Cuba (30 page)

They closed the door behind them and climbed the totally

dark staircase, feeling their way. They ended up in

a stuffy, black attic. Chance used the

flashlight. Furniture, desks, chairs,

stacked everywhere. In the middle of the attic was another

stairway up.

The door to the roof was also locked, this time with a

padlock, which was on the interior side of the door.

“What if there is a padlock on the other

side”…”…Chance asked.

“Then we’re screwed. Unless you want to kick this

thing down.”

“No.”

“Let’s try to get this lock open, then the door.”

“Okay.”

The lock was rusty, corroded. After several

minutes” effort Carmellini admitted his defeat

and used a wire saw to cut through the metal loop of the

lock. That took two minutes of intense effort but

didn’t make much noise, considering.

With the lock off and hasp pulled back, they pushed

at the door. It refused to open. With both men

heaving, the

door slowly opened with great resistance, and groaned

terribly.

“That’ll wake the deadea”…Chance muttered, and wiped the

sweat from his face as Carmellini slipped out onto

the roof.

Chance followed along.

The metal roof sloped away steeply in several

different planes. Moving on hands and knees they

worked themselves over toward the edge that faced the science

building.

“Let me do thisea”…Carmellini whispered, and

extracted the rope from his backpack. “Get out of the

way, up by the door.”

Chance went.

The glare of the city and the streetlights below

illuminated the roof quite well, too well in fact.

While it was easy to see where to walk, anyone below

who bothered to look could probably see the black

shapes silhouetted against the glare of the sky.

Chance huddled against the dormer that formed the staircase

up from the attic. He watched Carmellini on the

edge of the roof, shaking out the rope, checking the

grappling hook. Now he began to twirl the hook

above his head, letting out more and more line to make the

hook swing an ever-larger circle. Just as it seemed

the ckcle was impossibly wide, he cast the line

and hook across the chasm separating the buildings at a

metal vent sticking up out of the roof.

The hook made an audible metallic sound as it

hit the far roof, then it began sliding off.

Carmellini quickly pulled in line in huge coils,

but too late to stop the grappling hook from sliding

off the roof.

He kept pulling on the line. In seconds he

had the hook in his hand and bent down against the roof.

Someone was down below. Even back here Chance could hear

voices. He scanned the surrounding roofs, the

streets that he could see, the blank windows looking

at him from other buildings.

Minutes ticked by, the voices below

faded.

Now Carmellini was standing, swinging the rope and hook,

now casting it… and it caught! He tugged at it,

worked his way back up the roof to where Chance was

kneeling.

Carmellini put the disend of the rope around the dormer,

pulled it as taut as possible, then tied it off.

“Well, there is our way acrossea”…the younger man said.

“You want to go first, or should I?”

“Anchored solid, is it?”

“You bet.”

“Age before beautyea”…Chance said, and tugged on leather

gloves, wrapped his hands around the rope. He worked

out hand over hand, then draped his lower legs over the

rope. His backpack dangled from his shoulders.

Hanging from the rope like this took a surprising amount

of physical strength. The rope sagged dangerously

with his weight, becoming a vee with him at the bottom,

which made it more difficult to move along it.

Gritting his teeth, trying to keep his breathing even,

William Henry Chance worked his way along the

rope, taking care not to look down. At one point

he knew he was over the chasm but it didn’t

matter: if he slipped off the rope the fall would

kill him, whether he hit the roof and slid

off or missed it clean.

He kept going, doggedly, straining every muscle,

until he felt the bag dragging along the roof of the

science building. Only then did he unhook his

legs from the rope and let them down to the roof. Still

pulling on the rope, he heaved himself up by the vent and

grabbed it.

The grappling hook was holding by one tong. He

wrapped the rope around the vent and set the hook, then

tugged several times to make sure it would hold.

Wiping his forehead, he breathed heavily three or

four times. He had one hand on the rope, so he

felt the tension increase with Carmellini’s weight.

He peered at the other

building. Carmellini came scurrying along the

rope like a goddamn chimpanzee.

The younger man was over the gap between the buildings when the

rope broke, apparently where it was anchored atop

the lecture hall. Carmellini’s body fell

downward in an arc and disappeared from view. An

audible thud reached Chance as Carmellini’s body

smacked against the side of the science building.

“Our Lady of Coldn

was under this storm system; out of sight of the

satellites passing over, for six

hours,” Toad Tarkuigton explained to Jake

Grafton. They were bent over a table in Mission

Planning, studying satellite radar images.

“When next it reappeared, it was steaming for Bahia

de Nipe at twelve knots, yet its average

speed of advance while it was out of sight was two

knots.”

“Two?”

‘Two.”…Toad showed him the positions and

measurements.

“So it was stopped somewhere.”

“Or made a detour.”

“What if the ship rendezvoused with another ship and the

warheads were transferred?”

“Possible, but if you look at these other ship

tracks, it doesn’t seem very likely. All these

other tracks were going somewhere, with speed-of-advance

averages that seem plausible.”

“Okay. What if the ship stopped and the crew

dumped some of the weapons in the water? Maybe all

of them. Dumped them in shallow water for someone

to pick up later. How deep is the water in that

area?”

“That area is the Bahamas, Admiral. Pretty

shallow in a lot of places in there.”

