“Who are you anyway?” he demanded. “What’s your connection with all this?”
“I’m going to tell you the truth, Sebastian, because I see no reason to hold anything back. My name’s Blaine McCracken and I’ve been called in to replace Tom Easton on his current mission. You remember Easton, don’t you? He got sliced up by a couple of machine-gun clips along with a pair of twins you got special for him.”
The last lines seemed not to reach Sebastian. “If you’re replacing Easton, then you’d be smart to head for the oceans too.”
“Sure, let’s head out together. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
The humor was lost on Sebastian, but he smiled anyway. “You don’t know what you’re on to yet, do you?”
“I was hoping you might be able to help me there. You fingered Easton for the hit team, didn’t you?”
“I had no choice,” Sebastian said, suddenly defensive.
McCracken glanced around him, locking finally on the door. “For a guy who’s got a goddamn army of chaperons, that sounds pretty strange.”
“I got the army after they came the first time.” Sebastian’s stare grew distant, his grip slackening on his derringer. “They knew Easton was a patron of Madame Rosa’s and that he required special orders to be filled from time to time. Since I was Madame Rosa’s exclusive supplier, they came to me. I told them about the twins, when they were due in. The men seemed satisfied.”
“You set those kids up along with Easton,” Blaine charged. “You’re as guilty as the men with the Mac-10s.”
Sebastian stood up, trembling with rage. “Spare me your moralizing, McCracken. When I found those children, they were living in the streets of Athens and picked fruit to earn a penny or two a day.”
“So you rescued them. And I always thought Jerry Lewis knew no equal. …”
“I provide a service, McCracken. I supply products to people who would otherwise be unable to obtain them. And ninety percent of the time everything is respectable, everybody comes out ahead, and nobody gets hurt.”
“But then there are those other ten percent, right? And I’m not talking about just Easton either. You’ve probably gotten lots of innocent kids killed, Sebastian. But they’re better off being tortured in some weirdo’s bedroom than picking fruit, I suppose.”
Sebastian’s lips squeezed briefly together. “I don’t plan to argue ethics with a hired killer, which is all you are. You’re no match for who’s behind all this. My advice is to run before they find you like they found Easton.”
“Before who finds me?”
Sebastian hesitated. “The PVR.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Where have you been, out of the country or something?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Tell me about this PVR. Why have they got you so scared that you’ve got an army protecting you above the water and divers protecting you below it?”
Sebastian’s eyes flashed fear. “What divers?”
“I saw air bubbles rising on my way up to the deck.” Sebastian was shaking horribly now. “I don’t have any divers!”
McCracken rose to his feet. “Then who …”
As if both men had realized the answer simultaneously, they rushed toward the door together, linked by the terrible certainty that they were going to be too late. They bolted up the stairs with a set of befuddled guards right behind them and had reached the deck when the explosion came, shattering the stillness of the night. Heat singed the air and buckled Blaine’s flesh an instant before the world was yanked from under him. He reached out to grab something, anything, but it was all floating away.
Blackness came mercifully before impact, so it seemed he was still floating into a tunnel up ahead, and he tumbled into it falling, falling …
Chapter 8
When captain Alan Coglan first saw Sandy Lister enter the restaurant, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. It came as quite a surprise when she approached his table.
“Captain Coglan, I’m Sandy Lister.”
Coglan rose to greet her. “Yes, I know,” he said, starting to feel suspicious now.
“Please sit down, Captain. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time and I’m sorry if I interrupted your dinner.”
T.J. Brown had learned that Coglan ate dinner regularly at this small Italian restaurant near his station post, and Sandy had come with the intention of prying more information from him. Rarely did she take advantage of her celebrity status. It was great for avoiding long waits in restaurants or airports, but generally it was a burden to be shrugged off. Often during interviews her mere presence made people eager to please and under those circumstances they often revealed more than they intended. She was hoping for similar results tonight.
Coglan hadn’t quite settled himself back in his chair when Sandy spoke again.
“T.J. Brown works for me, Captain.”
Coglan’s face stiffened. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea that we speak, Miss Lister.”
“What’s an orbital flight plan, Captain?”
Coglan leaned across the table. “Miss Lister, please. By all rights I should have reported that T.J. had the disk in his possession, but for some reason I didn’t. Your questions might force me to change my mind.”
“I don’t think so, Captain, because then you would have to explain why you waited so long. Your people might also somehow learn that you had dinner here with me, a television reporter. I doubt very much they’d appreciate the timing of that,” Sandy warned, her threat spoken gently.
“Miss Lister, the information you’re asking for is top secret.”
“Not anymore, Captain. The disk was passed on to me by a civilian who died for the effort. Murdered, more specifically.”
Coglan hesitated. “Everything I say will be considered off the record?”
“Absolutely.”
“And you’ll forget about this meeting ever taking place?”
“It never happened.”
Coglan pulled his chair farther under the table and lowered his voice to a whisper. “The shuttle program is not my field, but I do know some basics. To begin with, the onboard crew under normal conditions has little control over the shuttle once it attains orbit. Everything is controlled and monitored by computers in Houston talking to computers one hundred and eighty miles above Earth. Through disks, Miss Lister. The disk T.J. brought me was one of the most important of all because it contained the preprogrammed space orbit Adventurer was to follow: when and where the shuttle would be at every instant of its orbit, barring malfunction, of course.”
“And did any malfunction occur on the flight?”
Coglan shook his head. “No. Everything was running green.”
“Just like Challenger …”
“No,” Coglan said defensively, “not like Challenger at all. The final transmission …” His voice trailed off.
Sandy’s eyebrows rose. No final transmission had been released to the press. “What transmission?”
Coglan backed off. “Miss Lister—”
“The shuttle was deliberately destroyed by someone, wasn’t it?”
Coglan hedged, then nodded slowly. “Or something. It’s been sealed tight under something called a Space-Stat alert, the space equivalent to a situation of war.”
“What happened up there, Captain?”
“All investigations have been sealed, as I said.”
“But there must be talk. There’s always talk.”
“Just rumors.”
“I’d like to hear them.”
“Off the record, right?” Coglan asked, needing the reassurance.
Sandy’s nod left no doubt.
Coglan sighed. “Drone satellites have just returned with pieces of the wreckage. It’s like nothing anyone’s seen before. The shuttle wasn’t just blown up, parts of it were totally vaporized.”