Saucer

Chapter Eighteen

'Mr. President, the Japanese delegation just informed their government via satellite telephone that the Europeans got the saucer for one hundred and fifty billion.'

P.J. O'Reilly whistled softly. 'That's sixty billion above the maximum amount the Japanese government was willing to pay,' he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

The president took the note from the aide, then nodded, dismissing him. He stared at the note for a moment, wadded it up, and tossed it in the out-basket.

'That tears it,' he said to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who was sitting on the Oval Office couch beside Bombing Joe De Laurio. 'Let's get on with it.'

The chairman, an army four-star, looked as if he had been sucking a persimmon. 'I want to go on record as opposing this.'

'You're on record,' said the president, who hated people who wanted their objections formally noted. When events proved them correct they were insufferable; when events proved them wrong they conveniently forgot their bad advice.

'I wish we could have flown that thing to Area Fifty-one,' Bombing Joe said wistfully, 'but I guess it wasn't to be. I don't see that we have a choice in this matter now.'

The president eyed the general without affection. Bombing Joe wasn't the man to share a lifeboat with — the pit bulls in Congress would eat him alive.

'I should have gone into the hardware business with Dad,' the president muttered.

'I want to see Rip,' Charley Pine said to the guard in the barn.

'What's on the tray?' the guard asked suspiciously.

Charley lifted the cover on the main dish, revealing a heaping, steaming hot plate of beef, boiled potatoes, and vegetables.

'I've got my orders,' the guard says. 'Any funny business, I shoot him.'

Charley replaced the dish cover.

'I'll do it, too. If you think I won't, you're making a big mistake.'

'You look like the type who would kill an unarmed man.'

'Listen, lady… '

She bent down and placed the tray on the floor, then straightened. If she could just get the man off guard, just for an instant, she could take him out with a karate kick or elbow to the neck, whatever opportunity offered.

The Aussie was too suspicious. He kept his finger on the trigger of the rifle and the muzzle pointed right at her belly. Shooting him with the Walther would be suicidal.

'No closer,' the guard said. 'I seen Rigby after you kicked him.'

She took a tentative step toward him, shifted her weight.

'Don't, Charley!'

That was Rip.

The guard had his left hand on the forearm of the rifle, the muzzle dead center in her stomach. His face was white, drawn.

'Don't try it, Charley,' Rip whispered. 'Thanks for the grub.'

'They want me to fly the saucer out of here,' she said, her eyes never leaving the guard's. The man was stupid and scared, a dangerous combination.

'Maybe Hedrick will let me go after you leave,' Rip said softly.

'Maybe.'

'Sorry it worked out like this.'

'I'll see you back in the States, Rip.'

'Yeah.' His voice was husky.

She backed away from the guard, then turned and walked out of the barn.

Hedrick was in the library seated at his desk while he waited for his European banks to call. The European bidders and two Australian politicians sat around the desk smoking Cuban cigars and drinking whiskey. Pieraut looked to be in an especially good mood.

Charley stood in the doorway. Hedrick excused himself and walked over to where she was standing.

'You owe me some money,' she said.

He reached in a jacket pocket and extracted a bundle of hundreds. 'I believe we said three thousand for each day you were here, plus three grand to ride the Concorde home from Paris. Here's twenty.'

'They want to go to Paris?'

'Yes.'

Charley took about a third of the bills and pulled them out of the bundle. 'I don't take tips,' she said and handed back the excess bills. She put the rest in a chest pocket of her flight suit. Then she put her hands in the pockets of her jacket. She used her right hand to get a firm grip on Rigby's Walther.

Hedrick's eyebrows went up. Apparently he wasn't used to people refusing money.

'I expect you to let Rip go when the saucer arrives in Paris.'

'And I expect you to fly the saucer to Paris and leave it with Pieraut and company.'

'Uh-huh.'

'If you ever want to see Rip alive again.'

Charley Pine's eyes narrowed. She was sorely tempted to haul out the Walther and shoot this son of a bitch then and there. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then said, 'If Rip doesn't come home hale and hearty, all in one piece, I'll kill you someday, Roger. Sure as shootin'.'

Hedrick seemed to be measuring her. 'You know, I think you mean that. I think you'd try.'

