“Tick tock,” Rook murmured.
King turned back to Okoa. “Mr. President,” he enunciated the words, “right now, all I care about it stopping Favreau from blowing up the lake and killing two million innocent people. I can do that with or without any help from the General. The smart play is to bring you both along. I don’t have time to learn how to trust him.”
Okoa did not relent. “Patrice, let them go. I will remain with you, not as your captive but as your partner.”
“I…” Velle’s voice caught. He took a deep breath and then tried again. “I will agree to this.”
Every fiber of his being told King not to trust the man. Velle was a traitor to his own country, a megalomaniac bent on personal glory, willing—eager even—to sell the wealth of his nation and the future of its people to foreigners.
“We could just shoot him,” Rook suggested. “That would clear up this question of who’s in charge.”
King ignored the remark. Like it or not, Okoa was right. The Chess Team had come here to preserve the peace and protect the innocent, but the ultimate responsibility for both rested with these two men.
“Right this minute, the only thing that matters is stopping Favreau,” he said. “General, I’m going to walk out of here and get on that helicopter. If you have dealt in bad faith, whatever happens will be on your head.”
He heard Rook suck in an apprehensive breath.
“Although if we fail,” he continued, lowering the Uzi. “I doubt any of us will be around to regret it.”
Velle stepped away. He was breathing rapidly, almost panting, and still bristling with anger. He looked defiantly at Rook and the guardsmen who still had their weapons trained on him, and then he stalked to the tent flap. He grabbed hold of it with such ferocity that the entire tent shook as he pulled it back.
“Go!” he snarled.
King looked to Okoa once more and saw him nod.
In the long silence that followed, King heard the sound of the helicopter’s engines powering up.
52
Bishop listened to the standoff that was transpiring just a short distance away. He had completed a hasty pre-flight check, but had held off starting the turbine engines until the confrontation was resolved, to avoid revealing their presence. Escaping in the helicopter had always been the trickiest part of the plan. It would take at least a full minute for the turbines to reach optimal take-off power, a minute in which the entire camp would know that something was amiss. One or two well-placed bullets would spell the end of their bid for freedom. King had been counting on using Favreau and Velle as human shields to discourage anyone attempting to destroy the helicopter, but that plan was now dead.
Favreau was going to use the bomb. Bishop didn’t know anything about the woman, but he understood that much about her. If her threat of destruction had been merely that, a threat, a bluff, she would not have gone out on the water. There was only one reason for her to do that.
She had to be stopped.
Two million lives depended on it.
In a moment of absolute clarity, Bishop understood what he had to do.
He slid out of the pilot’s chair and poked his head into the main cabin. “King needs you.”
Queen didn’t hesitate. While she hadn’t been able to follow the confrontation in the command tent, she had heard the gunfire and was already poised for action. Bishop slid the door open and gestured for Queen and the guardsmen to move out.
As she hopped down, scanning the surrounding area, Queen seemed to remember that she no longer had her glasses. “Where is he?”
“He’ll find you,” Bishop said. He slammed the door shut and threw the combat lock.
He half-expected Queen to start pounding on the door, demanding to be let back in, but the only sound he heard was the tense three-way exchange between King, General Velle and President Okoa.
Bishop moved back to the cockpit and started throwing switches in sequence. There was a loud backfire and then the twin Klimov TV3-117 turboshafts started spinning. A low whine filled the aircraft, quickly rising in pitch and intensity as the main rotor began to turn. Bishop felt the airframe shudder with the torque. He tightened his grip on the collective and cyclic controls, and watched the RPMs build.
“Bishop!” King shouted over the din, and Bishop realized he had mentally tuned-out the standoff in the command tent. “We’re outside. Open the door.”
There was an undercurrent of dread in King’s voice. He knows, Bishop thought. Of course he knows. This is exactly what he would do, in my place.
Bishop said nothing. He slowly twisted the throttle, increasing the RPMs, and then, moving his hands and feet in a complex ballet of synchronized activity, eased back on the collective, tilted the cyclic forward, and held the rudder steady. The Mil rolled forward a few yards, and then Bishop felt that indescribable sensation of the ground reluctantly letting go. The helicopter continued forward, picking up speed without gaining any altitude. The right wheel clipped a tent, which was already flapping like a loose sail in a hurricane, and then he was out over the dark waters of Lake Kivu.
The Mil bore as much resemblance to the helicopters he had trained on as a luxury sedan did to a city bus. The controls were the same, as were the basic principles of operation, but there was a whole lot more aircraft to pay attention to. Fortunately, the flat surface of the lake was the perfect place for him to get familiar with it, provided that he didn’t nose into the water. As the helo picked up speed, he increased the collective pitch and started climbing into the night sky.
With each foot of altitude gained, his view of the lake and the surrounding landscape broadened, all of it lit up like daylight in the virtual display of his borrowed glasses. At just a hundred yards, he could make out Ile Idjwi, a long strip of land that bisected the southern half of the lake. He scanned the narrow channel that ran between the island’s western shore and the mainland. Nothing. He didn’t think Favreau would have gone in that direction. For maximum effect, she would head for open water.
