Текст книги "Dragon"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

Giordino was the only one who didn’t stare back at the doctor in mute surprise. He looked up at Pitt. “Do you know something we don’t?”

“May I introduce Dr. Josh Nogami, the British deep cover operative who’s been supplying the lion’s share of information on Suma and his operation.”

“You figured it out,” said Nogami.

Pitt made a modest hands-out gesture. “Your clues made it elementary. There is no St. Paul’s Hospital in Santa Ana, California. But there is a Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London.”

“You don’t sound British,” said Stacy.

“Though my father was raised as a British subject, my mother came from San Francisco, and I attended medical school at UCLA. I can do a reasonable American accent without too much effort.” He hesitated and looked Pitt in. the eye, his smile gone. “You realize, I hope, that by coming back here you’ve blown my cover.”

“I regret throwing you in the limelight,” Pitt said sincerely, “but we have a more immediate problem.” He nodded toward the others. “Maybe only another ten or fifteen minutes before Kamatori and three of his security robots are discovered… ah… incapacitated. Damned little time to set off an explosive charge and get out of here.”

“Wait a minute.” Nogami raised a hand. “Are you saying you killed Kamatori and zapped three roboguards?”

“They don’t come any deader,” Giordino answered cheerfully.

Mancuso was not interested in cordial conversation. “If you can please provide us with a diagram of this complex, and quickly, we’ll be on our way and out of your hair.”

“I photographed the construction blueprints on microfilm, but had no way of smuggling them out to your people after I lost my contact.”

“Jim Hanamura?”

“Yes. Is he dead?” Nogami asked, certain of the answer.

Pitt nodded. “Cut down by Kamatori.”

“Jim was a good man. I hope Kamatori died slowly.”

“He didn’t exactly enjoy the trip.”

“Can you please help us?” Mancuso asked urgently, insistently. “We’re running out of time.”

Nogami didn’t seem the least bit rushed. “You hope to get out through the tunnel to Edo City, I suppose.”

“We had thought we might take the train,” said Weatherhill, his eyes aimed through the door into the corridor.

“Fat chance.” Nogami shrugged. “Since you guys penetrated the complex, Suma ordered the tube guarded by an army of robots on the island side and a huge security force of specially trained men at the Edo City end. An ant couldn’t get through.”

Stacy looked at him. “What do you suggest?”

“The sea. You might get lucky and be picked up by a passing ship.”

Stacy shook her head. “That’s out. Any foreign ship that came within five kilometers would be blown out of the water.”

“You have enough on your minds,” Pitt said calmly, his eyes seemingly fixed on one wall as if seeing something on the other side. “Concentrate on planting the explosives. Trust the escape to Al and me.”

Stacy, Weatherhill, and Mancuso all looked at each other. Then Weatherhill nodded in agreement. “You’re on. You’ve saved our lives and got us this far. Be downright rude not to trust you now.”

Pitt turned to Nogami. “How about it, Doc, care to tag along?”  Nogami shrugged and gave a half smile. “Might as well. Thanks to you, my usefulness here is finished. No sense in hanging around for Suma to have my head lopped off.”

“Any suggestions for a place to set explosives?” asked Weatherhill.

“I’ll show you an access hole to the electrical cables and fiber optics that feed the entire complex. Set your charge there and you’ll put this place out of business for a month.”

“What level?”

Nogami tilted his head toward the ceiling. “The level above, the fifth.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Weatherhill said to Pitt.

“Ready now.” Cautiously, Pitt slipped into the corridor and dogtrotted back to the elevator. They all followed and piled in and stood silent as it rose to the fifth level, tensed for any trouble they might face when the doors opened. Suddenly the elevator dropped down instead of going up. Someone had beat them to it by pressing the button on the level below.

“Damn,” Mancuso swore bitterly. “That’s all we need.”

“Everybody!” Pitt ordered. “Push the doors together to keep them from opening. Al, lean on the ‘door close’ button.”

The elevator stopped and they all pressed their hands on the doors and pushed. The doors tried to spread apart but could only jerk spasmodically without opening.

“Al!” Pitt said softly. “Now hit five!”

Giordino had kept one finger pressed against the “door close” button so tightly the knuckle went white. He released it and pushed the button marked 5.

The elevator shuddered for a few moments as if torn in two directions, then it gave an upward jerk and began rising.

“That was close, too close,” Stacy sighed.

“Going up,” Giordino announced. “Housewares, kitchen utensils, dishes, and hardware—” Abruptly he broke off. “Oh, oh, we haven’t tagged home base yet. Someone else wants on. The light on five just blinked.”

