“Lose those shoes!” Murdock snapped at Inge.

“But . . .”

“Ditch the shoes and run, damn it!”

If he’d been alone, he’d have had little problem avoiding the trap. With his SEAL conditioning, he was certain that he could outrun just about any army the opposition cared to send against him, and that woman would have to be one hell of a crack shot to hit a running man at ten meters with that snub-nosed revolver she was pointing at him. But he couldn’t leave Inge. . . .

Likely, all four were armed, but the only one who had a weapon out and ready for action was the woman, and Murdock immediately tagged her as the most dangerous of the four. She and her companion were five meters off now, the utility men a bit further away in the other direction.

Always do the unexpected. Murdock charged.

“Alt!” the woman screamed. She was a hard-faced, shorthaired woman, with muscles that Murdock suspected had been honed with weight training. She brought the gun up to point at directly into Murdock’s face, stiff-armed and one-handed.

Two mistakes—trying for a head shot against a moving target and trying for a one-handed stance like a gunfighter out of the mythical Wild West. Murdock sharply sidestepped, forcing her to pivot in an attempt to correct her aim, then lunged straight toward her, his left arm rolling up in a hard block, sweeping her gun hand aside as he stepped inside her reach. His right hand clenched, but when his right arm snapped forward, he carried the impact on the heel of his palm when it slammed squarely between the woman’s small breasts, just at the bottom of her sternum. His follow-through was purely reflexive, his knee catching her between the legs so hard she was lifted from the pavement.

That particular blow was fully as incapacitating for a woman as for a man. The pistol was sent spinning through the air, and Murdock was past the woman before she could hit the ground, dropping his center of gravity, pivoting on his left foot, and bringing his right around in a savage roundhouse kick that caught the man in sports clothes squarely in his left kidney. The man oofed and went down, still fumbling at the pistol tucked into his waistband. Murdock snap-kicked him in the side of the head; there was an ugly snicking sound as the ball of his foot connected and the man’s spine broke just below the base of his skull.

Spinning to face the remaining attackers, Murdock was just in time to see Inge, her shoes gone now, throw a hard forward kick into the groin of one of the utilities workers. The man gasped and doubled over, clutching himself; unfortunately, it was his partner who was carrying the tool kit and who was just pulling an Uzi submachine gun clear of the metal box’s open lid.

The bad guys must have planned on muscle, numbers, and threat alone to force the two of them to come along, or they would have had their weapons out and ready instead of inaccessible. Murdock took three quick steps to the left and grabbed the man’s gun hand, twisting him around and over into a wrist-breaker grip. Encumbered by the weapon in one hand and the toolbox in the other, the man screamed and dropped to his knees, toolbox and Uzi both clattering noisily onto the pavement. Murdock held him down, swinging his knee up hard to connect with the man’s face. The scream broke off in a gurgle of pain; Murdock kneed him again, then released him, scooping up the Uzi as the man’s body slumped to the sidewalk.

The guy Inge had kicked was still on his feet, but doubled over. Murdock walked over, grabbed his hair with his free hand, then slammed his knee up into his face. The woman was on her hands and knees, one hand clutching her abdomen, but she was trying to crawl toward her companion, and the weapon protruding from behind his belt. Murdock walked up behind her and jackhammered his fist down hard against the base of her neck, and she collapsed facedown on the pavement without a word or a sound.

The roar of an engine exploded nearby. Spinning, Uzi at the ready, Murdock saw the panel truck jump a curb and careen into the street, its back doors still flapping open. In an instant it had cornered at the next intersection with a squeal of outraged tires, and was out of sight. So . . . there’d been a fifth attacker, and he’d gotten away. Not good.

“You okay?” he asked Inge.

The BKA woman was still standing over the man she’d kicked, fists clenched at her sides, her maroon dress was very much the worse—or perhaps from Murdock’s point of view, much the better—for wear. Her kick had ripped the slit in the side of the dress clear to her waist, and he could see a torn stocking and a thin strip of something sheer, black, and lacy riding high across the tanned skin of her hip. She was excited too, breathing hard in tight, rapid, almost panting gasps, and the surge of adrenaline to her system had triggered a physiological reaction that made it quite clear that she was not wearing a bra beneath the thin material of her dress. “Yes,” she said. She swallowed, then nodded her head. “I think so. God, Blake, you play rough.”

