Janson heard the controlled slither of the 9.4mm rope as it fed through the figure-eight brake, confirming that the cord would bear him down to the waterplashed rocks below at a regulated speed of descent. The plunging cliff was now Novak’s greatest protection, shielding him from the riflemen on the battlements. Bullets could only shoot past him; they could not reach him. Novak had to do nothing. Gravity would do its part.
The B team, waiting in the boat at the base of the cliff, would do the rest.
The overhang of the cliff had protected the compound from amphibious attack over the centuries, even as the rocks and shoals kept warships from approaching too closely. The location of the fortress had been well chosen. And yet these features could provide the invaders with safety, too.
Peter Novak was almost home.
For the rest of them, it would not be so simple.
Janson and Katsaris could rappel down the cliff easily enough. But what of Donna Hedderman? There was no spare climbing harness and braking system for her use. A long look passed between Janson and Katsaris: wordlessly, a plan was agreed upon, tacitly devised in desperation.
Even as he made a double cord loop around another rock horn, Theo’s expression was clear enough. Damn the American! But leaving her behind was out of the question.
A burst of gunfire kicked up a painful spray of rock.
There was no time.
More and more of the sentinels would direct their raking fire toward the promontory. No doubt the darkness and fog made sighting difficult, for the bursts were aimed with only approximate accuracy, and at forty yards, that was not sufficient for a reliable kill. The rebels were compensating with sheer quantity, however. More fire rained down on them. How much longer before a bullet struck home?
“Rig yourself,” Janson ordered Katsaris. Meanwhile, Janson belayed the woman with what was to have been his own harness, the nylon webbing stretching tautly around her thighs and considerable waist. Hastily, he rigged the figure eight. A less-than-gentle push, and she was on her way down.
That left Janson with neither a harness nor a rappelling device. Facing the anchor Katsaris had rigged, he straddled the rope, looping it around his left buttock and across his hip, up across his chest and around his head to his right shoulder, and then over and down his back to his left hand. The rope was now configured in an S around his upper body. He would guide with his right hand, regulate speed with his left. Clasping the rope palm up, he could move it off his back to increase speed, and winch it around his hip to slow down. His nylon clothing would provide some protection from rope burns. Still, he was under no illusions. He had body-rappelled once before, in a training exercise; it would be extremely painful.
“Does that really work?” Katsaris asked skeptically.
“Sure it does,” Janson said. “I’ve done it before.” And he had hoped he would never have to do it again.
Several buzz-saw-like bursts of gunfire pelted the cliff like a hailstorm of lead. The rock at their feet exploded, only inches away; fragments stung Janson’s face. There was no time.
“I’m stuck!” Donna Hedderman’s wailing voice, perhaps thirty feet down the cliff.
“We’ll be right there,” Janson called to her, as he and Katsaris eased off the overhang. Bending at the waist, the two men kept their legs perpendicular to the sheer surface, “walking down” where it was possible. For Janson, the descent was excruciating; the nylon shell was strong but supplied no cushioning as the cord bit into his flesh. The only way to lessen the pressure was to increase the demands on his already aching muscles.
“Help me!” The woman’s quavering voice echoed against the sheer rock.
A third of the way down, they found her and saw what had happened. Her long, matted hair had become entangled in the figure-eight rappel device. It was a hazard they should have anticipated. Katsaris took out a knife and, propelling himself sideways with his feet, approached her. She let out an earsplitting scream. With one slice, her entangled hair was free. But there was more of it, and it could happen again. Katsaris released his brake hand and activated his autoblock, a piece of webbing that now wrapped around his rope and arrested further descent.
“Hold still,” he said. Inching farther toward her, he grabbed handfuls of her hair and sliced them off, ignoring her loud squawks of protest. As coiffure it was inelegant; as a safety precaution it was a thing of beauty.
