Chapter Ten
9:22 p.m.
"It's very simple," Ramirez said to Jean-Paul Moreau. After the phone call, he had sent Mannheim to the Bates Motel and returned to Launch. Let Washington stew awhile. They were probably now trying to figure out how to get their antiterrorist units into Greece. Their nightmare logistics would be fun to watch. "We have to find them. And get him. Alive if possible, but we can't be fussy. The time to do it will be just after midnight, when we're finished here."
Moreau disagreed. "I'd say the sooner the better. The longer they're free, the more problems they can cause." Crossing Ramirez was not something to be done lightly, but he felt strongly that the operation was not going as smoothly as it should have. It was time for a little damage control.
"Well, he's probably back on the mountain," Ramirez said calmly. "If you want to, then go on up and get him. Take the RPG-7; it's light. But be careful you don't damage anything."
He was right about the weight. At slightly over ten kilos, the RPG-7 was one of the best bangs-for-the-ounce around. It was a guerrilla special, a Soviet-designed 40mm launcher that loosed a rocket with an oversize hollow-charge rocket-warhead 85mm in diameter. Fired from the shoulder, it was deadly against lightly armored vehicles and structures. Used on personnel, it was lethal. They had brought along a Pakistani clone of the latest Soviet model, a two-piece version that was easy to move about, yet assembled quickly.
"But remember," Ramirez went on, "so far all we have to show for trying to take out this nuisance is a wrecked helo. Don't botch it again."
"That was because you left the work to German amateurs," Moreau remarked dryly. "This time I'll take care of it myself. Personally."
"I'm counting on that," Ramirez said, his eyes expressionless behind his gray shades.
9:43 p.m.
"We'll be working together, kid," Dore Peretz was saying. "We're a team." He swept back his mane of salt-and-pepper hair, then moved next to Georges LeFarge. The young engineer didn't like anything about the Israeli, right down to the cheap aftershave he was wearing, but he had to admit the guy seemed unfazed by all the hardware that controlled Big Benny, the Fujitsu supercomputer.
It was a correct assessment. Dore Peretz was definitely in his element. He had taken his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1984, then returned to Israel to accept a high-paying research job at the Weizman Institute, Israel's top- secret nuclear facility near Tel Aviv. During the next seven years he had advanced to the level of senior institute scientist, becoming an expert in every technology connected with nuclear weapons.
From the specialty of mass destruction he graduated to another hot topic—the emerging preeminence of smart weapons. Conventional delivery technologies, the war in the Gulf had shown, were no match for the new "smart" antimissile systems. It was back to the drawing board. What Israel needed in her arsenal was the next generation of weaponry.
He had gone on to head up a research team that played computerized war games, studying the "what ifs" of whole new generations of technologies matched against each other. The end result of this fascination was that he became a computer and missile-guidance expert—which, when added to his knowledge of nuclear weapons, made him a double-threat man.
It also made him perfect for what Sabri Ramirez wanted to do.
When Ramirez found him, he already had departed the institute, and also for reasons that suited Ramirez perfectly. Whereas Dore Peretz had an IQ off the scale, his social development was considered—even by those who tried to like him—as scarcely progressed beyond the infantile. His was an independent . . . make that irreverent . . . temperament that was bound to clash with the bureaucracy of a straitlaced place like the institute. He had particular trouble fitting in with the deadly-serious, high-security environment that surrounded military contract research. The problem had been obvious from the first day he arrived, but his genius was such that it had been overlooked and worked around by both sides. His final rupture with the Israeli defense establishment resulted from what—to his mind—was a totally compelling event.
He had personally developed a computer-assist program that provided special procedures for the quick arming of a nuclear device in case Israel found itself facing an imminent attack. It was important, and it worked.
He had expected, reasonably enough, a rousing financial tribute for this effort, or at the very least a citation. What he got instead was screwed. When the yearly Summary of Technical Research arrived on his desk January last, he discovered the computer program had been "created" by the vice president in charge of his section, with the "assistance" of someone named Dr. D. Peretz.
A reaming by an incompetent bureaucrat whom he had hated from the beginning was the last straw. He resigned in traditional style, papering the institute with a fusillade of memos that reviewed in detail the failings of its top management and then for good measure scrambling the electronic combination on his personal safe as he was readying to walk out the door.
