Cyclops One

Chapter 1

There was no part of his body that didn’t hurt. His right knee felt as if it had been turned inside out; a jagged numbness ran diagonally across his back to the left side of his neck, where it plunged through his chest and came out at his breastbone. His temples felt as if daggers were pressing against them.

McIntyre lay on his stomach in the darkness for an hour or more, gradually growing colder and colder. Images fluttered before his eyes, some real, some imaginary.

He saw a dozen girls he should have laid but hadn’t.

That was how he knew he wasn’t going to die. If he’d been about to buy it, he’d have seen a shadowy figure standing in front of a long tunnel, just as all those near-death books and movies claimed.

That, or a babe with serious knockers leading him to hell.

McIntyre pushed with his arms and legs, trying to lift the metal from around him. He pushed through the darkness, working his way in the path of least resistance. He began to feel cold. Several times the blackness closed around him and his head floated away from his arms and legs. At some point he realized he was on the ground outside of the wreckage.

His legs and arms felt stiff, and his neck buzzed with whatever he’d done to it. But he was free, he could move; he pushed over and sat up.

There was a rifle near him, a Russian Kalashnikov.

He reached for it. His hand moved in slow motion. When he finally touched it the metal seemed on fire. He pulled the gun toward him, used it as a crutch to get to his feet.

The helicopter lay a few yards away, nose-first against the side of the hill. There were people outside, near the door: bodies, none moving. He took a step forward, saw a man next to him: Captain Jalil.

The bastard who had kidnapped him.

McIntyre swung the rifle up and crashed it down on Jalil’s head. The Indian fell straight down. McIntyre swung again, hitting the back of his skull so hard that he felt something crack inside it. Surprised at his strength and the ferocity of his anger, he knelt over the captain. Blood streamed from his ears and mouth; the man was dead.

Something moved near the helicopter. McIntyre heard a shout. He grabbed the rifle right-side up, pulled it to his side and fired into the thick of the shadow as he turned around.

The shadow fell away. But rather than going over to make sure the soldier was dead — rather than getting up and seeing if any of the others were alive — McIntyre sat next to Jalil’s lifeless body.

“Why did you want to kill me?” he asked. “Why? Why kill anyone?”

Then he collapsed, unconscious, his chest landing on the motionless remains of his enemy.

McIntyre’s body transformed itself in the dazed nightmare of his troubled sleep. His arms became long icicles, and the back of his head swelled larger and larger until it lifted him up from the valley, sending him soaring through the darkness. He saw himself, then saw women — beautiful, gorgeous women in an endless parade, traveling through the rift in the mountains.

A gust of wind took him and spun him around; he woke to find himself sitting against part of the damaged helicopter’s tail. It was now mid-morning.

His first thought was: I’m in real shit.

His second thought was: Damn it’s cold.

His third: I have to take the world’s biggest leak.

McIntyre could do something only about the last. He rose, unbending unsteadily, then walked a few yards away. He remembered bashing his captor’s head and body; had it been part of the dream?

His hands were covered with blood, so he knew it had to have been real. Still, he couldn’t quite prepare himself for what he saw when he went back. He pushed it over, avoided looking at the battered face as he searched for his satellite phone.

He found a photo in one of the pockets. McIntyre threw it aside without looking.

Someone groaned from inside the helicopter. McIntyre steeled himself, continued searching. There were papers, a very small pistol; the phone had been tucked into the Indian’s hip pocket and was still warm.

There was another moan. Worried that some of the men might be alive, he took the phone and jammed it into his back pocket. An assault rifle sat on the ground; McIntyre stooped to pick it up. Blood rushed from his head; dizzy, he put his hand out and dropped the phone into the dirt.

The helicopter’s cockpit had been crushed, but the rear compartment was more or less intact. The side door had been torn off and there was a long, narrow hole running back from it, as if it were a seam that had split. Five or six bodies lay nearby. One moved, then another.

McIntyre saw another rifle and two clips lying close to it. He grabbed them, then whirled, sensing someone was watching him. Once more the blood fled from his brain.

One of the Indian soldiers sat upright on the ground, propped against the helicopter, eyes open. McIntyre stared at him, not sure whether he was alive or not. He started forward, thinking of poking him with the gun. As he took a step something seized him — not fear, and not precisely anger, either, but something he couldn’t have defined. It made him press the trigger. Three bullets burst from the gun. One glanced off the helicopter near the man’s shoulder and the others completely missed, McIntyre’s aim thrown off by the recoil. But though he hadn’t been hit, the man slumped over and fell to the side. He’d already been dead.

McIntyre stripped off the soldier’s bulletproof vest. There were grenades in it, two hooked into small pockets in the front and two more clipped on the top. The tops were taped so they wouldn’t accidentally explode. There were several clips of ammunition for the rifle as well.

Someone started talking inside the helicopter. It wasn’t a moan or a plea; McIntyre couldn’t make out the words or even the language, but the words had a calm, logical sound.

McIntyre took one of the grenades in his hand and held it. He started to push off the tape, thinking he’d blow up the helicopter, killing the men inside.

He’d expelled his anger, though. He didn’t want to kill; he just wanted to live.

He couldn’t think. He started to reel back and throw the grenade into the helicopter, then turned and threw it toward the rocks. His legs seemed to disintegrate; he pushed his body forward, sprawling and belatedly covering his head with his hands.

There was no explosion. He hadn’t set the grenade.

He had to get out of here.

McIntyre staggered, the rifles dragging over his shoulders as he began picking his way across and then down the slope, not sure which way he was going, only that he was moving.

Chapter 2

They were beyond tired, all of them, but Howe needed to get it all sorted out. He rubbed his eyes, hunching over the map as Atta and the crew members of Cyclops Two slowly — painfully slowly — worked through the cockpit gear and replotted each strike on the paper map. The map was so large that it draped over the small folding table they were using; they had to push it up to get the last of their plots in. They’d taken out a total of thirteen Indian ballistic missiles and six Pakistani IRBMs, as well as two SAMs.

“This hit,” said Atta, pointing to the far side of the map, “was definitely not ours.”

“We’re assuming it’s a missile, not a shadow contact,” said Howe. “Or a dummy warhead.” He leaned back against the frame of the weapons operator’s seat, slightly hunched over despite the ample clearance on the flight deck.

“The other may be,” said Atta, “but this here is definitely a live warhead. And the strike pattern on the target is exactly like ours: tracking laser, then the hit.”

It had to be Cyclops One. The AWACS radar contacts were consistent with a 767. They had tracked the contact’s flight north, then lost it in the mountains east of Jammu. There had been a series of Indian SAM launches; it appeared that the plane had been shot down by a Trishul missile, though the data was inconclusive. It was possible that the NSA would be able to supply more data about that in a few hours, pending their own analysis of the battle.

Had the Chinese stolen the plane, then used it to help Pakistan? Or had the Pakistanis stolen it themselves, only to lose it in battle?

Or was Megan responsible somehow on her own?

“There are several other contacts that we can’t completely account for,” said Atta. “Once the AWACS people review everything and compile it with the other data, they may be able to sort it out.”

Howe glanced at his watch. He was supposed to brief the Pentagon in five minutes over a secure video hookup in the headquarters building; it would take at least ten to get there. He looked around at the small knot of people crowded into the 767.

“All right. Anything else?”

Atta shook his head. The rest stared, more or less blankly.

“You guys, everybody, get some rest,” Howe told them. “Sleep. Good job. We did a good job. Better than anyone could’ve asked for.”

Outside, engine specialists and a veritable army of maintenance experts were busy dissecting the damaged engine and wing. A new power plant had been located and was en route. Howe nodded at the few men who seemed to notice him — most were absorbed in their jobs — and then walked toward the Hummer that had been assigned to transport him over to the base commander’s suite. His legs felt as though they had lead inserts at the knees, and the rims of his eyes seemed to vibrate with a metallic fuzz.

What would have happened if they hadn’t been here? Ten million, twenty million people dead? Fifty million injured?

If the other plane was Cyclops One, then Megan had been flying it. She had taken down the other two missiles.

She might have been ready to take down others.

His anger toward her seemed to have faded into confusion. He got into the truck and rubbed his eyes, bracing himself as the driver raced across the base. Inside the general’s temporary command post, the secure conference had already begun.

“Good job, Colonel,” said Dr. Blitz on the screen at the side of the room as Howe entered. “Beyond expectations. Very, very good job. The President is proud of you and your people.”

The screen changed; the feed showed the “tank,” the secure conference room in the basement of the Pentagon. The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff repeated Blitz’s congratulations. Several other military people chimed in, then the defense secretary told him they’d just made history.

Howe ran down the tally. They’d heard the initial reports, but this probably seemed more solemn, more official. He concentrated on the missiles, adding the F-16 and its probable nuke almost as an afterthought.

Someone at the Pentagon mentioned that the CIA analyst thought the plane had been carrying a five- or eight-megaton bomb.

“We believe the Indians have two missiles left,” said Blitz. “That’s our best guess. Both sides have agreed to a cease-fire. The UN Security Council is going to meet in a few hours in emergency session. You’re a hero, Colonel Howe. You and your people.” He seemed almost choked with emotion.

“Hear, hear,” said someone at the Pentagon.

“The President is going to address the nation in a few minutes to let them know what happened,” said Blitz. “He will mention you and your team.”

“There’s one thing we have to talk about,” said Howe. “Two of the hits that were made — we believe they came from another laser. It had to be Cyclops One.”

Chapter 3

Luksha had flown all night and his eyes felt as if they were on fire. He stared through the window as the car sped down Pereulok Sivtsev Vrazhek in the Arbatskaya section of Moscow just outside the Kremlin. Once something of a bohemian quarter and now a tourist favorite, the area included several new government buildings carefully concealed behind old facades. The one Luksha’s military driver was taking him to, in fact, had only been occupied a few months before; this was Luksha’s first visit, and he did not quite know what to expect.

