Gates of Hades (24 page)

Tough choice.

What if she—

There was a loud buzz that startled her before she realized the ship was receiving a message. Unusual for this time of day—must be important. As the sole person on duty in the communications room, she watched an incomprehensible series of letters and numbers march across the screen. In the old days—at least, according to the old war movies she loved—the message would have clattered through the printer louder than two skeletons making it on a tin roof. Now, only the buzzer alerted her to incoming traffic.

She waited for the characters to stop and then picked up a phone on the bulkhead next to her station just below the bridge. She waited a second or two before Lieutenant (J.G.) Wade, tonight's duty officer, picked up.

He must have been daydreaming, too. Woolgathering, her daddy would have called it. Easy enough to do when the only sounds were the rhythmic throbbing of the engines and swish of the hull parting a flat sea.

His voice sounded as though she had woken him up. “Wade.”

He didn't have to identify himself. His drawl was right out of North Carolina's tobacco fields.

“Sir,” Shawana said, “incoming message received.”

“From battle group, fleet?”

Shawana frowned and held her head back from the screen as if that might answer the question. “Don't think so, no, sir. Copy to fleet and battle group, but the communication appears be code ten.”

There was an audible intake of breath. “The navy department? Direct to the
Carney
?”

“Looks like it, sir.”

Thank you, Davis. I'll be right down.”

The immediate clang of hard leather on metal stairs
made good on the promise. Less than fifteen seconds later, Lt. (J.G.) Robert Lee Wade was looking over her shoulder. From his breath, Shawana guessed the spaghetti sauce in the officers' mess had been heavy on the garlic.

“That's something I've never heard of,” he said. “Why would Washington communicate directly with a guided missile destroyer instead of going through channels?”

“Maybe somebody's in a hurry,” Shawana suggested. “Maybe you ought to get this to the captain on the double . . . sir.”

“You may be right, Davis. I've never seen that particular cipher before.”

Neither had she, but she said nothing as he ripped the page from the printer and bolted for the companionway.

It took Cmdr. Edward Simms a full ten minutes of playing with his encryption computer to decode the message, and another ten to confirm he had done it correctly the first time.

“Balls!” he said to no one in particular. “This makes no sense at all.”

The other four men in the room, Wade and the three men who had been playing bridge with the ship's captain, looked at one another before one said, “It's from Washington. It doesn't have to make sense.”

Old joke. More truth than humor.

Simms held the offending paper up to the light as though there might be a secret message in light-sensitive ink. “We're to program the specified target location into one of those experimental aircraft, launch, and recover it.”

“But sir,” one of the men protested, “We have no armament for the Thing, only dummy bombs to test its stability and accuracy.”

“The Thing” was the nickname the
Carney
's crew had given the CRW (canard rotor/wing) X50A UAB (unmanned aircraft, bomber). The X designated the machine experimental. As one wag had noted, it looked like a helicopter and a Piper Cub had had sex with a resulting miscarriage.
It had wings and propeller at the rear, but also rotor blades above. The aircraft had vertical takeoff and landing capacity, making it able to act as either an attack or observation vehicle. Its composite skin made it a poor radar target even if it should climb higher than the terrain-hugging altitude suggested by the bulbous radome at the front end. The only thing in general agreement was that it was the ugliest object in the military since, along with the front parts, the rear end of mules had been retired.

“I don't get it,” someone else piped up. “Launch an experimental drone to drop phony bombs?”

“You don't have to get it,” Simms said, studying the map posted on the bulkhead. “It's an order. Not ours to question who or why, et cetera. It is ours to confirm with fleet, however.”

Simms knew too many horror stories where careers had been sunk by following unusual orders outside the chain of command, only to have some REMF (rear echelon motherfucker) deny issuing such orders when the excrement was being distributed by the ventilating device. Confirmed orders were undeniable orders. Undeniable orders covered one's ass nicely. He wasn't about to risk having his nineteen years end in front of a court-martial.

