Chapter Eight
2:37 p.m.
The conduit was roughly a meter and a half in diameter and pitch dark. He had expected that and had extracted a waterproof flashlight from an emergency kit in the wreckage of the Hind. It was helping, but not all that much. With the heat exchangers off, no water was flowing. The stone walls were merely moist, the curved sides covered with slime.
The tunnel sloped downward from the installation on the mountain as a gentle incline, and although the gray algae that swathed its sides now covered him, he had found niches in the granite to hang onto as he worked his way down.
Then it had leveled out, matching the terrain, and that was when he encountered the first water, now up around his waist. The radars up the hill, he realized, were only one of the producers of waste heat. Ahead, the tunnel he was in seemed to join a larger one from another site, as part of a general confluence.
Thank God all the systems are in standby, he thought. If those massive pumps down by the shore start up, they'll produce a raging torrent that'll leave no place to hide. . . .
As he splashed through the dark, he found himself pondering if this was what he had been placed on the planet to do. Maybe he should never have left Yale. The pay was decent, the hours leisurely, the company congenial. Poking around in the hidden secrets of the past always gave solace to the spirit. What did humanity think about three thousand years ago? Five thousand? Five hundred? What were their loves, their hates, their fears, their dreams? Were they the same as ours? And why did humanity always need to worship something? Where did the drive come from to create—poetry, music, painting? These were all marvelous mysteries that we might never unravel, but they were among the most noble questions anyone could ask. What makes us human? It was the immortal quandary.
But when you asked that, you also had to ask the flip-side question. How could humanity create so much that was bad at the same time? So much tyranny, greed, hurt? How did all that beauty and ugliness get mixed up together down in our genes? Maybe he was about to find out more about the evil in the heart of man, coming up. . . .
He splashed and paddled his way onward, his flashlight sending a puny beam ahead, and tried to relate his location to the rest of the facility. Before entering through the heat exchanger atop the mountain, he had grilled Mannheim on the specifics of site layout. The old man, however, hadn't really known much about the nuts and bolts of the facility; his head was out in space somewhere. All the same, Vance found himself liking him, in spite of his encroaching senility. Even Homer was said to nod. Just hope you live long enough to get senile yourself.
Back to business. Ahead, settled into the top of the conduit, was a metal door just large enough for a man to work through. What was that for? he wondered. Maintenance access? If so, it must lead into the main facility somewhere.
He felt his way around the curved sides of the conduit, searching for flaws in the granite where he could get a handhold. Then he reached up and tested the door.
The metal was beginning to rust from the seawater, but it still looked workable. A large black wheel in the center, inset with gears, operated sliding bolts that fit into the frame.
This has to be fast, he told himself. Do a quick reconnoiter of the place and make mental notes. Look for entry-points and escape routes. Then get back in time for the radio chat with Pierre. About three hours, two to be on the safe side.
He braced himself against the stone sides of the conduit and—holding the flashlight with one hand—tried to budge the metal wheel.
Nothing. The contact with seawater had frozen it with rust. He tried again, shoving the flashlight into his belt and, grappling in the dark, twisting the wheel with both hands. Was it moving?
He felt a faint vibration make its way down the stone walls of the conduit, then there was a hum of huge electric motors starting somewhere. Somebody was turning on the systems.
He listened as the vibration continued to grow, and now the water level was beginning to rise, as the pumps down by the shore began priming. Were they about to turn them on full blast? The involuntary rush of his pulse and his breathing made him abruptly aware of how close the confining tunnel felt, the tight hermetic sense of claustrophobia. For the first time since landing on Andikythera he felt real fear. He hated the dark, the enclosed space, and now he was trapped.
Idiot, how did you get yourself into this? You're going to be drowned in about thirty seconds.
Now the roar of water began to overwhelm the hum of the pumps. The conduit was filling rapidly, and flow had begun. He realized that only about a foot of airspace remained at the top. Praying for a miracle, he heaved against the metal wheel one last time, and finally felt it break loose, begin to turn.
2:38 p.m.
"Abdoullah" had finished unpacking the second crate, and now he examined what he had: two fifteen-kiloton nuclear devices, made using enriched uranium-235 from the Kahuta Nuclear Research Center. He smiled again to think they had been smuggled out right from under the noses of the officials at Kahuta, directly up the security elevators leading down to the U235 centrifuge at Level Five.
