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  Which was accurate.

  Marie's.

  "He said I've got secondaries in my liver and my chest cavity already," said Marie calmly. "Too late for chemotherapy, too late for surgery. I've got about three months. It doesn't hurt much."

  She was the only one who appeared to be calm, and talking about it. "I'm sorry, Miggy. I've come to give my notice. There's no point pretending I'm just on sick leave, anymore. Me and Lamont and the kids, we want to spend as much time as we can together now. While we can."

  "At least money's not really an issue any more," said Lamont with a sigh. "I never thought I'd be able to say that."

  "Ain't no use cryin', for heaven's sake. I thought we'd maybe go on a road trip. See places we've never seen."

  Lamont nodded. "We wanted to fly to Greece. But it seems like I'm a national asset, not to be risked in a foreign country. It's an attitude I wish they'd had when they sent me to Vietnam."

  Standing aside, talking to Jerry, Lamont looked like a skyscraper that just lost its foundations. "What the hell is the use of having all the money in the world if I haven't got Marie? I reckon my luck has deserted me, Jerry."

  He bit his lip, his eyes downcast, voice shaking. "I'd swap anything in the world, just to make her well. That's the worst kind of luck that can happen to any man. I was the luckiest man in the world, thanks to Tyche. Now, I think I'm the unluckiest. Marie's . . . she's my life, I guess."

  Jerry didn't quite know what to say. He just leaned over squeezed Lamont's shoulder.

  The telephone rang.

  "I'm not taking any calls right now," snapped Miggy.

  "But, Professor, it's Ms. Garnett," said Rachel Clements, popping her head around the door. "And she is . . . well, insistent."

  Marie rubbed her hands. "Shall I deal with her? For old times sake?"

  Miggy Tremelo smiled for the first time since he'd heard her news. "I'm tempted. But I'd better handle it. As little as I like that woman, I'll have to deal with her, for the foreseeable future."

  "And I won't have to cope with the aftershocks, I guess," said Marie.

  Miggy picked up his phone. "Professor Tremelo speaking."

  The person on the other end was shouting. Not quite loud enough for the rest of them to make out all the words. Just: sphinx.

  "I am afraid that you're blaming the wrong person," said Miggy. "But I strongly advise you not take on the environmental lobby over . . ." He held the phone away from his ear, and then put it down on the cradle.

  He looked at the phone as if it was an envenomed serpent. "I should have let you handle it after all, Marie. Still, I think that woman may have bitten off more than she can chew, this time."

  "What's happened?" asked Liz, curious.

  "It appears that certain PSA agents were observed loading Throttler on a cargo plane at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. God only knows how they talked her into getting on it—without getting killed in the process."

  Miggy smiled beatifically. "And, while PSA can ride roughshod over most things . . . Not the Endangered Species Act. Throttler and the dragons have been declared endangered species, if you recall, and now it appears that the two Greek dragons have disappeared too. It hasn't taken the wildlife authorities long to put the two together, and go public about it. It would appear that when their rare and endangered species are involved—especially crowd-pullers—Fish and Wildlife don't actually care if you're the head of the PSA. Especially since one of the loopholes in that screwball Swiss cheese legislation they call APSA exempts them from PSA authority."

  Jerry's eyes widened. "It does? Why, in God's name?"

  Miggy's grin was almost scary, now. "What do you think? The usual trading and swapping you get whenever Congress rushes through legislation too quickly. One of the key legislators involved—Montana's Senator Frank Larsen—saw a chance to do a favor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He's very partial to them, partly because he's an avid outdoorsman himself, and partly because his nephew Mark O'Hare happens to be the agency's director."

  Lamont chuckled. "So an agency nobody thinks has anything to do with 'alien pyramid security' gets a better deal from APSA than the CIA or the FBI, or even the military. What a laugh. It reminds me of something I read once. If a police car, a fire truck, and an ambulance—all answering emergencies with their lights flashing and their sirens blowing, mind you—come to an intersection at the same time as a Post Office van making routine deliveries, guess which vehicle legally has the right of way?"

  "The Post Office vehicle," said Miggy. "Of course, in the real world, no postman would even think of not pulling over to let the emergency vehicles go past him first—but, legally, he could pull rank on them if he wanted to. Yup, and that's technically the situation here. Except that in this instance, Fish and Wildlife is hopping mad. Mad enough, even, to be willing to take on that woman publicly."

  "What does Garnett want Throttler for, in the first place?" asked Liz. Militantly, she twitched the strap of her new shoulder bag. The bag wasn't yet as full of useful things as the old one had been. It still felt unnatural and quite emaciated, poor thing. It couldn't weigh more than five pounds. "They better not hurt her. She's biologically priceless."

