Chapter 12

No one discussed tactics with me, but it was clear that this operation was carefully planned. Our copter was second in a long string of at least a dozen that whirled down the coastline, past the foothills of Vesuvius, over the clusters of fishing villages and vineyards.

I had never seen Pompeii, but I caught a glimpse of something glittering and needle-nosed, up-thrust in the middle of a cluster of stone buildings that might have been the ruins.

Then the first ten of the copters spun down to a landing, while two or three more flew a covering mission overhead.

The expediters, hard-pellet guns at the ready, leaped out and formed in a skirmish line. Gogarty and a pair of expediters stayed close by me, behind the line of attack; we followed the troops as they dog-trotted through a field of some sort of grain, around fresh excavations, down a defile into the shallow pit that held the ruins of first-century Pompeii.

I had no time for archeology, but I remember tripping over wide, shallow gutters in the stone-paved streets, and cutting through a tiny villa of some sort whose plaster walls still were decorated with faded frescoes.

Then we heard the spatter of gunfire and Gogarty, clutching at me, skidded to a halt. “This is specialist work,” he panted. “Best thing we can do is stay out of it.”

I peered around a column and saw a wide open stretch. Beyond it was a Roman arch and the ruined marble front of what once had been a temple of some sort; in the open ground lay the three gigantic copters Defoe had mentioned.

The vanes of one of them were spinning slowly, and it lurched and quivered as someone tried to get it off the ground under fire. But the big thing was in the middle of the area: The bomb, enormous and terrifying as its venomous nose thrust up into the sky. By its side was a tank truck, the side of it painted with the undoubtedly untrue legend that it contained crude olive oil. Hydrazine, more likely!

Hoses connected it with the base of the guided-missile bomb; and a knot of men were feverishly in action around it, some clawing desperately at the fittings of the bomb, some returning the skirmish fire of the expediters.

We had the advantage of surprise, but not very much of that. From the top of the ancient temple a rapid-fire pellet gun sprayed into the flank of the skirmish line, which immediately broke up as the expediters leaped for cover.

One man fell screaming out of the big skyhook copter, but someone remained inside, for it lurched and dipped and roared crazily across the field in as ragged a take-off as I ever saw, until its pilot got it under control. It bobbed over the skirmish line under fire, but returning the fire as whatever few persons were inside it leaned out and strafed the expediters. Then the skyhook itself came under attack as the patrol copters swooped in.