by Tom Clancy
“Turn off the rotors,” he told the pilot when he reached the helicopter.
“We’ll slide into the water.”
“I’ll take the chance,” he told him.
“We may not be able to take off.”
“Turn them off,” said Morgan in a voice so strong it could have killed the engine on its own.
The heavy drone of the Aérospatiale Alouette III’s Turboméca made it nearly impossible for Nessa to hear the transmission, so even if she had spoken German and could have deciphered the heavy Swiss accent, she would have had trouble understanding what was being said.
The ever-helpful Captain Theiber, sitting in the rear compartment behind her, had no difficulty, however. In his calm baritone voice, he supplied a concise interpretation when the transmission was complete.
“Two jets from Fleigerstaffel 8 have taken off from Meriringen,” he said. “That’s north of us. A pair of trainers from Magadino are airborne as well. They are propeller-driven, but they should match a helicopter. And a liaison is contacting NATO. Herr Morgan will not escape.”
“I’m confident,” said Nessa, though she felt anything but. Having rallied such vast resources, she had better end up with something in her net besides the gorgeous scenery.
And a case of airsickness, which had started to creep up her esophagus.
“The lake,” said the pilot.
The edge of a blue-green bowl opened in the white and gray ahead. A town, two towns, lay to the right. The pilot had the throttle full bore—they whipped forward at just over two hundred kilometers an hour.
“Ten minutes,” predicted Theiber. “Less.”
“The PC-7’s will approach from the west,” said the pilot, pointing in the distance. “Castello Dinelli will be straight ahead.”
Nessa leaned straight ahead, willing it to appear.
Morgan’s ankle had started to swell and his knees were deeply bruised from his falls by the time he slid the last painting into the helicopter. He had to shove his chest to the side awkwardly to get into the craft, which was listing and had its left forward wheel underwater. The pilot’s frown did not lift as the rotors whipped into action; he wrestled with the controls as the aircraft began bucking violently.
“Go!” commanded Morgan.
“I’m trying,” growled the pilot.
Morgan buckled his seat belt and leaned against the seat as the helicopter pitched upward. Falling on the rocks had temporarily fatigued him, but as he thought of the paintings he now possessed, his characteristic bonhomie returned. “Now, now,” he told the pilot. “Come—you’ll be richly rewarded. Let us fly back to Zurich now.”
The helicopter trembled for a few moments more, but began gradually to lift steadily. The pilot’s frown faded.
Then a dark cross appeared a bare meter from the windshield and the Sikorsky lurched sideways to duck it.
“Shit! Don’t ram them!” shouted Nessa. “Tell them not to ram him!”
The two Pilatus PC-7’s buzzed in front of the Sikorsky so close, it seemed as if one of the wings would clip the rotor.
“It’s under control, I’m sure,” said Captain Theiber. He leaned forward and put his hand on her shoulder.
A few minutes before, Nessa would have reached up and touched his hand with her fingers. But the captain’s tone suddenly felt patronizing.
“Can you reach them on the radio?” she asked the pilot, ignoring Theiber.
“That switch,” he said. “The international emergency band.” His own hands were busy—he ducked the Alouette to the right as the Sikorsky began skittering away from the two orange-red Swiss Air Force planes.
“Helicopter leaving Castello Dinelli, this is Interpol,” said Nessa. “You are ordered to follow the directions of the Commando Fliers.”
“Kommando der Flieger,” corrected Captain Theiber over the circuit.
“Yeah, thanks.” Nessa flicked his hand off her shoulder. “Follow our directions and you won’t get hurt. You are to follow us back to the Magadino airport.”
The Sikorsky began powering away southward. It was a civilian version of the American Blackhawk combat helicopter, and its twin turboshafts could propel the helicopter more than twice as fast as the Alouette—and in fact could give the two small trainers a decent run if its maneuverability was used correctly.
