"Let me hear it, boys," Mac said, and the two fell silent. Just before the connection was lost, Mac heard enough from the pilot to encourage him. "Well, that is good news, isn't it?" he said.

The pa.s.senger turned. "Sure enough. I don't know what to make of that last bit, but we got 'em, we sure did."

At the airport Mac could hardly believe the disarray. What was left of the GC force there looked undisciplined and lackadaisical. That could work only to his advantage. "I need wheels," he told the only Peacekeeper who rose and saluted him in the main hangar. "I need the key to those wheels, I want to store my stuff, and I want to see a Rooster Tail, if it's here."

"Oh, it's here, sir, and we've been expecting you. I'll take your stuff."

"Did I say I wanted you to take my stuff?"

"No, sir, you plain as day said you wanted to store it yourself."

He ran to a desk where he dug keys out of a huge cardboard box.

"The Rooster Tail's in Hangar . The car's the first one on the end. I can bring it to you."

"You do that."

"Oh, almost forgot. I've got to put your code into the computer and "

"Not before you bring the car, you don't."

"Well, that's true enough." And he ran off.

Mac was aware of others staring at him, sitting

straighter, looking busy. But nothing seemed to be going on, no planes coming or going.

"Gonna get us some help here, Commander?" someone called from across the room.

Mac glared at him. "Excuse me, officer?"

"I said, are you-"

"I heard what you said! Now get your seat out of that chair and address me properly!"

The man rose quickly and caught his foot on a wheel of the chair, stumbling before he righted himself and approached. Mac leveled his eyes at him. The man stopped and saluted. Mac ignored it.

"You make it a practice to holler at your senior officers across the room?"

"I wasn't thinking, sir."

"You had a question."

"Just wondering if we were going to get some support here, sir.

You see how shorthanded we are."

Mac looked from one side of the hangar to the other and out onto the runway. "You're overstaffed and underworked, and you know it."

"Yes, sir."

"Am I wrong?"

"No, sir. It's just that, well, we used to "

"As you were."

The man saluted again and backed away. The younger officer skidded Mac's car to a stop in front of the hangar and opened the trunk. "You want some a.s.sistance with that high-speed Transatlantic, sir?"

"I need nothing but a toolbox and to be left to it. What'd you people find in it?"

"Nothing, sir."

"You're not serious."

"We were instructed to leave it for the bra.s.s. That would be you, I guess."

Mac pressed his lips together. Was there nothing Chang Wong could not accomplish with a few keystrokes? "Give me a toolbox and tell me who's handling the Judah-ite roundup."

"Sir Mac c.o.c.ked his head and squinted at the kid. "You tellin' me we had one of the most successful busts of the underground right under you people's noses out here, and n.o.body knows a thing about it?"

"Oh, that, no. Yeah, we knew. We know. I just, I mean, what are you asking?"

"Who's handling it? They took an operative alive and I want to see him. I'm under orders to see him."

"Well, I wouldn't know where they were holding him, sir. I mean, I-".

"I didn't expect you to know where they're holding him! Did I ask you that?"

"No, sir. Sorry."

"I expect whoever's handling the operation for us locally will know that. You follow?"

"of course."

"So who is?"

"Guy with a funny name, sir. You'd have to check at headquarters in Ptolemais."

"Happens to be Nelson Stefanich. You in touch with him?"

S.

"Yes, sir."

"Can you make sure he's expectin' me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Tell 'im I expect all the cooperation and information I need as soon as I get there."

"Yes, sir. Now could I get you to give me your sixdigit security code for the-"

"zero-nine-one-zero-zero-one," Mac rattled off, then took the toolbox and drove to the hangar where George Sebastian's plane had been quarantined. He knew where George hid his a.r.s.enal, and within seconds he had removed panels in the cargo hold and lifted a directed energy weapon and a fifty-caliber rifle with bipod into the trunk of the car. He could tell front the safety tab George had positioned on the cargo door that the GC had searched the hold. Clearly, they had not discovered the secret panels.

Mac rushed back to the main hangar. "Clean as a whistle," he told the young man, handing the toolbox out the window. Ptolemais know I'm comin'?"