Project Cyclops

Chapter Six

Cally Andros felt disgusted, physically nauseated. And partly it was with herself. Blame the victim. She wondered if all hostages felt this way: powerless, angry, and scared. What would she feel next? She had heard that strange things happened to your mind when you lost all control. You started forgetting recent events and remembering oddities from long ago, childhood memories you'd totally repressed, stashed away somewhere down in the lower cortex. It had already started, dwelling on her father's death and blaming herself, when the real reason was his overwork and grief.

And other memories were creeping in, little things that only the child inside would regard as anything but trivial. That first bumbling sexual disaster, in the Cal Tech dorm that weekend, when she got drunk, then threw up on his pillow. She'd repressed that one completely, never told anybody about that, hoping the memory would just go away. God! It was horrible. And now it was back, right at the top of the remembrance file.

More memories, the first year at Bronx Science, when her very first real date stood her up, and she ended up sitting home all night crying and praying everybody was going to believe her when she told them she'd had cramps and couldn't go out after all. (They didn't. Everybody found out exactly what had happened.)

Humiliations? Stupid things that meant so much at the time that they stuck. You felt your life had been a string of mistakes and you wanted to go back and get it right before you checked out. And try as you might, you didn't care at all about the triumphs — degrees, ceremonies, honors. No, all you could remember were the little, trivial things, joys and sadnesses that were yours alone. Remembrances of trivialities past. That's what being a hostage was all about.

On the other hand — and she hated herself for this feeling — there was something almost erotic about men with so much sudden, ill-gotten power. Evil had its own allure, just as surely as good. Were they just two opposite sides of the same emotion? Wasn't Satan the real hero of Paradise Lost? Was Ramirez that same figure? The sexiness of power. Bill Bates had the same aura…

Georges and his young staff engineers were sitting listlessly and staring at their computer screens, looking exhausted and defeated. Bill had been confined to his office, where he could do nothing but fume since his radio had been shut down and there was now only one phone remaining connected to the outside world — the one on her desk, which they monitored.

It got worse. Isaac was coming in, which meant they'd have a real prize for a hostage. As if Bill weren't enough, to have a famous American Jewish professor in hand would be the topping on their whole grab.

She tried to catch Georges's eye, across the room. He seemed to be drowsing at his terminal, almost as though nothing had happened. Since he had always held a political stance slightly to the left of Che Guevara, maybe he secretly enjoyed being taken hostage by these self-appointed enemies of American Capitalism.

No… she saw an eyelid flutter… he was just faking his calm. He was scared to death. And he was thinking. About what?

She had done some thinking of her own, about the guy who called himself Number One, the terrorist now sitting at the other end of Command, calmly smoking a thin cigar. As she examined him, the gray temples and perfect tan, the beige sunglasses, she began to find his appearance a little incongruous. What was it?

Well, for one thing, he looked too perfect. Something about him… He had to be at least in his late forties, but nobody's face looked like that at his age. It was too smooth, too tight.

Plastic surgery. The bastard had changed his appearance. So who was he, really? He hadn't given his name, but his face must have mattered once. Who?

Try and put it together, she told herself. He's not Middle Eastern. Maybe he's trying to pass as an Arab, but he's not fooling me. No, he's Latin. It's in the way he moves, the way he brushes at his sleeve, the way he holds his cigar. He's just like Domingo, the guy in junior year, who thought he was God's gift to the feminine gender.

Yes, Domingo was a Latin caricature, but this guy has all the same moves. They can't escape it. They're just so proud of being male. The ironic part was, half the time Domingo couldn't get it up unless some act of violence was involved. He liked to dominate, or be dominated. Power was what he was all about. Power.

Think. Can you use that some way to get to this guy?

No, she told herself, this killer has all the power he needs. He's about image. And money.

She moved through the rows of workstations, now merely flashing updates of the status of the various components of the Cyclops system. The power plant was idling now, the superconducting coil in standby mode. The crew of technicians, armed with a punch list of post-power-up items, was checking out the Cyclops itself. The test had been a total success.

