Текст книги "Gideon's War / Hard Target"

Автор книги: Howard Gordon

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

Gideon had fallen about eight feet. This put him just below the railing. He swung back and forth in the wind, slammed into the railing before he managed to grab hold. There was just enough slack for him to climb the railing as Timken shoved Kate backward.

Gideon crested the railing, reached up, and disconnected the carabiner from his harness, yanked off the helmet, which was still attached to the air hose and to the comm and electrical lines.

Embedded in the railing next to one of the dive winches was the small axe Timken had used to sever their umbilicals. Gideon yanked it from the railing mount and then jumped to the deck.

Timken turned at the sound Gideon made as he landed. His eyes took in the axe in Gideon’s hand. There seemed to be no fear in his expressionless eyes—just a rapid and clear appraisal of the threat. For the moment, Timken was unarmed. He was being attacked by a large and athletic man with an axe. The equation was simple. Time to retreat.

Timken was gone before Gideon could cross the five yards of deck that separated them.

Gideon turned his attention to Kate. “Are you okay?” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

Kate shrugged off Gideon’s hand and ran to Big Al’s side. “Al!” she shouted. “Stay with me!” He was nonresponsive, his pulse thready.

“We can’t stay here,” Gideon said. “Timken will be back with his people in about thirty seconds.”

“You go,” Kate said. “I have to stay with Al.”

“Kate—”

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“Don’t worry about me. They don’t care about me now. It’s...

Timken’s pistol lay at the far end of the dive station, half hidden under a pile of scuba gear. Gideon grabbed the gun and took off after Timken.

The rain had let up a bit, enough for Gideon to run without holding on to the railing. He’d already gone a hundred yards when he realized that he hadn’t asked Kate whether she’d managed to disarm the bombs. And it was too late to go back and ask her.

He turned a corner and nearly stopped at what was the most astonishing thing he’d ever seen. A curved line of cloud extended to the horizon, like a giant white wall—and above it, pale blue sky. A brilliant orange ball of light broke over the rim of clouds, and the first bright rays of sunlight hit Gideon square in the face.

We’re in the eye of the storm, he thought.

The rain had stopped and the wind had gone still. But there was no time to enjoy the extraordinary calm that surrounded him. If they were going to survive, he had to stop Timken.

CHAPTER FORTY

MAJOR DALE ROYCE JR. looked around, then turned to the pilot. “Where’d he go?”

“Who?” the pilot said.

“The meteorologist,” Royce snapped. He had been making last-minute preparations with his team and he’d come to the cockpit to see how the weather was holding out.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“He’s in the head.” the pilot said. Royce thought to...

The pilot didn’t notice what had happened—she was squinting out the windscreen into the blackness of the clouds, responding to someone on her radio.

“Copy that, SAT Seven.” She looked over her shoulder at Royce. “Good news, Major,him widt221; she said. “Satellite’s got a visual on the Obelisk. It’s in the eye. You’re cleared to jump.”

The pain was starting now, a sickening fire that was starting to burn its way up his leg. Royce gave the pilot a tight smile. “Outstanding,” he said.

Then he turned and began limping back into the cabin, trying not to let his boys see the agony in his face.

“All right, ladies, lock and load,” Major Royce shouted. “We’re going in!”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

IN THE SUDDEN EERIE silence, Gideon could hear a steady thudding on the other side of the rig. He realized it was the sound of Timken’s footsteps. Where was he going? Not that it mattered. If he could cut him off and kill him, the leaderless mercenaries would be easier to take out. Then all he’d have to do was find Earl Parker.

He pulled the mag of the Makarov. It was a single-stack mag, nine-shot capacity. Except for the two bullets Timken had used on Big Al, the mag was full and the chamber was loaded. He slammed it back into the Makarov and pulled back the hammer, ready to fire single action.

Timken’s footsteps pounded up the stairs of the BLP and onto the bridge linking it to the drilling platform.

Gideon hoped he’d get a shot at him while he was exposed. But by the time he reached the bridge, Timken was on the other side, disappearing into the stairwell leading down to D Deck. Gideon could only figure that he was heading for the remote bomb controls in D-4. The son of a bitch was going to blow the rig!

Gideon charged across the bridge. Two mercenaries popped up on B Deck over on the drilling platform, swinging their AKs at him. He crouched behind a pipe halfway across the bridge, squeezed off a shot at the first man, caught him high in the chest. The man dropped. He squeezed off another round at the second mercenary, but the man ducked down and disappeared.

Now he was down to five rounds.

