A sharp blow from the Supreme Commander on the side of her head made her stagger back, blinking. "Control yourself, Diana!" Pamela said, sharply. "That's an order! Have your face seen to immediately!"
Shaking with fury, her hands partially covering her shredded face, Diana left the room.
Later that day, the four Visitor officers held a staff meeting. Diana's face had been repaired, and icy calm had replaced the white-hot fury of her earlier exhibition.
"The Fifth Column," Steven said matter-of-factly. "I've heard reports on other ships, but this is the first action aboard this one. It's spreading throughout the fleet. Every ship is reporting incidents."
"Not my ship," Diana said between her teeth. "I'll have no Fifth Column aboard my ship."
Martin spoke up. "If I may, I'd like to suggest that we remove important prisoners to Earth Security Headquarters until we can secure the ship. It would seem safer."
"He's right," Steven said. "As long as this ship is contaminated by the Fifth Column, we're vulnerable. We have Juliet Parrish, one of the most important resistance leaders. We can't afford to lose her."
"I agree." Pamela nodded.
"Yes," Diana agreed. "Implement Martin's suggestion immediately. I want her moved tonight."
"Very well," Steven said, signaling Martin with a look. The two officers made their exit, leaving Diana and Pamela at the conference table.
Pamela scanned a tablet of reports idly. "I'm giving orders to increase security. I'll put it in my report."
"This is my ship." Diana looked up. "I give the orders on my ship."
"Diana." Pamela assumed an air of patience that caused the other Visitor to stiffen in rage. "Your ship is but one in my squadron. You forget my rank."
Diana tapped the table for a moment, then smiled. "I may not have your rank, Pamela, but I do have the Leader's special interest. Which, in many cases, is even more desirable than rank."
Pamela put on a gentle, rueful expression. "I shouldn't rely too heavily on your relationship with the Leader, Diana. That road has seen very heavy traffic, you know. As a matter of fact, there were rumors of a new consort under consideration when I left. I hadn't met her, but by all reports, she's lovely. And quite a bit older than you are . . . prime-molted, full-patterned . . ."
"I don't believe you!"
"Diana, sex for favors is as old as ambition, but most people discover eventually that sex is too fragile a foundation to handle the weight of an ambition as . . . extensive as yours. When you were in favor, many people noticed how quickly you became dissatisfied with each achievement."
Diana raised her chin. "I've never seen you lack for ambition, Pamela."
"That's because my ambition has always ranged side by side with my current abilities." She smiled again. "You might take a moment to consider, my dear, that your . . . lover . . . sent you eighty trillion kilometers away from home. Hardly an indication that he couldn't bear not seeing you."
Smiling gently at Diana's discomfiture, Pamela took her leave.
Mike Donovan rapped sharply on the door of one of the moms in the ancient saloon. "Come in," called Ruby Engels.
Donovan entered to find the elderly woman applying her cleaning-lady makeup. Ham Tyler sat beside her.
"We're ready to move," Donovan said to him. "I handed out the weapons just now. I hope the Teflon-tipped ammo holds out."
"If your people are as good shots as you claim, it'll be plenty," Ham said, watching Ruby as she dabbed a garish spot of rouge on her cheek.
"You don have to do this, Ruby," Mike said. "You're taking a terrible risk for us, and don't think I don't know it."
Ruby looked at him for a long moment. "If you can get Julie back without me, tell me how, and I'll stay home and knit."
His gaze held hers for many seconds, then his eyes dropped. "Ruby . . ."
"She's a real trouper, Gooder. Something you wouldn't understand at all," Tyler said. "I could'a used this lady in Poland, lemme tell ya. She's pure steel under all that makeup." He fished in a bag under his feet. "Got a couple of presents for you, Ruby. Here." Carefully he handed her a blackjack, an ice pick in a leather scabbard, and a walkie-talkie. Drawing out the ice pick, he looked at her, his pale eyes questioning. "You know where to aim on these gators, babe?"
Ruby nodded. "I think so." She touched her throat, her eye, and the side of her head, just below the ear.
"Right," said Ham approvingly, "and if they're not wearing that damn armor, right between the shoulder blades is okay for a spot in the back."
