Project Cyclops

  Chapter Eleven

  9:15 p.m.

  Fayette-Nam—as they called Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the 1960s—hosts the largest army base in the world: Fort Bragg, home of the XVIII Airborne Corps. Breaking the mo­notony of the harsh red Carolina clay around it, the town sports a variety of go-go bars, honkytonks, and tattoo parlors to refresh and spiritually solace the base's hundred thousand personnel. Known far and wide as a "macho post," Fort Bragg houses front-line units ready to mobilize on a moment's no­tice. During the Persian Gulf crisis, they were among the first to ship.

  The post deserves its macho reputation for a number of reasons, not the least being a highly classified square-mile compound, referred to locally as the Ranch, that nestles in a remote and secure corner of its sprawling 135,000 acres. There, protected by a twelve-foot-high fence, with armed guards and video cameras along the perimeter, is the nerve center for Delta Force, America's primary answer to terror­ism. Now part of the Joint Special Operations Command—informally known as "jay-soc"—Delta Force is the pick of the U.S. Special Forces, a unit of some seventy men specifically organized, equipped, and trained to take down terrorist situa­tions. Of course, Delta Force formally does not exist—"The only Delta we know about is the airline," goes the official quip.

  Although they rarely have an opportunity to display their capability, Delta personnel practice free-fall parachute jumps from thirty thousand feet, assault tactics on aircraft using live ammo and "hostages," high-tech demolitions, scuba inser­tions, free-climbing techniques on buildings and rock faces— all the skills needed to take terrorists by surprise, neutralize them, and rescue hostages. The leadership of this nonexistent organization occupies a large windowless concrete building topped by a fifty-foot communications bubble—which recently replaced Delta's former shabby quarters in the old Fort Bragg stockade.

  Since the late 1980s, Delta Force has been led by Major General Eric Nichols, a fifty-three-year-old Special Forces veteran of Vietnam who holds an advanced degree in nuclear engineering. He is short—barely five feet ten—with darting gray eyes and an old scar down his left cheek. He also moves with the deftness of a large cat. Like his hand-picked men, he is highly intelligent, physically honed to perfection, and pos­sessed of a powerful survival instinct. His only weakness is a taste for Cuban cigars, which he satisfies with Montecristos smuggled to him by resistance forces on the island—acquain­tances whose identity no conceivable amount of torture could extract.

  When Nichols breached the open doorway of the new officers' lounge, those in attendance were deep in a cosmic game of five-card stud, with two—Lieutenant Manny Jackson and Captain Philip Sexton—particularly engrossed, hoping desperately that the hand they now had in play would some­how miraculously recoup their staggering losses for the eve­ning. He paused a moment, involuntarily, and surveyed the men, feeling a surge of pride, as always, in the way they carried themselves. A bearing that in others might have seemed arrogance on them only affirmed their competent self-assurance.

  And why not? Usually fewer than half a dozen volunteers finished out of a class of fifty: a lightweight like Chuck Norris wouldn't stand a chance. Mostly in their early thirties, with the powerful shoulders of bodybuilders, the "shooters" of Delta Force did not resemble run-of-the-mill service types. For one thing, since they had to be ready for a clandestine op at a moment's notice, they deliberately looked as unmilitary as possible, right down to their shaggy civilian haircuts. Al­though they wore olive-drab one-piece jumpsuits during daily training, here—informally "off the Ranch"—it was sports shirts, tattered jeans, and sneakers.

  Naturally he noticed the poker game—bending the regs was, after all, Delta Force's modus operandi—and he just as routinely suppressed a smile. He simply wouldn't "see" it.

  But with the monetary stakes he counted on the table, he realized that his news could not have come at a worse time. On the other hand, legitimate ops were few and far between, and they were always eager for action. Some real excitement, at last. He knew every man in the vinyl-trimmed gray room would feel a rush of adrenaline.

  He took a deep breath and broke up the party.

  "Heads up, you screw-offs." It was his everyday formal greeting. "Bad news and good news. Report to the briefing room at 2130 hours, with all personal gear. Be ready to ship."

  There was a scramble to salute, followed by a frenzied bustle to collect the money still lying on the table. In seconds everybody was reaching for his jacket. They had only fifteen minutes, but they were always packed.