He stooped next to the man at her feet, checking for a pulse. The guy’s face was bloody and he was out cold, but he was still alive. Carefully, Murdock turned the man’s head to the side so that he wouldn’t strangle on his own blood. “When I have to.”

Inge walked over to the woman. The man lying on the cement next to her was on his back, eyes open and very obviously dead. “You . . . you kicked her. . . .”

The sheer illogic of the statement, the dull edge to her voice, the glassy look in her blue eyes, all told Murdock that Inge was on the point of going into shock. He walked over to her and took her by both arms, turning her to face him. “Inge . . . remember what I was saying earlier in the car? There is no fair in combat. There can’t be. You do what you have to do to survive. If that means you kill someone, if it means you use the dirtiest trick in the book, you do it, right? Because if you don’t, it’s a damned sure thing that the people you’re fighting aren’t going to show you a similar courtesy when they get the drop on you.”

Jerkily, she nodded.

“They had guns, we didn’t,” he said. “But we’re still here, right?”

She nodded again, then took a deep breath and gave him an awkward self-conscious smile. “I guess we are. Still think women can’t handle themselves in combat?”

“Well, I know I’m not going to argue it with you. Not right now, at any rate.” He nodded toward her torn dress. “I think you’d better go change, don’t you? And maybe sit down for a bit, with a good, stiff drink.”

She seemed unconcerned about her dress. “What . . . what should we do about them?”

Murdock considered the question. Stooping, he again checked each of the fallen ambushers. One dead, the other three incapacitated. The woman might begin showing some interest in her surroundings before too long, but he was pretty sure the two “utilities men” would be out of it for an hour or more, at the very least. The biggest problem was that the panel truck might come back for them . . . maybe with reinforcements.

“Get their guns.”

“What?”

“I don’t want the neighborhood kids wandering by and picking up their guns. The woman’s pistol flew over there, somewhere, by those bushes. Then I want you to go inside and call the police. Or . . . maybe there’s a department in the BKA?”

“I’ll call Captain Halber,” she said. “He’s on duty at the watch desk tonight. He’ll know who to send.”

Inge began doing as she’d been told. Good. She needed something to keep her mind occupied, something to keep the emotional shock at bay. The woman’s pistol was a Chief’s Special, a snub-nosed .38 revolver, while the weapon in her dead companion’s waistband was a German-made Walther PPK. The man with the tool kit had been carrying the Uzi, of course, and both “utilities men” were packing heavy artillery in the form of .357 Magnum revolvers, hidden inside their bulky coveralls.

“You have any enemies?” he asked Inge as she showed him the arsenal. “Someone who might want to even an old score?”

“No, Blake,” she said. “This was an RAF hit.”

“Red Army? How do you know?” In fact, he’d begun to suspect as much himself. The ambush had not been a robbery attempt. The idea had been to swiftly overpower Murdock and the BKA woman and bundle them into that van . . . a kidnapping, in other words. Since neither of them would raise much in the way of ransom, Murdock could only assume that the kidnapping had been for either political or intelligencegathering purposes, and that pointed to a revolutionary or terrorist organization like the German RAF.

Inge knelt beside the woman, picking up her left arm and turning it so that Murdock could see the back of her hand. A small tattoo had been neatly incised into the skin, a small red circle with the unmistakable black silhouette of an H&K submachine gun.

“Rather stupid of them to advertise themselves that way,” Murdock said. The H&K, he remembered from various SEAL briefings on terrorist cells and personnel, had been adopted by the Red Army Faction as a kind of logo back in the seventies. He studied the unconscious woman’s face for a moment. It was hard, with knife-edged creases . . . an angry, bitter face, he decided. She might be in her early forties. Possibly the tattoo dated from the so-called People’s Revolutions of the seventies, though he wondered how she could have gone for twenty years without someone noticing and reporting her to the authorities.

On the other hand, Germans were as likely to mind their own business and stay uninvolved as any other group of people.

Using strips torn from the dead man’s shirt, Murdock tied the wrists and ankles of the three surviving attackers, just in case they recovered enough to wander off. As he worked, a small crowd began gathering. By the time Inge, dressed now in slacks and a white blouse, had returned from making her telephone call, a police car was on the scene as well. Weapons, prisoners, and body were all removed with a minimum of fuss, while uniformed officers dispersed the crowd. For over an hour, then, back in Inge’s apartment, Murdock and Inge went over what had happened with the police again and again, with Inge serving as translator, until Lieutenant Hopke and Mac MacKenzie arrived.

