Executive Orders

63 THE RYAN DOCTRINE

WARS USUALLY BEGIN AT exact moments in time, but most often end neither cleanly nor precisely. Daylight found the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in command of yet another battlefield, having completed the destruction of one of UIR II Corps's divisions. The other division was now facing the Saudi 2nd Brigade, which was attacking from the rising sun while the American unit halted again to refuel and rearm in preparation for the continued attack on III Corps, still not decisively engaged.

But that was already changing. Those two divisions now had the full and undivided attention of all tactical aircraft in theater. First their air defense assets were targeted. Every radar which switched on drew the attention of HARM—High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile—equipped F-16s, and in two hours the skies were friendly to American and Saudi pilots. UIR fighters made an effort to strike down from their home bases to defend their beleaguered ground forces, but none made it past the radar-fighter screen set up well beyond the location of the forces they had been dispatched to support. They lost over sixty aircraft in the futile attempt. It was easier for them to lash out at the Kuwaiti brigades which had so impudently invaded their vastly larger and more powerful neighbor. The small air force of that country was on its own for most of the day, and the battle had little strategic relevance. The routes across the swamps were cut and would take days to repair. The resulting air battle was more a display of mutual anger than anything else, and here, too, the Kuwaiti forces held the day, not spectacularly so, but giving three kills for every one they absorbed. For a small country learning the martial arts, it was a battle that men would talk of for years, the magnitude of their deeds growing with every recounting. Yet all the deaths on this day would be useless, lives wasted in mere punctuation of a decision already reached.

Over III Corps, with the SAMs taken out, attention turned to more structured murder. There were over six hundred tanks on the ground, another eight hundred infantry carriers, more than two hundred pieces of towed and self-propelled artillery, several thousand trucks, and thirty thousand men, all of.them well inside a foreign nation and trying to escape. The F-15E Strike Eagles circled at about 15,000 feet, almost loitering on low power settings, while the weapons-systems operators selected targets one by one for laser-guided bombs. The air was clear, the sun was bright, and the battlefield was flat. It was far easier than any exercise in the Nellis bombing range. Lower down in different hunting patches, F-16s joined in with Maverick and conventional bombs. Before noon, III Corps's three-star commander, correctly thinking himself the senior ground officer, ordered a general retreat, gathered up the support trucks laagered in KKMC, and tried to get his units out in something resembling order. Bombs falling on him from above, the Saudi 5th Brigade approaching from the east, and an American force closing on his rear, he turned northwest, hoping to cross back into friendly territory at the same point he had entered. On the ground, his vehicles used smoke to obscure themselves as best they could, which somewhat frustrated the allied aviators, who did not, however, come down low to press their attacks, since the UIR forces might have shot back with some effect. That gave the commander hope that he might make it back with something like two-thirds of his strength. Fuel was not a concern. The combined fuel trucks for the entire Army of God were with his corps now.

DIGGS STOPPED OFF first to see Eddington's brigade. He'd seen the sights and smelled the smells before. Tanks could burn for a surprisingly long time, as much as two days, from all the fuel and ammunition they carried, and the stink of diesel oil and chemical propellants served to mask the revolting stench of burning human flesh. Armed enemies were always things to be killed, but dead ones soon enough became objects of pity, especially slaughtered as they had been. But only a few, in relative terms, had died by the guns of the men from Carolina. Many more had surrendered. Those had to be gathered, disarmed, counted, and set to work, mainly in disposing of the bodies of their fallen comrades. It was a fact as old as warfare, and the lesson for the defeated was always the same: This is why you don't want to mess with us again.

"Now what?" Eddington asked, a cigar in his teeth. The victors suffered through many mood swings on the battlefield. Arriving in confusion and haste, facing the unknown with concealed fear, entering battle with determination—and, in their case, with such wrath as they had never felt—winning with exhilaration, and then feeling horror at the carnage and pity for the vanquished. The cycle changed anew. Most of the mechanized units had reorganized over the last few hours, and were ready to move again, while their own MPs and arriving Saudi units took possession of the prisoners gathered by the line units.

"Just sit tight," Diggs replied, to Eddington's disappointment and relief. "The remains are running hard. You'd never catch them, and we don't have orders to invade."

"They just came at us in the same old way," the Guard colonel said, remembering Wellington. "And we stopped them in the same old way. What a terrible business."

"Bobby Lee, remember, Chancellorsville?"

