The Omega Command

by Jon Land

  The heat inside the crate was stifling. He felt more cramped than ever and longed for more light to filter between the hairline cracks in the crate. His eyes would be his worst enemy if they were suddenly exposed to the blinding Caribbean sun. He would be unable to see and unable to fight. All he could do was hope it didn’t come to that.

  McCracken was shaken hard against the side of the crate as it was hoisted by forklift into the back of a truck. The meager light vanished, and darkness was total again. The minutes grew into an hour as the loading process continued. Blaine breathed his own sweat. The voices continued around him, sometimes laughing. A rumble sounded and he quickly realized it was the transport readying to lift off. There was another rumble, the engine of the truck he was stored in, and then Blaine was conscious of motion, slow at first but gradually picking up.

  The road to the truck’s destination was not smooth. Blaine was tossed against the crate’s sides, doing the best he could to cushion the blows with his hands. He was jerked every way imaginable.

  Blaine checked the luminous dial of his watch. Five forty-five, which left him three good hours of light to find what he was looking for. Fifteen minutes later the trucks came to a halt, the engines turned off, and the unloading process begun. McCracken could sense he was in a spacious building with a cool breeze soothing him from between the cracks of the crate. The unloading process went on and on. Blaine had only his watch to distract him from the monotony of his confinement. It wasn’t until six-thirty that the voices disappeared and a heavy door slammed closed. Blaine waited another ten minutes just to be sure, then drew his feet up to his chest and aimed them for a thrust at the crate’s removable panel. He kicked out hard.

  The panel didn’t give. Impact resounded in an echo he was certain would attract every guard in the compound.

  He waited another two minutes before shifting his body from one end of his compartment to the other. Obviously he had tried the wrong side, the cost being near exposure and a painful repositioning within the crate. Finally he drew his knees up to his chest again and repeated the procedure.

  The panel came away with surprising ease and fell to the floor.

  McCracken became utterly rigid, daring barely to breathe, as if his silence might erase the noise already made. He took a deep breath and pushed himself from his prison.

  His legs hit the cement floor and collapsed under him from the strain. He massaged them to get his circulation going, and pulled himself to his feet. His entire body felt compressed. He stretched his muscles and fought to loosen up. The pain was seething as his limbs expanded to normal size. Blaine’s eyes began their work.

  The room he was in was the size of a high school gymnasium with a high ceiling. Sun spilling in through the windows provided enough light to see that the floor was crammed with crates of all sizes. Blaine walked past them through dirt and dust, noting their contents. There were grenades, rifles, bazookas, and countless crates of ammunition. So far as he could tell no guard was prowling here, but he couldn’t tell what might lay beyond the huge sliding door. He would have to make a careful check before even contemplating his exit.

  A narrow ledge ran under the windows at the front of the building. Blaine leaned his shoulders against a crate and shoved it forward until it was almost touching the front wall. He pulled himself atop it and then, inhaling deeply, leaped for the ledge with his hands.

  They grasped the edge, and his legs smacked up against the wall. Grimacing, he started to pull himself up. The process was slow and agonizing, and Blaine was constantly aware that the slightest slip would mean a twenty-foot drop to a hard surface.

  Finally he was upright, wavering a little but maintaining his balance. Stealthily, he ducked down and gazed through the dust-coated window.

  What he saw took his breath away.

  The window looked out over an army base, on the perimeter of which lay a series of training fields, where dozens of men were drilling. Blaine saw target ranges, obstacle courses, hand-to-hand combat areas, war games props where two sides seemed to be engaging each other at that moment, one dressed in blue, the other in red. The target range was the farthest off and Blaine could barely make out the figures chewing up man-sized dummies with automatic weapons. The dummies danced mechanically across the field to give the shooters practice with moving targets.

  All the training fields were too far away to make out anything clearly. He would have to get closer to do that. But getting closer without drawing attention would be difficult. All the men were wearing combat fatigues, and McCracken didn’t have a pair handy. Besides, the soft scraping of boots beneath him indicated a guard was just outside this supply depot, not visible from his vantage point but nonetheless ruling out the possibility of Blaine escaping through the front. That left the back, where there was no door, and no convenient ledge below the windows. There were rafters, though, which ran beneath the whole ceiling. He would have to make use of them.

  What Blaine really needed now was rope, but a quick inspection of the hangar yielded none. His best substitute was the twine wrapped tightly around a number of crates. He yanked an all-purpose knife from his jacket pocket and set about cutting as much as he would need. It took another few minutes to fasten the twine strips together in knots learned long before in ’Nam.

  Blaine pulled the different segments of the twine taut to check for weakness and then, satisfied, he tied one end to the knife and looped it over the lowest rafter. Then he twisted both ends together so the twine swirled upward like a single snake. He began to scale it, using both his arms and legs. The twine was sharp, and his hands quickly grew raw. He felt the sweat soaking his eyes when he finally grabbed hold of the rafter and pulled himself onto it.

