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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Countdown
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The launch control board had come alive. For the first few moments Kurshin had thought something was wrong. The fire sequence lights had begun coming on, one at a time toward a ten-second countdown. Suddenly they stopped.
“There,” Schey said, looking up. “The counter is running. In ten minutes the missile will launch.”
“You're sure?” Yegorov asked, even his voice hushed now.
“Of course,” Schey replied.
“Nothing can stop it?” Kurshin asked.
Schey shook his head.
“Nein.”
“Thank you,” Kurshin said. He raised the pistol he'd been hiding behind his leg and shot the East German in the face, the man's head slamming backward against the bulkhead. He slipped off the bucket seat and crumpled in a heap on the floor.
Yegorov hurriedly pulled up the floor panel, and then, getting down on his stomach, reached through the opening and removed
the storm sewer grate, shoving it aside. The street beneath the transporter was in deep shadow.
He looked up and Kurshin nodded.
Yegorov levered himself down into the cool storm sewer, his feet searching for and finding the metal rungs set into the concrete. When he looked up again, Kurshin handed down the trigger for the plastique.
“Just in case,” Kurshin said, and he too started down into the storm sewer.
ONE BLOCK OFF THE square the side streets were in darkness. McGarvey and Captain Hunte had removed the grating from the storm sewer the city engineer assured them connected with the tunnel beneath the missile transporter, and McGarvey was lowering himself into the black hole when they heard someone running down the street.
Hunte spun on his heel, yanked his .45 out of its holster, and levered the slide back.
McGarvey was halfway through the opening. He braced himself and pulled out his pistol.
“Mr. McGarvey,” someone shouted from the darkness. Seconds later the figure of Todd Kraus emerged.
“It's all right,” McGarvey said to Hunte. “Here,” he called to Kraus.
“Christ, am I glad I made it in time,” Kraus said, skidding to a halt. “You can't go through with it!”
“What's happened?”
“We just got word from the situation room at the base. The missile is in countdown mode. Both keys have been activated.”
“How much time do we have?” McGarvey snapped.
Kraus was shaking his head. “No one knows, but it could happen at any second. The countdown has stopped halfway through its sequence. Once it starts again, the launch will occur in ten seconds.”
“There's no way of telling if they're still in the transporter then.”
“Trotter wants you back now. Collingwood is starting to pull his people out.”
“They could be rigging some kind of delay circuit,” Hunte said. “It would give them time to get out of there.”
McGarvey thought it out, weighing the risks versus his chances of success. “Tell Collingwood to try to reach Kurshin on the radio. We can't risk sending the technicians over there until we're sure he and his people are gone.” He turned to Hunte. “I'm doing this one alone.”
“Like hell you are,” Hunte said.
“I could order you to stay behind.”
Hunte grinned. “I'm lousy at taking orders,” he said. “Besides, that's my missile out there.”
Kraus was looking at them, shaking his head. “You're both crazy. But I'm coming with you. There are three of them.”
“No,” McGarvey said. “Get my message back to Collingwood. If you want, you can stand by at the square. If we make it up to the transporter, we may need your help.”
Kraus was obviously disappointed, but he nodded. “Good luck,” he said, and he turned and hurried back to the square.
“I'll be right behind you, Mr. McGarvey,” Hunte said, uncocking his pistol and reholstering it.
“The name is Kirk,” McGarvey said, and he climbed the ten feet down into the collection vault, which was a round concrete chamber about fifteen feet in diameter. The vault itself was probably new, but the storm sewer lines radiating off at four odd angles to match the haphazardly angled streets above, were very old, constructed of brick with vaulted ceilings. The floor was covered with a few inches of water; a small stream trickled down from one of the sewer lines.
When Hunte made it to the bottom, McGarvey motioned for him to keep still as he peered into the darkness down the tunnel that led back to the square.
There was a sound. Very far away. Very distant. Hollow. As if he were hearing the scrape of shoe leather against brick.
