Night of the Hawk

ONE

Stand by for team launch,” Air Force Colonel Paul White radioed on the intercom. “All decks, get ready to rock and roll.” Captain Joseph Marchetti, the senior ship’s officer standing beside White, looked at his colleague in amusement and consternation. Rock and roll? Things were going to get critical here very, very fast.

Paul White was fifty-one years old, but, as he himself would readily admit, capriciously, only seventeen or eighteen. And he could not have been more out of place than on this ship — or having more fun than if he had an A-pass at Disneyland. It was at times like this that White longed for the flying skill and combat nerve needed to get knee-deep in the action. Although he had designed trainers and simulators for the Strategic Air Command and other organizations over the years, he had never earned a flying rating nor seen combat — but anyone who had flown in his modified super-realistic simulators back at Ford Air Force Base would have sworn they’d just been in combat when they finished a grueling session.

His current assignment with the Intelligence Support Agency — a support agency of the Director of Central Intelligence — was also not considered a combat assignment, but if something went wrong on this mission, or if they were discovered, they could be just as dead as if they were in the middle of World War III.

The twenty-nine-year veteran Air Force officer was on the bridge of what had to be the most unusual vessel in the world, as befitting one of the most dedicated yet unusual men in the world. The USS Valley Mistress was a maritime salvage and deep-sea construction vessel registered under the U.S. flag. Officially, the Mistress was part of the U.S. Navy’s Ready Reserve Fleet, leased from a private company from Larose, Louisiana, but for the past few months she was detached from her reserve duties and was on a “privately contracted” voyage to northern Europe, performing a variety of jobs in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Poland, and even the Commonwealth of Independent States, or CIS — what used to be known as the Soviet Union. Three hundred and twenty feet long, sixty feet in width, with a draft of twelve feet and a manifested crew of only twenty, the Mistress had put in a considerable number of miles on voyages all over the world.

Originally an oilfield support tug, the Mistress had been converted to an undersea construction, salvage, and rescue vessel with the addition of a large steel pressure enclosure on the middeck specifically designed to support a Navy deep-submergence rescue vehicle, or DSRV, which was its primary Naval Reserve Fleet assignment. The Mistress also sported a thirty-five-ton crane abaft the main superstructure, ostensibly to load and unload the DSRV, and it had a large helicopter landing pad on the fantail, so big that the sides of the pad hung out over the ship’s gunwales and several feet behind the transom. Her hull had been ice-strengthened to be able to operate in the Arctic and Antarctic, and a pressurized recovery hatch had been added in the hull to allow a DSRV or pressure-suited divers to be raised and lowered directly inside the enclosure. Her three big fourteen-thousand-brake-horsepower diesels propelled the three-thousand, five-hundred-ton vessel at a snappy twenty knots; computer-controlled stabilizers ensured a relatively smooth ride in all but the most treacherous waters; and side-thrusters and a sophisticated navigation and electronics suite allowed her to be positioned anywhere near a rescue site with great precision, or to locate submerged objects in up to two thousand feet of water.

Paul White was not her skipper — on the unclassified manifest he was listed as purser, in charge of everything from buying water while in port to filling out customs forms — but he loved this ship as if he was her master. It was a strange and overwhelming feeling of pride for a man from Wyoming who had never been near the sea or owned a boat, whose whole career had been in the United States Air Force, designing and building mechanical and electronic devices for aircrews. His particular talent was engineering … things. He was into gadgets, big and small.

And the Valley Mistress was Paul White’s biggest and best gadget of all.

The vessel, and Colonel White as her operational commander, were known by the code name MADCAP MAGICIAN. The vessel’s real purpose: conduct unconventional warfare, direct action, reconnaissance, counterterrorist, foreign internal defense, and special rescue operations to support the National Command Authority and unified military commands worldwide. It was one of four oceangoing vessels modified by White and secretly operated by the Intelligence Support Agency, the CIA’s “troubleshooters.” When the CIA needed more firepower than they normally used, but did not want to directly involve the military, it called on the Intelligence Support Agency. When ISA needed a tough job done quickly and effectively, it called on MADCAP MAGICIAN.

Although perfectly capable of acting as a salvage vessel — she had already earned several million for her nonexistent Louisiana salvage company, an unexpected bonus for the U.S. government treasury — she was not doing so now. The Valley Mistress had transferred her DSRV onto another cargo ship, this one the Italian-flag vessel Bernardo LoPresti, which had been contracted by the Intelligence Support Agency to act as the Valley Mistress’s support ship, and had secretly taken aboard a very different kind of cargo: six mission-specific cargo containers, or MISCOs, and a CV-22 PAVE HAMMER tilt-rotor special-operations aircraft, now nestled in the DSRV chamber and ready to go.

Her present, covert mission: a Lithuanian-born officer in a mostly Byelorussian unit of the CIS Army in Lithuania who had been delivering military and state secrets to the CIA for several months. He had been discovered and was now in danger of being captured. As part of his double-agent deal, the U.S. agreed to extract him by whatever means when the time came.

This was it.

“Gimme the downlink from PATRIOT, Carl,” White said to his operations officer, Air Force Major Carl Knowlton. “Tell the Intel section to stand by.”

The skipper of the Mistress watched and listened as White gave his orders — although Marchetti was commander of the vessel and in overall command of the entire mission, it was White who ran this show.

“You got it, boss,” Knowlton replied casually, then relayed the order down to the Intel section. The Air Force crew had long ago dispensed with traditional military courtesies while deployed — in fact, no one on board could easily be recognized as military men. They wore civilian work clothes, not uniforms, and some sported long hair and scraggly beards. Their military I.D. cards were in a hidden safe in the Engineering section and would not be reissued to the crew until they arrived back at their home port in Kittery, Maine.

Moments later a phone rang on the bridge. White picked it up himself: “Bridge, White here. Go ahead, PATRIOT.”

The snaps and crackles of the secure radio link were audible on the radio channel: “This is PATRIOT controller S-3. Radar plot description follows. Plot describes mission essential data.” PATRIOT was a NATO E-3B AWACS radar aircraft, orbiting over the Baltic Sea between Poland and Sweden. The plane’s powerful radar could track hundreds of aircraft and vessels for many miles in all directions and then feed that digitized data directly to White’s crew on the Valley Mistress. Even though the Warsaw Pact had disbanded, East Germany had fallen, and the Soviet Union had broken up into many fragments, a NATO radar surveillance plane was still on patrol twenty-four hours a day over Eastern Europe, tracking aircraft and vessels over the horizon and correlating the information with civilian and military sources. The Cold War may have been over, but President Ronald Reagan’s famous words, “Trust, but verify,” were the new watchwords in West-East relations in the 1990s.

The current political situation in the old USSR was confusing, complicated, and extremely dangerous. The new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) had replaced the USSR in 1992, but the new entity was more of a collection of bickering ministers than any sort of true union. The Red Army had disbanded, split along ethnic or religious lines, but the splits were inequitable and destructive: the Russian Army found itself with most of the skilled technicians and almost all of the officers but no one willing to do the “menial” tasks, while the armies of Belarus (Byelorussia), Ukraine, and Kazakhstan — the three most powerful members of the CIS besides Russia — were left with few well-trained, knowledgeable leaders but a lot of soldiers with little technical training or formal education. To say it was a mess was an understatement.

But all four republics still had one thing in common: nuclear weapons.

Despite the Commonwealth’s initial pledge to destroy its intercontinental weapons, move all tactical weapons to the Russian interior or into storage, and place the remaining ones in joint command, no republic was willing to give up the nuclear weapons inside its borders unless the other republics gave them up first. As a result, no one gave them up. All four republics — Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia — had intercontinental-range nuclear weapons and the skilled soldiers to use them.

Officially, the role of the United States government in regard to the fledgling Commonwealth was simple: encourage democratic reforms and a free market, but otherwise hands off. The Commonwealth had pledged to adhere to treaties already in force between the U.S. and the old USSR, and that satisfied the White House for the time being. Talks on new trade agreements between the Commonwealth, the individual states, and the U.S. and other countries were laid, in preparation for full diplomatic recognition and lifting of all trade barriers. World markets were eagerly awaiting the millions of new consumers being unleashed by the republics; everyone seemed willing to overlook the devalued, nearly worthless ruble (the adopted currency of the CIS) and bet that the future was going to be much brighter.

The White House feeling in private was much different: monitor the nuclear weapons and military movements in all Commonwealth-member republics and develop strategies and doctrines for dealing with a possible breakup of the Commonwealth and a loss of central control for each republic’s nuclear arsenal. For the Central Intelligence Agency, that meant stepping up covert operations in the various republics, especially the strategically and politically important Baltic states.

That’s where Paul White and MADCAP MAGICIAN came in.

The radar operator aboard PATRIOT read off his position, altitude, surveillance track, date-time group of the surveillance run, and his equipment status-all in encoded format, even on the secure anti-eavesdrop channel-then continued: “Nearest vessel of interest is off your port beam, range three point one nautical miles, possible ELINT vessel. Numerous smaller vessels all quadrants appear to be at anchor, adrift, or moored to navigation aids, none considered a mission risk. Largest vessel in projected flight path confirmed identity as ferry Baltic Star. Additional vessel, the LoPresti, west-northwest of your position, is scheduled to rendezvous with you in approximately twelve hours. He is just leaving port at this time.”

White muttered a curt “Copy.”

The ELINT (electronic intelligence) vessel, a Soviet-CIS Gagarin-class research ship about the same size as the Valley Mistress, was a serious threat to this mission. Primarily used for spacecraft tracking and recovery, it was crammed full of communications and radar gear. Based in St. Petersburg, it had been on its way to the Atlantic when it had slowed and begun shadowing the American vessel in the Baltic, using its radar to constantly monitor the skies and seas around the Mistress. White thought that the CIS spy ship would go away after they had made their schedule port call in Tallinn, Estonia, but it had not. Then, after their inspection by Estonian customs officials in Tallinn — many of whom, White was sure, were former KGB agents — he thought the spy ship would definitely leave. Again, it had not, although it was no longer scanning them with radar. The Mistress had moved back into the Baltic, headed toward its next port of call in Norway, and the Gagarin-class research ship was right on his tail.

It was wrong, but probably prudent, to always believe that your cover was blown. The Gagarin-class vessel was not now using its radar, but it had lots of other sophisticated sensors — infrared, laser, low-light TV, super-sensitive optical, and plain old trained “weather-eye” crewmen — with which to watch over the Mistress. Or it could be just hanging out, tracking its own satellites, conducting training missions, anything. White’s mission was too important to scrub, so some chances had to be taken.

The report from PATRIOT continued: “Possible military rotary-wing aircraft will be within ten miles of target vicinity at feet-dry. Subject aircraft has been observed orbiting the vicinity since sunset. Analysis indicates the target may have been compromised. Recommend postponement additional twenty-four hours. Radar downlink to follow. PATRIOT standing by. Out.”

Well, things did not look good. A spy ship nearby, and now a military chopper in the target area. “Looks like we’ve been blown,” Knowlton said. “We don’t have a choice but to bug out.”

“Shit,” White muttered. “You’re probably right.” But Knowlton knew White had no intention of leaving. White turned to Marchetti and said, “Let’s start putting a little distance between us and that Gagarin, Joe. Try to get us over his radar horizon.”

“It’ll look suspicious.

“We already look suspicious,” White said. “I’m going down to Intel. Keep an eye on things up here,” he ordered Knowlton, then hurried off the bridge.

The confusing status of White’s HUMINT (human intelligence) target underscored the dangerous situation that now existed in the region. Even though the Baltic states had been independent for quite a long time, all still had foreign troops on their soil. Worse, those troops had a continuing identity crisis of their own. They had gone from being Soviet Red Army troops to Union of Sovereign Socialist Republic troops to Union Treaty troops to Commonwealth of Independent States troops, all in the space of a few months. Now most of those troops didn’t even belong to the Commonwealth. The Soviet troops of Byelorussian heritage in the Baltic states pledged allegiance to Belarus, while the Russian troops pledged loyalty to the Russian Federation, and Lithuanian troops supported Lithuania.

Aggravating this identity problem was the status of the many former Soviet military installations and other important government facilities in the Baltic states. Lithuania had twenty such installations, ranging from radar sites to research laboratories to fighter and bomber bases. The land belonged to Lithuania — that was clear. The structures, equipment, and products within these facilities belonged to the Commonwealth of Independent States, subject to transfer negotiations between Minsk, the capital of the CIS, and Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. But occupying some of these bases were Soviet scientists and engineers, some of whom never agreed to or wanted a new commonwealth to upset their system of rank and privileges assured them under the old Soviet system. Some facilities were under the control of former KGB officers who still wielded considerable power. Other facilities were guarded by heavily armed troops who were loyal to who was the richest, the most powerful, or the most influential at the moment-the KGB, the CIS, Belarus, or themselves.

The main objective of CIA operations in the Baltics was to study the complicated, potentially disastrous mixture being brewed here in Lithuania. The best way to do that was to cultivate HUMINT resources. In a poor, unorganized land such as this, the CIA found lots of willing informants. But it wasn’t long before the CIA needed help in order to successfully run all their informants, so they had called on MADCAP MAGICIAN.

Since the Valley Mistress was a real, privately-owned salvage vessel, subject to searches by all seagoing navies when not operating on behalf of the U.S. Navy, she could not have normal intelligence sections in her — no Commonwealth or non-aligned nation would allow such a vessel in its territorial waters. But White devised a system to solve that problem. The Mistress’s specially designed cargo containers (MISCOs) could be shipped like any other container or easily transferred by the Mistress’s big crane between vessels while under way. The containers were completely self-enclosed, with all necessary subsystems installed, and were fully functional once ship’s power was applied. The Valley Mistress’s six MISCOs were strapped down to the middeck area abaft the crane. Three belonged to the CV-22 aircraft’s maintenance and support crew, one was a heavy-weapons armory for the CV-22 and the assault crew, and two made up the mission command center, or Intel, which contained all of the classified radar, communications, and intelligence-gathering equipment necessary to run the mission and communicate with U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters in Florida. All six MISCOs could be slid overboard in case of an unexpected boarding or attack, and self-destruct charges and incendiaries would ensure complete destruction of most of the incriminating evidence.

The CV-22 PAVE HAMMER aircraft itself was the newest addition to the Air Force Special Operations Command arsenal. This unusual tilt-rotor aircraft had the ability to take off and land vertically like a helicopter, but then fly like a conventional turboprop airplane. It had twice the range, speed, and payload capability of a helicopter, but had all the advantages of vertical flight. It carried a crew of three — pilot, copilot, and engineer/loadmaster plus a combat crew of eight soldiers, and was armed with one 20-millimeter Hughes Chain Gun on one outrigger pod and one twelve-round Stinger missile pod on another; both pods were steerable by either the pilot or copilot with helmet-pointing fire-control systems. The CV-22 PAVE HAMMER folded itself into a compact 58-foot by 18-foot by 18-foot unit that fit perfectly into the DSRV chamber on the Valley Mistress.

The V-22 family of tilt-rotor aircraft had made a name for itself in the fledgling U.S. Border Security Force, or “Hammerheads,” which was to receive sixty of the hybrid aircraft for border patrol and drug-interdiction duty. Hidden within that appropriation bill had been six other birds, modified by the Air Force, General Bradley Elliott’s High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center (HAWC) in Nevada, and transferred to the Special Operations Command. This was to be one of its first actual missions …

… If it was to go at all.

In the cramped, cold interior of the second container that formed the new Intel offices aboard ship, Paul White watched as five days’ worth of radar plots were replayed on a digital situation board. The map of the target area — a spot ten miles north of a small port and resort town called Liepaja, on the Baltic coast of Latvia, a few miles north of the Lithuanian border — showed numerous aircraft transiting the area. “Which one are we looking at?” White asked.

“PATRIOT says it’s this one,” an intelligence officer explained. He pointed at a persistent radar dot just north of the town, farther away from the other aircraft that seemed to circle near the town. “Liepaja has a large civil airfield here, called Liepaja East, used by the CIS Baltic Sea Fleet to resupply the naval patrol base. Lots of helicopter activity. There’s another base, a CIS air-defense fighter base, thirty nautical miles east-southeast of Liepaja at Vainode. Mostly older MiG-19s and MiG-21 s — daylight fighters — but once in a while they’ll deploy a couple of MiG-29s there. They’ve also deployed Sukhoi-25 ‘Frogfoot’ attack planes and ‘Hind-D’ attack choppers, too. I’d assume they have ‘em there now.

White nodded impatiently — he was well familiar with the deployment of the Commonwealth troops in the Baltic states. Technically those jets and choppers might have belonged to the CIS, but the pilots and commanders who controlled them were Byelorussian. In recent months Belarus had stepped up military activities in Lithuania, ostensibly to protect Byelorussian citizens moving out of Lithuania and to guard products and shipments being transferred across Lithuania from Kalinin, the small sliver of land on the Baltic Sea coast between Lithuania and Poland.

But Lithuania was no threat to Belarus. The real reason for the increased military activity, White feared, was a move by Belarus to at some point occupy Lithuania.

