Free Countdown by David Hagberg Page B

out to dry. You’d be a scapegoat.”
    â€œYou’re goddamned right …”
    â€œWhat do you suppose five hundred kilotons is going to do when it explodes on whatever target they’ve programmed it for?”

    â€œThey won’t launch it,” Collingwood said, but he wasn’t as sure as he had been a moment earlier.
    McGarvey looked at him again. “Yes they will, unless we stop them.”
    â€œIs it Kurshin?” Trotter asked.
    â€œI don’t know for sure,” McGarvey admitted. “I think so, but he’s wearing a damned good disguise. Had to if he was able to fool the people at the base.”
    â€œWe can’t destroy that missile here, Kirk,” Trotter said emphatically.
    Collingwood was closely watching the exchange.
    McGarvey turned back to him. “If they do launch it, what’s the possibility of shooting it down?”
    â€œAbout one in a thousand.”
    Again McGarvey stared at the missile which by now was nearly at the vertical. “Well, I’d suggest that you inform your people to at least give it a try in case we fail here and that thing actually gets airborne.”
    That was a logic the colonel could understand. “Will do,” he said, and he turned to his radioman and began issuing orders.
    McGarvey raised his binoculars and slowly began to search the entire square foot by foot, from the front of the train station all the way across to the missile transporter.
    It was Kurshin. He could feel it in his bones. Trotter had reported that the French police had indeed discovered a mutilated body along the railroad tracks fifty miles east of Paris. “Along the same line that Brad Allworth took to get here,” Trotter had said.
    That fact clinched it in McGarvey’s mind. But that meant that Kurshin had had some very good intelligence information. He’d known Brad Allworth’s orders, what he looked like, and what train he would be on. He also had the information needed to reprogram the missile. It was not beyond Baranov, coming up with such information. But the risks he had taken to get the data, and then so openly display that fact here like this, meant Baranov had a very large prize in mind. A very large prize indeed.
    â€œGet the city engineer here,” McGarvey said.

    Kurshin and the other man went around to the side of the transporter, the hatch opened and they climbed inside.
    â€œWhat?” Trotter asked.
    â€œThe city engineer,” McGarvey repeated. “I know how Kurshin means to escape.”

9
    ABOARD THE MISSILE TRANSPORTER
    IT WAS COMING lip on fifteen minutes before eight. Night had fallen, but the transporter was bathed in lights that had been hastily strung up around the perimeter of the square and on some of the rooftops. Shadows were long. Where there wasn’t light, the darkness by contrast was almost absolute.
    Schey had pulled the main panel from the fire control board where he had worked with a test instrument and a soldering pencil for the past half hour. He sat back and looked up, an expression of satisfaction on his face.

    â€œThere,” he said. “It is finished.”
    Kurshin swiveled around and looked into the tangle of wires behind the panel. A small electronic device had been wired into the firing circuitry.
    â€œOnce the fire switch is thrown, the delay circuitry will give us ten minutes to make our escape, no more,” Schey said.
    Yegorov had been watching as well. “What if we are delayed?” he asked.
    The East German managed another of his pinched smiles. “Then it will be too bad for us, because there is no way of reversing the firing order.”
    â€œPull out the wires?”
    Schey shook his head. “Any tampering with the circuitry from that point will cause the missile to immediately fire.”
    Baranov had insisted that Schey be a part of the team. Kurshin could see why now. Not only did he have the technical expertise to pull it