Thirty minutes had gone past since Skip Locker had last seen Lieutenant Ted Nash. That meant that their planned rendezvous on the second floor of the Pentagon was already ten minutes behind schedule. Locker paced back and forth nervously, unsure of what to do next. Screw him, I've got enough to blow half the people in this building into new careers. I'm not waiting any longer. But in spite of his own words, Skip Locker continued to wait in the hallway of the second floor of ring C, corridor 3, as he had been instructed. While the information he had gotten so far was great, a copy of the terrorist's last teletype message would be a fabulous addition. It would be an extra rocket he could use to guarantee that his career would be launched into the stratosphere.
"Skip — over here!"
"Where the hell have you been?" Locker rushed down the corridor toward where Nash had suddenly appeared out of a doorway. "I thought you said twenty minutes." Locker was out of breath as much from nervousness as from the small amount of running he had just done down the corridor. "I thought maybe I had gone to the wrong place or something."
"No, this is the right place." Without preamble Nash turned and began to walk rapidly down the empty corridor. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Locker was half a step behind. "It took me a few minutes more than I thought it would to get this," he continued as he waved the sheaf of papers in his hand.
"Is that the teletype message?"
"Yes. That, plus a few other things. I'm keeping my end of the bargain, just like you're keeping yours."
"Let me see them." Locker picked up his stride to try to match Nash's pace, but the man's longer legs were too much for him. "Christ, slow down," Locker panted as he broke into a slow trot in order to keep up with the larger man in front of him. "Let me see the messages," he repeated as he reached out to take them.
"No, not here." Nash yanked the sheaf of papers away and held them closer to his chest. "Too much of a risk. There are too many people still in the building."
Locker looked over his shoulder, then back up the corridor. "The place is empty, for chrissake. You could post them on the wall and no one would notice." Locker pointed to a bulletin board as they scurried past, the entire surface plastered with dozens of government notices.
"I'm not taking any chances. I've already taken considerable chances so far."
"Suit yourself." Locker shrugged, more out of resignation than understanding.
"I will." Nash then came to a stop so suddenly that Locker nearly collided with him. "But I intend to live up to my end of our bargain, just like you'll live up to yours. I've got us a place where we can speak freely. A place where you can make copies of whatever documents you need. After that, I've got to return the originals to where they came from before anyone gets wise."
"Naturally." Locker nodded in agreement. He used their brief stop to catch his breath. "But where the hell is this road race taking us? Have you got some specific place in mind?" Locker gestured along an endless row of closed doors that lined the corridor on both sides. "Most of these offices are empty, any one of them would do."
"What I have in mind is better than an office," Nash whispered as he leaned closer to Locker. "A place with a copy machine. A paper shredder. A place where we're guaranteed that no one will bother us. Is that okay?"
"Sure." Locker decided to play along with Nash's nonsense, at least for the few minutes more it would take to get the material he wanted. After that, Nash would become persona non grata in these corridors anyway, so it wouldn't hurt if the Lieutenant got one last look at them. "Where is this spot you've picked out?"
"One of the sub-basement briefing rooms."
"The vaults?"
"Yes."
"Lead the way." Locker had heard about the super-secret rooms in the sub-basement of the building — an area that wasn't even listed in the public documents about the Pentagon. Some of the briefing rooms, it was rumored, were vault-like enclosures with elaborate security locks. They each contained electronic counter-measures designed to prevent anyone outside from penetrating the secret discussions that were conducted inside the room no matter how sophisticated their electronic eavesdropping might be. Locker smiled. That location would add another nice element to his story, an element about how he had to gather information utilizing the very safeguards designed specifically to prevent secret information from getting out of the Pentagon. A bit of irony was always a good counterpoint for any story.
"Follow me." Nash began to move ahead rapidly again. When he reached the staircase he took the steps two at a time, then had to wait at the bottom for Locker to catch up. The two of them started walking again. After they had traveled through a few more corridors and staircases, they were face to face with a steel door that had an electronic locking device on the outside.
"Do you know the code?" Locker pointed to the dozens of buttons on the face of the lock.
"I hope so. If you punch in the wrong code two times in a row, the master siren goes off."
"Christ Almighty." Locker fidgeted — the last thing he needed now was an alarm that brought out the guards. "This isn't necessary, just hand me the papers."
