The Omega Command

Chapter 14

The past day had been an exercise in total frustration for Sandy Lister. The only bright spot had been the call to Stephen Shay she had promised T.J. Brown. Shay listened attentively to her story, from the moment she received the computer disk to its disappearance after her interview with Hollins in Billings. Somehow Shay’s silence made Sandy feel all the more tense. During the course of her story, her mouth got drier and drier, and by the end a thin taste of blood coated her tongue.

“You should have filled me in on this at the beginning,” Shay said when she had finished. “You broke procedure.”

“I know.”

“You jeopardized a police and possibly a federal investigation by withholding evidence, and then you breached national security by talking to that man Coglan. Not to mention the fact that you pursued a story totally out of your jurisdiction without prior network approval and—”

“Say no more, Steve. I’m on my way home. If you want my head on a platter, you’ve got it.”

“Wait a minute, you didn’t let me finish. I’m not applauding your methods, but the fact remains you’re on to a hot story here and I was a journalist a long time before I became a producer.”

“All I’ve ever been is an interviewer, remember? Smile at the right times and dig out fresh responses from basically boring people.”

“No, San, the connection to Krayman makes this your piece, so I want you to stay with it. And as for the disk, well, possession is nine tenths of the law, and we haven’t got a damn thing anymore.”

“But who stole it, Steve?”

“That’s what I expect you to be able to tell me by Christmas.”

“It had to be someone from inside the network. And T.J. thinks he’s being watched.”

“Probably his imagination. But I’ll put our security people on it to be on the safe side. You’ve got to stay in touch with me on this from now on, San. Call in regularly. I want to know every move you make. I want to know where you’re going before you get there.”

Sandy breathed a sigh of relief and barely managed to hold back tears of gratitude. “I’m on my way to Texas now,” she told Shay, “on the trail of Simon Terrell, Randall Krayman’s chief assistant until a few years before he pulled out.”

“Terrell … Never heard of him. Why bother pursuing the Krayman angle anyway now that you’ve got the space shuttle bit?”

“Because they’re connected. I just don’t know how yet. That interview with Hollins raised a lot more questions than answers. Randall Krayman wanted very badly to have total control of that ultra-density memory chip used in telecommunications. He’s got his hand in every television, telephone, and radio in the country and there’s something very wrong about that.”

The line went silent briefly.

“That’s quite a mouthful, San.”

“You should have heard Hollins.”

“I will … when you return to tape the interview.”

“Thanks, Steve.”

“Just make sure I don’t regret this.”

As it turned out, Sandy might have felt better if Shay had pulled her off the story. Her flight from Billings was airborne only forty minutes Saturday afternoon when a snowstorm forced it to land in Wyoming. She spent four miserable hours in a miniature airport eating prepackaged vending machine food with smudged expiration dates.

She finally made it to Dallas early Saturday night only to find that Simon Terrell was no longer at the address T.J. had given her. His new one meant a drive up Route 35 toward Denton in a rented car which overheated twenty miles down the highway. It was replaced by the rental company quickly enough with a sub-compact that changed lanes based on the whims of the wind.

Things got no better in Denton. Simon Terrell had vacated his apartment there nearly six months before and had left yet another forwarding address, this time hundreds of miles away in Seminole, Oklahoma.

Sandy spent the night in a roadside motel and left for Seminole early Sunday morning. She stopped for breakfast at a diner and bought a road map of Oklahoma at the gas station where she filled up the car. It was already blistering hot as she headed north. The air conditioner was a blessing for a while, but then the car’s temperature needle climbed dangerously toward the red and forced Sandy to use the windows instead. The hot breeze gave her a headache, drowned out the weak radio, and drenched her back with sweat to the point where she felt herself sticking to the vinyl upholstery.

Incredibly, though, she found Seminole with little trouble and quickly located Simon Terrell’s latest forwarding address.

“You’re sure this is the address you’re looking for?”

“Absolutely,” Sandy told the caretaker of the Green-leaves Cemetery.

A wry smile crossed the man’s face. “Then you’re gonna find it mighty tough to get yourself an interview. Most of our tenants don’t have much to say.” And he laughed.

With that lead behind her, Sandy would have to find Terrell, if he was among the 7,500 people of Seminole, through good old-fashioned legwork.

The heat had evaporated as she drew farther into Oklahoma, and Seminole was comfortably cool. The radio predicted a chance of showers. Sandy stopped first at a bar and grill and started asking questions. The people inside seemed suspicious of her, their answers abrupt and terse. None of them had ever heard of Simon Terrell.

“You that woman on TV, ain’t ya?” one of them asked her.

“Yes,” Sandy replied, glad for once at the recognition.

“Oh,” was all the man said before he went back to his beer.

Sandy went through three cups of coffee trying to figure out her next step. If Simon Terrell had come to Seminole, he would have used a different name. She moved from her booth and settled down at the bar next to the man who had recognized her. His hair was graying, his eyes tired, and he wore a patched-up down vest.

“Has any man moved into town in the last few months, say a man about forty?”

“Lots of people pass through,” the man told her, looking up from his beer.

“I mean somebody who settled down.”

The man churned his mug until suds formed on the top. “You lookin’ for a husband?”

“Just a story.”

The man raised his bushy eyebrows. “This guy you’re after, he do somethin’ wrong?”

“No, he’s connected to someone else I’m doing a story on. I need his help.”

“Any chance of me gettin’ on your show if I help ya too?”

“Nope,” Sandy said frankly, and they both smiled.

The man downed his beer and signaled for another. “Only one man I seen ’round here fits your boy, but his name ain’t Terrell. I deliver stuff to all the Indian reservations in these parts and he showed up at one a few months back. A teacher or somethin’.”

“Around forty?”

“I ain’t too good judgin’ ages, but I’d say yeah, give or take a few years. Got long hair, though.”

“You remember the man’s name?” Sandy asked, flipping the bartender a bill for the beer before the man could get his hand into his worn-out pants.

“Trask, I think,” he told her. “Steve Trask.”

The man’s directions to the Indian reservation were easy to follow, the roads straight, and the turns well marked. Sandy knew she had finally found Terrell. Men on the run often changed their names but kept the same initials to avoid questions about labels on luggage, books, towels, and other possessions. Simon Terrell was running, all right. Denton hadn’t been right for him, nor had Greenville, so he was trying Seminole with the same initials but a different name.

The reservation was located out on the plains, free of power lines, cables, even telephone poles. If Terrell had wanted to hide, he had certainly come to the right place. But why in Seminole? Why among Indians?

Sandy’s certainty that Trask was Terrell dwindled as she drew closer to the reservation. There were no identifying signs on the fence enclosing rows of small, well-constructed homes. There were larger buildings as well, none of which were identified in any way. She pulled her compact between a pair of pickups and climbed out.

There were few people around, and no one paid much attention to her. In all probability few of the reservation’s inhabitants would recognize her. She moved through the dusty grounds, longing for a pair of boots, and outside the parking lot she approached a plump, middle-aged Indian man.

“Can I help you?” he asked politely.

“I’m looking for Steven Trask.”

“You’ll find him somewhere around the school.” The Indian aimed a callused finger to the left. “About fifty yards that way. He’ll probably be with the kids behind the building.”

Sandy followed the Indian’s directions and found herself walking through a different age. Beneath the clearing sky women sewed and stirred the contents of tall pots over open flames. She didn’t see many men and guessed they were at work in the surrounding fields.

The schoolhouse was not hard to find, and as she drew closer to it, Sandy could hear the giggling of children not far away. She followed a path around to the rear of the building. A group of twenty or so kids was engaged in various games, and another ten sat in a circle around an elaborate arrangement of small stones. The head of a single adult dominated the scene, his back to Sandy. She moved closer and took a deep breath.

“Mr. Trask?”

The man turned around slowly and stood up.

“Hello, Miss Lister, I’ve been expecting you,” said Simon Terrell.

Chapter 15

“How did you know—”

“That you were coming?” Terrell asked, his arms on the shoulders of a young boy and a young girl who flanked him. “I have a friend at your network who told me you were on my trail. I knew you’d track me down sooner or later, though I expected you’d have a camera crew along for the ride.”

“Would you have talked before a camera?”

“I’m not sure I have anything to say to you even without one. And you can forget all about that off-the-record crap because with the people you’re looking into, there’s no such thing.”

The wind whipped up and ruffled Terrell’s overlong hair. He looked pretty much like the picture Sandy had of him, except a bit more ragged and less polished. His curly hair fell naturally around his face, styled by the wind. He had a two- or three-day growth of beard and sunburned skin that made his light blue eyes look even icier. His boots clip-clopped on the pebble ground as he moved toward Sandy, the two children still clinging tight to his forearms.