Hunte heard it as well. He pulled out his gun again.
McGarvey cocked his ear and continued to listen. There. He heard the noises again, only this time they seemed to be receding.
“It's them,” he said, climbing up into the tunnel. “They're heading in the opposite direction.”
“That means the countdown clock is definitely running.”
“Yeah,” McGarvey said tersely, the hair on the nape of his neck crawling as he started into the darkness, his pistol in his right hand, and his left brushing the rough brick wall of the tunnel for guidance.
He'd never liked dark, enclosed spaces. When he was in high school he and some friends had explored a cave in southwestern Kansas. They'd gotten lost and it had taken them nearly eight hours in the absolute darkness to find their way out again. Standing in the open that night, he'd vowed never to get himself into such a situation ever again. But then, he thought wryly, who of us ever keeps the promises we make to ourselves?
About fifty yards down the tunnel, McGarvey thought he could see a faint glimmer of light ahead, and he stopped. Hunte was right behind him.
“What?”
“Quiet,” McGarvey ordered. He'd thought he'd heard someone moving out ahead of them again, but now the tunnel was
ominously silent except for the very distant sound of what he took to be a siren.
 
“It's a siren,” Yegorov whispered.
Kurshin held up his hand for silence as he too listened. Twice he'd thought he heard another noise. Distant. He switched off the dim red penlight he carried and held his breath.
The sirens seemed to fade. He could hear water trickling somewhere, softly, slowly, but nothing else at first.
Then he heard it again, someone or something sloshing through water. Back the way they had come.
Yegorov heard it too. “Someone is back there,” he said softly.
“Yes,” Kurshin said, thinking it out. By now the missile's launch mode would have shown up at Missile Control. But they could not know about the delaying mechanism or how much longer before the missile launched.
“Have they figured it out then? Do they know we're gone?”
“It would appear so,” Kurshin said absently. One part of him had to begrudgingly admire whoever it was coming up the tunnel. He must have a strong will. The East German said that the delaying circuit was foolproof. No way to stop the rocket from launching. How far to trust the man's judgment? There was nothing foolproof … nothing! Kurshin had seen the opposite to be true too often for him to believe otherwise.
He switched on his light and looked at his watch. They had eight minutes before launch. More than long enough to get clear. Schey had warned them that when the missile took off, its tremendously hot exhaust gases would rush down into the storm sewers, probably killing anyone who was within a hundred-meter radius.
He shined the light on Yegorov's face. The man was sweating lightly.
“Whoever is back there might be able to stop the launch somehow,” Kurshin said.
“Then we'll destroy the missile,” Yegorov said, raising the trigger.
“No,” Kurshin said softly but sharply. “It must be launched. We will not fail.”
“Then what?”
Kurshin listened again. The sounds of someone coming were louder. “We go back and kill them before they can interfere.”
“There could be a dozen of them. More.”
“I don't think so.”
“But the rocket …”
“We go back,” Kurshin said, pulling out his silenced Graz Buyra automatic. It was a very large, ominous-looking weapon. A KGB Department Viktor assassination device. “Now.”
Yegorov was obviously torn between his fear of being roasted alive, and Kurshin whose ruthlessness was well known within the KGB.
“I have no desire to be caught down here when the missile is launched,” Kurshin said. “But I have even less desire to return to Baranov a failure.”
Yegorov nodded. He pulled out his silenced pistol. “Then let's do it quickly, Comrade, so there will be time for us to get clear. I don't wish to become anyone's martyr.”
“But softly, Ivan,” Kurshin said, once again dousing his penlight and pocketing it. “If we can hear them, it's a safe bet they can hear us.”
Being careful to make as little noise as possible, Kurshin started back the way they had come. Within thirty meters they had come to an intersection. Above, a dim light showed through the grating. Kurshin stopped a moment to search his memory of the sewer blueprint he'd studied. The lines all interconnected.
