Chapter 3

It was an arrogant mistake, and I
can't let it happen again. It won't happen again.

He turned and moved back up to the cockpit. "What's our status?"

"Sideslip is nominal," Salim reported grimly, his dark eyes glancing
down at the churning sea only a couple of hundred meters below them. "I
think we're going to be all right."

"We have just had an example of how an oversight can destroy an
operation," Ramirez declared, turning back to the main cabin. "We will
not succeed if we get careless, lose discipline. I have planned this
operation down to the last small detail. You have all been briefed,
over and over." He paused and examined the men. Sometimes he felt as if
he were lecturing children, but these were no children. "Each of you
knows what his job is. I expect you to do it with exactness and
precision. The next oversight anyone here makes will be his last. Am I
understood?"

There was silence, then finally a voice came from the litters in the
darkened cabin aft, barely audible above the roar of the twin engines.
It was Jean-Paul Moreau, the Frenchman. He hated flying, and he
particularly hated flying with an Iranian at the controls.

"What the hell happened?"

"Someone on . . . presumably a raft of some kind. We took a couple of
rounds of small-arms fire." He glanced back, making sure his voice
reached Peretz in the weapons station. "The last Swatter was left
turned on, armed, and it must have been hit. Probably the detonator. A
stupid oversight."

"Looks like the mistake was mine," came the voice of Peretz, trying,
unsuccessfully, to sound contrite. "Can't win them all, baby."

Back to his smart-ass self, Ramirez thought, still gritting his teeth
in anger. But he pushed it aside. "Forget it. In this business you only
look back if you can profit from your mistakes. We just learned what
happens when we forget our mission. The matter is closed."

"Now"--he returned his attention to the main cabin-- "when we set down at
the facility, I expect total discipline. Nothing less will be
tolerated. Is that understood?" He motioned Peretz out of the weapons
station and took his place there.

Would these men hold together the way he required? As he looked them
over, he felt confident. He had had enough experience to smell success.

Sabri Ramirez had definitely been around the track. Born in Venezuela
almost half a century earlier, the son of a prominent Marxist lawyer,
he had become an ardent revolutionary by age twenty. At twenty-five he
went off to Cuba, but it was only later, while attending Patrice
Lumumba University in the Soviet Union, that he discovered his true
ideological core --it turned out he actually despised "the oppressed of
the earth," along with curfews, books, and lectures. No, what he really
wanted to join was not the Party, but the party--good living, women,
fame. And he wanted the last most of all. After nine months his lack of
ideological fervor got him summarily expelled. He actually felt relief.

With an eye to where the action was, he immigrated to Beirut . . . and
prudently became a Muslim by conversion. Then he started making
contacts--Beirut had always been a good place to make contacts. The
payoff was quick. He was young, obviously brilliant, and he would do
anything. In the early 1970s he was recruited by the terrorist group
known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and assigned
leadership of its European unit. Off he went to Paris, the posting of
his dreams.

He had long fantasized about making himself a legend as one of the
world's leading terrorists, and he was soon succeeding beyond his
fondest imaginings. In 1974 he graduated from the PFLP and formed his
own group. A Middle Eastern gun-for-hire, it was known as the
Organization of the Armed Arab Struggle. The designation, he thought,
had a nice revolutionary ring, which he had long since learned
mattered. His new enterprise--terrorism-to-go--soon attracted such major
clients as Libya and Iraq. Among his more celebrated achievements were
the bombing of a French Cultural Center in West Berlin, exploding a
suitcase bomb at a Marseilles railroad station, and placing an
incendiary device aboard the French "bullet train."

Although he never had cared about ideology, he appreciated the
importance of a correct political stance in the Islamic world, and
therefore he frequently posed as the leader of an "armed struggle"
against the "Zionist Enemy." But always, however, at a profit. He had,
in fact, perfected the fine art of extortion, pressing the
"reactionary" regimes of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the
Gulf sheikdoms into paying protection money disguised as "revolutionary
donations." After he engineered the 1975 OPEC incident in Vienna in
which eleven oil ministers were taken hostage, and then blew up a
seaside resort, killing a Kuwaiti official, he began receiving regular
payoffs from all the Gulf states.

