slipping under a natty hank of cloth.
When that hand reappeared a moment later, it was holding a flat, palm-sized radio.
'Empire State to South Philly, do you read?' the vendor said in a quiet voice, transmitting over a trunked digital channel.
'Loud and clear, Empire State. The rooster back in the barn?'
'Just strutted in, big and nasty in life as in pictures,' she said.
A brief pause.
She bent lower, waiting, holding the radio out of sight.
'Sit tight, Empire State,' the voice replied after a second. 'We're on our way to pluck his feathers.'
Jointly sponsored by the ASEAN republics from its original blueprints to its funding and final construction, the Sandakan cryptographic key-storage bank was the largest in Asia, and the second largest in the world, ranking only behind a subsequently built facility of its type in Europe. In terms of proportion, it was to most of the world's other key-recovery banks what Citibank was to a small-town S&L. Sprawling across many acres of shoreline, the concrete-and-steel structure gave a fortresslike impression, and was protected by a sophisticated array of alarm systems and guard units of chiefly Malaysian and Indonesian composition. All this security was in place for a simple reason: The spare key-codes stored within its vaults were those of the region's largest governmental, military, and financial institutions.
It had been regarded as a logical, convenient, and secure place for the Japanese and American governments to store the spare keys to many of Seawolf's encrypted operational systems, including those which controlled its Advanced SEAL Delivery System — or ASDS — docking hatches. These would allow a fully pressurized mini-sub containing from eight to twelve special-op divers to launch and recover its personnel during insertions requiring long-distance, deep-submergence transport. As planned, when the SEALS returned from a mission aboard the sixty-five-foot ASDS vehicle, the computers aboard their vessel would signal the Seawolf's control systems to open the ASDS hatch so that the crew and passengers — and their equipment — could reenter the submarine via its docking chamber, and move from there onto its main decks.
Nga Canbera did not know, and would never know, precisely which Japanese government official had passed this information on to the Inagawa-kai, which had in turn relayed it to him through Omori.
And what difference does it make? he thought, sitting in his den now, watching the SEAPAC ribbon-cutting ceremony on television. He had remained home from the office to watch it undistracted, putting on his finest silk robe for the occasion. So far — given his knowledge of what would happen once the dignitaries were under way— it was proving to be quite a source of amusement.
For him the challenge of the game was the important thing, and though Nga had experienced his moments of apprehension lately, he felt the play would have been meaningless without an edge of danger. Today he would put aside his worries and enjoy himself. Could the Sea-wolf be tricked into swallowing a poison pill? After all, it was in theory only a matter of putting the right keys in the wrong hands — wrong from the American and Japanese standpoint, that is. And while Marcus Caine's failure to deliver the command-and-control keys had been a setback, it had in a sense only added to the excitement. Once Kersik got his hands on the Sandakan keys, Omori's divers would still be able to open the ASDS hatch. After that, they would simply have to put greater reliance on force than finesse, and use guns and bullets rather than keystrokes and passwords to take the submarine.
And maybe, if he were very fortunate, there even would be a little bloodshed to make things more interesting.
His eyes wide with disbelief, U. S. Secretary of Defense Conrad Holden looked at the telephone receiver in his hand as if it had been invaded by an evil poltergeist… albeit one that possessed the voice and speech mannerisms of Roger Gordian, someone he'd known for many long years.
'Roger, are you certain?'
'I'm telling you it's going to be Sandakan, Conrad.
And it will roughly coincide with the sub's embarkation. They won't want to give us time to disable the key- codes.'
'But the sub's launching in a half an hour—'
'Then get off the phone with me and call somebody who can stop this from happening!'
Hotter and sweatier than he was accustomed to feeling, Luan was about to change his shirt when he heard it: the regular thup-thup-thup of rotors beating the air, rapidly getting louder and closer.
He looked across the room to where Xiang and his bodyguards had been throwing a pair of dice.
'What's that sound?' he said, already knowing the answer. The army helicopters had been ubiquitous when he was driven from the hills of northern Thailand.
The pirate tossed down the dice and turned abruptly to his fellows.
'Get your weapons,' he grunted. 'We're being attacked.'
Leaning out the door of the Bell Jet Ranger chopper, Nimec extracted shells from his utility webbing, slapped them into his 12-gauge and pumped the forestock to chamber the first round. Like Osmar and the other three Sword ops in his team, he had on a pullover cowl, gas mask, and black Nomex Stealthsuit. The Zylon body armor underneath his shirt was both lighter and stronger than Kevlar.
Nimec gestured for the pilot to lower the chopper to a stabilized hover, and peered at the wooden structure below. There were a number of windows on all sides. He chose one of them as his target and pulled the trigger of his pump gun.
The finned CS bomblet disgorged from its muzzle in a train of propellent vapor, punched through the window, and burst open to release a cloud of tear gas.
Nimec chambered another round, fired, and loosed a third at the Thai's hideout. Billows of white smoke erupted from the windows.
He slung the weapon over his shoulder — he also had an MP5K against his side — donned his gloves, and signaled his companions to the door.
A moment later the rope line was dropped from its hoist bracket. One after another in quick succession, the men gripped the line and fast-roped to the boardwalk like firefighters sliding down a pole.
Submachine-gun volleys erupted on the ground almost the instant they alighted — stuttering from inside the house, from the dwellings around it, and from the wooden walkway that ran the length of the canal.
His head ducked low as his teammates laid down a lane of covering fire, Nimec raced around to the front of the hideout.
A man surged into his path from the gushing smoke of the building, bringing an FN P90 up in his direction. But he was half-blinded from the CS, and Nimec was quick to react. He jogged out of the way as the pirate released a stream of 9mm rounds. Nimec raked him across the middle with a burst from his MP5K, then kept dashing for the entrance without a backward glance.
He paused in front of the heavy plank door, sprayed the lock with bullets, and kicked it in with the flat of his foot. With his peripheral vision he could see Osmar running up on the left.
He looked over at him, signaled a crossover entry, and ticked off a three-count with his fingers.
Together they rushed forward into the house.
Minutes after the ribbon-cutting fanfare concluded, the delegation of world leaders was ushered across the gang, over the black anechoic tiles covering Seawolf's hull-like rubber flagstones, and then down into the sub by its executive officer. President Ballard dropped through the hatch first, followed by Prime Minister Yamamoto and the Malaysian and Indonesian heads-of-state.
The press contingent came next, Alex Norstrum at the back of the line, straining to see past a tall, broad- shouldered Canadian reporter who had been directed to board ahead of him.
As the group filed through a passageway toward the control room, Ballard felt as if he were about to step into the set of a Hollywood space opera, something about star-ships and wormholes in the space-time continuum. And in a sense he was entering a time machine, one which was capable of hurling him back through the accumulation of years and distance that had brought him to middle age, stripping the overlay of political cynicism and calculation from his face, and briefly revealing the excited countenance of a ten-year-old orphan from the Mississippi boondocks whose dreams had fueled a long, difficult journey from poverty to the Presidency. He goggled at the equipment and status boards filling up every corner of the brightly lit space with open wonder, his wide eyes no sooner landing on one piece of gadgetry than getting snagged by another of equal or greater fascination.
The sub's commanding officer, Commander Malcolm R. Frickes, USN, was saluting his guests from the control
