“We can see the helicopter from here,” Marty told Randi. Then he worried: “It looks very small.”
“It’ll do, if we can get to it.” Randi hooked her mini-grappling hook into a crevice on the tower wall outside the window, threw the coiled nylon-covered wire down to the ramparts seven levels below, slid into the harness, and dropped.
As soon as she had landed, Jon said, “You next, Marty.”
“Oh, very well.” Marty sat on the windowsill and shut his eyes. “I’m inured to danger.”
The harness was back almost instantly, and Theacute;regrave;se and Jon strapped him into it and lowered him over the side. Marty landed, the harness sped back up, and Theacute;regrave;se followed him down just as a grenade exploded out in the passageway.
Screams and yells followed as Peter sprinted into the room. His face was looking particularly grim. “I’m here, Jon. Let’s bunk.”
Jon motioned to the window. “You first, Peter. Age before beauty.”
“For that remark, my boy, you can stay.” Peter tossed the last grenade to Jon and glided over the edge just as the harness returned.
As Peter buckled himself in and disappeared, Jon waited, his gaze on the door. His heart was pounding.
When the harness reappeared, he snared it and quickly crawled inside. Just then, two Legionnaires stormed into the room. As he dangled high above the parapet, Jon pulled the pin, lobbed the grenade, and released the lock so he could drop down the castle’s wall.
As he sped downward, the detonation made the wire swing violently, and he felt the hook slip. He inhaled and increased his speed dangerously, hoping he had time to reach the bottom before the hook broke free. His rib cage tightened as he realized how much gray smoke was drifting out of some of the tower’s windows.
At last, just as his feet touched the rampart, the hook burst out and fell, nearly hitting him. With relief, he saw that Peter, Marty, and Theacute;regrave;se were already running off toward the barbican where the little scout helicopter was parked.
Shouts erupted not from above, but from along the rampart wall.
“It’s the Crescent Shield tin’s time!” Ranch’ shouted. “Faster!”
Jon and Randi tore after their friends. Peter was already behind the controls of the shuddering helicopter, its rotors spinning, and Theacute;regrave;se and Marty were strapped into passenger seats. Jon and Randi leaped in, too.
Peter lifted off, banking the chopper violently away from the castle as the first Crescent Shield soldiers came into view, firing as they ran.
Bullets pierced the walls and pinged off the landing struts. Everyone was breathing hard. They looked at one another silently, unable to speak, as Peter pushed the chopper farther and farther away from La Porte’s red-stone castle. The stars were a glittery display in the smooth night sky, untouched as if nothing unusual had just happened. Jon thought about General La Porte, about the Crescent Shield, about all the havoc and terror of the last few days, and wondered again at how so much evil could be done in the name of good.
Nearly a mile from the castle, they were just beginning to relax when they heard a volcanic roar. It shook the air around them, and the helicopter shuddered.
They whipped around in their seats just in time to see the east tower of Chteau la Rouge disappear in a violent outburst of fire and stone. Smoke billowed. Red and gold flames shot up against the night sky. Debris shimmered as it flew through the air.
“Good God, Jon,” Peter said. “I’m impressed. What happened?” He turned the helicopter around so it faced back at the castle. He hovered there so they could watch.
“Yes. Well, I meant to mention that,” Jon said.
“Mention what?” Randi asked instantly. “What’ve you been holding back?”
Jon shrugged. “Ammunition. Crates of ammo stored at the back of the armory.”
Peter’s voice rose. “You exploded a grenade in a room where there were ammo supplies? And you didn’t warn us?”
“Hey, so you didn’t notice the crates,” Jon said huffily. “Do I have to point everything out to you? Besides, the ammo was pretty far away.”
“Don’t feel bad, Peter,” Marty said helpfully. “I didn’t see the ammunition either.”
Theacute;regrave;se’s face had blanched white. “Neither did I, for which I’m now very grateful.”
“The whole point of this long, dangerous exercise was to stop the threat of the DNA computer.” Randi was staring at Jon, fighting a smile at the guilty look on his handsome face. “You succeeded, Jon. You blew it up with the grenade.”