Finally, in 1984, he closed out operations under the OAAS name, moved
to Damascus, and began training Syrian intelligence agents. By that
time, he had become a chimera, a legend whose nickname, the Hyena, was
linked to every car bomb in Europe. And by that time also, the Hyena (a
name he despised) had become the stuff of popular fiction, as well as
of dossiers on three continents.

Having reduced terrorism to a science--a boring science --he then
temporarily retired. But now, after the American invasion of the Middle
East, he had decided to come back for one last score, to do what he had
been dreaming about for years. The Americans had unwittingly provided
the perfect opportunity. Why not seize it? This time, however, he
wanted to do it himself, not with an army of half-crazed radical
Muslims. . . .

He stepped up to the cockpit and examined the rows of gauges. "Hold the
airspeed under a hundred knots. And make sure you keep her on the
deck."

Then he checked down below. "Peretz, this time make sure all the
weapons stations are switched off. That's _off."_

The Israeli nodded, this time without his usual grin.

Now the Hind had begun its final approach. The low-light

TV showed a small landing pad approximately thirty meters on each side
with a private helicopter parked in the middle of a black and white
bull's-eye in the center. He knew that ARM--a group he had long hated--
had ringed the island with a first-class industrial security system.
Five years ago, he recalled, they had killed three of his operatives in
Beirut, in a futile attempt to kill him. What's more, it never made the
papers. Typical. The security system they had developed for the island
was good, but it made no provision for this kind of penetration. It
pleased him to at last make fools of them.

"We're coming in," Salim announced. He touched the rudder pedal with
his left foot to hold their heading and grasped the collective pitch
lever as he eased the engines toward idle. "There's already a helo on
the pad. Looks like a new Agusta."

"I know about it. Just set down next to it, inside the landing
perimeter. I want this to be simple."

Tonight, he knew, they had scheduled the first full power-up of the
Cyclops. Everything depended on how that test went, but he couldn't
postpone the takeover any longer. This was it. . . .

Abruptly he wondered if the damaged wing would affect stability on
touchdown? They would soon find out.

8:10 P.M.

The current swept him inexorably southward, while behind him the bundle
of planks that remained of _Odyssey_ _II_ was dispersing rapidly. He
cursed himself for having lost the Ross DSC radio. On the other hand,
he considered himself lucky just to be in one piece. Luckier than the
crewmen of the USS Glover. It was heartrending. Seeing a tragedy coming
and not being able to stop it: that was the worst possible nightmare.
He wanted to go back to try and help, but the sea made it impossible.

He pulled himself over the bobbing, drifting mast, feeling it slam
against his face as the sea tossed it like a matchstick. All around him
lethal splinters of _Odyssey_ _II_ sliced through the water, jagged
spears driven by the swell. The dark engulfed him, lightened only by
the billowing remains of the Navy frigate now some thousand yards away.

Somewhere, dear God, it's got to be somewhere. Let it still be strapped
to the mast. The idea seemed stupid at the time, but now . . .

He felt his way down until his fingers touched a slippery nylon cord.
Was it . . . yes.

Maybe there is a God.

The straps were tangled, which was not supposed to happen, and
fragments of cypress planking from the sides of the ship had punctured
the nylon cover, but his Switlik search-and-rescue raft was still
dangling from the remains of the mast. Now for one more minor miracle:
Could he manage to pull it free before everything disappeared into the
dark and the swell?

He flailed with one hand to keep his head afloat, while his fingers
grappled with the bowline knot. Finally the knot loosened, and he
wrenched it loose.

Jesus, is there going to be anything left? Would it still inflate?

He grappled with the fiberglass canister that contained the raft, then
popped it open. With his last remaining strength he pulled on the
tether, discharging the bottled carbon dioxide that caused the Switlik
to hiss to life. Part of it. He realized the lower buoyancy tube had
been ripped to shreds by the 12.7mm machine gun of the Hind that had
destroyed the mast, but the upper one had somehow escaped intact. So he
was half-lucky.

It was yellow, hexagonal, and it looked like heaven. He had never used
one before, and he had never realized how it felt. Like an oversized
inner tube.

