Clancy, Tom - Ballance of Power

by Balance of Power [lit]

electromagnetic generator designed by Matt

  Stoll, Op-Center's technical wizard. The

  unit, approximately the size and dimensions of a

  portable CD player, sent out a pulse that

  disrupted electronic signals within a ten-foot

  radius and turned them to "gibberish," as Stoll

  described itComputers, recorders, or other

  digital devices outside its range would be

  unaffected.

  McCaskey and Aideen sat on the side of the bed

  with the Egg, as they'd nicknamed it, between them.

  "Deputy Serrador thinks that there isn't much we

  can do without cooperation on this end," McCaskey said.

  60 OP-CENTER

  "Does he," Aideen said bitterly.

  "We may be able to surprise him."

  "It might also be

  necessary

  to surprise him," Aideen said.

  "That's true," McCaskey said. He looked at

  Aideen. "Anything else before I call the boss?"

  Aideen shook her head, though that wasn't entirely

  true. There was a great deal she wanted to say. One

  thing Aideen's experiences in Mexico had taught

  her was to recognize when things weren't right. And something

  wasn't right here. The thing that had pushed her buttons

  back in the deputy's office wasn't just the

  emotional aftermath of Martha's death. It was

  Serrador's rapid retreat from cooperation to what

  amounted to obstruction. If Martha's death were an

  assassination-and her gut told her that it was-was

  Serrador afraid that they'd target him next?

  If so, why didn't he take on extra

  security? Why were the halls leading to his office so

  empty? And why did he assume-as clearly he

  did-that simply by calling off the talks word would get

  back to whoever did this? How could he be so certain that

  the information would get leaked?

  McCaskey rose and went to the phone, which was

  outside the pulse-radius. As Aideen listened

  to the quiet hum of the Egg, she looked through the

  twelfthfloor window at the streetlights off in the

  distance. Her spirit was too depleted, her emotions

  too raw for her to try to explore the matter

  right now. But she was certain of one thing. Though these

  might be the rules by which the Spanish leaders

  operated, they'd crossed the line into three of her own

  rules. First, you don't

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  shoot people who are here to help you. Second, if

  shooting them is designed to help you, then you're going

  to run into rule number three:

  Americans-especially this American-shoot back.

  .

  ATX-UL1024 FIVE

  ATX-UL0

  Monday, 8:21 p.m. San Sebastian, Spain

  The hull of the small fishing boat was freshly

  painted. The smell of the paint permeated the cramped,

  dimly lighted hold. It overpowered the bite of the

  handrolled cigarette Adolfo Alcazar was smoking

  as well as the strong, distinctive, damp-rubber

  odor of the wetsuit that hung on a hook behind the

  closed door. The paint job was an extravagance

  the fisherman couldn't really afford but it had been

  necessary. There might be other missions, and he couldn't

  afford to be in drydock, replacing rotted boards.

  When he'd agreed to work with the General, Adolfo

  knew that the old boat would have to last them for as

  long as this affair took. And if anything went

  wrong, that could be a while. One didn't undermine one

  takeover and orchestrate a counterrevolution in a

  single night-or with a single strike. Not even with a

  big strike, which this one would be.

  Although the General is going to try,

  Adolfo thought with deep and heartfelt admiration.

  And if anyone could pull it off, a one-day coup

  against a major world government, it was the General.

  There was a click. The short, muscular man

  stopped

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  staring into space. He looked down at the tape

  recorder on the wooden table beside him. He lay his

  cigarette in a rusted tin ashtray and sat back

  down into the folding wooden chair. He pushed play

  and listened through the earphones, just to make sure the

  remote had picked up the sounds. The General's

  technical officer from Pamplona, the man who had

  given him the equipment, had said the equipment was

  extremely precise. If properly

  calibrated, it would record the voices over the

  slosh of the ocean and the growl of the fishing boat's

  engine.

  He was correct.

  After nearly a minute of silence Adolfo

  Alcazar heard a mechanical-sounding but clear

  voice utter, His

  "It is accomplished.""

  The voice was followed by what sounded like crackling.

  No,

  Adolfo realized as he listened more closely. The

  noise wasn't static. It was applause. The men

  in the yacht were clapping.

  Adolfo smiled. For all their wealth, for all their

  planning, for all their experience at managing their

  bloodthirsty

  familias,

  these men were unsuspecting fools. The fisherman was

  pleased to see that money hadn't made them

  smart-only smug. He was also glad because the

  General had been right. The General was always right.

  He had been right when he tried to arm the Basques

  to grease the wheels of revolution. And he was right

  to step back when they began fighting among themselves-the

  separatists battling the antiseparatists. Killing

  themselves and drawing attention from the real revolution.