The research center was situated more or less in between the sister cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, in northeast Pakistan, where it was surrounded by barren, scrub-brush rolling hills that looked toward the looming border of Afghanistan. Kahuta was the heart of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, and its many levels of high-security infrastructure were buried deep belowground. The only structure visible to a satellite was the telltale concrete cupola and an adjacent environmental-control plant for air filtration. Security was tight, with high fences, watchtowers, and an army barracks near at hand.
The security was for a reason. In 1975 Pakistan began acquiring hardware and technology for a plant capable of producing weapons-grade uranium. Bombs require 90 percent enrichment, and when the U.S. discovered the project, it had threatened to cut off aid if any uranium was enriched beyond 5 percent. Pakistan agreed, then went right ahead. Between 1977 and 1980, using dummy corporations and transshipments through third countries, the government smuggled from West Germany an entire plant for converting uranium powder into uranium hexafluoride, a compound easily gasified and then enriched. Two years later the Nuclear Research Center purchased a ton of specially hardened "maraging" steel, from West Germany, which was delivered already fabricated into round bars whose diameter exactly matched that of the (also) German gas centrifuges under construction at Kahuta. Shortly thereafter, the plant at Dera Ghazi Khan was on-line, producing uranium hexafluoride feedstock for the Kahuta enrichment facility, and the Kahuta facility was using it to turn out U235 enriched uranium in abundance.
At the same time, Pakistani operatives were hastening to acquire high-speed American electronic switches called krytrons, the triggering devices for a bomb. Their efforts to obtain nuclear detonators required several tries, but eventually they got what they needed. They dispensed with above-ground testing of the nuclear devices they had assembled, having procured the necessary data from China, and instead just went ahead and made their bombs. They then secured them on Level Five of the Kahuta reprocessing facility—against the day they would be needed.
Until now. Liberating two of those well-guarded A-bombs had required a lot of unofficial cooperation from the plant's security forces. Batteries of surface-to-air missiles protected Kahuta from air penetration, and elite paratroopers and army tanks reinforced the many checkpoints, making sure that no vehicle, official or private, could enter or leave the complex without a stamped authorization by the security chief. Only a lot of money in the right hands could make two of the devices disappear. Sabri Ramirez had seen to that small technicality. . . .
Abdoullah patted one of the nuclear weapons casually and admired it. The bomb itself was a half meter in diameter, its outer casing of Octol carefully packed inside a polished steel sheath embedded with wires. Expensive but available commercially, Octol was a 70-30 mixture of cyclote-tramethvlenetetranitra
mine and trinitrotoluene, known colloquially as HMX and TNT. It was stable, powerful, and the triggering agent of choice for nuclear devices. Inside the Octol encasing each device were twenty-five kilograms of 93 percent enriched U235. When the external Octol sphere was evenly detonated, it would compress the uranium core sufficiently to create a "critical mass,-' causing the naturally occurring radioactive decay of the uranium to focus in upon itself. Once the radiation intensified, it started an avalanche, an instantaneous chain reaction of atom-splitting that converted the uranium's mass into enormous quantities of energy.
The trick to making it work was an even, synchronous implosion of the outer sphere, which was the job of the high-tech krytron detonator switches. . . .
Which, Abdoullah realized, were still in the Sikorsky. The krytrons were packed separately and handled as though they were finest crystal.
"Rais," he said, looking up and addressing his Berkeley classmate now standing by the door, "I need the detonators."
"Well, they're in the cockpit, where we stowed them." He was tightening his commando sweatband, itching to try out his Uzi, still unfamiliar. Would the others notice? In any case, he wasn't here to run errands.
"Then go get them, for chrissake." He had considered Rais to be an asshole from the day they first met in the Advanced Quantum Mechanics class at college. Nothing that had happened since had in any way undermined that conviction. The guy thought he was hot stuff, God's gift to the world. It was not a view that anybody who knew him shared.
"Why don't you go get them?" Rais said, not moving.
"Because I want to check these babies over and make sure everything is a go." What a jerk. "Come on, man, don't start giving me a lot of shit, okay? This is serious. Everybody's got to pull his weight around here."
Rais hesitated, his manhood on the line, and then decided to capitulate. At least for now. Abdoullah was starting to throw his weight around, get on the nerves. The guy was real close to stepping out of line.
"All right, fuck it." He clicked the safety on his Uzi on and off and on, then holstered it.
"As long as you're at it, why don't you just take them directly down to the clean room. We'll be assembling everything there anyway, since that's where the elevator is they use to go up and prep the vehicles."
"That's cool. See you down there." Rais closed the door and walked out into the Greek sunshine. He was starting to like this fucking place.
2:39 p.m.
