Pitt went into a baseball crouch and swung the bat, aiming for a low pitch, and struck Gly in the knee.
The blow smashed Gly's kneecap and he grunted in pain but didn't go down. He recovered in the blink of an eye and lurched at Pitt, receiving a blow in the ribs that knocked the breath from his body with an agonized gasp. For a moment he stood still warily watching Pitt, feeling the broken ribs, sucking painful intakes of air.
Pitt stepped back and lowered the bat. "Does the name Brian Shaw do anything for you?" he asked calmly.
The twisted look of hate slowly changed to puzzlement. "The British agent? You knew him?"
"Six months ago, I saved his life on a tugboat in the Saint Lawrence River. Remember? You were crushing him to death when I came up from behind and brained you with a wrench."
Pitt relished the savage glare in Gly's eyes.
"That was you?"
"A final thought to take with you," Pitt said, smiling fiendishly.
"The confession of a dead man." There was no contempt, no insolence in Gly's voice, just simple belief.
Without another word the two men began circling each other like a pair of wolves, Pitt with the bat raised, Gly dragging his injured leg. An eerie quiet settled over the room. Gunn struggled through a sea of pain to reach the fallen automatic pistol, but Gly caught the movement out of the corner of one eye and kicked the gun aside. Still tied to the chair, Giordino struggled weakly against his bonds in helpless frustration, while Jessie lay rigid, staring in morbid fascination.
Pitt took a step forward and was in the act of swinging when one foot slipped in the blood of a slain Russian. The bat should have caught Gly on the side of his head, but the arc was thrown off by six inches.
On reflex Gly threw up his arm and absorbed the impact with king-size biceps.
The wooden shaft quivered in Pitt's hands as if he had struck it against a car bumper. Gly lashed out with his free hand, grabbed the end of the bat, and heaved like a weightlifter. Pitt gripped the handle for dear life as he was lifted into the air like a small child and slung halfway across the room against a wall of bookshelves, where he crashed to the floor amid an avalanche of leather-bound volumes.
Sadly, despairingly, Jessie and the others knew Pitt could never shake off the jarring collision with the wall. Even Gly relaxed and took his time about approaching the body on the floor, triumph fairly glowing on his gargoyle face, lips spread in sharkish anticipation of the extermination to come.
Then Gly stopped and stared incredulous as Pitt rose up from under a mountain of books like a quarterback who had been sacked, dazed, and slightly disoriented but ready for the next play. What Pitt knew, and no one else 'realized, was that the books had cushioned his impact. He hurt like hell but suffered no crippling damage to flesh and bone. Lifting the bat he moved to meet the advancing iron man, and rammed the blunt end with all his strength into the sneering face.
But he misjudged the giant's unholy strength. Gly sidestepped and met the bat with his fist, knocking it aside and taking advantage of Pitt's forward momentum to clench iron arms around his back. Pitt twisted violently and brought his knee up into Gly's groin, a savage blow that would have doubled over any other man. But not Gly. He gave a slight gasp, blinked, and then increased the pressure in a vicious bear hug that would crush the life out of Pitt.
Gly stared unblinking into Pitt's eyes from a distance of four inches. There wasn't the slightest display of physical exertion on his face. The only expression was the sneer that was locked in place. He lifted Pitt from his feet and kept squeezing, anticipating the contorted terror that would spread across his victim's face just before the end.
The air was choked off from Pitt's lungs and he gasped for breath. The room began to blur as the pain inside his chest ruptured into flaming agony. He could hear Jessie screaming, Giordino shouting something, but he couldn't distinguish the words. Through the pain his mind remained curiously sharp and clear. He refused to accept death and coldly devised a simple way to cheat it.
One arm was free, while the other, the one still clutching the baseball bat, was caught in Gly's relentless grip. The black curtain was beginning to drop over his eyes for the last time, and he realized death was only seconds away when he performed his last desperate act.
He brought up his hand until it was even with Gly's face and thrust the full length of the thumb into one eye, driving inward through the skull and twisting deeply into the brain.
Shock wiped the sneer off Gly's face, the shock of atrocious pain and unbelief. The dark features contorted in an anguished mask, and he instinctively released his arms from around Pitt and threw his hands up to his eye, filling the air with a horrible scream.
In spite of the terrible injury, Gly remained on his feet, thrashing around the room like a crazed animal.
Pitt could not believe the monster was still alive, he almost believed Gly was indestructible until a deafening roar drowned the agonized cries.
Once, twice, three times, calmly and quite coldly, Jessie pulled the trigger on the fallen automatic pistol and shot Foss Gly in the groin. The shells thudded into him, and he staggered backward a few steps, then stood grotesquely for a few moments as if held by puppet strings. Finally he collapsed and crashed to the floor like a falling tree. The one eye was still open, black and as evil in death as it had been in life.
>
Major Gus Hollyman was flying scared. A career Air Force pilot with almost three hundred hours of flight time, he was suffering acute pangs of doubt, and doubt was one of a pilot's worst enemies. Lack of confidence in himself, his aircraft, or the men on the ground could prove deadly.