"Miss Andros, you are a beautiful woman." Ramirez glanced up as she approached. He had seemed to be meditating on his cigar, inspecting the ash as he slowly allowed it to accumulate. "I was wondering why a creature of such beauty would want to submit herself to this kind of manly trade?"

"Not as 'manly' a trade as yours. Killing for profit." She felt her anger coming back, and her courage. "As far as I'm concerned, there's no difference between a so-called 'terrorist' and a common murderer. You disgust me."

His face flushed for a millisecond as he impassively drew on his cigar. "It would be better if you would consider me, and the rest of these men, as economic freedom fighters. Perhaps I'm a modern-day Robin Hood."

"Right." She felt like spitting on him, a definitely unladylike response. "You steal from the rich and give to yourself. But you've made a big mistake this time. All you're going to do is ruin SatCom."

"Ruin you?" He seemed amused at the notion, taking another puff on his cigar. "I have no desire to ruin your precious American corporation. As a matter of fact, I'm going to make you the beneficiary of a billion dollars' worth of free publicity. Truly, no money in the world could purchase what I am about to do for you. And all I want in return is to borrow your Cyclops laser for a few days. If anything, you should pay me… though there will be others to do that."

"I don't know who you expect to come up with any money. It sure as hell isn't going to be SatCom. We're totally tapped out. If this launch doesn't meet our schedule, day after tomorrow, a bunch of banks in Geneva and Tokyo are going to take us over. And I doubt very much they're going to pay off you and your goons. They'll tell you to go screw yourself."

“They can do whatever they wish. They're not the ones who're going to pay." There was no trace of sarcasm in his voice. "We are going to make the Americans pay. For their crimes against the Muslim peoples of the world."

'That's a lot of crap." She hated the man, really hated him. "You don't care a damn about the 'Muslim peoples,' do you, senor?"

He pulled up sharply and stared at her, startled. For the first time since he had barged in, he seemed momentarily at a loss for words. But he covered it quickly by reaching out to tap his cigar ash into a half-filled trash can.

"What are you suggesting?"

"You're a fake, through and through." Keep him on the defensive, she thought. "As phony as they come. Who are you, really?"

His composure was returning, an instinct for chivalry that could operate on autopilot if need be. "I'm flattered by your interest in me, but who I am need not concern you. All you need to worry about is following my instructions. Then you and I will get along nicely."

"Listen, you creep, there's no way we are going to get along, nicely or otherwise." She felt her resolve growing. "You don't know me. I'm going to fight you with everything I have. You're going to have to kill me to stop me."

"Do yourself a favor, Miss Andros." He pulled again on his cigar, inhaling the harsh smoke. "Don't make that necessary."

Isaac Mannheim gazed down through the glass partition of the old Bell Jetranger and wondered again what he was seeing. The pilot couldn't raise Command on the radio, and now he was grumbling that the pad looked unsafe.

The boy had a point. The surrounding hurricane fence had been half ripped away, and there was oil everywhere on the asphalt. The place looked as though a raging bull elephant had powered its way through, knocking aside everything in its wake. What in blazes had happened? A tornado?

He surveyed the area, and something even more ominous caught his eye. What was it, that thing half-buried in the trees, about two-thirds the way up the mountain? Now he strained to see through the smudgy windows, just making out the wreckage of some sort of military helicopter.

Next he turned and looked in the other direction, down toward the launch vehicles. That's odd. Another helicopter was parked down there. It was big, a military gray, but no one was around it.

"It looks like there was a crash on the pad or something," the young Greek pilot shouted over the roar of the engines, his dark, serious eyes fixed gravely on the scene. His name, sewn in Greek on his tan shirt, was Mikis; his father owned the 1981 Jetranger, and the business. Flying this far from Athens meant he would have to refuel to make it back, and nobody was around to take care of that. Moreover, the situation definitely looked unsafe.

"I can see that," Mannheim responded dryly, his voice faint above the noise. "Which is why you need to be careful. We don't want to add another casualty."

"Something funny is definitely going on," Mikis continued, to no one in particular. He had already discovered the eccentric American professor with a baseball cap didn't care all that much for small talk. And he had no patience whatsoever for small talk that pointed out the obvious. "I don't like this, but I'll have to put her down. I'm already on my auxiliary tank."

