A score for our side, thought Machita, his hands casually holding the basket and shielding the ice pick. “Do you have Operation Wild Rose?” ”he asked, his tone official.

“Do you have two million American dollars?” the shadowy figure beside him retorted.

Machita hesitated and unconsciously ducked as the car swung beneath a tall stack of barrels that fell over toward them, jerking to a stop bare inches from their heads.

“Here … in the basket.”

Emma pulled an envelope from inside a dirty jacket. “Your boss will find this most interesting reading.”

“If not vastly overpriced.”

Machita was glancing through the documents in the envelope when a pair of grotesquely painted witches, fluoresced by ultraviolet light, leaped at the car and shrieked through hidden loudspeakers. Emma ignored the wax figures and opened the basket, studying the print on the currency under the purple illumination. The car rolled onward as the witches were pulled back into their recess by hidden springs and the tunnel plunged into darkness again.

Now! Machita thought. He snatched the ice pick from its hiding place and lunged at where he guessed Emma’s right eye socket should be. But in that split second the car snapped into a sharp turn and an orange floodlight burst on a bearded Satan who menacingly brandished a pitchfork. It was enough to deflect Machita’s aim. The pick missed Emma’s eye and its tip became embedded in the skull, above the brow.

The stunned informer cried out, chopped Machita’s hand away, and plucked the thin shaft from his head. Machita grabbed the razor blade taped to his forearm and swung it at Emma’s throat in a sweeping backhand slash. But his wrist was smashed downward by the devil’s pitchfork, snapping the bone.

The devil was genuine. He was one of Emma’s accomplices. Machita countered by throwing open the safety bar and lashing out with his feet, catching the costumed man in the groin, feeling his heels sink deeply into soft flesh. Then the car swung back into blackness and the devil was left behind.

Salvage I 113

Machita whipped his body back to face Emma, but found the seat beside him empty. A brief stream of sunlight flashed several meters to the left of the car as a door was opened and closed. Emma had vanished out an exit, taking the basket of money with him.

29

“Gross stupidity,” said Colonel Jumana with fiendish satisfaction. “You must pardon me for saying it, my General, but I told you so.”

Lusana stared pensively out the window at a formation of men drilling on the parade grounds. “A mistake in judgment, Colonel, nothing more. We will not lose the war because we have lost two million dollars.”

A sheepish Thomas Machita sat at the table, his face beaded with1 perspiration, staring vacantly at the cast covering his wrist. “There was no way of knowing-“