Fifteen minutes later, Anthony Price was escorted into the room by the general’s aide-de-camp.
“Good evening, Tony.”
Price looked at Drake and raised his eyebrows. “What’s going on, Frank?”
“What’s going on is this,” Richardson replied and jabbed the play button on the tape recorder.
He watched the expressions of the two men as they listened to the brief exchange. He detected nothing except genuine surprise—and in the case of Price, alarm.
“How the hell could Nichols have made that call?” Price demanded. He turned to Drake. “I thought you said that he was dead, soldier!”
“With all due respect, sir, Nichols is dead,” Drake replied tonelessly. He looked at Richardson. “General, I saw Nichols take a knife in the gut. You know that there’s no way a man can survive that unless he gets immediate medical attention—which wasn’t forthcoming.”
“You should have made sure he was dead,” Price snapped.
“Tony, that’s enough!” Richardson cut in. “I remember your after-action report, Sergeant. But you might want to explain the details to Mr. Price here.”
“Yes, sir.” Drake turned to Price. “Sir, our contact, Franco Grimaldi, was careless. He allowed Peter Howell to spot the trap. Howell took him down first, then came after Nichols and myself as we were closing in. Howell managed to get Nichols’s gun and shoot Grimaldi. At that point, I had no choice but to retreat. My orders were to conduct this operation in a clandestine fashion. If something went wrong, I was to fall back and wait for a better opportunity.”
“Which never came,” Price said sarcastically.
“The fortunes of war, sir,” Drake replied tonelessly.
“Enough backbiting!” Richardson snapped. “Drake followed orders, Tony. That the operation went to hell in a handbasket was not his fault. The question is, who is passing himself off as Nichols?”
“Peter Howell, obviously,” Price replied. “Clearly Nichols lasted long enough to give him the contact number.”
Richardson glanced at Drake. “Sergeant?”
“I agree that Nichols gave up the number, sir. And the rendezvous point, too. Otherwise your caller would have asked you to identify safe point Alpha. But I don’t think it was Howell.”
“Why?”
“Howell lives in this country, sir. Although he’s retired, we’ve long suspected that he’s still available for certain operations, and it came out that he and Smith worked together during Hades. I think Howell would go active if Smith asked him to, but he would do so only outside the country. That’s why he, not Smith, was in Palermo. I think Smith made that call, General.”
Richardson nodded. “So do I.”
“Smith…” Price muttered. “It all comes back to him. First he’s in Moscow, then Beria disappears. Now he’s here. Frank, you’ve got to take care of him once and for all.”
“Yes,” Richardson agreed. “Which is why I instructed him to go to safe point Alpha.” He looked at Drake. “Where you’ll be waiting.”
Wearing hightops, black pants and a turtleneck, and a dark nylon jacket, Jon Smith slipped out of his house and into his car. Driving out of Bethesda, he continually checked his mirrors. No vehicle fell in behind him on the quiet suburban streets. No tail picked him up on the beltway.
Smith crossed the Potomac and entered Fairfax County, Virginia. At this time of night traffic was light, and he drove quickly through the horse country around Vienna, Fairfax, and Falls Church. South of Alexandria he found the river again and followed it almost to the border of Prince William County. Here the affluent landscape gave way to stretches of waterfront bordered by thick forest. As he approached the county line, Smith saw safe point Alpha.
The Virginia Water and Power pumping station had been built in the 1930s, when coal was cheap and health issues nonexistent. The advent of newer, cleaner units, coupled with the outcries from environmentalists, were enough to close the plant in the early 1990s. Since then, all attempts to modernize the station had floundered on the rocks of budgetary considerations. So it continued to stand on the Potomac, a dark, hulking structure looking like some abandoned factory.
Smith turned off the two-lane blacktop and, cutting his headlights, cruised up the access road. He parked under a copse of trees a quarter mile away and, setting his backpack on his shoulders, jogged the rest of the way.
