Project Cyclops Part 7

There was silence, then finally a voice came from the litters in the darkened cabin aft, barely audible above the roar of the twin engines.

It was Jean-Paul Moreau, the Frenchman. He hated flying, and he particularly hated flying with an Iranian at the controls.

"What the h.e.l.l happened?"

"Someone on . . . presumably a raft of some kind. We took a couple of rounds of small-arms fire." He glanced back, making sure his voice reached Peretz in the weapons station. "The last Swatter was left turned on, armed, and it must have been hit. Probably the detonator. A stupid oversight."

"Looks like the mistake was mine," came the voice of Peretz, trying, unsuccessfully, to sound contrite. "Can't win them all, baby."

Back to his smart-a.s.s self, Ramirez thought, still gritting his teeth in anger. But he pushed it aside. "Forget it. In this business you only look back if you can profit from your mistakes. We just learned what happens when we forget our mission. The matter is closed."

"Now"--he returned his attention to the main cabin-- "when we set down at the facility, I expect total discipline. Nothing less will be tolerated. Is that understood?" He motioned Peretz out of the weapons station and took his place there.

Would these men hold together the way he required? As he looked them over, he felt confident. He had had enough experience to smell success.

Sabri Ramirez had definitely been around the track. Born in Venezuela almost half a century earlier, the son of a prominent Marxist lawyer, he had become an ardent revolutionary by age twenty. At twenty-five he went off to Cuba, but it was only later, while attending Patrice Lumumba University in the Soviet Union, that he discovered his true ideological core --it turned out he actually despised "the oppressed of the earth," along with curfews, books, and lectures. No, what he really wanted to join was not the Party, but the party--good living, women, fame. And he wanted the last most of all. After nine months his lack of ideological fervor got him summarily expelled. He actually felt relief.

With an eye to where the action was, he immigrated to Beirut . . . and prudently became a Muslim by conversion. Then he started making contacts--Beirut had always been a good place to make contacts. The payoff was quick. He was young, obviously brilliant, and he would do anything. In the early 1970s he was recruited by the terrorist group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a.s.signed leaders.h.i.+p of its European unit. Off he went to Paris, the posting of his dreams.

He had long fantasized about making himself a legend as one of the world's leading terrorists, and he was soon succeeding beyond his fondest imaginings. In 1974 he graduated from the PFLP and formed his own group. A Middle Eastern gun-for-hire, it was known as the Organization of the Armed Arab Struggle. The designation, he thought, had a nice revolutionary ring, which he had long since learned mattered. His new enterprise--terrorism-to-go--soon attracted such major clients as Libya and Iraq. Among his more celebrated achievements were the bombing of a French Cultural Center in West Berlin, exploding a suitcase bomb at a Ma.r.s.eilles railroad station, and placing an incendiary device aboard the French "bullet train."

Although he never had cared about ideology, he appreciated the importance of a correct political stance in the Islamic world, and therefore he frequently posed as the leader of an "armed struggle"

against the "Zionist Enemy." But always, however, at a profit. He had, in fact, perfected the fine art of extortion, pressing the "reactionary" regimes of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf sheikdoms into paying protection money disguised as "revolutionary donations." After he engineered the 1975 OPEC incident in Vienna in which eleven oil ministers were taken hostage, and then blew up a seaside resort, killing a Kuwaiti official, he began receiving regular payoffs from all the Gulf states.

Finally, in 1984, he closed out operations under the OAAS name, moved to Damascus, and began training Syrian intelligence agents. By that time, he had become a chimera, a legend whose nickname, the Hyena, was linked to every car bomb in Europe. And by that time also, the Hyena (a name he despised) had become the stuff of popular fiction, as well as of dossiers on three continents.

Having reduced terrorism to a science--a boring science --he then temporarily retired. But now, after the American invasion of the Middle East, he had decided to come back for one last score, to do what he had been dreaming about for years. The Americans had unwittingly provided the perfect opportunity. Why not seize it? This time, however, he wanted to do it himself, not with an army of half-crazed radical Muslims. . . .

He stepped up to the c.o.c.kpit and examined the rows of gauges. "Hold the airspeed under a hundred knots. And make sure you keep her on the deck."

Then he checked down below. "Peretz, this time make sure all the weapons stations are switched off. That's _off."_

The Israeli nodded, this time without his usual grin.

Now the Hind had begun its final approach. The low-light

TV showed a small landing pad approximately thirty meters on each side with a private helicopter parked in the middle of a black and white bull's-eye in the center. He knew that ARM--a group he had long hated-- had ringed the island with a first-cla.s.s industrial security system.

Five years ago, he recalled, they had killed three of his operatives in Beirut, in a futile attempt to kill him. What's more, it never made the papers. Typical. The security system they had developed for the island was good, but it made no provision for this kind of penetration. It pleased him to at last make fools of them.

"We're coming in," Salim announced. He touched the rudder pedal with his left foot to hold their heading and grasped the collective pitch lever as he eased the engines toward idle. "There's already a helo on the pad. Looks like a new Agusta."

"I know about it. Just set down next to it, inside the landing perimeter. I want this to be simple."

Tonight, he knew, they had scheduled the first full power-up of the Cyclops. Everything depended on how that test went, but he couldn't postpone the takeover any longer. This was it. . . .

Abruptly he wondered if the damaged wing would affect stability on touchdown? They would soon find out.

8:10 P.M.