Again alerted, every eye unconsciously rotated toward the panel and the small indicator light that was flashing for the fifth level. Then, as if activated by the same set of gears, they turned and crouched, ready to spring into action.

A white-coated engineer was standing there wearing a hard hat, intently studying notations on a clipboard. He didn’t even look up as he entered the elevator. Only when it began to seep through to him that the elevator wasn’t moving did he gaze around into the Occidental faces. None that he observed were smiling.

He opened his mouth to shout, but Pitt clamped one hand over the engineer’s mouth and squeezed the carotid arteries with the other. Even before the eyes rolled back in the head and the body went limp and sagged to the elevator floor, Nogami was out and leading the others into a passageway.

Weatherhill was the last to go. He paused and looked at Pitt. “When and where do you want us to join up?” he asked.

“Topside in twelve minutes. We’ll hold the cab.”

“Good luck,” Mancuso muttered, hurrying after the others, wondering what the man from NUMA had on his canny mind.

Giordino looked down at the unconscious engineer. “Where do we stash him?”

Pitt pointed up at the access door in the ceiling of the elevator. “Tear his lab coat into strips, then tie and gag him. We’ll park him on the elevator roof.”

As Giordino pulled off the white lab coat and began ripping it apart, he gave Pitt a half-crooked grin. “I heard it too.”

Pitt grinned back. “Ah, yes, the sweet sound of freedom.”

“If we can snatch it.

“Optimism, optimism,” Pitt muttered cheerfully as he launched the elevator upward. “Now let’s show some speed. It’s twelve minutes to show time.”

55

THE MAIT TEAM deep in the Dragon Center could not have been under heavier stress than the two men sweating out the minutes in the communications room of the Federal Headquarters Building. Raymond Jordan and Donald Kern sat watching a huge clock and listening anxiously for the team call sign to be beamed from a satellite in a fixed synchronous position over Japan.

As if triggered by the sudden buzz of a telephone sitting on the table between them, their eyes met, their faces drawn. Jordan picked up the receiver as if it carried the plague.

“Yes, Mr. President,” he answered without hesitation.

“Any word?”

“No, sir.”

The President went quiet for a moment, then said solemnly, “Forty-five minutes, Ray.”

“Understood, sir. Forty-five minutes until the assault.”

“I’ve called off the Delta Forces. After a conference with my other security advisers and the Joint Chiefs, I’ve come to the decision that we cannot afford the time for a military operation. The Dragon Center must be destroyed before it becomes operational.

Jordan felt as though his world was slipping away. He threw the dice one more time. “I still believe that Senator Diaz and Congresswoman Smith may be on the island.”

“Even if you’re right, their possible deaths would have no bearing on my decision.”

“You won’t change your mind and give them another hour?” Jordan pleaded.

“I wish I could find it in my heart to let you have more time, but our national security is at high risk. We cannot allow Suma the opportunity to launch his campaign of international blackmail.”

“You’re right, of course.”

“At least I’m not alone. Secretary of State Oates has briefed the leaders of the NATO nations and Soviet President Antonov, and they have each agreed that it’s in all our mutual interest to proceed.”

“Then we write off the team,” said Jordan, his frustration showing in his tone, “and perhaps Diaz and Smith.”

“I deeply regret compromising the lives of dedicated Americans, some of whom were good friends. Sorry, Ray, I’m faced with the age-old quandary of sacrificing a few to save many.”

Jordan set the receiver in its cradle. He seemed strangely hunched and shrunken. “The President,” he said vacantly.

“No reprieve?” asked Kern grimly.

Jordan shook his head. “He’s scrubbed the assault and is sending in a nuclear warhead.”

Kern went ashen. “Then it’s down to the wire.”

Jordan nodded heavily as he looked up at the clock and saw only forty-three minutes remaining. “Why in God’s name can’t they break free? What happened to the British agent? Why doesn’t he communicate?”

Despite their fears, Jordan and Kern were not remotely prepared for an even worse disaster in the making.

Nogami guided the MAIT team through a series of small side passageways filled with heating and ventilating pipes, skirting heavily populated offices and workshops, keeping as far out of the mainstream of activity as possible. When confronted by a roboguard, Nogami engaged it in conversation while one of the others slowly angled in close and shut down its circuits with a charge of static electricity.