At that point he did not know what he wanted to do next, but he was damned sure it would not involve further interaction with a bureaucracy.
Being no dummy, he also fully anticipated the response to his outrage. And sure enough, he found he had transformed himself into a high-profile security risk that Mossad suddenly found very interesting. Israel's intelligence service remembered all too well the case of Mordecai Vanunu, the thirty-one-year-old technician who had worked at the plutonium separation facility at the Dimona complex for nine years, then left in a huff and sold pictures and a detailed description of the facility to the London Sunday Times. Mossad had no intention of letting it happen again.
Dore Peretz was interrogated for weeks, threatened repeatedly, then placed under close surveillance. They had no grounds to arrest him, but they were going to intimidate the hell out of him.
Their harassment, however, achieved precisely the opposite effect. They galvanized his anger. In a degree of soul searching quite foreign to his normal mental activity, he found himself wondering why he owed Israel such allegiance in the first place. This was their thanks for all his service.
So why not give it back to the bastards, in spades? He became a "scientific adviser" to the PLO.
That only confirmed Mossad's fears and intensified their harassment: his phone was tapped, his mail opened, his stylish Tel Aviv apartment repeatedly and blatantly searched in his absence. The overall effect was cumulative, rendering him an ever-more-vociferous critic of Israel's conservative coalition government.
It was at this time, when his name was being linked to the PLO, that Sabri Ramirez got wind of him and knew he had found a gold mine—a disaffected, activist Israeli nuclear and rocket expert looking for a cause. He sounded perfect, and he was. Ramirez approached him at a demonstration supporting a Palestinian homeland, and made him an offer he could not refuse. How would he like to get rich? He would not need to betray his country, merely lend his skills to help teach the Americans a lesson.
Fuck Israel, he had declared. Then in a lower voice he had added—come to that, fuck the Palestinians, who were basically a pain in the ass. Acquiring personal wealth was a much more inspiring cause. He could not get work in Israel, any kind of work, and he was fast running through his savings.
Ramirez advanced him thirty thousand American dollars on the spot, in crisp hundreds. He immediately dropped his PLO affiliation and began lowering his profile—much to Mossad's relief. Their surveillance eased up as they gratefully turned to more pressing matters, and four months later he took advantage of his new freedom to slip into Jordan one night and from there make his way, a week later, to Beirut. It was in that ravaged city that he and Sabri Ramirez worked out the technical details of the plan.
. . . Which thus far had gone perfectly.
"We'll be modifying the payload," he announced, turning to the keyboard. “Therefore the weight will be different, so we'll have to factor that into the SORT program on the Fujitsu and run it again."
br />
Shit, LeFarge thought, he knows about SORT. Which probably means he knows everything he needs to make VX-1 fly.
9:45 p.m.
"I have a question," Michael Vance was saying. They were still resting on the hill, and he felt himself fighting back waves of exhaustion. "Could they get that vehicle down there off the ground without you being in Command?"
"I hate to admit it"—Calypso Andros exhaled ruefully and leaned back against the tree—"but they probably could. We've already had a final test of the power-up, everything. The Fujitsu has all the controls set. There's nothing left to do except initiate the launch routine and then let the computer take over."
"So Bill was about to be rich." He grinned, then picked up a small white stone and flung it down the hill. "He might even have been able to pay off our bet. If I'd won."
"What bet was that?"
"Long ago and in another country." He shrugged, hardly caring anymore. "It was a damned stupid stunt. We had a sailor's bet, and I lost. As it happens, your new guests here pitched in to help. But those are the breaks."
"Well, let's talk about the real world." She seemed scarcely to hear what he had said. Or maybe she wasn't interested. Vance sensed she was trying to feign normality, adopting a facade that denied the horror of watching her young technician being shot dead. "Do you think they're going to kill anybody else?"
What should I say? he wondered. Feed her a comforting lie, or tell her the truth? He looked her over and decided on the latter.
"Hate to say it, but if it's really Ramirez, he'll kill anybody he vaguely feels like. I saw him hit a U.S. frigate with a Swatter. You've got to call that mass murder. A ton of casualties, and for no good reason. He caught himself before he said more, the memory still chilling. "Then again, I'd guess he's not going to take out anybody important or technically crucial, at least for now. Which should include Bates and Mannheim. He's got to be figuring he can use the big names for headlines and leverage, if he needs it."
