Clive Cussler - Cyclops

For some strange reason, the howl of the tempest outside and everyone's weary breathing seemed to add to the deathly stillness of the house.

"Anyone home?" Pitt called out.

He repeated the question twice more, but his only reply was a ghostly silence. A dim corridor beckoned, but Pitt hesitated. Another smell invaded his nostrils. Tobacco smoke. Stronger than the nearlethal gas emitted by Admiral Sandecker's cigars. Pitt was no expert, but he knew that expensive cigars smelled more rotten than the cheap ones. He guessed the smoke must be coming from prime Havanas.

He turned to the others. "What do you think?"

"Do we have a choice?" Giordino asked dumbly.

"Two," replied Pitt. "We can either get out of here while we can and take our chances in the hurricane. Then, when it begins to die down, we can try to steal a boat and head back to Florida="

"Or throw ourselves on the mercy of the Cubans," Gunn interrupted.

"That's how it boils down."

Jessie shook her head and stared at him through soft, tender eyes. "We can't go back," she said quietly with no trace of fear. "The storm will take days to die, and none of us is in any condition to survive out there another four hours. I vote we take our chances with Castro's government. The very worst they can do is throw us in jail while the State Department negotiates our release."

Pitt looked at Gunn. "Rudi, how say you?"

"We're done in, Dirk. Logic is on Jessie's side."

"Al, how do you see it?"

Giordino shrugged. "Say the word, pal, and I'll swim back to the States." And Pitt knew he meant it too. "But the honest truth is we can't take much more. It pains me to say this, but I think we'd better throw in the towel."

Pitt looked at them and reflected that he couldn't have been blessed with a better team of people to face an unpleasant situation, and it didn't take a visionary to see things were going to become very unpleasant indeed.

"Okay," he said with a grim smile. "Let's crash the party."

They set off down the corridor and soon passed under an archway that opened onto a vast living room decorated in early Spanish antiques. Giant tapestries hung on the walls, depicting galleons sailing sunset seas or being driven helplessly onto reefs by thrashing storms. The furnishings seemed to have a nautical flair, the room was illuminated by ancient ship's lanterns of copper and colored glass. The fireplace was glowing with a crackling fire that warmed the room to hothouse temperatures.

There wasn't a soul to be seen anywhere.

"Ghastly," murmured Jessie. "Our host has simply dreadful taste in decor."

Pitt held up his hand for quiet. "Voices," he said softly. "Coming from that other archway between those two suits of armor."

They moved into another corridor that was dimly lit by candle holders every ten feet. The sounds of laughter and obscure words, from both male and female, became louder. A light loomed from under a curtain ahead. They paused for a second, and then swung it aside and passed through.

They had entered a long dining hall filled with nearly forty people, who stopped in midconversation and stared at Pitt and the others with the awed expression of a group of villagers meeting their first aliens from space.

The women were elegantly dressed in evening gowns, while half the men wore tuxedos and the other half were attired in military uniforms. Several servants waiting on the table stood stock-still like images on motion picture film that was suddenly freeze-framed. The stunned silence was as thick as a wool blanket. A scene straight out of an early thirties Hollywood melodrama.

Pitt realized he and the rest must have made a shocking picture. Soaking wet, their clothing torn and ragged, bruised and gashed skin, torn muscles, broken bones. Hair plastered down around their heads, they must have looked like drowned rats rejected from a polluted river.

Pitt looked at Gunn and said, "How do you say `Pardon the intrusion' in Spanish?"

"Haven't the vaguest idea. I took French in school."

Then it struck Pitt. Most of the uniformed men were high-ranking Soviet officers. Only one appeared to be from the Cuban military.

Jessie was in her element. To Pitt she couldn't have looked more regal, even if the designer safari suit hung on her body in tatters.

"Is there a gentleman among you who will offer a lady a chair?" she demanded.

Before she received an answer, ten men with Russian-type machine pistols burst into the room and surrounded them in a loose circle, sphinx-faced men whose weapons were aimed at all four stomachs. Their eyes were icy and their lips set in tight lines. There was little doubt in Pitt's mind that they were highly trained to kill on command.

Giordino, with the appearance of a man run over by a garbage truck, painfully pulled himself to his full height and stared back. "Did you ever see so many smiling faces?" he asked conversationally.

"No," said Pitt with the beginning of a to-hell-with-you grin. "Not since Little Big Horn."

Jessie didn't hear them. As if in a trance she shouldered her way through the armed guards and stopped near the head of the table, staring down at a tall, gray-haired man attired in formal evening wear, who stared back at her in shocked disbelief.

She brushed back her wet, tangled hair and struck a sophisticated, feline pose. Then she spoke in a soft, commanding voice. "Be a dear, Raymond, and pour your wife a glass of wine."

<<25>>

Hagen drove nineteen miles east of downtown Colorado Springs on Highway 94 until he came to Enoch Road. Then he turned right and arrived at the main entrance of the Unified Space Operations Center.

The two-billion-dollar project, constructed on 640 acres of land and manned by 5,000 uniformed and civilian personnel, controlled all military space vehicle and shuttle flights as well as satellite monitoring programs. An entire aerospace community mushroomed around the center, covering thousands of acres with residential developments, scientific and industrial parks, high-tech research and manufacturing plants, and Air Force test facilities. In ten short years, what had once been sparse grazing land inhabited by small herds of cattle had become the "Space Capital of the World."

Hagen flashed his security clearance, drove into the parking lot, and stopped opposite a side entrance to the massive building. He did not get out of the car but opened his briefcase and removed his worn legal pad. He turned to a page with three names and added a fourth.

Raymond LeBaron....Whereabouts unknown.

Leonard Hudson....Same.

Gunnar Eriksen....Same.

General Clark Fisher....Colorado Springs.

Hagen's call to the Drake Hotel from Pattenden Lab had alerted an old friend at the FBI, who traced the number of Anson Jones to a classified line at an officer's residence on Peterson Air Force Base outside of Colorado Springs. The house was occupied by four-star General Clark Fisher, head of the joint Military Space Command.

Posing as a pest control inspector, Hagen had been given the run of the house by the general's wife. Fortunately for him, she considered his unexpected arrival as a heaven-sent opportunity to complain about an army of spiders that had invaded the premises. He listened attentively and promised to attack the insects with every weapon in his arsenal. Then, while she fussed around in the kitchen with the hired cook, experimenting with a new recipe for apricot sautéed prawns, Hagen tossed the general's study.

His search revealed only that Fisher was a stickler for security. Hagen found nothing in desk drawers, files, or hidden recesses that could prove beneficial to a Soviet agent or himself. He decided to wait it out until the general left for the evening and then search his office at the space center. As he left by the rear door Mrs. Fisher was talking on the telephone and simply waved goodbye. Hagen paused for a moment and overheard her telling the general to stop off on his way home and pick up a bottle of sherry.