The Mission

CHAPTER 23

“If you are wrong, we will have wasted critical time,” Yakov said. The Amazon rain forest was flashing by beneath the bouncer as they headed northeast toward the coast.

“You got a better suggestion for the location of The Mission?” Turcotte asked. He held up his hand. A faint trace of black was under the skin. He felt terrible, a pounding headache on top of a fever. He held on to Baldrick’s last statement about a cure. It was their only chance.

“If you are wrong, at least we will be close enough to Kourou.” Yakov said. “I will ensure those rockets never launch in the morning.”

“Better to burn out than fade away,” Turcotte said. He knew what Yakov had in mind — a Special Operations warrior conducting a suicide mission was a most formidable foe. He had no doubt the two of them would be able to make a good charge at disabling those rockets no matter what security there was at the field. The problem, though, was that the Black Death would still continue burning through South America and eventually move outward from there. “What does that mean?”

“It’s a song,” Turcotte said. “Means it’s better to go out with a bang than a whimper.”

“A bang, yes,” Yakov said. “That is what it would be.”

“According to the information Dr. Duncan was able to find,” Turcotte said, “Devil’s Island has been abandoned since the Second World War. She’s having the NSA get some overhead shots and she’s tracking down the plans for the prison there.

“From the little we know of it. this Mission uses people and things that are already established. Devil’s Island seems custom made for it. Add in the fact that Kourou is right next to it on the mainland and the first two satellites were recovered to the east of the island in the Atlantic and it all fits. Plus the name Devil’s Island, which corresponds to what Sister Angelina said.” Turcotte nodded. “This is it. I can feel it.”

“I hope you are correct, my friend.” Yakov pointed to the left. “Because if you are wrong, that is our next slop.”

Brilliantly lit by spotlights, four Ariana rockets sat on the four launch pads at Kourou about eight miles to the north of where they were flying.

“NSA Seven, this is Eagle Leader. Over.” Lieutenant Colonel Mickell released the transmit button on the radio and waited. He was in the cargo bay of an MC-13 °Combat Talon — a specially modified version of the venerable four-prop Hercules transport plane that had been in the Air Force’s inventory for decades.

The Talon was special in that it could fly very low, hugging the terrain, thus evading getting picked up on radar. This was a relatively easy flight so far, given that the flight path had been over water since reaching the Atlantic off the coast of South Carolina.

The radio crackled as Duncan answered. “This is NSA Seven. Over.”

“This is Eagle Leader. I’m calling for final mission authorization. Authenticate, please. Over.” Mickell released the send button.

The radio hissed. “I authenticate NSA Directive 6-97. I say again, I authenticate NSA Directive 6-97. Over.”

Mickell nodded. He at least had a pretense of legitimacy. “Roger, NSA Seven. I copy NSA Directive 6-97. Over.”

“NSA Seven. Out.”

Mickell keyed the mike again. “Tiger Leader, this is Eagle Leader. Did you copy NSA Seven? Over.”

From two hundred fifty kilometers to the south the reply came back. “Roger that. I’ll get it cranking. Over.”

“Good luck. Out.”

Lisa Duncan put the SATPhone down. She was on board a bouncer, flying back to Area 51. She had far overstepped her bounds giving authorization for military action in a foreign country. NSA Directive 6-97 gave her some power, but not that much.

“We’re six minutes out from Area 51, ma’am,” the pilot announced.

“Thank you,” Duncan said. She called ahead and had Major Quinn patch into the SATCOM frequency for the Delta Force operation.

Turcotte sat on the opposite side of the tree trunk from Yakov. Kenyon was slightly behind him. They were near the top of a knoll. Below them were the old walls of the abandoned French prison. Beyond the prison, the Atlantic Ocean crashed into the rocky shoreline with thunderous breakers.

The bouncer had dropped them off on Devil’s Island, on the opposite side of a ridge behind the supposedly long-abandoned prison. The island was rough and heavily vegetated. The prison was on the western side, a walled compound about two acres in size. Turcotte, Kenyon, and Yakov had quickly hiked over the ridge to their present location. “The Mission must be in the old prison,” Yakov said.

Turcotte pointed to the right. “Two boats are tied to the pier.” The pier was about a mile from the prison.

“One is a patrol boat.” Yakov noted the dark silhouette, dimly lit by a couple of lights on the pier. “Russian made. We have made some good money selling items like that to the highest bidder in the past several years. Pauk class. It could have been used to pick up the satellites in the water. The other boat is smaller.” He turned his attention back to the prison. “There’s a helicopter inside the walls,” he noted.

Turcotte pulled a set of night-vision goggles out of his pack and put them on. “Guards. Four on the dock. Others along the top of the wall and inside the compound. About fifteen.”