With a surge of relief, he pulled himself aboard, inching in as he felt
the swell pound over him, and then he drew out the folding oars and
extended them. With his new course he knew he would miss the harbor at
Kythera recommended by Bates--no way could he battle the current and
make it. The vagaries of wind and sea were driving him almost due
south. It was the direction the chopper had taken--straight for the
little island of Andikythera.

Could they breach SatCom's security and get in? Probably. The setup
installed by ARM was industrial-level only. He had cautioned Bill about
that.

He grimaced and plied his strength to the two small aluminum oars. The
way the wind and seas were taking him, he would find out soon enough.
Again he lamented the loss of the radio--with it he could get out a
Mayday alerting any ships around that might mount a rescue of the
frigate's survivors. He also could try warning the SatCom facility that
trouble was headed their way. The problem was, the Hind had a top speed
of over a hundred and fifty knots. If Andikythera was its destination,
it probably was already there.

The cold sea stung his face and the tossing waves were making him
slightly seasick, but he felt alive again. Almost by instinct he looked
up to try to find the stars, loving how crisp and striking they could
be over the Aegean. Nothing yet, but there were glimmers in the north.
A good sign. The storm was blowing over now, the clouds starting to
open up again.

If Bill tries the radio, he'll probably figure I've just vanished from
the earth.

He half felt like it. As the cold autumn waters of the Aegean surged
around him, its six-foot waves washing over his partially inflated
Switlik, he thought about Bill Bates. He was a friend, a very good
friend. Was he about to be in trouble?

Although Bates was a world-class executive, he also was a dedicated
family man. He had a model wife back in Arlington and two model sons,
both deposited in model private academies. His wife, a blond WASP old-
fashioned enough to have the same family name as a prominent
Philadelphia bank, never seemed to tire of her charity obligations, so
it was his sons he took with him sailing in the summers. That was how
Vance had met him, sailing with the boys in the Bahamas.

Bill was highly regarded in industry circles as the CEO's CEO, and not
without reason. For one thing, less inconsequential than most would
think, he looked the part. His steel-gray hair was always trimmed to
the precise millimeter, his tanned cheeks were forever sleek from a
workout at his club, or whatever club was handy on his perpetual
travels. He had once claimed he knew the location of more health clubs
than any man in America.

Best of all, though, he knew how to raise money. When he described a
pending enterprise, he did it with the gleaming eye of the true
believer. Even in a dicey investment environment, he always generated
the enthusiasm sufficient to ensure that a new stock issue sold out and
closed higher than the offering price on the day it was floated. The
man could sell sunlamps in the Sahara.

He competed hard in everything he did. When he decided, some years
after he and Vance had become acquainted, that he wanted to spend
summers racing, he did not bother buying his own yacht; instead he flew
to Nassau and leased the fastest boat he knew. At that moment, the
vessel filling that description was the Argonaut, owned by Windstalker,
Ltd. It was a forty-four-foot sloop, highly regarded throughout the
racing fraternity. Its owner, however, never let any of his three
yachts out of the harbor without first undertaking a personal checkout
of the new skipper--even if it was an old friend.

Vance remembered it well. Bill manned the helm, a mahogany wheel always
kept well polished, and they were making a solid eight knots on the
Speedo. It was one of those mornings in the islands when everything
seemed as clear as a desert sky. No cruise ships were scheduled into
the harbor, and the stinkpot powerboats were mercifully in limited
supply. The wind was perfect and the water as smooth as a glittering
mirror. Best of all, Bates was handling the helm as though he had been
there all his life.

"Think we can get her up to ten knots?" he'd asked, shielding his eyes
as he studied the genoa, a gleaming triangle of white above the bow.

Vance had leaned back and tested the wind. "Give her a little touch on
the helm, to starboard, and I think she might come through for you." He
was proud of his recent refurbishing of the boat--the latest Northstar
digital satnav gear, brand-new sails that cost a fortune, a complete
renovation of the instrument station down below.

Bates tapped the wheel and the genoa bellied even more. "I like this
fucking boat a lot, Mike," he declared. "So here's the deal. I want to
lease her for three months, take her to Norfolk, get a crew together,
and get everybody comfortable with her."