“Go play with the others,” he told them softly. They resisted for a second, then took off with jealous eyes on Sandy.

“This is quite a departure from Krayman Industries, Mr. Terrell,” she said, taking his extended hand.

Terrell glanced around him. “I should have done it years ago. Call me Simon, by the way.”

“How did your contact at my network know how to reach you?”

“I’m not a total recluse, Miss Lister.”

“Sandy.”

“Sandy. There are a few people who know how to reach me in an emergency.”

They walked toward the schoolhouse, until they reached the shade of a big tree.

“This is as good a place as any,” Terrell told her. “As long as you don’t mind getting your pants dirty. I should keep my eye on the kids.”

“This is fine,” Sandy said, and they both sat down on the ground. Her eyes swept over the young children playing. “Are you their teacher?”

“Weekdays, yes. On weekends I become a baby-sitter. The older kids are working with their parents, mostly in the fields. Some are out hunting. I volunteered for this duty.”

“Doing penance for past sins?”

Terrell smiled briefly at that. “No, just trying to forget about them. My whole life had been based on technology for so long that I almost forgot what people were all about. Finally it got to be too much. I felt more like one of the machines I was tending than a man. I had to get out, so I ran away.”

“But you’re still running, aren’t you?” Sandy prodded. “Is someone after you?”

Sandy expected Terrell to hesitate, but his response came immediately. “No one’s after me and I think the running has stopped. For a dozen years I worked for the most powerful man in the world. I saw things I’d rather forget and did things I’d love to blame on somebody else. You could say I’ve been running from myself more than anything. Withdrawing, I guess.”

Sandy thought of Spud Hollins living at his ranch in the hills of Montana. “Randall Krayman seems to have that effect on people. You left Krayman Industries a few years before he dropped out of sight, correct?”

“It was about four,” Terrell said. “A new wave was taking over the company, led by a man named Francis Dolorman. They got Randy’s ear and twisted his thoughts around. He wouldn’t listen to me anymore.”

“You were on a first-name basis with Krayman?”

“We were friends, Sandy, and that made leaving him all the harder. It became one long guilt trip, especially when he dropped out of sight.”

“Have you spoken to him at all in the last five years?”

“I’ve tried to reach him, but either he doesn’t want to hear from me or someone else doesn’t want him to. I think he’s in trouble.” Terrell paused and began toying with the grass near his knees. “I think maybe Dolorman and his cronies ‘arranged’ Randy’s disappearance so they could run his companies as they saw fit.”

Sandy felt her pulse quicken, surprise mixing with excitement. “You’re saying they kidnapped him.”

“At the very least.”

“My God … but why? What could they hope to gain?”

“Plenty. I’ll have to backtrack a little for you to understand. I knew Randy Krayman better than anyone. I knew what made him tick, what he loved and what he loathed. And what he loved most of all was America. I know that sounds trite, but it’s true. This guy loved his country obsessively and would literally lose sleep over his fears that it was being mismanaged and mishandled into oblivion. People just didn’t understand what was going on, he thought; they had to be educated, informed, even controlled, if that’s what it took.” Terrell found Sandy’s eyes. “Controlled through the media. This goes back almost twenty years. Krayman started buying television stations, and when cable came along, he got in on the ground floor. He figured if he owned a major affiliate in every state, maybe even a network, he could go a long way toward influencing public opinion and with the help of cable, eventually create public opinion.

“It didn’t work, Sandy. Sure, he swayed a few elections his way. Probably won himself a lot of support, too, in addition to making a shitload of money. But what he really wanted was to have his voice be the only one America listened to, sort of an omniscent Paul Harvey telling people to stand by for lots more than just news. When his plan to control television stations and networks didn’t go far enough toward accomplishing this, he began to look elsewhere for the means. We’re going back ten years now, not long before I left.”

“What he ended up finding has something to do with the Krayman Chip, doesn’t it?”

“Everything.”

“And he sold the chip for a fraction of its production costs.”

Terrell looked surprised. “How’d you learn that?”

“Spud Hollins. Remember him?”

Terrell nodded. “Poor bastard. One of the many Krayman Industries chewed up and spit out when Dolorman and his gang first began to assert themselves.”

“Your former boss paid him sixty million for a bankrupt business. Why feel so bad for Hollins?”

“Randy paid him because he felt guilty, because he knew what he had done was wrong but that didn’t make it any less necessary to accomplish what he wanted.”

“Then you’re confirming that COM-U-TECH plagiarized Hollins’s discovery and marketed it as the Krayman Chip.”

“If that’s the scoop you’re looking for, Sandy, your vision is too narrow. It’s old news. Nobody cares anymore.”

“But the chip was part of a bigger plan, wasn’t it, Simon? Krayman wanted his chip in every piece of telecommunications equipment. Why?”

Terrell shrugged. “I wish I could tell you for sure, Sandy, but I can’t. It was around that time that Dolorman grabbed hold of Randy’s ear and convinced him to shut me out. Randy was more obsessed than ever at that point, willing to stop at nothing to have the country running the way he wanted it to. His intentions were good, really they were.”

“You know what they say about the road to hell, Simon.”

“Sure, but it wasn’t Randy who was walking it, it was Dolorman and his cronies. They were pulling the strings and Randy was letting them.” A pained look crossed Terrell’s face. “I saw less and less of Randy in those days. Eventually I was reassigned, but I stuck it out in the hope I could save him from the people around him as well as from himself. I was his friend. I had to try. But Dolorman turned him against me. He caught Randy at his weakest moment and exploited it to the fullest. We didn’t talk much those last few months, and when we did, the things Randy said truly scared me.”

“What kind of things?”

“All vague. I don’t remember any of them clearly. The common theme was that it seemed he had finally found a way to get what he wanted.”

“Control of American public opinion?”

“More like control of the entire country. Dolorman and his gang had put him on to something, and all I know for sure is that its origins were connected somehow to the Krayman Chip.”

“When was the last time you spoke to Krayman?”

“About six months before he dropped out of sight, I managed to make contact. He was talking crazy. They were getting close, he said, but it was wrong. All wrong. That’s his phrase, not mine. He said he was going to stop them before it was too late … and then he conveniently disappeared.”

“You’re saying Dolorman and his people killed Krayman?”

“Or kidnapped him and kept him prisoner.”

“But you never told anybody about that or your fears concerning the Krayman Chip.”

“Who was I going to tell, Sandy?” Terrell challenged, frustration mixing with fear in his voice. “Dolorman was running Krayman Industries and he’d inherited all the power that goes with it. There are lots of folks on the Krayman payroll who don’t draw a regular paycheck, if you know what I mean. Randy kept key officials and politicians in his pocket and you can bet Dolorman switched them into his five years ago. The list keeps growing all the time. The little guys they picked up early have grown into big guys by now. With the kind of power Krayman Industries wields, it wouldn’t be beyond them to own a president someday. I didn’t like the odds of going up against that kind of power, not without Randy to back me up.”

“But that didn’t stop you from speculating on what they were up to, did it?”

“I spent lots of sleepless nights. Still do. Coming here didn’t erase the past, it just dulled it a little. Computer electronics have always been my thing, Sandy. That’s what brought Randy and me together in the first place and in the end it was probably what split us apart. The implications of the Krayman Chip were all pretty frightening, but some of them stand out.”

“I’m listening.”

“It gets a little complicated and technical. And the key comes down to changes in society itself. The computer is now the axis around which everything else spins. We’ve become an information-oriented society instead of an industrial one. It would be too trite to call what’s going on now the information revolution, but the ramifications of the changes taking place are not unlike the ones suffered during the industrial revolution.”

“Suffered implies pain, Simon.”

“A poor choice of words on my part. The computer has far more good points than bad. It certainly has simplified a lot of lives and a lot of businesses. Like I said, though, times are changing. It’s not so much a question of data processing anymore as data transmissions. The whole national power grid is controlled by computers talking to other computers.”

“Hollins mentioned something like that,” Sandy told him. “He said the Krayman Chip allowed them to do it faster.”

“A lot more than just faster, a hell of a lot more. If you wanted to control the country, telecommunications would be the best way to go about it. Stop the computers from talking to one another or make them say what you want.”

“Through the Krayman Chip?”

“Well,” said Terrell, “if there was a way to shut all of them down at once, the whole nation would be brought to a standstill.”