She pulled the Walther from her pocket and pushed it against his stomach. 'This is how close you are to the next life, Roger. I could send you on your way right now. You hurt Rip, you'll be the richest dead man on this planet.'

Hedrick had balls, you had to give him that. He glanced down at the pistol, then smiled genially. 'We understand each other, Ms. Pine. That's rare in human affairs, but it's good. Misunderstandings can be quite messy.'

She put the pistol back in her pocket and kept her hand on it.

'By the way, where is Rigby?'

'I wouldn't know. Have you lost him?'

'Never mind.'

'When do I leave?'

Hedrick glanced again at his watch. 'The banks in Europe don't open for another hour. The transfer will be made then.'

He went back to the men sitting around his desk.

Charley removed her hands from her jacket pockets and dropped into the nearest chair.

The American nuclear-powered attack submarine rose slowly to periscope depth. For an hour the technicians had been carefully searching the sea with passive sonar. There were no ships within fifty miles of the submarine.

When the boat was stabilized at periscope depth, the skipper ordered the scope raised. All he could see was empty ocean and sky. The electronic signal detectors (ESM) on the scope remained silent. He lowered the scope back into the well.

'We have green lights on tubes one and two,' the OOD reported. 'Roger.'

The commanding officer looked at the digital clock ticking down on the fire-control computer. Forty-four seconds, forty-three… 'Commit,' he said.

'Commit to fire automatically,' replied the weapons officer.

Twenty-six hours ago the sub had raised its antenna above the waves and received a data dump from a computer in Washington, an encrypted signal that had been retransmitted by a satellite. Then the sub had run submerged at thirty knots for the next twenty-five hours, racing for this position. An hour ago, while the submarine was five hundred feet deep, it slowed to three knots and began the passive search. Ten minutes later the boat's com gear picked up a very-low-frequency radio signal that had traveled completely around the planet. This signal was the fire order. Now the time had arrived.

The skipper stared at the screen of the fire-control computer. Who would have thought the president of the United States would ever order live missiles fired into Australia? The world just kept getting weirder.

The seconds counted down. The instant the clock registered zero, the skipper felt a jolt as compressed air pushed a Tomahawk cruise missile from tube one.

The missile's wings popped out and its engine ignited as it broke the surface of the sea. It roared into the air and climbed to several hundred feet above the water before it leveled off. It was already headed west, pointed almost exactly at its target. As the missile flew it acquired the signals from eight GPS satellites and updated its position.

Sixty seconds later, a second missile came out of the water and roared away after the first.

Its work done, the submarine turned back to the east and silently descended below the thermal layer.

The staccato, irregular ripping of fully automatic weapons firing bursts echoed down the long interior corridor of the horse barn. Then came the louder booms of explosions. The ripping of assault rifles, a deeper, louder belching of machine guns, and the boom of explosions mingled into a rising roar.

The guard stared at Rip, consternation written on his face.

He looked right, then left at the main doors to the barn. Rip started to get to his feet.

'Hold it,' the guard shouted, raising his rifle to his shoulder. 'Don't move.' Rip sat back down.

The guard stood up, backed into the stall behind him so that he could not be seen from the doors on either end of the barn.

'Gonna wait until they come kill you?' Rip asked over the cacophony.

The guard didn't know what to do, that was obvious. He opened the window in the stall behind him and peered out carefully.

Rip gathered himself. This was his chance, if he could only get the hell out of this barn!

Several bullets struck the wood around the window that the guard was looking through. Little puffs of wood and dust exploded into the still air.

The guard rushed to the corridor. He looked both ways, then ran for the end of the barn nearest the house as the rifle fire grew louder. It sounded as if someone were shooting just outside.

Rip peered around the edge of the stall, watched as the guard scanned the area outside the barn, then ducked out the main door.

He trotted down the corridor and peeked around the large board door that the guard had just gone through.

The guard was lying twenty feet from the door, his rifle beside him. The man lay absolutely motionless, apparently shot dead.

Rip drew back. He could hear bullets thunking into the upper walls and beams, like the patter of rain but more irregular.

Just then the booming crack of a tank gun rolled through the barn like thunder. Then another. What in hell was going on?

The sounds of battle apparently caught Hedrick and the European delegation off guard. Pieraut loudly demanded to know who was shooting and what did it mean. Hedrick picked up the telephone and dialed it.