"Oh, yeah. He was right, too. Those couple of hours, Diggs, getting things set up, maneuvering my battalions, getting the information, acting on it." He shook his head. "I never knew anything could feel like that… but now…"

" 'It is good that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it. Funny thing is, you forget sometimes. Those poor bastards," the general said, watching fifty men being herded off to trucks for the ride back to the rear. "Clean up, Colonel. Get your units put back together. There may be orders to move, but I don't think so."

"Three Corps?"

"Ain't goin' far, Nick. We're 'keepin' up the skeer' and we're running them right into the 10th."

"So you know Bedford Forrest after all." It was one of the Confederate officer's most important aphorisms. Keep up the skeer: never give a fleeing enemy the chance to rest; harry him, punish him, force him into additional errors, run him into the ground. Even if it really didn't matter anymore.

"My doctoral dissertation was on Hitler as a political manipulator. I didn't much like him, either." Diggs smiled and saluted. "You and your people did just fine, Nick. Glad to have you on this trip."

"Wouldn't have missed it, sir."

THE VEHICLE HAD diplomatic tags, but the driver and passenger knew that such things had not always been respected in Tehran. Things changed in a country at war, and you could often spot previously clandestine facilities by the fact that they got more guards in time of trouble instead of remaining the same. The latter would have been far smarter, but everyone did it. The car halted. The driver lifted binoculars. The passenger lifted a camera. Sure enough, the experimental farm had armed men around the research building, and that wasn't the normal sort of thing, was it? It was just that easy. The car turned in the road and headed back to the embassy.

THEY WERE GETTING only stragglers. The Blackhorse was in full pursuit now, and this tail chase was proving to be a long one. American vehicles were better and generally faster than those they were pursuing, but it was easier to run than to chase. Pursuers had to be a little careful about possible ambushes, and the lust to kill more of the enemy was muted by the concern at dying in a war already won. Enemy disorder had allowed the 11 th to pull in tight, and the right-flank units were now in radio contact with the advancing Saudis, who were just now finishing off the last few battalions of II Corps and thinking about engaging III in a final decisive battle.

"Target tank," one TC said. "Ten o'clock, forty-one hundred."

"Identified," the gunner said as the Abrams halted to make the shot easier.

"Hold fire," the TC said suddenly. "They're bailing out. Give 'em a few seconds."

"Right." The gunner could see it, too. The T-80's main gun was pointed away, in any case. They waited for the crew to make a hundred meters or so.

"Okay, take it."

"On the way." The breech recoiled, the tank jolted, and the round flew. Three seconds later, one more tank turret blew straight up. "Jack-in-the-box."

"Target. Cease fire. Driver, move out," the TC ordered. That made the twelfth kill for their tank. The crew wondered what the unit record would be, while the TC made a position notation for the three-man enemy crew on his IVIS box, which automatically told the regimental security detail where to pick them up. The advancing cavalrymen gave them a wide berth. Unlikely though it was, one of them might shoot or do something stupid, and they had neither the time nor the inclination to waste ammunition. One more battle to fight, unless the other side got some brains and just called it a day.

"COMMENTS?" POTUS ASKED.

"Sir, it sets a precedent," Cliff Rutledge replied.

"That's the idea," Ryan said. They were getting the battlefield video first, unedited. It included the usual horrors, body parts of those ripped to shreds by high explosives, whole bodies of those whose deaths had come from some mysterious cause, a hand reaching out of a personnel carrier whose interior still smoked, some poor bastard who'd almost gotten out, but not quite. There had to be something about carrying a mini-cam that just drew people to that sort of thing. The dead were dead, and the dead were all victims in one way or another—more than one way, Ryan thought. These soldiers of two previously separate countries and one overlapping culture had died at the hands of armed Americans, but they'd been sent to death by a man whose orders they'd had to follow, who had miscalculated, and who had been willing to use their lives as tokens, gambling chips, quarters in a big slot machine whose arm he'd yanked to see what would result. It wasn't supposed to be that way. Power carried responsibility. Jack knew that he would hand-write a letter to the family of every dead American, just as George Bush had done in 1991. The letters would serve two purposes. They would, perhaps, be some measure of comfort to the families of the lost. They would, certainly, remind the man who had ordered them to the field that the dead had once been living. He wondered what their faces had been like. Probably no different from the Guardsmen who'd formed that honor guard at Indianapolis, the day of his first public appearance. They looked the same, but each human life was individual, the most valuable possession of its owner, and Ryan had played a part in stripping it away, and though he knew it had been necessary, it was also necessary for him, now and for as long as he sat in this building, to remember that they were more than just faces. And that, he told himself, is the difference. I know about my responsibility. He doesn't know about his. He still lived with the illusion that people were responsible to him, and not the reverse.