For once Mannheim allowed his thoughts to stray to the concerns of someone else. "There's an airfield at Kythera. You could make it there, if you just touched down here and dropped me off."

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Mikis was gripping the stick, frowning behind his aviator shades. "We can't raise anybody here on the radio, and now there's this mess. Let me take you to Kythera with me. The whole deal looks weird."

"No," Mannheim shouted back. "I have to find out what's happened."

This project is like Sarah, he thought, his estranged daughter coming to mind. I had to do everything I knew how to try to keep her from making the wrong decisions. Then he remembered ruefully that she had gone ahead and made them anyway. But he had been there always, ready to give her advice.

Mikis shrugged, clearly worried, and gave the Jetranger some pedal, circling to search for signs of life. There was nothing. The bleak granite cliffs were barren, and the cool blue of the light surf washed against an empty shoreline. He had not seen this space facility before, but everybody had heard about it. The most impressive sight was, of course, those silver spires down at the other end of the island. Those had to be their vehicles, but nobody was around them now. Puzzled, he examined the huge dormitory-type residence in the middle of the island and the supply buildings, lined along a paved segment connecting the landing pad with the main building, and still saw no one.

"Look, I'm going to just drop you off and then get the hell out of here," he yelled over. He was easing up on the collective, taking her in. "I'll buy petrol on Kythera. I don't see anybody around, and this place gives me the creeps."

"You've done all you need to," Mannheim shouted back. "Something…"

His voice trailed off as he finally saw some movement. A figure was coming down the mountain, carrying what looked like an automatic weapon.

"We'd better make this quick."

Vance was moving as fast as he could and watching as the helicopter — now about a thousand yards from the pad — began its final approach.

Friend or foe? With the second arrival in as many hours, the place resembled an airport. He assumed by now they surely had seen the wreckage of the Hind, but they seemed determined to come in anyway.

He watched as the old Bell gingerly began to hover above the landing pad, the pilot dispensing with preliminaries. While it was settling in, he chambered a round in the Uzi, pulled back the gnarled cocking lever on the top, and continued on down the hill at a brisk pace. With any luck he would beat the guys in black. Or maybe they were deliberately keeping a low profile, hoping to lure in the prey. They were also luring him out, he knew, but he had to take the chance.

He was moving quickly, the sharp rocks cutting into his feet, and now only a hundred yards or so remained between him and the approaching helo.

Only then did he first notice he had bumped Bill's new Agusta when he tried to fly the Hind, leaving a bad dent. Now he owed Bates for repairs. Great. He wondered fleetingly if SatCom had terrorist insurance.

There was now an opening in the pad's protective fence, where the Hind had ripped it away, and as the din of the approaching helicopter rang in his ears, he raced across the last clearing, headed for it. But his instincts caused him to look around, and just in time…

Approaching on the run down the asphalt road leading from the launch facility were three of the terrorists. He recognized two of them as his earlier assailants, together with a third who looked like he might actually know what he was doing. They must have seen the arriving Jetranger, and now they were coming out to give it a welcome.

The way they were moving, and the AK-47s they were carrying, told him a lot. The chopper's occupants were the good guys.

As the Bell settled in and its door opened, he dropped onto the granite and nestled the metal stock of the Uzi against his cheek. It felt warm from the morning sun, like the touch of a comfortable friend. He flipped the fire control to semiautomatic and caught the approaching goons in the metal sight. Then he gently squeezed the trigger.

The Uzi kicked back, sending a round upward into the morning air. He realized he was out of practice. Next time he would handle it better, but for now he had blown the operation.

The three in black who had been running toward the landing pad dropped onto the asphalt and opened fire, spattering flecks of granite around him as he took cover. Then he looked up to see an elderly man fairly tumble out of the chopper and make a dash for the safety of the SatCom Agusta. He need not have hurried; no one was shooting at him.

As the Jetranger started to lift off, however, the gunmen's focus switched away from Vance, and he realized they had no intention of letting it escape. As it left the pad and banked to gain altitude, the lead terrorist dropped to a prone position on the asphalt and took aim directly at the cockpit, where the pilot was just visible behind the glare of the windscreen. With a range of only fifty yards, Vance realized, taking him out would be easy.