He glimpsed a long streak of white on the lake’s surface, diffuse at its western tip, but sharpening to an abrupt point about seven miles east of where he flew. He zoomed in, and the dark object at the head of the wake resolved into the familiar shape of a rigid-hulled Zodiac, similar to the kind used by SEAL teams and professional dive service operators. A lone figure sat at the craft’s stern, operating the outboard engine.
“I see her,” Bishop said.
“I read you, Bish,” King said, and Bishop suddenly realized that it was the first thing King had said to him since he’d taken off. “Now, I don’t suppose you’d like to come back and pick us up so we can do this together?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bishop replied, wondering if he should elaborate. He wasn’t accustomed to explaining himself, but what he was doing was unexplored territory for him. His way of dealing with problems was to tear through them, obliterate them, and if the problem was bigger than expected, all he needed to do was unleash his volcanic rage.
Bishop felt no rage now. In fact, he didn’t think he had ever felt quite so calm in his entire life.
53
Lake Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Favreau wasn’t watching the sky, nor was she scanning the surface of the lake ahead. Her eyes were fixed on the display of a portable echo-sounder that showed a depth profile of the lake bottom. One corner of the display showed the actual depth in feet, a number that had been steadily growing larger with each passing second.
1180 feet. Not quite deep enough.
Because Lake Kivu was situated on a volcanic rift, two land masses slowly pulling apart like a spreading wound in the Earth’s skin, it was very deep. Its maximum depth was 1575 feet along the rift, making it one of the deepest lakes in the world. The methane reserves, which were created by microbial reduction of volcanic gasses rising out of the Earth, would be most concentrated in that deep zone.
1300 feet.
The lake
bottom was sloping rapidly now. Soon she would be deep enough.
Deep enough to ignite the vast field of dissolved methane and deep enough for her to survive the aftermath.
Monique Favreau was not afraid to die, a fact which had more than once tipped the balance in her favor to avoid that outcome, but neither did she have a death wish. When she had conceived of this plan, she had run the numbers and decided that it was indeed survivable.
A generous estimate, one in which the bomb sank at the rather astounding rate of three and a half feet per second, gave her about eight minutes from the time she dropped it overboard until detonation. In eight minutes, she would be able to travel nearly two miles away from ground zero. That was well outside the blast radius of the device on dry land, and while underwater explosions behaved very differently, she felt confident that two miles was a safe distance. Similarly, the water would shield her from any thermal or radiologic effects. In short, she had little to fear from the bomb itself.
The effects of igniting the methane reserves were more problematic. For one thing, when the gas bubble came to the surface, it would create a suffocating layer over the lake, extending several miles in every direction. That was easily enough overcome with a self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) tank she had appropriated from the Kisangani airport fire brigade, but that was minor concern in comparison to some of the other effects that were likely to occur. For one thing, she had no idea if the outboard would still function in air that was oversaturated with CO2. Also, there was a very real possibility that the sudden change in the lake’s chemistry might alter the specific gravity of the water to the point where the Zodiac would no longer be buoyant.
These possibilities did not concern Favreau so much as excite her. There was one outcome, however, that she considered unlikely enough to almost be dismissed entirely, namely that Marrs would be able to deliver on her demands. The game demanded that she listen to his dissembling, his request for concessions, for more time to gather support, but in the end she would do exactly as she had promised. She would teach him a lesson he would never forget. She would teach the whole world.
She cut power, allowing the Zodiac to coast forward, and took out her satellite phone, preparing to make that final decisive call. That was when she heard the low hum of a distant engine, which had been drowned out by throaty roar of her own outboard motor. She cocked her head, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.
The running lights of an aircraft were visible in the sky to the west. Favreau picked out the red and green lights, on the left and right sides, which told her the craft was moving toward her.
It could only be the Congolese air force Mil, but what was it doing out here? Her mind raced with possibilities, none of which boded well. She could easily imagine Velle brokering some kind of deal with Marrs, a deal which required him to take possession of the RA-115 and perhaps even eliminate Favreau in the process.
The engine noise grew louder, rising in pitch as the sound waves piled up on top of her. The helicopter would be overhead in just a few seconds.
She set aside the phone and found the remote for the dead-man trigger, which she waved above her head in one outstretched arm. It was no longer wired to the bomb, but Velle would have no way of knowing that.
If that didn’t frighten him off, it would take only a second to pitch the bomb over the side, and then there would be nothing he could do to stop her.
“What’s he doing?” Queen asked, staring out across the lake at the lights of the retreating helicopter.
King silenced her with a cutting gesture. He knew exactly what Bishop was doing, and it was taking every ounce of his self-restraint to refrain from interfering.
Around them, the soldiers were being roused. Velle had given the order for them to abandon the camp, leave the tents where they were and board the armored infantry vehicles. Busy with the evacuation, the soldiers had ignored the intruders in their midst, allowing King and Rook to move through the camp to where Queen waited. King had warned the others to keep an eye out for Favreau’s remaining mercenaries, but the ESI men had disappeared, possibly secreting themselves aboard the tracked vehicles or simply slinking away into the jungle. The rebel fighters had been told to leave the area, but without motorized transport, their chances of surviving the worst case scenario were slim. This was true for Chess Team as well, but King had already decided that they weren’t going anywhere.