Like Iraq before its invasion of Kuwait, Belarus seemed on the brink of breaking out of its isolation and claiming some valuable, unprotected neighboring territory. All the elements were there, and the parallels between Iraq and Belarus were frightening: Belarus was industrially advanced but cash- and resources-poor; Belarus had a large, well-equipped, and well-trained military, whose officers had seen a great decline in their prestige and perquisites after it joined the CIS; Belarus had no outlet to the sea and had to bargain with others for access to ports and commercial overseas-shipping facilities; and it was very dependent on the CIS, Poland, and Lithuania for raw materials for its factories. It would be difficult to stop Belarus if it decided to stretch its legs a bit.

So far his theory had no basis in fact, but White could see the signs. Something was brewing out there. …

“The pickup point is here,” the intelligence officer continued, pointing to a forested area several miles north of Liepaja, “and here’s the helicopter they’re looking at. It’s been in the target area for two days and seems to be hanging on for another day. The area is flat and marshy, and land navigation is pretty bad. Farther south is a resort area, very popular in the summer, but this is too early in the season. Railroad tracks and a highway farther east, very well traveled and patrolled.”

“What a damned stupid place for an exfiltration,” White muttered. “Less than ten miles from a military base. Hell, let’s just pick him up in a limo at the base!” But White knew they had no choice. According to the CIA, their subject, a lieutenant stationed at a research facility in Vilnius, Lithuania, had gone home to Siauliai, a town between the coast and the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. The young Lithuanian Army officer had been a longtime informant for the CIA, code-named RAGANU (Lithuanian for “witch”), but he was not a professional spy. He had inadvertently delivered a batch of fake data on a CIS Air Force deployment to Lithuania, an error that pointed directly at him as the infiltrator. Fortunately RAGANU was home on leave when the Americans discovered his cover blown, and he was told by his American handlers not to return to his unit but to execute one of his pre-planned exfiltration plans, the best of which was to send RAGANU to the coast to await pickup.

RAGANU was obviously clever enough to keep out of sight for one or two days, but as soon as his disappearance was noticed, the hunt for him would be on. From his hometown of Siauliai, they would track him down easily. After four days AWOL, the net would be very, very tight around him. He was probably a dead man, White thought, at least by daylight if not right now. The pickup plan was for RAGANU to meet at a predetermined spot and monitor it. Eventually someone would be inserted to retrieve him at that location.

That “someone” was MADCAP MAGICIAN.

White looked at his watch and cursed again — time was running out. It would take the Marines almost two hours to paddle into the drop area and travel overland to the target area — then they had to find RAGANU, travel to the pickup point, and find the CV-22, all before daylight. To make matters worse, the Valley Mistress’s cover was going to run out soon. She was scheduled for a port call in Kalmar in southern Sweden just seventy miles away, and it would attract a lot of attention if she was late. The Italian-flagged cargo vessel Bernardo LoPresti was going to rendezvous with the Valley Mistress in twelve hours to off-load the mission containers before the Mistress pulled into port — the mission had to be over by then. A decision had to be made.

White left the Intel section and made his way to the aft chamber, where the CV-22 aircraft was stowed. In the subdued night-vision red lights of the chamber, the CV-22 looked as if it were damaged. Its main wing was swiveled parallel to the fuselage instead of perpendicular, and the fifteen-foot-long rotors were folded flat against the engine nacelles. It looked as if it would never be able to untangle itself. But White knew that the CV-22 could go from completely stowed to ready for engine start in five minutes, all with the push of three buttons.

When White entered the chamber, the CV-22’s eight-man Marine Corps Maritime Special Purpose Force (MSPF) crew snapped to their feet in anticipation. Even after working with these guys for so many months, White was still in awe of them. They were members of “Cobra Venom,” Tenth Force Reconnaissance Company, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), deployed in the Mediterranean with the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet aboard LHD-1 Wasp and detached for service in Oslo. The MSPF were the elite of the elite and consisted of only fifty Marines in the United States specially trained for deep reconnaissance and covert penetration missions. The men in the MSPF could walk across cables stretched between two buildings, climb a ten-story building without a rope, swim ten miles in bone-chilling water — and kill with absolute precision, stealth, and speed. Most were unmarried, but the meaner ones were — meaner because they had more to fight for than just themselves.

The eight men here had received extra training in working not with Marine air-combat elements, but with U.S. Air Force special-operations forces, which they considered inferior but tolerable to their own. MADCAP MAGICIAN, on the other hand, seemed insane and dangerous enough for them, so they took him in stride.

None of them said a word as White strode to the CV-22’s cockpit. Inside were two Air Force pilots, Major Hank Fell and Major Martin J. Watanabe. The black-suited soldiers circled in behind White as he stepped inside the tilt-rotor aircraft and squatted between the two pilots’ seats. The crew engineer and loadmaster, Master Sergeant Mike Brown, left his place at the compartment doors and hurried to join them. The assault team leader, Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Jose Lobato, squatted behind the left-hand copilot’s seat to listen in as well.

“Visit from the boss just before a mission,” Fell quipped as White was about to speak. “Looks serious. Decision time, eh?”

“You got it. Listen up. The same fucking spy ship is still out there, but I think we can radar-shadow you enough to get away clean — we’re at ten miles now, and we’ll probably be right on the edge of his radar horizon by launch time. The problem is in the target area. There’s a chopper circling the pickup point, the same one we’ve seen the past two days.”

“Still just one chopper?” Fell asked. White nodded. “No other activity from Liepaja?”

“Plenty of activity, but nothing associated with the lone chopper or with us — at least I don’t think so,” White replied uneasily. “Radar pictures from two hundred miles away are not enough to accurately estimate enemy movements, but I think they’re still looking for RAGANU. They may be close, but I don’t think they got him. In any case, eyes are in the target area, and maybe eyes on us right now. It’s looking very risky. We have to off-load the MISCO trailers tomorrow morning before we enter Swedish waters or we’ll be in deep shit if we’re caught with them on board.

“My question is, do we go or cancel? The book says cancel.” He paused, gave a sly smile that went unappreciated by the black-suited warriors, then continued: “My gut says we go for it! But since it’s your asses on the firing line, I wanted to hear from you.”

“I need to see the radar plots,” Fell said. A technician came up a few moments later and delivered several large sheets of paper, each with different four-color screen dumps of the digitized radar picture from the AWACS radar plane. Fell examined them briefly, then handed them over to Watanabe, who began correlating the radar targets with his mission chart. “Any idea what aircraft they have at Liepaja other than the patrol and supply choppers?” Fell asked. “Any fixed-wing stuff? Any of the attack planes or helicopters from that squadron in Kaliningrad move north into Latvia?”

“Still the same info,” White replied. “Light-patrol, medium-search and rescue, medium-troop, and heavy-cargo helicopters only.” He referred to the screen dump. “Maybe a twin-engine liaison plane shuttling between Riga, Liepaja, and Vilnius, but no armed fixed-wings from Liepaja East. No apparent increase in numbers which might signify a reinforcement of the garrison already there. Except for that one chopper, it’s business as usual out there. Vainode is a large Soviet fighter base, thirty miles east, but we haven’t seen much activity from there except in daylight hours.”

Fell gave a sarcastic snort. “Yeah, right. Business as usual-meaning ten thousand troops, a spy ship, several gunboats, and thirty choppers within ten miles of the target zone.” Fell looked over at Watanabe. “Got all those targets plotted, Marty?”

“Plotted and laid in the mission computer,” Watanabe replied, handing the printouts to Gunny Lobato for him and his men to peruse. The CV-22’5 advanced AN/AMC-641 computer would warn the crew of any known enemy positions and would use the multimode radar to update that information during the flight; during withdrawal it would plot a best-guess evasion route out of the area and offer suggestions for safe escape-and-evasion routes in case they were shot down. Watanabe looked at his watch. “We need to start pulling out on deck if we want to recover before first light.”

“I take it you vote ‘go,’ “ Fell said dryly. Watanabe nodded and began strapping himself in. Fell turned to Lobato. “Gunny?”

“Walk in the park,” the dark Marine said quietly. “We go.”

“We go, then,” Fell said. “Turn us loose, Colonel.”

“One last sweep of the area and you’re on your way,” White said, stepping out of the CV-22 PAVE HAMMER. “Good hunting, gents. See you in a few.” White stood and watched as the Marine assault team loaded aboard the CV-22, the aft pressure-chamber access doors were opened, and the aircraft was winched out of the chamber onto the helicopter pad. White headed back to the bridge as the CV-22’s on-board auxiliary power system was started.

By the time White made his way back onto the bridge, the CV-22 had begun its transformation from a wadded-up puzzle into a flying machine. The rear-engine nacelle swiveled until it was horizontal, allowing it to clear its stowed position between the twin tail rudders; then the entire wing began to swivel from its stowed position parallel to the fuselage into its normal perpendicular position. As the wing moved into position, the aft-engine nacelle swiveled vertically into position and, like the petals of a rose, the rotors began to unstow themselves on each wingtip nacelle. By the time the wing was in flight position, the rotors were extended to their full thirty-eight-foot diameter and the engines were being started.

“Pre-launch sweep,” White called out to Operations Officer Knowlton.

“In progress, Paul,” Knowlton replied. “Radar reports negative. That Gagarin radar ship is over our horizon at one-five miles — Ladybug needs to stay below one hundred feet and no less than fifteen miles to stay outside of his normal radar horizon.” Knowlton said “normal” because the Gagarin-class ship was reported to have shipborne over-the-horizon radars that they very well could employ. “Data being transmitted to Ladybug — he’ll have it on his tactical computer and should have a course to keep him well out of range. His initial heading should be one-six-zero, no farther east than that. Pre-launch report from PATRIOT coming in now.

The pre-launch radar scan was worse than before: the helicopter was still in the target area, and there were more boats than before along the coastline. “Looks like fishing vessels to me,” White said to Knowlton.

His operations officer gave him a questioning expression — how could White know they were only fishing boats?

“It’s about the right time for them to head out,” White added, as if he had heard Knowlton’s unspoken question. Then again, they might not have been fishing boats — they could have been Soviet patrol boats. But no great numbers of patrol boats had ever been deployed like this before, so either they were indeed just fishermen… or the Soviets somehow knew they were coming.

“Pre-launch from PATRIOT shows clear,” Knowlton reported as a teletype machine on the bridge clattered away. He went to the small repeater scope, which had a smaller version of the Intel section’s digital situation screen. “Can’t tell about those boats — they’re not traveling in much of a straight line, as if they’re on a course to a particular spot. But only a few I can see are coming from the military docks — the rest look like they’re coming from the commercial docks. No aircraft up, except for our friend — but it looks like he might be heading back to base.”

“Must be refueling,” White said. “How long does it take to refuel a helicopter?”

“Not long,” Knowlton replied. “He’ll be up again by the time Ladybug is feet-dry.” He paused, looking at White with growing concern. “But we can’t delay the launch or we’ll run out of daylight.”

“I know, I know,” White exclaimed. “We’re committed. If Fell or PATRIOT sees a problem developing, we’ll wave Ladybug off, and RAGANU will have to go deep into hiding-or make a run for Poland. Jesus, what we need right now is a good thunderstorm to hide in.”

But they did not even have the good luck of bad weather to help them on this one.

White had reported that they needed to be no higher than one hundred feet to go under the radar from the Gagarin-class radar ship. One hundred feet would have seemed like a mile to Fell and Watanabe right now, because they were flying their CV-22 in full airplane mode only thirty feet above the Baltic Sea. The plane’s engine nacelles swiveled down to full horizontal, so the helicopter rotors were now airplane propellers. Aided by the high-resolution infrared scene projected onto their helmet-mounted sights by the AAR-50 thermal-imaging navigation set, and by their AN / APQ- 174 multimode terrain-following radar, the tiny warplane streaked inbound, changing course every ten to twenty seconds, skirting as far as possible around the growing number of vessels they picked up On radar. In OVER WATER mode, a tiny beam of radar energy measured the distance between the CV-22’s belly and the water, and a warning light would illuminate if the distance dipped below twenty feet.

The pilot was responsible for keeping the aircraft a safe distance above the water — no autopilot in existence had the precision to hold such a low altitude. Flight and sensor information was electronically projected onto Fell’s helmet visor, so he didn’t have to look down into the cockpit for vital information — a fraction of a second’s distraction could kill them all. As long as there were no sheer obstructions such as ships or towers in the flight path — the radar altimeter did not look forward, only downward— they were safe.

That is, if flying less than a wingspan’s distance above the water at four miles per minute could be considered safe.

The plane was to drop the MSPF team about ten to twelve miles from the coast, but obviously the closer to shore they could get before running into hostile detection systems, the better. In their case it was not hostile Soviet radars — it was the huge number of boats that kept popping up on radar. But there was an “obstacle” to contend with — the port town of Liepaja, now only fifteen miles away. The piers and warehouses along the coast were so bright now that they threatened to destroy their night vision — and if they could see the town, someone could well see them. They managed to get closer than ten miles to shore before encountering boats they could not safely circumnavigate, but the closer they got to shore, the harder it was to avoid them.

“All right, I think we’ve gotten as close as we can get,” Fell told Watanabe. “I can’t go far enough around these sonsofbitches. If they get an eyeball on us, the game is up. Alert the team and get the cargo doors open.

Watanabe made the interphone calls. The glow from Liepaja was so bright now that it created glare on the CV-22 PAVE HAMMER’s windscreen.

“Christ, it feels like the whole world can see us up here,” Fell muttered on interphone. “Double-check switches, Martin. If we make one squeak on the radio or forward-looking radar, they’ll pick it up all the way to fucking St. Petersburg.”

Watanabe carefully checked to see that all the radio switches were on STANDBY or RECEIVE, the APQ- 174 was not in TFR mode, all other radios that could transmit a signal were in STANDBY, such as the instrument-landing system, and that all exterior lights were off.

The AAR-50 infrared scanner showed the area around them was clear for at least eight miles, the optimal range limit for the FLIR. “Clear on cargo doors.” As Watanabe hit the switch to open the rear cargo ramp, Fell rotated a small switch on his control stick, which rotated the engine nacelles on the wingtips of the PAVE HAMMER and transformed the bird from a conventional turboprop plane to a helicopter, and the CV-22 began slowing from two hundred and fifty to only thirty miles per hour.

In the back of the cargo section of the aircraft, the ramplike cargo door lowered and a blast of frigid air washed over the MSPF team waiting in the back. The team was ready: they had a large twenty-foot rubber boat, called Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC), or “Rubber Raider,” complete with a 75-horsepower gasoline engine and extra fuel tanks, waiting in the open cargo hatch. The team was dressed in “Mustang suits”—black nylon water suits that protected the wearer from the cold, provided flotation, sealed out water, and allowed much more mobility than divers’ wet suits. Their weapons, radios, and other gear were sealed in black waterproof bags slung around their shoulders.

When the signal was given, the MSPF team members picked up the boat by its rope handles and ran out the cargo ramp into space, dropping into the ice-cold water below. The weight of the Marines on the handlines kept the CRRC from flipping over, and they began pulling themselves into the boat, stabilizing it against the hurricane-like turbulence from the CV-22’s rotor downwash. Seconds later the CRRC’s outboard engine was started, team members loaded and checked their MP-5 submachine guns and .45-caliber automatics and, with Lobato providing directions from a compass and from his intense advance study of the area, they raced off for shore.

Aboard the CV-22, Sergeant Brown reported that the Marines were safely away, and Fell wheeled his plane westward once again and sped away from shore, staying below fifty feet but carefully avoiding all boats that popped up on his FLIR sensor. At that same time, Watanabe relayed a single message on the command channel: “Teviske,” which meant “Motherland” in Lithuanian, the signal to Paul White and the rest of the assault team that the Marines were headed ashore.

Marines, especially Recon or special-operations teams, never fought alone. No matter how big or how small the team was, Marine Corps infantry units were always supported by a command, air, and logistics element. That simple “go” message would send the rest of the players into action:

As PAVE HAMMER returned to the Valley Mistress for fuel and to rearm with a two-man assist team, a Marine Corps KG- 130 aerial-refueling tanker began its takeoff roll from Sandefjord Air Base, south of Oslo, a NATO training base where the U.S. Marines had established a Northern Europe operations center. Flying along with the KG- 130 was a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter-a huge transport helicopter — with a reinforced rifle platoon called a “Sparrowhawk” on board ready to assist Gunny Lobato’s team if necessary. Watanabe’s message also alerted other detached members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Force in Denmark and Germany that the operation was in progress and that intelligence and planning teams were standing by, waiting for word on the team’s progress and preparing alternate plans of action.

The U.S. Air Force also had a support network.ready to go, with even more firepower than the Marines. Launching from Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany and under command of the Air Force Special Operations Command, was an MC-130P special-operations tanker aircraft — designed to refuel other aircraft at low altitude and over hostile territory or near a target area — accompanied by two F-16C Fighting Falcon fighters. Carrying mine dispensers, rocket pods, and antiradar missiles as well as air-to-air missiles, the heavily armed F-16s could assist the Marines on the ground to break away from hostile ground units, or they could clear the skies if the Soviets decided to scramble fighters against the rotary-wing aircraft. Additionally, the MC-130H COMBAT TALON aircraft from England, code-named WILEY COYOTE, and its fighter escorts from Norway, would begin their rendezvous orbit near the southern tip of the island of Gotland, ninety-six miles west of Liepaja, ready to pick up RAGANU and take him to safety. The Valley Mistress itself would dispatch several small, innocent-looking power boats-armed to the teeth by COBRA VENOM Marines — into the Baltic to act as a safety recovery team in case the CV-22 was damaged during its egress.

