In the lobby Mr. Phillips dashed over to one of the padded blue chairs beside a scale model of the VAB. He reached down to pull up a canvas satchel. "Ah, thank you, Rusty," he said. At Nicole's blank expression, Mr. Phillips said lightly, "Two more of those Stinger missiles. Just in case we run into further difficulties." Her heart sank. "They're really quite versatile weapons."

The little man's flushed face sparkled with perspiration. He seemed to have pa.s.sed beyond his ability to maintain a cool demeanor and had fallen into some sort of manic routine. "Contingency plans, contingency plans!" Cradling the satchel of tiny missiles under one arm, he gestured with the pistol. "Out you go to the parking lot. Our ride is waiting for us." The helicopter had settled onto an open s.p.a.ce on the blacktop. The rotor blades still spun slowly, like an aborigine's bolo. Boorman instinctively bent low and shuffled forward in a ducklike run across the short distance to the waiting helicopter. Nicole followed, prodded from behind by Mr. Phillips's gun. She tried to look for NASA security, but they were either well hidden or not around. Close behind her Mr. Phillips's polished shoes slapped the pavement-as if concerned that snipers might take him out as he rushed toward his escape craft. No shots rang out, though.

Senator Boorman climbed into the helicopter and squeezed into the back; Nicole quickly followed. Still holding the pistol on them, Mr. Phillips grabbed the pa.s.senger side of the open-framed helicopter and hauled himself in. A lone pilot sat inside the c.o.c.kpit wearing a helmet and a dark green flight jacket. His expression was unreadable behind mirrored sungla.s.ses.

Mr. Phillips turned his pistol on the pilot. "Are my pretty gems in here?"

With a leather-gloved hand, the pilot indicated a reinforced briefcase on the pa.s.senger's seat. "Right there, just what you asked for."

"Looks like the right size," Mr. Phillips said. He hauled it forward with a grunt. "My, it's heavy!" He snapped it open and stared at stacks and stacks of small plastic packets that contained glittering gems of various hues and colors. He ran his fingers through the packets, glancing at gem after gem. His lips curved upward in a grin, like a man ransacking a pirate's treasure.

Nicole said from the back, "I thought you were going to use your loupe and your gemology expertise to check all the gems. Go ahead- we've got plenty of time." Where was Security?

He frowned at her. "Oh no, that was just a bluff." He looked over at the pilot. "Do I have your personal word of honor that all the ransom is there, as I requested?"

The pilot looked surprised by the question. "Yeah, it's there."

"Good," Mr. Phillips said, clicking the briefcase shut again. "Thank you. That will be all." He pointed the pistol and shot the pilot twice in the chest.

Nicole cried out in utter shock, while the flabbergasted senator sat beside her, his big-knuckled hands hanging like wrecking b.a.l.l.s at his sides.

"But what?" Boorman said, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. "What. . . why-?"

Mr. Phillips looked coldly at him. "I would think the distinguished gentleman could be a bit more articulate." He bent down quickly, savagely, to yank the zipper of the pilot's jacket. Opening it up, he revealed that the pilot carried a concealed pistol and an FBI badge-wallet in his pocket. "Just can't trust anyone these days."

Twisting his shoulder in a Quasimodo motion, Mr. Phillips slung the satchel of missiles and launcher tube into the back pa.s.senger compartment. He reached to grab the pilot's bloodied green jacket and pushed the body out of the seat, dumping the dead man unceremoniously onto the parking lot.

Nicole felt numb until, unbidden, a derisive laugh came from her lips. "Now how are you going to get away, Phillips?" she said, intentionally leaving off the 'Mister.' "You don't even have a pilot."

"I wouldn't leave such a critical detail to chance, Ms. Hunter." He smiled at her. The oiled strands of his hair were now out of place, protruding in spiky dark wires. His suit looked very rumpled.

You will be my pilot."

Nicole tried to control her shock. "Me? I can't fly a helicopter. I'm the Launch Director. I'm just a manager, a desk jockey-"

"You underestimate yourself." Mr. Phillips yanked out the charcoal-gray PDA from his pocket, but he didn't bother to flip open the screen. "As I told you before, I do not buy faulty data. You may be an administrator now, but you were rated to pilot this helicopter during your Naval aviator training. You are going to fly us out of here yourself."