“I think you have — how do you say — hit the jackpot,” Yakov said.

Turcotte slipped the pack off his back and pulled out a SATCOM radio. He unfolded the tripod legs of the little dish and angled it up to the sky, then hooked in a scrambler and put on a small headset. He did a trial shot and got a successful bounce back from the communications satellite, indicating he was on the right direction and azimuth.

He hooked a small portable printer into the radio along with the laptop computer. It was a long way from his time in the infantry when he’d gone to the field with just a bulky FM radio for communications.

“I’ve got a link to both Duncan and Area 51,” Turcotte confirmed to Yakov.

The printer came alive and a sheet of paper scrolled out. “Current real-time thermal of the island from a KH-12 spy satellite,” Turcotte said. He tapped two small red dots. “That’s us.”

“Amazing” was Yakov’s take on that.

“And we’re not alone.” Turcotte slid his finger along the paper. “This dark blue square is the other wall of the prison. This building inside has people in it.” There were about a dozen red dots on the paper. “And the guards at the dock and people on both boats.”

Turcotte frowned. “The chopper is red. The engine is still hot.”

“You think they have already delivered the payload to Kourou?” Kenyon asked.

“I don’t know,” Turcotte said. “You said they needed to keep it refrigerated. Let’s hope they haven’t taken it out yet. I’d say if the boats are still here, the Black Death is still here.”

“So what do we do now?” Yakov asked.

“We wait for just a little while, then we go visiting.”

“I will stop those rockets from taking off at Kourou no matter what,” Yakov vowed once more.

“Let’s start here,” Turcotte advised.

Lisa Duncan was walking a fine line. She had told no one other than Turcotte about Kopina’s action in destroying the shuttle Endeavor. She wanted to stay clear of the official reaction to that event and the destruction of Columbia by the talon. With one fell swoop, two-thirds of America’s space fleet was gone; only the shuttle Atlantis, currently being refitted, was left.

She’d arrived in Area 51 and was now in the Cube, coordinating all the forces she had set in movement. Major Quinn was helping her, his military experience invaluable, his links to intelligence networks critical.

The progressives were using the events to further their own cause, as were the isolationists. China firing a nuclear weapon within its own borders had the world’s governments fixated on that event and how it affected their own little backyards.

Now that she had a slightly better view of the playing field, Duncan had to wonder how much of that was due to the influence of the Guides. The Ones Who Wait, and the Watchers.

Meanwhile, from Quinn’s intelligence, Duncan knew the Black Death was spreading in the Amazon rain forest and the four rockets were set to launch at Kourou in less than six hours.

“They have to have a Level Four biolab somewhere in there,” Kenyon said. “We’ll find it,” Turcotte promised. He cocked his head as the SATPhone gave a very low buzz.

“Turcotte,” he spoke in a low voice.

“Mike, this is Colonel Mickell. We’re en route.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mickell gave him the satellite radio frequency they would be working on and the call signs that would be used.

Turcotte switched from the phone to the more secure radio. “Eagle Leader, this is Wolf Leader. Over.”

The reply from Mickell was immediate. “This is Eagle Leader. Go ahead. Over.”

“Roger, we’ve got the prison under surveillance. One thing — we’ve got to recover a cure for the virus inside the prison, so tell your people to be careful who they shoot and what they blow up. Over.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end. “Roger. Over.”

Turcotte knew the Delta Force men with Mickell had no idea that they were here outside the normal chain of command. And if they knew, they wouldn’t really care — as Colonel Mickell hadn’t cared — given the urgency of the mission.

The trend in Special Operations over the past two decades had been for fewer and fewer people to be informed and involved in actual operations. The after-action report on the debacle at Desert One had shown up glaring faults in the number of people who were actively involved in the decision-making process, from the President on down. The military had pushed for less outside involvement and more autonomy for the leader on the ground. It also allowed those on the inside to use Delta Force for this mission without having to inform everybody and their brother about what was going on and having the chance of a Guide becoming involved. After what had happened to Endeavor there was most definitely a need for keeping this in close.

“They’ll keep the cure with them,” Kenyon said. “If they move the payloads with the Black Death, they’ll move the cure.”

“Why?” Turcotte asked.

“If you were going to handle snakes, wouldn’t you keep your antivenom kit close at hand?” Kenyon asked.

Sergeant First Class Gillis signaled to the pilot. “Crank her up, Corsen.”

The pilot started his helicopter. The aircraft was an OH-58, the military version of the Bell Jet Ranger. The twin-bladed helicopter could hold only the pilot and the three men of Tiger element. They were flying out of the airfield at St. George’s in Grenada, where, as members of the Seventh Special Forces Group, they were always on standby for counterdrug operations. Gillis was glad to be doing something other than chasing drug runners for once, even though the plan looked half-assed at best.

