Project Cyclops Part 46

"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," h.e.l.ling 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 h.e.l.l 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 d.a.m.ned 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 f.u.c.ks 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 a.n.a.lyses 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 b.i.t.c.h. 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 ch.o.r.e out of the way. Now it's time to start setting up the telemetry hookup with the radio-controlled detonators. .

CHAPTER TWELVE

10:05 P.M.

"Is there anything we need to go over again?" Pierre Armont inquired, looking around the dusty, aging Athens hangar with a feeling of wary confidence. The weather-beaten benches and tables were cluttered with maps of Andikythera and blueprints of the SatCom facility, scattered among half-empty bottles of ouzo and Metaxa. He had just completed his final briefing, which meant the time had come to board the Cessna seaplane that would be their insertion platform. The team seemed ready.

Hans had come through with the troops they needed; Reggie sat bleary- eyed but prepared, nursing a final brandy; the brothers Voorst of the Royal Dutch Marines were austerely sipping coffee; Dimitri Spiros was quietly meditating on the condition of the equipment; and Marcel of the Belgian ESI was sketching one last paper run-through of the insertion.

When n.o.body spoke, Armont glanced at his watch and frowned. This final briefing had gone longer than expected, but he had to cover more than the usual number of complexities.

For one thing, the hostages apparently were scattered all over the place, always a problem. Unless the team could strike several locations simultaneously, the element of surprise would be forfeited. That meant the insertion had to be totally secure, giving the team time to split up, get positioned, and stage the final a.s.sault with split-second coordination. Carrying out one op was dicey enough: he was looking at three, all at once. The alternate strategy would be to focus exclusively on Ramirez. Take him out first, blow their command structure, and hope the others would fold.

The decision on that option would have to be made in about two hours, just before they set down the plane two kilometers west of the island and boarded the Zodiacs for insertion. That was when Vance was scheduled to radio his intel on the disposition of the hostiles and the friendlies. What a stroke of luck to have him there, a point man already in place to guide the team in.

"All right, then," Spiros said, finally coming alive, "let's do a final check of the equipment. We need to double-inventory the lists and make sure everything got delivered. I don't want to hear a lot of c.r.a.p from you guys if somebody can't find something later on."

The others nodded. Dimitri had had to scramble to get all the hardware together, and Reginald Hall had had to make some expensive last-minute arrangements to obtain a set of balaclava antiflash hoods for everybody. When there were hostages everywhere, the safest way to storm the terrorists was with nonlethal flash grenades, which produced a blinding explosion and smoke but did not spew out iron fragments. But their use required the a.s.sault to function in the momentarily disruptive environment they created. The hoods, which protected the wearer's face and eyes from the smoke and flash, were crucial. And since your local hardware store did not stock them, he had borrowed a set from the Greek Dimoria Eidikon Apostolon, a SWAT unit of the Athens city police trained to provide hostage rescue, securing six on a "no questions asked" basis, even though everybody there knew they had only one use.

Word of the hostage-taking down on Andikythera had not yet leaked out to the world, so DEA had not been consulted. But their record of security at the Athens h.e.l.linikon Airport was so miserable he doubted they ever would be considered for a job like this. Though the DEA had trained with the German GSG-9, the British SAS, and the Royal Dutch Marines, they still were basically just cops. A real ant.i.terrorist operation would be out of their league.

DEA had no illusions about that, and they also knew that Spiros was with ARM, arguably the best private ant.i.terrorist organization in the world. So if they granted Dimitri a favor, they knew they could someday call on ARM to repay in kind. In the ant.i.terrorist community, everybody was on the same team. Everybody understood the meaning of quid pro quo.

Most of the rest of the equipment had been retrieved from the ARM stocks the organization kept stored in Athens. Governments frowned on the transportation of heavy weaponry around Europe, so the a.s.sociation found it convenient to have its own private stocks at terminals in London, Paris, and Athens. It made life simpler all around.

Reggie Hall had dictated the equipment list as he drove in to London in his black Jaguar, cursing the glut of traffic on the A21. Once he reached the ARM office there, a small inconspicuous townhouse in South Kensington, he faxed the list to Athens, then caught a plane. Dimitri had checked out the list against the ARM inventory in the warehouse and quickly procured whatever was lacking. It had been packaged into crates, then taken by lorry to this small side terminal of the h.e.l.linikon Airport, ready to be loaded on the un.o.btrusive Cessna seaplane he had leased for the operation.

