Vance stared up the mountain, puzzled. The silence baffled him, and
then he realized why. He was not hearing the usual high-tension hum of
transformers; nothing was operating. They had shut down the power.
He heaved a sigh, then dropped down beside a tree trunk and clicked out
the magazine of the black Uzi. It had about fifteen rounds left, so the
time had come to start making them count. Here, amid the brush, he had
a chance to lie low for a while and figure out what to do next. Besides
feeling thirst and fatigue, he had a throbbing sprain in his shoulder,
incurred somehow during the crash of the chopper. But the pain was
helping to clear his mind.
Maybe, he thought, he could find some provisions stowed in the Hind,
left or overlooked. A stray canteen or some MREs. But did he want to
risk going back down?
The answer was yes because--even more important--the radio might still be
operating. It was definitely time to activate the warranty on this job.
But first things first. Who are these creeps?
Hoping to find out something, he pulled out the leather packet he had
retrieved from the terrorist's torn shirt and cracked it open. Crumpled
inside was a wad of Yemeni dinars, and a crinkled ID card in German. On
the back was a phrase scrawled in English ... it looked like The
Resistance Front for a Free--it was smudged, but yes--Europe.
Back when he and Bates had first talked about the security question,
Bill had insisted ARM focus on industrial security. Truthfully, there
hadn't been any real thought given to antiterrorist measures. It had
just seemed unimaginable. Looked at another way, though, Bates had been
trying to be cost-effective, had gambled on an assumption. Now it was
beginning to look as though that had been a bad bet.
Although for a ground-based setup Dimitri's handiwork-- contracted out
of Athens--was top-notch, it had made no provisions against aerial
penetration. From land or sea. That haunting phrase kept coming back.
But Bill had laughed it off, and the client was always supposed to be
right.
Besides, the SatCom facility already had a nest of radars up on the
hill, there as part of the Cyclops and also to monitor the local
weather. Why clutter up the place any more? The fact was, these guys
had probably come in under the facility's electronic eyes anyway, using
the Hind's ability to detect an interrogation and keep low enough to
avoid a significant radar signature. The background noise from the
choppy sea must have been enough to mask their approach.
Maybe Spiros should have considered that, but at this point such
meditations amounted to Monday-morning quarterbacking. So now the
parameters of the job had changed, from industrial security to
counterterrorism. SatCom was fortunate in its choice of security
services, because an ARM job always came with a guarantee: if a problem
came up, the boys would be there immediately to solve it. Which meant
that alerting Paris was now his first priority. Until reinforcements
arrived, though, he was ARM's on-site rep.
Lots of problems came to mind. First off, he was operating on the
perimeter: he had no map of the facility, no idea where to find the
hostages. However, the communications station up the hill represented a
redoubt he probably could defend reasonably well, unless they brought
up some really heavy artillery. Maybe there would be some way to
disrupt the proceedings, provide a diversion.
Sooner or later, he figured, there's bound to be some action out of the
U.S. air and naval base down at Souda Bay, on Crete. Hopefully somebody
down at Gournes had picked up his Mayday.
But even if they had, could they send in a team? This was Greek soil,
and Greeks tended to be fussy about their sovereignty. Now that NATO
had no idea what its new mission was, America's heavy presence in
Europe more and more looked like Yankee imperialism. They might
convince the Greeks to let them bring in the Navy SEALs or even the
antiterrorist Delta Force from Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North
Carolina, but that would require a lot of negotiation, might take days.
Time could run out by then. And the Greeks had no capability themselves
to do anything but make matters worse.
He looked down the hill, toward the half-visible wreckage of the Hind.
Okay, he thought, time to see about that radio. Slowly he rose,
chambered a round in the Uzi with a hard click, and started through the
brush. The Greek scrub tore through his thin shirt and rasped at his
skin, while the morning sun, glimmering off the proud silver spires of
the vehicles at the other end of the island, beat down. The island
remained eerily calm, the sleep of the dead. The takeover was complete,
no question about that.
Through the brush the wreckage of the Hind showed its mottled coloring,
a mix of grays and tans among the green of the branches. As he
approached, he could discern no sign of his attackers, which either
meant they were pros and lying in wait for him or they were amateurs
and had fled.
He looked around the copse of scrub cypress, then gingerly stepped
through the open doorway. By some miracle the electronics were still
lined up in rows of readiness, lights and LEDs glowing. A tough bird.
And the radio was still operating, and on. Dawn had long since ripened
the clear blue of the sky, and he could feel the beat of warm sunshine
on the shattered bubble of the canopy. Now, he knew, the terrorists
would be scanning the military frequencies, so it was time to be
circumspect and use some caution for a change.
He checked it over. Good, it had sideband. That was perfect, because he
figured they probably wouldn't monitor those offbeat marine
frequencies. If he could raise Spiros in Athens, he could then contact
Paris. They could put together a team overnight and fly it down.
He fiddled with the sideband channels, hoping. He heard some amateur
action and a ship-to-shore--funny, he thought, that the minute yachtsmen
put to sea they're anxious to get in contact with someone on dry land.
What would Ulysses have done with a shortwave radio? Talked back to the
Sirens? . . .
The broadcasts, however, were mainly about the weather. Sailors did not
waste their time on world events. When that news finally trickled down,
however, these sideband channels would probably no longer be safe to
use--maybe they weren't now, but he had to take the risk. . . .
He tried a few frequencies and then he got lucky. It was a Greek ham
operator, probably having a second cup of strong native coffee and
waiting for the traffic in Athens to subside. As are all amateurs, he
was delighted to talk. He sounded youthful and enthusiastic, eager to
help.
"I read you, Ulysses. You're coming in loud and clear on SSB 432.124
megahertz. This is SV5VMS, Athens. What is your callsign?"