The four men were dressed similarly, all in black, including black balaclavas that left only their eyes exposed. Night-vision goggles hung around their necks, and each man wore a headset for communication among the team and with the other elements. They wore combat vests with the various tools of their trade hanging on them.

The single turbine engine started to whine as Corsen began his start-up procedures. Gillis glanced at his watch just before getting in and taking the left front seat, next to the pilot. Since the OH-58 was the slowest aircraft involved in the operation, it would leave first, even though it was two hundred fifty kilometers closer to the target than the Eagle element currently in the air. Just a few hours earlier they had received a real mission tasking and the Delta Team had worked out a rough plan with them over the radio. The plan depended on split-second timing from the various elements involved.

As soon as Corsen had sufficient engine speed, the blades started turning and the aircraft began rocking. Gillis looked over his shoulder at the two men seated in the back. Shartran and Jones both gave him a thumbs-up. Their guns were between their knees, muzzles pointing down.

Gillis pulled out the acetated map with their flight route on it. Written in grease pencil along the route were the time hacks for the various checkpoints on the way in. A stopwatch was taped to the map. Gillis checked his watch. Corsen lifted the aircraft to a three-foot hover. When his second hand swept past the twelve and the watch indicated 5:41, Gillis indicated “go” and clicked the stopwatch. Corsen pushed forward on the cyclic and they were on their way.

Four powerful turboprop engines drilled the night sky, pulling the Combat Talon troopship. Inside the cramped cargo bay, Mickell sat as comfortably as his parachute and equipment would allow on the web seats rigged along the side of the aircraft. He wore a headset connected by a long cord to a SATCOM radio nestled in among the electronics gear in the front half of the bay. The other members of his team were spread out in the rear half.

They had an hour and forty-two minutes to their infiltration point. Since they were coming in over the ocean, the Combat Talon was going to rely on something besides its terrain-following ability for this flight. The electronic-warfare people in the front were sending out a transponder signal indicating that the Talon was a civilian airliner en route to Rio de Janeiro. The aircraft would fit this profile except for the brief one-minute slowdown over the infiltration point for the drop.

Mickell’s ears perked up when he heard the radio come alive.

“Eagle, this is Hawk. I have lifted and am en route.” Mickell checked his watch: 8:44. The HH-53 Pave Low helicopter had lifted from the USS Raleigh off the coast of Panama on time. All the pieces were moving.

Turcotte waited at the base of the tree with Yakov and Kenyon.

“We are wasting time.” Yakov was sweating, his hand rubbing back and forth along the muzzle of the MP-5.

“We’re only going to get one shot at this.” Turcotte understood the Russian’s anxiety. With every passing minute people died and the Black Death spread farther. On a more personal note, the more time passed, the more the virus infiltrated their own bodies. “We have to do it right.” Turcotte stared at the old prison below. His adrenaline was starting to flow. He forced himself to calm down. They still had a while to go before things started happening. Another hour and twenty-five minutes.

At Area 51 Lisa Duncan looked at the latest imagery forwarded from the NSA of South America. There were now eight villages that were cold, all downriver from Vilhena. The next six were hot, indicating the disease was raging in those towns. The one farthest from the site where the satellite had gone down was on the Amazon. She knew that meant the disease would be down the river to the coast in the next twenty-four hours, if it wasn’t already. For all they knew, carriers, fleeing the disaster, had reached some of the major cities on the coast.

Focused on China and the shuttles, the media had not yet caught on to what was really happening, although some scattered reports were beginning to trickle in. She knew by the time the media was aware of the story, it would be far too late for anyone to do anything to stop the Black Death. The most chilling aspect of it all was that there appeared to be no survivors in the affected areas.

She turned to Major Quinn. “I’m going to Devil’s Island on one of the bouncers. You’re in charge here. If we don’t succeed in getting the cure, do your best to get someone to try to quarantine South America.”

Quinn stared at her in disbelief, but Duncan didn’t have time to discuss impossibilities as she hurried for the elevator.

Gillis looked at the fuel gauge. They were down to less than a third of a tank. He checked the map as the helicopter whizzed over a small lighthouse. “Checkpoint fifteen, on route and on time.”

Corsen nodded but didn’t speak.

Gillis checked the map again. “Turn right. Slop turn.” He peered ahead through his goggles. “The route goes slightly to the left.”

Corsen made the slight adjustment and the aircraft steadied on the new course. Gillis checked the time again. Another forty-five minutes to target.

