“Stand by,” the weapons officer said. “Time to impact, now.”
What the P-3C made up for in endurance and stability,
it lost in speed. The nose seemed to take forever to come around.
“Negative ten seconds from impact.”
Muto looked at his co-pilot.
“Kan-cho,
I show a miss with both torpedoes,” the weapons officer reported.
“Launch the sonobuoys now,” Muto ordered, his stomach sour. “What does the MAD show?”
“We've lost him,
Kan-cho,
” the ELINT officer said.
“Not for long,” Muto replied. “We've just started.”
Â
Mueller stood at the head of the stairs listening to Reid and the young woman argue. She had come to kill him, but first she wanted answers. Hundreds of people dead, and she wanted to know why. What did he hope to gain? How could he live with his conscience? She wanted to batter him with her anger and her guilt. She was to blame, as they all were, for not listening to McGarvey. He was the only one who knew what really happened, but they wanted to arrest him.
There it was again: McGarvey. He could hear what in the woman's voice when she spoke the name? Love?
Mueller had two considerations if he was going to remain at large for any length of time, hunted by every legitimate law enforcement agency in the world. He would need Reid's money and he would have to kill McGarvey.
Reid could transfer funds electronically once they got clear of this place, but McGarvey was a different story. Sooner or later the FBI and Interpol would give up. New issues would arise, and this case would drop off the most active file. But McGarvey would never give up. He'd read McGarvey's Stasi and KGB files, and he had a great deal of respect for the man. If he was going to meet McGarvey head to head, he would need an advantage.
He eased the Beretta's safety off and walked down the hall to the open sitting-room door.
The young woman, her back to the door, stood facing Reid. She held an automatic pistol at arm's length. If it went off she'd break her wrist. She was an amateur.
Reid stood next to a wingback chair near the window. His face lit up.
Dominique started to turn. Mueller stepped into the room, and reaching over her shoulder snatched the gun from her grasp.
“No,” she cried. But any thought she had about trying to fight ended when she looked into his eyes. She lowered her arms.
“Who are you?” Mueller asked.
“Her name is Dominique Kilbourne,” Reid said. “She's a lobbyist for the airlines.”
“Let her answer,” Mueller said mildly, pocketing her gun. “Are you a friend of McGarvey?”
“You're Colonel Mueller,” she replied in wonderment. But her eyes betrayed her. She was more than just a friend to McGarvey.
“Yes.”
She shuddered. “You're an assassin.”
“The same as McGarvey.” Mueller turned to Reid. “Are you capable of driving?”
“Yes.”
Mueller tossed Reid the car keys. “Pack a bag and leave it in the downstairs hall. Then get my car. It's a green Ford Probe on the upper side of R Street two blocks from here. Across from a woman's boutique.”
“I can't leave.”
“Two FBI agents were out front watching your house. I killed them.”
Reid stepped back as if he'd been slapped.
“They were gathering evidence against you, I suspect. They'll send others, so hurry.”
“But ⦔
“It very nearly worked as you planned,
Herr
Reid, but not quite. Stay here and you will be imprisoned. Come with me and you will have a chance of continued freedom.”
“Where are we going?”
“The Canadian border at Buffalo.”
“And then?” Reid asked.
Mueller watched Dominique. “We'll see. Mr. McGarvey will come for her, as he has all of his women.”
“He'll kill you,” Dominique said softly.
“That is a possibility.” Mueller smiled pleasantly. “It will be most interesting to see how it turns out.”
“I'll get the car,” Reid said.
“In the meantime, I'll get acquainted with Ms. Kilbourne.”
Â
The chopper that had tried to land on the roof of Seventh headquarters burned furiously where it crashed in the parking lot. Platoon Sergeant Ingrid Wentz figured they had five minutes before the mob reached the upper floors where she and Jones, who were the only survivors from Baker Platoon, had retreated. They'd rounded up seventeen other HQ personnel who'd gotten left behind in the bugout and herded them upstairs. They were admin types and wouldn't be able to offer much help in a knockdown dragout. But they were military personnel, and most of them carried sidearms. She raced down to the fifth-floor corridor from the roof where the others were covering the elevator and two stairwells.
“Lima and Kilo companies are pinned down across base at 26th,” Jones reported. “And I can't raise security ops.”
“An air evac is out unless they can control the small arms fire,” Wentz said. She was so frightened that her voice wanted to catch in her throat. But she wouldn't let it happen. She was a Marine.
“Search-and-rescue is standing by three minutes out.”
“Didn't you hear me, goddammit? The fucking chopper is down.”
Jones just looked at her. He knew the helicopter had crashed.
“Okay, let me talk to them.”
The power suddenly went out, and the emergency lights at each end of the corridor automatically switched on.
“Fuck!” someone shouted.
“Belay that!” Wentz ordered. “It means they can't use the elevator. Kill those lights, and double up on the stairwells.”
“SAR One,” Jones said.
“Anything comes through those doors, kill it.” Wentz took the handset as the emergency lights went off, plunging the corridor into darkness. “SAR One, Baker Platoon Sergeant Wentz.”
“What's your situation, Sarge?”
