Biowar (39 page)

“What’s going on?” she asked Rockman.

“Umar the son of Umar seems to have bought your act,” said the runner. “In any event, it’s clear you’re not Jewish, so he’s confused.”

“Does he know about the Israeli raid?”

“Not yet. We think there’s a messenger on the way. Definitely time to leave. We have Dean outside. We’re going to launch a diversion and you can get over the side wall. I’ll guide you.”

“I have to get the dongle into the computer in the bunker,” she told the runner. “Go ahead with the diversion and tell Charlie I’ll be along in a minute.”

“They’ll kill you if they find you.”

“The second entrance is back beyond the pool, right?”

“Lia—”

“Are you going to help me, or do I have to figure it out for myself?”

The missile that exploded at the gate shook the ground so hard that Dean fell against the wall. By the time he got up and over the top, Pendleton had jumped onto the other side, thoughtfully leaving his jacket over the sharp shards of glass that lined the top. Dean heard a crack of rifle fire as he jumped; he rolled onto his shoulder and up, looking for a target. But the gunfire had come from the front of the building, one of the guards there firing in panic.

As Dean got up, the ground shook again. There were shouts from inside the house. Dean saw the Brit kneeling a few yards away; he whistled to him and then started running toward the building.

“Where is she?” he asked Rockman.

“She’s inside the bunker beneath the house. Go to your right. You’ll see a large garden. Down the steps, keep moving to your right. Around to the pool house. She left the door open for you.”

“She left the door open for me?”

“She’s a lot more sentimental than she seems.”

84

Malachi Reese leaned back from the console, waiting as the commander of the mission cleared his F-47C bird from the engagement area. Malachi had the second plane in the formation; the unmanned fighter had a pair of 2,000-pound selectable GPS/laser-guided missiles under its wing, ready to fire.

But no target.

“Hang tight, Mal,” said Train—also known as Major Pierce Duff, the mission commander. “Orion has some good snaps for us—no more resistance there.”

“Yup on that,” said Malachi.

“Get into position for the bunker shot,” said Train.

“On it.”

A targeting reticle had opened in the middle of Malachi’s main screen. It boxed the back portion of the Syrian intelligence agent’s house with a yellow square. At this point, Malachi could launch his two air-to-ground missiles with 98.9 percent confidence that their GPS systems would take them within eighteen inches of the center of the square, striking within .4 second of each other.

“Hold off,” said the commander. “We have people in the bunker. Our people.”

Malachi held his stick lightly, staying on course. While in theory he could launch from anywhere within a twenty-four-mile oval fire zone, his best aiming area was somewhat more limited; he’d run out of it in about ninety seconds and have to slide back in the formation. Truck had already taken direct control on the backup plane and would have the next shot.

“We’re just going to hold here,” said the commander. “We may not have to be firing at all. Mal, you copy that?”

“Roger that. I got it. All dressed up and nothing to blow.”

“Don’t sweat it,” said Whacker, who handled the weapons systems for the four-man team that flew the birds. If the GPS failed for some reason, he could use a laser system to put the bomb on target. He could also launch the weapons himself, if authorized by the pilot or commander. “You’ll get some action.”

“Still got plenty of time here,” said Riddler. He worked the electronic countermeasures, or ECMs. The remote-controlled attack aircraft were flown from a bunker at Crypto City by four-man teams, who together handled anywhere from four to eight planes with the help of computers. The computer system and crew arrangements were necessary partly because of the slight but significant lag time involved in communicating commands over the network. The automated flight control systems actually did much of the “real” flying and fighting. Typically, two men served as pilots, with another taking offensive weapons—usually air-to-ground bombs, though they could fly interceptor missions as well—and another handling the defensive gear. All four men were actually cross-trained and could handle any of the others’ tasks.

“Israeli fighters now zero-five off,” said Riddler, adding their approach and speed. The Israelis had not been informed of the Birds’ mission; the four planes were too stealthy to be picked up by Israeli radar at present. “Going to have to decide what we’re doing here, chief. They’re coming hot and look like the ‘shoot first, say prayers later’ types.”