When the police had departed at last, MacKenzie grinned at Murdock. “Can’t you even have a nice night out on the town without getting into trouble, L-T?”

“Busman’s holiday, Mac. Lieutenant Hopke?”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“I need some firepower. Think your department could arrange it?”

“I think so. I think it might be a good idea if both of you were armed while you are in the country. You seem to have attracted some unwanted attention.”

“From my neighbors?” Inge said, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe that.”

“Did you know them well?”

“Not really.” She’d already been over this several times with the police. “They moved in a few months ago. I saw them now and then, in the hallway or in the laundry. The man’s name was Friedrick. The woman . . . I think her name was Erna, but I’m not sure. The name on their letterbox in the lobby was Dortman.”

“Some of Komissar’s people are in their apartment now,” Hopke said. “The police will be there with a search warrant before long, but Captain Steiner authorized a black-bag operation, before the uniform people muddy up the scene.” He glanced at Murdock. “This is not strictly legal, you see.”

“Understood. SEALs have to operate outside the strict limits of the law too, from time to time.”

“The trouble is,” Inge said, “why do you think it was Blake who attracted their attention? It seems to be too much of a coincidence that two RAF terrorists just happened to be living on my floor.”

“Quite correct, Inge,” Hopke said. “My guess, and it is only a guess at this point, is that they took that apartment to keep an eye on you. When Lieutenant Murdock here put in an appearance, however, they decided—or were ordered—to move.”

“Ordered?” Inge shuddered and closed her eyes. “By who?”

“Good question.”

“Do you have anything on that panel truck we saw?” Murdock asked.

“Nothing. Police helicopters are up, watching for a vehicle of that description, but I doubt that they’ll spot anything. The owners, if they are smart, will abandon it or get it quickly out of sight, and there are many white panel trucks on the Autobahn.”

“Sorry I didn’t get a license,” Murdock said.

“I doubt that it would have helped if you had.” Hopke shrugged. “These people are smart. They would have had fake plates.”

“I’m not so sure they were that smart. If that was a kidnapping attempt, it was pretty badly planned.”

Hopke smiled. “Perhaps, Lieutenant, they don’t know you are a SEAL. Or that SEALs are such formidable opponents. They must have thought that the threat of four people, displaying guns, would be enough to make you submit.”

“Maybe. If they didn’t know I was a SEAL, though, the question remains why they tried to pick us up at all.”

“If they have a mole with customs,” MacKenzie pointed out, “they would know we came in on a military flight. We’re in civilian clothes and we go straight to the BKA. One of us takes a lovely BKA agent back to her apartment. That’s got to make them curious.”

“Quite right,” Hopke agreed. “We will know more when we have interrogated the prisoners.” He looked back and forth between Inge and Murdock. “In any case, perhaps you two would like to resume your evening together?”

“I think Inge might like to get some rest,” Murdock said.

“Nonsense!” All evidence of the shock that had threatened her earlier was gone. She seemed animated and very much alive. “After what we’ve just been through? I’m hungrier than ever now. That steak we were talking about sounds wonderful!”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, L-T,” MacKenzie warned. “Suppose they try again.”

“About that gun,” Murdock said, turning to Hopke.

“What kind do you prefer?”

“I don’t suppose the Federal Republic would go along with me packing a shotgun. Or an M-16.”

“How about something concealable?”

“First choice would be a .45 Colt. After that, just about anything in semi-auto and .45 caliber.”

“I will see what can be done.” Hopke removed his suit jacket, revealing a shoulder holster rig which he began unbuckling as he spoke. “In the meantime, why don’t you take this. Just don’t get caught with it until I can put the proper paperwork through.”

“This,” was an H&K P9S, a 9mm double-action semiautomatic with a nine-round magazine. Tucked into its holster with a Velcro strap and positioned under Murdock’s left arm, it hardly showed at all when he put his jacket back on.

“Great,” he said, shrugging, then moving his arms back and forth to settle the harness comfortably into place. “Of course, some official backup might be nice too.”

“I’ll see what we can do.” He grinned suddenly. “Why do I have the feeling, Herr Murdock, that you are making of yourself a target?”

“I’m not really. And I wouldn’t deliberately use Inge here for bait either. But my feeling at the moment is that no place we go is going to be all that safe.” He shrugged. “Who knows? The guy in the panel truck may organize another try with some of his buddies. If we’re ready for them when they do, so much the better.”