He jumped from his cover and ran toward the drilling platform. A third man stepped out from behind a bulkhead. Gideon fired as he ran, his sight picture bobbing and jiggling. The first two rounds missed, but his third shot hit the man in the face. Gideon hoped he’d be able to scoop up the man’s AK on the way. But he was too late. The dying man dropped it over the side as he fell screaming to the deck, his jaw blown cockeyed and slinging blood.

Two rounds left.

Gideon hit the drilling platform, grabbed the railing, and wheeled around, taking the stairs three at a time down to D Deck.

Timken’s footsteps thumped down the hallway in front of him. Gideon turned the corner in time to see Timken disappearing into the storage room where the bomb control equipment was located. Gideon blasted through the door, expecting to see Timken heading for the bomb controls. But instead he found Timken on the far side of the big steel box, standing in front of the equipment locker door, spinning the dial on the padlock. He was still unarmed. As Gideon charged into the room, Tim-ken yanked the lock off and pulled open the door.

Behind him, Gideon heard the clank of a rifle boepsotstelt slamming home.

He froze, realizing the mistake he’d made. One of Timken’s men had been standing behind the door, ready to ambush him.

Timken spun around, then grinned, his hand still resting on the knob of the half-open door behind the metal box. “Too impulsive there, chief,” he said.

Gideon looked over his shoulder. A very thin, somewhat frightened-looking young man stood behind the door, eyeing Gideon through a pair of thick glasses. He wore an odd vest with a great many pockets that contained a variety of tools, bits of wire, detonators, pieces of circuit board. It occurred to Gideon that this man must be the demolitions specialist, the man who had rigged the bomb.

“Go ahead, Rashid,” Timken said. “Shoot him.”

Rashid hesitated. Timken was directly behind Gideon, putting him in the line of fire. To avoid shooting Timken, Rashid moved sideways. Gideon seized his opportunity. He dropped to his knees, rotating as he dropped, and squeezed off a round. It caught the bomb-maker center mass. Gideon saw in the very instant that he pressed the trigger that he’d made a mistake. The vest worn by the bomb-maker didn’t carry just his tools; it also contained a large Kevlar panel. Rashid grunted and stepped backward, essentially unharmed.

Gideon raised the sight twelve inches, fired again. The shot shattered one of the lenses in the bomb-maker’s glasses. He fell backward without a sound. Then Gideon turned his gun on Timken, who was jabbing his finger toward the bomb controls. “Now I’m the only one who knows how to disarm the bomb. Kill me and everybody on the rig dies.”

Gideon had counted his rounds and knew his clip was empty. He kept the gun trained on Timken, hoping he wouldn’t notice. No such luck. Timken’s eyes flicked to the slide of Gideon’s Makarov. It was locked back, the chamber open, indicating that the pistol was out of ammunition. “Damn, that’s inconvenient for you, huh? Kind of levels the playing field.”

Gideon noticed that the downed bomb-maker had dropped his AK-47 as he fell. It was about ten feet away, closer to Gideon than to Tim-ken. He coiled, preparing to spring toward the weapon.

But Timken had seen it, too. As Gideon leapt, Timken leaned his shoulder against the big metal box, gave a primal scream, and heaved. The box was set on a metal frame, which in turn rested on four large rollers. The steel box began to move, heading straight toward Gideon, and slamming into him just before he could grab the AK-47. Timken propelled the box forward like a nose tackle pushing a blocking sled, pinning Gideon against the wall.

And there they stopped. Timken, though several inches shorter than Gideon, was a powerfully built man. And with his feet sprawled behind him and his shoulder against the box, he was perfectly situated to keep Gideon pinned to the wall.

Gideon struggled to free himself, but with his back against the wall, he had no leverage. If Timken let go to pounce on the AK, Gideon would get free. The AK lay closer to Gideon than to Timken. It was a stalemate.

Timken grinned at Gideon.

Gideon had thought Timken was coming here to trigger the bomb. And yet when he entered the room, Timken had ignored the bomb controls and headed for the equipment locker on the far side of the room"0e¡€†. Were there weapons inside? No—if there had been weapons in the equipment locker, Timken would have grabbed something from the locker instead of attacking Gideon with a clumsy metal box.

The box.

“What was in the box?” Gideon said. It occurred to Gideon that whatever they had smuggled onto the rig in the box was probably now somewhere in the equipment locker. “It obviously wasn’t the bomb. So what was it?”