"Got you," Ruby said.
"Now, on my signal," he tapped the walkie-talkie, "you pull the plug on the electricity. Nothin' throws a fighting force into disarray faster than having the lights go out. We'll be waiting, and we'll move right in when you make your move. Then you get out quick, understand?"
"Right," Ruby said.
"This entire operation is built around you, babe."
"A star at last!" Ruby grinned. "I didn't have this good a role when I did the nurse in Romeo and Juliet."
Donovan gave her his hand. "Break a leg, Ruby. If this works, Julie's gonna know what you risked for her sake—'cause I'm gonna tell her. You've got more guts than any of us, lady."
"Shpilkes!" She shook her finger under his nose in her best Yiddish-momma manner. "I heard about you, Donovan, volunteering to get captured just to get a try at Diana. We're all doing what we have to, that's all."
"Well—" He hesitated, then awkwardly hugged her, careful not to smudge her makeup. "Be careful, all right?"
"I can take care of myself," Ruby said. "You just tell everyone in the strike force to pick up their feet."
Visitor Headquarters was lit up like a shopping mall during the Christmas rush. Ham Tyler squinted through the electric fence at the distant mansion with the enormous Visitor flag hanging from a pole in front of it, the landing strip next to it, and thought of France during the war. Shock troopers in full armor stood posted on the enormous portico. Several officers bustled around, obviously hurrying, casting looks now and then at the great ship overhead.
Ham lowered his binoculars and addressed the others. "They're expecting that squad ship with those VIP prisoners any second—you can tell from the way they're acting. We're gonna have to shake a leg."
Quietly the strike force gathered its arms, while Tyler eyed the electric fence. He clicked on the walkie-talkie. "Ruby?"
"Here," came the muffled response.
"What about the electricity on the fence?"
"I'm here by the power boxes in the basement. I can turn it off for a minute, but no longer. They've got a monitor in the checkpoint in front of the gate, and if the guard looks that way while the current is off, we're cooked."
"Right." Beckoning to Elias, Tyler handed him a pair of heavy-duty cutters, twin to his own. He thumbed the walkie talkie. "We're set. Down it."
In desperate haste, the two men clipped a ragged hole in the fence. As soon as the last wire was sheared through, Ham clicked the walkie-talkie. "Power up, Ruby."
Caleb, Elias, Sancho, Brad, Maggie, Donovan, Chris, and the others gathered to hear Tyler's last instructions. "All right. One by one, through the hole, except for you, Gooder. You all set to make the pickup?"
Donovan nodded. "When the lights go down, I ram the gate."
"Right. Get the truck moving, 'cause we're not gonna have any extra time." He turned back to the others. "Need I warn you all that if you touch the wire on the way through the hole, you'll look like an overdone french fry?"
There was a combined murmur of assent.
"Good," Tyler continued. "All right, get in there, spread out, and when I fire the first shot, take that as your signal to nail as many lizards as you can until the lights go out. Then grab one of the prisoners and rendezvous on the edge of the landing strip closest to the gate. Any questions?"
There were no questions. Cautiously, the strike force crawled through the fence, scattering into the night. Tyler was the last to go.
A few minutes later, he crouched in the shadows two hundred feet away from the large concrete apron in front of the headquarters. Although a few cars were parked along its fringes, the central portion was bare, a landing strip for Visitor craft.
He scanned the surrounding darkness alertly, but caught no betraying movement. Either Donovan's people were as good as he said they were, or they'd gotten lost in the dark. There was no way to be sure.
Suddenly a shout came from the Visitor guards in front of the headquarters, and the ranks of shock troopers trotted alertly into place. Overhead, a spot of light shone out from the underside of the Mother Ship, then was quickly eclipsed as the comparatively tiny squad vehicle slid out of the landing bay, drifting effortlessly toward the earth.
Okay, get ready, Ham thought, taking an experimental sight through the starlight scope on his M-16. A few moments later the squad vehicle drifted silently to earth, reflecting dimly the wash of lights from the mansion. The hatch came up, and Diana and Steven climbed out, followed by some dazed-looking human prisoners herded along by the shock troopers. Foremost among them was Juliet Parrish. Martin walked beside her. As Tyler watched, the blonde woman stumbled and the Visitor officer moved quickly to catch her arm.
