Spence rushed to the top of the stairs. "Simone!"
"They're breaking through, Chief!" Officer Simone called up.
"Get the hell out of-"
Another boom and then a creaking sound, followed by a powerful crash.
"They're out!" shouted Officer Jacot from somewhere out of sight.
Spence shouted. "Simone! Jacot! Get out of there now!"
Simone came into view at the bottom of the stairs, but he was looking back the way he'd come. His handgun was drawn.
Spence hurried down the stairs. "Do not fire your weapons!"
He was almost drowned out by the thunderous gunfire and shouting. It wasn't Simone. Simone was just standing there.
Chief Checker Spence reached the bottom just in time to watch Officer Jacot die. The man was triggering his gun in every direction, shouting at the mob of bloody, battered, silent figures who encircled him. They moved ponderously, without speaking, ignoring those among them who fell from gunshot wounds. Jacot ran out of bullets and the mob closed in. They grabbed his arms and legs. They grabbed his head. They sank their fingers in the flesh of his torso. Jacot was lifted off the ground.
Jacot realized his fate then. He made an ungodly sound. Then the eerily silent mob pulled his body apart.
"CALL THE MAINLAND!" Chief Spence barked at the dispatcher as he dragged Simone out and slammed the door, locking it with a dead bolt. "Call the army!" The dispatcher ignored him and looking around worriedly. "Where's Jacot?"
Officer Simone giggled. "He's all over the place." One glance told Captain Spence that Simone had gone out for lunch and might never come back.
"Oh, great," he said. Then he heard the sodden clomp of heavy feet on the stairs.
"Are you calling for help?" he asked the dispatcher.
"Who you want me to call exactly?" she asked, getting worried now.
There was a crash against the door to the basement. They were throwing their whole bodies against it. The dead bolt was already buckling.
"Forget it," Chief Spence said. "It's too late. Let's go."
THE UNION ISLAND MUSEUM of Natural History had a sophisticated security system, but Dawn Summens had an override code. She punched in the code, commanding the alarm system to maintain a silent but active state. She didn't want the museum curator to notice that his little green LEDs had blinked off.
Curator Matthew Builder was just a nosy old busybody two years ago when he retired from the University of Florida at Miami. Greg Grom had been on his way to the top, laying the groundwork for his wild popularity spree, and had already moved into the Union Island Tourism Promotions Department. Grom rarely made intelligent decisions-it was sheer stupid luck that got him everything he had-but latching on to the old codger from Florida State had been a rare smart move.
When Professor Builder told Grom his dig sites on the island were of marginal value in terms of the greater archaeological research record, Greg Grom had suggested otherwise. Grom suggested, in fact, that it was the most important Native American site in the Caribbean islands.
"Why would I think that?" Professor Builder had asked as the GUTX laid his self-determination in Greg Grom's lap.
"You'll think of a reason," Grom told the prof. And sure enough, Builder did. He claimed discovery of a series of hieroglyphics that showed the little-known Miytec of pre-Columbian Union Island had been rulers of far-reaching power, maybe for centuries. Newly translated Miytec hieroglyphics told how Miytec priests claimed to wield power over "all the kings of the earth." How the Miytec priests would receive the kings of all the lands. All rulers of power and influence were invited to drink the Miytec priests' sacred brew. The great secret was that, once the brew had been consumed, these men invariably became pliant to the suggestion of the Miytec priests.
Greg Grom had almost panicked when he heard the tale. It was too close for comfort. But even Professor Builder did not believe that the priests had ever had this power-he only claimed that this was what the priests themselves believed.
Professor Builder's reputation was rock solid. That's why Grom chose him. Despite a lack of archaeological verification, his theory was widely accepted. Even those who thought he was wrong still considered his claims worth investigating. Union Island became the subject of serious scientific inquiry, which boosted its prestige. Greg Grom got all the credit for it.
Professor Builder, at Grom's suggestion, returned to Union Island to serve as director of research for the Union Island Museum of Natural History, where a well-paid management staff took care of the day-to-day operations and Builder spent his days immersed in his research while the grant money, thanks to a few more well-placed suggestions, poured in too fast for the museum to spend it all.
Builder was always at the museum late into the evening. This was well-known among the Union Islanders. His car was also well-known-an electric golf cart with orange curling hot-rod flames painted on the doors. The cart was invariably parked in Builder's reserved spot at the private entrance in the rear of the museum. It was there now. From the third-floor research labs a single office blazed with light.
Dawn Summens knew the old professor would be buried in his research. She was pretty sure she could get in and out of the museum without attracting his attention.
But just in case... Well, she had brought a little something from President Grom's presidential beach house. It was a dagger of black obsidian, almost five hundred years old, and it had been one of Grom's first finds when he was a student intern on the island. It was incredible that something so fragile could have survived so many centuries, but it was intact.
If Professor Builder gave Dawn any trouble, she was going to see what kind of real damage it could do. She found herself hoping she'd get the chance.
Chapter 39
The phone beeped just as President Grom was pulling into the employee parking lot at the Turquoise Seas Beach Resort.
"Mr. President? It's Gaiman at the Miytec."
Grom switched off the engine and killed the stereo. Art Gaiman was the night manager at the Miytec Moon Village Resort. The old resort had recently been renovated and expanded with the addition of a new wing of three hundred hotel rooms. That made it one of the largest resorts on the island in terms of the sheer numbers of vacationers it could host. The Miytec was also the closest big resort to the town center, and it had been Grom's very first stop on his evening rounds.
"What's the problem, Art?"
"Well, Mr. President, it's about the hash brown potatoes."
Greg Grom felt his stomach tighten into a hard, knotted ball. "What about the hash brown potatoes?" he asked.
"Two men just came and stole 'em, Mr. President. All of them. Took every one of the tubs that you was working on tonight."
"Took them where?" Grom demanded.
"Down to the beach. That's the funny thing. They just heaved them out into the ocean. Never would have thought a man could send a plastic tub of hash browns that far. Splashed into the water so far out I couldn't see it and I could barely hear it."
"A white guy? With dead-man eyes? And a little Chinese grandpa?"
"Yeah! That's them!" Art exclaimed. "Asked for directions to the nearest resort and I told them because I wasn't going to say no to those two. Those two are crazy. I think they're gonna do the same fool thing over at Monte Carlo. What do those two have against perfectly good hash brown potatoes?"
Grom wasn't listening. His high spirits had fled like the breeze, when just a minute ago he thought everything was finally going his way, for once.
How come that pair of oddball agents wasn't dead? Grom had made sure that wherever those two showed up for dinner tonight they would get dosed with GUTX. A lot of it. Enough to send them into the deepest sleep of all.
That hadn't happened. The agents were alive, and they knew what Grom was doing. Which meant they knew why he was doing it. So they knew he had been using GUTX dosing to get him to where he was now.
Which meant they just might be able to bring it all to a screeching halt.
Unless, Grom thought determinedly, he screeching halted them first.
REMO HAD STOPPED explaining himself. At each resort they came to he simply barged in, headed for the kitchens and began looking for the tubs of thawing hash brown potatoes.
It was always the same. Big plastic ten-gallon or twenty-gallon tubs in the walk-in coolers filled with the same brand of spiced, shredded breakfast potatoes. The empty plastic bags would be in the trash can.