The seconds counted down. The instant the clock registered zero, the skipper felt a jolt as compressed air pushed a Tomahawk cruise missile from tube one.
The missile's wings popped out and its engine ignited as it broke the surface of the sea. It roared into the air and climbed to several hundred feet above the water before it leveled off. It was already headed west, pointed almost exactly at its target. As the missile flew it acquired the signals from eight GPS satellites and updated its position.
Sixty seconds later, a second missile came out of the water and roared away after the first.
Its work done, the submarine turned back to the east and silently descended below the thermal layer.
The staccato, irregular ripping of fully automatic weapons firing bursts echoed down the long interior corridor of the horse barn. Then came the louder booms of explosions. The ripping of assault rifles, a deeper, louder belching of machine guns, and the boom of explosions mingled into a rising roar.
The guard stared at Rip, consternation written on his face.
He looked right, then left at the main doors to the barn. Rip started to get to his feet.
'Hold it,' the guard shouted, raising his rifle to his shoulder. 'Don't move.' Rip sat back down.
The guard stood up, backed into the stall behind him so that he could not be seen from the doors on either end of the barn.
'Gonna wait until they come kill you?' Rip asked over the cacophony.
The guard didn't know what to do, that was obvious. He opened the window in the stall behind him and peered out carefully.
Rip gathered himself. This was his chance, if he could only get the hell out of this barn!
Several bullets struck the wood around the window that the guard was looking through. Little puffs of wood and dust exploded into the still air.
The guard rushed to the corridor. He looked both ways, then ran for the end of the barn nearest the house as the rifle fire grew louder. It sounded as if someone were shooting just outside.
Rip peered around the edge of the stall, watched as the guard scanned the area outside the barn, then ducked out the main door.
He trotted down the corridor and peeked around the large board door that the guard had just gone through.
The guard was lying twenty feet from the door, his rifle beside him. The man lay absolutely motionless, apparently shot dead.
Rip drew back. He could hear bullets thunking into the upper walls and beams, like the patter of rain but more irregular.
Just then the booming crack of a tank gun rolled through the barn like thunder. Then another. What in hell was going on?
The sounds of battle apparently caught Hedrick and the European delegation off guard. Pieraut loudly demanded to know who was shooting and what did it mean. Hedrick picked up the telephone and dialed it.
Within thirty seconds Krasnoyarsk and the senior Chinese bidder rushed into the room.
Pieraut went to the big window behind Hedrick's desk and looked out across the lawn. Just as he did so, something came through one of the top panes, shattering it. Pieraut ducked for cover as shards of glass rained down onto the carpet.
Hedrick shouted into the receiver. 'Find them. Bring them to the library under armed guard. He banged down the telephone receiver. 'Japanese commandos,' he said. 'At least a dozen, trying for the saucer.'
'If we don't get the saucer intact, we won't pay you a cent,' Pieraut said, loudly enough for Charley Pine to hear.
'Obviously,' Hedrick snapped.
'We should leave now, fly it out of here while we still can.'
Hedrick wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He dabbed at his palms. A bullet hit another small pane of glass in the big window, shattering it. Hedrick didn't even flinch.
Charley Pine put on her flight jacket, walked over to the small refreshment bar, and poured herself a drink of water.
Hedrick has a heck of a problem, Charley thought. If she had needed any confirmation of Hedrick's intentions, his indecision just now certainly supplied it. He never intended for the saucer to reach Paris. However, if he destroyed it before he received the Europeans' money, he would probably never get paid. The saucer had to be intact and Pieraut alive and well when the money arrived in Hedrick's banks or he would never be able to hang on to the bucks.
And then there were the Japanese. The commandos were either trying to steal the saucer or destroy it, and if they succeeded at either mission Hedrick wasn't going to collect money from anyone. It was a nice problem.
Charley helped herself to another glass of water. More bullets came through the main window, and the crowd around Hedrick's desk ducked below the level of the windowsill.
'Where is my army protection?' Hedrick roared at the two government ministers, who were huddled on the floor beside him.
As if in answer, a tank loosed off a round nearby. The boom took out another couple of windowpanes.
Just then Red Sharkey and two of his men marched the senior Japanese delegate, Hideo Ota, into the room at the point of a gun. Sharkey had a battery-powered radio transceiver in his hand. It was squawking gobbledygook.
Hedrick went at Ota like a tiger. ''What is going on?' he roared.
Hideo Ota had had it with Hedrick. His face twisted in a snarl. 'How would I know?' he asked in heavily accented English.
'I think your government is trying to steal the saucer or destroy it. You knew your government wasn't bidding in good faith.'
'I don't care what you think,' Ota replied and calmly crossed his arms. Hedrick slapped him. To his credit, the negotiator pretended not to feel the blow.
Apparently shocked by his own behavior, Hedrick backed away several steps and wiped his face again. He put the handkerchief in his pocket, squared his shoulders, shot his cuffs, checked his tie.
His eyes came to rest on Charley Pine. 'Fly the saucer to Paris,' he said.
'How is she going to get to the hangar?' Red Sharkey asked. 'They're having a war out there.'