  The briefing room was a windowless space next to the Ranch's new headquarters building. It contained a long metal table in the center, blackboards and maps around the walls, and the far end was chockablock with video screens and elec­tronic gear. As the unit members filed in, they noticed that maps of the eastern Mediterranean now plastered the left-hand wall. Next to these they saw blowups of KH-12 photos of a small island, identified only by latitude and longitude coordinates.

  "All right, listen up," Nichols began, almost the instant they had settled. He had just fired up a brand-new Cuban Montecristo and was still trying to get it stoked to his satisfac­tion. "I've picked twenty-three men. I'll read off the list, and if you don't hear your name, you're dismissed."

  He read the list, watched much of the room clear, and then continued.

  "Okay, you're God's chosen. I picked the guys I happen to think are best suited to the way I see the op shaping up. To begin with, we're going to be airborne by 2300 hours, which a check of your watches will inform you is less than an hour away. Which means no bullshit between now and when we ship out. We'll be flying Bess—everybody's favorite C-130— with two in-flight refuelings. Destination officially classified, but if you guessed Souda Bay I'd have to say 'no comment.' Wherever it is we're going, we're scheduled in at 1630 hours local tomorrow. For now I want to go over the general out­lines of the op. There'll be a detailed briefing after we land. In the meantime, I've put together a packet of maps and materials for everybody to study on the plane. I suggest you hone your reading skills. Now, here's what I'm authorized to tell you."

  They listened intently and without interruption as he proceeded to give a rundown. They would be making a scuba insertion onto a Greek island—operational maps with the general geography were in the packet—where an unknown number of hostiles had seized an American industrial facility and were holding hostages. He then provided a rough de­scription of the SatCom facility using satellite maps. They would rehearse the insertion at an appropriate location in the vicinity and then chopper to a carrier some twenty klicks south of the island, where they would undergo their final prep.

  It was a thorough, if circumspect, briefing—which was what they expected. Since its inception, Delta had always operated on a top-security basis. Information always came as late into an operation as possible, on the theory that it was a two-edged sword and lives were at stake. Frequently the command did not divulge the real background and strategic purpose of an op until after its conclusion, thereby avoiding sending in men with extractable information.

  Questions? Right away they all had plenty. What was the layout of the facility on the island? How many hostiles were there? How were they equipped? What was the disposition of the hostages? How many? Was their objective merely to ex­tract the friendlies, or were they also ordered to "neutralize" all the hostiles?

  Answer: You'll get a further briefing at the appropriate time.

  The biggest question of all, however, was why the ur­gency? Why was Delta being called in to take down a situa­tion that had no military dimensions. Where were the civilian SWAT teams? If this was merely an industrial matter, why wasn't somebody negotiating?

  They knew "Bess" was already being loaded with the gear the brass would think they would need. In addition, however, each man had certain nonissue items, something to take along as a talisman for luck—a backup handgun strapped onto the ankle, an extra knife. Carrying such paraphernalia was against the regs, o
f course, but Major General Nichols always took such niceties in stride. If the job got done, he had selective blind spots as far as such things were concerned.

  Nichols actually knew a lot more than he had told his men. He had already planned the op in his head. For the insertion, backup would be provided by two Apaches that would be armed and ready to carry out a rocket attack on the facility radars and the two launch vehicles. Once they had secured the hostages, they were going to treat the terrorists to a goddamn big surprise. There would be no place to hide. If he had to, he was prepared to blow the place to hell. Let the insurance companies worry about it.

  11:43 p.m.

  The electric sign meeting in progress over the door to the Situation Room had been illuminated for hours. Inside, Han­sen sat in a tall swivel chair at one end of a long table staring at a detailed map of the eastern Mediterranean now being projected on the giant screen at the end of the room. In the subdued, recessed lighting, half-drunk cups of cold coffee stood around the central teakwood table. A fourth pot was already brewing in the kitchenette, while the rotund Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs, Edward Briggs, had resorted to do­ing knee bends to stay alert.

  "All right," Hansen was saying, "we've got the Special Forces in the game. That gives us a military option. But I'm wondering . . . maybe we should just go ahead and evacu­ate Souda. At the minimum get the Sixth Fleet out of there. As a safety precaution. We could manufacture some exercise that would at least get most of our assets clear."