It was not, however, in any way a match for the F-5E’s the Swiss Air Force had scrambled, which chose this moment to close from the rear.
“You’re surrounded. Give up,” said Nessa. “Mr. Morgan can’t possibly pay you enough to die for. We can arrange a deal, I’m sure.”
Morgan punched the radio with his fist. Interpol? How in God’s name had the inept bastards traced him here?
“We have to land,” said the pilot.
A silvery-gray object whizzed down from overhead, whipping across the lake in front of him. The helicopter pilot threw the Sikorsky around, heading back toward the castle. Another helicopter, probably the one with the woman who had been speaking to them over the UHF band, was heading for them.
“We have to land,” repeated the pilot.
There were always contingencies; there were always escape routes. When the Americans had closed in on him for that tax nonsense, he had found a way to get out. There would be an escape now.
Morgan thought of the eyes of the child in the painting. One closed, one open.
“The jets are firing at us,” said the pilot.
“Fly into the helicopter,” said Morgan, pointing ahead.
“Into it! You’re insane.”
“They’ll veer off,” he said. “The jets will back off.”
“And then?”
“Then we will think of what to do next.”
“He’s heading right for us!” Nessa shouted as the Sikorsky came on.
They were low to begin with. The pilot veered to get out of the way, and the aircraft’s doors and rotor blades practically touched the lake.
“Get the sodding buggers!” said Nessa, clenching her teeth against the rising bile.
For three hours, the German bombers attacked Guernica. First they hit it with explosives and firebombs. The people of the town fled into the nearby fields, seeking shelter. The planes followed them there, strafing victim after victim, the aircrews laughing as the bullets danced into the bodies. Red blood pooled everywhere. There was no escape.
Morgan would not be captured. It was not a matter of spending time in prison, or being paraded around as an international prize. He would not give up the Picassos.
“Where do you want me to go?” asked the pilot calmly as the other helicopter veered away. Castello Dinelli sat in the water about a half kilometer away. “Should we land back near the speedboat dock, or follow them all the way to Magadino?”
“Neither,” said Morgan softly. “Go for the castle.”
“It’s fifty meters away. Then what?”
In answer, Morgan slipped the small Glock from his belt and shot the pilot twice in the head. His body slumped forward, but the aircraft continued ahead, its trajectory edging slightly downward but still aimed at the stone walls.
It was not the contingency he had wanted, but there was the consolation of having owned the Picassos, if only for an hour.
Nessa watched the Sikorsky slow as it approached Castello Dinelli.
“I think they’re going to try to land on the castle island, maybe in one of the courtyards,” she said.
The Sikorsky glided toward the yellow stone rampart, its nose tipping lower. It seemed to hesitate, then slide to the left, then crumple into a red burst of flames as it smacked into the wall.
“No!” shouted Nessa. “No, no, no!”
The only answer was a spray of black and red as the Sikorsky’s fuel tank exploded.
SIXTEEN
COLD CORNERS BASE, ANTARCTICA
MARCH 13, 2002
NIMEC HAD OWNED A MOTORCYCLE WHEN HE WAS IN his twenties, and had rented a snowmobile on two separate winter vacations with his ex-wif
e and son. Riding them was similar, but it could be dangerous to think they were exactly alike. A snowbike’s lower center of gravity demanded a light touch when you leaned and cornered. There were differences in surface traction speeding across snow and ice. And you had to keep your feet on a snowmobile’s running boards, avoiding the habit of kicking one of them out for balance. That was bad enough on a cycle because it could easily hit a road obstruction; it was worse when deep snow might drag hold of you, tearing up an ankle or knee.
He was not a man to make foolhardy mistakes.
Waylon’s experience qualified him for the lead position, and Nimec had jumped his machine out of the utilidor’s exit ramp right at his back, the others following in single file as Cold Corners One vanished behind them in a swirling curtain of snow.
