The Pandora faded into the darkness, the darkest kind of dark, under a moonless sky, though the stars were very bright, much brighter than they appear in the States.

Two Land Rovers were waiting for us at the dock. Op Nine helped me out of the speedboat and I rode shotgun in the lead vehicle as he drove.

The roads in Marsa Alam were not up to American standards, and I was concentrating on keeping my tongue in the center of my mouth so I didn't bite it off as we jounced along. We didn't head for the lights of the town. Those lights stayed on our left and kept fading until the desert night closed around us and the only thing I could see were the twin beams of the headlamps cutting into the darkness.

After about fifteen minutes I saw a red blinking light against the backdrop of stars and other blue and yellow lights twinkling on the ground.

"Oh, great," I said. "This is just great. Where are we?" But I already knew the answer.

"An airstrip," Op Nine said.

Several men in black uniforms emerged out of the darkness as we got out of the Rovers. They carried automatic rifles and wore black berets. A man with dark skin, dressed in a very nice silk suit, separated himself from the soldiers and bowed to Op Nine.

"Dr. Smith," he said. "I am honored to make your acquaintance."

"I am Dr. Smith," Abigail said, smiling her brilliant smile and extending her hand. The man looked at her, startled. He wasn't expecting Dr. Smith to be a woman, I guess. He cleared his throat and made a show of pulling a sheet of paper from his coat pocket.

"I have a communication from His Excellency, the President of Egypt," the man said. He cleared his throat again and read very slowly, like he was translating Egyptian into English as he read, which maybe he was.

" 'As signatory to the OIPEP Charter, dated Copenhagen, 19 November, 1932, the Egyptian government pledges its full cooperation and support in this most urgent operation. Therefore, as President of Egypt and duly authorized signatory agent of the aforesaid Charter, I grant designated operatives of the Office of Interdimensional Paradoxes and Extraordinary Phenomenon, as determined by the director of said office, unconditional clearance in our airspace and any and all logistical support they may need for the successful completion of the aforesaid operation.

" 'We cheerfully place the fate of the world and its future generations into your hands. God be with you.' "

He cleared his throat a third time, carefully folded the communication, and handed it to Abby.

"Thank you, Ambassador," she said. "On behalf of the Office, I extend our gratitude and pledge our undying friendship to your government and all signatories to the Charter."

She bowed to him, he bowed to her, and then they bowed in unison.

He looked at each agent in turn, until he got to me, and the look became a stare.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Alfred Kropp."

"I know who you are," he said, and then he turned on his heel and strode toward a black Lincoln Town Car parked near the Land Rovers.

Op Nine said something to the soldiers in Arabic, which sounded very fluent to me, and at one point one of the soldiers laughed and clapped him on the shoulder like he'd gotten off a good joke. I tried to imagine Op Nine joking in any language, and couldn't. Over his shoulder I could see the dark hulk of a big plane. It looked like the same kind of cargo plane that had carried Bennacio and me over the Atlantic on my first globetrotting secret mission last spring.

We walked toward the plane, the soldiers taking parameter positions around us. Op Nine led the way. I glanced to my right and saw Ashley walking beside me. Her hair was pulled into a knot on the back of her head, the same way Abby Smith wore her hair. Maybe it was a Company requirement, like a dress code. Three Egyptian soldiers kept pace about a dozen yards behind us.

"What's an intrusion event?" I whispered to Ashley.

She shook her head. "You don't want to know."

For the first time I noticed how different her voice sounded from when I first met her. I guess that was part of her transfer-student act. Her real voice was deeper and kind of raspy, the kind of voice you associate with smokers or female PE teachers. But I didn't think she was either one of those. I hadn't noticed the smell of smoke on her, and I doubted OIPEP recruited high school PE teachers as top-secret operatives.

I nodded toward Op Nine at the head of the pack.

"He kind of creeps me out. I was wondering if he was a cyborg."

She gave a little laugh. "A what?"

"You know, some kind of cybernetic robot or something."

"He's human, as far as I know."

"Well, he doesn't act like any human I've ever known."

"He's sort of a living legend in the Company." She lowered her voice, which made it sound even throatier. "He was in Abkhazia in eighty-three. The only one to come out alive."

