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  “That won’t be up to you, Mr. President,” Forester said, and the connection was broken.

  Thompson held on for several beats, willing himself to calm down, but then telephoned his adviser on national security affairs. Fenniger answered on the third ring, the sounds of a party in the background.

  “I’m calling an emergency meeting of the National Security Council for this morning, as soon as you can get everyone up and running,” Thompson said. Including the president and vice president, the council consisted of nineteen people, from the secretaries of State and Defense all the way to the directors of Homeland Security and CIA, and including the attorney general and even the ambassador to the UN.

  “Yes, Mr. President. Are you talking about the Venezuelan situation?”

  “I may have to order Operation Balboa after all.”

  “My God. Don’t tell me that they’ve hit the Initiative again?”

  “Could be in progress right now,” the president said. “Shake a leg, Nick.”

  58

  OSBORNE HAD HELD up at the corner of the R&D building long enough to make sure that no one was coming after them from Henry’s. Inside now on the first floor, he’d taken the wrong direction down the corridor, ending up at a series of offices. He had wanted the control center, but he’d never been there before, so he didn’t know where it was.

  He turned around and raced the opposite way down the corridor, past stairs leading to the second floor, when some serious shooting started from across the compound, and as he reached another intersection, someone else started shooting from the south in the direction of Donna Marie. At least two guns, and he was torn between finding Ashley and getting her out of here before they got caught in an attack coming from two directions, and going out to meet whatever was coming their way.

  But the shooting stopped as he pulled up short, and the sudden silence was ominous.

  First he had to find Ashley and make sure that she’d made contact with Ellsworth, and then they could get the hell out of here and keep out of everyone’s way until help arrived.

  He turned as Ashley came from a door halfway down the corridor, the short-barrel Ithaca shotgun in her hands, up and ready to fire.

  “You bastards!” she screamed, completely hyped-up, but determined, not frightened

  Osborne stepped back and raised a hand. “It’s me!” he shouted.

  She just stood there, the shotgun pointed down the corridor.

  “Come down now,” Osborne said. “It’s me. Ease up.”

  She lowered the shotgun, her face contorted as if she were going to cry, but she laughed a short little bark. “Someone was shooting. I didn’t know who.”

  Another burst of firing came from the south side of the compound, but closer this time.

  Osborne hurried down the corridor to her. “Did you get through?” The windowless room she’d come out of was long and narrow, and filled with electronic equipment and four desks with computers. Several plasma screen monitors were mounted on the walls.

  “I did,” Ashley said. “I told them that we were under attack, and someone was shooting at us.”

  “Are they sending help?”

  Ashley looked up at him, puzzlement on her face, and she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Someone fired two rounds, this time from the east side of the building, and very close. Answering fire came again from the south.

  Ashley was distracted, and she looked down the corridor toward the front entrance. “What’s going on? Who’s shooting?”

  Osborne grabbed her shoulder and turned her back. “Is help coming? Did they say that they understood?”

  “I don’t know,” Ashley said. “I told them what was happening, and they wanted to know who I was and when I told them the connection was shut down. It made no sense.”

  It made no sense to Osborne, either, but the people at Ellsworth knew that something was going on up here. At the very least they would have to send someone up to take a look.

  Whitney and Ashley would make perfect hostages, but this attack wasn’t about money, it was about the same thing as the first—the destruction of Donna Marie—and hostages would only serve to give Egan and his people time to set the charges and then get out.

  He figured that Whitney had already been taken and was likely down at Henry’s with the others. Which left Ashley and Donna Marie.

  What sounded like someone coming through a window on the north side of the building was followed by more gunfire along the front. They’d just about run out of options.

  Ashley stepped back, a determined look on her face. “What do you want to do?”

  Osborne winked at her. “Attack. It’s the only thing we can do.”

  She glanced down the corridor toward where they’d heard the window breaking. “Whatever it is, big guy, I suggest we do it now.”

  “Right,” Osborne said, and he hustled her back down to the corridor to the stairs he’d passed just a minute ago, and headed up, making as little noise as possible.

  At the top they ducked around the corner and held up, Osborne’s every sense listening for the sound of someone coming up the stairs after them. But if anyone was down there they were being stealthy now.

  “They know we’re in the building,” Ashley said, close to his ear. “When they find out we’re not downstairs, they’ll be coming up here. Won’t be long.”

  “Just long enough for us to get out of here,” Osborne told her, and he led her down the corridor to the south end of the building where he tried three doors on the west side before he found one that was unlocked and led into a conference room with a long table around which were ten chairs and a large window that looked out across an open snow-covered field.

  Slinging the M4 over his shoulder, Osborne started to drag the heavy table over to the door and Ashley helped him.

  “Won’t take them very long to figure this out, either,” she said.

  “Are you afraid of heights?” Osborne asked. He went to the window and looked out, watching for someone below, or at the corners of the building, waiting to cut off an escape from this direction. But if anyone was down there they were out of sight. In any event it was the only way out now.

  “Less afraid of heights than bullets. Might there be a reception committee down there?”

