“What if Moon’s assistant called Roth?” Rusty asked.
“Why would she do that?”
Rusty thought a second and nodded. “Okay. Okay, but wait a second.” He moved to the corner of the corridor and carefully peered around it. Sherry joined him. The offices of Senator Moon were halfway down on the left, in clear view. The door was open, and there were apparently no other individuals waiting in the broad corridor, though people he assumed were staff members were walking briskly in either direction.
Sherry nodded to Rusty and they both moved into the corridor toward the office.
Rusty’s stomach was in a knot. If the senator was on the Senate floor when they called, had there been enough time to call him back? Probably not. Less than fifteen minutes had elapsed. There was nothing illogical about having them come to his office, but Rusty had a nagging feeling that something was wrong.
Through the open door of the office less than twenty yards ahead, Rusty could see several people standing in the waiting room. One of them leaned out slightly to check the corridor, spotting the two approaching CIA employees. The man moved back inside the doorway, and Rusty could sense sudden movement within. Sherry stopped as a second man sauntered past the doorway, looking squarely at them, and pausing when he realized they weren’t moving. There was a moment of indecision, and the man suddenly moved into the corridor.
“Dr. Sanders? Is that you?”
Whether it was the voice or the use of his name, Rusty couldn’t explain. But the closing trap was all too obvious. He grabbed Sherry’s arm and propelled them both back the way they had come, well aware of several men cascading out of the senator’s office after them.
He knew the Hart Building well. There was a stairway just ahead that would take them down to the tram tunnel that led to the Capitol Building. There was no way even a renegade agent would risk firing a weapon in a tunnel full of senators.
They took the stairs two at a time, cognizant of the footsteps gaining behind them, and ran down the ramp toward the shuttle at full speed. A shuttle was just leaving and they pushed past one of the guards and into the last seat just before it moved forward.
Three men appeared on the landing, one of them hurriedly speaking into a radio as another spoke to the guard. Rusty looked forward. There were at least three senators aboard he recognized, and the Secretary of Commerce. They wouldn’t stop the shuttle, but Rusty was sure there would be a reception committee at the other end.
“What do we do now?” Sherry whispered to him.
“Get your ID ready. We’ll have to talk fast. The people at the other end will be the Capitol Police.”
Rusty turned for a last look behind them. Two of the uniformed guards were arguing with one of the agents. A second agent was trying to restrain the first, who was obviously angry. As Rusty watched, the angry agent shoved the guard and in an instant a flurry of guns were drawn and aimed at the three CIA employees. The shuttle rounded a bend and obscured the view as Rusty dared to hope the action would stay on the Hart end of the tunnel.
The shuttle moved underneath the Capitol and came to a halt. There were guards there as well, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to the two of them as Rusty guided Sherry up the ramp and into the elevator. Two other guards burst from around a corner, running toward the shuttle. As they passed, they spotted the elevator door closing and skidded to a halt, one of them trying to lunge for the door in time to stop it. Rusty saw the guard’s hands thrust forward just as the doors slid shut.
The elevator began to move upward. Several people were inside, all of them wondering what was going on. Radio calls to the floor above would be in progress. The guards would have only a partial description, and there were three other women aboard.
“Separate!” Rusty whispered in Sherry’s ear. “Follow me separately to the cloakroom.”
The doors opened to reveal a collection of six policemen, all scrutinizing the exiting passengers without interfering, all of them looking for a man and a woman together. Following another man, Rusty was one of the first off the elevator. Sherry had moved back as far as she could. She exited with another woman, talking to her as if they were together.
A couple toward the back of the elevator walked together through the door and were surrounded instantly.
Rusty moved down the familiar corridors to the guarded section leading to the Senate cloakroom. He presented his ID to the guard and asked if Senator Moon was ready.
“For what?” the man asked.
“I’m here to escort him to a briefing. Is he on the floor?”
Rusty was aware of Sherry’s entering the room behind him. He gave no sign of recognition as the guard scratched his head, satisfied the ID was real.
