Without Warning Part 49

He stood opposite Franks in the Joint Operations Center for the whole of the Pacific Command as they listened to the last of Musso's briefing on speak-erphone. The room was a large s.p.a.ce, but old-fas.h.i.+oned. It had been due to be replaced in a few months with a much larger, modern facility. Maybe it would happen. Probably not, though. For now, both men leaned forward to listen to their colleague as his disembodied voice crackled out of the old speakerphone.

"I really don't think we can let them put ten thousand hostages in the bag," said the marine. "They'll turn the civilians into human s.h.i.+elds for certain. We either show them that they can't f.u.c.k with us right now, or I promise you they will. After Gitmo it'll be the Ca.n.a.l next. And they won't even have to land there. They can just start executing hostages on the hour until we leave. You know they'll do it."

Ritchie found himself agreeing, but he waited for Franks to speak.

The soldier's melancholy features seemed even more hangdog than usual, which was saying something. The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs had returned from the Middle East with enormous dark pouches under his eyes, and cheeks hollowed out by the stress. A flap of skin hung loose beneath his chin where he had lost a lot of weight.

"General, I do not know whether our submarines will even respond to an order to fire on Venezuela," said Franks. "Only the president can authorize a launch. What d'you think, Jim?" he asked, turning to Ritchie Ritchie shook his head.

"Right back at the start of this I had the devil's own job getting my boomers to break protocol when I needed China boxed in. I didn't know whether they would have launched on my say-so even if I had ordered them to. I still don't. Only the president of the United States can authorize the use of nuclear weapons. The commanders in charge of those a.s.sets are trained not to respond to any other command authority."

"There's only one way to find out," said Musso.

He found Salas back in his office, arms folded, glaring out of the jagged hole where a window had been just yesterday. Lieutenant Colonel Stavros had remained seated and was watching the Venezuelans with mute hostility. He relaxed only slightly when Musso returned from the radio shack.

"I could just order my men to take this building, you know," said General Salas, keeping his back to them. "You could not hold it long, General Musso. I can see that from here. Perhaps that might be a better idea than allowing you to run off every few minutes to consult with your superiors. No?" he finished, turning to face him at last. It was very poor acting, thought Musso. He'd seen much better dramatics at law school during moot season.

"No," he answered. "That would not be a very good idea, General. You're here under a flag of truce, to negotiate a surrender on acceptable terms. Perhaps if you faced up to your responsibilities as an officer and started behaving like a professional warrior rather than a gang lord, we might get somewhere."

The general's neck flushed noticeably, but his face froze in a cold fury. He sat himself very carefully down behind the damaged desk again.

"Have you spoken to Caracas?" asked Musso, all but ignoring the gross umbrage taken by Salas at his remark.

"Si," the Venezuelan general said, deciding in the end not to respond to the insult. "I am authorized to offer safe pa.s.sage to all Americans in Cuba. We, in turn, will accept custodians.h.i.+p of the unaffected region of Cuba until the Cuban government rea.s.serts itself."

Musso snorted. "We want more than just safe pa.s.sage out of Cuban waters," he said. "It wouldn't do to have one of your submarines taking potshots at us as we try to sail out of the neighborhood. We want a guarantee of safe pa.s.sage out of the Caribbean and Atlantic as well."

Salas narrowed his eyes. His lips turned white, and his nostrils flared. "You are pus.h.i.+ng your luck, General Musso," he said with a tightly clenched jaw.

"No," Musso corrected him. "You are pus.h.i.+ng yours."

"Tell the president that it is not a bluff, Mr. Shapiro," said Franks. "Tell him we are deadly serious. The rules have changed. h.e.l.l, there are no rules anymore. Not when he feels free to fire on our civilians whenever it suits him ... I don't give a d.a.m.n that they deny it. That's one of the things that's changed. I don't have to give a d.a.m.n anymore. Just tell him."

Ritchie stood quietly in the underground command center, listening to Franks as he talked on the phone to the American amba.s.sador in Venezuela. Now, there's a job I'm glad I didn't get stuck with, he thought. Many of the screens in the room were blank, the workstations unmanned. Just behind Franks a navy commander silently updated the positions of three Ohio-cla.s.s ballistic-missile submarines in the South Atlantic, moving their pins on an old-fas.h.i.+oned paper map. All three were well within striking distance of Caracas. One of them, the Tennessee, had only just responded to flash traffic, having gone silent on the day of the Disappearance. There were another two other boomers lurking somewhere in the Atlantic right then as well, but they had flatly refused Franks's request to put some bite into Musso's bluff, citing the launch protocol line and verse.

Only the president of the United States, using the correct and verified launch codes...

It didn't matter. They really only needed the ordnance of one Ohio-cla.s.s submarine.

Franks appeared to listen to some long and winding pa.s.sage of dialogue from Amba.s.sador Shapiro before cutting him off.

"Look. I can see this is getting us nowhere, Mr. Amba.s.sador. Can I suggest that you take cover, sir? Franks out." He hung up and turned to Ritchie. "Do it."