Within thirty seconds Krasnoyarsk and the senior Chinese bidder rushed into the room.

Pieraut went to the big window behind Hedrick's desk and looked out across the lawn. Just as he did so, something came through one of the top panes, shattering it. Pieraut ducked for cover as shards of glass rained down onto the carpet.

Hedrick shouted into the receiver. 'Find them. Bring them to the library under armed guard. He banged down the telephone receiver. 'Japanese commandos,' he said. 'At least a dozen, trying for the saucer.'

'If we don't get the saucer intact, we won't pay you a cent,' Pieraut said, loudly enough for Charley Pine to hear.

'Obviously,' Hedrick snapped.

'We should leave now, fly it out of here while we still can.'

Hedrick wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He dabbed at his palms. A bullet hit another small pane of glass in the big window, shattering it. Hedrick didn't even flinch.

Charley Pine put on her flight jacket, walked over to the small refreshment bar, and poured herself a drink of water.

Hedrick has a heck of a problem, Charley thought. If she had needed any confirmation of Hedrick's intentions, his indecision just now certainly supplied it. He never intended for the saucer to reach Paris. However, if he destroyed it before he received the Europeans' money, he would probably never get paid. The saucer had to be intact and Pieraut alive and well when the money arrived in Hedrick's banks or he would never be able to hang on to the bucks.

And then there were the Japanese. The commandos were either trying to steal the saucer or destroy it, and if they succeeded at either mission Hedrick wasn't going to collect money from anyone. It was a nice problem.

Charley helped herself to another glass of water. More bullets came through the main window, and the crowd around Hedrick's desk ducked below the level of the windowsill.

'Where is my army protection?' Hedrick roared at the two government ministers, who were huddled on the floor beside him.

As if in answer, a tank loosed off a round nearby. The boom took out another couple of windowpanes.

Just then Red Sharkey and two of his men marched the senior Japanese delegate, Hideo Ota, into the room at the point of a gun. Sharkey had a battery-powered radio transceiver in his hand. It was squawking gobbledygook.

Hedrick went at Ota like a tiger. ''What is going on?' he roared.

Hideo Ota had had it with Hedrick. His face twisted in a snarl. 'How would I know?' he asked in heavily accented English.

'I think your government is trying to steal the saucer or destroy it. You knew your government wasn't bidding in good faith.'

'I don't care what you think,' Ota replied and calmly crossed his arms. Hedrick slapped him. To his credit, the negotiator pretended not to feel the blow.

Apparently shocked by his own behavior, Hedrick backed away several steps and wiped his face again. He put the handkerchief in his pocket, squared his shoulders, shot his cuffs, checked his tie.

His eyes came to rest on Charley Pine. 'Fly the saucer to Paris,' he said.

'How is she going to get to the hangar?' Red Sharkey asked. 'They're having a war out there.'

The two Tomahawk missiles flew only a hundred feet above the waves. They flew into a rain shower, rode through the turbulence, and came flying out the other side unaffected.

The crew of a small fishing boat making a set saw the missiles. Before the sailors caught sight of the missiles, they heard the engines over the noise of the boat's diesel engine. One of the men pointed, and seconds later the first missile flew almost over the boat. The second one passed a hundred yards to the south about a minute later.

When the missiles had disappeared in the haze to the west and the noise of their engines had faded, the fishermen talked about what they had seen. The captain radioed his base in Sydney — his wife — and left it to her to decide if the government should be informed about the missiles. Then the fishermen went back to work.

Rip Cantrell ran back down the central corridor of the horse barn. He looked in every stall. If he could find a vehicle, figure out a way to get to the house, where Charley was…

Nothing. Four very nervous horses were prancing in their stalls, nickering loudly, their eyes rolling, but there wasn't even a golf cart in the barn.

He reached the end farthest from the house and peeked through tiny cracks between the boards of the door. Two tanks were clanking down the hill, men were running for the foxholes at the base of the hill, wisps of smoke were rising from a far tree line.

Even as he watched, something struck one of the tanks. It seemed to stagger as fire and smoke erupted from the open top hatch. The tank ground to a halt. One man tried to climb from the hatch with his clothes on fire. His face was blackened. He got halfway out of the turret and collapsed facedown. Smoke rose from his clothing.