Mickell looked up in dismay as he verified the abort code word. The other members of his force were still in their positions. His ops officer was looking at him strangely, wondering what the long conversation was about. Mickell gestured for him to come over. The man waddled over awkwardly and threw himself on the adjacent seat. He yelled in Mickell’s ear to be heard over the roar of the engines. “What’s up?”

“I just got an abort over the SATCOM from the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

The ops officer rolled his eyes. “Damn! It’s a little too late for that. Tiger element is already past the point of no return. They don’t have enough fuel to make it back to Grenada.”

Mickell had talked personally with Lisa Duncan several times over the past two days, and he knew what was at stake. The fact that Mike Turcotte trusted her was more than enough for him, but someone in the Pentagon must have gotten wind about what was going on and wanted to pull the plug. He keyed the mike.

“NSA Seven, this is Eagle Leader. Over.”

He heard Duncan’s voice. “This is NSA Seven. Over.”

“We’ve received the order to abort from the Pentagon.”

There was a short pause. “Colonel Mickell, I’ve told you what the threat is. I would be lying to you if I told you I had authorization from higher for this mission. But I also believe that we would not get authorization until it was too late — if at all — given the fact that there have been compromises in security throughout our government.

“We just lost two space shuttles, one of them because of treachery within our own ranks. We don’t have the time to play games. Latest imagery shows the Black Death has reached the Amazon and is going downriver.

“I’m on my way to your location on board a bouncer and should be there shortly after you attack. I will take complete responsibility for everything that happens.”

Mickell looked down the cargo bay of the Combat Talon. His men were ready. Two helicopters were en route, one without enough fuel to get back. He had Mike Turcotte on the ground. Then there was the matter of his duty to his chain of command and his career.

“NSA Seven, this is Eagle Leader. I am having radio problems. You are the only station I can receive. Over.”

“I understand,” Duncan said. “Good luck. See you shortly. NSA Seven out.”

“Let’s go.” Turcotte took off the SATCOM headset. He had the plug for the FM radio on his vest in his left ear, a boom mike in front of his lips.

Together, Yakov, Kenyon, and he made their way downhill, staying under the cover of the jungle until they were as close to the wall as they could get. There was about ten feet of low scrub between the edge of the jungle and the ten-foot-high brick wall.

Turcotte was looking at the guard who was walking along the top of the wall, when there was a loud humming noise and his goggles blanked out. He ripped them off his face and saw the cause: lights had been turned on inside the compound and the glow had overloaded the light enhancement inside the goggles. The guard was clearly silhouetted now. Lights were also on at the docks.

“Time’s running out.” Yakov brought the MP-5 up and sighted on the guard. “Wail.” Turcotte gently laid his hand on the Russian’s arm. “Just wait another couple of minutes.”

A caution light appeared on the console of the OH-58. Gillis stared at it in concern. “What’s that?”

Corsen kept his attention fixed ahead. “Fuel warning light.”

“I thought you said we’d have enough fuel to make it to the target. Are we going to make it or not?”

“We should.”

“Should!” That answer didn’t please the sergeant.

“Relax. All that light means is that we’re low, not that we’re out. We should have about twenty minutes left. We’ll make it. And if we don’t,” Corsen added mischievously, “I’ll just autorotate.”

“Just great,” Gillis muttered to himself. “Checkpoint twenty-four. That’s the last one before we hit our final reference point.” He looked at the stopwatch. “Right on time.”

The ramp opened and air swirled in with a roar, Colonel Mickell pushed himself up tight behind the jumper in front of him. One minute out from drop. Mickell kept his eyes fixed on the glowing red light above the ramp. He took a few deep breaths. The light turned green and the ten men shuffled off the ramp in formation.

Mickell felt the plane’s slipstream grab him and buffet him about. He spread his arms and legs and arced his back in an effort to get stable. He had barely achieved that state when he pulled his rip cord. His chute blossomed above him and he oscillated under the canopy.

Quickly getting his bearings, Mickell spotted the other members of Eagle spread out below him. He dumped air and caught up with them.

The target island appeared on the low-light-television screen on the helicopter console. Corsen raised their altitude for the final approach.

“The prison is lit up big-time,” Corsen said.

Sergeant Gillis’s headset crackled as he heard Turcotte for the first time over the short-range FM radio. “Tiger, this is Wolf. I can hear you coming. Situation at target as briefed. LZ inside the south wall has one chopper on the pad and room for you to the east. Over.”

Corsen swung the chopper around in a left-hand bank and they approached the island from the south.

The muted buzz of the inbound helicopter reverberated through the air. Turcotte pulled a double-edged commando knife from the sheath on his combat vest. Holding the blade, he stood and threw in one smooth motion. He sprinted for the wall while the knife was still in the air.