The admiral picked up a phone. He had expected his voice to shake but it was remarkably steady. "This is Ritchie," he said. "Patch me through to the Tennessee."

General Salas nodded and hung up his phone.

"It is not acceptable," he told Musso. "You impugn our honor with the very suggestion. To promise that we will not attack you as you flee, to imply that we would even consider such a thing, is to traduce our national reputation. Our very manhood."

Musso would have snorted in derision, but he was haunted by the awful sight of that C-130 spilling its precious human cargo into the night. So many children, hundreds of them. Their deaths had been confirmed by the light of dawn. It was a sight so gruesome he would never be free of it. What terror must have attended their last moments on earth?

If he had been wearing a sidearm, the general's brains would probably be dripping down the wall behind him right now.

"Do not talk to me of your honor," he said, slowly and carefully enunciating each word. "I have seen your honor, and it is a poor ragged f.u.c.king thing that barely hides the crude ugliness of your intentions and deeds. The lowest of my marines could not wipe his a.s.s clean with your honor, General Salas. It would not be worth the effort of the rubbing. Now I suggest you stop f.u.c.king around and agree to what is a very reasonable request." Musso looked at his watch. "Time is running out."

Salas regarded him with lidded eyes, a snake sizing up a scorpion for its dinner, weighing the risks.

"And how long do you imagine that the civilians we are holding, some four thousand of them I believe, how long do you think they will survive in any ... cross fire?"

Musso sneered openly.

"Those people are in your care, General, and I would warn you to have a care for their safety. You, and every man under your command, will be held personally responsible for their fate. You keep telling me that things have changed, and you are right. There will be no diplomatic solution to this question, no Security Council meetings, no backroom deals. If you hurt them you will be hunted down. Your men will be hunted down. And your country will be laid to waste."

"I think you overestimate yourself, General Musso. You are not the power you once were."

"No. We're not," said Musso. "We're something infinitely worse now."

"Active track, package inbound," a staff officer replied. "One minute to impact."

Ritchie watched the center left screen, which showed a view of Caracas from the roof of the American emba.s.sy. The Venezuelan capital sat high up in a valley of the Cordillera Central, separated from the sh.o.r.es of the Caribbean by a ten-to-twelve-mile stretch of national park. On a linked display the ocean could be seen in a wide-angle shot sourced from the international airport, which lay on the water's edge in the smaller city of Maiquetia a short distance away. The image looked benign, a pleasant scene of blue water and a few plodding boats. Ritchie wondered if there were people down by the water, taking in the fresh air. He didn't recall Caracas being famous for any beaches. The emba.s.sy reported that the streets of the capital were not overly crowded, although there was a heavy and obvious military presence. But there was none of the violence and chaos that was rampant throughout so much of South America, or Europe for that matter.

n.o.body in the command center spoke. Ritchie could hear the blood rus.h.i.+ng through his own head.

It seemed perverse that he had just unleashed a nuclear warhead. It could not be real.

At 0706 hours a second sunrise blossomed out over the horizon from Maiquetia, as three bright flashes flared up twenty miles offsh.o.r.e on the satellite feed.

"All weapons delivered."

The Venezuelan general looked ill as he put down the phone.

"S-safe pa.s.sage out of the region is ... a.s.sured, General Musso," he said. "But this isn't over. My government a.s.sures me this isn't over."

"It'd better be over," Musso said, rising from his seat. "The next time it won't be warning shots. Good day."

Sixteenth arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, Paris

Caitlin wormed her way through the crawls.p.a.ce, feeling nauseated and claustrophobic. The attic was a constricted geometric tangle of wooden beams, hundreds of years old, rendered into opalescent green by her borrowed night-vision goggles. She'd had three days to recover since her liberation from the cell, but at least two of those days she had spent on the move with Rolland and his small team, creeping through hostile territory, backtracking a year's surveillance of Bilal Baumer. Tight s.p.a.ces had never bothered her before, but her heart felt as though it was being squeezed by a giant rubber hand. Yet another symptom of her physical decay.

And so it came to this, as always. Caitlin, on her own, inching carefully toward her prey in the dark.

She reached the little access panel after an hour of snaking through the roof s.p.a.ce of the line of tenements in which Baumer was holed up. Her watch read 2:13 a.m., and although she could hear the rumble of a great battle in the distance, and even sense it vibrating up through the structure of the house, down below her all seemed quiet. She had no idea what Baumer and his men were doing down there. Chances were, it was just a layup point, a place to regroup before fleeing the city. She adjusted her headset and hit the push-to-talk b.u.t.ton on the secure digital radio.

"In position," she reported quietly.

Rolland's voice came back in a brief crackle.

"No discernible movement inside. One guard at the front door. Sniper has him marked."

"I'm going in."

She cut the connection and carefully lifted the panel, just a crack, giving her access to a hallway on the top floor. Threading through a thin, black fiber-optic wire plugged into a handheld display, she was able to recon the hallway. It was clear.