We had reached the plane, which had no windows, and that was fine with me. Benches lined either side of the massive interior. We took our seats as the engines revved to life and I searched in vain for the seat belts. Ashley sat on my left and Op Nine on my right. Directly across from me sat Abigail Smith, who in the dim cabin lighting seemed to be smiling, but she might have just been gritting her teeth. Between us sat a half-dozen wooden crates bolted to the floor with heavy chains.

The plane began to accelerate, pressing me sideways into Ashley's shoulder. My stomach rolled, but things got a little better once we were airborne. Beside me, Op Nine reached under his seat and took out an oversized leather-bound book with funny triangular-shaped designs on the cover. Written in big letters the color of blood were the words "ARS GOETIA."

"What is that?" I asked him.

He cocked an eyebrow at me. "The Ars Goetia," he answered. "What's that mean?"

"It is Latin for 'The Howling Art.' "

Then he proceeded to ignore me, burying his nose in the musty, parchmentlike papers of the old book, his lips moving as he read. I tried to think of something to say to Ashley, but I couldn't think of anything to say that didn't sound boring or stupid. Of course, I usually didn't let those considerations bother me, otherwise I'd never say anything.

"Do you know what's in the Lesser Seal?" I asked her.

She nodded, and her eyes were wide and wet-looking, and I wondered if that meant she was as scared as I was.

"Well," I said. "What is it?"

"The worst thing," she whispered. "The worst thing in the world."

At that moment Op Nine abruptly slammed the big book shut and stood up.

"We're at T-minus fourteen-thirty," he announced. "Insertion is approximately one hundred kilometers from the nexus. We will approach on sand-foils, since no doubt the Hyena is expecting an aerial assault. SATCON INTEL has identified Bedouin tribesmen recruited by our target."

"How many?" one of the guy agents asked. He had a great tan. I wondered if he was one of the people posing as a tourist above deck on the Pandora.

"Upwards of fifty, perhaps more, stationed as recons along approachable routes. Including, presumably, our route."

Op Nine opened one of the overhead compartments and pulled out something that looked like a cross between an elephant gun and a rocket launcher. It had a black strap for hanging it over your shoulder and a telescopic sight.

"Now," he said. "In the case of a full-blown intrusion event, this is the CW3XD." He held it high over his head so everybody could get a good look. "Obviously, it has never been field-tested."

"No time like the present," the tanned agent muttered.

Op Nine ignored him. "The magazine holds fifty rounds of ordnance." He pulled an oversized clip of bullets from the same overhead compartment. He ejected one of the bullets and held it up. It looked like an ordinary rifle round, except the tip was larger, about the size of an olive. "Be extraordinarily cautious with these. Loss of one into unfriendly hands could result in complete MISSFAIL."

"Mission failure," Ashley translated for me, but I had already figured that one out.

"The CW3XD is designed solely for containment of intrusion agents," Op Nine said, his tone becoming stern. "Under no circumstances is it to be discharged at the Hyena and his forces."

"Why?" another agent demanded. He was the biggest one of the lot; his thighs bulged in the shiny OIPEP jumpsuit and his biceps were about the size of my head, which, like too many people have pointed out, was large. "One round from this bad boy and they'll never find all the pieces."

"The ordnance is limited," Op Nine said.

"Extremely limited," Abigail Smith added, and for some reason she looked across the aisle at me.

"And it is specifically designed for operation against an intrusion agent," Op Nine said.

"So it'll kill 'em?" the big agent asked.

Op Nine gave him a cold stare. "What has never lived cannot be killed. Theoretically, the CW3XD will inhibit the IAs, giving us time to retrieve the Seals from the target."

Op Nine nodded to Abigail, who took a deep breath and rose from her seat with an air of weariness, like she could actually feel the fate of the world resting on her shoulders.

"Let's gear up," she said, and I thought her voice shook a little, and that wasn't encouraging, a senior OIPEP agent, afraid.

16.

The agents stood up and popped open the overhead compartments, pulling out these yellow and orange bundles with white harnesses and clinking silver buckles. It took me a second to get it. This plane wasn't landing. Instead, we were jumping. My stomach did a slow roll.

Ashley touched me on the elbow. "You need some help with yours?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Turn around."

I turned my back to her and she slipped the harness over my shoulders. I turned again and she proceeded to snap the silver buckles closed. The top of her head was below my chin as she worked on the buckle at my waist, and her blond hair shimmered in the cabin lighting. I smelled lilacs. She gave each buckle a sharp tug before stepping back.

