Project Cyclops Part 71

Moreau was supposed to have taken care of him. Had he screwed up, too?

I should have just let Wolf kill him in the first place and had done with it. This time, I'll just handle it myself.

He checked his pockets, making sure he had extra clips for his Beretta 9mm and then he headed through the door leading into the open bay of Launch. The SatCom systems engineers and ground-control specialists, not privy to the wide windows of Launch Control, had no idea what had just happened outside. They were too busy worrying about the fog, making the final checks of the electronics, monitoring the countdown clicking off. And all of them had laid side bets on whether the launch, now scheduled for less than an hour and a half away, would be able to proceed. The wagering leaned toward the fog clearing in time.

Ramirez strode past the bustling gray SatCom uniforms with a single- mindedness that characterized his every move. How the h.e.l.l, he was wondering, did Michael Vance get on the island in the first place? He was one of the back-office support types for ARM, a financial guy.

n.o.body had ever ID'd him in an a.s.sault. It made no sense that he was here, when none of the rest of the ARM operatives were around. Why Vance, who was a n.o.body?

All the same, he had specialized in s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up things ever since the initial penetration. He had managed to wreck the Hind, destroy the gantry, make a general nuisance of himself. The time had come to put a stop to the annoyance and then get moving. If the money had been delivered, as Hansen had claimed, then it was time to move on to the next phase. Just take care of a few banking transactions, then put the egress plan into motion.

He hit the lock control on the door, which had long since been defaulted to manual, and strode out, his Beretta ready. The problem now was finding that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Vance in the fog, but the reflected light off the spots illuminating the vehicles was going to provide visibility.

Besides, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was a cowboy, took chances right and left. He also didn't seem to be a particularly competent marksman. . . .

6:36 A.M.

"There he is," Pierre Armont said, peering through the fog with his Tasco Infocus Zoom binoculars. They did not require focusing, and with a touch of a lever he jacked up the power from six to twelve. "I want the sucker myself. We missed him in Beirut, but this time . . ."

Up above, Sabri Ramirez was gliding along the side of the fallen gantry, an automatic in his hand. Ramirez, Armont knew, was famous for his Beretta 9mm, used to such deadly effect over the years. It was his trademark, always employed for a.s.sa.s.sinations.

But now, finally, after all the years. There was the Hyena, exposed and clear. One shot. One shot would do it.

"He's mine." Armont leveled his MP5, captured Ramirez in the sight, and clicked it to full auto. Vance was a genius. He had lured the Hyena from his lair. Take him out, and the whole op would be over in time for morning coffee.

6:37 A.M.

Ramirez was edging down the side of the gantry, the cold angle-iron against his back, when there was an eruption of gunfire down the hill.

It was controlled, professional fire that seemed to be coming from two locations. An a.s.sault.

Well, f.u.c.k Hansen. The President had lied, claiming he had called it off. Had he lied about the money, too? The fleeting thought made him seethe. But one problem at a time.

He quickly ducked behind the fallen gantry, disappearing into the shadows. One more phone call, then a check with Geneva. If the money hadn't been transferred, Souda Bay and the American Sixth Fleet were both going to disappear in a nuclear cloud. In fact, they were anyway.

What better way to cover an egress?

6:38 A.M.

"What in--" Armont emitted a curse as all h.e.l.l broke loose behind them.

A fusillade of automatic-weapons fire rained around, from somewhere in the direction of the sh.o.r.eline. It was almost like covering fire, not well directed, and since everybody on the ARM team had long made a practice of minimizing exposure at all times, he didn't expect immediate casualties. But what in h.e.l.l! Had Ramirez's terrorist team encircled them, drawn them in? He felt like an idiot.

"Hostile fire!" He gave the signal to get down and take cover, swinging his hand from above his head to shoulder level, but that was nothing more than redundant instinct. The ARM team was already on the ground, ready to return fire if so ordered.

n.o.body, however, was wasting ammo on the darkness. The team had little enough to spare, and besides--why give away your position and create a target? The third consideration was that ARM never fired on an unknown.