  "So, it would appear, Ms. Garnett has just been told by the Fish and Wildlife director. She somehow reached the conclusion that I had told the conservation authorities that the creatures were to be brought here. How I was supposed have done that when this is the first that I've heard about it, I don't know. But I suspect logic is not her best friend."

  "I don't think logic even gets near her mind," said Jerry, shaking his head, "unless it involves political maneuvering. The PSA still hasn't allowed me back to the Oriental Institute to collect my papers, although I have absolutely zero chance of being snatched."

  "Or let me back to the Department of Ecology and Evolution," said Liz with a grimace. "And quite a lot of my documentation is still sitting there. Documents Immigration and Naturalization want."

  "I'll get some of my people onto that," promised Miggy Tremelo. "Still, I think its a good thing that we have nothing to do with her dragon-problem. It'll probably explode on her."

  * * *

  "The thing to get into your head," said Cruz, patiently, "is that the people you're facing, as Doc explained to me, are the idealized warriors of their age. That means they've been fighting all their lives. They're more used to cold-blooded killing than any U.S. mass-murderer. And to them you are a barbarian. If you're not Greek, you're a barbarian. A Greek life isn't worth that much. A barbarian's life is worth a little less than that of a stray dog. They don't know what your human rights are, because you aren't human. Only Greeks are."

  Agent Stephens blinked. "We're posing as Greeks."

  Cruz shrugged. "At a distance, maybe." Greeks with hidden rifles, .50 caliber IDF Desert Eagles, abseil gear, night-vision goggles, laser sights, heat-seeking RPGs . . .

  And not a clue. Some of that gear could be useful, maybe. Depending on what it turned into.

  "Anyway, to be frank with you, Sergeant, they're not up to our level of training," said Bott, practicing assembling his rifle. He might be faster at that than a bastard like Odysseus would be at dismantling him before he was finished, but Cruz wouldn't bet on it.

  Chapter 4

  Even if the dragons flew to a remote part of the wildlife reserve, to have a break from pesky tourists they weren't even allowed to eat, there were inevitably eager dragon watchers with binoculars somewhere in the park, tracking their upward flight.

  Up, up, up . . . into the clouds.

  "So, where to from here?" asked Bitar.

  "Dunno. Thought you did."

  "It's north."

  "So which way is that?"

  Bitar thought about it for a moment. "Let's ask someone."

  Dragons have keen eyesight. It's useful for spotting prey from a great height. Good for spotting a really well camouflaged greenhouse in the woods, too.

  Carl Frederick, cultivator of the fine green
product known variously as purple haze, ganja, weed and, lately, thanks to his new English girlfriend, by the charming epithet "skunk," owed his skill in camouflage to time spent in the 101st, prior to his not-entirely-honorable discharge. He owed his survival over the next few minutes to being too stoned to care. He just sat there and smiled vacantly.

  There was no other reasonable way to treat a seventy-five-foot dragon landing on your greenhouse. Especially when his brother dragon is investigating your ear with his tongue.

  "We need to get to Fort Campbell. How do we get there?"

  It was not exactly a destination Frederick thought he'd ever see again. Or had any desire to. "Hey man, that is not a cool place to go."

  "Good. We like warm places," said the dragon happily. "Got any food?"

  "Besides you, that is," said the other dragon. "You smell funny. Like those Lotophagi."

  "Wouldn't want to eat him then," said the first one. "They made my tummy feel odd. Like it was flying without me."

  "We could nibble a bit and see." One of the dragons licked his small but very sharp-looking teeth with his forked tongue. He took Carl's arm into his mouth and the grower of the green product felt the illusion's teeth. Carl shrieked and pulled his arm away. "Hey man, you can't eat me!"

  One of the dragons looked at the other, wrinkling his forehead. The other looked equally puzzled. "Why not?" they asked in unison. It was, plainly, a serious question.

  There is nothing like the blood trickling down one's arm from a number of razorlike teeth to focus even the most stoned of minds. Even if they were hallucinations, he'd still better humor them. "Because . . . because I won't be able to show you the way to Fort Campbell."

  "Hmm, true. But I'm still hungry. Can't we just eat half?" said the first dragon.

  His companion agreed eagerly. "I'll have the left half, you have the right."

  "But two halves make a whole," protested Carl.

  The dragon nodded. "I hope it'll fill the hole where my tummy used to be."

  "But, but that's the whole of me," said Carl. "I'd be the whole that you ate."