The first thing he noticed as he got close was the Cyclone fence—still shiny, topped with glistening razor wire. A fat padlock, showing no rust, secured the heavy chain around the front gates. The perimeter was well lighted, the halogen lamps giving a winterlike glow to the deserted parking lot in front of the plant.
Being used but not in use…
Smith had come across buildings like this before. The army preferred the neglected, the abandoned, and the derelict, where it could give its special squads the kind of training impossible to duplicate on military reservations. The Virginia Water and Power plant had that peculiar feel about it…used but not in use.
Perfect for safe point Alpha.
Smith circled almost the entire perimeter before he found a suitable entry point, where the fence met the river’s edge. Climbing over slippery rocks, he made his way around the fence, then sprinted across a section of the deserted parking lot to the nearest wall. After pausing to get his bearings he scanned the perimeter. He saw nothing, heard nothing except for the faint calls of night creatures near the water. Yet his intuition warned him that he was not alone. His call had sent a shiver along the web. He just couldn’t see the spider…. Yet.
Hugging the side of the building, Smith moved along the face of the wall, searching for an entry point.
Three stories above Smith, in the shadows of a broken window, Sergeant Patrick Drake watched Smith through night-vision binoculars. He’d picked him up as soon as Smith had climbed around the fence, the logical entry point. According to the contents of the dossier Drake had read, Smith was nothing if not logical. It was an admirable quality in a soldier, but one that made him predictable. And in this case, fatally vulnerable.
Drake had been flown to the plant by helicopter. Later on, a car would be waiting for him when he finished his work. Getting here so quickly had allowed him to familiarize himself with the plant’s layout, choose the killing ground, and find a vantage point from which to observe Smith’s entry.
There he was, at the door Drake had hoped he would find, testing it…opening it.
Drake turned away from the window and crossed the barren room that had once housed pumping machinery. His crepe-soled shoes moved soundlessly along the dusty concrete floor.
Slipping into the stairwell, he drew out his silenced Colt Woodsman. The .22 was an assassin’s weapon, meant for close-range work. Drake wanted to see Smith’s face before he shot him. Maybe the terror in his expression would help ease some of the pain Drake carried on account of the loss of his partner.
Or maybe I’ll gut-shoot him first, so that he can feel what Travis went through.
Two floors down, Drake paused in a landing and carefully pulled back a door that opened on a second pump room. The moonlight coming through the tall windows bathed the pitted concrete floor in what could have been a layer of ice. Moving swiftly from pillar to pillar, Drake positioned himself so that he had a clear view of another door, still closed. Given where Smith had entered, this was the only entry point into the room. Like any good soldier, Smith would check every space he encountered, making sure that it was secure, that no one would surprise him when his back was turned. But in this case, not even the logical precautions would save him.
Somewhere outside the pump room Drake heard a footfall. Slipping off the safety on the Woodsman, he trained the barrel on the door and waited.
Smith stared at the door, its metal sheath streaked with old red paint stains. Safe point Alpha. Where Travis Nichols would have gone to report in. Where the owner of the horribly mangled voice would be waiting.
He wouldn’t have come alone, Sm
ith thought. He’d have brought backup. But how many?
Smith shrugged the backpack off his shoulders. Digging inside, he brought out a small, round object the size of an India rubber ball. Then he drew out his SIG-Sauer and pushed open the door with the tip of his hightop.
The blanket of moonlight destroyed his night vision, making him blink. At the same time he took one step across the threshold. Suddenly something very hard slammed into his chest. The backpack fell from his grip as he staggered back. A second blow sent him spinning against the wall.
Smith felt as though his chest were on fire. Gasping, he tried to remain standing but his knees buckled. As he slid down the wall, he saw a shadow emerge from behind a pillar.
His thumb flicked the pin on the stun grenade in his hand. With a weak toss he threw it across the room and quickly covered his eyes and ears.