The point hit the guard in the neck. The guard’s hands went to his throat, dropping his weapon. He staggered, went to his knees, then used one hand to try to steady himself as the other grabbed the handle of the knife protruding from his throat.

Turcotte reached the wall and jumped, grabbing the guard’s left leg and pulling him down on top of him. Turcotte was surprised when the body was lifted off of him as if pulled by a string. Yakov had the guard in his large hands. With a quick twist, he finished what Turcotte had started. He tossed the body into the bushes.

Turcotte stood and, with great effort, boosted Yakov up on the wall, then reached up and grabbed the Russian’s hand. Yakov reached down and pulled Turcotte up with one quick heave. He did the same with Kenyon.

They lay on top of the thick prison wall, getting their bearings. The main building was only twenty-five feet away. It had an administration center and two long wings of cells.

Turcotte spotted a guard on this side of the building, inside the wall. The man held a submachine gun in his hands.

Turcotte slithered over the wall, followed by Yakov and Kenyon. There was the sound of helicopter blades coming from the south, drawing the guard’s attention.

The inbound helicopter not only drew attention away from the wall, but it covered up the slight noise Eagle Force made as it landed on the roof of the main building and kept anyone from looking up and possibly seeing the black parachutes against the lit sky. One by one, the parachutists touched down, their chutes collapsing.

Mickell was the trail man in the airborne formation. He could see the canopies from the other jumpers draped all over the top of the roof. He braked and felt his knees buckle slightly as he made a perfect landing in the center of the roof. Two of the first jumpers were already at work, prepping a charge on a locked door that barred their way down.

Mickell looked up as the OH-58 swooped in from the south, its bright searchlight blinding the guards on the ground as it settled in toward the landing pad. The man in charge of the demolitions gave Mickell the thumbs-up. Mickell signaled for him to wait.

The skids of the bird settled on the concrete landing pad. Two guards were moving forward toward the aircraft from the front, trying to identify it. Corsen suddenly twisted his throttle to flap the blades. The two guards bent their heads even farther and covered their eyes at the sudden onslaught of wind.

As they did so Jones and Shartran leaned out of the open back doors, one on either side, and gunned down the guards, using their silenced MP-5s.

“Tiger, two down LZ,” Gillis reported over the radio as he got out. Jones and Shartran started sprinting for the front door, their weapons at the ready. Corsen rolled off the throttle and waited, weapon at the ready…

Mickell signaled. There was a flash and hiss as the charge ate through the lock. The door swung open and the ten men slipped in, Mickell in the lead. They halted at the foot of the stairs and the team split. Four men headed toward one wing, while the other six began work on the other.

They fanned out on the second floor, moving in a practiced routine. They began clearing, cell by cell. The first indication that anything unusual was happening in the building finally occurred — the muffled roar of a machine gun echoed up from the east wing.

Turcotte slid through a ground-floor entrance that was open and stepped through to the right while Yakov stepped to the left, Kenyon staying safely behind them.

“Turcotte, east wing,” he whispered into the mike as he and Yakov turned for the hallway.

A figure stepped out in front of them and Yakov cut the man down in a hail of bullets. The roar of a machine gun to their left startled both men.

Gillis let up on the trigger of the squad automatic weapon, SAW, with a satisfying click. “Tiger, one down first-floor foyer, main building.”

He swung the muzzle slightly to the left as another door opened and a half-dressed guard stepped out waving a pistol. As he pressed the trigger. Gillis could see the outlines of other men behind the first. He decided to make a clean sweep of things. Keeping the trigger depressed, he swept the doorway and then stitched a pattern on the walls.

The 5.56mm, steel-jacketed rounds tore through the brick wall and made a carnage in the guardroom. Gillis fired until he expended all hundred rounds in the drum magazine. When the bolt slid forward and halted for lack of ammo, he expertly pulled another drum out of the bag on his hip and reloaded.

“Tiger, a bunch down, first-floor foyer, main building.”

Gillis swung his barrel to the left as two figures stepped out of the hallway from the east.

“Friendly, Wolf element!” Turcotte yelled. He looked around the main foyer. Two large double doors were off to the left. “There!” He remembered the plans Duncan had managed to get hold of — those doors led to stairs going down to the old solitary confinement area.

Turcotte led Yakov, Kenyon, Gillis, and the other men to the doors. Gillis slapped a charge on the thick wooden doors. They all dove for cover, then the doors blew wide open. Gillis led the way in with a burst of fire from the SAW.

“We need them alive!” Turcotte yelled, seeing the wide row of stairs leading down. He pushed past Gillis and took the stairs two at a time. They ended at a steel door with dire warnings printed in several languages. Turcotte recognized the international symbol for bio-hazard.

More men came down the stairs, weapons at the ready. Colonel Mickell in the lead.