  If the bastards had a nuke, he was thinking, a well-placed hit could make Pearl Harbor look like a minor skirmish. Right now the entire complement of carriers in the Mediterranean was there, not to mention destroyers, frigates, and a classified number of aircraft. The destruction would run in the untold billions; the loss of life would be incalculable.

  "Where would we deploy them?" Briggs rose, bent over one last time to stretch his muscles, then straightened. "As­suming we could get them clear within twenty-four hours, which would be pushing our luck, we'd have to figure out what to do next."

  "Well, assuming there's available draft, we could deploy some of them around the island. We'd give those bastards who hijacked the place a little something to occupy their minds. Might make them think long and hard about getting back to Beirut or wherever the hell they came from."

  "You're talking about a tall order. I don't think we could really mobilize and evacuate the base in that kind of time frame. And even if we could, our operations in the Med would be disrupted to the point it would take us months to recover."

  "Well, Ed," the President snapped, "those are the kinds of problems you're supposedly being paid to solve. If we're not mobile, then what the hell are we doing in the Med in the first place?" The question was rhetorical, but it stung—as intended.

  "I'll see if I can get a scenario ready for you by 0800 hours tomorrow." He tried not to squirm. They both knew he had already cut the orders deploying Fort Bragg's Special Forces to Souda, to be ready in case an assault was needed. The last resort. "In the meantime, I certainly could arrange for the base to go on a practice alert—cancel all leave and get every­body on a ship-out basis."

  "I think you should do that, at the very least." Should I inform the Greek government? Hansen wondered again. No, let's see if this can be handled without opening a can of worms about whose sovereign rights are uppermost here. The relationship with Greece had, for all its ups and downs, been generally cordial. With any luck they would never have to be involved or, with supreme good fortune, even know. . . .

  "Then have Alicia get Johnson over at the Pentagon on the line," Briggs said, "and he can cut the orders. We've never moved this fast before, so we're about to find out where our glitches are. Don't be surprised if there aren't plenty."

  "Just be happy if the American taxpayer never finds out what he's getting for his money," the President responded. "And speaking of money, we've been faxed a string of account numbers for a bank in Geneva. This is going to have to come out of a budget somewhere, so who do I stiff to pay off these bastards? Or make them temporarily think I'm paying them off. It's got to be some discretionary fund that has minimal accountability. And I don't want the CIA within a mile of this: that place is like a sieve."

  Briggs pondered. "I can probably come up with the money by juggling some of the active accounts in Procure­ment. Cash flow is a marvelous thing if it's handled right. You can rob Peter to pay Paul, and then make Peter whole by robbing somebody else. Then the end of the fiscal year comes around and you withhold payment from some contractor while you hold an 'investigation.'" He smiled. "Believe me, there are ways."

  The President wasn't smiling. "Don't tell me. I don't think I want to hear this. But if you're going to play bingo with the books, then you'd damned well better do it quick, and on the QT."

  "That'll be the easiest part. I've already got some ideas."

  "Just make sure I don't end up with another Iran-Contra brouhaha on my neck. I won't be able to plead senility and let a few fall guys take the rap."

  Briggs had foreseen as well the glare of television lights in the Senate hearing room. Worse still, it did not take too chal­lenging a flight of imagination to figure out who would end up being the patsy. He would have to fall on his sword to protect the Presidency. Washington had a grand tradition of that. He could kiss good-bye to a comfortable retirement in Arizona next to a golf link.

  "You can be sure I will take the utmost care, Mr. Presi­dent." And he was smiling even though Hansen was not.

  "All right, now about the Special Forces. Once we get them to Souda Bay, I want a quick rehearsal and then I want them deployed just offshore, on the Kennedy, ready to move. Which means that whatever support they'll need has to be ready by the time they arrive. What have you got on that?"

  "A task force shipped out for Souda tonight, Mr. Presi­dent. Their C-130 is already in the air. The problems are at the other end. Once they're in-theater, we're still looking at a prep time of twelve hours, minimum. There's just no way they can mount an assault any sooner than that."

  The President winced, already thinking about his other problem. If they did have a nuclear device, or devices, whose was it? The signs all pointed in one direction. The Israelis claimed the stolen Iranian Hind had stopped over in Paki­stan. There probably was no need to look any further. But now he needed somehow to get a confirmation. Or was the threat of a bomb just a hoax?

  He had a meeting at ten o'clock in the morning with the Pakistani ambassador. It would have to be handled delicately, with a lot of circumlocutions and diplomatic niceties, but he damn well intended to get some plain answers.

