The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  "So, what I've got is a two-bank shot. Once off the ceiling at the entrance to Dodge City, and once off the left wall of the tunnel as it curves to the right and dumps out into the main room. There ought to be enough intact signal left, even then, for Yoko to be able to pick it up."

  Ought to be. Scary words.

  He tore his eyes from the empty passageway ahead of him, reluctant to glance away for even an instant, and quickly scanned the keypad to reassure himself what it looked like. The act of doing so made him feel silly. He designed it. Who could have changed it since he hid it?

  He held the keypad in his hand, realizing after a moment that it wasn't the keypad that was shaking. He glanced down the empty passageway once more, took a deep, trembling breath, and pressed the ‘power on’ switch. It came to life.

  A tiny switch had M/V written under it in black felt pen. He pushed the switch to "M", for manual. "V" would put him in voice contact with Yoko, but he couldn't afford the noise at this point. He laboriously typed out on the small keypad, "yoko. answer." He took another deep breath, slowly let it escape, and pushed "Enter". The words he'd typed disappeared from the two-inch square liquid crystal screen as they were transmitted.

  He waited. Five seconds. Eight. Ten.

  "PASSWORD" scrolled onto the tiny screen.

  His breath burst in a gush from his chest. It worked! It worked!

  "mother" he typed.

  "HELLO KIM."

  "ref sos message last sent"

  "AFFIRMATIVE."

  "send again"

  "HOW MANY?"

  "loop"

  "AFFIRMATIVE."

  "confirm"

  "AFFIRMATIVE. TRANSMITTING."

  "advise any response"

  "WILL DO."

  He left the transceiver powered up so he wouldn't miss any transmissions Yoko might make. They needed desperately to know if and when they'd made outside contact. Realizing that he couldn't return the device back to its crevasse and still maintain contact, he wracked his brain for a way to safely transport it without being discovered. He finally realized there was only one place. He slid it inside his jumpsuit and down inside the back of his underwear. He took a couple of steps to make sure it wouldn't fall out and grimaced at the gross sensation. But then his sense of humor overcame him and he laughed out loud at yet another absurd situation he'd found himself in. Shaking his head at the jokes he knew his boss would have in store for him when he found out, he headed back toward the mess hall. He laughed again when he realized he'd have to be careful how he sat down.

  In the penthouse sixty feet above him and across the cavern, a red light appeared on a console. A few seconds later a chime began to sound at one second intervals. A hidden doorway appeared in one of the walls, casting a long shaft of subdued light across the dark, plush carpet. Through the doorway could be seen a desk with a lamp illuminating it and part of a bed, covered with a black, satin comforter.

  Bereel Jambou appeared in the doorway, searching. His eyes fell on the winking red light and he crossed quickly to it. He touched a keyboard and a computer screen in the cluster before him lit up. There were words on it and they were pulsing. He leaned closer to read them.

  "SECURITY HAS BEEN JEOPARDIZED."

  "UNAUTHORIZED TRANSMISSIONS ARE IN PROGRESS."

  "DO YOU WISH TO RESPOND?"

  He typed "Y" and touched ENTER. The screen listed the frequency on which the signal was being transmitted.

  He typed "ORIGIN?"

  The security system responded by throwing a grid of the facility on the screen and popped a pulsing red X in one of them.

  "The submarine!"

  He tapped in "DISPLAY MESSAGE."

  "TEXT, VOICE, OR BOTH?" appeared on the screen. He hit "B".

  A sultry woman's voice filled the control room, even as accompanying text began scrolling across the screen, telling the world that the crew of the VIKING was in trouble and needed help, giving coordinates that he was sure would turn out to be his, and giving brief descriptions of each crew member for purposes of identification.

  As the voice droned on, and then began repeating itself after ten-second intervals of silence, Jambou felt rage well up from deep inside, boiling, bitter, gut-wrenching betrayal that blossomed into seething fury.

  Who dared assault his plans, his future? Who would dare...