"I can't believe that the U.S. isn't going to send in the Marines, especially when they find out he's got a bomb."
"Don't get your hopes up. There are a couple of problems with that. The first is that they may not be allowed on Greek soil, and even if they are, it could take several days for them to mount an operation."
"That's one." She looked at him. "What's the other?"
"The other is that if the U.S. should decide to mount an assault, it could well turn into a bloodbath. I'm almost wishing they don't. Delta Force and the SEALs are well trained, but as far as anybody knows, they've never been used to carry out a straight hostage-rescue. They'd probably come in here like John Wayne and tear this place apart. I don't even want to think about the carnage." His voice trailed off. “Take it from me. The people ARM is sending in are better suited for the job at hand. They also can deploy a lot quicker than the U.S. government."
"Well, somebody better come. And soon." She had caught a strand of her tangled hair and was twisting it, distractedly making the tangle worse. "What do you think these thugs really want?"
"I'd guess money's part of the package. But since Ramirez doesn't seem to be trying to extort SatCom, at least not yet, he probably has something bigger in mind." He slowly turned to her. “Tell me something. These vehicles are intended to go into orbit, right? But what if one didn't make it." He had a sudden thought. "Or what if one of them did make it, and then the orbital trajectory got altered somehow? Retrofire and reentry. You could set it down pretty much where you wanted, couldn't you?"
She stared at him uncertainly. "What are you suggesting?"
"That there are two ways to play this. Somebody could use these vehicles to deliver a bomb someplace. Or they could be used to put a bomb into orbit, to be delivered later." He leaned back. "Am I right or not?"
Her eyes darkened, and she suddenly found herself sorry she had ever come back to Greece. For this. Then she caught herself and answered him. "I suppose either one is possible. The reentry trajectory is precisely controlled. In fact, we power it down, more or less like the space shuttle."
"And the whole thing can be done within an hour or so, right? That is, once it's in orbit."
"A low-earth insertion means a full orbit of about ninety minutes for a satellite." She was thinking. "If the vehicle itself stays in orbit, then—"
"Everything would still be controlled from down here, correct?"
"We beam power up to the vehicle using the Cyclops.
That's the whole idea." She was thinking. "What you're saying is, once they get a vehicle, and a bomb, into orbit, they've got a loaded gun pointed at any place they choose."
"Doesn't that sound like the worst-case scenario?"
"They'll never pull it off." It was more a hope than a statement of fact.
"How are you going to stop them? If Ramirez thinks you're not cooperating, then all he has to do is start killing more of your staff until you do." He looked down the hill, where the facility was now dark except for the yellow sodium lights around the storage sheds and the blaze of floods that illuminated the two vehicles. "But I definitely think they're going to try some kind of launch. You said they're being very careful not to disturb anything. So what are the possibilities?"
"The easiest thing would be not to bother putting it into orbit at all," she answered after a moment. "In fact, Number One or Sabri Ramirez or whoever he is had Georges running some trajectory aborts. It all fits."
"Also, you've got two vehicles, and that box had enough detonators for several bombs. So, say they had two nuclear devices? They use the first one as a small demo, to prove they're serious. Sort of like we did on Hiroshima. And hold the second one in reserve. For more blackmail." He reached up and touched the bark of the tree above. "But any way you look at it, they seem to be dead serious about delivering a nuke somewhere. Where?"
"You know, there's a U.S. base not far from here."
"Souda Bay?"
"It's on Crete."
"So close they probably couldn't miss." He thought about it. "Taking out that base could decimate the U.S. Sixth Fleet. It would be a very attention-getting demonstration. Think they could really do it?"
"Crete would just be a short hop for VX-1."
"It's easy and it's a nightmare. Sounds pretty good for . . . uh-oh." He pointed down. Moving through the shadows at the far edge of the facility, past the bright circles cast by the sodium lights, was a group of black figures. "Guess it had to happen."
9:46 p.m.
"But I'm still finishing the trajectory-default analysis I was supposed to do," LeFarge said to Dore Peretz, hoping he could stall. "I'm only half—"
"I'm telling you to abort those runs." The truth, Peretz reflected, was that Ramirez had jumped the gun on the trajectory analysis. Maybe he just wanted to keep this computer jockey busy, or maybe he didn't understand the technical side of things well enough. In any case, it had to be redone since the crucial payload parameters were going to be new, a substantial weight differential that would impact the power input controls. "Kill what you're doing and let me see what you've got so far. If you're on the right track, then we'll do a quick rerun with revised numbers."
