The Icarus Agenda by Robert Ludlum

‘Then let’s go… your friend is bound.’

‘To the dock? To the boats?’

‘Not yet, amigo. We have something else to do before we get there.’

‘I tell you it will be light soon!’

‘If I do things right, there’ll be a lot more light sooner than that. Get the gasoline and pick up the tree clippers. I can’t manage much more than what I’ve got.’

Step by agonizing step, Evan climbed the narrow dirt road behind the Mexican until they reached the island’s immense, fence-enclosed generator, the bass-toned hum assaulting their ears to the point of painful vibrations. Signs of กPellagra!…Danger! were everywhere, and the single gate to the interior was secured by two huge plate-locks that apparently took the simultaneous insertion of keys to open. Limping around into the darkest shadows of the floodlights, Kendrick gave the order while handing Emilio the wire cutters. ‘Start here, and I hope you’re as strong as you say you are. This is heavy-gauge fence. Slice an opening, three feet’s enough.’

‘And you, se๑or?’

‘I have to look around.’

He found them! Three iron discs screwed into concrete thirty feet apart, three enormous tanks, cisterns for fuel, supplemented by banks of photovoltaic cells somewhere which no longer concerned him. Opening a disc required a T-squared hexagonal wrench, its upper bars long enough for two strong men on each bar. But there was another way and he knew it well from the desert tanks in Saudi Arabia; an emergency procedure in the event the caravans of fuel trucks forgot the implement, not uncommon in the Jabal deserts. Each supposedly impenetrable disc had fourteen ridges across the top, not much different from the manhole covers in most American cities, although much smaller. Hammered slowly counterclockwise, the circular vaults would loosen until hands and fingers could reach the sides and unscrew them.

Kendrick walked back to Emilio and the near deafening island generator. The Mexican had cut through two parallel vertical lines and was starting at the ground level base. ‘Come with me!’ said Evan, shouting into Emilio’s ear. ‘Have you got your hatchet?’

‘Pues si.’

‘So do I.’

Kendrick led the Mexican back to the first iron disc and instructed him how to use the towels from the electronic cabin to muffle the blows from the blunt ends of their hatchets. ‘Slowly,’ he yelled. ‘A spark can set off the fumes, comprende?’

‘No, se๑or.’

‘It’s better that you don’t. Easy now! One tap at a time. Not so hard!… It’s moving!’

‘Now harder?’

‘Christ, no! Easy, amigo. As if you were cracking a diamond,’

‘It has not been my pleasure—’

‘It will be if we get out of here… There! It’s free! Unscrew it to the top and leave it there. Give me your towels.’

‘For what, se๑or?’

‘I’ll explain as soon as you get me through that door you’re cutting in the fence.’

‘That will take time—’

‘You’ve got about two minutes, amigo!’

‘Madre de Dies!’

‘Where did you put the gasoline?’ Kendrick moved closer to be heard.

‘There!’ replied the Mexican, pointing to the left of the ‘door’ he was cutting.

Crouching painfully in the shadows, Evan tied the towels together, tugging at each knot to make sure it was secure until he had a single ten-foot length of cloth. His body aching with each twisting movement, he unscrewed the top of the petrol can and drenched the string of towels, squeezing each as if it were a dishcloth. In minutes he had a ten-foot fuse. His knee now boiling, his ankle swelling rapidly, he crawled back to the fuel tank dragging the towels at his side. Straining, he prised up the iron cover, inserting three feet of fuse and moving the heavy disc off centre so that a flow of air would circulate throughout the black tank below. Backtracking, he pressed each towel, each leg of his fuse, firmly in the ground, sprinkling dirt over each, but only ‘dusting’ them so as to retard the speed of the flame from base to gaseous contact.

The last towel in place, he stood—wondering briefly how long he could stand—and limped back to Emilio. The Mexican was pulling the heavy-gauged cut-out section of the fence towards him, bending it up to permit access into massive, glistening machinery that through the dynamo-electrical process converted mechanical energy into electricity.

