by Jon Land
It was 7:56.
The Indian was breathing hard. Blood dripped from the exposed areas of his neck, face, and arms. Cold wind and snow blew into the control room through the window he had left shattered. In the corridor men were pounding on the entrance to the command center.
Wareagle stripped a green thermolite charge from his belt and tossed it at the computer room door. He hit the floor right next to Blaine.
The door exploded inward, smoke and splinters surrounded them. Together they regained their feet and rushed into automatic fire, obviously from Hollins.
“Don’t kill him!” Blaine screamed to Wareagle. “Don’t kill him!”
Johnny had already made the connection. His knife split the air and lodged in the fleshy part of the shooter’s wrist. Hollins screamed in agony and let the gun slide to the floor. The knife was buried in his flesh up to the hilt, the blade poking out the other side of his wrist, and blood spreading down the sleeve of his denim shirt.
An instant later Wareagle was holding another knife against the soft flesh of his jugular.
“The abort signal!” Blaine demanded. “Where is it?”
Hollins said nothing.
“You haven’t got the guts to die, Hollins,” Blaine shot out at him. “Tell me or the Indian rips your throat out.”
Hollins’s breathing came fast and hard. His eyes fought to see the blade perched on his throat.
“The abort signal!” Blaine repeated. “Now!”
The clock turned to 7:59.
“There’s a key beneath the center console,” Hollins wheezed. “Turn it.”
Blaine rushed to the center console and followed his instructions. A red button popped up on the console.
“Press it and you’ll activate the abort sequence,” Hollins explained between labored breaths.
Blaine depressed the red button. The console seemed to swallow it.
“Abort system triggered,” a mechanical male voice announced. “Contingency plan now in effect. …”
Blaine and Johnny looked at each other. The clock clicked to 8:00.
“Repeat, contingency sequence now in effect. …”
Blaine yanked Hollins free of Johnny’s grasp and shook him hard. “What just happened? What did I just do?”
Hollins looked up at him with strange calm, quivering from the pain in his wrist. “You can’t win, son. You never could. You haven’t aborted Omega, you’ve merely postponed it. Even now, our satellite has begun shutting down all telecommunications for just a few seconds as a signal to Sahhan’s troops not to abandon their mission, but to wait twenty-four hours till when the communications are shut down again—for good this time. That will be the signal for them to launch their strike. Everything will proceed as planned. Only the sequence will have been affected.”
“But the abort sys—”
“There never was any abort system, son. Terrell’s people learned of it because we wanted them to. Disinformation, you might call it, developed as a final security precaution against a successful penetration of our defenses. Did you really think we’d be foolish enough to leave such a hole in our operation?”
“There’s got to be a way to stop it, Hollins, there’s got to be!”
“Then try to make the computer work.”
Blaine touched one of the console keys. His hand was jolted by a surge of electricity.
“Pressing the abort switch automatically shut down the computer once it had issued its final instructions,” Hollins explained triumphantly. “It will accept no more instructions for thirty-six hours and has been programmed, like our satellite, to defend itself against penetration. It has already beamed a signal to the satellite telling it to activate the complete stage of Omega beginning at eight o’clock tomorrow night, eastern standard time. There’s nothing you can do to stop that now. Not even the computer can stop it. The satellite is on its own. You’ve triggered the Omega command, son.”
“Then I’ll blow your fucking computer up!”
And Blaine grasped the machine gun still lying on the floor.
“Go ahead,” Hollins taunted. “Destroy the computer, and the effects of Omega will become irreversible. There will be no way of telling the satellite to reactivate communications once it has shut them down.”
Blaine let the machine gun slide from his hands. “You bastard! There’s got to be a way!”
“There isn’t. It’s over. You’ve lost, son. The satellite is operating on its own, prepared to trigger the entire operation tomorrow night, and it’s beyond even your reach.”
Blaine’s eyes were still locked on the computer, searching for the impossible. The calm certainty of Hollins’s words lulled his attention away from him long enough for Hollins’s good hand to creep from his pocket holding a small pistol. Blaine saw it and saw Wareagle start in motion from the other side of the room. But he knew the Indian could never reach Hollins in time to prevent him from firing, and neither could he.