"It's political dynamite, Mr. President," van Damm said.

"So?"

"There is a legal problem," Pat Martin told them. "It violates the executive order that President Ford put in place."

"I know about that one," Ryan responded. "But who decides the executive orders?"

"The Chief Executive, sir," Martin answered.

"Draft me a new one."

"WHAT IS THAT smell?" Back at the Indiana motel, the truck drivers were out for the morning dance of moving the trucks around to protect the tires. They were sick of this place by now, and heartily wished the travel ban would be lifted soon. One driver had just exercised his Mack, and parked it back next to the cement truck. Spring was turning warm, and the metal bodies of the trucks turned the interiors into ovens. In the case of the cement truck, it was having an effect its owners hadn't thought about. "You got a fuel leak?" he asked Holbrook, then bent down to look. "No, your tank's okay."

"Maybe somebody had a little spill over at the pumps," the Mountain Man suggested.

"Don't think so. They just hosed it down a while ago. We better find this. I seen a KW burn once 'cuz some mechanic fucked up. Killed the driver, that was on 1-40 back in 85. Hell of a mess." He continued to walk around. "You got a leak somewhere, ol' buddy. Let's check your fuel pump," he said next, turning the locks on the hood panels.

"Hey, uh, wait a minute—I mean—"

"Don't sweat it, pard, I know how to fix the things. I save a good five grand a year doing my own work." The hood went up, and the trucker looked inside, reached to shake a few hoses, then felt the fuel-line connectors. "Okay, they're all right." Next he looked at the line to the injectors. One nut was a little loose, but that was just the lock, and he twisted that back in place. There wasn't anything unusual. He bent down again to look underneath. "Nothin' drippin'. Damn," he concluded, standing back up. Next he checked the wind. Maybe the smell was coming from… no. He could smell breakfast cooking in the restaurant, his next stop of the day. The smell was coming from right here… something else, too, not just diesel, now that he thought about it.

"What's the problem, Coots?" another driver asked, walking over.

"Smell that?" And both men stood there, sniffing the air like woodchucks.

"Somebody got a bad tank?"

"Not that I can see." The first one looked at Holbrook. "Look, I don't want to be unneighborly, but I'm an owner-operator, and I get nervous about my rig, y'know? Would you mind moving your truck over there? And I'd have somebody give the engine a look, okay?"

"Hey, sure, no problem, don't mind a bit." Holbrook remounted his truck, started it, and drove it slowly off, turning to park in a fairly vacant part of the lot. The other two watched him do it. "The goddamned smell went away, didn't it, Coots?"

"That is a sick truck."

"Fuck 'im. About time for the news. Come on." The other driver waved. "Whoa!" they heard on entering the restaurant. The TV was tuned to CNN. The scene looked like something from the special-effects department of a major studio. Nothing like that ever was real. But this was.

"Colonel, what happened last night?"

"Well, Barry, the enemy came in on us twice. The first time," Eddington explained, holding a cigar in his extended hand, "we sat on that ridge back there. The second time, we were advancing, and so were they, and we met right about here…" The camera turned to show two tanks heading up the road, past where the colonel was giving his lecture.

"I bet those fuckers are fun to drive," Coots said. "I bet they're fun to shoot." The scene changed again. The reporter's familiar, handsome face was covered with dust, with the bags of exhaustion under his eyes.

"This is Tom Donner, with the press team assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. How can I describe the night we had? I've been riding with this Bradley crew, and our vehicle and the rest of B-Troop have gone through—Idon't know how many of the enemy in the past twelve hours. It was War of the Worlds in Saudi Arabia last night, and we were the Martians. "The UIR forces—the ones we faced were a mix of Iraqis and Iranians—fought back, or tried to, but nothing they did…"

"Shit, wish they'd've sent my unit," a highway patrolman said, taking his usual seat for his beginning-of-watch coffee. He'd gotten to know some of the drivers.

"Smoky, you have those in the Ohio Guard?" Coots asked.

