by Bob Finley
"Um-hm. They're laying off about ten miles north of our position. They got in some time early last evening and asked if they could ‘help’."
"Tactful," Major Strickland observed.
"I suppose. Though, it's probably more like the leopard waiting for the lion to get its belly full." The Captain got up and crossed to fill his coffee mug again. "At any rate, they did make one suggestion that I agreed to, with some very strongly worded conditions." He paused to sip the steaming brew before easing back into his chair again. "It seems one of their research ships in the Med was testing some kind of new spy submersible."
"A minisub?"
"Smaller than that. From what I understand, they're only about two feet long, but they're packed with a zillion high-tech, miniature gadgets. And, would you believe, they're stealth-capable."
"Stealth?! On a ‘mini-mini’?
Carruthers nodded. "They're making some pretty interesting claims about these toys."
"Such as?"
The Captain leaned forward. "I'll remind you of your security clearance." The Marine before him nodded. "They wanted to send in a couple of these gadgets to scout out the terrorists’ underwater defenses. Promised they'd dive 'em deep, then work them up the slope. They're also terrain-following equipped."
Matt shook his head in wonder. "So, did you let them do it?"
Jerry Carruthers sat back in his chair. After a moment, he nodded. "They had them flown in from the Med a little after midnight."
"What happened?"
"They might have found the goldmine," the Captain said, a smile beginning to form. He waited, allowing the suspense to build, and the smile became a grin. "They found what are probably...repeat, probably...two ways to get in. One of them neither of us likes. The other...well, it's a ‘maybe’."
The Captain told him how the little French mini-mini…‘micro’, they call it…had detected heat sources, one huge, the other much smaller. The big one was obviously too dangerous, as it would most likely be watched. But the smaller one was less than twenty feet across, and so heavily camouflaged that it might be considered by the terrorists to be safe against infiltration. The spy subs had apparently gotten in and out at dawn without being detected, and returned safely to their mother ship.
"Do we have the data? The location of this heat source, I mean?"
"We will. One of their helos should be landing in a few minutes. I'll have it sent down to you. Where will you be?"
"In the hanger deck. I want to familiarize my men with the helicopter your Chief and his guys just finished rigging up for us. Very impressive. If it works."
The Captain smiled. "If Chief Brogden says it'll work, it'll work. You can bet your life on it."
Matt Strickland gave a short, ironic laugh. "Yes, Sir. I was just thinking exactly the same thing."
Jerry Carruthers smiled and reached out to shake the hand of the brave man standing before him.
"What time do you want to launch?" he asked the Marine.
"About 1300 hours, probably. But I'll need to verify that with my control."
"Mr. Coventry?"
"Sir?"
"Coventry. The mover and shaker in civvies."
"Oh. Yes, Sir. Coventry."
After the Marine left, the Captain retrieved his cup of coffee. It was almost cold, but he slugged it down, anyway. "So," he thought out loud. "I wonder how many other names Mr. ‘Coventry’ is known by?" Then, as he was settling down to the paperwork before him, he decided he didn't really want to know, anyway.
Chapter 77
"Can't we get any kind of aerial coverage at all?" Cole Dickson demanded, exasperation clear in his voice.
Presnell and Valance looked at each other and Presnell finally answered with a sigh and a shake of his head. "No, they've got a lock on all air traffic over the area for a hundred miles in any direction. By UN consent, it's a ‘no-fly’ zone and anybody foolish enough to try had better know how to swim real good."
Dickson's face screwed up and an angry grunt punctuated the slap of his open hand on the desk. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and seethed. "There's got to be some way to get video on this!"
"Yeah," muttered Valance, "‘no film at eleven’ doesn't help a lot when it comes to handing out Pulitzers, does it?"
"When is our next bird due over?" Cole asked. For the third time.
"We won't get an orbit from our own satellite in that grid for about six hours. That'll be about four this afternoon. The next pass after that'll be after dark, which is no help," Valance offered.
"Who's got a g-sync we can use?"
The two newsmen looked at each other and shrugged. "I dunno," Valance admitted.
Dickson pointed at the computer station in front of Jeff. "Pull it off the net," he ordered.
