"Hi, Al, this is John. I'm in Langley now."
"What the bloody hell's been happening, John? Chavez and his people have fallen off the earth, and-"
"Ding and his people are halfway between Hawaii and California now, Al. They arrested a major conspirator in Sydney."
"Very well, what the devil's been going on?"
"You sitting down, Al?"
"Yes, John, of course I am, and-"
"Listen up. I'll give you the short version," Clark commanded, and proceeded to do that for the next ten minutes.
"Bloody hell," Stanley said when his boss stopped talking. "You're sure of this?"
"Damned sure, Al. We are now tracking the conspirators in four aircraft. They seem to be heading for central Brazil. Okay, I need you to get all the people together and fly them to Fort Bragg-Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina-with all their gear. Everything, Al. We may be taking a trip down to the jungle to… to, uh, deal decisively with these people."
"Understood. I'll try to get things organized here. Maxi mum speed'."
"That is correct. Tell British Airways we need an airplane," Clark went on.
"Very well, John. Let me get moving here."
In Langley, Clark wondered what would happen next, but before he could decide that he needed to get all of his assets in place. Okay, Alistair would try to get British Airways to release a spare, reserve aircraft to his people for a direct flight to Pope, and from there-from there he'd have to think some more. And he'd have to get there, too, to Special Operations Command with Colonel Little Willie Byron.
"Target One is descending," a control officer reported over the aircraft's intercom. The senior controller looked up from the book he was reading, activated his scope, and confirmed the information. He was breaking international law at the moment. Eagle Two-Niner hadn't gotten permission to overfly Brazil, but the air-traffic control radar systems down there read his transponder signal as a civilian air-cargo flight-the usual ruse-and nobody had challenged them yet. Confirming that information, he got on his satellite radio to report this information to NORAD and, though he didn't know it, on to CIA. Five minutes later, Target Two started doing the same. Also both aircraft were slowing, allowing Eagle Two-Niner to catch up somewhat. The senior controller told the flight crew to continue on this heading and speed, inquired about fuel state, and learned that they had another eight hours of flight time, more than enough to return to their home at Tinker Air Force Base outside Oklahoma City.
In England, the British Airways card was played, and the airline, after ten minutes of checking, assigned Rainbow a 737-700 airliner, which would await their pleasure at Luton, a small commercial airport north of London. They'd have to go there by truck, and those were whistled up from the British army's transport company at Hereford.
It looked like a green sea, John Brightling thought, the top layer of the triple-canopy jungle. In the setting sun, he could see the silvery paths of rivers, but almost nothing of the ground itself. This was the richest ecosystem on the planet, and one that he'd never studied in detail-well, Brightling thought, now he'd be able to, for the next year or so. Project Alternate was a robust and comfortable facility with a maintenance staff of six people, its own power supply, satellite communications, and ample food. He wondered which of the people on the four aircraft might be good cooks. There would be a division of labor here, as at every other Project activity, with himself, of course, as the leader.
At Binghamton, New York, the maintenance staff was loading a bunch of biohazard-marked containers into the incinerator. It was sure a big furnace, one of the men thought-big enough to cremate a couple of bodies at the same time-and, judging by the thickness of the insulation, a damned hot one. He pulled down the three-inch thick door, locked it in place, and punched the ignition button. He could hear the gas jetting it and lighting off from the sparkler things inside, followed by the usual voosh. There was nothing unusual about this. Horizon Corporation was always disposing of biological material of one sort or another. Maybe it was live AIDS virus, he thought. The company did a lot of work in that area, he'd read. But for the moment he looked at the papers on his clipboard. Three sheets of paper from the special order that had been faxed in from Kansas, and every line was checked off. All the containers specified were now ashes. Hell, this incinerator even destroyed the metal lids. And up into the sky went the only physical evidence of the Project. The maintenance worker didn't know that. To him container G7-89-98-OOA was just a plastic container. He didn't even know that there was a word such as Shiva. As required, he went to his desktop computer-everyone here had one-and typed in that he'd eliminated the items on the work order. This information went into Horizon Corporation's internal network, and, though he didn't know it, popped onto a screen in Kansas. There were special instructions with that, and the technician lifted his phone to relay the information to another worker, who relayed it in turn to the phone number identified on the electronically posted notice.
"Okay, thank you," Bill Henriksen replied upon hearing the information. He replaced the cabin phone and made his way forward to the Brightlings.
"Okay, guys, that was Binghamton. All the Shiva stuff, all the vaccines, everything's been burned up. There is now no real physical evidence that the Project ever existed."
"We're supposed to be happy about that?" Carol demanded crossly, looking out her window at the approaching ground.
"No, but I hope you'll be happier than you'd be if you were facing an indictment for conspiracy to commit murder, Doctor."
"He's right, Carol," John said, sadness in his voice. So close. So damned close. Well, he consoled himself, he still had resources, and he still had a core of good people, and this setback didn't mean that he'd have to give up his ideals, did it? Not hardly, the chairman of Horizon told himself. Below, under the green sea into which they were descending, was a great diversity of life-he'd justified building Project Alternate to his board for that very reason, to find new chemical compounds in the trees and plants that grew only here-maybe a cure for cancer, who could say? He heard the flaps lower, and soon thereafter, the landing gear went down. Another three minutes, and they thumped down on the road-runway constructed along with the lab and residential buildings. The aircraft's thrust-reversers engaged, and it slowed to a gradual stop.
"Okay, Target One is down on the ground." The controller read off the exact position, then adjusted his screen's picture. There were buildings there, too? Well, okay, and he told the computer to calculate their exact position, which information was immediately relayed to Cheyenne Mountain.
"Thank you." Foley wrote the information down on a pad. "John, I have exact lat and longe for where they are. I'll task a satellite to get pictures for us. Should have that in, oh, two or three hours, depending on weather there."
"So fast?" Popov asked, looking out the seventh-floor windows at the VIP parking lot.
"It's just a computer command," Clark explained. "And the satellites are always up there." Actually, three hours struck him as a long time to wait. The birds must have been in the wrong places for convenience.
Rainbow lifted off the runway at Lutonwell after midnight, British time, looping around to the right over the automobile assembly plant located just off the airport grounds and heading west for America. British Airways had assigned three flight attendants to the flight, and they kept the troopers fed and supplied with drink, which all the soldiers accepted before they settled down as best they could to sleep most of the way across. They had no idea why they were going to America. Stanley hadn't briefed them in on anything yet, though they wondered why they were packing all of their tactical gear.