Lobato and his crew were dropped only eight miles offshore, but it took them nearly an hour to reach the sandy shore north of Liepaja — they would stop the heavily muffled outboard engine every few minutes, and Lobato and his men would carefully scan the horizon, using PVS-5 night-vision goggles, checking for any sign of pursuit.

The assault team relied on their training and experience to filter out the noise of waves and water — and suppress their own fear and discomfort— and be ready to take action against any possible threat. Despite carefully donning their insulated “Mustang suits,” leaks were common, and the wet patches against their fire-resistant flight suits soon felt raw and numb from the wind-enhanced cold. Thick wool face masks and caps did little to protect against the wind-driven spray — they would hunker down as far as possible under the CRRC’s gunwales, exposing as little of their bodies as possible to the elements while constantly scanning all around them for signs of danger. The radio operator, using a small 5.5-pound Motorola MX-300 tactical radio, had to struggle to listen to the radio as well as scan his area of responsibility. Every sweep of a nearby lighthouse’s high-intensity white beam made the Marines tense up as they neared the shore, and Lobato was careful to keep that lighthouse as far away as possible.

Finally they heard the crashing of waves on the beach, and the assault team was ready to land. Every eye was trained on the beach, searching for anything that might be a threat — patrols were common, but civilians out for a late-night stroll were encountered even more frequently, and posed just as great a risk. Lobato made the decision to move the beaching spot an extra mile south because of an object that resembled a truck or large car parked near the coast highway, but otherwise their beachhead was clear.

With a soft hiss of sand, the CRRC slid onto Soviet soil. Immediately the Marines were out of the boat, ignoring the shock of cold water in their boots as they dragged the rubber raft out of the surf, across the fifty-yard-wide beach, and up onto a sandy ridge a few dozen yards from the coast highway. The CRRC was quickly buried in the sand and covered with brush, the area was policed and tracks erased, and the assault team spread out to search for threats along the highway.

Their task was only beginning-they had five miles to trek before reaching the extraction point.

“All air assets are up,” Knowlton relayed to Paul White in the number-two MISCO trailer, where the tactical communications gear was set up to monitor the mission. “All reporting in the green.”

White smiled: ten sophisticated aircraft, about thirty highly trained men, plus a three-hundred-million-dollar high-tech spy vessel, directly involved in an operation to extract a non-American individual from a republic in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In two hours they would all converge on the eastern Baltic and the game would be played to its conclusion. If you included the men and women of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, standing by in Norway and in the Mediterranean Sea, and the 93rd Air Force Special Operations Wing in England, there were nearly six thousand Americans involved in trying to get one man out of Lithuania.

Countering them, of course, was the awesome might of the CIS-Byelorussian Army, Air Force, and Navy in the occupied Baltic states. Even after wholesale troop withdrawals in recent years, there were still over fifty thousand foreign troops in the three Baltic republics themselves, plus over a half-million more Belarus troops within a few hours’ flying time.

The odds clearly were not in the Marines’ favor.

Only three things gave the Americans any chance for success — the speed, bravery, and stealth of the eight men who at that very moment Were setting foot on Lithuanian soil to put their hands on a Lithuanian peasant officer.

“Urgent message from PATRIOT,” Knowlton said, grabbing White’s attention. “That chopper is heading back to the target area. It’ll be on top of the assault team in ten minutes, maybe less.”

“Shit,” Paul White swore. They all knew the helicopter was going to be a factor. “Have PATRIOT relay the contact to the assault team. I’ll get on the horn to Colonel Kline.”

White hustled to the communications console and put his hand on the phone that was tied directly to the Amphibious Task Force commander, Marine Corps Colonel Albert Kline, commander of the 26th MEU’s (SOC) Ground Combat Element, on the amphibious-assault carrier Wasp—then stopped. What would he recommend? He had sent this team on its way knowing the helicopter, which had been dogging them for days, was in the area and would probably be a factor. Should White now recommend additional assets be brought in? One of the F-15’s escorting COMBAT TALONs could make short work of a helicopter, but it would blow the whole mission if the Gagarin radar ship saw it barreling in toward the coast.

No, they had to use the CV-22. “I need a status report from Ladybug,” White snapped. “Give me the location of WILEY COYOTE as well.”

The locations of both aircraft and an estimate of the CV-22’s aircraft’s fuel status were laid out for White on a chart in the MISCO trailer. The MC-13 °COMBAT TALON special-operations support aircraft was in its standby orbit seventy-five miles north, near the southern tip of the Swedish island of Gotland, well within view of the Gagarin-class spy ship but presently being left pretty much alone. The CV-22 was headed back to the Valley Mistress for refueling and rearming, sweeping well to the south and west to stay away from the Soviet radar ship.

White made the only decision he could: “Tell the MC-130 and the CV-22 that they need to perform an emergency rendezvous. I need Ladybug back in the target area without delay.” White himself found a plotter and a pair of dividers and, using a base refueling speed of 180 knots, computed a rough rendezvous point about forty-three miles west of Liepaja: “Clear COMBAT TALON for ‘music,’ and keep the escorts in the rendezvous area. Send it.”

“Pojorna, nas razyidinili, butti lubezni, paftariti, “the Marine assault-crew radio operator suddenly heard in Russian on the radio. It came over the receive-only command channel-a broadcast from PATRIOT, the E-3B AWACS radar plane. Translated, “Squad, reply not received, repeat message.” It was meant for Lobato and his crew, a warning message saying that the helicopter that had been working the target area was on its way and heading toward them. For maximum reliability, emergency radio messages from the AWACS to the assault crew were not scrambled or encoded with complex algorithms, which meant that intercepting and decoding a message was easier for the enemy-hence the code words in Russian.

The Marine carrying the radio moved quietly to Lobato’s side and passed the word to him, and Lobato nodded. They knew all about the helicopter, and Lobato had been expecting it — the wise play would be to assume the helicopter would arrive just as the Marines approached the target area. Lobato increased the assault team’s speed, still using extreme caution but picking up the pace slightly.

But he wasn’t expecting what happened next. The unit had traveled within one mile of the estimated pickup point when they heard the faint whupwhupwhupwhup of a helicopter in the distance.

The CIS helicopter that had been scouring the area for days looking for RAGANU was closing in on the Marines’ position.

“Message from PATRIOT,” the radio operator reported to Lobato. “The chopper is inbound, slowing to patrol speed.”

Lobato seethed: “Shit… we’re running out of time.” Lobato signaled the rest of the squad and they fanned out and headed for the pickup spot. The Marines hastily split up and dashed into the treelines on both sides of a small dirt road, carefully staying just within sight of each other, MP5 submachine guns at the ready.

They moved as if linked: they would stop for a long sixty seconds, scanning the woods and the road, listening for sounds of men, vehicles, aircraft; then, together move another twenty or thirty yards and repeat the process. They used their night-vision goggles to carefully sweep the area.

After another ten minutes of movement, Gunny Lobato was beginning to get nervous — the target was nowhere to be seen. He signaled the radio operator to join up with him as the squad moved cautiously ahead. Lobato searched the forest, but with no luck. The target was still south of them; he had to be.

He had to be very—

Someone was kneeling at the base of a tree, just thirty feet ahead of Lobato. He appeared out of nowhere. He was slowly getting to his feet, but he was still hidden to Marine Corps Corporal John Butler, who was moving in his direction to Lobato’s right. Butler had just crouched down as he heard the faint rustle of leaves — he knew that something was out there, but he couldn’t see or identify it yet.

Lobato had raised his MP5 and had clicked on the small infrared sniperscope searchlight, which would provide bright illumination for anyone wearing PV-5 goggles, when suddenly the stranger whispered loudly, “Hey, Marine, I here. Here.”

Butler swung around, saw the stranger, and was about to fire when the man said quickly, “Top of the morning, Marine, top of the morning,” in a thick, Transylvanian-sounding accent.

“Hands up!” Lobato hissed, praying silently that Butler wouldn’t pull the trigger. He didn’t. The man’s hands shot up in the air. His right hand was empty; his left held a thin briefcase. “Drop the briefcase!” Lobato shouted.

“No!” the man shouted back.

In a flash Butler leaped toward the man, driving the butt of his rifle into the stranger’s solar plexus and dropping him to the ground. With an animal-like wooof! of air forced out of his lungs, the man collapsed, and Butler jumped on top of him, scrambling for the man’s hands.

Two other assault-team members rushed to Lobato’s side. They pried the man’s fingers off the briefcase, and one Marine took it away to examine it away from the others in case it was booby-trapped. Lobato knelt to the man and searched him, loosening all his clothing, running his gloved hands next to his skin to check for wires or weapons. It took several seconds, but finally the man began to regain his breath, grunting, “Top of the morning, top of the morning,” in a hoarse whisper.

The sound of the helicopter was getting closer — this guy’s identity had to be verified before they dared take off with him. “Midnight jaybird,” Lobato challenged. It was one of the code-word challenges devised with a nonverbal response, used in just these situations where the subject was unable to speak or wearing a gas mask. Butler took his knees off the man’s wrists, and he promptly interlaced his fingers together, thumbs bent. It was the right response. Wordlessly, Lobato ordered Butler to gag RAGANU and bind his hands in front of his body; then he reached down to his web belt and activated a tiny radio transmitter.

No sooner had he done that than a brilliant searchlight flared to life. The intense white beam focused squarely on the small group of American soldiers at the edge of the trees. The CIS attack helicopter had suddenly popped out from over the trees and had emerged practically right on top of them.

“Pilot, engineer, pickup signal.” The PAVE HAMMER CV-22’s crew chief, Master Sergeant Brown, dared not say anything more on inter-phone because he knew they were only milliseconds away from going into battle — or dying in a fiery crash. They had to save themselves before going back to save the assault team.

The PAVE HAMMER CV-22 was skimming over the dark waves of the Baltic Sea, less than six hundred feet above the surface-it would have been lower, except the north winds had picked up considerably and the turbulence threatened to throw them into the sea at any moment. Forty feet in front of the CV-22, at the same altitude, was the MC-130H COMBAT TALON aircraft. The huge dark cargo plane had unreeled one of its “hose-and-drogue” aerial-refueling systems-a three-foot lighted basket at the end of a fuel line-from a pod on the right wingtip, and Fell was taking on fuel at two hundred gallons per minute. The lighted ring around the edge of the basket was the only light on these two aircraft-at night, about three wingspans above the sea, traveling at four miles a minute. The two airplanes sped through the night with only a thin hose between them and disaster.

Hank Fell’s hands were grasping the controls with a hard death’s grip as he fought to maintain control. He knew the MC-130H was in front of him, somewhere, but he would see it only at less than twenty-feet range— just before a collision — so the probe kept on disconnecting from the drogue and he had to struggle to reconnect. Fell had swiveled the engine nacelles on the CV-22 to 30 degrees, an intermediate position between airplane and helicopter modes, to give him as much altitude control as possible while maintaining maximum forward airspeed — the COMBAT TALON aircraft was designed to refuel helicopters at low speeds, but in this turbulence and at this low altitude, a sudden wind shear could send the one-hundred-and-forty-thousand-pound special-operations plane into the sea without warning.

As if to underscore his fear, the MC-130H suddenly dipped precariously down by the tail as if wallowing in heavy seas. Fell could feel the buffeting of the plane’s four huge turboprops as the prop wash rolled over the CV-22, and he could hear power being applied. The hose dipped suddenly, then shot up and swayed from side to side as the COMBAT TALON pilot fought for control. The drogue popped off the CV-22’s probe, whipped violently in the swirling winds, and the padded canvas-covered basket hit the tilt-rotor aircraft’s windscreen with a loud thump! The MC-130H pilot pulled power back to try to get back into position.

Fell turned the nacelle angle-control upwards, moving the CV-22 more into HELICOPTER mode so he could safely decelerate. “Dammit! Signal breakaway!” Fell shouted. Watanabe flicked the exterior lights four times in rapid succession, and the drogue disappeared as the MC-130H pilot applied power again and climbed an extra one hundred feet. “How much fuel now, Marty?”

“We took on five thousand pounds,” Watanabe replied. “We have ten thousand total.”

“Is it enough?”

“Barely,” Watanabe replied. “Just barely. In, out, land back on the Mistress with one thousand pounds. Oslo is out unless we can get the MC-130 back after exfiltration-and that’s unlikely since he must be low on fuel.”

“Signal ‘terminate refueling,’ then,” Fell said. “We’re going in with What we got.” Watanabe gave the MC-130H crew six flashes of the lights — flash-flash, pause, flash-flash, pause, flash-flash — and the ghostly Outline of the COMBAT TALON disappeared.

They were headed east, back toward the target point east of the town of Liepaja — in fact, after air refueling they were only six miles from the coast. Things had changed very quickly. PATRIOT was no longer using Russian code words to warn the CV-22 crew of airborne threats — instead, he was on the secure HAVE QUICK scrambled channel, issuing threat information directly to Ladybug. Brown had set the CV-22’s entire INEWS (Integrated Electronic-Warfare System) jamming suite to full automatic, which would jam all surface-to-air and air-to-air radars, radio communications, and laser illuminators detected by the threat receiver. INEWS also automatically modulated the heat emissions from the CV-22 itself, effectively “jamming” its own infrared signature to provide limited protection against heat-seeking missiles.

The threat scope had come alive a few minutes later as the CV-22 crossed the coastline — the search radar at Liepaja got a solid skin paint on them when they climbed to their highest altitude, three hundred feet, when Fell yanked the aircraft up to avoid a transmission tower that the AN/APQ-l 74 terrain-following radar suddenly detected directly ahead. Soon afterward plenty of VHF radio transmissions and fast-sector radar scans were detected.

The bad guys had spotted them.

The Marines had sprinted off into the forest as soon as the helicopter appeared. Lobato dragged RAGANU along after him as though the young CIS Army officer had been a sack of dirty laundry. Quickly, the Marines had turned the tables on the chopper pilot — eight sets of MP5 submachine guns were trained on the helicopter’s cockpit and engine compartment, ready to send it crashing to earth in a blazing fireball. The chopper, a Kamov-27 “Helix-B” amphibious-warfare helicopter, was fitted with a rocket pack on one side and a 12.5-millimeter gun pod on the other. Seconds after it popped on its searchlight on the group, it suddenly sped off into the night, extinguishing the searchlight and all other external lights.

“Move out!” Lobato shouted. “Scatter!” There was something else he remembered about the Helix — it had a bomb bay. With one hand firmly under RAGANU’s left arm, and his other hand holding his MP5, Lobato scrambled off into the forest.

Just then the chopper could be heard coming back. Lobato quickened his pace, his pulse thrumming in his ears. When he heard the chopper almost directly overhead, he wheeled left, ran hard until the throb of the chopper’s rotors seemed to replace the heartbeat in his chest, then dived behind a tree opposite the sound. He dragged RAGANU behind the tree with him, closed his eyes tightly, and yelled “Cover!” just before a series of loud explosions tore into the forest. The Helix had dropped two explosive mine canisters and the four hundred tiny bomblets began ripping the foliage into green shreds.

RAGANU was screaming like a wounded lamb, and Lobato had to put a hand over his mouth. “Shut the fuck up!” yelled Lobato. RAGANU seemed to understand — Lobato wanted RAGANU alive, but he would not put himself or his squad in any more danger because of the Lithuanian soldier; the Marines had RAGANU’s briefcase, the contents of which were probably as important as the man himself. As he listened for a follow-on attack, Lobato followed RAGANU’s hand up his arm and felt blood.

Lobato unrolled a thick field-dressing pad from a pouch on his web belt, pressed it onto where he thought the center of the wound was, put the Lithuanian soldier’s free hand on the wound, and tightened the man’s fingers around it. “Press hard,” Lobato ordered. “Hard!”

Once Lobato was convinced that RAGANU was finally helping himself, he raised up to a knee and tried to scan the area with his night-vision goggles. The device was useless, broken in a desperate race to get away from the mines. Unaided vision was an exercise in futility. Still, Marines had fought for decades without them. …

The area underneath the chopper’s flight path was probably strewn with delayed-arming antipersonnel mines, so Lobato reminded himself to avoid it. He shouted, “Assemble foxtrot two, foxtrot two! Assemble!” then ducked and listened. After a few minutes he heard the familiar rustling of feet behind him and he knew his men were on the move.

Time to get the hell out of Dodge.

“Ladybug, target ten o’clock, three miles, altitude seven hundred feet, climbing, airspeed one-zero-five knots,” the radar controller aboard PATRIOT reported. “Target turning left … target turning left to intercept…”

The chopper appeared out of nowhere, but fortunately its appearance was telegraphed by a series of small flashes on the ground ahead — and then Fell wondered if the Marines might be down there under those flashes. But there was no time to think about them.

