Duroc swore inwardly, unable to reach for his own weapons while he teetered practically spread-eagle against the window. For all his size and strength Michel Woerner was even more helpless. Neither could move without disastrously unbalancing the other.
With his pistol out and steadied in a two-hand grip, the guard edged closer, visibly more confident as his eyes sorted out the spectacle in front of him. Duroc forced himself to look beyond the muzzle aimed at his stomach. The other man was young, and young-looking despite the thick mustache curling above his upper lip. An ex-conscript perhaps, fresh from his military service and still eager for action. That was unfortunate. An older man might have been more reasonable or more worried about his own survival. But younger men prized glory above all else.
“Do not move or I will shoot.”
Duroc’s mouth twisted at the clumsy, phrase-book Hungarian. Nevertheless, he obeyed and stood motionless, still perched in Woerner’s cupped hands, silently willing the guard to keep walking. A little further, he thought. Just a little further.
The young man stepped away from the open cafeteria door, moving out onto the lawn to give himself a clearer field of fire. He lowered one hand from his pistol toward the radio clipped to his belt. Duroc felt his jaw muscles clench. An alert now would ruin everything.
The security guard’s chest exploded in a red rain of blood and broken bone — torn open by a 7.62mm bullet that hit him squarely in the back and threw him forward onto the grass. He shuddered once and then lay still.
Duroc scrambled down from the window and knelt beside the body, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. He glanced toward the wooded hills three hundred meters away and punched the transmit key on his own radio. “Confirmed.”
Two answering clicks sounded in his earphones as the sniper he’d placed there on overwatch acknowledged the kill.
He pulled the pistol out of the dead man’s hand and rose to his feet. “Who was he?”
“Monnet, Jacques.” Woerner read the guard’s bloodied name tag aloud.
Duroc recognized the name and shook his head slowly and sadly from side to side. Monnet had been the sentry stationed at the main door. He ought to have been safely on duty and out of the way. But he evidently couldn’t wait for his shift change to get his coffee. So now the young fool was dead. A pity. His death would complicate matters.
He nodded toward the window. “Bring him.”
Woerner grunted his assent and bent to his task. Together they manhandled the guard’s body through the gap and dumped it into the corridor beyond.
Nose wrinkling at the smell of blood and voided bowels, Duroc wiped his gloves clean on the grass and checked his watch. They were behind their timetable — but still well within the planned margin for error. “Right, Michel. Let’s finish this and get home to our beds, eh?”
A humorless smile ghosted across the big man’s face. “I’ve had enough excitement for this night.”
Thirty seconds later, Duroc glided down the dark hallway alone while Woerner waited outside to guard his retreat. The Frenchman was tired of unpleasant surprises.
A thick, fireproof steel door blocked access to the computer center. And a tiny red light blinked steadily on a nearby ten-key panel controlling the door’s electronic lock. Security might be lax everywhere else, but the Sopron plant’s data banks held information that Eurocopter’s Japanese and American competitors would dearly love to see — production schedules and costs, precise formulas for rotor metal and plastic composites, reports on advanced R&D projects, and all the thousands of other facts and figures generated by any major industrial concern.
Duroc focused a small penlight on the keypad and carefully punched in the six-digit security code he’d memorized. Yesterday’s security code. As he’d expected, the massive steel door stayed obstinately shut. Good. He tried the code again. This time the panel’s tiny red light stopped blinking. Even better. The simpleminded computer controlling the lock would now have a record of two failed attempts using a code that would have worked just a few hours before.
He snapped the penlight off and clipped it back in place on his web gear. Moving quickly, he molded an ounce of pliable plastic explosive around the lock control panel. More ounces covered the door’s hinges. When he was finished, the Frenchman stepped back and eyed his work appreciatively. Wires ran from igniters buried inside each piece of plastic explosive to a small, inexpensive, and old-fashioned wristwatch set for a two-hour delay. He nodded to himself. It had the right feel to it. Effective but amateurish. Even the type of explosive he’d used was appropriate. Czechoslovakia’s old communist government had doled out odorless, colorless Semtex to terrorists around the world.
Duroc moved back up the corridor. Time for the finishing touches to this night’s work. He uncapped a small can of red paint, shook it, and sprayed. “Death to French pigs!” and “Liberty, not slavery!” in meter-high letters across one wall. Duroc had been careful to memorize the nationalist slogans in Hungarian, and even used the characteristic lettering. Even the smallest details were important in a job of this kind. All of the signs would point to Hungarian terrorists, angry with French “economic colonialism.”
Woerner was waiting for him at the window. “It’s still quiet.”
“Not for long.” Duroc dropped onto the grass and stood waiting while the big man rerolled their black steel mat and carefully set the cut-out piece of glass back in place. Then the two men turned and trotted back toward the hills rising above the factory complex.
The watch-driven bomb they’d left behind clicked another minute closer to detonation.
Duroc and his team were forty kilometers away when the timer reached zero.
The Sopron factory administration building rocked on its foundation, torn by a powerful explosion. A searing white light flared behind every ground-floor window milliseconds before the shock wave blew them apart. Behind that first shock wave, a wall of fire and superheated air roared outward from the detonation point, killing five Hungarian maintenance workers who had just come on-shift and setting everything flammable ablaze.
Even before the first emergency sirens wailed over the Eurocopter complex, flames could be seen dancing eerily through the shattered building.
Pale sunshine streamed over a scene of barely contained chaos. Fire trucks and other emergency vehicles surrounded the bomb-damaged administration center — parked seemingly at random on its scarred, wreckage- strewn lawn. Workers carrying salvaged office equipment and furniture outside mingled with weary firemen, structural engineers, and worried-looking company officials. Restless security guards armed with automatic weapons instead of their standard-issue pistols stood watch at the main gate and near the explosion site.
A thin, acrid smell of smoke and charred paper lingered in the muggy, windless air. The computer room’s halon fire extinguishers and steel doors had saved the factory’s data processing systems, but they hadn’t stopped blast-sparked fires from roaring through the rest of the ground floor.
Fifty meters from the building, a short, round-faced man fought hard to control his temper. Even during the best of times, Colonel Zoltan Hradetsky had never much liked Francois Gellard, the Eurocopter factory’s general manager. The Frenchman had always been officious, arrogant, and all too ready to look down a long, thin nose at everything and everybody Hungarian. At the moment, the man’s worst traits were magnified a thousandfold.
“For the last time, Colonel, I must refuse your request to investigate this affair.” The manager folded his arms. “Your presence here is unnecessary… and disruptive.”
“Disruptive? You…” Hradetsky swallowed the string of curses that rose in his throat. “You misunderstand me, M. Gellard.”
He jabbed a finger toward the wrecked administration center. “That is a police matter. So is the cold-blooded murder of five of my countrymen. As the ranking police officer for this district, I am not making a ‘request.’ I’m issuing an order.”
“Impossible,” Gellard sneered. “Your orders carry no weight within this compound, Colonel. I suggest you reread the terms of the contract between your government and my company. For all practical purposes, this is French soil. This terrorist crime has been committed against a French corporation. And it will be investigated under French authority.”
That damned contract! Hradetsky ground his teeth together. He didn’t need to peruse the fine print to know that the factory manager was on safe ground. When the Sopron plant was being built, Hungary’s shaky military