Sandy’s hair ruffled in the breeze. A number of children were sitting just out of earshot now, watching them.

“But what about all the communications satellites orbiting thousands of miles above ground?” she asked him. “I’ve heard they may make land-based forms of communications obsolete someday.”

“An insightful observation, but not an altogether accurate one. To begin with, yes, com-sats do play an increasing role. Before their signal can be beamed to various sub-stations, though, it first has to be relayed up to them, and that switching process relies predominantly on—”

“The Krayman Chip again,” Sandy completed.

Terrell nodded. “And just for the record, Krayman Industries has four com-sats of their own in orbit as we speak.”

“And maybe something else …”

“What do you mean?”

Sandy spoke softly. “What would you say if I told you I had evidence linking Krayman Industries to the destruction of Adventurer last week?”

“What kind of evidence?” Terrell asked, leaning forward.

“A copy of the shuttle’s orbital flight plan delivered to me by a dying Krayman employee.”

“Did you say dying?”

“Murdered, more specifically.”

“Oh, God,” Terrell muttered. “It doesn’t make any sense. Destroying a space shuttle; no, that doesn’t fit.” He looked down, then up again. “Unless Adventurer saw something or was about to see something it wasn’t supposed to. That would explain why Krayman would be in possession of the orbital flight plan in the first place. If they put something in the sky, they’d want to know if the shuttle’s path would eventually intersect with it.”

“Wait a minute, how would Krayman get whatever it is up in the sky?”

“The same way they got their com-sats up, by contracting for a launch.”

“Through NASA?”

“In this case, more likely overseas, through France probably. They’d want a minimum of questions and the French ask none so long as all accounts are paid on time.”

“But what have they got up there that could destroy a space shuttle?”

Terrell’s face paled, his thoughts elsewhere. “Christ, this explains it. …”

“Explains what?”

“The Pegasus launching.”

“Simon, what are you talking about?”

He looked at her intensely. “An armed shuttle scheduled to be launched the day after Christmas.”

“Armed? That program was outlawed by Congress.”

“No program the military wants badly enough is ever outlawed. The funds are just redirected. In Pegasus they have a whole new generation shuttle complete with deflector shields, advanced radar technology, and a pair of laser cannons that can cut through steel two yards thick.” Terrell’s stare tilted to the sky. “And it’s being sent up there after whatever destroyed Adventurer.”

“How do you know all this?”

Terrell sighed. “I can’t leave all my old life behind me, Sandy. I still care about emerging technology. I know the proper numbers to dial, and just yesterday one of those numbers yielded me the information about Pegasus.”

“But you have no idea what it’ll be facing up there.”

“Or what the thing was launched for in the first place. Com-sats orbit at around twenty thousand miles, but Adventurer’s orbit would have placed it at only one eighty. From that altitude there’s not a hell of a lot you can do.”

“Apparently there’s enough,” Sandy said. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any ideas where I might fill in the missing pieces.”

“Just one — Houston.”

“NASA?”

“And Krayman Industries’ corporate headquarters.”

“How convenient,” Sandy managed halfheartedly.

Dolorman leaned painfully forward, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Will you repeat that, Wells?”

“The man posing as a reporter at Sahhan’s reception was Blaine McCracken.”

“McCracken’s dead. We received positive confirmation of that.”

“I wasn’t convinced then, and now I’m certain he’s alive. There was an incident following the reception that fits McCracken’s style.”

“What sort of incident?”

“The middleman Krell disappeared and his bodyguards were killed.”

“Even so, a certain ‘style’ is hardly the basis for such a conclusion on your part,” noted Dolorman.

“I’m also going by descriptions from the scene of the reception,” Wells told him. “I said from the beginning that Scola wasn’t capable of dealing with McCracken, and I stick to my claim.”

“What is it between the two of you, Wells?” Dolorman asked. “What happened back there in Vietnam?”

“I’ve got a debt I owe him,” was all the big man said.

Dolorman’s expression wavered. “If you’re right, Wells, all of Omega might be in danger. With only seventy-two hours until activation, we can’t have that.”

“We’re going about this in the wrong way, I think,” Verasco interjected. “If McCracken is still alive, we must assume he is still working for Andrew Stimson and the Gap. It would seem a much simpler matter to get rid of Stimson.”

Dolorman turned the scarred man’s way. “Wells?”

Wells’s one working eyebrow rose. “Leave it to me.”

“I have already left to you the elimination of security leaks, and little has been accomplished in that regard.”

“My people are closing on the source now. A break-through should come at any time.”

“See that it does. The fewer complications we face in the coming days, the better.”

“I assume, then, that the order to leave Sandy Lister alive remains in force.”

Dolorman nodded. “We are better off letting her follow a path that can ultimately lead nowhere.” He turned gingerly toward Verasco. “I’m more concerned about Sahhan. Did that unpleasant business at the reception unsettle him?”

“If anything,” said Verasco, “he is more charged than ever. Our people close to him say he is working himself into a frenzy. He can barely sleep at night. Apparently Christmas Eve can’t come fast enough for him.”

“Or us,” added Dolorman.

Chapter 16

McCracken Reached Paris late Saturday and immediately set the wheels in motion for locating the world’s most celebrated arms dealer, François Deveraux. Deveraux held the unique distinction of being the only arms dealer ever profiled by a major American television newsmagazine that had set out to break the stereotype of the dark-eyed man selling stolen rifles out of a warehouse. Indeed, most of what Deveraux did was both respectable and totally legal. The great majority of his business arrangements were made with legitimate military or paramilitary groups who wanted American- or Russian-made arms and, who, for whatever reason, chose not to deal direct. His equipment was often surplus and frequently secondhand. Deveraux made no secret of his profession and chose his clients with as much caution and discretion as he could afford.

Blaine knew the arms dealer quite well, in fact had saved his life once a decade or so back when a group of fanatical Arab terrorists were upset after Deveraux backed out of a deal with them. Blaine had stepped in and handled the hit team personally. The credit went to the Israelis.

So Deveraux owed him and that should make the situation infinitely simpler, though that didn’t make Blaine any fonder of the prospect of returning to Paris. He had spent by far the worst five years of his career stationed there, frustration simmering until it had boiled over at the airport barely a week before. The smell of Orly Airport itself brought back all the bitterness of those years, all the anger over the fact that his own people had buried him.

Blaine checked into a hotel, made a series of phone calls, and then waited in the darkness flirting with sleep. It was morning before he learned that not only was François Deveraux in town, he would be attending a special performance at the famed Paris opera house that very evening. Deveraux would be sitting in his private box and Blaine would let him enjoy the first act before making his appearance. It was a tremendous stroke of luck actually, for if Deveraux had been out of town or otherwise indisposed, precious time would have been lost getting to see him.

The opera setup presented McCracken with only one problem — dress was strictly formal, at least if he wanted to move comfortably in Deveraux’s circles and not stand out. Blaine rang up the hotel concierge, who sent up a tailor to take his measurements. A rented tuxedo in the proper size would be delivered to his door by six that evening, no small accomplishment on a Sunday.

The worst thing about life in the field was the waiting. And the worst thing about waiting was that it gave you time to think. All of Blaine’s thoughts as he lingered in his hotel room throughout the day centered around Luther Krell. He should have killed him. Plain and simple. It was the expected thing to do and the right thing, too, since Krell could have blown his dead man’s cover. Sure he could tell himself that after talking, the fat man would never dare return to Sahhan, that he was as good as dead anyway. But it didn’t wash. McCracken couldn’t do the job because he didn’t have the stomach for such execution-style killings anymore. Killing in self-defense or the defense of others was one thing; putting a bullet in a whimpering lump of flesh, something else again. It implied vulnerability. Five years ago there would have been no doubt, no hesitation, and Blaine trembled at the thought of where that hesitation might show up next.

His tuxedo was delivered thirty minutes late, at half past six, which left him just enough time to dress and make it to the opera house prior to the start of the first act. Most disquieting was that he lacked a firearm. Smuggling in or obtaining a gun had proven impossible; there was too much risk involved. Blaine felt naked as a result. He took a cab to the opera house. His ticket was being held at the box office, so there was really no reason for him to rush except that he needed time to spot Deveraux’s private box.

The Paris opera house was a huge building constructed nearly two hundred years before. Though remodeled numerous times in the interim, it nonetheless retained the elegant decor of its birth. The lobby of the building was huge, with a swirling staircase rising through the various levels. People in formal attire clustered in small groups to chat and sip champagne. Blaine hoped he might find Deveraux mingling among them, in which case he could finish their rendezvous early and spare himself sitting through the opera’s first act.