"Don't have a handle," Vance replied into the mike, in Greek. "This is
a Mayday."
"I copy." The voice suddenly grew serious. "What is your location?"
He paused a second, wondering what to say. No, he couldn't take a
chance. Who knew who else was listening in?
"Don't have that either. What I need is a phone patch to a number in
Athens. Can you set it up?"
"No problem," came the confident response, using the international
English phrase. Vance tried to imagine what he looked like. Probably
mid-twenties, with the swagger acquired by all young Greek men along
with their first motor scooter. They wanted to impress you with how
wonderful their country was, and they also wanted you to know that they
were the biggest stud in all the land. "But whoever you want may be
gone to work by now."
"This guy probably won't even be out of bed yet. He's a night owl,"
Vance replied into the mike. He didn't add that the best thing Dimitri
did at night was handle an infrared-mounted H&K MP5. "It's Athens city
code and the number is 21776." He knew that Spiros kept a lovely
whitewashed house on the western side of town, just out of the major
smog centers.
Moments later the patch was through and he had Spiros on the radio. The
patch was scratchy and hill of static, but not so much he couldn't
hear.
"Michael, you woke me up. I hope the world just ended." It was Spiros's
gruff voice. A thirty-year veteran of an antiterrorist unit in
Brussels, he was as tough as he sounded. "By the way, everybody's heard
about that _Odyssey_ stunt of yours. Are you in trouble already? We've
got a pool going on you. I have ten thousand drachmas saying you'll
never make it."
"I appreciate the confidence. Anyway, you can start spending the money.
You'll be relieved to know I blew it. She sank on me."
'Too bad." He laughed. "So what was the problem?"
"Mostly it was some twelve-mil machine-gun fire. Took the wind right
out of her sails. I took a swim and then I think a 57mm Euclid finished
her off."
'That's Russian." The voice quickly grew serious. "Sounds like vou made
the wrong people mad. Who in hell did it?"
"Don't know, but they're very meticulous about their work. They used a
false-flag approach and shelled an American frigate down here north of
Crete. Should be making the news any time now."
"Sounds like somebody's getting hot about inviting the Sixth Fleet out
of the Med." Then Spiros's pensive tone turned businesslike. "Are you
okay? Where are you now?"
"I'm fine, I think. But you've got to get some of the boys down here."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember that job you did for Bill Bates?" Maybe, he thought, we can
talk around the problem. "Looks like the security didn't stick."
"That was a good job," Spiros said with a growl. "Need some updating?"
"It's going to be a little more than that. I think maybe a dozen
hostiles, give or take, came in by chopper. A Hind-D. Had all the
factory extras."
"Had?"
"It just met with an accident."
"And I'll bet you had nothing to do with it." He laughed. "So what kind
of hardware do they have?"
"Uzis for sure. Probably also some grenade launchers. Also light
machine guns, ZB-26. The odds are good they're going to be here for a
while. They've dug in and it's a long swim to anywhere."
"Should we be having this conversation on the phone?" Caution was
entering his voice. "Can we secure up these communications?"
"Bight now we've got no choice," Vance answered. "Nothing where I am is
secure." Including my skin, he thought.
"All right, then, give it to me fast." He was all business. "What do
you have on nationality?"
"It has a Beirut feel about it. But I managed to get some material off
one of them, and I think he was a former East German Stasi type.
Whoever they are, they're operating under some phony front name."
"I read you. Usual terrorist MO?"
"Best I can tell."
'Then we have to worry about civilians. That's going to make it
tougher."
"Bill may be among them. And all his staff."
"Bad news."
"He's a prize."
"What do you think their game is?" Spiros asked after a pause.
"Ransom?"
"That'd he my first guess. Though it doesn't synch with the attack on
the U.S. ship--unless it was intended as a deliberate diversion. Maybe
they're planning something else. But my hunch is money's involved.
Anyway, we'll find out soon enough."
"You're damned right we will." The line was silent for a moment as
static intervened. "Well, this will teach us to guarantee our work.
It's going to be an expensive insurance policy."
"Nothing in life is supposed to be easy."
"So we keep finding out." He seemed to be thinking. "You know, I sent
the layout to Paris when the job was finished. For the files." He
didn't want to mention Pierre Armont, the head of ARM, on an unsecured
line. "I'll see what the office there can get together for us."
"Do we have any people left on site?" Vance asked.
"Just contract," Spiros responded. "Locals and probably not worth
much."
"Well, whoever they are, chances are good they've been neutralized by
now. As a matter of fact, I fear the worst."
"That's our motto. Assume everything will go to hell and then work
around it."
"Time to get off the air. I'll try to raise you at 1700 hours. On 2150
megahertz. By that time you'd better have the team lined up and ready
to move in. I owe Bates this one. A nice clean job."
"Right. Who do you think we ought to use?"
"Anybody who worked on the security here would be good."
'That's got to be me," Spiros said ruefully.
"Okay. Beyond that, we'll need a first-class SWAT team. This one is
going to be rough. We need somebody who can handle explosives like a
brain surgeon, maybe Marcel, out of Antwerp. Get him if you can find
him sober. Also, we probably could use a negotiator. Somebody who can
keep them busy while we get the real insertion in place. And a good
sniper will be essential. Lots of friendlies."
"Okay. That sounds like Reggie. I'll run some names past Paris. But
what are you going to do in the meantime?"
"Well, they know I'm here, but they don't know who I am. I'll
concentrate on staying alive, and try to find out whatever I can about
the MO. Catch you at 1700."
"Talk to you then," Dimitri said, and hung up.
Right, Vance thought. I'd definitely rather be in Philadelphia.