It was. The AK-47 was on full auto, and one burst splintered away the windscreen, exploding it and leaving what remained spattered with blood. The pilot was thrown against the shattered glass, then left hanging halfway through. He never knew what hit him.

The fuselage began to pirouette into a sickening spiral, but the firing continued, as though to kill what was already dead. The gunman's obsessed, Vance thought. He's also emptying his magazine.

Now's the time. Make a move while he's still distracted. These thugs want the old man alive, whoever he is. So why not try and ruin their day, get him before they do.

The Bell continued to autorotate in a series of circles. Then it abruptly nosed straight downward, and a second later it veered toward the side of the cliff abutting the sea. A splintering crash replaced the sound of the engine as the rotors slammed against the granite, shearing away — whereupon the fuselage bounced down the steep wall of the cliff and into the water. In moments the seabed swallowed it up.

In the meantime Vance had reached the landing pad, a few meters away from the old man, who was stumbling distractedly across the asphalt, staring in the direction the chopper had disappeared and so shocked by the sight he seemed not to realize he was walking directly into the hands of the men who had killed the pilot.

Vance wanted to shout, but then he thought better of it. What was the point? The old man clearly was unable to think. He had to be pulled out quickly and with a minimum of risk. No, the best thing to do was lay down a line of covering fire and go for him.

He opened up the Uzi on semiauto and dashed for the Agusta.

Wolf Helling hit the ground rolling, bringing up his Kalashnikov, set on automatic. The renegade guard was back to shoot it out, firing from somewhere in the area of the pad.

Good. He was going to trap the fucker. This time he would handle the situation personally; he would not have to depend on a bunch of incompetent East German Stasi burnouts.

He glanced back and saw the two trailing behind him. When the guard had opened fire, they'd dived and stumbled pell-mell for the cover of the storage sheds. They wouldn't be any help, but he'd known that already.

It didn't matter. This was going to be one-on-one. And easy.

The chopper had been lost, which was a shame. Although Ramirez's orders were to seize it when it arrived, that had not been possible. You win some, you lose some.

Amid the gunfire the old man had reached the SatCom helicopter, while the guard was now making a dash for its protection, too, even as he covered himself with another spray from the automatic that the damn fools had let him get.

Fortunately his aim was wild again, probably because he was running, and the rounds sailed by harmlessly. And he was in the open.

Now.

Helling trained his AK-47, long barrel and heavy clip, on him and pulled the trigger…

His clip was empty.

Scheisse! He cursed himself for having used the gun on automatic. At ten pops a second, you could wipe out a 35- round clip before you could sneeze.

Still cursing, he pushed the button releasing the clip and slammed in another. But he was too late; by that time the guard had disappeared behind the SatCom helicopter. The two East Germans were firing randomly and ineffectually from the safety of the storage sheds, holding their weapons around the corners and spraying blindly. Idiots. They were providing cover, but since they had no idea where they were aiming, they were endangering him at least as much as their target.

And now the bastard had reached the cover of the helicopter. He was safe for the moment. But only for the moment.

"Don't shoot," Isaac Mannheim shouted as he saw the unshaven, barefoot man roll next to him, an Uzi giving off bursts of rounds.

"Get down," Vance yelled back, then shoved him onto the asphalt beside the blue-and-white Agusta. "You picked a hell of a time to come visiting. There're some new natives, and they're not overly friendly."

"Who are you?" The old man's ancient eyes were brimming with alarm and confusion. "What are you doing here?"

"At the moment I'm trying to keep you alive." Vance checked the clip of the Uzi. There were about seven rounds left. With three hoods out there, all with Kalashnikovs, seven rounds would not go very far.

Was anything usable in the Agusta? he asked himself. He peered through the glass of the cockpit, searching. It looked empty. Except for—

A blast of fire careened by the canopy, and he again yanked Mannheim down onto the asphalt. Then he cautiously raised up enough to recon the situation.

The hoods were all advancing now, scurrying forward from building to building as they gave covering blasts from their automatics. However, the two farthest back did not seem to be overly enthusiastic.

"They're going to kill us, too," Mannheim stammered. "Can you—?"