  “Could be. But I’m hoping they’re busy downstairs looking for us.”

  A short burst of gunfire was immediately followed by another, and using the butt of the carbine, Osborne knocked out the window glass, and ran the barrel around the frame to make sure all the shards were gone.

  Still nothing moved below, but it was very cold and just as dark. The only lights were a couple thousand yards to the south on the Donna Marie generating hall and the smokestack.

  Someone shouted something on the first floor from what sounded like the foot of the stairs.

  “Looks clear for now,” Osborne said.

  He took the shotgun from Ashley and laid it on the floor, then picked her up and eased her feetfirst out of the window. It was about a fifteen-foot drop into a bank of snow piled up against the base of the building.

  “Ready?” he asked, holding her at arm’s length.

  “Right,” she replied, and he let go.

  She landed soft, and immediately rolled over away from the building, keeping as low a profile as she could. But after a moment, she looked up and waved for him.

  He dropped the shotgun and then the carbine, both of them butt first into the snow, and as soon as Ashley had recovered them he levered himself out the window, a task made very difficult because of his titanium leg, and dropped to the ground. He hit hard, a sharp, nearly impossible pain hammering his stump, nearly dislocating his hip, and slamming all the way up his spine to the base of his neck as he lost his balance and fell over.

  For just a few seconds his wind was gone and struggling to get up he almost lost his balance again, but Ashley was right there at his side.


  Someone fired two shorts bursts from inside the building, somewhere upstairs, maybe in the corridor.

  “Move your ass, soldier,” Ashley said in his ear. “We’ve got incoming.”

  With her help Osborne managed to get to his feet, where he swayed unsteadily for several seconds before he took a step forward, nearly pitching to the ground. His leg was bent, or at least the socket and the tip of his stump had been damaged in the awkward landing.

  “Can you make it?” Ashley asked. She was deeply concerned, worry all over her face.

  “Piece of cake now that I’ve got my balance,” Osborne said, taking the carbine, and hobbling straight west into the darkness, Ashley right beside him.

  “Do you want to try for your car and get the hell out of here?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Osborne said through the pain. “We’re going down to Donna Marie.”

  “What?”

  “Egan’s people mean to destroy the place, so we’re going to stop them.”

  Ashley had to laugh, but the sound was without much humor. “Oh, I thought maybe you had something difficult in mind.”

  59

  AT THE BAR, his back to the hostages sitting on the dance floor, Egan keyed the portable radio tuned to the Air Force Rapid Response Team’s tactical frequency. “Ellsworth Rapid Response, this is the Initiative. Copy?”

  No one responded. The six-foot fiberglass whip antenna was fully extended, nothing in the building would interfere with the signal and the radio was powerful enough to reach anyone in the air out to a range of at least fifty miles. If they were incoming, which he expected they were, they were hearing him.

  “Ellsworth Rapid Response, this is Barry Egan at the South Dakota Initiative. I’ve taken over here, and unless you want me to start killing personnel, respond.”

  “Copy,” the radio blared. They were close. “What is your situation?”

  “I expect you already know what our situation is. Who am I speaking to?”

  “I repeat, what is your situation?”

  Besides a couple of little hiccups in the plan, Egan was enjoying himself. This was the big score he’d been looking for all of his life; not just in terms of money, though he’d been promised twenty-five million in cash, but in terms of status, prestige. No matter the outcome here, he would forever be known as a player, a serious contender.

  “Identify yourself,” Egan said.

  The radio remained silent.

  “As you wish,” Egan muttered. He turned and motioned for one of the contractors to bring over a hostage. This one a young, frightened woman. Egan keyed the microphone and held it out to her. “Tell them your name, sweetheart,” he said.

  “Watts,” the girl said. “I’m Susan Watts. Please help us.”

  Keeping the mike keyed, Egan pulled out his pistol and shot the girl in the head, driving her backwards off her feet. He held the mike up so that whoever was listening could hear the hostages’ screams and shouts.

  “Dump her body outside,” Egan told a contractor, and he turned back to the mike. “That’s one,” he said. “Who am I talking to?”

  “Captain Glenn Nettles, United States Air Force Rapid Response Team Alpha. There was no need to kill that girl.”

  “Unfortunately I knew of no other way to motivate you into cooperating with me, Nettles. And believe me, cooperate this night you will. What is your present position and strength?”

  The radio was silent.

  “I have plenty of hostages here, other than Dr. Lipton and Ashley Borden, who I’m ready to kill.”

  “We’re forty klicks out directly to your south. Two MH-60 Blackhawks in the lead with six operators plus crew including two gunners in each.”

  “That it?”

  “We have two squads of ground troops en route,” Nettles radioed, obviously pissed off. “Means you walk out of there now, or we’ll take you out in body bags.”

  Egan keyed the mike. “Bring me another fucking hostage,” he said, and he released the push-to-talk button. All high drama, he thought. Theater. And he loved it.

  “No, wait!” Nettles shouted.

  One of the contractors was starting to pull a hostage to his feet, but Egan waved him off. He keyed the mike. “That’s better.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I think that you or the people who cut your orders know. But this is what you’re going to do for us, Captain. And there will be no arguments, no bargaining, no delays. As I said I have plenty of hostages here. Are you ready to copy?”

