Gregg Loomis - Gates Of Hades

They had arrived at Maria's Explorer. She was fumbling with the keys. "Whatever your real business is, somebody is displeased by it."

He took the keys from her shaking hand. "Apparently."

The lock popped open and he held out the keys.

She was staring as though seeing him for the first time. "You really were going to kill that guy."

Jason was walking around to climb into the passenger seat. "Think of it as returning the favor. He very nearly ran over both of us."

Now Maria was having trouble getting the key into the ignition. Jason got out and opened her door. "You're in no shape to drive. Let me."

Wordlessly, she climbed over the gearshift and brake and sat.

Jason started the engine. "Where to?"

For a moment he wasn't sure she heard him. Then: "You really were going to stab him."

She was looking straight ahead.

Jason bit back a retort and said, "Maria, we don't know that he was alone. I'd suggest we not hang around to find out. Where to?"

She shook as though the words had shocked her back into reality. "To? Your hotel, I guess."

Jason was turning the car around, stopping only to allow a blue-and-white police car, siren wailing, to pass, headed in the direction from which they had come.

"Not a good idea. If that guy knew where to find us, he-or one of his pals-must have followed us. They know my hotel. Next time they might get lucky. Where are you staying?"

She turned to look at him, the hint of a nervous smile tugging at her mouth. "I thought I had heard every come-on there was, but this is the first for 'I need to stay with you tonight because someone is trying to kill me.'"

"Delighted to have exhausted another possibility of human experience," Jason said. "I might remind you that truck driver was perfectly willing to kill you, too. Which way?"

Her eyes grew large. "Me? He had no reason to want to run me over!"

"You want to bet your life on that? Which way?"

She pointed. "Right, up the hill past your hotel."

They were quiet for a few minutes until she said, "I think it is only fair to warn you: I do not do sleepovers with men whose real names I do not know."

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the serpentine road but taking his right hand off the wheel to extend it. "Jason. My pleasure."

She shook it. "Certainly not mine. Nearly getting killed is hardly my choice of a date. This sort of thing happen to you often?"

He was steering around a hairpin turn to the left. "Often enough. Comes with the job."

"Which is?"

"Now a job description's a prerequisite to staying at your place, too?"

"Okay, so I can guess." She looked out over one of the turns. The town below was a handful of jewels. "You really were going, to kill him, were you not?"

Jason nodded. "Someone very like him and his pals killed someone very dear to me, along with about three thousand other innocent people, all in the same morning. They're terrorists, Maria, just the same mind-set as any other bunch willing to kill to achieve their political or religious aims. Civilization as we know it can't coexist with people like that."

" 'Civilization as we know it'? Don't you think you are being a little extreme?"

He took his eyes off the road just long enough to give her a questioning glance. "Extreme? I don't think so. There's only one way I see of solving the problem: exterminate them like any other vermin."

"I take it your business involves just that."

"You could say that."

"Surely there are good people with extreme ideas."

"Ideas are free. It's when someone is willing to kill anyone who doesn't share them that the trouble starts. Not to put too fine a point on it, but General Sheridan could have been speaking of fanatics, religious or political, when he defined a good Indian: a dead one."

"Turn right here." She pointed to a barely discernible path leading away from the road. "You don't really believe that."

He was squinting, trying to make sure he stayed on the dim track. "Let's say I believe most beliefs have their good and bad people. Culling one from another is the problem." A small building took shape in the headlights. "That it?"

She nodded. "The government rents it for staff when we are working at Aetna. There is a spare bedroom."

He turned off the lights and ignition. "Lucky me."

She looked over her shoulder as she reached for the door. "Lucky you, indeed. Believe me, it always was the spare room or the foldout."

Jason got out and shut the door. "And here I thought my charm, wit, and good looks would prevail."

She produced a set of house keys from her purse. "I am almost as allergic to violence as I am liars. I would say we have a real personality conflict."

She opened the door and flipped on the light. From behind her, Jason saw her body stiffen as she emitted a frightened squeak. In a step he was beside her, the SIG Sauer in his hand.

The single living room/kitchen/dining room was a wreck. Drawers had been pulled out, emptied, and left on the floor amid their contents. Drapes lay in heaps or thrown over chairs or a sofa from which the cushions had been removed.

Weapon in hand, Jason searched the two adjacent rooms.

" 'Fraid they've been tossed, too," he said, putting the gun away.

Tears were running down Maria's face, whether from anger, fright, or both, Jason couldn't tell. "Who… What did they want; what were they looking for?"

Jason righted a chair and picked up what looked like the matching cushion. "If I had to guess, I'd say they were looking for the samples I gave you."

She was still gazing around the room, dazed. "I left them at the portable lab, not here. But why would they…?"

Jason slowly raised his hands, nodding toward the still- open door. "I'm afraid we're about to find out."

On the threshold stood a tall, bald man, the one Jason had seen in the photograph, Eglov. He held what Jason recognized as a Colt M733, a true submachine gun not much larger than a pistol. Delta Force had used them in the jungles of Asia.

Jason's eyes cut toward a window.

"Don't bother, Mr. Peters," the intruder said in almost accentless English. "I'm not alone."

"Jason," Maria asked in an unsteady voice, "who are-"

"You can bet they're not among the 'good' idealists we were talking about."

The man with the weapon made a motion, and Jason heard a rear door crash open, making Maria give another frightened squeak. Rough hands grabbed Jason from behind, and he felt the weight of the SIG Sauer being lifted from his belt while a hand groped into his pockets.

A voice behind him spoke in Russian that Jason couldn't follow.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Maria had regained enough composure to start getting angry.

In a step, the man with the Colt was beside her. He slapped her with the back of his hand hard enough to send her staggering backward.

"Silence! You'll find out soon enough!"

Instinctively, Jason started to move toward her until he felt the jab of a gun's muzzle in his back. Maria slid down a wall, sitting splay-legged on the floor.

The man who had hit her motioned to whoever was behind Jason. The gun muzzle moved, and another man, this one with a mustache, carrying an AK-47 with a full clip, walked over to a table and deposited the contents of Jason's pockets along with the SIG Sauer.

"Okay," Jason said. "Now that you've made yourselves at home, exactly what is it you want?"

Eglov smiled, showing one shiny steel front tooth. "Allow me an introduction. My name is Eglov. Aziz Saud Alazar was a friend and business associate. You have caused considerable inconvenience, Mr. Peters. But I what I want is information. We will start with why you have consulted Dr. Bergenghetti."

"Consult?" He shrugged. "She's an attractive woman. I like attractive women."