“All right, let me talk to Telach and see whether we want to give these guys a heads-up or just blow out of here,” said Train.

85

Lia pushed against the wall as she heard someone at the far end shout in Arabic. Two men ran from the front room into the hallway and then into the access chamber and outside.

The bunker looked more like the basement of a well-appointed middle-class home than a bomb shelter or backup military headquarters. A beige Berber carpet covered the floor; the walls were covered with plasterboard painted a muted damask.

The computers she had to tap were about midway down the hall. As Lia moved up the hallway she heard someone talking. Not sure exactly what was happening, she ducked into a nearby room, which turned out to be an oversize linen closet. Towels, sheets, and pillows filled the walls on the left. The rest of the room was empty.

Lia pulled a pile of the towels out, carrying them in front of her as if she were a housemaid. She took a breath, then went back into the hallway.

“Lia?” asked Rockman.

“Got it covered,” she said.

The door to the computer room was open. Lia swung inside, back to them, as a towel dropped to the floor. One of the two men inside got up, starting to question who she was. As she turned toward him the wall flashed and exploded—the result of a lipstick-sized mini-flash-bang grenade Lia had slipped into the towel.

Stunned, the man closest to her went down with a quick chop to the side of the head. Lia jump-kicked the second man as he rose, or tried to, from one of the desk chairs near the computer. A second kick rendered him unconscious. Lia went back to the first man, just rising from the carpet. Two sharp kicks from her heel ended the effort. Neither man had been armed, unfortunately, and there was no door to the room.

The computers were late-nineties PCs. One had just connected via modem to some other database; a prompt flashed on the screen requesting a password. Lia connected the dongles via the serial port, using a second adapter.

“Go,” said Rockman. “Get the hell out of there!”

But it was too late. As she hopped over the bodies and ran for the door, two of the Syrian bodyguards and the woman who had brought her here came down the hallway.

Dean and Pendleton were nearly to the pool when the ground in front of them began percolating with small-arms fire. They threw themselves down onto the patio, rolling behind a low wall that provided scant cover.

Chips of concrete flew around Dean as he hunted for a target. He pushed to his right, saw something move, and fired. The sky vibrated fiercely—Dean threw himself into the vibration, running to the pool building as he emptied the AK-47 into three figures in green running toward him. He dived behind the building, rolling on the ground and then scrambling back, swimming through the rumbling air that had enveloped the world. From the edge of the building he saw two of the guards advancing, their rifles flaring. He popped in a new magazine and took them with two presses of the trigger. But the magazine had been nearly empty and the gun ran dry after a pair of bursts.

“Cover me!” he yelled to Pendleton, launching himself back up across the patio toward the two guards. Just as he reached the closest one, another Syrian came out from the back of the house; Dean tried scooping up the AK-47 but dropped it, then threw himself down as well. By the time he got the gun in his hands and rose to his feet, Pendleton had burned though his own magazine. The Syrian lay on the ground, blood burbling from his neck.

“We have to get into the bunker there,” Dean told Pendleton. The SAS sergeant bent and grabbed two mags from the dead man, tossing them to him.

“More men, coming around the north side of the house,” warned Rockman.

“Come on back to the pool house and watch my back,” Dean told the sergeant. “There’s two guys coming up from around the side of the house there.”

“How do you know?”

“God told me.”

As Lia stepped out into the hallway, she saw that the Syrian woman had her handbag over her shoulder.

“I’d like that back, please,” Lia said.

“We’ll bury it with you, Jew.”

“Now do I look Jewish?”

One of the two men poked her breast with the nose of his gun and leered. Lia stepped back but didn’t make a grab for the barrel; the others were too far for her to be certain of getting the gun and shooting them in time.

“You’ll tell us exactly who you’re working for before we kill you,” said the woman.

Lia took another step back, her right elbow now at the doorjamb of the computer room.

“You’re getting all this?” she said to Rockman.

“On your signal.”

Before she could give it, the door at the far end of the hall behind her opened.

“Lia!” said Dean.