The two Tomahawk missiles flew only a hundred feet above the waves. They flew into a rain shower, rode through the turbulence, and came flying out the other side unaffected.
The crew of a small fishing boat making a set saw the missiles. Before the sailors caught sight of the missiles, they heard the engines over the noise of the boat's diesel engine. One of the men pointed, and seconds later the first missile flew almost over the boat. The second one passed a hundred yards to the south about a minute later.
When the missiles had disappeared in the haze to the west and the noise of their engines had faded, the fishermen talked about what they had seen. The captain radioed his base in Sydney — his wife — and left it to her to decide if the government should be informed about the missiles. Then the fishermen went back to work.
Rip Cantrell ran back down the central corridor of the horse barn. He looked in every stall. If he could find a vehicle, figure out a way to get to the house, where Charley was…
Nothing. Four very nervous horses were prancing in their stalls, nickering loudly, their eyes rolling, but there wasn't even a golf cart in the barn.
He reached the end farthest from the house and peeked through tiny cracks between the boards of the door. Two tanks were clanking down the hill, men were running for the foxholes at the base of the hill, wisps of smoke were rising from a far tree line.
Even as he watched, something struck one of the tanks. It seemed to stagger as fire and smoke erupted from the open top hatch. The tank ground to a halt. One man tried to climb from the hatch with his clothes on fire. His face was blackened. He got halfway out of the turret and collapsed facedown. Smoke rose from his clothing.
Rip went back through the barn, opening tack-storage closets and food bins. He was near panic when he saw a silver serving tray sitting on top of a barrel. On the tray were two empty wineglasses.
Rip opened the door to the main storage room. Tools, saddles, bridles, brooms, sacks of feed… and a door. He jerked it open. A stairway led down. Rip dash
ed down the stairs as the door swung shut behind him.
At the bottom of the stairs was a narrow corridor that turned right, toward the main house. The underground corridor was lit by bulbs every thirty or forty feet. Rip ran along it.
He saw a stairway ahead. The door at the top was unlocked. On the other side he found himself in another narrow passageway.
There was something familiar about this one…
He had been here before! He was under the main house. He kept going, went around a turn, and was looking through a glass panel in a door into the kitchen. No one in sight.
Staying low, below the tops of the counters, he slipped through the kitchen and took a look into the main dining room.
A man with a rifle was moving from window to window, looking out.
Rip looked around the kitchen. A rolling pin was handy, so he picked it up. As he turned he saw the dining room door opening, and he ducked down.
The man came along between the work islands. As he hurried by, Rip smacked him in the knee with the rolling pin.
The man went down hard, swearing. Before he could get the unwieldy rifle around in that confined space, Rip tapped him experimentally on the head with the pin. The thunk of wood against skull was sickening. The Aussie collapsed to the floor and let rip a mighty oath.
Rip gritted his teeth. He was going to have to hit the man harder, take the chance of cracking his skull. He swung the pin again, put more muscle into it.
The gunman went limp.
Rip got the rifle, checked the magazine, eased the bolt back for a look. Yep, he saw the gleam of brass.
The safety must be this lever here, and it was on.
He had done enough hunting as a teenager to be familiar with rifles, but he had never before handled a genuine assault weapon. Two spare magazines were in the unconscious man's pockets. Both were full of cartridges.
The gunman was out cold. Or dead. Rip felt his carotid artery for a pulse. still there. He touched his skull where the rolling pin had whacked him. A large knot, big as an egg, was swelling up. The skull didn't feel pulpy.
With the rifle at the ready, Rip Cantrell slipped out of the kitchen into the dining room, then made his way deeper into the main house.
Captain Koki Owada of the Japanese Self-Defense Force threw himself against the bottom of the hangar personnel door and tried to catch his breath. Four of his men threw themselves to the ground near him.
He had had six men with him when he started; two were now dead.
Owada keyed the microphone switch on the back of his left hand and spoke into the headset he wore. 'Red One is at the hangar door. We're going in now.'
'Blue One, roger. The Diggers have their heads down.' Blue One started the day with two dozen commandos. Koki Owada had not asked how many were still alive.
'Red Two, open the door.'
Lieutenant Kawaguchi complied.
Owada dove through the door with his rifle at the ready.
No people visible.
The saucer sat in the middle of the bay facing the door.
Owada scanned the gloomy interior, ready to shoot. Not a soul in sight.
He posted two of his men outside, then he and Kawaguchi approached the saucer.
Extraordinary. It was so large, so…
'Red One.'
Owada looked at Kawaguchi, who was pointing to a bloodstain on the concrete floor. Owada nodded, then turned back to the saucer.
The captain circled it once. The exhaust pipes were pointing toward the back wall, so apparently the thing was facing the closed hangar door.
'Red Three, it's all yours.'
Red Three was a test pilot. Getting him and his colleague, Red Four, here was Owada's mission. Unfortunately, Red Four had stopped a bullet ten minutes ago and died instantly.
