Sabri Ramirez stood watching as the last of the krytron detonators was secured in the ganglia of wiring that surrounded the explosive Octol sphere. Now one of the bombs was armed. He liked the looks of it. The next-
"They haven't come back yet," Wolf Helling said, interrupting his thoughts. "Do you think there was a problem?" He was warily watching the bomb and its timer being assembled, trying to calm his nerves. This was not like playing with a yellow lump of Sematach. One false move and you would be vaporized. Any man who pretended it didn't scare him was a liar, or worse, a fool. Maybe both.
The bomb did not frighten Ramirez; his mind did not dwell on risk. He assumed the Pakis knew their job-they damned well better. No, his current concern also was what had happened to Moreau. He had expected his unit to return before now. So far they had taken over an hour on what should have been a simple operation. With hostages dispersed in three locations, Ramirez feared that things were getting spread thin. Gamal had been keeping watch over the guards and the off-duty shifts on Level Three of the accommodations facility, while Peretz was holding things together in Command, but still it would be better if four of the team were not out chasing over the island trying to find some rogue guard. He had tried to reach them on his walkie-talkie, but so far he had not been able to raise anybody. That was particularly troubling. Why should all the radios suddenly go dead?
"If there was some difficulty up the hill, surely they're handling it." Ramirez tried to push aside his misgivings. He actually felt it was true, or should be true. He had checked out Moreau's credentials carefully, investigating beyond the popular myth, and what he had found did nothing to diminish the legend of the blond demon, Jean-Paul…
"Now, we're ready to secure this baby into the payload container," Abdoullah was saying. "I measured it already, and it should fit with no problem. But we'll need to hook up the detonators with the telemetry interface, and for that we need Peretz’ input. He'll use the Fujitsu in Command to blow this thing, but it all has to be synchronized with the trajectory control."
"He's there now," Ramirez said, "updating the trajectory runs. That's scheduled to be completed in"-he checked his watch-"about twenty minutes. When he gets through, we can go ahead with the detonators. Everything is on schedule."
For some reason Abdoullah did not like the precise tone of Ramirez's voice. Right, he thought, everything is on schedule. So when Shujat and I have finished our part, what then? Will we be "accidentally" gunned down, the way Rais was? You claimed that was a screw-up, but you're not the kind of guy who makes that kind of mistake. Okay, so maybe Rais got careless. Was that your way of making an example of him?
He motioned Shujat to help lift the first shiny sphere into the heat-resistant Teflon payload container. On a conventional launch, the container was designed to be deployed by radio command when the VX-1 vehicle had captured low earth orbit. The nose of the vehicle would open and eject it, after which the satellite payload would release. This launch, however, was-
"Hey, they're back," Helling announced, watching the door of the clean room open.
Ramirez looked up, and realized immediately that something was wrong. Jean-Paul Moreau's eyes seemed slightly unfocused, and his sense of balance was obviously impaired -a man stumbling out of a centrifuge. He also was rubbing at his ears, as though his head were buzzing.
"What in hell happened?" He had never seen anyone with quite this set of symptoms before. They looked like men who had been too close when a homemade bomb went off.
"The bastard was up on the hill, and he managed to get control of one of the radars. Let me tell you, there's nothing like it in the world. You feel your head is going to explode. I can barely hear." He then lapsed into French curses.
Stelios Tritsis still had said nothing. He merely watched as Rudolph Schindler and Peter Maier set down the RPG-7 and collapsed onto the floor.
"Then let him go for now." Ramirez wanted to kill them all, then and there. "But get that damned thing out of here." He indicated the grenade launcher. "And the rest of you with it. Take turns getting some sleep and report back to me at 0600 hours. We'll soon have our hands full. The natives here are going to start getting restless. When that happens, the next man who fucks up will have to answer to me."
They all knew what that meant.