Rip went back through the barn, opening tack-storage closets and food bins. He was near panic when he saw a silver serving tray sitting on top of a barrel. On the tray were two empty wineglasses.

Rip opened the door to the main storage room. Tools, saddles, bridles, brooms, sacks of feed… and a door. He jerked it open. A stairway led down. Rip dashed down the stairs as the door swung shut behind him.

At the bottom of the stairs was a narrow corridor that turned right, toward the main house. The underground corridor was lit by bulbs every thirty or forty feet. Rip ran along it.

He saw a stairway ahead. The door at the top was unlocked. On the other side he found himself in another narrow passageway.

There was something familiar about this one…

He had been here before! He was under the main house. He kept going, went around a turn, and was looking through a glass panel in a door into the kitchen. No one in sight.

Staying low, below the tops of the counters, he slipped through the kitchen and took a look into the main dining room.

A man with a rifle was moving from window to window, looking out.

Rip looked around the kitchen. A rolling pin was handy, so he picked it up. As he turned he saw the dining room door opening, and he ducked down.

The man came along between the work islands. As he hurried by, Rip smacked him in the knee with the rolling pin.

The man went down hard, swearing. Before he could get the unwieldy rifle around in that confined space, Rip tapped him experimentally on the head with the pin. The thunk of wood against skull was sickening. The Aussie collapsed to the floor and let rip a mighty oath.

Rip gritted his teeth. He was going to have to hit the man harder, take the chance of cracking his skull. He swung the pin again, put more muscle into it.

The gunman went limp.

Rip got the rifle, checked the magazine, eased the bolt back for a look. Yep, he saw the gleam of brass.

The safety must be this lever here, and it was on.

He had done enough hunting as a teenager to be familiar with rifles, but he had never before handled a genuine assault weapon. Two spare magazines were in the unconscious man's pockets. Both were full of cartridges.

The gunman was out cold. Or dead. Rip felt his carotid artery for a pulse. still there. He touched his skull where the rolling pin had whacked him. A large knot, big as an egg, was swelling up. The skull didn't feel pulpy.

With the rifle at the ready, Rip Cantrell slipped out of the kitchen into the dining room, then made his way deeper into the main house.

Captain Koki Owada of the Japanese Self-Defense Force threw himself against the bottom of the hangar personnel door and tried to catch his breath. Four of his men threw themselves to the ground near him.

He had had six men with him when he started; two were now dead.

Owada keyed the microphone switch on the back of his left hand and spoke into the headset he wore. 'Red One is at the hangar door. We're going in now.'

'Blue One, roger. The Diggers have their heads down.' Blue One started the day with two dozen commandos. Koki Owada had not asked how many were still alive.

'Red Two, open the door.'

Lieutenant Kawaguchi complied.

Owada dove through the door with his rifle at the ready.

No people visible.

The saucer sat in the middle of the bay facing the door.

Owada scanned the gloomy interior, ready to shoot. Not a soul in sight.

He posted two of his men outside, then he and Kawaguchi approached the saucer.

Extraordinary. It was so large, so…

'Red One.'

Owada looked at Kawaguchi, who was pointing to a bloodstain on the concrete floor. Owada nodded, then turned back to the saucer.

The captain circled it once. The exhaust pipes were pointing toward the back wall, so apparently the thing was facing the closed hangar door.

'Red Three, it's all yours.'

Red Three was a test pilot. Getting him and his colleague, Red Four, here was Owada's mission. Unfortunately, Red Four had stopped a bullet ten minutes ago and died instantly.

Everything now rested on Red Three's shoulders, Captain Ikeda. He had been on the secure satellite phone with the Japanese engineers who had inspected the saucer — and were now safely hidden in the rooms of the main house — so he knew where the main entrance hatch was. Unfortunately, he didn't know how to open it. The American test pilot had always opened and closed the hatch, and the Japanese engineers were afraid of making her suspicious by asking how it was done. After all, how difficult could it be?

While Red Three examined the hatch mechanism, Owada inspected the hangar door, a simple electric overhead door. When the time came, he had merely to push the button.

Owada permitted himself a smile. Things were going well.

