Intrigued, Blaine watched the men in the fields more closely; not the men specifically but their actions and mannerisms. These did not appear to be radical amateurs turned into murderous pros in ten easy lessons. There was a swiftness to their movements, a sureness in their stride, professional sureness.
McCracken was still trying to reconcile this when a piercing siren went off. His heart leaped into his mouth and he felt panic rise with it. They knew security had been breached. The hundreds of soldiers off in the fields were sprinting closer to the main complex. Blaine held his ground and his breath.
From over a thin rise a pair of tanks followed by more heavy equipment appeared with men trotting in step behind the machines. So they were calling out the heavy stuff to bring him in. …
Then Blaine relaxed. The troops were just falling in, forming neat, precise rows on the edge of the cement area that contained the storage buildings and barracks. They were simply—
Blaine’s mind stopped pondering. He squinted his eyes, then rubbed them. He could see the troops clearly now and what he saw was impossible.
It couldn’t be. Yet it was.
Every single man was white.
McCracken’s phone call from Paris had deeply disturbed Andrew Stimson. A Christmas Eve strike by a revolutionary black group was bad enough. But add the involvement of someone like Randall Krayman and obviously even more was going on.
McCracken claimed Krayman was financing the PVR’s supply of weapons. Why? What could the mysterious billionaire possibly have to gain from such an association? Stimson knew little about the man and had put a team of researchers on to him immediately after Blaine’s phone call.
He would have stayed through the night himself, but fatigue finally consumed him. He had slept barely at all these past few days, and it was finally catching up with him. After he dozed off for the third time at his desk, Stimson figured it was time to call it quits for the day. He called his bodyguards and had his car brought to the front of Gap headquarters.
The procedure was standard these days for high-ranking government officials, even clandestine ones like Stimson. Two cars with two bodyguards in each, one behind and one in front. Usually he opted to drive his car himself because he enjoyed the solitude and loathed the helpless feeling of being driven around. Tonight he had almost called for a driver, then figured handling the chore himself would do him good.
Stimson climbed behind the wheel of his standard issue sedan and signaled his lead car to take off. The second one would hang back slightly, guarding against attack from the rear.
A freezing drizzle had begun earlier that evening, and by the time the procession hit the middle of a surprisingly barren expressway, a steady snow had started up and the roads were icy slick. Automatically, Stimson turned up his windshield wipers and switched the climate control to defrost. The wipers streaked unevenly across the icy glass, but Stimson barely noticed, too much else on his mind.
Obviously, Randall Krayman was using Sahhan because the Christmas Eve strike was part of a far more extensive plan. The implications promised to be catastrophic, with the PVR providing merely a spark.
Behind Stimson, the following car began to close the gap.
The Gap chief shuddered. Thank God for Blaine McCracken, he thought. No other agent confined by rules and regulations could have gotten this far. Stimson had been right in utilizing his skills.
The following car had moved still closer, not more than twenty yards back now.
Stimson checked the rearview mirror and felt something was wrong even before he realized one of the car’s headlights was out. Both had been working when they passed onto the expressway. Something must have happened back there while his thoughts had been elsewhere. The cars had been switched, his bodyguards taken out, and now the enemy was close enough to spit on.
Stimson heard the roar of the engine as the car accelerated and drew up alongside him in the other lane. He floored his own pedal and started blasting the horn in the hope of attracting the attention of his men in the lead car.
Both windows on the strange car’s passenger side slid open.
Stimson’s throat clogged with panic, but he didn’t give in to it, even as black barrels were being steadied on the sills. Part of him was still a field man. Part of him responded the only way possible.
Still holding the pedal to the floor and drawing closer to the lead car, Stimson veered sharply to the left, hoping to crunch the opposition’s vehicle and thus buy enough time for the lead car to drift back.
It almost worked. Metal had just smacked against metal when the barrels blazed red and Stimson heard the glass around him shatter only after slivers of it had jammed into his flesh among the dozens of lead pellets stealing his life away. He tried to breathe, but his air was gone along with the steering wheel. He felt himself slumping, eyes locked painfully open, when another volley tore away his last grip on life. The trailing car slammed back into his and sent it careening madly for the guard rail, up and over the metal in a single leap down into a darkness that broke into flames on impact.
Then death.
Chapter 18
The ramifications of what he was seeing were lost only briefly on McCracken as the shock subsided.
There were not one, but two armies! One white and the other black. And Randall Krayman was financing both!
Blaine’s mind could make no sense of it. There was too much happening too fast. He needed time to put things together.
If Sahhan’s troops were being utilized on Christmas Eve, then where did these come in? As a supplement perhaps?
No, that didn’t wash. The mix of the two armies would prove more volatile than their collective mission. Besides, these white troops were professional mercenaries. Compared to them, Sahhan’s army of fanatics were rank amateurs whose greatest weapons would be shock and surprise. The men he was watching now lined up squarely in rows wouldn’t need either. A similar number of these could—
Another siren wailed, breaking Blaine’s train of thought. The men scattered in all directions, but mostly for the barracks. The leaders walked off together, leaving a small group of sentries to watch over the field and heavy equipment. Men were coming toward him from all angles and Blaine knew it wouldn’t be long before the body of the real guard would be discovered.
He walked away from his post toward the fields, hidden by the similarly dressed men he passed among. He held the M-16 across his shoulder a bit tighter and felt in the gun belt for the exact location of its extra clips. For no particular reason he headed toward the target range, where mechanical dummies had made for realistic practice. Above him loomed a guard tower with men manning binoculars and a powerful machine gun. He did his best to appear to be doing what he was supposed to, moving slowly at the pace of an on-duty sentry.
His eyes turned back toward the storage hangar just before he reached the field. The commotion was obvious. The men with berets were sprinting toward a large group of soldiers in their practice fatigues. The guard’s body had been discovered. Blaine cursed the sun for not setting earlier in the damn Caribbean. Darkness would have shielded the man’s body indefinitely.
He reached the field, glad he had chosen it since it was the farthest from the base complex and in the proper direction to reach the airstrip. Instinctively, he had begun to contemplate escape. He had learned everything he was going to here on San Melas and nothing he had been expecting. The puzzle merely had more pieces thrown in. He would walk straight across the field, over the ridge, and make his way to the airstrip. Sooner or later another craft would take off and somehow he would have to make himself a passenger.