  He was in line with a window and he edged toward it. He reached for the latch. The window opened inward, allowing him ample passage out. Blaine felt for the twine behind him and passed its length out through the window. It came up three or four feet short of the ground, an easy drop at that point. Then he swung around so that he could pass his legs through the window first. Gripping the twine, he began to lower himself to ground level, where he landed firmly on his feet. He felt to make sure his knife and the Heckler and Koch were still in place. His next order of business was to obtain a uniform.

  The guard at the front of the building would have to help him out.

  Blaine moved to the side of the building and pressed himself against it, staying within its shadow. He crept along step by step until he was barely a yard from the corner. Then he kicked up dirt with his shoes. When that got no reaction, he dug deeper and rattled some pebbles.

  The guard’s boots pounded closer.

  Blaine waited for him to round the corner before he moved. The man saw only a shape lunge from the shadows. By the time his mind had registered anything else, McCracken’s blade had slid deep into his lower back. The guard stiffened and died without a sound. Blaine dragged him away from the corner farther into the shadows, then undressed him and pulled the guard’s clothes over his own. His placement of the wound allowed him to tuck that part of the dead man’s shirt into his pants. He noticed that the guard was white, which seemed peculiar, but there was no time to think about it.

  It took no more than a minute for Blaine to put on the entire uniform of the dead guard, a poor fit, with the pants baggy and short and the shirt too loose. He pressed the man’s corpse into a depression in the ground right against the building. Finally he stuck the Heckler and Koch into his belt, swung the guard’s M-16 over his shoulder, and took up his position in front of the storage hangar.

  From there he had a clear view of the various training stations, and inspection of them proved truly chilling. He recognized the methods of the same guerrilla training he had excelled in so many years ago. Several men at each station—the instructors, obviously—were dressed in darker uniforms topped with berets. Krayman was sparing no expense. He had probably hired the best paramilitary instructors available, men who had learned their trade in ’Nam or
Korea. Most of the drills he knew well, others appeared to have been modified for an urban climate rather than a jungle one.

  Blaine gazed to his right and saw rows of jeeps and troop carriers lined up in what must have been the motor pool. Beyond them lay a half dozen M60 tanks, scorched and scarred metal indicating they had seen battle at one time or another.

  Blaine was wondering what possible use the PVR could have for tanks when something else occurred to him. The techniques the men in the training fields were practicing had nothing to do with what they would face on Christmas Eve. All the drills were based around coming up against similarly armed and prepared men. By rights, though, the PVR would be using a hit and run, total terror strategy, destruction of property their foremost aim. People would die, but most easily without a fight. The only resistance they might meet would be token police forces at Christmas Eve strength; most of the population would be home watching Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Taking over major urban centers should prove effortless for such well-trained troops, but nothing they were practicing suggested that was what they expected.

  Intrigued, Blaine watched the men in the fields more closely; not the men specifically but their actions and mannerisms. These did not appear to be radical amateurs turned into murderous pros in ten easy lessons. There was a swiftness to their movements, a sureness in their stride, professional sureness.

  McCracken was still trying to reconcile this when a piercing siren went off. His heart leaped into his mouth and he felt panic rise with it. They knew security had been breached. The hundreds of soldiers off in the fields were sprinting closer to the main complex. Blaine held his ground and his breath.

  From over a thin rise a pair of tanks followed by more heavy equipment appeared with men trotting in step behind the machines. So they were calling out the heavy stuff to bring him in. …

  Then Blaine relaxed. The troops were just falling in, forming neat, precise rows on the edge of the cement area that contained the storage buildings and barracks. They were simply—

  Blaine’s mind stopped pondering. He squinted his eyes, then rubbed them. He could see the troops clearly now and what he saw was impossible.

  It couldn’t be. Yet it was.

  Every single man was white.

  McCracken’s phone call from Paris had deeply disturbed Andrew Stimson. A Christmas Eve strike by a revolutionary black group was bad enough. But add the involvement of someone like Randall Krayman and obviously even more was going on.

  McCracken claimed Krayman was financing the PVR’s supply of weapons. Why? What could the mysterious billionaire possibly have to gain from such an association? Stimson knew little about the man and had put a team of researchers on to him immediately after Blaine’s phone call.

  He would have stayed through the night himself, but fatigue finally consumed him. He had slept barely at all these past few days, and it was finally catching up with him. After he dozed off for the third time at his desk, Stimson figured it was time to call it quits for the day. He called his bodyguards and had his car brought to the front of Gap headquarters.

  The procedure was standard these days for high-ranking government officials, even clandestine ones like Stimson. Two cars with two bodyguards in each, one behind and one in front. Usually he opted to drive his car himself because he enjoyed the solitude and loathed the helpless feeling of being driven around. Tonight he had almost called for a driver, then figured handling the chore himself would do him good.

  Stimson climbed behind the wheel of his standard issue sedan and signaled his lead car to take off. The second one would hang back slightly, guarding against attack from the rear.

  A freezing drizzle had begun earlier that evening, and by the time the procession hit the middle of a surprisingly barren expressway, a steady snow had started up and the roads were icy slick. Automatically, Stimson turned up his windshield wipers and switched the climate control to defrost. The wipers streaked unevenly across the icy glass, but Stimson barely noticed, too much else on his mind.