“If you’ll wait here, Doctor, I’ll check.”
The guard turned his back on Rusty and began to walk toward the cloakroom. Rusty motioned in a small, sharp gesture to Sherry who moved to his side, and they followed the man through the stanchions. The guard had entered the cloakroom itself before something told him he was being followed. He turned around, instantly angered to see Rusty behind him. At the same moment, Sherry spotted the senator several yards away.
“Hold on! Right there!” the guard ordered. The presence of Sherry confused him. “Who are you, ma’am?” he asked.
She ignored him and tried to slip past into the alcove.
“Senator Moon?” she called. Heads turned in the cloakroom.
The guard had Sherry by the arm and was blocking Rusty. There were footsteps running down the corridor from which they’d come, and a voice shouting, “Hold them!”
“GET DOWN, EVERYONE! HE’S ARMED!” one of the shouting figures yelled. A gun cleared his coat. Rusty could see a silencer on the end of it. His mind shifted into high speed as the images before him slowed to a crawl.
The gunman slid to his knees in a shooter’s stance, his muzzle aimed in the general direction of Rusty’s head. The hammer clicked into position with an unmistakable sound. There would be no time to duck. The inevitability of being shot washed over him just as a tall man brushed past from behind and moved between Rusty and the gunman.
“Hold it!” the man’s deep baritone voice commanded.
The gunman instantly uncocked his weapon and got to his feet.
“It’s okay, Martin,” the tall man said to the gunman. “I’ll take care of it from here.”
Rusty heard a single “Yessir.” He heard Sherry gasp.
The unmistakable voice of Senator Moon came from just behind them.
“What the hell’s going on out here?”
The senator moved beside them as Rusty focused in disbelief on the face of the tall man who had saved his life.
Jonathan Roth!
Roth looked at Rusty Sanders.
“Been spinning some conspiracy theories, have we, Doctor?”
Senator Moon’s voice interceded again. “Sherry Ellis! What are you doing here?” He turned to Roth. “Are these the two you mentioned, Jon?”
“Yes, Senator.”
Rusty turned to the senator. “Sir, I’ve got evidence …”
Moon held up his hand to stop him. “You talk to your boss here, and then you and Sherry and Deputy Director Roth are invited to meet me in my office in thirty minutes.”
Senator Moon turned and walked back toward the Senate floor as Jon Roth’s right hand came down gently on Rusty’s shoulder. Rusty turned to look at the deputy director, who was alternately looking at Sherry and him.
“You’ve got this wrong, you know,” Roth said. “Both of you do.”
“I don’t think so, Director,” Rusty said.
“Things aren’t always as they appear. You’ve misread clues, Rusty, jumped to conclusions, and apparently thought we were trying to get rid of you. We need to talk. Immediately. Thanks to your two-person demolition act, I’ve got two people in the hospital, a burning airplane at National, and the chairman of our oversight committee madder than hell at being disturbed with a cockamamie cla
im that the deputy director is out trying to hire terrorists to shoot down that seven-forty-seven.”
Roth began steering them back toward the corridor.
Rusty refused to move, and Roth turned to look at him with a sigh.
“What, Doctor?”
“I gave you evidence of an internal renegade operation. You said you’d take care of it.”
“You did, and I acted immediately. You never called in, did you, Sanders? I told you to dig in and report back to me. I never had the chance to tell you that what you’d found was not what it seemed. You uncovered a plot, all right, but it wasn’t hatched by the CIA, and it wasn’t hatched by me. Okay?”
Rusty glanced at Sherry, then back at Roth.
“Can we go now?” Roth said, the familiar irritation in his voice replacing the feigned friendliness he’d used in front of the senator.
“Where?” Sherry asked.
Roth sighed. “To the senator’s office, of course.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
NORTH OF ASCENSION ISLAND—SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 24—6:15 A.M. (0715Z)
“There!”