"Yeah, my unit's armored cavalry. Those boys from Carolina had a big night. Jesus." The cop shook his head, and in the mirror noticed a man walking in from the parking lot.

"Enemy forces are in full flight now. You've just had a report from the National Guard force that defeated two complete armored divisions—"

"That many! Wow," the cop observed, sipping his coffee.

"— the Blackhorse has annihilated another. It was like watching a movie. It was like watching a football game between the NFL and the Pop Warner League."

"Welcome to the bigs, you bastards," Coots told the TV screen.

"Hey, is that your cement truck?" the cop asked, turning.

"Yes, sir," Holbrook answered, stopping on the way to join his friend for breakfast.

"Make sure it don't blow the hell up on you," Coots said, not turning his head.

"What the hell is a cement truck from Montana doing here?" the cop asked lightly. "Huh?" he added to Coots.

"He's got some kinda fuel problem. We asked him to move the rig. Thanks, by the way," he added. "Don't mean to be unneighborly, buddy."

"It's all right. I'll have it checked for sure."

"Why all the way from Montana?" the cop inquired again.

"Well, uh, we bought it there, and bringing it east for our business, y'know?"

"Hmmm." Attention returned to the TV.

"Yes, they were coming south, and we drove right into them!" a Kuwaiti officer was telling another reporter now. He patted the gun tube of his tank with the affection he might have shown a prize stallion, a little man who'd grown about a foot in the last day or so, along with his country.

"Any word on when we can get back to work, Smoky?" Coots asked the cop. The highway patrolman shook his head. "You know as much as I do. When I leave here, I go up to the line to play roadblock some more."

"Yeah, all that good ticket money you're losin', Smoky Bear!" a driver commented with a chuckle.

"I didn't notice the tags. Why the hell drive a cement truck in from Montana?" Coots wondered. Those guys just didn't fit in.

"Maybe he got it cheap," the cop thought, finishing his coffee. "I don't have anything on the sheet about a hot one. Damn, I wonder if anyone ever stole one of those?"

"Not that I heard of—zap!" Coots said. The current shot was of smart bombs. "At least it can't hurt much."

"Y'all have a good one," the cop said on the way out. He entered his Chevy patrol car and headed back to the highway, then decided to give the cement truck a look. Might as well run the tag, he thought. Maybe it was hot. Then he smelled it, too, and to the cop it wasn't the diesel… ammonia…? It was a smell he'd always associated with ice cream, having once worked a summer in a plant which made it… and also with the smell of propellant in his National Guard cavalry unit. His curiosity aroused, he drove back to the cafe. "Excuse me, gentlemen, is that your truck parked over on the edge?"

"Yeah, why?" Brown asked. "We do something wrong?"

It was his hands that betrayed him. The cop saw them twitch. Something was definitely not right.

"Would you gentlemen come with me, please?"

"Wait a minute, what's the beef here?"

"No beef. I just want to know what that smell is. Fair enough?"

"We're going to have it looked at."

"You're going to have it looked at right now, gentlemen." He gestured. "If you would, please?" The cop followed them out, got back into his car, and drove behind them as they walked to the truck. They were talking back and forth. Something just wasn't right. His fellow highway cops were not terribly busy at the moment, and on instinct he called another car for backup, and told his headquarters to run the truck tag. That done, he got out and looked up at the truck again.

"You want to turn it over?"

"Okay, sure." Brown got in and cranked the engine which was noisy enough.

"What is going on here?" the cop asked Holbrook. "Could I see some identification, please?"

"Hey, I don't understand what the beef is."

"No beef, sir, but I do want to see your ID." Pete Holbrook pulled out his wallet as another police car arrived. Brown saw it, too, looked down to see Holbrook's wallet in his hand, and the cop's hand on the butt of his pistol. It was just the way cops stood, but Brown didn't think of that. Neither Mountain Man had a gun handy. They had them in their room, but hadn't thought to carry them to breakfast. The policeman took Pete's driver's license, then walked back to his car, lifting the microphone—

"The tag is clean, not in the computer as hot," the lady at the station informed him.

"Thank you." He tossed the mike back inside and walked back to Peter Holbrook, twirling the license in his hand—Brown saw a cop with his friend, another cop, they'd just talked on the radio—

The highway patrolman looked up in surprise as the truck jerked forward. He yelled and pointed for the man to stop. The second car moved to block him, and then the cement truck did stop. That did it. Something was just not right.

