“Good luck,” Mancuso muttered, hurrying after the others, wondering what the man from NUMA had on his canny mind.
Giordino looked down at the unconscious engineer. “Where do we stash him?”
Pitt pointed up at the access door in the ceiling of the elevator. “Tear his lab coat into strips, then tie and gag him. We’ll park him on the elevator roof.”
As Giordino pulled off the white lab coat and began ripping it apart, he gave Pitt a half-crooked grin. “I heard it too.”
Pitt grinned back. “Ah, yes, the sweet sound of freedom.”
“If we can snatch it.
“Optimism, optimism,” Pitt muttered cheerfully as he launched the elevator upward. “Now let’s show some speed. It’s twelve minutes to show time.”
55
THE MAIT TEAM deep in the Dragon Center could not have been under heavier stress than the two men sweating out the minutes in the communications room of the Federal Headquarters Building. Raymond Jordan and Donald Kern sat watching a huge clock and listening anxiously for the team call sign to be beamed from a satellite in a fixed synchronous position over Japan.
As if triggered by the sudden buzz of a telephone sitting on the table between them, their eyes met, their faces drawn. Jordan picked up the receiver as if it carried the plague.
“Yes, Mr. President,” he answered without hesitation.
“Any word?”
“No, sir.”
The President went quiet for a moment, then said solemnly, “Forty-five minutes, Ray.”
“Understood, sir. Forty-five minutes until the assault.”
“I’ve called off the Delta Forces. After a conference with my other security advisers and the Joint Chiefs, I’ve come to the decision that we cannot afford the time for a military operation. The Dragon Center must be destroyed before it becomes operational.
Jordan felt as though his world was slipping away. He threw the dice one more time. “I still believe that Senator Diaz and Congresswoman Smith may be on the island.”
“Even if you’re right, their possible deaths would have no bearing on my decision.”
“You won’t change your mind and give them another hour?” Jordan pleaded.
“I wish I could find it in my heart to let you have more time, but our national security is at high risk. We cannot allow Suma the opportunity to launch his campaign of international blackmail.”
“You’re right, of course.”
“At least I’m not alone. Secretary of State Oates has briefed the leaders of the NATO nations and Soviet President Antonov, and they have each agreed that it’s in all our mutual interest to proceed.”
“Then we write off the team,” said Jordan, his frustration showing in his tone, “and perhaps Diaz and Smith.”
“I deeply regret compromising the lives of dedicated Americans, some of whom were good friends. Sorry, Ray, I’m faced with the age-old quandary of sacrificing a few to save many.”
Jordan set the receiver in its cradle. He seemed strangely hunched and shrunken. “The President,” he said vacantly.
“No reprieve?” asked Kern grimly.
Jordan shook his head. “He’s scrubbed the assault and is sending in a nuclear warhead.”
Kern went ashen. “Then it’s down to the wire.”
Jordan nodded heavily as he looked up at the clock and saw only forty-three minutes remaining. “Why in God’s name can’t they break free? What happened to the British agent? Why doesn’t he communicate?”
Despite their fears, Jordan and Kern were not remotely prepared for an even worse disaster in the making.
Nogami guided the MAIT team through a series of small side passageways filled with heating and ventilating pipes, skirting heavily populated offices and workshops, keeping as far out of the mainstream of activity as possible. When confronted by a roboguard, Nogami engaged it in conversation while one of the others slowly angled in close and shut down its circuits with a charge of static electricity.
They came to a glass-enclosed room, a large expansive area filled with electrical wiring and fiber-optic bundles, all branching out into narrow tunnels leading throughout the Dragon Center. There was a robot standing in front of a huge console of various dials and digital instruments.
“An inspector robot,” said Nogami softly. “He’s programmed to monitor the systems and report any shorts or disconnects.”
“After we queer his circuits, how long before his supervisor sends someone to check on him?” asked Mancuso.
“From the main telepresence control, five or six minutes.”
“Plenty of time to place the charge and be on our way,” said Weatherhill casually.
“What do you figure for the timer setting?” Stacy asked him.
“Twenty minutes. That should see us safely to the surface and off the island if Pitt and Giordino come through.”
Nogami pushed open the door and stepped aside as Mancuso and Weatherhill entered the room and approached the robot from opposite sides. Stacy remained in the doorway, acting as lookout. The mechanical inspector stiffened at his console like a metal sculpture as the statically charged hoses made contact with his circuit housing.
Smoothly, skillfully, Weatherhill inserted the tiny detonator into the plastic explosive and set the digital timer. “In amongst the cables and optical fibers, I think.”
“Why not destroy the console?” said Nogami.
“They’ve probably got backup units in a supply warehouse somewhere,” explained Mancuso.
Weatherhill nodded in agreement as he moved up a passageway a short distance and taped the charge behind several bundles of heavily insulated cable and optical fibers. “They can replace the console and reconnect new terminal leads in twenty-four hours,” he lectured, “but blow a meter out of the middle of a thousand wires and they’ll have to replace the whole system from both ends. It will take them five times as long.”
“Sounds fair,” Nogami acquiesced.
“Don’t make it obvious,” said Mancuso.
Weatherhill looked at him reproachfully. “They won’t be looking for something they don’t know exists.” He gave a love pat to the timer and exited the passageway.
“All clear,” Stacy reported from the doorway.
One at a time they moved furtively into the corridor and hurried toward the elevator. They had covered nearly two hundred meters when Nogami suddenly halted and held up his hand. The sound of human voices echoed along the concrete walls of a side passage followed by the soft whirr of an electric motor. Nogami furiously gestured for them to move ahead, and they darted across the opening and rushed around a corner before the intruders came into sight of the main corridor.
“I misjudged their efficiency,” Nogami whispered without turning. “They’re early.”
“Investigators?” Stacy asked him.
“No,” he answered quickly. “Telepresence supervisors with a replacement for the robot you put out of commission.”
“You think they might be onto us?”
“We’d know if they were. A general alarm would be sounded and a horde of Suma’s human security forces along with an army of roboguards would have swarmed through every corridor and blocked all intersections.”
“Lucky someone hasn’t smelled a rat from all the robots we’ve wasted,” grunted Mancuso as he rushed along
