Dragon (Dirk Pitt 10)

They burst through a wire fence. A piece of it clipped Mancuso on the side of the head, and then they were out of the cornfield almost on top of the limousine. It had shot into the open at an incredible rate of speed in a direct line toward a concrete silo with the Stutz right behind.

"Oh, God," Mancuso murmured, seeing disaster.

Despite the shock of witnessing an approaching crash that he was helpless to prevent, Pitt jerked the steering wheel violently to his right, throwing the Stutz in a spin around the other side of the silo, and missed piling into the Lincoln by an arm's length.

He heard rather than saw the convulsive crush of metal tearing apart followed by the crackled splash of shattered glass against concrete. A great cloud of dust burst from the base of the silo and shrouded the devastated limousine.

Pitt was out of the Stutz before it stopped and running toward the crash site. Fear and dread spread through his body as he came

around the silo and viewed the shattered, twisted car. No one could have lived after such a terrible impact. The engine had pushed through the firewall and was shoved against the front seat. The steering wheel was thrust up against the roof. Pitt could not see any sign of the chauffeur and assumed his body must have been thrown to the other side of the car.

The passenger compartment had accordioned, raising the roof in a strange peak and bending the doors inward, jamming them shut so tightly nothing less than an industrial metal saw could cut them away.

Pitt desperately kicked out the few glass shards remaining in a broken door window and thrust his head inside.

The crumpled interior was empty.

In numbed slow motion Pitt walked around the car, searching under it for signs of bodies. He found nothing, not even a trace of blood or torn clothing. Then he looked at the caved-in dashboard and found the reason for the vacant ghost car. He tore a small instrument from its electrical connectors and studied it, his face reddening in anger.

He was still standing by the wreckage as the chopper landed and Giordino ran up, trailed by Mancuso, who was holding a bloodied handkerchief to one ear.

"Loren?" Giordino asked with grim concern.

Pitt shook his head and tossed the strange instrument to Giordino. "We were hoodwinked. This car was a decoy, operated by an electronic robot unit and driven by someone in the helicopter."

Mancuso stared wildly about the limo. "I saw her get in," he said dazedly.

"So did I," Giordino backed him up.

"Not this car." Pitt spoke quietly.

"But it was never out of your sight."

"But it was. Think about it. The twenty-second head start when it left the track and drove under the stands to the parking lot. The switch must have been made then."

Mancuso removed the handkerchief, revealing a neat slice just above his ear lobe. "It fits. This one was never out of our sight once we hit the highway."

Mancuso broke off suddenly and looked miserably at the demolished limo. No one moved or said anything for several moments.

"We lost her," Giordino said as if in pain, his face pale. "God help us, we lost her."

Pitt stared at the car unseeing, his big hands clenched in anger and despair. "We'll find Loren," he said, his voice empty and cold as Arctic stone. "And make those pay who took her."

AJIMA ISLAND

October 12, 1993

Bielefeld, West Germany

The fall morning was crisp with a biting wind from the north when August Clausen stepped out of his half-timbered house and gazed across his fields toward the slopes of the Teutoburg Forest near Bielefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia. His farm lay in the valley, bordered by a winding stream that he had recently dammed up. He buttoned up his heavy wool coat, took a few deep breaths, and then walked the path to his barn.

A big hardy man just past seventy-four, Clausen still put in a full day's work from sunup to sundown.

The farm had been in his family for five generations. He and his wife raised two daughters, who married and left home, preferring city living in Bielefeld to farming. Except for hired hands during harvesting, Clausen and his wife ran the farm alone.

Clausen pushed open the barn doors and mounted a large tractor. The tough old gas engine turned over and fired on the first revolution. He slipped the transmission into top gear and moved into the yard, turning on a dirt road and heading toward the fields that had been harvested and cultivated for the next spring planting.