Quintana slapped Pitt's back in acknowledgment and gave instructions in Spanish to the next man in line, who slipped away toward the light.
Pitt didn't have to ask. He knew the security guards manning the gate had only another two minutes to live.
He skirted the wall and crept into the culvert, vastly relieved to find the bars still bent as he had left them. They scrambled through and wormed their way to the air vent above the compound's motor pool.
This was as far as Pitt was supposed to go. Kleist's firm instructions were for him to guide Quintana's force to the air vent and go no further. He was to step out of the way, return alone to the landing beach, and wait for the others to withdraw.
Kleist should have guessed that when Pitt offered no argument the orders were not about to be carried out, but the colonel had too many problems on his mind to become suspicious. And good old Pitt, quite naturally, had been the very model of cooperation when he laid out a diagram of the entry into the compound.
Before Quintana could reach out and stop him, Pitt dropped through the vent onto the support girder over the parked vehicles and disappeared like a shadow down the exit shaft to the cells far below.
>
Dave Jurgens, flight commander of the Gettysburg, was mildly disturbed. He shared the elation with everyone in the space station at the unexpected arrival of Steinmetz and his men from the moon. And he found nothing amiss in the sudden orders to carry the colonists to earth as soon as their scientific cargo could be loaded into the shuttle's payload bay.
What disturbed him was the abrupt demand by Houston Control to make a night landing at Cape Canaveral. His request to wait a few hours until the sun rose was met with a cold refusal. He was given no reason why NASA officials had suddenly reversed their strict policy of daylight touchdowns for the first time in nearly thirty years.
He looked over at his copilot, Carl Burkhart, a twenty-year veteran of the space program. "We won't have much of a view of the Florida swamps on this approach."
"You see one alligator, you've seen them all," the laconic Burkhart replied.
"Our passengers all tucked in?"
"Like corn in a bin."
"Computers programmed for reentry?"
"Set and ticking."
Jurgens briefly scanned the three TV screens in the center of the main panel. One gave the status on all the mechanical systems, while the other two gave data on trajectory and guidance control. He and Burkhart began to run through the de-orbit and entry procedure checklist.
"Ready when you are, Houston."
"Okay, Don," replied ground control. "You are go for de-orbit burn."
"Out of sight, out of mind," said Jurgens. "Is that it?"
"We don't read, come again."
"When I left earth, my name was Dave.'
"Sorry about that, Dave."
"Who's on the line?" asked Jurgens, his curiosity aroused.
"Merv Foley. You don't recognize my resonant vowel sounds?"
"After all our scintillating conversations, you've forgotten my name. For shame."
"A slip of the tongue," said the familiar voice of Foley. "Shall we cut the small talk and get back to procedures."
"Whatever you say, Houston." Jurgens briefly pressed his intercom switch. "Ready to head home, Mr.
Steinmetz?"
"We're all looking forward to the trip," Steinmetz answered.
In the Spartan living quarters below the flight deck and cockpit the shuttle specialists and Jersey colonists were packed together in every foot of available space. Behind them the sixty-foot-long payload bay was loaded two-thirds full with data records, geological specimens, cases containing the results of more than a thousand medical and chemical experiments-- the bonanza accumulated by the colonists that would take scientists two decades to fully analyze. The bay also carried the body of Dr. Kurt Perry.
The Gettysburg was traveling through space backward and upside down at over 15,000 knots per hour. The small reaction-control jets were fired and joggled the craft over from orbit as thrusters pitched it to a nose-high attitude so the insulated belly could absorb the reentry friction of the atmosphere. Over Australia, two secondary engines burned briefly to slow the shuttle's orbit speed from twenty-five times the speed of sound. Thirty minutes later, they hit the atmosphere shortly before Hawaii.
As the atmosphere grew denser, the heat turned the Gettysburg's belly a vivid orange. The thrusters lost their effectiveness and the elevons and the rudder began to clutch the heavier air. The computers controlled the entire flight. Jurgens and Burkhart had little to do except monitor the TV data and systems indicators.