Vance shoved the metal door open just as the roar of the onrushing water reached the confluence at the intersection of the tunnel, a mere hundred yards ahead. The tunnel was almost full now, the water flow increasing.
They're about to turn on the Cyclops, he thought. You've got about fifteen seconds left.
He pulled himself through the metal door, soaked but alive, and rolled onto a cement floor. With his last remaining strength he reached over and tipped the metal door shut, then grabbed the wheel and gave it a twist. Down below he could feel the wall of water surge by.
He thought he was going to faint, but instead he took a deep breath and pulled out the flashlight. . . .
. . . And found himself in a communications conduit, consisting of a concrete floor with Styrofoam insulation overhead. All around him stretched what seemed miles of coaxial cables, wrapped in huge circular strands. The conduit also contained fiber-optics bundles for carrying computer data to guide the parabolic antennas up on the mountain as they tracked the space vehicle.
The major contents of the conduit, however, were massive copper power-transmission cables. What had Mannheim warned? How many gigawatts per second? The numbers were too mind-boggling to comprehend, or bother remembering. All they meant was that if the Cyclops were suddenly turned on, the Gaussian fields of electromagnetic flux would probably rearrange his brain cells permanently.
He rose and moved down the conduit, feeling along its curved sides, his back braced against the large bundle of power wires in the center while ahead of him the darkness gaped. A few yards farther, though, and the probing beam of his flashlight revealed a terminus where some of the shielded fiber optics had been shunted off into the wall, passing through a heavy metal sleeve.
Although it was welded into a steel plate bolted to the side of the wall, large handles allowed the bolts to be turned without the aid of special wrenches. Whoever designed the fiber optics for this tunnel, he thought, didn't want a lot of Greek workmen down here waving tools around after a long lunch of guzzling retsina. The fibers were too vulnerable to stand up to any banging.
He grasped the handles and began to twist one, finding the bolts well lubricated. After four turns, it opened. The second yielded just as easily. Then the third and the fourth.
He took a deep breath, thinking this might be his first encounter with the hostages, and the terrorists. Then he slid the metal plate back away from the wall and tried to peer through. The opening was approximately a meter wide, with the bundle of fiber-optics cables directly through the middle. Still, he found just enough clearance to slip past and into the freezing cold of the room used to prep the payloads for the vehicles.
2:40 p.m.
"What's this all about?" LeFarge looked again at the sheet, then up at Number One. "SORT is intended to calculate orbital parameters. Optimize them."
"And if there is an abort? It has to go down somewhere."
"You're talking about a pre-specified abort?" LeFarge was trying to sound dumb. "The Cyclops can't power an ICBM." It probably could, but he didn't want to mention that.
The terrorist who called himself Number One was not impressed. "That's a question we will let the computer decide. I happen to believe it can. You just send it up, then you abort. When you fail to achieve orbital velocity, it comes down. The nose has a reentry shield, since you are planning to reuse the vehicle. It should work very nicely."
Georges looked at Cally. He did not want to admit it, but this guy was right. He had thought about that a lot. Any private spaceport could be seized by terrorists and turned into a missile launch site. Was that their plan?
"I won't do it," he heard himself saying. "I refuse."
"That is a mistake," Number One replied calmly. "I will simply shoot one of your technicians here every five minutes until you begin." He smiled. "Would you like to pick the first? Preferably someone you can manage without."
"You're bluffing." He felt a chill. Something told him what he had just said wasn't true. This man, with his expensive suit and haircut, meant every word. He was a killer. Georges knew he had never met anyone remotely like him.
"Young man, you are an amateur." His eyes had grown narrow, almost disappearing behind his gray aviator shades. "Amateurs do not know the first thing about bluffing. Now don't try my patience."
He turned and gestured one of the technicians toward them. He was a young man in his mid-twenties. He came forward and Number One asked his name.
"I'm Chris Schneider," he said. His blond hair and blue eyes attested to the fact. His father was a German farmer in Ohio, his mother a primary-school teacher. He had taken a degree in Engineering from Ohio State, then stumbled upon the dream job of his life. He was now thinking about moving to Greece.
"I'm sorry to have to make an example of you, Chris," Number One said, drawing out his Walther. . . .
2:41 p.m.
Vance realized he was in a satellite "clean room," painted a septic white with bright fluorescents overhead. Along one wall were steel tables, several of which held giant "glove boxes" that enabled a worker to handle satellite components without human contamination. Alongside those were instruments to measure ambient ionization and dust. Other systems in the room included banks of electronic equipment about whose function he could only speculate.