"I think we can talk." Vance had to smile. The yacht would be in good
hands, and a three-month charter was a dream come true for a guy in his
business.

"Matter of fact, I wanted to ask you to help me out with something
else, too. Some security work."

"Hey, I'm just a simple charter-boat operator. Not my line."

"Don't bullshit me, pal." He laughed. "You know SatCom is building a
new industrial facility in the Aegean."

"A private space facility."

"I think American technology is getting a bum rap, Michael," he said
with sudden seriousness. "I plan to change that."

"The Journal says you want to try and give the Europeans a run for the
roses."

He looked over, the wind whipping his glistening hair. "You keep in
touch pretty damned good for a simple sailor. But I tell you, if we
succeed, we'll literally change the way space is used. I'll be able to
put a satellite into orbit for a song. Just between us, I'm building
the biggest private spaceport anywhere. The French operation in Guiana
won't hold a candle to it. I've already got ten geostationary orbital
slots locked up with the World Administrative Radio Conference. Even
NASA better keep a grip on their jockstrap."

"Where's the money coming from? The usual suspects?"

"Who else." He laughed, then tapped the helm slightly more to
starboard. "The stock was over-the-counter and it was hell and gone in
three fucking hours. Bang. Out the door. Matter of fact, it's now
trading almost fifteen percent above the original offering price." He
shrugged. "I should have issued more. But like a stupid son of a bitch,
I had a failure of nerve. Didn't go with my instincts."

"Next time, how about letting me in on the action?"

"You're a goddamn piece of work, Michael. And so's this boat. Tell you
what. I'll make you a deal. I figure you're expecting about four thou a
week for this baby, correct?"

"Anything for a friend."

"Right." He laughed. "I want her for twelve weeks. So . . . what if I
paid you with some of my personal SatCom stock? Fifty thou worth at the
current price? How's that sound?"

"Deal," Vance said, without hesitation. He'd heard a lot of big-time
bull in the charter business, but Bates was a straight shooter. The
temporary gap in cash flow was going to make meeting the three
mortgages--one for each boat--tough, but he liked the sound of the
project."

"This isn't going to leave you strapped, is it?" Bates looked a trifle
worried.

"I'll manage. As I always say, two in the bush is worth one in the
hand."

"Michael, half the time you don't have a pot to piss in. I know that.
You're the lousiest personal-finance manager I know." He laughed out
loud and tapped the helm, bringing her to port a notch. "Which is one
of the world's great ironies, considering what you do for ARM."

"You hear things, too." He had never really discussed his ARM work with
Bates.

"You're good. I know that. Word gets around." He paused. "Matter of
fact, I wanted to ask you a favor. I was hoping you could work up a
contract for me with your people. As I said, I need some security for
that facility in Greece."

"What kind?"

"That's for your guys to say. It just has to be good. We're going to be
installing some proprietary technology that's light-years beyond
anything that's ever been seen before. And we're going to rock a lot of
boats in the business. There're a hell of a lot of Europeans who'd love
to know what we're up to. There's a real chance of industrial
espionage."

"So what's the program? Perimeter surveillance? Security guards? We
could probably arrange the subcontracting."

"I'd appreciate it. Your guys know Europe, the local scene. I've got a
feeling that's going to be important."

"No problem." The truth was, this was exactly the kind of no-risk work
the boys at ARM liked. Nobody shooting at you. "I'll put in a call to
Paris if you like. Something probably can be arranged."

"Good." Bates nodded, as though a handshake were already involved. One
more thing off his checklist. "Mainly I want some physical-security
stuff. You know--fences, alarms, that kind of crap."

"We've got a guy in Athens who specializes in that. He won't give
estimates over the phone, but if you'll let him look over the site,
he'll price the job for you right down to the drachma. With various
options. But you'd be smart to go with his top-of-the-line
recommendation. Try to nickel and dime him and he'll walk. I've seen
him do it."

"So what's this so-called 'top of the line' likely to run me?" Bates
had asked.

"Well, there are the systems you can see and the ones you can't." He'd
laughed. "The ones you can't see cost more."

