Part Nineteen
Villacana counted down the seconds in the silence of his own mind. With his plan in motion, he had calmed, running through checklists and then settling into his chair to wait with infinite patience. Nothing could stop him now, nothing….
This time the intruder alert got his immediate attention. He left the chair, crossing again to the back of the room and his access to the island computer system. He frowned as he saw Travis and Vaughan's arrival, aware that they must have seen the radio dish, before realising that it didn't matter. Why care if a couple of blundering policemen with more luck than judgement had their suspicions confirmed? They were too late. In a few minutes more the whole world would feel his fury, and the efforts of the detective and security man would come to nothing.
He scowled at the screen as Gardner turned-coat. Dismissing the image, he strode to his chair, just seconds away from apotheosis.
"EV deployment complete. Technician Chau standing by."
The report from the space station distracted Villacana from his anticipation. He glanced at one of the smaller windows lining the main screen, studying the white-suited technician floating tethered not far from the Weather Station's main antenna. Sunlight glinted off the man's mirrored visor. On the central screen, Jim Dale was leaning forward intently, obviously watching the space-walk himself. The commander's fingers were drumming against the arm of his chair, his expression tense. Villacana let a small smile play across his lips, enjoying the superiority he felt over the man. While Villacana was ignored and discarded, Dale had been promoted by the World Space Patrol and NASA, set in command over their mutual pride and joy – the shared space station that Villacana's innovations had helped create and whose computers Villacana's codes protected.
With enormous satisfaction, Villacana pressed the override button, opening the back door through those codes and tunnelling beneath the layers of firewall built upon them.
There was a hammering barely audible through the door of Villacana's room, almost lost in the sudden flood of reports from the Weather Station as its personnel realised that they were no longer in control. Ignoring the mere ground-side distraction, confident that his doors would hold Vaughan for long enough, Villacana's fingers played over his controls, uploading the first elements of the programme he'd long since derived. Slowly, but unstoppably, the World Weather Control System turned its attention towards the Indian subcontinent, a huge induction charge building in the Weather Station and the satellites it controlled.
On the screen, Dale was a frozen rock in the sea of alarmed, hopeless reports around him. He was a mere spectator, his people able to see what was happening but quite helpless to stop it. Villacana spared another small smile for the commander's obvious shocked indecisiveness.
On the ground, the lights flickered and there was a hiss of arcing electricity that faded into silence. A beat passed and then the clatter against the door grew louder; Vaughan was obviously through the upper door faster than Villacana had expected and now directly outside his sanctum. Calmly, Villacana reached under his chair, opening a shallow compartment and pulling out the weapon concealed there. He'd not planned for an intrusion this early in his plan, but he'd never been naïve enough to think San Fernando would escape suspicion forever. He'd expected them to send men after him, men stupid enough not to see the gun he was holding against the head of the world, but to need a more immediate threat to subdue them. He'd armed his people against that possibility, and now he armed himself. Settling the revolver across his lap, Villacana glanced up from the weather monitors to see how the Weather Station crew were reacting.
Jim Dale stood up. All around him, noise and movement stilled, his staff waiting for his word. He pulled a radio from his belt – not a networked com-link that would transmit through the computer network Villacana controlled, but rather a direct, short-range radio.
"Chau," he called, in a voice tight with tension. "Cut it!"
In front of Villacana, behind him, all around his control room, the screens flickered. He frowned, climbing from his chair and hurrying to the status boards behind him. His eyes widened, sheer disbelief overriding his rigid control. They'd cut the power line to the main antenna. Not deactivated the power supply, or redirected the data flow, or anything he could override with software. They'd physically gone out of the station, and cut the power cable.
The space-walking technician, Chau, was moving across the skin of the station, pulling himself hand over hand towards the auxiliary antenna that now channelled every signal Villacana was receiving. Hatred, pure and irrational, engulfed Villacana as he watched his plan shatter into tiny shards around him, splintering like the hull of the yacht that had started all of this. He stepped to the console on his left, his fingers flying across it as his eyes locked with Dale's on the main screen. The man was looking tense, anticipatory. Villacana was determined not to let him enjoy this victory.