No such luck. The arms dealer was nowhere to be found and Blaine found his own seat five minutes before the lights were dimmed. His eyes swept the rows of private boxes above him, some set back so far that their occupants were hidden. He borrowed a pair of opera glasses from a hefty woman seated next to him and intensified his sweep, aware that once the house lights were turned down, he would have to break the search off. The orchestra had finished tuning their instruments. He had only seconds left.

He was studying the middle boxes on the left side of the hall when a man rose to greet a pair of female guests. Blaine smiled. François Deveraux hadn’t changed a bit. His toupee seemed to fit better than the last time they had met, but other than that he looked exactly the same. His flesh was baked bronze by the sun, the absence of lines and wrinkles due not so much to nature as to a plastic surgeon’s skilled knife. His smile flashed white and full, and he kissed the ladies politely.

The lights dimmed and a drumbeat pounded the air. The opera was about to begin. Blaine returned the glasses and slumped back in his chair, making himself applaud until the people next to him stopped.

The next hour was as long as any he could remember. He did not know the opera’s tide, nor could he follow its plot as it unfolded onstage. The high notes and orchestral reverberations stung his ears, and he found himself stealing as many glances as he could up at Deveraux’s box, wondering what he might do if the arms dealer was similarly unenthused about the performance and made an early exit.

At last the first act came to an end and Blaine pushed by the others in his row and made his way up the aisle. It was already crowded, and he felt the nag of frustration in the pit of his stomach, eyes cheating up toward Deveraux’s box. He needed the arms dealer alone up there. If Deveraux had opted for a trip to the bar, Blaine might have to stomach another act, and he wasn’t sure if he was up to that.

He moved with the crowd back into the lobby and then against the traffic up one of the circular stairways closest to Deveraux’s box. He had tried to pin down its location from its proximity to others, a needless task as it turned out, since two guards were stationed before its private entrance. Deveraux’s guards were there more for show than anything else, since the private boxes were connected, split only by a thin dividing wall and a curtain. Blaine passed Deveraux’s and entered the one two down from it.

“Excuse me,” he said, pushing by two exasperated couples and sliding behind the curtain.

He repeated the same process at the next box and then stuck his face out from behind the curtain at Deveraux’s.

“Bonsoir, Monsieur Deveraux.”

The two women gasped. Deveraux swung around quickly.

“Mon dieu” he muttered, face suddenly pale.

“Take it easy, François, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Blaine said, and stepped out from behind the curtain.

“I believe I have, mon ami, or perhaps the champagne was too strong.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Oui, oui. Come in, please.”

Blaine moved forward and smoothed the curtain back into place. Deveraux told the two women to bring back another bottle of champagne and inform the guards to make sure he wasn’t disturbed.

“I heard you had been killed in the States, mon ami,” Deveraux said softly when they were alone.

“Couldn’t kick off until the debt was square between us, now, could I?”

Deveraux slid a small table holding a golden spittoon closer to him. In spite of his rich, urbane life-style, he had never abandoned the habit of chewing tobacco. The only concession he made was to buy the most expensive supply around, packaged in gold foil pouches that looked quite respectable. He packed a small measure in his mouth.

“We need to talk, François.”

“Are you in trouble? If so, my house is yours. No one in France would dare touch you under my protection.”

“It’s not like that. No one in France knows I’m here besides you.” A pause. “I’m working again.”

“For your own people? I would have thought your days with them were over.”

“They are formally. This is strictly undercover and unofficial. No accountability and all that.”

Deveraux expelled a wad of tobacco juice into the spittoon as gracefully as he did everything else.

“Which branch?”

“The Gap.”

“Ah, the most secretive of them all. …”

“Also the most desperate. They lost an agent a while back and I’m taking his place. The agent was on to a plot by some black fanatics planning to try the civil war all over again starting Christmas Eve.”

“And where do I come in?”

“You’ve been shipping them the weapons to do it.”

Deveraux almost missed the spittoon. He tried to hold his calm. “Because we are friends, Blaine, I will try to forget you said that. You know me too well to suspect me of doing business with such a cause.”

“Not knowingly, perhaps. And in this case the cause has lots of help. Let me put it this way. You have made nine almost identical weapons shipments to different regions of the U.S. in the past six months, haven’t you?”

Deveraux’s eyes flashed unsurely. “Yes, quite large shipments, to various new American mercenary units destined for Latin America.”

“That’s what they wanted you to think.”

“They had proper authorization.”

“Anything Luther Krell’s involved in is never what it seems. You should know that better than anyone.”

“The fat bastard …”

“I’ve taken him out of circulation for a while.”

“Yet another debt I owe you, mon ami.”

“You can pay both of them up by answering a few questions.”

“D’accord. I am at your service.”

“Where were the shipments sent to, François?”

Deveraux spit again and thought briefly. “Major cities. New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago. The others I cannot recall off the top of my head.”

“The weapons were divided equally by region?”

“More or less. There was no reason for me to question it.” Deveraux hesitated. “Tell me more about what is going on.”

“It gets complicated, but it’s centered around a man named Mohammed Sahhan.”

“I’ve heard of him, mon ami. Very dangerous.”

“And now very armed.”

“I did not know,” Deveraux said apologetically. He raised the spittoon to his mouth, as if not trusting his aim anymore.

“No one’s accusing you. Sahhan had help. Someone set Krell up with him and Krell set you up.”

“Who?”

“That’s what I don’t know. But it’s somebody with power, connections, and resources. Attaché cases don’t normally come packed with cash.”

This time Deveraux missed the spittoon though he still held it under his chin. His lips trembled. “Leather attaché cases,” he muttered.

“The way Krell told me he arranged payment to you.”

“Yes, but there is another client who’s been paying me the same way, also shadowy. They have purchased even more arms than Krell arranged for. But all shipments have gone to one place.”

“Where?”

“An island in the Caribbean called San Melas. Small. Remote.”

“Which tells us nothing.”

“Wait, I haven’t finished yet. The island is privately owned by that American billionaire.” Deveraux hesitated to be sure of the name. “Randall Krayman.”

For a long moment McCracken just sat there looking at Deveraux. Krayman, whose fortune was estimated to be four times that amassed by Howard Hughes, certainly possessed the resources to be the mysterious party backing Sahhan. And the connection between them was now unavoidable. But what would Randall Krayman have to gain from an association with a radical fanatic and his plans for a Christmas Eve revolution?

“Blaine?”

Deveraux’s voice lifted him from his trance.

“I’m sorry, François.”

“The second act is about to start, mon ami. We should conclude our business before then,” Deveraux said, eyes looking away.

“You’re scared.”

“Krayman is a powerful man, not someone to cross.”

“You’re not crossing him, François. You’re just providing information that may be the only thing that can save thousands of lives Christmas Eve.”

“You really suspect Krayman is the force behind Sahhan?”

“I’ve got to proceed on that assumption. What I don’t know is why.”

“That I cannot tell you, mon ami. Where does the island come in? Why does he need so many arms?”

McCracken shrugged. “Training probably. He must be using San Melas to prepare Sahhan’s troops for the assault. It makes sense. A few hundred at a time every few weeks would be more than sufficient. No one would even raise an eyebrow.” Blaine found the Frenchman’s stare and bore into it. “I’ve got to get onto that island, François.”

“Impossible! Reports from my supply planes stress that it is heavily guarded and that the waters are mined. Several innocent fishermen who have strayed too close to the shore have conveniently disappeared.” Deveraux seemed to think of something. “Wait, there might be a way, but it is so risky…” His eyes sharpened. “One final shipment is due to leave for the island from one of my airfields late tomorrow morning.”

“Then it’s simple — I’ll just have to be on board.”

Deveraux shook his head. “Not so simple.” He yanked the wad of tobacco from his mouth and dropped it into the golden spittoon. “The people representing Krayman have insisted that the same crew make the drop each time. For you to replace one of them would arouse suspicion and would not help you accomplish your task in any case.”

“Why not?”

“Because my men are watched constantly from the time they land on San Melas until the time they depart. They are never out of sight of guards the whole time the shipments are unloaded onto trucks on the airfield.”

“Then I’ll have to stow away and make my escape while the shipment is being unloaded.”

Deveraux shook his head more resolvedly. “Non, mon ami. The airstrip is quite a distance from what must be the training grounds, and it is out in the open. You are talking suicide. I owe you too much to let you take such a risk.”

Blaine smiled. “Then I guess we’ll just have to think of something else. …”

When he had finished detailing his plan, the orchestra was tuning up for the second act.

