Coonts, Stephen - Jake Grafton 7 - Cuba

by Cuba (lit)

  could be kept in sight at all times yet no one would

  be directly behind them, following where they could be seen

  or noticed. The subjects would seem to be alone,

  moving of their own will through the urban environment, yet

  their isolation would be an illusion.

  He knew all that, yet he could detect no

  tails or signs of people that might be

  watching, taking an interest in him or Carmellini.

  Chance was no neophytehe had a great

  deal of experience in this line of work, he knew what

  was possible and he knew what was likely.

  He thought about all these things as the flawlessly

  decked-out Cuban waiter served coffee. The

  music formed a backdrop to the babble of conversation from

  his fellow diners, who were gabbing in at least five

  languages, perhaps six.

  Chance sipped the coffee, let his eyes wander the

  room. No one was paying the slightest attention. Not

  a single furtive glance, no hastily broken eye

  contact, no one studiously ignoring him.

  Well, if he and Carmellini were going to do it, tonight

  was the night. The longer they stayed in Havana, the more

  likely it was that they would attract the interest of the

  Department of State Security, the secret

  police. The interest of Santana and Alejo

  Vargas.

  The truth was that Vargas might have burned them, might

  have devoted the resources necessary to learn everything about

  them. Vargas or his minions might be waiting tonight in

  the science hall, waiting to catch them redhanded,

  to embarrass the United States, perhaps even

  to execute Chance and Carmellini as

  spies.

  In this line of work the imponderables were always huge,

  risks impossible to quantify. Still, he and

  Carmellini were going to have to look inside that building,

  see what was there.

  If there was a biological weapons program in

  Cuba, it had to be in that building, which housed the

  largest, bestequipped laboratory known to be on the

  island. And the most knowledgeable people were nearby, the

  microbiologists and chemists and skilled lab

  technicians that would be needed to produce large

  quantities of microorganisms.

  Chance was well aware that the most serious technical

  problem a researcher faced when constructing a

  biological weapon was how to keep the

  microorganisms alive inside a warhead or

  aerosol bomb for long periods of time. Some

  biological agents were easier to store than others,

  which

  was why they were most often selected for weapons

  research. For example, the spores of anthrax were

  very stable, as were the spores of the fungal disease

  coccidioidomycosis, which incapacitated but rarely

  killed its victims. Of course, the

  naturally occurring strains of an infectious disease

  could have been altered to make the microorganisms more

  stable, more virulent, or to overcome widespread

  immunity: years ago researchers produced a

  highly infective strain of poliomyelitis

  virus for just these reasons.

  Idly he wondered about the microbiologist who

  ran the program. Who was he? What were his

  motivations? Perhaps that question answered itself in a

  totalitarian society, but it was worth researching,

  when he had some time. If he ever had some time.

  "Ready"..."...Chance muttered to Carmelliniea"...who drained

  the last of his coffee.

  The two men paid their bill in cash and left the

  casino. They got into a car parked at the curb, one

  driven by one of their associates, and sped off into the

  night.

  In a dark, deserted lane on the outskirts of the

  city the car in which Chance and Carmellini rode met the

  former telephone van they had used before, but now it

  bore the logo of a wholesale food supplier.

  Inside the van Carmellini and Chance changed

  into black trousers, a black pullover shirt with a

  high collar, black socks, and black

  rubber-soled shoes. When they were dressed,

  they sat listening to the insects, drinking water,

  monitoring a radio frequency. One of their

  colleagues was observing the science building at the

  university. He checked in every fifteen minutes.

  So far he had seen nothing out of the ordinary.

  "Why did you get into this line of work"..."...Chance asked

  Carmellini as they sat listening to the chirp of

  crickets.

  "The challenge of it, I guess. I had an

  uncle who cracked a few safes... he was a

  legendary figure. The only time he ever went to the

  pen was for tax evasion: he did a couple

  years that time. I was always asking him questions. He

  told me if I wanted to be a safecracker, go

  to work for a firm that manufactured and installed the

  things. That was good advice. I installed safes for

  several summers while I was in college, got

  too cocky for my own good. Thought I had this stuff

  figured out, you know? One thing led to another, and before you

  know it I was cracking the things."

  Chance nodded.

  "Here I am still at it. Only this time I won't go

  to the pen if they catch me."

  "Yeah. The Cubans will probably execute us as

  soon as Vargas gets through with us, if

  there's anything left to execute."

  "The way I figure it, I finally made the big

  leagues."

  "You optimists, always looking on the bright side."

  "Which brings up a point. You got us garroting

  wires and knives and pistols. I never carry

  weapons. I'm a safecracker, not a killer."