  The small dish-shaped "ear" the fisherman had

  64 OP-CENTER

  placed on top of his boat's cabin, right

  behind the navigation light, had picked up every word of the

  conversation of that

  altivo,

  the haughty Esteban Ramirez, and his equally

  arrogant

  compadres

  on board the

  Veridico.

  Adolfo stopped the cassette and rewound it. The

  smile evaporated as he faced another unit

  directly to the right. This device was slightly

  smaller than the tape recorder. It was an oblong

  box nearly thirteen inches long by five inches

  wide and four inches deep. The box was made of

  Pittsburgh steel. In case it were ever found, there

  would be metallurgic evidence pointing to its country

  of origin. Ramirez, the traitor, had ties to the

  American CIA. After seizing power, the General

  could always point to them as having removed a

  collaborator who had outlived his usefulness.

  There was a green light on the top of the box face

  and a red light beneath it. The green light was glowing.

  Directly below them were two square white

  buttons. Beneath the topmost button was a piece of

  white tape with the word arm written in blue

  ink. That button was already depressed. The second

  button was not yet depressed. Below it

  was

  a piece of tape with the word detonate written
on

  it. The General's electronics expert had given

  this device to Adolfo as well, along with several

  bricks of U.s. army plastique and a remote

  detonator cap. The fisherman had attached two

  thousand grams of C-4 and a detonator below the

  waterline of the yacht before it left the harbor. When the

  blast occurred, it would rip through the hull at a

  velocity of twenty-six thousand feet per second-

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  nearly four times faster than an equivalent amount

  of dynamite.

  The young man ran a calloused hand through his curly

  black hair. Then he looked at his watch.

  Esteban Ramirez, the wealthy son of a bitch who

  was going to bring them all under the iron heel of his

  monied Catalonian cohorts, had said that the

  assassin would be arriving at the airport in an

  hour. When Adolfo had heard that, he'd used his

  ship-to-shore radio to pass the information along

  to his partners in the northwestern Pyrenees,

  Daniela, Vicente, and Alejandro.

  They'd hurried out to the airport, which was located

  outside of Bilbao, which was seventy miles to the

  east. Just two minutes ago they'd radioed back

  that the airplane had landed. One of Ramirez's

  petty thugs would be bringing him out here. The other

  members of the

  familia

  would be rounded up and dealt with later. That is, if they

  didn't panic and disperse of their own accord.

  Unlike Adolfo, so many of those bastards were only

  effective when they worked in big, brutal gangs.

  Adolfo picked up his cigarette, drew on it

  one last time, then ground it out. He removed the

  audiocassette from the recorder and slipped it

  into his shirt pocket, beneath his heavy black

  sweater. As he did so, his hand brushed the shoulder

  holster in which he carried a 9mm Beretta. The

  gun was one that had been used by U.s. Navy

  SEAL'S in Iraq and retrieved by coalition

  forces. It had made its way to the General through the

  Syrian weapons underground. Adolfo slipped in

  a tape of native Catalonian guitar music

  and pressed play. The first song was called

  "Salou," a song for two guitars. It was a

  paean to the magnificent illuminated

  66 OP-CENTER

  fountain in the beautiful town south of Barcelona.

  The young man listened for a moment, humming along with the

  lilting tune. One guitar played the melody

  while the other made pizzicato sounds like water

  droplets hitting the fountain. The music the

  instruments made was enchanting.

  Reluctantly, Adolfo turned off the tape.

  He took a short breath and grabbed the

  detonator. Then he doused the battery-powered

  lantern that swung from an overhead hook and went

  upstairs to the deck.

  The moon had slid behind a narrow bank of clouds.

  That was good. The crew of the yacht probably wouldn't

  pay attention anyway to a fishing boat over six

  hundred feet off their portside stern. In these

  waters, fishermen often trolled for night-feeders.

  But the men on the yacht would be less likely even

  to see him if the moon were hidden. Adolfo looked

  at the boat. It was dark save for its navigation

  lights and a glow from behind the drawn curtain of the

  midcabin porthole.

  After several minutes Adolfo heard the muffled

  growl of a small boat. The sound was coming from behind him,

  from the direction of the shore. He turned

  completely around and watched a small, dark shape

  head toward the yacht. It was traveling about forty

  miles an hour. From the light slap of the hull upon

  the water Adolfo judged it to be a small,

  two-person runabout. He watched as it pulled up

  to the near side of the yacht. A rope ladder was

  unrolled from the deck. A man stood unsteadily in

  the passenger's seat of the rocking vessel.

  That had to be the assassin.

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  The detonator felt slick in Adolfo's

  perspiring hand. He gripped it tightly, his finger

  hovering above the lower button.