“Mike!” Mickell called out, seeing Turcotte. “We’ve got both wings secure. My men are checking the exterior, but I think we’ve got it all.”

“Can you get us in there, sir?” Turcotte pointed at the doors.

Mickell responded by yelling orders. A demolitions man ran up with a heavy backpack. He put it on the floor, pulling a cylindrical black object out. Working rapidly, he placed it on a tripod, one end eighteen inches away from the steel.

Turcotte knew it was a shaped charge, designed to focus a blast of heat and force at exactly the distance it was from the door.

“Fire in the hole!” the demo man called out, causing everyone to scatter for cover. Turcotte grabbed Kenyon and dove behind a desk that had been a security checkpoint. There was a loud bang, causing his cars to ring. Poking his head above the desk, Turcotte saw a four-foot-wide hole had been torched through the steel.

“Wait for it to cool,” the demo man advised as Turcotte approached the hole. Turcotte threw a chair across the bottom of the hole, the wood arms hissing as they met the red-hot metal. He grabbed a flash-bang grenade off his combat vest, pulled the pin, and tossed it through the hole. As soon as it exploded, he followed it through, diving headfirst, his belly sliding over the chair.

Turcotte rolled left once, then to his feet, weapon at the ready. He froze as he saw the white-coated bodies crumpled all over the floor amid the sophisticated equipment. He slowly stood.

The Mission had completely gutted the level and put in a Biolevel 4 lab. Turcotte considered the situation. Had the virus already taken over here? Had there been an accident? But the guards had seemed fine.

“What happened to them?” Mickell demanded, carefully stepping through the hole in the door.

Turcotte knelt next to a body and looked closely. He had seen this before. Deep under the Great Rift Valley. “They were killed by the people they worked for. The Mission is covering its tracks.”

“Exfil is only a couple of minutes out,” Mickell said.

“That’s not important right now,” Turcotte said as he stepped forward into the room. There were six men in the white coats. All dead, their faces contorted in agony. All were middle-aged. Hemstadt — the Dulce Nazi — wasn’t here.

There was a lot of complicated equipment in the room along with several highspeed computers. Yakov had a difficult time getting through the hole, singeing his shoulder on the cooling metal but not seeming to notice it. Kenyon followed him.

“Are we too late?” Yakov asked.

“I don’t know,” Turcotte responded.

“The payloads.” Yakov ran over to a large door on the left side of the room. A crane was bolted lo the ceiling. He threw the door open. A tunnel beckoned, a set of narrow-gauge rail tracks bolted to the floor. A lone lightbulb every thirty feet dimly lit the way.

Yakov pounded his fist against the rock wall. “They got the payloads out!” Turcotte oriented himself. The tunnel led to the west. Toward the ocean. “The patrol boat!”

“The cure!” Turcotte grabbed Kenyon’s shoulder. “Is it in here?”

Kenyon unlatched a large freezer door and swung it open. Turcotte looked over his shoulder. There were rows and rows of rubber-lined slots designed to hold test tubes. They were all empty.

Kenyon read the labels below the empty racks. “The first batches of Black Death are gone, along with the cure.”

Yakov was staring down the dark tunnel. “There is no time. We must go after them.” He headed down the tunnel, shoulders hunched to keep his head from hitting the ceiling.

Turcotte turned to Colonel Mickell. “We need to get to the pier.”

Turcotte pushed a man trying to get into the lab out of the way as he bullied his way through the breach in the doors, Colonel Mickell behind him, Kenyon following. They took the stairs up two at a time. Sergeant Gillis was standing guard in the main foyer.

“What’s going on?” Gillis demanded as Turcotte sprinted past him. “Follow me,” Turcotte yelled over his shoulder.

Entering the courtyard, Turcotte saw the OH-58. He ran to the passenger side. “Get us in the air!”

Corsen was staring at him. “Who the hell—” He paused as Gillis, Kenyon, and Colonel Mickell crowded into the backseat of the chopper.

“Get us down to the docks as quickly as possible.” Turcotte forced himself to speak more slowly.

“Now!” Colonel Mickell added from the backseat.

Corsen turned the generator and fuel switch on, then rolled the throttle. The engine began to whine.

Turcotte felt time ticking away. The blades began to slowly turn overhead. “You have a chopper coming in for exfil?” he asked Mickell.

The colonel nodded. “HH-53 Pave Low.” He checked his watch. “Only a minute out.”

Turcotte grabbed a headset and put it on. “What’s the call sign?”

“Hawk,” Mickell said.

Turcotte keyed the radio. “Hawk, this is Wolf. Over.”

The pilot of the Pave Low flared the chopper to slow it as he got his new orders from Turcotte. He banked hard right and followed Devil’s Island’s western coastline.

