Cauldron

CHAPTER 1 Provocation

The two men lay quietly on a thinly wooded hillside overlooking their target. Clouds covered the night sky above them, rolling slowly eastward in an ever-thickening band that promised rain before morning.

Down in the valley below, dim yellow lights outlined vague shapes in the darkness — huge aluminum-sided warehouses and factory buildings, a concrete and glass administration center, and boxcars waiting empty on a railroad siding. Other lights were strung at widely spaced intervals along a wire fence enclosing the whole compound. A single wooden guardhouse blocked an access road leading to the Budapest-Vienna highway and the Austrian border.

Nothing moved. Money and energy were both too scarce in the wreckage of Europe’s economy to warrant around-the-clock manufacturing. Too scarce even for the high-tech tilt-rotor assemblies built by the French-owned Sopron plant.

Major Paul Duroc glanced at his companion. “Ready, Michel?”

“Yes.” The big man’s guttural French tagged him as an Alsatian — a man born in one of the twin provinces torn back and forth between France and Germany for centuries. He was half a head taller and massed at least ten kilos more than Duroc, extra weight and extra height that often came in handy for the physical side of their work. He slipped a pair of night-vision goggles over his eyes and quickly scanned the darkened factory compound. “Still clear.”

Duroc tapped the transmit button on the tiny walkie-talkie clipped to his web gear. Two soft clicks sounded in his earphones. The other members of his team were in place and alert. Perfect.

He flipped his goggles down, rose to his feet, and moved downhill. Michel Woerner followed close behind — cat-quiet despite his size. Neither man had any trouble avoiding the trees, thorn-crowned clumps of underbrush, and moss-covered stumps in their path. Their goggles magnified all available light, turning the nighttime world into an eerie array of sharp-edged blue-green images.

Duroc paused at the edge of the woods, carefully studying the narrow band of open ground separating them from the factory’s wire fence. There weren’t any signs that Sopron’s security personnel had set up new motion sensors, video cameras, or other detection devices to cover this part of the perimeter. The single camera assigned to monitor this stretch of fence scanned slowly back and forth in a regular, dependable pattern. Men who knew the pattern in advance, and who moved quickly enough, could avoid its unblinking gaze. He allowed himself a quick, cold grin that flitted across a narrow face quite unused to smiling. For once the mission planners had been right. The Eurocopter complex was wide open. The fence, the lights, and the rest would keep out thieves, but not professionals with access to detailed information on the factory’s security systems and routines.

He nodded once to Woerner and loped across the open ground, dropping prone next to the fence. The other man slid into place beside him a second later, already reaching for the wire cutters he carried in a pocket of his equipment vest. Duroc slipped the razor-edged jaws of his own cutters over the lowest strand of barbed wire and waited for his subordinate to do the same. Six short, powerful snips cut through three strands in rapid succession, opening a gap just wide enough for them to wriggle through. They were past the first barrier.

The two men scrambled upright and headed deeper into the darkened factory complex. Despite the continued silence, they moved cautiously, skirting pools of light and staying out of sight of the main gate guardhouse. Both men were veterans of more than a dozen “special” operations conducted in half a dozen countries around the world. And professionals never took unnecessary chances.

Duroc led the way, picking a roundabout path through the man-made maze of warehouses, assembly lines, and loading docks. The hours he’d spent studying detailed maps and photographs were repaid with every surefooted step. Ten minutes after they’d cut through the security fence, he crouched beside the waist-high rear wheels of a tractor-trailer truck — surveying the deserted parking lot and empty lawn surrounding the plant’s administration center and an adjacent staff canteen. Near the main walkway, a large, floodlit billboard proclaimed “Safety Comes First” in French, German, and Hungarian. His lips twitched upward at the irony. That might almost be his own motto.

A low rumbling and the distant, mournful blast of a train horn drifted down the valley — the sounds of the midnight freight express lumbering toward Vienna. They were still on schedule.

Duroc tapped his radio’s transmit button again. His hands were already busy with a final equipment check when the response came. Three clicks this time. The others were ready for Phase Two. He looked at Woerner and found the big man’s expressionless, pale blue eyes staring back. There were enough lights on around the factory headquarters to make their vision gear unnecessary.

Duroc pushed his own goggles further up his forehead and lowered his hand, frowning at the sight of the black camouflage paint smeared on his fingertips. Annoyed, he wiped them off on his sleeve. It was a cool night. He shouldn’t be sweating.

He drew in a quick breath, held it briefly, and then breathed out. “Now.”