Their conversation, however, remained centered on things professional. At first, Inge was interested in the aspects of SEAL training. “Drown-proofing” fascinated her, though she thought the sink-or-swim mentality seemed a bit barbaric. The idea of tying a man hand and foot and throwing him into the deep end of the pool, literally to sink or swim . . .

Later, their conversation had grown more technical, with Inge probing Murdock’s thoughts on nuclear proliferation . . . especially now, with the old Soviet empire gone.

“We’ve been especially concerned about the possibility of radicals in the former Soviet states getting hold of nuclear warheads before they can be disassembled or shipped back to Russia,” she told him. “Even a so-called battlefield weapon, a tactical nuclear artillery shell, for instance, could kill tens of thousands of people, ruin a fair-sized city, and be extremely hard to track.”

It was, Murdock reflected, not exactly light dinner conversation, but it was a topic he was keenly interested in. “Everybody said the world would be a safer place with the collapse of Soviet Communism, that we could enjoy a ‘peace dividend’ with all the money we’d save cutting back on our military expenditures. Stupid idea that, fit only for liberal, anti-military politicians and other assorted half-wits. I certainly don’t want the Soviets back—never did—but at least they kept pretty good track of their nukes.”

“You believe the current owners of the warheads do not?” Murdock shrugged and kept cutting the steak on the plate in front of him. “There are just too damned many nukes, and too many people with reasons to sell them or steal them.”

Inge nodded thoughtfully. “It sounds as though the—what is the expression? The nuclear genie has escaped its bottle.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“So,” Inge said. “What is the answer? How can we stop the proliferation? What will happen if we don’t?”

Murdock didn’t reply right away. Looking past Inge’s shoulder, he spotted MacKenzie, seated at a table across the restaurant with Lieutenant Hopke, and caught his eye. Mac nodded slightly but gave no other sign of having noticed Murdock. There was at least one other BKA team in the room too, Murdock knew, but they were good, and he hadn’t been able to spot them.

Good backup, just in case. Chances were, though, now that they were ready for them, the RAF wouldn’t try again, not in the same way, at least. The other patrons of the restaurant were going on with their meals, talking about weather or opera, the latest scandal in parliament or love, unaware of the topic being discussed at at least one of the tables.

“I really don’t know, Inge,” Murdock said. “Used to be, I thought the old nuclear balance of power would be enough. You know, they won’t nuke us because then we’ll nuke them. How do you nuke a terrorist group, though? You can’t. You can’t even nuke the country that sponsored the terrorists, because it’s their government that’s bad, not the people. Hell, most of the population of North Korea is one step removed from outright slavery.

“Later I thought SDI was the answer. You know, what the press called ‘Star Wars’? But then the Russians folded and it was peace-dividend time, and everyone in Congress was scrambling for the easy kills, looking for money for welfare and free health insurance. Hell, even if we had a perfect ballistic missile defense, chances are those terrorist nukes would come by way of freighter or submarine or even a moving van coming across the border from Mexico, not in the warhead of an SS-19.

“I’m very, very much afraid that things have simply gone too far. One of these days pretty soon now, we’re going to lose a city.”

“I never took you for the fatalistic sort, Blake.”

“I’m hardly that. I’ll fight as long as I can, I’ll fight whoever I’m told to fight to stop the holocaust. But I’m also a realist. In my line of work, you have to be.”

“I know what you mean. Working with Komissar, you can often begin assembling a larger picture in your own mind while you are still feeding the machine with the snippets and fragments. For a long time now, there have been, well, hints of something very large, some operation involving many of the old terror groups, and it has left me with a dreadful foreboding. Like knowing that something terrible is about to happen, and being unable to do a thing about it.”

Even with much of their conversation centering on what was for both of them shop talk, their relationship, their mutual feelings of camaraderie and comfortable closeness had deepened considerably by the time they reached Inge’s apartment again, at just past twelve-thirty in the morning. She asked him in to have a drink and he accepted, with Mac waiting for him in a rented car outside. After two drinks more, she asked him to spend the night. Murdock signaled MacKenzie from her apartment’s balcony with a flashlight, a quick-beamed longshort-short—not Morse for the letter “D,” but an old Navy whistle or horn signal meaning, “Cast off and stand clear.” MacKenzie replied with an affirmative flash from his headlights and drove off a few moments later.

When Murdock turned away from the window, Inge was waiting for him, beautifully, gloriously naked.