Congo - Crichton Michael - Страница 27

7. Bugs

“WELL, GODDAMN IT,” ELLIOT BEGAN, “DO YOU mean to tell me that…”

“That’s right,” Ross said coldly. “You’re expendable.” But even as she spoke, she grabbed his arm firmly and led him out of the airplane while she held her finger to her lips.

Elliot realized that she intended to pacify him in private, Amy was his responsibility, and to hell with all the diamonds and international intrigue. Outside on the concrete runway he repeated stubbornly, “I’m not leaving without Amy.”

“Neither am I.” Ross walked quickly across the runway toward a police helicopter.

Elliot hurried to catch up. “What?”

“Don’t you understand anything?” Ross said. “That airplane's not clean. It’s full of bugs, and the consortium’s listening in. I made that speech for their benefit.”

“But who was following you in San Francisco?”

“Nobody. They’re going to spend hours trying to figure out who was.”

“Amy and I weren’t just a diversion?”

“Not at all,” she said. “Look: we don’t know what happened to the last ERTS Congo team, but no matter what you or Travis or anyone else says, I think gorillas were involved. And I think that Amy will help us when we get there.”

“As an ambassador?”

“We need information,” Ross said. “And she knows more about gorillas than we do.”

“But can you find her in an hour and ten minutes?”

“Hell, no,” Ross said, checking her watch. “This won’t take more than twenty minutes.”

“Lower! Lower!”

Ross was shouting into her radio headset as she sat alongside the police helicopter pilot. The helicopter was circling the tower of Government House, turning and moving north, toward the Hilton.

“This is not acceptable, madam,” the pilot said politely. “We fly below airspace limitations.”

“You’re too damn high!” Ross said. She was looking at a box on her knees, with four compass-point digital readouts. She flicked switches quickly, while the radio crackled with angry complaints from Nairobi tower.

“East now, due east,” she instructed, and the helicopter tilted and moved east, toward the poor outskirts of the city.

In the back, Elliot felt his stomach twist with each banking turn on the helicopter. His head pounded and he felt awful, but he had insisted on coming. He was the only person knowledgeable enough to minister to Amy if she was in medical trouble.

Now, sitting alongside the pilot, Ross said, “Get a reading,” and she pointed to the northeast. The helicopter thumped over crude shacks, junked automobile lots, dirt roads. “Slower now, slower..

The readouts glowed, the numbers shifting. Elliot saw them all go to zero, simultaneously.

“Down!” Ross shouted, and the helicopter descended in the center of a vast garbage dump.

The pilot remained with the helicopter; his final words were disquieting. “Where there’s garbage, there’s rats,” he said.

“Rats don’t bother me,” Ross said, climbing out with her box in her hand.

“Where there’s rats, there’s cobras,” the pilot said.

“Oh,” Ross said.

She crossed the dump with Elliot. There was a stiff breeze; papers and debris ruffled at their feet. Elliot’s head ached, and the odors arising from the dump nauseated him.

“Not far now,” Ross said, watching the box. She was excited, glancing at her watch.

“Here?”

She bent over and picked through the trash, her hand making circles, digging deeper in frustration, elbow-deep in the trash.

Finally she came up with a necklace-a necklace she had given Amy when they first boarded the airplane in San Francisco. She turned it over, examining the plastic name tag on it, which Elliot noticed was unusually thick. There were fresh scratches on the back.

“Hell,” Ross said. “Sixteen minutes shot.” And she hurried back to the waiting helicopter.

Elliot fell into step beside her. “But how can you find her if they got rid of her necklace bug?”

“Nobody,” Ross said, “plants only one bug. This was just a decoy, they were supposed to find it.” She pointed to the scratches on the back. “But they’re clever, they reset the frequencies.”

“Maybe they got rid of the second bug, too,” Elliot said.

“They didn’t,” Ross said. The helicopter lifted off, a thundering whirr of blades, and the paper and trash of the dump swirled in circles beneath them. She pressed her mouthpiece to her lips and said to the pilot, “Take me to the largest scrap metal source in Nairobi.”

Within nine minutes, they had picked up another very weak signal, located within an automobile junkyard. The helicopter landed in the street outside, drawing dozens of shouting children. Ross went with Elliot into the junkyard, moving past the rusting hulks of cars and trucks.

“You’re sure she’s here?” Elliot said.

“No question. They have to surround her with metal, it’s the only thing they can do.”

“Why?”

“Shielding.” She picked her way around the broken cars, pausing frequently to refer to her electronic box.

Then Elliot heard a grunt.

It came from inside an ancient rust-red Mercedes bus. Elliot climbed through the shattered doors, the rubber gaskets crumbling in his hands, into the interior. He found Amy on her back, tied with adhesive tape. She was groggy, but complained loudly when he tore the tape off her hair.

He located the broken needle in her right chest and plucked it out with forceps, Amy shrieked, then hugged him. He heard the far-off whine of a police siren.

“It’s all right, Amy, it’s all right,” he said. He set her down and examined her more carefully. She seemed to be okay.

And then he said, “Where’s the second bug?”

Ross grinned. “She swallowed it.”

Now that Amy was safe, Elliot felt a wave of anger. “You made her swallow it? An electronic bug? Don’t you realize that she is a very delicate animal and her health is extremely precarious-”

“Don’t get worked up,” Ross said. “Remember the vitamins I gave you? You swallowed one, too.” She glanced at her watch. “Thirty-two minutes,” she said. “Not bad at all. We have forty minutes before we have to leave Nairobi.” 

8. Present Point

MUNRO SAT IN THE 747, PUNCHING KEYS ON THE computer. He watched as the lines crisscrossed over the maps, ticking out datalines, timelines, information lock coordinates.

The computer ran through possible expedition routines quickly, testing a new one every ten seconds. After each data fit, outcomes were printed-cost, logistical difficulties, supply problems, total elapsed times from Houston, from Present Point (Nairobi), where they were now.

Looking for a solution.

It wasn’t like the old days, Munro thought. Even five years ago, expeditions were still run on guesswork and luck. But now every expedition employed real-time computer planning; Munro had long since been forced to learn BASIC and TW/GESHUND and other major interactive languages. Nobody did it by the seat of the pants anymore. The business had changed.

Munro had decided to join the ERTS expedition precisely because of those changes. Certainly he hadn’t joined because of Karen Ross, who was stubborn and inexperienced. But ERTS had the most elaborate working database, and the most sophisticated planning programs. In the long run, he expected those programs to make the crucial difference. And he liked a smaller team; once the consortium was in the field, their working party of thirty was going to prove unwieldy.

But he had to find a faster timeline to get them in. Munro pressed the buttons, watching the data flash up. He set trajectories, intersections, junctions. Then, with a practiced eye, he began to eliminate alternatives. He closed out pathways, shut down airfields, eliminated truck routes, avoided river crossings.

The computer kept coming back with reduced times, but from Present Point (Nairobi) the total elapsed times were always too long. The best projection beat the consortium by thirty-seven minutes-which was nothing to rely on. He frowned, and smoked a cigar. Perhaps if he crossed the Liko River at Mugana.