Vance watched the control room freeze as the body slumped to the floor, and he felt his fingers involuntarily bunch into a fist. The bastards were killing hostages already. They definitely were terrorists, right out of the textbook. Kill one, and frighten a thousand. Except they might not stop with one. He foresaw a long day. And night.
The victim had been hardly more than a college kid. Murdered at random, and for no other apparent reason than to frighten the rest into submission. A technique that was as old as brutality. But that terrorist trick, management by intimidation, worked both ways. Take away their Uzis and these smug bastards could just as easily be turned into quivering Jell-O. All human beings had psychological pressure points that could be accessed. What separated the wheat from the chaff was what happened when somebody got to those points. He often wondered what he would do. He prayed he would never have to find out…
Then he watched as the young man at the terminal began typing in something off a sheet of paper. Whatever the terrorist had intended to accomplish by his wanton murder, apparently it had worked. The other technicians were all staring down at their screens, scared to move. Whatever had gone on, everybody was back to business. But what did these thugs want?
Sadly he turned away from the screen to reexamine his surroundings… and noticed a workstation, situated off to the left side of the door. What had Bill once said? They practically had computer terminals in the bathrooms. This one obviously was intended for quick communications with the command crews from here in this freezing white room.
Keeping an eye on the TV monitor, he moved over to take a look. Instructions began appearing on the bright green screen, indicating it was tied into a computer network at the facility. Yes, somebody-probably the young analyst out there-was typing in a complex series of commands. Above that, on the screen, another sequence had been aborted. It had been some sort of run called HI-VOLT. That must have been what had jolted him when he was out in the conduit.
He studied the screen, trying to figure out what was going on. Only the hum of air conditioning broke the silence, and the quiet helped him to think…
Of course! These bastards were planning to use the Cyclops-or worse, its spacecraft-to… what?
He recalled seeing the second chopper arrive and the boys unload two crates. Its cargo wasn't going to be a Christmas present to the world. Whatever it was, they were poised to deliver it just about anywhere on the globe.
So what was their target? He studied the computer screen, hoping to get an inkling. But he saw only numbers. In pairs. They looked like… latitude and longitude. Coordinates. What did that mean? The first ones were nearby, maybe somewhere near Crete. So what were they doing? Reprogramming the vehicle into a missile? Terrific.
That was the first half of the bad news. The second half was that whatever they were up to, there also seemed a good chance they might try to blow up the SatCom facility after they were finished, just to cover their tracks. Dead men make no IDs in some faraway courtroom years from now.
He could probably terminate that plan by just sabotaging some of the fiber optics in the conduit, thereby putting the whole facility out of commission. But that would screw Bill too, and probably end up costing SatCom millions. Bates was close enough to being suicidal already. This was probably going to put him over the edge in any case.
Keep that as a last-ditch option, he told himself. And besides, everything at the moment was only guesswork. The thing to do first was to get a better handle on the situation without the terrorists knowing. The question was how.
He looked around the room again, wondering. And then his eye fell on the terminal and a thought dawned. Why not see if you can interrupt the computer run in progress and have a chat with the analyst at the keyboard, the one with the beard now typing in the numbers appearing on the green screen?
He reached down and tested one of the keys, but nothing happened. The data being typed in just kept on coming. What now? How to cut into the system and send him a little personal E-mail? Get his attention. Something. Then he realized the keyboard had an on/off switch, which was currently shunting it out of the system.
Guess that's to keep somebody from screwing up a run by leaning against it, he thought. How much time is there? Any minute now somebody could come wandering in. Probably this window of opportunity only had a few minutes to go.
He switched on the keyboard and again gave a letter a tap. This time it instantly appeared on the screen, highlighted. A glance at the TV monitor told him that the startled analyst at the keyboard had frozen his fingers in mid-tap, bringing everything to a halt.
Quickly he started typing, hoping that none of the terrorists had the brains to be monitoring the computers.