The Omega Command (23 page)

McCracken aimed the tank around to where most of the troops were dispersing. He dabbed at his brow and decided his next and last targets would be the greatest concentrations of men. Perhaps in the confusion he might slip away. Perhaps—

Wait! Confusion, that was it! The
ultimate
in confusion had to be created if he was to escape. Blaine gave the accelerator pedal more pressure and reached over the T-bar for a pair of buttons. The tank’s front-mounted, twin machine guns responded by cutting down those troops brave enough to chance a rush at the iron monster.

He swung the M60 to the left and angled it for the storage hangar he had come from originally. He had just come in line with the front of the building, when an armor-piercing shell ripped into the side of his tank, spraying dust and debris into the cabin. The smell of burnt metal and wires flooded his nostrils.

“Come on, baby,” McCracken urged out loud. “Hold together for just a little longer. …”

The tank seemed to hear him and obey, limping forward with one tread crippled as more explosions outside battered Blaine’s ears. He swung the turret in the direction they were coming from and fired the big gun quickly without taking proper aim. The shell landed short but bought him the last seconds he needed.

The counter clicked down to “1.”

He crashed the M60 through the hangar’s heavy doors, rolled right through them with the turret swinging back to the front. The T-bar shook in his hands and he had to twist it in crazed patterns to compensate for the crippled tread. The targeting scope was equipped with infrared, so even in the darkness he had no trouble locating the corner he remembered the crates of grenades had been stored in. With the tank struggling forward, knocking crates from its path, Blaine fired his last rocket.

The results were immediate. And spectacular.

That entire portion of the building went up in a blinding fireball, the intense heat and flames reaching out to consume box after box of other explosives and ammunition. Blaine was out of the M60’s cabin an instant before the flames reached his area, and he rushed away as they licked at his back. An explosion catapulted him through the air and he felt himself strike the floor as another blast ripped out the wall before him. With the onrush of flames serving as his cover, Blaine crawled back outside. On the base there was total havoc. Order had collapsed. Troops ran in every direction with no idea of what they should be doing in such a situation. The commando leaders were shouting commands, but it was useless. Explosions kept sounding in the storage hangar, which had become a formless mass of construction tumbling in upon itself to be swallowed by the raging flames.

McCracken’s face was charred black and he was bleeding superficially in a number of areas. As he moved through the chaos, he saw many others who looked much the same, especially those who had followed orders to battle the fire with hoses bearing insufficient pressure. Then, above it all, a voice crackled over the loudspeaker.

“Attention all personnel! Attention all personnel! Prepare immediately for evacuation to Newport com-center. Repeat, prepare immediately for evacuation to Newport com-center. Trucks will begin leaving for the airfield in five minutes. Trucks will begin leaving for the airfield in five minutes.”

They were abandoning ship, Blaine thought. I’ve accomplished that. And destroyed a prime weapons cache to boot.

Newport com-center …

What in hell was that? No matter, McCracken figured, it’s my chance for escape regardless.

He burst through a barracks door, where men were feverishly packing gear, and found an unoccupied bed and foot locker. In the near darkness and confusion no one took much notice of his features through the grime and blood that covered them. He would be fine so long as the bed’s true occupant didn’t make an untimely return.

Blaine redressed in shapeless green fatigues and rummaged around their owner’s foot locker to find sufficient packing for a duffel bag as the others were doing. He would do everything just as the others did. They were his ticket off the island.

He moved from the barracks, duffel bag in hand, with the second rush of men through the door. The fire was now totally out of control. It had spread to neighboring structures in the face of facilities utterly inadequate to fight it. Blaine ran toward the trucks near the motor pool and hurled himself into the back of one. Its darkness soothed him. Feeling cocky, he extended helping hands to the last of those who crowded in the back and shoved around to find seating space. A number gave up and settled on the floor. McCracken managed to find a spot on the bench way in the back near the truck’s cab.

