Bonnard’s anger had built even higher. His face was violent red as he told Mauritania, “We have evidence Suleiman brought them from Barcelona to Formentera to here. At the very least, he’s compromised us!”
As Suleiman blanched, Mauritania asked quickly, “Here? How do you know this?”
“We don’t speak idly, Khalid.” Abu Auda scowled at Suleiman.
Captain Bonnard switched to French. “One of your men is dead on the motor launch, and he didn’t die by stabbing himself. Suleiman brought an extra passenger, who’s no longer on the boat.”
“Jon Smith?”
Bonnard shrugged, but his face remained furious. “We’ll know soon. Your soldiers are searching.”
“I’ll send more.” Mauritania snapped his fingers, and all of the men poured out of the hall.
In the dark night, the lightless SH-60B Seahawk helicopter hovered low over an open area near plastic greenhouses and citrus groves a mile from the villa. The air whipped Randi’s face as she stood in the open doorway and hooked the rescue cable onto her harness. She was wearing night combat camos with a black watch cap covering her blond hair. She carried equipment attached to her mesh belt and wore a backpack with more equipment. She gazed down, thinking about Jon, wondering where he was and whether he was all right. Then her mind moved to the mission itself, because in the end that was most important. More important than either hers or Jon’s life. The DNA computer must be destroyed so that whatever madness the terrorists planned was stopped.
She gripped her harness and nodded her readiness. The crewman at the hoist watched the pilot, who finally nodded that he had the chopper in position, hovering. The signal given, Randi jumped into the dark void. The crewman let out the hoist as she descended. She fought the terror of falling, of the failure of equipment, blocked all her fears from her mind until, at last, she bent her knees and rolled onto the ground. Quickly she unhooked the harness. There was no need to bury it. They would know she was here soon anyway.
She bent to the small transmitter. “Saratoga, do you read me? Come in Saratoga.”
With a clean, clear sound, a voice from the cruiser’s combat information center responded, “We read you, Seahawk 2.”
“This could take an hour, maybe more.”
“Understood. Standing by!”
Randi shut off the radio and stowed it in a pocket of her camos, unslung her MP5K mini-submachine gun from her shoulder, and loped off. She avoided the main road and the beach. Instead, she worked her way through the citrus groves and past the greenhouses, their plastic coverings stirring with the wind. The moon hung low on the horizon, its milky light reflecting eerily on the plastic. In the distance, surf pounded the beach, rhythmic as a heartbeat. Above her, the stars had come out, but the sky seemed more black than usual. Nothing moved on the highway or out at sea, and there were no houses in sight. Only the ghostly-orange and lemon trees, and the shifting glitter of the greenhouses.
At last she heard two cars speeding along the highway, their motors loud assaults in the quiet night. They roared past, and abruptly their tires screeched and burned rubber as they made the sharp turn inland that Max had identified from the air. In a few minutes, the engines stopped, cut off as if a curtain of silence had fallen over them. Randi knew the only residence ahead was the villa. The speed indicated someone had felt an urgent need to get to the villa.
She accelerated into a serious run and soon reached the high white wall, where she discovered it was topped by coils of razor wire. An open space of almost ten yards had been cut between the vegetation and the wall as far as she could see, which meant she would not be helped out by overhanging branches. She unslung the backpack she had loaded on the Saratoga with equipment flown to her by the CIA and pulled out a small air pistol, a miniature titanium barbed dart, and a roll of thin nylon-covered wire. She attached the wire to a miniature ring on the dart, inserted the dart into the pistol barrel, and searched until she found a thick old olive tree some ten feet inside the wall.
She stood back and fired. The dart landed where she wantedinto the tree. She returned the pistol to her backpack, put on padded leather gloves, and, grasping the wire, she swarmed hand over hand up to the top of the wall. Once there, she hooked the wire to her belt, returned the gloves to the backpack, and brought out a miniature pair of wire cutters. She clipped a three-foot opening in the razor wire, returned the cutters, and slid over the wall and dropped to the ground.
