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echoing off the thick marble walls, Hunter raced down the dark passageway until he came to a door that he hoped led into the base of the fortress tower.
    The smell of SX-555 was so thick inside this part of the passageway, Hunter quickly lowered his gas mask again. Then, shoving a fresh clip of ammo into his M-16, he opened the door. There was a set of narrow stone steps on the other side that spiraled upward. Moving quickly but quietly, Hunter started taking the stairs two at a time. As he climbed, a hauntingly familiar feeling seized him. It had happened a number of times in the past few years-that powerful sense of destiny . . . as if he were being propelled by unseen forces along a preordained path. But where was that path ultimately leading? What about the road not taken?
    Despite his almost mystical powers of intuition, that answer remained tantalizingly beyond Hunter's grasp.
    And now, fate had intervened again. All the twisted threads of his life over the past few months suddenly had come together on this desolate mountainside in the midst of the Canadian wilderness ... his missing F-16, the demented Duke Devillian, the gorgeous but deadly Elizabeth Sandlake .. . and his beloved Dominique. All here, witnesses to-or victims of-a thoroughly wwdivine day of judgment.
    After the first few dozen steps, the twisted stairway grew even narrower, until it was barely wide enough for
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    two people to pass each other. Like a bad dream, the gloom of the tower deepened into total darkness, and Hunter was forced to start feeling his way by running his hands over the rough stone walls on either side.
    He had climbed about two hundred steps when suddenly he halted. His famous built-in "radar system"-actually his keenly developed ESP powers -warned him that something was waiting around the next bend in the stairway. Slowly, he eased his way forward in the darkness, and sensed rather than saw the person standing in front of him. He lunged, and the two bodies collided and began tumbling down the steps, locked in a deadly struggle.
    Despite the near-total darkness, Hunter managed to reach up and jerk off his opponent's gas mask. Then, holding the struggling soldier in a viselike grip, he waited for the SX-555 knockout gas that was blowing through the tower stairway to take effect. It took thirty long seconds, but eventually the thrashing subsided, and the body went limp. Pulling out his penlight, Hunter shined its narrow beam into his opponent's face and realized for the first time that he had been wrestling with a woman.
    Stepping over his fallen foe, the Wingman resumed his climb. He judged that he was at least halfway up the tower by now.
    Halfway to his Dominique.
    She had watched, first with fear and then with growing hope, as the battle swirled above and around the castle.
    From the narrow window at the top of the tower, she couldn't identify the attacking forces, although she caught a glimpse of a couple of airplanes that somehow looked familiar. She almost let herself believe that the invaders were coming to rescue her, that the W she had seen in the sky really was proof of Hunter's presence and not just a trick of her tormented mind.
    But then, just as her hopes were rising higher than ever before, her cell door crashed open, and a gang of six fash-34
    ionably dressed female guards burst in, rifles raised.
    One of the women, her voice sounding both drugged and desperate, hissed at Dominique: "Don't think your friends will save you, my lovely little thing.
    They're not going to get here in time."
    Another of the Amazonlike women then stepped forward and grabbed Dominique by the hair.
    "In fact," she told her harshly, "we're here to waste you. But not before we get a little of this . . ."
    The guard suddenly ripped the front of Dominique's gown down to her waist and began crudely squeezing her lovely, heaving breasts. Exhausted and depleted beyond words, Dominique nevertheless attempted to fight back. But two more of the women