  "You'll probably become a dead safecracker

  if they catch you in there."

  "I've never carried weapons. Ever."

  "A wise precaution if you are burgling

  gentlemen's safes. You're in the major leagues

  now."

  "Listen, Chance"

  "This isn't a game, Tommy. Speaking for myself,

  I want to keep breathing. You'll do as I say."

  The driver parked the van in an alley near the

  science building. He sat hunched over the wheel

  watching people on the sidewalks as Chance and

  Carmellini examined the building through binoculars.

  They were behind him, in the body of the van, looking forward

  through the windshield.

  The way in, they decided, was through the roof. To get

  there, they would need to go into the building beside the science

  building, a lecture hall, ascend to the

  top floor, then get access to the roof. From here they

  would need to cross to the roof of the science hall, then

  find a way in.

  The lecture hall was locked at night, though it was

  not guarded.

  It was one in the morning when the van stopped in the

  empty alley behind the lecture hall. The two men

  in back pulled on latex disgloves, swung on

  backpacks, then went out the van's side door.

  The door was not wired with an alarm. Carmellini

  picked
the lock in thirty seconds, and they were in.

  The van drove away as the door closed behind mem.

  They stood in the darkness letting their eyes adjust

  to the gloom.

  Carmellini led off. Behind him Chance took out his

  pistol and thumbed off the safety, keeping the pistol

  pointed downward at the floor.

  The weak light filtering through windows in classrooms

  and thence through open doors to the hallway did little

  to alleviate the darkness. The floors were uncarpeted

  concrete, the walls massive masonry, the

  ceilings at least twelve feet high. The building

  was devoid of decoration or even a trace of

  architectural imagination.

  Carmellini moved like a shadow, making no

  detectable noise. Chance seemed to be making enough

  noise for both of them. He could hear himself breathing and

  his heart pounding, could hear the echoes of his

  footfalls

  in

  the cavernous hallways.

  Keeping near the wall, they climbed the stairs to the

  second floor. Carmellini moved slowly,

  steadily, listened carefully before turning every corner,

  then lowered his head, keeping it well below the place

  one would naturally look for it, and peeped around the

  corner. Then he slithered around the corner out of

  sight; Chance followed as silently as he could.

  The top of the staircase put them out on the fourth

  floor of the building. There had to be another

  staircase, probably very narrow, leading to the roof.

  Where might it be?

  Carmellini was ready to go explore when he suddenly

  held up his hand. He held a finger to his lips.

  Chance listened with all the concentration he could muster.

  He

  could

  hear something! Voices? Carmellini slowly inched

  along the hallway toward an open door, then

  froze there.

  He came back down the hajlway to Chance, put his

  lips against Chance's ear. "A couple of kids

  making love."

  The silenced Ruger felt heavy in Chance's hand.

  "Gonna kill 'em?"

  Not shooting them was a risk, sure.

  Chance listened carefully. The lovers were whispering.

  No other sounds.

  "Find the stairs up."

  The stairs were at the end of a hall, behind a locked

  door. Carmellini worked on the lock in the darkness

  for almost a minute before he pulled the door open.

  They closed the door behind them and climbed the totally

  dark staircase, feeling their way. They ended up in

  a stuffy, black attic. Chance used the

  flashlight. Furniture, desks, chairs,

  stacked everywhere. In the middle of the attic was another

  stairway up.

  The door to the roof was also locked, this time with a

  padlock, which was on the interior side of the door.

  "What if there is a padlock on the other

  side"..."...Chance asked.

  "Then we're screwed. Unless you want to kick this

  thing down."

  "No."

  "Let's try to get this lock open, then the door."

  "Okay."

  The lock was rusty, corroded. After several

  minutes" effort Carmellini admitted his defeat

  and used a wire saw to cut through the metal loop of the

  lock. That took two minutes of intense effort but

  didn't make much noise, considering.

  With the lock off and hasp pulled back, they pushed

  at the door. It refused to open. With both men

  heaving, the

  door slowly opened with great resistance, and groaned

  terribly.

  "That'll wake the deadea"...Chance muttered, and wiped the

  sweat from his face as Carmellini slipped out onto

  the roof.

  Chance followed along.

  The metal roof sloped away steeply in several

  different planes. Moving on hands and knees they

  worked themselves over toward the edge that faced the science

  building.

  "Let me do thisea"...Carmellini whispered, and

  extracted the rope from his backpack. "Get out of the

  way, up by the door."

  Chance went.

  The glare of the city and the streetlights below

  illuminated the roof quite well, too well in fact.