High-tech security was extremely expensive, and terrorists could rarely afford it. Fundamentalists who became terrorists maintained such an extreme secrecy that their paranoia prevented them from seeking out the necessary hardware, the sales of which were often too closely monitored for their tastes. At least, that was the theory, and she could only hope it was correctand be cautious as hell.
With that in mind, she released the wire from the dart, pulled the coil over the wall after it, and returned everything to her backpack. She melted through the vegetation toward the unseen villa.
Dr. Emile Chambord paused, his hands on the lid of the glass tray. “It’s possible. Yes, I believe you’re right, Colonel. We should be able to escape that way. It appears you’re indeed more than a physician.”
“We’ve got to go immediately. No telling when they’ll discover I’m here.” He nodded at the computer, which was only partially disassembled. “There’s no more time. We’ll take the gel packs and leave the rest”
There was a noise out in the corridor, the door flung open, and Abu Auda and three armed terrorists rushed in, weapons raised. Theacute;regrave;se cried out, and Dr. Chambord attempted to jump in front of her to protect her with his pistol. Instead, the scientist stumbled heavily into Jon, destroying his balance.
Jon recovered, grabbed for his Walther, and spun. It was too late to destroy the DNA prototype, but he could damage it so that Chambord would need days to make it operational again. That would buy Randi and Peter time to find it, if he were not around to help.
But before Jon’s gun could home in on the gel packs, Abu Auda and his men jumped him, knocked the pistol away, and wrestled him to the floor.
“Really, Doctor.” Mauritania had followed his men into the room. He pulled Chambord’s pistol away from him. “This is hardly your style. I don’t know whether to be impressed or shocked.”
Abu Auda jumped to his feet and pointed his assault rifle down at Jon’s head where he lay on the floor tiles. “You’ve given us enough trouble.”
“Stop,”
Mauritania ordered. “Don’t kill him. Think, Abu Auda. An army doctor is one thing, but the American colonel we saw in action in Toledo who’s managed to find us again is quite another. We may have need of him before this is finished. Who knows how valuable he may be to the Americans?” Abu Auda did not move, the rifle still at Jon’s head. His erect, angry posture radiated intent to kill. Mauritania said his name again. He looked at Mauritania. His eyes blinked thoughtfully, and the fire in them slowly banked.
At last, he decided, “Wasting a resource is a sin.”
“Yes.”
Abu Auda gestured with disgust, and his men hauled Smith to his feet. “Let me see the doctor’s gun.” Mauritania handed him Chambord’s pistol, and he examined it. “It’s one of ours. Someone will pay for this carelessness.”
Mauritania’s attention returned to Smith. “Destroying the computer would’ve been a futile gesture in any event, Colonel Smith. Dr. Chambord would simply have had to build us another.”
“Never,” Theacute;regrave;se Chambord insisted and pulled away from Mauritania.
“She hasn’t been friendly, Colonel Smith. Pity.” He glanced back at her. “You underestimate your power, my dear. Your father would build us another. After all, we have you, and we have him. Your life, his own life, and all the work he will do in the future. Much too high a price to save a few people from a bad day, wouldn’t you say? After all, the Americans would not be as concerned about you or me. We’d be a small ancillary cost’collateral damage,’ they call itwhile they took what they wanted.”
“He’ll never build you another!” Theacute;regrave;se raged. “Why do you think he stole your pistol!”
“Ah?” Mauritania raised an eyebrow at the scientist. “A Roman act, Dr. Chambord? You’d fall onto your sword before you’d help us in our dastardly attack? How foolish, but how brave to consider such a gesture. My congratulations.” He looked at Jon. “And you are equally foolish, Colonel, to think you could stop us for any length of time by putting a few bullets into the doctor’s creation.” The terrorist leader sighed almost sadly. “Please give us credit for some intelligence. Accidents are always possible, so naturally we have the materials at hand for the doctor to rebuild, should you decide to martyr yourself even now.” He shook his head. “That’s perhaps you Americans’ worst sinhubris. Your so-smug assumption of your own superiority in all things, from your borrowed technology to your unexamined beliefs and assumed invulnerability. A smug assumption you often extend to include your friends, the Jews.”