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  As he was beginning to draw back into the tunnel, a man came out of the side building and hurried towards the front of the main building. He was heavyset, somewhat fat looking, with brown hair like Mike's, wearing a white lab coat. But what caught Mike's attention was the gas mask on his hip and the fact that he didn't look like a local. If Mike ran into him on a city street, he'd have pegged him as a Serb or a Russian. He had that sallow complexion that the Russian men got from too much borscht and vodka. And he didn't move like a local. Middle Eastern men strolled, even when they were strolling fast. They walked with weight centered although sometimes with their head down, putting their legs out in front of them, almost a sashay but not as graceful. Europeans tended to walk with weight forward, legs and arms pumping, always looking up, as if to push through resistance. Arabs didn't swing their arms and kept close personal space to the point of holding hands in public. Europeans tended to spread out more and it was one reason they tended to find Arabs and other Middle Easterners odd and uncomfortable. Middle Easterners would get right inside of what Europeans, and especially Americans, considered to be "personal space" and always appeared a bit effeminate. To American males, it always appeared as if Arab males were coming on to them.

  Mike wasn't too sure what that said about the respective cultures, but that guy definitely was not local. And with the perimeter guards and all the activity, there was no way he could call in until the sun went down, which should be soon given the shadows.

  He slid back down to the bottom of the air shaft and tried to be patient. But who knew what was happening to the girls. Nothing good, he was sure. He looked at his watch, willing the sun to go down, and worked some mental exercises. As he was doing that he heard noise from topside and chimneyed up to investigate.

  A group of soldiers were carrying something towards a truck, with other soldiers gathering around for a look. As the group spread to lift the object into the truck, Mike got a flash of a limp white arm, a blood-covered torso and light brown hair. Then the body was lifted into the truck and it drove away.

  "Oh, those motherfuckers," he said through gritted teeth. "I am going to so fuck them up." He didn't know how long they had worked on that poor girl, while he had been sleeping! But he knew he was on short time now. But they had to be ready to kill the girls at a moment's notice. And with all the guards and everything else around, whatever happened was going to need something to help it out, a distraction at least. But whatever it was, it had to happen fast.

  He slid down to his hide again, gathered up his gear, slid on his "harness" and secreted everything he could around his body. Then he moved back up to the entrance and waited, wrench in hand. He timed the guards and they came around on a thirty-minute or so schedule. By the time they came around the next time, it was dark and he waited until their footsteps had dwindled, then undid the bolts and slipped out of the hole.

  He nearly died of fright when he realized the large side entrance now had sentries on it. He was in shadow but they had to be blind not to notice him. He stayed nonchalant, though, casually replacing the grate and using the wrench to apparently bolt it tight, then moving down the line of grates. He passed around the back of the building, aware that at any moment the perimeter guards might appear, until he hit one of the vents that had a smell of sulfur to it. Then he quickly undid the four bolts holding on the grate and slid into the darkness, pulling the grate shut and attaching only a single bolt. As his hand slid into the darkness of the air shaft he could hear the guards approaching.

  As soon as he was sure they were clear he slid into the shaft and looked down the drop. This one had a functional fan and he considered how to handle that. However, the power leads were pretty plain, and on top. So he slid down and planted his feet above the spinning blades then carefully undid the power leads with his Leatherman tool. One of them sparked and shocked him as he was undoing it, but it was only a brief jolt and he even managed to hold onto the tool. He moved the leads to the wall, then put his foot on the blades to stop them spinning as quietly as possible.

  He slid down the shaft, quietly, watching every move, then shimmied to the grate at the entrance. This one had a filter on it so he couldn't see through. But he also didn't hear anything from the other side. He lifted the filter out on his side then pushed out the grate and lowered it. The room on the far side appeared to be some sort of locker room. He slid out into the room, put the filter and grate back on and looked around.

  He knew he was on borrowed time, that the girls were on borrowed time, but getting caught was still going to screw things up. Speaking of which, the time Pierson gave him was almost up; he should have called in. Too fucking bad: he was busy. Speaking of which, there was a telephone on the wall. He couldn't read Arabic, but he knew the numbers and it had an extension number on it. He picked it up and got a standard dial tone. Hmmm . . .

  He checked the lockers, which were unlocked, and found a bunch of laundry that really needed washing. On the other hand, there were some shirts that made more sense, locally, than his black T-shirt and he found a perfect pair of shoes and a keffieh rag. In a few moments, he was the perfect image of a modern major raghead. And what the hell, he had a wrench; a wrench was nearly as good as a clipboard. He balanced the wrench in his right hand, put on an expression of hopeless fatalism, and shuffled to the door.

  The corridor beyond, as far as he could tell, headed out. But he didn't look around because there were guards at the far end. There was a double set of doors, obviously in frequent use from the dirt, almost across from the locker room. He stepped into them and looked around. Ahah. Even better. The room was filled with chemical suits and respirators. He quickly shucked his clothes and pulled on a chemical suit and mask, then picked the wrench back up and stepped through the far door.