“It is still risky, very risky,” Deveraux said, unconvinced.

“I’ve got to get onto that island, François, and you haven’t come up with a better way.”

The Frenchman nodded reluctantly. “Be at my airfield in Gournay by eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“You mean I actually get some time to sleep?”

Deveraux winked. “You can even stay for the rest of the show now, mon ami.”

“What do you know about Randall Krayman, Andy?” McCracken asked from his hotel room later that evening. The call had been routed through a sterile emergency exchange to make tracing or eavesdropping impossible.

“Why?” Stimson asked.

“Because I think he’s the missing piece we’ve been looking for in all this.” And Blaine proceeded to relate his conclusions based on the information passed on by François Deveraux.

“Let me get this straight,” Stimson said at the end. “A billionaire recluse is financing Sahhan’s Christmas Eve strike and training the principals on his private island in the Caribbean.”

“That’s right,” Blaine confirmed. “An island called San Melas, where I’ll be headed tomorrow morning.”

“And what might Krayman have to gain from all this?”

“Won’t know that until I get there, Andy. Maybe your computers can provide us with a head start. There’s got to be something on them that will give us an idea what Krayman, or his people, are up to. Every damn move of this thing has been carefully planned, from Chen to Krell. Any word from Peachfuzz?”

“His men are making progress, but it’s slow. Too slow. The game’s still yours.”

“I’ve got a feeling the fun’s just beginning.”

Chapter 17

Deveraux’s landing field in Gournay was hardly an official strip. In fact, no one outside of a necessary few even knew it was still in limited operation. It had been constructed by French Resistance troops at the peak of World War II as a means of smuggling people out of and weapons into France. It had served brilliantly back then and continued to serve Deveraux as one of ten airfields he kept active in continental France.

McCracken arrived by rental car in the bright chill of ten-thirty A.M. to find the transport plane already warming its engines.

“Mr. McCracken?” a man with a French submachine gun said, approaching him.

“Greetings from Paris.”

“Mr. Deveraux contacted us. You are expected. I will make arrangements to have your car driven back to your hotel. Mr. Deveraux insists that no evidence exist of your being here.”

Blaine closed the car door behind him.

“My name is André,” the man, who looked to be still in his twenties, told him. “Mr. Deveraux has requested that I be at your service. Everything is arranged as your instructions indicated. We had to improvise, but I think you’ll find the results most satisfactory. Follow me.”

The whirl of the propellers stung Blaine’s ears as he followed André in a trot toward the large plane’s cargo bay. They climbed up a ramp into a damp, dark world broken by the half-light cast by irregularly placed work lamps.

“Over here, Mr. McCracken.”

André led him toward a wooden crate in the far left corner, approximately the same size and shape as all the others.

“A pair of heavy machine guns are inside here,” André explained, “with a compartment constructed between them for you to conceal yourself in upon reaching the island. A section of the crate has been cut out and loosely refitted, so moderate pressure applied by you from the inside will pop it out to secure your freedom.” André’s eyes became cautious. “If the crate is dropped or rammed, your escape hatch might be prematurely discovered. It was the best we could come up with on such short notice.”

“I understand.”

“In any event, it will not be necessary for you to take refuge in the crate until the crew informs you they are beginning their descent. At that point they will help you lift one of the heavy machine guns aside temporarily and remove one of the false separators so you can slip inside. Any questions so far?”

“Is this crate first class or tourist?”

André smiled. “Whatever you prefer. Just don’t expect any pretty stewardesses. Will you be needing a handgun?”

Blaine nodded. “Something small and reliable. Heckler and Koch, if you can manage it.”

With a thin smile André produced a sleek pistol from his pocket. “Mr. Deveraux anticipated your request,” he said, handing over a Heckler and Koch P-9.

“Perfect,” Blaine said as he took it.

“The flight will last approximately nine hours if winds are favorable. The crew will do its utmost to keep you as comfortable as possible.”

Blaine stowed the pistol in the pocket of his jacket and thanked André. He had dressed casually for the trip in sport shirt, slacks, and windbreaker, a wardrobe right for the Caribbean but not for France in December. His flesh stung with cold. The rest of his baggage was being forwarded to a Gap depot in the States, where he would retrieve it once he returned.

His return from San Melas was something he hadn’t considered yet. He had looked far enough into the future only to hope that his crate was placed somewhere he might manage an unobstructed entry from into Krayman’s base. There was always a way to escape, he told himself, and he had never failed to find it before. Improvisation was the key, the ability to create something out of nothing.

Even though he had managed six uninterrupted hours of slumber the night before, Blaine drifted off to sleep soon after takeoff and the surprisingly smooth flight did little to jar him. He came awake periodically and drifted off again until he awoke and realized the big plane was starting its descent.

“I’m afraid it’s time to become a stowaway, sir,” said the first officer, emerging from the cockpit.

Blaine downed a mug of coffee and a roll first and then headed for the crate.

“It’s eighty-five degrees and sunny outside,” the first officer reported. “Great tanning weather.”

“What about the time?”

“Four-thirty in the afternoon. Four hours until sunset.”

“Thanks,” Blaine told him, and together they moved toward the crate in the back of the cargo hold.

Under ten minutes later McCracken was settled between two heavy machine guns in his private tomb. The darkness was total and there was no way to be comfortable. Blaine stretched his limbs as best he could, fighting against spasm by rhythmically flexing his arms and legs. He felt he knew what it would be like now to be buried alive, and the jolts his body absorbed as the plane landed made matters worse. His head took a hefty measure of the blows, and he found himself powerless to shift his frame to a position that could spare any single part of him the pounding. He felt the brakes being applied, heard them squeak, and rejoiced as the plane taxied to a halt.

The most uncomfortable part of his journey, he hoped, was over.

Blaine heard the heavy cargo doors being opened and ramps wheeled into place. Next he heard footsteps, muffled and disjointed. Garbled orders were shouted. Each minute the footsteps and voices drew closer to his crate.

Finally he sensed motion. He felt his crate being dragged across the floor. There was a hard shove from the rear and a thud as it reached the ramp and began its slide down. At ground level impact with another crate made it sway and threatened to tip it over. Blaine grasped his pistol in the darkness. If he was exposed now, he meant to make a fight of it. But the crate came to a halt with no damage done. He heard trucks being backed up and forklifts motoring close by.

The heat inside the crate was stifling. He felt more cramped than ever and longed for more light to filter between the hairline cracks in the crate. His eyes would be his worst enemy if they were suddenly exposed to the blinding Caribbean sun. He would be unable to see and unable to fight. All he could do was hope it didn’t come to that.

McCracken was shaken hard against the side of the crate as it was hoisted by forklift into the back of a truck. The meager light vanished, and darkness was total again. The minutes grew into an hour as the loading process continued. Blaine breathed his own sweat. The voices continued around him, sometimes laughing. A rumble sounded and he quickly realized it was the transport readying to lift off. There was another rumble, the engine of the truck he was stored in, and then Blaine was conscious of motion, slow at first but gradually picking up.

The road to the truck’s destination was not smooth. Blaine was tossed against the crate’s sides, doing the best he could to cushion the blows with his hands. He was jerked every way imaginable.

Blaine checked the luminous dial of his watch. Five forty-five, which left him three good hours of light to find what he was looking for. Fifteen minutes later the trucks came to a halt, the engines turned off, and the unloading process begun. McCracken could sense he was in a spacious building with a cool breeze soothing him from between the cracks of the crate. The unloading process went on and on. Blaine had only his watch to distract him from the monotony of his confinement. It wasn’t until six-thirty that the voices disappeared and a heavy door slammed closed. Blaine waited another ten minutes just to be sure, then drew his feet up to his chest and aimed them for a thrust at the crate’s removable panel. He kicked out hard.

The panel didn’t give. Impact resounded in an echo he was certain would attract every guard in the compound.

He waited another two minutes before shifting his body from one end of his compartment to the other. Obviously he had tried the wrong side, the cost being near exposure and a painful repositioning within the crate. Finally he drew his knees up to his chest again and repeated the procedure.

The panel came away with surprising ease and fell to the floor.

McCracken became utterly rigid, daring barely to breathe, as if his silence might erase the noise already made. He took a deep breath and pushed himself from his prison.

His legs hit the cement floor and collapsed under him from the strain. He massaged them to get his circulation going, and pulled himself to his feet. His entire body felt compressed. He stretched his muscles and fought to loosen up. The pain was seething as his limbs expanded to normal size. Blaine’s eyes began their work.

