“I guess you don’t know that I’m playing poker tonight with a guy who’s got a tell a blind man can see.”
“This is urgent, Dr. Mercer, or we wouldn’t be asking.”
“Do you have my address?” he asked.
“Yes, we do.”
“All right. I’m game. Do me a favor. Say to her, ‘Mauve peignoir,’ and tell me what she does.”
“She blushed, and called you a pig again.”
Mercer laughed and said, “I’ll meet your courier at nine.”
“Well?” Cabrillo asked when Julia punched off the phone.
Hux looked pointedly at Soleil. “He’s quite the charmer. You’ll have to tell me the story of the mauve nightie.”
Soleil’s blush deepened. “Later.”
“Well?” Cabrillo asked a second time.
“He’ll do it. Tiny can pick it up tonight and be back with it by tomorrow.”
“Once we have his diagram, we can formulate our plan to take out Bahar’s computer.”
They headed back to the harbor and made a startling discovery. MacD Lawless was leaning negligently against a fence near where they had berthed the lifeboat.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Juan called out.
“Long story, but Ah came down to talk to the harbormaster to see if the Oregon had come in yet and saw the Or Death tied up pretty as you please.” His sunny smile faded. “We need to talk. Langston Overholt himself came to get me and had me flown here on an Air Force jet.”
“Let me guess,” Juan said knowingly. “Bahar has made his move with his quantum computer.”
MacD’s jaw dropped. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Eric and Mark figured out that he’d built it, and it stands to reason he’d use it against the United States. Tell me everything.”
They boarded the disguised hydrofoil as MacD told them what had been going on since he’d parted with the team in New Orleans, but it wasn’t until they were halfway back to the ship that the dread chill creeping up Juan’s spine went into overdrive. Linda had said Langston had phoned earlier about a mission involving a Chinese ship. That didn’t jibe with what was happening in Washington, and the sickening realization hit home.
As soon as they arrived on the Oregon he had Hali Kasim track Linda down.
“When you spoke with Overholt, did he sound different to you?” he asked without preamble.
“No. He sounded fine. Is something wrong with him?”
“Did you tell him we were headed here?” Trepidation carried in his voice. If she had, they were blown.
“No. I said we had another op and would need a week. He said it was no problem, since the Chinese looked like they were sticking around the Gulf of Alaska.”
Juan let out a long-held breath. “Thank God.”
“Why? What’s up?”
“That wasn’t Langston. That was the quantum computer you were talking to.”
Cabrillo had taken Eric’s and Mark’s warnings seriously, but this was the first time he truly understood the staggering capabilities Gunawan Bahar had at his disposal. Like the president had remarked earlier, they were squared off against a man who wielded the power of God.
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” Linda asked. She’d gotten it too.
“Yeah,” Juan replied. “Yeah, I think this time we really are.”
* * *
AS BADLY AS CABRILLO wanted a Predator drone over the Albatross Mine, he knew that the request was impossible because Bahar would get wind of it. Instead, Gomez Adams would be renting a helicopter there in Monaco and doing an aerial survey of the place. In the meantime they would have to make do with archived satellite imagery off the Internet. His concern went so deep that he had Mark ensure the images hadn’t been doctored recently. Fortunately, they were clean.
The mine sat in the Arc River Valley near the alpine town of Modane and, as Soleil had recalled, very close to the Italian border. From the air, there wasn’t much to look at. It was a basic industrial brownfield site, with several dilapidated buildings and the remains of the tower for the headgear hoist that once carried men into the mine and salt back out. A single access road snaked to the mine over an undulating series of switchbacks, but it also had rail access. Despite the graininess of commercial satellite pictures, they could see that some of the track bed had been removed, so that locomotives could no longer reach the facility.
A river approach was likely because the mine’s southern boundary ran directly along the banks of the Arc River. There was even a bridge crossing the river nearby that looked like it went to an abandoned gravel pit that must have worked in conjunction with the mine when it was in operation.
Linc, Eddie, Linda, and Juan were in the conference room, studying the images projected on the big flat-panel monitors.
“Why a mine?” Lincoln asked suddenly.
The others were so deep in their own thoughts, no one had really paid attention.
“What did you say?”
“I said, why put this thing in a mine?”
That was something Cabrillo hadn’t given much thought to, so he had no answer. He called Mark down in his cabin and posed the question to him.
“It’s shielding,” he replied. “Eric and I had considered this when we first realized Bahar had built a quantum computer and were trying to guess a location. You see, the operations inside the machine take place at the atomic scale. It can automatically correct for atomic vibrations because they come at a set rate and frequency. One of the things that could unbalance the computer and cause it to kick out error messages is if it got bombarded by a heavy enough cosmic particle.
“As you know,” he went on, “the earth gets hit tens of trillions of times an hour by subatomic junk winging in from space. A lot of this is deflected by the magnetosphere, and what does get through is generally harmless to us. Though an interesting note, there is a theory posited that some cancers are the result of genetic damage caused by a single cosmic ray hitting a DNA strand.”
Juan knew to let him ramble but still had to grit his teeth.