  10:41 p.m.

  "So this is the Bates Motel I've heard so much about," Vance said, casting a glance down the dull, cinderblock walls. "Hitchcock's version had a lot more character."

  "You're right," Cally agreed. "But wait till you see what it's like upstairs. It sort of gives new meaning to the phrase no frills.' A hell of a place to cut corners, given all the money Bill poured into this facility, but he said he wasn't building a resort." She gestured around the utilities room, where a maze of insulated steam and hot-water pipes crisscrossed above their heads like a huge white forest. "Anyway, welcome back to the slightly unreal real world."

  "Maybe what we need is less reality, not more. But if you can find us a beer, I think I could start getting the hang of the place. Let's just try not to bump into anybody."

  "Okay, my feeling is that if we stay out of Level Three, upstairs, we'll be all right. That's got to be where they're holding everybody who's not on duty. Locked away for safe­keeping."

  They had entered Level One via a trapdoor in the stone water conduit that picked up waste heat from the environ­mental control unit in the residential quarters. Around them now was silence, save for the clicks and hums of motors and pumps.

  "All right, who do we see about something to eat?" He had just finished drinking deeply from a spigot on one of the incoming cold-water pipes. Even though he
was still soaking wet from the trip through the conduit, he was feeling se­verely dehydrated and the water tasted delicious, as though it had come from a well deep in the island's core. It had.

  "You see me," she replied. "We're going to head straight for the kitchen. There's got to be something edible there. So let's take the elevator up and see what's on the menu. I think today was supposed to be calamari."

  "I'd settle for a simple American T-bone if you've got one in the freezer. The more American the better. I'm sort of down on Greece at the moment."

  "You can have pretty much what you want here. As long as it's not a pizza or a decent hamburger." She was pushing the button to summon the elevator. The lights above the door told the story of the facility: three levels, with the top being the living quarters; Level Two being services such as food preparation and laundry; Level One, utilities.

  "Hit two," she said as the bell chimed, and she stepped on, taking one last glance about the basement. The elevator whisked them up quickly, then opened onto another empty hallway.

  "You know," she said, her voice virtually a whisper, "this corridor is almost always full of people. I guess they really do have everybody confined to quarters. Lucky us."

  "They're thorough, and they know what they're doing. They—"

  That's when he noticed the line of explosives that had been placed along the wall next to the elevator, neat yellow bars of Semtex, wrapped in cellophane. The first was wired to a detonator, which was in turn connected to a digital timer.

  "Hello, take a look." He nodded down. "Guess my wild hunch was right. They're not planning to leave any witnesses when this is over. When they're finished, they'll just pack everybody in here and blow up the place. Nice and tidy. Won't even interfere with the computers, just in case they need to keep them running for a while after they leave."

  He bent down and examined the timer, now scrolling the minutes in red numbers. It was set to blow in just over twenty-nine hours.

  "Guess we just got the inside track on their timetable."

  "My God," she said, looking at the device as though it were a cobra. "Can't we just turn it off?"

  "Sooner or later we'd better, but it's still got plenty of time left on it." His voice turned slightly wistful. “Tell you the truth, I'd rather some of the guys from ARM did it. I'm slightly chicken when it comes to bomb-squad operations. Cut the wrong wire and . . . eternity takes on a whole new perspective." He shrugged. "Also, there's a chance it's booby-trapped somehow. The thing's a little too obvious, sitting out here in plain view. When something looks too easy, I always get suspicious. Maybe for no reason, but . . ." He motioned her away. "I suggest we forget about that for now and focus on finding a steak. I also wouldn't fling a hot shower back in your face."

  “That's only on Level Three. It may have to wait." She took his arm. "Come on. I don't like being around bombs, even if they have timers."

  She led the way down the abandoned corridor, its lighting fluorescent and its floor covered with gray industrial carpet. There was a total, almost palpable silence about the place that made it feel all the more eerie and abandoned. It seemed utterly strange and alien.

  “The kitchen is in here," she said, pushing open a large steel door. Vance stepped in and surveyed it: all the fixtures needed for a mess that served several hundred people three meals daily. In fact, it looked as though the evening's cleanup operation had been halted in mid-wash. Dirty pots sat cold on the big industrial stoves, and piles of half-peeled vegetables were on the wide aluminum tables. The storage lockers, re­frigerators, and freezers were located across the room, oppo­site.