Everything now rested on Red Three's shoulders, Captain Ikeda. He had been on the secure satellite phone with the Japanese engineers who had inspected the saucer — and were now safely hidden in the rooms of the main house — so he knew where the main entrance hatch was. Unfortunately, he didn't know how to open it. The American test pilot had always opened and closed the hatch, and the Japanese engineers were afraid of making her suspicious by asking how it was done. After all, how difficult could it be?
While Red Three examined the hatch mechanism, Owada inspected the hangar door, a simple electric overhead door. When the time came, he had merely to push the button.
Owada permitted himself a smile. Things were going well.
Red Sharkey and Roger Hedrick huddled together in the back of the room around Sharkey's handheld radio transceiver, trying to get a handle on the military situation. Charley Pine seated herself in a huge stuffed chair well back from the window, facing the door to the hallway. Once again, she had both her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, her right wrapped around the grip of Rigby's Walther.
Why no one had found Rigby Charley couldn't imagine. Maybe they found him and thought the Japanese commandos worked him over. Maybe Hedrick didn't give a fig about Rigby. This possibility was the most likely, she decided. All Hedrick's lieutenants were expendable, like so many paper clips.
The pistol in her pocket gave her a fool's confidence, and she knew it. She tried to fight it back. still, she had made up her mind: If anyone came at her in a belligerent way, she was going to start shooting.
She watched Pieraut — he was nervous now — and the Australian politicians, who were trying to telephone someone for help. The politicos were seated side by side on the floor in front of Hedrick's desk with the telephone. Finally they realized that the lines must be down. They abandoned the phone and hugged their knees.
She was facing the main doorway to the library, so she was the first to see Rip when he eased his head around the opening and looked in. He saw her too.
She glanced around the room to see who was paying attention, then stood and walked for the door. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Hedrick look up, then elbow Sharkey.
She walked through the door, saw Rip and his rifle. 'Could you shoot someone with that?' she asked. The look on Rip's face was the answer. Charley Pine took the rifle, flipped off the safety, then stepped back through the doorway to the library and leveled the weapon hip high at Red Sharkey, who was striding toward her with a pistol in his hand.
Sharkey was almighty quick. He leaped sideways as the rifle went off. The bullet smacked into the glass door of a cabinet near Hedrick, who dove for cover.
All of a sudden everyone in the room wanted to be flat on the floor.
Charley Pine took another shot at Sharkey. She hit him this time. Wounded, he started to rise, the pistol still in his right hand. Somehow he snapped off a shot, which missed her.
She lifted the rifle to her shoulder, aimed, and shot Red Sharkey in the chest.
'Holy damn!' she heard Rip exclaim, then he was reaching for her arm. 'Let's go!'
One of Hedrick's thugs was on the floor eyeing Charley as he drew a pistol. She shot him too, then turned and followed Rip.
'We're going to have a hell of a time getting to the hangar,' she called as they ran down the hall.
'Upstairs! Let's go upstairs! The room with all the windows!'
'On top of the house? What good will that do?' Rip bounded to the stairway and charged upward. Charley had no choice but to follow.
The Tomahawk missiles crossed the Australian coast just north of Sydney harbor. They were in the terrain-matching mode at this point, flying a mere two hundred feet above the ground. The radar in the noses of the missiles scanned the flight path ahead for obstacles, then turned or climbed the missiles to avoid them. They eased over low hills, went around a radio tower, all the while continuously matching their computed position against the information they received from their GPS receivers. Course corrections were minute.
Red Three, Captain Ikeda, called Koki Owada over to the saucer. 'I can't open this hatch,' the test pilot said, obviously agitated. 'I can't figure out how to do it.'
'Is
there another way in?'
'Not if we are going to fly it out of here.'
'Keep trying.'
Owada called on his radio for a situation update from Blue One.
'We have them pinned down. No one seems to be in a hurry to leave their foxholes or bunkers.'
'And the people in the house?'
'Still there. Someone shot from one of the windows a while ago, but nothing lately. Are you in the saucer yet?'
'We're working on it.'
Owada asked the test pilot, 'Do you need some tools?'
'The engineers said the American woman opened this with her hand. No tools.'
'Take your time,' Owada said, pretending to a calm he didn't feel. To give the man time to think, he walked back to the open personnel door to check on his troops.
Owada kneeled by the door.
They were so close! Yet if they couldn't get into the saucer, they would have to destroy it. One of the troopers lying beside the hangar was carrying two optically aimed, wire-guided antitank missiles. The team had already used two: one on a fortified bunker and another on a tank. A missile warhead would punch a hole in the saucer and start a hot fire. A couple of magnesium grenades tossed into the hole should finish the job. What a waste that would be, Owada thought.
'Don't let them get in here,' Rip shouted at Charley Pine as he topped the stairs and entered the atrium. Charley rushed over to the private elevator and pushed the call button. She listened with her ear to the door and heard a hum.
Rip ran through the large room looking for people.
There was a woman with a telephone pressed against her ear sitting behind the large desk in the center of the room.
'Who are you?' Rip demanded.
She put her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. 'I'm Bernice Carrington-Smyth, if it's any of your business. And who, may I ask, are you?'
'Later. Who are you on the telephone with?'
'That's none of your — '
He lunged across the desk, grabbed the phone, and slammed it into the cradle.
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