Valance brought up a search screen and keyed in a command string. In a few seconds, a window opened into which he typed the spatial parameters of the search he'd activated for a list of geosynchronous orbit satellites. Almost before he'd lifted his hands from the keyboard, the list scrolled onto the screen. All three of them thrust their heads closer, squinting. Mostly numbers, the information was intimidating.
"What's this?" Cole touched the screen to indicate a specific line.
Valance and Presnell began simultaneously to decode the data on the fly.
"That's, uh..."
"That's the name of the satellite, but it's really a numerical reference, not a..."
"Yeah, but here's the global coordinates, and that's what we really need to..."
"Yeah, but without this here, the actual angle that it acquires the images..."
They both stopped abruptly when Cole raised both his outstretched hands before their faces, their mouths frozen around severed words. He looked from one to the other. "All I wanna know is," he said with exaggerated patience, "which satellite is squattin' over what we want to see. Does either of you know the answer?"
With sidelong glances of embarrassment at each other, Valance pressed one finger against the terminal screen.
"This one," he said, grinning sheepishly.
Dickson leaned closer and squinted at it. "What kind of a name is that?" he muttered.
"It's a number. I mean, that is its name," Valance said, hurrying on when Cole gave him a ‘you-don't-say’ look. "What I really mean is, there's so many satellites up, they finally just gave up giving them names and started numbering them, kind of like stars."
Presnell came to his friend's rescue. "Whatever we need to know about it, about that particular one, we'll have to reference it by its number."
"Well, let's do it," Dickson said, exasperated.
"What do you want to know?" Valance asked, recovering.
"Who owns it?"
Jeff selected the data line and tapped some keys. A new screen came up.
"ComPacque," he and Presnell said together.
"And, who owns them?" Cole Dickson persisted.
"Hang on," Valance said, toggling over to another program and typing furiously. The data popped up on the screen, with an elapsed time of 00:07:79 displayed at the bottom.
"There's a whole daisy chain of ownership here," he mused aloud, "but it looks like it's this one, unless it's a dummy cutout."
Dickson leaned closer. Then he leaned back in for a second look. Then he smiled. Valance leaned slightly forward so he could see Presnell around the veteran newshound and raised an eyebrow. Presnell gave him a facial shrug.
"Gentlemen," Dickson crooned expansively, "I think we have a winner. Hand me that ‘phone, would you? And...get us some coffee. Both of you. It should take you about ten minutes to do that and get back here, don't you think?"
It took a moment for the message to sink in, but they finally got it. And vacated.
"Whaddaya think he's up to?" Valance asked his partner as they made their way to the coffee mess.
"I don't know. And if he doesn't want me to know, I don't want to know."
"Yeah, but..."
"No ‘buts’...just get the
coffee. And watch the clock."
They stood around, impatiently marking time for the longest ten minutes they could remember. Finally, only eight minutes into their exile, Cole Dickson stood up at the desk across the room and motioned to them. They wasted no time getting back.
"What's up?" Valance blurted, never one to wait well.
"We are," Cole replied, smiling. "In orbit, that is. It seems that an old acquaintance of mine, from quite a few years back, is now a vice-president of the company that owns the satellite we were just looking at. And he has graciously offered to trade us some time on his bird. He should be able to down-link to us in about a half-hour. Here are the frequencies." He handed a scrap of paper to Presnell. He looked at his watch. 8:55 a.m. Almost lunchtime off the Spanish coast. "If you would be so kind as to make the arrangements, I'd appreciate it. And call me when you've got a feed from that satellite."
Valance was staring at him, open-mouthed. Finally, with a certain degree of reverence, he asked, "You said he's ‘trading’ us some time. Trading for what?"
Coleman Dickson just smiled mysteriously and said, "You don't want to know." He looked from one to the other. "Well?" he said, pointing at the scrap of paper in Presnell's hand. "Show me what you can do with that." He walked away, a hint of a jaunt to his step. Valance and Presnell low-fived each other and scurried away to get things rolling.
Chapter 78
"It didn't work before, why do you think it'd work now?" Marc Justin asked surreptitiously, pretending to be closely examining a fingernail held near his chest.