They came to a glass-enclosed room, a large expansive area filled with electrical wiring and fiber-optic bundles, all branching out into narrow tunnels leading throughout the Dragon Center. There was a robot standing in front of a huge console of various dials and digital instruments.

“An inspector robot,” said Nogami softly. “He’s programmed to monitor the systems and report any shorts or disconnects.”

“After we queer his circuits, how long before his supervisor sends someone to check on him?” asked Mancuso.

“From the main telepresence control, five or six minutes.”

“Plenty of time to place the charge and be on our way,” said Weatherhill casually.

“What do you figure for the timer setting?” Stacy asked him.

“Twenty minutes. That should see us safely to the surface and off the island if Pitt and Giordino come through.”

Nogami pushed open the door and stepped aside as Mancuso and Weatherhill entered the room and approached the robot from opposite sides. Stacy remained in the doorway, acting as lookout. The mechanical inspector stiffened at his console like a metal sculpture as the statically charged hoses made contact with his circuit housing.

Smoothly, skillfully, Weatherhill inserted the tiny detonator into the plastic explosive and set the digital timer. “In amongst the cables and optical fibers, I think.”

“Why not destroy the console?” said Nogami.

“They’ve probably got backup units in a supply warehouse somewhere,” explained Mancuso.

Weatherhill nodded in agreement as he moved up a passageway a short distance and taped the charge behind several bundles of heavily insulated cable and optical fibers. “They can replace the console and reconnect new terminal leads in twenty-four hours,” he lectured, “but blow a meter out of the middle of a thousand wires and they’ll have to replace the whole system from both ends. It will take them five times as long.”

“Sounds fair,” Nogami acquiesced.

“Don’t make it obvious,” said Mancuso.

Weatherhill looked at him reproachfully. “They won’t be looking for something they don’t know exists.” He gave a love pat to the timer and exited the passageway.

“All clear,” Stacy reported from the doorway.

One at a time they moved furtively into the corridor and hurried toward the elevator. They had covered nearly two hundred meters when Nogami suddenly halted and held up his hand. The sound of human voices echoed along the concrete walls of a side passage followed by the soft whirr of an electric motor. Nogami furiously gestured for them to move ahead, and they darted across the opening and rushed around a corner before the intruders came into sight of the main corridor.

“I misjudged their efficiency,” Nogami whispered without turning. “They’re early.”

“Investigators?” Stacy asked him.

“No,” he answered quickly. “Telepresence supervisors with a replacement for the robot you put out of commission.”

“You think they might be onto us?”

“We’d know if they were. A general alarm would be sounded and a horde of Suma’s human security forces along with an army of roboguards would have swarmed through every corridor and blocked all intersections.”

“Lucky someone hasn’t smelled a rat from all the robots we’ve wasted,” grunted Mancuso as he rushed along the corridor in Nogami’s trail.

“Without obvious signs of damage, the telepresence supervisors will think they suffered from simple electronic malfunctions.”

They reached the elevator and lost a full two minutes as they waited for it to rise from a lower level. After what seemed half a lifetime, the doors finally opened to an empty interior. Weatherhill was the first in, and he pressed the button for the surface level.

The elevator, with the three men and one woman standing grimly and silently, rose with excruciating slowness. Only Nogami had a watch, the others having lost theirs when they were captured. He peered at the dial.

“Thirty seconds to spare,” he informed them.

“Out of the fire,” murmured Mancuso. “Now let’s hope there’s no frying pan.

All that mattered now was their escape. What plan did Pitt have circulating inside his head? Had anything happened to him and Giordino? Had Pitt miscalculated and was he recaptured or dead? If he was, then all hope had vanished and they were left with nothing, no direction for freedom, their only hope of escape struck down.

They had lost track of the number of times they’d prepared for the worst, crouched ready to spring at whatever or whoever stood outside the elevator. They stiffened as the doors pulled apart.

Giordino stood there big as life, a broad grin on his face. When he spoke it was as though he was standing at the gate of an airport. “May I see your boarding passes, please?”

Ubunai Okuma and Daisetz Kano were top-level robotic engineers, highly trained in the teleoperation of computer vision and artificial intelligence, as well as the maintenance and troubleshooting of sensory malfunctions. In the telepresence control room they had received a signal that robot electrical inspector Taiho, whose name meant “big gun,” was nonfunctioning, and they immediately moved to replace him for repair.

Sudden breakdown from myriad problems was not uncommon. Robotics was still a new science, and bugs cropped up with maddening frequency. Robots often stalled abruptly for reasons that became readily apparent only after they were returned to a reconditioning center and probed.

