The Death Strain Read Online Free PDF Page B

my shoulders and lift me up.
    I managed to plant one foot firmly enough, and half-spun around to see the giant Japanese and beyond him, my Cougar with the man getting out of it. I tried a backward blow at the huge man but he flung me down like a sack of potatoes and I landed half over a wooden crate. For all his size, the Japanese was quick as a cat, and he was on me as I hit the crate. I swung but he brushed the blow aside with an oak-like arm, and his counter-punch sent me sailing through the air.
    I landed on the back of my neck, did a reverse flip and saw pretty lights of pink and yellow and red. I shook my head and pulled myself upright to find that, in reflex action, Hugo was in my hand and I was lashing out in short, vicious arcs. But I was slicing only thin air, and I heard the sound of a car engine starting up, a familiar sound.
    Shaking my head to clear it further, I saw my blue Cougar starting up the dirt ramp. I ran around the edge of the crate and fell to the ground where Wilhelmina lay. I got one shot off at them, more in frustration than anything else, as they disappeared out the exit ramp. I heard the sound of the car receding, and I put the Luger back in its holster.
    They were off and running, and Hawk had the cops out looking for a black Chevy. I decided to do the same and found their car behind a long generator. They'd left the keys in it. I drove it out of the construction site and down Norbert Road. A police helicopter appeared overhead and I waved at it. Minutes later I was surrounded by flashing yellow and red lights and a cordon of police cruisers. I climbed out, talked fast, and they let me contact Hawk via their radio. I straightened things out and gave them the new description of the blue Cougar.
    "Hell, friend," one cop grimaced. "They could have taken off in any damn direction by now."
    "Seek and ye shall find," I said. He gave me a disgusted look as he closed the door of his patrol car. I got back in the black Chevy and headed for the Carlsbad house. I'd go over every damn inch of it and see if it yielded anything. So far Rita Kenmore's idealistic, sincere, dedicated uncle, out to make the world listen, had been responsible for four deaths — the two guards at the Cumberland operation and now the two FBI agents. But that figured, too. I'd long since learned that there was nothing so calloused as the idealist who thinks he's got his hand on the true light. Nothing matters except his quest.
* * *
    I was thinking about the girl as I approached the Carlsbad house, fairly certain she didn't know how deeply her uncle had dug himself in. Maybe she wouldn't really find out until it was too late. Or maybe she'd find out and look the other way.
    I pulled up in front of the house and got out slowly. My body cried out in protest, every muscle of it. It made me remember that I not only had a deadly virus to find but a score to settle. The front door was open and I started with the girl's bedroom where I'd seen the open traveling bag on the bed. She'd obviously just tossed a few things into it because most of her clothes were still in the closet with a few pieces lying on the floor. I was about to leave the room when my eye caught a glitter of silver, and I reached down to pick up a small object, not unlike something from a locket or a key chain. A few links hung loosely from the circular piece of silver. Set into the metal was a piece of something that looked like either ivory or bone. Someone had torn it loose and dropped it in the haste to get Rita Kenmore's stuff together. I put it in my pocket and started through the rest of the house.
    It revealed absolutely nothing until I reached a little room, hardly more than a cubbyhole, with a tiny, desk in it and a few shelves. On the shelves were large, fastened-together bundles of check stubs; in the desk drawer I found a checkbook of the three-hole business variety. As I pored over the check stubs, it suddenly became clear why Carlsbad had been living in this