Chapter Sixteen
11:16 P.M.
"It's him," Alicia's voice came back over the intercom in the Oval Office. By now it looked as disheveled as the Situation Room in the basement.
"What?" Hansen said. "The son of a bitch is on the phone again? At this hour?"
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Just a minute." He clicked off the intercom and returned to his other call. "Caroline, I don't know. Just play it by ear and do the best you can. Press Secretaries get paid for giving non-answers. Tell the goddamn Post we have no comment. Try and make a deal. Say you'll give their team an exclusive, deep background, just for them, if they'll hold off another few hours to give us time to sort this out. Tell him we promise not to give the Times anything fit to print until after their deadline tomorrow. The late edition." He paused. "You're probably right, but give it a shot anyway. Look, I've got to go."
He reached over and pushed a second button on the console.
"Yes."
"Mr. President," came the voice, its accent more pronounced now, "I know you think you can recover this facility with an assault, but I want to assure you that any such action would be a very costly mistake."
"The only mistake that's been made so far was made by you. Going there in the first place." Hansen glanced at the listing of his commitments for the next day. Ted would have to cancel all of them. This wasn't how the presidency was supposed to be. Nobody told him he would be spending days on end negotiating with a criminal threatening mass murder.
"Let me put it like this," the voice went on. "If there is an assault, all I have to do is retire to the lower level of the facility and then detonate one of the nuclear devices I now have armed. It's radio-controlled."
"If you want to commit suicide, then go ahead," Hansen said. What kind of bluff was that? he wondered.
"Let me put your mind at ease," came the voice, as measured and secure as it was foreboding. "My revolutionary colleagues and I will be at the main power coil, which is buried at least three hundred feet below the bedrock here. It is a ready-made bomb shelter. Any invading force, however, would be vaporized, along with all the civilians."
"You'd never escape," Hansen shot back. "What's the point?"
"That remains to be seen. But what you have to ask yourself is whether you are prepared to have a nuclear disaster in the Aegean."
On that point, Hansen admitted to himself, the son of a bitch had a point. The political costs, not to mention the economic costs, would be staggering.
"Look," he said, "you're proposing a scenario neither of us wants. It would be irresponsible and immoral. Though I suppose those points don't disturb you very much."
"Let me help your thought processes. You have twenty minutes, starting now. If at the end of that time you can't assure me that the assault has been called off—please don't bother to deny that one is imminent—then what will happen will be on your hands." He paused. "Incidentally, I also will bring Professor Mannheim to the phone then, and you can explain to him why he is about to die. I am putting this line on hold. You now have nineteen minutes and forty seconds." The phone went silent.
Hansen stared at Ed Briggs, sitting bleary-eyed across on the couch, then returned his gaze to the desk, noting the time on the digital clock.
6:25 a.m.
"Alpha Leader, this is SEAL One," crackled the radio. "Bearing two-zero-niner. Range five hundred meters. No hostile fire."
"Roger," Nichols replied. "Continue inbound." He clicked off his walkie-talkie, then turned around and yelled to the men in the back of the Huey.
"Okay, heads up. The assault is now in progress. We go in at 0630 hours."
The Deltas nodded as they checked their watches and spare ammo clips. The twenty-three men were all wearing black pullover hoods, each with a thin plastic microphone that looked like a phone operator's. Over these they had Kevlar helmets with protective goggles and light balaclavas, while their bulletproof assault vests included pockets filled with grenades and extra ammo for their H&K MP5 assault submachine guns.
Nichols was using a squad of ten Navy SEALs to stage a diversionary assault on the shoreline, the same kind of diversion that had been employed so successfully by the SEALs in the war to liberate Kuwait. After leaving the carrier, they would approach the island at forty mph in a pair of Fountain-33 speedboats, powered by 1,000-hp MerCruiser engines. About one kilometer offshore, they were scheduled to disembark into two motorized Zodiac rubber raiding craft that they had lashed to the bow. If all went according to plan, they would hit the coastline in full view and provide diversionary fire, giving the real assault team an opening to take the two main objectives.
That's when the serious action would begin. Nichols and his men would then come in using Army choppers—two HH-1K Huey gunships and two AH-64A Apaches. The Hueys would hover and drop off the insertion teams, while the Apaches would provide backup firepower that—with their 30mm chain guns, Hellfire missiles, and 70mm folding-fin rocket pods—could easily be mistaken for the end of the world.