The car stopped in the middle of the street, in front of a four-story yellow building whose exterior dated from the late eighteenth century. A single guard in a black suit stood at the doorway, eyeing Luksha suspiciously as he walked up the steps. The man touched his ear — there was an ear bud for a communications system there — then nodded to Luksha, who nodded back and pulled open the thick door. Two guards, these in paratrooper uniforms, stood inside the long but narrow vestibule. The men had AK-74s equipped with laser-dot sights; their fingers rested on the triggers. They neither moved nor said anything as the general walked past. His boots slid slightly on the polished marble floors; the lighting was so dim that he could not have read a newspaper. A large abstract painting by Kandinsky hung at the far end of the hall, which formed an alcove for a short flight of stairs to the left. Luksha walked down the stairs and there was met by two more paratroopers, who snapped sharply to attention and stood silently while a petite woman in an army uniform strode forward.

“General, please,” she said, waiting for his nod before turning on her heel and leading him to a waiting elevator.

As soon as Luksha was inside, the doors slid shut and it started downward, picking up speed as it went. The young woman stared at the door as it descended; Luksha felt his ears pop.

The door opened on a corridor of polished granite. The rug on the floor was so thick Luksha felt as if he would trip as he walked. They turned right; two men in civilian dress passed, saying nothing, eyes studiously avoiding both Luksha and his attractive guide.

Two short corridors later the young woman deposited the general in the office of his commander, Andrev Orda, who besides being a major general was a member of parliament. As was his habit, Orda played the fussy old maid welcoming a long-lost relative, ushering Luksha in and offering him a vodka, which could not be turned down. Luksha felt himself sinking into the leather chair in front of Orda’s pristine glass desk, his tired bones precariously close to sleep.

Two toasts later Orda’s hospitality evaporated into the more comfortable — for Luksha — abruptness of a former army field general.

“The American weapon was used over India,” said Orda. “You told me it was not operational.”

“On the contrary,” said Luksha. “My last communication not only noted that the remaining plane and its escorts had left the base but spoke of the possibility that the weapon might be used.”

“The Americans are celebrating already. Their president has gone on television and declared war obsolete.”

Luksha said nothing. He could not blame the Americans for celebrating, though in his opinion their claims for the weapon were overblown. It would make war more efficient, not obsolete.

“What happened to the plane that crashed?” asked Orda. “Or was that intended as some manner of ruse?”

“That is why I am here,” said Luksha. As succinctly as he could, the general laid out what his people had found and what they had surmised. He made it clear that he could not explain why the weapon would have been flown under such conditions from its development base; he was not, he admitted, certain that the aircraft had not crashed, since the American actions were consistent with an all-out search. But the hints of activity at the supposedly abandoned island in the Kurils, added now to telemetry that seemed military in nature and records of a fuel delivery some eight months before, seemed “provocative.”

Luksha used the word deliberately; it was one Orda relished.

Two flyovers by his Geofizia, outfitted with a photo reconaissance pod, had proven inconclusive; a ground inspection was necessary.

“I can answer many questions simply by going there,” said Luksha. “Four or five destroyers, a battalion of paratroopers…We quarantine the island, take it over, capture the weapon.”

Orda’s face, reddened by the vodka earlier, turned nearly white.

“This is Japanese territory,” said the general.

“The presence of a military installation would violate the treaty and return the land to us,” said Luksha. He had been prepared for the objections — legitimate, surely — and now played his trump card. “Given that we have detected signals from a Tu-160 device, we could say that we were searching for such an aircraft that was reported missing.”

Orda remained silent, staring at him as if he were an unfamiliar man who’d burst into the room with an incredible plan to go to war against America. Luksha began to feel less sure of himself.

“The Americans have occasionally used private companies as fronts for the CIA,” he said, repeating a theory Chapeav had raised. “It is possible they are planning to do something against the North Koreans, if not ourselves.”

Luksha waited, trying not to wince under the force of Orda’s stare. General Orda had the authority to grant permission for the operation, but if he didn’t, should Luksha go over his head?

He would have to speak to the premier himself. Just getting on his calendar would take days if not weeks.

“The Japanese would view this as an attack,” said Orda finally. “If there are troops there, they would resist.”

“There are no defense forces that are using standard communications equipment on the island,” said Luksha. “The Japanese have not been on the island as far as we can tell for at least six months. We would approach peacefully, with no intent to harm anyone, unless we were fired upon.

“A reconaissance is hardly an attack,” he added quickly. “Looking for our aircraft, we find another. If a weapon happens to be aboard it — in violation of an international agreement — then surely it would be our right to examine in detail.”

Orda stared at him. There was no doubt about the laser’s capabilities; the Americans had just proven all of the scientists’ speculation. If it truly was this close to them, it had to be examined — if not destroyed.

“A large-scale operation would be out of the question,” said Orda finally. “But a reconaissance in force, conducted at a time when the island was not monitored by the Japanese or the Americans, proceeding carefully as you’ve outlined…What is the minimal force you would need, if such a group were under your direct, personal command?”

Chapter 4

“Define venti.”

The skinny young man with half a goatee blinked.

“Venti?”repeated Fisher.

The thick aroma of ground caffeine in the upscale coffee shop had obviously intoxicated the clerk’s delicate senses. Fisher sympathized, but not to the point of being patient.

“How about I hop over the counter and get the coffee myself?” he asked the clerk, who had a tag on his shirt declaring he wasn’t a clerk at all but something in an obscure Romance language that seemed to mean lawgiver.

“Venti would be, uh, bigger than grande,” said the clerk. He pronounced the last e with an exaggerated swagger, as if the accent might somehow make him European.

“So there’s grande and extra grande, which is large and extra large, except that large is what used to be regular, but you can charge more by calling it large. So venti is large, and I want extra large, so I guess I want extra venti.” Fisher took out a cigarette. “What would that be? Vento?”

“Um—”

“Because it sounds kind of Latin, you know what I mean? It’s not Latin, but it’s close.” He lit the cigarette.“Venti, vento, ventanimous — I came, I saw, I coffeed. Works for me.”

“You can’t smoke in here,” said the clerk.

“Yeah, I know,” said Fisher. “So you gonna get me the ventanimous or what?”

The clerk stared at the cigarette. “Mocha?”

“Just regular coffee. Straight.”

The young man took cover behind the dessert display, whispering to one of his coworkers. Fisher surveyed the counter, looking for something to put his ashes in. A display near the register was filled with CDs “celebrating the organic music of the Rain Forest.” Next to it was a small glossy photo of the man who had actually picked the coffee being prepared today; it seemed likely the company had spent more on the glossy photo than on the beans. A legend below the photo declared that the coffee had been harvested with integrity, which Fisher agreed was a good thing: You couldn’t have too much integrity in a hot beverage, as far as he was concerned.

On the other hand, Fisher wasn’t sure about organic music. Possibly it was the song they sang when they tore the trees down to panel the interior of the store.

The clerk with the pseudo-Latin job title sent a braver, skinnier coworker forward with the coffee. Fisher paid for it — the price represented a month’s car payment — and then sat along the wall. Several people stared, eyeing his cigarette with obvious envy.

He’d taken only two sips from the coffee — while admittedly on the strong side, it lacked the metallic, burned aftertaste so highly prized by true connoisseurs of java — when a gentleman clad in the dark blue favored by officers of the law approached his table. Fisher reached into his jacket for his Bureau ID, expecting the cop to riff a variation of “license and registration” on him. Instead he touched his holster, unsnapping the gun restraint at the top.

“FBI,” said Fisher. “Relax.”

“Put it down slowly,” said the cop.

Fisher pulled out his ID and laid it on the table.

“I meant the cigarette,” said the policeman.

Fisher’s cell phone began to vibrate.

“How about I take it outside?” he suggested, figuring the heavy lacquer of the walls would interfere with his reception.

“Good idea,” said the policeman, whose hand remained poised near his weapon as the FBI agent walked out. The small concrete patio near the sidewalk was crowded with smoking refugees, but Fisher found an unoccupied table near the Dumpster, where the refreshing aroma of spent coffee beans mixed with more earthly scents.

“Fisher.”

“McDonald.”

“Betty, how are you?” he asked, starting to sip the coffee. “Did the GSA help?”

“About as much as Congressman Taft,” she said.

“Good,” said Fisher. It was best not to acknowledge sarcasm in an amateur.

She sighed. Fisher recognized the sound of a Tootsie Roll being unwrapped.

“We persevered despite your help. There are some interesting intersections,” she said between chews. “Ferrone Radiavonics, which according to your papers worked on the F/A-22V’s radar.”

“Yup?”

“They’re owned by a company which is owned by another company which is part of a trust controlled by the people who control El-Def.”

“This is going somewhere, right?”

“Megan York’s family and friends have an important interest in about half a dozen defense projects besides Cyclops,” she told him.

“Controlling interests?”

“Big interests.”

“Like which ones?”

“God, Fisher, do you do anything besides drink coffee and smoke cigarettes all day?”

“Nope.”

“The augmented-ABM project is the biggest. The connection’s rather convoluted.”

“Bonham’s involved?”

“He has stock in some of the companies. His stake is unclear. There are others.” Betty ran down a list that included an unmanned submarine project and a satellite network. “Awful lot of stock to own, given his supposed net worth. Get this: He claims his condo cost under two-fifty. Can’t possibly be, not near the Beltway. No way.”

As she talked the call-waiting feature beeped Fisher’s line with another call.

“Gotta get going, Betty. Keep digging.”

“Digging for what?”

He clicked onto the other line and immediately regretted doing so.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Why, Jemma, hello to you. Actually, I am in a coffee emporium in downtown central north Alexandria. I think it’s downtown. Hard to tell.”

“I need you to get on a plane right away. You have to go to Afghanistan. Did you catch the President’s speech?”

“The President?”

“Fisher, I don’t have any time for your bullshit.”

“Such language. I bet there’s an ordinance against it here.”

“Fisher — I’m going to give you twenty minutes to get over to Andrews. There’s a plane waiting.”

“A big one, I hope.”

