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"Then she's as good as in our hands."
Velikov nodded. "I think you can safely say that."
The President sat in a bathrobe behind his desk in the Oval Office, chin lowered, elbows on the arms of his chair. His face was tired and drawn.
He looked up abruptly and said, "Is it certain, Houston can't make cont
act with the Gettysburg?"
Martin Brogan nodded. "That's the word from Irwin Mitchell at NASA. Their signals are being drowned out by outside interference."
"Is Jess Simmons standing by at the Pentagon?"
"We have him on a direct line," answered Dan Fawcett.
The President hesitated, and when he spoke it was in a whisper. "Then you'd better tell him to order the pilots in those fighters to stand by."
Fawcett nodded gravely and picked up the phone. "Any word from your people, Martin?"
"The latest is they've landed on the beach," Brogan said helplessly. "Beyond that, nothing."
The President felt weighted with despair. "My God, we're trapped in limbo."
One of four phones rang and Fawcett snatched it up. "Yes, yes, he's here. Yes, I'll tell him." He replaced the receiver in its cradle, his expression grim. "That was Irwin Mitchell. The Gettysburg has deviated too far south to reach Cape Canaveral."
"She might still make a water landing," said Brogan without enthusiasm.
"Providing she can be warned in time," added Fawcett.
The President shook his head. "No good. Her landing speed is over two hundred miles an hour. She'd tear herself to pieces."
The others stood silent, searching for the right words. The President swiveled in his chair and faced the window, sick at heart.
After a few moments he turned to the men standing expectantly around his desk. "God help me for signing a death warrant on all those brave men."
Pitt dropped out of the exit shaft and hit the corridor at a dead run. He twisted the handle and threw open the door to the cell that housed Giordino and Gunn with such a force that he nearly tore it from the hinges.
The tiny room was empty.
The noise betrayed him. A guard rushed around the corner from a side passage and stared at Pitt in astonishment. That split-second hesitation cost him. Even as he was lifting the barrel of his weapon, the baseball bat caught him on the side of the head. Pitt had grabbed the unfortunate guard around the waist and was dragging him into a convenient cell before he hit the floor. Pitt threw him on a bed and looked down into the face of the young Russian who had escorted him to Velikov's study. The boy was breathing normally, and Pitt figured the damage was no more than a concussion.
"You're lucky, kid. I never shoot anyone under the age of twenty-one."
Quintana was just coming out of the exit shaft as Pitt locked the guard in the cell and took off running again. He did not bother to be careful of concealing his presence. He would have welcomed the chance to bash the head of another guard. He reached the door to Jessie's cell and kicked it open.
She was missing too.
Dread swept through him like a wave. He plunged on through the corridors until he came to room six.
There was nothing inside but the stench of torture.
Dread was replaced by cold, ungovernable rage. Pitt became someone else, a man without conscience or moral code, no longer in control of his emotions, a man for whom danger was merely a force to be ignored. Fear of dying had totally ceased to exist.
Quintana hurried up to Pitt and clutched his arm. "Damn you, get back to the beach! You know the orders=
He got no further. Pitt shoved the stubby barrel of the AK-74 into Quintana's gut and slowly pushed him back and against a wall. Quintana had stood face to face with death many times before this moment, but staring at the ice-- cold expression on the craggy face, seeing the pure look of murderous indifference in the green eyes, he knew he had one foot in a coffin.