The room he was in was the size of a high school gymnasium with a high ceiling. Sun spilling in through the windows provided enough light to see that the floor was crammed with crates of all sizes. Blaine walked past them through dirt and dust, noting their contents. There were grenades, rifles, bazookas, and countless crates of ammunition. So far as he could tell no guard was prowling here, but he couldn’t tell what might lay beyond the huge sliding door. He would have to make a careful check before even contemplating his exit.

A narrow ledge ran under the windows at the front of the building. Blaine leaned his shoulders against a crate and shoved it forward until it was almost touching the front wall. He pulled himself atop it and then, inhaling deeply, leaped for the ledge with his hands.

They grasped the edge, and his legs smacked up against the wall. Grimacing, he started to pull himself up. The process was slow and agonizing, and Blaine was constantly aware that the slightest slip would mean a twenty-foot drop to a hard surface.

Finally he was upright, wavering a little but maintaining his balance. Stealthily, he ducked down and gazed through the dust-coated window.

What he saw took his breath away.

The window looked out over an army base, on the perimeter of which lay a series of training fields, where dozens of men were drilling. Blaine saw target ranges, obstacle courses, hand-to-hand combat areas, war games props where two sides seemed to be engaging each other at that moment, one dressed in blue, the other in red. The target range was the farthest off and Blaine could barely make out the figures chewing up man-sized dummies with automatic weapons. The dummies danced mechanically across the field to give the shooters practice with moving targets.

All the training fields were too far away to make out anything clearly. He would have to get closer to do that. But getting closer without drawing attention would be difficult. All the men were wearing combat fatigues, and McCracken didn’t have a pair handy. Besides, the soft scraping of boots beneath him indicated a guard was just outside this supply depot, not visible from his vantage point but nonetheless ruling out the possibility of Blaine escaping through the front. That left the back, where there was no door, and no convenient ledge below the windows. There were rafters, though, which ran beneath the whole ceiling. He would have to make use of them.

What Blaine really needed now was rope, but a quick inspection of the hangar yielded none. His best substitute was the twine wrapped tightly around a number of crates. He yanked an all-purpose knife from his jacket pocket and set about cutting as much as he would need. It took another few minutes to fasten the twine strips together in knots learned long before in ’Nam.

Blaine pulled the different segments of the twine taut to check for weakness and then, satisfied, he tied one end to the knife and looped it over the lowest rafter. Then he twisted both ends together so the twine swirled upward like a single snake. He began to scale it, using both his arms and legs. The twine was sharp, and his hands quickly grew raw. He felt the sweat soaking his eyes when he finally grabbed hold of the rafter and pulled himself onto it.

He was in line with a window and he edged toward it. He reached for the latch. The window opened inward, allowing him ample passage out. Blaine felt for the twine behind him and passed its length out through the window. It came up three or four feet short of the ground, an easy drop at that point. Then he swung around so that he could pass his legs through the window first. Gripping the twine, he began to lower himself to ground level, where he landed firmly on his feet. He felt to make sure his knife and the Heckler and Koch were still in place. His next order of business was to obtain a uniform.

The guard at the front of the building would have to help him out.

Blaine moved to the side of the building and pressed himself against it, staying within its shadow. He crept along step by step until he was barely a yard from the corner. Then he kicked up dirt with his shoes. When that got no reaction, he dug deeper and rattled some pebbles.

The guard’s boots pounded closer.

Blaine waited for him to round the corner before he moved. The man saw only a shape lunge from the shadows. By the time his mind had registered anything else, McCracken’s blade had slid deep into his lower back. The guard stiffened and died without a sound. Blaine dragged him away from the corner farther into the shadows, then undressed him and pulled the guard’s clothes over his own. His placement of the wound allowed him to tuck that part of the dead man’s shirt into his pants. He noticed that the guard was white, which seemed peculiar, but there was no time to think about it.

It took no more than a minute for Blaine to put on the entire uniform of the dead guard, a poor fit, with the pants baggy and short and the shirt too loose. He pressed the man’s corpse into a depression in the ground right against the building. Finally he stuck the Heckler and Koch into his belt, swung the guard’s M-16 over his shoulder, and took up his position in front of the storage hangar.

From there he had a clear view of the various training stations, and inspection of them proved truly chilling. He recognized the methods of the same guerrilla training he had excelled in so many years ago. Several men at each station — the instructors, obviously — were dressed in darker uniforms topped with berets. Krayman was sparing no expense. He had probably hired the best paramilitary instructors available, men who had learned their trade in ’Nam or Korea. Most of the drills he knew well, others appeared to have been modified for an urban climate rather than a jungle one.

Blaine gazed to his right and saw rows of jeeps and troop carriers lined up in what must have been the motor pool. Beyond them lay a half dozen M60 tanks, scorched and scarred metal indicating they had seen battle at one time or another.

Blaine was wondering what possible use the PVR could have for tanks when something else occurred to him. The techniques the men in the training fields were practicing had nothing to do with what they would face on Christmas Eve. All the drills were based around coming up against similarly armed and prepared men. By rights, though, the PVR would be using a hit and run, total terror strategy, destruction of property their foremost aim. People would die, but most easily without a fight. The only resistance they might meet would be token police forces at Christmas Eve strength; most of the population would be home watching Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Taking over major urban centers should prove effortless for such well-trained troops, but nothing they were practicing suggested that was what they expected.

Intrigued, Blaine watched the men in the fields more closely; not the men specifically but their actions and mannerisms. These did not appear to be radical amateurs turned into murderous pros in ten easy lessons. There was a swiftness to their movements, a sureness in their stride, professional sureness.

McCracken was still trying to reconcile this when a piercing siren went off. His heart leaped into his mouth and he felt panic rise with it. They knew security had been breached. The hundreds of soldiers off in the fields were sprinting closer to the main complex. Blaine held his ground and his breath.

From over a thin rise a pair of tanks followed by more heavy equipment appeared with men trotting in step behind the machines. So they were calling out the heavy stuff to bring him in. …

Then Blaine relaxed. The troops were just falling in, forming neat, precise rows on the edge of the cement area that contained the storage buildings and barracks. They were simply—

Blaine’s mind stopped pondering. He squinted his eyes, then rubbed them. He could see the troops clearly now and what he saw was impossible.

It couldn’t be. Yet it was.

Every single man was white.

McCracken’s phone call from Paris had deeply disturbed Andrew Stimson. A Christmas Eve strike by a revolutionary black group was bad enough. But add the involvement of someone like Randall Krayman and obviously even more was going on.

McCracken claimed Krayman was financing the PVR’s supply of weapons. Why? What could the mysterious billionaire possibly have to gain from such an association? Stimson knew little about the man and had put a team of researchers on to him immediately after Blaine’s phone call.

He would have stayed through the night himself, but fatigue finally consumed him. He had slept barely at all these past few days, and it was finally catching up with him. After he dozed off for the third time at his desk, Stimson figured it was time to call it quits for the day. He called his bodyguards and had his car brought to the front of Gap headquarters.

The procedure was standard these days for high-ranking government officials, even clandestine ones like Stimson. Two cars with two bodyguards in each, one behind and one in front. Usually he opted to drive his car himself because he enjoyed the solitude and loathed the helpless feeling of being driven around. Tonight he had almost called for a driver, then figured handling the chore himself would do him good.

Stimson climbed behind the wheel of his standard issue sedan and signaled his lead car to take off. The second one would hang back slightly, guarding against attack from the rear.

A freezing drizzle had begun earlier that evening, and by the time the procession hit the middle of a surprisingly barren expressway, a steady snow had started up and the roads were icy slick. Automatically, Stimson turned up his windshield wipers and switched the climate control to defrost. The wipers streaked unevenly across the icy glass, but Stimson barely noticed, too much else on his mind.

Obviously, Randall Krayman was using Sahhan because the Christmas Eve strike was part of a far more extensive plan. The implications promised to be catastrophic, with the PVR providing merely a spark.

Behind Stimson, the following car began to close the gap.

The Gap chief shuddered. Thank God for Blaine McCracken, he thought. No other agent confined by rules and regulations could have gotten this far. Stimson had been right in utilizing his skills.

The following car had moved still closer, not more than twenty yards back now.

Stimson checked the rearview mirror and felt something was wrong even before he realized one of the car’s headlights was out. Both had been working when they passed onto the expressway. Something must have happened back there while his thoughts had been elsewhere. The cars had been switched, his bodyguards taken out, and now the enemy was close enough to spit on.