Nimec thought about their next move as they approached the dome. He couldn’t make assumptions about his opposition’s force size or resources. He didn’t have time to worry about their reasons for striking at the base. But their strike’s intent was clear; they’d stuck it to one of the CC’s critical life-sustaining functions, and the immediate question was what they would do next. Whether they would break for it, or wait to ensure that the bleeding they’d inflicted wasn’t stopped.
He gripped his handlebars, plunging directly into the teeth of the wind, his knees bent against the snowmobile’s metal flanks, its powerful engine vibrating underneath him. The best he could manage was a guess, and that guess would determine his tactics. Meaning it had damned well better be a good one. So what did he know about the men who’d hit the water-treatment plant?
The important things weren’t hard to deduce. He didn’t know where they’d come from, but there was only cold desolation for miles around. Since they hadn’t popped out of a hole in the sky, he presumed they must have traveled a very long distance. Someone would need extensive skill and knowledge of the terrain to manage that under the best of circumstances, and in this storm it would be incredibly rough going by any means. In fact, it would have seemed unthinkable to Nimec just a small packet of minutes ago.
Whoever these people were, they had already demonstrated themselves to be capable, selective about their target, and committed to taking it out. Above all, they had shown they had moxie to spare. They would count on the weather getting worse before it got better, know it would be impossible to remount their strike, know they only had one real shot. Nimec thought it apparent that they’d hoped to accomplish their mission on the sneak—but say they had a notion they’d been discovered. They definitely would’ve had to contemplate it. Would men of their caliber and determination withdraw before they were positive of success?
Nimec wondered about it a second. Would he?
“Waylon, you reading me?” he said into the voice-activated radio headset under his hood.
“Loud and clear.”
“How far to the dome?”
“Close,” he said. “Under a thousand yards.”
Nimec was taken by surprise. That was much too close. He couldn’t see anything past Waylon’s tail, and had no intention of rushing in blind.
“Okay,” he said. “Listen up. Here’s how I want to do this. . . .”
Snow splayed around Burkhart’s bike as he brought it to a stop. The dome was just ten or fifteen yards to his left, its tetrahedral planes and angles smeary in his vision.
Straightening in his seat, he listened to his men move into position around the dome and then abruptly cut their engines. He thought he could see gray scribbles of smoke issue into the flying whiteness from the hair-thin spaces between the dome’s lowered door and doorframe.
Burkhart stared out toward the base. The low wave of light he’d spotted before had fragmented, but that did not mean it had ceased advancing. His eyes narrow behind his helmet shield, he looked over his right shoulder. Was that a faint, rippling trace of it out there?
He believed so. As Musashi had written in his Book of Five Rings, it was better to move strong things from the corners than to push at them straight on. From what Burkhart had learned about the enemy through his intelligence sources, they would know this as well as he did.
His Sturmgewehr across his chest, Burkhart watched, listened, waited. The mission had strayed far from his intentions. He had wanted to get in, deliver a clean blow, and get out. That he was now heading toward an engagement meant he’d very seriously stumbled. No good could come of it—but there was also no retreat.
Burkhart waited in the rampant storm. Then, suddenly, he once again became aware of the swelling, pulsing sound of engines under the wind’s louder clamor . . . this time coming from all around him.
The corners were closing in.
The dark smudges of smoke Burkhart noticed outside the dome were no trick of the eye.
Behind its roll-down door, his solgel incendiaries had ignited with brilliant, white-hot slashes of flame, instantly reducing the desalinization unit’s flow-pump motor to a tarry mire of fused steel and plastic. The pump quit with a shudder, chuffing out acrid, concentrated fumes that bleared the dials and alarm lights on its control panel as they floated past. Bristling vines of fire circled its butterfly inlet valve and coiled over the meshwork of low-pressure PVC pipes around the water tanks. They seared, sagged, and blistered, their melted plastic segments springing distorted fish-mouthed leaks, showering the dome’s instrumentation with jets of distilled water. Raw seawater began flushing from the main pipeline, pouring down onto the tank platform, running over its sides. The smoke rose, spread, seeking fresh air. It eddied against the door, slipping through its weather seals in thready wisps.