Janson worked hard to keep up with the others, gritting his teeth as the stresses moved along the cord. At one moment, it tightened around his chest like a python, constricting his breath; at the next, it was digging into his gluteus muscles. Body-rappelling was natural, he supposed, in the way that natural childbirth was. The agony was what made it real. His hands were overstrained; yet if he let go of the rope, there would be nothing between him and the rocks below.
He had to hold on just a little longer. He had to keep reminding himself that at the base of the cliff, the other team members would be waiting for them, in the ultralightweight rigid inflatable boat that had been stowed on the BA609. They would be rested and ready. Janson and the others would be safe in their hands. If only they could reach them.
Clear like water, cool like ice.
Seconds ticked by like hours. He could hear the sounds of the aquatic team as they untrussed Peter Novak and bundled him into the boat.
This race would go to the swift. If there was any doubt where they had gone, the cable anchors would tell the sentries everything they needed to know. And if those anchors were sliced in the next few minutes, three people would plunge to their death. The darkness and fog were their only allies, time their greatest enemy.
The only hope of survival lay in speed—to get off the ropes and into the boat as fast as possible.
How much time had passed? Forty seconds? Fifty? Sixty?
Just when his muscles had reached the point of total depletion, Janson felt hands reaching up to grab him, and finally he let go of a lifeline that had turned into an instrument of torture. As he took his seat in the flatbottomed watercraft, he looked around him. There were six of them. Novak. Hedderman. Katsaris. Andressen. Honwana. Hennessy would be piloting the BA609, taking second shift.
The motor whined as the rigid inflatable boat—a Sea Force 490—shot off from the rocks, hugging the shore for half a mile as it moved south, and then out into the mist-shrouded waters. The poor visibility would make it difficult to sight the RIB, and they had chosen a course that would take them out of the way of the rebels’ fixed artillery. “All accounted for,” Andressen said into his communicator, alerting Hennessy in the BA609. “Plus one guest.”
A few bullets pocked the waters some distance from them. They were bullets fired out of desperation, fired for show. But such stray projectiles could sometimes achieve the same result as ones that were carefully guided.
Only when they were half a mile out could they no longer hear the sounds of the rebel forces; KLF gunfire no doubt continued, not least out of sheer frustration, but the reports were lost amid the sound of the restless ocean.
The Sea Force heaved in rhythm with the waves; its powerful motor strained as it competed with the monsoon-roiled waters. As the Anuran coast disappeared in the mists, Janson had a fleeting sense of how insignificant their vessel was, a tiny thing of rubber and metal propelling itself through the vast, empty seas. And yet for those who cared about the future of humanity on this planet, its cargo was significant indeed.
Peter Novak faced the direction in which they were traveling. From the set of his jaw, Janson could see that he was continuing to regain a sense of his identity, a sense of his selfhood. Yet his expression was blank; his mind was elsewhere. The spray and spume of the ocean was glittering in his hair and on his face; his broadcloth shirt was spattered with brine. From time to time, he would run a hand through his bristle-thick hair.
Hedderman’s face was buried in her hands. She had curled up into a ball. It would take her a long time to heal, Janson knew. The two had fallen into the
KLF’s clutches in radically different circumstances and were a study in contrast.
Janson’s men, too, were silent, lost in thought, or rehearsing the remaining operational steps.
Would the rebels follow in a speedboat? It was a possibility, though not a probability. If one was not skilled at rappelling, Adam’s Hill was a formidable obstacle.
The six people in the RIB could hear the whompwhomp of the rotors before they could see the craft. Another quarter mile of open sea separated them from it. Andressen checked his watch and turned up the throttle. They were in operational overtime: the exfiltration had taken longer than anticipated. The small boat rose and fell with the waves like driftwood while its powerful outboard motor kept them moving in a more or less straight line. Now the aircraft came into view. It was resting on a flotational helipad, an expanse of self-inflating black rubber. The downwash from the rotors caused the sea to bowl around it. Hennessy, who would be piloting the return flight as Honwana rested, was merely readying the hydraulics.
