X gets up and gets towels and water bottle from the ambulance compartment. They towel off their faces, drink deeply. Abe feels the shakes begin to hit. The kinetic memory of the amputation returns, that crunch when the waldo suddenly overcame the bone’s resistance. “Man,” he says. X laughs softly.

Brrk! Crrk! “Truck five twenty-two, code six, a two car head-on where the Coast Highway meets Five in Capistrano Beach—”

Tapped out again. Reflexively they’re up. Xavier yells in to the ER nurses, Abe gets the truck started. X jumps in. Seat belts on. “Man they’re densepacked tonight.”

“Drive, road pilot, drive this baby.”

Chapter 23

23

Dennis McPherson reads of the sabotage at Parnell on the morning wall news, shoots air between his teeth. A bad business. There have been several attacks by saboteurs on defense contractors recently, and it’s hard to tell who’s behind them. It’s beginning to look like more than intercompany rivalries. Every company’s security division, including LSR’s, is involved in some questionable activities, usually concerned with getting their hands on classified military documents or the plans of other companies; this McPherson is aware of, as is everybody. And in isolated cases a zealous or desperate security team may have gotten out of hand and done some mischief to a rival. It’s happened, sure, and in recent years, with the Pentagon’s budget leveling off a little, the competition has become more and more unscrupulous. But mostly it’s been confined to intelligence and minor-league tampering. This widespread sabotage appears to be something new. The work of the Soviets, perhaps, or of some Third World power; or of homegrown refusniks.

Dennis laughs without humor to read that the composite-compound solvents used in the attack were mostly Styx-90, made by Dow. Parnell is owned by Dow. And he laughs again when it occurs to him that these companies, whose main business it is to defend America from ICBM attack, cannot even effectively protect themselves from little field cruisers. Who anymore can possibly believe in Fortress America?

Certainly not the security men at the gate of the LSR complex. They look distinctly unhappy as they check to see if McPherson is the correct occupant of his car. They’re there to defend against industrial espionage, not guerrilla attack. They’ve got an impossible job.

And the people inside?