  “Roger.”

  “Good man. I do not want you or your people in the air or on the ground closer than ten miles from the south gate. So when you reach that point you will touch down. Failure to do so will result in more deaths. Copy?”

  “Roger,” Nettles said. “Let me talk to Dr. Lipton.”

  “Later.”

  “Now!” Nettles shouted.

  Egan was about to key his mike, but Nettles beat him to it.

  “Wait. We’ll be setting down in about twelve minutes.”

  Egan waited to answer. In the opening moves it was always a good idea to let the other bastard sweat a little.

  “You copy that?” Nettles came back.

  “Roger. Are you recording my voice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, then there’s no need for you to write anything down. More accurate that way. Soon as you land, call again and I’ll tell you what will come next.”

  “I need to talk to Dr. Lipton.”

  “Indeed you will, in due time,” Egan said. He laid the mike on the bar counter and got off the stool. “Nobody touches the radio, no matter what the bastard has to say.”

  The contractors all nodded, and Egan went outside where he keyed his lapel mike.

  “Post one, team lead, are you in your fallback position?”

  “We’re on our way,” the squad leader said. The four of them would wait just inside the generating hall, where they had a good firing angle on the rear gate, and yet could protect the explosive charges until the choppers that would take them to the Dickinson airport arrived.

  “Post two, team lead.”

  “We’re on our way to you, but there’s been a fair amount of gunfire from the R and D building,” the squad leader said. “Do you want us to reinforce?”

  “Stand by,” Egan said. “Rodriguez, copy?”

  “Yes,” Rodriguez came back immediately.

  “Switch to two,” Egan said and switched. “Copy?”

  “Sí,” Rodriguez replied and switched to the secondary channel.

  “I’m talking to the Air Force. They’ve agreed to stand off for now, as we knew they would.”

  “How many hostages did it take to convince them?”

  “Only one, just as you predicted would happen. But they want to talk to Lipton.”

  “Let them.”

  “She and the lieutenant commander managed to get out and head up to the R and D center. You need to take charge and get her and the Borden woman back here ASAP. I’ve got my hands full.”

  “I’m not going to ask how you allowed that to happen,” Rodriguez came back sharply. “But I’m on it.”

  Egan was going to call the man on his tone, but he thought better of it. “Thanks,” he said, and he switched back to channel one. “Post two, team lead. Rodriquez will be taking charge for the moment. Copy?”

  “Copy,” the squad leader said, and Egan was sure that he heard the son of a bitch snicker. His time would come, too.

  Egan stalked back into the club, where he went behind the bar, grabbed a bottle of whisky, took a deep draft, and tossed it away. The contractors watched him but said nothing.

  Nettles came back. “Egan, this is Nettles, we’re down.”

  Egan grabbed the mike. “No screwing around now, Captain. You’re going to have a Gulfstream or some other business jet capable of carrying twenty people to Colombia brought to the airport at Dickinson. Only the flight crew will be aboard. No weapons. Is that understood?”
/>   “Yes.”

  “Also aboard will be five million dollars in gold at the current rate of—let’s call it two thousand dollars per ounce.”

  “That may take some time,” Nettles said.

  “You have ten hours, nonnegotiable,” Egan said. “Dr. Lipton and General Forester’s daughter, Ms. Borden, will be coming with us aboard a Chinook CH-47 or some variant, which will set down in front of Donna Marie within that time period. No one but the unarmed crew will be aboard. Noncompliance will result first in Ms. Borden’s death, and then if we find ourselves cornered, Dr. Lipton will die.”

  “Why?” Nettles asked, his tone a little more respectful.

  By then Egan figured the captain finally understood that he was dealing with a professional. “Money, of course. And, one more thing for you to consider. We have planted explosives inside the power plant, in the control room, at the turbine, at the wellhead and furnace. All of them remotely controlled. Believe me, if I’m forced into it, I will not hesitate to push the button.”

  “I’ll relay your demands,” Nettles said.

  Egan laid down the mike. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Are you all hungry?” he asked everyone, including the hostages.

  No one answered.

  “Well good, then,” he said. “Cooks, let’s beat feet and rustle up some grub.”

  60

  CAMERON AND WHITNEY made it to the second-floor corridor in the R&D building just steps in front of whoever had blown the hinges off the front door. Holding up just around the corner, Whitney half propping him up, Cameron held his breath and listened for someone on the stairs.

  Two men, he thought. Maybe three, directly below at the foot of the stairs. One of them said something that Cameron couldn’t make out, and he eased Whitney silently back a half step and raised the M4 carbine.

  Right now a couple of flash-bang grenades would have come in handy, he thought. But so then would a Squad Automatic Weapon, maybe the M249 with a burst firing rate in excess of seven hundred rounds per minute.

  Whitney started to whisper something, but Cameron put a finger to his lips and shook his head. He pointed toward the stairs and raised two and then three fingers. She was wide-eyed and out of breath, but she nodded that she understood.