"You clowns are going nowhere!" the guard spat in English.
"Well, well," said Pitt. "What have we here? Another mercenary hit man like we met in Colorado. Karl Wolf must pay you guys handsome wages to murder and die for him."
"Give up, pal. You're the one who's going to die."
"You people have a nasty habit of repeating the same old song." Pitt pointed his old Colt an inch from the guard's left eye until it was lined up to fire across his face. "Dr. O'Connell and her daughter. Where are they held?" Pitt wasn't trying to imitate the rattle of a diamondback, but he gave a pretty good impression of it. "Talk or I pull the trigger. You'll probably live, but you won't have any eyeballs to see with. Now, then, where are they?"
Pitt was tough, but he wasn't sadistic. The look on his twisted face and the malice in his eyes was enough to fool the guard into thinking a madman was about to blow his eyes out. "They're confined on one of the great ships."
"Which ship?" demanded Pitt. "There are four of them."
"I don't know, I swear I don't know."
"He's lying," said Giordino, his tone cold enough to freeze oil.
"The truth," Pitt said menacingly, "or I'll blast both your eyeballs into the far wall." He pulled back the hammer of the Colt and pressed the muzzle against the edge of the guard's right eye in line with the left.
The guard's face did not transform from defiance to pure fright, but still, staring from eyes filled with loathing, he gasped, "The Ulrich Wolf' They're being held on the Ulrich Wolf."
"Which ship is that?"
"The ship-city that will carry the people of the Fourth Empire to sea after the cataclysm."
"It would take two years to search a ship that size," Pitt pressured. "Give a more exact location or go blind. Quickly!"
"Level Six, K Section. I don't know which residence."
"He's still lying," said Giordino coarsely. "Pull the trigger, but wait till I look away. I can't stand to see blood spray all over the furniture."
"Then kill me and get it over with," the guard growled.
"Where do the Wolfs find murdering scum like you?"
"Why would you care?"
"You're American. He didn't hire you off the street, so you must have come out of the military, an elite force, unless I miss my guess. Your loyalty to the Wolf family goes far beyond rationality. Why?"
"Giving my life for the Fourth Empire is an honor. I'm repaid by knowing, as we all are, that my wife and sons will be safely onboard the Ulrich Wolf when the rest of the world is devastated."
"So that's your insurance policy."
"He has a human family?" Giordino said in amazement. "I'd have sworn he curls up and lays eggs."
"What good is a bank account with a billion dollars when the world's population is about to perish?"
"I hate a pessimist," said Giordino, as he swung the barrel of his automatic against the nape of the mercenary's neck, dropping him unconscious onto the inert bodies of his comrades. In almost the same instant a series of alarms began to sound throughout the building "That tears it. We'll have to shoot our way out of town."
"Style and sophistication," Pitt said, seemingly unconcerned. "Always style and sophistication."
Six minutes later, the elevator stopped at the lobby level and the door opened. On the floor of the lobby, nearly two dozen men, with automatic weapons raised and aimed into the elevator, stood and knelt in the firing position.
Two men in the black coverall uniforms of security guards, with stocking caps pulled down almost to their eyes, raised their hands and shouted with lowered heads in both English and Spanish. "Do not shoot. We have killed two of the intruders!" Then they dragged two bodies dressed in orange coveralls by the feet out onto the lobby's marble floor and unceremoniously dumped them. "There are others who were working from the inside," Giordino said excitedly. "They've barricaded themselves on the tenth floor."
"Where is Max?" inquired a guard who acted as if he was in command.
Pitt, his arm over his face as if wiping away perspiration, turned and pointed upward. Giordino said,
"We had to leave him. He was wounded in the fight. Hurry, send for a doctor."