Chapter 5

Blitz had expected some of the criticism. It was mostly knee-jerk anti-Americanism, the kind that would interpret a cure for cancer as somehow part of a plot to bring a McDonald’s restaurant to every intersection in the world. A few of the sources were surprising, or at least ironic: A German newspaper accused the U.S. of trying to enforce its “ethos” on the world, as if eliminating all life-forms from several hundred thousand square miles was a lifestyle choice.

But there were a few nuanced opinions — he couldn’t call them criticisms exactly — that did disturb him. One, recognizing that mankind now stood at the precipice of a new age, went on to warn that the shape of this age was not so clear-cut:

One of the lessons that seems not to be understood about the use of the atomic bombs against Japan was that they helped end the war precisely because they were weapons of indiscriminate annihilation. They made possible the erasing of an entire people — not simply the removal of combatants, but of all people. World War II to a great degree erased the line between combatant and noncombatant. The Allied powers involved in the fight understood — though they could not admit it publicly — that the only real way to win the war was to combine military victory with severe crippling of the civilian population. The atomic bombs were the culmination of that, a step further along the line that led from Dresden to the firebombing of Tokyo. There would have been no final victory without these mass destructions, just more in the cycle of engagements that had wracked the world for one hundred, two hundred years.

And so, when the possibility of complete destruction is removed, what then? Does it lead to more stability — to no more war, as the President declared in his forceful speech last night? Or does it lead paradoxically to an era of more instability? If a country can only be defeated in war by total annihilation — the lesson of World War II — what happens when that possibility is removed? Is the answer truly peace? Or is the result more cycles of violence? Low-grade violence compared to world wars, certainly, but inevitable and intractable nonetheless.

The American action against Iraq in the first Gulf War is a case in point. By limiting their objectives in the war, America and its allies inadvertently set the stage for years of continued conflict and great suffering, necessitating actions in 2003 which even now we do not fully understand the ramifications of. Would the result have been so much different if Saddam Hussein — or, better, a successor who rose to power by assassinating the despised leader — swore off weapons of mass destruction? Would the Kurds have been freed, the Shiite majority unchained? The Cyclops weapon — along with the ABM and augmented ABM system currently envisioned — can eliminate nuclear war. But will they make the world safer? And in pursuing this safety — admittedly a seemingly glorious goal — are we actually making ourselves less secure?…

Not only did Blitz disagree with some of the essay’s conclusions; it bothered him considerably that the essay had been written by one of his mentors, Donald Byrd, who had preceded him at Harvard and in his estimation remained his teacher. In essence, his friend was saying he had done the opposite of what he had intended.

But what was the alternative? What would he have said if they let the war go on?

“Lost in thought?” asked the President as he entered the East Sitting Room on the second floor of the White House. The President pulled one of the ornate wooden chairs from the table where one of the aides had stacked the newspapers and printouts. A silver coffee service sat on the floor; D’Amici bent over and helped himself. “So?” he said finally. “What’s the verdict?”

“Mostly positive,” said Blitz.

“I don’t mean the press reaction,” said D’Amici. He waved his hand dismissively. “Will the cease-fire hold or not?”

“I think it will,” said Blitz. “They sound scared.”

“What about the other plane? Was it Cyclops?”

D’Amici hadn’t slept — Blitz knew this for a fact, since he hadn’t himself — but he looked as if were rested and ready to go bicycling or on a picnic. The doubt he’d seen the other night was gone. He’d made the right decision, and his people had executed it perfectly.

“We’re still going through the satellite photos,” said Blitz. “Colonel Howe should be conducting the search by now.”

“Howe’s still in Afghanistan?”

“Yes, sir. The Pentagon…His aircraft have the most advanced gear available. And he volunteered.”

“He’s got a future.” The President smiled in a way that suggested he might consider adopting the colonel — or placing him on the ticket as vice president for the next election.

“We’re a little worried about Chinese reaction,” added Blitz.

D’Amici shrugged. “If they’re the ones who have the plane, their reaction is irrelevant. And if they don’t, well, we’ll deal with that down the line. You don’t think this is parallel Chinese technology?”

The CIA had raised that possibility yesterday, claiming that their review of the strikes showed differences in the weaponry. Bonham’s experts had snickered, and Blitz sided with them.

“Doubtful. And it’s definitely not Russian. They’re clearly years behind.”

“So the Pakistanis stole it?”

“I just don’t see that,” said Blitz. The Pakistani theory — that they had stolen the plane to protect themselves from just such an attack — was popular at the Pentagon but had no evidence to back it up, especially given the plane’s flight path from the time it was spotted off the Indian coast. A task force of intel experts was trying to piece together the plane’s flight path prior to that, but had made little progress.

“Someone took it. I doubt the original crew hijacked it for Greenpeace,” he said sarcastically.

“I agree,” said Blitz. “Maybe the Russians.”

“Then why aren’t they talking about the shootdown, or the fact that they lost the aircraft?” The President was referring to intercepted communications, not public announcements, since saying anything would implicate their guilt in taking it.

“They know we can read them.”

D’Amici bent to the floor and poured himself another cup of coffee. “Congress is going to approve the augmented-ABM funding, as long as next week’s tests go well. We’re riding a wave, Professor. Riding a wave. The end of war as we know it.” He picked up a folded newspaper from the floor, holding open the editorial page. The lead editorial, congratulating him, bore that title: “The end of war as we know it.”

Blitz looked up as a familiar set of footsteps echoed through the second-floor hallway. Mozelle appeared from behind a pair of Secret Service agents. She greeted the President first, then looked at Blitz, tacitly asking whether she should speak. But there was really no option: D’Amici didn’t like secrets, especially ones so obvious.

“McIntyre is missing,” she said. “We’re not sure yet, but it looks like he was at one of the Indian bases in Kashmir. No one’s heard from him since the exchange.”

Chapter 6

Pure oxygen was a tried-and-true hangover cure, and while Howe didn’t have a hangover, the O₂worked wonders, clearing his foggy head and wiping away much of his fatigue as he and Timmy began their search for the downed aircraft believed to be Cyclops One.

A day and a half’s worth of analysis had yielded a five-hundred-square-mile box where Unk-2—still not positively ID’d as Cyclops One — had apparently been hit by an Indian SAM before going down. The area, which Howe and Timmy were just entering, included a small portion of Pakistan and India as well as China and Nepal. The peaks rose over six thousand meters — eighteen thousand feet.

What would he do if he found her — if Megan were down there in the snow or worse, crumpled in the rocks?

Kick her in the face?

No, he couldn’t. He’d bend down, ask her why.

Why?

It wouldn’t be like that. He’d be in the plane, and if there were a body rather than leg or mangled bit of burnt flesh…Howe took a slow, deep breath, forcing himself to concentrate on flying the aircraft. The ground-scanning mode of the radar had been tweaked by one of the engineers, allowing the AI tactics module to assist in the search. In effect, it was like having a backseater with a magnifying glass going over the readout.

“It thinks it’s looking for a squished Scud,” the technical expert had explained.

“You don’t know who T. S. Eliot was?” Meagan asked.

“No.”

“T. S. Eliot was only the most famous poet of the twentieth century. Chr-ist.” She smiled at him.

“What’d he write? ‘Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright’?”

“Blake. That was Blake. T.S. Eliot wrote ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’The Waste Land, Four Quartets.”

“Big hits.”

“The biggest. You really never, ever heard of them? In school or anywhere?”

He shrugged again now, remembering, reliving the conversation.

“How do you live in an age where death is constant?” she asked.

“Is that a serious question?”

“The Waste Landis about rebirth,” she told him. “You have to find a way beyond the cycle.”

“How?”

“If I knew, the poem would be boring. But I’ll tell you this: Fear death by water.”

“Huh?”

Her laughter dissolved the memory. It was a joke, a reference to a line in the poem, as she’d explained later by reading it to him. It was an interesting, kaleidoscopic poem — not that he knew much about or, to be honest, cared about poems. But they were as real to her as airplanes, and that intrigued him. It was different; it was one of the things that was interesting about her beyond her eyes, beyond the smooth curve of her hips.

Yet, he still hated her for being a traitor.

“What are we doing, Bird One?” asked Timmy, bringing him back to the present.

“Two, we’re going to start the sweeps as we planned,” he told his wingman. “Anything on Guard?”

“Negativo.”

“Let’s do it.”

The two delta-shaped aircraft plunged downward, arrowheads hurled by a god toward the snowy mountains below. There were no clouds today; under other circumstances this might have seemed a purely majestic view.

“Don’t even see any mountain goats down there,” said Timmy in Bird Two.

Howe let his speed bleed off gradually, coming below three hundred knots as he banked into the next search track. He lifted his right wing slightly, concentrating on the view ahead. They took a circuit and then another one, reaching the edge of their search box, then pulled around and began again, retracing their steps backward.

The climate and terrain combined to make this a very difficult place to live, yet settlements dotted the valleys and roads ran around the steepest mountains.

Resourceful species, humans.

“Got a couple of aircraft at long distance,” said Timmy. “Shenyang F-8s, pretty far off — two hundred miles.”

The Chinese F-8MII interceptors were double-engined interceptors that could be viewed as outgrowths of the MiG-21 family. In contrast to their forebears, they were not particularly maneuverable, but they could go relatively fast. Howe thought of them as a poor man’s updated MiG-25; equipped with radar missiles, they could be a severe annoyance.

Not today. The planes soon passed out of range to the east. Howe kept making his tracks, varying his path and trying to keep his memories of Megan at bay.

Something caught his eye when he reached the southeast corner of their search area for the fourth time. The sun had flashed off something a few miles farther into China — or maybe not, because when he stared in that direction he saw nothing.

The tactical screen was clear, and the computer hadn’t said boo to him about seeing anything.

Still, it was worth checking out.

“Two, follow me.”

“Got something?”

“Just hang with me.”

“On your butt, boss. Smells like aftershave — now that’s a story.”