Red Sharkey and Roger Hedrick huddled together in the back of the room around Sharkey's handheld radio transceiver, trying to get a handle on the military situation. Charley Pine seated herself in a huge stuffed chair well back from the window, facing the door to the hallway. Once again, she had both her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, her right wrapped around the grip of Rigby's Walther.

Why no one had found Rigby Charley couldn't imagine. Maybe they found him and thought the Japanese commandos worked him over. Maybe Hedrick didn't give a fig about Rigby. This possibility was the most likely, she decided. All Hedrick's lieutenants were expendable, like so many paper clips.

The pistol in her pocket gave her a fool's confidence, and she knew it. She tried to fight it back. still, she had made up her mind: If anyone came at her in a belligerent way, she was going to start shooting.

She watched Pieraut — he was nervous now — and the Australian politicians, who were trying to telephone someone for help. The politicos were seated side by side on the floor in front of Hedrick's desk with the telephone. Finally they realized that the lines must be down. They abandoned the phone and hugged their knees.

She was facing the main doorway to the library, so she was the first to see Rip when he eased his head around the opening and looked in. He saw her too.

She glanced around the room to see who was paying attention, then stood and walked for the door. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Hedrick look up, then elbow Sharkey.

She walked through the door, saw Rip and his rifle. 'Could you shoot someone with that?' she asked. The look on Rip's face was the answer. Charley Pine took the rifle, flipped off the safety, then stepped back through the doorway to the library and leveled the weapon hip high at Red Sharkey, who was striding toward her with a pistol in his hand.

Sharkey was almighty quick. He leaped sideways as the rifle went off. The bullet smacked into the glass door of a cabinet near Hedrick, who dove for cover.

All of a sudden everyone in the room wanted to be flat on the floor.

Charley Pine took another shot at Sharkey. She hit him this time. Wounded, he started to rise, the pistol still in his right hand. Somehow he snapped off a shot, which missed her.

She lifted the rifle to her shoulder, aimed, and shot Red Sharkey in the chest.

'Holy damn!' she heard Rip exclaim, then he was reaching for her arm. 'Let's go!'

One of Hedrick's thugs was on the floor eyeing Charley as he drew a pistol. She shot him too, then turned and followed Rip.

'We're going to have a hell of a time getting to the hangar,' she called as they ran down the hall.

'Upstairs! Let's go upstairs! The room with all the windows!'

'On top of the house? What good will that do?' Rip bounded to the stairway and charged upward. Charley had no choice but to follow.

The Tomahawk missiles crossed the Australian coast just north of Sydney harbor. They were in the terrain-matching mode at this point, flying a mere two hundred feet above the ground. The radar in the noses of the missiles scanned the flight path ahead for obstacles, then turned or climbed the missiles to avoid them. They eased over low hills, went around a radio tower, all the while continuously matching their computed position against the information they received from their GPS receivers. Course corrections were minute.

Red Three, Captain Ikeda, called Koki Owada over to the saucer. 'I can't open this hatch,' the test pilot said, obviously agitated. 'I can't figure out how to do it.'

'Is there another way in?'

'Not if we are going to fly it out of here.'

'Keep trying.'

Owada called on his radio for a situation update from Blue One.

'We have them pinned down. No one seems to be in a hurry to leave their foxholes or bunkers.'

'And the people in the house?'

'Still there. Someone shot from one of the windows a while ago, but nothing lately. Are you in the saucer yet?'

'We're working on it.'

Owada asked the test pilot, 'Do you need some tools?'

'The engineers said the American woman opened this with her hand. No tools.'

'Take your time,' Owada said, pretending to a calm he didn't feel. To give the man time to think, he walked back to the open personnel door to check on his troops.

Owada kneeled by the door.

They were so close! Yet if they couldn't get into the saucer, they would have to destroy it. One of the troopers lying beside the hangar was carrying two optically aimed, wire-guided antitank missiles. The team had already used two: one on a fortified bunker and another on a tank. A missile warhead would punch a hole in the saucer and start a hot fire. A couple of magnesium grenades tossed into the hole should finish the job. What a waste that would be, Owada thought.

'Don't let them get in here,' Rip shouted at Charley Pine as he topped the stairs and entered the atrium. Charley rushed over to the private elevator and pushed the call button. She listened with her ear to the door and heard a hum.

