Dark Goddess. James Axler
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flashlight suddenly glowed, startling Kane so much that he jumped and cursed.
“Relax,” Domi said softly. “Windows boarded over—nobody can see.”
Kane squinted toward her as she flung back the hood that shrouded her close-cropped, bone-white hair. An albino by birth, Domi was a small white wraith of a girl, every inch of five feet tall. Eyes like red rubies stared up at him through the mask of combat cosmetics she had daubed over her cream-white complexion.
“Had you goin’ there, huh?” Laughter was in her high-planed face, and the faint mockery added piquancy to her features.
“Yeah,” Kane said dryly. “You’re a gifted comedian. What would you have done if the dogs had caught me?”
Domi’s small right hand eased out from beneath the ragged cloak. Nestled within it lay her Detonics Combat Master .45. The stainless-steel autopistol weighed only a pound and a half and was perfectly suited for a girl of her size.
“Shoot ’em,” she replied frankly. “Then kill the men who made them killers.”
Kane nodded. “Figures. Where’s Grant?”
Domi shrugged out of the tattered cloak, letting it drop to the floor. “Upstairs. He was keepin’ an eye on you, too.”
Stepping around the heap of rancid rags, Kane pinched his nostrils shut. “Why does it stink so bad?”
Domi shrugged. “Cover up my own scent, in case the dogs got after me. Old Outland trick.”
Kane regarded her gravely. “You peed on it, didn’t you?”
“Among other things.” Domi turned toward a stairwell, casting the beam of the flashlight ahead of her. She wore a black tank top and tight-fitting denim shorts that only accentuated her compact body, with its pert breasts and flaring hips.
Kane followed her up the stairs, reflecting that after five-plus years of working with her, he shouldn’t be surprised by anything Domi did, even wearing a cloak soaked in her own urine.
The stairs opened onto a small room that led out onto a balcony. Grant stood there, peering through a screen of oleander leaves. The buttsock of the heavy Barrett sniper rifle was settled firmly in the hollow of his right shoulder. He pushed it forward on its built-in bipod as he leaned down to squint through the twenty-power top-mounted telescopic sight.
Without turning toward Kane, he said in his lionlike rumble of a voice, “I thought you were going to be in and out of here like the wind.”
A big man standing several inches over six feet, Grant had exceptionally broad shoulders and a heavy musculature, but with a middle starting to go a little soft. Beads of perspiration sparkled against his coffee-brown skin like stars in the night sky. Gray dusted his short-cropped hair at the temples, but it didn’t show in the sweeping black mustache that curved fiercely out from either side of his grim, tight-lipped mouth. Like Kane, he wore camo pants and T-shirt.
In response to Grant’s sarcastic question, Kane replied, “That was the plan. I guess they smelled my wind.”
Carefully, he moved to the balcony’s rail and looked down into the ville. He could still detect the chemical tang of the CS powder.
Grant stepped away from the Barrett and tapped the scope. “They caught more than that. Take a peek.”
Obligingly, Kane stooped and peered through the eyepiece. He glimpsed a tall figure standing just outside the log wall, trying to hide himself in the shadows. The rifle he cradled in his arms looked like a lever-action 30.06.
“They left one behind,” he commented. “A spotter.”
Grant nodded. “They want to see which house you come out of. And to find out if anybody in town is helping you, so they can be made an example of.”
Kane shrugged. “I don’t think they got a good look at me. And since you two didn’t arrive until after dark, they most likely don’t know you’re here.”
“Porpoise is probably sure it was you creepin’ around his place,” Domi stated matter-of-factly.
Kane cast her a quizzical glance. “Why do you say that?”
The girl shrugged. “He only saw you and Brigid together—stands to reason he’d figure you’d be the one to try and sneak in and steal her back from him.”
Chapter 2
The morning sky melted, pouring down heat. Kane stood on the shoreline, listening to the noise of the surf and gazing through the smoky spume rising from the breakers.
Although sunglasses masked his eyes, he squinted against the glare glimmering on the blue surface of the gulf. There was nothing to be seen except the blaze of white sand, sparse stalks of beach grass and the long line of combers lapping at the shoreline. He perspired heavily, as if the rising sun were a sponge sucking liquid from every pore of his body and soaking through his black T-shirt. Although he felt the sting of sunburn on his arms and face, the heat failed to thaw a hard knot of ice inside him.
Acceding to the demands of Billy-boy Porpoise, he was completely unarmed, not even carrying a jackknife. The only concession to his standard complement of equipment was the Commtact, a flat curve of metal fastened to his right mastoid bone and hidden beneath a lock of hair.
Despite heat that turned the beach into an oven, Kane stood motionless, hands loose at his sides. He knew he was being watched, and he figured Billy-boy would wait until he had virtually sweated out all of his strength before sending someone to fetch him.
But Kane had learned stamina in a hard school, a killing school. He retained vividly grim memories of former colleagues whose stamina failed them at the last critical second. Stamina in this case consisted of standing steadfast, husbanding all of his resources until they were needed.
A burst of static filled his head and Grant’s voice said, “Testing, one, two, testing.”
Resisting the urge to turn and look in the direction of Coral Cove, Kane reached up behind his ear and made an adjustment on the Commtact’s volume control. The little comm was attached to implanted steel pintels; its sensor circuitry incorporated an analog-to-digital voice encoder embedded in the bone.
Once the device made full cranial contact, the auditory canal picked up the transmissions. The dermal sensors transmitted the electronic signals directly through the skull casing. Even if someone went deaf, as long as he wore a Commtact, he would still have a form of hearing, but if the volume was not properly adjusted, the radio signals caused vibrations in the skull bones that resulted in vicious headaches.
“Receiving you,” Kane subvocalized in a faint whisper. “Do you read me?”
“Reading you. Status?”
“Lots of sea and sand. I think I spotted a crab a few minutes ago.”
The Commtact accurately conveyed Grant’s grunt of disgust. “The bastard believes in making people wait for him.”
“I guess Billy-boy thinks it increases the anticipation.”
“No sign of the spotter he left behind?”
“No. He probably hung around until just before daybreak and then moved on.”
Grant didn’t respond for a long tick of time. Then he asked dourly, “How did such a simple op go so goddamn complicated?”
Kane almost lifted a shoulder in a shrug but stopped himself. “Happens sometimes,” he retorted with a nonchalance he did not feel. “You know that as well as I do.”
“I do,” Grant said. “I also know Brigid hasn’t answered any of our thousand and one hails, so we may want to—”
“Her Commtact is probably malfunctioning,” Kane broke in harshly. “She was knocked into the pool when Billy-boy’s crew put the arm on us. That’s all there is to it.”
“Right,”