Stimson heard the roar of the engine as the car accelerated and drew up alongside him in the other lane. He floored his own pedal and started blasting the horn in the hope of attracting the attention of his men in the lead car.

Both windows on the strange car’s passenger side slid open.

Stimson’s throat clogged with panic, but he didn’t give in to it, even as black barrels were being steadied on the sills. Part of him was still a field man. Part of him responded the only way possible.

Still holding the pedal to the floor and drawing closer to the lead car, Stimson veered sharply to the left, hoping to crunch the opposition’s vehicle and thus buy enough time for the lead car to drift back.

It almost worked. Metal had just smacked against metal when the barrels blazed red and Stimson heard the glass around him shatter only after slivers of it had jammed into his flesh among the dozens of lead pellets stealing his life away. He tried to breathe, but his air was gone along with the steering wheel. He felt himself slumping, eyes locked painfully open, when another volley tore away his last grip on life. The trailing car slammed back into his and sent it careening madly for the guard rail, up and over the metal in a single leap down into a darkness that broke into flames on impact.

Then death.

Chapter 18

The ramifications of what he was seeing were lost only briefly on McCracken as the shock subsided.

There were not one, but two armies! One white and the other black. And Randall Krayman was financing both!

Blaine’s mind could make no sense of it. There was too much happening too fast. He needed time to put things together.

If Sahhan’s troops were being utilized on Christmas Eve, then where did these come in? As a supplement perhaps?

No, that didn’t wash. The mix of the two armies would prove more volatile than their collective mission. Besides, these white troops were professional mercenaries. Compared to them, Sahhan’s army of fanatics were rank amateurs whose greatest weapons would be shock and surprise. The men he was watching now lined up squarely in rows wouldn’t need either. A similar number of these could—

Another siren wailed, breaking Blaine’s train of thought. The men scattered in all directions, but mostly for the barracks. The leaders walked off together, leaving a small group of sentries to watch over the field and heavy equipment. Men were coming toward him from all angles and Blaine knew it wouldn’t be long before the body of the real guard would be discovered.

He walked away from his post toward the fields, hidden by the similarly dressed men he passed among. He held the M-16 across his shoulder a bit tighter and felt in the gun belt for the exact location of its extra clips. For no particular reason he headed toward the target range, where mechanical dummies had made for realistic practice. Above him loomed a guard tower with men manning binoculars and a powerful machine gun. He did his best to appear to be doing what he was supposed to, moving slowly at the pace of an on-duty sentry.

His eyes turned back toward the storage hangar just before he reached the field. The commotion was obvious. The men with berets were sprinting toward a large group of soldiers in their practice fatigues. The guard’s body had been discovered. Blaine cursed the sun for not setting earlier in the damn Caribbean. Darkness would have shielded the man’s body indefinitely.

He reached the field, glad he had chosen it since it was the farthest from the base complex and in the proper direction to reach the airstrip. Instinctively, he had begun to contemplate escape. He had learned everything he was going to here on San Melas and nothing he had been expecting. The puzzle merely had more pieces thrown in. He would walk straight across the field, over the ridge, and make his way to the airstrip. Sooner or later another craft would take off and somehow he would have to make himself a passenger.

Blaine was halfway across the field, when one of the mechanical dummies looked up at him. He froze in his tracks and felt a tremor of shock pass through him.

The target wasn’t a dummy.

It was a man. Shot full of holes and staring out through sightless eyes.

The war games they were playing here were real, with flesh and blood used in place of cardboard silhouettes. The corpse’s features were too bloodied to make out clearly. Perhaps he was a recruit who hadn’t been making it. The law of San Melas might well be survival of the fittest. Only the best were sent off the island to …

Where? Why?

“Hey, you there! You’re off limits!”

Blaine hadn’t heard the jeep squeeze to a halt. He turned slowly and faced two men with rifles at the ready.

“This is my area. I’m just on guard duty.”

“Bullshit! I don’t know you. I don’t—”

McCracken acted before the sentence was complete. He felt the futility of his ruse, knew it would get him nowhere. He was going for the M-16 on his shoulder as he dove and found the trigger just as he struck the ground.

The two men were dropped immediately by his hail of fire, managing a harmless volley each. But the gunshots would certainly bring the force of hundreds descending upon the field. Outfighting or outrunning those numbers was impossible. Outwitting them was something else again.

Blaine fired a trio of bursts into the distance beyond the ridge. Then, faking panic, he grasped his rifle tight and sprinted back in the direction he had come from. A last-second thought made him dive to the ground near the two men he had shot. His hand found the wounds of one and came away thick with oozing blood. He smeared it over his forehead and half his face, then wiped the remainder on his green pants for still more effect.

He ran from the field, eyes gazing back with forced fear, one leg dragging theatrically behind him.

Floods of men were rushing toward him, led, as expected, by the bereted leaders.

“Help me! Help!”

Blaine struggled to reach them, eyes darting more feverishly than ever over his shoulder.

“Stay down!” he screamed in warning. “Stay down!”

Most of the charging men hit the turf and rolled. A few of the bereted leaders held their ground. Blaine collapsed at their feet. He was struggling for breath and made sure they saw the blood running down the side of his face.

“How many?” one of the men in a beret asked.

“I don’t know,” Blaine wheezed. “Six maybe. I couldn’t tell. They took us by surprise from over the ridge. They seemed to be everywhere.”

“How are they packed?”

“I don’t know,” Blaine huffed.

“How are they packed, I asked you? Get a hold of yourself, soldier!”

The bereted leader grabbed Blaine and shook him at the shoulders.

“I dunno, I dunno. …”

“I said, get a hold of yourself!”

Blaine gazed vacantly at him. “They’re packed heavy. Automatic weapons.”

“Get to sickbay,” the bereted leader told him, and then signaled his men to move on.

McCracken hobbled off in the opposite direction. He had bought himself time, but that did nothing about an escape route. And now he was moving away from the airstrip. Wait! The motor pool where the heavy equipment had been stored! He could grab a jeep or truck from there and drive it to the airfield.

Blaine quickened his pace just a bit as more uniformed men streaked by him. Any moment now the leaders surveying the field might realize there had been no assault, that they had been fooled. He had to reach the motor pool before then.

He reached the macadam surface of the complex and straightened up. Suddenly his pace was that of a sprinter making fast for the motor pool. Shouts and screams started up behind him. He heard footsteps pounding the pavement and glanced back to see men rushing at him leveling their weapons.

Blaine turned all the way around and fired a spray to his rear which scattered most of the soldiers giving chase. Hundreds of others were rushing back from the target practice field. His ruse was obviously up. A jeep would do him no good now, would only delay the inevitable. But a tank …

He lit out at top speed toward the neat row of tanks.

The machine gun in the guard tower opened fire, and Blaine dodged behind the side of a building to escape the bullets. The gun had him pinned, an easy target for the many troops sprinting back toward the complex. He had to move now. In the amber light of the early evening Caribbean sun, Blaine focused on a tank at the end of the row. He had been in plenty of M60s over in ’Nam; they were powerful but cumbersome machines which took a minimum of three men to operate. Recently, though, many had been updated with computer technology, so it was possible for only one man to drive the tank and fire it. McCracken could only hope these M60s had been part of that lot. If not, the best he could hope for would be to do plenty of damage with its big gun until they got him.

Blaine sprinted out from his hiding place and dared the bullets to hit him. He ran in a zigzag to make it difficult for the tower machine gun to lock on to him. But now the troops were roaring back and fanning out in commando fashion to enclose him, not realizing yet what he was headed for.

Bullets chimed off the tank’s steel flesh as he reached it with a final leap. He vaulted behind the gun turret for cover, popped open one of the hatches, and plunged in headfirst.

He landed hard and rose immediately to close the hatch and lock it down. Bullets continued to ricochet off the steel outside, some clanging harder than others. Blaine switched on the cabin’s lights and moved to the dashboard. He blessed his luck; all the gauges were digital, indicating this was one of the updated tanks.

The control panel was on his right, and he hit the M60’s master switch. Then he pressed the starter button and the diesel engine began to hum. The pedals beneath him were similar to those found in a car, the left being the brake and the right the accelerator. There was a T-bar located directly in front of him which took the place of a steering wheel. To his right and up a little was the weapons range and targeting indicator with readouts displayed on a miniature television screen. The digital counter above it read “3,” meaning three rockets were stowed in the big gun. A button within reach of the T-bar would launch them, so he could drive and fire at the same time. The machine gun firing buttons were also within easy reach, and as he shifted the gear lever into low, Blaine couldn’t help but be amazed by this wonder of modern ballistics.