LeFarge grimaced, then turned back to the keyboard and gave the order to abort, directing the output to the battery of printers. The quiet hum of zipping lasers began, barely audible above the ambient noise of the room. When the first printer finished, Peretz ripped out the stack of paper and began looking it over.
"All right." He nodded with satisfaction. "This is enough. The power inputs"—he pointed—"right here, will need to be reentered to conform to the altered weight coefficients of the new payload. I'll have to get them."
He turned away and clicked on his black Kenwood walkie-talkie. Moments later he was asking somebody some technical questions. He then waited, humming to himself, while the answers were procured. Finally he nodded and jotted them down on the bottom of the printout.
"Got it. You double-verified, right? Okay. Ten-f
our." He clicked off the handset and looked up. "All fixed." He walked back and laid down the paper on LeFarge's desk. "Okay, start over and run it with these."
Georges looked at the numbers. The new payload was 98.3 kilograms. There it was. What now?
He knew the answer. He had no choice but to give Peretz what he wanted. He had planned to make some changes in SORT that would screw up the whole launch routine, but now, with the Israeli looking over his shoulder, that was going to be impossible. This creep knew exactly how the program worked. He probably could spot any changes a mile away.
Cally, Cally, where are you? Are you okay? Are you getting help? Let me know where you are, at least. I can't stop these guys all by myself.
He sighed, tugged at his wisp of beard, and called up the data input file for SORT. Then he began inserting the new parameters. Around Command the other staffers were perfunctorily carrying out housekeeping chores at their workstations, the routine checks and runs they did every day. LeFarge suspected the stakes had just been raised, but he had no idea what they were.
9:48 p.m.
She looked down. "Where? I don't see anything."
"Over there. By the side of the sheds. There's a saying: in the darkness, only the shadows move. See them?" He rose and looked around. "Guess we'd better start thinking up a plan here."
Although trees shielded the base of the mountain, the top had been cleared and flattened to accommodate the battery of antennas. The only possible protection was a low cinderblock structure on the side nearest the facility.
"You're right," she said finally, squinting. "I do think I see something. Yes. They look like they're headed our way. Toward the trees and then right up the hill. Oh, shit."
The sight made something click in her head, and her fear turned again to anger. Terrorists, she knew, always planned to wear down their captives, make them pliable. She wasn't going to let it happen.
"Looks like three or maybe four." Who needed this? he sighed to himself. "Uh-oh, I think I see something else. They're carrying something with them and I don't like the looks of what I think it is."
As he stared down, he was wondering: How would they choose to try and take the mountain? A direct assault? A two- pronged pincer? Or would they use some other technique? And what were they carrying? Some of the hardware they'd brought in the Hind?
"At least we've got the high ground," he continued finally, trying to think through the odds. "Let's hope that counts for something. It's mostly open, so we can see them." Then he reflected on the downside. "But they can see us if we make a run for the top of the hill. It's too far. So there's not much we can do except just wait. The one little Uzi isn't going to do much good."
"Let's think a minute," she said, turning and looking up the hill. 'They're about to pass through the trees down there, which should give us enough time to get to the blockhouse. . . ." She pointed. There at the dark crest was the cinderblock emplacement that housed the on-site operation controls for the radars. "Let's go up there. I've just had an idea."
"I'm game." He nodded, feeling his adrenaline starting to build again. "Standing here is not going to do anything for us."
It was a quick climb, through the slivers of granite outcropping that cut their way out of the shallow soil. When they reached the cinderblock structure, she punched in a security code on the keypad beside its black steel door and shoved it open. "If they haven't shut down the terminal in here yet, maybe I can get Georges on the computer net. He can shunt over control of those servomechanisms up there and then . . ."
He followed her inside. As he did, fluorescent lights clicked on to reveal an array of radar screens and a main computer terminal. "Hey, can we kill the beacon?" He frowned. "Whatever you're planning better be doable in the dark."
"No problem." She activated the terminal, then pointed toward the door. "The light switch is right there. Think you can handle it?"
