The Cassandra Compact c-2

by Robert Ludlum

  Hugging the side of the building, Smith moved along the face of the wall, searching for an entry point.

  * * *

  Three stories above Smith, in the shadows of a broken window, Sergeant Patrick Drake watched Smith through night-vision binoculars. He'd picked him up as soon as Smith had climbed around the fence, the logical entry point. According to the contents of the dossier Drake had read, Smith was nothing if not logical. It was an admirable quality in a soldier, but one that made him predictable. And in this case, fatally vulnerable.

  Drake had been flown to the plant by helicopter. Later on, a car would be waiting for him when he finished his work. Getting here so quickly had allowed him to familiarize himself with the plant's layout, choose the killing ground, and find a vantage point from which to observe Smith's entry.

  There he was, at the door Drake had hoped he would find, testing it… opening it.

  Drake turned away from the window and crossed the barren room that had once housed pumping machinery. His crepe-soled shoes moved soundlessly along the dusty concrete floor.

  Slipping into the stairwell, he drew out his silenced Colt Woodsman. The.22 was an assassin's weapon, meant for close-range work. Drake wanted to see Smith's face before he shot him. Maybe the terror in his expression would help ease some of the pain Drake carried on account of the loss of his partner.

  Or maybe I'll gut-shoot him first, so that he can feel what Travis went through.

  Two floors down, Drake paused in a landing and carefully pulled back a door that opened on a second pump room. The moonlight coming through the tall windows bathed the pitted concrete floor in what could have been a layer of ice. Moving swiftly from pillar to pillar, Drake positioned himself so that he had a clear view of another door, still closed. Given where Smith had entered, this was the only entry point into the room. Like any good soldier, Smith would check every space he encountered, making sure that it was secure, that no one would surprise him when his back was turned. But in this case, not even the logical precautions would save him.

  Somewhere outside the pump room Drake heard a footfall. Slipping off the safety on the Woodsman, he trained the barrel on the door and waited.

  * * *

  Smith stared at the door, its metal sheath streaked with old red paint stains. Safe point Alpha. Where Travis Nichols would have gone to report in. Where the owner of the horribly mangled voice would be waiting.

  He wouldn't have come alone, Smith thought. He'd have brought backup. But how many?

  Smith shrugged the backpack off his shoulders. Digging inside, he brought out a small, round object the size of an India rubber ball. Then he drew out his SIG-Sauer and pushed open the door with the tip of his hightop.

  The blanket of moonlight destroyed his night vision, making him blink. At the same time he took one step across the threshold. Suddenly something very hard slammed into his chest. The backpack fell from his grip as he staggered back. A second blow sent him spinning against the wall.

  Smith felt as though his chest were on fire. Gasping, he tried to remain standing but his knees buckled. As he slid down the wall, he saw a shadow emerge from behind a pillar.

  His thumb flicked the pin on the stun grenade in his hand. With a weak toss he threw it across the room and quickly covered his eyes a and ears.

  * * *

  Drake advanced on Smith with the confidence of a hunter who knows he's scored a direct hit ― two, in fact. Both the bullets had hit Smith center mass. If the colonel wasn't already dead, he soon would be.

  Drake was relishing that thought when he saw a black sphere arc toward him. His instincts and reactions were superb, but he couldn't cover his eyes in time. The stun grenade exploded like a supernova, blinding him. The shock wave hammered him to the ground.

  Drake was young and very fit. During live fire training and on actual missions he had taken his share of explosions. As soon as he hit the ground he covered his head in case of shrapnel. He did not panic when, opening his eyes, he saw nothing but white. The flash would wear off in a few seconds. He still had his gun in his hand. He knew that he'd hit Smith and that he was down. All he had to do was wait for his sight to return.

  Then Drake heard the distant wail of sirens. Cursing, he staggered to his feet. Although the room was still a blur he made it to the windows. His vision cleared enough for him to make out two red dots flickering between the trees bordering the access road.