"Out!" he shouted, his pistol in his hands now. The second officer took control of Holbrook, not having a clue what this was all about. Brown stepped down, and felt his collar grabbed and himself thrust against the body of the truck. "What is the matter with you?" the cop demanded. It would take hours to find out, and then a very interesting time at the truck stop.

THERE WAS NOTHING for him to do but scream, and that, uncharacteristically, he did. The video was undeniable. There was an instant respectability to global TV, and he couldn't stop it from going out. The affluent m his country had their own satellite dishes, and so did many others, including little neighborhood groups. What would he do now? Order them turned off?

"Why aren't they attacking?" Daryaei demanded.

"The Army commander and all corps commanders are off the air. We have some contact with two of our divisions only. One brigade reported it is heading north with enemy forces in pursuit."

"And?"

"And our forces have been defeated," Intelligence said.

"But how?"

"Does that matter?"

THEY CAME ON north. Buffalo came on south. UIR III Corps didn't know what lay ahead. The discovery took place in midafternoon. Masterman's 1st Squadron had so far eliminated a hundred or so fuel and other trucks, more than the other two battalions. The only question now was how much resistance the enemy would display. From air coverage, he knew exactly where the advancing force was in what strength and concentration, and in what direction. It was much easier than the last time he'd seen action.

A-Troop was screening in advance, with B and C three klicks back, and the tank company in reserve. As fearful a pounding as their UIR forces were taking, he decided not to use his own artillery yet. No sense warning them that tanks were close by. With contact less than ten minutes away, he shifted A-Troop to the right. Unlike the first— and only previous—battle in his career, Duke Masterman wouldn't really see this one. Instead, he listened to it on the radio.

A-Troop engaged at extreme range with both gun tubes and TOW missiles, and crumpled the first ragged line of vehicles. The troop commander estimated at least battalion strength as he engaged them from their left-front, approaching obliquely in the planned opening maneuver. This UIR division was Iraqi in origin and recoiled the other way, without realizing that it was being herded right into two more cavalry troops.

"This is GUIDON-SIX. Punch left, say again punch left,"

Masterman ordered from his command track. B and C turned to the east, sprinted about three kilometers, then wheeled back. At about the same time, Masterman let his artillery fire into the enemy's second echelon. There was no surprise to lose now, and it was time to hurt the enemy in every possible way. In another few minutes, it was clear that he was engaging at least a brigade with the 1st Squadron of the Buffalo, but the numbers didn't matter any more now than they had during the night.

For one last time, there was a mechanistic horror. The gun flashes were less brilliant in the light of day, and tanks drove through the dust of their own shots as they advanced. As planned, the enemy force recoiled again from the devastating effects of B- and C-Troop, turning back, hoping to find a gap between the first attacking force and the second. What they found were fourteen Ml A2s of the squadron's tank company, spaced two hundred meters apart like a breakwater. As before, first the tanks were destroyed, then the mechanized infantry carriers, as GUIDON rolled into the enemy formation. Then it stopped. Vehicles not yet engaged stopped moving. Crews hopped out and ran away from them. It was the same, Masterman heard, all the way west on the line. Surprised, running, their exit blocked, the soldiers lucky enough to see what was rolling toward them in time decided that resistance was surely fatal, and the Third (and last) Battle of KKMC stopped thirty minutes after it had begun.

It wasn't quite that easy for the invaders. Advancing Saudi forces, finally in heavy contact, fought a deliberate battle, grinding their way through another brigade, this one Iranian and therefore getting more attention than an Arab unit might have, but by sunset, all six of the UIR divisions that had entered their country were destroyed. Sub-units with some lingering fight in them were ordered to surrender by senior officers, before enemies on three sides could enforce a more final decision.

The biggest administrative headache, as before, was the prisoners, all the worse with the additional confusion of nightfall. That problem would last for at least a day, commanders reported. Fortunately, in most cases the UIR soldiers had water and rations of their own. They were moved away from their equipment and placed under guard, but this far from home, there was little danger of their striking across the desert on foot.