He clicked it off and let the wisecrack pass. Then he turned back. "Now what?"
"God, I've never had anybody coming to kill me. The stories are right. It really does concentrate the mind." She began typing on the keyboard. "I had a thought. We're networked into the Fujitsu from all over the facility with LAN, so—"
"And that's computer lingo for a local-area network, or something."
"Right." She nodded. "At one point we had to hook all the workstations together, for a special test. Part of this area was connected into the network, so we could do some of the work from up here, but we always kept the larger servomechanisms on the main system, for safety reasons. Georges set it all up so everything has to be operated from down there, where the power drain can be monitored. Right now I need to get hold of him and have him do some things."
She was still typing. And then she got what she wanted.
9:51 p.m.
. . . HELLO, SOHO. BLUEBIRD NEEDS A FAVOR. CAN YOU SWITCH ON THE SERVOS?
LeFarge stared at the screen, not believing his eyes. Cally was on the LAN. A window had appeared at the lower right- hand of his screen, and her terminal ID was . . . terrific, it was the blockhouse up the hill.
He slipped a glance at Peretz, standing over by the water cooler, then quickly typed in an acknowledgment.
SOHO NEVER LETS BLUEBIRD DOWN
Then came the specific directions. She was asking him to switch control of the servos for Radar One over to her terminal. What was she doing? The radars were always controlled by Big Benny, the Fujitsu here in Command. He grimaced. Switching the big radar over to her workstation was a tall order. And the Israeli bastard was waiting for his SORT run. So now the trick was to try to do both things at once.
He split the screen and went to work.
9:52 p.m.
"Georges is a genius," she said, turning back, "but this may not actually be possible. Nobody's ever done it before."
"Whatever you're planning had better be possible or we've got to begin thinking up a Plan B, and quick." He was staring out the open door. "Because our new friends are definitely on their way and ready for a close encounter."
"Georges has got to hook this terminal directly to the Fujitsu—which isn't how we normally use it—and then give me control of the routine that runs the servos. In effect he has to put them on manual."
"Don't think you're going to manage it in time," he said. He was thinking this was no time to get experimental, but he decided to keep the thought to himself. Instead he nervously checked the Uzi. Three rounds were left in the last remaining clip. He regretted all the random firing he had done over the last few hours. Now every round had to be hoarded as though it were the last. On the other hand, maybe he was lucky just to have the damned Uzi at all, along with the few puny rounds left. The trick now was to try not to have to use them.
Down below them the four black figures had already moved past the helicopter landing pad and were about to be swallowed up in the copse of trees that began at the base of the hill. But now a sliver of moon had appeared from behind a bank of clouds in the east, casting an eerie pale glow onto the scene. He found himself deeply wishing for an IR scope, which would be a great help, bring them right up.
"I just lost them in the trees," he said, turning back. "Which means we've got about five minutes left for whatever you've got in mind."
"Trust me." She was still typing. 'This workstation just logged onto the big system, so the main servo program is now accessible from here. Georges, I love you. Now all I have to do is try and override the internal checks that go through the Fujitsu down in Command."
Vance was staring, not quite sure what he was expected to say. "Then what?"
"Hopefully it's a surprise," she laughed, a trifle grimly.”Just be quiet and let me work." Then her voice swelled with anger. "The bastards. This is going to be a pleasure. After what they did to Chris, maybe I'll get to return the favor."
Vance started to say something, but stopped when he noticed the first signs of motion at the edge of the copse of brush. The killers were emerging,
and the sight gave him a chill. They're the hunters and we're the quarry, he thought, it's going to be like a giant turkey-shoot, played with automatics.
"You know . . ." He turned back. '”here's still time for you to give yourself up. They'd probably rather have you live anyway. You could do the white-flag thing and I could use the confusion to try and make it into the brush down here, toward the shore. Those guys are carrying something that looks suspiciously like heavy weaponry. But that's a riddle we don't want to solve empirically."
"Look, trust me," she shot back. "I know what I'm doing . . . I think. Don't you have any faith?"
"We may not know each other well enough to be having his conversation."
"As a matter of fact, you're exactly right." She hurriedly finished typing. "Okay, Georges has the control set up now and we're on line. Hang on."