  “Goddamnit!” he roared as he heard the sirens. Smith had brought his own backup! Who were they? How many?

  His vision almost normal, Drake rushed to where he'd seen Smith fall.

  But he wasn't there!

  The sirens were getting louder. Cursing, Drake snatched up the backpack and headed into the stairwell. He made it outside just in time to see two sedans pull up in front of the gates.

  Let 'em come, he thought. All they're going to find is a body!

  * * *

  Staring at the loose wires dangling from the panel, Megan Olson struggled to fend off her despair. She had lost track of all the combinations she had tried, running different wires to different terminals. So far, nothing had worked. The shuttle's air-lock door remained firmly sealed.

  Her only consolation was that she thought she'd fixed her mike. But she didn't want to test it just yet.

  Calm down, she told herself. There's a way out of here. All you have to do is find it.

  It was maddening that less than a foot away, on the other side of the door, was the emergency-release lever. All Dylan Reed had had to do was pull it.

  Instead he's going to let you die. Like all the others…

  No matter how hard she tried, Megan could not distance herself from the horror of Reed's actions. For the last several hours she had listened in on his terse, intermittent conversations with Harry Landon at mission control. In one of them, he had given a graphic description of the bodies.

  But how did he get a sample?

  From Treloar! Klein had told her about the theft from Bioaparat and how Treloar had helped smuggle the Russian smallpox sample into the country. But how had Treloar gotten the virus to the launch site? He was killed soon after landing in Washington.

  That's when she remembered the morning of the liftoff, being unable to sleep, taking a walk in the darkness, seeing the launch pad in the distance, seeing Reed… Then the anonymous visitor, approaching him, handing him something, and leaving. Could it have been a last-minute transfer? It had to be.

  If what Reed had received was in fact smallpox, Megan thought, then it would have remained stable until the shuttle was in orbit and Reed could store it in the biofreezer.

  The Spacelab! Suddenly she remembered the message that had come in to the flight deck. Minutes later, Reed had changed the experiments' schedule, bumping her and taking the first slot for himself. He had explained it away so smoothly that no one, not even she, had questioned him.

  Not even when you had seen the NASA log number for that message. Reed's number. And you asked yourself how he could possibly have sent that message to himself…

  Megan shook her head. The questions had been there, but she had ignored them. Instead, she had accepted the events as coincidence, had chosen to believe in the integrity of the man who had brought her to the stars.

  The question of why Reed would be party to such a barbaric act plagued her. Even after she'd gone over everything she knew about him, no answer was forthcoming. There was something in him, about him, that she hadn't seen. No one had.

  Earlier, Megan had clung to the frail hope that Reed would return. A part of her could not believe that he would kill her in cold blood. But as the hours passed and she listened to his communication with mission control, she came to accept that as far as he was concerned, she was already dead.

  Megan stared hard at the wiring panel. Because she was able to eavesdrop on the conversations with mission control, she knew how Harry Landon intended to bring down the shuttle and, more important, how long that would take. She still had
time to figure out how to escape. Once she did, she would head straight for the auxiliary communications unit in the lower bay.

  But if the wiring continued to foil her and time began to run out, she had one final option. Choosing to exercise it meant that the door would open ― no doubt about that. But there was no guarantee that she would survive the aftermath.

  * * *

  Smith staggered to his feet, ripped off his jacket, and tore at the Velcro straps of his Kevlar Second Chance bulletproof vest. It was rated to stop anything up to a 9mm slug. But even though it had absorbed Drake's.22s easily, Smith still felt as though he'd been kicked in the chest by a mule.

  Getting into his car, he activated the global positioning system built into the dash. Instantly a glowing blue dot appeared on the small screen that showed a map of Fairfax County.

  Smith reached for the phone.

  “Klein here.”

  “It's me, sir.” Smith said.