Howe pushed down in the direction of the glint. There was a peak there, a mountain 6,570 meters high — just under twenty-thousand feet above sea level. That was a decent altitude in an airplane, and beyond the rated ceiling of many helicopters — an important factor if a rescue mission was launched.

Forget that. She’s not going to be standing down there waving her arms at you.

“Got something?” asked Timmy as they crisscrossed around the peak and the nearby ridges.

“Negative.” Howe looked at the ground through the canopy and then back at the tactical screen, back and forth.

The AWACS working with them back near the Afghan border reported that an unknown aircraft was taking off from Lop, a small airfield in the Xinjiang Uygur region to the north. The contact, probably a small commercial transport, headed east.

Howe checked his fuel state, deciding that a brief break from the search would help. And it did — sort of. As he looked back at the large display, he saw a double triangle in yellow at the right. Magnification made it look like a rock with a hatchet on it.

He tracked back, practically climbing out of the cockpit to get a better view. It was just a pile of rocks.

But there was something dark about a half-mile away, on the side of the slope facing India.

Dark and gray — the color of Cyclops One.

The computer bleeped a target tone.

“Two, I think I’ve found it,” he said, changing his course.

Chapter 7

Special Forces Captain Dale “Duke” Wallace didn’t know exactly what to make of Fisher. The first thing the FBI agent had done on boarding the C-17A in Bahrain was to ask if there was a smoking section. The next thing he’d done was ask if they were jumping out.

He seemed equally disappointed to hear that the answer was no on both counts.

The C-17A Globemaster III had been designed as a combat-area transport, able to move people and gear great distances at a moment’s notice. Its interior measured two inches beyond sixty-eight feet (counting the ramp); six Marine Corps LAVs could be loaded inside with room left over for a company mascot or two. In this case, Duke and his team of SF troopers from the Army’s 56th SFG (A) were the only cargo. They sat along fold-down seats at the side of the aircraft, Alice packs and mission gear nearby, mostly dozing. Two of the men had stretched mats on the steel floor and were sleeping there.

Fisher, on the other hand, was alternating slugs between two massive thermoses of coffee, which he’d somehow managed to obtain on the tarmac as he walked — walked, not ran — from the E-3 that had delivered him from the States.

Fisher glanced up and saw him staring. “Want some?” he asked.

Duke shook his head, then went over and sat next to him.

“We’ll be landing in Afghanistan in an hour or so,” Duke told him.

“Sounds good.”

“We want to take right off.”

“Makes sense,” said Fisher.

“We have a transport en route, an MV-22. It’s going to meet us on the tarmac and fly us right to the wreckage they’ve spotted. Assuming that’s the wreckage. But I guess that’s why you’re here, right? You’re the expert.”

“MV-22,” said Fisher. He took a long sip from the thermos bottle. “That’s the airplane that thinks it’s a helicopter, right?”

“The Osprey, yes, sir. The MV-22 is a Special Forces version. Equipped with a chain gun in the nose, ports for mini-guns and additional weapons. Whatever we need we can get. We’ll get you in and out, no sweat.”

“I investigated a crash of one of those three years ago, looking for sabotage,” said Fisher. “Wasn’t sabotage.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I investigated another one of those two years ago. That wasn’t sabotage, either.”

“Are you making a point, Mr. Fisher?”

“You sure I can’t smoke in here?”

Some hours later, Andy Fisher stepped out of the MV-22 into six inches of snow, surveying the wreckage of what had until very recently been a 767. He’d seen one of the engines as they’d flown in, and that would be enough to definitively ID the plane. Which was a good thing, because the rest of the aircraft had disintegrated beyond recognition.

Airplanes could do funny things when they crashed, but usually what they did fell into general patterns. Fisher wasn’t a crash expert per se: The real experts got off on analyzing the way metal twisted, and could look at a burn pattern on a piece of cloth and tell you what the pilot had for lunch. Still, Fisher had seen enough to know that this plane had been wracked by something more than an anti-air missile before it exploded.

Interestingly enough, the revolving turret where the laser had fired from was only beaten to shit as opposed to disintegrated beyond recognition. So it was easy to cinch the identification.

“Our plane?” asked Duke.

“Not a doubt,” said Fisher. “When do we get the forensics team in?”

“We’re in China, Mr. Fisher. You aren’t getting any forensics people in here. There’s bound to be some sort of Chinese army patrol sooner or later. My orders are to assist you making an ID, then blow the remains up into little pieces.”

“Be a hell of a lot better if we had a forensics team.”

“Be a hell of a lot better if we were sitting on a beach, catchin’ rays,” said the SF captain.

“Good point,” said Fisher. “We want to take samples so we can check for explosives. Something helped the plane go boom besides a bad attitude.”

“Hey, down here!” shouted one of the soldiers from a ravine about fifty feet away.

Fisher tagged after Duke, sliding down the rocks to a relatively flat plain about twenty feet wide. The soldier was standing over a twisted black blob of gear that looked as if it were covered with tar.

“It’s a boot,” said Fisher.

“How the hell can you tell?”

Fisher knelt down near it. “Believe me. That’s what it is.” He picked it up and looked at it. The bottom half had been burned by high heat; Fisher guessed it would help the lab people recreate the fire and explosion. A bit of sock was evident in the mass, so even if there wasn’t any flesh in the blob there, they’d have a shot at DNA.

Maybe. Of course, if the blob included bones or even just burnt flesh, that’d be even better.

The FBI agent held it out to one of the soldiers, who suddenly looked a little pale. “Evidence.”

“Don’t you want to, uh, put it in a bag or something?”

“Nah,” said Fisher. “By the way, the foot’s not in it.”

“How do you know?”

“Just guessing,” Fisher admitted. “But if I told you it was, you wouldn’t take it, right?”

“How can it be empty?” said the trooper, still hesitating.

“Boot probably got blown right off while the foot and leg were burning to a crisp along with the rest of the body. Lab guys’ll get off on this.”

The soldier took the boot without further comment.

Fisher walked down another slope, surveying more of the scattered bits and pieces. A piece of green cloth lay tangled against a few rocks about twenty feet to the right, tangled with a long piece of burnt metal. Fisher bent down and saw that it was a collar from a flight suit — or at least might have been. He folded it and put it in a paper envelope from his jacket.

“Watcha got?” asked Duke, tramping down the slope.

“Cloth. We’ll look for DNA.”

“Yeah? Will that work?”

“Gives the lab something to do,” said Fisher.

“The pilots have a good read on some more pieces west,” said Duke, who’d been talking to them on his radio. “There’s some good hunks out there.”

Fisher took a long drag on his cigarette.

“I need as many pieces of metal as we can get to test for explosives.”

“Which pieces?”

“The ones where the bomb was,” said Fisher, throwing his cigarette butt away and walking back up the hill.

Chapter 8

Clayton Bonham had always believed that you could tell a great deal about a man by what he ordered at an expensive restaurant. In his particular case, the filet mignon — medium rare, with a pepper sauce and oyster mushrooms — meant that he was a solid, conservative man who appreciated the finer things in life, but nonetheless eschewed flamboyance.

The choices of his guests fell in line with his theory. Congressman Taft had chosen a nondescript chicken and pasta dish from the lite side of the menu, an attempt not only to demonstrate that he was watching his weight but also that he was not a spendthrift; the dish was nearly the least expensive entrée, though least expensive was a relative term on M Street. Jeff Segrest, by contrast, had ordered a grilled salmon soup with foie gras mousse floating on a black corn taco — a bizarre though thoughtlessly flamboyant mélange that looked about as appetizing as the napkin covering the wrought-silver bread basket.

The restaurant, named James after its owner and executive chef, ranked comfortably in the top tier of Washington power eateries, a fact that Bonham kept firmly in mind as he ate, since it meant that their conversation had to be circumscribed. This was not necessarily a bad thing, however; while he found Taft inoffensive, Segrest was a serial blowhard, and only the possibility that he would be overheard kept his boasts within somewhat reasonable bounds.

It also meant that he was semidiscreet regarding Cyclops, which was what both men wanted to talk about.

“Revolutionary,” said Segrest. “That was the President’s word.”

“Yes,” said Bonham. Things in India had gone remarkably well — much better, in fact, than he could have hoped. Incredibly better. The intelligence agencies were closing in on the wreckage, with the early reports indicating that an Indian SAM had taken out the plane. Depending on what theory they began to favor about the aircraft’s theft, evidence would be supplied — nothing firm, of course, just hints and suggestions. A money transfer, a name on a visitors’ list, a credit card transaction — the sort of things the sleuth Fisher would eat up.

The bastard had sniffed out the lake plan somehow, even though they hadn’t gone through with it. Bonham still hoped Fisher might manage to convince someone to have the damn thing drained. Serve the idiot right.

“Do you think this is the end of war, General?” asked Taft.

Bonham smiled. The President had used that phrase, and a number of commentators had picked it.

“I think it’s a bit premature,” said Bonham.

“My cousin thought the augmented ABM system more critical,” said Taft.

Bonham smiled again, though this time much more tightly. Though anyone who really mattered would surely know who the men and their relationships were, Bonham nonetheless would have preferred that Megan’s name not be mentioned. She surely would have preferred that herself.

“The antimissile system is critical,” said Segrest. “And when we get the contract, it will be a windfall.”

More than a windfall, you greedy bastard,thought Bonham, sipping his wine. Segrest controlled a considerable portion of the Jolice and related portfolios, and so he had to be dealt with very carefully. Still, Bonham fantasized about the day when he would tell the fat pomposity to get out of his office.

His White House office.

“Don’t be premature,” Bonham said mildly.

“We’ll score well in the next round of tests,” said Segrest. He looked at Taft. “The congressman agrees.”

Bonham realized belatedly that Segrest wasn’t merely boasting: He was demanding that the weapon be used in the next round of tests.

“The tests will show what the tests show,” said Bonham. He could feel his throat starting to close. “Anything can happen. Whatever the results, Jolice should be funded. An argument is there.”

“More than an argument when the results of the first test are duplicated.”