Drake advanced on Smith with the confidence of a hunter who knows he’s scored a direct hit—two, in fact. Both the bullets had hit Smith center mass. If the colonel wasn’t already dead, he soon would be.
Drake was relishing that thought when he saw a black sphere arc toward him. His instincts and reactions were superb, but he couldn’t cover his eyes in time. The stun grenade exploded like a supernova, blinding him. The shock wave hammered him to the ground.
Drake was young and very fit. During live fire training and on actual missions he had taken his share of explosions. As soon as he hit the ground he covered his head in case of shrapnel. He did not panic when, opening his eyes, he saw nothing but white. The flash would wear off in a few seconds. He still had his gun in his hand. He knew that he’d hit Smith and that he was down. All he had to do was wait for his sight to return.
Then Drake heard the distant wail of sirens. Cursing, he staggered to his feet. Although the room was still a blur he made it to the windows. His vision cleared enough for him to make out two red dots flickering between the trees bordering the access road.
“Goddamnit!” he roared as he heard the sirens. Smith had brought his own backup! Who were they? How many?
His vision almost normal, Drake rushed to where he’d seen Smith fall.
But he wasn’t there!
The sirens were getting louder. Cursing, Drake snatched up the backpack and headed into the stairwell. He made it outside just in time to see two sedans pull up in front of the gates.
Let ’em come, he thought. All they’re going to find is a body!
Staring at the loose wires dangling from the panel, Megan Olson struggled to fend off her despair. She had lost track of all the combinations she had tried, running different wires to different terminals. So far, nothing had worked. The shuttle’s air-lock door remained firmly sealed.
Her only consolation was that she thought she’d fixed her mike. But she didn’t want to test it just yet.
Calm down, she told herself. There’s a way out of here. All you have to do is find it.
It was maddening that less than a foot away, on the other side of the door, was the emergency-release lever. All Dylan Reed had had to do was pull it.
Instead he’s going to let you die. Like all the others…
No matter how hard she tried, Megan could not distance herself from the horror of Reed’s actions. For the last several hours she had listened in on his terse, intermittent conversations with Harry Landon at mission control. In one of them, he had given a graphic description of the bodies.
But how did he get a sample?
From Treloar! Klein had told her about the theft from Bioaparat and how Treloar had helped smuggle the Russian smallpox sample into the country. But how had Treloar gotten the virus to the launch site? He was killed soon after landing in Washington.
That’s when she remembered the morning of the liftoff, being unable to sleep, taking a walk in the darkness, seeing the launch pad in the distance, seeing Reed…Then the anonymous visitor, approaching him, handing him something, and leaving. Could it have been a last-minute transfer? It had to be.
If what Reed had received was in fact smallpox, Megan thought, then it would have remained stable until the shuttle was in orbit and Reed could store it in the biofreezer.
The Spacelab! Suddenly she remembered the message that had come in to the flight deck. Minutes later, Reed had changed the experiments’ schedule, bumping her and taking the first slot for himself. He had explained it away so smoothly that no one, not even she, had questioned him.
Not even when you had seen the NASA log number for that message. Reed’s number. And you asked yourself how he could possibly have sent that message to himself….
Megan shook her head. The questions had been there, but she had ignored them. Instead, she had accepted the events as coincidence, had chosen to believe in the integrity of the man who had brought her to the stars.
The question of why Reed would be party to such a barbaric act plagued her. Even after she’d gone over everything she knew about him, no answer was forthcoming. There was something in him, about him, that she hadn’t seen. No one had.
Earlier, Megan had clung to the frail hope that Reed would return. A part of her could not believe that he would kill her in cold blood. But as the hours passed and she listened to his communication with mission control, she came to accept that as far as he was concerned, she was already dead.
Megan stared hard at the wiring panel. Because she was able to eavesdrop on the conversations with mission control, she knew how Harry Landon intended to bring down the shuttle and, more important, how long that would take. She still had time to figure out how to escape. Once she did, she would head straight for the auxiliary communications unit in the lower bay.