Nash ignored him. He reached forward and began to punch a code into the machine. After a few seconds Nash realized that Locker had been watching over his shoulder too intently. "Don't strain your eyes trying to see these numbers. The code is changed twice a day."
"Oh." Locker smiled sheepishly; he had been caught doing something silly. It had been an especially stupid stunt on his part since he knew damn well that in a few hours he'd never be permitted inside the Pentagon again — not even as a tourist, probably. But that was an insignificant price to pay for a scoop like this. "Just curiosity, nothing more," Locker added in the way of explanation.
"Don't worry about it." Nash punched in the last few numbers, then grabbed the lock and turned it. The silver steel handle spun effortlessly. A few moments later the door itself began to swing inward. "We're almost there."
"Good." Locker glanced at his wristwatch. 8:05. They had wasted a great deal of valuable time with this unnecessary display of secrecy. Still, if this sort of charade was what it took to pry top-secret information out of Nash, Locker was more than happy to go through with it. "Is this the vault?" he asked as he followed Nash down the new corridor that led farther into the bowels of the building.
"No." The two men turned another corner, then entered a staircase. They hustled down first one, then another flight of narrow stairs. Once again they entered another nameless corridor, also lined with closed and locked doors on both sides.
"Here we are." Nash stopped in front of a gray hinged-steel plate that looked more like the internal partition from a warship than anything that belonged inside a building. "This lock has a different code," Nash volunteered as he stooped over the electronic device and began to play with its buttons. After a few seconds a low-toned buzzer sounded briefly, then an amber light above the door flashed on.
"What does that mean?" Locker pointed to the long row of colored lights, although only the amber one was lit.
"It means that the room is ours." Before Nash could add anything else to his explanation the door's buzzer beeped twice and the red signal light above the doorframe flashed on and began to pulsate. "That," Nash said as he pointed toward it, "tells us that the room can't be tampered with from the outside. It's totally ours."
"Wonderful." Locker stepped across the doorsill and he followed Nash in. For some reason he felt particularly uncomfortable in this place, although he had no idea why. The room itself was fifteen feet square, with a wooden conference table in the center surrounded by upholstered chairs. Two rows of overhead fluorescent lights provided the illumination. In the corner were a copy machine and what Locker took to be the paper shredder. "What's behind the partition?" he asked as he pointed to the fiber glass divider that covered part of the adjacent wall.
"Two separate areas. Toilet to the right, kitchen to the left."
"They've got you covered on both ends, huh?" Locker smiled at his own joke.
Nash didn't respond. Instead, he stepped quickly across the room and began to lean his body against the bulk of the heavy metal door. In a few seconds he had pushed it closed. A red light above the interior of the door continued to blink, just like the red light above the outside of the door had. Nash reached for the interior handle and spun it until it locked with an audible click. At that moment, the red light above his head turned from blinking to steady.
"What's the light mean?" Locker asked. He was beginning to enjoy himself, beginning to plan out how this experience would make wonderful material for the inevitable follow-up sidebars that his story on the hijacking would promote.
"It means that the time sequence lock has engaged." Nash leaned back casually against the heavy metal door and folded his arms. "That means that no one can get in — and we can't get out — until the time I've programmed into the machine has elapsed."
"Very good." But there was something in Nash's eyes that told Locker this news was anything but good. "How much time did you set it for?" Locker asked tentatively, his words coming out with far more anxiety than he had intended.
"Sixteen hours from now."
Skip Locker stumbled backward. Sixteen hours! "What the hell... are you... crazy or something?"
"No. Just the opposite." Ted Nash began to smile, for what would be the first time for him that day. "I'm keeping my end of the bargain, just like you intended to keep yours." Nash allowed the deepening grin to play across his face before he continued. "Your problem is that you've got a big mouth, that you've said too much. The major prerequisite for being a good liar is that you need a good memory to pull it off. Quite obviously, it's a requirement you don't meet."
"I don't understand." Locker leaned back against the conference table, still in shock. Snips of scattered thoughts whirled through his mind.
"At the Ground Zero hamburger stand, just before I left you, the last thing I asked was if you wanted a copy of that message from the terrorists. I asked because I wanted to see if you intended to use it — to show it on television, to print it."
