“Yes, sir.”
“Ask Atlantic Fleet to get a P-3 out to that area as soon as possible, have the crew search for anchored or stationary ships. Any ships not actually under way. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jake Grafton rubbed his forehead, trying to decide if there was anything else he should be doing.
“Uh, Admiral …” Toad began, his voice low. “I want to thank you for saving my assets last night. I about had a heart attack after we jumped over that rail, everything behind us blowing up, wondering if we were going to go into the water or splatter ourselves on a rock pile. That was truly a religious experience.”
A wry grin crossed Jake Grafton’s face. “Wish I had paid more attention to where those rocks were before crunch time arrived. Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire! For a few seconds there I thought we had had the stroke.”
“You didn’t know?” Toad was aghast.
“What say we don’t mention this to Rita or Callie?” Jake said, and walked away. He had another meeting to attend.
William Henry Chance grabbed the rope, which extended over the side on the science building roof into the darkness. The rope was still taut. Tommy Carmellini must be hanging on the end of it!
Chance braced himself and began pulling, hand over hand, and almost ruptured himself.
He got no more than six feet of rope up when he realized he wasn’t in the right position. Moving carefully, he braced himself against the vent pipe and got the rope over his shoulders. Now he used his whole body to help raise it.
Two more feet.
Four.
A dark spot, a head, coming above the eave, struggling to climb.
Chance held the rope steady as Carmellini heaved himself over the edge of the roof and began crawling up the slope, still holding onto the rope.
“Man, I thought I had bit the big one,” Carmellini said between gasps. Leaning against the chimney, Chance blew equally hard.
“I’m getting too old for this shit,” Carmellini muttered.
“Next time get a desk job.”
“Why in hell do you think I went to law school?”
Chance coiled the rope and inspected it. It had frayed through where it was wrapped around the dormer on the other building. He showed the place to Carmellini, then put the rope in his knapsack.
“Let’s go.”
Carmellini used a glass cutter on a pane of a dormer window, then they went in.
Chance took a chance and used the flashlight. This attic was stacked with laboratory equipment: dishes, warmers, mixing units, microscopes, a spectrometer, a bunch of equipment large and small that he couldn’t identify.
“Let’s put on our masks,” Chance said, “just in case.”
They donned the gas masks, made sure the filter elements were on tight. The mask could provide only filtered air: it had an inhalation and exhalation valve and a black faceplate with two large clear lens to see through. The mask was attached to a hood that went over the head and shoulders of the user. Pull strings sealed the hood so air could not get in around the user’s neck. When they had the mask on, both men removed the leather gloves they had been wearing and donned a pair of latex gloves. They stuffed their trousers inside their socks.
With Carmellini in the lead, the two men stealthily descended the stairs.
The laboratory was in the basement, so Chance and Carmellini had to pass through the main floor to get there.
The elevator would be the best way from the top of the building to the bottom, but it might be monitored from the guards’ station at the main entrance. Certainly it should be: nothing could be simpler than to have a warning light come on when the electric motor that ran the elevator engaged. Chance and Carmellini took the stairs.
Carmellini was leading the way now. Using the flashlight, he examined the door to the staircase for alarms, then opened the door a crack and examined the stairwell. Fortunately the stairwell was lit. If this building were in the States it would be festooned with infrared sensors, motion detectors, microphones, and remote cameras controlled from a central station. However, this was Cuba.
At each landing, Carmellini extended a small periscope and looked around the corner.
On the second floor his inspection of the stairs leading down revealed a camera mounted on a wall above the landing, focused on the door in from the main floor. There was probably a camera mounted above the door to the main floor, a camera that looked back toward this camera.
Carmellini studied the camera through the periscope, twisted the magnification to the maximum and refocused. He kept the instrument steady by bracing himself against the wall.
The security camera was fifteen or twenty years old if it was a day. No doubt there were ten or twelve cameras on a sequential switch, so the video from each one was shown in turn on a monitor at the guard’s station. The guard was probably reading something, eating, talking to another guard, if he was paying any attention at all.
From his backpack Carmellini removed a strobe unit and battery. He plugged the thing together, switched on the battery, and waited for the capacitor to charge. The bulb had a set of silver metal feathers around it so that the light could be focused. Carmellini tightened the feathers around the bulb as much as they would go. When the capacitor’s green light came on, he eased the light around the corner, exposing his head for the first time. One quick squint to line up the light, then holding the thing tightly against the wall to steady it, he retracted his head, closed his eyes and buried his head in the crook of his arm. William Henry Chance did likewise. The short, intense burst of light should burn out the camera’s light-level sensor, rendering it inoperative.
The flash was so bright Carmellini saw it through his closed eyelids.
The two men slipped down the stairs. Standing just under the camera that had just been disabled, Carmellini used the periscope again. Yes. Another camera, just over the door to the main floor.
He waited ten more seconds for the capacitor to fully charge, then stuck it around the corner and flashed the light.
“Let’s go!”
With Chance behind him, Tommy Carmellini went down the stairs to the main floor and used his periscope to examine the landing on the stairs leading down. Nothing.
On down to the landing, peeking around the corner.
“Motion detector,” he whispered to Chance.
Chance was breathing heavily inside the mask. It wasn’t the exertion, he decided, but the tension. He must be audible at fifty paces. He tried to ignore the sound of his own rasping and listen.
Were the guards coming? Two cameras were down — had they noticed? Would they come to inspect the things?
Or were the guards congregating right now, calling in troops?
“Microwave or infrared?” Chance asked, referring to the motion detector.
“One of each.”
“Beautiful.”
“Probably two independent systems.”
“Oh, Christ!”
“That’s a poor way to install them, actually. This is old technology, Mission Impossible stuff. We’ll just walk by the infrared detectors — all this clothing will help shield our body heat. If we move right along we should be okay.”
“And the microwave system?”
Carmellini had already removed a device the size of a portable CD player from his backpack. “Jammer,” he said, and examined the controls.
He turned it on and, holding it in front of him, walked down to the motion detectors. The one on the left was the microwave one, with a coaxial cable leading away from it. Carmellini pulled the cable an inch or so away from the wall and wedged the jammer into that space.
“Come on,” he whispered, and opened the door into the basement.
The two men found themselves in a hallway. Directly over their head was a camera that pointed the length of the hall, covering the door halfway down that must lead into the lab.