The virtual display allowed him to see what Bishop saw, and he watched in silence as Bishop scanned the lake’s surface, looking for Favreau’s boat.
“I see her.”
“I read you, Bish,” King said, his voice quiet. “Now, I don’t suppose you’d like to come back and pick us up so we can do this together?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” There was a pause then Bishop went on. “If the bomb is still wired to the dead-man trigger, all I need to do is take Favreau out from the air. That will detonate the bomb, but if Felice is right, a blast on the surface won’t be enough to cause the lake eruption.”
“The blast will also knock you out of the sky.” King felt Queen grip his arm. She couldn’t hear what Bishop was saying, but evidently she grasped his intent.
“That’s why it makes more sense for me to do this alone,” Bishop said in an unnaturally calm voice. “No sense in all of us getting killed.”
King felt numb. He wanted to argue with Bishop, tell him that he had a better idea, a strategy that would let them win without such a sacrifice. He considered ordering Bishop to return so that he could go instead. He didn’t have Bishop’s familiarity with the helicopter, but maybe Deep Blue could talk him through it.
I didn’t fight my way across three millennia so Bishop could die on the next big mission.
Even as denial and helplessness raged within him, King realized that he had been wrong. His obsession with protecting his friends had overshadowed what should have been his real purpose: to help them give their lives meaning.
Bishop was about to risk his life to save two million people, and perhaps—if Felice’s estimates were correct—the whole world.
King couldn’t think of anything more meaningful than that. He swallowed down the emotion that was thick in his throat, and whispered, “Godspeed, Erik.”
54
Bishop saw the woman in the Zodiac waving an object over her head. The warning was clear: back off or I’ll blow us all to hell. He looked past her and spotted the familiar olive-drab cylinder of the backpack nuke. The sight filled him with a sense of relief. Favreau hadn’t deployed it yet. If she blew the bomb now, only she and Bishop would die.
“Do it,” he murmured. “Save me the trouble.”
Her wave-off became more frantic, and Bishop knew that what he had to do needed to be done quickly. He eased back on the cyclic, allowing the helicopter’s forward momentum to take it the rest of the way, and used the rudder to maneuver to a stop directly over the little boat. He spun the Mil around until he could just see her through the transparent bubble window beneath his feet. Then, with the same calm detachment that had gotten him this far, he twisted the collective-pitch control, flattening the rotor blades.
The helicopter dropped like a stone and Bishop closed his eyes, waiting for the brilliant light that would—
There was a cacophony of metal crunching and shearing apart, bulkheads twisting, the rotor blades snapping off their axle. The Mil jolted violently and Bishop felt the flight seat collapse beneath him. A spike of pain shot up his spine as he was driven straight down by the sudden stop. His head snapped forward, glancing off the cyclic control stick, and the taste of blood filled his mouth, as his teeth were slammed together, removing a small piece of tongue. The impact left him momentarily stunned, but as that moment gave way to the next and then another, he knew that he had failed.
The bomb had not detonated.
It seemed impossible that Favreau could have avoided the crash without inadvertently releasing her grip on the trigger.
Wa
s the bomb a dud after all? He couldn’t take that chance.
Wracked by pain, Bishop hauled himself up. In that instant, the helicopter started to roll beneath him, and he was thrown sideways into a bulkhead. As he struggled to move again, a wave of cold water blasted him back.
The calm that had guided him through what he had expected to be the last few seconds of his life fell into ruin, as agony and desperation reawakened the beast within.
He pulled himself out of the cockpit and into the half-submerged cabin. Water streamed in through dozens of cracks in the fuselage, but most of it was rising up through the sliding door, which had buckled inward upon impact. The pressure change in his ears told him that the helicopter was already sinking.
Bishop plunged both hands into the water and found the bent metal door. With a heave, he wrenched it out of its track and pitched it aside, then dove down into the water. He kicked away from the submerged aircraft and followed the line of bubbles trailing away from it, clawing his way back to the surface.
The Zodiac floated just a few yards away. The impact of the falling helicopter had evidently caused it to squirt free, like a bean from its husk.
While his kamikaze dive had not quite had the expected effect, it had done significant damage to the rigid-hulled inflatable craft. Though it was still afloat, several of its inner tube-like air cells had collapsed, allowing the lake to pour in.
As Bishop stared at the Zodiac, incredulous, he saw a hand appear on its far side, gripping the air bladder. Another hand fell beside it, and then a bedraggled Monique Favreau hauled herself up and out of the water.
Bishop saw that her hands were empty. She had lost the dead-man trigger in the crash, but the bomb had not detonated.
The bomb.
Bishop’s gaze fell on the canvas pack, still nestled inside the boat, held in place by its own weight. Favreau looked at it, too. Then she saw Bishop.
Savage (Jack Sigler / Chess Team) Page 32