Legacy (21 page)

“Not to ruin your good mood, my dear, but the Mechanic is coming in from Ecuador immediately and I will have him meet you in Houston. Use him. I do not want you directly involved if the Mechanic finds an opening against this Dr. Compton.”

“Oh, I have many uses for our Arab friend. Using him to kill is just one of them,” she said, shooting her father a demure look.

Rawlins watched his daughter leave the office. He knew Laurel was not a follower of his word, but there was a quid pro quo. She allowed him his own small peccadilloes as far as his religion went. As long as the money supply was up to a minimum level, Laurel was his forever. He smiled as he figured that it was probably time she earned her keep. He looked at his watch and frowned.

“All right, Mr. McCabe, where are you?”

30 MILES OUTSIDE QUITO, ECUADOR

Ryan had come around nicely. They made their way through the thick stand of trees as Jason asked Will Mendenhall one more time if his nose looked as bad as it felt. Collins raised his hand when he saw Everett suddenly stop and hold up five fingers, then clench his fist. He lowered his hand slowly with the palm facing down, telling through his fingers to stop, get down, and be quiet. Collins eased his way forward.

They had heard helicopters fly very low over the sparsely forested part of the foothills, and each time they had to scramble for cover, barely staying out of view of people who were obviously McCabe’s men searching for them. For the most part they had been lucky. The bulk of the search was being conducted around the falls and the lake they had been near more than two hours before.

Everett turned around and knelt beside Jack. “Looks like a cop up ahead on that small road—looks local to me. He’s parked next to a ’66 Chevy Impala with a male driver and a woman passenger. Looks like they’re changing a flat. The cop is just standing there, jawing.”

“This may be our chance to bum a ride.”

“That’s what I was figuring,” Everett confirmed, and looked back at the scene just below on the roadway.

Jack turned and held up a hand to Ryan and Mendenhall, indicating for them to stay put. As he watched, Will reached out and patted Ryan on the shoulder. He silently shook his head and made a face indicating that the nose looked real bad, causing the small Navy man extreme consternation.

“Okay, looks like we may be in business here, Jack. The cops are leaving.”

“Okay, stay in the tree line. I’ll see if we can get a ride.”

“Well, they look to be pointed in the right direction,” Carl said as he moved aside to let Jack by. “Watch your ass.”

“Yeah, my judgment hasn’t been real good today, so maybe you better watch it for me,” Collins said, easing out of the trees.

“Hola,” Jack called out. He raised his right hand and crossed the broken macadam of the old roadway.

The man was just lowering the large car from its jack. He paused and stood. He pulled the woman behind him as he looked at the bedraggled man crossing the road.

“Hola,” the old man answered, as his eyes searched the area around Collins to see if he was alone.

“
Habla inglés?”
Collins asked, smiling the best nonthreatening smile he could muster.

“Sí,”
the man said. “Little … bit,” he said, holding up his index finger and thumb about an inch apart.

“Uh, I and some friends seem to be in a fix. Our car broke down a few miles back, and we need a ride into the next town.”

The middle-aged man watched as Jack approached the car, hands held slightly out in front of him. He seemed to relax a bit as he stepped away from the car.

“You need assistance?” the man said, the words clearly understood by Jack.

“Yes,” Collins said, looking around the car. All he could see was the woman standing behind the man, as though hiding.

“
Sí,
we will assist you,” the man said. He pointed west. “Quito,” he said, looking back at Collins.

“That’s where we’re headed.”

“
Sí,
bring your friends,” the man said.

Jack turned away and gestured toward the trees. Everett came first, followed by Will and then Ryan. As Jack watched them come down the small incline, he was shocked when he saw Everett dive into some bushes, quickly followed by Mendenhall and Ryan.

As he turned he saw that the small woman had stepped out from behind the older man. She held an ugly-looking UZI machine gun. Jack’s eyes widened as she brought the weapon up and started shooting. The initial line of bullets stitched a path directly to Jack’s front. He saw the gun move in slow motion. Without thinking, he jumped to the right and landed behind the car’s rear bumper. He rolled until he was underneath the hot exhaust pipe. The heat was intense, but he kept rolling until he hit the right rear wheel, still partially suspended by the jack on the rear bumper. As he watched, the man went to one knee and the first thing Jack saw was the blue steel barrel of an automatic being angled toward him. Thinking fast, Jack spun on his back, causing broken pieces of blacktop to dig into his skin. The woman once again opened fire on Everett, Ryan, and Mendenhall across the road. Collins, mustering all the strength he had, kicked at the jack. It didn’t take as much strength as he thought to make it break loose. The man had just spotted Collins and was about to open to fire when the car began to fall.

“Oh, shit,” Collins said, flattening himself as low as he could manage. The large Chevy came down and the rear quarter panel caught his would-be killer in the side of the head, propelling the side of his face into the roadway. The weapon was knocked out of his hands just as the car’s bottom hit Jack in the chest. The heavy-duty springs brought the car back up. Jack reached for the gun and fired into the woman’s legs. Two bullets hit her in each thigh, dropping her to the ground. Jack saw her face twist in anger, shock, and pain. She desperately tried to bring the UZI around.

“Don’t do it,” Jack yelled, aiming at a spot between the woman’s eyes.

Before she had a chance to fire her weapon, and before Collins managed to kill her, a large boot came down onto the side of the woman’s face. Jack relaxed when he realized Everett had come up on her without her knowing it. He lowered his head and took a deep breath.

“You okay?” Carl asked as he knelt and looked at Jack’s dirty face. “It’s a damn good thing you don’t have a beer gut, buddy. This car would have surely flattened it for you.” Everett reached out a hand and pulled Jack out from under the car.