“Say,” the captain continued, “look at these coordinates. We're conducting a phony strike on Italian territory, Sardinia, to be exact.”

“Perhaps that's why Washington wants to use the Thing. Suppose it involves some sort of spook operation. The plane doesn't officially exist, being as how it's experimental. They could deny responsibility under adverse circumstances.”

Simms glared at his junior officer. “Wade, you sound like a politician.”

It was not a compliment.

 

 

Silanus, Sardinia

Three hours later

Jason had insisted everyone gather up whatever few possessions they had brought to the cave and be ready for a speedy departure.

“Y' tellin' us the cavalry's gonna come chargin' o'er yon hill?” Adrian had asked, only half joking.

“Something like that,” Jason had replied enigmatically.

“Exactly what will happen?” Maria wanted to know.

“I'm not sure,” Jason confessed. “I just know we're gonna have to move in a—”

He was interrupted by a flash of light. Half a second later, a sound like a thunder reached the cave. All four peered out of the entrance to see smoke rising from a patch of ground near the house. Fifty feet away, a second burst was followed by the same roar and dense smoke.

Adrian was chuckling. “Practice bombs! Little noise, lots of smoke to show where the thing hit. 'Less a man knew, he'd think he was being assaulted by ground forces.”

Against the billowing smoke, additional flickers silhouetted
men running in every direction, firing at imagined attackers. One or two bullets whined off the rock at the entrance to the cave.

“We'll never have a better shot at it,” Jason said, rolling out onto the rocky ground. “Let's go!”

With his hand on Maria's elbow, Jason dashed up the hill, followed by Adrian and Clare.

It must have been the loose pebbles and scree that cascaded from each hurried step that drew the attention of the ecoterrorists below. First one shot, then two, then a fusillade split the air above their heads.

Maria moaned in fear.

“Bloody sods dinna know where we are, just shooting at th' sound,” Adrian puffed.

Maria ducked her head as though she might be able to dodge a stray bullet. “They do not have to know if they hit us.”

As they crested the edge of the gully where the car was hidden, Adrian took the lead. He seemed to know their position from memory rather than whatever he could see with the nightscope. The steep hills blocked all but the stars directly overhead. It seemed to Jason they had been on this trek for hours, although his watch told him they had left the safety of the cave only minutes before.

Behind them, the sound of both rifle fire and practice bombs had stopped. Apparently, Eglov and company had realized they were not under any serious attack.

A glimmer of light on metal told Jason they had arrived at the place they had left the Volvo.

Adrian opened the driver's door and swiftly disabled the interior light. “Briskly, now.”

The whine of a nearby rifle shot suggested they had not been quick enough.

“Somebody saw the courtesy light,” Jason surmised, piling into the backseat just as the rear windshield became a spiderweb of cracked glass.

“Never mind,” Adrian said, pulling his wife in beside him. “We'll be outta here . . .”

The sentence died with the empty clicking of the car's solenoid and the thump of two more rounds hitting sheet metal.

“Jesus wept!” Adrian was back out of the car, handing the Sten to Jason through an open window. “Spiteful ol' bitch! She picks a hell of a time to demand attention!”

Jason was considerably more interested in getting the Volvo going than attributing malevolent intent to it. He was using the butt of the machine gun to clear the remaining glass from the back window so he could see to shoot if necessary. “If you can't get her started, now's the time to run for it. They don't see us yet, but that interior light gave somebody the general location.”

As if to verify the observation, a bullet kicked up pebbles as Adrian slammed the hood down. “Give 'er a try, Mother!”

Clare leaned across the seat and tried the key. The feminine touch was no more successful.

Jason opened his door. “Hey, you saved over a hundred euros, remember?”

“An' where's Antonio when you need him?” grunted Adrian.

“Not exactly the time to play mechanic, Adrian. We need to make a run for it.”

“I dinna think so. In th' dark you'd na' be able to follow me. You'd be lost in five minutes, left to the tender mercies of our friends back there once the sun came up.”

“So, what the hell do you suggest?”