Yuri Steblinko’s index finger tapped the glass of the tactical radar display, which was set to the hundred-fifty-mile range. A minute before, a bright, steady blip had crawled onto the scope dead ahead of the Gulfstream. For seven sweeps of the antenna he had waited to see if it would disappear, but it remained—precisely when and where he had expected.
Yuri checked his watch. He would reach firing position less than a hundred miles north of the island.
ABOARD FLIGHT 66
It was time.
On the flight deck James Holland reached up and nudged a small, vertical plastic wheel toward the nose-down position, beginning a gentle autopilot descent. Ascension was a hundred fifty miles ahead and showing now on the radar. He wanted to be at five hundred feet above the water by fifty miles out.
Dick Robb was climbing back in the right seat, deep circles under his eyes, his collar open, his airline regulation tie long since discarded.
Rachael, too, had returned to the cockpit after a few hours of sleep. She found James Holland alone, and felt relieved. There was no reason to dislike the copilot, but she felt out of place in his presence.
For thirty minutes Rachael sat in silence beside Holland in the observer’s chair. James finally turned and smiled at her—and reached for her hand. She found the combined rush of warmth and need that engulfed her immensely startling, but she smiled back and squeezed his large hand in return. His presence brought a feeling of security that defied the logic of their predicament.
And when time came to wake the copilot, Rachael felt a small wave of resentment.
“How’re we doin’ on fuel?” Robb asked as he settled back into the right seat.
“About where we figured. We’ve got about twenty-three thousand remaining,” Holland replied, giving him a long, appraising look. “How’re you doing, Dick? Get any real rest?”
Robb nodded, rubbing his eyes. “A bit. Enough. When the hubbub settles down after we land, I’ll need more.”
Holland nodded. “So will I. So will all of us.”
There was a pause as Robb glanced at Rachael and smiled a friendly smile, which she returned. He looked back toward the captain.
“James, I was lying back there thinking. Maybe we should check the shortwave broadcasts again, just in case something’s changed, or just in case someone’s organized an armed reception for us at Ascension.”
“If they are, they are. We don’t have enough fuel to go anywhere else,” Holland said.
Robb nodded and thought it over.
“I guess you’re right,” he said at last.
Holland glanced at him. “Actually, Dick, I did try myself a while ago with a small worldband shortwave one of the passengers has on board. I couldn’t pick up anything. The signal strength down here below the equator is too low with all the electronic interference we’re generating inside this cockpit. All I get is static and loud squeals.”
There was another return on the radar now, dead ahead about sixty miles north of the island, and Robb pointed to it.
“Looks like we’ve got a weather cell out there. I see red in the middle.”
“Isolated thunderstorm.” Holland nodded. “That’s a little surprising for the predawn hours. It’s probably the remnant of a real monster from yesterday.”
“You going to steer around it?” Robb asked.
Holland nodded. “But not until we’re a bit closer.”
A moonless starfield hung before them on the other side of the windscreen against an ink-black sky. The sun wouldn’t begin painting the horizon for another half hour. In the meantime, there was nothing below but blackness passing at seventy-two percent of the speed of sound. Holland began dimming the cockpit and instrument lights to adjust their night vision. A hint of fuzzy light on the horizon announced the presence of Ascension Island. The small thunderstorm cell was twenty miles ahead now and Holland eased the autopilot to the west so that the plane would clear it by ten miles as it moved east. There were occasional lightning flashes from within the cloud, and a steady red blob on the radar indicated it was a tightly packed little storm with quite a bit of power. But elsewhere the picture was clear, and the mass of Ascension was crawling steadily across the radar screen toward them.
“Not enough of a cut,” Holland said as he changed course to head forty-five degrees to the right.
Holland peered into the night as Dick Robb watched the radar screen. Robb began staring at it intently, puzzled by lines that suddenly appeared on the screen, then disappeared.
He felt a chill up his back. He had seen such lines before—as they had approached the African coast many hours ago.
“Uh, James …” he began.