The assault was timed down to the second. Three minutes after the diversionary SEAL action began, the two Hueys would set down in the middle of the island and pour out the real assault teams, one team to storm Command and the other to hit Launch Control, massively. He figured if they took both at once, there would be no place for the terrorists to hide. That was the best way they knew to accomplish their first objective, which was to neutralize any nuclear devices safely.
The outstanding unknown, of course, was the location of those devices, and their state of readiness.
You had to assume terrorists weren't suicidal, Nichols told himself . . . but yet, what about Beirut and the Marine barracks, demolished by a suicide mission? Such things were never outside the realm of possibility. So if these crazy fuckers decided to go out in a blaze of glory, it wouldn't exactly be a first. . . .
"Alpha Leader." The radio came alive again. "SEAL One objective secure. No sign of any hostiles down here."
"Copy, SEAL One." Shit, Nichols thought. The bastards didn't go for it. They're battening down, planning to make a stand. And why not? They've got hostages. They think we're not going to hit the place.
They've got another thing coming. It's just going to be bloodier than we had hoped. If they start using the hostages for human shields . . .
"Request permission to advance toward Launch Control," came the radio again. "If we're going to provide that diversion, we're going to have to go in."
Why not? Nichols thought. We're already improvising, but maybe the bastards can still be drawn out. It's worth a try.
"Roger, SEAL One," he said, checking his watch. "Watch yourself. It could be a setup." He knew the SEALs were lightly armed, with only a German Heckler & Koch submachine gun each, plus a couple of M16s specially equipped with M203 grenade launchers, the so-called "bloop tube." Still, those boys could raise some hell.
"Confirmed."
"Copy. We'll slip in here for five. Kick hell out of anything that's not nailed down."
"Roger, Alpha Leader. If they show their heads, they're gonna know we're in town."
6:26 a.m.
"All right," Armont declared, "we make the insert here." He tapped his finger on the blueprint. "We hit the nerve center of Launch with flash-bangs and tear gas, and take it down. If we're lucky, Ramirez will still be there, and that should be the end of it. He always controls an operation totally. Nobody else will have any authority. That's his style. If we handle it surgically, there shouldn't be any major casualties among the friendlies."
The area around Launch Control was still foggy, illuminated mainly by the lingering spotlights on two vehicles. No technicians were in evidence, since the final stages of the countdown were underway and nothing remained to be done to the exterior of VX-1. The dry ice "propellant" had been installed and now the action was underground, where the subterranean energy-storage system, the superconducting coil, was being primed. At th
is point, most of the staffers were monitoring the last-minute computer checks of the in-flight systems.
"Sounds good," Reggie said, pointing to a spot on the blueprint. "I'll position myself right there, where I'll have a clear shot at the main points of ingress and egress. Now let's move it before somebody checks in with the security system and picks up our penetration."
Everybody else agreed, signifying it by a last-minute review of weapons and gear. Everybody, that is, except Michael Vance, who had been thinking, and worrying, about the irreversible step that a frontal assault would represent. What if Ramirez had left Launch and gone back to Command? The man had a habit of keeping on the move. It was an innate part of his inner nature.
"You know . . ." He rubbed at his swollen face and winced at the pain. "I'd like to suggest a different tack. A sort of 'look before you leap' approach."
"What do you mean?" Armont asked distractedly, anxious to get the assault under way while there was still a lingering cover of fog and semi dark.
"Pierre, before the team assault, why don't you let me test the waters a bit. See if I can't be a decoy long enough to make them show their hand."
"Care to explain exactly what you have in mind?" Armont asked, always willing to listen, if skeptically.
"They know I'm here. They don't know about the team, at least not yet. And, more to the point, we don't know if Ramirez is really in there or not. But assuming he is, instead of storming the place, why not let me first see if I can't draw him out, at least give us a preview of his resources."
"How would anybody go about doing that?" Reggie was double-checking the sight on his Enfield L85A1 assault rifle, still anxious to get moving.
"Well," Vance went on, "he wants me. So maybe this is not the worst time to use our heads instead of hardware. Why not use me as bait?"