Ignoring his question, Timken said, “That bomb’s ticking down. We stay here, we both die. I can disarm the bomb. But I’m not about to do it with you holding that AK to my head.”

The LED on one of the bomb controls read 03:10:41. Time was running out.

Then Gideon heard a thump. It sounded like it had come from inside the equipment locker.

“What’s in the locker?” Gideon said.

Timken glanced back toward the locker again, then gave Gideon a sarcastic smile. “I realized I left my health insurance card in there,” he said. “Life’s so full of risk these days, I just feel naked without it.”

Another thump from inside the equipment locker.

“Tell you what,” Timken said, “if you put your hands up, step over here away from the AK, I’ll reset the bomb. Truce, right? We’ll both be unarmed, even-steven, nobody has the advantage, nobody gets hurt. Fair enough?

Gideon had no plan. But he knew a truce with this snake would go badly. “Don’t think so,” Gideon said.

With that, the door to the equipment locker burst open and a figure stumbled into the room. He was dressed like Timken and his men– faded, mismatched green BDUs and black combat boots. He wore a black leather holster on his hip, the same as Timken. The only difference was that his holster was empty. And unlike Timken, the man’s hands were flex-cuffed behind him, and his head was covered with a black hood. A muffled, inarticulate roar erupted from the man, as though he were gagged beneath the hood.

“Shit,” Timken said.

The man hurled himself toward Timken’s voice, lowering his hooded head like a bull.

Timken turned to face the onrushing attacker, still bracing himself against the steel box, so that Gideon couldn’t move.

Timken attempted to kick the man, who still managed to ram his hooded head into Timken’s chest. The impact shifted Timken’s weight just enough to give Gideon the clearance he needed to get out from behind the box.

Seeing that Gideon was about to free himself, Timken gave the box one last shove, then dove for the AK-47 lying beside the dead demolitions man.

Gideon stumbled slightly as the corner of the box caught him painfully in the left hip. It was hardly even a stumble—barely more than a stutter-step. But it was enough to slow him down. Timken reached the AK just a fraction of a second before Gideon. His right hand clamped around the grip and his left around the wooden fore end. Gideon was able to get both hands on the stock, but his leverage was no good. Timken’s finger found the trigger and he began slowlyen ¡€† forcing the barrel around.

From behind Timken the hooded man groaned. Timken glanced backward. It was just the break Gideon needed.

He reached down toward the dead man, grabbed a pair of needle-nose pliers from the bomb-maker’s vest and jammed them into Timken’s neck.

Timken screamed and grabbed his throat. He tried to say something, but it was lost in a fountain of blood coming out of his mouth. He stumbled backward, knocking over the box, so that it fell on top of the hooded man. Timken pulled the pliers from his neck, eyes wide with panic, then slipped in his own blood, fell on top of the box, and stopped moving.

Gideon stepped around Timken and yanked the box off the prone body of the hooded man, then pulled the hood from his face. The man’s mouth was gagged with several loops of blood-smeared duct tape and his clothes and bearded face were covered with blood, obscuring his features. It took Gideon a moment to realize that it was Timken’s blood, not that of the man who lay on the floor. Gideon quickly unwrapped the duct tape, the man’s eyes blinking as they adjusted to the light.

“Gideon?” the man said, wincing. “Is that you?”

The wind hit Major Dale Royce Jr. like a hammer as he jumped from the rear of the C-17 into the blinding sun. As he caught the slipstream, his body spun, the motion twisting his already broken ankle. He screamed. Dale Royce had played football at the academy and had gone through all of the most dangerous and painful training that the United States Army could dish out.

But never had he felt pain like this.

He spread his arms instinctively, slowing in the wind. The buffeting jiggled his ankle. But still, unaccountably, he felt a grin come across his face. Below him, stretching out to the west, was a great blue circle, surrounded by towering walls of cloud. It was surely the most amazing thing he had ever seen.

And at the edge of the circle was a tiny black dot. The Obelisk.

The drop had been pretty good. But not perfect. If they’d done a high altitude, high open drop, it would have been a piece of cake to land on the rig. But HALO—high altitude, low open drop—meant they’d fall over forty-two thousand feet before opening their chutes. Then they’d pull their ripcords at five hundred feet. A modern square ram-air chute could cover several hundred horizontal feet for every thousand feet of fall. On a HALO drop over these lethal seas, there was no room for a near miss. If you were more than a few hundred ground-feet from the rig when you pulled, you were a dead man.

So you had to steer in free fall.