‘That’s enough,’ said Kendrick, bending over to speak close to Emilio’s ear. ‘Now listen to me carefully, and if you don’t understand, stop me. From here on everything is timing—something happens and we do something else. Comprende?’

‘Si. We move to other places.’

‘That’s about it.’ Evan reached into the pocket of his mud-encrusted jacket and withdrew the torch. ‘Take this,’ he continued, nodding his head at the hole in the fence. ‘I’m going in there and I hope to hell I know what I’m doing—these things have changed since I installed them—but if nothing else I can shut it down. There may be a lot of noise and big sparks—’

‘ฟC๓mo?’

‘Like short bolts of lightning and… and sounds like very loud static on the radio, do you understand?’

‘It is enough—’

‘Not enough. Don’t get near the fence—don’t touch it and at the first crack, turn away and shut your eyes… with any luck all the lights will go out and when they do, shine the torch on the opening in the fence, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘As soon as I get through to this side, swing the light over there.’ Kendrick pointed at the last of his knotted towels protruding out of the ground. ‘Have your rifle over your shoulder and hold out one for me—have you got the cap you took from the first guard? If you have, give it to me.’

‘Si’. Here.’ Emilio took the cap out of his pocket and handed it to Evan, who put it on.

‘When I’m clear of the fence, I’ll go over there and strike a match, setting the towels on fire. The second I do that we get out of here to the other side of the road, comprende?’

‘I understand, se๑or. Into the grass at the other side of the road. We hide.’

‘We hide; we work our way up the hill in the grass, and when everyone starts running around, we join them!’

‘ฟC๓mo?’

‘Twenty-odd personnel,’ said Kendrick, checking his pockets and removing the two tins of fuel, replacing them in his trousers, then ripping the coat off his back and the tie off his neck. ‘We’re only two of them in the dark, but we’ll be making our way over the hill and down to the dock. With two rifles and a Colt .45.’

‘I understand.’

‘Here we go,’ said Evan as he awkwardly, painfully bent down and picked up the rubber-handled tree clipper and a machete.

He crawled through Emilio’s opening and rose to his feet, studying the whirring, life-threatening machinery. Some things had not changed, they never would. Above on the left, bolted into a fifteen-foot-high tar-covered pole, was the main transformer, the shunt wires carrying the major load of power to the various offshoots, the cables encased in rubber conduit at least two inches in diameter to prevent seepage from water—rain and humidity—which would short-circuit the load. Ten feet away on the ground and diagonally opposed above the two black squat main dynamos were the grid plates, whirling maniacally on flywheels on top of the machinery, changing one field of energy into another, protected by a heavy latticework of wire and cooled by the air that had open access. He would study them further but not now.

First things first, he thought, moving to his left and extending the telescopic tree clipper to its full height. Above in the floodlights the saw-toothed jaws of the long instrument gripped the upper shunt cable, and as he had done with the wire cutters on the tail assembly of the helicopter, he worked furiously up and down until his professional instincts told him he was within millimetres of the first layer of coiled copper. He gently leaned the extended metal pole against the fence and turned to the first of the two main dynamos.

If it were merely a question of shorting the island’s electrical power, he would simply continue slicing into the transformer’s conduit while gripping the nonconductive rubber handles and let the short take place by angling the metal clipper into the metal fence when he struck cable. There would be a brief electrical explosion and all the power terminated. However, more was at stake; he had to face the probability that neither he nor Emilio would survive, and a damaged transformer cable could be repaired in a matter of minutes. He had to inflict more than damage; he had to cripple the system. He could not know what was happening in San Diego, he could only give Payton’s forces time by disabling the machinery to the point where it would take days to replace, not repair. This island compound, this headquarters of a government within a government, had to be immobilized, isolated, without means of communication or departure. The transformer was, in actuality, his backup, his far less desirable option, but it had to be there and ready to execute. Time was everything now!