"Michael," Armont interjected, "whatever you have in mind, you've done enough already. This isn't your fight, and I can't in good conscience ask you to do anything more. You just take care of those bruises and let us handle it from here on out. Tell you the truth, you look like hell."
Vance paused, trying to get a grip on his own feelings. "All right, maybe it's just a vendetta on my part, unprofessional, but the real truth is I'd like the chance to take him down myself." He realized he had truly come to hate Ramirez, a killer without a conscience who deserved anything he got. "Besides, there's another reason. I think he's got an old professor in there somewhere, and I confess a certain fondness for the man, in spite of all his bungling. If you rush the place, God only knows what he's liable to do. Probably get himself killed."
"I can understand you might feel you have a personal stake in this," Reggie Hall said finally, "but what exactly do you think you can do? Remember the old saying, Shakespeare or somebody, a hero is the bloke who died a-Wednesday."
"I don't plan to try and get killed. But why not let me take some flash grenades and a gun? Go up there by the gantry and generate a little excitement. If he's still there, maybe I can draw him out. He won't realize I've got backup. You take it from there."
"I'm not sure I like it," Armont grumbled, slamming a clip into his automatic. "If you ask me, there's been too damned much impromptu strategy on this op already."
"On the other hand, Michael has a point," Hans interjected with Germanic logic. "If we can separate Ramirez from the hostages, it could prevent a lot of danger to the friendlies. My only worry is that if it doesn't work, then we've blown the element of surprise. All of a sudden we've got a firefight on our hands."
"We've got a firefight anyway," Marcel observed, "no matter what happens. So why not?"
"I agree it's a gamble," Vance paused. "But the alternative could be a genuine disaster." He took an MP5 from the bag of hardware they had brought and checked the clip. "Does anybody strenuously object?"
"I do," Cally finally spoke up, her anger at him seeming to soften. "We'll probably have to come and pick up the pieces. But you're right about Isaac. Knowing him, he's liable to just walk into a line of fire, out of sheer absentmindedness."
"All right." Vance looked around. "While the fog is still in, I want to go up." He was pointing. Why wait for a vote? Nobody seemed to be strongly against it. "I'll come in from up there"—he pointed—"by the base of what's left of the gantry, and try to draw him out. If nothing else, it'll be diversion. If it doesn't work, you can still go in."
"All right, you win," Armont said. His eyes betrayed his lingering misgivings. "But you're making yourself a target, so don't try any heroics. If Ramirez does show his face, let us take it from there. This isn't your game."
Willem Voorst nodded and pulled out an extra vest, already festooned with grenades. He handed it to Vance, who slipped it on and secured it, wincing silently from the pain in his rib cage.
"Just be bloody careful," Reggie Hall said. That and nothing more. British understatement.
Calypso Andros had no such reserve. Her hair plastered across her face, she reached up and impulsively kissed him on a swollen cheek. Then she whispered good luck.
6:31 a.m.
"Alpha Leader, this is SEAL One. I think we've spotted some hostiles."
With a smile, Nichols clicked his radio to transmit. He was in the lead Huey, now hovering slightly more than a kilometer away from the shoreline of Andikythera.
"I copy, SEAL One. What's your status?"
"We're ready to get acquainted. Are you synchronized?"
"Roger," Nichols's terse voice replied back. "I want all hell to break loose. And any bad guys you can pin down or neutralize will be much appreciated. We insert in ninety seconds."
"We roger that, Alpha Leader. SEAL One team on full auto."
Nichols turned to his pilot, Manny Jackson. "Okay, it's a go. I want us on the ground in nine-zero seconds."
6:32 a.m.
Vance moved quickly up the hill, toward the toppled gantry. Already he had a view of the wide sloping window that was the center of Launch Control, and he could see figures there, though not clearly enough to know if Ramirez was one of them. Maybe they were SatCom staffers or . . .
No. There was Ramirez, talking on the phone. And standing beside him was the man Vance had come to love . . . Isaac Mannheim. The old professor looked haggard, a perfectionist man who had despaired. He clearly had lost touch with time and place. Then Ramirez handed him the phone and barked something at him. Dejectedly he took it and started speaking.
Damn. Any half-competent sniper could take out Ramirez here and now. He thought he was safe, and he had never been more exposed. But this was not a job for an amateur, not with Mannheim so close.
