She
She reached for her cell phone.
They left Lia tied to the folding metal chair all night, releasing her once in the morning to use the facilities — a bright blue portable construction john positioned a few yards away from the tents. There was nothing in the narrow plastic box that would serve as a weapon, no pieces of wire that she could hide as a lockpick for later, no odds and ends with which she could MacGyver her way out. She stepped out of the john; they led her back to the tent and again handcuffed her before tying her to the chair.
Later, they’d brought her a plate of scrambled eggs and watched her while she ate. At least they weren’t going to let her starve.
“What time is it?” she murmured. The two guards were still there, sitting on chairs on the far side of the tent, watching.
“Just past twelve, where you are,” Marie Telach whispered in her ear. Back at the Art Room, it would be five hours earlier — about seven in the morning.
She wondered if Charlie was still in south Asia, or if he’d wrapped up his part of the op and flown home.
The interior of the tent was stiflingly hot, with the tropical sun beating down from directly overhead. Would they give her water if she asked for it?
With startling suddenness, Feng threw back the tent flap and barked something in Arabic at the two. They leaped to their feet, slung their weapons and hurried to untie her.
“He told them to take you to the tube,” another voice said in Lia’s ear. Dr. Fahd al-Naimi was one of Desk Three’s language specialists, fluent in both Arabic and Urdu.
Still handcuffed, she was led out of the tent and into the dazzling midday sun.
The small tent city was set up on the floor of the higher and shallower of the two partially merged craters. Walking her between them, the guards led her along a well-worn footpath through cinders and red sand, taking her over a low lip, then down a much steeper path into the deeper, northern crater. The drill was still in operation — she’d heard its grinding all through the long night, punctuated by the clang and clash of metal when the workers swapped out a cutting head or added more drill pipe.
At the floor of the deeper crater, she was led around to the right. In front of her, a round and very black opening gaped in the rock, a tunnel entrance leading down into the rock beneath the higher, southern caldera.
“They’re taking me into a cave or tunnel of some sort,” she murmured. “South wall of the northern crater.”
“Quiet, whore,” one of her captors growled. “You talk all you want … later.”
“We copy you, Lia,” Marie whispered. “They’re taking you into a tunnel entrance near the drilling rig in the deeper crater.”
They walked her out of the sun and into deep shade. The difference in temperature was startling, and she suppressed a small shiver.
“The island is riddled with tunnels and ancient lava tubes,” Marie continued, talking, perhaps, just to reassure Lia, to maintain contact with her. “Up in the northern part of the island, they use them to channel rainwater down to—”
Marie’s voice faltered, then broke off. Lia caught a few garbled words after that, and then there was nothing but silence.
The walls of the cave were blocking the signals between her belt antenna and the NSA communications satellite overhead.
Lia hadn’t realized how much comfort she’d been drawing from the periodic, reassuring voices from the Art Room. As the guards led her deeper into the cool and echoing stone throat of the tunnel, Lia DeFrancesca felt more alone than she’d ever felt before in her life.
22
Stand up!” The cargo master barked the order over the intercom from his station at the front of the cargo bay. “Gear check!” Charlie Dean turned and faced Ilya Akulunin, tugging at various snaps, latches, and D-rings to make sure all was secure, having him turn so he could check his back, and then standing with arms slightly out from his body while Akulinin did the same check-over for him.
“Ready for this, Sharkie?” he yelled.
“Just like in training,” Akulinin yelled back.
The rear ramp of the Hercules ground slowly open, and Dean saw dazzling sun-glare off impossibly white clouds below. In some ways, it was good making a HALO jump in daylight; night operations were always a
The rushed timetable, he knew, had been cobbled together because no one knew when the Tangos might have their bombs planted and armed, or when they were planning on detonating them. The smart money said that the ten nuclear devices arrived at Mogador Airport Friday or Saturday, and that the terrorists started flying them out to La Palma as soon as possible to avoid complications either from the Moroccan authorities or from American or Spanish agents.
If the bombs were already on La Palma, they might already be planted. Marine Task Force Green Amber might be about to fly into a nuclear holocaust.
Colonel Kemper, in charge of the FORECON elements deployed for Green Amber, had argued hard for a night drop, but he’d been overruled. It was more important that the two-man Marine elements be down and in place absolutely quickly as possible than that they come in under the cover of darkness.
Besides, the chances that they would be seen were not as large as might be imagined, Dean knew. This was a HALO jump — the acronym standing for “high altitude, low opening.” The C-130 was currently cruising southeast at twenty-six thousand feet; the jumpers would exit the aircraft and free-fall all the way down to six thousand feet before opening their chutes. Their target drop zones along the eastern flanks of the Cumbre Vieja were all at around three thousand feet above sea level. Once they popped their chutes, they actually would be flying in along the mountainside at an altitude well
The weather reports were promising. A large mass of cumulus clouds had been moving in with the northeastern trades all morning, their base at around six thousand feet. The jumpers would actually have the clouds as cover for the gliding part of their descent.
While nothing was ever certain in a military operation, especially one with as many variables as this one, the chances were acceptable that the Marines would be able to get to their positions without being seen.
The insertion was the easy part. Ten separate terrorist sites, ten nuclear weapons. The approach, recon, and takedown would have to work perfectly ten times in a row, or people, quite likely a