  The submarine. Only one person had been aboard that sub who knew enough to set off a message like that. How? A timer? No. What then? He suddenly straightened. How, indeed? With whatever he'd brought off the ship that that fool, that stupid fool Banner hadn't found yet. And now the little sneak had used it! Whatever it was. He'd actually used it! And put all the work, his hard work, at risk. All because of one stupid little weasel he should have let Banner kill when he wanted to!

  "Well," he thought, "it's never too late!"

  He stabbed a microphone on the internal communications console.

  "Yeah?" Banner answered the beeper tone after a few seconds. He sounded irritated.

  "I need you up here. Now!"

  "Can it wait a few minutes? I'm tied up!" Banner didn't even try to disguise his frustration.

  "No, it can't wait. I've got a job for you. One I should have already let you take care of." Jambou's lips curled back from his lips in a grimace of a smile. "Trust me," he said, his voice full of irony. "You'll like it."

  Smelling blood, Banner was there in record time. He listened in shock to the recording, turning to Jambou with eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

  "Find him," Jambou said, his voice dripping with menace. "Find him and make him stop that transmission. And hurry up!"

  Banner faced him, eyes adance.

  "Then what?" he asked, licking his lips, suddenly gone dry.

  Jambou's eyes narrowed to slits and he leaned into the vengeful mercenary's face. His face twisted into a macabre mask.

  In a voice that barely carried the distance, he said, "Then...kill him!"

  Chapter 79

  Marine Corps Major Matthew Strickland helped the last one of his six team members waddle like a seal into the cabin of the helicopter that squatted on the massive elevator and looked at the instrument strapped to his left wrist. 12:49. They'd get away on schedule. He turned to the Chief hovering a couple of feet away.

  "You here to give last rites to us or this pile o' junk, Chief?" The lifer swabbie grinned back at him.

  "Y' ain't worried, are ya, Major?" he parried.

  "Nah. We all gotta go sometime. Just tell me your ‘pilot’ never makes mistakes."

  "Not when he's sober. 'Course, he ain't never done this before," the Chief leered. "Seriously, sir...good luck. And don't worry about this baby." He patted the metal skin of the chopper. "She's good to go."

  Strickland gently tapped the aging Chief on the shoulder and tossed his swim fins up into the cabin. By the time he'd hoisted himself clumsily in as well, the Chief had cleared the elevator pad. A warning klaxon sounded. The helicopter lurched slightly on its suspension as the huge slab of reinforced steel on which it sat detached itself and began to rise toward the gaping hole in the flight deck overhead, lifting its uneasy burden with indifference.

  Inside, the Major awkwardly strained to snap his fins on over the neoprene booties. When he'd finished, he turned to the others. He was pleased, but not surprised, to see that they were already pre-checking each other's gear. They were a strange-looking group. Everything was black...wet suits, fins, facemasks, Mark III lungs, hoses, weapons. Even their faces were greased black. The white eyes staring from the blackened faces somehow seemed as much comical as they did sinister.

  "Want some o' this paint, Ty-rone?" one of the group asked the only black man on the team, and grinned, his own white teeth gleaming.

  Tyrone Jeffries vaguely waved a fist in the direction of the instigator. "Y'all want me to rub some o' this natural black off on that pathetic excuse fo' a body, y'all jus' keep on. An' when we get out yonder, be sure 'n keep yo' lip zipped so them pearly whites o' yurn
don't give us away, y' hear?" Their laughter could be heard by the sailors below decks, who looked at each other and shook their heads at the bunch of crazies in the chopper. Special Forces sergeant Jeffries laughed the hardest. He liked to tell people he'd just met that he was from 'L. A.'. Only later, if he liked them, would he reveal that it stood for 'Lower Alabama'. And only after they'd known him a lot longer would they discover that ‘southern’ was only one of five foreign languages in which he was fluent.

  They emerged into sunlight and a few seconds later were jolted by the elevator jarring to a halt. The wash of salt air into the cabin didn't quite overcome the smell of aviation fuel and oil. There was a blend of unidentified sounds above decks and a fretful breeze that swirled through the cabin.