He was ordering it. Ridiculous!

Bonham picked up the napkin from his lap and daubed at the sides of his mouth, surreptitiously glancing around the room to make sure no one was listening.

The plan was to dismantle the weapon and the base, and to leave. Anything else was far too risky — for him especially. He’d gone to great lengths to cover their tracks.

And why, really? Because of greed. Because Jolice and its backers stood to gain billions if the augmented ABM system was built. Never mind that it might not work. Never mind that companies much better suited to build it — Lockheed and Boeing, for example — were being flim-flammed out of the competition.

Meagan York’s motives were pure, but no one else’s were, not even his. He wanted power, not money; at least he had the wisdom to realize when they’d gone too far.

“I believe the weather in the Pacific is very tempestuous,” Bonham said, as close to a hint as he dared.

“Nonsense,” said Segrest. “The weather there has never been better. Don’t you agree, Congressman?”

“Oh yes,” said Taft.

“We have to move along the course I’ve outlined,” said Bonham. He kept his voice low; still, he worried about being overheard.

“No. That’s far too cautious. You’re conservative, General, a conservative by nature.” Segrest’s voice was so loud, it could have been a toast. Bonham pushed his teeth together, sure that others were staring. “The future — imagine the possibilities.”

“Yes,” said Bonham.

“Very rich possibilities,” said Segrest, signaling to the waiter for more wine.

Chapter 9

The first day after the crash, McIntyre managed to walk only a few hundred yards beyond the ravine where the helicopter had gone down. He lost his strength somewhere after midday and, lying down to rest, fell fast asleep. When he woke it was dark; he went back to sleep and didn’t open his eyes until the sun forced them open. He got up and began walking. After a while he realized the aches and stiffness he’d felt had melted into a gnawing hole in his stomach, something he thought must be hunger, though it felt slightly different than that, as if his stomach had been emptied and then twisted in his body.

McIntyre came to a hillside so sheer that the only way was to slide on his butt. He couldn’t find a comfortable way to hold the guns and finally decided to loop the straps around his neck. As he started to push down he changed his mind, thinking it would be better to crawl on his belly, but it was too late: Unable to stop himself, he slid sideways, then rolled and kept going until he slammed against some rocks. The gray hands that had climbed over his eyes pressed in and he lost consciousness.

He was out for an hour, maybe more. Then the ground in front of his face turned blue. He opened his eyes and saw that he was about fifty feet above a trail through a valley. Bushes began to rise in the terrain about twenty yards to his right, gradually becoming thicker until the entire valley was covered in lush green.

McIntyre picked up the guns from his chest and got to his feet. He slid a few yards, walked a bit, then gave way to his momentum and began trotting down the hill. For a second his aches, pains, and bruises disappeared. He reached the bottom of the hill and caught his breath, hyperventilating slightly. His head remained clear.

The blood on his clothes had dried into stiff patches that felt like pieces of wood. He wasn’t hungry, but his mouth was dry.

His butt hurt, as though the bone in his rear end had been broken.

He had his phone there. He’d put his phone there yesterday, then completely forgotten, blacked out before he could use it.

McIntyre began to laugh. He laughed so hard he rolled over, face in the dirt.All I’ve got to do, he thought,is just call someone and tell them to pick me up. Send a taxi. Send a friggin’ taxi!

The laughter caught in his throat and he began to spit. His phlegm came out in red gobs. When he stopped, McIntyre reached back for the phone. Had he tried it yesterday? He didn’t think he had, but yesterday was a jumble, the crash was a jumble. He remembered hitting the Indian captain who had kidnapped him, and walking, but nothing else.

McIntyre put his thumb on the Power button and held it down. When he let it off, the display flashed green, then faded; he couldn’t tell in the direct sunlight whether the phone was working or not.

At first he thought it was dead. His chest rippled and tears erupted from his eyes. He dropped the phone and hunched over his knees, weeping in despair. He saw himself from the distance; he sneered at the miserable wretch who was so pathetic.

He hadn’t cried since he was a little boy, six or seven years old. Crying was a thing sissies did, and girls, and he was neither.

Shaking, he tried the phone again. Holding it sideways this time to avoid the sun’s glare, he realized that it was in fact working. The battery was only at half power, but the phone was working.

He thumbed the menu up, got the main switchboard, hit Send.

McIntyre put the phone to his ear.

He heard nothing.

“NSC.”

“Hello?”

“Hello? I’m having trouble hearing you.”

“This is McIntyre,” he said. “I’m in India, I think. There was a crash.”

The operator didn’t say anything, and for a long moment McIntyre thought he had lost the connection. Then there was another voice on the line, a louder voice, male, vaguely familiar.

“Mac…this is James Brott. Where the hell are you?”

Brott was one of the intelligence liaisons, a CIA officer over on assignment.

“I’m in India.”

“Are you all right? We’re starting to track the call and get a location. Do you know where you are? Do you have a GPS?”

“No.” McIntyre spoke softly, as if someone were nearby. The crying jag had taken his anxiety away; he wanted to tell Brott everything and yet he felt calm, or almost calm. “We were flying near the Pakistani border, west of a base called Pekdelle. I’m not sure I’m pronouncing it right. They took me on the attack. I guess they were going to either throw me out of the helicopter or make it look like the Pakistani soldiers killed me.”

“Where are you, Mac? Describe it.”

McIntyre looked around, then began to describe what he saw. Mountains rose in the distance — mountains rose everywhere, actually — and the nearest one had a green circle on it that looked like a fist.

As he spoke he heard a truck somewhere nearby. He got to his feet, looking for the road.

“There’s something coming,” he said. “I’m going to flag it down.”

“No, McIntyre. No!” Brott shouted. “They’re at war, Pakistan and India. Stay hidden.”

“Hidden?”

“Mac, there are guerrillas fighting all over Kashmir, even though there’s a cease-fire. You have to try to hide. We’ll send someone; we’ll find someone we can trust to rescue you. Stay hidden.”

The road was across the hill, to the right. McIntyre walked sideways across the grade, peeking down toward it. A large, open transport rounded the tar-paved road. White rocks were piled alongside the road where the shoulders should have been, funneling the pavement over the sharp terrain. The truck continued past, then downshifted as it went downward. He looked across the way and realized that the road ran around the opposite rise; he was exposed here.

“How safe are you?” Brott asked.

“Safe?”

“Are you in shelter or out in the open?”

“The open. Listen, my battery is weak. I have maybe an hour of talk time left.”

“All right. You’re going to have to assume — we have to assume — that anyone you see right now is the enemy.Anyone. We’re going to try to get your location; I think we’re going to be able to get it. The NSA has been looking for your signal, so I’m sure we’re going to get it; I just haven’t been able to get them yet. I don’t want your battery to die, though. Can you get somewhere safe — somewhere we could send in a team and find you?”

“I don’t know. Yeah, I have to. Yeah.”

“A good-sized field, someplace in the open, but with a place you could hide….”

McIntyre started to laugh. “I’ll just check the Michelin guide.”

Brott started to apologize, but McIntyre held the phone down; he heard the truck downshift again, the motor revving as it started up opposite him.

“Look, I don’t think this is a good place. I’m going to move,” he told him.

“Don’t hang up yet,” said Brott. “I want to make sure I have the location.”

“I have to save the battery,” McIntyre told him. If they had been looking for him, the NSA had more than enough to find him now. “I’ll call in an hour.”

“McIntyre, listen—”

He hit the End button, then got up and began running toward a low thicket he’d seen to his left.

Chapter 10

Fisher sat on the long canvas bench, staring at the pile of retrieved aircraft remains in the center of the Osprey and wondering if the odds of finding a trace of an explosive could be measured in the billions or simply the millions.

Millions, he decided. But it was also likely that whoever had worked this out had probably also been smart enough to set it up in a way that would be hard to pin down, maybe making the fuel do most of the work.

He had the boot and the cloth sample, which appeared to contain a hair. Could they trust a DNA sample?

His cell phone began vibrating. Fisher took it out of his pocket.

“Fisher.”

“Mr. Fisher, this is Matt Firenze.”

“Hey, Doc, whatcha got?”

“Well, we took apart the environmental control system, and there it was.”

“Back up. What are we talking about?”

“It’s like a Trojan Horse virus. Actually, we didn’t find the code, but we found that something had erased something, and we figure that’s where it has to be. We couldn’t duplicate it on the bench units. It had to be there. We have a model—”

Fisher let the boy genius explain how he thought a rogue program could have caused a power surge in the circuitry connected to the shared radar sections and at the same time knocked out the controls. It was rather convoluted, but the agent knew better than to cut off a scientist mid-theorem.

“It’s just a spike, a temporary hit,” concluded Firenze, “and that fits with what happened.”

“Who developed that system?”

“It was purpose-built for this model of the plane,” said Firenze. “I think Carie Electro Controls. But it could have been Jolice too.”

“Jolice?”

“They have a lot of little divisions and things. It’s hard sometimes to keep them straight.”

“They owned by Ferrone?”

“No, it’s the other way around, I think,” said the scientist. “I think Jolice is the bigger company.”

“Why don’t you work for them?” Fisher asked Firenze, whom the records had shown was working on the project under a special contract with the Air Force.

“Jolice, NADT, all those people — they make you rich, but then they figure they own you,” said Firenze.

“I know how that goes,” said Fisher. “Except for the rich part.”

Chapter 11

McIntyre watched the wheels of the truck bounce up the trail. He could tell it was something small and relatively old, but he was too afraid to rise and get a good view of it. When he was sure it had passed, he sat up and tried to take stock of his situation.

They’d be working on finding him. The NSA would have the location of his transmission by now. But could they do anything about it? He was half a world away.

There’d be Navy units in the Indian Ocean. Somebody could come up and get him.

It might mean staying another night at least. He’d have to find a place to hide.

Something to eat would be good too. And drink.

