electromagnetic generator designed by Matt
Stoll, Op-Center's technical wizard. The
unit, approximately the size and dimensions of a
portable CD player, sent out a pulse that
disrupted electronic signals within a ten-foot
radius and turned them to "gibberish," as Stoll
described itComputers, recorders, or other
digital devices outside its range would be
unaffected.
McCaskey and Aideen sat on the side of the bed
with the Egg, as they'd nicknamed it, between them.
"Deputy Serrador thinks that there isn't much we
can do without cooperation on this end," McCaskey said.
60 OP-CENTER
"Does he," Aideen said bitterly.
"We may be able to surprise him."
"It might also be
necessary
to surprise him," Aideen said.
"That's true," McCaskey said. He looked at
Aideen. "Anything else before I call the boss?"
Aideen shook her head, though that wasn't entirely
true. There was a great deal she wanted to say. One
thing Aideen's experiences in Mexico had taught
her was to recognize when things weren't right. And something
wasn't right here. The thing that had pushed her buttons
back in the deputy's office wasn't just the
emotional aftermath of Martha's death. It was
Serrador's rapid retreat from cooperation to what
amounted to obstruction. If Martha's death were an
assassination-and her gut told her that it was-was
Serrador afraid that they'd target him next?
If so, why didn't he take on extra
security? Why were the halls leading to his office so
empty? And why did he assume-as clearly he
did-that simply by calling off the talks word would get
back to whoever did this? How could he be so certain that
the information would get leaked?
McCaskey rose and went to the phone, which was
outside the pulse-radius. As Aideen listened
to the quiet hum of the Egg, she looked through the
twelfthfloor window at the streetlights off in the
distance. Her spirit was too depleted, her emotions
too raw for her to try to explore the matter
right now. But she was certain of one thing. Though these
might be the rules by which the Spanish leaders
operated, they'd crossed the line into three of her own
rules. First, you don't
BALANCE OF POWER 61
shoot people who are here to help you. Second, if
shooting them is designed to help you, then you're going
to run into rule number three:
Americans-especially this American-shoot back.
.
ATX-UL1024 FIVE
ATX-UL0
Monday, 8:21 p.m. San Sebastian, Spain
The hull of the small fishing boat was freshly
painted. The smell of the paint permeated the cramped,
dimly lighted hold. It overpowered the bite of the
handrolled cigarette Adolfo Alcazar was smoking
as well as the strong, distinctive, damp-rubber
odor of the wetsuit that hung on a hook behind the
closed door. The paint job was an extravagance
the fisherman couldn't really afford but it had been
necessary. There might be other missions, and he couldn't
afford to be in drydock, replacing rotted boards.
When he'd agreed to work with the General, Adolfo
knew that the old boat would have to last them for as
long as this affair took. And if anything went
wrong, that could be a while. One didn't undermine one
takeover and orchestrate a counterrevolution in a
single night-or with a single strike. Not even with a
big strike, which this one would be.
Although the General is going to try,
Adolfo thought with deep and heartfelt admiration.
And if anyone could pull it off, a one-day coup
against a major world government, it was the General.
There was a click. The short, muscular man
stopped
BALANCE OF POWER 63
staring into space. He looked down at the tape
recorder on the wooden table beside him. He lay his
cigarette in a rusted tin ashtray and sat back
down into the folding wooden chair. He pushed play
and listened through the earphones, just to make sure the
remote had picked up the sounds. The General's
technical officer from Pamplona, the man who had
given him the equipment, had said the equipment was
extremely precise. If properly
calibrated, it would record the voices over the
slosh of the ocean and the growl of the fishing boat's
engine.
He was correct.
After nearly a minute of silence Adolfo
Alcazar heard a mechanical-sounding but clear
voice utter, His
"It is accomplished.""
The voice was followed by what sounded like crackling.
No,
Adolfo realized as he listened more closely. The
noise wasn't static. It was applause. The men
in the yacht were clapping.
Adolfo smiled. For all their wealth, for all their
planning, for all their experience at managing their
bloodthirsty
familias,
these men were unsuspecting fools. The fisherman was
pleased to see that money hadn't made them
smart-only smug. He was also glad because the
General had been right. The General was always right.
He had been right when he tried to arm the Basques
to grease the wheels of revolution. And he was right
to step back when they began fighting among themselves-the
separatists battling the antiseparatists. Killing
themselves and drawing attention from the real revolution.