CLARK AND CHAVEZ left the Russian embassy an hour after nightfall. In the back of their car was a large suitcase whose contents would not appear overly dangerous to anyone, and was in fact largely in keeping with their journalistic cover. The mission, they decided, was slightly crazy, but while that troubled the senior member of the team somewhat, it had Ding rather juiced. The premise of it seemed incredible, however, and that had to be verified. The drive to the alley behind the coffee shop was uneventful. The security perimeter around Daryaei's home stopped short of their destination. The coffee shop was closed, what with the blackout conditions imposed on a city half at war and half at peace—streetlights were off, and windows draped, but cars were allowed to drive about with lights, and domestic electricity was evidently on. That worked to their benefit. The door lock was easily defeated in the unlit alley. Chavez eased the door open and looked inside. Clark followed, lugging the case, and both men went inside, closing the door behind them. They were already on the second floor when they heard noises. A family lived here. It turned out to be a husband and wife in their fifties, proprietors of the eating place, watching television. Had the mission been properly planned, he knew, they would have established that sooner. Oh, well.

"Hello," Clark said quietly. "Please do not make any noise."

"What—"

"We will not hurt you," John said as Ding looked around for—yes, electric cords would do just fine. "Please lie down on the floor."

"Who—"

"We will let you go when we leave," Clark went on in literate Farsi. "But if you resist, we must hurt you."

They were too terrified to resist the two men who had appeared like thieves in their home. Clark used the light cords to tie their arms, then their ankles. Chavez laid them on their sides, first getting the woman some water before he gagged her.

"Make sure they can breathe," Clark said, in English this time. He checked all the knots, pleased that he remembered his basic seamanship skills from thirty years before. Satisfied, they went upstairs.

The truly crazy part was the communications lash-up. Chavez opened the case and started taking things out. The roof of the building was flat, and had a clear line of sight to another such building three blocks away. For that reason, they had to keep low. First of all, Ding set up the mini-dish. The tripod for it was heavy, with spiked feet to secure it to the roof. Next he had to turn it, to get the buzzing chirp of the carrier signal from the proper satellite. That done, he twisted the clamp to lock the dish in place. Then came the camera. This, too, had a tripod. Chavez set that up, screwed the camera in place, and aimed it, switching it on and pointing it at the center of the three buildings that held their interest. Then the cable from the camera went into the transmitter/power-supply box, which they left in the opened suitcase.

"It's running, John."

The odd part was that they had an up-link, but not a down-link. They could download signals from the satellite, but there wasn't a separate audio channel for them to use. For that they needed additional equipment, which they didn't have.

"THERE IT IS," Robby Jackson reported from the National Military Command Center.

"That's the one," Mary Pat Foley confirmed, looking at the same picture. She dialed a phone number to the American embassy in Moscow, from there to the Russian Foreign Ministry, from there to the Russian embassy in Tehran, and from there by the digital phone in John's hand. "Do you hear me, Ivan?" she asked in Russian. "It's Foleyeva." It took a very long second for the reply to come through.

"AH, MARIA, HOW good to hear your voice." Thank God for the phone company, John thought to himself, letting out a long breath. Even the one here.

"I have your picture here on my desk," she said next.

"I was so much younger then."

"HE'S IN PLACE and everything's cool," the DDO said.

"Okay." Jackson lifted another phone. "It's a go. I repeat, it's a go. Acknowledge."

"Operation BOOTH is go," Diggs confirmed from Riyadh.

THE IRANIAN AIR defense system was about as tense as it could be. Though no attack at all had been launched into their territory, the radar operators were keeping a close eye on things. They watched several aircraft patrolling the Saudi and Qatari coasts, mainly running parallel, not even pushing toward the center of the waterway.

BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE and BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-TWO completed refueling from their tankers within seconds of each other. It wasn't often that Stealth fighters operated in unison. They were, in fact, designed to operate entirely alone. But not this time. Both separated from the KC-lOs and turned north for a flight of about one hour, albeit with a thousand feet of vertical separation. The tanker crews remained on station, and used the time to refuel the standing fighter patrol on the Saudi coast, exactly routine for night operations. Fifty miles away, an AW ACS tracked everything—or almost. The E-3B couldn't detect an F-117, either.

"WE 1CEEP MEETING like this," the President said to the makeup woman, with forced good humor.

"You look very tired," Mary Abbot told him.

"I am pretty tired," Ryan admitted.

"Your hands are shaking."

"Lack of sleep." This was a lie.

CALLIE WESTON WAS typing alterations to the speech directly into the electronic memory of the TelePrompTer. Even the TV technicians were not allowed to see the content of this one, and in a way she was surprised that she herself was. She finished, scanning the whole thing for typos, which, she'd learned over the years, could be very disconcerting to Presidents on live TV.