Okay, he thought, guess this is going to have to happen the hard way.
He extracted a flash grenade from the vest Willem had given him and got ready to pull the pin.
6:33 a.m.
"Johan, he'll do it," Isaac Mannheim was saying into the handset that Ramirez had thrust into his face. 'They have two devices. One is on VX-1, ready for launch, and the other one is here. They say they've rigged a radio-controlled detonator on it. He's going to use it if you don't do whatever it is he wants."
"Let me talk to the son of a bitch again," Hansen said.
"All right, Johan. Please talk to him." Mannheim handed back the receiver. His hand was shaking.
"Have you made a decision, Mr. President?" Ramirez inquired.
"Yes, goddammit. I've got an open line to Gournes. You can listen while I issue the order to hold off the assault for six hours. Does that satisfy you?"
"It will do for a start," Ramirez said. "Then we can talk about the money."
And he listened as Hansen spoke tersely through the secure communications link to Mission Control on the Kennedy.
What he did not hear in Hansen's conversation was the incredulity on the other end of the line. But the assault is already under way, General Max Austin was declaring, stunned. They were in communication with Nichols, and the SEALs were about to open fire on the hostiles.
/> "Just scrub the operation," Hansen barked. "That's an order."
"That was a wise decision," Ramirez said, listening. "Now about the money."
"Check with the bank in fifteen minutes," Hansen said, a note of resignation in his voice. "It will be deposited. Now, I want you out of there, all hostages safe, and those weapons disarmed and left."
"You have nothing to worry about," Ramirez declared, scarcely able to contain his sense of triumph. "You have made a decision for humanity."
"Just get the hell gone. And don't try my patience." This time it was Hansen's turn to abruptly break the connection.
Ramirez was cradling the receiver, savoring his triumph, when a blinding flash erupted from the direction of the fallen gantry. And there, in the momentary glare, stood Michael Vance.
6:34 a.m.
The leader of the SEALs, Lieutenant Devon Robbins, spoke into his thin microphone. "Can you see them? We could use an IR scope." The SEALs had split into two teams, as was their practice, and he was leading the first.
"Hard to make out much in this fog," came back his point man, Lieutenant Philip Pease, who was leading the second
team. Pease was exactly twenty meters away, all but invisible because of his dark commando gear. He was studying the men up the hill with a pair of 8x30mm Steiner stereo-optic binoculars. Though they were designed for low light, he still could not see clearly. "But they're dressed in black, and they look like they're armed."
"What else can you ID?"
"They're not together, exactly. It's almost as though they're deploying for something."
"What the hell are they doing outside in the first place? Does it mean the fuckers haven't gotten around to taking over the launch facility yet? Maybe they're getting set up for their next move."
"Can't confirm anything, SEAL One. Just too much damned fog. . . . Wait, yeah, they've got assault rifles of some kind. Looks like some big-time shit. That's a definite confirm."
"Do they look like they're setting up?"
"All I can tell for sure is they're moving, spreading out. Something's about to go down. Got to be baddies. Who else could they be?"
"All right, SEAL Two, our mission is to create a diversion, shake them up, and let Nichols's chopper teams handle the heavy lifting. Those Apaches can make a man give his heart to Jesus."
"You've got a rog on that, SEAL One. But if we're here to make an impression, I say let's give them a big Navy welcome. Time for a close encounter."
"We came to play. Get—"
A flare blossomed from somewhere up in the vicinity of the vehicles, illuminating the fog into a huge white cloud, vast and mysterious.
"What in hell!" yelled Pease's voice on the radio. "That was farther up. Maybe it's a two-point assault."
"Looked like it was over to the left. Can you tell what happened?"
"Must have been a flash-bang. These assholes brought their own boombox."
"Okay, SEAL Two, we've got a mission. First things first.
For now we just neutralize those bastards in black. Looks like half our hostiles are outside and in the clear. On the count of three."
The SEALS all clicked off the safeties on their MP5s and took aim, wishing they could see something more than dark, vague outlines in the fog.
6:35 a.m.
How the hell, Ramirez wondered, did Vance get on the loose again? Moreau was supposed to have taken care of him. Had he screwed up, too?
I should have just let Wolf kill him in the first place and had done with it. This time, I'll just handle it myself.