The small dish-shaped "ear" the fisherman had
64 OP-CENTER
placed on top of his boat's cabin, right
behind the navigation light, had picked up every word of the
conversation of that
altivo,
the haughty Esteban Ramirez, and his equally
arrogant
compadres
on board the
Veridico.
Adolfo stopped the cassette and rewound it. The
smile evaporated as he faced another unit
directly to the right. This device was slightly
smaller than the tape recorder. It was an oblong
box nearly thirteen inches long by five inches
wide and four inches deep. The box was made of
Pittsburgh steel. In case it were ever found, there
would be metallurgic evidence pointing to its country
of origin. Ramirez, the traitor, had ties to the
American CIA. After seizing power, the General
could always point to them as having removed a
collaborator who had outlived his usefulness.
There was a green light on the top of the box face
and a red light beneath it. The green light was glowing.
Directly below them were two square white
buttons. Beneath the topmost button was a piece of
white tape with the word arm written in blue
ink. That button was already depressed. The second
button was not yet depressed. Below it
was
a piece of tape with the word detonate written
on
it. The General's electronics expert had given
this device to Adolfo as well, along with several
bricks of U.s. army plastique and a remote
detonator cap. The fisherman had attached two
thousand grams of C-4 and a detonator below the
waterline of the yacht before it left the harbor. When the
blast occurred, it would rip through the hull at a
velocity of twenty-six thousand feet per second-
BALANCE OF POWER 65
nearly four times faster than an equivalent amount
of dynamite.
The young man ran a calloused hand through his curly
black hair. Then he looked at his watch.
Esteban Ramirez, the wealthy son of a bitch who
was going to bring them all under the iron heel of his
monied Catalonian cohorts, had said that the
assassin would be arriving at the airport in an
hour. When Adolfo had heard that, he'd used his
ship-to-shore radio to pass the information along
to his partners in the northwestern Pyrenees,
Daniela, Vicente, and Alejandro.
They'd hurried out to the airport, which was located
outside of Bilbao, which was seventy miles to the
east. Just two minutes ago they'd radioed back
petty thugs would be bringing him out here. The other
members of the
familia
would be rounded up and dealt with later. That is, if they
didn't panic and disperse of their own accord.
Unlike Adolfo, so many of those bastards were only
effective when they worked in big, brutal gangs.
Adolfo picked up his cigarette, drew on it
one last time, then ground it out. He removed the
audiocassette from the recorder and slipped it
into his shirt pocket, beneath his heavy black
sweater. As he did so, his hand brushed the shoulder
holster in which he carried a 9mm Beretta. The
gun was one that had been used by U.s. Navy
SEAL'S in Iraq and retrieved by coalition
forces. It had made its way to the General through the
Syrian weapons underground. Adolfo slipped in
a tape of native Catalonian guitar music
and pressed play. The first song was called
"Salou," a song for two guitars. It was a
paean to the magnificent illuminated
66 OP-CENTER
fountain in the beautiful town south of Barcelona.
The young man listened for a moment, humming along with the
lilting tune. One guitar played the melody
while the other made pizzicato sounds like water
droplets hitting the fountain. The music the
instruments made was enchanting.
Reluctantly, Adolfo turned off the tape.
He took a short breath and grabbed the
detonator. Then he doused the battery-powered
lantern that swung from an overhead hook and went
upstairs to the deck.
The moon had slid behind a narrow bank of clouds.
That was good. The crew of the yacht probably wouldn't
pay attention anyway to a fishing boat over six
hundred feet off their portside stern. In these
waters, fishermen often trolled for night-feeders.
But the men on the yacht would be less likely even
to see him if the moon were hidden. Adolfo looked
at the boat. It was dark save for its navigation
lights and a glow from behind the drawn curtain of the
midcabin porthole.
After several minutes Adolfo heard the muffled
growl of a small boat. The sound was coming from behind him,
from the direction of the shore. He turned
completely around and watched a small, dark shape
head toward the yacht. It was traveling about forty
miles an hour. From the light slap of the hull upon
the water Adolfo judged it to be a small,
two-person runabout. He watched as it pulled up
to the near side of the yacht. A rope ladder was
unrolled from the deck. A man stood unsteadily in
the passenger's seat of the rocking vessel.
That had to be the assassin.
BALANCE OF POWER 67
The detonator felt slick in Adolfo's
perspiring hand. He gripped it tightly, his finger
hovering above the lower button.