"Commander! We have fluctuations in the environmental systems."
Villacana smiled as Dale's expression froze. They'd soon have more than fluctuations.
"Life support is going down!"
"Chau! You've got to get there! Cut the line!"
Villacana programmed furiously, aware of the pounding on the door building in intensity and the technician coming ever closer to destroying the one remaining link between the Weather Station and the Earth.
His hands faltered, a booming sound echoing around him, followed by a clatter that grew ever closer. Puzzled, almost overwhelmed by the unexpected suddenness of the sound, Villacana's eyes snapped around towards it, searching the walls and floor until he saw the grille that led to his long-disregarded ventilation intake. Thick smoke billowed through it, choking and lit from within by a burning red light. For a few seconds, Villacana could do no more than stare, already coughing as acrid fumes filled the room. Angry with the distraction and the delay it had caused, he turned back to his console, typing quickly, flicking switches, gritting his teeth in anger and despair as he commanded the Weather Station to open all its airlocks. He typed the final commands and hit enter in the same moment that the screens around the room finally flickered and died. Not even Villacana, coughing and crawling across the ground to escape the red-lit smoke, could say which had happened first.
The recoil almost tore the flare gun out of Scott Tracy's bruised hands. It pushed him backwards, staggering against Gordon and toppling both of them. Scott scrambled upwards, grabbing his little brother's arm as dizziness threatened to drop him once again.
"The tarpaulin, Gordy!"
He'd explained his rudimentary plan as they emerged into the daylight. Gordon had just nodded, untwisting their pack and dumping its contents to the ground while his elder brother drew in deep, panting breaths and tried to suppress his cough. Scott had intercepted his little brother before the younger boy could pick up the flare gun, pocketing the spare charges, but Gordon had helped him load a red-bordered shell into the short, broad mortar, brushing aside his trembling fingers to do it. Now Gordon spread his arms wide, lifting the creased and dirty grey tarpaulin to the vent.
"It's working, Scotty! It's working."
Scott watched with satisfaction as the obstruction was pulled onto the vent and held in place by suction from the overhead exhaust fans that completed the system. With the intake blocked, the fans would have nothing to draw up and through the control room but smoke from the flare he'd fired into the shaft. Each passing second would rob the place of air. The pale man would have no choice, he would have to leave, and that would give the people Uncle Jim was sending time to get here.
Now he just had to do what Dad's old friend had told him and hide until they did.
Scott tore his gaze away from the covered vent, looking down at his dishevelled but bright-eyed little brother, and then around at the terrifying mass of machinery moving above them. The radio dish had unfolded now, standing as tall as it was wide, huge dish angled high, pointing out across the island about sixty degrees above the horizon. Above the throaty hum of the motors that were slowly tracking it across the sky, Scott heard a more familiar, more frightening engine sound. The jeep!
Gordon recognised it too. He didn't need prompting as the two of them scrambled, half running, half on hands and knees, into the shelter of the machinery. The shadows were thick, only a fraction of the sun's brilliance filtering through the wire-mesh dish and around its edges. Gears were grinding, their meshing teeth terrifyingly close as Gordon leapt up onto the structure, turning around and offering Scott a hand to help his elder brother struggle after him. They huddled in the fork of two girders, each as thick as Scott's arm was long, a metre and a half off the ground and somewhere in the centre of the latticework that supported the dish far overhead. The entire structure was moving, rotating, and Scott had to concentrate to adjust to the dizzying movement, trying to see across the clearing.
It was harder to tell here, with the loud clanking of machinery all around them, but it sounded like the jeep had stopped, some way back up the track. Scott was leaning out a little further from behind the girder sheltering them, trying to see the track they had come down what seemed like hours before, when he heard a sound that froze him stiff. The loud, sharp crack of a single gunshot carried even above the rumble of gears.