Now the craft’s matte resin body was outlined in the first glimmers of the new day, a pink tendril over the horizon. A few minutes later, the tendril had become something indistinct but intense, like an arc light glimpsed through closed fingers. Dawn was breaking, into what was now an almost clear sky. A dark violet, shading swiftly into an intense cerulean. Dawn on the Indian Ocean. The first dawn that Peter Novak had seen for some days.
Hennessy opened his window and called out to Janson. “And who’s the woman, now?” he asked, his voice tense.
“Ever hear of Donna Hedderman?”
“Mary, mother of God, Janson. This extraction was for one. This craft can’t seat another person. Dammit, we’re already at the limit of our fuel capacity. We can’t take another hundred pounds of cargo without running out of fuel before we reach the landing zone. That’s how fine the tolerances are.”
“I understand.”
“You should. It was your plan, bejaysus. So give me an alternative LZ.”
Janson shook his head. “There’s no place nearer that’s safe, or it wouldn’t be an alternative.”
“And what does your plan call for now?” the Irishman demanded.
“I’ll stay behind,” Janson said. “There’s enough fuel in the RIB to get me to Sri Lanka.” Hennessy looked incredulous, and Janson added, “Using reduced speed, and taking advantage of the currents. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
“Sri Lanka’s not safe. You said so yourself, be the holy.”
“Not safe for Novak is what I said. I’ll make do. I’ve prepared contingency plans, in case something like this came up.” He was only half bluffing. The plan he had specified would work, but it was not an eventuality he had foreseen.
Now Donna Hedderman, gasping and sputtering, was brought on board the aircraft. Her face was flushed, her clothes drenched from the spray of the ocean.
“Mr. Janson?” The Hungarian’s voice was reedy and clear, even through the pulsing rumble of the nacelles. “You’re a very brave man. You humble me, and I’m not easily humbled.” He clasped Janson’s upper arm. “I won’t forget this.”
Janson bowed his head, then looked straight into Peter Novak’s brown eyes. “Please do. In fact, I’m going to have to ask you to do so, for reasons of my security, and that of my team.” It was the professional response. And Janson was a professional.
A long pause. “You’re a good man,” the humanitarian said. Katsaris helped Peter Novak up the ramp and into the aircraft and then walked back down it.
The Greek’s face was stern as he faced Janson. “I stay. You go.”
“No, my friend,” Janson said.
“Please,” Katsaris said. “You’re needed there. Mission control, yes? In case things go wrong.”
“Nothing can go wrong at this point,” Janson said. “Novak’s in capable hands.”
“A hundred miles on the open sea in an inflatable boat—that’s no joke,” Katsaris said stonily.
“You’re saying I’m too old for a little sailing?”
Katsaris shook his head, unsmiling. “Please, Paul. I should be the one.” His black hair gleamed in the dawn light.
“Goddammit, no!” Janson said, in a burst of anger. “My call, my screwup, my foul. No member of my team takes a risk that should be mine. This conversation is over.” It was a point of pride—of what passed for manhood or honor in the shadowy world of secret ops. Katsaris swallowed hard, and did as he was instructed. But he could not erase the worry from his face.
Janson downshifted the RIB’s motor: fuel efficiency would be increased at a more moderate speed. Next he verified his direction with the compass on his watch face.
It would take him three or four hours to reach the coastal plains of southeastern Sri Lanka. There, he had a contact who could put him on a fast lorry to Colombo International Airport, assuming that the place wasn’t in the hands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam again. It wasn’t the ideal; only, once again, the best of the available alternatives.
He watched the small turquoise-bodied aircraft rise into the air, describing something like a ziggurat pattern as it started its ascent to an altitude suited to extended flight, taking advantage of the prevailing winds for the long trip to Katchall.
The early-morning sky was now a beautiful azure, almost matching the resin skin of the rotorcraft, and Janson was filled with a sense of growing calm and relief as the craft glided through the sky.