They scuttled out from behind the truck and sped across the grass, angling away from the lighted walkway and toward concealing shadows at the base of the administration building. Duroc felt his heart speeding up, racing in time with his feet. Every noise they made seemed a hundred times too loud. Each footfall on the soft, dew-soaked grass sounded like an elephant crashing through dead brush. And every hushed, panting breath echoed dangerously through the quiet night air.

They merged with the shadows and stood still, waiting uneasily for the shout or clanging alarm klaxon that would tell them they’d been spotted. None came. Just the fading thunder of the freight train vanishing in the distance.

Duroc’s pulse slowed and he swallowed hard to clear the sour taste in his mouth. The Frenchman shook his head, coldly irritated by the lingering remnants of his own fear. Maybe he was getting too old for this sort of caper. He’d seen it happen to others in the secret services. Every field operative had only a limited reservoir of courage. When it was used up, you were finished, fit only for a sterile, useless desk job.

He snorted in self-contempt as Woerner touched his arm. Precious seconds were slipping away while he wasted time in absurd self-analysis. Action would burn through the fear. It always did.

Bent low to stay below eye level of anybody inside looking out onto the grounds, they edged around the corner of the building. Duroc counted windows silently. Three. Four. There. He stopped. The architects who’d designed the Sopron plant’s ultramodern headquarters had been thinking of esthetics, not security. Waist-to-ceiling picture windows made every outside room and hallway seem larger and lighter on sunny days. But they also left them exposed and unguarded.

According to the blueprints he’d memorized, the window in front of him opened directly onto a corridor leading straight to their objective, the factory’s computer center. It was almost a perfect entry point. He glanced toward the nearby staff canteen — far too near for his taste. Still…

He shrugged. Second-guessing a good plan was usually a certain road to disaster. Speed and convenience should outweigh any risk.

Woerner was already hard at work, his thick fingers flashing nimbly through long-practiced tasks. The big man pulled a piece of metal shaped as a flattened U out of his vest and smeared a fast-acting adhesive across both ends. Then he clamped the metal bar onto the window and held it in place for several seconds, waiting for the glue to take hold. Satisfied, he let go and stepped back, leaving room for his superior to take over.

Duroc moved forward with a diamond-edged glass cutter in his right hand. They had their door handle. Now to make the door. He dragged the glass cutter through the window in four steady strokes, two vertical and two horizontal, grunting softly at the effort it took.

When he was done, Woerner grabbed the metal handle with both hands and tugged straight outward, levering a solid piece of glass right out of the window. While the giant Alsatian carefully set his burden down on the grass, Duroc unrolled a thick sheet of black matting across their new-cut opening. The steel strands woven through both the matting and his gloves would protect his hands and legs while he climbed through the gap.

Without waiting for further orders, Woerner knelt down and put his own hands together to form a makeshift stirrup. Duroc stepped up into the other man’s locked hands, reaching for the edges of the cut glass as his subordinate boosted him toward the hole. He threw one leg over the protective matting, leaning inward…

An outside door banged open.

Duroc almost lost his balance as he jerked his head around toward the entrance to the factory’s cafeteria. A blue-uniformed security guard carrying a steaming cup of coffee stood there staring back at him. Shock and surprise combined to stretch time itself, turning a single second into an endless, frozen pause.

Sudden motion shattered the illusion as the security guard tossed his coffee cup away and fumbled for the pistol holstered at his side. “Halt!”

Duroc swore inwardly, unable to reach for his own weapons while he teetered practically spread-eagle against the window. For all his size and strength Michel Woerner was even more helpless. Neither could move without disastrously unbalancing the other.

With his pistol out and steadied in a two-hand grip, the guard edged closer, visibly more confident as his eyes sorted out the spectacle in front of him. Duroc forced himself to look beyond the muzzle aimed at his stomach. The other man was young, and young-looking despite the thick mustache curling above his upper lip. An ex-conscript perhaps, fresh from his military service and still eager for action. That was unfortunate. An older man might have been more reasonable or more worried about his own survival. But younger men prized glory above all else.

“Do not move or I will shoot.”

Duroc’s mouth twisted at the clumsy, phrase-book Hungarian. Nevertheless, he obeyed and stood motionless, still perched in Woerner’s cupped hands, silently willing the guard to keep walking. A little further, he thought. Just a little further.

The young man stepped away from the open cafeteria door, moving out onto the lawn to give himself a clearer field of fire. He lowered one hand from his pistol toward the radio clipped to his belt. Duroc felt his jaw muscles clench. An alert now would ruin everything.

Crack.

The security guard’s chest exploded in a red rain of blood and broken bone — torn open by a 7.62mm bullet that hit him squarely in the back and threw him forward onto the grass. He shuddered once and then lay still.

