Soul Dad nodded.

"Jesus!" whispered Kurtz. "The Triads? They control the flow of junk into North America on the West Coast, and they have plenty of meth labs in Vancouver, but why supply a mob family here? The Triads are at war with the West Coast Families…"

Kurtz was silent for several minutes, thinking. Somewhere in the shack city, an old man began coughing uncontrollably and then fell silent. Finally Kurtz said, "Christ. The Dunkirk Arsenal thing."

"I think you are right, Joseph," Soul Dad rumbled. Closing his eyes, he intoned, "Our contest is not against flesh and blood, but against powers, against principalities, against the world-rulers of this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places." He opened his eyes and showed strong white teeth in a grin. "Ephesians 6:12."

Kurtz was still distracted. "I'm afraid my contest is going to be against flesh and blood, as well as against powers and principalities."

"Ahhh," said Soul Dad. "You're going up against the shit-eating Seneca Social Club."

"And I don't have a clue as to how to get to Malcolm Kibunte," said Kurtz.

Pruno opened his eyes. "Which book on my list did you like the most and understand the least, Joseph?"

Kurtz thought a moment. "The first one, I think. The Iliad."

"Perhaps your solution lies in that tale," said Pruno.

Kurtz had to smile. "So if I build a big horse for Malcolm and his boys and seal myself in, they'll wheel me into the Social Club?"

" O saculum insipiens et inficetum, " said Pruno and did not translate.

Soul Dad sighed. "He's quoting Catullus now. 'O stupid and tasteless age. When Frederick gets like this, I am reminded of Terence's comment: Me solus nescit omnia. 'Only he is ignorant of everything. "

"Oh, yes?" said Pruno, his rheumy eyes snapping open and his wild gaze fixing on Soul Dad. "Nullum scelus rationem habet—" He pointed at Kurtz. "Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus—"

"Bullshit," responded Soul Dad. " Dum abast quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur. Caetera, post aliud, quum contigit, Mud, avemus, Et sitis aequo tenet! "

Pruno shifted to what sounded like Greek and began shouting.

Soul Dad answered in what had to be Hebrew. Spittle flew.

"Thanks for the dinner and conversation, gentlemen," said Kurtz, standing and moving to the low doorway.

The two men were arguing in what sounded like a totally unknown language now. They had forgotten that Kurtz was there.

Kurtz let himself out.

Kurtz parked next to Doc's old rusted-out pickup with the camper shell on its back. It was starting to snow harder, and the black sky seemed to blend with the looming black buildings. Kurtz put the little.38 in his coat pocket, made sure he had extra boxes of shells in the other outside pocket, and walked across the dark and slippery parking lot into the open maw of the abandoned steel mill.

As soon as Kurtz stepped through the open doors, he felt that something was wrong. Everything looked and smelled the same—cold metal, cold open hearths, huge crucibles hanging like looming soup ladles high above, towering heaps of slag and limerock, a few pools of light from hanging lamps, and the distant glow of Doc's control room thirty feet above everything—but something was definitely wrong. Kurtz's neck prickled and cold currents rippled across his skin.

Instead of walking across the open area between heaps of coal black rock, Kurtz ducked and ran toward a maze of rusted machinery to his right. He slid to a stop behind a low wall of iron, the.38 in his hand.

Nothing. No movement. No sound. Not even a flicker of motion.

Kurtz stayed where he was for a minute, making sure that he was concealed from all sides, catching his breath. He had no idea what had spooked him—but paying attention to such nothings had kept him alive for more than eleven years of prison life, much of that time with a price on his head.

Staying to the shadows, Kurtz began working his way toward the control room. He had briefly considered making a break for the door and then sprinting back to the Buick, but it involved too much open space. If everything was all right and Doc was up there waiting for him, Kurtz might be slightly embarrassed by this melodramatic approach, but he always preferred embarrassment to a bullet in the brain.

Kurtz moved around the edge of the huge space, advancing toward the control room in short sprints of five yards or less, always keeping to cover behind pipes or mazes of I-beams or half-removed machines. He stayed to the ink-black shadows and never exposed himself to fire from darker areas. He made very little noise. This worked for two-thirds of the distance, but when he came to the end of the machinery, he still had sixty or seventy feet of open space between himself and the steel ladder to Doc's control tower.

Kurtz considered shouting for Doc, but quickly decided against it. Even if someone had watched him enter, they probably did not know precisely where he was at the moment. Unless they have long guns and night-vision goggles like the good old boys in the icehouse. Kurtz shook that thought out of his head. If they had rifles and scopes, they almost certainly would have taken him when he came through the main doors, still a couple of hundred feet from the control tower.

Who the hell is "they?" thought Kurtz, and then tabled that question for later.

He moved backward, crawling under a latticework of pipes that were each at least a yard across. The metal was inert and empty. Cold seeped up from the concrete floor and made his feet and legs ache. Kurtz ignored it.

Here. Doc's control room was connected to every corner of the huge space by catwalks and here against this brick wall, far from any light, a man ladder ran up to the maze of catwalks.

Kurtz crouched next to the ladder and hesitated. This part of the ladder was cloaked in darkness and shielded from the main space by vertical beams and pipes, but what if the intruders were up on the catwalks, hiding in that very darkness? Or even if they were on the main floor, Kurtz would have to move through relatively lighted areas up there to get to the control room. Despite all the James Bond movies where the secret agent ran across endless catwalks with automatic weapons just kicking up sparks around him, Kurtz knew that there was very little cover on any exposed steel. One aimed slug would probably do the job.

No guts, no glory, said part of his mind.

Where the fuck did that thought come from? replied the sensible majority of his brain. He would do a commonsense audit later.

Kurtz glided up the ladder, his long, dark coat billowing behind him. When he was level with the distant control room, Kurtz threw himself flat on the catwalk, wishing that the steel were solid instead of a grille.

No shots. No movement.

Kurtz moved out from the wall, crawling, his knees and elbows being abraded by the rusty metal, pistol aimed. At the moment, he wished to Christ that he had kept the Kimber.45, incriminating bullet-matches or no. Another reason to get to Doc's control room and supply closet.

At the first juncture of catwalks, Kurtz paused. There was enough metal beneath him and around him here to act as a partial shield for a shot from below, but there were also two tiers of catwalks higher up. Kurtz did not like that. Up near the ceiling, sixty feet above the mill floor, the shadows were almost impenetrable. Anyone already up there would see him silhouetted against the few lights on the floor below, and it was always easier to fire downward with accuracy than up.

Kurtz rolled on his side and studied the approach to the control room.