There's the signal, Ham thought, taking careful aim. When he squeezed the trigger, Martin went down clutching at his leg, dragging Juliet with him.
A volley of shots rang out. Some Visitor guards began falling, others fired back into the darkness. Ham looked quickly for Diana, but couldn't see her—damn scaly bitch leads a charmed life—and continued shooting. When it looked as though the Visitor guards were beginning to regroup, he thumbed the switch on the walkie-taikie.
"Okay, Ruby, kill those lights!"
He heard the explosion from the basement power room faintly, and the lights went out. Tyler heard the crash of the gate as Donovan bashed through it with the big truck, and then he was up, running for the rendezvous point.
Scattered firing pulsed through the night as Ham raced across the landing strip, stopping on his way to catch the arm of a dazed-looking older man. (It was only later, when Tyler really looked at the man, that he realized he'd rescued the Mayor of Los Angeles.) Towing his prize stumbling beside him, he legged it toward the truck, identifying its location by sound only—either Donovan didn't want to give the Visitors a visual target, or they'd already shot the headlights out.
Reaching the vehicle, he slung his charge into the back of the truck, seeing Juliet Parrish's blonde head, then tumbled into the cab beside Mike. The air was full of the pulsing of Visitor weapons. Donovan slewed the truck around, gunning it, and took off. Maggie and Elias, still clinging to the side rails, were hastily dragged aboard by their fellow rebels.
Tyler finched as the flying truck bounced off the gatepost on his side on its way out. "Did we get her?" Donovan yelled over the sound of the engine.
"Smooth as silk, Gooder. Your people did okay."
Glancing over at the newsman, Tyler didn't miss the relief spreading across Donovan's face—even in the greenish dimness of the dash lights, it was palpable. "Don't you think you oughta turn on the headlights, Gooder?" he asked mildly.
"Oh. Yeah." Hastily Donovan flicked the truck's lights on as the heavy vehicle rumbled along the side road.
Ham grinned. "Since you've gotten hooked up with this bunch, you've really worn a few edges off, haven't you, Donovan?"
"As I live and breathe, the Fixer has turned into a student of human nature. When did you decide to take up psychoanalysis?"
"You oughtta know that any agent who makes it through twenty-five years in this business has to be a pretty observant guy. If you're not observant, especially about people, you're dead."
"I can't figure you, Ham. Sometimes you border on being human—then you come out with some of the most racist, right-wing, bigoted shit I've ever heard, and piss me off all over again. What gives?"
"Just natural talent, I guess." Ham heard the tightness in his own voice, and Donovan didn't miss it either.
"What's bugging you?"
"I'm worried about Ruby."
"Why? If things go according to plan, she'll never be connected with the mess. After all, she was assigned to the night shift to clean up the place for the brass—she has every right to be there."
"I know, but I'm stilt worrying. Everything else went so smooth—not one casualty—that I'm not gonna rest until I know Ruby's all right, too."
"Yeah, I know what you mean."
Ruby Engels moved cautiously through the dark basement with the aid of the flashlight she'd concealed in her cleaning bucket, along with the plastic explosives and blasting caps. The bucket was empty now. She carried it in her other hand—she couldn't afford to leave any evidence that might point to the identity of the saboteur.
She was almost to the foot of the basement steps when the door swung open with a jerk, and she found herself pinned in the gleam of a powerful hand torch. Daniel Bernstein stood at the top of the stairs. Ruby jumped and screeched, dropping her bucket—and the flashlight. "Mercy, boy, don't scare me like that!"
"What are you doing down here?"
Ruby limped painfully toward the stairs. "I was cleanin' in the main hall when the lights went out. I lost my way, and 'fore I knew what was what, I tripped and fell down these here stairs. Near broke my ankle."
"You're lying," Daniel said, coming down the stairs. "I saw a flashlight beam down here. Where'd you hide it?"
