Travis’s head shot up and then he finally nodded.
“If it becomes necessary, will you be willing to use it?” the Major asked.
“Nicole, you mean?”
The Major nodded, watching him closely. “Shirley confirmed that she will be with them. If it comes to that, can you watch Nicole suffer?”
Travis stared at the table for several moments; then he snapped the pencil in two and let the pieces bounce noisily off the polished surface. “Nicole who?” he said bitterly.
Chapter 34
So where is he?
Travis paced back and forth like a caged animal. His head turned each time he changed directions so he could watch out the huge glass windows of the Shalev City Library across the quad toward the dark shape of Central Control. Once again he glanced at his wrist computer. It was seven minutes after two.
The Major watched him check the time and stirred in his chair. “Well,” he asked, “where do you suppose he is?”
Travis shook his head, the tension and frustration pulling down at the corners of his mouth. Then suddenly the radio crackled behind him, and the young woman manning it jumped to turn up the volume. “Command Base, Command Base, this is Charlie Four. Someone is coming into the quad from around the president’s mansion.”
Travis leaped to the microphone. “Charlie Four, how many do you see?” Charlie Four was the four-man team Travis had hidden on the top floor of the building closest to Central Control.
“Just one so far.” There was a short pause. “It’s a man. Seems to be alone. He has a rifle, but it’s slung over his shoulder. He’s heading for Central Control. And he’s in a hurry. He’s running.”
“I’ve got him,” the Major said, staring out the window with the field glasses. “But why just one? Surely they’ll send more than one to make entry.”
“All units stand by,” Travis barked into the radio. “Don’t anybody move until I give the signal.”
Suddenly one of the units, too excited to identify itself, shattered the silence. “It’s Corporal Jensen! It’s Joe Jensen!”
Travis spun around in time to see the lone figure run up the steps of the front entrance and into Central Control. Travis jammed the mike back to his mouth. “Zebra Six, Zebra Six, the man coming in is Corporal Jensen. He thinks we’re in Central Control. Send him over to Command Central. Tell him to hurry. I don’t want Lloyd’s men to see him.”
He turned back to the window and nodded in satisfaction as a moment later the dark figure reappeared and broke into a run toward them.
For the past ten years, Donald Brownley had taught graduate chemistry classes at the Shalev Institute for Technical Studies, and for eight years he had been Charles Metcalf’s partner in the Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer Company. Neither position had prepared him for tonight, and as he swallowed back the dryness in his mouth, he decided that all the fiction writers who had described the effects of fear on a man had grossly understated the case.
He and Eric were standing in the deep shadows of Central Control’s western wall, where it was more than two stories high. Brownley fought back the almost overpowering urge to let his eyes measure exactly how high the wall was. Instead he forced them to watch calmly as Eric extracted a heavy coil of rope and a threepronged grappling hook from the sack at his waist.
“Did I ever tell you I’m terrified of heights?” Brownley whispered as Eric carefully took the coil in his left hand and the hook in his right.
Eric chuckled softly. “Yeah, me too. Stand back.” The hook sang softly in the darkness as he swung it in a cirle, its speed increasing with each revolution. Then he heaved it upward, the rope hissing after the hook. He jumped back as there was a soft clang of metal against brick, and the grappling hook plummeted back to the ground.
Eric again coiled the rope, stepped to the right to get a better angle, and started the hook swinging once more. This time it sailed up and over the top of the wall. He pulled slowly until the hook grabbed, tugged hard two or three times, then tested it with his full weight. Satisfied, he turned back to Brownley. “You want to go first, or me?”
Brownley shrank back from the extended rope. “I’m not kidding, Eric,” he whispered. “Heights absolutely petrify me. I can’t do it.”
“What?” Eric stepped closer to see if he really was serious. What he saw evidently convinced him, because his eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say something back in camp?”
Brownley forced a weak smile. “And have all the women think I have no machismo?” Then he added quickly. “I kept telling myself I could do it.”