He checked his pockets, making sure he had extra clips for his Beretta 9mm and then he headed through the door leading into the open bay of Launch. The SatCom systems engineers and ground-control specialists, not privy to the wide windows of Launch Control, had no idea what had just happened outside. They were too busy worrying about the fog, making the final checks of the electronics, monitoring the countdown clicking off. And all of them had laid side bets on whether the launch, now scheduled for less than an hour and a half away, would be able to proceed. The wagering leaned toward the fog clearing in time.
Ramirez strode past the bustling gray SatCom uniforms with a single-mindedness that characterized his every move. How the hell, he was wondering, did Michael Vance get on the island in the first place? He was one of the back-office support types for ARM, a financial guy. Nobody had ever ID'd him in an assault. It made no sense that he was here, when none of the rest of the ARM operatives were around. Why Vance, who was a nobody?
All the same, he had specialized in screwing up things ever since the initial penetration. He had managed to wreck the Hind, destroy the gantry, make a general nuisance of himself. The time had come to put a stop to the annoyance and then get moving. If the money had been delivered, as Hansen had claimed, then it was time to move on to the next phase. Just take care of a few banking transactions, then put the egress plan into motion.
He hit the lock control on the door, which had long since been defaulted to manual, and strode out, his Beretta ready. The problem now was finding that bastard Vance in the fog, but the reflected light off the spots illuminating the vehicles was going to provide visibility. Besides, the bastard was a cowboy, took chances right and left. He also didn't seem to be a particularly competent marksman. . . .
6:36 a.m.
"There he is," Pierre Armont said, peering through the fog with his Tasco Infocus Zoom binoculars. They did not require focusing, and with a touch of a lever he jacked up the power from six to twelve. "I want the sucker myself. We missed him in Beirut, but this time . . ."
Up above, Sabri Ramirez was gliding along the side of the fallen gantry, an automatic in his hand. Ramirez, Armont knew, was famous for his Beretta 9mm, used to such deadly effect over the years. It was his trademark, always employed for assassinations.
But now, finally, after all the years. There was the Hyena, exposed and clear. One shot. One shot would do it.
"He's mine." Armont leveled his MP5, captured Ramirez in the sight, and clicked it to full auto. Vance was a genius. He had lured the Hyena from his lair. Take him out, and the whole op would be over in time for morning coffee.
6:37 a.m.
Ramirez was edging down the side of the gantry, the cold angle-iron against his back, when there was an eruption of gunfire down the hill. It was controlled, professional fire that seemed to be coming from two locations. An assault.
Well, fuck Hansen. The President had lied, claiming he had called it off. Had he lied about the money, too? The fleeting thought made him seethe. But one problem at a time.
He quickly ducked behind the fallen gantry, disappearing into the shadows. One more phone call, then a check with Geneva. If the money hadn't been transferred, Souda Bay and the American Sixth Fleet were both going to disappear in a nuclear cloud. In fact, they were anyway. What better way to cover an egress?
6:38 a.m.
"What in—" Armont emitted a curse as all hell broke loose behind them. A fusillade of automatic-weapons fire rained around, from somewhere in the direction of the shoreline. It was almost like covering fire, not well directed, and since everybody on the ARM team had long made a practice of minimizing exposure at all times, he didn't expect immediate casualties. But what in hell! Had Ramirez's terrorist team encircled them, drawn them in? He felt like an idiot.
"Hostile fire!" He gave the signal to get down and take cover, swinging his hand from above his head to shoulder level, but that was nothing more than redundant instinct. The ARM team was already on the ground, ready to return fire if so ordered.
Nobody, however, was wasting ammo on the darkness. The team had little enough to spare, and besides—why give away your position and create a target? The third consideration was that ARM never fired on an unknown. They were, after all, civilians and answerable. An army could wreak whatever havoc it pleased and later blame everything on the heat of battle. ARM had to be damned sure who it was taking down.
By the time Arm
ont's yell died away, everybody on the team had already found cover behind the random outcroppings of rocks. Everybody, that is, except Hugo Voorst, who spun around and stumbled backward, moaned, then collapsed.
6:39 a.m.
