Saucer (30 page)

The Russian left the room.

Pieraut lit a cigarette and savored the smoke. “If no one else chooses to bid in the next round, I presume we are the winners?”

“Under the rules,” Hedrick acknowledged, “that is indeed the case.”

“Where do you want the money wired? If we win the auction.”

Hedrick handed a sheet of paper to Bernice, who delivered it to Pieraut. “Those are the banks,” he said. “If you win the auction, wire the money. When the banks confirm that they have received the money, the saucer is yours.”

“You expected to sell the saucer for such a large sum?”

“I try to avoid idle speculation. As always with rare and precious things, the price depends on how much the object is desired.”

“Oúi,” said Pieraut and smoked the rest of his cigarette in silence. He looked self-satisfied, Charley thought, as did the two German engineers and the Italian.

She decided she had had enough. She got up and walked from the room.

In the foyer, Krasnoyarsk was grunting into a telephone. The news he was hearing was written on his face.

Charley was sitting on a stool in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee when Bernice came charging through the door. “The Russians excused themselves from the next round! The Europeans have won!”

“Roger is now the world’s richest man?”

“He’s so close. In just a few hours. I am so happy for him.”

“He doesn’t deserve you, Bernice. Why don’t you dump him and find yourself a decent fella?”

Bernice was horrified. She whirled and marched from the kitchen without another word.

It takes all kinds to make a world, Charley decided, and poured herself another cup of Java.

The head cook came over to see if she liked the coffee.

“You got any peanut butter?” Charley asked. “I could do with a sandwich.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

“Mr. President, the Japanese delegation just informed their government via satellite telephone that the Europeans got the saucer for one hundred and fifty billion.”

P.J. O’Reilly whistled softly. “That’s sixty billion above the maximum amount the Japanese government was willing to pay,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

The president took the note from the aide, then nodded, dismissing him. He stared at the note for a moment, wadded it up, and tossed it in the out-basket.

“That tears it,” he said to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who was sitting on the Oval Office couch beside Bombing Joe De Laurio. “Let’s get on with it.”

The chairman, an army four-star, looked as if he had been sucking a persimmon. “I want to go on record as opposing this.”

“You’re on record,” said the president, who hated people who wanted their objections formally noted. When events proved them correct they were insufferable; when events proved them wrong they conveniently forgot their bad advice.

“I wish we could have flown that thing to Area Fifty-one,” Bombing Joe said wistfully, “but I guess it wasn’t to be. I don’t see that we have a choice in this matter now.”

The president eyed the general without affection. Bombing Joe wasn’t the man to share a lifeboat with—the pit bulls in Congress would eat him alive.

“I should have gone into the hardware business with Dad,” the president muttered.

• • •

“I want to see Rip,” Charley Pine said to the guard in the barn.

“What’s on the tray?” the guard asked suspiciously.

Charley lifted the cover on the main dish, revealing a heaping, steaming hot plate of beef, boiled potatoes, and vegetables.

“I’ve got my orders,” the guard says. “Any funny business, I shoot him.”

Charley replaced the dish cover.

“I’ll do it, too. If you think I won’t, you’re making a big mistake.”

“You look like the type who would kill an unarmed man.”

“Listen, lady…”

She bent down and placed the tray on the floor, then straightened. If she could just get the man off guard, just for an instant, she could take him out with a karate kick or elbow to the neck, whatever opportunity offered.

The Aussie was too suspicious. He kept his finger on the trigger of the rifle and the muzzle pointed right at her belly. Shooting him with the Walther would be suicidal.

“No closer,” the guard said. “I seen Rigby after you kicked him.”

She took a tentative step toward him, shifted her weight.

“Don’t, Charley!”

That was Rip.

The guard had his left hand on the forearm of the rifle, the muzzle dead center in her stomach. His face was white, drawn.

“Don’t try it, Charley,” Rip whispered. “Thanks for the grub.”

“They want me to fly the saucer out of here,” she said, her eyes never leaving the guard’s. The man was stupid and scared, a dangerous combination.