When she didn't answer he smiled. "We had a saying on the trading floor: 'In science, you can afford to be wrong as long as you're not stupid; in business, you can afford to be stupid as long as you're not wrong.'

I, Ms. Hunter, am neither stupid nor wrong. So get moving. Now."

She sat like a statue, knowing he was right and knowing he had her exactly pegged. Flying this thing was like riding a bicycle-she might be rusty, but she'd never forget how. She couldn't say anything to argue with him.

At gunpoint, she squeezed to the front, sat in the left-hand seat of the helicopter, and grasped the controls.

58

LAUNCHPAD 39A, EMERGENCY BUNKER.

ICEBERG LIFTED HIS HEAD when the ground-splitting noise stopped. He sat speechless in shock, but one of the other crewmembers shouted, halfway between a scream and a wail of despair. The two Russian mission specialists chattered furiously with each other.

Burns slumped back down onto the bunker floor. "d.a.m.n, they blew it up anyway!"

A red emergency light glowed above the heavily reinforced door; the air-recirculation system chugged in the background, running off batteries stored in a deep cache beneath the thick concrete floor.

Iceberg coughed, unable to believe what he had heard. He hung his head in his hands. Atlantis was destroyed, even after he had disarmed the bomb! Sometimes, life just wasn't fair.

Alexandra still gripped him tightly, as though unwilling to give up the sanctuary of having another human being so close. Iceberg squeezed her arm, and she loosened her grip. She didn't say a word.

The bunker was cool and refreshing after the last four crazy hours- a refuge from the outside insanity. Iceberg didn't venture to speak, knowing that once he did, he'd have to return to the real world of friends dying and futures shattered.

Atlantis had exploded after all, destroyed in a fireball that had nearly engulfed him as well. He wanted to stagger back outside to stare at the holocaust-but he knew that for a while the launchpad would remain a h.e.l.lish inferno, swirling with toxic fumes. For the moment they were stuck in the bunker, helpless.

"Gator's still unconscious." Arlan Burns's voice broke the silence. He stood behind them, the red emergency light casting deep shadows across his face. "What about Dr. Franklin?"

Iceberg shook his head. "He didn't make it." Franklin's body would have been incinerated in the shuttle explosion, a fitting funeral for an astronaut, he supposed.

Burns nodded stiffly. Alexandra moaned, and the other crewmembers murmured in disbelief. "This is just too much," said Purvis, the other payload specialist. "Just too much."

At the moment it felt as if Iceberg had never left his crew at all. They all waited for him to speak, to tell them what to do.

Grunting, Iceberg attempted to stand. An avalanche of pain nearly bowled him back over, but he held on to Alexandra for support. Burns stepped over to him and draped Iceberg's other arm around his shoulder. "Come on, let's go see Gator." The three hobbled over to the injured pilot. Stretched out on the floor, Gator Green groaned softly. He kept his eyes shut and his head lolled to the side. Purvis knelt by the pilot, looking helplessly at an open first-aid kit. "I did what I could, stopped the bleeding a little-but we have to get him to a doctor. Fast."

Iceberg nodded, drawing in cold breaths, trying to focus his concentration. "Yeah, that would be a fine idea. If we could get out of here."

Purvis called from the front. "Hey, Iceberg-the alarm light's off. Do you really think it's okay to evacuate?"

"Let's get that door open," Iceberg said. "I suppose NASA isn't going to waste any time sending rescue choppers out here." He shook his head in dismay. With Atlantis gone, the terrorists didn't have much of a bargaining chip left.

Except Nicole.

The other two cosmonauts turned the sealing mechanism and pushed open the heavy bunker door. Hot air and sunlight spilled in, filled with chemical smoke and crackling flames from the launchpad. A smoke alarm in the ceiling began to shrill.

"I had planned on being in orbit by now," Burns said, staring stunned at the bunker wall.