"Hold your fire! Goddammit, hold your fire." The SEAL leader, Lieutenant Devon Robbins, was pressing in his earpiece, incredulous at what he was hearing. Around him the team was on the ground, in firing position, keeping the terrorists up the hill pinned down. Next would come the assault. "Roger, Alpha Leader, I copy. Does anybody know what's going on with this whole fucked-up op? . . . I copy."
He looked around. "We just got aborted."
"What the fuck do you mean," the SEAL next to him, John McCleary, said. He was slamming another clip into his MP5.
"The team is extracted. Now." Robbins could scarcely believe his own words.
"You have got to be fucking kidding," came the radio voice of Lieutenant Philip Pease. "We've got the assholes. A couple of grenades from the blooper and then we take them. They're history."
"Hey, I just report the orders, I don't give them," Robbins replied. "Immediate egress. That's the word. Who the fuck knows?"
"But what about the choppers? Nichols is coming in with the Apaches."
"Goumes says they're scrubbed, too. Everybody's on hold. Nichols just about ate the fucking radio. He's going apeshit."
"Well, the hell with Gournes," came a third voice, through a black pullover. "Maybe we had a 'radio failure.' The fuckers are pinned down. Let's just go ahead and take them down. The whole op is blown. Now they're going to know we're coming in."
"They probably figured on it anyway," Robbins said, clicking on the safety of his MP5. "But who the hell cares. We're out of here. Flint, you've got the rear. Use it. I'm on point. Let's hit the beach. In five. Pass it on." He switched on his radio. "Listen up. Anybody not in a Zodiac in five mikes swims."
6:40 a.m.
Georges LeFarge had been studying Peretz, trying to figure out what was going on. One thing was sure: the countdown was about to switch into auto mode—which meant the priming of the superconducting coil would begin. When that happened, the Cyclops would be entering a very delicate, and dangerous, phase. Shutting it down after auto mode commenced required the kind of familiarity with the system he was sure Peretz did not have. Mess up then and you could literally burn out the huge power storage ring buried deep in the island's core—which was why the Fujitsu was deliberately programmed to thwart any straightforward command to abort. Ironically, the fail-safe mechanism was designed not to shut down the Cyclops, but rather to carry through. At this stage, the only way to abort the launch sequence safely was to bleed off the power using the Cyclops's main radar, the way they had done early last night. To simply flip a switch and turn everything off would be to risk melting the multimillion-dollar cryogenic storage coil down under. The whole thing was as bizarre as it was real. By continuing the countdown until everything went into auto mode, Peretz was creating a monster of inevitability.
He was currently trying to explain this to the Israeli, hoping the guy could conceive the gravity of what he was about to do. "You don't understand," he was pleading, his voice plaintive above the clicks of switches and buzz of communications gear in Command, "you're going to risk—"
"Hey, kid, chill out." Peretz did not bother to look up from his terminal. A strip-chart recorder next to him was humming away as voltage and amperage checks proceeded.
"But look." Georges pointed to the screen of an adjacent workstation. "You've got less than three minutes left to abort the power-up. After the auto-test sequence it's doing now is finished, the superconducting coil starts final power-up. That's when everything switches to auto mode. It's all automatic from then on. For a very good reason."
"Hey, that's why we're here, kid." Peretz was grinning his crazy grin. 'This is not some fucking dry run. This is the big one. I've got no intention of shutting it down. We're gonna launch, dude."
Dore Peretz knew exactly what the critical go/no-go points in the countdown were; he had researched the Cyclops system extensively. He also knew that after auto mode, there would be no altering the orbital abort and the timing of the detonation. Once auto mode began, he was home free. He could split.
The trajectory he had programmed with SORT was not for Souda Bay but for low orbit. One orbit. The abort had been preset. The bomb was going to be delivered right back here on Andikythera. It was brilliant. Get the money in place, get out, and then wipe out the island, all evidence of the operation.
Including Sabri Ramirez.
The world would then think that all the terrorists were dead. And they would be—all, that is, except Dr. Dore Peretz.
In truth, he was thinking, this was almost the most fun he'd had in years. The actual most fun had been the memo he had presented to Sabri Ramirez concerning the new split of the money. All along he had thought the phrase fifty-fifty had a nice solid ring. What point was there in spreading the ransom all over the place? Giving it to a bunch of assholes?