“Anyway, on the exacting scales the computer works at, an impacting cosmic ray could disrupt the machine’s function catastrophically, so they need to shield it. Here’s the rub. I have no idea why they chose this salt mine. If cosmic radiation is a threat, we would have thought they would have buried it deeply under the densest rock they could find. The best theory Eric and I could come up with is, there might be some other mineral mixed in with the salt to help shield against one particular cosmic ray that would cause the most damage.”
“Okay, thanks,” Juan said, and ended the call before Mark could expound further.
“Sorry I asked,” Linc said sheepishly.
“Listen, why don’t we pick this up again when we have something more concrete to work with? We’ve got a good overview, but to plan the assault we need details.”
Heads nodded around the table, and the meeting broke up.
It wasn’t until after supper that Tiny arrived back aboard with Philip Mercer’s diagrams. Most of the crew were lounging around the dining room, some sipping brandy, others nibbling after-dinner cheeses. Cabrillo, who’d dined with Soleil, decided that this was as good a spot as any to take their first look at the plans and ordered the lights be set on bright. The clubby feel of the room lost some of its luster under a bright halogen stare.
Juan slipped out of his suit coat and loosened his tie. He fiddled with the cap of a Montblanc pen while he waited.
“Hey, gang,” Tiny called jovially when he entered the room. He wasn’t a regular feature aboard the Oregon, so his arrival was greeted warmly. The big pilot never looked so rumpled. His blond hair stuck out in tufts, and there wasn’t a square inch of his white uniform shirt that wasn’t rumpled. In his hand he carried a yellow legal pad and a single rose.
He crossed through the dining hall, shaking hands and slapping backs, until reaching the Chairman. “Tah-dah,” he said with a flourish, and set the pad
on the table. He handed the rose to Soleil. “Mercer sends his compliments.”
She smiled.
Cabrillo spun the pad so he could see it. Mercer had written out a several-page description of the facility and the underground conditions. He detailed how over the years the miners had dug too close to the bottom of the river and that they refused to work the lower shafts. Roland Croissard had bought the facility during what he thought was a regular labor dispute. It was only after hiring Mercer and reading his report, and a report by another expert when he didn’t like what had been said in the first, that he realized he’d been swindled.
The first time he’d even visited the place was on the day Mercer delivered his report. Soleil had come with him on a lark.
Water seepage had been manageable, but Mercer calculated that the continued use of explosives deeper in the tunnels would cause the plug of rock between the mine and the river to fail. The flood would be catastrophically fast.
There was a gem among all the technical information, one that Mercer hadn’t disclosed to Croissard, and it was something he doubted many of the original miners remembered.
“There it is,” Juan blurted out when he read it.
“What do you have there?” Max asked. Unlike Juan, who had dressed for dinner, Hanley wore jeans and a western-style checkered shirt, complete with pearl snaps.
“One of the mine’s upper tunnels intersects with a piece of history.”
“Come again?”
“The miners bored their way into an old tunnel that was once part of the Maginot Line. Mercer writes that they had boarded it up, but he took the boards down and checked it out.”
Constructed after World War I as the ultimate defense for the homeland, the French had built a near-continuous wall of underground bunkers and forts along the border with Germany and, to a lesser extent, Italy. The forts had armored turrets that could pop up from the ground like obscene mushrooms and unleash directed cannon and mortar fire. Many of the structures were interlinked so that troops could be shuttled from one to another on subway trains. And some were so large, they were virtually underground cities unto themselves.
The Germans never obliged the French to use their grand fortification. When they invaded in 1940, they hooked through Belgium and Holland and poured into France where the defenses were weakest.
Because the Arc River Valley lacked the strategic protection of the mountains that surrounded it, it was little wonder that the French would have built casements and bunkers there.
“Does he say if he could reach the topside outlet?” Linda asked.
“No. He said he didn’t go that far. But it can’t be too tough to find.”
“I think,” Mark said, “that the bunkers that weren’t turned into museums and tourist attractions were permanently sealed by the French. Just so you know.”
“We can cut our way in with Hypertherm,” Max rebutted confidently. “Like how we cut apart that tanker. What was her name?”
“The Gulf of Sidra,” Juan answered with a shudder. He’d still been aboard when the steel-cutting explosive had burned through the hull like a wire garrote through cheese. He got back to the topic at hand. “This is our back door into the mine in case we need it.”
What followed in the legal pad were hand-drawn plans of each of the mine’s twenty-eight levels. They showed how the salt was excavated in huge rooms where massive pillars had been left in place to support the weight of the rock above. Mercer included information about ventilation shafts and water-removal conduits.
“The level of detail is beyond belief,” he said as he flipped though the pages.
“He has a photographic memory,” Soleil said. “We talked about his work, and he told me he remembers the layout of all the mines he’s ever entered.”
“This information’s a gold mine.” Cabrillo turned to Mark and Eric, who sat next to each other across from Max and Linda. “You guys think Bahar will put the computer on the lowest level?”
“Close, but that mine’s been inactive for years. More than likely the bottom levels have flooded due to groundwater seepage.” Mark cocked his head as he ran some esoteric numbers through his brain. He looked at Soleil. “How long ago did your father buy the mine?”