He turned back to Yegorov. “You head straight toward the transporter. I'll take the right-hand tunnel. I believe it will circle around. If I can get behind them, we will have them in a cross fire.”
“Just remember where I will be standing.”
“Yes,” Kurshin said. “And you had better be standing there, Ivan.”
 
Twice more McGarvey stopped to listen, but the tunnel was silent. Either the Russians were by now out of earshot, or they too had stopped to listen. McGarvey had heard them, had the Russians heard their pursuers?
The light grew brighter in the tunnel ahead, until McGarvey stopped at the vault beneath the transporter. He could see that the grate above had been removed, and he could see up into the interior of the transporter itself, red and green lights flashing from the instruments on the launch consoles and radar screen.
Hunte was just behind his right shoulder. He whispered in McGarvey's ear. “If we're standing here when that bird launches, we'll be cooked meat.”
McGarvey nodded, but he was still listening. Had he heard a sound up the tunnel to his left?
“What are we waiting for … ?” Hunte started to say, but McGarvey backed up against him and shook his head.
Hunte's eyes narrowed. He was getting jumpy.
McGarvey led him a few feet farther back into the tunnel. “I think they've come back,” he said, his voice barely audible.
Hunte glanced toward the vault.
“We'd be sitting ducks, do you understand?”
Hunte nodded.
“I want you to go back down the tunnel for about fifty feet as quietly as you can. Then turn around and run like hell back here.”
“You're going to try to flush them out?”
“Something like that. Now go. I don't know how long we've got before that missile will fire.”
Hunte turned and disappeared into the darkness, making absolutely no noise. McGarvey waited for a couple of moments, then turned and edged back to where the tunnel opened into the vault beneath the transporter. Remaining in the shadows he checked to make sure his pistol was ready to fire, and brought it up, steadying it against the greasy damp brick wall.
For a long time nothing seemed to be happening. Once again in the distance McGarvey could hear a siren from the streets above. It would take Hunte a minute or so to get into position and start back. Kurshin had lied about wanting the helicopter and the gold, and he had almost certainly lied about the intended target. But where, if not Tripoli? The new Pershing had a range of more than two thousand miles. That covered a lot of territory, all the way from the British Isles to parts of the Middle East,
including some important oil fields. Was that Baranov's game? Interrupt the industrial West's major supply of crude? It was certainly possible.
The radio in the transporter above blared.
“Flybaby, Six-P-Two, this is Colonel Collingwood, do you copy?”
There was a movement in the tunnel to the left, as if someone had taken a step backward. McGarvey stiffened.
“Flybaby Six-P-Two, this is Collingwood, talk to me, you sonofabitch.”
Whatever the Air Force colonel was or was not, if he was still in the square, McGarvey had to admire his guts.
“The chopper is ready and your gold is on its way,” Collingwood's voice boomed in the collection vault.
Hunte was taking too long. McGarvey started to turn when he heard the distinctive soft plopping sound of a silenced pistol shot.
There was a flash of movement from the collection vault. McGarvey turned back in time to see a large burly man leaping out of the left tunnel, a big pistol in his right hand, a small black box in his left.
McGarvey fired twice, the first shot catching Yegorov in the chest, the second in the side of his neck, bursting his carotid artery, the bullet deflecting off a bone, and finally destroying his throat. The big man crashed backward against the concrete wall, and the triggering device fell into the water.
The tunnel was suddenly silent.
McGarvey turned around and dropped to one knee, his pistol up, but the darkness behind him was absolute.
Almost too late he realized that he was outlined by the light behind him, and he dove forward at the same moment something plucked at his sleeve and he heard another silenced shot.
He fired twice down the tunnel. At this point he didn't think there was much fear of hitting Hunte. The captain was probably dead.
Again the tunnel was in silence. Even the sirens topside had stopped.
McGarvey started to edge forward, keeping to the far left wall.
Something moved ahead of him, and he fired two more shots into the darkness, quickly scrambling to the right side of the tunnel as two answering silenced shots were fired.

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