And what was that? . . . there, just above the door . . . it looked like a closed-circuit TV monitor, black-and-white. It seemed to be displaying the vague movements of a large control room, one with banks of computer screens in long rows and mars
haled lines of technicians monitoring them. He studied the picture for a second, wondering why it seemed so familiar, and then he realized it looked just like TV shots of the Kennedy Space Center.
Shivering from the cold, he moved closer to the screen, which was just clear enough to allow him to make out some of the figures in what had to be the command center. However, he saw only staffers; no sign of Bill Bates. One individual stood out, his suit and tie a marked contrast to the general open-shirt atmosphere, and he looked like he was giving the orders. He was now chatting with a woman and another, younger man, seated at a keyboard.
Then the well-dressed guy turned and beckoned one of the staffers forward. He said something to him and then—Jesus!—he pulled a pistol. . . .
2:42 p.m.
"No!" Cally screamed, but it was already too late. Before Chris Schneider even saw it coming, Ramirez shot him precisely between the eyes, neatly and without fanfare. The precision was almost clinical, and he was dead by the time he collapsed onto the gray linoleum tiles of the floor. His body lay motionless, his head nestled in a growing pool of dark blood.
Georges LeFarge looked on unbelieving. Had he really seen it? No, it was too grotesque. Chris, murdered in cold blood right before his eyes. They had been talking only yesterday about going to Crete for the weekend, maybe renting a car. . . . Death had always been an abstraction, never anything to view up close. He had never seen a body. He had never even imagined such things could really happen; it was only in the movies, right? Until this moment he had never confronted actual murder ever in his life.
Calypso Andros felt a shock, then a surge of emotional Novocain as her adrenaline pumped. Right then and there she decided that she was going to kill this bastard herself, personally, with her own hands. Number One, whoever he was, was a monster. No revenge . . .
Then the superego intervened. He's still got the gun. Wait, and get the son of a bitch when he's not expecting it.
"Georges," she said quietly, finally collecting herself, "you'd better do what he says."
LeFarge was still too astonished to think, let alone talk.
This horror was outside every realm of reason. He had no way to file it within any known category contained in his mind.
"She is giving you excellent advice," Number One was saying. "You would be wise to listen. In any case, I merely want you to demonstrate the technical capabilities of this system." He smiled as though nothing had happened. "An intellectual exercise."
Georges looked at Cally and watched her nod. Her eyes seemed almost empty. Was it shock? How could she manage to carry on?
Well, he thought, if she can do it, then so can I.
Slowly he revolved and examined the computer terminal in front of him. The cool green of the screen was all that remained recognizable, the only thing to which he could still relate.
"All right." He barely heard his own words as he glanced down at the sheet. "I'll see if I can put in a run."
The room around them was paralyzed in time, the single thunk of the pistol having reverberated louder than a cannon shot. Like Georges, none of the other young technicians had ever witnessed an overt act of violence. It produced a new reality, a jolt that made the senses suddenly grow sharper, the hearing more acute, the periphery of vision wider.
Still in shock, he typed an instruction into his Fujitsu workstation, telling it to start back-calculating the trajectory of an abort splashdown for various locations. Then he began typing in the numbers on the sheet. The first coordinates, he realized at once, were somewhere close. But where?
2:43 p.m.
Vance watched the control room freeze as the body slumped to the floor, and he felt his fingers involuntarily bunch into a fist. The bastards were killing hostages already. They definitely were terrorists, right out of the textbook. Kill one, and frighten a thousand. Except they might not stop with one. He foresaw a long day. And night.
The victim had been hardly more than a college kid. Murdered at random, and for no other apparent reason than to frighten the rest into submission. A technique that was as old as brutality. But that terrorist trick, management by intimidation, worked both ways. Take away their Uzis and these smug bastards could just as easily be turned into quivering Jell-O. All human beings had psychological pressure points that could be accessed. What separated the wheat from the chaff was what happened when somebody got to those points. He often wondered what he would do. He prayed he would never have to find out. . . .
Then he watched as the young man at the terminal began typing in something off a sheet of paper. Whatever the terrorist had intended to accomplish by his wanton murder, apparently it had worked. The other technicians were all staring down at their screens, scared to move. Whatever had gone on, everybody was back to business. But what did these thugs want?
Sadly he turned away from the screen to reexamine his surroundings . . . and noticed a workstation, situated off to the left side of the door. What had Bill once said? They practically had computer terminals in the bathrooms. This one obviously was intended for quick communications with the command crews from here in this freezing white room.