"I don't know that it would," Kim answered, appearing to be sipping idly from the glass he held at his lips, "but it'd be worth a try."
"Not if it gets you killed," Janese retorted in a voice so loud they all unconsciously looked around the dining hall at once. But the two or three groups of guards seemed involved in conversations of their own. "Sorry," she apologized meekly, looking at each in turn.
After a moment of silence, Bill Layton murmured, "Have you tested this device yet?" Matsumoto looked at him and shook his head.
"No. But just because we didn't raise anybody on radio or satlinks from the VIKING the night Cy and I went aboard doesn't mean that it holds true now. Half the world's navies weren't sitting on our front porch then."
"Then, not only is the voice-link to Yoko an unknown, so is the device's ability to circumvent Leo's communications, isn't that right?"
"All the more reason to test it now," Kim said defensively.
"What if it doesn't work?" Frank entered the debate.
"What if it does?" Kim shot back.
"Alright, alright," Marc interjected. "Whether it does or doesn't work is a moot point. We won't know 'til we've tried it..."
"Exactly my..."
"...but," Justin overrode his diminutive cohort ,"the real issue is whether trying it, testing it, will bring any kind of recriminations down on us from King Looney up there."
They all thought that one over.
"How could it?" Kim finally asked. "They'd have to see me using it to know anything about it, wouldn't they? And I'm not stupid enough to try it in front of any of them. I'll just take it back in a tunnel somewhere and try it from there. There should be enough scatter, bouncing off these rock walls, to make it down a tunnel and out into the main cavern where Yoko is. Don't you think so?"
Before his boss could answer, Janese jumped in. "Probably. How much output does the thing have?" Kim was jolted back to remembering that this was, in fact, Janese's forte.
"A guess? Maybe ten watts."
"That'll be enough, probably," Janese nodded, "as long as you're in a tunnel that's actually connected directly with the main cavern. I wouldn't trust it, necessarily, in one of the vaulted rooms off the main tunnel, though. Too much rock to go through."
"Why does it have to be now, though?" Cy Wojecki asked, getting into the conversation for the first time. "With our guys up topside, it's just a matter of time before we're rescued." Kim and Marc looked at each other, but Kim looked away, leaving Marc to answer. He reluctantly looked over at the young man, who'd already been through so much for someone his age.
"Cy, we may need all the help we can get. If this gadget works, it could be just the edge we need."
"Why? Why can't we just lay low until the cavalry gets here?"
Marc sighed and looked down, studying the table top. Finally, he looked up again. "Because, Cy," he said quietly, "it may be the ‘cavalry’ we have to watch out for the most." He saw the puzzled looks and sighed again.
"What do you mean?" Frank asked, alarm in his voice.
"Yeah, what are you talking about?" Janese Cramerton added.
It was Bill Layton who held up a restraining hand to the others. "I think," he said slowly, watching Marc as he did so, "that Marc knows something that we don't." He and Justin looked at each other, the older one holding the younger's with a rock-steady gaze. Finally, Justin surrendered a wry, cockeyed grin.
"You're a tough old bird, aren't you?" he grunted at the gritty scientist. Their mutual respect went back a long time. He looked at each face. They were all watching him, except for Kim, who already knew what was coming.
"Okay. But this is pure conjecture, I don't really know any more than any of you what's going to happen, so don't take this as gospel. Agreed?"
They all nodded, but with obvious trepidation.
"Would you all agree that this whole scene, this situation, with hostages, terrorists, and world-wide nuclear threat against some very influential players is something that the world in general would take seriously? Very seriously?"
Everyone nodded.
"Well, several years ago, after one very nasty terrorist attack resulting in the death of several hundred hostages, there was a resolution passed in the UN, and adopted soon after by NATO, that was supposed to set the standard for similar incidents, should there be others. And, of course, there have been."
"You mean...wasn't it something about how to respond to terrorist threats? Some pretty heavy stuff, wasn't it?" Layton offered.
Justin nodded. "Yeah, pretty heavy. They decided to create an international terrorist-response team. And to take the gloves off them."