SOME OF THEM were smoking, Clark saw, the guards outside. Poor discipline, but maybe it did serve to keep people awake.

"John, you ever think that this job is maybe just a little too exciting?"

"Gotta take a leak?" It was the usual reaction, even for them.

"Yeah."

"Me, too." It was something that never made the James Bond movies. "Hmph. I didn't know that." Clark pressed the earpiece in, hearing a normal voice, as opposed to one of a known announcer, say that the President would be on in two minutes. Maybe some network director, he thought. With that, the last two items came out of the suitcase.

"MY FELLOW AMERICANS, I am here to give you an updated report on the situation in the Middle East," the President said without preamble.

"Approximately four hours ago, organized resistance ceased among the forces of the United Islamic Republic which invaded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi, Kuwaiti, and American forces, working together, have destroyed six divisions in a battle which raged through a night and a day.

"I can now tell you that our country dispatched the 10th and 11th Cavalry regiments, plus the First Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard, and the 366th Wing from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. A massive battle was fought south of King Khalid Military City. You have already seen some of the details on TV. The final UIR units attempted to flee the battlefield to the north, but they were cut off, and after a brief engagement, they began to surrender. Ground combat in the area has, for the moment, concluded.

"I say 'for the moment, because this war is unlike any most of us have known in the past fifty years. An attack was made directly upon our citizens, on our soil. It was an attack deliberately made upon civilians. It was an attack made using a weapon of mass destruction. The violations of international law are too numerous to list," the President went on, "but it would be wrong to say that this attack was made by the people of the United Islamic Republic upon America.

"Peoples do not make war. The decision to start a war is most often made by one man. They used to be kings, or princes, or barbarian chiefs, but throughout history it's usually one man who decides, and never is the decision to start a war of aggression the result of a democratic process.

"We Americans have no quarrel with the people of the former Iran and Iraq. Their religion may be different from ours, but we are a country which protects freedom of religion. Their languages may be different, but America has welcomed people of many languages. If America has proven anything to the world, it is that all men are the same, and given the same freedom and the same opportunity, they will all prosper to the limit only of their own abilities.

"In the last twenty-four hours, we killed at least ten thousand soldiers of the UIR. Probably many more. We do not know now and probably never will know the total number of enemy deaths, and we need to remind ourselves that they did not choose their fates. Those fates were chosen for them by others, and ultimately by one person." Ryan clasped his hands together theatrically. It seemed a very awkward gesture to all who watched.

"THERE IT GOES," Chavez said, his face to the camera's small eyepiece screen, which was now showing the download from the orbiting satellite. "Start the music."

Clark thumbed the laser transmitter, careful to see that it was on the invisible infra-red setting. A check through his eyepiece put the dot on the building's cornice—or parapet, he couldn't remember the difference. Whatever, there was a guard standing there, his foot on the structure.

DIGGS IN RIYADH: "Final check."

"BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE," he heard in reply— "Two-FivE-Two."

"THROUGHOUT HISTORY, KINGS and princes have made war at their whim, sending people off to die. To the kings, they were just peasants, and the wars were just grabs for power and riches, a kind of entertainment, and if people died, nobody much cared, and when it was all over, for the most part the kings were still kings, whether they won or lost, because they were above it all. All tfye way into this century, it was assumed that a chief of state had a right to make war. At Nuremberg, after the Second World War, we changed that rule by trying and executing some of those responsible. But getting to that point, arresting the criminals, as it were, cost the lives of twenty million Russians, six million Jews, so many lives lost that historians don't even know…." Ryan looked up to see An-drea Price wave to him. She didn't smile. It was not a smiling matter. But she gave the signal anyway.

THE GROUND-BASED laser was only insurance. They could have gone in without it, but picking out exactly the right house in the city would have been difficult, and they wanted to limit collateral damage. This way, also, the aircraft could drop their weapons from higher altitude. Simple ballistics would guarantee a drop to within a hundred yards, and the improved optics systems on the guidance packages cut that figure to one. Exactly on time, both BANDIT aircraft ("Bandit" was the semi-official call sign for the pilots of the Black Jets) opened their bomb-bay doors. Each aircraft carried a single five-hundred-pound weapon, the smallest that could take a PAVEWAY guidance package. These hung from a trapeze while the seeker heads looked for a modulated laser signal. Both acquired the laser dot, and so informed the pilots, who executed the release. Then they both did something neither had ever done before on a Stealth mission.

"BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE, bomb away!"

"Two-FivE-Two, bomb gone!"

"EVERY IDEA IN the history of man, good or bad, has started in a single human mind, and wars begin because one mind thinks it profitable to kill and steal. This time, it's happened to us in a particularly cruel way. This time, we can be exactly sure who did it—and more."

WORLDWIDE, IN EVERY country with a satellite dish and TV cable, in over a billion homes, the picture changed from the Oval Office of the White House to a three-story building on a city street. Most viewers thought it some mad error, something from a movie, a bad connection—

A HANDFUL 1CNEW different, even before the President went on. Daryaei, too, was watching the President's speech, as much from pure curiosity as political advantage. What sort of man was this Ryan, really? he'd wondered so long. Too late, he found out.

"THIS IS WHERE he lives, Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, the man who attacked our country with disease, the man who attacked my child, the man who tried to attack me, the man who sent his army on a mission of conquest that turned into a mission of death. He is a man who has defiled his religion and the laws of men and nations, and now, Mr. Daryaei, here is the reply of the United States of America."

THE PRESIDENT'S VOICE stopped, and a second or two later, so did translations all over the world, replaced only by silence, as eyes watched an ordinary black-and-white picture of a quite ordinary building—and yet everyone knew that something extraordinary was about to happen. Those looking very closely saw a light go on in a window, and the front door open, but no one would ever know the identity of the person who might have been attempting to leave, because both weapons fell true, struck the roof of the building, and went off a hundredth of a second later.

THE NOISE WAS awful. The passing pressure wave was worse. Both men watched, ignoring the danger. The echoes were punctuated by the tinkle of glass from half a mile around.

"You okay?" Ding asked.

"Yeah. Time to boogie, partner."

"Fuckin' A, Mr. C."

They got down to the bedroom level as quickly as possible. Chavez cut most of the way through the cords with a pocket knife. He figured it would take them about five minutes to work themselves free. The alleys allowed them to drive from the area, and keep out of the way of emergency vehicles, which screamed their way to the remains of the three buildings. Half an hour later, they were back in the safety of the Russian embassy. Vodka was offered. Vodka was drunk. Chavez had never experienced so bad a case of the shakes. Clark had. The vodka helped.

"TO THE PEOPLE of the United Islamic Republic, the United States of America says this: "First, we know the exact location of the germ-warfare factory. We have asked for and received the help of the Russian Federation. They are neutrals in our dispute, but they have knowledge of this type of weapon. A team of technical experts is now on its way to Tehran. They will land, and you will take them immediately to the facility to supervise its neutralization. They will be accompanied by journalists for an independent verification of the facts. If this does not happen, then twelve hours from now we will destroy the site with a low-yield nuclear bomb to be delivered by a Stealth aircraft. Do not make the mistake of thinking that I am unwilling to give that order. The United States of America will not tolerate the existence of that facility and its inhuman weapons. The twelve-hour period starts now.

"Second, your prisoners will be treated in full accordance with international convention, and also the stern and admirable laws of hospitality which are part of your Islamic faith. Your prisoners will be returned as soon as you deliver to the United States the living bodies of every single person who had a role in preparing and delivering those weapons to our country, and those behind the attack on my daughter. On that there will be no compromise.

"Third, we will give your country a week to comply with this requirement. If you do not, then America will declare and wage unlimited war. You have seen what we can do, what we have done. I assure you that, if we have to, we can do more still. The choice is yours to make. Choose wisely.

"Finally, and I say this to all nations who may wish us ill, the United States of America will not tolerate attacks on our country, our possessions, or our citizens. From this day forward, whoever executes or orders such an attack, no matter who you are, no matter where you might hide, no matter how long it may take, we will come for you. I have sworn an oath before God to execute my duties as President. That I will do. To those who wish to be our friends, you will find no more faithful friend than we. To those who would be our enemies, remember that we can be faithful at that, too.

"My fellow Americans, it has been a hard time for us, for some of our allies, and for our enemies as well. We have defeated aggression. We have punished the person most guilty for the cruel deaths in our land, and we will have a reckoning also with those who followed his orders, but for the rest, let us now recall the words of President Abraham Lincoln:

" 'With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

"Thank you, and good day."