He couldn't bring himself to believe his mission to shoot down the space shuttle Gettysburg was anything more than a crazy exercise dreamed up by some egghead general with a fetish for far-out war games. A simulation, he told himself for the tenth time, it had to be a simulation that would terminate at the last minute.
Hollyman stared up at the stars through the canopy of the F-15E night attack fighter and wondered if he could actually obey an order to destroy the space shuttle and all those on board.
His eyes dropped to the instruments that glowed on the panel in front of him. His altitude was just over 50,000 feet. He would have less than three minutes to close on the rapidly descending space shuttle and lock in before firing a radar-guided Modoc missile. He automatically went through the procedure in his mind, hoping it would get no further than a mental event.
"Anything yet?" he asked his radar observer, a gum-chewing lieutenant named Regis Murphy.
"Still out of range," replied Murphy. "The last update from the space center in Colorado puts her altitude at twenty-six miles, speed approximately six thousand and slowing. She should reach our sector in five minutes, forty seconds, at a speed of twelve hundred."
Hollyman turned and scanned the black sky behind, spotting the faint exhaust glow of the two aircraft following his tail. "Do you copy, Fox Two?"
"Roger, Fox Leader."
"Fox Three?"
"We copy."
A cloud of oppression seemed to fill Hollyman's cockpit. None of this was right. He hadn't dedicated his life to defending his country, hadn't spent years in intensive training, simply to blast an unarmed aircraft carrying innocent scientists out of the air. Something was horribly wrong.
"Colorado Control, this is Fox Leader."
"Go ahead, Fox Leader."
"I request permission to terminate exercise, over."
There was a long pause. Then "Major Hollyman, this is General Allan Post. Do you read me?"
So this was the egghead general, Hollyman mused. "Yes, General, I read you."
"This is not an exercise. I repeat, this is not an exercise."
Hollyman did not mince words. "Do you realize what you're asking me to do, sir?"
"I'm not asking, Major. I'm giving you a direct order to bring down the Gettysburg before she lands in Cuba."
There had been no time for a full brie
fing when Hollyman was ordered to scramble his flight into the air. He was stunned and bewildered at Post's sudden revelation. "Forgive me for asking, General, but are you acting by higher command? Over."
"Is a directive straight from your Commander in Chief in the White House good enough for you?"
"Yes, sir," he said slowly. "I guess it is."
God, Hollyman thought despairingly, there was no getting around it.
"Altitude twenty-two miles, nine minutes to touchdown." Burkhart was reading off the instruments for Jurgens. "We've got lights off to our right."
"What's going down, Houston?" asked Jurgens, his face set in a frown. "Where in hell are you putting us?"
"Stay cool," replied the impassive voice of Flight Director Foley. "You're lined up just fine. Just sit tight and we'll bring you in."
"Radar and navigation indicators say we're touching down in the middle of Cuba. Please cross-check."
"No need, Gettysburg, you're on final approach."
"Houston, I'm not getting through to you. I repeat, where are you setting us down?"
There was no reply.
"Listen to me," said Jurgens in near desperation. "I'm going to full manual."
"Negative, Dave. Remain in auto. All systems are committed to the landing site."
Jurgens clenched his fists in futility. "Why?" he demanded. "Why are you doing this?"
There was no reply.
Jurgens looked over at Burkhart. "Move the speed brakes back to zero percent. We're going on TAEM.* I want to keep this ship in the air as long as I can until we get some straight answers."
-------------------------------------
*Terminal-area energy management, a process for conserving speed and altitude.
"You're only prolonging the inevitable by a couple of minutes," said Burkhart.
"We can't just sit here and accept this."
"It's out of our hands," Burkhart replied miserably. "We've no place else to go."
The real Merv Foley sat at a console in the Houston control center in helpless rage. His face, the color of chalk, showed an expression of incredulity. He pounded a fist against the edge of the console.
"We're losing them," he muttered hopelessly.
Irwin Mitchell of the "inner core" stood directly behind him. "Our communications people are doing the best they can to get through."
"Too damned late!" Foley burst out. "They're on final approach." He turned and grabbed Mitchell by the arm. "For Christ's sake, Irv, beg the President to let them land. Give the shuttle to the Russians, let them take whatever they can get out of it. But in the name of God don't let those men die."
Mitchell stared up dully at the data display screens. "Better this way," he said, his voice vague.
"The moon colonists-- those are your people. After all they've achieved, the years of struggling just to stay alive in a murderous environment, you can't simply write them off this close to home."
"You don't know those men. They'd never allow the results of their efforts to be given away to a hostile government. If I was up there and Eli Steinmetz was down here, he wouldn't hesitate to blow the Gettysburg to ashes."
Foley looked at Mitchell for a long moment. Then he turned away and buried his head in his hands, stricken with grief.
>
Jessie lifted her head and gazed at Pitt, the coffee-brown eyes misted, teardrops rolling past the bruises on her cheeks. She was shuddering now, shuddering from the death around her and immense relief. Pitt unashamedly embraced her, saying nothing, and gently removed the gun from her hand. Then he released her, quickly cut Giordino's bonds, gave Gunn a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder, and stepped up to the huge wall map.