He allowed himself a brief moment of pride. It had been a triumph against nearly impossible odds. Peter Novak was free. The murderous fanatics would be bereft of their glorious captive and would have gained nothing but humiliation. Janson leaned back in the boat and watched as the aircraft rose a little higher, its threeaxis movement making it look almost like a thing of nature, a darting insect.
In the small boat, the approach toward the coastal plains of Sri Lanka would call for some care on his part; there were sometimes unexpected sandbars that made things treacherous. But from Colombo, there was a direct flight to Bombay, and from there the return stateside would be straightforward. He had committed Márta Lang’s private telephone number to memory, and so had Katsaris; it would reach her wherever she was. Though the RIB lacked the requisite telecommunications, he knew that Katsaris would assume command. In a few minutes, Katsaris would notify Novak’s deputy that the mission had been accomplished. It was a call that Janson had hoped to be able to make, but Katsaris had every bit as much a right to it: he had been extraordinary, and absolutely integral to the long-odds triumph.
If Janson knew the Liberty Foundation, they would probably have assembled an aerial flotilla by the time the BA609 had returned to Katchall. Janson continued to watch as the aircraft climbed, soaring and magnificent.
And then—no! it couldn’t be, it had to be a trick of the light!—he saw the flash, the dazzling, fiery blast and plume of a midair explosion. A pulse of white bleached the early-morning sky, followed immediately by a vast secondary flare, the yellow-white of combusted fuel. Small pieces of fuselage began to drift toward the sea.
No! Oh, Christ, no!
For several long seconds, Janson felt perfectly numb. He closed his eyes and reopened them: Had he imagined it?
A detached propeller twirled lazily before it crashed into the sea.
Oh, dear God.
It was a catastrophe such as none he had ever witnessed. At once, his heart felt squeezed, hard, harder. Theo. Theo Katsaris, the closest thing he had to a son. A man who loved him, and whom he loved. “Let me stay behind,” Theo had begged him, and—out of vanity, out of pride—Janson had refused him.
Dead. Incinerated before his eyes.
In a kaleidoscope, he saw the faces of the others. Taciturn, even-tempered Manuel Honwana. Andressen: loyal, methodical, reliable, soft-spoken—easily underestimated precisely because he was so devoid of selfregard. Sean Hennessy, whom he had spirited out of an English prison cell, only to serve with a death sentence. Donna Hedderman, too—the luckless
American do-gooder.
Gone. Dead because of him.
And Peter Novak. The greatest humanitarian of a new century. A giant among men. The peacemaker. A man who had once saved Janson’s life. And the object of the entire mission.
Dead.
Cremated, three thousand feet above the Indian Ocean.
An incredible triumph had turned, now that day broke, into a nightmare.
All he knew was that it was no accident, no engine malfunction. The double explosion—the blast that preceded, by a few crucial seconds, the burst of combusted fuel—was telltale. What had occurred was the result of craft and design. Such craft and design that four of the best men he knew had been murdered, along with one of the best men anybody had ever known.
What the hell had happened? Who could have planned such a thing? When had the plans been laid?
And why? For God’s sakes, why?
Janson sagged to the floor of the RIB, paralyzed by grief, futility, rage; for a moment, in the open sea, he felt as if he were in a crypt, with a heavy weight on his chest. Breathing was impossible. The very blood that sluiced through his veins seemed to congeal. The heaving sea beckoned, with its antidote of everlasting oblivion. He was harrowed, tormented, and deeply afraid, and he knew just how to put a stop to it.
But that was not an option.
He would have given his life for any of theirs. He knew that now.
But that was not an option.
Only he survived.
And in some calculating part of his mind, a clockwork mechanism spooled with a hard, icy rage. He had taken arms against a compound of fanatics, only to succumb to something far more diabolical. Outrage infused his soul with a near cryogenic frost. Emotions like despondency and grief had to give way before a larger emotion, an absolute and unyielding thirst for justice, and it was that emotion that commanded him not to succumb to the other emotions. He was the one left alive—left to find out what had just happened.