Fell saw that the chopper was doing more than turning to intercept — a second later he could see tiny winks of light and a few bright-yellow lines arc in the night sky. “Target shooting!” he cried out. He hauled back on his control stick, zooming up and over the tracers. The helicopter tried to climb and keep its muzzle pointing at Ladybug, but it didn’t have the airspeed that the CV-22 did. Seconds later, after climbing less than two hundred feet, it suddenly lowered its nose again and banked hard to the right.

Fell was expecting that right turn — the pilot sits on the right side of most helicopters, even Eastern Bloc helicopters, so that’s the direction chopper pilots prefer to turn — so Fell was banking hard left and descending as soon as he saw the hostile helicopter couldn’t pursue. “Stinger coming on-line,” Fell shouted as he flicked the weapon-arming switch on his control stick. After one more turn to the right to line up on the helicopter, Fell heard the growl of one Stinger missile’s seeker head locking on to the helicopter’s hot exhaust. “One away!” he warned Watanabe as he pressed the trigger. The CIS chopper banked once more, hard to the right, but the tiny Stinger missile tracked it easily. There was a small puff of white flame, a tiny flicker of fire, then darkness.

“Ladybug, splash one,” PATRIOT reported. “Area clear of airborne targets. Steer heading one-five-four for pickup, range six miles.” Fell did not acknowledge — flying the suggested heading was acknowledgment enough, and there would be plenty of time to thank the crew of the E-3B after the assault team and RAGANU were safely on board the Valley Mistress. He re-engaged the TFR system and resumed his nap-of-the-earth flight back to the pickup point.

The small dirt road they had worked around all night had a peculiar hairpin turn in it that showed up remarkably well on satellite photos they studied while planning this extraction, and now Lobato knew why — there was a small religious monument, a janseta, in the curve. This was the “foxtrot two” assembly area, the closest one away from the area where the Helix attack chopper could have strewn mines. Lobato took up a position south of the janseta and sat and waited. After five minutes he used hand gestures to tell RAGANU to stay put, and he carefully inched his way toward the monument.

Stealth and patience were more important now than in almost any other time in the mission, but after the helicopter attack Lobato’s men were really anxious to get out of the country. No sooner had Lobato reached the monument than the seven other members of the team came in — the last, Corporal Butler, practically sprinting. Lobato took them back into the forest and set up a security watch. Except for a few serious-looking scrapes and one possible broken wrist from a fall, the rest of the team members appeared well.

The arrival of the CV-22 a few minutes later was like watching an angel descend from heaven. Four Marines guarded the front and rear of the landing zone and two others carried RAGANU up the cargo ramp. Ladybug was on the ground less than thirty seconds before lifting off again and tree-hopping away back to the Baltic. RAGANU was given water, a life vest, and careful medical attention by the team’s corpsman. He had received a deep, six-inch-long gash in his right bicep, and a three-inch piece of metal was embedded in the wound — one last chilling reminder of what would probably be his last moments in the CIS.

The CV-22 took the long way back to the Valley Mistress this time— giving the Gagarin-class research vessel a wide berth and avoiding all large vessels and shore radar sites, it took twice as long to get back to the salvage ship as it did to reach shore. As soon as Ladybug touched down on the helipad, crew members were on deck doing an engines-running refueling, checking for damage, and removing the weapons pods from the aircraft. All possible evidence of the incident had to be erased.

Paul White was on board as soon as it was safe to approach the aircraft. He saw four Marines surrounding a smiling young man. White went over to the newcomer, extending a hand. “Lieutenant Fryderyk Litwy?”

The young man nodded enthusiastically, shaking White’s hand with both mittened hands. It was the first time Lobato had realized that this guy might have a real name.

White had been studying Lithuanian phrases for a week just for this moment. “Labas vakaras. Glad to see you. Welcome to America.” To the Marines surrounding RAGANU, White said, “Excellent job. Bring him inside and get him something to eat.”

As the Marines escorted Lieutenant Litwy out of the CV-22 and into the pressure chamber, White met up with Lobato, who pressed the briefcase into White’s hands. “Mission accomplished. We checked it over and swept it for bugs and transmitters. Clean. Pretty good-quality set of photos in there. Definitely a worthwhile trip, I’d say.”

“Fantastic,” White said gleefully. “I’ll make copies and uplink them to HG, then send the package with a destruct mechanism with you to Norway. Good job, Gunny. Pass a well-done to your troops.”

The fuel lines were being retracted and the assault team was returning back to the plane as White crossed through the pressure chamber to the first MISCO trailer and turned the briefcase over to the technicians waiting inside the darkened room. The CV-22 was not going to stay on the Valley Mistress—the ship needed to be transformed back into a salvage vessel as quickly as possible. The CV-22 would take the Marines, the photos, and Lieutenant Litwy to U.S. Embassy officials in Oslo as quickly as possible so formal political asylum proceedings could begin. Litwy would be yet another American intelligence success story.

Before they could leave, however, the photos that they had risked so much to retrieve from occupied Lithuania had to be successfully copied, and the originals taken back to the United States. it was not enough to Simply take a picture of a picture — too many successful exfiltration operations were ruined by careless handling of retrieved photos. White was determined not to let this happen to him, and he had designed MISCO number two to safely, quickly, and redundantly process photos without damaging them or triggering some secret destruct process.

One by one, Litwy’s photos were examined with a variety of methods, principal among which were plain sight and feel. Many photos were treated with chemicals to kill the person handling them, or to self-destruct if handled too much or if exposed to flash photography. But these appeared to be standard 8-by- 10 and 5-by-7 matte-finish photos — judging by their brittle, curled appearance. They were processed hastily in an amateur-photography darkroom with old enlarging paper and old, cold chemicals, then allowed to air-dry. White photographed each one with high-resolution video and still cameras without using any extra light or flash units, followed thereafter by Xerox copies and digitized computer scans. The digitized pictures were transmitted via satellite to U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters in Florida and to the National Security Agency intelligence-data collection center in Virginia. White waited impatiently as the data was transmitted to the satellite, relayed to other satellites ringing the globe, then dumped to the NSA’s ground station in Ft. Belvoir, Virginia.

Major Carl Knowlton arrived at the MISCO 2 trailer a few moments later, just as the last of the photos were being successfully uplinked to the satellites. “PATRIOT reports rotary-wing choppers from Liepaja about forty miles out, heading this way,” Knowlton reported. “ETA, twenty minutes. They’re surface-scanning. No air radars reported.”

“We’re finished here,” White said, packing the original photos in waterproof bags, then turning them over to a technician for packing in a special transfer case. “Ladybug will be halfway to Oslo in twenty minutes. What is the Gagarin doing?”

“It’s headed our way as well,” Knowlton replied. “ETA to radar horizon crossing, forty-five minutes.”

“If the Russkies launch fighters from Vainode, Riga, or Kaliningrad, we’ll be in for a rough time,” White said soberly. The photos were ready to go; White inspected the self-destruct package himself, locked the photos up, and armed the package. If the lock was tampered with, or if someone attempted to cut the case open, an incendiary charge would burn the photos inside and probably kill anyone standing within a few feet. “We better get permission from the Swedish government for an overflight. Are the weapons pods off the bird?”

“You bet. Checked on that myself. The fire-control boxes were pulled also.”

“Good.” The U.S. government would have to certify to the Swedish government that any aircraft requesting overflight were unarmed — if the CV-22 crashed in Sweden with weapons aboard, even a few 20-millimeter cannon shells, it would create a disastrous international incident, akin to the embarrassment of Soviet submarines running aground in Swedish waters, and U.S. aircraft and ships would be barred from Sweden for years. White began to flip through the copies of the photos as he continued: “First sign of anyone trying to board us, we deep-six the gun pods and the Intel MISCO trailers.”

“Everything’s ready to jettison,” Knowlton said. “The pods are in the pressure chamber. If those choppers try to deliver a boarding party, we can dump the weapon pods and most of the classified stuff out the recovery hatch. We can also—”

“Shit! Look at this!” White exclaimed, staring at a photo. It was a blurry but very readable picture of what had to be the most unusual-looking aircraft either of them had ever seen. “What the hell is it?”

“It looks like a … like a fighter, I think,” Knowlton said. “Like a stealth fighter, only with a curved fuselage and wings. It reminds me of the alien spacecraft from the movie War of the Worlds, except with a pointed nose. You think the Russians have a fighter like this in development-in Vilnius, of all places? They’re building a bomber in the middle of a revolution?”

“Well, Fisikous is a major aerospace research-design complex,” White explained. “They probably got a dozen models like this…” White found a magnifying glass and peered intently at the photo. “I don’t think this is a model. It’s too big! See the sentry standing over here? The lower root edge of that wing has to be twenty feet high. It’s gotta be bigger than the B-2 bomber. And they’ve got pneumatic and electrical cables running to it. Maybe it’s a prototype. The Pentagon is gonna love this.”

“Think it’s a fake? A decoy?”

“Could be,” White admitted. “If young Lieutenant Litwy was blown, they might have set up some fake aircraft at Fisikous.”

“Or Litwy could be a fake,” Knowlton observed. “The real Litwy could have been tortured for the passwords and responses, a mole put in his place. This whole thing could be a big ruse.”

White gave Knowlton a lopsided grin and a shrug of his thin shoulders. “That’s above our pay grade, Carl,” he said, flipping to another photo. “It’s up to Defense Intelligence and the CIA to find out if Litwy’s for real. We don’t kiss ‘em or shoot ‘em — we just snatch ‘em. Let the guys in the bad brown suits worry about—”

Paul White froze. He was staring at a photo he’d just flipped to, his eyes riveted to it, not believing what he was seeing.

Knowlton saw his superior officer’s wide-eyed look. “Paul? What is it? Litwy bring back a gory one? Let me see—”

White glanced up, confusion and disbelief spreading across his face. He lowered the photo, handing it over to Knowlton. It was a picture of a group of three soldiers — all elite Black Beret troops who occupied many of the more important ex-Soviet facilities in the Baltic states, including the Fisikous Research Institute — surrounding a younger man. One couldn’t tell whether the Black Berets were protecting an important civilian or if he was a prisoner.

But it was the man, dressed in plain brown slacks and a sweater, who had grabbed White’s attention.

Knowlton prodded. “Hey, Paul, who is he? A long-lost brother or something? You know this guy?”

White nodded, taking the photo back. “A guy I knew at Ford—”

“Ford Air Force Base? You’re kidding, right? Maybe he just looks like him.”

But White had thought of that and instantly discarded it. He remembered hearing the reports of Lieutenant Dave Luger’s death, three years ago in a plane crash in Alaska, test-flying a supersecret bomber. He’d never fully believed the report — the facts didn’t wash and everything was too neatly wrapped.

He’d heard the rumors circulating through the Air Force about a preemptive strike against a ground-based laser site in Siberia, and about the aircraft that accomplished the mission: a modified B-52, reportedly from the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. How or why a research center had a strike aircraft in its inventory was still unclear. But there was never any inquiry or details about the mission and the threat from the Soviet laser — if there ever had been one — had suddenly disappeared.

As did two navigators from Paul White’s old B-52 wing at Ford Air Force Base, Patrick McLanahan and David Luger.

They had gone TDY several weeks before the alleged incident. Neither had returned to Ford. Later, Paul White found out about Luger’s death, and learned that his crew partner, Patrick McLanahan, had suddenly received a new duty assignment. White did not know where McLanahan had gone, or why — but he was one of the most gifted bombardiers in the nation, so White never thought McLanahan had gotten himself in trouble or kicked out of the Air Force. White had liked both men — they were sharp, very sharp — though Luger could be a bit of a hothead. Still, he’d done well at Ford, as had McLanahan.

And now Luger had, it seemed, turned up alive at a secret Commonwealth research center in Lithuania. White rubbed his chin. What was going on? Was Luger a defector? A mole? He turned to Knowlton: “It’s the guy from Ford, I’m sure of it. An American military officer in fucking Lithuania, of all places. This guy was declared dead in 1989.”

Knowlton looked skeptical. “Paul, how can an American Air Force officer killed years ago suddenly turn up in Vilnius, Lithuania?”

“Stranger things have happened. Look at some of the Vietnam vets we’d written off for dead who’ve suddenly turned up in the past few years.

“But Vietnam was a war, Paul. You’re bound to have misreported casualties. This guy—”

“David Luger. That’s his name.”

“Okay, this guy, Luger… wasn’t in a war. Was he?”

White ignored the question. “I’m going to upchannel this one immediately. This can’t wait. The mission Luger was on, well — if he’s there and alive, people need to know it. The… uh, mission was too important.”

Knowlton shook his head. “You can’t make a call like that from the Mistress, Paul. You know that. An unnecessary secure communication this close to Russia, to Belarus, hell, that’ll compromise us and the satellite channel both.”

“Look, I know this guy. I ran him through my course at Ford.”

“You gonna risk the entire MADCAP MAGICIAN program to help him? If the Russians get wind that we’re anything but a marine salvage-and-rescue ship, everything goes down the drain. Years of your work, Paul.”

He could tell White was mulling it over. Knowlton hadn’t seen him this agitated in ages, which meant he was pretty damn sure of his I.D. of this guy. White had long joked he’d always forget a name, but never a face. Now he’d remembered both. “Look, Paul… send an urgent message in the photo packet to alert the intelligence section, then wait until we get to Oslo — the embassy has the facilities you need, and everything will be waiting for us. We can delay the CV-22 a few minutes until you draft a message.

White was ready to go connect the channel himself, but realized the best thing to do was wait. If he alerted Intel, God knows where it would end up. Some asshole looking for one less problem to deal with would just sweep it under the rug. And Paul White was damned if that was going to happen.

“There it is,” the Lithuanian Self-Defense Force helicopter pilot radioed to his passenger. “My God, look at what the bastards have done to that farm.” He nodded toward the crash site. Several helicopters, dozens of Vehicles — including some BTR armored combat vehicles — and hundreds of soldiers had surrounded a small dark splotch on the muddy ground. The troops had used combat-engineering vehicles to carve a wide path from the main road to the crash site, shearing straight through several hundred meters of wire, wood, and stone fencing, bulldozing down a corral and six acres of corn and cutting down about four acres of pine forest to get to the crash site. The three kilometers from the main road to the crash site looked like the path of a tornado.

“The Byelorussian infantry is efficient, that’s for sure,” General Dominikas Palcikas, commander of the Lithuanian military, said as he studied the area carefully from the front copilot’s seat. “The trucks have been dispersed throughout the area,” he told the pilot. “See? They’re blocking all the roads and open areas nearby with armored vehicles. They don’t want us to land.”

The chopper pilot nodded in understanding. Although Lithuania had separated from the Soviet Union in 1990, it wasn’t until the USSR fell and the Commonwealth of Independent States was created that a transition treaty between the CIS and Lithuania allowed a CIS military presence within the Baltics — ostensibly to keep the peace. But it was a concern of every Lithuanian that these forces — especially the Byelorussians— would overstep their “obligations” and someday make a play for Lithuania.

“What do you want me to do, sir?” the pilot asked.

“Try the bastards again on the radio. Get them to clear that parking area there.”

The pilot radioed, trying to get a reply.

Palcikas waited for a response from the Byelorussians, his expression getting angrier and darker with every passing second. General Dominikas Palcikas was a fifty-three-year-old combat veteran, born in Lithuania but trained and educated in the former Soviet Army. His father had been a Russian general, commander of a Lithuanian division nicknamed the Iron Wolf Brigade after the Lithuanian Grand Duke’s fierce armies of medieval times. Palcikas’ father’s brigade became heroes in World War II, making Palcikas’ own rise within the military easy. He rose quickly through the ranks to Colonel, served in the Far East Military District, then in Afghanistan as commander of a tank battalion. Later he was reassigned to the Western Military District after the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. But his career suffered because of the military defeat in Afghanistan, and he was reassigned to the Byelorussian SSR in the Interior Ministry’s Troops of the Interior, in charge of a border patrol regiment. The sudden halt in his career affected his outlook on the Soviet Union: what the Soviet Union was turning Lithuania into was not much better than the poverty he saw in Afghanistan. He became a student of Lithuanian history, and his disenchantment with the Soviet occupation of Lithuania grew and peaked in 1989 and 1990 with the bloody massacres in Riga and Vilnius at the hands of special units of the Soviet Interior Troops called the Black Berets. He resigned his commission in the Soviet Army in 1990 and emigrated to Lithuania. Upon the independence of Lithuania in mid-1991, he accepted a commission in the Forces of Self-Defense, in the rank of General and Commander in Chief. He named his initial cadre of officers and enlisted volunteers the Iron Wolf Brigade, invoking not only the spirit of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, but the memory of the World War II unit, led by his father, that saved Lithuania.

“No reply, sir,” the pilot reported. “Only a warning to stay away.”

Palcikas was boiling: “This is my country and my airspace, and no one will tell me what I will do. Hover near that group of vehicles, the one with the flag. Tell the other helicopters to stay by.”

“But sir, that appears to be the investigation team chiefs vehicle.”