"So what?"
"Nothing, except that I'd already told you that the terrorist's message contained their demand for the ransom payment. In your greed you forgot that just one minute before you had given your word that you would never say anything about that aspect of the situation — about the President's decision to pay the ransom. You promised me that you would never print any of that."
"I.. .1 was just..."
"But I could tell what you were really thinking when I offered you that little bit more. A smell of cheese always brings out the rat." Ted Nash shook his head in disgust as he glared down at the man who stood in front of him. "That was a terrific plan you had to get yourself a hot story. I bet you would have gotten a nice promotion out of it, too. The fact that it would have meant the deaths of those hostages meant nothing to you," Nash added with contempt.
Locker stood silently for half a minute. Finally, he began to nod his head in a gesture of acceptance. "I've got to hand it to you," he responded, his voice surprisingly cheerful. He had obviously totally regained his composure. Locker stood upright and waved his hand at Nash. "But I'm afraid I'm still going to get my story. You think you've covered all the angles, but I'm happy to say that I've outsmarted you. I would have preferred to give this story to my editor in person, but that small point doesn't matter now. I've already made provisions for the possibility of a foul-up of some sort. The major point is that, at this very moment," Locker said as he tapped his wristwatch, "one of the people from my office will be picking up a copy of a tape from my locked desk in the reporter's office on the first floor. What it contains," Locker continued, his voice gloating with pride, "is an exact copy of this tape." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the miniature tape recorder he had hidden in there.
"A copy of the tape you made of me? A copy of the explanation of everything that occurred to the hostages, including the business about the ransom demands?"
"Exactly." But as much as he tried to keep the psychological upper hand between them, Locker could tell from the casual way that Nash had figured out what was on the miniature tape recorder that he had already figured that fact out much earlier. Locker shifted his weight nervously as he looked up at the Lieutenant's eyes.
"When your man picks up that tape and plays it," Nash began nonchalantly, "I think he'll be sorely disappointed." Nash rubbed his hands together before he spoke again — the next line was the one he had been looking forward to for the past half hour. "During the time you were waiting for me on the second floor, ring C, corridor three, I was busy elsewhere. Down on the first floor."
"First floor?" Locker winced, although he had no idea what Nash was leading up to.
"Yes. In the reporter's office. Naturally, I couldn't tamper with your desk — a fact I'm sure you were aware of. With the other reporters sitting in the office working on the Air Force budget story, it would have been too much of a risk for me to take. But the one thing I could accomplish inconspicuously was to lay two briefcases at opposite corners of your desk."
"Briefcases?" Locker was perplexed, none of it made sense to him. He had already figured that no one could break into his desk with the reporters working in the room. But Nash had done something else. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"About technology, my friend." Ted Nash took one step toward the center of the room where Locker stood. "About modern solid state circuits. About two powerful electromagnets that, in the span of just a few seconds, can completely erase everything recorded on a tape. Your tape. In case you're not aware of it, erasing a tape is done magnetically. If a magnet is strong enough, it can erase a recorded tape from several feet away." Nash paused long enough to allow Locker to finish with the low groan that had begun when the facts about erasing tapes were being explained to him.
"Damn it, but I know the truth!" Locker suddenly shouted. "You can't keep us here forever! When the door opens, I'll march out of here and tell the world what happened!" Locker gestured toward the steady red light above the steel door with a trembling hand. "You haven't outsmarted me, you've just delayed me!"
"Don't bet on it," Nash answered calmly. "Because it will be your word against mine. It'll be your word against everyone's — the President, the Pentagon staff, the hostages. You've got zero proof. If you stop and think about it for a minute, that means that you've effectively got no story. Add that to one other factor — that you can't get any story into print until long after all the other news services have already covered it. If you say anything about a ransom payment, I'm willing to bet that it'll look like pure fiction — some calculated invention on your part to cover your own lack of a scoop." Nash smiled broadly, then rubbed his hands together once again. "By the way, there is one additional thing."
"What?"
Nash pointed a few feet away, to the miniature tape player that Locker had laid on the conference table moments before. "I'm going to take the tape out of that cute little machine of yours. Then I'm going to feed that tape into the shredder. But before I do, I think I should advise you," Nash continued, his words slowing down so their meaning would be totally clear, "that when I'm finished shredding that tape I'm going to spend a little extra time on you."