“And you can,” Eric said firmly. “I’ll go up first and then help pull the rope.”
“Look, you don’t need me up there. All you do is uncork the bottles and pour them into the air conditioning ducts.”
“Oh yeah,” Eric retorted. “Heights may frighten you, but that little concoction you put together gives me the jitters. No way am I going to mess with it.”
“Really?” Brownley peered more closely at him to see if Eric was putting him on.
“Really! No way am I going up there alone with that stuff. Besides, we don’t know what we’ll find up there. It may take us both.” Without waiting for an answer, he swung the bag so it hung directly behind him and moved up the side of the building hand over hand.
The moment he cleared the small retaining wall around the edge of the roof, he looked around, then leaned over the edge. “Okay, Don,” he called softly. “Come on up.”
For several anxious moments, Eric didn’t think the middleaged man was going to do it. “Come on, Don!” he urged in a low hiss. “Do it! We’ve got to hurry!”
For several long seconds Brownley stared up, shaking his head, a mindless, unreasoning panic paralyzing him. Then Eric flipped the rope, and it brushed against his face. With a sudden burst of will, he grabbed at it, bit his lip, and muttered, “Otherwise how will I ever face my fans?” He leaped up, pulling on the rough hemp, his eyes shut tight.
“Climb, Don,” Eric urged, the dead weight nearly pulling his arms out of the socket. “Use the building. Help me!” Bracing his feet, Eric started hauling the rope up until Brownley’s head appeared, and one hand shot up to grab the edge of the wall. Eric quickly grabbed that hand, then both hands, and hauled him up and over the top.
“Man,” Brownley gasped, “that’s terrible!”
“You made it! Come on, let’s get moving.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Tarzan,” Brownley moaned, gasping for air. “You’re only twenty-four. I’m forty-nine—or I was before I started up that wall. Now I’m sixty-nine.”
“Let’s go, old man,” Eric said with a grin. He moved quickly in a low crouch to a dark shape that was emitting a low hum.
Brownley lurched to his feet, muttering to himself, “Which means I’ll be eighty-nine when I get down.”
“Here’s one,” Eric said, tapping on the air-conditioning unit. Then he pointed. “There’s the other.”
Brownley could manage only a nod as he collapsed next to Eric, who was opening the sack and pulling out the two plastic bottles.
“Will the air conditioning send this stuff all the way through the building?”
“Oh, yes,” Brownley said. “These will do just fine.” He uncorked the first bottle. “Avert your head and cover your face, please,” he said, following his own command. “It would be a shame if we took a whiff of this and ended up sleeping peacefully on the roof.”
“Are you sure this stuff will work?” Eric put his arm across his face as Brownley poured in the liquid.
“Of course. As I told you before, it’s colorless, odorless, brings unconsciousness in less than thirty seconds, and the person wakes up in about an hour with no side effects other than a slightly fuzzy head. One of the chemical companies I consulted for before Termination developed it for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.”
“And you’re sure it’ll be gone by the time we’re ready to go in?”
Brownley s
hook his head. “You make me feel a little better about being afraid to climb up that wall.”
“Well, this stuff makes me nervous.”
“It breeds a healthy respect in me too,” Brownley agreed. As they moved across the roof to the second air conditioning unit, he continued. “But, yes, it’ll be gone by the time we go in. It gassifies on contact with air and dissipates very quickly.” He uncorked the second bottle and, averting his head, poured it slowly into the whirling fans. “All right. That’s it.”
“Good, let’s get out of here.”
“Any other way down besides the back elevator?”
“Sure, I’ll call you a helicopter.”
“Your empathy and understanding are really touching,” Brownley sighed. “Why don’t you just throw me off?”
They had reached the edge of the roof, and Eric handed him the rope. “That’s my second option,” he growled, “so get going.”