  "By the way." He had a sudden thought. “This place must have TV monitors somewhere, am I right? Every other place here does."

  "Well, you're right and you're wrong. It does, but they're on the blink. It always seemed like a stupid idea anyway, almost like spying, and then one day somebody just cut the wires. Probably one of the cooks. I never bothered getting them fixed. I just couldn't think of any good reason to bother."

  "Well, for once laziness paid off. Maybe we're safe here for a while." He had opened the freezer. "Hello, Lady Luck has decided to get with the program." He was pulling out two thick steaks. "Care to join me?"

  "Those are there for Bill," she noted, then laughed. "I'd still rather have a pizza, but I don't guess he'll mind if we dip into his private stock."

  "So I repeat the question." He was already unwrapping two, both thick.

  "Yes, of course. I'm famished." She shivered. "And I also wouldn't mind a set of dry clothes."

  "Maybe one of these will warm you up." He was popping the steaks into a gleaming white microwave for a quick thaw.

  "Right."

  "And while dinner is coming along, how about drawing me a diagram of what's up there. Maybe we can go up later, take a look around."

  "Let's eat first. I'm too wired to think." She switched on one of the large, black electric grills. "My vote is that we just sit tight for now."

  And why not? This man with the sexy eyes and healthy laugh attracted her. Mercurial in his spirits, he appeared will­ing to take chances. Just the way she remembered her father. And Alan. But she wondered why he was here risking his life for a bunch of total strangers. Even Alan wouldn't have done that.

  "You know, Mike Vance, I have to tell you, you don't look much like a commando."

  "Guess what. I'm not."

  "You know what I mean. For that matter, you don't look like the guys who came and installed our wonderful security system. I'd like to know your real story."

  "How are retired archaeologists supposed to look? But I wasn't good enough at it, or maybe I was too good at it—I'm not sure which—and as a result I ended up doing what I really wanted to for a living. Running a sailboat business." He looked her over. "You seem to like what you're doing, too. And from what I've seen, I'd say Bill's getting a bargain, no matter what he's paying you."

  She laughed. "I'd say you're an even better bargain. He's getting you for free."

  "Freebies are only a deal if they pan out." He lifted their steaks out of the microwave and flipped them onto the grill. They immediately sizzled deliciously, a sound he had loved since he was a child growing up in Pennsylvania. It all min­gled together with the scent of trees and summer.

  "God, those smell great." She came over to take a look. "I think the aroma is giving me some backbone. There's nothing like the smell of grease."

  "I figured you'd come around." He patted her chastely on the back, half imagining it was farther down, then lifted one of the steaks to see how they were going. Well. Just like his spirits.

  But now she was moving off again into a space of her own. She scrutinized his weathered face, feeling a little hopeful that maybe, finally, she had run across somebody like Alan. Though she still hardly knew a damned thing about him.

  "With people I meet for the first time, I like to play a little game," she said finally. "It's always interesting to try and guess. What are they really like? Does character show?"

  "What happens if you guess right?" He nudged a steak. "Do you own their soul? Like some primitive tribes think a photograph captures their spirit?"

  "Guess you'll have to find out, won't you?" She checked him over again.

  "Okay." He smiled and gave her the same look back. "But it's only fair if we both get to play. So, if one of us hits the truth, what happens then. Do we get to go for Double Jeop­ardy?"

  "Be warned. The prince who learns the princess's secrets can end up getting more than he bargained for." She came back, full of feeling. Then she paused for a second, thinking, and began. "All right, I get to go first. Woman's prerogative. And I want to start with the sailboat—what did you call it? Odyssey II?—and what it says about you. I think it means you're a doer, not a talker. I like that."

  "Maybe." He felt uncomfortable, not sure what to say, so he decided to let it pass. "Now it's my turn." He leaned back and examined her, hoping to get it right. Make a good first impression. Igno
re the fact she's a knockout, he lectured him­self, at least for now. Look for the inner woman. "You like it here," he started. "But the isolation means everybody knows everybody. No privacy. And you're a very private person. So—to use that famous cliche—you bury yourself in your work. You could be happier."

  "That goes for you, too," she quickly began, a little startled that his first insight had been so close to the mark. "And you're a loner. The good news is . . . I think you're pretty loyal. To friends. To women. The downside is you keep your friends to a close circle."