A second shot answered it, and then a third, the sound drawing a frightened whimper from Scott's little brother. The gunfire was still echoing around the circular valley when the door in the hillside beside the vent slammed open, crashing against the rock wall. The pale man staggered out, coughing and wreathed in red smoke. Scott felt Gordon shrinking against him and held his brother tight, eyes on the revolver in the man's hand.
The jeep had stopped halfway along the green tunnel of trees, the two men it had carried both on their feet and peering at the ground in front of it. Travis waited until he was close behind the stopped vehicle before circling into the trees alongside and bracing himself against a trunk, rifle raised to his shoulder. He shot out the front left tyre of the jeep at point blank range, seeing both men jump violently as the sound echoed off the hillside. One, the more junior thug from the bars of Santa Isobella, landed a little forward and had to throw himself back away from the pit in the road, one foot scrabbling for purchase on the edge of it. He landed on his backside on the dirt track and froze there, raising his hands behind his head, as Travis emerged from the jungle, rifle levelled. The live-in servant, Friell, was less cautious. Taking advantage of his colleague's distraction, he dived back towards the jeep, looking to get behind the wheel at first, and then ducking down behind the vehicle when he realised that only a skin of deflated rubber separated the front right wheel rim from the ground. Travis was already ducking behind a tree when an answering shot sent splinters flying from the trunk beside his ear. Keeping low, he slipped between the trees, manoeuvring to put the sprawled junior thug between him and the shooter. The seated man watched him, wide-eyed, realising that he was still easily within the sights of Travis's rifle, and wisely opting not to move.
Later, Travis wasn't sure why he'd thought Friell would hesitate. He'd seen the man's cold eyes when the servant escorted Mike and him from the dock to the house. He had pulled the rap sheets on all Villacana's staff and was already sure what sort of low-life the man employed. Even so, he was startled when Friell raised his pistol and coolly snapped a shot through his companion's arm that barely missed Travis' head. The thug on the ground screamed, flailing wildly before falling backwards, head thumping against the ground. Even Friell looked a little startled by the loud reaction. Travis didn't hesitate. He raised the rifle, aimed and fired in one smooth motion, relief outweighing satisfaction when Friell fell back, pistol spilling from his nerveless hand.
Travis moved forward cautiously, swiping the weapon to one side and into the pit with his foot before nudging Friell with his toes. Turning his attention back to the first thug, he stripped off the man's belt, tying it in a rapid tourniquet around his upper arm. The entry wound, at the back of his arm just below the shoulder, was matched by an exit wound to the front. The bullet had drilled a neat hole through the muscular flesh, and it was probably the pressure wave rather than direct impact that had broken the man's arm. Satisfied that the man was unlikely to bleed out, at least in the short term, he shook the thug's shoulder until he awoke, and then dropped it, reaching into his jacket instead to pull out his ID.
"Stay here, don't move and I'll be back to help," he instructed sharply, shoving the leather wallet back into a pocket. Dazed with pain, the man eyed the rifle in his other hand warily before nodding. Travis frowned, pulling out another plastic tie and securing it one-handed around the man's ankles for good measure, before turning his attention to Friell. He'd assumed at first that the servant was dead. A second inspection showed him that his bullet had done no more than clip the man's skull, knocking him cold and almost certainly giving him a concussion that would make Jeff Tracy's look like a walk in the park. Rolling the man into the recovery position, he decided mercy only went so far and used another tie to secure Friell's outflung arm to the jeep's wheel arch.
The thought of Tracy had reminded Travis of an urgency he'd never really forgotten. He skirted both wounded men, reiterating his instruction not to move to his one conscious prisoner, before looking with some trepidation down into the hole in the road they had been inspecting. Travis went pale beneath his tanned skin at his first glimpse of the tainted spikes, protruding through a woven thatch of grass. It was obvious that the trap had been sprung long before these men came upon it, and the detective scanned the cruel steel spears anxiously for any sign of their victim.