Kano circled Inspector Taiho, making a quick visual check. Seeing nothing obvious, he shrugged. “Looks like a faulty circuit board.”

Okuma glanced at a chart on a clipboard that he carried. “This one has a history of problems. His vision imaging has caused trouble on five different occasions.”

“Strange, this is the fourth unit to be reported as failed in the past hour.”

“It always runs in streaks,” muttered Okuma.

“His systems need updating and modifying,” agreed Kano. “No sense in giving him a quick fix. I’ll schedule him for a complete rebuild.” He turned to the replacement robot. “Ready to assume inspection duties, Otokodate?”

An array of lights flashed and Otokodate, a term for a sort of Robin Hood, spoke in slow but crisp words. “I am ready to monitor all systems.”

“Then begin.”

As the replacement robot took its place at the monitor, Okuma and Kano hoisted the malfunctioning robot onto a motorized dolly with a small crane. Then one of them programmed a code word into the dolly’s computer and it began to move automatically toward the conditioning area without human control. The two engineers did not accompany the injured robot but made their way toward the workers’ comfort room to indulge in a brief cup of tea.

Left alone, Otokodate concentrated his vision system on the dials and blinking digital readings and routinely began to process the data in his computer. His high-level sensing ability, incredibly advanced over a human’s, caught an infinitesimal deviation of measurement.

The laser pulse rate through an optic fiber is measured in millions of beats per second. Otokodate’s sensors could read the instrument measurements far more accurately than a human, and he recognized a minuscule drop in the pulse rate from the standard 44.7 million beats per second to 44.68 million. He computed the refractive index profile and determined that the light transmitting its waves through two of the strands inside a ribbon containing thousands of optic fibers was temporarily zigzagging at some point.

He signaled telepresence command that he was leaving the console for an inspection of the fiber bundles inside the passageways.

56

SUMA WAS GROWING more angry and impatient by the moment. Diaz and Smith never seemed to tire of quarreling with him, giving vent to their hatred of his achievements, threatening him as if he was a common thief off the street. He came to welcome the chance to wash his hands of them.

Abducting Senator Diaz, he felt, was a mistake. He took him only because Ichiro Tsuboi was confident that Diaz carried substantial influence in the Senate and held the President’s ear. Suma saw the man as petty and narrow-minded. After a medical discharge from the Army, Diaz had worked his way through the University of New Mexico. He then used the traditional road to power by becoming a lawyer and championing causes that brought headlines and support from the majority state party. Suma despised him as an obsolete political hack who harped on the monotonous and tiresome harangue of taxing the rich for welfare programs to feed and house nonworking poor. Charity and compassion were traits Suma refused to accept.

Congresswoman Smith, on the other hand, was a very astute woman. Suma had the uncomfortable feeling she could read his mind and counter any statement he tossed at her. She knew her facts and statistics and could quote them with ease. Loren came from good western stock, her family having ranched the western slope of Colorado since the 1870s. Educated at the University of Colorado, she ran for office and beat an incumbent who had served for thirty years. She could play hardball with any man. Suma suspected that her only soft spot was Dirk Pitt, and he was closer to the truth than he knew.

Suma stared across the table from them, sipping saki and regrouping for another exchange of harsh words. He was about to make another point when Toshie came into the room and whispered softly into his ear. Suma set his saki cup on the table and stood.

“It’s time for you to leave.”

Loren elegantly came to her feet and locked eyes with Suma. “I’m not moving from here until I know Dirk and AI are alive and treated humanely.”

Suma smiled indulgently. “They covertly came onto foreign soil, my soil, as intelligence agents of a foreign country—”

“Japanese law is the same as ours in regards to espionage,” she interrupted. “They’re entitled to a fair trial.”

Suma gloated with malicious satisfaction. “I see little reason to carry this discussion further. By now, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Giordino, along with the rest of their spy team, have been executed by my friend Moro Kamatori. Make of it what you will.”

Loren felt as if her heart had been crushed in ice. There was a stunned silence, made even more shocking at knowing it must be true. Her face went white and she swayed on her feet, her mind suddenly void.

Toshie grabbed Loren’s arm and pulled her toward the door. “Come, the aircraft that will take you to Edo City and Mr. Suma’s private aircraft is waiting.”

“No ride through your amazing tunnel beneath the sea?” asked Diaz without a hint of disappointment.

“There are some things I don’t wish you to see,” Suma said nastily.