Duroc scrambled down from the window and knelt beside the body, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. He glanced toward the wooded hills three hundred meters away and punched the transmit key on his own radio. “Confirmed.”

Two answering clicks sounded in his earphones as the sniper he’d placed there on overwatch acknowledged the kill.

He pulled the pistol out of the dead man’s hand and rose to his feet. “Who was he?”

“Monnet, Jacques.” Woerner read the guard’s bloodied name tag aloud.

Duroc recognized the name and shook his head slowly and sadly from side to side. Monnet had been the sentry stationed at the main door. He ought to have been safely on duty and out of the way. But he evidently couldn’t wait for his shift change to get his coffee. So now the young fool was dead. A pity. His death would complicate matters.

He nodded toward the window. “Bring him.”

Woerner grunted his assent and bent to his task. Together they manhandled the guard’s body through the gap and dumped it into the corridor beyond.

Nose wrinkling at the smell of blood and voided bowels, Duroc wiped his gloves clean on the grass and checked his watch. They were behind their timetable — but still well within the planned margin for error. “Right, Michel. Let’s finish this and get home to our beds, eh?”

“Oui, m’sieu.”

A humorless smile ghosted across the big man’s face. “I’ve had enough excitement for this night.”

Thirty seconds later, Duroc glided down the dark hallway alone while Woerner waited outside to guard his retreat. The Frenchman was tired of unpleasant surprises.

A thick, fireproof steel door blocked access to the computer center. And a tiny red light blinked steadily on a nearby ten-key panel controlling the door’s electronic lock. Security might be lax everywhere else, but the Sopron plant’s data banks held information that Eurocopter’s Japanese and American competitors would dearly love to see — production schedules and costs, precise formulas for rotor metal and plastic composites, reports on advanced R&D projects, and all the thousands of other facts and figures generated by any major industrial concern.

Duroc focused a small penlight on the keypad and carefully punched in the six-digit security code he’d memorized. Yesterday’s security code. As he’d expected, the massive steel door stayed obstinately shut. Good. He tried the code again. This time the panel’s tiny red light stopped blinking. Even better. The simpleminded computer controlling the lock would now have a record of two failed attempts using a code that would have worked just a few hours before.

He snapped the penlight off and clipped it back in place on his web gear. Moving quickly, he molded an ounce of pliable plastic explosive around the lock control panel. More ounces covered the door’s hinges. When he was finished, the Frenchman stepped back and eyed his work appreciatively. Wires ran from igniters buried inside each piece of plastic explosive to a small, inexpensive, and old-fashioned wristwatch set for a two-hour delay. He nodded to himself. It had the right feel to it. Effective but amateurish. Even the type of explosive he’d used was appropriate. Czechoslovakia’s old communist government had doled out odorless, colorless Semtex to terrorists around the world.

Duroc moved back up the corridor. Time for the finishing touches to this night’s work. He uncapped a small can of red paint, shook it, and sprayed. “Death to French pigs!” and “Liberty, not slavery!” in meter-high letters across one wall. Duroc had been careful to memorize the nationalist slogans in Hungarian, and even used the characteristic lettering. Even the smallest details were important in a job of this kind. All of the signs would point to Hungarian terrorists, angry with French “economic colonialism.”

Woerner was waiting for him at the window. “It’s still quiet.”

“Not for long.” Duroc dropped onto the grass and stood waiting while the big man rerolled their black steel mat and carefully set the cut-out piece of glass back in place. Then the two men turned and trotted back toward the hills rising above the factory complex.

The watch-driven bomb they’d left behind clicked another minute closer to detonation.

Duroc and his team were forty kilometers away when the timer reached zero.

The Sopron factory administration building rocked on its foundation, torn by a powerful explosion. A searing white light flared behind every ground-floor window milliseconds before the shock wave blew them apart. Behind that first shock wave, a wall of fire and superheated air roared outward from the detonation point, killing five Hungarian maintenance workers who had just come on-shift and setting everything flammable ablaze.

Even before the first emergency sirens wailed over the Eurocopter complex, flames could be seen dancing eerily through the shattered building.

Pale sunshine streamed over a scene of barely contained chaos. Fire trucks and other emergency vehicles surrounded the bomb-damaged administration center — parked seemingly at random on its scarred, wreckage-strewn lawn. Workers carrying salvaged office equipment and furniture outside mingled with weary firemen, structural engineers, and worried-looking company officials. Restless security guards armed with automatic weapons instead of their standard-issue pistols stood watch at the main gate and near the explosion site.