They were, after all, civilians and answerable. An army could wreak whatever havoc it pleased and later blame everything on the heat of battle. ARM had to be d.a.m.ned sure who it was taking down.

By the time Armont's yell died away, everybody on the team had already found cover behind the random outcroppings of rocks. Everybody, that is, except Hugo Voorst, who spun around and stumbled backward, moaned, then collapsed.

6:39 A.M.

"Hold your fire! G.o.ddammit, hold your fire." The SEAL leader, Lieutenant Devon Robbins, was pressing in his earpiece, incredulous at what he was hearing. Around him the team was on the ground, in firing position, keeping the terrorists up the hill pinned down. Next would come the a.s.sault. "Roger, Alpha Leader, I copy. Does anybody know what's going on with this whole f.u.c.ked-up op? . . . I copy."

He looked around. "We just got aborted."

"What the f.u.c.k do you mean," the SEAL next to him, John McCleary, said.

He was slamming another clip into his MP5.

"The team is extracted. Now." Robbins could scarcely believe his own words.

"You have got to be f.u.c.king kidding," came the radio voice of Lieutenant Philip Pease. "We've got the a.s.sholes. A couple of grenades from the blooper and then we take them. They're history."

"Hey, I just report the orders, I don't give them," Robbins replied.

"Immediate egress. That's the word. Who the f.u.c.k knows?"

"But what about the choppers? Nichols is coming in with the Apaches."

"Goumes says they're scrubbed, too. Everybody's on hold. Nichols just about ate the f.u.c.king radio. He's going apes.h.i.t."

"Well, the h.e.l.l with Gournes," came a third voice, through a black pullover. "Maybe we had a 'radio failure.' The f.u.c.kers are pinned down.

Let's just go ahead and take them down. The whole op is blown. Now they're going to know we're coming in."

"They probably figured on it anyway," Robbins said, clicking on the safety of his MP5. "But who the h.e.l.l cares. We're out of here. Flint, you've got the rear. Use it. I'm on point. Let's. .h.i.t the beach. In five. Pa.s.s it on." He switched on his radio. "Listen up. Anybody not in a Zodiac in five mikes swims."

6:40 A.M.

Georges LeFarge had been studying Peretz, trying to figure out what was going on. One thing was sure: the countdown was about to switch into auto mode--which meant the priming of the superconducting coil would begin. When that happened, the Cyclops would be entering a very delicate, and dangerous, phase. Shutting it down after auto mode commenced required the kind of familiarity with the system he was sure Peretz did not have. Mess up then and you could literally burn out the huge power storage ring buried deep in the island's core--which was why the Fujitsu was deliberately programmed to thwart any straightforward command to abort. Ironically, the fail-safe mechanism was designed not to shut down the Cyclops, but rather to carry through. At this stage, the only way to abort the launch sequence safely was to bleed off the power using the Cyclops's main radar, the way they had done early last night. To simply flip a switch and turn everything off would be to risk melting the multimillion-dollar cryogenic storage coil down under. The whole thing was as bizarre as it was real. By continuing the countdown until everything went into auto mode, Peretz was creating a monster of inevitability.

He was currently trying to explain this to the Israeli, hoping the guy could conceive the gravity of what he was about to do. "You don't understand," he was pleading, his voice plaintive above the clicks of switches and buzz of communications gear in Command, "you're going to risk--"

"Hey, kid, chill out." Peretz did not bother to look up from his terminal. A strip-chart recorder next to him was humming away as voltage and amperage checks proceeded.

"But look." Georges pointed to the screen of an adjacent workstation.

"You've got less than three minutes left to abort the power-up. After the auto-test sequence it's doing now is finished, the superconducting coil starts final power-up. That's when everything switches to auto mode. It's all automatic from then on. For a very good reason."