Out in the wind and snow, Burkhart continued his waiting game.
Further away, Pete Nimec and his men pushed their snowmobiles toward the dome as quickly as they could. Nimec did not think getting inside would be easy, but still he hoped they might have time to somehow prevent the machinery that produced Cold Corners’ entire usable water supply from becoming severely maimed.
He didn’t have a shot.
The moment Burkhart had put his combustive charges in place, time had run out.
“Sir—I’ve spotted some of them.”
“Where? I can’t see a thing.”
“A little ways ahead of us,” Ron Waylon said. “I’d guess maybe forty, fifty yards. At about ten o’clock.”
Nimec kept Waylon’s blaze-orange parka in his headlights as he whirred along behind him. He had mostly gotten the hang of the snow bike, but the bare ice patches that would come up on it without warning kept threatening to rob its skis of traction and wrench the handlebars out of his grasp.
He squinted through his goggles.
“You said some?”
“Right—”
“How many? Still can’t see anything . . .”
“I’m not sure. There could’ve been three, four. They were on bikes. Moving. Wearing winter camouflage.” Waylon paused. “The bikes were white too,” he added.
Nimec thought a moment. His instincts had been right.
“We made more than three of them inside the dome,” he said over the com-link. “Looks like it’s how I figured. They’ve deployed around it.”
“Looks like,” Waylon said.
Nimec swooped on toward the dome, a guy named Mitchell pacing at his rear, the rest having split off at his direction.
“Okay, both of you reading me?”
He received two affirmatives in his earpiece.
“This is it,” he said, then let go of his right handgrip to reach for the weapon strapped over his shoulder.
The dome to his near left, Burkhart was still poised to throttle his snowmobile into action when one of his floating patrols hailed him over their radio link.
“Kommandant, ich sehe sie.”
It was Langern, at the opposite side of the water-treatment facility.
“Wie viele?” Burkhart replied.
“Mindestens drei Männer. Sind auf rotes Schneemobilen.”
Burkhart clicked his teeth. At least three
men had been sighted. On red snowmobiles.
As he’d suspected, the enemy had broken up into harrier teams.
“Schätzen?” he asked.
“Ungefähr fünfzig meter östlich.”
Burkhart tasted adrenaline at the back of his tongue. The machines Koenig had reported were approaching from fifty meters to the east.
His alertness notched to its utmost level, Burkhart looked over his right shoulder, glimpsed the noses of two more snowmobiles through the snow—these speeding toward him from a westerly direction.
It further confirmed his assessment of the enemy’s diversionary tactics. But he had no doubt their main thrust still would be reserved for the dome’s entrance.
“Lass keinen näher kommen,” he ordered, thinking that they had gotten close enough.
Much about Antarctica was alien to Nimec, but he would have recognized the sound of automatic gunfire anyplace on earth.
The initial burst came from approximately where Waylon had seen the snow bikes, its distinctive crackle carrying across the distance even in the high, wild wind.
His opponents were throwing themselves into an outright confrontation, forfeiting stealth to delay his Sword ops from reaching the dome.
The nasty little cold war they’d initiated had just gotten very hot.
Nimec mentally bold-faced a decision that he’d known had to be. Sword was a civilian security outfit whose international presence was licensed through a clutter of separate arrangements with UpLink’s host governments, most of them skittish about having armed foreigners on their real estate. Nonlethal threat response was Sword’s option of first choice, and its techies had developed a collection of ingenious suppressive tools toward that end. Nimec’s operatives were not cowboys on horses riding the range in search of desperados. But he had never allowed them to be victims-in-waiting either. Their rules of engagement were right in line with those followed almost universally by police and military forces. Deadly fire was to be returned in kind.