Stanley Kooska, former owner and operator of the Kooska Mill and Lumber Company, liked to tell people he was a big-game hunter. Elk, moose, mountain goat, bear—he’d shot them all, he would say, and watch their eyes widen. Then when they were dutifully impressed, his wife or one of the kids would break in. “Ask him what he shot them with,” they would suggest. And then Stan would trot out the finest examples of his photography. Though people invariably oohed and aahed over his work, they were never quite as impressed when they found that his weapon was a camera. This always left Kooska faintly irritated, because his hobby required far greater stalking skills and infinitely more patience than that of a hunter.
That was why Eric had placed him in command of this team, he decided. He stopped in the thick darkness of an aspen tree near the southwest corner of Central Control and let his ears sift the soft sounds of the night.
“No one should be guarding the south fire door,” Eric had said. “But it’s our way out, and we need to be sure we can use it. If anyone is there, you’ve got to see them without their seeing you. Move as if you were part of the night.”
Kooska had taken him at his word, and now it paid off. A soft cough and brief rustle of the foliage were barely audible over the sighing of the wind in the trees, but to Kooska’s ears they sounded like a chain saw in the vast silence of a forest. It took him one minute to find the man, sitting in a thick patch of foliage. In ten more minutes he circled slowly and found eight more, all facing the circle of light that illuminated the fire exit, all armed and waiting.
Satisfied that he had located all there were, Kooska backed away slowly, puzzling over what he’d found. Eric’s little rebellion had unquestionably put Shalev on alert, and the Major was known to be a careful man, but this was no precautionary guard. It was an ambush, a trap set to slam shut on the first person who stuck his nose out the door. And that was an ominous sign. For the first time since they had left the mountains, Kooska felt the uneasy pricklings of fear rumble in his stomach.
He had left the six other members of his team waiting near the low ridge that protected Central Control’s back flank, and it took nearly ten minutes to make his way back there, still moving with the utmost care. As he called out softly, he noted that several of the men jumped, which made him smile. He had moved undetected to within twenty feet of them—and they were watching for him!
“We’ve got trouble,” he said, as he stepped forward to join them. “Get Eric on the radio.”
“So do we abort?” Clayne Robertson’s voice was angry.
Eric shook his head and drummed his fingers against his leg. “How long ago do you think Joe left us?”
“We’re not sure,” Nicole answered. “No one actually saw him go. We thought he had gone with Kooska’s team, but Stan said he assumed he had stayed with us. He must have gone not long after we left the van.”
“Was he with us when we split into two teams?”
Rod Loopes shook his head. “No, I’m sure of that.” The former head of computer services for the Guardians was deeply upset, for he had recommended that Joe Jensen be brought into the movement. “Maybe he just got behind and got lost.”
“We have to assume the worst,” Clayne broke in, impatient with their unwillingness to grapple with the real question. “Joe’s gone, and nine men are waiting at the back door. We’ve been blown—there’s no question about that. So the question is, do we abort or do we go ahead anyway?”
“If Joe is the Major’s man,” Rod Loopes broke in, “then Shirley Ferguson is probably with him.”
Dick Andreason, the radioman, nodded. “Which puts the camp in danger.”
“These radios,” Eric said, touching the walkie-talkie at his belt, “there’s no way they can reach the camp?”
Dick shook his head. “No, but we’ve got the big radio in the van. I can be there in two minutes. We told the camp to keep a watch on the radio all night.”
“All right,” Eric said. “Go call them. Tell them to pack it up and move out fast. Tell them also to watch Shirley.”
“Right.” Andreason turned and hurried back up the hill.
“Okay,” Eric said, turning back to face the others. “We’ve got two things in our favor. We didn’t tell you any of the details of how we were going to get into Central Control, not because we didn’t trust you, but because we didn’t dare risk your knowing too much if you got caught. So that means Joe doesn’t know the details either. He left before we split into teams. He knows we’re going out the side door, but he doesn’t know Stan is there and has spotted the ambush. And the Guardians there don’t know they’ve been spotted either. That gives us another advantage. Also, we didn’t tell any of you about putting the knock-out liquid in the air conditioning until we arrived here at the building. Only Don and I knew anything about that, so that’s another surprise in our favor.”