Blaine’s hands locked on the rolling desk chair in front of one of the computer terminals. In one sudden, swift action he propelled the chair forward as Hollins’s arm came up to aim.
The chair crashed into him. His legs were yanked from under him and he reeled backward.
Hollins struck the computer with enough force to send 30,000 volts charging through his body, frying him as he stood. His flesh turned purple, and his eyes bulged to twice their normal size, jeans and denim shirt smoking. His mouth dropped for a scream which lasted barely a second before death swallowed it, though the current kept him pinned there, writhing, his entire frame a mass of jittery convulsions.
“The main door, Blainey! They’re almost through it!”
That lifted McCracken from his trance and he rushed with Wareagle into the control room toward the shattered window. A series of ropes ran from the roof to six feet above ground level. Obviously, Wareagle had escaped the battle in the courtyard by way of the roof and then had climbed down the top portion of the rope to gain entry into the command center.
They slid down the rope quickly, hands burned raw from the coat of ice on its strands. When they let go, the cushiony snow broke their falls, and Johnny shot the rope down with a single burst from a machine pistol to prevent the guards from imitating their rapid plunge.
They ran together through the woods toward the dock. Wareagle’s instinctive sense of direction gave him the lead, and before the exertion stole too much of Blaine’s breath away, he was able to think out loud.
“The satellite! It’s the key now. If we destroy it, we destroy Omega!”
“The spirits do not roam the skies, Blainey. We must seek help elsewhere.”
“There’s no time! Who would believe us?”
“We must try,” Wareagle shouted as he ran. “No other choice.”
Suddenly Blaine realized there was. “Florida,” he muttered. “We’ve got to get to Florida. Canaveral.”
That was the last of the conversation between them. They drew closer to the general area of the shoreline, where the boat was docked. Johnny gave his hoot-owl signal. Nightbird would be expecting them now.
They could hear the pounding of boots, everywhere, it seemed, all around them. Both freed their machine guns from their shoulders and ran with the barrels poised and ready. The shoreline was just up ahead, under its thick blanket of snow. The storm showed no signs of letup. If anything, the snow was coming down harder than ever. Blaine and Johnny lunged into a clearing.
Forty yards ahead was the pier. Both strained their eyes. Incredibly, the boatman’s craft was still tied up in place.
Suddenly men dashed in front of them and opened fire. Blaine took a few out with a single spurt, but his position was now forfeit and the shore was clearly held by Wells’s troops. Wells might be lying back in the command center with a pulverized face, but he wasn’t finished with them yet.
From his position of cover in the snow, Blaine could see the troops fanning out between him and the pier. No wonder they had left the boat intact. It
was the bait for a trap he and Wareagle had stumbled right into. But what of Sandy, the boatman, and Nightbird?
Then he made out rapid footsteps, crushing the snow well behind him, evidence that more of the troops were giving chase from the mansion. He and Wareagle were surrounded, or would be shortly. There was barely enough time to act.
“Any explosives left?” Blaine whispered to Johnny as machine-gun fire whizzed over their heads.
“Two thermolites.”
“Give me one. You take the right. I’ll take the left. We’ve got to reach that boat.”
Wareagle nodded his acknowledgment. More machine-gun fire coughed up snow into their faces. The pounding steps behind them sounded closer.
“Go!” Blaine signaled.
And in unison they rose and sprinted parallel to the shore in opposite directions. Snow spit everywhere around him as Blaine ran. The storm and the darkness were confusing the troops’ aim, but they were sure to lock on to him before long. Blaine estimated there were at least fifteen soldiers facing him, perhaps as many as twenty, most concentrated in the area fronting the pier. He ripped the tab from his thermolite bomb and hurled it at them. Wareagle did the same on his side.
Blaine then circled back for the boat and timed his entry into the open for the moment the explosives would ignite on the beach. His blast came an instant prior to Wareagle’s, and, again, as if on cue, they started moving inward in an attempt to catch as many of the now defensive troops in their crossfire. He rushed right at them, machine-gun hot in his hands.
