Free Devil's Eye by Al Ruksenas

flippancy was affecting her. “What about the scream? What are you going to do? What about these men? You shot them! Are you going to call the police?”
     
    The Colonel realized he was totally preoccupied and ignoring her concerns. He got up and faced her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you through this.”
     
    She looked at him in a mixture of fear and relief and collapsed into his embrace, still clutching the stiletto.
     
    They hurried to his car with the night breeze turning to a brisk wind that rustled the treetops in the Mall and swayed them back and forth in seeming mimicry of the assault that had just been thwarted.
     
    In the roadster Caine grabbed his secure phone and raised the night duty officer at his Pentagon office. He asked the officer to relay a message about the two bodies to the Washington police. “I’ll file a report.” He signed off.
     
    Caine looked with concern at Laura.
     
    “ If I’m going to keep seeing you, I’ll have to take up karate,” she said.
     
    As the Viper’s taillights receded in the darkness, a head peered from an upper window inside the Museum of Natural History. It looked intently through the pane at the scene of the commotion below. Even though the hallway beyond the window was dimly lit, the features of the derelict whom Caine had seen under the tree on his way to the reception were unmistakable. He glowered into the darkness outside, then disappeared into the depths of the building.
     
    Chapter 8
     
    Massive expanses of black ‐ topped parking areas ringing the Pentagon were still void of cars that morning, giving the vast complex the look of a fortress surrounded by a tar moat. Colonel Caine drove his dark red roadster into an area off I ‐ 395 and parked at an eastern entrance to the building.
     
    Passing security, he hurried upstairs then along an infinite corridor towards the office of his commanding general on the fourth floor. It was in the third section of the five concentric pentagons making up the familiar headquarters of the Department of Defense. Due to the ultra ‐ secret nature of the Omega Group, the office was deliberately located outside the prestigious “E ring” where the most senior officials had their offices.
     
    As he passed the office adjoining his own, he heard the inevitable through an open door.
     
    “ Yo! Swamp Fox! The General’s got our orders.”
     
    Caine looked in on his fellow ‐ officer, Colonel Garrison Jones, one of the ranking field officers in the Omega Group. “Morning, Arie.”
     
    “ It’s the Middle East again,” Jones said. He rose from his chair and approached Caine in the hallway. Jones, like Caine was athletically built and out of uniform that day. Still, his khaki slacks and matching safari shirt, complementing his dark complexion, gave him a crisp military bearing.
     
    “ Where to?” replied Caine.
     
    “ The old man will fill us in. I hear you were at the Smithsonian last night. Talking to mummies?”
     
    “ I may as well have,” Caine replied as the two walked towards General Bradley’s office.
     
    “ Didn’t you catch Sherwyck?”
     
    “ There was no sign of him. But we got tangled up with some baddies outside.”
     
    “ We? I thought I was your partner.”
     
    “ Dr. Laura Mitchell.”
     
    “ Here I am sittin’ at my desk with paperwork up to here and you’re mixin’ it up somewhere with a strange woman?”
     
    Caine did not reply to his friend’s usual banter as they entered General Bradley’s office. He was at his desk with a cup of coffee in his hand.
     
    The General beckoned them to sit down on the studded leather sofa along a wall opposite his desk. He joined them and sat down in a matching armchair facing the couch.
     
    “ I hear there was some gunplay at the Smithsonian last night,” the General said as he took a careful sip of his steaming coffee.
     
    Jones looked over to Caine.
     
    “ Yes, sir,” Caine replied. He recounted the details of the