The truck rumbled to a start, lurched forward in one grinding lunge, and then another. The engine, not yet warm, resisted, but the driver pushed the machine until its gears ground in protest. Blaine followed the path they were taking as best he could through the open tailgate. It was smooth-going through the length of the complex until they reached the hardened dirt road that would lead them to the airfield. Blaine recognized its coarse feeling from the trip in and found it little more comfortable outside a crate than inside.

His fear of being recognized as an impostor had evaporated by the time the caravan of trucks reached the airstrip. Enough eyes had met his and turned away routinely to convince him that where the darkness and grime stopped being his ally, he was aided by the fact that these men had apparently remained strangers to each other through their training.

That led him to the conclusion that their training had not lasted long and to wonder how many had come before them.

Newport com-center …

What if this destination was one of many spots across the country Krayman’s white mercenary troops had been airlifted to? Blaine had to assume that Sahhan’s PVR cells were already in place in similarly strategic areas. Two separate armies, both prepared to strike, both financed by Randall Krayman. But where was the connection?

The questions and puzzles kept battering Blaine’s mind as he sat in the crowded cargo hold of one of the transports streaking through the sky. He had overheard someone calling out the flight coordinates earlier and thus knew that the Newport of their destination was the one in Rhode Island—quite fortunate since he had spent a month some years back resting and recuperating from an especially grueling mission on the prestigious community’s famed beaches. He remembered the area well enough to suit his needs.

Blaine dozed a few times through the eight-hour flight, which ended harshly on an abandoned airfield at nearly three A.M. The troops stretched and shook themselves awake, trying to beat back the sluggishness the long trip had brought on. Once the plane came to a halt, the men closest to the doors slid them open and let down the ramps. Blaine walked out in the middle of the group and felt the cold air assault him on contact. Paris had been bearable and San Melas steaming, so a return to the unusually early winter cold was shocking. All the troops looked to be shivering. But the bereted leaders shouted at them and pointed them in the direction of a hangar which might have been a giant icebox.

After so long in darkness, even the temporary fluorescent lighting burned Blaine’s eyes. He shielded them as he took his place in line, leaving his duffel bag by his feet and making sure his face was covered. The rows of men were neat and orderly. The troops stood halfway at attention in the cold. Beyond a window crusted with a combination of ice and dirt, Blaine noticed a few of the leaders conferring with a giant of a man wearing a civilian overcoat. Even from this distance, the big man did not look pleased. The men beyond the window dispersed, and moments later a raspy, slurred voice echoed through the hangar over a P.A.

“The unfortunate incidents on San Melas change nothing,” the voice began. “You know what you have to do, where and when you have to meet up. Your weapons are ready for you, along with fresh clothes, cash, and additional paperwork where required. Everything becomes routine from here. Just stick to your orders as precisely outlined unless you hear differently from your station leader providing the proper access code. The abort and regroup signals are uniform nationwide to avoid confusion. Please follow your orders in the days ahead
exactly.
The time is almost upon us. Be ready and stay alert. That is all.” The troops swung toward the doors at the front of the hangar as if on cue, and Blaine swung with them. He was still digesting the shadowy speaker’s words, when his row began to move in single file toward the exit. There was only this door to pass through and he would be free.

He was almost to it when a hand grasped his shoulder and shoved him around. He found himself looking up at the horribly mangled grin of a figure with only half a face and a gun in his hand.

“I’ve been expecting you, McCracken,” said Wells.

Part Four
Newport

Tuesday Morning to Wednesday Morning

Chapter 19

THE FIGURE RAN
through the thickening snow, a furtive eye cast to his rear at regular intervals as if expecting a great beast to pounce upon him. He had run often since coming to these woods years before. His route was never the same, no concrete destination or purpose. He ran mostly when memories of the hellfire grew too near, ran as if to widen the gap separating him from them.