"What do you mean?" Janese asked, her brow furrowed, trying to understand.
"I mean," Justin said carefully, "that their job is to kill terrorists, not rescue hostages."
There was silence as the mental grindstones slowly turned. One by one, he saw the recognition spread from face to face, like a tidal bore inexorably marching up an estuary, until it reached Janese Cramerton. She gasped and shock froze her features, her eyes seeking Justin's.
"You don't mean...I mean, they wouldn't..."
Marc leaned forward, intertwining his fingers before him on the table. "Their primary mission is to kill the hostages. All of them. Every single one of them. Their message is clear and simple: terrorists who take hostages die. Period."
"But, what if..."
"If," Marc broke in, "if hostages get in the way, or are not instantly distinguishable from the terrorists, they die, too. The whole premise is, no terrorist can hope to use a hostage as a shield or as a bargaining chip in negotiations. There is no negotiating once this team is sent in. They even have a motto, one of those black humor things that soldiers love."
"I know," said Cy Wojecki. "I've heard about them. Through the grapevine." He looked around at the others. "Their motto originated in Viet Nam, where it was impossible for non-Asians to tell the good guys from the bad: ‘Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out’."
Janese's hand went to her mouth. Fortunately. It helped stifle the panic that had sprung into her throat.
"No! I don't believe it!" she hissed hoarsely.
Suddenly all eyes were back on Marc. For confirmation or denial. He'd have preferred denial. He nodded slowly.
"Like I said, I don't know for sure that this is what's going to happen. But I think we should include the possibility in our planning...what little planning we can do.
This situation, it seems to me, fits all the criteria set forth when the group was formed. Terrorists. Hostages. Nuclear threat. Lots of countries involved, most of whom are members of either the UN or NATO, or both."
"Have they ever been used, this team?" Frank asked.
Again, Justin nodded. "Couple of times, at least, that I've read about," he answered.
"Were the hostages..."
"Some have survived."
"How many haven't?"
"I...don't know." He really didn't. He wasn't sure whether the numbers of hostages who had died over the years was 60 something or more than 70. Did it really matter? They all waited, but he didn't amend his answer.
There was a very long silence.
"So, what you're saying," Bill Layton finally ventured, "is that we could be caught in a crossfire between our abductors and our saviors, and be shot or blown up by either of them."
Marc shrugged. "Unfortunately, yes."
"So," Layton pressed, "if we do nothing, we could die. Or, if we do something, we could die."
Marc shrugged another ‘yes’.
"Well, that settles it for me, then," Layton said decisively. "If I've got to take a beating for something I'm not guilty of, then I'm sure going to be guilty of something!" He looked around at the group, a hard glitter in his eyes. He got no arguments.
"Kim, you think it's important to test that gizmo of yours?"
Kim nodded. "Yes, I do," he said.
"And safe?"
Kim shrugged. "I dunno. I hope so."
"Then, what are you waiting for?" Layton said, again looking to the group for support. Nobody agreed. But then, nobody disagreed, either.
In the muted light of the passageway beyond Dodge City, Kim slipped the transceiver from under his jumpsuit, where he'd secreted it at the small of his back. He'd had to recover it from where he'd wrapped it in a scrap of dark cloth and jammed it into a deep cleft in one of the fissure lines that populated the cavern and its lava tubes. He'd felt immense relief wash over him as he'd probed into the fracture and felt the hard outline of the device, just where he'd left it.
Constantly watching both ahead of and behind himself for hostile traffic, he worked his way back up the slight incline toward the side passage that led to their quarters, treading softly and not quite hugging the rough rock wall. Rounding a bend in the tunnel, he could see the side passage about twenty-five yards ahead, where it led off to the right. Knowing there could be crew members wandering in or out to their mutual quarters, he eased back down the slope a few feet, until he had to step out from the wall slightly to see the doorway. He studied the physical structure of the tunnel. It ran uphill slightly from where he stood, topping out at the entrance to the crew's quarters. From there, he remembered, it angled downhill, with a gradual curve to the right, past the mess hall, until it opened up at the head of the curving stone staircase that wound down into the main cavern.