Rip ran through the large room looking for people.

There was a woman with a telephone pressed against her ear sitting behind the large desk in the center of the room.

'Who are you?' Rip demanded.

She put her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. 'I'm Bernice Carrington-Smyth, if it's any of your business. And who, may I ask, are you?'

'Later. Who are you on the telephone with?'

'That's none of your — '

He lunged across the desk, grabbed the phone, and slammed it into the cradle.

'That was my mother I was talking to,' Bernice said body. 'Just who are you, anyway? I'll have Roger throw you off the place if you can't mind your manners.'

'We're in the middle of a war and you're talking to your mother?'

'A war?' Bernice looked around wildly. The noise of small arms fire was quite plain here. 'I thought those soldiers were just practicing.'

Charley came trotting over. 'I've disabled the elevator. Hi, Bernice.'

'Charley, what is all this? I was on the satellite phone, Roger's private line, when he — '

'Maybe you ought to get under the desk, Bernice, so you don't accidently stop a bullet.'

As Bernice took that advice, Charley asked Rip, 'Would you mind explaining what we're doing up here when — '

'Later. Don't let anyone get in here.' He pointed toward the stairs. 'Oh, here are a couple spare magazines.' He tossed them on the desk.

Charley got behind the desk and pointed the rifle toward the stairs. 'I'm waiting for a miracle, Rip. Get busy.'

Bernice spoke up. 'Would you mind terribly, Charley, explaining what is going on?'

Rip ran to the corner of the room facing the hangar. He got down on his knees so only his head was visible through the window.

This had better work!

He tried to clear his mind. Closed his eyes, pressed the palms of his hands against them, took three or four deep breaths.

Okay.

He visualized the saucer, how it would look if he were sitting in the pilot's seat.

Reactor on!

He waited a moment.

Up a smidgen! Maybe a foot.

Another small wait, three or four seconds, then he commanded, Gear up!

Captain Ikeda, Red Three, was ready to call it a bad job. He couldn't figure out a way to open the saucer's hatch. Such a small thing, and yet it had beaten him.

He was walking toward Red One, Koki Owada, who was still crouched by the hangar door, telling him on the radio to destroy the saucer with the antitank missile, when he heard a hum behind him. Not loud, just a gentle hum.

Ikeda glanced back over his shoulder. The saucer was suspended in midair about a foot off the concrete.

Ikeda staggered, then caught himself. He turned, faced the ship.

Now the gear was retracting.

'Red One, this is Three. There's someone in the saucer. You'd better destroy it now!'

Koki Owada turned to the soldier outside the hangar, who passed the antitank launcher through the door.

When Owada turned around, the saucer was moving!

It crossed the concrete floor, accelerated, and smacked into the closed hangar door. The building quivered from the impact.

From his perch in the atrium, Rip saw the roof of the hangar ripple. Okay! He backed the saucer up, ran it at the door again, faster. The impact made the hangar roof shimmy.

Should he raise the saucer, use it to lift the hangar roof? The saucer would be lifting against the joists that held up the roof.

First the door. Overhead doors were relatively flimsy; this one should cave in easily.

The saucer rammed the door so hard the upper hinges tore loose. Only the lifting cables were still holding it up.

Owada was right beside the lower right corner of the overhead door. He was trying to activate the battery in the missile launcher when the saucer hit the door again and the near door edge whipped out, just flicking against the toe of his boot.

Owada lost his balance and fell.

He picked up the launcher as the saucer backed up for another ram. The door was off its hinges. It would go through this time.

Before he could get the launcher on his shoulder, the saucer shot forward, tore the door loose from the building, and went soaring upward. Owada ducked to get out of the way of the falling door panels.

When Rip saw the saucer clear the hangar on the far side, a wave of relief flooded over him. Yes, yes, yes!

He brought the saucer around in a turn, flew it up to his level, then slowed it as it neared the atrium.

The first Tomahawk missile reached its initial point and pitched upward. It climbed quickly to three thousand feet, then pitched over steeply. The radar in the nose went into its target acquisition mode.

The aim point was a ventilator shaft on top of a roof. There! Computer analysis of the radar return identified the shaft to a 99 percent certainty. The computer checked the shaft's position in relation to the missile against its predicted position based on GPS coordinates, determined that it was within parameters, and began issuing steering commands to the missile's canards and flying tail.