  He had never been in a chemical plant but this one looked pretty much as he'd envisioned. There was lots of piping on the ceiling and big tanks. There were some people crawling on the tanks and he kept an eye on them as he worked his way along one wall. Suddenly, he heard English and stopped to check a dial.

  "Can you people not understand the words 'quality control'?" a man shouted in a thick eastern European accent. Mike ducked his head around the tank he was using for cover and saw his friend from before waving his arms at two other figures in suits. "The temperature has to be kept to precisely one hundred and fifteen degrees Celsius! Not one hundred. Not one fifty! One hundred and fifteen! The entire batch is ruined! Now we have only the original test batch to show! Am I to explain this to your president? He is depending on this to stop the Americans and you have put us back by six months."

  Interesting, but not really getting him anywhere. Mike kept moving along the wall, trying to look like a worker who was trying not to work, and headed for the back of the facility. He'd noticed that most of the markings were in French, those wonderful people. Where the Germans just built the bunkers, the French built the chemical plants. And here they were, both of the finest lights of Europe, perfectly represented. The point, though, was that he could quite often decipher what was in the tanks. And when he came to one that was marked, quite clearly, H2SO4, he knew he'd hit pay dirt.

  A pipe ran out of the bottom of the very large tank to a pump, then went vertical across the high room. Mike followed the pipe, keeping behind tanks, until he found where it started to split up. He went around to the rear of the room and cautiously removed his chemical suit, hoping like hell that whatever mix they made in this place wasn't filling the air, then pulled out a bunch of the Semtek and some detonators. There was a phone conveniently situated near where the pipes branched and, after putting his suit back on, he spent a short time partially disassembling it, then finding some wire in a maintenance area. From time to time he'd look at a gauge or wave his wrench at a pipe, and twice people passed him but paid little or no attention to what he was doing. Finally, he found a ladder and climbed up to the branching, trailing wire behind him. He rigged the Semtek, most of this bunch, at the branch, then ran t
he wires from the detonator down behind some pipes to the phone. He also ran a wire across to the tank and fitted just about the last of the Semtek behind it.

  When all the material was in place he carefully attached the last wire, wincing as he always did. But there was no immediate explosion. Now, as long as the phone didn't ring, the material wouldn't detonate. And he definitely wanted to be out of the room before it did.

  Demo in place, he casually strolled towards the entrance, wrench in hand. As he was disrobing, the foreigner came into the room, carrying a sample case. He got undressed—his clothing clearly wasn't in the room—and more or less followed Mike into the locker room, muttering in what Mike took to be Russian.

  The doctor went to one of the lockers, setting the sample case on the bench, and took out his clothes. As he was preparing to put his pants on, Mike swung the wrench into the back of his head.

  It was a spur of the moment decision but one that Mike didn't regret. Win or lose, he'd taken the primary intelligence out of the WMD effort. And the doctor clearly had more access than a worker. He might even be able to find the girls. Or be told where they were.

  Mike stripped out of his clothes and donned the doctor's, stuffing the body in the locker. Then he looked in the sample case. There were two things that looked like smoke grenades. One was labeled "Sarin" and the other "VX." There was a larger canister labeled "Sarin Area Weapon" and a can of what looked like wasp spray labeled "Mustard." Mike put that together with "test batch" and realized that he was, probably, holding live agents in his hands. That caused him to put the material back in the sample case and close it rapidly.

  He picked up the doctor's glasses and looked in the mirror, trying for the proper expression of distracted and pissed off. The glasses made things a bit fuzzy but he could see well enough and he was pretty sure he'd gotten it right. The Herr Mad Scientist also had a pair of rubber gloves. Those went in the sample case. The last thing he did was pick up the belt with the gas mask and put it on.

  He paused in thought, then shrugged, opening up the sample case and lifting out the rack with the samples in it. He still had about a kilo of Semtek left and he molded it into the bottom of the case. The nice thing about plastique was that it looked like plastic. Only a close examination would reveal it. He slid the detonators into his shoes, wincing. They shouldn't go off. He'd have been fine if they were NONEL; you couldn't get NONEL to go off without electrical current, period. But he wasn't positive with Skodas.

  With that done, he hid the MP-5 and walked out of the locker room, practically running into a man in one of the purple camouflage uniforms.

  "Doctor Chayanov?" the man said in passable English.

  "Da?"

  "You are late," the officer replied, grabbing his elbow. "Are those the samples?"

  "Da," Mike answered in his best Russian accent. "Is terrible quality control. All of your people are shit, just shit."

  "Well, you probably need to try not to say that to the president or the Great One," the officer replied tightly. "Be very polite."

  "Da, I am polite," Mike replied as they hurried down the corridor. At the far end there was a door on the right guarded by two of the purple soldiers. That led to another corridor, with more soldiers, and the sound of the pumps from the facility on the right-hand wall. Halfway down the corridor was a single-person door on the left. The only door along either wall. This led to another corridor. That one dead-ended in a wall. There were two doors halfway down, with two guards in front of either door. If Mike wasn't completely turned around, and he had pretty good spatial referencing ability, the door on the left led to his hidey hole. They took the door on the right. The corridor was practically identical to the hidey-hole corridor, which added to the likelihood. The exception was that there was an exit at the far end and two guards were in front of one of the doors. If the design matched the other side, it was the "storage" room. He was taken to this room and stopped.