Holland looked at him and followed his gaze to the screen, which just as quickly cleared of everything but the echoes of the island and the storm.
Holland looked at the radar screen, then back at Robb, sensing his discomfort.
“What was it, Dick? Were you seeing something?”
Robb remained still for a moment as his eyes tracked the screen, then shook his head in the negative.
No need to sound paranoid. Fatigue is making me jumpy.
“Just some lines on the scope, sort of like before. But no fighter could have followed us across three thousand miles of ocean.”
Yuri Steblinko switched his attack scope to the fifty-mile range and checked the Heads-Up Display. The 747 was dead ahead now, less than ten miles and closing—though much closer to the island than he had planned.
No matter. The Boeing’s wreckage would still fall in deep water.
The 747 was running dark, without position lights or beacons, which made it invisible against the dark starfield. But Yuri’s attack display clearly showed the Boeing as a phosphorescent target.
The jumbo had been descending for some time. Yuri estimated the altitude now at five thousand. Obviously the captain had learned how to run on the surface to avoid radar.
Yuri smiled to himself and shook his head. So that’s how he slipped away before!
He maneuvered the Gulfstream slightly to the right. The plan was simple: lock a missile on to the heat signature of the 747’s right inboard engine and blow it off the wing. The 747’s captain would suddenly be faced with a worst-case flight control problem: two engines gone on one side.
And, with any luck, Yuri thought, the explosion would take the wing off at the same time. If not, there were two more missiles.
This time, he doesn’t suspect I’m here.
Yuri triggered the switch to lower the left missile rack into the slipstream and felt the plane respond to the drag. As soon as it stabilized, he walked the pipper onto the target and began moving it to the right, searching for a clear definition of the infrared signature from the remaining right engine.
A few more miles!
The Gulfstream’s closing speed on the Boeing was in excess of a hundred knots. Yuri calc
ulated he was close enough and pulled back the throttles, letting the business jet slow to match the jumbo’s velocity exactly.
The number three engine—the inboard right one—flared brightly now on the attack screen, and he pressed the appropriate button to lock the missile’s warhead on target. They were down to fifteen hundred feet, the descent shallowing, the 747 still clipping along at more than two hundred fifty knots.
Yuri decided to wait until he leveled out, regardless of how low the 747 went. An explosion just above the water would give the pilot no recovery room. Even if they were still flyable, a panicked maneuver could drive the 747 into the waves and finish it.
Sure enough, Flight 66 descended through a thousand feet, slowly stabilizing at five hundred.
Yuri checked his navigation display. They were fifty-two miles north of Ascension.
That was close enough! It was time.
He brought the Gulfstream two miles aft of the 747 and rechecked the lock-on, which was set to drive the warhead right up the tail pipe of number three engine. The infrared tracker was growling at high pitch and warbling in his ear with excitement. He caressed the trigger and reviewed everything once again. The captain had been immensely crafty, he thought. It was a shame the man had come so close to making it to Ascension before being blown out of the sky. It would have been preferable to finish him off many hours ago, before hope had had a chance to grow again for those poor people.
Yet there could be no hope, Yuri reminded himself. Whether the wreckage sank near the Canary Islands or in the middle of the trackless South Atlantic was immaterial.
Remember, they’re all about to sicken and die anyway. Some may already be dead.
Yuri pressed the trigger.
Immediately, the sound of a rocket motor igniting and propelling the missile off the rails toward the jumbo ahead filled the cockpit. The glow of the rocket exhaust seemed to corkscrew in front of him only a fraction of a second before reaching the target. Then the sudden, almost painful flare of the explosion loomed amazingly large where the 747 had been.
There was a huge explosion to the right of Quantum 66’s cockpit. The soul-jarring impact illuminated the whole side of the aircraft in a bright orange phosphorescent flare, accompanied by a massive shudder as the number three engine exploded off its pylon and pieces of disintegrating turbine and fragmented engine parts clanked and crashed into the wing and fuselage, as if the pilots had just flown through an airborne junkyard.
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