now.”
Randi turned toward Smith. “Our bird?” she asked pointedly.
Jon shrugged. “A U.S. Army UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter,” he said. “Dispatched here by C-17 about the same time we flew from Paris to Lisbon. I thought it might come in handy.”
“Good thinking,” Randi said with barely contained sarcasm. “Let me get this straight: You just snapped your fingers and had the Army and the Air Force ship you a multimillion-dollar helicopter for our personal use? Is that about right, Jon?”
“Actually, I asked a couple of friends in the Pentagon to pull a string or two,” Smith said modestly. “Everybody's so worried about this nanophage threat that they were willing to bend some of the rules for us.”
Randi rounded on the leathery-faced Englishman. “And I suppose you think you can fly a Black Hawk?”
“Well, if I can't, we'll soon find out the hard way,” Peter told her cheerfully.
Chapter Forty-Six
Hideo Nomura paced slowly along the edge of the long concrete runway. The wind, blowing from the east, whispered through his short black hair. The light breeze carried the rich, sun-warmed smell of tall grass growing on the plateau beyond the fence. He looked up. The sun was still high overhead, just beginning its long slide toward the western horizon. Far to the north, a few clouds drifted slowly past, solitary puffs of white in a clear blue sky.
Nomura smiled. The weather was perfect in every respect. He turned, seeing his father standing behind him between two of Terce's hard-faced guards. The older man's hands were handcuffed behind his back.
He smiled at his father. “It's wonderfully ironic, isn't it?”
Jinjiro eyed him with a stony, cold reserve. “There are many ironies here, Lazarus,” he said coldly, refusing even to call his treacherous son by his own name. “To which do you refer?”
Ignoring the gibe, the younger man nodded toward the runway in front of them. “This airfield,” he explained. “The Americans built it in 1944, during their war against Germany and our beloved homeland. Their bombers used this island as a refueling point during their long transatlantic flights to England. But today, I will turn their own work against them. This airfield is about to become the staging area for America's annihilation!”
Jinjiro said nothing.
Hideo shrugged and turned away. It was clear now that he had kept his father alive out of a misguided sense of filial piety. Once the first Thanatos drones were airborne, there would be time to arrange a fitting end for the old fool. Some of his scientists were already working on different variations of the Stage IV nanophages. They might find it useful to test their new designs on a live human subject.
He strode toward a small knot of flight engineers and ground controllers waiting beside the runway. They wore headsets and short-range radios for communications between the aircraft hangars and the tower. “Is everything ready?” he asked sharply.
The senior ground controller nodded. “The main hangar crew reports they are ready for rollout. All canisters are onboard.”
“Good.” Nomura looked at his ranking flight engineer. “And the three aircraft?”
“All of their systems are functioning within the expected norms,” the man told him confidently. “Their solar power cells, fuel-cell auxiliaries, flight controls, and attack programs have all been checked and rechecked.”
“Excellent,” Nomura said. He glanced again at the ground controller. “Are there any unidentified air contacts we need to worry about?”
“Negative,” the controller said. “Radar reports nothing airborne within one hundred kilometers. We're in the clear.”
Hideo took a deep breath. This was the moment he had spent years planning, scheming, and killing to make a reality. This was why he had tricked, trapped, and betrayed his own father — all for this single glorious instant of sure and certain triumph. He breathed out slowly, savoring the delightful sensation. Then he spoke. “Commence Thanatos operations.”
The ground controller repeated his order over the radio.
“Open hangar doors.”
In response, at the southern end of the airfield huge metal doors on the nearest hangar began groaning apart, revealing a vast interior crowded with men and machines. Sunshine streamed inside through the rapidly expanding opening. It fell on the solar cells of the first Thanatos flying wing. They gleamed like golden fire.
“The first aircraft is taxiing,” the senior flight engineer reported.
Slowly, the enormous drone, with a wingspan wider than that of a 747, lumbered forward, clearing the doors with only feet to spare. Fourteen twin-bladed propellers whirred silently, pulling it out onto the runway. Clusters of thin-walled plastic cylinders were visible on each of the aircraft's five underwing pods.
“Don masks and gloves,” Nomura ordered. The controllers and engineers hurriedly obeyed, shrugging into the heavy gear that would give them limited protection if anything went wrong during takeoff.
Terce moved to his side, offering him a gas mask, respirator, and thick gloves. Hideo took them with a curt nod.
“And the prisoner?” the tall green-eyed man asked, in a voice muffled by his respirator. “What about him?”
“My father?” Hideo glanced back at Jinjiro, who was still standing bareheaded in the sun, rigid and unbending between his two gas-masked guards. He smiled coldly and shook his head. “No mask for him. Let the old man take his chances.”
“The second aircraft is taxiing,” the flight engineer reported, speaking loudly enough to be heard through his mask and breathing apparatus.
Nomura looked back at the runway. The first Thanatos drone was already two hundred meters away, slowly accelerating as it rolled north on its takeoff run. The second flying wing was emerging from inside the mammoth hangar — with a third just visible behind it. He pushed his father's impending death to the back of his mind and focused instead on watching his cruel dreams take flight.
Terce moved away, unslinging a German-made Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle from his shoulder as he went. His head swiveled from side to side, checking the armed guards he had posted at intervals along the runway. All of them appeared alert.
A slight frown crossed the big man's face. Counting the two men watching Jinjiro, there were ten sentries stationed at the airfield. There should have been twice as many — but the unexpectedly heavy losses he had sustained in New Mexico and then again in Virginia could not be made up in time. The deaths of Nones and his Paris-based security detail only made the manpower shortage worse.
Terce shrugged, looking westward out to sea. In the end, it would not matter. Nomura was right. Stealth outweighed firepower. No matter how-many soldiers, missiles, and bombs they possessed, the Americans could not attack a target they could not find.
He froze. Something was moving out there above the Atlantic, right near the edge of his vision. He stared harder. Whatever it was, the object was drawing closer at high speed. But it was difficult to make out through the thick, distorting lenses of his gas mask.
With a snarl, Terce tore off the mask and attached respirator and tossed them aside. At least now he could see clearly! A small dark green dot, racing low just above the ocean waves. It curved toward him, tilting slightly — growing larger fast. Sunlight flashed off spinning rotor blades.
Aboard the UH-60L Black Hawk, Smith leaned forward in the copilot's seat, peering at the airfield ahead of them through a pair of high-powered binoculars. “Okay,” he said loudly, shouting to be heard above the howl of the troop carrier's two powerful engines and its large, clattering rotors. 'I count two An-124 Condor cargo planes near the north end of the runway, parked next to a big hangar. Also what looks like a much smaller executive jet, maybe a Gulfstream.'
“What's that moving down near the south end of the runway?” Randi yelled in his ear. She crouched behind