Suddenly a warning tone sounded in their headsets and a master alarm light came on. Jurgens quickly reacted by punching a computer keyboard to call up details of the problem while Burkhart notified ground control.
"Houston, we have a warning light."
"We read nothing here, Gettysburg. All systems look great."
"Something is going on, Houston," persisted Burkhart.
"Can only be computer error."
"Negative. All three navigation and guidance computers agree."
"I have it," said Jurgens. "We're showing a course error."
The cool voice at the Johnson Space Center returned. "Disregard, Dave. You're right on the beam.
Do you copy?"
"I copy, Foley, but bear with me while I go to the backup computer."
"If it will make you happy. But all systems are go."
Jurgens quickly punched a request for navigation data from the backup computer. Less than thirty seconds later he hailed Houston.
"Merv, something's fishy. Even the backup shows us coming down four hundred miles south and fifty east of Canaveral."
"Trust me, Dave," Foley said in a bored tone. "All tracking stations show you on course."
Jurgens looked out his side window and saw only blackness below. He switched off his radio and turned to Burkhart. "I don't give a damn what Houston says. We're off our approach course. There's nothing but water under us when we should be seeing lights over the Baja California peninsula."
"Beats me," said Burkhart, shifting restlessly in his seat. "What's the plan?"
"We'll stand by to take over manual control. If I didn't know better, I'd swear Houston was setting us down in Cuba."
"She's coming in like a kite on a string," said Maisky, his expression wolfish.
Velikov nodded. "Three more minutes and the Gettysburg will be past the point of no return."
"No return?" Maisky repeated.
"To bank and still glide to the runway at the Kennedy Space Center."
Maisky rubbed the palms of his hands together in nervous anticipation. "An American space shuttle in Soviet hands. This has to be the intelligence coup of the century."
"Washington will scream like a village of raped virgins, demanding we return it."
"They'll get their billion-dollar super-machine back. But not before our space engineers have explored and photographed every square inch of her."
"And then there's the wealth of information from their moon colonists," Velikov reminded him.
"An incredible feat, General. The Order of Lenin will be in this for you."
"We're not out of the woods yet, Comrade Maisky. We cannot predict the President's reaction."
Maisky shrugged. "His hands are tied if we offer to negotiate. Our only problem as I see it is the Cubans."
"Not to worry. Colonel General Kolchak has placed a screen of fifteen hundred Soviet troops around the runway at Santa Clara. And, since our advisers are in command of Cuba's aircraft defenses, the shuttle has a clear path to land."
"Then she's as good as in our hands."
Velikov nodded. "I think you can safely say that."
The President sat in a bathrobe behind his desk in the Oval Office, chin lowered, elbows on the arms of his chair. His face was tired and drawn.
He looked up abruptly and said, "Is it certain, Houston can't make cont
act with the Gettysburg?"
Martin Brogan nodded. "That's the word from Irwin Mitchell at NASA. Their signals are being drowned out by outside interference."
"Is Jess Simmons standing by at the Pentagon?"
"We have him on a direct line," answered Dan Fawcett.
The President hesitated, and when he spoke it was in a whisper. "Then you'd better tell him to order the pilots in those fighters to stand by."
Fawcett nodded gravely and picked up the phone. "Any word from your people, Martin?"
"The latest is they've landed on the beach," Brogan said helplessly. "Beyond that, nothing."
The President felt weighted with despair. "My God, we're trapped in limbo."
One of four phones rang and Fawcett snatched it up. "Yes, yes, he's here. Yes, I'll tell him." He replaced the receiver in its cradle, his expression grim. "That was Irwin Mitchell. The Gettysburg has deviated too far south to reach Cape Canaveral."
"She might still make a water landing," said Brogan without enthusiasm.
"Providing she can be warned in time," added Fawcett.
The President shook his head. "No good. Her landing speed is over two hundred miles an hour. She'd tear herself to pieces."
The others stood silent, searching for the right words. The President swiveled in his chair and faced the window, sick at heart.