  "No you wouldn't. I'd only have eaten half," said the dragon with impeccable logic. "Half a whole would only half fill the hole."

  "And if you were a whole," said the other dragon professorially, "there'll be no point in eating you because you can't fill a hole with hole."

  "So you can't eat me. I'm whole," protested Carl.

  The two dragons looked at each other. "We'll have to dismember him before we eat him," they said in unison.

  Frederick clung to the only straw in this whirlpool. "But then I can't show you the way."

  "Well, that's true," said the first dragon grumpily. "You carry him first, Smitar. We'll have to find something to eat along the way."

  "Road-food always gives me gas," said the other dragon.

  "Good. We'll need it," said his companion.

  Carl found himself in the airborne again, despite the not-entirely-honorable discharge. Well, airborne again, anyway. Without the benefit of a parachute. "Take us to Fort Campbell," instructed the dragon.

  This had to be the strangest weed he'd ever grown. "Man, it's more like you're taking me."

  "Which way?" asked the dragon carrying him.

  "Uh. Northwest," he answered.

  "Northwest it is," said the dragon obligingly. "So which way is that?"

  Swales was a small town. It wasn't entirely true to say that it was a one horse town. The horse had died some years before, but Beth Camero had some nice pictures of it. Now it briefly became a two dragon town instead. Well, the diner on the edge of town became a two dragon diner. A two hungry dragon diner.

  "What's that?" asked Bitar, pointing to the billboard with a faded burger painted on it.

  "It's a hamburger," said Camero, who had emerged from the diner with a shotgun for company.

  "Can you eat it?" asked Bitar, tasting the edge of the billboard.

  "I make ones you can eat. Cheeseburgers too." Beth swatted his nose away from her sign with the shotgun.

  "What about maiden-burgers?" asked Smitar, keeping a coil around their guide-captive-half-meal.

  "You big snake! Mind what you say to a lady." Camero was acting as if dragons landed in her diner's parking lot every day. "Now, what'll it be?"

  "Food," said Bitar.

  "Lots," said Smitar.

  "With ketchup!" said Bitar licking his chops, studying Camero's bright red hair. "Now that you've reminded me."

  "Lots," agreed Smitar. "Lots and lots of ketchup."

  Beth leaned the shotgun against the wall and put her hands on her hips. "And who is paying for this 'lots'?"

  "What's paying?" asked Bitar.

  "You know," said Smitar. "Giving something in exchange for dinner instead of catching it. They use gold sometimes."

  "Gold's not very tasty. No crunch to it," said Bitar, dismissively. "So you get captive dinner. We've got that."

  "Turn him upside down and see if he has any gold," suggested Smitar.

  Bitar did, and shook him. A wallet, a packet of cannabis and some keys clattered to the ground. "No gold," said the dragon, dolefully. "I like the way it shines, even if it has no crunch to it."

  "Anyway, he's a captive already. No use paying for him," said Smitar.

  "Never mind," said Camero, picking up the wallet and opening it. She smiled cheerfully after examining the contents. "Food and ketchup it is. I don't get that many customers dropping in that I can afford to turn two big eaters down, I reckon. You eating too, mister? Seeing as you're paying."

  An hour and one hundred and fifty-four half-pound burgers with cheese and all the trimmings, twenty-four hot dogs and all the mustard and ketchup in the place—and an empty wallet—later, they rose, slowly, heading northwest.

  "Say, what's your name, half-dinner?" said Smitar.

  "Carl Frederick," answered the man.

  The dragons peered at him suspiciously. "Have you been to Colchis?"

  "Never heard of the place, honest."

  "Ach. What did Mac say they called it these days? . . . ah! Georgia."

  "Uh. Yeah," admitted the good-ole-boy from Georgia, USA, in cheerful ignorance of any other Georgia.

  The dragon wrinkled his nose in distaste. "You keep those golden fleas to yourself, now."

  "They got under my scales last time," agreed the other dragon.

  * * *

  It was just after three that frantic wildlife officers got their first lead on the two missing rare and endangered animals. In response to their radio broadcasts and TV appeals, someone named Beth Camero from a small town forty miles from the Tennessee state line called in. A state trooper was dispatched immediately to the spot.

  The state trooper looked at the wallet. "I'll be damned. Carl Frederick." He shook his head. "We've been trying to get our hands on that drug-dealing son of a bitch for a while now. So which way was he heading with those dragons, ma'am?"

  Beth pointed. "And I'd offer you boys a burger and a cup of coffee, but they ate everything I had."