McIntyre rose and shouldered his guns, then began walking toward the road, going in the direction the truck had come from. It took only a few minutes to reach the nearest curve, which made its way across a notch on the side of a series of hills. There was a switchback in the distance, but he couldn’t tell if the one-and-a-half-lane pressed-chip-and-tar road led to it or not.

He began to walk. Two or three minutes later he heard a vehicle coming up behind him. There were some trees a short distance away and he managed to get to them before the truck passed. It was a pickup, and it moved at a pretty good clip. Just as he started out from behind the tree he heard another truck. He slid down, watching a military vehicle speed past. It was a Russian-made KAMAZ 6x4, or possibly an Indian knockoff. The six-wheeled truck had a canvas backing, the kind that might be used for light cargo or soldiers, but what it was loaded with or even if it was loaded at all he couldn’t see.

Was it even Indian? He might actually be over the line in Pakistan. The border in Kashmir wasn’t very well defined, and now there might not be a line at all.

McIntyre walked for a long while, his head gradually stooping closer to the ground. Finally he heard noises. Thinking it was another truck, he climbed over the stones at the side of the road and hid in a small depression a short distance away. Minutes passed without anything appearing, and he finally realized the sound wasn’t getting any louder. It seemed to be an engine of some sort, but it was standing still.

A large boulder stood on the slope across the road from him. Thinking it might give him a vantage to see ahead, he slipped back across the road and clambered up the slope. But the rock was higher than he’d thought, and tired and battered as he was, he couldn’t get to the top, not even when he put down the rifles. He settled for sidestepping across the slope below it, pushing through the bushes to see.

Something orange flashed in the distance.

A tiger.

He reached for a rifle, realizing belatedly that he had left them on the ground. He took a step and then the tiger sprang forward, charging him from the distance.

McIntyre tried to run but quickly lost his balance and slid down the rocks. He covered his head, cowering against the dirt and scrubby vegetation, waiting to be torn apart.

Except that he wasn’t; the tiger had stayed where it was.

It wasn’t a tiger. There were no tigers here, or other large cats; even the snow leopards had long ago fled, leaving man as the only predator. The orange was a piece of cloth, and as he walked toward it he realized it wasn’t even orange but yellow. It was draped over a bush, and it wasn’t moving.

McIntyre looked past the cloth and saw a building in the distance, set back near a clearing. This, he thought, might be a good place to arrange the pickup, though he’d have to scout it first, see if there were people nearby. He checked his watch: He had a half hour left before he was supposed to call.

The bushes in the back didn’t provide much cover, but the building looked run-down and possibly abandoned. McIntyre gathered his courage and walked down a shallow slope toward what seemed to be the back or a side wall, studying two large metal housings on the roof. There was no sound, and he could see no vehicles nearby. The highway swung around somewhere ahead, passing in front of the building.

The door must be on that side. Here there were only windows, one boarded, the other’s glass covered with a thick layer of grime.

McIntyre edged to the left side of the structure. There were two windows. A car or truck passed; he crouched before it came into view and couldn’t see it.

He tried to come up with a plan, but his brain wouldn’t supply one. What would the occupants do if a man with a rifle — two rifles — appeared at the front door, his clothes torn and covered with blood?

Shoot him, or run for their lives.

But then again, if no one was here, it would be a perfect place to stay and wait for a rescue.

McIntyre hunched on his knees, thinking. Finally he pushed up from the crouch, walking toward the building with the guns still in his hands.

When he was about twenty feet away, he tried to run. After a single step his right thigh muscle began to spasm. He managed to reach the wall and hurled himself against the blocks, catching his breath before edging toward the front corner.

A metal door was set into the front wall about a third of the way down. The road was visible through some trees to his left.

McIntyre steadied the rifle in his right hand, glancing at his finger on the trigger. Then he knocked on the door with his left hand as hard as he could manage, and stepped back.

No one answered. He tried again, stepped back farther this time. The third time he used the butt end of the rifle, the other gun swinging awkwardly off his shoulder. When no one answered, he reached for the handle.

The door was heavy and opened toward him rather than inward. Slapping his side against the door to hold it open, he stood against the darkness, anger inexplicably mixing with his fear and exhaustion; with a rush he went forward into the building, not so much ready for anything as resigned to it.

There was no one inside.

The building housed some sort of machine shop. A pair of desks sat in the front, separated from the work area by some filing cabinets and open space.

There were phones on both desks. McIntyre went over and picked one up.

A dial tone.

A dial tone! He wouldn’t have to rely on the satellite phone and the draining battery.

But didn’t the fact that the dial tone worked mean the building wasn’t abandoned?

Was it a trap? Was someone watching him?

McIntyre put the phone back down and walked through the rest of the building. There was a washroom in the back. He opened the tap and put his face under the faucet. The warm water tasted metallic and moldy at the same time, but he was so thirsty he gulped it down.

When his thirst was quenched, he realized he was a few minutes late for his phone call. He went back to the front and took out the satellite phone.

Brott picked up before the first ring ended.

“We think we know where you are,” he told him. “We’re going to arrange a rescue, but it’s not easy. It’s chaos over there. There’ve been several riots.”

“Get someone here,” said McIntyre. He sat down on the floor against the desk. “Get somebody here.”

“We’re working on it. You have to relax.”

As McIntyre struggled to control his response, the door began to open.

Chapter 12

Blitz had the answer ready, but Byrd would not call on him. The others were droning on about terrorist threats, the need for force on the ground, the fool’s gold of technology. Finally he could stand it no more: He stood up from the desk and found himself in the middle of the circle. The others were dressed as he had known them in college, in jeans mostly, but he was in the suit he’d been wearing in the White House a few hours before. Instantly he was self-conscious. Byrd looked at him, waiting.

And so he started.

“Nation-on-nation violence can be halted. We’ve done so for the first time,” he said. The words sounded strange in his ears, as if he were talking through a tube. “Terrorism remains a difficult problem, but the impact there also will be great, with more pinpoint attacks. Imagine fighting the Intifada with the ability to eliminate individual bomb-making facilities with absolute certainty. Imagine the 1996 attack on the Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan with Cyclops rather than cruise missiles. The attack on the World Trade Center never would have occurred.”

Byrd nodded, then asked, “What does that mean for those who possess the weapon?”

Blitz had thought of this at some length, mostly from the perspective of what they should do if an enemy obtained its own version. But for some reason his brain refused to formulate an answer.

“Does the selectivity mean the weapon will be used more often, or less?” asked Byrd. “And is either beneficial?”

Again, Blitz had thought of this; the answer, he thought was obvious: the weapon did not need to be used to be effective, but its use must be as carefully controlled as the nuclear bombs had been. But he couldn’t speak.

“Well, Dr. Blitz?”

What was the alternative, he wanted to know. Do nothing? They had been right in India: Millions of people owed their lives to that gamble. That good could be measured unambiguously.

Blitz began to stutter.

“Dr. Blitz?”

Blitz pushed his head upward from the desk as the classroom disappeared. He was in his office; he’d fallen asleep, exhausted, waiting for word about McIntyre.

One of the military liaisons was standing at the door.

“Dr. Blitz?”

“Go ahead. I’m sorry, I was dozing.”

The aide nodded. It was a little past three in the morning.

“Mr. McIntyre just called again. We have a good location. The Pentagon people are trying to contact the task force working with Colonel Howe.”

“Good.” He rose, stretching some of the fatigue away. “I’ll go over to the Tank as soon as I can.”

Chapter 13

Howe and Timmy climbed through thirty thousand feet, circling upward over Chinese territory as the MV-22 finished collecting the last member of its team and set course back to Afghanistan. It would stay low for a little under two hundred miles, threading its way through the mountains and valleys to avoid any possible detection by radar. At that point it would climb and skirt into eastern Pakistan and then over into Afghanistan.

Though much faster than a helicopter, the Osprey was still a propeller-driven aircraft, and flying low through the unforgiving terrain was not something that could be rushed. It would take close to an hour to reach the relative safety of the Pakistani border.

Timmy proposed to fill that time with a song.

“What sort of song?”

“I was thinking something by Limp Bizkit,” joked the wingman.

“If you try that, I’m going to order silent com,” said Howe.

“Don’t you think there ought to be an M3 hookup in these?” asked Timmy. “Actually, a karaoke rig. That’s what we need. I’m going to talk to Firenze about that when we get back.”

Laughing in spite of himself, Howe was just about to suggest that Timmy sing “Old MacDonald” when the AWACS supervisor radioed, requesting that he switch to a new frequency. The moment he keyed in, an Army lieutenant colonel at the Pentagon introduced himself by saying they had found their man.

“Which man are we talking about?”

“An NSC staffer was in the helicopter your plane shot down at the start of the Indian operation,” said the colonel, who was transmitting from the Tank through a satellite hookup. “He’s alive on the ground nearby.”

“How nearby?”

Howe listened as the colonel explained the situation. The location was very close to where they had taken out the helicopters in the Kashmir border area, reachable via a short though significant detour from their planned flight path.

“That’s not a pretty place,” said Howe. “My briefers this morning were talking about guerrilla conflicts all through that region.”

“That’s why we need him located and rescued ASAP,” said the Army colonel. “He’s a valuable commodity.”

So are we all,thought Howe, though he didn’t say it.

Chapter 14

McIntyre stared at the door as it cracked open slowly. The guns were next to him on the desk, but he made no move to get them. He just stared as the door opened.

A teenager took a step inside. He swung a bucket before him, setting it down on the floor and starting to reach back for something outside before seeing McIntyre across from him in front of the desk.

He froze, and for a second they stared at each other, neither able to react.

It was the Indian who moved first. He fell backward out of the building, scrambling away as the door closed. McIntyre followed, still holding the phone in one hand. He cracked open the door, crouching at first, worried that there would be more people outside.

The boy had disappeared. No one else was there as he gradually opened the door wider and wider.

“McIntyre — what the hell’s going on?” Brott was asking when McIntyre closed the door and brought the phone back up to his ear.

When he told Brott about the kid, the aide said he should have shot him.

“Yeah,” answered McIntyre. “Do you know where I am?”