  Obviously, Randall Krayman was using Sahhan because the Christmas Eve strike was part of a far more extensive plan. The implications promised to be catastrophic, with the PVR providing merely a spark.

  Behind Stimson, the following car began to close the gap.

  The Gap chief shuddered. Thank God for Blaine McCracken, he thought. No other agent confined by rules and regulations could have gotten this far. Stimson had been right in utilizing his skills.

  The following car had moved still closer, not more than twenty yards back now.

  Stimson checked the rearview mirror and felt something was wrong even before he realized one of the car’s headlights was out. Both had been working when they passed onto the expressway. Something must have happened back there while his thoughts had been elsewhere. The cars had been switched, his bodyguards taken out, and now the enemy was close enough to spit on.

  Stimson heard the roar of the engine as the car accelerated and drew up alongside him in the other lane. He floored his own pedal and started blasting the horn in the hope of attracting the attention of his men in the lead car.

  Both windows on the strange car’s passenger side slid open.

  Stimson’s throat clogged with panic, but he didn’t give in to it, even as black barrels were being steadied on the sills. Part of him was still a field man. Part of him responded the only way possible.

  Still holding the pedal to the floor and drawing closer to the lead car, Stimson veered sharply to the left, hoping to crunch the opposition’s vehicle and thus buy enough time for the lead car to drift back.

  It almost worked. Metal had just smacked against metal when the barrels blazed red and Stimson heard the glass around him shatter only after slivers of it had jammed into his flesh among the dozens of lead pellets stealing his life away. He tried to breathe, but his air was gone along with the steering wheel. He felt himself slumping, eyes locked painfully open, when another volley tore away his last grip on life. The trailing car slammed back into his and sent it careening madly for the guard rail, up and over the metal in a single leap down into a darkness that broke into flames on impact.

  Then death.

  Chapter 18

  THE RAMIFICATIONS OF what he was seeing were lost only briefly on McCracken as the shock subsided.

  There were not one, but two armies! One white and the other black. And Randall Krayman was financing both!

  Blaine’s mind could make no sense of it. There was too much happening too fast. He needed time to put things together.

  If Sahhan’s troops were being utilized on Christmas Eve, then where did these come in? As a supplement perhaps?

  No, that didn’t wash. The mix of the two armies would prove more volatile than their collective mission. Besides, these white troops were professional mercenaries. Compared to them, Sahhan’s army of fanatics were rank amateurs whose greatest weapons would be shock and surprise. The men he was watching now lined up squarely in rows wouldn’t need either. A similar number of these could—

  Another siren wailed, breaking Blaine’s train of thought. The men scattered in all directions, but mostly for the barracks. The leaders walked off together, leaving a small group of sentries to watch over the field and heavy equipment. Men were coming toward him from all angles and Blaine knew it wouldn’t be long before the body of the real guard would be discovered.

  He walked away from his post toward the fields, hidden by the similarly dressed men he passed among. He held the M-16 across his shoulder a bit tighter and felt in the gun belt for the exact location of its extra clips. For no particular reason he headed toward the target range, where mechanical dummies had made for realistic practice. Above him loomed a guard tower with men manning binoculars and a powerful machine gun. He did his best to appear to be doing what he was supposed to, moving slowly at the pace of an on-duty sentry.

  His eyes turned back toward the storage hangar just before he reached the field. The commotion was obvious. The m
en with berets were sprinting toward a large group of soldiers in their practice fatigues. The guard’s body had been discovered. Blaine cursed the sun for not setting earlier in the damn Caribbean. Darkness would have shielded the man’s body indefinitely.

  He reached the field, glad he had chosen it since it was the farthest from the base complex and in the proper direction to reach the airstrip. Instinctively, he had begun to contemplate escape. He had learned everything he was going to here on San Melas and nothing he had been expecting. The puzzle merely had more pieces thrown in. He would walk straight across the field, over the ridge, and make his way to the airstrip. Sooner or later another craft would take off and somehow he would have to make himself a passenger.

  Blaine was halfway across the field, when one of the mechanical dummies looked up at him. He froze in his tracks and felt a tremor of shock pass through him.

  The target wasn’t a dummy.

  It was a man. Shot full of holes and staring out through sightless eyes.

  The war games they were playing here were real, with flesh and blood used in place of cardboard silhouettes. The corpse’s features were too bloodied to make out clearly. Perhaps he was a recruit who hadn’t been making it. The law of San Melas might well be survival of the fittest. Only the best were sent off the island to …

  Where? Why?

  “Hey, you there! You’re off limits!”

  Blaine hadn’t heard the jeep squeeze to a halt. He turned slowly and faced two men with rifles at the ready.

  “This is my area. I’m just on guard duty.”

  “Bullshit! I don’t know you. I don’t—”

  McCracken acted before the sentence was complete. He felt the futility of his ruse, knew it would get him nowhere. He was going for the M-16 on his shoulder as he dove and found the trigger just as he struck the ground.