“Don’t kill him!” Blaine screamed to Wareagle. “Don’t kill him!”
Johnny had already made the connection. His knife split the air and lodged in the fleshy part of the shooter’s wrist. Hollins screamed in agony and let the gun slide to the floor. The knife was buried in his flesh up to the hilt, the blade poking out the other side of his wrist, and blood spreading down the sleeve of his denim shirt.
An instant later Wareagle was holding another knife against the soft flesh of his jugular.
“The abort signal!” Blaine demanded. “Where is it?”
Hollins said nothing.
“You haven’t got the guts to die, Hollins,” Blaine shot out at him. “Tell me or the Indian rips your throat out.”
Hollins’s breathing came fast and hard. His eyes fought to see the blade perched on his throat.
“The abort signal!” Blaine repeated. “Now!”
The clock turned to 7:59.
“There’s a key beneath the center console,” Hollins wheezed. “Turn it.”
Blaine rushed to the center console and followed his instructions. A red button popped up on the console.
“Press it and you’ll activate the abort sequence,” Hollins explained between labored breaths.
Blaine depressed the red button. The console seemed to swallow it.
“Abort system triggered,” a mechanical male voice announced. “Contingency plan now in effect. …”
Blaine and Johnny looked at each other. The clock clicked to 8:00.
“Repeat, contingency sequence now in effect. …”
Blaine yanked Hollins free of Johnny’s grasp and shook him hard. “What just happened? What did I just do?”
Hollins looked up at him with strange calm, quivering from the pain in his wrist. “You can’t win, son. You never could. You haven’t aborted Omega, you’ve merely postponed it. Even now, our satellite has begun shutting down all telecommunications for just a few seconds as a signal to Sahhan’s troops not to abandon their mission, but to wait twenty-four hours till when the communications are shut down again — for good this time. That will be the signal for them to launch their strike. Everything will proceed as planned. Only the sequence will have been affected.”
“But the abort sys—”
“There never was any abort system, son. Terrell’s people learned of it because we wanted them to. Disinformation, you might call it, developed as a final security precaution against a successful penetration of our defenses. Did you really think we’d be foolish enough to leave such a hole in our operation?”
“There’s got to be a way to stop it, Hollins, there’s got to be!”
“Then try to make the computer work.”
Blaine touched one of the console keys. His hand was jolted by a surge of electricity.
“Pressing the abort switch automatically shut down the computer once it had issued its final instructions,” Hollins explained triumphantly. “It will accept no more instructions for thirty-six hours and has been programmed, like our satellite, to defend itself against penetration. It has already beamed a signal to the satellite telling it to activate the complete stage of Omega beginning at eight o’clock tomorrow night, eastern standard time. There’s nothing you can do to stop that now. Not even the computer can stop it. The satellite is on its own. You’ve triggered the Omega command, son.”
“Then I’ll blow your fucking computer up!”
And Blaine grasped the machine gun still lying on the floor.
“Go ahead,” Hollins taunted. “Destroy the computer, and the effects of Omega will become irreversible. There will be no way of telling the satellite to reactivate communications once it has shut them down.”
Blaine let the machine gun slide from his hands. “You bastard! There’s got to be a way!”
“There isn’t. It’s over. You’ve lost, son. The satellite is operating on its own, prepared to trigger the entire operation tomorrow night, and it’s beyond even your reach.”
Blaine’s eyes were still locked on the computer, searching for the impossible. The calm certainty of Hollins’s words lulled his attention away from him long enough for Hollins’s good hand to creep from his pocket holding a small pistol. Blaine saw it and saw Wareagle start in motion from the other side of the room. But he knew the Indian could never reach Hollins in time to prevent him from firing, and neither could he.
Blaine’s hands locked on the rolling desk chair in front of one of the computer terminals. In one sudden, swift action he propelled the chair forward as Hollins’s arm came up to aim.
The chair crashed into him. His legs were yanked from under him and he reeled backward.
Hollins struck the computer with enough force to send 30,000 volts charging through his body, frying him as he stood. His flesh turned purple, and his eyes bulged to twice their normal size, jeans and denim shirt smoking. His mouth dropped for a scream which lasted barely a second before death swallowed it, though the current kept him pinned there, writhing, his entire frame a mass of jittery convulsions.
“The main door, Blainey! They’re almost through it!”
That lifted McCracken from his trance and he rushed with Wareagle into the control room toward the shattered window. A series of ropes ran from the roof to six feet above ground level. Obviously, Wareagle had escaped the battle in the courtyard by way of the roof and then had climbed down the top portion of the rope to gain entry into the command center.
They slid down the rope quickly, hands burned raw from the coat of ice on its strands. When they let go, the cushiony snow broke their falls, and Johnny shot the rope down with a single burst from a machine pistol to prevent the guards from imitating their rapid plunge.
They ran together through the woods toward the dock. Wareagle’s instinctive sense of direction gave him the lead, and before the exertion stole too much of Blaine’s breath away, he was able to think out loud.
“The satellite! It’s the key now. If we destroy it, we destroy Omega!”
“The spirits do not roam the skies, Blainey. We must seek help elsewhere.”
“There’s no time! Who would believe us?”
“We must try,” Wareagle shouted as he ran. “No other choice.”
Suddenly Blaine realized there was. “Florida,” he muttered. “We’ve got to get to Florida. Canaveral.”
That was the last of the conversation between them. They drew closer to the general area of the shoreline, where the boat was docked. Johnny gave his hoot-owl signal. Nightbird would be expecting them now.
They could hear the pounding of boots, everywhere, it seemed, all around them. Both freed their machine guns from their shoulders and ran with the barrels poised and ready. The shoreline was just up ahead, under its thick blanket of snow. The storm showed no signs of letup. If anything, the snow was coming down harder than ever. Blaine and Johnny lunged into a clearing.
Forty yards ahead was the pier. Both strained their eyes. Incredibly, the boatman’s craft was still tied up in place.
Suddenly men dashed in front of them and opened fire. Blaine took a few out with a single spurt, but his position was now forfeit and the shore was clearly held by Wells’s troops. Wells might be lying back in the command center with a pulverized face, but he wasn’t finished with them yet.
From his position of cover in the snow, Blaine could see the troops fanning out between him and the pier. No wonder they had left the boat intact. It was the bait for a trap he and Wareagle had stumbled right into. But what of Sandy, the boatman, and Nightbird?
Then he made out rapid footsteps, crushing the snow well behind him, evidence that more of the troops were giving chase from the mansion. He and Wareagle were surrounded, or would be shortly. There was barely enough time to act.