Carte Blanche

through the metal detector undisturbed.
    “Give it to me,” Hydt ordered.
    Bond reached into his pocket and dug it out. Hydt examined it, then dropped and crushed it beneath his heel. “Who are you? Who are you working for?”
    Bond shook his head.
    No longer calm, Hydt gazed at the angry faces of his partners, who were asking furiously what steps had been taken to shield their identities. They wanted their mobile phones. Mathebula demanded his gun.
    Dunne studied Bond in the way he might a misfiring engine. He spoke softly, as if to himself: “ You had to be the one in Serbia. And at the army base in March.” His brow beneath the blond fringe furrowed. “How did you escape? . . . How ?” He didn’t seem to want an answer; he wasn’t speaking to anyone but himself. “And Midlands Disposal wasn’t involved. That was a cover for your surveillance there. Then here, the killing fields . . .” His voice ebbed. A look approaching admiration tinted his face, as perhaps he decided Bond was an engineer in his own right, a man who also drafted clever blueprints.
    He said to Hydt, “He has contacts in the UK—it’s the only way they could have evacuated the university in time. He’s with some British security agency. But he would’ve been working with somebody here. London will have to call Pretoria, though, and we’ve got enough people in our pocket to stall for a time.” He said to one of the guards, “Get the remaining workers out of the plant. Keep only security. Hit the toxic-spill alarm. Marshal everyone into the car park. That’ll jam things up nicely if the SAPS or NIA decides to pay us a visit.”
    The guard walked to an intercom and gave the instructions. An alarm blared and an announcement rattled from the public-address system in various languages.
    “And him?” Huang asked, nodding to Bond.
    “Oh,” Dunne said matter-of-factly, as if it were understood. He looked at the security man. “Kill him and get the body into a furnace.”
    The huge man was equally blasé as he stepped forward, aiming his Glock pistol with care.
    “Please, no!” Bond cried and lifted a hand imploringly.
    A natural gesture under the circumstances.
    So the guard was surprised by the swirling black razor knife that Bond had pitched toward his face. This was the final item in Hirani’s CARE package, hidden in Jessica’s bag.
    Bond had not been able to adjust his distance for knife throwing, at which he was not particularly proficient anyway, but he’d flung it more as a distraction. The security man, though, swatted away the spiraling weapon and the honed edge cut his hand deeply. Before he recovered or anyone else could react, Bond moved in, twisted the man’s wrist back and relieved him of his gun, which he fired into the man’s fat leg, both to make sure that the weapon was ready to shoot and to disable the guard further. As Dunne and the other armed guard drew their weapons and began firing, Bond rolled through the door.
    The corridor was empty. Slamming the door shut, he sprinted twenty yards and took cover behind, ironically, a green recycling bin.
    The door to the conference room opened cautiously. The second armed guard eased out, narrow eyes scanning. Bond saw no reason to kill the young man so he shot him near the elbow. He dropped to the floor, screaming.
    Bond knew they would have called for backup so he stood up and continued his flight. As he ran he dropped out the magazine and glanced at it. Ten rounds left. Nine-millimeter, 110-grain, full-metal jacket. Light rounds and with the copper jacketing they’d have less stopping power than a hollow point but they’d shoot flat and fast.
    He shoved the magazine back in.
    Ten rounds.
    Always count . . .
    But before he got far, there was a huge snap near his head and the nearly simultaneous boom of a rifle from a side corridor. He saw two men in security-guard khaki approaching, holding Bushmaster assault rifles. Bond fired twice, missing, but giving himself enough cover to kick in the door to the office beside him and run into the cluttered workspace. No one was inside. A fusillade from the .223 slugs tore up the jamb, wall and door.
    Eight rounds left.
    The two guards seemed to know what they were about—ex-army, he guessed. Deafened by the shots, he couldn’t hear voices but from the shadows in the corridor he got the impression that the men had joined up with others, perhaps Dunne among them. He sensed, too, they were about to make a dynamic