"Keep your hands off me." Locker backed a few feet away from the conference table, until the back of his legs bumped into one of the upholstered chairs. "I'm warning you, you'd better leave me alone." Locker had tried to sound forceful, but instead the result came out more as a plea than a threat.
"I'm going to go over you carefully, to be certain that you don't have another copy of that unfortunate tape stuck away somewhere on your person," Nash said, as if Locker had just said nothing. He knew there was probably no other copy of the tape, but the opportunity to harass Locker — even slightly — was too nice an option to pass up.
"There isn't any other tape. I swear it."
"Like you told me that you wouldn't let out the facts about the ransom payment? No, I'm afraid you're out of chances to tell the truth." Nash took half a step toward where Locker was standing. "I don't think you have any idea how much trouble you've caused. I had to explain everything to Captain Martin. He was nice enough to give me a chance to try to get out of this situation on my own. He said that would be the only way I would stand half a chance of saving my ass, since there could obviously never be a public court martial for me to defend myself at."
"No court martial? What does that mean?"
"If they court-martialed me, the Navy would be admitting that I had been involved in something highly secret. Since none of this ransom business officially occurred, it stands to reason that I couldn't have told anyone about it."
"They sure are treating you rotten." Locker had spoken the line with feigned empathy, in the hopes that he could get Nash to nibble at the bait, to get Nash to feel that this event had turned into a battle of the two of them against the Navy.
"For ten cents I'd put your face through that steel wall," Nash answered through clenched teeth, even though he made no overt move toward Locker. "Don't try that psychological crap on me, I've already made up my mind." Nash exhaled slowly, then began to shake his head. "How do you think I got this briefing room, by telling the brass that I wanted to picnic down here? Martin authorized this room for me so I could try to paddle upstream. The way it stands right now, I think I stand a slight chance that I won't be busted out of the Navy." Nash shrugged in despair. "When this door opens in sixteen hours, my problems are just going to begin. It serves me right for dealing with someone like you. But at least I managed to prevent you from endangering the lives of those innocent hostages."
"Listen, I can help you out of this," Locker blurted out. "I'll tell them..."
"You're a son-of-a-bitch." Nash took another step forward. "You don't understand how damn little you're going to be able to help anyone, at least around here. I'm only sorry that you haven't broken any actual laws so we could string you up."
"That's right, I haven't broken any laws. Just remember that." Locker looked across the conference table defiantly.
"That's true. When this door opens, you're a free man. You can walk out. But until then, I think that I can convince you to cooperate with me to the fullest." Nash smiled broadly, then flexed the tensed muscles in his arms. Rough him up, just a little. Like Captain Martin said, then maybe he wouldn't be so quick to pull this kind of crap in the future.
"I haven't broken any laws!"
"That's true, very true." Ted Nash took slow and deliberate strides toward where Skip Locker had begun to cower in the far corner of the locked conference room.
<>
"It is now 9:30," Olga Rodriguez said as she held up her wristwatch for the others to see.
"Let's get on with it. We can't wait forever."
"I'll be the judge of that." Jerome Zindell looked across the submarine's small wardroom table toward where Ed McClure sat. On top of everything else, the man had taken what was customarily the Captain's chair, the one with the high upholstered seatback. It was a fact that Zindell had decided to ignore, but he certainly didn't intend to ignore any more of McClure's challenges to his authority. "With the current situation on the Yorktown, we'll have to remain flexible. I'm not certain that we should surface quite yet."
"I agree with the Captain," Clifton Harrison said. He ran his hand across his bushy beard, then began to speak again in cool and measured tones. "We have to assume that Yang's last transmission was cut off because he was somehow overpowered by the hostages. Remember that the message he got out just before the transmission ended was that he was experiencing some sort of problem." Harrison leaned forward and placed his elbows on the green plastic tablecloth. "Since he hasn't transmitted again during the last hour — and, from what we can tell, he hasn't left the Yorktown — then there's no other logical explanation for what happened."
"What the hell difference does it make?" McClure sat farther back, in an exaggerated display of casualness. He took another toothpick out of his shirt pocket and popped it into his mouth. "When you think about it, it only means that there's more gold for each of us. From now on, control of the Yorktown is no more than an academic point."