Ruby's armpits were clammy as she forced herself not to glance at the flashlight she'd kicked beneath a storage bin. "I dunno what you're talkin' about, boy. Can you give me a hand t' climb these stairs? It's a mercy I didn't break my leg, an' that's the truth."
"Don't I know you?" The young man shone the blinding beam of the high-power light into her face. "You look familiar."
Ruby cackled with just the right touch of lewd familiarity. "Know me? Honey, I just wish you'd known me thirty years ago. I ain't never seen you before. I'd remember a handsome young buck like you!"
"No." His eyes, In the reflected glare of the flashlight, narrowed. "I do know you." He reached out and grabbed her shoulder shaking her hard. "Who are you?"
As he pulled his hand away, his fingers caught in the frazzled platinum wig Ruby wore, dragging it askew. Daniel reached out and snatched it off her head, baring Ruby's own shock of thick white hair. "I knew it!" he crowed. "Ruby Engels, who lived across the street! The crazy old biddy who ran off and joined the resistance, or so the gossip goes . . ."
Ruby gave up the pretense. "Yes. You know me."
"And you were the one who planted the charge that blew the power boxes, weren't you? When I turn you in, I'm gonna be a hero all over again."
"You'll be a hero, all right, and further disgrace your grandfather's name. Let me go, Daniel. For his sake, if not for your own."
He hesitated, and Ruby thought she saw a shadow of pain flit across his face at the mention of Abraham Bernstein. "No," he said.
"Daniel," she stepped closer to him, keeping her voice soft, coaxing, "I've known you all your life. Remember when you would come over to my house on the days I baked lebkuchen, and you'd watch through the screen door till I took them out of the oven? I used to decorate them like little faces for you, Danny. Little funny faces on the honey cakes?"
His face betrayed a struggle.
"You were a good boy, then, Danny. Could you have changed so much? Betray someone who was your grandfather's friend, who was kind to you? I don't think so."
Slowly she walked past him, her eyes holding his until the last possible moment. Putting her hand on the stair railing, she raised her foot and began to climb. One step . . . two . . .
"Stop!" his voice cracked uncertainly, then gained strength and conviction. "Stop! I'm warning you!"
Three steps . . . Oh, God, let me get away, see my friends again. Let me see the end of this thing—did Julie get away? Four steps . . . five . . . please, God . . . Six steps . . .
The shot ca
ught her full in the back. Ruby gasped, hearing the pulse of the weapon, and for an endless second couldn't understand why her hand wouldn't hold onto the railing—she was going to fall—
I'm falling . . . Livid fire awoke in her back as her body twisted. Then came the terrible slow-motion helplessness of her backstroking plunge off the steps. No, please, help—
Ruby crashed onto the cement floor and lay there, stunned, trying to breathe but unable to. The pain was too all-encompassing, too huge. It had swallowed up the world, and now it would swallow her up. It was as simple as that. She could feel it rushing for her, slamming at her with a force so elemental that nothing of what had been Ruby Engels could stand in its way . . .
Reflexively she tried to gasp, but the pain arrived before the air did, snatching her up, taking her down with it, into a darkness where there was no place for anything, not even pain.
By the time Daniel stepped over her to summon his friends, she was dead.
Chapter 27
Juliet Parrish and Mike Donovan stared up at the gargantuan Mother Ship as it hovered barely a thousand feet above the treetops. Dangling from its belly, like some obscene umbilical cord, was an enormous hose that ran down into a huge pipe. The pipe extended down into the pumping station that stood beside the huge dam.
Donovan made a helpless, wordless gesture with his hands. "Martin wasn't kidding. How can we fight something on this scale?"
"I don't know." Juliet pushed a few wisps of blonde hair out of her eyes. "I just don't know. We can't let the size of the operation hang us up. The bigger they are—"
"Yeah," said Donovan, unconvinced. "How long before they take the reservoir down below replenishable levels?"
"Chris Faber calculated that we have no more than two days to make our move."
"We'd better get rolling then. We'll need the films of the pumping station to plan our attack." He gave her a quick, concerned glance. "You okay, Doc?"
She gave him a wan smile. "Yeah. Don't I look all right?"
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