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oking the fabulous collection below. "That's interesting."
"What?"
"You referred to the assassins as being from the Fourth Empire."
"Their words, not mine."
"The Nazis called their hideous dreamworld the Third Reich."
"Most all the old Nazis are dead, thankfully," said Pitt. "The Third Reich died with them."
"Did you ever take a course in German?" inquired Gunn.
Pitt shook his head. "The only words I know are ja, nein, and auf Wiedersehen."
"Then you don't know that the English for `Third Reich' is `Third Empire.' "
Pitt went taut. "You're not suggesting they're a bunch of neo-Nazis?"
Gunn was about to reply when a great whoosh sound came, like a jet fighter using its afterburner, and was followed immediately by an earsplitting screech of metal and a streak of orange flame that flashed across the interior of the hangar before disappearing through the far wall. Two seconds later, an explosion rattled the hangar and shook the wrought-iron balcony. Dust fell from the metal roof and settled on the shiny cars, dulling their bright paint. A weird silence trailed the fading rumble from the explosion.
Then came the rattle of prolonged gunfire, followed quickly by another, more muted explosion. Both men stood frozen, gripping the balcony railing.
Pitt found words first. "The bastards!" he hissed.
"What in God's name was that?" asked Gunn in shock.
"Damn them. They fired a missile into my hangar. The only thing that saved us from being blasted to shreds was that it didn't explode. The warhead smashed through one thin corrugated wall and out the other without the detonator in its nose striking a heavy structural beam."
The door burst open and the two security guards came running onto the floor of the hangar, pulling to a halt beneath the spiral staircase. "Are you injured?" asked one.
"I believe the word is shaken," said Pitt. "Where did it come from?"
"A handheld launcher fired from a helicopter," answered the guard. "Sorry we let it get so close. We were conned by the markings-- it was supposed to be from a local television station. We did fire on it, however, and bring it down. It crashed in the river."
"Nice work," said Pitt sincerely.
"Your friends certainly don't spare any expense, do they?"
"They obviously have money to burn."
The guard turned to his partner. "We're going to have to increase our perimeter." Then he looked around the hangar. "Any damage?" he asked Pitt.
"Only a couple of holes in the walls big enough to fly kites through."
"We'll see that they're repaired immediately. Anything else?"
"Yes," Pitt said, becoming even more angered as he stared at the coating of dust on his expensive cars.
"Please call in a cleaning crew."
"Maybe you should reconsider that project in the Pacific," said Gunn.
Pitt seemed not to have heard him. "Fourth Reich, Fourth Empire, whoever they are, they've made a very serious mistake."
"Oh?" said Gunn, looking curiously at his trembling hands as if they belonged to someone else. "What mistake is that?"
Pitt was staring up at the gaping, jagged holes in his hangar's walls. There was a cold malignity glaring out of his opaline green eyes, a malignity Gunn had seen on at least four other occasions, and he shivered involuntarily.
