the trigger. He used that momentary hesitation—which could have been no more than an eighth of a second—to shift his head out of the path of the 9 mm slug as it left the barrel and raced through the air toward him. Then, as the bullet clipped past Flag’s ear, his hand whipped out and snatched the pistol before Octavo could loose another shot.
Octavo cried out as the pistol left her hand, along with her glove, which was caught up by Flag’s swift action. As her glove fell to the floor with a slap, the beautiful Italian turned on Flag, hissing like an enraged cat.
Abraham Flag’s eyes never left Octavo’s, but his fingers worked in a blur of movement. In less than two seconds, he had deconstructed the Beretta with one hand, dropping the component parts to the hard floor of the tiny office. But that minuscule distraction had been enough. As the barrel, grip and trigger guard tinkered to the wooden floor, Demy Octavo’s fist snapped out, connecting with Flag’s square jaw.
Caught off guard, Flag took a step backward, reeling from the savage blow. That momentary stumble threatened to cost Flag—and by extension the U.S. government—plenty. Signorina Octavo swooped down at the object resting on the desk like a hawk swooping down on a field mouse, snatching the stone knife in her right hand. She was still moving as Flag recovered, her tall body twisting as she jumped back to the window.
“Look out, Professor!” Barnaby B. Barnaby called from his hiding place behind the desk. “That incorrigible Italian ingenue is escaping. And she’s got our knife!”
Octavo leaped once more through the shattered window, an angry snarl marring her flawless features. She had the ancient artifact, but she had lost one of her precious Beretta pistols during the scuffle. Landing on the tarmac beyond the broken window, Demy Octavo took off at a run, the heels of her Italian leather boots clip-clopping against the ground as she made her way past the administration block.
“Where’s she goin’, Chief?” Little Ant asked as he watched the woman hurry away.
Instantaneously, Flag recalled the layout of the naval base. “She’s heading toward the main dock of the base!” he exclaimed. “Signorina Octavo is either planning to steal a boat…or my plane. Come on, let’s go.” As he said those final words, Flag was at the door to the office, running out into the corridor at a fast clip.
Outside, Demy Octavo had already reached the long airstrip where Flag has landed his experimental aircraft less than an hour before. She was as graceful as a gazelle as her arms pumped, and her long legs strove forward, the ancient knife clutched firmly in her right hand.
Two sailors were refueling Flag’s curious air vehicle as Octavo appeared from around the side of the two-story administration building. Nearby, another group of sailors—eight in all—were busy at work refitting a one-man submarine. The sub was still in the testing stages, the parts laid out along the concrete skirt beside the airstrip. All of the naval personnel looked up at the sound of running feet, and were surprised and baffled when they saw the striking form of the Italian special agent sprinting toward them.
Behind Octavo, the door to the administration block crashed open and Professor Flag came running out with his two mismatched partners hot on his heels. “Stop that woman!” Flag bellowed, his powerful voice needing no augmentation to be heard clear across the other side of the sunbaked airstrip.
One of the sailors who had been refueling Flag’s aircraft held up his hand, ordering Octavo to stop right where she was. In return, the cruel Italian doyenne brought up her right hand—the one that held the ancient stone knife—and swiped the blade across the unsuspecting sailor’s face.
With an agonized cry, the sailor fell to the smooth blacktop strip, a sudden crimson streak marring his youthful features.
Although they were rare, there were times when Abraham Flag regretted his policy of never carrying a gun. As he watched that brave sailor fall to his knees, the young man’s face a ruined mosaic of pouring blood, he felt that pang of regret once more. Despite Flag’s years training his body to an incredible level of physical fitness, Octavo had had too much of a head start and Flag’s own actions had not been fast enough. Now the young lad would wear that hideous scar for the rest of his life, evidence of the coldhearted cruelty of Mussolini’s fascist desires. Armed with the swift justice of a bullet, Flag might have halted Octavo in her tracks, wounded or killed her before she could cause any further damage.
As regrets darkened Abraham Flag’s mind, Demy Octavo drew her second Beretta handgun from its holster and began to wave it at the shocked sailors standing along the airstrip.
“Everybody keep back,” she warned, her voice as harsh as the ugly punishment she had just doled out to the sailor.
Showing their hands, the sailors backed away, their eyes fixed on the muzzle of that lethal handgun. But Abraham Flag’s eyes had been drawn elsewhere. Instead of stopping, he drove himself harder, running at full speed to catch up to the Italian infiltrator, outpacing his companions with his huge strides.
Still holding the sailors at bay with her silver-handled Beretta, Demy Octavo turned at the sound of Flag’s running feet. “Stop right where you are, Professor,” she ordered, “or their blood will be on your hands.”
As if to prove the seriousness of her threat, Octavo pulled the trigger, and a bullet spit from her gun, spearing through the air over the heads of the wary sailors.
Now twenty feet from Octavo, Flag stopped, his eyes fixed on the scene before him. “Demy, no!” Flag cried, and it seemed that there was the slightest trace of fear in the great man’s voice. “Stop!”
Octavo laughed, a vicious, ugly sound from such a beautiful face. “I’ll be leaving now, Professor, and no one will dare stop me,” she assured him, taking a step toward his waiting aircraft.
Abraham Flag fixed the woman with his stare, his incredible amethyst eyes exerting an almost hypnotic power. “Please, Demy,” he said, his voice calm once more. “Look at the knife.”
Suspicious of a trick, Demy Octavo glanced at the stone knife in her hand. Its strange, dark surface rippled with sunlight, and yet the glow seemed somehow unnatural, as though it didn’t really belong. Across from Octavo, still kneeling on the airstrip with his bloody face in his hands, the wounded sailor was clearly going into shock. But there was something else about him, something different. From beneath the sailor’s hands, Octavo saw that selfsame glow, tinged with red and pulsing like something organic. As the man lowered his hands, he revealed a rent in his face that was so unnatural as to defy description.
Flag had sensed as much as seen the nightmarish change to the young sailor’s face. It wasn’t simply a cut, the way a knife would cut. It seemed almost as though that ancient blade had burned him like acid, eating into the flesh and sinews that hid beneath his fragile skin. But there was more to it than that. The young man was wounded at a cellular level; the very fiber that made up his being had been damaged in a manner that utterly defied human comprehension.
For an awful moment, the name of the stone blade bubbled to the surface of Flag’s thoughts once more: Godkiller.
But it wasn’t just the young sailor’s face that had been altered. Demy Octavo was changing, too, as she clutched the knife in her elegant hand. She stood there looking at it, holding the blade in front of her as though transfixed.
“Demy,” Flag urged, his voice firm, “Miss Octavo? Please, put down the knife.”
For a moment, Octavo did nothing. She just stood, as still as a statue, as the Pacific sun beat down on the thin black line of the naval airstrip. And then, in