“Listen, you’re going to have to go somewhere else now. Do you understand? Is there a place back where you were that you can hide, near the first place you called from?”

“No,” said McIntyre.

“Can you leave the phone on?”

“I’m worried about the battery,” he said, glancing at it.

“Get to a safe place and call again,” said Brott. “We have assets en route, but it’s going to take a while. It may take a long while.”

A safe place.McIntyre wanted to laugh. Instead he just looked at the phone.

He couldn’t kill a kid who had nothing to do with him, who was just coming to wash the floor or the windows, for chrissakes.

“Yeah, I’ll call,” he said abruptly, then pushed the End button, got his guns, and went outside.

Chapter 15

Howe spotted the wreckage of the helicopter strewn across the side of a slope, then began arcing north-westward in the direction of the GPS coordinates he’d been given. He needed to strike a balance: go slow and low enough to be seen by McIntyre, and yet somehow not be slow and low enough to be nailed by some joker with a shoulder-launched SAM.

Couldn’t be done. He had to risk a good portion of his butt to save McIntyre’s.

Not that he wasn’t willing to make the trade. He just wanted to understand the equation.

“One, yeah, I see the debris,” said Timmy. “Uh, you got maybe two feet over that ridge, boss.”

“Come on, now, I have five at least,” said Howe, who was actually close to a thousand feet over the peak that rose two miles off to his left. Howe pushed toward a black-topped road that wound up one of the hillsides, trying to compare it with what the Pentagon colonel had described, which of course was itself second- or thirdhand.

“Got a couple of army vehicles back here,” said Timmy. “Uh, two transports, armored car or something in front — near that city.”

“That’s a city?” asked Howe. He began banking to get lower and take a closer look, putting his nose up slightly to make sure he didn’t run into anything while his attention was directed toward the ground.

“Not all of us were born in New York, you know.”

“Timmy, that’s not even a city in North Dakota.”

The radar synthesized a small downtown area of a dozen buildings. The three vehicles Timmy had spotted were moving northward on the road, parallel to the border. Howe looked down through the canopy as he passed, but he was roughly five thousand feet above them and moving close to four hundred knots; he could tell they were vehicles, and thought the lead one had a gun at the top, but there was no way he was reading license plates from here. He took the Velociraptor along the road, looking for more activity. Timmy, studying the passive IR plot from the sensor suite, nudged to his left when he got a flare of something.

“Fire, I think,” explained the wingman.

As they turned and started a fresh track, the Pakistani radar over the border — the one that had been targeted by the Indians to start all this — turned itself on.

“Somebody’s watching,” said Timmy.

“Roger that,” said Howe.

“Yeah, but I’d like to go pee on him anyway.”

“Eyes on the prize.” None of the radars associated with SAMs had come up. The Pakistanis had given the Pentagon a blanket assurance yesterday that no U.S. planes would be targeted, though for security reasons they had not been alerted to the Cyclops One search. The Indians had not agreed to permit “spy flights” over their territory.

The Osprey checked in; they were now thirty minutes away at top speed. He went over his game plan with Howe: If their pickup didn’t make his call back on time, they were going to try to drop the SF team near the last phone-in point so they could have a look around. They’d play it by ear from there. An MC-130 was being launched to stand by to refuel the Osprey if things took too long; a second assault team was being rounded up in Kabul, though launching it would take at least two or three hours.

Howe and Timmy would have to start thinking about a refuel soon as well.

“Couple of, uh, Land Rovers maybe,” said Timmy. “You got ’em?”

Howe glanced at his tactical screen, where Timmy had cursored them for him. They were moving across an east — west roadway into a village at the southwest, ten miles away from the crashed helicopter.

“You sure those are military?” Howe asked.

“No.”

“I’m going to get down there and get close,” he told his wingman. “Hang tough.”

“Only way to go. Got your six.”

Howe dipped his wing. He came over the road at three thousand feet — not counting the nine thousand or so holding the tar up in the mountains.

There were definitely troops in the back of the trucks. As Howe began to pull up he saw a glint of something. He went immediately for the defensive flares, accelerating away.

“They shoot at you?” Timmy’s voice was practically a shout.

“You tell me,” said Howe.

“Didn’t see anything.”

“Getting jumpy.” He pulled around to his left, angling in the direction of the road, trying to see where the troops were going. A puff of smoke erupted near a cluster of buildings that sat before a bend; the buildings looked like storefronts, with large colorful signs at the top. A pinprick of smoke fluttered across the other side of the bend, near a building. Howe saw movement, people running. Bingo.

“Have some action here,” he told Timmy.

“Is it ours?”

“Good question. I’m going to get back with the Pentagon people, see if they can get the Indians and Pakistanis to stop shooting up here.”

“Part the Red Sea next,” said Timmy.

Chapter 16

Duke went over the map with the copilot, trying to figure out the area where their pickup would most likely be. McIntyre’s last call had been made from a building on the outskirts of a small town, but he’d been spotted and had to move. He hadn’t called back yet.

The pilots in the Velociraptors reported fighting nearby. Whether it had to do with McIntyre wasn’t clear.

Duke moved to the back and laid it out for his guys. As he expected, they nodded and threw in a few positive suggestions. Not one of them pointed out that finding the American alive was a serious long shot.

The FBI agent had a pained expression on his face.

“Something up?” the captain asked, plopping into the seat next to him.

“Yeah,” said the agent. “I should’ve brought more coffee. Two thermoses just don’t cut it overseas.”

“You think we’re going to find him?” Duke asked.

“Question is probably whether you’ll find him dead,” answered Fisher. “But you’re kinda stuck, right?”

“If things got tough, could you handle a weapon?”

“Depends,” said Fisher. “The place we’re landing, that a nonsmoking area?”

Duke started to laugh. “Smoking.”

“Then I’ll lead the charge.”

Chapter 17

McIntyre felt the dryness in his mouth, his thirst returning, as he started toward the road. A low fence cut off some of the view to the right; he heard a truck coming and trotted toward the fence for cover, huffing and wheezing as he slid in. An empty flatbed passed a half-second later.

When it was gone he started to the left, walking roughly westward as he cut a diagonal toward the road. There was a ravine and then a rise on the opposite side, but there were some scrub bushes he might use for cover on the left if someone was coming.

As he reached the road he looked down it to his right. It curved sharply northward; he could see the edges and roofs of buildings beyond.

A figure appeared just taking the turn about two hundred yards away. Dressed in grayish white, the man wore a headband and carried a rifle.

Another figure appeared behind him.

McIntyre took a step back toward the building, then realized they’d look for him there. He ran instead along the road as he’d intended, holding the rifles in his hands. He heard gunfire, trucks, aircraft maybe; he sensed that the commotion wasn’t about him, but knew that if he stopped he’d be caught in it.

Fear overcame his exhaustion, and he ran at a decent pace for perhaps ten minutes, running at the side of the road as it curved first left and then right. A stone wall started abruptly at the right side of the road about ten feet past the second curve. The wall, chest-high, was made of pure-white stones that all seemed the same size. His breath finally failing, McIntyre ran behind it and collapsed to the ground, unable to move.

When his will returned, he saw that there was a house a short distance away. The whitewashed brick facade was punctuated by oversize windows with elaborate wooden frames, as if the glass were part of a shrine. A mountain rose several hundred yards behind the property, its bluish-black flank punctuated by the brown scar of a road.

McIntyre got up, making sure he hadn’t been followed, then began walking to the back of the house. A metal shed sat at the edge of the yard, collapsed on the ground, its roof and walls a bright mélange of rust and white paint. McIntyre went to the shed and examined it: If he had trouble in the house he could retreat there and hold off anyone who came out. He put one of the rifles down, propping it at the back so it would be easy to grab. He hesitated. The gun was easily seen and, if taken, might be used against him. McIntyre hid it under a loose piece of metal siding at the back of the ruins, then went to the house.

There was no door in the back but there were two large windows. Long drapes or curtains blocked off his view of the inside. He went to the one on the left and pushed; it gave way easily.

He stepped inside, heart pounding.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, and another for him to figure out that he was in a bedroom. There were two thick mats at the side on the floor, blankets; with a start he realized there was an infant tucked on one side of the bedclothes. Maybe two or three months old, it stared at him with one eye, following as he walked as quietly as he could to the doorway.

Not a baby: a doll. He realized that as he put his hand to the slatted door.

Before he could touch the doorknob, it pushed inward. He stepped back as a woman entered. She saw McIntyre and froze.

She had an infant against her chest. He’d already leveled the gun at her.

“Are you alone?” he said.

She didn’t answer. It wasn’t clear whether she understood or not. Her face had paled, and her eyes wore the glaze of a death mask.

Somehow her terror terrified him as well, though he was the cause of it. For a moment, he couldn’t speak.

“Alone?” he managed, voice cracking.

The woman nodded. He pointed with his other hand, motioning for her to back up. She took a step out into what he thought was a hallway but turned out to be a large common room. There was a TV and some upholstered chairs on one side, an old sewing machine, a pile of fabric, something that looked like a shrine on the right. Beads covered another doorway to the front of the house. A slatted wooden door similar to the one to the room he’d come in through sat opposite it. Staring at it, he went to the door, looked at her; neither she nor the baby moved, or even seemed to breathe. McIntyre rapped on it, then reached down and turned the knob. He flung the light door open with his hand. It was another bedroom, this one with real mattresses, though they were all on the floor. He couldn’t see anyone in the tumble of clothes and sheets.

“All right,” he told the woman. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He reached into his pocket and took out his phone.

The woman’s cheeks seemed to implode as the baby began to wail. Tears streamed from the mother’s eyes. McIntyre pushed her to the floor; he tried to be gentle but she collapsed in a tumble. He went back to the front room. There was a table there, a washing machine, a stove, an old refrigerator.

Something had happened to his phone. He couldn’t connect.

He went to the window, tried again.

Nothing.

Cursing, he punched the Power button twice, staring at the corner of the screen where the battery icon would appear. It had about a third of a charge left; it should work.