The current swept him inexorably southward, while behind him the bundle of planks that remained of _Odyssey_ _II_ was dispersing rapidly. He cursed himself for having lost the Ross DSC radio. On the other hand, he considered himself lucky just to be in one piece. Luckier than the crewmen of the USS Glover. It was heartrending. Seeing a tragedy coming and not being able to stop it: that was the worst possible nightmare.

He wanted to go back to try and help, but the sea made it impossible.

He pulled himself over the bobbing, drifting mast, feeling it slam against his face as the sea tossed it like a matchstick. All around him lethal splinters of _Odyssey_ _II_ sliced through the water, jagged spears driven by the swell. The dark engulfed him, lightened only by the billowing remains of the Navy frigate now some thousand yards away.

Somewhere, dear G.o.d, it's got to be somewhere. Let it still be strapped to the mast. The idea seemed stupid at the time, but now . . .

He felt his way down until his fingers touched a slippery nylon cord.

Was it . . . yes.

Maybe there is a G.o.d.

The straps were tangled, which was not supposed to happen, and fragments of cypress planking from the sides of the s.h.i.+p had punctured the nylon cover, but his Switlik search-and-rescue raft was still dangling from the remains of the mast. Now for one more minor miracle: Could he manage to pull it free before everything disappeared into the dark and the swell?

He flailed with one hand to keep his head afloat, while his fingers grappled with the bowline knot. Finally the knot loosened, and he wrenched it loose.

Jesus, is there going to be anything left? Would it still inflate?

He grappled with the fibergla.s.s canister that contained the raft, then popped it open. With his last remaining strength he pulled on the tether, discharging the bottled carbon dioxide that caused the Switlik to hiss to life. Part of it. He realized the lower buoyancy tube had been ripped to shreds by the 12.7mm machine gun of the Hind that had destroyed the mast, but the upper one had somehow escaped intact. So he was half-lucky.

It was yellow, hexagonal, and it looked like heaven. He had never used one before, and he had never realized how it felt. Like an oversized inner tube.

With a surge of relief, he pulled himself aboard, inching in as he felt the swell pound over him, and then he drew out the folding oars and extended them. With his new course he knew he would miss the harbor at Kythera recommended by Bates--no way could he battle the current and make it. The vagaries of wind and sea were driving him almost due south. It was the direction the chopper had taken--straight for the little island of Andikythera.

Could they breach SatCom's security and get in? Probably. The setup installed by ARM was industrial-level only. He had cautioned Bill about that.

He grimaced and plied his strength to the two small aluminum oars. The way the wind and seas were taking him, he would find out soon enough.

Again he lamented the loss of the radio--with it he could get out a Mayday alerting any s.h.i.+ps around that might mount a rescue of the frigate's survivors. He also could try warning the SatCom facility that trouble was headed their way. The problem was, the Hind had a top speed of over a hundred and fifty knots. If Andikythera was its destination, it probably was already there.

The cold sea stung his face and the tossing waves were making him slightly seasick, but he felt alive again. Almost by instinct he looked up to try to find the stars, loving how crisp and striking they could be over the Aegean. Nothing yet, but there were glimmers in the north.

A good sign. The storm was blowing over now, the clouds starting to open up again.

If Bill tries the radio, he'll probably figure I've just vanished from the earth.

He half felt like it. As the cold autumn waters of the Aegean surged around him, its six-foot waves was.h.i.+ng over his partially inflated Switlik, he thought about Bill Bates. He was a friend, a very good friend. Was he about to be in trouble?

Although Bates was a world-cla.s.s executive, he also was a dedicated family man. He had a model wife back in Arlington and two model sons, both deposited in model private academies. His wife, a blond WASP old- fas.h.i.+oned enough to have the same family name as a prominent Philadelphia bank, never seemed to tire of her charity obligations, so it was his sons he took with him sailing in the summers. That was how Vance had met him, sailing with the boys in the Bahamas.

Bill was highly regarded in industry circles as the CEO's CEO, and not without reason. For one thing, less inconsequential than most would think, he looked the part. His steel-gray hair was always trimmed to the precise millimeter, his tanned cheeks were forever sleek from a workout at his club, or whatever club was handy on his perpetual travels. He had once claimed he knew the location of more health clubs than any man in America.

Best of all, though, he knew how to raise money. When he described a pending enterprise, he did it with the gleaming eye of the true believer. Even in a dicey investment environment, he always generated the enthusiasm sufficient to ensure that a new stock issue sold out and closed higher than the offering price on the day it was floated. The man could sell sunlamps in the Sahara.

He competed hard in everything he did. When he decided, some years after he and Vance had become acquainted, that he wanted to spend summers racing, he did not bother buying his own yacht; instead he flew to Na.s.sau and leased the fastest boat he knew. At that moment, the vessel filling that description was the Argonaut, owned by Windstalker, Ltd. It was a forty-four-foot sloop, highly regarded throughout the racing fraternity. Its owner, however, never let any of his three yachts out of the harbor without first undertaking a personal checkout of the new skipper--even if it was an old friend.

Vance remembered it well. Bill manned the helm, a mahogany wheel always kept well polished, and they were making a solid eight knots on the Speedo. It was one of those mornings in the islands when everything seemed as clear as a desert sky. No cruise s.h.i.+ps were scheduled into the harbor, and the stinkpot powerboats were mercifully in limited supply. The wind was perfect and the water as smooth as a glittering mirror. Best of all, Bates was handling the helm as though he had been there all his life.

"Think we can get her up to ten knots?" he'd asked, s.h.i.+elding his eyes as he studied the genoa, a gleaming triangle of white above the bow.