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"Meeker," came a weary voice from a cellular phone.
"This is Ingram, boss."
"Don't you ever get tired of peeking at the world's darkest secrets all night? Why don't you go home and make love to your wife?"
"I admit sex is best, but staring at these incredible pictures is a close second."
Curtis Meeker sighed with relief as the traffic opened up and he made it through the last intersection light signal before turning down his street. "You see something?" he asked.
"I have an airplane in the sea off Soseki Island."
"What model?"
"Looks like a World War Two B-Twenty-nine, or what's left of it. Appears heavily damaged but otherwise in pretty good shape after sitting on the seabed for fifty years."
"Any details?"
"A clear picture of numbers and letters on the side of the fuselage and the tail. I can also make out a small figure on the bow beneath the cockpit."
"Describe it."
"Not a perfect image, mind you, when you consider that we're looking through four hundred meters of water. But I'd say it looks like a devil with a pitchfork."
"Make out any wording?"
"Pretty vague," answered Ingram. "The first word is covered by undersea growth." He paused and gave the command to the computer for further enhancement. "The second word looks likèDemons.' "
"A little off the beaten path for the Twentieth Air Force during the war," said Meeker.
"Think there's any importance attached to it?"
Meeker shook his head to himself as he turned into his driveway. "Probably just an aircraft that went missing after it flew off course and crashed like the Lady Be Good in the Sahara Desert. Better have it checked out, though, so any living relatives of the crew can be notified of their final resting place."
Ingram set down the receiver and stared at the shattered picture of the old aircraft buried under the sea, and found himself wondering how it came to be there.
There had been no need to tape their eyes open. Stacy, Mancuso, and Weatherhill had watched the viewing screen in horrified fascination just before the picture went black during Pitt's fight with the robodog. Then sadness and shock flooded their emotions as Kamatori fiendishly aimed another camera at the blooddrenched ground.
The four of them sat chained to metal chairs grouped in a small semicircle around a huge high-resolution video screen set into the wall. The two robots Giordino called McGoon and McGurk stood guard with the latest in Japanese automatic rifles aimed at the back of their prisoners' heads.
The unexpected defeat of their plans and total helplessness had stunned them worse than the virtual sentence of death. A hundred plans to salvage their predicament rushed through their minds. None had the slightest hope of getting off the ground. They were conscious now of little but approaching death.
Stacy turned and looked across at Giordino to see how he was taking the crushing blow of his friend's loss. But his face was completely composed and thoughtful, with no trace of sorrow or rage. Giordino sat there in icy calm, his eyes curiously staring at the action on the screen as if it was an adventure serial at a Saturday matinee.
A short time later, Kamatori entered the room, sat down crosslegged on a mat, and poured a cup of saki. "I trust you watched the results of the hunt," he said between sips. "Mr. Pitt did not play by the rules. He attacked the robot, altered its programming, and died through his own stupidity."
"He would have died by your hand anyway!" spat Mancuso. "At least he cheated you of that piece of butchery."
Kamatori's lips curled downward briefly and then up in a sinister smile. "I assure you, there will be no repeat of your friend's performance. A new robodog is presently being reprogrammed so that any unexpected damage to his system will not result in an attack on his quarry."
"That's a break," grunted Giordino.
"You scumbag," hissed Mancuso, red-faced and straining against his chains. "I've seen the brutalities men like you did to Allied prisoners of war. You delight in the torture of others, but can't stand the thought of suffering yourself."
Kamatori observed Mancuso with the same expression of haughty distaste he might have displayed at observing a rat baring its teeth from a sewer. "You shall be the last I run to ground, Mr. Mancuso. You will suffer at watching the agony of the others until your turn."
"I volunteer to be next," said Weatherhill calmly. His mind skipped over escape schemes and began concentrating on one act. He figured if he did nothing else, killing Kamatori would be worth dying for.