"I already told you I need the best."

"Then you probably want to go MAD," Vance said, his eyes hiding a
twinkle.

"What the hell are you talking about?" He looked over, annoyed and
puzzled.

"Magnetic anomaly detectors. You bury special transmitting cables
beneath the ground, outside the perimeter, so that they build an
invisible electromagnetic field around and above their location.
Anything--doesn't even have to be metal--that enters the field will
distort it. If you go with the Sentrax system, made by an outfit in
Switzerland called Cerberus, you can have the whole thing linked to a
central console that displays the layout of the perimeter on computer
screens."

"Sounds good. We're practically going to have computers in the
bathrooms."

"Won't come cheap."

Bates shrugged into the wind. "As long as you guys don't

ask for the store, I see no problem. I've budgeted for security, and
there's always contingency money."

"I'll see what I can do." He had glanced up and ascertained that the
sun had passed the yardarm. But even if it had not, what the hell. He
saw the prospects for a fat commission looming. "How about a Heineken?"
He was reaching into the cooler in the well.

"You read my mind."

"By the way, want to tell me the location of the site? You've managed
to keep that out of the papers so far. I'd guess it's probably an
uninhabited island, right?"

"Good guess. It's north of Crete, about twenty square kilometers. It's
privately owned, but I've just signed a long- term lease."

Vance tried to envision the place. Most of the Greek islands tended to
be granite, with nothing growing on them but scrub cedar. "What's the
terrain like?"

"That's actually what makes it so attractive. Cliffs all around the
shoreline--you couldn't put in with so much as a dinghy--and then one
really marvelous deepwater inlet. But the best part is, the interior is
mostly level and perfect for what we need. And there's a granite
mountain at one end that's ideal for our telemetry."

"A protected docking location and a natural telemetry base."

"Right. All the electronics will be set up high above the launch
facility, and we can use the inlet for bringing in materials. We should
only have to dredge it a bit and sink some pilings. It's well along.
I've already signed off on a lot of the prime contracts." He stared at
the blue horizon and adjusted the wheel again. "And I'll let you in on
another secret, Michael. I've bet the ranch on this one. The stock
offering wasn't nearly enough to capitalize the enterprise. I've had to
raise money from everybody in town--junk bonds, the fucking banks, you
name it. Just the hardware ran close to three hundred million. I've
even put up my stock in all my other companies. If this project doesn't
fly"--he laughed--"literally, I'm going to be joining America's homeless.
I even put up my house in Arlington. Worth two million, and I owned the
goddamn thing free and clear. I'll just have to hand over the keys.
Dorothy'll kill me."

"Then we'll make sure nobody snoops." He popped open an ice-cold beer
for Bates, then one for himself. "From land or sea."

"Land or sea." Bates hoisted his icy green bottle.

"Which actually raises an interesting question." He took a sip, cold
and bracing. "How about security from the air? Flyovers, that kind of
action?"

"Let them come. There'll be nothing to see. Except for the launch pad
and telemetry, everything's going to be underground. There're a lot of
caves on the island--like that famous one on Antiparos. We're going to
use those for the computers and assembly areas. And what we can't find
in place, we'll just excavate."

It's beginning to sound a little too pat, Vance found himself thinking.
But that's what security experts were for. They were the guys who got
paid to find holes in a project like this. . . .

The thing that kept gnawing at his mind, however, was the phrase "by
land or sea." All along he'd worried about penetration from the air.
Had he been right after all?

CHAPTER THREE

7:48 P.M.

Sitting at Main Control, the central desk facing the large display
screen, Cally Andros had just reached a conclusion. She was getting
old. Two more weeks to her thirty-fifth birthday, then a measly five
years till the big four-oh. After that she could only look forward to a
holding action, fighting sags and crow's-feet. Building dikes to hold
back the deluge of time.

It was depressing.

She sipped at a cup of black coffee emblazoned with the SatCom logo,
the laser eye of the Cyclops, and impatiently drummed her fingers on
the workstation keyboard, trying not to be distracted by meditations on
mortality. Tonight for the first time they would nin up the
superconducting coil all the way, in their most important test yet. The
tech crews at the other end of the island predicted it would reach peak
power in--she glanced at the huge digital clock on the blue wall next to
the screen--twenty-seven minutes. . . .

What was wrong with her? She had thought that one over

a lot and decided the answer was nothing. She had dark Greek eyes,
olive skin, and a figure that would stop a clock-- a perfect size eight.
But it got better. She had the best legs in the world. The absolute
very best. If they wouldn't necessarily stop a timepiece, they'd sure
as heck slowed a lot of traffic over the years.

No, her problem was opportunity. Whereas on paper this island was every
single girl's dream--males trapped here by the carload--all the
attractive/interesting men were either too young or too old or too dumb
or too married. Moreover, those in the control room--mostly Ph.D.'s in
their late twenties--saw her only as Dr. C. A. Andros, Director-in-
Charge. There seemed to be an unspoken rule around Control that you
didn't make a move on the boss lady. Anybody who could run this project
had to be treated with the distance befitting authority. Especially
since they believed all she really cared about was work.

Thanks a lot, whoever dreamed that one up.

The sickest part of all, though, was they were half right. She did not
wish herself anywhere else in the world right now, men or no men. She
occupied the center of the universe, was poised for the winner-take-all
shot she could only have dreamed about five years ago, back when she
was still fighting the mindless bureaucrats at NASA. With Project
Cyclops she was running a half-billion-dollar gamble for the last big
prize of the twentieth century. If she lived to be a hundred, she would
never be handed anything this terrific ever again.

Born Calypso Andropolous thirty-four years ago, daughter of strong-
minded Greek farmers, she had learned to believe in herself with a
fierce, unshakable conviction. Until now, though, she had never really
had the opportunity to test that faith. Until now.

It had not been an easy journey. After getting her doctorate in
aerospace engineering from Cal Tech, she had struggled up through
NASA's Kennedy Center bureaucracy to the position of chief analyst. But
she had never achieved more than a desk job. She had wanted more, a lot
more. Now, thanks to SatCom, in three days she would have it. Using a
fifteen-gigawatt microwave laser nicknamed Cyclops, she was about to
put SatCom in the forefront of the private race for space.

Ironically, the company had built its spaceport barely three hundred
kilometers from her birthplace on the island of Naxos. She often
thought about life's ironies: sometimes you had to return home to
change the future. She barely remembered that rugged little island now;
the images were faint and overly romantic. Those times dated back to
when the junta of right-wing colonels had seized power in Greece. Soon
thereafter her parents had emigrated; they and their nine-year-old
daughter joining a large exodus of freedom-minded Greeks to New York.
They had been there only three months when her father died--the hospital
said it was pneumonia; she knew it was mourning for Greece and all he
had lost. He had loved it more than life. She was afraid, down inside
in a place where she didn't visit much anymore, that he loved it more
than he had loved her. So along the way she tried to forget all of it,
to bury her memories of Greece. And now here she was back again. In New
York, Cally Andropolous had, in spite of herself, thought incessantly
of Greece; back here now, all she could think about was New York.

The strongest recollection was the third floor of a walk-up tenement on
Tenth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, a section of town widely known as
Hell's Kitchen--and for good reason. The schools were designed to make
sociopaths of all those trapped inside; only New York's famous Bronx
High School of Science, one of the finest and most competitive public
institutions in the nation, offered an escape from their horror.

Accepted when she was thirteen, Calypso Andropolous graduated third in
her class. For her senior science project, she created a solid-fuel
rocket, using, as the phrase goes, ordinary household chemicals. And
she did it all by herself, with a little help from a skinny French
Canadian boy named Georges LeFarge, who lived with his mother in Soho.

By that time, she knew exactly what she wanted. Her ambition was to be
the first woman in space.

Nobody said it would be easy. But after the rocket--she

and Georges had launched it from the Morton Street Pier in Greenwich
Village--she felt she was on her way. She had blossomed--in every way,
much to her frustration--a lot quicker than Georges did. At age
seventeen his idea of sex was still to swap chemical formulas. So she
finally gave up on him as a lover and decided to wait till college.