As if walking through a nightmare, Loren uncaringly allowed Toshie to drag her through a foyer that opened onto a stone path that crossed over a small pond. Suma bowed and motioned for Diaz to accompany the women.

Diaz shrugged submissively and limped with his cane ahead of Suma while the two roboguards brought up the rear.

Beyond the pond, a sleek tilt-turbine aircraft sat in the middle of a lawn surrounded by a high, neatly trimmed hedge. The jet engines were turning over with a soft whistling sound. Two crewmen in red nylon flight suits and brimmed caps stood at attention on each side of the steps leading inside the main cabin. Both were short, one slim, the other fairly bursting the stitched seams over his shoulders. They respectfully bowed their heads as Suma’s party approached.

Diaz stopped suddenly. “When I return to Washington, I’m going to hold a news conference and expose you and your monstrous plans. Then I’ll fight you with every means at my command in both houses of Congress, until every asset you have in the United States is confiscated and nationalized. I won’t rest until you pay for your crimes.”

Suma made an infuriating grin. “Our Washington lobbyists are more than strong enough to dilute your pathetic efforts. We own too many of your fellow legislators, who have a weakness for hidden wealth, for you to influence. Your voice will ring hollow, Senator Diaz. Your government, whether you like it or not, corrupt and mired in emotional programs instead of technology and science, has become a wholly owned Japanese subsidiary.”

Loren leaned toward Suma, her eyes narrowing in scorn. “You underestimated American guts fifty years ago, and once again you’ve awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with terrible resolve.”

“Admiral Yamamoto’s words after December the seventh do not apply now,” Suma said contemptuously. “Your people have lost the fortitude to make sacrifices for the good of the nation. You must face reality, Congresswoman Smith. America’s greatness is gone. I have nothing more to say except to urge you to warn your President of Japan’s intentions.”

“Don’t you mean your intentions,” said Loren bravely, the color coming back into her face. “You don’t represent the Japanese people.”

“A safe journey home, Congresswoman Smith. Your visit has ended.”

Suma turned and began to walk away, but he’d only taken one step when the two crewmen grabbed his arms from each side, lifted him off his feet and hurled him backwards through the open door into the aircraft’s cabin, where he seemingly vanished. It all happened so fast that Loren and Diaz stood in blank-minded shock. Only Toshie reacted, lashing out with her foot at the heavier-built crewman.

“Is this any way to begin an intimate relationship?” laughed Giordino, grabbing Toshie’s foot, sweeping her up in his arms, and hoisting her through the door to Weatherhill and Mancuso’s waiting hands as easily as if she was filled with air.

Loren gasped and started to mutter something to Giordino, but Stacy brusquely pushed her up the short stairs. “No time to waste, Ms. Smith. Please step lively.” With Loren on her way, she pulled at Diaz. “Get a move on, Senator. We’ve worn out our welcome.”

“Where… where did you all come from?” he stammered as Mancuso and Weatherhill hauled him through the hatch.

“Just your friendly neighborhood hijackers,” Weatherhill answered conversationally. “Actually, it was Pitt and Giordino who got the drop on the crew and tied them up in the cargo compartment.”

Giordino lifted Stacy into the cabin and scrambled up the stairs after her. He threw a smart salute at the two roboguards that aimed their weapons at him but stood in stationary bewilderment.

“Sayonara roboturkeys!”

He yanked the door shut and locked it. Then he turned and shouted one brief word in the direction of the cockpit.

“Go!”

The soft whistle of the two turbine engines increased to an earsplitting shriek, and their thrust flattened the grass under the stubby wings. The wheels lifted from the damp ground and the aircraft rose straight into the air, hung there for a few moments as the engines slowly twisted to a horizontal position, and then it shot off in a wide bank that took it over the sea toward the east.

Loren hugged Giordino. “Thank God you’re all right. Is Dirk with you?”

“Who do you think is driving the bus?” Giordino smiled broadly as he nodded toward the cockpit.

Without another word, Loren ran up the aisle and threw open the cockpit door. Pitt sat in the pilot’s seat, heavily concentrating on flying an aircraft that was new to him. He didn’t blink or turn his head as she slipped her hands around his neck and down inside his borrowed Suma Corporation flight suit and kissed him at least a dozen times.

“You’re alive,” she said joyfully. “Suma said you were dead.”

“It hasn’t exactly been a fun-filled day,” Pitt managed between her kisses. “Does this mean you’re glad to see me?”

She lightly dragged her nails over his chest. “Can’t you ever get serious?”