The missile accelerated downward.

Rip Cantrell brought the saucer gently in against the glass and framework of the atrium as a burst of rifle fire sounded behind him. He was distracted for only a second, then concentrated on the saucer before him.

Glass exploded from the windows, blew around in a cloud as the framework twisted, buckled, and collapsed from the force of the saucer pressing against it. Punctuating the sound of falling glass and twisting metal was the staccato hammering of Charley's rifle and the high-pitched eerie wail of Bernice's screaming.

Koki Owada, Red One, came around the corner of the hangar with the launcher on his shoulder. He leaned against the side of the building to steady himself, put the crosshairs of the optical sight on the saucer, which was settling down amid the twisted wreckage of the atrium.

The first Tomahawk missile plunged through the hangar roof a scant six inches from the venI'llator shaft and penetrated two feet into the reinforced concrete floor of the hangar before the warhead exploded.

The force of the blast lifted the roof of the empty hangar and pushed its walls away from the building.

Koki Owada was struck by the wall just as he pulled the trigger of the missile launcher. The antitank missile roared from the launcher, shot across one hundred yards of manicured lawn, and punched a hole in the side of Hedrick's house. The missile went through three walls before the contact fuse impacted something solid enough to detonate it — the concrete elevator shaft in the center of the house.

The force of the exploding warhead bulged every door on the shaft and caused the elevator, which was at the top — atrium — level, to smash upward against the lifting machinery, ripping it from its mountings. The entire elevator and all its equipment fell down the shaft with a mighty crash.

Huddled in the library as explosions rocked the house and sifted dust down from the ceiling lights, Hedrick heard Red Sharkey's radio squawking. He picked it up and held it against his ear. Sharkey certainly didn't mind: He was lying dead five feet away.

'Hedrick here.'

'Mr. Hedrick, the saucer is sitting on top of your house, and the hangar just blew up.'

'On top of the house, you say?'

'Right on the bloody top. Collapsed the atrium framework, it did. Now it's sitting up there like a hen on her nest.'

That bitch, Charley Pine! She was to blame. $150 billion! Down the bloody sewer. Of all the rotten luck!

Crouching, he made his way to his desk, opened the bottom drawer. The radio-control device for the bomb was still there, right where he had left it. He got out the device as the Europeans and politicians watched, set it on the desk, flipped on the battery switch.

Green light.

With the saucer at rest on its gear amid the wreckage of the atrium roof, Rip Cantrell made his way to the hatch and opened it. 'Come on, Charley. It's time to go.'

She crawled over twisted beams, trying to avoid the shards of glass that threatened everywhere. She turned, called to the now-silent woman under the desk. 'Bernice, this is your chance. Do you want to go with us?' 'No.'

Bernice was staying with the money. Charley shrugged and crawled on.

Rip was very agitated. Any second Hedrick's goons were going to come up the staircase shooting like wild men. 'Want to tell me how you got this thing to fly up here?' 'Later. In, in, in! Let's get the hell outta here!'

The second Tomahawk couldn't locate its discrete target to guide upon, so its computer opted to impact at the GPS coordinates programmed in before launch. It hit within three feet of the place the first missile impacted.

The force of this blast was not impeded by the hangar walls, so the nearest Gulfstream V, Hedrick's, soaked up some of the warhead's shrapnel. Fuel began running from holes in the wing.

As Charley climbed into the saucer, a tremendous force slammed into her right shoulder.

Her shoulder and arm went numb, and she dropped the assault rifle she had been carrying. She tried to fall back through the hatch, but Rip was pushing hard on her bottom. Against her will, she was propelled into the saucer and sprawled on her face.

Rigby kicked her viciously in the ribs, bringing forth a grunt.

Rip crawled over her, going for Rigby.

Rigby screamed. No words, just a high-pitched, keening wail came out of the bleeding hole in the swollen, bloody mess that was his face.

He kicked at her again, this time getting Rip. On the next kick, Rip got hold of a leg and held on. Rigby went down, still screaming.

Charley rolled over, trying with her left hand to get the pistol out of the right-hand pocket of her flight jacket. She was having trouble breathing against the pain in her side.

