The Hinge of Fate of All the Asias was understandibly displeased. Even the Hong Kong Cavaliers, those detested minions of the hated Banzai, had believed Replay to be in far less than her normal fighting trim; while Hanoi Xan was prepared to believe it possible that Dingo had somehow outfoxed him, it was clear to him that she must have been the one who'd fired the fatal shot. It was not something Rawhide would have risked under those conditions, not with her so close; the chance of even a direct hit damaging more than the target would have been considerable even in full light. That left only Replay; therefore, she was the shooter. She must either have been incredibly confident of her aim, or more than a little suicidal.

The fact remained that Dingo was no longer of any use to him. Reports from his other spies concurred that Replay was still considered to be convalescing and had not yet resumed her own personal equipment, which could only mean that she must have borrowed Rawhide's sidearm. Dingo hadn't heard any indication she'd warned the other man she was planning to take it, which could only mean that Banzai's second had been taken off-guard by more than the power failure alone. Her performance during her escape months earlier was sufficient evidence that she was capable of obtaining weapons on virtually no notice, using only the slightest of distractions to full advantage. Undoubtedly Rawhide's first reaction would have been indignation; even if she hadn't killed someone the cowboy would have considered an ally, the sudden loss of his weapon would have justified a certain degree of anger.

Eventually, Xan decided that the immediately troublesome question was neither how nor why Replay confounded his best attempts to predict her at every turn, but rather, why had she fired at all? Dingo had never been intended as a physical threat to her; his task had been to make sure that certain compulsions had taken hold and if the original implementation had not been effective, to place them anew. She should not have been able to tell he was even that much of a threat if the commands she'd been exposed to while unconscious in the hotel had taken hold, unless perhaps the unfamiliar sign and countersign had been some manner of tip-off. Rawhide would not have told Dingo to come ahead as well if he'd been certain what Replay was telling the man; was it possible that she shared history with more than a few of Team Banzai's ex-cops? Might she actually have expected him to reveal things she didn't want Rawhide knowing?

That thought calmed Xan considerably. He might have a very useful avenue of attack shaping up; faith and trust were after all such fragile things, so very vulnerable to doubts.

***

Jet leaned against the doorframe of Buckaroo's private quarters at the rear of the bus, taking the opportunity to focus as much as possible on assessing her own condition. The stairs had taken every bit of concentration she'd been able to muster, and if they hadn't been almost exactly as narrow and steep as the steps she was accustomed to find in military control towers, she knew she probably wouldn't have been able to climb them at all. The ache in her head was beginning to receed now that she wasn't hearing half a dozen things occuring around her simultaneously, but the better her head felt, the more she noticed other hurts. She was distantly aware that Rawhide and Buckaroo were not the only ones seriously concerned about her, and somewhat more alert to the questions Buckaroo had for her now than she'd initially been. Some of them made no sense taken individually, but she was beginning to see an overall pattern. Unless she was very much mistaken, it was diagnostic, the best set of substitutions he could come up with for the usual queries. It wasn't like she'd had that clear an idea of what was happening around her to begin with, but at least they'd had time to establish her level of confusion earlier; he'd be misreading some of her answers very badly otherwise.

She was also a little distracted with her own checks, which couldn't be helping him any, but she wasn't aware of anyone else in a position to be doing them for her. She wasn't all that steady on her feet yet, but that ought to pass; the system gyros had overloaded and needed time to reset, time that circumstances hadn't really allowed. By rights she should have lost them again altogether, which would have been rather problematic even if her head had been straight to begin with; just now, it was a little difficult to override her skewed sense of balance on visual ranging alone. That ought to resolve itself given time as well; either her inner ear would recover quickly enough or her compensation for it would improve as her headache faded. None of it was worth worrying about yet as far as she could tell; whatever neurological damage she might be suffering from, it was talava-related this time.

