The Devil's Footprint (79 page)

In
Arlington
and Rosslyn and
a score of suburbs, citizens would drink the contaminated water and be
affected.
 
Ice cubes would kill.
 
The touch of a hand or the gentlest of kisses
would kill.
 
The air itself, the very
grass you walked on, the ventilator in your automobile.
 
All would kill.

The cameras
concealed throughout the supergun valley had audio pickups as well as
visual.
 
Oshima wanted to savor every
detail.
 
She heard the klaxon sound and
saw the gun crew put on ear protectors and scurry for cover in the firing
bunker.

The supergun
was a truly massive weapon, and as Oshima looked at the monitors, she was
entranced by the sheer destructive potential of such power.
 
And you could make one of these things out of
microfiber-reinforced concrete.
 
The
implications were exhilarating.

The countdown
in Spanish commenced.
 
"Five
— Four — Three — Two — One — FIRE!"

The last word
issued in a triumphant shout and then repeated by Oshima.
 
"FIRE!
 
FIRE!
 
FIRE!
 
FIRE!"

There was the
expected thunderclap of explosions, but the sight Oshima actually witnessed
strained her credibility.

The entire
supergun, all 656 feet and 21,000 tons of it, blew apart in a rippling roaring
thundering inferno of flame and destruction that was the most powerful
explosion that Oshima had ever seen.

The structures
in the valley were swept away as if by some Devil's breath.

The
glass-fronted bunker containing the terrorist firing team — set across the
divide of the valley — was hit by the blast wave and shattered as vast lumps of
flying matter smashed into it.

For the next
few seconds, the sky rained pieces of the supergun and a thick cloud of dust
and debris stained the sky.

And then there
was a dreadful silence.

"Fitzduane-
san
!" hissed Oshima, the hate thick
in her voice.

27

Dr. John
Jaeger stepped out of the Blackhawk helicopter and, holding his hat on his
head, ran through the dust storm created by the downdraft of its rotors.
 
Beyond the fog of sand, the harsh sun of the
Tecuno plateau cut in and he slipped on his sunglasses with relief.

Madoa airfield
was well and truly under the control of the 82
^nd
Airborne.
 
Around him paratroopers were methodically
scouring every inch of the air base, while up above armed helicopters and
gunships kept watch.
 
Above them again
there would be a combat air patrol.

It was
over.
 
But then again, you never quite
knew.

Security was
tight.
 
A C130 making its approach fired
red flares to distract any straggler with a handheld missile foolish enough to try
anything,
then
dropped in like a stone in the
stomach-wrenching maneuver know as a combat assault landing.
 
Jaeger had experienced the procedure when he
and his team were flown in, and suddenly he realized why the Airborne preferred
to jump.

He found
Fitzduane near what might have been some kind of barracks building.
 
It was hard to tell after the air force had
worked it over, but a cargo parachute had been erected like a giant tent to
give some shade.
 
Inside, the filtered
light was curiously peaceful.

The Irishman
was lying back in a wooden tub watching a yellow plastic duck bob up and down
in the water in front of him.
 
He had a
glass of red wine in one hand.

Various other
camouflaged figures sat in makeshift chairs in the general vicinity.
 
He recognized Lonsdale and Cochrane, and
there was a stocky lieutenant who looked as if he could life weights with his
little finger.
 
His eyes were
closed.
 
Farther back, other paratroopers
were asleep.

"The tub
was Oshima's, they tell me," said Fitzduane.
 
"Damn near the only thing that wasn't
blown to hell and back."

Jaeger
collapsed with some relief into what passed for a deck chair and accepted a
glass of wine.
 
"The duck?" he
said.

"The duck
belongs to my son," said Fitzduane.
 
"I gave it to him, but he loaned it to me.
 
Sort of a good-luck charm.
 
To bathe without one is uncivilized — though
not everyone knows that."

Jaeger drank
his wine.
 
The atmosphere was pleasantly
relaxing.
 
It was like sitting on the
porch after you'd done everything that had to be done and now you could just
swap yarns and listen to the crickets before falling asleep.
 
Only, there weren't any crickets.
 
Instead there were the snores of sleeping
paratroopers and crawling things that were mostly lizards but were occasionally
scorpions.

"So it
worked," he said.
 
"I was
having a nightmare about the whole thing, but it really worked like we
hoped.
 
"We've just checked the
Devil's Footprint and the area all around.
 
Not a trace of nerve agent.
 
Nothing.
 
And the gun
is shredded.
 
It really bloody
worked."

Fitzduane
looked at him.
 
"Hoped?" he
said incredulously.
 
"Tell me you
were certain it would work, or I'll have Brock shoot you."

"When you
put it like that — I was certain," said Jaeger.
 
"We fuck up on nukes now and then at
Livermore
, but when it
comes to hydrogen superguns we're aces."

"I'm
going to shoot him," said Brock sleepily.
 
"He didn't say positively."

"But what
about Oshima?" said
Jaeger.
 
"Where's Oshima?"

"Good
question," said Fitzduane.

"Well, if
she's inside the command bunker, she's dead," said Jaeger.
 
"And so would you lot have been if you'd
blown that door."

There was
silence.
 
No one particularly wanted to
be reminded of how close they had come to blasting their way into a slow and
messy death.
 
