"Whatever you just did, reverse it," the other answered. "It's going farther north."
"Right." Blowing a drop of water from the end of his nose, Kwon touched the proper control on his reel and brought a meter of filament back in. He was just preparing to move back to his left when a snapped command stopped him in mid-step.
"Hold it! You're right on target!"
Kwon froze, carefully bringing his weight back onto both feet. "All right," Hawking murmured, "we're almost there. It's swinging right over the turret. Countdown: three... two... one.. drop!"
And Kwon touched the release, letting the spool spin freely on its nearly frictionless bearings. Deprived suddenly of the line's tension, the kite should fall pretty nearly straight down—
"Bull's-eye!" Hawking crowed. "Okay, reel in slowly."
Kwon eased off on the release, letting the wind give the kite some lift again. If Hawking's gadget had hit the prison roof solidly enough, the four catches on its underside should have released, freeing it from the kite. "Kite's rising," he informed Hawking, watching the distant dot carefully.
"Beautiful." Hawking backed away from his telescope and scrambled to his feet. "Take a look, I'll bring in the kite."
Handing over the reel, Kwon gingerly got down in the muddy grass and eased up to the eyepiece. Dead center in the field of view was a hemispherical knob sticking up from the prison's main building—the comm laser turret for Cerbe's secure link to the outside world. Now, sitting directly over it, was another roughly hemispherical shape, this one wispy and insubstantial in the lightning flashes. Its bubblelike appearance was not illusion, the device consisted solely of a thousand hair-thin optical fibers arranged with their inner ends pointing radially toward and away from the turret and their outer ends gathered into a horizontal bundle at the base. "This thing really going to work?" he asked, looking up just in time to catch a large drop in his eye.
"Sure." Hawking was reeling in the filament at about half speed and studying the hills to their right. "Comm lasers always have wide apertures, to minimize dispersion over long distances. No matter what direction they point it, some of the fibers will intercept a little of the beam and funnel it to our receiver—ditto for incoming beams. Absolutely trivial and nearly undetectable."
"Unless they spot the receiver."
"They won't." Shifting his grip on the reel, Hawking pointed to the right. "The pirated beam should hit somewhere on one of those two hills. Once the receiver's in place, we can put the actual listening post ten klicks away if we need to."
"If you say so." Kwon got to his feet, brushed the worst of the mud off his pants, and glanced westward. "Looks like the storm's easing up—most of the lightning's already passed over. Let's get the receiver planted before their sensors start working again, eh?"
"Right. Here, you bring the kite in the rest of the way; I'll handle the scope."
Kwon grinned in the darkness as he accepted the reel back again. Hawking's nervousness where his equipment was concerned was legendary. "Not a bad night's work," he commented. "Vale says Haven and O'Hara are finally ready, you and I have a tap into the collies' gossip line, and Skyler and Novak will have Jensen back by breakfast."
"Things are finally moving our way," Hawking agreed, his telescope cradled like a baby in his arms. "About time, too."
Off to the east, the thunder rumbled restlessly.
CHAPTER 22
Caine glanced up as Lathe entered the blackcollars' room, then returned his gaze to the map he was studying. Something about the way Lathe closed the door made him look up again, and this time he saw the comsquare's expression. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"They got Jensen," Lathe said quietly.
"Dead?" Mordecai, sitting near the door, looked as relaxed as always; but his voice made Caine shiver.
"I don't know." Lathe mopped at his forehead with the towel draped across his shoulders. "Skyler called about five minutes ago, and Dan caught me as Bakshi and I were leaving the range. The collies apparently raided the Millaire HQ a short time before they arrived. The Security cordon was just being taken down, and they had to sneak into the area on foot. No indication anywhere as to whether Jensen was dead or just captured."
"Could he have gotten away?" Caine asked.
Mordecai shook his head. "The Security cordon would've still been up."
"Right," Lathe agreed heavily. "The timing's too good for coincidence. They wanted Jensen and they got him." Dropping into the chair across from Caine, he stared off across the room.
"What's Skyler going to do?" Mordecai asked after a short pause.
"He wants to stay and try to find him. I told him yes."
It was Mordecai's turn to stare into space. "We'll have to pull someone back here from Hawking's house to help with guard duty, you know."
"True. But after tomorrow O'Hara and Haven will be available again."
"Or they'll be dead," Caine muttered.
"In which case we'll have lost, anyway." Mordecai shrugged. "All right. I suppose it won't hurt to let Skyler operate down there a day or two. Might even take some of Security's attention off us here." He cocked an eyebrow. "How'd the workout go?"
Lathe had discarded his towel and the weapons on his belt and was worming out of his skintight shirt. "No question—Bakshi's a genuine blackcollar. Speed and reflexes are too good for him to be otherwise."
Caine frowned. "You were testing Bakshi? Why?"
"I want to know what we've got to work with," Lathe said. "Or had you forgotten Fuess's mediocre performance in the Strip?"
"That wasn't really his fault," Caine said. "I understand they were permanently affected by nerve gas during the war."
"I heard that, too," Mordecai said. "It's a convenient excuse, anyway."
"For something no one talks about much, the story sure gets around," Lathe said dryly. "How was your talk with Cameron?"
"Fine," Mordecai said. "Lianna Rhodes will be here in fifteen minutes; then we start a short list of local group leaders that should take us past noon."
"Good. Just enough time to shower." Lathe disappeared into the bathroom, taking his shuriken with him.
Caine shifted in his seat, still uncomfortable with this farce. Since early dawn Lathe and Mordecai had been calling in Radix officials one by one and giving them detailed instructions on "their" part in the upcoming raid on Cerbe Prison. The overall battle plan was perfectly believable and halfway practical—and had been concocted by Lathe for the sole purpose of keeping Security's spies too busy to pay undue attention to the upcoming meeting with Lianna Rhodes. Caine wondered what Tremayne would say when he learned how Lathe had been wasting Radix's time and energy.
The map of Cerbe was still in front of him, but Caine found himself unable to concentrate on it. The news from Millaire was heartbreaking—and the worst part was that Caine couldn't decide whether or not he hoped Jensen had been taken alive. The government clearly was desperate for information on the blackcollars' mission, and if Jensen was alive Caine knew what they'd do to get that information out of him.