Keeping an eye on the TV monitor, he moved over to take a look. Instructions began appearing on the bright green screen, indicating it was tied into a computer network at the facility. Yes, somebody—probably the young analyst out there—was typing in a complex series of commands. Above that, on the screen, another sequence had been aborted. It had been some sort of run called HI-VOLT. That must have been what had jolted him when he was out in the conduit.
He studied the screen, trying to figure out what was going on. Only the hum of air conditioning broke the silence, and the quiet helped him to think. . . .
Of course! These bastards were planning to use the Cyclops—or worse, its spacecraft—to . . . what?
He recalled seeing the second chopper arrive and the boys unload two crates. Its cargo wasn't going to be a Christmas present to the world. Whatever it was, they were poised to deliver it just about anywhere on the globe.
So what was their target? He studied the computer screen, hoping to get an inkling. But he saw only numbers. In pairs. They looked like . . . latitude and longitude. Coordinates. What did that mean? The first ones were nearby, maybe somewhere near Crete. So what were they doing? Reprogramming the vehicle into a missile? Terrific.
That was the first half of the bad news. The second half was that whatever they were up to, there also seemed a good chance they might try to blow up the SatCom facility after they were finished, just to cover their tracks. Dead men make no IDs in some faraway courtroom years from now.
He could probably terminate that plan by just sabotaging some of the fiber optics in the conduit, thereby putting the whole facility out of commission. But that would screw Bill too, and probably end up costing SatCom millions. Bates was close enough to being suicidal already. This was probably going to put him over the edge in any case.
Keep that as a last-ditch option, he told himself. And besides, everything at the moment was only guesswork. The thing to do first was to get a better handle on the situation without the terrorists knowing. The question was how.
He looked around the room again, wondering. And then his eye fell on the terminal and a thought dawned. Why not see if you can interrupt the computer run in progress and have a chat with the analyst at the keyboard, the one with the beard now typing in the numbers appearing on the green screen?
He reached down and tested one of the keys, but nothing happened. The data being typed in just kept on coming. What now? How to cut into the system and send him a little personal E-mail? Get his attention. Something. Then he realized the keyboard had an on/off switch, which was currently shunting it out of the system.
Guess that's to keep somebody from screwing up a run by leaning against it, he thought. How much time is there? Any minute now somebody could come wandering in. Probably this window of opportunity only had a few minutes to go.
He s
witched on the keyboard and again gave a letter a tap. This time it instantly appeared on the screen, highlighted. A glance at the TV monitor told him that the startled analyst at the keyboard had frozen his fingers in mid-tap, bringing everything to a halt.
Quickly he started typing, hoping that none of the terrorists had the brains to be monitoring the computers.
DON'T STOP. JUST ANSWER.
The young analyst, he could tell from the monitor, had a funny look on his face, obvious even through his scraggly beard. But he was cool.
WHO ARE YOU? came back the answer.
A FRIEND. NEED INFORMATION. FAST. HOW MANY TERRORISTS?
TEN. The reply appeared. BUT I THINK ONE WAS KILLED.
Plus those who came in on the Sikorsky this morning, Vance thought. Looked like another three. Then he typed in another question.
WHAT DO THEY WANT?
DON'T KNOW. MAYBE USE VEHICLES. The typing was quick and experienced. THEY SAY FACILITY TO KEEP OPERATING NORMALLY.
WHERE IS BATES? Vance typed back. IS HE OKAY?
IN HIS OFFICE. THINK HE'S OKAY.
That's a relief, he thought. Guess Bill's still got some hostage value to them.
TELL HIM ULYSSES HAS LANDED. BE OF GOOD CHEER.
The answer came back. WHO ARE YOU? I'M SCARED. THEY KILLED CHRIS.
I SAW IT. BUT THAT'S PROBABLY ALL FOR A WHILE. STANDARD TERROR TACTICS. NOW ERASE THIS CONVERSATION.
Something was typed on the screen and their words immediately all disappeared. And just in time. . . .
2:48 p.m.
Rais had finished retrieving the box of krytrons from the cockpit of the Huey and was headed down the elevator for the area directly below and south of the launch facility, the clean room where SatCom's expensive communications satellites were going to be prepped for launch. Abdoullah was a jerk, but he had been right about that: it was the obvious location to install the detonators and set the timing mechanisms.
As the elevator door opened, his Uzi was still holstered just below his right hip and in his hands was the box of detonators, all carefully secured in their beds of bubble-wrap. He stepped into the hallway, then headed down for the closed door of the clean room.
2:58 p.m.
"William Bates, I must say, made a wise choice when he hired you to run this project, Miss Andros," Ramirez was saying. He had just lit a new cigar. "I have to commend his judgment."