"How can you be so sure?" Zindell didn't want to be in a position of needing to ask for McClure's opinion, but this unexpected change in plans had rattled him and he knew it. Don't play super commander. Ask your officers for help whenever you need it. As always, his father's words made a great deal of sense to him, although Zindell knew damn well that his father would never have asked a man like McClure for so much as the time of day.
"The problems aboard the Yorktown are unfortunate, but I agree that they are really of no consequence." As Olga spoke she looked across the table at Harrison, then allowed her eyes to scan either side toward both McClure and Zindell. "It was hours earlier when we received the message from Yang that both the ship's engines had been permanently disabled."
"That's right," McClure nodded. "Yang also confirmed that he had destroyed the radios inside the airliner, and also the small transmitter on the ship's bridge. His emergency radio works on only one frequency — which means that if the hostages use it, they can only contact us." McClure smiled broadly. "So what if they've managed to string up Yang and his friends by their balls? By now the hostages must realize that all they've managed to do is give themselves a bigger area to roam in. Instead of being locked inside the hangar bay, they're now trapped onboard a ship that's lying dead in the water — and with no way of communicating with the outside world."
"What about the skiff? Do you think they might try to use that small boat to escape?" Zindell turned his body so that he could rest the stump of his left arm against the sidewall. He then looked around the table as he waited for an answer.
Harrison was the first to speak. "Even if they tried, that one small boat won't hold more than a couple dozen of them. There are no other serviceable skiffs on the Yorktown, Yang had already taken care of that. If they do launch that skiff, we'd probably hear its engine on our sonar. Then we could ram and sink it, if we wanted to."
"Or even let them go, for all the difference it would make."
"That's no good," McClure interrupted. He glared at Olga, to show her that her last comment about letting some of the hostages escape did not sit well with him. "They should go down with that ship, every damn one of them. That's the only way to tell for sure that none of them know anything about who we are or what we intend to do. Yang might've figured out more than we told him and — take it from me — he wouldn't be much of a tough nut to crack." McClure's cold, intimidating smirk played across his lips. "Speaking of nuts, if they put Yang's nuts in a vise he'd sing like a choir boy."
"Okay." Zindell rocked forward in his seat and strummed his fingers nervously against the wardroom table. "I see your point." He knew it was time for a decision, that he had put off making one for as long as he could. "We've waited long enough. I've got to get the Trout on the surface very soon in order to charge the batteries or we're going to have an electrical problem during our submerged portion of the escape run." Zindell stood up, then turned around in the narrow confines of the wardroom. "I'm going to check with Moss one more time, to be certain that there's no sign of activity from the Yorktown. When he convinces me that the ship is still dead in the water and that there's no one else out there, I'll come back for you. At that time, we'll surface the boat." Without waiting for a reply from them, Zindell stepped into the corridor that led from the wardroom, then turned aft toward the control room of the Trout.
"We're a full hour behind our planned schedule, and our fearless leader still wants to wait longer." But McClure had waited until the sound of Zindell's footsteps had faded down the corridor before he had said anything. He took the chewed-over toothpick out of the corner of his mouth and flung it toward the rear wall of the wardroom. It landed on the shelf where the coffeepot sat. "I'm getting damned tired of this bullshit."
"So am I — except that I think that most of the bullshit is coming from you."
"Is that so?" McClure sat expressionless, as if Harrison's comment had not been directed solely at him.
"Yes." Harrison sat a few inches farther forward on his chair. "Take your recommendations about the disposal of the explosives, for example. That's one line of bullshit that might come back to haunt us."
"How?"
"We should have had Yang dump those explosives he took from the airliner overboard, rather than hiding them on the ship."
"It's not a good policy to get rid of munitions. You never know when you might need them."
"That's asinine. All you've done is given the hostages a chance to find them."
"No chance at all. I personally told Yang where to hide the explosives."
"Based on what I've seen of your planning so far, that news doesn't thrill me."
"Please," Olga interrupted before McClure could respond. "Let us not get into this. It is already, done, finished. It is pointless to talk about." But even as she watched Harrison, she could see that his words were actually more about something other than what he was saying. This was the first time that the three of them had been alone together, and it was evidently creating a bad effect on Harrison. Whether he knew for certain what had gone on between her and McClure or had only guessed at it, it made no matter, because the results were the same. "Perhaps we should go to the control room to see how the Captain is doing," Olga said nervously.