“I'm set up on the fifth floor with fifty well-armed personnel. But I don't want to hurt any civilians unless I'm forced into it.”
“What about Charlie-Seventeen?”
“No survivors, SAR One. We need some help right now!”
“Roger that. The Japanese authorities are en route.”
“We need an air evac. Can you lay down enough tear gas to come in? I really don't want to use my grenade launchers or LAWS. A lot of people will get hurt.” She hoped to Christ they knew that communications weren't secure, and that she was bluffing. The platoon hadn't been equipped with anything heavier than M16s.
Something crashed on the floor below them, and there were many sounds of breaking glass, twisting metal, and splintering wood. The mob was destroying the building.
“Ten minutes.”
“We don't have ten minutes, SAR One. Suggest you get serious or we're dead meat.”
Â
“There weren't fifty people left in the building,” Don Moody said. “Admiral, if we don't do something there's going to be a lot more casualties on both sides.”
“Don't I know it,” Admiral Ryland said. “Nothing from the Japanese authorities?”
“Not a thing,” Captain Byrne said.
The morning outside the windows of the Boeing Sea Knight helicopter was still pitch black. To the east it was impossible to pick out where the sky met the sea. Only
behind them could they see the loom of Tokyo on the horizon.
“Do we have any tear gas aboard those choppers?”
“No, sir. They're search-and-rescue, not crowd control.”
“I've got an idea,” Moody said. “It's a long shot, but I don't see any other options.”
“Go ahead.”
“Assuming the Japanese are going to send someone down there to clear out the base, we have to buy some time. But no matter what happens there'll be casualties. We need to minimize them by keeping the crowd away from our people.”
“I'm listening,” the Admiral said.
“The mob has reached the fourth floor. If we move our people up to the roof, the fifth floor will be empty long enough to bring in some choppers.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Don?” Byrne asked.
“Covering fire. We shoot through the windows on all four sides of the building. Make the fifth floor a noman's land.”
“You're talking about the Iroquois and Super Cobra assault helicopters,” Byrne pointed out. “The nearest birds are at least an hour away.”
“Christ,” Moody said.
“Get 'em started, Tom,” Admiral Ryland ordered. “In the meantime we'll put more pressure on the Japanese, and I'll call Washington.”
“What about Sergeant Wentz?”
“She'll just have to hold on.”
Â
The television monitors in the White House situation room were tuned to the three commercial networks and CNN, covering the carnage at and around the eight airports. They were all reporting death tolls in the plus-two-thousand range. Every major highway into .those airports was jammed with traffic, and the nation's long-distance telephone system was so overloaded that it had finally broken down. Almost no calls were getting
through anywhere. It was as if the entire country had gone into gridlock.
An aide came in with the AP bulletin from Tokyo. Secretary of Defense Landry took it.
“What is it now?” Lindsay asked.
“The Associated Press is quoting an unnamed Japanese government source about a battle between three of our warships and the MSDF submarine north of Okinawa.” Landry passed the wire copy down the table.
“Has Seventh said anything about this?” the President asked.
“There's something going on down there all right, but no one knows for sure exactly what. The curious thing is that someone in the government is willing to talk about it.”
Lindsay read the brief report. “Have shots been exchanged?”
“I don't know.”
“Find out, Paul.”
“Yes, sir.” Landry picked up one of the phones.
“If it's true, it changes everything,” Secor said.
“Depends who in Tokyo told the AP,” Lindsay said. “Call Westin and find out who the hell his people talked to.” Bert Westin was the general manager of the AP.
“Mr. President, we have reached Prime Minister Enchi,” a technician said.
“The question is whether or not Enchi is in control over there,” Secor said.
“I'm about to find that out.”
Â
“There are at least four Russian nuclear submarines in the vicinity of Soya Strait,” Director General of Defense Hironaka said.
A light flashed on Enchi's console. He stared at it hypnotically. The Japanese had had no war crisis-management practice in more than fifty years. He was a politician, a friend of big business, not of the military. “Is that confirmed?”
“One of our ASW aircraft spotted the first submarine near where the Russian destroyer went down. It dropped
a pair of torpedoes, but then lost the sub when it went deep.”
“You said there were four of them.”
“That one is confirmed, Mr. Prime Minister. The others are probables. Based on best estimates from available data.”
“Then we don't know this for sure?”
“Where there is smoke there is fire.”
Enchi slapped his open palm on the table. “I deal with facts, not speculation,
Hironaka-san.
”
“The Russians have attacked Wakkanai,
Enchi-san.
That is a fact. As is the presence of a Russian nuclear submarine ten miles off our coast. If you wait until you have
all
the facts the entire north island may be nothing but smoking cinders!”
Enchi composed himself for a moment, then viciously jabbed the button on his console. “Mr. President, I have learned the unfortunate news about Vice President Cross.”
“He was just one of more than two thousand,” President Lindsay cut in. The anger in his voice was unmistakable. “I have heard about a battle between several of our navy vessels and one of your submarines in the East China Sea north of Okinawa. What is going on?”
“We are trying to recall that submarine. But I assure you that we are engaged in no incident with your navy.”
“Someone in your government thinks so. They leaked the information to the Associated Press there in Tokyo. It has hit all of our media.”