True to form, Cap listened intently to Madsen while at the same time bent over one of his attackers’ bodies, giving the fellow a quick medical examination. He wore a videocam headset and earcomm to send information back to Flash at the Institute.

“Dandridge was Gramps’s research assistant for years,” young Madsen said. “They’d done all sorts of work on electronics and integrated circuits. Amazing stuff. Julie would have been rich if he’d been working in private industry. But he only held a few patents. Most of his work through the college fell-he thought- into public domain. He felt he worked for mankind that way. Turns out, though, that Dandridge had filed patents on a lot of the work and had begun licensing the most valuable stuff. Julie found out, but then there was this big hush-hush scandal with the grad student who turned up dead. They say he killed himself, but Gramps had his suspicions. Anyway, Dandridge fixed it so that the college administration suspected Julie of driving the kid to suicide, so they canned him.”

Cap nodded as he shone an intense light in one eye of his unconscious patient. “Flash,” he subvocalized. “Where’s Tex?”

“At the clinic in Jamaica,” came the radioed reply.

“Tell him to be at A.I. tonight. I’ve got four head jobs for him.”

“Great,” Flash chuckled. “He loves late-night brain surgery.”

“There’s not much to add,” Madsen said quietly, not noticing the inaudible exchange, “except that Julie considered Dandridge a friend and it turned out that Dandridge considered Julie a rival.”

Cap said gently, “Son…”

Jonathan frowned a bit at the term-it seemed quaintly old-fashioned for the stranger to use it.

“I think Dr. Madsen was the man who walked into that Los Gatos diner. His physical description matches that given by the waitress-short, grey hair, goatee. Dandridge injected him with microscopic robots. That’s what killed him.” He stopped examining the rigid, insensate body on the sidewalk and looked at Jonathan.

“Where was your grandfather these last four months?”

The young man spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t know. When he called me last night, all he said was ‘I’ve seen Hell in the Pacific.’ Then he hung up. That’s when I decided to go for the safe.” He glanced at the four fallen men, the position of their rifles on the street outlined in yellow chalk by the police. One cop was intent on circling the location of every brass casing ejected by the weapons. Another officer snapped digital photos of the scene.

Cap nodded. “With your permission, I’d like to examine the disc.”

Madsen nodded. Cap again murmured just loud enough for his earcomm to detect. To the young man, it looked as if Cap were merely pausing to think, except that his throat pulsed irregularly as he created the imperceptible tones. The strong muscles of his neck hid most of the movement, leaving Jonathan with no clue that Captain Anger maintained constant communication with his aides. “Lei, if you’re through sweettalking Detective Fleming, let’s get these zombies back to A.I. for Tex to examine. Flash-call the team together, no later than midnight tonight. Tell them this is big.”

“Roger.”

“And where’s that plane headed?”

“He headed out over the ocean, then dropped down below radar coverage, probably to turn and throw us off track. I’m trying to connect with satellite lookdown radar now, but I may have lost him.”

“Roger,” Cap said quietly.

Leila raised her voice loud enough for all to hear.

“I don’t care what police procedure is, these men need immediate and sophisticated medical attention! Dr. Uriah West is the finest neurosurgeon in the world. Ask any doctor above the rank of arrant quack!”

Fleming cleared his throat. While his eyes drank in the curvacious Leila Weir, his attention drifted from the subject of brain surgery. He shook his head after a moment and said, “I can’t release these men to anyone but qualified paramedics. Those guys.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of two red ambulances.

Leila smiled, excused herself, and strolled over to the gawking paramedics.

“Ready to roll!” Rock hollered. He bent the left front fender away from the tire with his thick, bare hands. The wheels pointed straight and the engine idled unharmed. The tires had a few bullet holes in them, but that made little difference: instead of air, they kept their shape by means of rigid sidewalls and closed-cell plastic foam, almost as light and cushiony as air, but safe from blowouts.

Even in its battered shape, the van possessed power and speed. Its engine roared into life, making a sound subtly different from an ordinary automobile engine.

Captain Anger laid a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “You’d better be getting back to your parents.”

“They’re in Europe,” he said. “Besides, I have a right to see what’s on that disk.”

Cap nodded. “All right. You’ll fly in my jet.”

“Sweet!” Johnny said with awe.

Leila’s voice murmured in Cap’s ear, “The paramedics know where to take the patients. Let’s hit the road.”

“Agreed,” Cap said.

Cap and Rock exchanged places, Cap maneuvering the van onto the street and Rock in the back with Leila, checking the condition of equipment. Jonathan sat in the creme-white passenger’s seat and watched the extraordinary man to his left perform the ordinary act of driving.

Captain Richard Anger handled the vehicle with supreme ease and quiet efficiency. He gave as much concentration to it as he did to flying an aircraft or piloting a ship. It was his nature to use his abilities to their utmost in any endeavor, even when events split his attentions three ways and more.

The act of driving calmed him. The constant forward motion, the awareness of heading somewhere, of adventure laying ahead of him, brought him peace.

Jonathan Madsen wondered how such a man could exist in the world of today. All he had ever seen in the few years of his life had been men and women of compromise: school teachers more interested in silence than in curiosity; store employees who viewed every teenager as a potential shoplifter; celebrities and even presidents whose confused personal lives tabloid magazines exposed with morbid glee.

Here he sat next to a hero whose name he had never heard before. A man who could follow him out a second-story window and land on his feet. A man who could crack a safe yet asked a kid’s permission to take its contents. A man with friends as quietly competent as he, who apparently traveled the world yet who-without hesitation-interrupted their personal and professional lives to give aid to strangers, to battle enormous evil without so much as a thought of the risk. A man and companions who thrived on danger, who sought it out where others would flee.

The only hero Jonathan had known in his life had been his grandfather. Julie also hearkened to another age, an earlier time when a man could still live a life heroically without bowing to the pressures all around him.

In the driver’s seat, though, sat a man one-third Gramps’s age who embodied all things heroic from ages long past. He was the last of the heroes, Jonathan marveled. Or perhaps, he thought with hope, the first of their return!