  “Jon! Are you all right? I received reports of an explosion.”

  “That was my doing.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Just outside the plant. The target's moving ― by the looks of it, on foot. Whoever you sent, sir, did the job. They got here just in time to spook Drake.”

  “What about Drake? Did he take the bait?”

  Smith glanced at the pulsing blue dot. "Yes, sir. He's on the move.

  * * *

  It took Sergeant Patrick Drake five minutes to cover the one-mile hiking path through the woods between the power plant and the deserted recreational area where he'd parked his vehicle.

  Alert for any sign of a tail, Drake drove to the outskirts of Alexandria. Pulling into the lot of a Howard Johnson motor lodge, he parked in front of the last unit in the row. Drake opened the door to find General Richardson and Anthony Price inside.

  “Mission report, Sergeant?” Richardson asked.

  “The target was neutralized, sir,” Drake replied smartly. “Two hits, center mass.”

  “You're sure?” Price demanded.

  “What do you want, Tony?” Richardson snapped. “Smith's head on a platter?” He turned to Drake. “At ease, Sergeant. You did well.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Price gestured at the backpack that Drake had brought with him. “What's that?”

  Drake dropped the pack on one of the beds. “Something Smith left behind.”

  Undoing the straps, he laid out the contents: two spare ammunition clips, a road map, a cell phone, a microcassette recorder, and a small, round object that got Price's attention.

  “What's that?”

  “A flash grenade, sir,” Drake said, pretending not to notice Price's shocked expression. “It's okay, sir. The pin is secure.”

  “Give us some privacy, soldier,” Price said.

  As Drake went into the bathroom, Price grabbed Richardson's arm. “Enough of this soldier-boy shit, Frank. Neither one of us needed to be here. Drake could have called in the results.”

  Richardson jerked his arm away. “That's not the way I work, Tony. I lost a soldier boy, as you call him, over in Palermo. He had a name. Travis Nichols. And in case you've forgotten, Smith got close enough to us to call me at Fort Belvoir ― on a line you guaranteed was secure!”

  “The number was secure!” Price shot back. “Your man gave it up.”

  Richardson shook his head. “For someone who's done the things you have, you sure don't like getting your hands dirty, do you? You prefer to give orders and let others die while you watch the results on television, like this is all a big game.” Richardson leaned in close. “I'm not playing a game, Tony. I'm doing this because I believe it is necessary. I'm doing this for my country. What do you believe in?”

  “The same,” Price replied.

  Richardson snorted. “But you've feathered your bed with Bauer-Zermatt, haven't you? As soon as we give the world a small taste of what our bug can do, everyone will be clamoring for an antidote. Coincidentally Bauer-Zermatt will leak that it has the inside track on the research and its stock will skyrocket. I'm curious, Tony. Just how many shares did Bauer give you?”

  “A million,” Price replied calmly. “And he didn't give them to me, Frank. I earned them. Don't forget that I was the one who found Beria, who watched your back, making sure that no one even got a whiff of what was happening in Hawaii. So don't try to rub my nose in this hero horseshit!”

  He glanced at the items Drake had removed from the backpack. “Now let's wrap this thing up…”

  His words trailed off.

  “What's wrong?” Richardson asked.

  Price picked up the microcassette recorder, examined the casing, and popped open the cover. “Say it ain't so,” he muttered.

  “What?” Richardson demanded. “Smith brought it along so that he could tape a confession.”

  “Maybe…”

  Price removed the cassette and pulled one of the two pins that held it in place. The assembly came away in one piece.

  “And maybe not!” His face was mottled with rage. “I knew I recognized this thing! Take a look, Frank.”

  In the cavity Richardson saw a state-of-the-art transmitter.

  “The latest in surveillance technology!” Price hissed. “Your boy's been had! Smith knew that if something went wrong, his killer was sure to take the backpack. Somebody's heard every word we said!”

  “Sergeant!” Richardson roared.