Iceberg coughed as the door opened wider. His eyes hardened as he looked out at the destruction.

The explosion had destroyed most of the Fixed Service Structure and obliterated Atlantis.

Black-and-gray smoke boiled into the sky, and flames still licked the wreckage of the gantry. An orange cloud drifted out to sea. A sharp, acidic smell rolled into the bunker. It made the VAB inferno look like a Boy Scout campfire.

"And Phillips still wins in the end," Iceberg said bitterly. He clenched his raw fists, feeling helpless. But what about Nicole?

He heard the faint chopping of helicopters, growing louder. Sirens warbled in the background.

His stomach tightened. Part of him wanted to slam the heavy vault door closed, shut out the rest of the world. All he wished to do was sit back in the cool, dark sanctuary and wait for the rescue squad to get them out. He'd done enough. Except he couldn't leave a job half finished. He couldn't stand to think of Phillips flying off with the ransom money after all.

And what about Nicole?

59.

ESCAPE HELICOPTER.

NICOLE SETTLED INTO THE pilot seat of the helicopter, shunting aside any feelings for the dead FBI man who had been in the same spot only moments before. Specks of his blood dotted the controls and the curved windshield.

Despite his cultured appearance, Mr. Phillips couldn't disguise the fact that he was a butcher at heart.

She closed her dark eyes and then opened them again, trying to reset her thoughts and slow her breathing. Time to think like an aviator again. She reached down; the c.o.c.kpit vibrated with a hypnotic, powerful sensation as the rotors powered up again. As Nicole gripped the control stick, she let all the old feelings, the old confidence, flood back into her. She had to step even closer to the edge, push her abilities.

It had been a long time since she'd flown an aircraft. Too long.

Mr. Phillips settled into the front seat beside her, while Senator Boor-man hunched in back, cowering next to the gem-filled briefcase and the satchel containing the missiles and shoulder-mounted launcher tube.

"Everybody buckle your seatbelts," Mr. Phillips said, shifting the pistol from one hand to the other as he fastened the strap. "We don't want to be unsafe."

He moved the pistol from Nicole to Senator Boorman. "I wish the rest of my team members had been able to come along, but that didn't prove feasible. They will have to fend for themselves. Not to worry, though- they're quite resourceful."

Nicole increased the throttle, and the blades spun up to a roar. In the pilot's seat again . . . in control, like a rodeo cowboy on a wild bronco. Any other time it would have been . . . exhilarating, as Mr. Phillips might have said.

She had flown fixed wings a great deal during her short Naval career and had been checked out in helicopters, but that was years ago. Iceberg had scorned her for spending the last few months flying a desk rather than pushing her reflexes to the edge.

She pulled back on the stick, and the helicopter edged forward as it rose into the air, like a ballet dancer performing a graceful leap. She compensated, and the craft ascended slowly with a downwash of air from the prop blades. She started slipping a little too much to the side. Nicole's heart pounded in time with the engines. She felt the gold key at her neck hit against her skin. The good luck charm didn't seem to be working very well today.

In the back Senator Boorman leaned forward. He breathed deep with fear, making his words thick and slurred, difficult to understand against the background chatter of the copter's blades. "Just cooperate with him. It's almost over." Perhaps, after seeing so much blood, the senator had realized how useless he was to Mr. Phillips. "Think of our lives. We have to survive. We've both got important work to do."

Nicole turned her chin to the right, glancing over her shoulder. She wondered if Phillips had brought Boorman along just to annoy her. "Let's work on one important thing at a time, Senator. Save the speeches.

I've got to fly this aircraft, and I'm a little out of practice."

"Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Hunter," Mr. Phillips said with a polite smile. "Please proceed straight east toward the ocean. I'll give you directions as we go along."

Tight-lipped, she tilted the rotors, curving away from the parking lot and out across the wide-open Kennedy s.p.a.ce Center. "Why are we heading out to the water?"

"What, do you think I'll give away my entire plan?"

"It would help me to follow your instructions better." They left the Launch Control Center behind, picking up speed. In the distance they could still see the conflagration at launchpad 39A.