“We
succeeded,” Jon agreed, “despite everything.” Peter nodded gruffly. Then he smiled. “Are we ready to go home now?”
For another minute, they continued to study the display as the fire spread through the great old castle in the distance. Then Peter banked the chopper in a long slow circle, preparing to resume their flight southeast toward Paris. Jon and Randi pulled out their cell phones to make full reports to their bosses. Theacute;regrave;se leaned back in her seat and sighed wearily.
“See those little bright specks in the sky?” Marty asked no one in particular, peering east. “They look like lightning bugs. Can anyone tell me what they really are?”
Everyone stared as the points of light grew larger.
“NATO helicopters,” Jon said at last. “I count twenty of them.”
“They’re heading for the castle,” Randi decided.
“Guess your message got through, Jon.” Marty described how Jon had given him a code to alert his superiors to the castle at Chteau la Rouge. “I sent it just before Jon destroyed the prototype.”
Suddenly the dark night air seemed full of the aircraftlarge, troop-carrying helicopters that dwarfed their little Bell scout. The newcomers were flying in a pack, passing to the north in perfect formation. Moonlight made them glow like otherworldly beasts, and their rotors looked like spinning silver swords.
The accumulation of so many was breathtaking. The big choppers landed across the moonlit Norman farmland, still in formation. NATO soldiers jumped out, spread out, and moved at a fast trot toward the burning castle, where the flames licked higher and had spread into what appeared to be half the castle. There was a precision and decisiveness about the troops that was reassuring.
“Pleasant to see NATO in action,” Jon said in vast understatement.
Marty nodded and sighed. “Peter, we’ve seen enough. Take us back to Paris. I want to go home.”
“Right you are,” Peter said, and they resumed the journey.
Epilogue
A Month Later
Fort Collins, Colorado
It was one of those sunny June days for which Colorado was famous. Blue skies, balmy air, and the aromatic scent of pine drifting on a light breeze. Jon walked into the utilitarian building that housed the secret CDC-USAMRIID laboratories where he and other scientists were laboring to create the world’s “first” DNA computer.
He nodded and greeted the lab assistants, secretaries, and clerks by name, and they said hello back. This was the first time some had seen him since he left, and they stopped to say it was great that he was able to return. How was his grandmother?
“Gave us all quite a scare,” he said over and over. “Almost died. She’s on the mend now.”
When he had arrived two days ago at this rustic Colorado State University campus, all of the events in France, Spain, and Algeria were still fresh, although the stress was beginning to fade. Memory could be a blessing that way. Hold on to the good; let go of the bad. He had spent ten days with Fred Klein, going over everything in detail. Covert-One’s files were growing, and each new piece of information, name, location, and comprehension of those who would harm others on scales large and small was grist for future grinding. At the top of the list was the terrorist leader, the pseudonymous M. Mauritania, who had somehow escaped the devastation at the castle. He had disappeared, as vaporous as the billowing white robes he favored.
From what Jon could figure out, a few others of the Crescent Shield must have managed to get out with him. There were not as many dead terrorists as Jon, Randi, and Peter had speculated in their various reports. The corpse of Abu Auda, however, had been found with several shots to the back. No one knew who had fired those bullets, of course, since no one aliverenegade Legionnaires or terroristswas captured in the burning hulk of the castle.
Even the French general who had been ultimately behind it all, Roland la Porte, was dead. He had taken a bullet to his head that blasted off half his skull. Somehow he’d had time to dress in his uniform, his chest full of medals and ribbons, before he shot himself. The pistol was in his hand, and his impeccably pressed tunic was blood-soaked.
It was a sad ending in some ways, Jon reflected as he climbed the stairs to the meeting room. So much potential perverted. But that was what it was all about, why Covert-One existed. Fred Klein had sent a watered-down version of Jon’s report over to army intelligence, as a cover for his supposed employment there. That way, if General Carlos Henze or Randi Russell or even Theacute;regrave;se Chambord went looking, they would find that he had been legitimately hired as a freelancer.