After a few moments he turned to the men standing expectantly around his desk. "God help me for signing a death warrant on all those brave men."
>
Pitt dropped out of the exit shaft and hit the corridor at a dead run. He twisted the handle and threw open the door to the cell that housed Giordino and Gunn with such a force that he nearly tore it from the hinges.
The tiny room was empty.
The noise betrayed him. A guard rushed around the corner from a side passage and stared at Pitt in astonishment. That split-second hesitation cost him. Even as he was lifting the barrel of his weapon, the baseball bat caught him on the side of the head. Pitt had grabbed the unfortunate guard around the waist and was dragging him into a convenient cell before he hit the floor. Pitt threw him on a bed and looked down into the face of the young Russian who had escorted him to Velikov's study. The boy was breathing normally, and Pitt figured the damage was no more than a concussion.
"You're lucky, kid. I never shoot anyone under the age of twenty-one."
Quintana was just coming out of the exit shaft as Pitt locked the guard in the cell and took off running again. He did not bother to be careful of concealing his presence. He would have welcomed the chance to bash the head of another guard. He reached the door to Jessie's cell and kicked it open.
She was missing too.
Dread swept through him like a wave. He plunged on through the corridors until he came to room six.
There was nothing inside but the stench of torture.
Dread was replaced by cold, ungovernable rage. Pitt became someone else, a man without conscience or moral code, no longer in control of his emotions, a man for whom danger was merely a force to be ignored. Fear of dying had totally ceased to exist.
Quintana hurried up to Pitt and clutched his arm. "Damn you, get back to the beach! You know the orders=
He got no further. Pitt shoved the stubby barrel of the AK-74 into Quintana's gut and slowly pushed him back and against a wall. Quintana had stood face to face with death many times before this moment, but staring at the ice-- cold expression on the craggy face, seeing the pure look of murderous indifference in the green eyes, he knew he had one foot in a coffin.
Pitt did not speak. He pulled back the gun, raised the baseball bat to his shoulder, and pushed his way through Quintana's men. Suddenly he halted in his tracks and turned back. "The elevator is this way," he said quietly.
Quintana motioned his men to follow. Pitt took a fast head count. There were twenty-five, including himself. He hurried toward the elevator that rose to the upper levels. No more guards appeared in their way. The passages were deserted. With the prisoners dead, Pitt reasoned, Velikov probably saw no purpose in stationing more than one guard in the lower storage area.
They reached the elevator and he was about to push the Up button when the motors began to hum.
He motioned everyone against the wall. They waited, listening to the elevator stop at a level above, hearing a murmur of voices and soft laughter. They stood frozen and watched the interior light shine through the crack between the doors as it descended.
It was all over in ten seconds. The doors opened and two technicians in white coats stepped outside and died without the slightest whisper of a sound from knives thrust into their hearts. Pitt was amazed at the efficiency of the act. None of the Cubans wore the slightest expression of remorse in their eyes.
"Decision time," said Pitt. "The elevator can hold only ten men."
"Only fourteen minutes until the space shuttle lands," Quintana said urgently. "We've got to find and cut off the compound's power source."
"There are four levels above us. Velikov's study is on the top. So are the living quarters. Take your pick of the other three."
"Like drawing to an inside straight."
"What else," Pitt said quickly. "We're also bunched-up fish in a barrel. My advice is to split up into three groups and take each level. You'll cover more territory faster."
"Sounds good," Quintana hastily agreed. "We've come this far without a greeting. They won't be expecting visitors to pop up on the inside at the same time in different areas."
"I'll go with the first eight men to level two and send the elevator down for the next team, who will hit level three, and so on."
"Fair enough." Quintana wasted no time arguing. He hurriedly selected eight men and ordered them into the elevator with Pitt. Just before the doors closed he snapped, "You stay alive, damn you!"
The ride up seemed endless. None of the men looked into the eyes of the others. A few dabbed at the sweat trickling down their faces. Some scratched at imagined itches. All had a finger poised on a trigger.