"Well, if you think I'm doing such a great job, you'd better let me go on doing it," Cally managed to answer, trying to get a grip on herself. She had her arms crossed, mainly to try to keep her hands from shaking. When Chris was shot, she was so stunned she'd repressed the horror. Now the numbness was wearing off and she wanted to scream. Just one long wail to purge everything. She was biting her lip to try to repress the impulse. "I need to go down to the launch facility and check with the tech crews."
Toughen up and think, she told herself. These terrorists are up to something, and the sooner you figure out what it is, the better for everybody.
"As a matter of fact"—he nodded—"I need to go down myself and see how things are proceeding. So why don't we both go, Miss Andros."
"Around here I'm called Dr. Andros." She was feeling her control coming back. Two could play the power game.
"But of course." He nodded. "In a professional environment we all like to be treated accordingly. I respect that, and expect no less myself." He surveyed the room, its SatCom technicians still stunned. Then his eye caught the tall, bearded Iranian, Salim, now lounging by the door with his Uzi, and motioned him over.
"Get this body out of here."
The Iranian nodded and strolled over. Cally studied him, wondering. She had been trying to size up the team for some time, and she still had not figured them all out. But this one, heavy-set and defiantly bearded, seemed somewhat at odds with the others. He clearly had no taste to clean up Number One's murder; you could see it in his eyes.
"Where—?"
"In the lobby. It's disrupting the professional environment."
He nodded again and without a word grabbed Chris Schneider by the shoulders and began dragging him past.
"Dr. Andros"—Number One turned back to her—"already I feel closer to you than I do to half of my men. I think you and I will make a good team."
"You have got to be fucking kidding."
He merely laughed, then spoke to another of the terrorists, a young Arab. After apparently ordering him to stay behind in Command to keep an eye on things, he motioned Cally to lead the way through the security doors.
They edged around Salim, still moving the body, and out into the lobby. The first thing she noticed was that the guard was missing from the front security station. Instead a wide dark stain covered the desk. Blood.
She whirled on Number One. "What happened to Milos, you bastard?"
"Regrettably he is no longer with us." He shrugged, not pausing as he took her arm and shoved her on.
"You mean you murdered him, too?" She felt herself about to explode. She had loved that Greek, who spent more time worrying about soccer scores than he did about security. Thinking about his death, she felt a wave of nausea sweep over her. "You bloodthirsty—"
"Please, we're going to try to be professionals, remember," he interrupted her calmly. "We will be working together in the days ahead, and animosity will serve no purpose."
She thought of several responses, but squelched them all. Talking wasn't going to make things any better. In that respect, he was right. Talk would have no effect.
They were facing the tunnel leading to the mechanical- systems sector at the other end of the island. The large metal doors, operated from the security system at the desk, had been opened, slid back, and permanently secured. The short- circuiting of the security system had disabled all the electronic locks in the facility.
Scrutinizing them, she felt sadness. All the months of fine-tuning and technical calibration throughout the facility, had all that effort been wasted? Probably not, she suspected. These goons, true to their word, had taken great pains not to disturb anything in Command. So far everything had apparently conformed to their plan, except for something to do with a helicopter. Whatever that was, it had taken them by surprise. What was it?
Ramirez said nothing as they started down the asphalt pavement of the underground passageway. Over a thousand meters long and illuminated by fluorescent lighting, its cinderblock walls were wide and high enough to accommodate a standard Greek truck or two small lorries. Cally noted the deserted guard desk at the far end. Had he been killed as well? she wondered.
"Let me put your mind at ease," Number One announced, as though reading her thoughts. "The other guards have merely been disarmed and locked in their quarters. As I said, we have no desire for any unnecessary bloodshed."
"More lies?" She tossed her hair.
"You should try to believe me. Again, trust will make things easier for us both."
She pushed past the doors at the end of the passageway and together they entered the first sector, Launch Control. Beyond, another set of doors led to the giant underground installation for the superconducting coil, which fed into a massive glass tube holding the wiggler, heart of the Cyclops. Above that, now unseen, stood the launch vehicles, "rockets" that carried no fuel.
Neither was yet primed; they planned to ready the vehicle designated VX-1 just before launch. In fact, nothing had happened since the test the night before. Tech crews were checking the instruments, knowing only that a communications breakdown with Command had occurred and some strange visitors had shown up in a helicopter. Something was going on, but nobody knew what.
"A very impressive installation," Number One said, watching as the technicians all nodded their greetings. "Incidentally, there is no point in alarming any of them now. For the moment, you should just proceed normally."