“Six years.”
“The bottom four levels and half of the fifth are inundated. He’ll put it on level 23.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Linda accused.
“Au contraire. As you can see, the area of each level is clearly labeled, as is the height. That gives me their volume. It’s then a simple calculation of time versus the water permeability of the upper strata.”
“Which you happen to know?”
“Which I happened to research,” he said with a smug grin, and stole a piece of blue Stilton from Linda’s plate. “Boo-ya!”
Eddie Seng sat at a nearby table with the gundogs. Juan fluttered the legal pad to get his attention and then tossed it over. “Take a look at this. We’ll meet in the conference room at noon. Gomez should be back with his pictures by then. We go one day later.”
“This from that guy?”
“Yeah, and it’s a godsend.”
“I’ll make copies and give them to the rest of these apes. Sorry, boys, you all have homework tonight.”
“Damned Yankees,” MacD drawled. “It’s pronounced ‘y’all.’ ”
25
THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS ABOARD THE OREGON were spent in feverish preparation while a stunned world awaited the plight of the citizens of Las Vegas. They had water reserves for another two days, under the tightest rationing in the city’s history. If the utility authorities couldn’t reactivate the complicated system of pipes and pumps that drew water across the desert from Lake Mead, evacuations would most likely be ordered. A state of emergency was declared soon after the pumps inexplicably stopped working, and National Guard troops had already been called up.
In the White House, the president of the United States watched the television coverage in mute horror, knowing he could end it but terrified of the price his nation would pay. This was an Abraham Lincoln going-to-war type of decision. This was Truman deciding to drop the A-bomb. This was a decision he feared he hadn’t the courage to make.
There was no such hesitation in Juan Cabrillo’s mind. He knew his choice. Agree or disagree, whenever the American people went to war, he felt they did so to protect the idea of individual liberty, be it their own or another nation’s. This was no different.
Every member of the crew was involved in preparations, once the plan had been approved. Weapons were drawn from the arsenal and additional gear was gotten from stores. A truck to move all the equipment and personnel was rented from an agency in nearby Nice, and under the cover of darkness Gomez choppered in everything they couldn’t declare through customs and stashed it in an abandoned farmhouse.
This was the Corporation’s forte—coming up with a strategy and executing it quickly and flawlessly.
The assault team was in position fifteen minutes inside Cabrillo’s one-day schedule. Not knowing the number of guards Bahar had, he brought a force that was large by their standards and consisted of himself, Linda, Eddie, Linc, MacD, and Max, plus two other gundogs, Mike Trono and Jim O’Neill. Max wouldn’t join in the fray unless absolutely necessary.
Mike and Jim plus Linc, the team’s best sniper, were to act as a diversionary force. They had seen from the aerial shots Adams took that Bahar had constructed a concrete bunker over the mine’s entrance that looked like it could withstand the full load of a B-52’s bomb bay. Knowing Bahar would feel secure inside it, they were sure that once the diversion started he would take cover rather than flee. What he didn’t know was that the Corporation had a back entrance to his fortified bunker.
The three men were dropped off about a mile from where the mine’s access road connected with the main highway. They would have to hike through the woods to get into position, and each man carried nearly fifty pounds’ worth of ammunition for the .22 cali
ber mini Gatling. Like its big brothers on the Oregon, this weapon had six rotating barrels powered by a car battery. What made the system relatively man portable was the fact that the 30-grain hypersonic bullets were so light, they could pack in thousands of them. Linc’s job, with his Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle, was to make sure none of the guards got close to the Gatling.
They would remain in constant radio contact with the rest of the team on secure—well, at least they used to be secure—radios with throat mics. Cabrillo doubted the quantum computer was listening in for nearby radio chatter, but they would keep usage to a minimum.
Cabrillo stayed on the main highway past the gated entrance to the Albatross Mine. The metal crosspieces were rust rimed and graffitied. The mine was down from the road, so they could not see it as they drove.
Another mile farther on was a cut in the trees that bordered the quiet road. The dirt track led into a pine forest, which opened to a meadow that had been cleared of trees decades earlier. Cabrillo took his team across the meadow and eased the truck between some pines on the far side. Behind them towered mountains that still retained a vestige of snow on their summits. They were about a mile from the river.
After so many hours cramped in the truck, Cabrillo felt his spine pop when he stepped to the ground. The air was some of the cleanest and clearest he’d ever breathed. The temperature hovered around sixty but would drop overnight.
Their hope was to find the abandoned entrance to the old Maginot Line fort by dusk and make their assault at first light.
Since all this land was part of a national park, there was the possibility of running into hikers, but it couldn’t be helped. But since they were dressed as hikers themselves, and their weapons were sheathed in tissue-thin bags that could be torn away in an instant, they would arouse little suspicion if Bahar had guards this far out.
They hiked through the forest in a twenty-yard string, Cabrillo on point and Eddie in the drag slot. The ground was littered with pine mold, and moving silently was next to impossible. Except for Lawless. Like he’d been a few weeks ago in Myanmar, the man was as stealthy as a cat.
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