Then it jammed and he knew he was dead. But he caught the flash of motion at the far edge of the dock, coming from behind the enemy troops’ line. As if in answer to a prayer, a figure covered with snow rose from the white blanket with a rifle in his hands, cutting Wells’s men down as if they were bowling pins falling to a perfect strike. A few turned to offer resistance, but Wareagle, coming fast from the right, used his final burst to kill them. In seconds the bodies were strewn everywhere, warm blood cutting scars in the deep snow.
Blaine discarded his jammed gun and sprinted toward the snowcrusted wielder of the rifle, fully expecting it to be the sharpshooter Nightbird, but this figure looked taller, and as Blaine got closer he saw why.
It was the boatman!
“Never did fancy these things much,” he said, and tossed the rifle to the snow. “If I was you, friend, I’d want to make it off this island real fast.”
The snow stirred below him and Sandy Lister rose to her feet, brushing the white powder from her clothes and coughing it free of her mouth. She was about to speak, when more shots split the air, coming from the woods.
“Get to the boat!” Blaine shouted.
Wareagle was already halfway there, the boatman well on his way. Sandy stumbled and Blaine reached to aid her. Together they started to cover the twenty yards of beach and pier that separated them from the small craft.
“Hurry, Blainey!” Wareagle called out as he untied the ropes from the pilings.
McCracken trudged faster through the thick snow. Sandy slipped and he yanked her back to her feet. Behind him a new series of bullets had begun to sound, smooth and even. The last of the enemy troops had finally come within Nightbird’s patient range and were paying for it. But even Nightbird couldn’t shoot down all of Wells’s men. A stray bullet caught Sandy in the leg and pitched her forward. Blaine knelt to pick up her unconscious frame.
The black shape hurled itself at him through the darkness. A scream punctured the night and Blaine knew before a set of massive hands had closed around him that it was Wells, far from dead, with fury lending him more strength than ever. They rolled in the snow, the scarred man’s hands searching for a grip on his throat. The good side of his face was bruised and bloodied, but his remaining eye still focused well enough to land a fist against Blaine’s jaw, stunning him.
They rolled again, and McCracken ended up on top, cracking the scarred man’s teeth with an elbow and then struggling to regain his feet. Wells reached out when he had almost made it and tripped him up.
A knife flashed in the scarred man’s hand.
It came down swift and sure, and only Blaine’s sudden move to the right stopped it from splitting his throat in two. Wells slashed again, and this time McCracken dodged to the left, at the same time jamming a hand up under the scarred man’s chin.
Wells seemed not to feel it. He plunged the knife down a third time and McCracken caught his wrist early and high, pinning it in the air. Wells’s teeth bared like an animal’s, and he screamed again as his free hand shot down for Blaine’s throat.
McCracken felt the fingers digging into his flesh, trying to tear through. His eyes bulged with fear. He fought futilely to pry the fingers off, the last of his breath choked off and his strength starting to give.
Wells tensed suddenly. The hand locked on Blaine’s throat spasmed, then let go. Wells spilled over backward, an arrow embedded a third of the way up its shaft through his good eye.
Dead this time.
Blaine looked up to see Wareagle kneeling on the dock above the boat, sliding another arrow into place to deal with a guard rushing from the woods, gun clacking. More men followed behind him.
“Come on!” Johnny shouted.
Blaine picked up the unconscious Sandy and ran toward the boat with bullets scorching the air around him. He kept his frame as low as he could and lowered Sandy’s body to Johnny as soon as he reached the boat. The boatman had begun to inch it away from the dock and Blaine jumped to the deck. The bullets followed them from the shore but they kept low and soon gained the full protection of darkness and snow.
“The souls of Bin Su can rest now, Blainey,” Wareagle said softly.
“Twenty years too late,” McCracken replied.
“How is she?” Blaine asked Johnny after the boatman had steered them safely through the rocks.