  "You must be searched," the officer said. One of the guards handed his weapon to the other and then gave Mike a brief pat down, ignoring Mike's shoes. That was why the detonators were there; shoes and feet were untouchable to an Islamic. The guard looked at the locking blade knife and then gave it back. Then he gestured to the sample case.

  Mike opened it up and pointed to the items in it. The guard looked at the officer and asked something in Arabic.

  "He asks if these are bombs?" the officer said, glancing at the items uncomfortably.

  "Nyet," Mike said. "Are not bomb. Are poison gas. Samples your leader asked to see."

  "That's okay, then," the officer replied, waving at the case and not asking for the material to be removed for further search. "We are very careful of the life of our president."

  "Da," Mike replied, trying not to roll his eyes. As he closed the sample case, he heard a muffled shriek and paused.

  "We are entertaining some American young ladies," the officer said, looking at him carefully. "They are not enjoying the entertainment."

  "Good, is all American bitches are for," Mike replied, closing the case.

  "Glad you approve," the officer said, gesturing at the door. One of the guards opened it and Mike stepped into darkness.

  Chapter Eight

  "Mr. President, I think you should see this," Secretary Brandeis said, keying one of the overhead video screens. It was an oblique shot, probably from a satellite, of a line of soldiers and a helicopter. Two men were descending from the helicopter.

  "We can't get resolution on faces, Mr. President," the secretary said. "But from the body shape and clothing, the man on the right is Basser Assad."

  "So it's not a rogue Syrian operation," Minuet said. "That's good and bad to know. The tall one, though, is that who I think it is?"

  "Probably," the secretary replied. "Given his height, movements and the way that he holds his right arm."

  "Makes me tempted to nuke the facility right now," the President said, darkly. "I've heard about the first video tape. Have we gotten the demands, yet?"

  "A group calling itself The Popular Front for the Islamic Jihad was the contact to Al Jazeera," the CIA director said. "They called for a withdrawal of all crusader forces from all areas of the Dar Al Islam. Now, that's an incredibly broad demand. Arguably, it includes not only all of the Balkans but Spain and Southern France as well. Certainly, they're referring to all European and American forces in the Middle East. Otherwise, they will do what they have already done to one girl every two hours, until their demands are met. I had analysts go over the video, which is already on the Internet. Several of the girls who were kidnapping victims have been identified from 'audience shots.'"

  "What's the download rate like?" Brandeis asked.

  "High," the CIA director admitted. "It's flying around the net. And, of course, the news media is all over it like flies on shit. They're interviewing all the parents of the girls and various commentators are already talking about Stockholm syndrome."

  "Unlikely in this situation," Minuet said. "Conditions are too extreme. And it takes some time to set in. Any word from Harmon?"

  "Negative," the defense secretary said. "And he's overdue to check in. But security on the site has been increased. I'm not sure he can get out of his hidey-hole."

  "We give him five more hours," the President said. "That is two and a half lives. Then we go whether we know where they are or not."

  The room was dark with the only light coming from a sheet of one-way glass. It took Mike's eyes a moment to adjust.

  "Come in, Doctor Chayanov," a voice said in Oxford-accented English. "You are very welcome. Come watch the show."

  There was a desk set a meter or so from the window and Mike walked to it, setting the sample case on it and glanced through the window. A girl with dark brown hair was being raped and had had part of the skin on her side peeled off. The man on her was rubbing his hands into the exposed flesh as he thrust into her. Even through the thick glass, the screams were clearly audible.

  Mike turne
d away from the scene with apparent indifference. He was horrified and repulsed by what was happening. But, at the same time, hating himself, it turned him on. However, the sexual turn-on was close enough to rage that he could channel it and he was well prepped to explode.

  He controlled his reaction and glanced at the group in the room. There were two guards by the door and a short-coupled man, the one who had spoken in English, that he vaguely recognized and thought might be Basser Assad. His eyes widened, though, when he recognized the tall man at Assad's side.

  "I am truly honored," he said, nodding. "It is a great pleasure to meet you, sir. You have done much damage to the American pig-bastards."

  "As I did to the Russian pig-bastards," the tall man said darkly. "But as I worked with the Americans to defeat your kind, so I am happy to work with you to defeat them. Allah's ways are complex, but he gives his servants opportunities such as yourself. What did you bring to Allah's servants?"

  As Mike opened the sample case, one of the guards stepped forward but all Mike pulled out at first was a pair of gloves. He tried to ignore the shrieks at his back as he pulled out the first of the gas grenades.

  "Sarin," he said, setting it down. "Lethal in low concentrations but very short-lived. Which means you can move in the area no more than five hours after dispersal. This grenade will, well . . ." He turned around and gestured at the room full of naked women. "If I tossed it in that room, there would be no women to torture in less than five minutes. And that is just the time it would take to disperse fully." He turned back, set the grenade back inside and pulled out the next.