"No." Harrison gestured for her to stay where she was. "We're going to follow the Captain's orders. He told us to stay here."
"Very well." Olga wanted to look toward McClure, but she was afraid of doing something even as innocent as turning her head. He is insanely jealous. He is also afraid of McClure. Those factors together will make him irrational. Olga could read Harrison's fear of McClure as easily as if it were in letters on a billboard. "Let us not bicker over small points, the major job goes well. It is something we can be proud of."
"Sure. Proud as hell." Harrison had answered tersely, his angry words aimed at Olga. "But some of the things we've done lately aren't worth being proud of. Do you agree?"
"It is pointless to talk this way," Olga repeated, her voice as calm and as soothing as she could make it. This man is too jealous, yet also too afraid. He is irrational. He is violent. With the hand that was beneath the table, Olga carefully unbuttoned the fastener around the top of her pearl-handled knife. She drew the knife out of its sheath, careful to keep her actions slow enough so as not to draw notice to any movement.
"Don't tell me what the hell a pointless act is and what isn't!" Harrison's voice was nearly shrill. He began to hunch his body farther forward in his seat and he ran his trembling fingers back and forth through his beard. "I don't need any lectures! Not from a whore like you!"
"Then what sort of whore would you like to hear a lecture from?" Those were the first words McClure had spoken since he had answered Harrison's question about the explosives. McClure turned his body slightly so he faced Harrison fully, then slowly slid both his hands to the top of the wardroom table. "Maybe you'd rather hear it from someone else. Maybe you'd like to hear a lecture from a whore like your mother."
Clifton Harrison leaped across the table like an overwound spring, his body nearly on top of McClure before the other man had so much as raised his hands in defense. "You bastard! I'll kill you!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, the pent-up emotions of jealousy and hatred triggered by an insult that actually meant very little to him. Coffee cups and ashtrays flew off the table in all directions and crashed loudly against the metal walls and flooring. "I'll kill you!" Harrison shouted again, this time his words partially choked by the wild gyrations that he and McClure had locked themselves into.
"Stop! Both of you!" Olga staggered to her feet, then backward against the wall as she watched in horror as the two men continued their violent struggle. Their arms and legs kicked and flew in all directions and their bodies rolled back and forth several times across the small wardroom table before they finally fell, locked together, heavily to the floor. But somehow Harrison had gotten the advantage and had pushed his body on top of McClure's. Harrison then began to pound his fist senselessly into McClure's face, shoulders and chest, although the blows were partially deflected because of the awkward angle he was at.
He is a murderer. Without realizing what she was about to do, Olga rushed forward. She held the pearl-handled knife in her extended hand.
The stainless-steel blade of the knife caught Harrison squarely in the back, less than an inch to the left of his spine. The long blade buried itself quickly through his flesh and, before Olga became aware of what she had done, it had sliced the man's heart nearly in two. Harrison went limp instantly, his arms and legs sprawling out across McClure's body.
"God Almighty! What happened?!" Zindell stood at the entrance to the wardroom. He looked down at the two bodies on the floor. Even as he watched, a torrent of blood began to flow from the hole around the imbedded blade of the pearl-handled knife stuck in the middle of Harrison's back. "What happened, for God's sake?"
"Nothing." McClure shoved the inert body off him and rolled to his feet. He took a few deep breaths, then turned to face Zindell again. "A difference of opinion."
"What?" Zindell looked at McClure incredulously, then back at the body sprawled on the floor.
"A difference of opinion, that's all." McClure also glanced down at Harrison's body. He then looked up at Olga. She stood a few feet away, her mouth still open, her arms hanging slack at her sides. "Your Executive Officer here," McClure said as he gestured toward Harrison's body, "had decided that he wanted me to die." McClure began to rebutton his shirt and to brush the dirt off his pants. "But I'm happy to report that your third in command wanted me to live." McClure flashed a big smile at Olga, then stepped over Harrison's body as if it weren't even there. "The only thing I can figure," McClure said as he stepped out of the wardroom and turned to walk down the stretch of corridor that led to the center of the submarine, "is that she figures that I'll be a good man to have around."