By that time the rest of the team had already started arriving. Then, two and a half hours ago, Pierre had begun the briefing.

A counterterrorist operation always had several objectives: protecting the lives of hostages and procuring their safe release, isolating and containing the incident, recovering seized property, and preventing the escape of the offenders. But this time there was a twist to the usual rules. In a special-threat situation like this, possibly involving nuclear weapons, the recovery of those devices was the paramount priority.

The way Armont had planned the a.s.sault, ARM could manage with a seven- man team instead of the nine most special-reaction outfits normally used. He would be team leader, which meant his responsibilities included supervision as well as being in charge of planning and execution, controlling cover and entry elements, and determining special needs.

Since Vance was already on the ground, he would be point man, providing reconnaissance and recommending primary and alternate routes of approach. The point man in an a.s.sault also led the entry element during approach and a.s.sisted the defense men in the security. Finally, he was expected to pitch in and help with the pyrotechnics as needed.

The defense man would be Marcel, the Belgian, who would cover for the Voorst brothers during the a.s.sault and provide security for Vance during the approach. He would also double as point man when required and protect the entry team from ambush during approach. Another duty was to cover the entry element during withdrawal and handle the heavy equipment.

Hans would serve as the rear security man, following the entry element during movement and providing close cover during withdrawal. He would be second in command, and also would bring in whatever equipment was needed.

Since Reggie was a crack shot, the best, he would be the standoff sniper, maintaining surveillance on the subject area from a fixed position, monitoring radio frequencies, and providing intelligence on hostile movements. He also would neutralize by selective fire anybody who posed an imminent threat to the entry team.

Spiros would be the observer, keeping a record of everything for an after-action summary, providing security for Reggie, and a.s.sisting in locating hostile personnel. He would relieve Hall as necessary, and handle the CS or smoke if Pierre signaled for it.

That was it for a.s.signments. Everybody would be doing more or less what they always did. So far so good.

The next item was intelligence. Normally you tried to gather as much as you could on-scene, and presumably Vance was taking care of that. For the rest of it, Armont had dug up blueprints for all the buildings from the files, and on the plane from Paris he had meticulously numbered the levels, sectorized the windows, and labeled all the openings, ventilation shafts, et cetera. At the briefing just completed, he had used the blueprints to designate primary and secondary entry-points. He would fine-tune his strategy with Vance by radio once they had made the insertion; and then, after he had located all the terrorists and confirmed the situation of the hostages, they would use the blueprints to plan the a.s.sault.

Next came the equipment. Since the a.s.sault would be at night, they would need vision capabilities. That included M17A1 7x50 binoculars, starlight scopes, and infrared scopes. Then the radios, which had to be multi-channeled, with one channel reserved strictly for the team, and have cryptographic (secure voice) capability. The surveillance radio package--compact in size, with a short antenna--included a lapel mike, push-to-talk b.u.t.ton, and earpiece. All members of the team would have a radio, worn in a comfortable position and out of the way. As usual they would employ strict communication discipline, using their established call signs and codes as much as possible.

Other personal equipment included chemical light wands, luminous tape, gloves, protective gla.s.ses, disposable inserts for hearing protection, black combat boots, lightweight body armor, balaclavas, flashlights, knives, first-aid pouches. Insertion gear included grapple hooks, several hundred feet of half-inch fibrous nylon rope, locking snaplinks, and rappelling harnesses.

Finally there was the weaponry. Everybody would carry a .45 caliber automatic pistol and a .38 caliber revolver with a special four-inch barrel. The a.s.sault team would use H&K MP5s except for Armont and Hall: Pierre preferred a Steyr-Mannlicher AUG and Reggie had brought along an Enfield L85A1, in addition to his usual AK-47. Then, just in case, they had the heavy stuff: M203 40mm launcher systems, M520-30 and M620A shotguns, modified 1200 pump shotguns, and 9mm PSDs. G.o.d help us, Armont thought, if we need all this.