"That's why you're here, right?" she shot back. "To make sure there's all this normality. Things were pretty normal be
fore you and your band of thugs barged in."
"We are colleagues now, Dr. Andros. I'm here to observe the lift-off we all are so anxious for. Please, for starters I would like to tag along and have you show me around. You're a congenial guide."
You bet, she thought. You'll discover how "congenial" I am soon enough.
Of course, she had not yet formulated a strategy. One bright spot was the voice on the radio this morning? Was somebody on the island still free? She had peeked out into the lobby long enough to learn that the mysterious "guard" had shot one of the Germans and then escaped. So who was it? That was what she wanted to find out next. . . .
But first, business. She approached Jordan Jaegar, a young Cal Tech graduate and friend of Georges who had been with the project from the start.
"J.J., how long did the coil temperature stay nominal?"
Although he had a master's in mechanical engineering, Jordan sported shoulder-length hair and had just gotten a tattoo on his right bicep—an elaborate rendering of his initials, J.J., which he much preferred to be called. He liked the fact Dr. Andros remembered that.
"For just over twenty-one minutes," he announced with pride, his eyes discreetly taking in her hourglass figure. "Long enough. Then it started creeping up, but we'd have almost inserted into orbit by that time. And after twenty-nine minutes it was only five degrees Celsius higher. No sweat, Dr. Andros."
Who, J.J. was wondering, was this hotshot standing next to Dr. Andros? He had seen a lot of SatCom brass come and go, but this dude was definitely new. What was his scene? No question, though, the boss lady was really pissed about something. She also did not seem interested in introducing this new creep to anyone. Fine. There was enough to worry about without more head-office brass.
Cally nodded. "The on-line readout in Command showed that the Cyclops reached saturation at twelve point three-five gigawatts."
"Right," J.J. agreed. "The wiggler went critical and we used the phased array to dissipate the energy." He beamed. "Hell, we could have sent her up last night. The whole thing was textbook."
He knew she already knew all that. But he figured there was no harm in impressing this front-office creep that all the money they'd spent hadn't been wasted. SatCom was definitely on-budget from his section. Management had to be happy. Payoff time was just around the corner. This time next week, SatCom's stock was going to be pure gold. After VX-1 went up, there wouldn't be any more shit from Arlington. They'd be passing out stock bonuses like fucking peppermints. He figured a hot new Nissan was definitely in his future.
"Good," Dr. Andros said, but she seemed distracted, having trouble staying focused. Something was definitely wrong, but she was hiding it. "How about sending a data summary to my terminal in Command."
Cally walked on past J.J., thinking as fast as she could. None of the technicians here knew what had happened. When they found out, were they going to fall apart, endangering everybody and everything? Maybe, she thought; it would be better now to just continue normally as long as possible.
Number One, whoever he was, wasn't carrying an Uzi now; instead he had a 9mm skillfully concealed beneath his double-breasted. It was all very stylish. He was keeping the takeover on low profile, at least down here where the vehicles were. Maybe, she told herself, he doesn't feel as sure of himself here, or maybe he needs to keep their plans a secret. So they're definitely up to something.
As they walked past the massive steel housings enclosing the wiggler's controls, Ramirez suddenly paused and cleared his throat.
"Dr. Andros, what is the payload for the test launching? You certainly wouldn't put a multimillion-dollar communications satellite at peril during your maiden run."
He isn't stupid, she thought. He understands the economics of the satellite business.
"It's just a test. With a dummy payload."
"Good. We will have a real payload for you. It won't be low-cost, but it will definitely get you some attention. We—"
At that moment his walkie-talkie crackled.
3:00 p.m.
Abdoullah had completed his inspection and, together with Shujat, was loading the crates back onto the small trucks intended to move them down to the clean room.
"We'll have to adjust the timers very carefully," he was saying to Shujat, now bent over with him, "make sure they're synched critically with the trajectory."
The second Pakistani engineer nodded. "Right. So we'll do it when the trajectory computer runs are completed. That's scheduled for 2200 hours tonight."
"Sounds good." Abdoullah clicked on his black walkie-talkie, a small Kenwood, and tried to sound professional. "Firebird Two to Firebird One. Do you read?"
There was a burst of static, and then Ramirez's voice sounded. "I copy you, Firebird Two. Any problems?"
"Negative. The items look in perfect condition. We are taking them down to the clean room now to install the detonators."
"Fine," Ramirez replied. "I'll meet you there." The radio voice paused. "Incidentally, be aware there is somebody loose on the island who seems a trifle out of synch with the situation."
