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The figure was an elaborate mannequin!

She had started to back dazedly away when a voice echoed through the hall’s gaping expanse.

“I’m here, Patty.”

And she turned to see a figure emerging from another section of the room into the light. The figure was her father.

* * *

Eight minutes to critical stage.…”

Along the green, florescent-lighted corridor directly above the Pennsylvania Yankee reactor complex, the temperature was already in excess of a hundred degrees. Sweat poured from Jack Tunnel’s face as he helped Blaine fasten himself into the layered radiation suit.

“Gonna be close to a hundred and fifty at the bottom of the ladder — if you make it that far.”

“I’ll make it, all right.”

“Temperature’s rising a degree every five seconds — that’s gonna increase as we get closer to critical stage. Even in the suit you can take maybe three minutes down there. Probably less.”

“It’s all I’ll need.”

“The valves are clearly marked. I’ll stay up here and direct you to them.”

“That ring on your finger tells me you’ve got a family, Jack. Might be a better idea for you to hightail it out like everyone else.”

“And let you take all the credit for saving the greater Northeast? Not on your life, McCracken.”

Back near the hatch that led onto the ladder, two volunteers from the control room had finished stuffing towels and padding into another radiation suit. They were tying the rope under the filled-out suit’s arms when Blaine approached.

“Show time,” McCracken said as he eased the makeshift dummy through the opening. “You boys better stand back and cover your ears.”

And with that he began to lower the thing down, giving slack on the rope to match the pace of a man’s descent down the ladder. “Seven minutes to critical stage.…”

Just after the fifteenth rung, the firing began, the motion sensor having picked up the dummy’s descent. Bullets ripped through its suit and stuffed innards and clanged off pipes and ladder rungs, ricocheting off walls in all directions. The metallic echoing burned Blaine’s ears, and several times he flinched when bullets flew maddeningly close to the open hatch. Through it all, he continued to lower the dummy at a pace designed to draw continuous fire from the rifle Abraham had planted until its ammo was exhausted.

At last he heard a repetitive clicking sound that told him the firing pin was striking an empty chamber. McCracken let the dummy drop the rest of the way down the ladder and reached back for his helmet.

Jack Tunnel touched his arm. “With the coast clear, I can get the job done better than you, friend.”

“Coast might not be clear, Jack. Might be more surprises waiting for anyone who goes down there. It’s got to be me.”

“Sounds like a song.”

“Hopefully a happy one.”

Tunnel tightened Blaine’s helmet into its slot, but didn’t clamp the faceplate down. “Look, if she goes to critical stage the rest of us will still be able to get out with limited contamination. But you, friend, are gonna get zapped by enough rads to make your skin glow.”

“Get to save on my electric bills then, won’t I?” Blaine said, flipping his faceplate down before disappearing into the rancid heat of the loop below.

Six minutes to critical stage.…”

* * *

To Johnny Wareagle, this all had a shade of familiarity cast over it, as if he’d already been through it before. Perhaps he had. In the many dreams the spirits had sent to prepare him for his Hanbelachia, a battle with the greatest enemy he had ever faced, they had shown him all.

Abraham could have chosen anywhere along the motorcade’s route to strike at the president, but Johnny knew the spirits would guide him in the right direction. Suddenly Wareagle gazed up at a nest of buildings squeezed claustrophobically against one another on Boylston Street, five blocks away from the Ritz Carlton. The entire city seemed to be choking on its own progress. The beginning structure of yet another skyscraper was piercing the sky where a parking lot had been just months before. Gazing that high up from ground level, there was nothing that could be seen clearly.

But Johnny didn’t have to see. He felt a sudden chill pass through him. The high steelworkers were clustered on Boylston Street, where everyone was waiting for the motorcade to pass by. The steel skeleton was deserted.

Not quite.

Johnny could feel the presence quite clearly now, could feel it as clearly as if it were a yard away. It was something cold and vile, with a manitou as dark as the night itself. The stink of its spiritless soul reached him, assailing his senses.

The motorcade was coming.

Johnny jumped the fence enclosing the structure and rushed to one of the scaffold construction elevators.

“Stray Seven to Alley Cat! I’ve lost him! Goddammit, I’ve lost him!”

“Not again!” Arnold Triesman shouted, rushing down Boylston Street toward Stray Seven’s last reported position. In the streets around him a number of agents were doing the same on his orders. A nag had suddenly hit Triesman’s gut about this one. He probably should have ordered the motorcade back to the airport; it was in his power. But everything he had been taught advised against panic, and, if this proved to be a false alarm, he’d be finished.

“Wait a minute!” Stray Seven’s voice echoed in his ear. “I think I just caught a glimpse of him!”

“What’s the twenty?”

“Near the Commonwealth Insurance Building.”

Right along the motorcade route, Triesman thought. But he couldn’t reroute without taking the president into an unsecured area. And a slowdown or outright stoppage would subject Top Guy to more danger than letting him go on. The situation, in any case, was under control. They had their man sighted.

“Did he enter any building, Seven?”

“No way to be sure, Alley Cat.”

“Get sure! Do you hear me? Get sure by the time I get over there!” Triesman switched his communicator to all bands.” All Stray teams, converge on the area of the Commonwealth Insurance Building shell. Choppers, do you copy that?”

“Roger,” the three pilots replied in virtual unison.

“All buildings considered compromised. Let’s move! Everyone move!”

* * *

“Dad?” Patty asked tentatively, tremors rising through her stomach and chest.

“I’m sorry,” Phillip Hunsecker said.

“You should be,” Patty blurted out.

“Not for what I’ve done. Sorry that you came here. You should leave.”

“Not unless you leave with me.”

He kept approaching, shaking his head. “I can’t do that.”

Patty’s eyes flicked about the room. “This is more important to you than your family, your life?”

“This is my family, my life. Always has been.”

The man who had come to a halt a yard from her did not look like her father. Oh, it was him all right, but she barely recognized him. Part of her had envisioned herself running into his arms; now those arms might as well have been a stranger’s. Patty shivered.

“I can get you out of this,” she made herself say. “McCracken will help me. He can fix things.”

“It’s too late for that, Patty.”

“It’s never too late.”

“This time it is. We’ve failed. Our identities are known. Our plan is known. For our honor to be preserved, we must disappear, become the past.”

“What are you saying?”

Patty heard a second set of steps behind her just before the voice reached her.