She reached down to flip a large red switch on the side of he console. Immediately one of the large green cathode-ray tubes began to glow. What it showed, however, was not the usual sweeping line going round and round. Instead it displayed the crisp outline of the VX-1 space vehicle at the other end of the island. Next she flipped another switch, then reached for a mouse that was connected to the keyboard. She zipped it across, and the focus of the radar picture changed, almost as though it were a zoom lens. The image of the vehicle became larger and smaller. He realized the radar could be focused.
Then she called in another routine.
"I'm going to cut the power for a second, take it down cross the facility and onto the base of the mountain, and then I'll power up again."
He watched as the outline of the island, in exquisite detail, swept over the screen.
"I thought this thing was only for transmission. How can it be sending back images?"
“There's the phased-array section for powering the vehicle with microwaves—that's part of the Cyclops—but we also have to have a guidance section, for keeping the beam on track. The Cyclops is the gun, but the guidance radar here is what we use to aim it." She was concentrating on the screen "Now, where do you think our friends are down there?"
'They're probably halfway up the hill by now."
"Let's take a look." She brought down the focus, then began scanning.
"Hold on." He stayed her hand, bringing the mouse to halt, and then pointing to the lower left corner of the large screen. "Didn't something move just then, right there?"
"Where?"
There." He took the mouse and guided the image to center screen. "Where is that in the real world? It's got to be close."
She zipped the mouse again, bringing up the detail. A number scrolled at the bottom of the screen. "Four hundred meters, to be exact."
9:59 p.m.
As Moreau emerged from the last copse of cypress, he scanned the mountain, towering upward in the moonlit night, and wondered where the bastard would be holed up. There was one obvious place—in the cinderblock control house.
Yeah, ten to one that's where he had to be. The guy was stupid, riding a lucky streak. It was over.
On the other hand, he thought, there's no reason not to take this slow. Just in case. The fucker wasn't that stupid.
He looked down as a limb of thorny bramble caught his black trousers, tearing a hole near the knee. "Je m'en fiche!”
Although he lived by terrorism, Jean-Paul was a confirmed denizen of Paris's rive gauche and he had little use for roughing it here on this godforsaken island in the bowels of the Aegean. Who needed it? On the other hand, tonight's expedition promised some diversion. It was always a pleasure to take out some jerk who was specializing in making a bloody nuisance of himself. If he could assassinate the chairman of Renault, he figured, he could handle this asshole guard.
Moreau had brought along Stelios Tritsis, reasoning that a native Greek could best guide them up this rugged mountain, but he also had Helling's two Stasi fuck-ups. Merde! What a lousy idea it had been to include them in the first place. Ramirez had lost sight of his better judgment.
He looked back to check them over. They were carrying he RPG-7, as ordered, but he doubted they had the slightest idea how it was fired. Though possibly they were teachable retardates.
He revolved and stared up the mountain, wondering whether the blockhouse contained any technical apparatus that he had to be wary of. Maybe, he thought, I'd better just use a stun grenade. . . . What was that? He checked through the IR scope of his Kalashnikov just to be sure: one of the giant radar dishes was turning.
What in hell did that mean?
Then he caught a flicker of light from the blockhouse. So he bastard was in there. But was he trying to pull something?
Okay, time to get serious. The place is well away from the radars and antennas. So just send a stun grenade through the door and take out the fucker's eardrums. No frags: no muss, no fuss. Then clean up the place at leisure.
He motioned for Schindler and Maier to bring up the launcher.
10:01 p.m.
"What are you doing?" Peretz asked. He sensed the lad at he terminal was up to something because he'd split the screen and was typing in a second batch of commands on the lower half.
CC to Ian NET.RAD
"Just some systems cleanup." LeFarge tried to lie as convincingly as he knew how.
EXPN to JRAD
"Better not try to bullshit me, pal. It could be very unhealthy."
LeFarge was already aware of that. But he kept on typing trying to look as casual as he could. Almost, almost there.
10:02 P.M.
"The bastard is in the blockhouse. There." Moreau motioned for the first German Stasi, Schindler. "But get a move on. He may be up to something."
With Moreau directing them, they quickly slipped the two sections of the launcher together to form a single tube approximately a meter and a half in length. The rocket grenade on the forward end looked like a round arrowhead while the back was flared to dissipate the exhaust gases. The sight and rangefinder occupied the center, and just in front of that was the handgrip and trigger.