Caitlin removed the hatchway and took a length of rope from the heavy utility belt she wore over black coveralls. Tying it to a beam, she rappelled down silently and took a moment to orient herself, imagining the floor plans Rolland had secured overlaid onto the glowing green setting in front of her. A narrow corridor leading to a stairwell. Two doors on the left, both closed.

A silenced handgun and a fighting knife appeared in her hands.

She glided over to the first door and inserted the fiber-optic wire through the old keyhole. The room appeared to be deserted. She turned the k.n.o.b. Hinges creaked horribly and she sidestepped, bringing up the pistol. For two minutes she stood, ready to cut down anyone who appeared, but there was n.o.body inside.

She moved on and repeated the routine.

This time her pulse accelerated as the optic display unit showed her a low-light-amplified image of a man, crouched in the corner of the room, pointing a pistol at the door.

A large white male, with head and arm wounds field-dressed using torn bedsheets, if she was not mistaken. He seemed to be straining to hear any sound that might give away the position of someone in the corridor. Caitlin checked her exposure. Crouched low as she was, off to the side of the door, she was safely out of his line of fire. He was aiming for the center ma.s.s of anyone who walked through the door.

f.u.c.k.

She had no idea who he was or what he was doing there. The man was a complication she did not need.

There was no going in and taking him down. This guy was primed for trouble.

She took a moment to examine him in the display screen again. He had a good firing position and held the gun as though it was an extension of his body. He didn't look nervous, self-conscious, or likely to hesitate if he needed to shoot.

He was clean-shaven, and wearing the sort of vest she'd often seen on press photographers. The image was not sharp, unfortunately, but she thought she could make out a notepad, some pens, and possibly a small Dictaphone in some of the pockets, the sort of thing that took little microcas-settes. If only she could see the back of his vest-there might be an identifying logo or something. A lot of reporters used reflective tape to spell out PRESS or the acronym of their media affiliates on their backs.

Caitlin thought that just made them easier targets, but journalists were weird. They had some f.u.c.ked-up ideas.

She had to come to a decision quickly.

The man was almost certainly not part of the group downstairs.

He was trapped in the room, probably by their unexpected arrival.

There was probably no way of getting in there without him firing off half a mag at the door.

She decided to leave him in place.

He disappeared from the screen as she withdrew the fiber-optic wire.

For thirty seconds she crouched, waiting, but no sound or movement came from within.

That was actually kind of impressive.

This guy was no amateur.

But he was not necessarily an ally either, and she began to edge away, eventually making the stairs, where she stood, adjusting herself to the sounds, to the feel of the house. It felt like an inhabited dwelling, but that wasn't down to any bulls.h.i.+t sixth sense. She knew the lower floors were occupied. What she didn't know was where her targets were holed up.

She listened, willing her nausea to recede to the edge of consciousness, breathing as she had been taught to settle her nervous system.

She could hear the angry rumble of battle.

A jet aircraft shrieking low to the west.

The creaking and settling of the building as the ground underneath moved fractionally in response to the pounding of high explosives and the grinding of heavy armor through streets no more than a mile distant.

A radio, playing Arabic music.

Snoring. Some muttering, but not conversational, probably someone talking in their sleep.

A clink of china cups or gla.s.ses.

Quiet laughter.

A ringing in her ears, which had been constant for two weeks.

Her pulse and heartbeat.

The silent advance of the tumor that was eating her from the inside out.

Caitlin floated down the stairs, using a technique she had studied under the ninjutsu master Harunaka Hos.h.i.+no, who had trained her to cross a nightingale floor with a minimum of noise. There was no way to eliminate the singing of the boards, but Hos.h.i.+no taught her to quiet its chirping. The stairs of the old French residence were no challenge after that.

She paused on the second-to-last step. The house was dark, the power grid having failed long ago, but with her NVGs she could make out a weak, fluttering light emanating from under two of the four doors on this floor. She stilled herself, becoming as stonelike as a human being could, and opening all of her senses wide to let the world rush in.

She smelled old food. Meat gone cold. And coffee.

A body s.h.i.+fted and rolled over on the floor nearby, lifting slightly and settling back down with a light thump.

A sheet or blanket rustled.

A windup clock ticked.

In one of the lighted rooms a page turned.

Every hair on Caitlin's body bristled, an ancient autonomic response to danger, a hangover from her animal ancestors.

She floated down the hallway to the door behind which she knew at least one man was awake and reading. Again she settled into stillness and allowed the life of the building, just a soft heartbeat and a murmured breath at this dead hour, to flow into her.

Another page turned and she heard mumbling in Arabic from the same room.

"O ye who believe! When ye meet the Unbelievers in hostile array, never turn your backs on them. If any do turn his back to them on such a day-unless it be in a stratagem of war, or to retreat to his own troop-he draws on himself the wrath of Allah and his abode is h.e.l.l, an evil refuge indeed."