After Madoa Air Base had
been secured, the command bunker had been drilled by a chemical warfare team
and found to contain lethal quantities of Xyclax Gamma 18 under positive
pressure.
 
Opening the door would have
cause the nerve agent to flood out into the subterranean complex and possibly
to spread throughout the airfield itself.

The decision
had been taken to seal off the bunker rather than break in, while the
chemical-warfare team figured out a way to decontaminate it safely.
 
The problem was not straightforward.
 
The nerve gas was volatile and so would
ignite, but if the bunker contained explosives in addition to the gas, the
combination could be akin to exploding a rather large bomb.
 
True, it was sixty feet underground, but the
extensive subterranean evacuations meant that there was no guarantee the
effects of an explosion would be contained.

Jaeger was
confident that the problem was solvable, but meanwhile it meant that no one had
actually physically searched the bunker.
 
Special suits and equipment were being flown in.
 
In the back of his mind was the thought that
some 41,000 tons of chemical agent were lying around the former
Soviet Union
.
 
This
was a problem that was not going to go away.

"We don't
think she's dead," said Fitzduane.
 
"If the pattern is any indication, she is lying low waiting to make
a break for it."

"So you
think she left the command bunker and is now hidden in some hidey hole under
this place," said Jaeger.

Fitzduane
nodded.

"So one
of these days — if your theory is right — she is going to pop out of the ground
and make a run for it," said Jaeger.
 
"But when and where?
 
And how
long can you wait?
 
I love my country,
but I know its faults.
 
The
U.S.
of A.
likes sprints, not marathons."

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

General Mike
Gannon was feeling progressively more impatient.

The 82
^nd
Airborne was designed to carry out strategic missions rapidly and then be
pulled out.
 
Subduing the Devil's
Footprint terrorist complex had been achieved.
 
Keeping two brigades tied up now that the mission had been accomplished
struck him as a misuse of resources.

He was itching
to head back to Bragg.

"One
goddamn terrorist and the entire division
is
tied
up," he growled.
 
"This is
ridiculous.
 
How much effort is Oshima
worth?
 
We've searched the entire Devil's
Footprint complex, and diddly squat.
 
She's either dead or she's long gone."

"She's
still here, General," said Fitzduane with absolute certainty.

Gannon glared
at him.
 
Colonels were supposed to agree
with generals, but this damned Irishman had his own way of doing things.

"I agree,
sir," said Dave Palmer.

Gannon's
eyebrows shot skyward.
 
Fitzduane was one
thing, but Palmer was his exec and definitely part of the system.
 
He was supposed to snap out
"Airborne!" in agreement and go with the flow.

"Colonel
Palmer," he said.
 
"Getting
shot down and reincarnated has scrambled your brains.
 
This division is not a democracy."

"Airborne,
sir," said Palmer.
 
He had a great
deal of sympathy for the CG.
 
Gannon
genuinely cared about his men and fought to see that they were properly
utilized.
 
But on this issue he backed
Fitzduane, and his eyes still showed it.

Mollified but
not fooled, Gannon looked at Palmer, then at Fitzduane and the others in the
group.
 
He tapped the map.
 
"So where is she?" he said.
 
"And why haven't we found her?
 
What haven't we done?"

"If she
has run true to form," said Fitzduane, "she will have left the
command bunker through an emergency tunnel and be holed up somewhere sixty feet
underground waiting to make her move.
 
The emergency tunnel will have been deliberately collapsed behind
her.
 
The only way we could have found
her would have been by stumbling over her ventilation point, and even that
would have been disguised."

"Tunnels,"
said Gannon in disgust.
 
"Hell of a
way to fight a war.
 
Vietnam
was
full of the things, and we never completely winkled the gutsy little bastards
out of them.
 
But who'd have thought they
would have built hundreds of kilometers of the things."

"The
positive news, General," said Fitzduane, "is that we've got hold of
the geological reports and they indicate you couldn't tunnel as and where you like.
 
There is too much rock.
 
So if Oshima is sitting underground, the
chances are that she is somewhere on the north side."

"So where
will she come up?" said Gannon.

"Somewhere
on the northern perimeter outside the minefields," said Fitzduane.
 
"She will do it at night."

Gannon studied
the map.
 
"That's still a whole lot
of territory to watch," he said.
 
"Worse yet,
it's
broken ground.
 
Not a lot of major cover, but more than
enough for someone crawling on their belly.
 
But after that, what then?"

"There will
be a cache of supplies a couple of kliks away," said Fitzduane.
 
"Food, water, weapons,
and probably some kind of transport.
 
Something easy to conceal that can handle this terrain.
 
Maybe a motorcycle or
all-terrain vehicle."

"We can't
find the cache either?" said Gannon.

"No,
sir," said Palmer.
 
"But we're
still looking."

Gannon was
lost in thought.
 
He tried to imagine
what it must be like to spend days underground while others hunted you.
 
Foul air, little or no food,
stale
water at best, the constant fear of suffocation,
darkness, no sanitation, insects, snakes, and who knew what else.
 
A vile existence, but some people were
prepared to endure it.
 
Evidently, Oshima
was prepared to endure it.
 
You could
hate your enemies and kill them without compunction, but it never paid to
underestimate them.

"Run me
through the perimeter surveillance."