"It gets worse. Not only is the gantry gone, but I'm afraid they've
taken Mike prisoner."
"Mike?" He was still trying to get his bearings.
"Vance." She was suddenly embarrassed by the implied familiarity.
Isaac, she noted, hadn't missed it, and he raised an eyebrow. "Look,"
she continued, "he may be dead by now, who knows. But I want to get you
out of here, and then try to raise ARM on the radio. They were going to
delay everything for a day, but now they've got to get in here and stop
the launch." She paused, shaking from the strain. "Isaac, I'm not as
strong as I thought I was." Her voice quavered. "I'm scared to death.
For you, for Bill, for Georges, for Mike. For all of us. Even worse,
I'm scared for the world."
"What do you mean?" He was finally coming alive. With a faint groan he
rubbed his glassy eyes and brushed back his mane of white hair.
"I've got a sneaking suspicion that those bastards have put a nuclear
weapon in the payload bay of VX-1."
"Good God. And now you say the gantry is gone? How will we get it
down?"
"Look, let's not worry about that part just yet. We just have to stop
them from going through with the countdown. We can disarm the bomb
later."
"All right, then." He was on the side of his bed, searching for his
shoes. "Get me out of here."
She led him out into the darkened hallway. The separate rooms were all
locked, giving no clue who was still around. Where was the SatCom
security staff? she suddenly wondered. Were they locked up in their own
safe little enclave somewhere? Wherever they were, they wouldn't be any
help now. They undoubtedly were unarmed and demoralized.
With a sigh she pushed open the door and they stepped out into the
storm. Wind was tearing across the island, bringing with it the taste
of the Aegean, pungent and raw. It felt cool, a refreshing purge after
the stuffiness of the Bates Motel. The rain lashed their faces,
cleansing away some of the feeling of the nightmare, and she knew that
the few wild goats that had not been captured and removed would now be
huddled in the lee behind a granite ledge they liked, bleating
plaintively. There was a wildness, a freeness about Andikythera, as the
winds tore across and through the granite outcroppings--and the sea
churned against the timeless rocks of the shore--that made it feel like
nowhere else on earth.
Get practical, she ordered herself, forget the romance. The storm would
probably be over well before morning, but in the meantime it would just
make things that much harder for ARM to reach the island. If they made
it at all, it would be around dawn, just in time to watch the launch.
Damn Vance.