"We've got him surrounded, sir!"
"Where?"
"Lakeport."
"I'm on my way."
Moore slammed the phone down, summoned Moira, Pryor, and half a dozen security men, and headed for Lakeport, the huge airport complex that floated atop Lake Michigan, some ten miles off Chicago's shoreline.
When they arrived they found that Jeremiah was trapped inside an empty hangar. As far as Moore could tell, there was no possible means of escape. Thirty armed men encircled the building, their weapons trained on every door and window. Still more men were backing up the first group, and the remainder of his security force was carefully checking the passengers on all incoming and outgoing boats and planes.
Furthermore, the city--or those members of its government who were personally obligated to Moore--had blocked off all other means of ingress and egress: the ramps, the tunnels, the monorails.
"How did you spot him?" Moore asked the man in charge.
"He tried to buy a ticket to Cairo."
"Egypt or Illinois?"
"Egypt. A couple of our agents identified him."
"You're sure it's Jeremiah?"
"Him or his twin brother," came the reply. "He fits the description we've got to a T, and he raced off like a bat out of hell when we called him by name."
"And he's still in the hangar?"
"Right."
"Moira, you come with me," said Moore. "I want to be absolutely certain we've got the right man."
"I don't think you should go in," she said. "He could be more dangerous than you think."
"I want to make sure that what happened last time doesn't happen again," said Moore. "Or if it does, I want to see it with my own eyes."
He took a handgun from one of the guards and, gesturing to his own security team to accompany him, entered the hangar.
It was quite large, almost four hundred feet long by two hundred wide and eighty high, and displayed no sign of life. Moore directed one of the men to turn on the lights, but found that the additional illumination didn't make much difference. He looked up at a number of ramps that ran along the inside wall of the hangar at a height of about fifty feet, trying to locate a likely place of concealment. There was none.
"All right," he announced at last. "It's obvious that he can't get out past our men, so we can take our time about this. We'll proceed as a unit and go over every inch of the damned building."
They began following the wall to the left, moving slowly and carefully, looking under, behind, and inside every object large enough to hide a man. They had gone about two hundred feet when they heard a shuffling sound from the far wall of the hangar.
"Over there!" shouted Moore, racing in the direction of the noise.
He and his men got to within fifty feet of a large baggage carrier when a young man stepped out from behind it, his hands above his head.
"Is that him?" Moore asked Moira.
"Yes," she replied.
"You're sure?"
"Absolutely."
Moore stared at the young man for a long moment. Finally he shrugged.
"Kill him," he ordered.
"No!" screamed Jeremiah. "I'm unarmed! You can't do this! I'm--"
Seven guns exploded in unison, Moore's included, and Jeremiah was flung some thirty feet away by the impact of the bullets. As soon as he stopped rolling over he got groggily to his feet and began running.
"What the hell is going on here?" muttered Moore. He fired again at Jeremiah, who was limping painfully but rapidly toward a door at the far end of the hangar as a hail of bullets struck the walls around him.
Moore took up the chase, shooting as he went. Jeremiah fell twice more, but each time managed to regain his feet and continue running toward the door. He reached it mere seconds ahead of Moore and raced out into the sunlight.
Moore stepped through the doorway just in time to see an airplane skid off a runway and head directly toward the hangar. He took in the situation at a glance, then ducked back inside the hangar and threw himself to the floor. There was a loud explosion an instant later, followed by two smaller ones and a burst of heat and smoke.
The hangar caught fire instantly, and beams and girders began falling to the floor. Moore got to his feet and began running to the undamaged end of the building. Moira and two of the security men followed him, but the others had disappeared under the rapidly accumulating rubble.
When he reached the door through which he had entered, he stepped outside, checked himself for injuries, found nothing but some superficial bruises and abrasions, and circled around the hangar to view the carnage. The air stank of burning flesh, and fifty of his men lay dead or severely mangled near the wreckage of the plane. A rescue crew was already on the scene, and half a dozen more were speeding toward the scene.
"Where is he?" demanded Moore, trying to spot Jeremiah's corpse in among the other bodies.
"He couldn't have survived that," replied one of the security men firmly. "He was right in the middle of it. You'll be lucky if you can find the fillings from his teeth."
"I hope you're right," said Moore, "but I want the entire area checked anyway. And I want somebody to find out what happened to the plane--what made it skid and crash." He turned to Moira, who was bleeding from her mouth. "Are you all right?"
"I will be, after I see a dentist," she said. "I have a couple of teeth loose." She looked down at her torn, grime-covered suit. "I think I could probably use a change of clothes, too. How about you, Mr. Moore? You look dreadful."
"I'm okay. Just shaken up a little," he said. "Let's get back to the office. There's nothing much we can do here."
They arrived, patched up most of their wounds, and changed into fresh clothes just in time to receive Pryor's first report from Lakeport: the plane's landing gear had failed to function. A brief preliminary investigation hadn't turned up any signs of sabotage.
Ten minutes later there was a second call from Pryor. A horribly mangled young man who matched Jeremiah's description had managed to board an airliner at gunpoint, and was, according to the pilot's radio message, preparing to parachute down somewhere over the Pocono Mountains.
"I wish I knew what the hell is happening!" snapped Moore after hanging up the receiver.
"I don't understand," said Moira.
"Your boyfriend has more lives than a goddamned cat."
"You don't mean to say that Jeremiah is alive?"
"Alive and free," said Moore. "The son of a bitch not only lived through that holocaust, but he managed to hijack a plane."
"But that's impossible!" exclaimed Moira.
"Evidently not," replied Moore. "I seem to remember Sherlock Holmes telling Dr. Watson that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth. If we apply that to Jeremiah, the one thing that remains is that there's no way in hell that he can be a normal man with normal abilities--if he's a man at all."
"I don't care if he's a man, a mutant, or an alien," persisted Moira. "No one could have survived that!"
"Someone did," said Moore. "Him."
)
As the kingpin of an immense criminal empire, Solomon Moody Moore is astonished to learn that the assassination attempt he just survived was arranged by a small-time crook named "Jeremiah the B." When the upstart criminal inexplicably survives a retaliatory hail of gunfire from Moore's best sharpshooters, Solomon discovers he's engaged in a battle of biblical proportions with Immanuel Jeremiah Branch--the Jewish Messiah.