  "Hey, I'd almost think you've been reading my mail." He seemed vaguely discomfited. "But I'll bet you suffer from the same malady. You made some tight friends early on, but not much in that department since. They're all engineers, and mostly you talk shop. Oh, and no women. You want them but you don't respect them enough. They're not as committed as you are. In fact, your last good friend was in college. Some­times you have trouble getting next to anybody."

  "Well, for the record I'll admit that my best friend was from before college, and it's a he. Georges." She decided to skip over the matter of Alan Harris. He had been a friend as well as a lover. A good friend, or so she thought. Once. "But I think the buzzer just went off. Game over."

  "Whoa, don't bail out now, just when it's getting good. This was your idea, remember? And I'm not through." He leaned back. "Okay, let's really get tough. Go personal. You figure falling for some guy might just end up breaking your heart. Maybe it already happened to you once or twice. So these days you don't let things go too far." He rubbed at his chin as he studied her. "How'm I doing?"

  "The rules of the game don't include having to answer questions." She took a deep breath. Mike Vance was defi­nitely better at this than she'd reckoned. "But if you want to keep going, we'll have round two. Back to you. I'd guess you're always in control, or you want to be. So what happens is, you co-opt the things and people around you, make them work for you. And from the way things have gone so far, I'd say luck seems to be on your side; some people are like that and you're one of them."

  "Don't be too sure." He checked the steaks again, then flipped them over. They were coming along nicely, the fat around the edge beginning to char the way he liked. "Luck always has a way of running out eventually."

  "Tell me about it . . ." she said, letting her voice trail off.

  "But I'd also guess you're a homebody in your soul. You like a roaring fire and a glass of wine and a good book over going out to paint the town."

  "And you're probably just the opposite. You want to be out in the sun and wind and rain. Sitting around bores you."

  "Guilty." He nodded. "Now for round three. That glass of wine you have with the book is probably something tame. Say, Chablis."

  "You drink . . . mmmm, let me see. Scotch is too mun­dane. I'll bet it's tequila. Straight."

  "You're psychic. But you missed the lime."

  "Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing." She grew somber. "You like a good battle. So taking on these thugs is going to be the most fun you've had all week."

  "That's where you just went off the track." His eyes nar­rowed, the corners crinkling. "We're definitely on the wrong end of the odds here. These bastards are dug in, they've probably got A-bombs, and we know for sure they've got a lot of helpless people in their grasp. That's not a recipe for her­oics. It's more like one for pending tragedy." He paused, deciding it was definitely time to change the subject. "Speak­ing of tragedies, it would be a major one if we didn't have a Greek salad to go with those steaks."

  He walked over and checked the fridge. Sure enough, there was a massive bowl of ripe, red tomatoes sitting next to a pile of crisp cucumbers. Most important of all, there was a huge chunk of white feta cheese. Yep, the chef had to be Greek. And up there, on a high kitchen shelf, were rows and rows of olives, curing in brine. Throw them all together with a little oregano, lemon juice, and olive oil, and the traditional side dish of Greece was theirs.

  "Just the stuff." He pulled down a jar of olive oil and one of dark Greek olives. Then he selected some tomatoes and a cucumber and went to work.

  "You know, you're not a half-bad Greek chef. My mother would have loved you. You're making that salad exactly the way she used to." She made a face. "Every day. God, did I get sick of them. All I wanted to eat was french fries. So when I finally got away, off at college, I practically lived on cheese­burgers and pizza for years after that."

  "Shame on you. This is very wholesome. Very good for your state of mind." He finished slicing the tomatoes, then opened the fridge and fished out a couple of brown bottles of the local beer. "Retsina would be the thing, but this will have to do." He looked over. "By the way, how're the steaks coming?"

  "Looks like our feast is ready." She pulled them off the grill and onto plates. "How long has it been since you ate?"

  "Think it's about two days now." He finished tossing the salad and served them each a hearty helping. "Didn't realize how famished I was till I smelled those T-bones broiling." He popped the caps on the beers and handed her one. "Bon appetit. Better eat hearty, because this may be the last food we're going to see for a while."

