was evident even from the way their weaponry hung on their combat garb. They
knew what they were doing. If they found themselves under siege and had only
seconds to regroup, any one of them would take out the prisoner. From intercepts
he had seen, it was likely to be their standing instructions.
He zoomed in on the acned young man, then swiveled again. Here were seventeen
seasoned warriors, at least one of whom had almost supernal powers of
observation and retention.
“We’re fucked”: Katsaris on the lip mike, expressionless and to the point.
“I’ll be right over,” Janson said, retracting the camera by a few inches into
the recesses of the chute. His gut clenched into a small, hard ball.
Janson stood up as far as the space allowed, his joints aching from the extended
crouch. The truth was, he was too old for this sort of expedition, too old by at
least a decade. Why had he chosen to play this role, the most dangerous and
demanding of them? He’d told himself that he was the only one who would be
willing to do it, to face the odds; or rather, if he was not willing to, nobody
else would or should. He had told himself, as well, that his experience made him
the best one for the job. He had told himself that having devised the plan, he
would be the one best prepared to alter it if necessary. But was vanity
involved, too? Did he want to prove to himself that he could still do it? Or was
he so desperate to expunge a debt of honor to Peter Novak that he had made a
decision that might ultimately endanger Novak’s own life, as well as his own?
Doubts came to his mind like a shower of needles, and he forced himself to
remain calm. Clear like water, cool like ice. It was a mantra he had often
repeated to himself during the long days and nights of terror and agony he’d
known as a POW in Vietnam.
Katsaris was standing precisely where the blueprints had suggested they would
find the second entrance—the entrance that made the entire operation possible.
“The thing is where it’s supposed to be,” Katsaris said. “You can see the
outline of the trapdoor.”
“That’s good news. I like good news.”
“It’s been sealed off with cinder block.”
“That’s bad news. I hate bad news.”
“Masonry’s in sound shape. Probably not more than thirty years old. There might
have been a problem with flooding at some point, and this was the fix. Who
knows? All I know is that Ingress A no longer exists.”
Janson’s gut furled even tighter. Clear like water, cool like ice.
“Not a problem,” Janson said. “There’s a workaround.”
But it was a problem, and he had no workaround. All he knew was that a
commanding officer must never let his men sense panic.
They had entered into the situation with sketchy knowledge. There was the
information, confirmed by intercepts, that Peter Novak was being held in the
colonial dungeon. There was the inference, supplied by common sense, that he
would be heavily guarded. There was the necessary recourse to an aerial
insertion. But then? Janson had never entertained the idea of a merely frontal
approach to the dungeon—running a gauntlet that would equally jeopardize the
rescuer and the one to be rescued. What made the plan workable was the prospect
of simultaneity: removing the hostage even as the guards were being
incapacitated. There was no longer any viable rear entrance. Hence no viable
plan.
“Come with me,” Janson said. “I’ll show you.”
His mind raced as he and Katsaris returned to the cargo chute. There was
something. The realization went from inchoate to merely murky, but something was
better than nothing, hope better than no hope.
Manipulating the fiber-optic cuff, he shifted the field of vision away from the
seated soldier and toward the worn staircase that rose up at the end of the
room. “Stairway,” he said. “Landing. Ductwork. Ledge.” Projecting out from the
midlevel landing was a shelf of poured concrete. “A relatively recent
addition—the last few decades, I’d guess, done when the plumbing got
modernized.”
“Can’t get there without being spotted.”
“Not necessarily. The period of exposure—going from the landing to the concrete
shelf—would be relatively brief, the room is filled with the haze of cigarette
smoke, and they’re all playing a pretty damn engrossing round of proter. You
still get the principle of simultaneity. It’s just that we’re going to have to
resort to the main entrance as well as the chute.”
“This was your backup plan?” Katsaris shot back. “You’re doing more improvising
than the Miles Davis Quintet. Jesus, Paul, is this an operation or a jam
session?”
“Theo?” It was a request for understanding.
“And what guarantee is there that there won’t be a guard hived off, stationed in
the dungeon with the prison?”
“Any close contact with Peter Novak is dangerous. The KLF knows that—they’ll
guard him, but they’ll keep him isolated from any of the Kagama rebels.”
“What are they afraid of—that he’ll stab a guard with a cuff link?”
“His words are what they’re afraid of, Theo. In a poor country, the words of a
plutocrat are dangerous things—implements of escape more formidable than any
hacksaw. That’s why the guards are going to be grouped together, and at some
distance from the prisoner. Let the prisoner have the opportunity to strike up a
relationship with a single guard, and who knows what manipulations might occur?
Remember, Theo, the per capita income in Anura is less than seven hundred
dollars a year. Imagine a Kagama guard being drawn into conversation with a man
worth tens of billions. You do the math. Everybody knows that Novak is a man of
his word. Suppose you’re a Kagama rebel, and he’s telling you that he could make
you and your family rich beyond the dreams of avarice. You’re going to start to
think about it—it’s human nature. Ideological fervor might immunize some men
against that temptation, the way it has with the Caliph. But nobody in command
is going to count on it. BSTS—better safe than sorry. So you guard him, but you
isolate him, too. It’s the only safe way.”
Unexpectedly, Katsaris smiled. “OK, boss, just give me my marching orders,” he
said. Both of them had moved to a place beyond fear; an odd Masada-like serenity
had settled in, at least for the moment.
Removing the grate required them both, and the effort needed was doubled by the
imperative that it be removed noiselessly. By the time Janson left Katsaris
there, his joints and muscles were protesting furiously. He was creaky. That was
the truth of it. The Beretta, in its thigh holster, seemed to dig into his
flesh. Perspiration beaded up on his water-resistant face paint; rivulets fell
into his eyes and burned. His muscular recovery, Janson was learning the hard
way, was not what it once was: his muscles remained knotted longer—they ached
when the last thing he needed to deal with was bodily pain. Years ago, in the
midst of combat, he would feel as if he himself were a weapon, an operational
automaton. Now he felt all too human. Sweat was beginning to cause the nylon
combat suit to bind around his knees, crotch, underarms, elbows.
A humbling thought crossed his mind: Maybe he could have stayed by the chute,
and let Katsaris do this part. Now he clambered up the rubblework supporting
wall toward the narrow rectangular gap that would lead to the inside edge of the
veranda. The rectangular space, one of several along the roofline, served to
prevent water from pooling on the first floor during the heavy downpours of
monsoon season. As he wriggled through the eighteen-inch-wide drainage port, he
found that he was having difficulty breathing: Exertion? Fear? Katsaris had told
him he’d come up with a good plan. He was, they both knew, lying. This wasn’t a
good plan. It was merely the only one they had.
His muscles still spasming, Janson made his way down a service corridor
adjoining the stateroom of the north wing. He flashed on the blueprints: down
the corridor to the left, twenty feet. The door would be at the end of the
hallway. Discreet. Wood-clad stone. The unremarkable-looking door that led to an
unspeakable pit. Two chairs to either side were empty. The men, having been
summoned by the commotion, would be still unconscious at the foot of the
veranda. The same was true of the backup pair of guards, who would have had a
clear view of the hallway. Seven down. Seventeen to go.
Janson’s pulse quickened as he stood before the door. The lock was many decades
old, and more of a formality than anything. If an intruder had got this far, a
lock on a door was unlikely to stop him. It was, as a quick inspection
confirmed, a wafer tumbler lock, probably of mid-century design. Such locks,