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."So they hauled the oversized suitcase up to the roof.Pavel clambering up the dangling nylon rope first.Kelly followed the bomb and Hazard went up last, with the box hanging from a length of rope attached to his waist and the radiation meter in his pocket clicking away.They drove along the docks to the pier where the fishing boats came in and found the wholesalers already at work in the pre-dawn darkness.The place was a madhouse of furiously busy people, with the bustle and smell of cranes swinging cargo nets loaded with fish, men and women shouting prices at each other, diesel trucks waiting with their motors clattering and fumes fouling the air.Kelly found a friendly dealer who let her weigh the case on a scale used for weighing fish.Then she went to the phone-booth at the end of the pier and plugged her portable computer into its access port.A few taps on her keyboard and she came back to Hazard and Pavel at the car with a worried frown on her face."You're right, Jay," she said as she got into the car."The case is almost exactly ten kilograms lighter than it should be if it were loaded with fissionable material."Hazard clenched both hands on the steering wheel."Then there's no plutonium in it.The bomb's a fake.""Or someone else has already disarmed it," Pavel suggested."It's a fake," Hazard insisted."Shamar has the plutonium back at his base.""The plutonium from all of the bombs?" Kelly wondered.Hazard revved the car to life and started through the pre-dawn darkness to their rendezvous point."Your father's going to piss himself when he finds this out," Hazard said.Kelly said, "Maybe we should bring Sleeping Beauty here along with us, to see how much he knows about this.""Julio won't know a damned thing," Hazard shot back."He's just the guy who stashed the bomb in the power plant, a guy who took a wad of money to do his employer dirt.He didn't even know it was a nuke."Pavel said nothing.But his mind was racing with the possibilities that this new twist had opened up.None of the possibilities looked good to him.Not one of them.Two days later, one of our ferret satellitespicked up this series of electromagneticvibrations as it cruised slightly to the southand west of Moscow.The voices wereidentified by computerized voice-printmatching.Pavel Zhakarov: There is no plutoniumin the bomb.We conclude that Shamar hasthe plutonium with him, and all the bombsthat have been discovered so far are duds.Gregor Volynov (KGB operationsdirector): So we have heard through the IPF.The bomb in Moscow is likewise empty.Zhakarov: The operation againstShamar becomes even more important,then.Volynov: Yes.And more diflScult.Zhakarov: I am confident that we canmake a success of it.Volynov: Good.Once it is finished,Alexander will be too dangerous to bepermitted to continue.Zhakarov (after a pause of nineseconds): You wish me to eliminate him?Volynov: You are ordered to do so,comrade.At the earliest possible moment.VALLEDUPARYear 8THE jet seaplane was moored once again in the Cesar River, but this time at a spot well above the city of Valledupar, in a branch of the river that cut through thick tropical growth as it curved around the base of the steep granite mountains.While Chris Barker worried loudly about ripping out the hull against the shallow rocky river bottom, Alexander urged him to nose the seaplane as close to shore as possible.Once anchored, the whole crew spent the rest of the day covering the broad wings and graceful fuselage with foliage to hide it from prying eyes.That evening after dinner they convened in the wardroom.To an outsider, it might have looked like half a dozen men and women taking their ease in casual conversation.To Alexander, the dynamics of who sat where were not only interesting, but important.Barker picked the lounge chair closest to the forward bulkhead and the flight deck, the braces on his lower legs bulging beneath his slacks.Alma Steiner, the logistics expert, wore a faded gray jumpsuit cinched at the waist with an old U.S.Army belt, tight enough to show off her neatly curved figure.She sat close to Alexander himself.Jay Hazard took a seat near the map table; Kelly automatically picked the seat beside his.Pavel was off in the comer by the rear bulkhead, looking alone and unhappy."It's been confirmed," Alexander said without preamble."Each one of those goddamned bombs is empty.Duds, all of 'em.""But why?" Barker asked."Why go to the risk.?""Shamar's smart," Alexander interrupted with a grim smile."He gets local crazies to plant fake bombs in Washington, Moscow, Paris and Barcelona, then he makes sure that the IPF finds out about it.We spin our wheels trying to neutralize the bombs and find out what he's up to.""While he remains here in these mountains, constructing new bombs from the plutonium," Steiner concluded."Is that possible?" asked Barker."It isn't too difficult," Kelly replied."It's mainly an electronics job, and he should have access to plenty of people who can do the work.""College kids have made nuclear bombs," Hazard pointed out."They just didn't have the fissionable material to make them go boom.""Shamar does," Alexander said."Enough to make five one-hundred-kiloton bombs,"Kelly murmured."Which makes the task of nailing him even more important," said Alexander.Steiner took a deep breath, something she did quite well, as far as Alexander was concerned."The mercenary troops will arrive over the next four days.Two separate groups, each of them coming in two contingents, for a total of seventy-eight men."Alexander added, "They'll disperse their camps along the river.Cold camps, no fires, so they run the minimum risk of being detected.""Don't you think Shamar has the river under surveillance?"Hazard asked, his handsome face looking slightly worried."And spies in the city?"With a shrug, Alexander replied, "We do the best we can."Pavel finally spoke up."We strike in four days, then?""Six," corrected Alexander."Got to give the meres a couple days to get settled and learn the tactical plan." With a sardonic smile, he added, "You can tell Moscow we'll hit Shamar six days from now."Pavel did not smile back.The meeting broke up.The three youngsters headed for their bunks.Alexander watched his daughter, she lingered near Hazard and ignored Pavel, who watched them with dark liquid eyes.Young love, Alexander said to himself.What a pain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]