“I said hover near it. About twenty meters upwind and ten meters overhead.” Palcikas unstrapped from the copilot’s seat and made his way aft. On his way to the cargo section of the small Soviet-made twin-engine Mil-8 assault helicopter, he passed his aide-de-camp and headquarters executive officer, Major Alexei Kolginov, a young, Russian-born infantry officer who had served with Palcikas for many years. “Follow me, Alexei.”

“Are we going to—?” And then Kolginov stopped and looked at Palcikas in surprise — his superior had just put a pair of heavy, rough leather gloves on his hands and had unstowed a four-centimeter-thick rope from its overhead storage bin. He checked that it was secure on its anchor hook on the ceiling of the helicopter’s cabin. “Sir, what are you—?”

“Just follow me.” Palcikas checked his sidearm, a Soviet-made Makaroy TT-33 automatic, then slid open the portside entry door ‘and peered outside. Kolginov knew what Palcikas had in mind, and scrambled to put on his gloves and secure his AKSU submachine gun.

The three-star commander of all Byelorussian forces in the western part of his country, General Lieutenant Anton Osipovich Voshchanka, cursed aloud as the Lithuanian assault helicopter moved nearly overhead. It quickly drowned out all voices around him. He grabbed his service cap before it twisted away in the wind, raised his voice, and turned to his commander of detached forces in Lithuania and Kaliningrad, Colonel Oleg Paylovich Gurlo, and yelled, “Get that asshole’s tail number and find out who the pilot is! I want him brought before me in thirty minutes!”

The Colonel had been in command of all Byelorussian armor and infantry units in Lithuania for many months. The loss of the attack helicopter the night before, and the subsequent appearance of his commanding general at the crash site, was turning into a real nightmare for him. This irritation was going to ice it for him — he would be lucky to hold on to his position for another hour.

The Colonel looked aloft and squinted against the swirling dust. “It is a damned Lithuanian helicopter,” he said. “I will deal with—”

Suddenly a man leaped out the portside cargo door of the hovering helicopter. At first it looked like a suicide attempt, because the man virtually leaped headfirst. But the shock wore off quickly, and the Colonel recognized the maneuver — a man doing an Australian rappel, the fastest assault rappel known. In only two seconds the man reached the ground, pulling himself upright three meters before his face smashed into the earth. He was followed shortly thereafter by another man, accomplishing a more conventional feetfirst rappel from the same rope a few moments later.

Soldiers accompanying the two Byelorussian officers unslung their weapons and held them at the ready, but the first rappeller ignored them all as he strode right up to General Voshchanka. “What in hell do you mean by ordering me away from this area?” the Lithuanian officer yelled after waving the helicopter that he and the second man had dropped in safely. The chopper veered away. “I demand to know what in hell is going on here.”

Voshchanka’s colonel recognized the man as none other than Palcikas himself, commander of Lithuania’s puny self-defense force.

“Who are you?” General Voshchanka demanded. “What is the meaning of this? Colonel Gurlo, arrest this man.

The Colonel knew he was not authorized to touch Palcikas — it would be an act of war for a foreign officer to touch a general on his own soil — but he motioned for two security officers to move closer. They immediately surrounded Palcikas but did not touch him. In Russian, the Colonel said, “General Voshchanka, may I present General Dominikas Palcikas, commander of the Self-Defense Forces of the Lithuanian Republic. General Palcikas, I present General Lieutenant Voshchanka, commander, Western Corps Armies, Republic of Belarus, and commander of security forces of the Baltic states for the Commonwealth of Independent States.”

Neither man saluted the other.

Palcikas’ face remained dark as he removed his thick rappelling gloves. But Voshchanka said, “Palcikas! We finally meet. I’ve heard a lot about you. That was quite a stunt for an old war horse.”

“I’d be happy to teach it to you, General,” Palcikas said in very good, well-disciplined Russian, “but it is not a maneuver for the faint of heart … or those with big bellies and soft hands.”

Voshchanka, a rather short, stocky man who had never even been inside an assault helicopter, let alone jumped from one, calmly smiled away the offhanded remark.

Palcikas, eyes dead-on Voshchanka, said, “General, you will explain to me why your troops have destroyed this farm, and why your unit has been ordering my aviation and ground units away from this area.”

“There was an attack last night, General Palcikas,” Voshchanka explained. “A Lithuanian deserter from a Commonwealth unit stationed in Vilnius was being pursued by a patrol helicopter when suddenly the helicopter pilot reported that he was under attack by an unknown aircraft. Seconds later he was shot down by a heat-seeking missile of Western design. The Lithuanian traitor has vanished. We are investigating.”

Palcikas’ eyes flared at “Lithuanian traitor,” which pleased Voshchanka. Palcikas said, “I sympathize with the loss of your flyers and your aircraft, General Voshchanka, but look at what your men are doing to this farmer’s land — you are causing thousands of liths’ worth of damage. The forests you’ve decimated can’t be replaced for decades. And you’re in violation of the treaty of security and cooperation by bringing your troops here. You will assemble them and move out immediately.”

“We were … concerned about destruction of evidence, General,” Voshchanka said lamely, not acknowledging Palcikas’ orders. “Having untrained, undisciplined farm boys roving around where they are not supposed to will hinder our investigation.”

“My men or these farmers could not possibly destroy more evidence than your men have done so far,” Palcikas said.

Voshchanka knew that was true. He had obtained all the evidence he needed after the first few minutes on the crash scene. “I’ll issue orders to my men to be more careful, and I will personally see to it that these farmers are reimbursed for the damage.”

“Very well, General,” Palcikas acknowledged. He stepped toward a plywood table covered with white canvas, where several pieces of a missile were being reassembled. The lower section of a one-and-a-half-meter-long missile, blackened and twisted, rested on the cloth, with several guidance fins still intact. “I see you’ve already collected quite a bit of evidence,” he said. “A Stinger missile?”

“Very observant, General,” said Voshchanka.

“Distinctive shape of the tail fins, distinctive blast pattern of the warhead section — I saw many like it in Afghanistan after they shot down our attack helicopters.” He took a closer look, then added, “These tail fins are Somewhat larger, however, and there appears to be an attachment point for an extra set of fins in the forward section, in addition to the normal Set of retractable nose fins. An AIM-92C air-launched Stinger missile, Perhaps?”

“Excellent,” Voshchanka said. “And the origin of the missile?”

“Difficult to say, General Voshchanka. Many countries now fly the AIM-92C,” Palcikas said. “We can narrow it down to six or seven European countries outside NATO. And they are readily available on the black market, I should think. They are license-built in Belgium, and their plant security is reputed to be poor.”

“I see that we can do away with our investigation team, General Palcikas,” Voshchanka said facetiously. “You’ve done all the detective work for us.”

“Good,” Palcikas said evenly. “Now you can get off this farmer’s property and remove all these vehicles to Byelorussia.”

“The proper name of our country is Belarus, “Voshchanka said. “The distinction is important to us.”

“As you wish,” Palcikas said distractedly. For decades the western Soviet republic had been called Byelorussia, loosely translated as “White Russia,” which, although most scholars attributed the name to mean that this part of the Slavic territory was never conquered by the dark-skinned Mongols, some said gave the people of this region a decidedly negative connotation, as in weak or enslaved people. When it became an independent nation, the republic proclaimed itself as the Republic of Belarus, which translated more closely to “Great Russia,” or “Mother Russia,” the native land of the original Rus conquerors of early Europe. The distinction was meaningless to Palcikas except for the fact that he knew how it would aggravate the hawkish right-wing advocates in the Byelorussian military.

“The presence of all these vehicles and soldiers violates the security and cooperation agreement between Lithuania and the Commonwealth of Independent States,” Palcikas continued, and then recited the treaty provisions.

Voshchanka remained impassive, with the same amused smile on his lips, but the Colonel with him hissed: “Who in hell do you think you’re talking to, Palcikas? General Voshchanka does not answer to you or to any Lithuanian!”

Voshchanka held up a hand. “What the Colonel is saying in a rather inelegant way, General Palcikas, is that I take my orders from the commander in chief of military forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Because of the nature of this mission — an attack against a Commonwealth helicopter by an unknown, hostile aircraft — I personally took charge of this mission when the order was delivered from Minsk, and I did not inquire into the treaty or legal ramifications of those orders.”

“General Voshchanka, I did not ask you for an excuse,” Palcikas interrupted. “You may submit your explanation in writing to the Lithuanian government directly, through me, or through the Commonwealth. I am only concerned with these Belarus troops violating the treaty. I hereby order you again to comply with the joint cooperation treaty and return to Belarus or to your bases. Will you comply with my orders or ignore them?”

Voshchanka pointed to the black smear of metal and burnt debris. “Three men died in that crash, General Palcikas. Three highly trained, professional aviators. Are you not concerned about the men who died here?”

“As concerned as you appear to be about complying with any treaties with Lithuania,” Palcikas said.

“You insolent bastard!” Colonel Gurlo retorted. “The General has told you that he has orders to investigate this incident, and he will accomplish that mission with or without your cooperation or any trash about treaties. Now step out of the way and we will complete our assigned duty.”

Now Palcikas chuckled. “Does this pitiful excuse for a colonel speak for you, General Voshchanka?”

The Byelorussian colonel said something in unintelligible Russian, and he drew his sidearm. “You Lithuanian bastard. I will put a bullet in your head for that.”

Just then three helicopters popped from over a nearby treeline, encircled the group of Byelorussian vehicles, and hovered about two hundred meters away from the group. Voshchanka and his colonel could see that the first helicopter was Palcikas’ Mil-8 transport helicopter, with door gunners standing in each side door and out the back of the rear cargo ramp, aiming huge Degtyarev 12.7-millimeter machine guns at the vehicles and soldiers below. The other two helicopters were small, almost toylike American-made McDonnell-Douglas Model 500 Defender attack models, but each one carried a rocket and gun pods on fuselage-mounted pylons. They may have looked like toys, but there was nothing childlike about the threat. At the same time, Palcikas’ aide had raised his AKSU assault rifle, ready to open fire.

“Tell your aide to lower his rifle or there will be bloodshed,” the Byelorussian colonel said. He had aimed his sidearm at Palcikas’ aide when he had raised his own. The two men eyed each other, neither daring to move; then Kolginov turned the muzzle of his weapon away. The Colonel smiled, as though he had just won a major victory, then holstered his sidearm.

“This is how you want to conduct business with the Commonwealth, General Palcikas?” Voshchanka asked, taking only a momentary glance at the attack choppers before turning back to the Lithuanian general. “Aim a gun pod at a fellow officer-in peacetime? Threaten us with violence while in the midst of negotiations? You should re-evaluate your actions, I think.”

“I am no threat to you or your Byelorussian soldiers, General Voshchanka,” Palcikas said. “I am sure six antiaircraft guns are targeted against each one of my helicopters. They, or I, would not survive a firefight. But neither would you, and I assure you, I would be satisfied with that outcome.

“You Lithuanian pig,” Voshchanka’s colonel spat.

“I have asked you twice to depart this area. I shall ask a third time. After that I will consider this detachment an invasion force and deal with it with all the power in my command — right here, right now. You will pack up your troops and your vehicles and return to your CIS base in Siauliai or to Kaliningrad immediately. Will you comply?”

Voshchanka’s confident smile had vanished with the appearance of those attack helicopters. True, he had more than enough counter-battery units to destroy this pathetic force, especially hovering as they were in plain view, but one rocket from one helicopter could kill all of them instantly. No, this was not the time nor place for a showdown.

“Colonel Gurlo, order your units to assemble and return to base immediately,” Voshchanka said, keeping his gaze affixed on Palcikas. “Tell the gunners to lower their antiaircraft guns right now.

The Colonel looked mad enough to spit bullets, but he relayed the order.

Palcikas remained as he was, staring at Voshchanka as the big BMP-1 and BMV-3 armored personnel carriers scattered around the farm fired up their big diesels and started to move toward the main road, their 30-millimeter machine guns lowered and pointing far away from the helicopters. As the armored vehicles moved, the two Defender helicopters moved along with them, leaving Palcikas’ Mil-8 nearby ready to pick up the Lithuanian general.

“I’d say that was a very risky move, General Palcikas,” General Voshchanka said. “Sacrificing ten men and three helicopters, plus yourself and your aide — that would be more than your poor country could afford, I think. You might be better off letting your politicians do the fighting for you and to direct your forces from a desk instead of leaping out of helicopters and threatening superior officers.” He moved a bit closer to Palcikas. “It could get very dangerous out here, you know, surrounded by superior forces.

“On Lithuanian soil you are nothing but a trespasser, General,” Palcikas replied. “I respect you and your soldiers, but I won’t let that alter my responsibility to defend my homeland.” This time Palcikas paused, then glanced at the retreating armored vehicles. “This is a large number of vehicles for a simple aviation incident, General.”

“Perhaps I expected trouble from you Lithuanians.”

“Or perhaps you have some other mission in mind, General,” Palcikas said. “What else do you have planned for Lithuania, General? Or shall I guess?”

“You seem to enjoy the sound of your own prattle very much, General, so please continue,” Voshchanka said magnanimously.

“I have watched most of the Commonwealth’s Fifth Army in western Byelorussia being replaced by Byelorussian troops over the past several months,” Palcikas said. “Now the Commonwealth’s 103rd Guards Division appears to be replaced by Byelorussia’s Tenth Lancers in Vilnius, Kaunas, and Kaliningrad.

“Your intelligence is commendable but spotty,” Voshchanka said smugly.

Palcikas ignored the remark. “Your forces are widely dispersed, but there is a solid line of Byelorussian troops forming from the Baltic to Minsk. There are almost no Commonwealth forces at all west of the thirtieth meridian.

“We are Commonwealth forces, Palcikas,” the Byelorussian colonel said irritably. “What the hell do you think we’re doing in your rat’s nest of a country?”

Palcikas knew the Colonel was blowing smoke at him. While Voshchanka was commander of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ military forces in the Baltics, set up as a part of the mutual-defense treaty of the Baltics, he was also commander of all Byelorussian forces. When Byelorussia became independent, Voshchanka simply assumed control of the troops and equipment that had been his to command when he was head of Soviet forces in Byelorussia. Besides being a convenient way to hold on to the rank and privileges Voshchanka enjoyed under Soviet rule, it was also a nice way to expand his power-and Palcikas would bet his next paycheck that Voshchanka would do it with Byelorussian troops.

“Never mind replying to his fiction, Colonel,” General Voshchanka said. “He is trying to impress us with his supposed knowledge of Commonwealth troop deployment and strengths, when in fact he couldn’t be further off the mark. He has asked us to withdraw, so we will.” He turned back toward Palcikas and, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the helicopters nearby, added, “Bringing your helicopter gunships over my troops is like pulling a gun on me, General. Next time you had better be prepared to use it. I will not warn you again.” He turned and headed for his vehicle, leaving Palcikas and Kolginov alone in the middle of the muddy, disheveled corral.

“General, you took a very big chance there,” Kolginov said in Lithuailian. He shouldered his rifle and held tightly to the sling, hoping that he could keep his hands from shaking. “True, they had at least six twenty-and thirty-millimeter guns on the Defenders, but they also had a few twelve..point..sevens trained on us. I thought we were dead.”

“We were dead,” Palcikas stressed. “I saw the murder in Voshchanka’s eyes. He would have ordered his men to open fire, had he himself not been in the area. Colonel Gurlo was ready to mow us all down, too.”

Palcikas motioned for the Mil-8 to land in a clearing a few hundred meters away. “Unfortunately, we haven’t seen the last of him. He’ll be back, with more troops, sooner than we think. He’s a hungry pig.”

Kolginov watched his superior officer searching the skies and the fields around him as if he were already commanding the battle he knew was coming.

Finally Palcikas said, “Let’s go check the farmer and his family; they’re probably scared out of their minds right now.”

They found the farmer, who was mad enough to chew on horseshoes, a few moments later. Palcikas and Kolginov had no choice but to endure the old man’s blistering tirade against all military men in general and Byelorussian soldiers in particular. “Why, they can’t even drive a tank properly!” the old man shouted. “In the Great Patriotic War, I drove all kinds of vehicles, from sidecar motorcycles to tanks. I was half their age and I could maneuver a tank around a fencepost or outhouse like nobody’s business!”

“If the General could just get your name, sir …” Kolginov tried, but the man ranted on for a few minutes more until a young woman entered the room.

“His name is Mikhaus Egoro Kulikauskas,” the woman said. She touched the old man’s shoulder to silence him. “He is my father. He doesn’t hear very well, and he has seen more strangers this morning than he has all month.”

“And you are Anna Kulikauskas, the famous young revolutionary,” General Palcikas said. “I recognize you from your photos in the Sajudis newspapers. I now see where you get your temper from.”

The woman, no older than her late thirties, nodded and smiled as she carefully returned Palcikas’ gaze. Anna Kulikauskas was one of the new breed of young, fiery politicians in the “new” Lithuania, a left-wing (many, including Palcikas, would call her “radical”) advocate of making Lithuania part of a “New European Order.” Palcikas recalled that her idea of a New European Order did not include such things as armies, navies, military facilities of any kind, nuclear-power plants, taxes, heavy industrial plants that could pollute the environment, and foreign companies that wanted to invest in Lithuanian businesses that owned farms and forests. Anna Kulikauskas was active in the formation of the Sajudis independent political party and first gained international prominence as the leading voice of protest that finally resulted in the closing of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in northwestern Lithuania-photos of her facing down hundreds of armed Red Army and Black Beret soldiers were published worldwide. She was strong-willed, intelligent, quick-tempered, bold, and aggressive.

