Project Cyclops Part 59

"What do you mean, we can't?"

His eyes narrowed.

"Don't give me that 'cla.s.sified' bulls.h.i.+t. I've got Top Secret clearance and I d.a.m.ned well have a 'need to know.' "

A long pause ensued. "Jesus! Now you tell me. 'Nuclear material'? What the h.e.l.l does that mean? You're planning to send in my boys to take down a nuke! This is the first I've heard . . . Thanks a lot for telling me. Good Christ!" He paused once more. "Okay, let me think.

I'll get back to you."

He settled the phone back in its cradle and looked around Mission Planning, the gray walls covered with maps. "s.h.i.+t, this whole thing is coming apart."

"What is it?" General Max Austin asked. He was two-star, with steel- gray hair. As the base commander for Souda, he had been placed in charge of Operation Lightfoot, code name for the action to retake Andikythera. Even though they had known each other for fifteen years, Nichols was not necessarily pleased to have this REMF, rear-echelon motherf.u.c.ker, running the show. Austin had been given the undemanding post on Crete for a year mainly as an excuse to b.u.mp up his rank in preparation for retirement.

"The whole op is rapidly going to h.e.l.l in a handbag," Nichols said.

"The Pentagon conveniently left one small fact out of my briefing papers. I'd kill somebody, if only I knew who." He looked up. "Max, we may have to send the Deltas in tonight. Just get this d.a.m.ned thing over with."

"That's not possible," Austin declared without hesitation. "This operation can't go off half-c.o.c.ked. You of all people ought to know that."

"Well, sometimes circ.u.mstances don't wait around for the textbooks. The Gournes SIGINT team just intercepted some radio traffic. Somebody's out there talking, and they know more than we do. They're probably free- lance clowns, most likely mercenaries, but they're claiming the bad guys may be about to launch one of the vehicles, within the next few hours. So they're planning to hit the place tonight."

"Well, they won't stand a chance," Austin said.

"I agree, but what they can do is royally f.u.c.k up our insertion.

They'll disrupt the h.e.l.l out of everything and probably get a lot of the hostages killed."

"Okay," Austin mused, sipping at his coffee, "we've got two problems here. Maybe they should be handled separately. First we interdict these guys going in, and then we decide what to do next."

'The best way to solve them both at once, two birds with one stone, is with a preemptory strike on the island," Nichols insisted again. "Right now. Tonight. We just go in and take the place down."

"No way, Eric," Austin interjected. 'That's going to skew the risk parameters in our ops a.n.a.lysis. We'd have to sc.r.a.p our computer simulation and virtually start over. h.e.l.l, that alone could take us three hours."

All those fancy a.n.a.lyses are best employed wiping your b.u.m, Nichols heard himself thinking, almost but not quite out loud. We've got n.o.body on the ground, so we're working with satellite intel, and SIGINT--which ain't giving us s.h.i.+t 'cause those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds aren't talking on their radios.

"Let me make sure I heard it right a minute ago," Nichols went on. "We can't just take out the launch vehicles, a surgical strike, because there's a chance there could be nuclear material on board?"

"You've got it right. I'd hoped not to have to tell you. So consider this Cla.s.sified. The whole op has been jacked up to a Vega One. We've never had anything that serious before."

That's nuclear, Nichols told himself. Well, he figured, why not. If the terrorists did have a bomb.

"This d.a.m.ned thing is hot," Austin continued. "They don't get any hotter. So there's no way in h.e.l.l I'm going to go around procedures. If you and your boys don't do this clean, it's going to mean our next command, yours and mine, will be somewhere within sight of Tierra del Fuego. If there's a nuclear incident here, the Greek government would probably tear up our mutual-defense treaty and convert the base at Souda into a souvlaki stand. Am I making myself clear?"

"If I hear you right, what you're saying is, no way can we afford to f.u.c.k this one up."

"I've always admired your quick grasp of the salient points in a briefing. So, we're going to do this by the G.o.dd.a.m.n book; we're going to dot every G.o.dd.a.m.n 'i' and cross every G.o.dd.a.m.n 't' and get every G.o.dd.a.m.n detail of this op, right down to the color of our G.o.dd.a.m.n shoelaces, approved, signed off, and a.s.s-kissed in triplicate. That Iranian hostage disaster did not exactly make a lot of careers. Again I ask you, Eric, am I getting the f.u.c.k through?"