The seas were unusually active. They seemed to be
reflecting the times themselves, uneasy and roiling below the
surface. There were only four or five seconds
from the peak of one uproll to the peak of the next. But
Adolfo stood at the edge of the rolling deck with the
sure poise of a lifelong fisherman. According to the
General, he needed to be in a direct and
unobstructed line with the plastique. Though they could have
given him a more sophisticated trigger than the
line-of-sight transmitter, these were more commonly
available and less easy to trace.
Adolfo watched as the yacht rocked
gently from side to side. The assassin started
uncertainly up the short ladder and the runabout moved
away to keep from being rocked by the yacht's swells.
A man appeared on deck. He was a fat man
smoking a cigar- clearly not one of the crewmen.
Adolfo waited. He knew exactly where he'd
placed the explosives and he also knew the
precise moment when they'd be exposed by the roll of the
boat.
The yacht tilted to port, toward him. Then it
rolled away. Adolfo lowered the side of his thumb
onto the bottom button. One more roll, he
told himself. The ship was inclined toward the starboard for
just a moment. Then gently, gracefully, it righted itself
yacht rose, revealing the area just below the waterline.
It was dark and Adolfo couldn't see it, but he
knew that the package he'd left was there. He
pushed hard
68 OP-CENTER
with his thumb. The green light on the box went off
and the red light ignited.
The portside bottom of the hull exploded with a
white-yellow flash. The man on the ladder
evaporated as the blast followed a nearly
straight line from prow to stern. The fat man flew
away from the blast into the darkness and the deck crumpled
inward as the entire vessel shuddered. Splinters of
wood, shards of fiberglass, and torn, jagged
pieces of metal from the midcabin rode the blast
into air. Burning chunks arced brightly against the sky
while broken fragments, which had been blown straight
along the sea, plopped and sizzled in the water just
yards from Adolfo's fishing boat. Smoke rose
in thick sheets from the opening in the hull until the
yacht listed to port. Then it became steam. The
yacht seemed to stop there for a moment, holding at an
angle as water rushed through the huge breach;
Adolfo could hear the distinctive, hollow roar of the
sea as it poured in. Then the yacht slowly rolled
onto its side. Less than half a minute after
the capsizing, the wake caused the fishing boat
to rock quickly from side to side. Adolfo easily
&
nbsp; retained his balance. The moon returned from behind the
clouds then, its bright image jiggling on the waves
with giddy agitation.
Dropping the detonator into the water, the young man
turned from the sea and hurried back into the cabin.
He radioed his associates that the job had been
accomplished. Then he walked to the
controls, stood behind the wheel, and turned the boat
toward the wreckage. He wanted to be able to tell
investigators
BALANCE OF POWER 69
that he had raced to the scene to look for survivors.
He felt the weight of the 9mm weapon under his
sweater. He also wanted to make sure there weren't
any survivors.
ATX-UL1024 SIX
ATX-UL0 Monday, 1:44 p.m. Washington,
D.c.
Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert was in a gray
frame of mind as he arrived in Paul Hood's
bright, windowless basement office. In contrast to the
warm fluorescence of the overhead lights, the gloomy
mood was much too familiar. Not long ago they'd
mourned the deaths of Striker team members Bass
Moore, killed in North Korea, and X.
Col. Charles Squires, who died in Siberia
preventing a second Russian Revolution.
For Herbert, the psychological resources he
needed to deal with death were highly refined. Whenever he
learned of the demise of enemies of his country-or when
it had been necessary, early in his intelligence career,
to participate in some of those killings-he
never had any problems. The life and security of his
country came before any other considerations. As
Herbert had put it so many times, "The deeds are
dirty but my conscience is clean."
But this was different.
Although Herbert's wife, Yvonne, had been
killed nearly sixteen years ago in the terrorist
bombing of the U.s. Embassy in Beirut, he was
still mourning her death. The loss still seemed fresh.
Too fresh,
he
BALANCE OF POWER 71
thought almost every night since the attack.
Restaurants, movie theaters, and even a park
bench they had frequented became shrines to him. Each
night he lay in bed gazing at her photograph
on his night table. Some nights the framed picture
was moonlit, some nights it was just a dark shape. But
bright or dark, seen or remembered, for better or
for worse, Yvonne never left his bedside. And
she never left his thoughts. Herbert had long ago
adjusted to having lost his legs in the Beirut
explosion. Actually, he'd more than adjusted. His