Still, three rockets would be little more than a distraction. The chances of his getting off the island suddenly seemed extremely thin. The bullets chiming regularly off the tank’s exterior reminded him he couldn’t stay inside forever.

McCracken swung the T-bar hard to the right to make the M60 go left to clear the motor pool. He headed it straight toward the largest congestion of troops, going right into the teeth of their offensive. He pressed his eyes tighter against the rubber eye holes that functioned like a submarine’s periscope. He saw the troops backing away unsurely, retreating under the onslaught of the monstrous vehicle. The M60’s top speed was perhaps thirty miles per hour, but McCracken kept it slow for more maneuverability. An explosion to his right shook the tank, and Blaine adjusted his viewer to include a wider scale.

On the tower a man stood poised with a bazooka, a second behind him sliding in another shell. Blaine slowed the tank to a crawl and switched on the automatic targeting device.

A set of grids with numbers alongside appeared on the screen before his eyes. He kept adjusting until the guard tower was in the grid’s center.

The man holding the bazooka went into his crouch.

Blaine pushed the red firing button.

Impact thrust him back against his seat and halted the tank’s progress. Blaine watched through the viewer as a blur shot out toward the guard tower, turning it into an orange fireball spraying metal and wood everywhere.

The digital rocket counter clicked down to “2.”

McCracken aimed the tank around to where most of the troops were dispersing. He dabbed at his brow and decided his next and last targets would be the greatest concentrations of men. Perhaps in the confusion he might slip away. Perhaps—

Wait! Confusion, that was it! The ultimate in confusion had to be created if he was to escape. Blaine gave the accelerator pedal more pressure and reached over the T-bar for a pair of buttons. The tank’s front-mounted, twin machine guns responded by cutting down those troops brave enough to chance a rush at the iron monster.

He swung the M60 to the left and angled it for the storage hangar he had come from originally. He had just come in line with the front of the building, when an armor-piercing shell ripped into the side of his tank, spraying dust and debris into the cabin. The smell of burnt metal and wires flooded his nostrils.

“Come on, baby,” McCracken urged out loud. “Hold together for just a little longer. …”

The tank seemed to hear him and obey, limping forward with one tread crippled as more explosions outside battered Blaine’s ears. He swung the turret in the direction they were coming from and fired the big gun quickly without taking proper aim. The shell landed short but bought him the last seconds he needed.

The counter clicked down to “1.”

He crashed the M60 through the hangar’s heavy doors, rolled right through them with the turret swinging back to the front. The T-bar shook in his hands and he had to twist it in crazed patterns to compensate for the crippled tread. The targeting scope was equipped with infrared, so even in the darkness he had no trouble locating the corner he remembered the crates of grenades had been stored in. With the tank struggling forward, knocking crates from its path, Blaine fired his last rocket.

The results were immediate. And spectacular.

That entire portion of the building went up in a blinding fireball, the intense heat and flames reaching out to consume box after box of other explosives and ammunition. Blaine was out of the M60’s cabin an instant before the flames reached his area, and he rushed away as they licked at his back. An explosion catapulted him through the air and he felt himself strike the floor as another blast ripped out the wall before him. With the onrush of flames serving as his cover, Blaine crawled back outside. On the base there was total havoc. Order had collapsed. Troops ran in every direction with no idea of what they should be doing in such a situation. The commando leaders were shouting commands, but it was useless. Explosions kept sounding in the storage hangar, which had become a formless mass of construction tumbling in upon itself to be swallowed by the raging flames.

McCracken’s face was charred black and he was bleeding superficially in a number of areas. As he moved through the chaos, he saw many others who looked much the same, especially those who had followed orders to battle the fire with hoses bearing insufficient pressure. Then, above it all, a voice crackled over the loudspeaker.

“Attention all personnel! Attention all personnel! Prepare immediately for evacuation to Newport com-center. Repeat, prepare immediately for evacuation to Newport com-center. Trucks will begin leaving for the airfield in five minutes. Trucks will begin leaving for the airfield in five minutes.”

They were abandoning ship, Blaine thought. I’ve accomplished that. And destroyed a prime weapons cache to boot.

Newport com-center …

What in hell was that? No matter, McCracken figured, it’s my chance for escape regardless.

He burst through a barracks door, where men were feverishly packing gear, and found an unoccupied bed and foot locker. In the near darkness and confusion no one took much notice of his features through the grime and blood that covered them. He would be fine so long as the bed’s true occupant didn’t make an untimely return.

Blaine redressed in shapeless green fatigues and rummaged around their owner’s foot locker to find sufficient packing for a duffel bag as the others were doing. He would do everything just as the others did. They were his ticket off the island.

He moved from the barracks, duffel bag in hand, with the second rush of men through the door. The fire was now totally out of control. It had spread to neighboring structures in the face of facilities utterly inadequate to fight it. Blaine ran toward the trucks near the motor pool and hurled himself into the back of one. Its darkness soothed him. Feeling cocky, he extended helping hands to the last of those who crowded in the back and shoved around to find seating space. A number gave up and settled on the floor. McCracken managed to find a spot on the bench way in the back near the truck’s cab.

The truck rumbled to a start, lurched forward in one grinding lunge, and then another. The engine, not yet warm, resisted, but the driver pushed the machine until its gears ground in protest. Blaine followed the path they were taking as best he could through the open tailgate. It was smooth-going through the length of the complex until they reached the hardened dirt road that would lead them to the airfield. Blaine recognized its coarse feeling from the trip in and found it little more comfortable outside a crate than inside.

His fear of being recognized as an impostor had evaporated by the time the caravan of trucks reached the airstrip. Enough eyes had met his and turned away routinely to convince him that where the darkness and grime stopped being his ally, he was aided by the fact that these men had apparently remained strangers to each other through their training.

That led him to the conclusion that their training had not lasted long and to wonder how many had come before them.

Newport com-center …

What if this destination was one of many spots across the country Krayman’s white mercenary troops had been airlifted to? Blaine had to assume that Sahhan’s PVR cells were already in place in similarly strategic areas. Two separate armies, both prepared to strike, both financed by Randall Krayman. But where was the connection?

The questions and puzzles kept battering Blaine’s mind as he sat in the crowded cargo hold of one of the transports streaking through the sky. He had overheard someone calling out the flight coordinates earlier and thus knew that the Newport of their destination was the one in Rhode Island — quite fortunate since he had spent a month some years back resting and recuperating from an especially grueling mission on the prestigious community’s famed beaches. He remembered the area well enough to suit his needs.

Blaine dozed a few times through the eight-hour flight, which ended harshly on an abandoned airfield at nearly three A.M. The troops stretched and shook themselves awake, trying to beat back the sluggishness the long trip had brought on. Once the plane came to a halt, the men closest to the doors slid them open and let down the ramps. Blaine walked out in the middle of the group and felt the cold air assault him on contact. Paris had been bearable and San Melas steaming, so a return to the unusually early winter cold was shocking. All the troops looked to be shivering. But the bereted leaders shouted at them and pointed them in the direction of a hangar which might have been a giant icebox.

After so long in darkness, even the temporary fluorescent lighting burned Blaine’s eyes. He shielded them as he took his place in line, leaving his duffel bag by his feet and making sure his face was covered. The rows of men were neat and orderly. The troops stood halfway at attention in the cold. Beyond a window crusted with a combination of ice and dirt, Blaine noticed a few of the leaders conferring with a giant of a man wearing a civilian overcoat. Even from this distance, the big man did not look pleased. The men beyond the window dispersed, and moments later a raspy, slurred voice echoed through the hangar over a P.A.

“The unfortunate incidents on San Melas change nothing,” the voice began. “You know what you have to do, where and when you have to meet up. Your weapons are ready for you, along with fresh clothes, cash, and additional paperwork where required. Everything becomes routine from here. Just stick to your orders as precisely outlined unless you hear differently from your station leader providing the proper access code. The abort and regroup signals are uniform nationwide to avoid confusion. Please follow your orders in the days ahead exactly. The time is almost upon us. Be ready and stay alert. That is all.” The troops swung toward the doors at the front of the hangar as if on cue, and Blaine swung with them. He was still digesting the shadowy speaker’s words, when his row began to move in single file toward the exit. There was only this door to pass through and he would be free.

He was almost to it when a hand grasped his shoulder and shoved him around. He found himself looking up at the horribly mangled grin of a figure with only half a face and a gun in his hand.

“I’ve been expecting you, McCracken,” said Wells.