“Lady, right now I’m about as serious as I can get. I’ve got eight people depending on me to fly an aircraft I’ve never touched before. And I better get the hang of it real quick or we’re all going body surfing.”

“You can do it,” she said confidently. “Dirk Pitt can do anything.”

“I wish people wouldn’t say that,” Pitt groaned. He gave a quick tic of his head to his right. “Take the co-pilot’s seat and play with the radio. We’ve got to call in the cavalry before the samurai air force takes up the chase. No way we can outrun jet fighters.”

“Suma doesn’t own the Japanese military.”

“He owns everything else around here. I’m not taking any chances. Switch on the radio, I’ll give you the frequency.”

“Where are we going?”

“The Ralph R. Bennett.”

“A boat?”

“A ship,” Pitt corrected her. “A U.S. Navy detection and tracking ship. If we get to her before we’re intercepted, we’re home free.”

“They wouldn’t dare shoot us down with Hideki Suma on board.”

Pitt’s eyes flickered from the instrument panel to the water rushing by below. “Oh, how I hope you’re right.”

Behind them, Giordino was trying but failing to soothe Toshie, who was hissing and striking out like a hysterical rat. She spat at him but narrowly missed his cheek, catching him on the ear. Finally he grabbed her from the rear and held her in a tight vise grip.

“I realize I don’t make a good first impression,” he said happily, “but to know me is to love me.”

“You Yankee pig!” she cried.

“Not so, my Italian ancestors would never admit to being Yankees.”

Stacy ignored Giordino and the struggling Toshie and tightly bound Suma to one of several plush leather chairs in the luxurious executive main cabin. Disbelief was written all over his face.

“Well, well, well,” said a happy Mancuso. “Surprise, surprise, the big man himself came along for the ride.”

“You’re dead. You’re all supposed to be dead,” he muttered incredulously.

“Your buddy Kamatori is the one who’s dead,” Mancuso sadistically informed him.

“How?”

“Pitt stuck him on the wall.”

Pitt’s name seemed to act as a stimulant. Suma came back on keel and he said, “You have made a disastrous mistake. You will unleash terrible forces by taking me hostage.”

“Fair is fair. Now it’s our turn to act mean and nasty.”

The human voice can’t exactly imitate the hiss of a viper, but Suma came pretty close to it. “You are too stupid to understand. My people will launch the Kaiten Project when they have learned what you’ve done.”

“Let them try,” Weatherhill fairly purred. “In about another three minutes your Dragon Center is going to have its lights put out.”

The robotic electrical inspector Otokodate soon found the explosive charge taped to the ribbon of fiber optics. He deftly removed it and rolled back to his console. He studied the package for several moments, recognizing the timer for what it was, but his memory had not been programmed to analyze plastic explosives, and he had no concept of its purpose. He transmitted a signal to his superior in robotic control.

“This is Otokodate at power center five.”

“Yes, what is it?” answered a robot monitor.

“I wish to communicate with my supervisor, Mr. Okuma.”

“He is not back from tea yet. Why are you transmitting?”

“I have found a strange object attached to the primary fiberoptic bundle.”

“What sort of object?”

“A pliable substance with a digital timing device.”

“Could be an instrument left behind by a cable engineer during installation.”

“My memory does not contain the necessary data for a positive identification. Do you wish me to bring it to control for examination?”

“No, remain at your station. I’ll send a courier down to collect.”

“I will comply.”

A few minutes later a courier robot named Nakajima that was programmed to navigate every passageway and corridor and pass through the doors to all office and work areas in the complex entered the power center. As ordered, Otokodate unwittingly turned over the explosive to Nakajima.

Nakajima was a sixth-generation mechanical rover that could receive voice commands but not give them. It silently extended its articulated gripper, took the package, deposited it in a container, and then began the trip to robotic control for inspection.

Fifty meters from the power center door, at a point well removed from humans and critical equipment, the C-8 plastic detonated with a thundering roar that rumbled throughout the concrete passageways of level five.

The Dragon Center was designed and built to withstand the most severe earthquakes, and any structural damage was minimal. The Kaiten Project remained intact and operational. The only result of Weatherhill’s explosive charge was the almost total disintegration of courier rover Nakajima.

57

THE ROBOGUARDS ALERTED their security command to the stray drama in the garden before Pitt had lifted the tilt-turbine cleat the hedged confine. At first the robots’ warning was discounted as a malfunction of visual perception, but when an immediate search failed to turn up Suma, the security command offices became a scene of frenzied confusion.