She wore a homespun “peasant’s skirt” that was now all the rage in Europe — especially in the Baltic states — and being copied by famous designers and dressmakers all over the world. Like most Slavic women, she had light-brown curly hair which was worn long and unbound, big blue eyes, full lips, and a nose just a bit out of proportion with the rest of her face. But there must have been a Viking in the barn one night, because Anna was also curvaceous and full-figured, with a thin waist bisecting healthy hips and a deep, sexy bosom that made Palcikas stare.

Kolginov coughed politely, stifling an amused smile.

Palcikas quickly asked, “Was anyone hurt here?”

“Human, no,” Anna replied. “Animal, yes. Some of the soldiers claimed two of our horses jumped over a fence and ran away, but I think they took them. Some other animals were killed or chased away — a few thousand liths’ worth.”

“Make a list of the damage and the missing livestock, sign it, and deliver it to my headquarters at Trakai,” Palcikas said. “The government will reimburse you immediately. My men will also help rebuild your barns and fences.”

“I don’t need your help to rebuild my farm!” the old man retorted. “I just need to be left alone! I used every ruble of my pension savings to buy this farm, and I won’t have it torn apart by you soldiers again!”

“Those were Commonwealth soldiers, Mr. Kulikauskas,” Palcikas’ aide, Kolginov, said. “Not Lithuanians.”

“And who are you?” the old man demanded, his eyes widening at Kolginov’s slight Russian accent. “A Russian? First we have Commonwealth soldiers, then Byelorussians, and now Russians …?”

Kolginov gave him a wry smile, but Palcikas interceded for him: “Major Kolginov is a naturalized Lithuanian and a member of the Iron Wolf Brigade, Mr. Kulikauskas,” he said.

“The Iron Wolf Brigade!” the old man cried out. “How dare you! How dare you debase the name of the Grand Duke’s army!” The old eyes sought out Palcikas’ uniform and rested with shock on a red patch with a mounted knight on a rearing charger in white in the center. “You wear the Grand Duke’s Vytis like a patch to mend tattered clothing? Do you have a Vytis sewn in your crotch as well? Why, that Is… that is unholy…!”

“Mr. Kulikauskas, I do not defile the name of the Grand Duke — I honor it,” Palcikas said. “The men in my unit who wear the Vytis have sworn an oath, with one hand on the Bible and one hand on the Sword of State, to protect this nation.”

“What do you know about honor, or fidelity, or—”

“We follow the very same ritual of training and service, and swear the very same oath, as King Gediminas prescribed in centuries past,” Palcikas said. “The training period is two years, as it was then. Major Kolginov accomplished the additional rigors of naturalization before performing the training, and he has earned the right to receive the Sword and make the oath. You are a veteran: if you wish to view this ritual at Trakai, you may do so as my guest. The next full moon, be at Trakai at eleven P.M. The ritual begins at midnight.” Kolginov produced a memo sheet with instructions for the castle guard. Palcikas signed it, handed it over to the old man, and turned to depart.

Anna Kulikauskas met up with the two officers outside. “That was a good thing you did for my father,” she said. “He is somewhat of a student of history.”

“As am I,” Palcikas said. “Please be sure he submits a full report on the damage, and advise me when my men can come over to rebuild your damaged farm.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Although I must admit this is a side of the military I have not seen. Are you sure you’re not doing all this because of who I am?”

“I didn’t know who owned this farm before I knocked on your door,” Palcikas replied. “I give all our people equal attention, and what I do is what I do — I’m not quick enough to put on an act for everyone I see who I think might be an opinion leader. But I hope at least I’ve changed your attitude about the military — and about myself — a bit.”

He knew she was controversial, a firebrand, even potentially dangerous to the continued existence of the Iron Wolf Brigade. Besides being a strong advocate for a completely demilitarized Lithuania and complete neutrality, with no more than regional police units to offer protection, she also advocated no military ties to any other nation or organization. But somehow that didn’t really matter now.

“I’m not convinced that all military commanders are as caring and as sensitive as you appear,” she admitted. “But yes, I’m willing to look a little harder for the good in everyone, even a man with a uniform and a gun.” She paused, her eyes scanning the road that the Byelorussian soldiers used to depart the farm. “Will those Commonwealth troops be back?”

“I don’t think so,” Palcikas replied. “If they do return, notify my office at once. We must begin assembling a case against them for the government to take to the United Nations. It’s obvious there are numerous violations of the transitional treaty. As for the helicopter crash, I will send an investigation team of my own to get your statement and one from your father, and anyone else that was here.”

“We saw nothing,” Anna said. She looked at her father, who stared at his daughter with questioning eyes, then turned toward Palcikas with defiance. To Palcikas, there was an unspoken message between father and daughter, heard and felt all too much in Palcikas’ career: Don’t get involved. Stay out of it. If they did see something last night, and the odds were good that they did, they were not going to volunteer the information.

“I would appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Kulikauskas, Miss Kulikauskas. If you have anything that I might find useful, anything at all, please notify me at once. Good day.” He and Kolginov departed.

Outside, Kolginov had just finished signaling for the Mil-8 to return. “Well? They give you anything on the crash?”

“No, but they know something — they probably saw the whole thing,” Palcikas said irritably. “A helicopter gun battle, unidentified planes flying low, reports of bomb blasts — they saw something. Hopefully, after their corral is rebuilt, they’ll be a bit more helpful.”

“At least the follow-up interviews will be a pleasure,” Kolginov said with a smile. He looked at Palcikas and saw the trace of a thin smile on his lips. “I see you thought so too. It’s funny — when she’s on the podiums or on the evening news, she looks like a crackpot. In person, she’s quite attractive and—”

“I think you need a dunk in the Salantai River,” Palcikas said. “You’re overheating.”

“And you weren’t, General?” Kolginov said with a laugh.

“You’re crazy, Alexei.”

“You’re right, of course, sir. What would a woman like that see in an old war horse like you?”

“Thank God your ritual days are approaching,” Palcikas said. “There’s nothing like some good old-fashioned debasement and sacrifice to instill discipline in a man.”

The Mil-8 swung overhead, translating to the touchdown area, but Palcikas flashed a sign to the pilot. Instead of landing, the crew chief on board threw the rappelling rope out the portside cargo hatch, and the pilot brought the aircraft to a hover about ten meters above ground. “Up you go, Major,” Palcikas said.

“What? You want me to climb up, under a hovering helicopter?”

“You are the expert on love, I am the expert in soldiering,” Palcikas said with a laugh as the sound of the rotors overhead nearly drowned out his voice. “We’ll see who has the greater power. Follow me!” At that, Palcikas gave a loud cry, jumped onto the rope, and began climbing. In less than thirty seconds he was on-board the helicopter and waving for Kolginov to follow.

But as he leaned out the cargo door watching his young aide pull himself up the rope, he caught a glimpse of Anna Kulikauskas watching them from inside the house. Her hand was upraised, and he thought he saw her wave at him. It was hard to tell if she did, but the thought of her doing so made something stir within him.

The scale aircraft model, ten meters in length and almost the same in width, dominated the conference room on the second floor of the main research center of the sprawling Fisikous Institute. The model, hanging from hydraulic arms a few meters above the conference table, looked nothing like a conventional plane. Its wings were undulating curves tapering to narrow points; its body was blended into the wings, giving it a huge manta-ray appearance. Its cockpit windows were narrow slits on the upper side near the pointed nose. Two sharply angled vertical stabilizers jutted out of the tail section, atop narrow engine exhausts.

The Fisikous Institute of Technology was one of perhaps a dozen government aircraft-design bureaus in the former Soviet Union. Like the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center (HAWC) the U.S. government had in Nevada, Fisikous was an ultrasecret, highly classified development center that the official Soviet government never officially or publicly acknowledged. Normally, products developed in the compound housing the Fisikous labs in Lithuania went to one of the other major design bureaus-Sukhoi, Mikoyan-Gureyvich, or Tupolev, among others-in Moscow for incorporation in their designs. This radical aircraft was one of Fisikous’ first designed from the wheels up by the Lithuanian lab itself, and it was one of the most important — it was the Soviet Union’s first stealth bomber, designed to avoid detection by advanced radar systems.

One of the scientists gathered in the room activated a switch on a console at his seat, which rotated the model along its longitudinal axis so that the two vertical stabilizers could be clearly seen by all. “The tailplane on the Fisikous-170 stealth bomber is an all-moving, hydraulically operated fly-by-light control surface, made of all composite materials,” Dr. Pyotr Fursenko, the senior project scientist, said, continuing his informal talk about the newest changes in his design. “It provides stability in all three axes of flight — yaw, roll, and pitch. In addition, the tailplanes can be retracted downwards toward the fuselage, like so.” He hit another switch and the vertical stabilizers lowered until they were almost flush with the aft end of the weird-looking model. “This can be done during several phases of flight, but mostly during high-speed portions of a mission at either high or low altitude, when normal pitch-and-roll control can be accomplished by the mission-adaptive wing structure. The stabilizers are quite strong in their fully extended position, and their composite construction increases radar cross-section by only one one-thousandth of a percent — far less than the radar return from the pilot’s helmet through the cockpit windscreen.”

The scientists in the room nodded their approval, but in the low murmur of approving voices there was one voice that caused the other delegates to the conference to stop and turn toward the speaker with a great deal of surprise. “Excuse me,” Fursenko said irritably to the one attendee. “Would you repeat what you just said?”

“I said bullshit, tovarisch,” David Luger said in rather stilted pidgin Russian. The other delegates peeled away from the tall, thin man as if he were glowing with radioactivity. Luger went on: “That vertical surface will increase the aircraft’s radar cross-section by a factor of at least four hundred, whether extended or retracted.”

“We have run dozens of tests on the design, Dr. Ozerov,” Fursenko replied. “The data show that radar cross-section is reduced significantly, as close to zero as possible, with the vertical control surfaces retracted.”

“You’re talking about a computer model that merely computes an RCS factor based on the square footage of the control surface in the slipstream,” Luger said. Most of his words, especially the technical terms, came out in English, and his pronunciation of most of the Russian words was barely understandable — the other scientists shook their heads in exasperation, trying to understand him as he continued: “Your computer model doesn’t take into account the lobal-propagation properties of RF energy coming off the wings and fuselage and the wave pattern associated with reflections from the control surfaces, especially when the main wing trailing edge deflects in greater increments during high-speed turns.”

Fursenko rolled his eyes in exasperation. “I did not understand you, Doctor Ozerov. Would you kindly—”

Luger sneered. “Don’t you know anything about stealth characteristics?”

Fursenko let out a resigned sigh and, searching the attendees, let his eyes rest on a man sitting as unobtrusively as possible in the back of the room. The man noticed Fursenko searching for him, and he smiled with great amusement at the scientist. The man in the back of the room made a gesture at Fursenko as if to say, “Answer the man, Doctor.”

But before Fursenko could, Luger proceeded: “Stealth isn’t just a factor of the structural or material composition of an aircraft. You can’t just build anything you want out of composites and call it stealthy. You’ll always have radar reflections because of structural members beneath the skin. But even if the entire thing were built out of plastic, it doesn’t mean you’ll have a stealthy aircraft. What you got there doesn’t even come close. I haven’t run a computer model of the aircraft with those stabilators, but just judging by the light reflecting off those things, you don’t have a stealthy bomber there.

“The key is to channel whatever radar energy is reflected into lobes, with specific direction and amplitude, and you have to be careful not to let the lobes cross with other lobes from other parts of the aircraft. If you can aim the lobes away from the emitter, bingo! You have a stealthy design. The lobes are real, and they’re powerful, just like regular RF energy — if you cross them or blend them, you’ll destroy whatever stealth characteristics you had. Is that clear now?”

“Thank you for your input, Doctor Ozerov,” Fursenko finally said to Luger. “You have certainly explained your arguments… er, succinctly and positively…”

“So run your computer models again, but this time you have to plot the lobes from the vertical stabilizers in every possible position, then combine it with the lobe structure from the main mission-adaptive wings in every possible position and see if you have any cases where the lobes enhance or blend with each other.”

“Thank you, Doctor Ozerov.”

“It may take a while, but it’ll be worth it,” Luger said, his voice more excited, his words more clipped. “You can compute the lobal propagation for the plane by hand, but it’ll take weeks. But if you freed up the computer a little, I’d run the model for you and have an answer in a few days. If you ask me, you should just take the damn vertical stabs off. Increase the range of motion of the MAW actuators, and you’ll have full roll-and-pitch control at all speeds—”

“I said, thank you, Doctor.”

Luger scratched his head, his other hand patting nervously against his right leg. He glanced quickly at his colleagues, but something had suddenly gone out of his eyes. He was feeling confused, disoriented. “And another thing. I…” He looked around, frustration and anxiety giving way to anger. “Dammit, I was going to say something else, but I’ve lost… my train of thought. I …” He scratched his head again, pacing back and forth. “I… don’t know what’s wrong… what I’m doing.”

Fursenko’s eyes darted to the back of the room, but the man who had been watching Luger was already moving toward him from behind.

Luger felt a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, Doc. Hey…” Luger’s face fell into despair, then brightened somewhat. “Hey, Doc where have you been?”

“I think it is time to go, Ivan,” Viktor Gabovich — known to David Luger as Dr. Petyr Kaminski — said gently. “That was a very good presentation.”

“So why are these guys looking at me like this?” Luger asked. “Why are they staring at me?” He glared at one of the delegates and raged in English, “You got a problem? I’m right about those vertical stabilizers, man. You gotta take those suckers off—”

“Speak Russian, Ivan,” Gabovich urged him quietly. “Some of these gentlemen don’t understand English too well.”

“Well, I suppose that’s my fucking fault too, huh?” Luger shouted. A tiny drop of spittle rested on a corner of his mouth. “Just like it’s my fault I can’t get to sleep at night, right? And my fault the first prototype crashed… and now you’re saying it’s my fault that these morons can’t understand me? Well, fuck you, Kaminski.”

By this time Gabovich had led Luger out of the conference room and into an anterior hallway. “Hey, I wasn’t finished with my points, friend, I gotta go back there—”

A fist plunged hard and deep into Luger’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Luger tried to take a breath, failed, wheezed, and sank to his knees, gasping for breath. Gabovich’s deputy, Vadim Teresov, rubbed his knuckles for a moment, then pulled Luger’s head up by his hair. “Quit whining, Luger!”

“Nyet,” Gabovich said. “You idiot — his name is Ozerov.” The two Russians helped Luger to his feet. Luger’s face was turning red from the pain and exertion, but Gabovich could see he was taking deeper breaths. “You must learn not to get so excited, Ivan Sergeiovich,” Gabovich told him. “You will just get yourself and those around you upset for no reason.”

“Why the fuck did you do that?” Luger croaked. “Why did you do that …”

“Colonel Teresov was only trying to get your attention,” Gabovich said. “Your excitement raises a lot of concern among your colleagues here.”

“No one listens to me,” Luger muttered. “I don’t know any of these people… I don’t know… I don’t know who I am… sometimes …”

It was happening again, Gabovich thought.

Luger was losing his carefully regimented programming. After years of hard work, the effects they had so wondrously achieved were being nullified. This was the third incident in just two weeks. Gabovich wondered if Luger wasn’t getting addicted to the pain to which he was being subjected, because it always took more and more of a booster to get him through a day’s work.

“You must not get so excited,” Gabovich said patiently. He snapped his fingers for some nearby guards, both known personally to him — Luger was too valuable to be entrusted to an uncleared person. “Come, Ivan. Go back to the dormitory with these men. You’ve had a very long day.” To the guards, Gabovich hissed, “Take him to the Zulu facility immediately. No one is to speak with him—no one.”

Luger seemed steady enough on his feet, so the two ex-Soviet guards began escorting him to the back exit and a waiting car outside which would take him to the security building, also in the compound. Luger looked downtrodden, as if the pain in his stomach was nothing compared to the hopelessness he felt as he thought of all the months of work that still lay ahead.

As they proceeded down the corridor, they noticed a Lithuanian Self-Defense Force officer, with a sergeant at his side, standing nearby watching them. “You. Come here,” Gabovich ordered. The two soldiers walked over to him. “You are?”

“Major Alexei Kolginov, deputy commander, Iron Wolf Brigade headquarters,” the officer replied. “This is Command Sergeant Major Surkov, Brigade NCOIC. I was—”

“Kolginov? Surkov? You are Russians?” General Gabovich asked with an expression of surprise and amusement.

Kolginov nodded.

“You are officers in a Lithuanian Boy Scout army…?”

“We are part of the Lithuanian Self-Defense Force,” Kolginov asserted.

“Ah yes, the Iron Wolf Brigade,” Gabovich said derisively. “Such a tough name for such a playschool army.”

