“Let’s go,” she said a little louder than before.

They crept to the juncture of their small chamber and of the next. Leila moved like a panther, sleek and graceful with lithe power and supple strength. Motioning for Johnny to come to her side, she pointed toward their guard’s positions.

The two guards sat in the boat that had brought them to the island. The shallow inlet to the cave barely provided enough clearance at low tide, which Leila estimated it to be. One guard snoozed while the other read a tattered, dog-eared men’s magazine in the dim light.

She judged the distances, then whispered, “How well can you throw, Johnny?”

Her companion shrugged. “Well enough for left field,” he said.

“Do you think you could take this rock”-she reached into the water and handed him a stone worn round from wave action- “and hit the guy on the right in the head?”

He hefted the rock and performed the instinctive judgment of mass, distance, and angles that come naturally to anyone who has had to deliver a ball to a precise point. Finally, Johnny thought, a use for sports!

Leila picked up another rock, slightly larger, and performed the same preparation. Rising and taking a deep breath of salt-and seaweed-tinged air, she hurled the rock at the sleeping man at the same instant as Johnny aimed for the other. For a long second they watched the black stones arc across the width of the cavern, zeroing in on their targets.

The rustle of their clothing as they pitched the missiles caused the guard to look up from his magazine in time to see the incoming attack. Throwing himself aside, he cried “Caramb-” just as the stone slammed his right shoulder with numbing force. His companion twitched violently when the rock hit him between the eyes with a coconut-like klonk, then slid further down his seat, more unconscious than ever.

Reaching across with his left hand, the other guard struggled to draw his pistol from his right-side holster. Leila crossed thirty feet of sand and rock, leapt up at the waterline, and sailed into him with the speed of a flying tackle. The pistol went off with a report that echoed through the cavern. Startled bats fluttered and flew out with a leathery flap of wings.

“Hate to do this to a fellow lefty,” Leila muttered, “but…” She hammered the side of his head with a double fist, stunning him. Swiftly, she seized the pistol and tossed it to Johnny, who leveled it at the man and took aim with deadly intent.

“Don’t,” she said upon hearing the distinctive click of the semi-auto pistol’s hammer pulling back.

“Why not?” Johnny demanded. “They work for Dandridge.”

Disarming the other guard, she said, “They treated us quite civilly under the circumstances. They deserve a rap on the head for being rough guards, not death.” She nodded toward the boat. “Let’s get out of here.”

They hit the aluminum deck of the boat with resonant thumps, rolling and sliding into position. Leila gunned the engine into life and roared out of the cavern in a spray of sea foam.

“But we don’t know how many people they might have killed!”

“Exactly,” Weir said. “And we don’t know if they’ve ever killed anyone. We’re out to stop Dandridge, not judge everyone who works for him.”

Johnny frowned, puzzled and even a little annoyed. “Well, that’s a hell of a way to fight evil.”

Leila laughed mirthfully. “It works for us.”

The boat smacked over the waves. “All right,” she shouted over the roar of the engine, “Where’d they hide the plane?”

Johnny scanned the flat, blue horizon and saw nothing but the islands behind them and the sea everywhere else. Salt spray stung his face as the sun-low on the horizon-scintillated on the ocean’s surface.

“Flash!” she called out, confident that she had her earcomm signal back. “I’m going around to the other island. Fill me in!”

“I lost everyone’s signals two hours ago. They towed the Seamaster halfway between the two islands. Cap and the rest must still be somewhere inside the southern island. Be on your guard.”

Her long black hair whipped in the wind as she steered around the northern island. To Johnny, she looked like a golden statue of some Grecian goddess come to life. She gazed intently at the waters ahead, guiding the boat with sure strength. The slap of the metal hull against the swells punctuated the growl of the engine like the sound of a giant animal charging its prey.

He watched in wonder as the southern island came into view. It looked like something out of a mad scientist’s maddest nightmare. In the golden light of the late-day sun, it looked at first like the outline of an ordinary island, then like a tortured city skyline. As they grew closer, the shapes resolved into an intricate array of many-sided pillars that thrust out of the ocean at angles that, combined, lanced upward like a hideous sea creature breaking through the surf.

Off to one side floated the Seamaster. Leila steered toward it, one hand on the wheel, the other gripping the stolen pistol. Her index finger lay alongside the trigger guard, safe from accidental firing but ready to react to the slightest sign of danger.

She shouted over her shoulder to Madsen. “I suppose telling you to lie down and stay hidden would be pointless, so just be careful and work on not getting killed!”

“I can shoot, you know!” he hollered back.

“I don’t think you’ll have to!” She cut back on the throttle a thousand yards away from the aircraft. The boat settled down and drifted. “Flash-how many boats are out there?”

“I saw three on the last satellite image I nabbed. That was fifteen minutes ago. Now that you’re here, I’ll see what the plane’s cameras can pick up.”

After a moment, his voice buzzed in her ear. “I still see three. One by the nose, two coming straight toward you.”

Leila saw the rooster-tail spray from the two speedboats closing in on their inflatable. “Can you splash them with the portside missiles?”

“Just wanted your say-so. Already locked in.”

She nodded and said, “Fire away.”

Instantly, two white streaks tipped with fire screamed away from a rotating weapons pod under the Seamaster’s left wing. In less than a second, two explosions flung tons of water into the sky, taking the patrol boats with them. Tiny figures scrambled at air as the force of the blast threw them outward in every direction. One boat whirled in space and landed in one piece while the other disintegrated into shattered planks and engines, falling in pieces to the churning sea below.

Leila winked at Johnny as she gunned the engine into life. “We’ll toss out a life raft for them once we’re in the air.”

Her passenger frowned. “Why not let the sharks have ‘em?”

She grinned. “Cap says it totally annoys your enemies to owe you their lives. Besides”-her voice turned somber-“killing for convenience is a trait of the other side.”

She steered around the aft of the Seamaster, past its high T-tail empennage that towered like a diving whale’s powerful flukes, and said, “Open the gate to the castle, Flash.”

Hundreds of miles away in his electronic cocoon at the Anger Institute, Flash tapped into his keyboard the command to unseal the Seamaster. Encrypted with a 512-character prime number, the message darted upward to a commercial satellite and down again to the Seamaster’s computer, which decrypted the message and activated the gun bay door.

The boat bobbing at the prow of the seaplane released its tow line and roared into action, pulling around at the sight of the missile attack. Three men leveled their weapons toward Leila.

She took aim and squeezed off three rapid shots. Two rounds hit home, dropping the men to the deck. The third kept his cool and fired at the deadly woman.

The bullet punched through the boat’s windshield with a nerve-rattling crack. Leila sucked in a gasp of air and fired again. The pistol barked out a bullet that found its mark in her attacker’s chest. Dropping his rifle, he clutched his heart with one hand, gripped his skipper’s shoulder with the other, and sank out of sight to join his fallen comrades in the bottom of the boat.