Steering meant diving headfirst, extending your toes, pulling your arms to your sides, and using your feet as rudders. His team had worked out the order in which they would fall, transitioning from belly diving to head-down diving. With the greater speed and aerodynamic control of the head-down dive, they could head downward in a stack, just like a formation of fighter jets. One by one, his men assumed their positions. He followed, last.

It was only as he straightened his legs and pulled in his arms that he realized he couldn’t point his left toe. In fact, when he looked down, he saw that it had been twisted backward by the force of the wind. And now the drag of his ruined foot was cauy w¡€†sing him to roll slowly over, like a plane doing a barrel roll. He tried to countersteer with his right hand. To his relief, he steadied.

Below him, though, his men were slowly drawing away from him. And, to his horror, he realized that he would be unable to steer in any meaningful way. Just keeping himself stable was going to destroy his ability to steer the dive. His men were heading in perfect formation toward the Obelisk. But he was veering slowly to the west. By the time he reached the water, he realized, he’d be as much as a mile off course.

He couldn’t deploy his chute high enough to steer himself to the rig or he’d risk giving his men away. The success of any HALO jump rested on pulling so low that the enemy had no time to react. If somebody was scanning the sky and saw him deploy half a minute before his boys hit the Obelisk, the enemy would sit there and pick them right out of the sky.

It hit him with a strange shock. He was a dead man. In this orientation, he was moving at roughly 150 miles an hour, terminal velocity. He’d be airborne for nearly a minute. He wore an inflatable life vest. But so what? No one would be able to get to him to pick him up from those mammoth waves. He’d fight until he drowned or until exhaustion and hypothermia finished him off.

The men all wore comm links, but they were observing radio silence, so he couldn’t even alert them to his plight. The senior NCO, Sergeant Williams, would take command when they hit the deck. He’d do fine. Every man would do his job.

The formation of his men was drawing farther and farther away. An odd feeling of peace washed through him. Perfect. His boys were perfect. Royce felt a burst of pride. They’d make it. Every single man in his team would make it.

And if they hit that deck together, the bastards on that rig wouldn’t stand a chance. He smiled. Well, he wouldn’t make it . . . but the mission would succeed.

This was what it was all about, Royce thought. How many men could say they’d lived a life like his? Not many. Not very damn many.

At about twenty thousand feet, though, Royce realized he was writing his own epitaph prematurely. There was no need for him to crash into the waves. If he just splayed his legs and arms into a normal controlled descent position, he could slow his fall by nearly thirty miles an hour, allowing his men to hit the Obelisk well before he got close to the ground. Then he could pull the rip cord high enough that he should be able to pilot the nimble parafoil chute to his destination. He’d arrive late for his command. But he’d get there.

He opened his arms, and suddenly his men began to break away from him with remarkable speed.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Thirty seconds later, he saw the first parachute blossom...

He readied his gear as the Obelisk grew closer and closer. He looked at his arm. Taped to the inside of his forearm was a photograph of the target, Tillman Davis. In the photo he wore a dress uniform, hair high and tight, black eyes staring unwaveringly at the camera. Looked like a hell of a warrior. Royce wondered where the man had gone wrong.

As the first chute blossomed, Royce sp of¡€†oke into his mic for the first time: “Guys, you know your orders. Every one of you has a picture of the target on your sleeve. You make a positive ID on Tillman Davis, you take him out.”

A tide of emotion flooded Gideon Davis as he stared at the man on the floor. For the first time the savagery and pace of the past few days hit him, and his legs went so weak he was afraid he couldn’t keep standing.

“Tillman?” The man on the floor nodded. “Earl told me you were dead.”

Then, from somewhere above them they heard the sound of gunfire.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

KATE CROUCHED OVER BIG Al on the floor of the dive station as her old friend tried to breathe, a thin stream of blood running from his mouth.

He inhaled, shallow and ragged, then said, “He must have hit me in the lung.”

“Don’t talk, Al,” she said, applying a compression bandage to his wound.

“Look,” he said, pointing feebly past her to the other deck.

Kate thought maybe she was hallucinating when she turned and saw a handful of paratroopers descending onto the chopper deck. Relief coursed through her. Even from here she could see the small rectangular patches on their shoulders: the American flag had never looked so good to her in her life.

There was a brief flurry of shouting and gunfire as a gaggle of Tim-ken’s mercenaries burst onto A Deck and began shooting at the soldiers.

Big Al grabbed her sleeve. “Hey,” he said, his gravelly voice now full of an ominous bubbling sound. “Listen to me, chérie”

“Shh!” Kate said. “Just hang on! Help’s coming.”