Kolginov let the insult roll off his back. “We are on a facilities inspection, checking for treaty compliance as part of the deactivation of this facility, when I noticed you taking this man out of the security conference room. He appears to be ill or disoriented. Is there a problem here? Is he all right?”

Gabovich made an expression of undisguised exasperation. The security problems here at the Fisikous Institute were becoming a joke.

When the facility, and Lithuania, belonged to the old USSR, security at the Fisikous Research Institute was handled by the MVD, the Soviet Troops of the Interior. From the MVD troops stationed in Lithuania, a special detachment of highly trained troops was formed specifically to handle security here in Fisikous and in other critical Soviet offices in Vilnius. That unit was called OMON, or Otriad Militisija Osobennoga Naznachenaia, meaning “Special Purpose Military Detachment.” Because they wore black berets to distinguish them from other MVD troops, they were called the Black Berets by many in Lithuania and in the West. They soon gained a terrible reputation as ruthless enforcers, and were charged with murdering many Lithuanian citizens, along with citizens of the other Baltic republics, before those countries declared their independence from the Soviet Union.

When Lithuania became independent in 1991, the Black Berets were supposedly disbanded. But they weren’t. They still existed, in smaller numbers, in the most important Soviet facilities in the Baltic states. At the Fisikous Institute in Vilnius, they were called “private Security employees” and placed under the command of Viktor Gabovich, who was no longer part of the KGB (since technically the KGB did not exist as of 1992) but was an officer of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ Inter-Republican Council for Security, or MSB, charged with maintaining security for Commonwealth facilities in Lithuania during the transition period.

But because of the treaty for the transition of control of former Soviet facilities between Lithuania and the Commonwealth, Commonwealth troops and Lithuanian officials had equal access to Fisikous to monitor compliance. Military personnel wearing all sort of uniforms paraded around the place all the time, making it nearly impossible for the scientists to get anything done. This went up Viktor Gabovich’s ass sideways. The Institute was his domain, his base of operations, and even though he wasn’t a scientist, he sure as hell had authority over what they did. Turning Fisikous into the premier weapons-and-aircraft-design facility in the Commonwealth was not only his goal, it was his obsession.

It was the reason he had brought the American from that hellhole in Siberia, and the reason he’d expended so much time and energy turning him from a prisoner into a collaborator.

It was also the reason he put up with these petty interruptions by the Lithuanians, on whose soil the Institute unfortunately sat. Every day he was tempted to simply lock the doors and gates, tell these Boy Scouts to fuck off, and seal off access. But Viktor Gabovich knew that his Black Berets did not have the numbers needed to keep the Lithuanians at bay, let alone the might of the Byelorussian-equipped Commonwealth forces.

But just because Gabovich had to let these popinjays in did not mean he had to stand for their petty interrogations. To Kolginov he replied, “You asked if he’s all right? That is none of your business.”

Kolginov’s eyes narrowed, and Surkov instinctively took a defensive step backwards, immediately drawing his walkie-talkie to summon help. “Your identification cards, please,” Kolginov demanded.

Gabovich produced his identification card and replied hotly, “What the problem is, Major, is that you are skulking around here and observing Private research activities that do not concern you.

Kolginov examined the card and recognized the man’s name immediately — although they had not met before, Kolginov knew Gabovich was the head of security for Fisikous, hired by the scientists themselves to Provide “special” security procedures and services for parts of the facility not yet open to inspection by Lithuania. Kolginov also knew that Gabovich and his aide, a man named Teresov, were former KGB officers and most likely still had their entire KGB apparatus intact. Kolginov had never seen the third man. He motioned to Luger and asked, “And that man…?”

“Doctor Ivan Sergeiovich Ozerov. He is under my supervision. He is not required to show you his identification,” Gabovich said testily. “Now, what is your reason for being in this wing of the facility, Major Iron Wolf?”

“I am on an inspection tour of—”

“There are no guard posts down this corridor, Major,” Gabovich pointed out. “I suggest you keep your nose out of business that does not concern you.”

“If you have a problem with my actions, Comrade Gabovich,” Kolginov said loudly, “you—”

But he never had a chance to finish. Gabovich, flushed with anger as his patience finally snapped, pulled out a huge Makarov pistol and aimed it at Kolginov, silencing him immediately. Teresov pulled a gun on Surkov before the NCO could reach into his holster.

“I am ordering you to close your mouth, move away from this area immediately, and keep your mouth closed about this incident, or I will shut you up permanently,” Gabovich said. “This is a private operation, underwritten by the Commonwealth of Independent States. Ozerov is a CIS scientist under my care, and you are in violation of internal-security regulations. If you have damaged this operation with your actions, I will see to it that General Voshchanka goes to your government and has you stripped of your rank. If you don’t believe we have the power to do that, just try it. Now go.”

Kolginov glanced at Surkov and shook his head. He knew that Surkov could probably disable Teresov in the wink of an eye, and he might even reach Gabovich, but eventually one or both of the CIS officers would gun them down. There was no use fighting it out here and now — better to wait. Kolginov and Surkov stepped backwards away from the two MSB agents, and Teresov made sure that they were retreating away from the conference level before rejoining Gabovich.

“Damn those Lithuanian busybodies,” Teresov cursed. “Do you think they heard what we were saying?”

“I do not know,” Gabovich snapped. “See to it that access by Lithuanian security forces is restricted or denied.”

“How do I do that?” Teresov asked. “The Commonwealth offers equal access to the Lithuanian Self-Defense Forces as it does to us. They let everyone in this place — Latvians, Byelorussian troops, Polish investors, everyone. We don’t have the strength or influence to get the CIS to keep the Lithuanians out.”

Gabovich was about to reprehend Teresov for asking such a question — it was his job to find ways to do things — but he fell silent. This was beginning to become a problem in all operations in Fisikous as the prospect of turning over the facility to the Lithuanians got closer and closer to reality. As part of the treaty between the Commonwealth of Independent States and Lithuania, the CIS was to turn over possession of all former Soviet land, bases, and facilities to Lithuania by the year 1995. The CIS could take all products and equipment made or brought into the country prior to the first of June 1991 out of those facilities and return them to the Commonwealth, subject to continuous scrutiny and verification by the CIS and Lithuania.

According to the treaty, the research and products made in the Fisikous Research Center, including the stealth bomber, belonged to the CIS. The problem was, the CIS did not know anything about it. The Fisikous-170 bomber was developed in near-total secrecy by a group of Soviet scientists, and its existence was kept off the books by the KGB and the Soviet Air Force for years. Viktor Gabovich, as senior KGB officer in Lithuania, became the driving force behind the project, tightening security at the facility, building a defense force around the facility of near-regiment strength, and recruiting the best and brightest scientists and engineers to work there — including his prisoner, David Luger.

When the Fisikous-170 program was canceled by the Soviet government in mid-1991, just after the August coup attempt, work continued on a part-time basis, with funds supplied by the Gabovich’s “special projects” account. As a “black” program, the Fi-170 enjoyed almost unlimited funding and support until 1992, when the newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States disbanded the KGB and the CIS-Lithuania treaty went into effect. Gabovich still enjoyed considerable power in Lithuania and throughout the region, mainly because of the strength of the “private” army and his former KGB intelligence network, which was still intact, but the gradually weakening Commonwealth and the rapidly strengthening Lithuanian influences in the area weakened that power.

When he lost Fisikous, he would lose all he cherished-power, wealth, and influence. He, along with most of the Soviet scientists in the Fisikous Research Center, had nothing to return to back in the Commonwealth. They would lose everything they had if Fisikous closed down.

Dr. Fursenko met up with Gabovich a few moments later, after the Lithuanians had departed. “Is Doctor Ozerov going to be all right?” he asked, worried.

“I think so, Doctor.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I should apologize for my colleague’s behavior—”

“Nonsense, General,” Fursenko interrupted. “Doctor Ozerov may be a little… eccentric but he is a welcome addition to the engineering team. You know he’s right, of course — our computer models do computer radar cross-section as a function of area and structural composition and not by lobal propagation. But, General… will Ivan… uh, Doctor Ozerov, be able to finish the modifications to the stealth computer-model applications as you said he would? He seemed very discombobulated this morning.”

“Doctor Ozerov is under a great deal of stress right now, Doctor,” Gabovich replied, “but he will be back in the lab to finish that program tomorrow.”

Fursenko looked so relieved that Gabovich expected him to kiss his hand, and he all but skipped back to the conference room.

“And, Doctor…” Gabovich said.

Fursenko turned back to Gabovich, his big grin still on his face. “Please remember, Doctor, that Doctor Ozerov’s presence here at Fisikous is still very classified. His name is not to be mentioned or published outside these walls. I will know about it if there is a leak.”

Fursenko nodded his understanding and departed.

Gabovich let out a sigh of relief. The program was humming along nicely thanks to Luger. Never in his wildest dreams did Gabovich expect the American to be able to contribute to it on the level that he had. The knowledge Luger had gained at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center in Nevada was proving priceless. And he, Viktor Gabovich, was the reason why — he had turned a man others would have regarded simply as a prisoner to be shot into a collaborator. Dr. Ivan Sergeiovich Ozerov, né David Luger, was a natural-born worker, as intelligent or more so than the scientists at Fisikous, but as easily controlled as a dog that could be tied up, kicked, and trained.

The one infuriating fly in the ointment was the programming. Gabovich tried to put it out of his mind, but there wasn’t any denying that Luger was having… problems. The behavior modification and assumption of Dr. Ozerov’s identity weren’t holding as well or as long as Gabovich had hoped.

The “booster” had better take care of that.

Or he would.

They called it the Zulu area, but the fancy name referred only to a dark, smelly, damp section of the second subfloor of the Fisikous Aircraft Design Center Security Facility. The security facility — whose ex-KGB personnel were separate from the Commonwealth security forces for the main Fisikous installation-had four upper floors and two lower floors. Luger’s apartment was on the top floor, along with surveillance and support rooms, and this was closed off to all personnel. Classified-document storage facilities were on the third floor; a complete arsenal for the four-hundred-man OMON Black Beret security force was on the second teams were on the ground floor; and more offices and storage areas were on the first subfloor. The Zulu area was a series of concrete-block cells and security systems amidst the mechanical equipment, boilers, and incinerators of the second subfloor.

The original idea behind Luger’s interrogation and brainwashing in the Zulu area when he had been brought to Fisikous was implementation of the traditional Shtrafnoi Izolyator, or punishment-isolation cell system, which usually guaranteed that a prisoner would break within ten to fourteen days. The usual technique was isolation and sleep deprivation, sometimes for days, followed by alternating “good” and “bad” interrogators. He was given about 800 to 1700 calories of food and no more than a half-liter of water per day, most times laced with neuroleptic drugs such as haloperidol or triftazin, and stimulants such as methylphenidate. Physical torture was rarely used, especially with military or government-trained personnel, since most prisoners with resistance training could shut off the pain and could even use their pain against their torturers.

But David Luger was different.

Extracting information was not enough — Gabovich had wanted Luger to be able to use his education and experience to contribute hands-on to the growing Fisikous- 170 stealth-bomber project. A beaten, battered, psychologically devastated Luger would not produce a workable collaborator. Since Fisikous had some of the finest electrical-engineering minds in the world working there, Gabovich had them design a machine to his specifications to try to “turn” David Luger without creating any psychological damage. His finely tuned intellect had to be left intact, even as his consciousness and short-term memory were being trashed and replaced with an alternate identity, that of Dr. Ivan Sergeiovich Ozerov.

Inside one of the cells, David Luger was strapped to a waveless waterbed, heated precisely to his skin temperature to help deaden his sense of feel and sever any sensory input. He was naked, covered with a thin cotton sheet to keep moisture from the cold, sweating walls from dripping on his skin and awakening him. An intravenous drip with a computerized metering device had been started in his left arm, which alternated a sedative, haloperidol, and phencyclidine hydrochloride — PCP, the powerful hallucinogen “angel dust”—in tune with an electroencephalograph. A tube had been inserted into Luger’s mouth both to deaden his taste buds, to keep his teeth apart (the sound of teeth grinding or clicking was carefully controlled), and to keep him from swallowing his tongue in case of an induced epileptic episode. His eyes were covered by a tight blindfold. On his head was strapped a pair of headphones, through which instructions, messages, propaganda, noise, news, information, and other aural stimulation were introduced — or, if desired, no sound at all was allowed.

In his third year of captivity in the Fisikous Institute, First Lieutenant David Luger, United States Air Force, had become one of the greatest KGB mind-alteration experiments in history.

By controlling Luger’s sensory inputs and altering his normal brain functions, Gabovich and his KGB associates were able to mold Luger’s consciousness in whatever way they felt necessary. They tried to completely empty his short-term memory and introduce their own personality, Dr. Ozerov, in its place.

Viktor Gabovich entered the cell a few minutes later, still aggravated from the episode upstairs. “What in hell happened up there?” he demanded of the senior doctor in charge of the Zulu area. “He completely went to pieces!”

The doctor put a finger to his lips and motioned outside. Once the door was closed and locked, the doctor replied, “His tape program and narcotic regimen have not been started yet, Comrade General. Silence is important …”

“Going haywire in front of those eggheads could have jeopardized this entire project! He is not holding together!”

“Comrade General, this sensory-deprivation process is not an exact science,” the doctor said. “The subject’s mind is strong and resilient. Drugs and hypnotherapy with the audio system can unlock only so many levels of the human subconscious-the other deeply seated levels are bound to surface sooner or later. They can counteract weeks, even months of work.”

“Ozerov has been hard at work on the Fisikous-170 project for over a year without so much as an English burp — now, three times in two weeks he’s begun to unravel!” Gabovich said. “We are at a critical point in the development. He’s got to stay together until we finish that aircraft.”

“I cannot guarantee success, Comrade General,” the doctor said. “We will continue with the treatments.”

“Accelerate the treatments,” Gabovich said. “Double the doses.”

“Not if you want a cohesive, functioning engineer. Let me take care of it, Comrade General. Ozerov will be back at work by tomorrow morning, fresh and ready to go.”

Gabovich narrowed his burning eyes: “He’d better be.” He then stormed out of the cell.

In the months since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the treaty defining the withdrawal of all foreign powers from Lithuanian soil, Viktor Gabovich of the KGB and General Lieutenant Anton Voshchanka of the Byelorussian Army had never met, although their paths had crossed often in southeastern Lithuania. Even though Gabovich, as a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ Council of Inter-Republican Security, and Voshchanka, as an officer of the Commonwealth’s central military command, ostensibly were part of the same organization, their minds still worked as separate entities: Gabovich was still KGB, and Voshchanka was still a Belarus general. The KGB had no business in Belarus’s affairs, and Belarus had no business mucking around in KGB operations.

It was because of this that their first meeting, called by Gabovich’s aide, Teresov, as a suggestion to his superior officer, started out very quiet and strained. He had picked a neutral location — the VIP lounge of the Vilnius International Airport. It turned out to be the perfect place. Since the airport adjoined the Fisikous Research Institute, Gabovich’s KGB officers and Black Beret soldiers patrolled the eastern side of the facility; and because the airport was one of the locations that Commonwealth forces were allowed to stage out of according to treaty, it was heavily fortified with Belarus soldiers, tanks, armored vehicles, and aircraft.

Both men felt safe and secure.

Except for initial greetings, the two had not yet said anything to each other. Teresov reintroduced himself to the Byelorussian general, then said in Russian, “Sir, we have asked you here today to discuss the status of security measures here in Lithuania. As you know, the treaty between the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Lithuanian Republic calls for the complete withdrawal of all foreigners and the removal of all foreign equipment excluding real property. Most of these treaty provisions take effect by the first of next year.

“As an officer in the Commonwealth Inter-Republican Council for Security and director of security for the Fisikous Research Institute, General Gabovich has expressed his concern that … the right interests are not being met by these arrangements.”

“What do you mean by ‘the right interests,’ Major?” Voshchanka asked, in heavily accented, sloppy Russian. “Are your interests not those of the Commonwealth?”

The old Byelorussian war horse had come right to the point, Gabovich thought. Good — maybe this would be a short meeting. Gabovich said, “Let’s save both of us some time here, General. We both know that the treaty will hurt both Belarus and my principals.”

“Your principals? Who are your principals, General Gabovich?” Voshchanka asked. “Do you not serve the Commonwealth?”

I owe no loyalty to the CIS, General,” Gabovich said irritably. Why Was Voshchanka challenging him? All indications from Gabovich’s sources in Minsk said that he was as dissatified with CIS policies and its future as Gabovich. Was Voshchanka saying all this to bait him, or was he truly that wedded to this damned Commonwealth? What if he had seriously misjudged Voshchanka? Well, it was too late now…

Gabovich continued. “When Fisikous closes, I will be out of work. I have a small pension, in worthless Russian currency. The same goes for the scientists, engineers, and administrators that work at the Institute. They will all be out of work. When the plant closes, their life’s work will undoubtedly be sold or destroyed or… handed over to the West.”

Voshchanka nodded. No matter how much one espoused the benefits of openness with the West, Voshchanka and those like him, including Gabovich, were vehemently distrustful of the reforms and especially of the West. He had spent his entire career serving the Soviet Union only to see the collapse of his life’s work, the USSR, and his own Belarus, dominated by countries like Russia and the Ukraine, even Lithuania and Latvia.