"In skywriting. The only small problem I see, sir, is that while everybody is carefully protecting their pension, those a.s.sholes on the island may start slaughtering hostages, or put this 'nuclear material'-- which I have just learned about in such a timely fas.h.i.+on--into G.o.dd.a.m.n orbit. And then my Deltas are going to be in the middle of a s.h.i.+tstorm they easily could have prevented if they'd been given the chance.

They're my boys, and I don't really take kindly to that happening.

_Sir_." He reached in his breast pocket for a cigar, the chewing of which was his usual response to stress.

"So what exactly do you propose we do?" Austin asked.

"The most obvious first thing would be to interdict this bunch of mercenary jerkoffs and keep them from going in there and getting a lot of people killed. I say we should find them and stop them, using whatever force it takes. There are enough civilians in harm's way as it is." He leaned forward. "Look, if we have to d.i.c.k around waiting on the Pentagon before we can go in, at least we can stop these mercenary a.s.sholes. It has to be done. And we don't need some computer study before we get off our a.s.s. I want to take them down, and n.o.body has to even know about it. If it comes out in some debriefing someday, we'll worry about it then."

"All right, maybe I agree with you," Austin sighed. "They should be interdicted. What do you want? A Pave-Low?"

"Just give me an SH-60. To pick them up. I'm going to put the love of the Lord into these amateurs, then bring them in. h.e.l.l, they're probably well-intentioned, just doing what somebody paid them to do."

And who could blame that somebody, he found himself thinking, if it takes the U.S. of A. this long to cut through its d.a.m.ned bureaucracy and mount an operation.

"All right, I'll give you a Seahawk," Austin said. "It can be prepped and ready to go by"--he glanced at his watch--"0300 hours. Will that be enough?"

"Guess it'll have to be." By that time, he was thinking ruefully, we could be taking the island. And with that thought he decided to h.e.l.l with protocol and fired up his well-chewed cigar.

"Look, Eric, I know what you're thinking," Austin said after a pause.

"That an old fart like me is cramping your guys' style. And, dammit, maybe there's a grain of truth in that-- h.e.l.l, more than a grain. But here's the downside. If your Deltas go in half-c.o.c.ked and get cut up, we're going to get blamed. On the other hand, if they don't go in till Was.h.i.+ngton says so, then, yes, maybe it'll be too late, but it's going to be on somebody else's service record, not ours. I'm protecting your boys, whether you see it or not. If we only go in on orders, then the Deltas are not going to be the ones taking the heat if this thing falls apart."

"Just get me the d.a.m.ned chopper," Nichols said quietly.

3:15 A.M.

Mannheim looked at her. "Cally, we need to try and find him. This Vance fellow. If his friends are going to try and come in, then they'll need him to help them. He'll know what they require a lot better than you will."

She found herself nodding grimly, agreeing. Isaac Mannheim was no dummy.

"They must either have captured him or shot him," she said. "Or both.

He would have come back by now unless there was a problem. But if he's still alive, then they probably have him down at Launch. And it's going to be very dangerous for us to go down there, Isaac."

"I'm an old man. Maybe I've outlived my usefulness." It was strange talk for Isaac Mannheim, but he was turning wistful, perhaps even defeated. "I do know one thing. He risked his life for me. I owe it to him to at least find out what happened. So let me go by myself."

She did not like the sound of that. "Look, maybe I--"

"No, not you. They've got to be looking for you. But they probably just think I'm an old fool"--he laughed--"and maybe they're right. At any rate, at least I can go down there and wander around a bit. Everybody knows I'm harmless. As long as it doesn't look like I'm going anywhere, I don't think they'll bother with me. At least not right now. If they're busy with the countdown, they're not going to trouble with a deranged old man. I'm small potatoes."

"Isaac, you're a very big potato." She wanted to hug him. "But you're also just about the most wonderful man I know. I love you to death.

Just be careful, please?"

Now it was his turn to smile, the old face showing its wrinkles more than ever. "I'm not dead yet. And with any luck I won't be for a while." He looked at his watch. "By the way, when do you think those friends of his are likely to show up?"

'They didn't say, but I expect they might get here in a couple of hours."

"Well, Dr. Andros, we're not licked yet. With any luck there won't even be a launch. Maybe the weather. In the meantime, why don't I check the empty storage bays in Launch. Just a hunch." He rose and kissed her, then began to shuffle down the hill.

3:20 A.M.