  The seas were unusually active. They seemed to be

  reflecting the times themselves, uneasy and roiling below the

  surface. There were only four or five seconds

  from the peak of one uproll to the peak of the next. But

  Adolfo stood at the edge of the rolling deck with the

  sure poise of a lifelong fisherman. According to the

  General, he needed to be in a direct and

  unobstructed line with the plastique. Though they could have

  given him a more sophisticated trigger than the

  line-of-sight transmitter, these were more commonly

  available and less easy to trace.

  Adolfo watched as the yacht rocked

  gently from side to side. The assassin started

  uncertainly up the short ladder and the runabout moved

  away to keep from being rocked by the yacht's swells.

  A man appeared on deck. He was a fat man

  smoking a cigar- clearly not one of the crewmen.

  Adolfo waited. He knew exactly where he'd

  placed the explosives and he also knew the

  precise moment when they'd be exposed by the roll of the

  boat.

  The yacht tilted to port, toward him. Then it

  rolled away. Adolfo lowered the side of his thumb

  onto the bottom button. One more roll, he

  told himself. The ship was inclined toward the starboard for

  just a moment. Then gently, gracefully, it righted itself

  for a moment before angling back to port. The hull of the

  yacht rose, revealing the area just below the waterline.

  It was dark and Adolfo couldn't see it, but he

  knew that the package he'd left was there. He

  pushed hard

  68 OP-CENTER

  with his thumb. The green light on the box went off

  and the red light ignited.

  The portside bottom of the hull exploded with a

  white-yellow flash. The man on the ladder

  evaporated as the blast followed a nearly

  straight line from prow to stern. The fat man flew

  away from the blast into the darkness and the deck crumpled

  inward as the entire vessel shuddered. Splinters of

  wood, shards of fiberglass, and torn, jagged

  pieces of metal from the midcabin rode the blast

  into air. Burning chunks arced brightly against the sky

  while broken fragments, which had been blown straight

  along the sea, plopped and sizzled in the water just

  yards from Adolfo's fishing boat. Smoke rose

  in thick sheets from the opening in the hull until the

  yacht listed to port. Then it became steam. The

  yacht seemed to stop there for a moment, holding at an

  angle as water rushed through the huge breach;

  Adolfo could hear the distinctive, hollow roar of the

  sea as it poured in. Then the yacht slowly rolled

  onto its side. Less than half a minute after

  the capsizing, the wake caused the fishing boat

  to rock quickly from side to side. Adolfo easily

&
nbsp; retained his balance. The moon returned from behind the

  clouds then, its bright image jiggling on the waves

  with giddy agitation.

  Dropping the detonator into the water, the young man

  turned from the sea and hurried back into the cabin.

  He radioed his associates that the job had been

  accomplished. Then he walked to the

  controls, stood behind the wheel, and turned the boat

  toward the wreckage. He wanted to be able to tell

  investigators

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  that he had raced to the scene to look for survivors.

  He felt the weight of the 9mm weapon under his

  sweater. He also wanted to make sure there weren't

  any survivors.

  ATX-UL1024 SIX

  ATX-UL0 Monday, 1:44 p.m. Washington,

  D.c.

  Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert was in a gray

  frame of mind as he arrived in Paul Hood's

  bright, windowless basement office. In contrast to the

  warm fluorescence of the overhead lights, the gloomy

  mood was much too familiar. Not long ago they'd

  mourned the deaths of Striker team members Bass

  Moore, killed in North Korea, and X.

  Col. Charles Squires, who died in Siberia

  preventing a second Russian Revolution.

  For Herbert, the psychological resources he

  needed to deal with death were highly refined. Whenever he

  learned of the demise of enemies of his country-or when

  it had been necessary, early in his intelligence career,

  to participate in some of those killings-he

  never had any problems. The life and security of his

  country came before any other considerations. As

  Herbert had put it so many times, "The deeds are

  dirty but my conscience is clean."

  But this was different.

  Although Herbert's wife, Yvonne, had been

  killed nearly sixteen years ago in the terrorist

  bombing of the U.s. Embassy in Beirut, he was

  still mourning her death. The loss still seemed fresh.

  Too fresh,

  he

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  thought almost every night since the attack.

  Restaurants, movie theaters, and even a park

  bench they had frequented became shrines to him. Each

  night he lay in bed gazing at her photograph

  on his night table. Some nights the framed picture

  was moonlit, some nights it was just a dark shape. But

  bright or dark, seen or remembered, for better or

  for worse, Yvonne never left his bedside. And

  she never left his thoughts. Herbert had long ago

  adjusted to having lost his legs in the Beirut

  explosion. Actually, he'd more than adjusted. His