There were sounds outside. McIntyre turned and saw something moving by the window, then realized there was someone coming through the doorway. He spun around and pressed the trigger on his gun.

A small child, a boy of four or five, had come out from hiding near the closet where McIntyre had missed him earlier. By the time McIntyre realized what he had shot, the boy’s neck had been cut nearly in half by his bullets. In the next moment the child’s mother ran into the room, screaming, a knife in one hand and the little baby in the other. He took a step to the side as if he were a matador, pushing her slight body to the floor with his left hand. She rolled to the floor, the knife clattering away as she collapsed in a convulsing heap over the baby.

Blood from the dead child flooded around her. McIntyre took a step back, his head pounding. The whole house seemed to shake.

It was shaking: A helicopter was flying nearby.

Chapter 18

Duke trailed along the south side of the road just a few yards behind the man who had the point. Their man had called from a point about a mile up the trail, near what passed for a highway here — right in the path of Indian troops pursuing a small band of Muslim guerrillas.

Poor bastard’s luck was holding.

He hadn’t called back yet, a bad sign. They had the building where he’d called from pinpointed about a quarter of a mile away. There was a village along the highway to the right; to the left the road switched back and forth like a snake, gradually making its way up a mountainside beyond. There were a few small houses in that direction; they’d check them after the building, then take stock before reconning the village.

Assuming the Indians and Pak guerrillas hadn’t started taking shots at them yet. The Osprey had let them off a quarter of a mile behind in a sloping field, then taken off. Duke had left one of his men and Fisher aboard to play cavalry if needed.

Duke came to the edge of the field behind the building. McIntyre had picked a good spot: It would have been easy to make a pickup here.

Poor dumb bastard. Just had horseshit luck.

“Let’s take a look,” he told his point man. But before they could approach the building, two figures dressed in dark brown clothes emerged from the opposite side of the field and ran toward the highway. Duke and his trooper ducked down, watching as the men — obviously guerrillas — checked the road and then crossed. Two others appeared from near the building, running up near the road and setting up a position there.

Trucks were coming down the road.

Chapter 19

McIntyre fled in the direction of the helicopter, running toward the building he’d been in earlier. He got maybe a hundred yards before his lungs started giving out and he felt stitches in his side like knives. He stopped, then abruptly fell to his knees. Bright dots of red covered his knees; he stared at them, thinking for a moment that they were paint.

Then his stomach started to turn. He felt as if a fist had taken hold of his insides, punching upward. Vomit spewed from his mouth; for a minute, maybe more, he retched uncontrollably, only vaguely aware of his surroundings.

Deep instinct took hold of him then, made him wipe his mouth on his shoulder, forced him back to his feet. He left the idea — the absolute knowledge — that he was a murderer in the pool of puke and began walking toward the road. His legs shook; he was far past his limits of endurance. But the instinct that had picked him up would not let him stop. He walked to the stone wall, paralleling it for a short distance, tripping in the loose dirt and vegetation. Realizing that he could make better time on the road, he put his hand on the wall and went to hop over. He didn’t have the strength nor the balance; his legs landed awkwardly, but he managed to get both on the ground and, though stumbling, kept himself going.

Sounds were jumbled in his ears: vehicles — tanks, maybe — and gunfire. He walked a bit farther, maybe twenty feet, then realized something else was coming up the road from behind him. He climbed back over the stone wall and hunkered down, waiting for what seemed like an eternity. As he waited he realized he’d left the other gun behind at the wrecked shack; for a moment he actually considered running back to get it.

Instead he decided to try the phone again. He turned it on, waiting this time as the small screen flashed.

He thumbed the menu, selected, hit Send.

Nothing.

Chapter 20

One of the guerrillas fired a bazookalike weapon at the lead truck as it rounded the corner. The missile plowed into the engine and exploded, but most if not all of the men in the back managed to get out before the fire really got going. In the meantime other troops surged up from behind, fanning out in pursuit of the guerrillas.

Duke’s communications specialist, who was maintaining contact with the Osprey and F/A-22Vs, slid over to the captain and told him that two Indian helicopters had been reported about twenty minutes away. They were being escorted by fighters. Meanwhile an armored vehicle was making its way up the road from the west; it would reach their position in another few minutes.

It was possible McIntyre was still in the industrial building, but if they were going to check it out, they were going to have to do it now.

“Tell the Osprey and the Velociraptors to stay close,” Duke told the como specialist. “As soon as we check that building, we’ll bug out.”

Chapter 21

McIntyre stared at the phone. It was ringing.

It was ringing.

He pushed the Talk button and held it to his ear. “Yes?”

“McIntyre, our guys are looking for you,” said Brott. “Are you in the building?”

“No,” he said. “I–I’m up the road about a mile. There’s a house — Wait.”

He heard something coming behind him, something big.

“Something’s coming for me.”

“We’re tracking you down,” said Brott. “Keep talking. We’re very close to you. I have somebody who’s connecting with the ground people now. You’re looking for a guy named Duke.”

“You’re breaking up,” said McIntyre. “My battery is dying.”

“Leave the phone on. Just—”

Brott said something else, but it was garbled. The tank was close now, very close.

McIntyre threw himself down. The heavy stutter of the diesel shocked the ground. He concentrated all of his energy on wishing it away, wishing it past him. As the sound began to fade he turned his head up just enough to see that there were soldiers walking behind it.

One of them shouted.

McIntyre jerked up, drew the gun to his side, and began firing. The dozen or so soldiers in the road dropped down, unsure at first how large the enemy force was.

Chapter 22

Timmy had his cursor zeroed in on the armored personnel carrier, waiting for a decision.

“What we doing, Bird One?” he asked Howe over the short-range radio, checking his speed and altitude.

“We’re hanging tight,” replied Howe. “They’re checking the building now. They want to see if he’s inside.”

A moment later Brott’s excited voice, filtered by static as it was relayed across the globe, broke into his helmet.

“There’s a tank — something — men firing at him. He’s a mile up from the building. He said there was a house.”

“I have a BMP,” Timmy said, referring to the infantry fighting vehicle leading the attack. Its turret and tracks made it look like a tank. “I’m going to take it out. Tell our guy to kiss dirt.”

Howe started talking to Brott, trying to get better details on the location. The Osprey chimed in, but Timmy was so intent on the target, the babble of voices didn’t register as one of the mini-bombs slid out from the belly. Guided by a GPS steering package, the bomb’s warhead struck within an inch and a half of the center of the BMP’s turret. Though the bomb weighed roughly half what an old Mark 82 did, the combination of its shaped high explosives and precision accuracy made it arguably as effective as a thousand-pound bomb, possibly even more.

In any event, such fine points were lost on the truck’s crew. The bomb blew through the thin armor skin as if it were the top of a tuna can, incinerating the men. Fragments from the shell of the personnel carrier flew into the squad of men who’d gathered behind it for protection, downing them all. Timmy had no idea of the casualty count; he just saw that he didn’t have a substantial target.

“Osprey, I see you,” he said, running over the road. He saw a lot of bodies down on the road, and a man running to the left. “Hot down there. Hold off!”

The MV-22 appeared over a ridge as he banked, the rotors on its long arms already pointing upward as it slapped down for a landing. The chain gun began spitting slugs in the direction of the flattened BMP.

Must be an Air Force pilot,Timmy thought to himself.Doesn’t like to take orders.

Chapter 23

The aircraft appeared in front of him, its two arms held up in the sky as if it were descending a ladder. There was a gun at the chin, moving.

An Osprey.

His rescuers.

McIntyre threw down his rifle and held up the cell phone, desperate to make them see that he was on their side. But the gun blinked anyway, its roar so loud that he lost his balance.

He was dead, he knew he was dead.

Gradually he realized that the bullets were landing well behind him, back at the road. The gunfire stopped abruptly, the Osprey whipping around overhead, now behind him, now on the side, once more in front. McIntyre, his eyes filled with dust and his whole body vibrating, got to his feet. The plane stuttered in the air in front of him, then dipped forward.

Shit, the bastards got him! Shit!

McIntyre felt himself pulled forward. He was running; the aircraft was there, intact and unharmed. One of the crewmen was alongside, someone helped him in, they were moving, moving, whipping upward into a surreal swirl, his mind and body twisting in a frenetic mélange.

For a while he seemed to lose consciousness. Not that he blacked out — his brain just couldn’t process information. Then McIntyre found himself sitting along the wall of the aircraft, next to a man in a wrinkled business suit.

“I’d give you a cigarette,” said the man, “but this is the nonsmoking section.”

McIntyre blinked. He knew the man, though the part of his brain that would have connected his face to his name was temporarily out of order.

Andy Fisher.

“So, what do you know about Jolice Missile Systems, anyway?” asked Fisher, smiling and giving him a cigarette despite what he’d said earlier.

Chapter 24

Howe took a pass over the road as the Osprey cleared. The SF contingent was already set for a pickup near the building. The Indians, somewhat confused about what was going on, were rushing down the road toward the BMP Timmy had splashed, bypassing the building.

Howe cleared through the pass, then circled back as the MV-22 rendezvoused with the ground team.

Two more Indian troop trucks were coming out from the village. Howe saw them stopping, men pouring from the back.

The lead truck was in the middle of his tactical screen. He hesitated for a second, but it was no contest: A shoulder-launched missile from there could easily splash the Osprey, and even an automatic rifle could do enough damage to take it down.

The small-diameter bomb spun out from his belly, zooming toward the truck. He dished a second one into the other vehicle, at the same time telling the Osprey what was going on. The MV-22 pilot thanked him; ten seconds after the second one exploded, he was airborne.

The Pakistani radar had turned itself off.

“Do we take out the MiGs?” asked Timmy, referring to the Indian planes coming north to help in what they thought was a firefight with Pakistani guerrillas.

“They’re not a threat. Hold off,” said Howe.

“Damn.”

“I love you, Timmy, but sometimes you’re a bit much,” said Howe, snapping his Talk button off.