“I’ve got one vessel — patrol boat size — moving west, two hundred meters from shore.” the pilot informed Turcotte, seeing the ship clearly on his low-light television. He turned slightly, adjusting the camera mounted under the nose of the craft. “Second, smaller one is preparing to get under way.”

“Stop the patrol boat!” Turcotte ordered.

The pilot frowned. “Yes, sir.” All he had were door-mounted 7.62mm Gatling guns.

He rolled throttle, increased pitch, and headed in for a run, telling his left door gunner to be ready.

The gunner pulled the trigger as they passed the ship, two hundred meters off its port side. The electric drive ran the belt of ammunition through the gun, the barrels rotating, spewing out hundreds of rounds per second. The bullets ripped into the superstructure of the patrol boat, killing and maiming.

The ship retaliated a second later as a surface-to-air missile leapt out of a tube and headed for the Pave Low’s hot exhaust.

“Evasive manuevers!” the pilot screamed as he banked hard left, directly into the oncoming missile, reducing both his target profile and his heat signature. The missile flashed by to the right, narrowly missing.

Two more missiles were launched.

The pilot saw them coming and knew he had run out of options. They both homed in on the exhaust coming out of the engine.

The Pave Low exploded in a ball of fire.

Turcotte saw the explosion as the OH-58 finally lifted off the concrete pad and cleared the prison walls. “Goddamn,” Colonel Mickell exclaimed.

Yakov heard something ahead. Voices. Speaking in German. His hands tightened down on his submachine gun. The tunnel was narrow, less than six feet wide and the curved ceiling just under six feet high, causing Yakov to walk with knees bent. It went down at a steady angle toward the ocean.

He caught a glimpse of light reflecting off metal about fifty meters ahead and increased his speed.

“What do you want me to do?” Corsen’s voice was worried; he had just seen the Pauk-class patrol boat take out the HH-53.

A red light went on and a warning tone sounded.

“What’s that?” Turcotte asked.

“Fuel warning light,” Corsen said. “We have only a minute or two of fuel left.” It took Turcotte less than ten seconds to tell Corsen his plan.

A voice echoed back up the tunnel, inquiring in German who was there.

Yakov had the butt of the MP-5 nestled tightly in his shoulder. He could see two men now, with something metal in front of them on the rails. He pulled the trigger once, then twice. Both men flopped backward.

Yakov continued down the tunnel, then paused briefly when he recognized the metal object that was reflecting light — a wheelchair with a bald old man sitting in it.

Corsen headed straight into the first SAM launch, evading the first missile at the last second using his flares. The distance between the chopper and the Pauk patrol boat closed rapidly even as the helicopter gained altitude.

“They’re going to launch again!” Colonel Mickell warned,

Corsen reached up and flipped a switch. The sudden silence was startling as the engine emergency shutoff activated.

With a burst of light, another missile launched. And a third. Both flew by the OH-58, unable to find an infrared source because the engine had stopped putting out hot exhaust.

The blades whooshed by overhead as the chopper autorotated, the blades being turned by the air passing through them, in turn providing some lift, enough to keep them from gaining terminal speed.

Corsen was struggling with his controls, manhandling the hydraulics now that he didn’t have power from the engine to assist, pushing forward, trying to direct the fall.

He made it as they slammed into the rear deck of the Pauk, the blades cutting into the superstructure with a glitter of metal-on-metal sparks. The landing struts crumpled, and the helicopter ended up precariously perched on the deck, tilted hard to the right.

“General Hemstadt,” Yakov whispered, keeping the muzzle of his MP-5 centered on the old man as he slipped past the wheelchair and turned to face his enemy.

“Who are you?” Hemstadt asked in German.

“Where is the cure?”

Hemstadt’s face was surprisingly young-looking for a man in his late eighties. His hands were gripping the arms of his chair, his lower body covered in a blanket.

“You are Russian,” Hemstadt said. “I recognize the accent. A Russian pig. I killed many of your kind in the—”

“You killed many prisoners,” Yakov said. “Where is the cure?”

“Not here.”

Corsen was dead, the control panel smashed against his chest. Turcotte had narrowly escaped the same fate. He kicked out the front Plexiglas and rolled onto the deck. He got to his knees and noted green tracers flashing by perilously close. He rolled left.

The sound of a SAW firing roared in his ears and red tracers tracked back down the green ones. Sergeant Gillis was standing on top of the wreckage of the chopper, firing rolling bursts with the automatic weapon, the recoil slamming into his shoulder.

Gillis swept right, then left. In a matter of seconds, he got off five twenty-round bursts before a bullet caught him in the head and knocked him backward on top of Colonel Mickell and Kenyon, who had been trapped below him in the wreckage of the chopper.

By that time, Turcotte had maneuvered up the left side of the ship’s superstructure. He killed the man who had shot Gillis with one round through the head, knocking him off the wing of the bridge.

Turcotte blew out the bridge windows with a burst, then threw a flash-bang grenade through the opening. He dashed up the metal ladder onto the bridge. There were two men doubled over, hands pressed against their heads, suffering the aftereffects of the grenade.

“Freeze!” Turcotte yelled, knowing they probably couldn’t hear him.

One of the men reached for a pistol on his belt, and Turcotte shot him. The second man saw that and paused in his grab for a weapon. Then the man reached for a lever on the instrument panel.

“No!” Turcotte yelled.

The man’s hand closed around the lever. Turcotte fired, hitting him in the shoulder, knocking him back against the wheel. The man’s right arm flopped, useless. He reached with his left hand for the lever. Turcotte fired again, hitting him in the chest. The man grinned, then pulled the lever. Turcotte put a round right between the man’s eyes.

He ran forward to the console. A digital timer welded into the metal frame was counting down second by second from one hundred. As Turcotte watched, it went from 98 to 97.

Yakov placed the muzzle of the MP-5 on Hemstadt’s chest. “Where is the cure?” “Gone.”

“The Mission,” Yakov said. “Where are they?”

Hemstadt smiled. “‘They’—as you call them — are long gone. You will never find them.”

“Who are they?”

Hemstadt simply shook his head. “Far beyond you. You don’t have a clue about what is really going on. What has been going on throughout history. Nothing is as you were taught.”

“They helped you in the camps during the Great War.”

Hemstadt snorted. “Helped? They invented the camps. We helped them. You have no idea—”

Yakov jabbed the steel barrel into the old man’s frail chest. “Why don’t you tell me, old man.”

Hemstadt laughed, the sound echoing off the stone walls. “You think you have accomplished something here? You haven’t stopped us. The launches have already been aborted and this plan abandoned. They’re taking the cure out to sea to sink it.”

Turcotte left the bridge and raced aft. Kenyon and Mickell were pushing pieces of the helicopter out of the way. There were several large plastic cases tied down on the deck.

“You’ve got a minute,” Turcotte yelled.

“What?” Kenyon was at the cases.

“This ship’s going to blow in a minute.”

Kenyon flipped open the latches on the first one. A large stainless-steel cylinder rested on the cut-out foam, about three feet wide by six in length.

“One of the satellite dispersers,” Kenyon said. He turned to the next case. It also held one of the satellite payloads.

“Thirty seconds.” Turcotte knew that the concussion from an explosion carried well in water. Even if they got off in time, the blast would kill them as they tried to swim away.

Kenyon skipped the next two cases, which were the same size.

The fifth, smaller box was different. Kenyon opened the lid and the top of rows of glass test tubes appeared, each one inserted in the foam padding. “Black Death?” Turcotte asked.

Kenyon pulled one out and read the German label. “Yes.”

He opened the next box. Pulled out a tube. “More Black Death.”

Turcotte looked up. A bouncer was hovering overhead. A voice spoke in his earpiece — Duncan had arrived. He swung the boom mike for the FM radio in front of his lips to tell her what he needed.

Two more boxes of Black Death.

“Twenty seconds!” Turcotte yelled.

There was only one box left.

“Grab the cargo net!” Turcotte ordered as the bouncer came in low, hovering just above their heads. Kenyon and Colonel Mickell jumped.

Turcotte grabbed the last box with one hand and with the other grabbed hold of the cargo attached to the bottom of the bouncer.

His arm was wrenched in its socket as the bouncer accelerated straight up, the case almost torn from his grip. Below him there was a thunderous explosion and pieces of the boat flew by.

“I’ll tell you something to show you how ignorant you are,” Hemstadt said. “Nineteen oh eight. Tunguska. The great explosion. You should know what caused that, but you don’t, do you? Your own government hid that from you. And you are Section Four, aren’t you? You are a naive child.”

Yakov saw that the old man’s right hand had slipped under the blanket. He ripped the blanket off the German’s lap. The hand flopped down, a small needle clenched between two fingers. When Yakov looked up, Hemstadt’s face was slack with death.

The bouncer came down very slowly over the courtyard of the prison on Devil’s Island. Turcotte’s feet touched the ground and he collapsed, cradling the case. The bouncer slid over to the side and touched down. The top hatch opened and Lisa Duncan slid down the outside and ran over.

“Are you all right?”

Turcotte didn’t have the strength to reply. He forced his other hand to let go of the handle of the plastic case. Kenyon unsnapped the latches and opened the lid. Rows of glass tubes were nestled in the foam lining. He pulled a tube out and held it up.