Rigby had the strength of ten men. It was all Rip could do to hang on to his leg as he kicked and smashed Rip about the head and shoulders with his fists.

Charley finally dug the damned pistol out, tried to use her right hand on the safety. Numb. She fumbled with the safety with her left. Got it off.

Pointed the thing at Rigby and fired.

The shock of the bullet hitting Rigby was like a cattle prod on a bull. He went nuts, still screaming at the top of his lungs. He kicked so wildly that Rip lost his grip on his leg

Completely insane, Rigby went for Charley. She shot him again and again as fast as she could pull the trigger.

He got his hands around her throat.

He was strangling her when she saw another bomb clinging to the underside of the pilot's seat. The realization of what it was sunk in despite the physical agony she was feeling. She still had the pistol in her left hand. She fired it twice more into Rigby's body before it stopped working — empty!

With blood pouring from his mouth, Rigby was starting to topple over when Rip grabbed him by the hair and jammed a screwdriver into the side of his neck.

The screaming stopped. Rigby fell over.

Charley reached up, grabbed the bomb, and jerked it loose.

'Get us airborne, Rip. We'll put Rigby through the hatch.'

With her left hand she stuffed the bomb into Rigby's shirt, then helped Rip pull him toward the hatch.

'You fly,' Rip shouted. 'I'll crash us.'

She clambered up into the pilot's seat. Using her left hand, she raised the collective. The saucer rose from the roof. Now gear up.

'Still using just her left hand, she moved the stick sideways and took the saucer out over the lawn.

Rip dragged Rigby to the hatch and pushed him through.

The body fell halfway to the ground, about thirty feet, and stopped in midair.

Looking through the hatch, Rip shouted, 'He's trapped in the antigravity field.'

Hedrick and the Europeans were crowded around the window in the library when the saucer came into view with Rigby suspended in midair beneath it.

'That's your man, Rigby, isn't it?' one of the Europeans demanded of Hedrick. 'Look at his face!'

Hedrick pushed the button on the radio control.

Behind him there was an explosion. He turned. A cloud of plaster dust filled the far end of the room. As it thinned somewhat, he could see the safe. The door was off its hinges and smoke was pouring out.

God damn that Charley Pine!

Pieraut looked thoughtfully at Hedrick's radio-control unit. If he and his delegation had departed in the saucer, Hedrick would have murdered the lot of them. Pieraut reached into his pocket for his own radio-control device. He flipped the switch to arm it, then pushed the firing button.

Yoi come fly this,' Charley shouted, getting down from the pilot's seat. Having managed to close the hatch, Rip got into the seat in her stead. He put on the computer headband.

We want to light the rockets and go.

Behind him he heard a rumble of the rocket engines lighting off.

Pieraut was looking out the window at the accelerating saucer when he pushed the button on his device. Rigby's body, which was still trapped in the antigravity field, disappeared in a ball of fire.

The saucer sped away as the roar from the engines shook the library window glass, cracked it, then caused it to collapse.

Staring through the hole where the window had been, the audience in the library watched the saucer disappear in the haze, still low in the sky.

As they stood watching, two fireballs rose from the planes on the parking mat in front of the hangar. Mr. Ito of the Japanese delegation and the gentleman from Beijing had both detonated their bombs.

Up in his bedroom, Krasnoyarsk was futilely pushing the button on his radio-control device. The battery in the device would not cause the green test light to come on. He pried open the radio controller.

The battery was Russian.

Krasnoyarsk cursed, then threw the controller against a wall, shattering it.

After the saucer had traveled a distance of about fifteen miles, Rip Cantrell laid it into a turn. He still had not touched the controls. With the headband on, he was telling the computer what he wanted the saucer to do, and it was flying the ship. When the saucer was straight and level, pointing back at Hedrick's station, Rip let the machine accelerate through Mach 1. Charley was in one of the forward-facing seats. The G's pushed both of them back into their seats and held them imprisoned there.

The saucer was passing through Mach 6 when it went over Hedrick's mansion at two hundred feet.

The shock wave from the saucer blew out every window in the building and pushed the top story of the house down into the structure. The walls bulged, then blew out. The whole house collapsed.

The nose of the saucer rose until the ship was going straight up atop a pillar of fire.