“Have NSA put that area under intense surveillance.

Have them study every satellite image since that storm

passed. If those warheads were dumped overboard from the

Colon,

someone is going to come along to pick them up.

We have to get there before that somebody gets them

aboard.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ask Atlantic Fleet to get a P-3 out

to that area as soon as possible, have the crew search for

anchored or stationary ships. Any ships not actually

under way. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Jake Grafton rubbed his forehead, trying

to decide if there was anything else he should be doing.

“Uh, Admiral…”…Toad began, his voice

low. “I want to thank you for saving my assets

last night. I about had a heart attack after we

jumped over that rail, everything behind us blowing up,

wondering if we were going to go into the water or

splatter ourselves on a rock pile. That was truly

a religious experience.”

A wry grin crossed Jake Grafton’s face.

“Wish I had paid more attention to where those rocks were

before crunch time arrived. Talk about jumping

out of the frying pan into the fire! For a few seconds

mere I thought we had had the stroke.”

“You didn’t know”…”…Toad was aghast.

“What say we don’t mention this to Rita or

Callie”…”…Jake said, and walked away. He had

another meeting to attend.

William Henry Chance grabbed the rope, which

extended over the side on the science building roof

into the darkness. The rope was still taut. Tommy

Carmellini must be hanging on the end of it!

Chance braced himself and began pulling, hand over hand,

and almost ruptured himself.

He got no more than six feet of rope up when

he realized he wasn’t in the right position. Moving

carefully, he braced himself against the vent pipe and

got the rope over his shoulders. Now he used his

whole body to help raise it.

Two more feet. , Four.

A dark spot, a head, coining above the eave,

struggling to climb.

Chance held the rope steady as Carmellini heaved

himself over the edge of the roof and began crawling up the

slope, still holding onto the rope.

“Man, I thought I had bit the big

oneea”…Carmellini said between gasps. Leaning

against the chimney, Chance blew equally hard.

“I’m getting too old for this shitea”…Carmellini

muttered.

“Next time get a desk job.”

“Why in hell do you think I went to law school?”

Chance coiled the rope and inspected it. It had

frayed through where it was wrapped around the dormer on the

other building. He showed the place to Carmellini,

then put the rope in his knapsack.

“Let’s go.”

Carmellini used a glass cutter on a pane of a

dormer window, then they went in.

Chance took a chance and used the flashlight. This

attic was stacked with laboratory equipment:

dishes, warmers, mixing units, microscopes, a

spectrometer, a bunch of equipment large and

small that he couldn’t identify.

“Let’s put on our masksea”…Chance said, “just

in

case.”

They donned the gas masks, made sure the filter

elements were on tight. The mask could provide

only filtered air: it had an inhalation and

exhalation valve and a black faceplate with two

large clear lens to see through. The mask was

attached to a hood that went over the head and shoulders

of the user. Pull strings sealed the hood so air could

not get in around the user’s neck. When they had the

mask on, both men removed the leather gloves they

had been wearing and donned a pair of latex

gloves. They stuffed their trousers inside their

socks.

With Carmellini in the lead, the two men stealthily

descended the stairs.

STEPHEN COONTS

The laboratory was in the basement, so Chance and

Carmellini had to pass through the main floor to get

there.

The elevator would be the best way from the top of the

building to the bottom, but it might be monitored from

the guards” station at the main entrance. Certainly it

should be: nothing could be simpler than to have a warning

light come on when the electric motor that ran the

elevator engaged. Chance and Carmellini took the

stairs.

Carmellini was leading the way now. Using’the

flashlight, he examined the door to the staircase for

alarms, then opened the door a crack and examined the

stairwell. Fortunately the stairwell was lit.

If this building were hi the States it would be

festooned with infrared sensors, motion detectors,

microphones, and remote cameras controlled from a

central station. However, this was Cubit

At each landing, Carmellini extended a small

periscope and looked around the corner.

On the second floor his inspection of the stairs

leading down revealed a camera mounted on a wall

above the landing, focused on the door in from the main

floor. There was probably a camera mounted above the

door to the main floor, a camera that looked back

toward this camera.

Carmellini studied the camera through the periscope,

twisted the magnification to the maximum and

refocused. He kept the instrument steady by bracing

himself against the wall.

The security camera was fifteen or twenty years

old if it was a day. No doubt there were ten or

twelve cameras on a sequential switch, so the

video from each one was shown in turn on a monitor

at the guard’s station. The guard was probably reading

something, eating, talking to another guard, if he was

paying any attention at all.

From his backpack Carmellini removed a strobe

unit and battery. He plugged the thing together,

switched on the battery, and waited for the

capacitor to charge. The bulb had a set of

silver metal feathers around it so that the light could be

focused. Carmellini tightened the feathers around the

bulb as much as they would go. When the capacitor’s

green light came on, he eased the light around the

comer, exposing his head for the first time. One quick squint

to line up the light, then holding the thing tightly against

the wall to steady it, he retracted his head, closed

his eyes and buried his head in the crook of his arm.

William Henry Chance did likewise. The

short, intense burst of light should burn out the

camera’s light-level sensor, rendering it

inoperative.

The flash was so bright Carmellini saw it through his

closed eyelids.

The two men slipped down the stairs. Standing just under

the camera that had just been disabled, Carmellini used the