“The bullet passed through,” the Indian reported. “The spirits deflected it. The woman was not meant to die tonight, Blainey. She is strong, just as I told you this afternoon.”
“She’ll need a doctor.”
“Nightbird will arrange for one.”
“Nightbird’s still on the island.”
“With the spirits guiding his bullets. He will stop them from pursuing us in boats and then he will steal a boat for himself and return to the dock where we started.” Wareagle’s eyes looked up at the boatman. “She will be safe with him until Nightbird returns.”
Blaine accepted because he had to. “I’m sorry about your men, Indian,” he offered lamely.
“They have made their peace with the spirits, Blainey. They are better off than you and I.” He paused. “The spirits laughed when you spoke of going to Florida. I heard them. We must not tempt their good graces. They have helped us get this far. To ask for more would be to mock that favor. Ask for too much and you receive nothing.”
“Then we’ll have to help ourselves, Indian. Cape Canaveral’s our next stop, and we’ve got to get there by late tomorrow morning.”
“What lies there for us, Blainey?”
“Our only remaining means to stop that satellite from activating Omega: an armed space shuttle called Pegasus. It’s scheduled to launch on Friday with a practice run-through tomorrow. We’re going to pay the shuttle a Christmas visit, Johnny.”
“To help it on its way?”
“To hijack it.”
Chapter 32
FOR NATHAN JAMROCK it had already been a ten-Rolaids day, and he had stored an extra pack in his pocket in anticipation of things getting even worse.
“Say again, Paul,” he said into his headset from his position in the control room of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“I said, screw all the other preparations tests,” came back the voice of Pegasus commander Paul Petersen from the cabin of the shuttle seven hundred miles away in Florida. “Just make sure you get the crappers workin’ this time. Plumbers charge a hell of a price for a house call in outer space.” Petersen was a cornb
read southerner from Alabama who’d dreamed of being an astronaut ever since John Glenn orbited the Earth in Friendship 7. Taking care of bodily needs and functions in outer space hadn’t occurred to him much in those days.
Jamrock popped another pair of Rolaids into his mouth. “The commodes check out fine, Paul.”
“Sheeeee-it, that’s what you said last time and I nearly died of spontaneous combustion when I had to hold my crap in for two days.”
“We got the problem fixed.”
“I’m fixin’ on bringing ya back a shoe box full if you’re wrong, boss.”
In spite of himself, Jamrock smiled. Petersen was the right man for this mission. No question about it. Career air force and a military man all the way and this was, after all, a military mission. It was also the most important mission Jamrock had ever been associated with. Pegasus had to go up tomorrow. It was as simple as that. Before that could happen, though, almost a thousand tests had to be successfully completed. After Challenger, NASA could not afford to submit itself to second-guessing. And yet, if Pegasus couldn’t make it up … Jamrock chose not to complete the thought. He’d give himself another ten minutes and then chew two more Rolaids.
“Commander, this is Jamrock, do you read?”
“Dirty books, boss, read ’em all the time. What can I do for ya?”
Jamrock consulted a clipboard his assistant had just handed him. “We have clearance on all primary boosters, fuel flows, and jettisoning outlets.”
“Gonna get to work on the crappers now, boss?”
“Launch countdown stands at T-minus twenty-four hours, thirty-one minutes, Paul. We’ll be ready to start your lift-off run-through anytime you’re ready.”
“Me and Bob would be more than happy to oblige ya, but the weapons officer ain’t made it here yet.”
“Where the hell is he?”
“Since this is a precise run-through, he’s probably taking a crap like he will before lift-off tomorrow. I’ll tell ya, boss, we should be carryin’ diapers up this time just in case.”
“Get back to me when the weapons man is on board, Paul.”
Jamrock stripped off his headset and massaged his temples. He hated run-throughs even more than he hated launches, because although he was in charge, he wasn’t in control. From seven hundred miles away from the launch pad, all he had to rely on were faceless voices and endless dials, gauges, and computer overviews. Once Pegasus was in the air, it was his baby, but until then too many things could go wrong. Not that the situation would be any different once this particular shuttle reached outer space.