A thin, acrid smell of smoke and charred paper lingered in the muggy, windless air. The computer room’s halon fire extinguishers and steel doors had saved the factory’s data processing systems, but they hadn’t stopped blast-sparked fires from roaring through the rest of the ground floor.

Fifty meters from the building, a short, round-faced man fought hard to control his temper. Even during the best of times, Colonel Zoltan Hradetsky had never much liked Francois Gellard, the Eurocopter factory’s general manager. The Frenchman had always been officious, arrogant, and all too ready to look down a long, thin nose at everything and everybody Hungarian. At the moment, the man’s worst traits were magnified a thousandfold.

“For the last time, Colonel, I must refuse your request to investigate this affair.” The manager folded his arms. “Your presence here is unnecessary… and disruptive.”

“Disruptive? You…” Hradetsky swallowed the string of curses that rose in his throat. “You misunderstand me, M. Gellard.”

He jabbed a finger toward the wrecked administration center. “That is a police matter. So is the cold-blooded murder of five of my countrymen. As the ranking police officer for this district, I am not making a ‘request.’ I’m issuing an order.”

“Impossible,” Gellard sneered. “Your orders carry no weight within this compound, Colonel. I suggest you reread the terms of the contract between your government and my company. For all practical purposes, this is French soil. This terrorist crime has been committed against a French corporation. And it will be investigated under French authority.”

That damned contract! Hradetsky ground his teeth together. He didn’t need to peruse the fine print to know that the factory manager was on safe ground. When the Sopron plant was being built, Hungary’s shaky military junta had been desperate for French and German financial assistance. To the generals in Budapest, meeting Eurocopter’s demands for tax-free status and complete control over its facilities had appeared a small price to pay for the jobs and low-interest loans its factory would provide. And they’d granted the same special privileges to dozens of other Franco-German business interests.

The police colonel shook his head. He’d supported the two-year-old Government of National Salvation as a regrettable but necessary emergency measure. Hungary’s weak, faction-riddled, post-communist democracy couldn’t cope with economic chaos and failing harvests. Heavy-handed rule by soldiers had seemed better than misrule by inept, quarreling politicians. Now he was starting to have second thoughts about that. In effect, the generals had mortgaged their nation’s sovereignty to feed the hungry, unruly people who had put them in power. After forty-five years of military and political domination by the Soviets, his poor country had staggered into the grasp of a new set of masters — France and Germany, Europe’s new economic and military superpowers.

“Well, Colonel?”

Hradetsky looked up. “What you say may be legally correct, but I do not think it is especially wise.” He tried to keep his voice dispassionate. “If there are terrorists operating in this region, surely you can see that it will take all our combined efforts to hunt them down?”

“What do you mean, ‘if there are terrorists’?” Gellard demanded. “There’s no ‘if about it! What’s more, it’s obvious that they were aided by traitors inside our own work force. By some of your lazy, shiftless countrymen!”

The factory manager frowned. “Given that fact, Colonel, even an idiot should be able to understand why my company can’t trust this investigation to you or your men. Hungarians hunting Hungarians? The very idea is ludicrous.”

Hradetsky’s irritation flared into open rage. He could stomach arrogance, but he’d be damned if he’d put up with deliberate insults. He stepped closer to Gellard — a move that wiped the easy assurance off the Frenchman’s long, aristocratic face. “I think you should reconsider your choice of words, monsieur. Some of my countrymen might say that you have a tongue so sharp that it must wish for the touch of a knife. Do I make myself clear?”

The manager paled, evidently aware that he’d gone too far. “I didn’t mean… that is, what I said was…”

A helicopter roared low overhead, drowning out his stuttered apology. Both men turned to stare as it circled, flared out, and clattered in to land in the administration center’s parking lot. Hradetsky scowled at the blue, white, and red tricolor emblazoned on the helicopter’s tail-rotor pylon. Clearly the French government wasn’t wasting any time before poking its own nose into this matter.

Three men climbed out of the aircraft, ducking under its slowing rotor blades. Two were big men, mere muscle. The third wore a dark gray civilian suit, carried a bulging leather briefcase, and walked with the easy assurance of a man used to command.

When Hradetsky turned back to face Gellard, the Frenchman had regained his poise. “That will be the security specialist dispatched by my embassy, Colonel. An expert on terrorism and counterterrorist tactics. You can deal with him in future.”

The Hungarian police colonel eyed the short, grim-faced man striding briskly toward them. Something told him this wasn’t going to be a pleasant or productive meeting. “What’s his name?”

Gellard smiled coldly. “Major Paul Duroc.”