  A crewman suddenly appeared in the open door of the helicopter and leaned in. He was wearing a scuffed helmet with ear muffs and carrying a field phone, which he quickly jacked into a receptacle just inside the cabin.

  "Major Strickland, sir?" he called above the rising crescendo of a jet engine winding up somewhere down the flight deck.

  "Yes!" Matt Strickland called above the mounting din.

  "‘Phone, sir!" The deck hand extended the telephone toward him. Strickland covered one ear and pressed the telephone hard against the other.

  "Strickland here!" Hearing was becoming difficult.

  A voice on the phone, one he didn't recognize, said, "Stand by, please, for a Priority One communication. Do you copy?"

  "Yes, I copy. I'm standing by." He listened to the hiss issuing from the earpiece. "Actually, I'm sitting by," he said to no one in particular and leaned his head impatiently back against the bulkhead.

  Almost fifty yards off the helicopter's starboard beam and several stories above the flight deck, a second class talker in navy whites handed a telephone receiver to the tall, gaunt man in civilian clothes. He waited patiently while the enlisted man withdrew from the small, cramped wing of the bridge.

  "Are you ready to launch, Captain?" he asked the man standing beside him. The Captain of the nuclear aircraft carrier George Washington looked across the nearly two miles of ocean that separated his ship from what had to be assumed to be an armed nuclear bomb in the hands of a madman. Two miles wasn't enough to protect his ship and crew from even a medium-yield detonation. But if they pulled back from the perimeter they'd been patrolling immediately after unexpectedly launching a helicopter in the direction of the terrorists' headquarters, it could serve to warn the terrorists that a major tactical change was in the works. Which it was. But...

  "Yes, Mr. Coventry. At your discretion," Carruthers said. His eyes bored into the other man's. They both knew the risk they were taking. Coventry turned away and looked down at the helicopter on the aft deck. It looked so small from this distance and height. He reached into his left hand coat pocket and withdrew a digital stopwatch. Clearing it, he held it before him. He raised the telephone receiver to his ear and positioned the speaker at his lips.

  "Archer, this is Trigger. Acknowledge." His eyes were riveted on the stopwatch. He knew that, down in the helicopter, Strickland would be concentrating on his wrist chronometer. Five seconds.

  "Trigger, this is Archer. On my mark. Go."

  Coventry tripped the watch and stared as it started over again at zero. Counted off exactly eight seconds.

  "Trump is spades," he carefully enunciated and reset the watch. Five seconds.

  "King follows," came the reply precisely on the mark. He reset the watch, involuntarily bringing it closer to his eyes, where he could better see the numbers roll by. The instant the numeral 12 appeared, he completed the exchange.

  "The hand is yours." His own hand, with the watch still running, slowly dropped to his side.

  In the helicopter, Matt Strickland ran the watch on his wrist through its modes to return it to normal use. When he turned to his team he found, not unexpectedly, they were all watching him. He nodded.

  "The Launch Code Recognition Sequence from ‘Trigger’ is verified. We're a ‘go’. From here on in, gentlemen, it's all ours." There was a chorus of approval from the pumped-up assembly. This was why they'd volunteered for the TRAP team...to take retribution to terrorists, wherever they might be. Or, in their own words, ‘Take it to 'em! Take 'em out!’ They were ready.

  There was an eerie whine that quickly grew in intensity and volume. From his vantage point near the open door Strickland could see the rotor's shadow on the deck outside as the blades overhead began to turn. In a matter of seconds, the individual shadows became a whirling blur and the helicopter began to vibrate. He looked up at the maze of wires and pulleys that filled the cabin and then followed them with his eyes to where they entered the cockpit. The empty cockpit.

  "I don't know about you, sir," one of the men leaned over and shouted into his ear, "but it bothers me a bit that there ain't no pilot up there!" Strickland nodded his agreement apprehensively. His eyes fell on the stubby smoke canisters in racks against the front wall.

  "Chief Langsford said not to sweat it, everything'll be okay!" he shouted back.