  While it was easy to see where to walk, anyone below

  who bothered to look could probably see the black

  shapes silhouetted against the glare of the sky.

  Chance huddled against the dormer that formed the staircase

  up from the attic. He watched Carmellini on the

  edge of the roof, shaking out the rope, checking the

  grappling hook. Now he began to twirl the hook

  above his head, letting out more and more line to make the

  hook swing an ever-larger circle. Just as it seemed

  the ckcle was impossibly wide, he cast the line

  and hook across the chasm separating the buildings at a

  metal vent sticking up out of the roof.

  The hook made an audible metallic sound as it

  hit the far roof, then it began sliding off.

  Carmellini quickly pulled in line in huge coils,

  but too late to stop the grappling hook from sliding

  off the roof.

  He kept pulling on the line. In seconds he

  had the hook in his hand and bent down against the roof.

  Someone was down below. Even back here Chance could hear

  voices. He scanned the surrounding roofs, the

  streets that he could see, the blank windows looking

  at him from other buildings.

  Minutes ticked by, the voices below

  faded.

  Now Carmellini was standing, swinging the rope and hook,

  now casting it... and it caught! He tugged at it,

  worked his way back up the roof to where Chance was

  kneeling.

  Carmellini put the disend of the rope around the dormer,

  pulled it as taut as possible, then tied it off.

  "Well, there is our way acrossea"...the younger man said.

  "You want to go first, or should I?"

  "Anchored solid, is it?"

  "You bet."

  "Age before beautyea"...Chance said, and tugged on leather

  gloves, wrapped his hands around the rope. He worked

  out hand over hand, then draped his lower legs over the

  rope. His backpack dangled from his shoulders.

  Hanging from the rope like this took a surprising amount

  of physical strength. The rope sagged dangerously

  with his weight, becoming a vee with him at the bottom,

  which made it more difficult to move along it.

  Gritting his teeth, trying to keep his breathing even,

  William Henry Chance worked his way along the

  rope, taking care not to look down. At one point

  he knew he was over the chasm but it didn't

  matter: if he slipped off the rope the fall would

  kill him, whether he hit the roof and slid

  off or missed it clean.

  He kept going, doggedly, straining every muscle,

  until he felt the bag dragging along the roof of the

  science building. Only then did he unhook his

  legs from the rope and let them down to the roof. Still

  pulling on the rope, he heaved himself up by the vent and

  grabbed it.
/>   The grappling hook was holding by one tong. He

  wrapped the rope around the vent and set the hook, then

  tugged several times to make sure it would hold.

  Wiping his forehead, he breathed heavily three or

  four times. He had one hand on the rope, so he

  felt the tension increase with Carmellini's weight.

  He peered at the other

  building. Carmellini came scurrying along the

  rope like a goddamn chimpanzee.

  The younger man was over the gap between the buildings when the

  rope broke, apparently where it was anchored atop

  the lecture hall. Carmellini's body fell

  downward in an arc and disappeared from view. An

  audible thud reached Chance as Carmellini's body

  smacked against the side of the science building.

  "Our Lady of Coldn

  was under this storm system; out of sight of the

  satellites passing over, for six

  hours," Toad Tarkuigton explained to Jake

  Grafton. They were bent over a table in Mission

  Planning, studying satellite radar images.

  "When next it reappeared, it was steaming for Bahia

  de Nipe at twelve knots, yet its average

  speed of advance while it was out of sight was two

  knots."

  "Two?"

  'Two."...Toad showed him the positions and

  measurements.

  "So it was stopped somewhere."

  "Or made a detour."

  "What if the ship rendezvoused with another ship and the

  warheads were transferred?"

  "Possible, but if you look at these other ship

  tracks, it doesn't seem very likely. All these

  other tracks were going somewhere, with speed-of-advance

  averages that seem plausible."

  "Okay. What if the ship stopped and the crew

  dumped some of the weapons in the water? Maybe all

  of them. Dumped them in shallow water for someone

  to pick up later. How deep is the water in that

  area?"

  "That area is the Bahamas, Admiral. Pretty

  shallow in a lot of places in there."

  "Have NSA put that area under intense surveillance.

  Have them study every satellite image since that storm

  passed. If those warheads were dumped overboard from the

  Colon,

  someone is going to come along to pick them up.

  We have to get there before that somebody gets them

  aboard."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Ask Atlantic Fleet to get a P-3 out

  to that area as soon as possible, have the crew search for

  anchored or stationary ships. Any ships not actually

  under way. Understand?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Jake Grafton rubbed his forehead, trying