“Listen,” he said. His eyes lost focus for a moment, but then he winced and continued. “Don’t let yourself die alone just because of Ben. It was bad luck, the thing that happened to him.”

Kate felt the same stab of loneliness that pierced her every time she thought about Ben.

On the other platform the shooting continued furiously. The mercenaries—where she could see them—looked frightened and frantic. The American soldiers, on the other hand, seemed businesslike, making crisp hand signals to one another or shouting brief gnomic messages to one another: “Frag out! Tango down! Two in motion, flank left!” They had the unhurried competence of a well-drilled football team.

And suddenly the firing stopped. The soldiers on the other side of the rig were now disappearing inside the rig, leaving the fallen bodies of at least half a dozen of Timken’s mercenaries.

“I saw the way you looked at him,” Big Al whispered. “Don’t let what happened to Ben stop you from living your life.”

“Help!” Kate screamed. “I need medical help over here!”

She heard several loud pops, half swallowed by the rig. Then silence.

“Over here!”

“Promise me, you’ll let yourself be happy,” Big Al said, his eyes closing heavily. “Promise me.”

Then he took his last ragged breath, blood bubbling from his mouth.

Kate began crying quietly, in stark counterpoint to the gunfire that erupted in another part of the rig.

Gideon used his Benchmark to cut his brother’s flex cuff, then pulled him to his feet.

“It’s Parker,” Gideon said. “He’s behind everything.”

“Uncle Earl?” Tillman stared, as if trying to piece together what had happened.

“Are you surprised?”

“Not really.”

“He told me you’d switched sides. That you were working for the insurgents.”

When Tillman finally answered, his voice cracked with regret. “I was. But only because he wanted me to stay under. I took my orders directly and exclusively from him. And my mission was to penetrate the insurgency as deeply as I could. Which meant doing some pretty bad things.” He drifted off, lost in some painful memory before his eyes shifted back to Gideon. “When I told him I wanted to quit, he said he’d have me killed before he let me out. I knew he’d established enough plausible deniability that no one would have listened to me.”

“I would have,” Gideon said.

“I didn’t think you’d understand.”

“So you ran away to Kampong Naga.”

Tillman nodded, then went on to explain how the village had been shelled, and how he’d been grabbed and drugged by Timken.

“He sold us out. Both of us. He used General Prang. He hired Timken to impersonate you, and a bunch of mercenaries to hijack the rig, pretending to be Islamic terrorists on some kind of suicide mission. Their plan is to blow the rig and frame you for it. When the bodies were found, yours would be among them. I imagine they were going to shoot you and make it look like you’d been killed in the assault.”

“What assault?”

Gideon cocked his head at the furious gunfire above them. “That one. A Delta Force team just HALO jumped onto the rig.” As soon as he spoke, the gunfire slackened. “They may need help.” Gideon pulled a Makarov from the hip of the downed bomb-maker on the other side of the box, tossed it to Tillman.

“I’m still a little groggy. I got my bell rung when I hit the deck here.” Tillman pulled the slide back half an inch, verifying that a round was chambered, and looked over the sights, then gave Gideon a sly smile. “But I’ll do what I can.”

Gideon glanced at the timer on the bomb. Just under three hours. Still enough time. If they had to, they could evacuate the hostages into the escape pods and drop into the ocean before the bomb went off. It wouldn’t be a lot of fun riding in one of those pods, especially not after the eye passed and was replaced by another storm. But they&21;±€†#8217;d survive.

Tillman suddenly gripped Gideon’s shoulders. “Man, it’s been too long.” He pulled Gideon into a strong hug, which Gideon reciprocated. “I’m sorry things got so messed up between us.”

“Me too.” Gideon said. There were a thousand things he wanted to tell his brother, but he knew they would have to wait. “Let’s go.”

Tillman trailed Gideon as they charged out into the hallway and headed for the stairs. This would all be over soon.

As they climbed the stairs, they heard gunshots on one of the upper decks and the calm assured voices of American soldiers. Gideon sprinted ahead, up the stairs to the chopper deck, where he found a handful of camo-clad soldiers.

“Thank God you’re here!” Gideon shouted.

The four men turned, aiming their M-4 carbines at him. Gideon expected the men to greet him enthusiastically. Instead, their eyes went straight to his AK-47. Their faces were hard.

“Put your weapon down!” one of them shouted. “Weapon down!”