He looked around the circle of anxious faces. “Clayne is right. We have to assume that Joe and Shirley have betrayed us. If so, we also have to assume the Major and Travis have planned a little trap. But why haven’t we hit it yet? Why didn’t we see any Guardians before this?”
Clayne saw his reasoning almost instantly. “Because the trap is here, at Central Control.”
“Inside. They’ll be waiting for us inside,” Nicole said, also seeing what Eric was getting at. “Which means they too will be knocked out.”
“There are nine at the south door,” Abernathy said, shaking his head. “What if there are others elsewhere out here?”
“A valid possibility,” Eric agreed. “But we’re committed now. We’ve put the stuff into the vents. If we do abort, they’ll know we were here, and we can never use this tactic again. It’ll mean a head-on assault to get to those computers.”
The silence hung heavy for a moment. Eric took a deep breath. “If my father or Cliff Cameron were here, they’d say we have yet another advantage.”
“What?” Dick Andreason asked. “We need every one we can get.”
Eric looked from face to face, finally stopping with Nicole. “Heaven favors the just cause.”
“I say we go,” Clayne said. “If we don’t take them out tonight, then our chance is gone.”
“I agree,” Loopes said.
“Nicole? Chet?”
Nicole felt her chest tighten and her stomach twist at the thought of what could be waiting for them. “I’m very frightened,” she finally answered, “but I think we owe it to Cliff.”
Chet Abernathy took a deep breath. “We never thought it would be a piece of cake,” he said with a shrug.
Eric turned to his last man. “Don?”
“Will I have to climb any more ropes?”
Eric gave a brief laugh. “No, that I promise you.”
“Then I think I can handle anything else.”
Eric nodded, feeling a swift surge of pride. These weren’t warriors, they were common people, everyday men and women caught suddenly in a web of war. He pulled the radio off his belt. “Stan, are you there?”
“Roger. Standing by.”
“We’re going in. Ca
n you be ready to neutralize our friends?”
“Roger. How soon?”
“We should be coming out in no more than twenty to thirty minutes. Stay low until you see the door open. No matter what happens, don’t let them see you until we come out. Then we’ll try to catch them in a crossfire.”
“Will do.”
“And Stan?”
“Yes.”
“If we’re not out in forty-five minutes, we’re not coming. Pack it up, get back to camp, and get our people clear out of the Alliance.”
There was no answer.
“Is that understood?”
For a moment the soft hum of static was the only sound, and then Kooska’s voice came soft but clear. “That’s a roger, Eric. Good luck.”
“Same to you.” Eric looked quickly into his team’s eyes, then spoke into the radio again. “Mark, have you been getting all of this?”
Mark Van Dam responded instantly. “Yes, Eric. We got it all.”
“Are you all set there?”
“Roger. We’re inside the studio waiting to broadcast. You buzz the people’s wrist computers and wake them up, and we’ll talk to them.”
“Nicole will program the message the minute we get into Central Monitoring. Tell them we need them, Mark.” His voice had lowered, and Nicole could tell he was feeling the strain. “Once we knock out the computers, their implantations will be neutralized. They can help us. Tell them that.”
“We will,” Van Dam said. “We’ll send you the whole blinking city.”
“Right. Thanks, Mark.”
“Good luck.”
When Eric looked up, his face was grim. “That’ll be our last little surprise for the Major.”
Just then Dick Andreason rejoined them. To Eric’s questioning glance he shook his head. “There’s no answer. I couldn’t raise anyone.”
“Oh, no,” Nicole whispered, thinking of the children. “We’ve got to help them.”
Eric shook his head, his face unreadable. “If they’re in trouble, the best help we can give them is to wipe this building off the face of the earth.” He reached out and took her hand. “Let’s go.”