  "Chief Langsford ain't here, sir!"

  Matt looked at the man and grinned. "What's worse, ridin' in a jury-rigged airplane full of balin' wire for a couple of minutes or defusing an H-bomb while a maniac shoots at you?"

  The soldier's eyes roamed around the cabin and finally Strickland leaned toward him.

  "I said, what's worse..."

  "I heard whatcha said. I'm thinkin', I'm thinkin'!"

  Matt laughed and playfully shoved the one they called Monk. A weapons expert, it was said he could defuse a bomb with one hand while dangling by his ankles upside-down like a monkey. In fact, had done so. The next thing Matt knew, he was sliding across the decking and people were grabbing any handhold they could, as the helicopter lurched off the deck of the ship and skittered in a nose-down attitude just six feet off the armored shell plating. Then it tilted hard right and crabbed sideways across the ship, heading pell mell for the superstructure. All the passengers could do was hang on to anything that was anchored down. Sailors topside scattered before the onslaught of the loose cannon bearing down on them. Up on the bridge there were shouts and curses that carried downwind for a long distance as an imminent crash seemed unavoidable.

  But then, the aviation mechanic with the remote controller in his hands, like some model airplane novice, suddenly got the hang of it and rotated his joystick to 285 degrees and pulled it back to the eight o'clock position.

  The aging chopper heeled to port like a water-laden buoy in a storm surge, cleared the ‘island’ by fifty feet, and climbed up and away in a textbook turn. It cleared the port quarter ‘gunnel’ and gracefully settled in a shallow dive toward the sea, leveling off just fifty feet above the wave tops and pointing at the tower two miles distant.

  The ‘junior pilot’ looked over at the Chief, who's knuckles on the railing were ghostly white, and said in a chipper voice, "Nothin' to it, Chief. Just had to get the hang of it, tha's all. Here, want to try it?"

  Chief Langsford managed to decline the offer, though he couldn't speak yet, and didn't even want to think about the source of the odor that had suddenly enveloped him. Coming to the Chief's aid, a lieutenant leaned over the AM1's shoulder and began giving quiet encouragement as the man manipulated the controls of what used to be a video game hastily liberated from the ship's rec room.

  Inside the helicopter, the TRAP team had managed to regroup and breathe a collective sigh.

  "Hey, Monk! You know that question I asked you about ‘what's worse’...?" Strickland shouted across the cabin.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Never mind."

  The trip out to the tower took less than two minutes. As they slithered on their bellies into position near the door, they could see and feel the old chopper labor to gain altitude, leveling off at what looked like about three hundred feet. Strickland's helmet mike came to life. He listened a moment before relaying the traffic to his team.

  "The W
ashington's calling the Bad Guys at the tower." He listened for almost twenty seconds, shaking his head every few seconds for the benefit of the team to indicate there had been no response. This might be easier than they'd hoped.

  Nope. "They're answering...‘what's going on?’...‘negotiators enroute to the tower landing pad to talk to’...‘negative, say again, negative, call them back’...double-talk from the Washington, stalling...Bad Guy's demanding...gettin' hostile...threatening..."

  They felt the chopper begin to settle as they started a gradual descent toward the target. Strickland reached out from his prone position and extracted an orange life jacket from where it had been jammed under a seat. He shoved one arm through a strap and slid the device beneath his body.

  "Arguing...WHOA!...the SAM site's gone hot...gonna ‘shoot us down’...‘missiles!’ Get ready!"

  The wave tops were rapidly coming up to meet them, under a hundred feet, now.

  The chopper abruptly flared, the nose coming up, then the whole ship rocked erratically as the controller back on the Washington reacted to commands called out to him by a spotter who was glued to three-foot-long binoculars bolted to the ship's railing.

  They couldn't see the tower from their positions on the floor of the helicopter, and the controller couldn't rotate the craft for fear of the team being spotted by the tower through the open doorway. They could only hope to be inserted as close to the tower as possible without being blown up first. The aircraft dropped lower, the surface of the sea now only twenty feet or so below them.