Thomas Hoover - Project Cyclops

Willem Voorst nodded and pulled out an extra vest, already festooned with grenades. He handed it to Vance, who slipped it on and secured it, wincing silently from the pain in his rib cage.

"Just be bloody careful," Reggie Hall said. That and nothing more. British understatement.

Calypso Andros had no such reserve. Her hair plastered across her face, she reached up and impulsively kissed him on a swollen cheek. Then she whispered good luck.

"Alpha Leader, this is SEAL One. I think we've spotted some hostiles."

With a smile, Nichols clicked his radio to transmit. He was in the lead Huey, now hovering slightly more than a kilometer away from the shoreline of Andikythera.

"I copy, SEAL One. What's your status?"

"We're ready to get acquainted. Are you synchronized?"

"Roger," Nichols's terse voice replied back. "I want all hell to break loose. And any bad guys you can pin down or neutralize will be much appreciated. We insert in ninety seconds."

"We roger that, Alpha Leader. SEAL One team on full auto."

Nichols turned to his pilot, Manny Jackson. "Okay, it's a go. I want us on the ground in nine-zero seconds."

Vance moved quickly up the hill, toward the toppled gantry. Already he had a view of the wide sloping window that was the center of Launch Control, and he could see figures there, though not clearly enough to know if Ramirez was one of them. Maybe they were SatCom staffers or…

No. There was Ramirez, talking on the phone. And standing beside him was the man Vance had come to love… Isaac Mannheim. The old professor looked haggard, a perfectionist man who had despaired. He clearly had lost touch with time and place. Then Ramirez handed him the phone and barked something at him. Dejectedly he took it and started speaking.

Damn. Any half-competent sniper could take out Ramirez here and now. He thought he was safe, and he had never been more exposed. But this was not a job for an amateur, not with Mannheim so close.

Okay, he thought, guess this is going to have to happen the hard way.

He extracted a flash grenade from the vest Willem had given him and got ready to pull the pin.

"Johan, he'll do it," Isaac Mannheim was saying into the handset that Ramirez had thrust into his face. 'They have two devices. One is on VX-1, ready for launch, and the other one is here. They say they've rigged a radio-controlled detonator on it. He's going to use it if you don't do whatever it is he wants."

"Let me talk to the son of a bitch again," Hansen said.

"All right, Johan. Please talk to him." Mannheim handed back the receiver. His hand was shaking.

"Have you made a decision, Mr. President?" Ramirez inquired.

"Yes, goddammit. I've got an open line to Gournes. You can listen while I issue the order to hold off the assault for six hours. Does that satisfy you?"

"It will do for a start," Ramirez said. "Then we can talk about the money."

And he listened as Hansen spoke tersely through the secure communications link to Mission Control on the Kennedy.

What he did not hear in Hansen's conversation was the incredulity on the other end of the line. But the assault is already under way, General Max Austin was declaring, stunned. They were in communication with Nichols, and the SEALs were about to open fire on the hostiles.

"Just scrub the operation," Hansen barked. "That's an order."

"That was a wise decision," Ramirez said, listening. "Now about the money."

"Check with the bank in fifteen minutes," Hansen said, a note of resignation in his voice. "It will be deposited. Now, I want you out of there, all hostages safe, and those weapons disarmed and left."

"You have nothing to worry about," Ramirez declared, scarcely able to contain his sense of triumph. "You have made a decision for humanity."

"Just get the hell gone. And don't try my patience." This time it was Hansen's turn to abruptly break the connection.

Ramirez was cradling the receiver, savoring his triumph, when a blinding flash erupted from the direction of the fallen gantry. And there, in the momentary glare, stood Michael Vance.

The leader of the SEALs, Lieutenant Devon Robbins, spoke into his thin microphone. "Can you see them? We could use an IR scope." The SEALs had split into two teams, as was their practice, and he was leading the first.

"Hard to make out much in this fog," came back his point man, Lieutenant Philip Pease, who was leading the second team. Pease was exactly twenty meters away, all but invisible because of his dark commando gear. He was studying the men up the hill with a pair of 8x30mm Steiner stereo-optic binoculars. Though they were designed for low light, he still could not see clearly. "But they're dressed in black, and they look like they're armed."

"What else can you ID?"

"They're not together, exactly. It's almost as though they're deploying for something."

"What the hell are they doing outside in the first place? Does it mean the fuckers haven't gotten around to taking over the launch facility yet? Maybe they're getting set up for their next move."

"Can't confirm anything, SEAL One. Just too much damned fog… Wait, yeah, they've got assault rifles of some kind. Looks like some big-time shit. That's a definite confirm."

"Do they look like they're setting up?"

"All I can tell for sure is they're moving, spreading out. Something's about to go down. Got to be baddies. Who else could they be?"

"All right, SEAL Two, our mission is to create a diversion, shake them up, and let Nichols's chopper teams handle the heavy lifting. Those Apaches can make a man give his heart to Jesus."

"You've got a rog on that, SEAL One. But if we're here to make an impression, I say let's give them a big Navy welcome. Time for a close encounter."

"We came to play. Get-"

A flare blossomed from somewhere up in the vicinity of the vehicles, illuminating the fog into a huge white cloud, vast and mysterious.

"What in hell!" yelled Pease's voice on the radio. "That was farther up. Maybe it's a two-point assault."

"Looked like it was over to the left. Can you tell what happened?"

"Must have been a flash-bang. These assholes brought their own boombox."

"Okay, SEAL Two, we've got a mission. First things first. For now we just neutralize those bastards in black. Looks like half our hostiles are outside and in the clear. On the count of three."

The SEALS all clicked off the safeties on their MP5s and took aim, wishing they could see something more than dark, vague outlines in the fog.

How the hell, Ramirez wondered, did Vance get on the loose again? Moreau was supposed to have taken care of him. Had he screwed up, too?

I should have just let Wolf kill him in the first place and had done with it. This time, I'll just handle it myself.

He checked his pockets, making sure he had extra clips for his Beretta 9mm and then he headed through the door leading into the open bay of Launch. The SatCom systems engineers and ground-control specialists, not privy to the wide windows of Launch Control, had no idea what had just happened outside. They were too busy worrying about the fog, making the final checks of the electronics, monitoring the countdown clicking off. And all of them had laid side bets on whether the launch, now scheduled for less than an hour and a half away, would be able to proceed. The wagering leaned toward the fog clearing in time.

Ramirez strode past the bustling gray SatCom uniforms with a single-mindedness that characterized his every move. How the hell, he was wondering, did Michael Vance get on the island in the first place? He was one of the back-office support types for ARM, a financial guy. Nobody had ever ID'd him in an assault. It made no sense that he was here, when none of the rest of the ARM operatives were around. Why Vance, who was a nobody?