When they had finished, he checked it over, then surveyed the mountain, where the heavy servomechanisms controlling the radars continued to rotate.
Wait a minute, he told himself with a sudden chill in his groin. Something's wrong. He's tilting the radar dishes down.
Mon Dieu!
"Get ready."
10:03 P.M.
"We just ran out of time," Vance said, slamming the door shut. "Looks like they've got a grenade launcher. If they can manage to blast through this door, it's going to ruin our day once and for all."
"Georges is still on-line, and I'm turning the servos as fast as I can." Her voice betrayed the strain.
"Well, get on with it. They're setting up to fire. I'd guess you've got about thirty seconds to pull off this miracle of yours."
"I think a hundred and sixty degrees will do it," she said, her voice now deceptively mechanical, all business. Suddenly he could envision her running this facility and barking orders right and left. "We're at one-twenty now. I just don't know if I can focus it in time. Georges always handled this."
She was tapping on the keyboard, some message to LeFarge. A cryptic reply appeared on the screen, next to what appeared to Vance to be computer garbage. Then the motion of the giant servomechanisms seemed to pick up speed. The radar antennas were swiveling around, and down.
"We're almost ready. Let me get Georges to transfer the power controls to full manual."
"Christ!" He cocked his Uzi.
"Look," she exploded. "I'm doing my part. How about you doing yours? Slow them down."
"I don't want to waste any rounds until it's absolutely necessary."
But it looked like that time had come. He opened the door again and stepped through. Down below, the moon glistened on the rocks, and one of the gunmen was aiming a grenade launcher. "How long—?"
"Just a couple more seconds now. . . ."
"It's now or never." He took careful aim on the man holding the launcher. "I'm goin
g to count to five."
That was when he heard her say, "Got it."
10:04 p.m.
"All right," Moreau barked, "fire on three."
Schindler had just finished fine-adjusting the crosshairs, the rangefinder portion of the complex optical sight. With inflight stability for the rocket provided by tail fins that folded out after launch, the RPG-7 had a 500-meter range against static targets. Though a crosswind could affect the accuracy, tonight, thankfully, there was none. This one couldn't miss, if there wasn't a sudden gust.
He tested the trigger confidently, sights on the open doorway, and hoped Moreau was right when he claimed the concussion grenade would render anybody inside totally incapacitated.
His eyes on the target, he failed to notice a flashing green light that had just clicked on next to the main antenna up above, atop the mountain. . . .
. . . When jet fighters are launched from carriers, it is standard practice to turn off an aircraft's radars until the planes are airborne, the reason being that the energy in the intense electromagnetic radiation can literally knock a man flat with an invisible wave. Memorable things happened to the eyes and ears. In this case, however, the radar could have no such total effect, since the random clumps of trees down the hill scattered and diffused the energy. It was, however, one of the most powerful radars on earth. . . .
10:05 p.m.
Vance watched as something hit the men below, something that seemed like a giant, invisible mallet. They stumbled backward, while a grenade rocketed harmlessly into the night sky.
"Congratulations." He lowered his Uzi. "I'm impressed. I think our new friends down there are, too. Yep, you made a very definite impression. Now, how about leaving that thing on long enough for us to get out of here and back up the hill? Maybe just fry the bastards for a while."
"How does eight minutes sound to you?"
"Should be time enough for us to scurry back down the rabbit hole. Maybe take a moonlight swim in a tunnel." He was liking her more and more all the time. Not a bad piece of work.
"I'll tell Georges to cut the power in eight," she said.
Then she added, "Look, why don't we head for the hotel. You look bushed."
"You mean go down to the Bates Motel?" I'm being invited to a motel by this woman? He smiled. I must be dreaming.
"We can cut around by the shore. That's probably the last place anybody is going to look for us now."
"Sounds good." It did. He was dead tired and hungry. Tomorrow was going to be a long, long day.
"The other reason I want to go down is to try and find Isaac," she added.
"The half-cracked professor?"
"Well, he only seems that way. Behind all those eccentricities is a mind you wouldn't believe. But whatever we find, I think we both need to knock off for a while and get recharged."
"Let's give it a try. I think everybody's brain, and nerves, could use a breather. I know mine could."
"We're out of here." She was already typing instructions into the keyboard.