Which was why Dore Peretz had, two weeks earlier, established an account in the same Geneva bank where Ramirez was having the money delivered. The memo had instructed Ramirez to advise the bank to move half the money into that account as soon as it arrived. And when funds were deposited into that account, the bank was instructed to move them yet again—well beyond the reach of anybody.
All he needed now was proof that Ramirez had faxed the bank with the new instructions. So had he? The time had come to check in with the bastard and find out. Then it was over. All he would have to do after that was commandeer the chopper and get the hell out.
The only missing link was somebody to fly the Sikorsky, and the perfect choice for that little task was in the next room, a certain Vietnam fighter-pilot turned CEO. . . .
He motioned for Georges LeFarge. "Okay, everything's set. Auto mode. We've got exactly sixty-eight minutes to liftoff. Is that enough excitement for you?"
LeFarge did feel something of a thrill, in spite of his better judgment. He didn't know why Peretz would want to abort the flight—which he knew was what SORT had been programmed to do—but at least VX-1 was going up. And when you worked on a project like this, there was only one real payoff—when the vehicle left the pad. All the months, years, of preparations led up to that final moment. . . .
"I want Bates," Peretz declared, pointing toward the closed office door. "So, go and get him. That's an order. It's time he got in on the fun. After all, this is his baby.
Georges turned away from his useless workstation, still shaken by the sight of auto mode clicking in, and walked back toward the door. Bates had been locked in there, mainly to keep him quiet. But now things were starting to happen. Several members of the terrorist group had come in, started readying weapons, and were acting nervous.
Well, Georges thought, maybe they're worried the U.S. might just get off its ass and come in, do something about this outrage. The terrorists had plenty of heavy weapons, and now they were checking them out and slapping in clips of ammunition. Bill Bates was not going to like what he saw. . . .
He opened the door and motioned for Bates to come out. He slowly rose from his chair, looking beat and haggard, and came. Georges's first impression was that he was missing a large slice of his old zip. He looked like a man near defeat— exhausted, even disoriented.
"How are you feeling?" Peretz asked.
"How do you think?" Bates growled, looking around at all the assembled terrorists now readying their weapons. The place was turning into an armed camp.
"Just a friendly inquiry," Peretz went on, flashing his empty grin. "We're about to start the fireworks up at Launch, and I didn't want you to miss out on any of it." He paused to check the countdown scrolling on the terminal in front of him. "So . . ." he continued, turning back, "I think it's time we three—you, me, and Georges here—took a small stroll and checked out how things are going."
"Mind telling me what in blazes
you're up to?" Bates demanded. His voice was still strong even though he had lost much of the spring in his step. "If you fuckers have killed any more of my people, I'm going to see to it personally that—"
"Take it easy, man," Peretz interjected. "As long as nobody causes any trouble, then nobody gets hurt." He turned and motioned for Jean-Paul Moreau. "Keep an eye on this place. He swept his arm over the sea of technicians and systems analysts. "Everything's right on target with the countdown." It was an impromptu private joke, a spur-of-the-moment thing, that he found delightful.
Jean-Paul Moreau, his reflexes now slowing slightly from lack of sleep, did not get the joke, and he did not like the feeling he was getting. Dore Peretz was a canny little fucker, and he suddenly seemed in a great hurry to get out of Command. Was the batard up to something? It was puzzling, and troubling.
He adjusted his blond ponytail and gazed around the room, now a cacophony of preflight activity. Keeping everybody in line was the least of his problems. These white-shirted engineers were so scared that if you said jump, they'd all stand up and ask how high. No, what bothered him was not knowing what the damned Israeli had up his sleeve. Peretz was planning something, probably intending to leave somebody to hold the bag.
And it wasn't hard to figure out who that somebody was. . . .
"You know," he said to Peretz, "everybody has orders to stay at their posts and keep security, in case there's an assault. You pulling out of here is not part of the plan."
"Hey, I've been handling this thing so far, and the launch is set. Now I need to check on the telemetry and data hookups at Launch—if that's okay with you. I've taken care of my end, so now all you've got to do is keep any of these assholes from getting on the computer and trying to screw things up. Nobody so much as touches a keyboard, got it?"
"Got it." Moreau nodded, hating the little son of a bitch even more.
"Good," he said, turning back to Bates. "Okay, baby, we're gone."