That evaluation completed, she took a deep breath and recentered on the present just as Buckaroo finished cutting her free of the ruined leather jacket. The sodden garment slid off her shoulders at scarcely a touch, the additional weight of the water it had soaked up pulling it free, the sleeves turning inside out as it fell but not hanging up on her hands. The other man, a gangly fellow who seemed as much carried along by circumstance as simply rolling with things until there was time for explanations, caught himself looking at her soaked t-shirt and hastily averted his eyes. She didn't really need that very human gesture of concern for her modesty to remind her that her relations with everyone around her would have been very unstable even without the apparent machinations of Hanoi Xan.

Buckaroo was considerably less distracted by her attire. Most of the wearable clothing we had available just then had either been supplied by the same Blue Blazes who'd set up the safehouse or had been stored in this tiny cubicle to begin with; rather than feeling he needed to choose a random direction to look, he had a specific purpose in mind. There were things here that were a close enough fit for her to satisfy propriety, and she'd never concerned herself much over what any of the family's physicians might or might not get a look at. Having New Jersey in the room would satisfy Penny that nothing untoward was going on, and we could worry about legalities later if Missouri law specified the required chaperone be another female.

With the broad outlines of his own thoughts written even as faintly as that on his face, Jet was surprised to realize she understood him without words. She had a vague and distant memory of people at the ranch giving her grief about someone with shields sufficient to prevent her from reading his mind even with his cooperation, someone she'd had to resort to nothing more than verbals and visuals to be able to anticipate; was it possible that she was looking at that man now?

Like it or not, she couldn't afford the time to speculate on that for more than a moment or two at a time just yet. Things were happening much too fast for such luxuries as proper rest or testing her long-term recall. He'd said something about getting the bus underway which could only mean that the safehouse had ceased to be useful even as a staging point, and it was clear that people had understood more than he'd said, but it would have been nice to know that herself. "Two things," she said, her volume still subdued but sounding a great deal more like herself now that she was beginning to get her second wind.

He didn't discourage her, so she proceeded. "Where?"

It was a question he only understood because he'd grown accustomed to her sometimes peculiar sense of priorities and her habit of making one word do the work of three when she was feeling stressed. "We're not welcome in St. Louis right now," he answered; "but the police can find us in New Brunswick."

"Lindbergh flying?" Buckaroo only nodded. "He'll do," she said, not certain why she said it; usually she prefered to watch other pilots for a lot longer before she was willing to pronounce them competent. "What about Dingo? Don't wanna be airborne with him, the state he's in."

"We know what we're looking for," Buckaroo said. "It won't be an issue."

***

By the time the ambulance arrived on the scene south of Earth City, the officer who'd initially requested it had realized that one was either vastly insufficient or one too many. The white panel van lying overturned in someone's pasture now had rolled at least twice if the trail it had left through the grass was reliable indication; it was far enough from the pavement that the flashing lights only began to reflect back from it as the rain finally began to lighten up for real. By the time an officer had finally taken a good hard stare at my identification and allowed that I might in truth be who I claimed I was, it was clear that this one was going to be a long while in the figuring out.

Answering questions for the police is often time-consuming enough when you're dealing with officers who can easily drop by for a visit should they wish to discuss things further. Add to that the fact that we had two entirely different sets of officers seeking explanations, and I fully expected that Wayback and I would be tied up in someone's station house until the wee small hours of the next morning even before St. Charles got a chance to take our statements about events on the bridge approach. I only hoped that I had the opportunity to call the house and let people know we were safe, or talk to one of Big Norse's crew aboard World Watch One via go-phone if the jamming problem was ever resolved.

