“No!” Pitt snapped. He hunched down and motioned for the light. His hands circled the cone of the shell as lightly as those of a safecracker fingering a tumbler dial. Locating the locking screws, he carefully undid them with a screwdriver. The threads were frozen with age and they fought his every twist. Time, Pitt thought desperately; he needed time before Fawkes’s crew repaired the hoist and returned to the projectile-storage compartment.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, the last of the screws sheared off and the nose cone came loose in his hands. Tenderly, as though it were a sleeping baby, he set it aside and looked inside the warhead.

Then Pitt began to disconnect the explosive charge that was set to split the warhead and release the cluster of bomblets containing the QD organism. There was nothing tricky or particularly hazardous about the procedure. Working on the theory that too much concentration makes the hands tremble, Pitt idly whistled under his breath, thankful that Lusana wasn’t plying him with questions.

Pitt cut the wires leading to the radar altimeter and removed the explosive detonator. He paused for a moment and took a small money sack from his coat pocket. Lusana was mildly amused to see that the lettering on the soiled canvas read WHEATON SECURITY BANK.

“I’ve never admitted this to a soul,” Lusana said, “but I once robbed an armored truck.”

The Iowa 253p>

“Then you should feel right at home,” replied Pitt. He lifted the QD bomblets from the warhead and gently deposited them in the money bag.

“Damned clever smuggling method,” Lusana said, smiling tightly. “Heroin, or diamonds?”

“I’d be interested in knowing that myself,” Patrick Fawkes said as he ducked under the door frame into the compartment.

63

Lusana’s first reflex was to shoot Fawkes. He spun around in a firing crouch and threw up the Colt, confident he couldn’t miss such a massive target, dead certain the captain had the split-second advantage of a first shot.

Lusana barely caught himself in time. Fawkes’s hands were empty. He was unarmed.

Slowly lowering the Colt, Lusana looked down at Pitt to see how the jther man was taking the situation. As far as he could see, Pitt gave not jthe slightest reaction. He continued loading the sack as if the intrusion lad never occurred.

“Have I the honor of addressing Patrick McKenzie Fawkes?” Pitt Snally said without looking up.

“Aye, I’m Fawkes.” He moved closer, his expression one of curiosity. |”What goes on here?”

‘Excuse me for not rising,” Pitt said casually, “but I’m deactivating a joison-gas warhead.”

Perhaps five seconds passed as Lusana and Fawkes digested Pitt’s Drief explanation, staring at each other blankly and then back down at Jitt.

“You’re daft!” Fawkes blurted.