“Maybe Hedrick will let me go after you leave,” Rip said softly.

“Maybe.”

“Sorry it worked out like this.”

“I’ll see you back in the States, Rip.”

“Yeah.” His voice was husky.

She backed away from the guard, then turned and walked out of the barn.

• • •

Hedrick was in the library seated at his desk while he waited for his European banks to call. The European bidders and two Australian politicians sat around the desk smoking Cuban cigars and drinking whiskey. Pieraut looked to be in an especially good mood.

Charley stood in the doorway. Hedrick excused himself and walked over to where she was standing.

“You owe me some money,” she said.

He reached in a jacket pocket and extracted a bundle of hundreds. “I believe we said three thousand for each day you were here, plus three grand to ride the Concorde home from Paris. Here’s twenty.”

“They want to go to Paris?”

“Yes.”

Charley took about a third of the bills and pulled them out of the bundle. “I don’t take tips,” she said and handed back the excess bills. She put the rest in a chest pocket of her flight suit. Then she put her hands in the pockets of her jacket. She used her right hand to get a firm grip on Rigby’s Walther.

Hedrick’s eyebrows went up. Apparently he wasn’t used to people refusing money.

“I expect you to let Rip go when the saucer arrives in Paris.”

“And I expect you to fly the saucer to Paris and leave it with Pieraut and company.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you ever want to see Rip alive again.”

Charley Pine’s eyes narrowed. She was sorely tempted to haul out the Walther and shoot this son of a bitch then and there. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then said, “If Rip doesn’t come home hale and hearty, all in one piece, I’ll kill you someday, Roger. Sure as shootin’.”

Hedrick seemed to be measuring her. “You know, I think you mean that. I think you’d try.”

She pulled the Walther from her pocket and pushed it against his stomach. “This is how close you are to the next life, Roger. I could send you on your way right now. You hurt Rip, you’ll be the richest dead man on this planet.”

Hedrick had balls, you had to give him that. He glanced down at the pistol, then smiled genially. “We understand each other, Ms. Pine. That’s rare in human affairs, but it’s good. Misunderstandings can be quite messy.”

She put the pistol back in her pocket and kept her hand on it.

“By the way, where is Rigby?”

“I wouldn’t know. Have you lost him?”

“Never mind.”

“When do I leave?”

Hedrick glanced again at his watch. “The banks in Europe don’t open for another hour. The transfer will be made then.”

He went back to the men sitting around his desk.

Charley removed her hands from her jacket pockets and dropped into the nearest chair.

• • •

The American nuclear-powered attack submarine rose slowly to periscope depth. For an hour the technicians had been carefully searching the sea with passive sonar. There were no ships within fifty miles of the submarine.

When the boat was stabilized at periscope depth, the skipper ordered the scope raised. All he could see was empty ocean and sky. The electronic signal detectors (ESM) on the scope remained silent. He lowered the scope back into the well.

“We have green lights on tubes one and two,” the OOD reported. “Roger.”

The commanding officer looked at the digital clock ticking down on the fire-control computer. Forty-four seconds, forty-three… “Commit,” he said.

“Commit to fire automatically,” replied the weapons officer.

Twenty-six hours ago the sub had raised its antenna above the waves and received a data dump from a computer in Washington, an encrypted signal that had been retransmitted by a satellite. Then the sub had run submerged at thirty knots for the next twenty-five hours, racing for this position. An hour ago, while the submarine was five hundred feet deep, it slowed to three knots and began the passive search. Ten minutes later the boat’s com gear picked up a very-low-frequency radio signal that had traveled completely around the planet. This signal was the fire order. Now the time had arrived.

The skipper stared at the screen of the fire-control computer. Who would have thought the president of the United States would ever order live missiles fired into Australia? The world just kept getting weirder.

The seconds counted down. The instant the clock registered zero, the skipper felt a jolt as compressed air pushed a Tomahawk cruise missile from tube one.