“Many things have changed,” Voshchanka said. “In many ways this Commonwealth is worse than the old Soviet Union. It seems the government has no control. Why have a government if it will not assume control?” He looked at Gabovich warily. He had to remember that this man was … KGB. Even if he was no longer working for a Soviet government, the old KGB ways were undoubtedly still in him. “So, the scientists in Fisikous are your principals?”

“They offer a solution to the problems we face,” Gabovich said. “An opportunity for us to break out of the stagnant cesspool we find ourselves being dragged into.”

“Indeed? And what sort of things are your… ‘principals’ working on in Fisikous?” Voshchanka asked.

“The future,” Gabovich said. “The state of the art in Soviet aerospace weapons. Antimissile and aircraft systems unlike anything in the Commonwealth’s inventory. Cruise missiles that rival anything in the West, let alone the Commonwealth.” He paused to make sure that the old fart Voshchanka was following him.

“But the best thing of all,” Gabovich continued, “is that we have an operating breeder reactor — a facsimile of an efficient German model, not a Soviet one — capable of producing small amounts of weapons-grade plutonium. Once we return to full production, we can produce three hundred thermonuclear warheads per year, all with a yield of over one hundred kilotons.”

The old general’s eyes widened in surprise, and his mouth dropped open. “Three… hundred… nuclear warheads?”

Gabovich knew that the Byelorussian general would be impressed. “They are only very small nuclear warheads, weighing perhaps… oh, sixteen or seventeen kilos.” He knew that was about the size of a 100-millimeter artillery shell-small, easy to transport, easy to store, and adaptable to almost every kind of delivery system-which, Gabovich calculated, should make Voshchanka’s mouth water even more. “Electronically adjustable yield and detonation triggers, a quite soldier-proof design. As I said, it is state-of-the-art. But when Fisikous is closed, all those weapons and all that technology will be either destroyed or sold- by the Commonwealth. They keep the money or the weapons. I doubt if Belarus will see one kopek.”

Voshchanka sat staring at General Gabovich, a slow, sly smile spreading across his face. The implications hung in the air like a thick, heavy fog. A twinkle sparkled in Voshchanka’s eyes, his mind casting about the possibilities, all exciting, all dangerous… “What is it you want to do, Comrade Gabovich? My government does not have the money to buy the Fisikous Institute, and I seriously doubt if we will be permitted to buy any of these weapons ourselves. We probably couldn’t even afford one of your scientists.”

Gabovich nodded sympathetically, but shrugged. He was going to let out a bit more line before reeling this one in. “Yes, funds are scarce everywhere, General Voshchanka. The price of reform, no? Belarus is spending billions of rubles on building its own military-why, you must be knee-deep in requisitions for boots and socks alone … forget any modern weapons of war.”

Voshchanka’s eyes flared at Gabovich, his cheeks a flash of red. “How dare—”

Gabovich held up a hand. “No offense intended, General. After all, I don’t have all the answers. Only … more questions. For example, I’ve often wondered what the arrangement will be between Belarus, the Commonwealth, and Lithuania when all Belarus forces depart Lithuania. When the treaty concludes, all of your forces go home-but where does that leave Kalinin? Will Belarus be separated from Kalinin forever? Will your troops be granted access to its industrial centers and ports? Or will you have to pay tolls and duties to … Lithuania just to get wheat and oil from the ports that you built and protected? Will a television set or farm tractor cost double the normal price because of transit and excise fees imposed by Vilnius?”

Gabovich had hit another nerve.

Kalinin.

Located between Poland, Lithuania, and Byelorussia, the tiny industrial territory of Kalinin, with its large year-round Baltic Sea port city of Kaliningrad, its extensive air and rail transportation network facilities, and its very high standard of living, was the best-kept secret of the old Soviet Union. Temperate climate, lush forests, and arable, well-drained farmland, beautiful beyond compare, Kalinin oblast was an ideal place for both a military assignment and a permanent residence, despite its industrial pollution and the hectic life-style of its affluent citizens. Kalinin was officially part of the Russian Federation, but the rail lines and superhighways from Kaliningrad through Vilnius to Minsk were the life’s blood of the people of Belarus. As long as the rail lines and highways were open, Belarus did not have to depend on Moscow for anything. Belarus, without any other outlet to the sea, was landlocked without Kaliningrad…

… and Lithuania could close the railroad and the highways. According to the treaty between it and the Commonwealth, independent Lithuania was expected to maintain the highways and rails inside its own country, a multibillion-lith challenge. Lithuania, in an act seen by many in Belarus as economic retaliation against the Commonwealth (Voshchanka had at once called it “war” against Belarus), immediately set tolls and tariffs on imported goods brought in by rail or by truck. Since the railroads and highways were still the best way to get large amounts of food and supplies from Kaliningrad to Minsk, the price of using those facilities had now nearly doubled.

Financially strapped Belarus was beginning to feel the pinch.

“We are in negotiations with Lithuania on their schedule of tariffs and restrictions on transportation,” Voshchanka said irritably. “Those negotiations… umm, will be resolved soon…”

“Resolved, yes.” Gabovich chuckled. “But in Belarus’s favor? I think not, unless you want to help the Lithuanians build new highways and railroads. No, Belarus will suffer.”

“Never,” Voshchanka growled. “My troops still maintain a presence along the railroads and in Kaliningrad. We have unrestricted access.”

Gabovich noted Voshchanka’s proprietary use of “my troops.” Voshchanka had tipped his hand. He disliked and distrusted the Commonwealth as much as Gabovich. “What will happen when Russia takes control away from your forces of the port facilities at Kaliningrad?” Gabovich asked. “Belarus will be at the mercy of other countries for its very existence. You will have to deal with Ukraine, with Russia, with Poland, with Lithuania… Belarus will become the whore of Europe.”

“Never!” Voshchanka declared angrily, rising to his feet, his face beet red. “We will take orders from no country, do you hear me? We will determine our own destiny.”

“What about the Commonwealth? Do you serve the Commonwealth, General? Don’t you believe the Commonwealth will protect Belarus, as the Soviet Union did? Where does your loyalty lie? Who is your principal, General — the Commonwealth of Independent States or Belarus?”

“Belarus!” Voshchanka raged, spittle flying. “The fucking Commonwealth is a joke! It is an attempt by Russia to impose its will on all of Europe and the Transcaucasus once again!”

“I agree, General,” Gabovich said, nodding sympathetically. “But why is the headquarters of the Commonwealth located in Minsk? Why not Moscow? Kiev? Tblisi? Riga? Because Belarus is the key to solidarity. It is the most powerful, wealthy, industrialized city in the Commonwealth besides Moscow. Minsk leads the way. Subdue Minsk, and Belarus is forfeit. Subdue Belarus, and the rest are automatically held prisoner. And with Commonwealth troops swarming into Minsk, they can handcuff you rather effectively, can’t they?”

“The Commonwealth does not control Minsk. I control Minsk!”

“There is little doubt of that,” Gabovich soothed, “although I do know Commonwealth forces are garrisoned near your capital. No matter-you can subdue them easily if you have to. But that may not be true for the Baltic states. You have considerable forces in Lithuania, but Russia controls Latvia, not Belarus. If you had to fight Russia, you would fight from weakness, not strength. A landlocked country, surrounded by CIS forces…

“We will never be subdued by anyone,” Voshchanka said confidently. “This is all a fantasy. There is no conflict…

“If the Commonwealth falls apart or is taken by Russia, Belarus withers and dies away,” Gabovich said. “You, however, have the opportunity to seize the upper hand before it collapses. You have the position — and I and my principals can help.”

“Help with what, General Gabovich?” Voshchanka asked suspiciously.

Gabovich leaned closer to the Byelorussian general, and in a low, conspiratorial voice, said, “Take Lithuania and Kalinin. Now.”

“What?” Voshchanka breathed. The old war horse seemed genuinely surprised at the suggestion. “Invade Lithuania… take Kalinin…

Gabovich nodded. “Come now, don’t act so surprised. You know it’s the only solution. Belarus must have access to the Baltic and to those rail lines and highways. Not to mention a buffer zone between it and Russia. The only solution is to … take Lithuania.

Voshchanka said nothing, the wheels of thought turning.

Gabovich went on. “What’s your biggest concern? How to counter the strength of the Commonwealth armies? You have hundreds of nuclear-Capable launchers, from aircraft to artillery pieces to rockets. You also have several dozen warheads that you have not returned to Russia.” Voshchanka narrowed his gaze at Gabovich and was about to speak, but Gabovich raised a hand. “I know you do, Comrade. So don’t even bother Protesting. But what you do not have is the means to unlock and pre-arm these weapons. Well, my principals in Fisikous do have the knowledge- they Probably designed and built many of the tactical nuclear warheads still stored in your country. They also have the means of making your army one of the most powerful and technologically advanced in the world.”

Voshchanka stared at Gabovich, not sure if he was a savior or the devil himself. Slowly, the Byelorussian general sank back into his seat, trying to sort out everything. “Your idea is absurd, General Gabovich,” he said finally. “What makes you think I will not report your treason to the Commonwealth?”

“Because I’m the last hope you have of Belarus determining its own destiny,” Gabovich said. “You report me and I’ll deny this conversation ever took place — and I believe I have the political strength to neutralize your allegations. You would then have made yourself a powerful enemy in me.”

Voshchanka looked at the ex-KGB officer as if sizing up this man who was so free with his threats. He was wondering if Gabovich really had the power to challenge a general of the CIS Army. “What if your connections did not save you?” Voshchanka asked. “The Commonwealth would order me to take you and occupy Fisikous myself. I would have its technology in any case.

“My principals would prefer to deal with you, General,” Gabovich replied, “but they are certainly able to do so without you. If you tried to take Fisikous, my security forces would simply hold you off long enough to destroy all records and all devices. Believe me, we have the strength to hold off an entire army, even without thermonuclear weapons.”

“A few scientists in a small research center, with no government sup-port? How long do you think you’d last?”

“My OMON forces are handpicked and specially trained, General,” Gabovich said. “We were trained to hold this entire country against well-organized militants.”

“You obviously failed at that task.” Voshchanka smirked.

“Perhaps. But now we control Fisikous. Now we control the weapons and defensive systems developed at Fisikous. We can stand against any army, at least long enough to destroy all the weapons inside and make our escape. After your army loses thousands of men trying to take Fisikous, you would find nothing but a booby-trapped, burned-out hulk. And if we face certain disaster from a sneak attack or airborne raid, one nuclear-tipped cruise missile aimed at your headquarters in Minsk should avenge our deaths. Where will you be when the fighting starts, General?”

Voshchanka clenched his fists, barely controlling his anger. “How dare you threaten my country. Do you expect me to trust you after making a threat like that …?”

“General Voshchanka, I want to work with you, for the benefit of my principals and the benefit of Belarus,” Gabovich said calmly. “Think about it. We can build a new Soviet state, ruled under Communist ideals, with the central government, led by Belarus, firmly in charge. And if Belarus wishes to remain in the Commonwealth, you can deal with Moscow on equal terms. I’m offering you a way to take advantage of the weakness of Lithuania and the weaknesses in the Commonwealth. Decline it, and we will both lose. Accept it, and we both have a chance to win.

Gabovich shrugged his shoulders. He knew an incohesive, disorganized, turbulent Commonwealth would leave Fisikous alone. He gave Voshchanka a mischievous smile. “If we fail, tovarisch, at least we gave it a good try. You will be praised as a patriot who wanted nothing but greatness for his country. The Commonwealth might bury you in an unmarked grave, but the people would remember you always.”

Voshchanka couldn’t believe Gabovich’s balls — and that last remark! Gabovich’s allegory was from a famous Byelorussian legend about a general from Minsk in the Great Patriotic War who commanded one of the armies that helped drive the Nazis from Russia; when the Byelorussian general reported back to Stalin that Moscow and Leningrad had been saved, he was reportedly shot and buried in a shallow grave because his fame might make him a political nemesis. “You know your Byelorussian history, tovarisch,” Voshchanka said finally. Then he stood up, nodded to his aide, and headed for the door. “I will be in contact with you, General Gabovich. Doh svedanya.”

Even in winter, the Leningrad Rail Station in central Moscow was normally one of the most beautiful public buildings in Europe. With soaring concourses, wide entryways, intricately carved relief sculptures on every wall, and ornate clocks everywhere, it was one of the main tourist attractions of Moscow. Even after the city of Leningrad changed its name back to its imperial, historic name of St. Petersburg in 1991, the Leningrad Station kept its name — there was no debate.

Today, it resembled a makeshift relief center for victims of some widespread natural disaster. Hundreds of men, women, and children were huddled against radiators and steam vents hoping for a trickle of warm air that would never come. Farmers from the countryside were selling the last bits of rotting food from their barns and cellars for exorbitant prices, just for a chance to buy a good coat or boots that did not exist anywhere In the city. Roving gangs of thieves were common, so the city police, Russian Federation army soldiers, and Commonwealth Army soldiers patrolled the station. Yet the soldiers, who had to give every ruble and every ration coupon they earned to their families, stole almost as much from the hapless, cowering merchants, and from each other, as the gang members.

Moscow, even in the best of times and weather, was never a particularly uplifting place to be. Now, in early spring, with heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures still lingering and after years of shortages leading to outright famine, it was a perfectly miserable place to be assigned.

Political Affairs Officer Sharon Greenfield, of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, had been in the city now for three years, longer than anyone else in the American delegation. Greenfield was in her late thirties, tall, dark hair gradually turning gray, but with bright blue eyes that she used to advantage to rivet any man who would dare take her for granted.

Greenfield had seen every form of the human condition here. When the first McDonald’s was opened, there was dancing in the streets. When the first foreign businesses opened that would accept the new convertible ruble, there were more celebrations. When full reforms failed to be enacted and the foreign stores closed, people were depressed. When the food ran out, there were riots. When the new Lithuanian Republic sold its former master its first one thousand metric tons of wheat, there was resentment and anger everywhere. Now, she was seeing simple, abject poverty — people dying in the streets, looting and lawlessness combined with severe martial law. The new Commonwealth of Independent States was powerless to help. The new law in Moscow was the army, whether local or state, and the “Russian Mafia” cartels that bought their protection.

Most of the ticket windows at Leningrad Station were boarded up and the doors locked, but Sharon went directly to one door and entered. A Moscow City Police officer immediately stood in front of her, arms outstretched, and reached for her left breast. She slapped it away. The officer’s face flushed with anger and he took a menacing step forward until a firm voice behind him said, “As you were, Corporal.” The cop backed away but gave Greenfield another satisfied glance.

Today he’s groping me, Sharon thought. Tonight he’ll be booted out of his unit for insubordination, and tomorrow he’ll be either in the gangs, dead after drinking himself into oblivion and passing out on the cold streets, or pounding on the outside gate of the U. S. Embassy, looking for asylum or work or trying to sell worthless information. She had seen it a hundred times.

Her defender — if you could call him that — was Boris Georgivich Dvornikov, formerly the Moscow bureau chief of the KGB and now a high-level official with the Moscow City Police. He was tall, with wavy gray hair, an infectious smile, and big, meaty hands. Dvornikov was sometimes a Communist Party member, most times not; sometimes heterosexual, sometimes not; sometimes credited with a bit of integrity; most times not. They met on an irregular basis, depending on what either of them — or both — needed from the other. Today he had called her.

“My apologies, Sharon Greenfield, for that corporal’s crude and inelegant action. Times are difficult, but I’ll handle his insolence later.”

Of that, Sharon Greenfield had no doubt. Boris Dvornikov was known to be ruthless, even sadistic — traits that had served him well in the KGB and certainly would continue to do so in the new Commonwealth. “Thank you, Boris Georgivich,” replied Greenfield, using the respectful custom of the Russian’s first name with his father’s.

“My pleasure,” Dvornikov said, then motioned to the door behind her. “Pitiful sight, is it not, Miss Greenfield? Three hundred eighty-seven new souls out there today alone. The total is well over three thousand homeless and living in the Leningrad Rail Station.”

“And how many are removed every night?” Greenfield asked. She knew that, with a wide-open press in Russia now, the squalor in Leningrad Station was a political eyesore for the Russian government, so the police had been charged with helping “clean it up.” For Dvornikov, that meant carting away hundreds of lost souls, probably for a long train ride to the farthest reaches of the Russian Federation, and certain death.

“We must deal with the situation as best we can.”

“The pity is that much of their suffering could be avoided.”

“Ah. The noble offer by the United States and the so-called industrialized nations,” Dvornikov sneered. “And all Russia must do is give up our right of self-determination, our national identity, condemn our economic system, and leave ourselves defenseless.”

Greenfield said, “Free elections, free emigration, institute a market economy, and do away with your offensive nuclear weapons. Russia spends billions of dollars — dollars, Boris Georgivich, not rubles — every year in maintaining a three-million-man army, a stockpile of ten thousand nuclear warheads, and a fleet of intercontinental bombers.”

“‘It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright,’” Dvornikov quoted with his usual raconteur’s flair. “Benjamin Franklin. