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?
All the same, he had specialized in screwing up things ever since the initial penetration. He had managed to wreck the Hind, destroy the gantry, make a general nuisance of himself. The time had come to put a stop to the annoyance and then get moving. If the money had been delivered, as Hansen had claimed, then it was time to move on to the next phase. Just take care of a few banking transactions, then put the egress plan into motion.
He hit the lock control on the door, which had long since been defaulted to manual, and strode out, his Beretta ready. The problem now was finding that bastard Vance in the fog, but the reflected light off the spots illuminating the vehicles was going to provide visibility. Besides, the bastard was a cowboy, took chances right and left. He also didn't seem to be a particularly competent marksman…