“No,” said Lia.

The guard nearest her started to jerk his rifle toward Dean.

“Now!” screamed Lia, grabbing the gun and throwing herself sideways into the computer room. “Duck, Charlie Dean!” she yelled.

In that instant, the hallway exploded, the bomb in her purse ignited by the Art Room.

86

By the time Karr got himself situated in Bangkok, the Art Room had managed to track the detonator he’d found in Myanmar to a manufacturer in Singapore and from there to Taiwan. From there it had gone to Thailand, purchased by a Royal Thai Construction Company—owned by a holding company that also owned the Bangkok Star Imperial Hotel, the same hotel Karr had visited upon his arrival.

“Kinda symmetrical,” Karr told Telach.

“I know. On the other hand, as Johnny Bib himself pointed out, a handful of big companies own everything anyway, so there’d be connections somehow.”

“He didn’t tell you how many companies?”

“Actually he did. But the number is suspiciously prime.”

Karr laughed and checked his watch. It was going on six.

“Think I can catch Mr. Bai before cocktails?”

“He’s there. But once the ball starts rolling—”

“It’ll gather no moss.”

87

Dean flew backward against the wall, his head rebounding against the concrete. His right knee collapsed and he fell in a tumble to the carpet. Smoke and dust choked his lungs; he coughed, rolled over, grabbed for his gun.

Something snapped it down out of his hand.

“Christ, Charlie Dean, you are the original bad penny. Always showing up at the wrong place and the wrong time.”

Dean looked up into Lia’s face. “That’s how you thank me for coming to save your butt?”

“The day I need you to save my butt is the day I buy myself a fuzzy pink bathrobe and rabbit slippers,” she said, pulling him up. “Let’s get the hell out of here before the Israelis get here and blow the crap out of this place.”

88

Rubens avoided glancing at his watch as the discussion continued. It was now early morning in Moscow; they had just under four hours to strike.

And he had just over twenty minutes to give the order.

Technically. In reality, Rubens had foreseen the possibility that the discussion might continue past the optimum moment and so had instructed Telach to have the strike aircraft ready. To keep operational secrecy—and to prevent accusations that he had jumped the gun later on—he had also told her to use the crew from the Syrian mission, giving them information only on an as-needed basis. The final strike order would be given only if he approved it.

“I think Mr. Rubens is a warmonger,” said Sandra Marshall.

Even Rubens had to take notice of that. He looked up at her as she continued, telling the President that the national situation was well on its way to being under control. Attacking a hospital was uncalled for.

Her position was eminently reasonable, calmly presented, and in its way entirely logical.

She was quite good, Rubens realized. Quite good.

“Preemptive action may well be justified,” said Debra Jodelin. “But there is a lot of risk to innocent people there. Can’t you strike the bacteria while it’s being transported?”

“We have a much better chance here, much better,” said Hadash. “Hitting a moving object can be quite difficult, especially when you’re launching your weapons from sixty or seventy thousand feet. We would run the same risks of collateral damage, with a much higher chance of failure. Considerably higher.”

“What if the bacteria survives the attack?” asked Jodelin.

Before Rubens could open his mouth, the Secretary of Defense, Art Blanders, jumped in.

“The weapons they’re talking about using would obliterate the lab area,” said Blanders. “And I assume pile debris in such a way that it could not be easily accessed.”

“That’s correct,” said Rubens. He and the Defense secretary occasionally disagreed, but Blanders could be a very useful ally. “Without a support medium, the bacteria should die within twenty-four hours. All of their machinery will be wrecked and of course the electricity will be turned off. We’ll infiltrate the recovery teams, just to be sure.”

“If we strike them like this, there may be consequences,” said Secretary of State James Lincoln. “Severe consequences. We should explain our rationale.”

“They won’t know it’s us,” said Hadash. He seemed to be a firm supporter of the plan, albeit a reluctant one.

“The weapons are sterile,” explained Rubens. “Everything is arranged to make it appear as if it’s a terrorist attack. We’ll plant information so that the Russians have plenty of evidence.”