Adrian leaned against the post of the open driver's door. “I suggest you bloody push on t' other side. There's a steep swale a few yards away an' we might be able to jump 'er off.”

There was no time for argument. Jason put his shoulder against the car door, his feet scrabbling in the loose, rocky
soil. The car didn't budge, and he saw one, two muzzle flashes as their opponents drew closer. Fortunately, the shots were still wild.

They wouldn't be much longer.

“Give 'er a shove, now.” Adrian gasped. “On th' count o' three. One, two . . .”

The Volvo seemed to move forward a few inches before rolling back, but at least a ton or so of inertia had been overcome.

Jason ducked as a bullet sang by, too close for his liking. Ignoring a second, he heaved again.

This time the car began moving ahead, tires grinding at glacial speed against loose dirt and rocks.

“Should we get out?” Clare wanted to know.

“Nah. We get this thin' goin', there'll be na' time to stop for you,” Adrian puffed.

If
we get it going.

The Volvo was picking up speed, reaching the pace of a steady walk. A bullet buzzed past Jason's ear like an angry bee.

“Any chance that lot has access to night-vision equipment?” Adrian panted.

Jason was thinking the same thing. “Who knows?”

The automobile was now moving at the velocity of an octogenarian's brisk walk as four more shots sprayed Jason with biting, stinging dirt. “But I'd say it's a definite possibility. We're not in accurate range of the AK-47s they carry.”

“When will we be?” Maria's voice asked from the floor of the backseat.

“No time soon, I hope, lassie. Jason, jump in.”

This was going to be it. Either the balky Volvo cranked when Adrian popped the clutch or they had lost valuable time trying to escape. At least they had the chance, Jason thought. Had the Volvo an automatic transmission, there would have been no possibility of using the car's own motion to replace the starter motor.

The Volvo shuddered and jerked, its tires skidding on the dirt, then stopped.

Nothing.

“Not fast enough yet. We'll give 'er a go again,” Adrian said with unwarranted optimism. “Jason, kin ye fend those lads off a bit?”

The Sten wasn't known for its accuracy at any sort of range, and Jason would have cheerfully exchanged the silencer for a flash suppressor. A shot would be hard to trace by sound in these hills, but the fire from the muzzle would pinpoint their location.

Jason rested the machine gun on the roof of the automobile and flicked the selector to single fire. “Soon's there's a chance of hittin' anything. How 'bout you get this buggy going?”

His answer was another shuddering jerk as Adrian popped the clutch again. This time the effort was rewarded with the sound of the engine. The Volvo fishtailed with the sudden application of power, steadied, then lurched forward. Jason fired two or three rounds behind them before jumping into the rear seat. Unlikely he would hit anyone, but it served notice to their pursuers to keep their distance.

“There's a paved road coupla kilometers on,” Adrian announced. “We get there—”

The Volvo hit a bank, lifting the right wheels.

“If you dinna turn on the headlights, we'll na' make it to the paved road,” Clare observed. “Easy to run right inta the edge o' the' combe w'out seein' it.”

“She's right,” Jason observed. “We're at the edge of their range, anyway. More chance of us crashing into something or running over a cliff than getting hit.”

The road in front of them was suddenly visible in the car's lights. Jason marveled that they had not smashed the radiator against one of the boulders lining the rocky trail like irregularly spaced sentries. Or hit the unforgiving rock that, in several spots, towered above the path. This
would have been difficult four-wheel-drive territory. That the Volvo had not left its oil pan or transmission housing along the way had to be the sheerest of luck.

“ 'Ere we be.” Adrian was turning onto what at first looked like a continuation of the uneven path they had followed. Closer observation revealed dirt-colored pavement, cement or asphalt, Jason couldn't be sure. Whatever the material, it served to join a series of tooth-loosening potholes.

At least here there was small chance of unexpectedly hitting a stone larger than the car. As it was, the road was carved from the hills that formed the spine of the island, a serpentine, narrow two-lane that looked barely wide enough for two medium-size vehicles to pass.