The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,42

nobody else would or should. He had told himself, as well, that his experience made him the best one for the job. He had told himself that having devised the plan, he would be the one best prepared to alter it if necessary. But was vanity involved, too? Did he want to prove to himself that he could still do it? Or was he so desperate to expunge a debt of honor to Peter Novak that he had made a decision that might ultimately endanger Novak's own life, as well as his own? Doubts came to his mind like a shower of needles, and he forced himself to remain calm. Clear like water, cool like ice. It was a mantra he had often repeated to himself during the long days and nights of terror and agony he'd known as a POW in Vietnam.

Katsaris was standing precisely where the blueprints had suggested they would find the second entrance - the entrance that made the entire operation possible.

"The thing is where it's supposed to be," Katsaris said. "You can see the outline of the trapdoor."

"That's good news. I like good news."

"It's been sealed off with cinder block."

"That's bad news. I hate bad news."

"Masonry's in sound shape. Probably not more than thirty years old. There might have been a problem with flooding at some point, and this was the fix. Who knows? All I know is that Ingress A no longer exists."

Janson's gut furled even tighter. Clear like water, cool like ice.

"Not a problem," Janson said. "There's a workaround."

But it was a problem, and he had no workaround. All he knew was that a commanding officer must never let his men sense panic.

They had entered into the situation with sketchy knowledge. There was the information, confirmed by intercepts, that Peter Novak was being held in the colonial dungeon. There was the inference, supplied by common sense, that he would be heavily guarded. There was the necessary recourse to an aerial insertion. But then? Janson had never entertained the idea of a merely frontal approach to the dungeon - running a gauntlet that would equally jeopardize the rescuer and the one to be rescued. What made the plan workable was the prospect of simultaneity: removing the hostage even as the guards were being incapacitated. There was no longer any viable rear entrance. Hence no viable plan.

"Come with me," Janson said. "I'll show you."

His mind raced as he and Katsaris returned to the cargo chute. There was something. The realization went from inchoate to merely murky, but something was better than nothing, hope better than no hope.

Manipulating the fiber-optic cuff, he shifted the field of vision away from the seated soldier and toward the worn staircase that rose up at the end of the room. "Stairway," he said. "Landing. Ductwork. Ledge." Projecting out from the midlevel landing was a shelf of poured concrete. "A relatively recent addition - the last few decades, I'd guess, done when the plumbing got modernized."

"Can't get there without being spotted."

"Not necessarily. The period of exposure - going from the landing to the concrete shelf - would be relatively brief, the room is filled with the haze of cigarette smoke, and they're all playing a pretty damn engrossing round of proter. You still get the principle of simultaneity. It's just that we're going to have to resort to the main entrance as well as the chute."

"This was your backup plan?" Katsaris shot back. "You're doing more improvising than the Miles Davis Quintet. Jesus, Paul, is this an operation or a jam session?"

"Theo?" It was a request for understanding.

"And what guarantee is there that there won't be a guard hived off, stationed in the dungeon with the prison?"

"Any close contact with Peter Novak is dangerous. The KLF knows that - they'll guard him, but they'll keep him isolated from any of the Kagama rebels."

"What are they afraid of - that he'll stab a guard with a cuff link?"

"His words are what they're afraid of, Theo. In a poor country, the words of a plutocrat are dangerous things - implements of escape more formidable than any hacksaw. That's why the guards are going to be grouped together, and at some distance from the prisoner. Let the prisoner have the opportunity to strike up a relationship with a single guard, and who knows what manipulations might occur? Remember, Theo, the per capita income in Anura is less than seven hundred dollars a year. Imagine a Kagama guard being drawn into conversation with a man