Mr. Phillips smiled. "Very well. Let me give you a scenario. Imagine if you will that I have reached an agreement with a certain foreign country, one with a small yet capable navy, one willing to send asubmarine into the waters just off the coast of Florida. Perhaps we could fly low over the waves, reach a rendezvous point where the submarine will meet us."

"So what. . . what'll happen to Ms. Hunter and myself?" Boorman asked, leaning forward. "Are we going to be hostages aboard the sub, too?"

Mr. Phillips sighed. "While I enjoy your company, Senator, I think you've overstayed your welcome. I would not want to be cooped up in a tiny underwater craft with you. You and Ms. Hunter could get to know one another floating out on the water in an inflatable life raft. I'm sure the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station will be combing the waters for us anyway."

"Excellent compromise, Phillips!" Boorman agreed so readily that Nicole found it embarra.s.sing. "Sounds like a good resolution to this plan. Everyone's happy."

Nicole wanted to say that she wasn't happy. Many people were dead. Atlantis had blown up. The Vehicle a.s.sembly Building was severely damaged, and the bad guy was getting away with a huge ransom of jewels. But most of all, she didn't believe Phillips would let them live.

No, she thought, this was not a good way to end the situation.

60.

LAUNCHPAD 39A, EMERGENCY BUNKER.

A MILITARY HELICOPTER APPEARED over the concrete roof of the emergency bunker, circling away from the smoke. It hovered above the ground, then b.u.mped to a landing fifty feet away. The heavily armed MH-53J was outfitted more to secure the scene than to act as an ambulance for the injured.

Iceberg stood like a lost, beaten soldier, the useless, broken rifle hanging from his shoulder. He watched a second rescue helicopter circle the devastation, an Air Force MH-60 rescue bird with the latest emergency medical technology. The rest of the Atlantis crew stood at the doorway, sh.e.l.l-shocked, staring as the rescue helicopter nosed toward the bunker.

Ten parajumpers ran from the security helicopter, ducking their heads, leaving the pilot and co-pilot behind in the c.o.c.kpit. One of the parajumpers carried a pair of white suitcases, each marked with a red cross; the others held automatic weapons. The armed jumpers stalked around the complex, securing the area from any terrorists lurking there who might have survived the explosion itself.

The trooper with the first-aid kit called out as he approached, "Colonel Friese? Thank G.o.d you're alive.

What's the casualty situation?"

Iceberg nodded stiffly. "We're all here, except for Dr. Franklin. He . . . he didn't make it. We've also got a badly hurt crewman who needs immediate attention. Gunshot wounds from sniper fire."

The rescue jumper pushed past Iceberg into the bunker with no more than a cursory glance. Iceberg allowed himself to relax. So it was over. All the running around, trying to get to the Atlantis crew. And it ended like this; talking to a kid probably just out of rescue school.

The second helicopter landed. More paramedics boiled out, rushing toward the bunker. Iceberg heard sirens in the background, a fire truck, ambulances, and other rescue vehicles. About time.

The all-out response meant that Phillips must have gotten away, leaving NASA unhampered.

He heard no other aircraft in the sky. The Air Force should have scrambled everything from all the bases in the southeastern United States. Mr. Phillips wouldn't stand a chance up against one of the F-16s from around here, not with their look-down tracking radar. But the terrorist and his hostages could be miles away by now. Where to-Cuba? The Cayman Islands? Some pirate hideout in the Caribbean?

While the rest of the Atlantis crew a.s.sisted the rescue troops, Iceberg hobbled toward the nearest helicopter, the security chopper, to get away from the frantic bustle. He scanned the sky, raising a hand to his forehead to block the sun. He saw another helicopter flying alone, streaking low across the swampy wildlife refuge as it headed out to sea.

He hoped it was tracking Phillips . . . but the terrorist b.a.s.t.a.r.d must be long gone. With Nicole.

Iceberg finally reached the security copter, swaying from pain and dizziness as he tried to keep weight off his bad foot. He probably looked as if he had been run over by a truck . . . no, an entire fleet of trucks.Maybe he could spend a week on the beach after this was all over.