When the cold wind finally spent its last strength howling around the eaves of the High City, she found the answer to the question of when the turret doors were opened—in good weather. The turrets were small and cramped, and the crews much preferred being out of doors, at least when an autumn wind wasn’t blustering around the gray granite battlements of the acropolis.
“So we set the attack on a nice day,” Sula said at a planning meeting. “All we need is to glance at the long-range forecast.”
“We can probably manage that, princess,” said Patel with an easy smile. “It’s climbing that damned rock I’m worried about.”
They were holding the meeting in Patel’s hotel suite, sitting around an elegant chrome-rimmed table that seemed strangely at home with the fussy laquered cabinets, the collected bric-a-brac, and the bright bouquets of fragrant flowers. The room, with its oddities and perfumes, appeared to be a perfectly suitable environment for a man who had offered to fight for love.
“I wish we could rehearse the climb somehow,” Julien said. “We’ve not only got to get ourselves up that cliff, but our gear.” He gave a tight, uncomfortable grin. “And I don’t much like heights.”
It was clear that no frontal assault on the acropolis could possibly succeed. The positions that controlled the two gateways to the High City—the funicular and the switchback road—could only be taken from behind, and that meant first sneaking a force onto the acropolis.
Getting an army up the cliff was a task that would have been impossible in peacetime, when the long granite bulk of the High City was illuminated by brilliant floodlights that would have pinned any climber to the cliff. After the destruction of the ring, the electricity shortage had turned the floodlights off. Even most of the streetlights on the High City were dark, so the area was full of shadows.
The Ngeni Palace was very large, enough to hide two entire action groups until it was time for them to move out.
“We can have them practice on a real cliff,” Macnamara suggested. “Take them out to the country and send them up an escarpment.”
Julien looked at him in something like shock. He was a city boy, and the very idea of countryside was alien to him.
“Can’t we do it in town somewhere?” he said. “Climb a building or something?”
Sula smiled “That might attract attention.” She looked up at Macnamara. “You’ll work out the training schedule for the trips to the country and the climbs. I want everyone to ascend at least twice.”
Julien was dismayed. “Won’t there be snakes and things?” he asked.
Casimir grinned at him. “Yes. Big nasty poison ones too.”
Macnamara sniffed and made a note on his datapad. He had never learned to like the cliquemen, and he wasn’t able to hide it. The Bogo Boys responded with a good-natured condescension that suggested they were hated by a lot more interesting people than Macnamara.
Sula took a sip of her sparkling water and looked at her agenda. “My worry is security,” she said. “This is a big operation. Any leaks and most of us die.”
“Keep the inner circle small,” Casimir said. “Only a few of us should know the actual objective.”
Spence tapped cigarette ash into one of Patel’s elegant ashtrays—hanging around cliquemen, along with a delivery job that delivered tobacco in large quantities, had taught her to smoke.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “What we should do is hide one big operation underanother big operation. We tell them to prepare for one thing, and then—on the day—they all get new orders.”
Sula looked at her in surprise. “What’s bigger than taking the High City?”
“Attacking Wi-hun,” Spence suggested, naming the airfield the Naxids used as a base for their shuttlecraft. “That might draw security forces out into the countryside.”
“No,” Casimir said. “We tell everyone we’re taking the prisons and liberating all the hostages.”
Sula looked at him in admiration. “Very nice,” she said. “Storming the prisons will require a lot of the same skills as storming the High City, so we can explain any training exercises. And we’ll put a watch on the prisons, have people take notes about the number of guards, shift changes, and so on, so that if the Naxids find out about it, the data will seem to support the cover story.”
“The security forces will be drawn out of the High City,” Spence said. “There aren’t any prisons in the city center.”
“I’d like to completely isolate the High City if we can,” Sula said. “The High City has all the political and military leadership in their palaces. The mid-level leadership stays in requisitioned hotels on the acropolis, particularly the Great Destiny, and most of the rankers sleep in those hotels in the Lower Town, at the foot of the funicular. If we can keep the officers from their troops, they’re going to have to overcome their own leadership deficit before they can do anything else.”
“Princess,” Patel said, “can’t we kill those officers, somehow, while they’re asleep?”
“I wanted to take out the Great Destiny Hotel early on, with a truck bomb,” Sula said, “but Hong wanted to concentrate on the Axtattle Parkway attack first.” Which had been the end of Hong and the secret army, all but Team 491.
“Can’t we use a truck bomb now?” Patel asked.
“They have barricades all around the hotel. We couldn’t get a truck up to it.”
“Barricades can be knocked down,” said Spence, the practical engineer.
“We’d need heavy equipment to do it,” Sula said. “And how are we going to get that up on the rock?”
Spence flicked her cigarette in the ashtray and shrugged. “All sorts of ways. They have building projects on the High City that can provide us cover, I assume.”
“You’ll handle the arrangements then?”
Another shrug. “Sure.”
“And any truck bombs?”
“Of course.” She smiled. “The bombs are more in my line, really.”
Patel looked at Spence and smiled. “I know just where I can get the equipment we need. A government storage facility, near one of my enterprises. I don’t even think it’s even guarded at night.”
“Let me run up to the High City first and see exactly what’s required.”
Julien looked from one person at the table to the next. “You know,” he said, “I’m beginning to think we’re actually going to do this.”
Casimir looked at Sula and gave one of his rumbling laughs. His eyes were sparkling. “With the White Ghost leading us,” he said, “how can we fail?”
Autumn came quickly on the heels of the Naxid missile. A blast of frigid wind blew in from the northwest, howling around the corners of the buildings like mourners crying their anguish at the death of Remba. The wind blew cold for days. Leaves turned brown and crisp and were blown from the trees before they could display their glories of orange and yellow.
Sula, wearing a windbreaker and with a scarf wrapped around her blond hair, traveled over the High City, confirming the information given by PJ, Sidney, and other informants. She took note of defenses and dispositions, as well as the location of police patrols and the hotels and palaces where security forces slept.
The project began to develop its own astounding plausibility. Naxid defenses in the High City were surprisingly thin. Most of the security forces weren’t barracked on the High City at all, but in the complex of hotels around the train station at the base of the funicular. If the secret army attacked at night and could hold the two routes to the crest of the acropolis, they might have a chance of maintaining a grip on the High City, at least for a while.
Sula didn’t want to refer to her scheme directly; she thought it might tempt fate. Instead she called it Project Daliang, after a campaign fought by Sun Pin, the general of Qi. When Wei attacked Zhao, Zhao appealed for help to Qi. Sun Pin was expected to march into Zhao to help drive off the invaders, but instead marched straight for Daliang, the Wei capital, which forced Wei to abandon its campaign and retreat in disorder.