But today was different. Today he ran from a sense of wrongness, a feeling that something was out of balance. He was a huge man but his feet made only the slightest impression in the hard-packed Maine snow and his steps produced barely a sound. The old ones had taught him that anything was possible if one achieved balance, that of the spirit as important as that of the body and the world about. The three existed as one, none set into place unless all were. Today all were not.

Because something
was
coming. Not a great beast with dagger teeth and razor claws; something less defined but equally deadly. He could liken this feeling only to that which often preceded an ambush in the hellfire. He had survived on those occasions by heeding the sense of imbalance when it came, slight tremors which warned him when Charlie was about to spring from one of his innumerable tunnels.

But there was nothing slight about what he felt now. It reached out for him from the shadows, only to dart back when he swung around. Soon, though, he knew it would show itself.

And he knew he would be there when it did.

“It’s been a long time, Wells. Last time we met I think you had your whole face.”

Wells shoved him hard and all at once a half-dozen men with rifles enclosed McCracken. A van skidded to a halt. One of the men threw open the back doors.

“Get in,” Wells ordered.

Blaine started to, but then turned back to the guards.

“Has Pretty Boy here led you on any massacres lately?”

It went back to ’Nam in 1969. Wells and McCracken had been in different divisions of the Special Forces. Blaine had known the war was unwinnable from his first month in. The Viet Cong had built tunnels under the whole country. Troops appeared out of nowhere and disappeared the same way. Traps, mines, ambushes—it was a guerrilla war, the Cong’s war. But Blaine went about his business nonetheless with as much dignity and honor as the circumstances would allow.

His division had come upon the town of Bin Su in early March, and to this day the sight haunted him. The entire town—women and children included—had been slaughtered. Bodies and pieces of bodies lay everywhere, obviously there had been torture and, most hideous of all, a collection of heads had been staked to fence posts, where they had been used for target practice. Every code of ethics had been violated. Someone had to pay.

Blaine was warned to back off and told the adjutant to stick a Huey up his ass. The Cong was the enemy, but they were also people and there were rules in the field that had to be obeyed. Forget them and something far more important than this war would be lost. It took a month, and the help of a crazy lieutenant who happened to be an American Indian, but he tracked down the unit responsible for Bin Su. It was under the command of Vernon Wells.

Then Blaine made his only mistake. He should have killed Wells instead of turning him in. Or have let the lieutenant scalp him, as he had begged Blaine to let him do. As it was, the whole incident was covered up. The guilty unit was broken up, and Wells himself was discharged to the States. The Indian had never let him live that one down. Blaine seethed, but quietly. He had done everything he could.

The van was moving. Wells handcuffed McCracken’s wrists and made sure all four guards held their weapons trained on him. Light in the van was sparse, but occasionally a streetlamp would spill onto the big man’s face and illuminate the slight grin lurking beneath his twisted features.

“I always knew I’d get my shot at you,” he taunted.

“Didn’t I see you in
Phantom of the Opera?
”

Wells’s grin faded. “Your impetuousness surprises even me, McCracken. I told them all along that Scola couldn’t finish you. I knew she hadn’t even when the reports said otherwise. And when word came in about San Melas, I knew you’d be on board that plane.”

“I guess I should be flattered. When do I get to find out where we’re going?”

“We’re almost there.”

“You work for Randall Krayman, don’t you, Wells? Or is your hairdresser the only one who knows for sure?”

Wells’s hand lashed out fast; not the one holding the gun, but the other, appearing out of nowhere and knocking Blaine to the carpeted floor of the van. The blow was barely a graze, far more violence restrained than released, yet its effect was dizzying and sharp.

“Can I take that as a yes?” Blaine asked.

Wells remained silent and expressionless.

“Isn’t this when you’re supposed to say I could make it easy on myself by spilling my guts now?”

“Why should I bother?” Wells returned, words slurred noticeably. “You won’t talk now, and you probably won’t talk later. I know you well, McCracken, better than anyone else does probably. We’ve had a half-dozen chances to kill you that no other man could have slipped out of.”