Gideon gingerly set his AK-47 down. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m Gideon Davis. The president—”

“I know who you are, sir. Down on the ground! On your knees and lace your hands behind your head!” The soldier’s commands were non-negotiable.

Gideon could hear Tillman clumping slowly up the steps behind him. The effects of his drugged captivity had obviously not quite worn off: he was lagging well behind.

Suddenly Gideon noticed something. Taped to the inside of every soldier’s left forearm was a photograph of Tillman. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out that it meant Tillman was their target.

“Wait!” Gideon shouted, as Tillman crested the stairs, brandishing the Makarov.

“There’s been a mistake! Don’t shoot him!” Gideon flung himself in front of Tillman’s body. For a moment everyone froze. Four carbines were leveled at Gideon’s chest.

One of the men’s eyes flicked to the photo on his arm, trying to make sure who he had authorization to kill here.

“Drop it! Put that weapon down! Do it now!”

“Don’t!” Gideon shouted. “He’s not the enemy here.”

The soldiers hesitated, puzzled.

Then a man in a dark suit stepped out from behind a door.

“Excellent work, boys!” the man said. “I’m assistant national security advisor Earl Parker.” Parker scanned the soldiers to determine which one was in command. He quickly ascertained that the ranking officer was a tall man at the back of the cluster of soldiers who was clearly favoring one leg. Parker’s voice rang with parade ground military authority. “Major Royce, that man is the terrorist Tillman Davis. His brother, Gideon Davis, was his inside man, coordinating this terrorist operation. Shoot them.”

“Sir?Rhe ±€†21; the Delta officer said.

“I have direct authorization from the president,” Earl Parker snapped. “Your orders are to use lethal force.”

Gideon continued shielding his brother with his body. “He has no such authority!” Gideon shouted. “I work directly for the president—”

“Shoot them!” Parker shouted. “These are enemies of the United States.”

Gideon saw then that the Delta Force commander was badly injured. One of his feet was turned around almost backward, like a broken GI Joe doll. He was sweating profusely, and his skin was pale. “Down on the ground,” the Delta Force major grunted. “Both of you. I’m taking you both into custody until I sort this out.”

“On the ground!” his men echoed.

“Put the gun down, Tillman,” Gideon said softly. “Put it down or they’ll kill you.”

Reluctantly Tillman set down the Makarov, got on his knees, and laced his fingers behind his head.

“You need to take them out, Major!” Parker shouted.

Royce shook his head. “Sir, I can’t—” He grabbed the wall next to him like he was about to lose his balance. “I can’t authorize . . .”

“He’s lying!” Tillman said. “He’s the one who—”

“Shut it!” An enormous blond soldier lifted his rifle like he was going to swat Tillman across the face.

Tillman eyed the man briefly, then decided to keep his mouth shut. He glared at Parker.

“D Deck clear!” a voice shouted from below.

“All decks clear!” another voice called.

“Major Royce,” Earl Parker said, “you’re obviously confused about your orders, I’m going to have the president call you directly.”

“Mr. Parker, until the rig is secure I need you to—” Parker ignored Royce, turning his back on the soldiers and walking briskly past Tillman and down the stairs. Under other circumstances, the Delta commander might have enforced his authority more vigorously. But it was obvious he was barely holding himself together against the pain of his injury.

“You son of a bitch!” Tillman shouted. “You sold me out!”

The big blond soldier backhanded Tillman, knocking him over, as the other Delta Force operatives pinned the brothers to the ground, knees on their necks.

As Earl Parker disappeared down the stairs, it all came clear in Gideon’s mind: Earl Parker was improvising an exit strategy. He would return to Washington saying that Tillman and Gideon had been in league with each other from the very beginning. Parker could be trusted to have assembled a long and detailed trail of evidence to bolster his claim that Tillman was behind the seizure of the rig. From there it wouldn’t be hard to push the claim a little farther—saying that Gideon had been involved, too. Blood was thicker than water, right?

em"±€†

Once they got back to the States, Parker’s story would seem more plausible than Gideon’s. Except for Prejean, Kate, and Gideon, none of the hostages who were still alive had ever seen Parker interacting with Timken. Nor had they ever seen Timken’s face. As far as everybody on the rig knew, Tillman had run the show when the bad guys seized the Obelisk. Now Timken and his men were almost certainly all dead. Gideon was pretty sure that Big Al was dying. If Big Al died, there was only one other person on the rig—other than Tillman and Gideon—who could testify directly about Parker’s involvement with the plot.

Kate.

If Parker could eliminate Kate, it would be Gideon’s word against Parker’s.