He rapped his knuckles against it, gauging the thickness. Then he moved back and lashed out with his foot at the center of the Indian Ocean. The hidden panel gave way, swung on its hinges, and smashed against the wall.
"I'll be back," he said, and disappeared into a passageway.
The interior was well lit and carpeted. He rushed incautiously, the gun held out in front of him. The passage was air-conditioned and cool, but the sweat was flowing through his pores more heavily than ever before. He rubbed a sleeve over his forehead, blocking his view for a brief moment, and almost died.
At that exact moment he reached a cross passage, and like a scene from an old Mack Sennett silent movie he collided with two guards who were walking around the corner.
Pitt crashed through them, knocking them to the sides, then whirled and dropped to the floor. The advantage of surprise was on his side. The guards hadn't expected to meet a foe so close to General Velikov's study. Pitt did. The automatic in his hand spat four times before the startled guards had a chance to trigger their rifles. He leaped to his feet while they were still falling.
For two seconds, perhaps three-- it seemed an hour-- he stared at the inert figures, curiously unaffected by their death but stunned that it all happened so fast. Mentally and emotionally he was exhausted, physically he felt reasonably fit. He sucked in deep lungfuls of air until his mind struggled through the haze, and he turned it to figuring which passage ran toward the electronic center of the compound.
The side passages had concrete floors, so he stuck with the one with the carpet and forged ahead. He had run only fifty feet when his brain cells finally came back on line and he cursed his sluggishness for not thinking to snatch one of the guard's rifles. He pulled out the clip of the automatic. It was empty, only one shell remained in the chamber. He wrote off the mistake and kept going.
It was then he saw a backwash of light ahead and heard voices. He slowed and ghosted up to a portal and peered out with the wariness of a mouse peeking from a knothole for a cat.
Six feet away was a railing on a balcony overlooking a vast room crammed with banks of computers and consoles stretched in neat rows beneath two large data display screens. At least ten technicians and engineers sat and calmly monitored the array of electronics while another five or six stood in agitated conversation.
The few uniformed guards who were present were crouched at one end of the room, their rifles aimed at a heavy steel door. A barrage of gunfire was coming from the other side, and Pitt knew Quintana and his men were about to break through. Now he was really sorry he hadn't taken the guns from the dead guards. He was about to turn and run back for them when a thunderous roar engulfed the room, followed by a great shower of dust and debris as the shattered door twisted crazily and burst into jagged fragments.
Before the cloud settled, the Cubans charged through the opening, guns blazing. The first three inside the room went down from the fire of the guards. Then the Russians seemed to melt away before the murderous onslaught. The din inside the concrete-walled room was deafening, but even so, above it all Pitt could hear the screams of the wounded. Most of the technicians hid under their consoles. Those who resisted were unmercifully shot down.
Pitt moved out along the balcony, keeping his back flattened against the wall. He saw two men standing about thirty feet away, staring in rapt horror at the carnage below. He recognized one of them as General Velikov and began edging closer, stalking his prey. He had only moved a short distance when Velikov pulled back from the balcony railing and turned. He looked at Pitt blankly for an instant, and his eyes widened in recognition, and then incredibly he smiled. The man seemed to have no nerves at all.
Pitt raised the automatic and took deliberate aim.
Velikov moved with the swiftness of a cat, jerking the other man in front of him, a fraction of a second before the hammer fell on the cartridge.
The bullet caught Lyev Maisky in the chest. The deputy chief of the KGB stiffened in shock and stood there staring in petrified astonishment before staggering backward and tumbling over the railing to the floor below.
Pitt unconsciously pulled the trigger again, but the gun was empty. In a futile gesture he threw it at Velikov, who easily deflected it with an arm.
Velikov nodded, his face revealing more curiosity
than fear. "You're an amazing man, Mr. Pitt."
Before Pitt could reply or take a step, the general lurched sideways through an open door and slammed it shut. Pitt threw himself against the door, but he was too late. The lock was on the inside and Velikov had snapped the latch. There would be no kicking this one in. The heavy bolt was firmly embedded in a metal frame. He raised his fist to punch the door, thought better of it, swung around and ran down a stairway to the floor below.
He crossed the room through the confusion, stepping over the bodies until he reached Quintana, who was emptying the magazine of his AK-74 into a bank of computers.
"Forget that!" Pitt shouted in Quintana's ear. He gestured to the radio console. "If your men haven't destroyed the antenna, let me try to make contact with the shuttle."
Quintana lowered his rifle and looked at him. "The controls are in Russian. Can you operate it?"
"Never know till I try," said Pitt. He sat at the radio console and quickly studied the confusing sea of lights and switches labeled in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Quintana leaned over Pitt's shoulder. "You'll never find the right frequency in time."
"You Catholic?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Then call up the saint who guides lost souls and pray this thing is already set on the shuttle's frequency."
Pitt placed the tiny headset over one ear and kept pressing switches until he received a tone. Then he adjusted the microphone and pressed what he guessed and fervently hoped was the Transmit switch.
"Hello, Gettysburg, do you read me? Over." Then he pushed what he was sure was the Receive switch.
Nothing.
He tried a second, and a third. "Gettysburg, do you read? Over."