"The chute should automatically deploy after seven seconds," she told me. She touched a cord hanging over my left shoulder. "Pull the backup if it doesn't."

"What if the backup doesn't work?"

"It'll work."

"But what if it doesn't?"

"Then you hit the ground at five hundred miles per hour."

She turned away and rummaged in the overhead. Four agents fussed with the big crates in the middle of the hold, unhooking the heavy chains and checking the mattress-sized parachutes tied to them.

"When you say seven seconds, is that seconds like 'one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi' or 'one thousand one, one thousand two'?" I asked.

She turned, holding a gun and holster. She wrapped it around her slim waist and pulled it tight.

"It'll be all right, Alfred," she said. "Just don't stiffen up on the landing. Remember to bend your knees on touchdown; you'll be okay."

A bell rang inside the hold and a yellow light began to pulse over the cabin door. All the agents except two lined up for the jump. These two took positions in the rear on either side of the massive bay door; I guessed they were in charge of deploying the crates. I wondered who was in charge of deploying Alfred Kropp.

The agents lined up by the pulsing yellow light were hooking these long metal cords dangling from their chutes to a thin pole that ran the length of the cabin. I was wondering why, when the door swung open and a tornado roared into the plane. The wind kicked my feet out from under me and I would have smacked butt-first onto the hard metal floor, but a pair of huge hands caught me before I hit.

Op Nine shouted into my ear: "Be careful, Alfred Kropp! There may not always be someone near to catch you when you fall!"

He hooked me to the pole. I shivered in the howling wind. The temperature must have dropped about ten degrees when the door swung open.

One by one the OIPEP agents vanished through the opening. One second they were standing there, the next they were gone, like they were being sucked into the maw of an angry, screaming beast. Op Nine put one hand on my shoulder as we edged closer. My knees felt very weak and my throat very dry, but I didn't have a choice now-I couldn't turn back or change my mind, and sometimes that's better.

When my turn came, I put a hand on either side of the opening and stared into the dark Arabian night, unable to look up or down or unclench my cramping fingers from the cold metal. Op Nine bellowed in my ear, "Now! Let go, Alfred!"

That was it, the whole deal. I really had a problem with this letting-go thing. My mom. The truth about my dad. The loss of everybody who was close to me. I suddenly realized that sometimes the toughest thing is getting out of your own way.

I let go.

17.

I spun and twisted and flipped as I fell, yowling my lungs out. The big plane appeared to shoot straight up toward the stars, and the world fragmented and refused to arrange itself into any kind of order: stars, earth, earth, stars, stars, earth, earth . . . and my mind fell apart with it. I forgot to count and by the time I remembered, I had no idea where to start-how many seconds had passed? Should I pull my cord just to be safe? Or would pulling my cord mess up the timing mechanism and tangle my chute? And, if my chute got tangled, would the desert sand break my fall? But if desert sand could break someone's fall, why use a parachute in the first place?

I hadn't been counting, but I figured I was way past the seven-second window, so I pulled the cord. Nothing happened. Stars, earth, earth, stars-and nothing happened. I yanked the cord again. I should know better than to jump from airplanes. In fact, with my track record, I shouldn't even indulge in something as commonplace as jaywalking. I pulled the cord a third time.

Nothing happened. Well, one thing happened: the rip cord broke off in my hand.

A few seconds later I was yanked about fifty feet straight up as my chute deployed and my descent slowed-but didn't seem slow enough. At least I was falling feetfirst. I could see one or two other OIPEP troopers silhouetted against the sky, dangling from their chutes like the toys I used to buy-the green army men with the plastic parachutes that you threw underhanded into the air. Half the time the kite string didn't unravel correctly and the army man crashed to earth or got hung up in a tree branch.

I looked down between my feet and saw the desert rushing up. Bend your knees, Kropp, keep 'em loose, I told myself, but I smacked into the ground with my legs as stiff as one of those army men's. My right ankle twisted in the sand. I pitched forward and the chute settled gently over my writhing body, the silky material wrapping tighter and tighter around me as I rolled in the sand.

Somebody pulled the chute off me and rolled me over. I looked up into Ashley's face-her red lipstick looked purple in the starlight-and said, "I think I broke my right ankle."

"Let's see," she said softly. She ran her fingers along the bones and then took my foot in both hands and gently turned it.

"Ouch!"

"I think it's a sprain. Let's see if you can put any weight on it."

She unhooked me from the harness and pulled me to my feet.