This would be one single gesture of hate, not the orchestrated campaign she would have liked.
Could Carranza's force make the difference? Possibly, but unlikely.
Never wait until the last minute, the Hangman had said. Society is corrupt. People are venal. You will always be presented with other opportunities. They will hand you the very weapons you need to destroy them. In their avariciousness and ignorance they arm their very enemies.
Strike without pity and disappear. Prepare your escape route in advance, and when they think they have you, hurt them.
The confusion will aid your escape. When they are close and think they have you they get careless. They always do. You bait the trap and they will enter it and be destroyed. But don't be greedy. Don't stay and watch. Never wait until the last minute.
Jin Endo would be coming with her and five others. Enough to fight a rear-guard action if needed. Enough to distract and confuse, yet a small enough group to evade detection.
Six others in the command bunker would not be leaving. They had served their purpose. If left unharmed they might have attempted to interfere with the nerve-gas mechanism. Their throats had been cut as they sat in front of their consoles, and the air was thick with the smell of their blood.
The two cylinders sat linked to the dispersion unit. A timer was attached, ready to be activated. When their attackers broke in, the entire command bunker would be flooded with nerve agent, and with luck it would spread throughout the complex and to the attacking troops beyond.
But she would have to be well away by then. So really there was no good reason to wait.
Oshima mentally counted down, preparing herself for the shaft of flame as the huge weapon hurled its projectile toward Washington, D.C. In her mind she could see the path of the missile as it shot out of the supergun barrel, climbed up into the stratosphere, and then curved gracefully down toward its target below. How long would it take? A few minutes, no more.
As the missile neared its destination, a pressure-controlled mechanism would activate the two cylinders of gas. They would blend and become a liquid horror. The dispersion unit would cut in and the air over the capital of the most powerful nation in the world would fill with a vast cloud of nerve gas.
Invisibly the deadly miasma would float toward the ground.
It would be hours before the Americans would realize they had been hit, and by then it would be too late. Everywhere people would start dying. They would die at work, they would die at home. Senators and congressmen would collapse as they spoke. Lobbyists would spit blood as they advanced their causes. Policemen would die as they patrolled the streets. Prisoners would puke their guts out as they lay behind bars.
Across the Potomac, the military in the Pentagon would be hit and would be powerless to respond.
In Arlington and Rosslyn and a score of suburbs, citizens would drink the contaminated water and be affected. Ice cubes would kill. The touch of a hand or the gentlest of kisses would kill. The air itself, the very grass you walked on, the ventilator in your automobile. All would kill.
The cameras concealed throughout the supergun valley had audio pickups as well as visual. Oshima wanted to savor every detail. She heard the klaxon sound and saw the gun crew put on ear protectors and scurry for cover in the firing bunker.
The supergun was a truly massive weapon, and as Oshima looked at the monitors, she was entranced by the sheer destructive potential of such power. And you could make one of these things out of microfiber-reinforced concrete. The implications were exhilarating.
The countdown in Spanish commenced. "Five – Four – Three – Two – One – FIRE!"
The last word issued in a triumphant shout and then repeated by Oshima. "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!"
There was the expected thunderclap of explosions, but the sight Oshima actually witnessed strained her credibility.
The entire supergun, all 656 feet and 21,000 tons of it, blew apart in a rippling roaring thundering inferno of flame and destruction that was the most powerful explosion that Oshima had ever seen.
The structures in the valley were swept away as if by some Devil's breath.
The glass-fronted bunker containing the terrorist firing team – set across the divide of the valley – was hit by the blast wave and shattered as vast lumps of flying matter smashed into it.
For the next few seconds, the sky rained pieces of the supergun and a thick cloud of dust and debris stained the sky.
And then there was a dreadful silence.
"Fitzduane- san!" hissed Oshima, the hate thick in her voice.
27
Dr. John Jaeger stepped out of the Blackhawk helicopter and, holding his hat on his head, ran through the dust storm created by the downdraft of its rotors. Beyond the fog of sand, the harsh sun of the Tecuno plateau cut in and he slipped on his sunglasses with relief.
Madoa airfield was well and truly under the control of the 82 ^ nd Airborne. Around him paratroopers were methodically scouring every inch of the air base, while up above armed helicopters and gunships kept watch. Above them again there would be a combat air patrol.
It was over. But then again, you never quite knew.
Security was tight. A C130 making its approach fired red flares to distract any straggler with a handheld missile foolish enough to try anything, then dropped in like a stone in the stomach-wrenching maneuver know as a combat assault landing. Jaeger had experienced the procedure when he and his team were flown in, and suddenly he realized why the Airborne preferred to jump.
He found Fitzduane near what might have been some kind of barracks building. It was hard to tell after the air force had worked it over, but a cargo parachute had been erected like a giant tent to give some shade. Inside, the filtered light was curiously peaceful.
The Irishman was lying back in a wooden tub watching a yellow plastic duck bob up and down in the water in front of him. He had a glass of red wine in one hand.
Various other camouflaged figures sat in makeshift chairs in the general vicinity. He recognized Lonsdale and Cochrane, and there was a stocky lieutenant who looked as if he could life weights with his little finger. His eyes were closed. Farther back, other paratroopers were asleep.
"The tub was Oshima's, they tell me," said Fitzduane. "Damn near the only thing that wasn't blown to hell and back."
Jaeger collapsed with some relief into what passed for a deck chair and accepted a glass of wine. "The duck?" he said.
"The duck belongs to my son," said Fitzduane. "I gave it to him, but he loaned it to me. Sort of a good-luck charm. To bathe without one is uncivilized – though not everyone knows that."
Jaeger drank his wine. The atmosphere was pleasantly relaxing. It was like sitting on the porch after you'd done everything that had to be done and now you could just swap yarns and listen to the crickets before falling asleep. Only, there weren't any crickets. Instead there were the snores of sleeping paratroopers and crawling things that were mostly lizards but were occasionally scorpions.
"So it worked," he said. "I was having a nightmare about the whole thing, but it really worked like we hoped. "We've just checked the Devil's Footprint and the area all around. Not a trace of nerve agent. Nothing. And the gun is shredded. It really bloody worked."
Fitzduane looked at him. "Hoped?" he said incredulously. "Tell me you were certain it would work, or I'll have Brock shoot you."
"When you put it like that – I was certain," said Jaeger. "We fuck up on nukes now and then at Livermore, but when it comes to hydrogen superguns we're aces."