But if the wiring continued to foil her and time began to run out, she had one final option. Choosing to exercise it meant that the door would open—no doubt about that. But there was no guarantee that she would survive the aftermath.
Smith staggered to his feet, ripped off his jacket, and tore at the Velcro straps of his Kevlar Second Chance bulletproof vest. It was rated to stop anything up to a 9mm slug. But even though it had absorbed Drake’s .22s easily, Smith still felt as though he’d been kicked in the chest by a mule.
Getting into his car, he activated the global positioning system built into the dash. Instantly a glowing blue dot appeared on the small screen that showed a map of Fairfax County.
Smith reached for the phone.
“Klein here.”
“It’s me, sir,” Smith said.
“Jon! Are you all right? I received reports of an explosion.”
“That was my doing.”
“Where are you?”
“Just outside the plant. The target’s moving—by the looks of it, on foot. Whoever you sent, sir, did the job. They got here just in time to spook Drake.”
“What about Drake? Did he take the bait?”
Smith glanced at the pulsing blue dot. “Yes, sir. He’s on the move.”
It took Sergeant Patrick Drake five minutes to cover the one-mile hiking path through the woods between the power plant and the deserted recreational area where he’d parked his vehicle.
Alert for any sign of a tail, Drake drove to the outskirts of Alexandria. Pulling into the lot of a Howard Johnson motor lodge, he parked in front of the last unit in the row. Drake opened the door to find General Richardson and Anthony Price inside.
“Mission report, Sergeant?” Richardson asked.
“The target was neutralized, sir,” Drake replied smartly. “Two hits, center mass.”
“You’re sure?” Price demanded.
“What do you want, Tony?” Richardson snapped. “Smith’s head on a platter?” He turned to Drake. “At ease, Sergeant. You did well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Price gestured at the backpack that Drake had brought with him. “What’s that?”
Drake dropped the pack on one of the beds. “Something Smith left behind.”
Undoing the straps, he laid out the contents: two spare ammunition clips, a road map, a cell ph
one, a microcassette recorder, and a small, round object that got Price’s attention.
“What’s that?”
“A flash grenade, sir,” Drake said, pretending not to notice Price’s shocked expression. “It’s okay, sir. The pin is secure.”
“Give us some privacy, soldier,” Price said.
As Drake went into the bathroom, Price grabbed Richardson’s arm. “Enough of this soldier-boy shit, Frank. Neither one of us needed to be here. Drake could have called in the results.”
Richardson jerked his arm away. “That’s not the way I work, Tony. I lost a soldier boy, as you call him, over in Palermo. He had a name. Travis Nichols. And in case you’ve forgotten, Smith got close enough to us to call me at Fort Belvoir—on a line you guaranteed was secure!”
“The number was secure!” Price shot back. “Your man gave it up.”
Richardson shook his head. “For someone who’s done the things you have, you sure don’t like getting your hands dirty, do you? You prefer to give orders and let others die while you watch the results on television, like this is all a big game.” Richardson leaned in close. “I’m not playing a game, Tony. I’m doing this because I believe it is necessary. I’m doing this for my country. What do you believe in?”
“The same,” Price replied.
Richardson snorted. “But you’ve feathered your bed with Bauer-Zermatt, haven’t you? As soon as we give the world a small taste of what our bug can do, everyone will be clamoring for an antidote. Coincidentally Bauer-Zermatt will leak that it has the inside track on the research and its stock will skyrocket. I’m curious, Tony. Just how many shares did Bauer give you?”
“A million,” Price replied calmly. “And he didn’t give them to me, Frank. I earned them. Don’t forget that I was the one who found Beria, who watched your back, making sure that no one even got a whiff of what was happening in Hawaii. So don’t try to rub my nose in this hero horseshit!”
He glanced at the items Drake had removed from the backpack. “Now let’s wrap this thing up…”
The Cassandra Compact Page 28