  She took a bite, then looked up, chewing. "It's delicious. And I want to say one more thing about our game a while ago." She stopped to swallow. "And I mean this. It's always a little sad when I see a person who can do a lot of things but doesn't really find total satisfaction in any of them. Nothing they ever do really makes them happy. And I think that's you, really. I'll bet that whenever you're doing one thing, you're always thinking about some other things you could be doing. Which means you're never really content. You always want more."

  "That's pretty deep stuff." He had launched hungrily into his steak. "Maybe you're right, but I'm not going to come out and admit it. It's too damning. So let me put it like this. Maybe I happen to think it's possible to care about a lot of things at once. That's—"

  "Such as?"

  "Well, okay, I'll give you a 'for instance.' I like sailing around these islands, but all the time I'm doing it, I'm think­ing about what it must have been like two, three thousand years ago. The archaeology. It's intrigued me as long as I can remember. My dad was the same; he spent his life digging around in Crete. I thought that was the most marvelous thing in the world, so I did it, too. For years. Even wrote a book about that island once. I loved the place. Still do."

  "That's funny. I was born practically in the shadow of Crete, and yet I've only been there a couple of times." She sighed. "Well, what happened? I mean to your love affair with Crete. Sounds like that's what it was."

  "Maybe I loved the place too much. I don't know." He paused to take a drink of the beer, cold and refreshing. "Well, when you love somebody, or something, you want to find out everything there is to know about them. But when I did that, and told what I'd concluded was the real story, or what I passionately believed was the real story, nobody wanted to hear it. I had some ideas about the island's ancient age of glory that didn't jibe with the standard theories. Made me very unpopular in the world of academia. Scholars don't like their boats to be rocked."

  "And you let that get you down?" She snorted. Being a woman, she'd had an uphill battle all her life. Men could be such babies sometimes. "See, when the world's against you, that's when you're supposed to fight hardest. That's always been my rule. I'm not a quitter. Ever."

  He winced and stopped eating. "Hey, I'm back, aren't I? In Greece." He looked at her, impulsively wanting to touch her again. "But it's nice to have somebody like you to pitch in and help. Maybe we'll manage something together."

  "Maybe you should have had somebody around the first time." God, he was really reminding her of Alan. The same buttons. "Maybe you're not as tough as you think."

  "Adversity depresses me. Like bad weather. I prefer life without too many psychodramas." And this Greek fireball, he told himself, had psychodrama written large all over her. Still . . .

  "Then the question now is what I should do." She looked at h
im, taking a last bite. "Go back, or stay with you."

  "We need to learn from Ulysses’ experience with the Cyclops," Vance said, clicking back into the real world. "The one-eyed giant had trapped him and his crew and was de­vouring them one by one. So how did they overcome him? They got him plastered on some good Greek wine, then put out his eye with a burning post. That done, they proceeded to exploit his disability."

  "What are you saying?" She frowned.

  "This guy is killing off your people, right? Pierre is com­ing in with his crew to try and take this place down, but in the meantime it would be good if we took a shot at putting out their eyes."

  "Put out their eyes?" She was still puzzled.

  "It's a metaphor. It would be extremely helpful if we could blind them enough that they didn't know ARM was coming in. Couldn't 'see' the team. Maybe shut down the radars, something."

  "Michael"—it was the first time she had used his name, and she liked it—"that's why we're in this mess in the first place. There are no radars that could spot an insertion. That's how these bastards got in here in the first place. Bill gets the Saddam Hussein Military Preparedness Award. There is no radar to monitor the shore."

  He laughed. "Okay, but now that oversight has turned into a plus. What's good for the goose is good for the you- know-what. If there are no peripheral radars, then they're not going to know where Pierre and the boys make their inser­tion."

  "Right. The bad guys are already blind. It's got to make a difference."

  'Then what we need to do"—he was thinking aloud—"is to get them all together in one place."

  'They're not going to let it happen." She was questing, too. "Unless . . . unless we can make it happen. Some­thing . . ."

  "Keep thinking," he said. "I don't have any ideas either, but somebody better come up with one."

  "Well, let's go back up on the mountain before they find us here," she said finally, clearly itching to get going and do something. "We're going to screw these guys, wait and see."

  Vance nodded, wishing he could believe it as confidently as she did.

  10:49 p.m.

