There was a man-size hole in the ground behind the headstone. Remo had only had to burrow a few inches below the surface to come up on the far side of the stone.

He knocked the clods of overturned earth back in the hole, tapping them down with the sole of his loafer.

"It might not be what I was after, but it still felt good," he said in satisfaction. He turned from the grave.

Out of respect for the dead, he didn't start whistling until he reached the street.

Chapter 3

The ancient Bell UH-I Huey raced along the jagged length of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Swirls of snow flew up in its frenzied wake.

Eleven nervous men lined the rear of the helicopter. Although they all wore bulky headsets, the radios in most of them didn't work. The headphones were to dull the eardrum-rattling noise of the screaming rotor blades.

Anxious eyes stared out the scratched windows. Below the belly of the racing Huey stretched the pipeline. It ran eight hundred miles down from the wastes of the north. Most people thought it followed a perfectly straight line from point A to point B. Not so. The huge pipe had been built in staggered sections to allow for certain elasticity during earthquake shocks. From the back of the Huey, it looked as if some giant vandal had taken great strides south, twisting the pipe as he went.

Right now, most of the men in the chopper would have preferred a giant. At least it would be something they could see from a distance. What they were actually after was unknown.

Something had happened somewhere down there in the Alaskan wilds. Something that warranted pulling a group of trainees from their exercises.

One of the men pressed a gloved hand to his headset. He'd found that he could get it to work sometimes if he pushed the loose wire trailing into his right earpiece.

"Sir, do you know what this is all about?"