He breathed a guarded sigh of relief as he saw none, his eyes lifting towards the radio dish that rose out of the trees ahead. Skirting the pit cautiously, he ran on down the narrow track.
The pale, coughing man from the control room glared at the tarpaulin and at the litter of debris beside it. He wrenched the coated canvas off the vent, looking down at it and then at the ground. A few scraps of metal foil from the last meal pack, the empty water bottle, their stiff, dirt-encrusted sweaters and a couple of thin survival blankets: it wasn't much to identify them, but it was obviously enough.
Scott crouched lower, Gordy huddled beneath him as a pair of cold ice-blue eyes swept over them and past them. The man raised his gun, his face utterly devoid of expression as he looked towards the red-stained steel structure that was the valley's only hiding place.
"Come out," he said sharply. "Come out, or I will kill you when I find you."
Scott honestly couldn't have said whether Gordon made the small, involuntary movement when the gun muzzle swung past them or whether he did. Ultimately it didn't matter. For a few seconds he had to fight to keep both of them balanced against the girders, and when he looked up again, the man's eyes locked with his, gun aimed directly at Gordon.
"Climb down, or I will shoot you both."
Scott didn't doubt it. He was equally sure that whether their captor shot them on the spot or used them to escape the net closing around him first, they were still just as dead. He looked down. Gordon's eyes were flooded with terrified tears, his fists clinging to the front of Scott's shirt. Desperately, Scott searched his brother's face for something, anything he could say to make this easier. He pulled Gordon tight against him and blinked in surprise. Scott had almost forgotten about the flare gun, brought along unnoticed during their scramble for cover, until he felt it pressed between them. Cautiously he patted the pockets of his jeans. He'd put the two small shells there in an instinctive effort not to leave ammunition of any kind where Gordon might find it. Now he couldn't help a brief prayer of thanks for that instinct.
"Move!"
The man was sounding impatient. Scott looked up.
"We…" His voice cracked. He wheezed a little, swallowed hard and tried again, this time getting a little volume behind his shout. "I need a moment to get my little brother down. Please? He's frightened. Please!"
The man remained silent, but the barrel of his gun dipped a little. Scott swallowed hard, beginning to squirm across the girder. A few seconds was all they'd have. A few seconds out of sight behind the metalwork. It would have to be enough.
"Gordy! Gordy! Listen to me. It's going to be all right, okay? I want you to be ready to run, out towards the track, and hide in the trees."
He was far from sure Gordon was taking anything in, but there was no time to be sure. The instant they were out of view, his hand dived into his pocket, pulling out their second shell and snapping open the flare gun to receive it. He fumbled it into place as he slipped from the girder, landing heavily on the ground, his hands too busy to catch his weight. He still had the flare gun in one hand as he reached out with the other to steady Gordon.
"Ready, Gordy?"
He couldn't wait for an answer, and there was no time to do more than try his best and hope it was enough. He peered around the girder and fired the flare gun at the same moment, his heart soaring when the smoke canister thudded into the ground less than a foot in front of their captor. There was a frozen, shocked moment and then the flare hissed into life, brilliant green light blinding them both, even as smoke billowed around it.
With a high-pitched whine and a clang, a bullet Scott hadn't even seen ricocheted off the steelwork above his head. He'd thrown himself on top of Gordon, half through design, half simply because the recoil from the compact cannon made it impossible to stay on his feet. Now Gordy scrambled out from under him, tugging at his arm. Both of them were coughing and he could hear the coughs of the pale man with the gun, lost in the smoke. He tried to make Gordon leave him, but his little brother shook his head, breathless but adamant. Desperate, Scott struggled to his feet, flare gun still clutched in his right hand, Gordon's hand in his left.
There was another clang, this one lower pitched, more solid. The smoke thinned, the blaze of light moving to one side, and Scott realised that someone had kicked his flare to one side, sending it bouncing downhill through the trees. Instantly, he swung the gun back up, turning towards the centre of the clearing, pushed Gordon behind him and peered through the rapidly clearing smoke.