I was not prepared for my first real look at the scene to include a face I recognized from a copy of a single, grainy, black & white Interpol photo which presently hung pinned to a dartboard in the bunkhouse. Deng Fat had plainly been a passenger in the first chase car, for its driver was still slumped over the steering wheel. He'd either been shaken up badly by it's collision with the cruiser or was communing with his foul master when I set eyes on him, for there seemed not to be a mark on him beyond the early signature of a seatbelt bruise across his exposed collarbone. Perhaps I can be forgiven for the slight hiss that crept into my voice as I identified him for the policeman still standing next to me. "Deng Fat. One of Hanoi Xan's lieutenants."

To this day, I have no doubt that he heard his own name as clearly as the officer did. The look he shot at me was alert and venomous enough to have dissuaded anyone less accustomed to dealing with the criminal element than a veteran officer, or a Cavalier. "You will not live long enough for it to matter," was his only audible response.

Wayback, meanwhile, had understood when the panel van went off the road that it hadn't been range which had taken them out of his limited 'sight', but it hadn't really occured to him that its occupants were either dead or nearly so, along with some farmer's cow the vehicle had come to rest atop. As soon as the other officer had returned his i.d., the Canadian had turned to view the little he could see of that wreck, trying to make sense of it. When he turned around to stare at Deng instead, it was with that particular intensity we'd only seen him display when someone deliberately tried to prevent him from reading their mind in lab experiments. Deng only laughed and raised cuffed hands toward his ruined ear. I shouted a warning, certain he was up to something, but knowing I was already far too late for the officer trying to put him in the back of an undamaged cruiser.

To their collective credit, most of the other officers on the scene dropped to the pavement at once. Wayback was there no more than a heartbeat later, taking cover behind as much of the car as he could; he, at least, had seen the aftermath of a bomb at close range and was aware of the existence of the Death Dwarves, but his reflexes weren't quite as developed as the patrolmens' were. Still, even we were surprised by the force of the explosion that rocked the remains of the panel van, sending shrapnel flying in every direction and shooting flames twenty feet into the air even before the secondary explosion from the gas tank.

Caught in the open with a firm grip on Deng when I'd given warning, one officer had stayed on his feet. Deng took advantage of the blast to break loose and charge toward us, using the few seconds of delay on the detonator in his own bomb to try to get close enough to make good his threat of a few moments earlier. He made it about halfway before someone realized that this was one shot more risky to ignore than to take.

***

It was Rawhide who first noticed Lindbergh was wounded. "Lemme look at that hand, " he said, making the pilot blink at a request not immediately understood. "What'd you burn it on?"

"Oh," said Lindburgh, finally connecting. "Got a little toasted connecting to the landline." He looked at his wounded digits for the first time and was mildly surprised to discover only the blisters of second degree burns where he'd half expected to see worse. "Hasn't really started to hurt yet."

"It will," said Rawhide. "Anybody tell you that's not smart?"

"Yeah. Me." He seriously considered the extent of the damage for a moment. "I'm still airworthy. Wouldn't want to have to deal with a chopper, though."

"That true, or just wishful thinking?" It was not a question he would have asked just anyone, even under the present circumstances, but Lindbergh had only been one of us for some four months. Once upon a year, this would have meant he wouldn't have made intern for at least another two months, but one of our post-Yoyodyne changes had been the accelerated internship program he had recently graduated from. Designed to take prior experience into account more fully than we'd been accustomed to doing in the past, the program allowed apprentices with one or more of the manditory skills to advance to intern status in less time than those who had to be taught everything, but I digress. Suffice it to say that one of the few flaws we'd discovered with the accelerated program is that we didn't always have as much opportunity to learn how accurate our interns' personal judgment was on issues such as this.

"Wouldn't, not couldn't. Guess I'd better have someone tape these up, though." It was not in his nature to raise the issue of his co-pilot; either Silk was safer with the crew guarding the 727 than any of the rest of us, or she was in considerably more trouble than he could hope to deal with until we could verify her position.

The O'Fallon police might be another matter. Given a completely different segment of the available radio bandwidth by law, they might still have working communications, which was something else Lindbergh had been thinking when he'd gone to so much effort to bring them in.