At last the elevator settled to a stop and the door parted. The Cubans poured out into an operations room staffed by nearly twenty Soviet GRU officers and four women who were also in uniform. Most died behind their desks in a hail of gunfire, dying in dazed disbelief. In a few seconds the office resembled a charnel house with blood and tissue sprayed everywhere.
Pitt took no time to see more. He punched the Level I button on the panel and rose alone in the elevator to Velikov's study. Pressing his back against the front wall, weapon in the raised position, he stole one quick glance around the opening doors. The sight inside the study struck him with a mixed force of elation and savage anger.
Seven GRU officers were sitting in a semicircle, watching in rapt fascination as Foss Gly performed his sadistic act. They seemed oblivious to the muted thump of gunfire from the level below, their senses deadened, Pitt concluded, by the emptied contents of several wine bottles.
Rudi Gunn lay off to one side, his face nearly battered into pulp, trying desperately out of some burning pride to hold up his head in contempt. One officer held a small automatic pistol on a bleeding Al Giordino who was tied in a metal chair. The brawny little Italian sagged forward with his head almost on his knees, shaking it slowly from side to side as if to clear his vision and rid himself of the pain. One of the men lifted his leg and kicked Giordino in the side, knocking him and the chair sideways to the floor. Raymond LeBaron sat beside and slightly behind Gly. The once dynamic financier had the look of a man who was worn to a shadow, his spirit torn from his body. The eyes were sightless, the face expressionless. Gly had pressured and twisted him into a decaying vegetable.
Jessie LeBaron knelt in the center of the room, staring at Gly in defiance. Her hair had been crudely lopped short. She clutched a blanket around her shoulders. Ugly red welts and dark bruises covered her exposed legs and arms. She looked to be beyond suffering, her mind deadened to any further pain.
Despite her pitiful appearance she
was incredibly beautiful, with a serenity and poise that were remarkable.
Foss and the other men turned at the arrival of the elevator, but seeing that it was apparently empty, they turned back to their sport.
Just as the doors began to close Pitt stepped into the room with an almost inhuman icy calm, his AK-74 held at eye level, the muzzle erupting fire.
His first carefully aimed shots took the man who had kicked Giordino onto the floor. The second blast struck the chest of the bemedaled officer seated next to Gunn, pitching him backward into a bookcase.
The third and fourth bursts swept away three men sitting in a tight group. He was swinging the gun barrel in an arc, lining up on Foss Gly, but the massively built turncoat reacted more quickly than the others.
Gly yanked Jessie to her feet 'and held her in front of him as a shield. Pitt delayed just long enough for the seventh Russian, who was sitting almost at his elbows, to unholster an automatic pistol and snap off a wild shot.
The bullet struck the breech of Pitt's gun, shattered it, and then ricocheted into the ceiling. Pitt raised the useless weapon and sprang at the same moment he saw the muzzle flash from the second shot.
Everything seemed to slow down. Even the frightened expression on the Russian's face as he squeezed the trigger for the third time, but the blast never came. The frame of the AK-74 sliced the air and caved the side of his head in.
At first Pitt thought the second bullet had missed, but then he felt the blood dripping down his neck from the nick taken out of his left ear. He stood there rooted, his fury still burning as Gly rudely shoved Jessie sprawling on the carpet.
A satanic grin spread across Gly's evil face along with an expression of unholy expectation. "You came back."
"Very perceptive-- for a cretin, that is."
"I promised you would die slowly when we met again," said Gly menacingly. "Have you forgotten?"
"No, I didn't forget," said Pitt. "I even remembered to bring a big club."
Pitt had no doubts that Gly meant to crush the life out of him with his massive hands. And he knew that his only real advantage, besides the bat, was a total lack of fear. Gly was used to seeing his victims helpless and naked, intimidated by his brute strength. Pitt's lips matched the satanic grin, and he began to stalk Gly, observing with cold satisfaction the look of confusion in his opponent's eyes.