The helicopter was completely beneath the line of the ridge now. Lieberman could see that the centre was built on a huge overhang of rock that had somehow been left behind in the natural erosion of the original mountain. 'Bob, they checked those places you mentioned. I saw them doing it. They put a team down with ropes and stuff, and looked inside.'
The thin face glared at him. 'The obvious ones. Don't you think these people expect that? It's in the bomber's psychology. You pick the places you know people will look. And put the real nasty somewhere else altogether. Somewhere you'd never think of looking.'
Lieberman watched the cliff face move past them at a snail's pace, felt the vast gap between him and the ground below turn into something physical, something he could touch. 'Make this quick, for God's sake.'
'One pass, that's all. Around the ridge. And I'm probably wrong, let me say that straightaway. This is doubtless me just being downright awkward.'
'You said it,' Lieberman replied, and tried to stifle a burp.
The machine moved another few feet along the cliff face. They were now beneath the massive spur of rock, in the shadow of the overhang that supported the command centre. And there was nothing to see. Nothing at all. He felt Mo's hand on his shoulder.
'What's going on, Michael?' He shook his head. The pilot was trying to work the radio, cursing all the time.
'Problems?'
The pilot grimaced. 'It's blocked by the mountain. I can't even talk to them if we do see something. I'll just have to break off.'
'Bob…' Lieberman wanted to yell at this man, wanted to seize the stick on this thing and guide them gently, swiftly down to solid earth. Hanging like this in the thin and burning afternoon air was insane. 'There is nothing here. It's straight underneath the outcrop. You couldn't get at it even if you tried. That's why they didn't look.'
'No?'
The helicopter swung around a corner of the rock face, and the pilot said, 'Then what the hell is that?'
Lieberman looked at it in silence. As they shifted around the mountain, it was coming into full view, with the machine now edging toward ten feet from the mouth. And there was no mistaking this. Below, through the glass panels beneath their feet, you could see the winding, narrow track, invisible from a distance, that led to the place. This was some kind of disused, ancient mine entrance, an opening that spanned a good thirty feet in diameter, with nothing but blackness beyond.
'Bloody idiots,' Davis said. 'I knew they should have looked here. There could be any number of these things hidden in the lee of the peak.'
'What are you going to do?' Lieberman asked.
'What can I do? We'll fall back to the other side of the valley, I'll be able to radio them from there, and then we're going home. I'm damned if I'm hanging around here doing their dirty work for them.'
'Sounds good to me. You think that — '
And he stopped, pulled the headset off, knew that this was more important than anything else right then. Mo was screaming, over and over, frantic, hysterical, and for a moment he couldn't see why. 'Look!' she yelled.
In the mouth of the opening, emerging from the blackness, was a solitary figure: a woman dressed in khaki overalls, moving slowly forward into the light. Lieberman blinked. She had bright red hair, so bright it seemed unnatural.
'Oh Jesus,' the pilot said quietly to himself, then hit the throttle. The helicopter pitched up and started to move backward, turning slowly on its axis. Lieberman stared at the woman, trying to work out what this strange, shapeless thought was that kept running around the shadows in his head.
'She's not armed,' he said. Then he put the headset back on, repeated, 'Bob, she's not armed.' The helicopter was moving so wildly now, thrusting them from side to side, he thought he might lose all contact with what was up, what was down.
'She doesn't need to be,' the pilot said quietly, and then the sun was on them, pouring through the glass canopy of the machine. 'Base One.'
He yelled into the mike. No one returned the call. 'Base One!'
Climbing, turning. Lieberman didn't want to try to work out which way they were even facing now, so he focused back on the fast-disappearing mouth of the mine in the rock face instead. The figure was no longer there. The machine popped up above the flat level line of the helipad, fifty feet away, still ascending, still shifting back toward the sea.
'Base One!'
'Base One, we read you,' said a bored voice. 'You're supposed to be long gone from here, friend.' The engine screamed higher; it felt as if they were being pulled into the sun.
'You have intruders in a tunnel underneath the facility,' the pilot yelled. The radio was quiet for a couple of long seconds.
'Location?' It was Capstick's voice.
'A disused mine about three hundred feet below your level, just around the corner of the overhang, going back into the mountain. If you have people at ground level, they can get in through a path that leads up from the valley. You may need ropes.'
'Can you get there?' Capstick asked.
'We've been there, mate, and we're not going back. We can't land and we can't do a damn thing except sit there waiting for them to start firing.'
The line went dead. Lieberman looked at the pilot. The engine had lost some of its frenzy. The machine was edging back over the valley, rising steadily, on its way home.
'Hold position,' Capstick said.
'Negative, we have civilians on board.'
'Well, put them down somewhere, man. We need you to point these bastards out.'
Lieberman looked at Mo in the back. She was terrified, plain terrified, with Annie clinging to her. And Davis was wavering. Military men, he thought. It was hard to shake it from your blood.
'I can't just leave them,' the pilot said. 'If I find somewhere close by I can…'
You can what? Lieberman almost asked the question. It seemed a reasonable one under the circumstances. But there was something in the way, and it was half-noise, half-light too. It sat, ominous and golden between all of them, like a fiery beast taking in breath. And then it roared, exhaling, screaming, loud and blinding, blotting out everything else there with its vast, shimmering presence.
The machine bucked and wheeled. The pilot was wrestling the stick, forcing the throttle ever higher, trying to climb away from this thing. And beneath them, everywhere, was dust, a huge, swirling ocean of brown, alive and billowing, racing out from the ledge beneath the command centre, out toward them, with powdery fingers and fiery breath.
Lieberman looked at the base and thought: This is a sight that lives with you forever, stays imprinted on the cells of your neural fibres until they cease to function.
A bright, searing line of fire ran from the foot of the outcrop, close to where they found the mouth of the shaft, diagonally upward and inward, toward the massive heel where the projecting spur met the mountain, eating the rock like a fissure in a volcano, rising, destroying, weakening as it ran. There was a second explosion, a ball of fire roaring out of the rock. The pilot looked nervously at them. 'Brace yourselves, the shock comes after.'
Lieberman watched, clinging to the door handle in the helicopter to try to minimize the discomfort of the buffeting. The spur of rock on which the centre stood was failing, its integrity destroyed by the blasts. Tiny, distant figures, like racing ants, ran around the crumbling buildings, tried to cling to the structure, unable to second-guess which way it would twist and turn as it crumbled into dust. He watched and thought: Charley? Maybe the CIA woman is right. People do change that much. And then the view was obscured by a vast, billowing cloud of dust that raced toward them, the engine was screaming, the helicopter fighting to gain some height.