"Just stay down," Vance interrupted him. "I'm probably the one they want to get rid of. If they'd wanted you dead, believe me, you would be by now."

He opened the door and hurriedly surveyed the cockpit more closely. Yes, he had seen it right…

Attached to the back firewall, ready for emergency use, was a rack of smoke grenades, factory fresh, the kind used for signaling in case the helo went down.

He remembered that grenade smoke was designed to cling to the ground rather than rise, and with a burn time between one and two minutes, a good grenade could produce a quarter million cubic feet of HC smoke.

Maybe, he thought, I just got lucky.

He peeled one off the rack and checked it over. Yep, American M-18, which everybody knew was the best. The can was about the size of a Diet Coke, and it was military gray. It even gave the flavor on the side — this one was red, but they also came in yellow and white. Nice to have around if you went down in wooded terrain.

He looked toward the gunmen approaching and made the decision on the spot. With a quick motion he clenched the handle with his right hand and yanked the steel pin with his left. When he looked up again, they had closed the distance, now only about thirty yards. Time for a touchdown.

He drew back and lobbed the can directly at the lead terrorist.

The time delay was one and a half seconds. It landed just in front of the first man, bounced once, and blew — an eruption of red that engulfed him.

Beautiful.

With a quick twist he yanked the rack from the side of the cockpit and began hurling the cans as fast as he could. Finally, he grabbed the startled old professor by the arm, then dropped the last grenade at their feet.

"Time to move the party. There's cover in the rocks up there."

Mannheim stumbled backward as the smoke bomb exploded, and Vance realized he would never make it. He would have to be dragged, or carried. And since dragging was out of the question, there really was only one option.

He bent down and grabbed the old man around the waist, then lifted him over his shoulder. It turned out he was hardly more than skin and bones, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds, tops. After spending the last four days heaving the tillers of the late, lamented Odyssey II, the load seemed like a feather.

Some more random gunfire exploded behind them as he struggled and stumbled up the rocky slope, but now a dense cloud of red completely obliterated the scene below. The M-18 grenades were still billowing, totally obscuring the landing pad and the roadway.

When they reached the first clump of brush leading up the mountain, he settled Mannheim onto the ground. The old professor was choking from the smoke, totally disoriented, and babbling. Vance clapped a hand over his mouth, then urged him onward.

"No talking. If they find us, we're going to have some really lousy odds."

He removed his hand, and immediately Mannheim started again.

"Whoever you are, I guess I have to thank you for saving my life." He puffed over the stones. "Who are you?"

"I'm a friend of Bill Bates, the man supposedly in charge around here."

"I'm Isaac Mannheim. This project—"

"The godfather." Vance looked him over. "Bill's talked about you. MIT, right?"

“The Cyclops is my—"

"Nice to meet you. Now who in the hell are these thugs?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, we can assume they're not part of Bill's technical support team." He glanced down the hill, toward the drifting cloud of red smoke, then back at the old man. "But if you've been involved in this project, then you must know the layout here."

"I know it very well. But—"

"Good. We're going to have to keep moving, at least till it gets dark, but while we're doing that, I want you to get me up to speed on where things are. Give me the setup. And tell me how many personnel are here and where they are."

Mannheim pointed down the hill, at a point just past the storage sheds. "The people are housed in the Bates Motel, which is over there, beyond that row of buildings."

Vance looked it over. At the moment it seemed deserted.

"Where's the entrance?"

"You can go in directly from the connecting corridor underground, or you can use the front entrance, there."

"What if the entrance topside were locked? Then it would he secure, right?"

"I suppose so." He still seemed disoriented, though he was recovering. "Of course there are fire exits at various places in the underground network, as well as the security lobby over there. And then, the storage sheds can be accessed from below."

"But all of those entry-points can be sealed, right?"

"Yes. In fact, they can be sealed electronically, from Command. The staff controls everything from there."

Vance looked down at the white surf rippled across the blue. "So if somebody wanted to take over this place, that's where they would start, right? Hit that and you're in like a bandit. It's the head office."

“That's correct." Mannheim nodded.

"Good. We know where to focus. Now you're going to tell me how I can get there."