When Collins stood he saw that the woman was out cold not two feet from the man’s body. Was the man her husband?

“Will, see what you can find in the car,” Jack said, reaching down and retrieving the UZI. He tossed it to Carl. “Get her legs wrapped. You and Ryan can pull both of them into the trees. I suspect their friends will find them soon enough.”

“Yes, sir,” Mendenhall said, amazed at the close call the colonel had just had.

“May I suggest we take the car and get the hell back to the city?” Everett removed the ammunition clip from the UZI and checked its remaining rounds. He smiled as he slammed the clip back home. He went around to the driver’s side, kicking the jack stand and crowbar out of the way as he did so.

“Let’s go, gentlemen. I have a feeling our ex-Delta man may have more friends waiting for us.”

*   *   *

Two hours later the old and battered Impala pulled into the main concourse area of the airport. Everett had taken all the back roads he could find into the outskirts of the city and the zigzag route had cost them time. The four men were sore and exhausted.

“Well, here we are,” Everett said, slamming the car’s gearshift into park. “Ryan, do you think you can fly with that swollen nose of yours?”

“Very funny. I want you guys to know that this thing hurts like hell—and the face Mendenhall makes every time he looks at me doesn’t help.”

Will turned away and opened the rear door without saying a word, but he was smiling where Ryan couldn’t see him.

Jack stood and stretched as he tried to examine as much of his surroundings as he could.

“What do we do about the excavation, Colonel?” Will asked.

“There’s nothing we can do about it at the moment. We don’t have a clue how deep this thing goes. We may be dealing with the Ecuadorian government and their military.” He turned and faced the others as he closed the car’s door.

“What about the weapons inside?” Ryan asked. He gently touched his nose.

“They won’t be there even if we do come back. We need to bring Niles up to date as fast as possible. This thing has to be figured out at management level.”

*   *   *

As the men turned and headed for the private section of the new airport, James McCabe lowered the field glasses that he had been using to examine the parking structure across the way.

“We can shoot them before they board their aircraft,” his assistant said.

McCabe raised the glasses once more and watched as Collins and his men moved into the terminal.

“Why in the world would I want to do that?” he asked, smiling. “When mistakes are made in field operations, you try not to compound them by making another equally disastrous move.” He lowered the glasses and tossed them to the plainclothes security man. “You minimize the mistake by at least getting intelligence for the next round of battle. When they leave here, we’ll know exactly where they will land.”

“Yes, but instead of a tracking device, we should have planted a bomb onboard their aircraft,” the large German said, turning to follow McCabe.

“That is why you are you and I am me. I need to know who Jack and his pals are working for, and I couldn’t do that if he’s dead, could I?”

McCabe opened the door of his limousine.

“I want those two fools who got shot up on the roadway eliminated for trying to kill them after they managed to escape. You should have passed on my orders far sooner than you did,” McCabe said, looking closely at the large German before stepping into the limousine. “And that’s exactly why I will kill you if my instructions are not followed to the smallest detail. You see, there must be discipline in the ranks or else there will be chaos. And then we could not do what we are paid to do.” The small man climbed into the car and the German felt the heat of the man’s glare.

“Now, I need to go to our private hangar. I feel like blowing something up.”

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON, TEXAS

Director Appleby watched the face of Niles Compton. Although tired from his many flying hours in the past day, Compton seemed bright and eager. He was astonished to see what DARPA in its dark guise had to show him.

They stood in a small nondescript room and watched the large screen before them. Sarah, always one to show wonderment when faced with the unbelievable, walked to the screen and placed her hand on the image. She turned and looked at Appleby.

On the large monitor the director had instructed the NASA/DARPA computer system to bring up a split image of two different warehouses. One of the warehouses was active. Niles, Virginia, and Sarah saw men and women walking around in their white coveralls as they worked. In the foreground was the giant solid booster rocket that made up the heavy power stage.

“Mr. Compton, I give you the Ares I. The new platform is an in-line, two-stage rocket configuration. The vehicle’s primary mission is carrying crews of four to six astronauts into Earth’s orbit. However, Ares I may also use its twenty-five-ton payload capacity to deliver resources and supplies to the International Space Station or to park payloads in orbit for retrieval by other spacecraft bound for the Moon or other destinations. Normally this would have been in the
cut
portion of the president’s budget restraint, but with the retirement of the space shuttle program nearing, the president pointed out a small loophole in the budget, some sort of secret black project that kept the Ares program operational.”

“How many do we have?” Niles asked, looking at the giant booster and Ares’s different stages as they lay prone in the massive complex housing the project. The director of DARPA saw that Compton had expertly sidestepped the issue of the president secretly saving the Ares system even though his budget cut had called for it. On the monitor everything gleamed in pure whiteness and the sight was so impressive that Niles had a hard time not looking at its beauty.

“One platform is available now, complete with the Orion crew capsule and the Altair lunar lander. All are highly advanced systems designed for Moon debarkation and extended habitation. The other Ares can be put together in a matter of a week and transported to either one of two launch facilities, complete with a three-quarters-finished lunar landing and transport system.”

“We have two Ares and no other backup?” Niles turned and faced Appleby. “Those are all untried systems.” Niles held up a hand when Appleby looked to protest. “That’s not a rebuke, just an observation. What if the president gives a go to a Moon mission and the system fails?”

“That’s exactly why I brought you here, Mr. Compton. I need to show you the only reliable backup we have.”

Sarah stepped back from the large screen as Appleby punched some buttons on the computer keyboard. “My science offices axed this program many, many years ago, but NASA, in its nostalgia, hung on to it.”