"Where is he?" He was signaling for Shujat to come over and listen. Having a problem or two always made things more fun.
"Probably up at the communications complex on the mountain. So far he's only been a nuisance, but the matter will have to be resolved. In the meantime, don't let anything slow down your work. We need to be prepared for the next phase, including whatever time flexibility we might need."
Abdoullah did not exactly like the sound of that. He had a troubling feeling that Number One wasn't exactly telling everybody the whole plan. He was not a man you instinctively trusted. Who the hell was he. really. Of course, in this business you didn't necessarily trust anybody, but still, when you were working together it was nice to think that everybody was on the same wavelength.
In his view, a lot of questions still needed answering. Like where had the money come from to mount this operation? The preparations, the bribes, the equipment and the second chopper, the Sikorsky—the Hind, he knew, had been stolen —the payments to all the third parties involved. Everything had required money, tons of it, but the man known as Number One clearly had all he needed. So how had this character come up with all those millions of bucks?
His intuition told him that not everybody was going to make it to the safe house in Malta when the time came. At the moment he had confidence only in Rais and Shujat. And Rais was a jerk. In fact, he hadn't seen him since he went out to get the krytrons from the cockpit of the Sikorsky, but he should be down in the clean room by now. . . .
3:01 p.m.
Vance heard a sound outside the clean room, footsteps. Somebody was approaching, but not with a walk that suggested familiarity with the place.
This might turn out to be his hoped-for break. Maybe he was about to have a nice face-to-face with one of the terrorists. At last, an opportunity for some answers.
He slipped back against the wall next to the door, his wet clothes chilling him in the low temperature. But he sensed that things were about to warm up. The person behind the door paused for a second, then shoved it open. A box appeared, then a face. It was young and cocky.
"Don't even think about making a sound, asshole." He slapped his Walther against the guy's cheek, then yanked the Uzi from his leg holster and pulled him into the room. Next he kicked the door shut and shoved his new guest to the floor. The box he was carrying thumped down beside him.
In the glare of the fluorescents the "terrorist" looked like an aging graduate student, except he was wearing a Palestinian kaffiyeh. Vance ripped it away, rolled him over, and inserted the Uzi into his mouth. A metal barrel loosening the teeth, he knew, did marvels for a wiseguy's powers of concentration. That was one of the first lessons he'd picked up from the boys at ARM. And this one was no exception. He stared up, genuine terror in his eyes, and moaned.
"Speak English? Just nod."
He dipped his forehead forward, eyes still
in shock.
"Good. Now we're going to play Twenty Questions. That's about the number of teeth you've got, so each time I get an answer I don't buy, one of them goes. And when we run out of teeth, you won't be able to talk any more, so I'll just blow your head off. Okay, how're we doing? We understand each other so far?"
He nodded again and gave an airless grunt.
"Great. Looks like we're on a roll. Now, how many more of your team is in there? Hold up fingers. Very slowly. I was never good at fast arithmetic."
His eyes were cloudy, but he managed to lift five fingers.
This guy is one of the new arrivals, Vance thought. I counted three of them. So that means two others are down here as well. Those first guys were the pros, but this kid barely knows which end of an Uzi to hold.
"Do they know you came back here?" He rattled the barrel of the Uzi around in his mouth, just to keep him focused.
Again he nodded, even more terrified.
Okay, he thought, we're going to have to make this a short chat.
"Are there hostages down here?"
Again the man nodded.
"How many?"
He just shrugged, clearly having no idea.
Well, Vance thought, maybe it's time to get this show on the road.
He slowly removed the barrel, then ripped off a portion of the kaffiyeh lying on the floor, balled it, and stuffed it into his mouth. Next he tore off a longer strip and tied it around his head, securing the gag. The eyes were still terrified.
"By the way," he said, "what's in the box?"
A new look of even-greater horror entered the eyes. He's really scared now, Vance thought. Interesting.
"Well, well, maybe we ought to take a look."
He reached over and opened the lid. There, nestled inside several layers of bubble-wrap, were what looked like large, oversized blue transistors.
Bingo, he thought, what have we here? Could it be these are the tickets to the upcoming show. This ain't chopped liver.
"Okay, pal, on your feet. We're going to get moving. Just you and me. And we're going to take along your little box of toys. You can tell me what they are later."
The young terrorist started to rise, gingerly.
"See that opening over there"—he pointed—"where the wires enter into the conduit? We're going through there, you first. You're about to have some experience in mountain climbing. The workout might do you good."
That was when the door opened.