  Sabri Ramirez stood watching as the last of the krytron detonators was secured in the ganglia of wiring that sur­rounded the explosive Octol sphere. Now one of the bombs was armed. He liked the looks of it. The next—

  "They haven't come back yet," Wolf Helling said, inter­rupting his thoughts. "Do you think there was a problem?" He was warily watching the bomb and its timer being assem­bled, trying to calm his nerves. This was not like playing with a yellow lump of Sematach. One false move and you would be vaporized. Any man who pretended it didn't scare him was a liar, or worse, a fool. Maybe both.

  The bomb did not frighten Ramirez; his mind did not dwell on risk. He assumed the Pakis knew their job—they damned well better. No, his current concern also was what had happened to Moreau. He had expected his unit to return before now. So far they had taken over an hour on what should have been a simple operation. With hostages dis­persed in three locations, Ramirez feared that things were getting spread thin. Gamal had been keeping watch over the guards and the off-duty shifts on Level Three of the accom­modations facility, while Peretz was holding things together in Command, but still it would be better if four of the team were not out chasing over the island trying to find some rogue guard. He had tried to reach them on his walkie-talkie, but so far he had not been able to raise anybody. That was particularly troubling. Why should all the radios suddenly go dead?

  "If there was some difficulty up the hill, surely they're handling it." Ramirez tried to push aside his misgivings. He actually felt it was true, or should be true. He had checked out Moreau's credentials carefully, investigating beyond the popular myth, and what he had found did nothing to diminish the legend of the blond demon, Jean-Paul. . . .

  "Now, we're ready to secure this baby into the payload container," Abdoullah was saying. "I measured it already, and it should fit with no problem. But we'll need to hook up the detonators with the telemetry interface, and for that we need Peretz’ input. He'll use the Fujitsu in Command to blow this thing, but it all has to be synchronized with the trajectory control."

  "He's there now," Ramirez said, "updating the trajectory runs. That's scheduled to be completed in"—he checked his watch—"about twenty minutes. When he gets through, we can go ahead with the detonators. Everything is on sched­ule."

  For some reason Abdoullah did not like the precise tone of Ramirez's voice. Right, he thought, everything is on sched­ule. So when Shujat and I have finished our part, what then? Will we be "accidentally" gunned down, the way Rais was? You claimed that was a screw-up, but you're not the kind of guy who makes that kind of mistake. Okay, so maybe Rais got careless. Was that your way of making an example of him?

  He motioned Shujat to help lift the first shiny sphere into the heat-resistant Teflon payload container. On a conven­tional launch, the container was designed to be deployed by radio command when the VX-1 vehicle had captured low earth orbit. The nose of the vehicle would open and eject it, after which the satellite payload would release. This launch, however, was—

  "Hey, they're back," Helling announced, watching the door of the clean room open.

  Ramirez looked up, and realized immediately that some­thing was wrong. Jean-Paul Moreau's eyes seemed slightly unfocused, and his sense of balance was obviously impaired —a man stumbling out of a centrifuge. He also was rubbing at his ears, as though his head were buzzing.

  "What in hell happened?" He had never seen anyone with quite this set of symptoms before. They looked like men who had been too close when a homemade bomb went off.

  "The bastard was up on the hill, and he managed to get control of one of the radars. Let me tell you, there's nothing like it in the world. You feel your head is going to explode. I can barely hear." He then lapsed into French curses.

  Stelios Tritsis still had said nothing. He merely watched as Rudolph Schindler and Peter Maier set down the RPG-7 and collapsed onto the floor.

  "Then let him go for now." Ramirez wanted to kill them all, then and there. "But get that damned thing out of here." He indicated the grenade launcher. "And the rest of you with it. Take turns getting some sleep and report back to me at 0600 hours. We'll soon have our hands full. The natives here are going to start getting restless. When that happens, the next man who fucks up will have to answer to me."

  They all knew what that meant.

  11:16 P.M.

  Dore Peretz had just finished checking over the trajectory analyses and he was satisfied that guidance would not pose a problem. With SORT controlling the trajectory at lift-off, a vehicle could be set down with pinpoint accuracy. Midcourse correction, abort—the whole setup was going to be a cakewalk.

  The kid LeFarge was good, good enough to make him think he could do without the Andros bitch. Right now noth­ing indicated that it could not all be handled from right here in Command, with the staff at hand.

  Okay, he thought, one more chore out of the way. Now it's time to start setting up the telemetry hookup with the radio-controlled detonators. . . .