  Drake bolted out of the bathroom, gun in hand. Richardson marched up to him and showed him the gutted recorder. “Tell me again, is Smith dead?”

  Drake recognized the transmitter instantly. “Sir, I didn't know…”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “All that means is that he can't tell us where the receiver is,” Price said. He looked at Richardson. “Are you a religious man, Frank? Because prayer might be the only thing we have left!”

  * * *

  The front door to the unit opened and Richardson, Price, and Drake stepped out fast, heading for their cars.

  Fifty feet away, in the shadows, Jon Smith watched them through the windshield of his vehicle.

  “It's Richardson, Price, and Drake,” he said into the phone.

  “I know,” Klein replied. “I recognized their voices ― except for Drake's. So did the president.”

  Smith glanced at the transmitting unit, set in the passenger-seat well, that had relayed the conspirators' words to Camp David.

  “I'm going to move in, sir.”

  “No, Jon. Look around you.”

  Smith saw two black sedans moving into position to block the front entrance of the motor court. Another pair was closing off the rear exit.

  “Who are they, sir?”

  “Doesn't matter. They'll deal with Richardson and Price. Just stay low until it's all over, then get the hell away. I'll expect you at the White House at first light.”

  “Sir―”

  The windshield exploded as a bullet shattered the safety glass. Smith threw himself across the seat as two more shots whistled into the sedan.

  “You said he was dead!” Price screamed.

  “He will be,” Richardson said grimly. “Get in the car. Sergeant, you make sure this time!”

  Drake didn't bother to look back. He had spotted the blackedout sedan the instant he'd stepped out of the unit. Smith's vehicle was parked in the shadows of some Dumpsters, a good call. But Smith had forgotten about the moon. Cold and bright, it washed the car's interior, illuminating him perfectly. Drake had taken his first shot before Smith had realized he'd been made. Now Drake was moving to make sure of his kill.

  He was fifteen feet from the car when suddenly the headlights snapped on, blinding him. Drake heard the roar of the engine and realized what was happening. But even he wasn't fast enough to get out of the way in time. As Drake launched himself into the air two tons of cold metal smashed into him, catapulting him over the car.

  Behind the wheel, Smith straightened up and kept his foot
on the accelerator. His peripheral vision registered dark shapes spilling out of the sedans forming the blockade, but that didn't stop him. He saw Richardson and Price jump into a car and back up fast. Turning the wheel, he tried to cut them off. For a split-second, he saw Richardson's expression through the window, then felt a tremendous jolt as the two cars mashed together in a tangle of metal.

  Smith hung on to the steering wheel, trying to push Richardson's car off to the side. Then he looked up and saw the two sedans at the exit. Spinning the wheel, he hit the brakes and went into a controlled skid.

  Frank Richardson felt his car rock as Smith's vehicle spun away. Then he too saw the blockade.

  “Frank!” Price screamed.

  Richardson slammed on the brakes, but too late. Just as he threw his hands over his face the car smashed into the front ends of the angled sedans. Seconds later, a piece of jagged metal tore through his throat as he was hurled through the windshield.

  Smith leaped out of his car, running hard. He got close enough to see Richardson's body sprawled across the hood before a pair of strong arms caught him.

  “It's too late, sir!” a voice called out.

  Smith struggled but was dragged back. A moment later, a huge explosion slammed him to the ground.

  Gasping and coughing, Smith struggled to breathe. Lifting his head off the asphalt, he saw a giant fireball engulf the three vehicles. Slowly he rolled away, oblivious to the shadows darting around him, the urgent voices calling to one another. A pair of hands hauled him to his feet and he found himself looking at a young, hatchet-faced man.

  “You don't belong here, sir.”

  “Who… are you?”

  The man pressed a set of keys into Smith's palm.

  “There's a green Chevy around the corner. Take it and go. And, sir? Mr. Klein said to remind you about your meeting at the White House.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN