Thomas Hoover - Project Cyclops

"Got a little item to go over with you," Peretz said, in Arabic, not looking up from his screen. "A minor business matter."

"What's on your mind?" Ramirez asked in English. "We're all busy."

Peretz glanced in the direction of Salim, who was standing by the door, keeping a watchful eye on the staffers. Salim, he knew, spoke Farsi as a first language and English as a second. Like many Iranians, he had not deigned to learn Arabic. Peretz, on the other hand, spoke it fluently. Furthermore, he had brushed up on it in his recent experiences with the Palestinians. Ramirez, of course, had spoken it for almost twenty years, finding it indispensable for his business dealings in the Islamic world.

"The time is overdue for us to have a business chat," Peretz continued in Arabic, revolving around in his chair. "I've been thinking over the money. It strikes me that the split ought to be 'to each according to his ability,' if you know what I mean. You're a card-carrying Marxist, right?"

"If you insist," Ramirez replied, immediately realizing he had been right about the direction the conversation was going to take. He also understood the reason for the Arabic. "You may have the quotation in reverse, but I assume you did not call me down here to discuss the finer points of collectivist ideology."

"Nobody ever called you dumb, friend," Peretz went on, now settling comfortably into the mellifluous music of the Arabic. He actually liked the language better than Hebrew, understood why it was the perfect vehicle for poetry. "So I expect you won't have any trouble understanding this.'' He was handing Ramirez a plain white business envelope, unsealed.

Sabri Ramirez suppressed an impulse to pull out his Beretta and just shoot the fucker between the eyes. The only thing that surprised him was why this extortion-for that surely was what it was-had been so long in coming. Peretz had been planning this move all along.

After a moment's pause, he took the envelope and held it in his hand, not bothering even to look down at it. Instead he let his gaze wander around the room, taking in the rows of video terminals, some with data, some with shots of the working areas, together with the lines of shell-shocked staffers. Then his gaze came back to Peretz, a novice at the trade.

This inevitable development, in fact, almost saddened him. He had, over the past couple of months, acquired almost a fondness for the Israeli. He even had come to tolerate his irreverent humor, if that's what it could be called. Thus he had begun to wonder, in a calculated way, if they might have a partnership that could continue beyond the current episode. A good tech man was hard to find…

"Do I need to bother opening this?" he said finally. "Why don't I just guess. At this point you feel your services have become indispensable, so you want to restructure the distribution of the money. You want to cut out the others, and I suppose there's even a chance you want to cut me out as well."

"Cut you out?" Peretz grinned again. "Never crossed my mind. The way I see it, we're business partners, baby, colleagues. I'd never, ever try and screw a partner, surely you know that. What do you take me for? No, man, I just think there's no point in giving monetary encouragement to all these other assholes."

"And what if I don't choose to see it your way?" Ramirez kept his voice calm.

"Well, there could be a lot of problems with the countdown, if you know what I mean. There's only one guy around here who could fix it. So I think teamwork is essential. You do your part and I do mine. The old 'extra mile.'"

"Your 'extra mile,' I take it, is to finish the job you were hired for in the first place." Ramirez found keeping his voice even to be more and more difficult. But he had to bide his time. A quick glance at Salim told him that the Iranian did not have an inkling of what was going on.

"You might say that." Again the inane grin.

"And mine is to restructure the dispersals of the money afterwards." Ramirez's eyes had just gone opaque behind his gray shades. "Something like that."

"Not 'afterwards.' Now. It's all in the envelope."

'Tell you what," Ramirez said finally, his anger about to boil over. "I'm going back to Launch, and I'll take this with me. What's the point in opening it here, raising questions."

"You'd better take this problem seriously, believe me," Peretz interjected, vaguely unnerved by Ramirez's icy noncommittal. "I'm not kidding around."

"Oh, I take you quite seriously, Dr. Peretz." He was extracting a thin cigar from a gold case. "I always have. You will definitely get everything you deserve."

"I intend to."

Isaac Mannheim stumbled through the torrential rain, wondering if the terrorists were stupid enough to try a launch in this kind of weather. Actually, he found himself thinking, it might just be possible. The guidance system would be tested to the limit, but if the weather eased up a little…

The aboveground structures for Launch were just ahead, including the two pads with the vehicles sprouting into the sky. From the looks of things, they were both unharmed, with VX-1 clearly prepped and ready for launch. Then he paused to examine the collapsed gantry and shook his head in dismay, heartsick at the sight. That was going to cost a fortune to repair.

He shrugged sadly and moved on.

He knew it was going to be a beehive of activity inside the tech areas now. The entire SatCom Staff was on duty, which was standard for a "go" power-up situation. Which meant that they had to be holding Vance somewhere out of the way. The question was where. Where? He tried to think.

There were some spare-parts bays, locations where items that constantly needed replacing could be held ready to hand. But everything was clicking now, with those areas pretty much out of the loop. So… maybe that would be the place to start checking.

The main entry-points for the bays were, naturally enough, from the inside. But there also was a large loading dock on the south that allowed gear to be delivered directly from the warehouse. Maybe that would be the logical place to try and slip in. He was feeling better now, energized. Why not go in, have a look.

Jean-Paul Moreau punched him again, then waited for a response. There wasn't one, but only because Michael Vance was near to passing out. They had taken him not to the Bates Motel but to an unused room at the periphery of Launch. Its original purpose wasn't clear, but whatever it was, it no longer appeared to be used for anything-the ideal location to beat somebody's brains half out.

"You have a remarkably low tolerance for this, you sleazy batard."

Vance merely moaned. He had been trying mystical techniques for blocking out the pain. God, he hated pain. So he attempted to focus his mind on something else, on little things like working on his boat, on making love, on Caribbean sunsets. Instead what he got was the vision of a nuclear bomb going off somewhere, and the anger he had felt when Ramirez and his thugs blew up the U.S. frigate. Still, any emotion, any feeling he could muster, seemed to drive back the pain, make it more endurable. Now he was focusing as best he could on the long-haired, blond French goon who was pummeling him. Whack. Love. Whack. Hate. Whack. Anger. Boiling, seething anger. It was almost working. Almost.

He moaned again. Then for one last time he tried to smile. "Jesus, what sewer did Ramirez dredge to come up with you guys?"

"Good. Good. Keep talking," Moreau said. "Sounds mean you are still alive. It means you still can feel." And he hit him again, hard in the stomach, taking his breath away once more. The moans had become airless grunts.

Jean-Paul Moreau had readily accepted the job of softening up the fucker who had caused them so much trouble. It was intended to be a partial compensation for his having endured the radar treatment, and also it felt good to be able to work over the very son of a bitch who had done it. There was, indeed, justice in the world. Justice that you made for yourself. He was now making his own justice, and it felt terrific.