The missile’s wings popped out and its engine ignited as it broke the surface of the sea. It roared into the air and climbed to several hundred feet above the water before it leveled off. It was already headed west, pointed almost exactly at its target. As the missile flew it acquired the signals from eight GPS satellites and updated its position.

Sixty seconds later, a second missile came out of the water and roared away after the first.

Its work done, the submarine turned back to the east and silently descended below the thermal layer.

• • •

The staccato, irregular ripping of fully automatic weapons firing bursts echoed down the long interior corridor of the horse barn. Then came the louder booms of explosions. The ripping of assault rifles, a deeper, louder belching of machine guns, and the boom of explosions mingled into a rising roar.

The guard stared at Rip, consternation written on his face.

He looked right, then left at the main doors to the barn. Rip started to get to his feet.

“Hold it,” the guard shouted, raising his rifle to his shoulder. “Don’t move.” Rip sat back down.

The guard stood up, backed into the stall behind him so that he could not be seen from the doors on either end of the barn.

“Gonna wait until they come kill you?” Rip asked over the cacophony.

The guard didn’t know what to do, that was obvious. He opened the window in the stall behind him and peered out carefully.

Rip gathered himself. This was his chance, if he could only get the hell out of this barn!

Several bullets struck the wood around the window that the guard was looking through. Little puffs of wood and dust exploded into the still air.

The guard rushed to the corridor. He looked both ways, then ran for the end of the barn nearest the house as the rifle fire grew louder. It sounded as if someone were shooting just outside.

Rip peered around the edge of the stall, watched as the guard scanned the area outside the barn, then ducked out the main door.

He trotted down the corridor and peeked around the large board door that the guard had just gone through.

The guard was lying twenty feet from the door, his rifle beside him. The man lay absolutely motionless, apparently shot dead.

Rip drew back. He could hear bullets thunking into the upper walls and beams, like the patter of rain but more irregular.

Just then the booming crack of a tank gun rolled through the barn like thunder. Then another. What in hell was going on?

• • •

The sounds of battle apparently caught Hedrick and the European delegation off guard. Pieraut loudly demanded to know who was shooting and what did it mean. Hedrick picked up the telephone and dialed it.

Within thirty seconds Krasnoyarsk and the senior Chinese bidder rushed into the room.

Pieraut went to the big window behind Hedrick’s desk and looked out across the lawn. Just as he did so, something came through one of the top panes, shattering it. Pieraut ducked for cover as shards of glass rained down onto the carpet.

Hedrick shouted into the receiver. “Find them. Bring them to the library under armed guard. He banged down the telephone receiver. “Japanese commandos,” he said. “At least a dozen, trying for the saucer.”

“If we don’t get the saucer intact, we won’t pay you a cent,” Pieraut said, loudly enough for Charley Pine to hear.

“Obviously,” Hedrick snapped.

“We should leave now, fly it out of here while we still can.”

Hedrick wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He dabbed at his palms. A bullet hit another small pane of glass in the big window, shattering it. Hedrick didn’t even flinch.

Charley Pine put on her flight jacket, walked over to the small refreshment bar, and poured herself a drink of water.

Hedrick has a heck of a problem, Charley thought. If she had needed any confirmation of Hedrick’s intentions, his indecision just now certainly supplied it. He never intended for the saucer to reach Paris. However, if he destroyed it before he received the Europeans’ money, he would probably never get paid. The saucer had to be intact and Pieraut alive and well when the money arrived in Hedrick’s banks or he would never be able to hang on to the bucks.

And then there were the Japanese. The commandos were either trying to steal the saucer or destroy it, and if they succeeded at either mission Hedrick wasn’t going to collect money from anyone. It was a nice problem.

Charley helped herself to another glass of water. More bullets came through the main window, and the crowd around Hedrick’s desk ducked below the level of the windowsill.

“Where is my army protection?” Hedrick roared at the two government ministers, who were huddled on the floor beside him.

As if in answer, a tank loosed off a round nearby. The boom took out another couple of windowpanes.