The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [10]
Amy stuck her head in again.
“Sorry,” I said, before she could open her mouth. “I can’t speak to anyone right now. E-mail bulletins only for another half hour at least. Hang on.”
The file completed downloading, and I dragged a copy to the folder where I kept documents for client access.
“I’m writing a big video file to the public drive. As soon as it finishes, e-mail the address to Rashid and then to everyone else on the prime distribution list.”
“Right,” she said, closing the door.
“Can we get on with this?” Walter snarled.
I clicked on the file irritably. My media player opened, and a second later the screen filled with an image I couldn’t identify, the lower half shiny gray metal and the upper a blurry blue tube. The field of view began shifting smoothly upward, and suddenly I got oriented.
“The camera’s mounted on one of the scrubbing towers,” I said. “It was pointed straight down, maybe so nobody would notice it.”
“Whose camera?” Walter asked.
“My contact didn’t know. Pirates, he said.”
The camera scrolled up until the Gulf of Finland was just visible at the top of the screen and then began tracking to the right. Alex pointed to the screen.
“What’s that?”
Four metal struts reached skyward, the ends blackened and twisted. Dark smoke was spewing up between them.
“The control tower,” I replied, horrified. Even with the terminus performing only minimal duty, there would have been at least three or four guys in the control tower.
The camera kept panning, and the white marquee where I’d last seen the Russian deputy prime minister about to speak—or what was left of it—came into view.
“Jesus Christ.” Alex gasped.
Flaming scraps of canvas surrounded a charred rectangular area that looked like an airplane crash site. Burned corpses and scattered body parts became distinguishable as the camera zoomed in. A few survivors crawled on the ground, blood seeping from appalling wounds. Alex grabbed hold of my garbage can and threw up. I felt I wouldn’t be far behind him. Walter started to leave.
“Wait,” I managed to say. “My contact said I should watch until the end.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you speed it up?” Walter asked impatiently.
“I think so.”
I clicked my mouse on the appropriate button and the video began playing at ten-times speed. Walter lifted my phone without asking, reeling off a litany of crisp orders while I tapped out yet another urgent e-mail with trembling fingers. Six minutes later—an hour of elapsed real time—the Russians had four military helicopters and fifteen or twenty fire trucks and ambulances on the ground, and another pair of helicopters circling overhead. The parking lot I’d seen earlier had been converted into an emergency triage zone, with dozens of coveralled medics working on the injured.
“Stop,” Walter ordered.
I’d already moved my mouse to the pause button. A pale red X had suddenly appeared in the center of the screen, a column of similarly colored numbers superimposed to the far left.
“Play,” Walter said. “Half speed.”
I watched curiously as he bent closer to the screen. The camera swung slowly toward the helicopters and the emergency vehicles. Walter tapped the changing column of numbers on the left with one finger.
“Distance and azimuth,” he declared crisply. Walter had been an army officer in Vietnam. I hadn’t, but I had a sudden dread of what to expect. “Speed it up again.”
The camera lingered fractionally on each of the landed helicopters and on the larger pieces of emergency equipment, the central X blinking repeatedly. Each time the X blinked, it left behind a red dot. The camera pulled back for a wide view, and I felt my heart in my throat. The blow wasn’t long coming.
Every one of the emergency vehicles and helicopters exploded simultaneously. A fraction of a second later a rolling wave of synchronized explosions took out the triage zone. No one on the ground had a chance. Alex retched again.
“Mortars,” Walter announced. “Some targeted, some pre-positioned. Probably on the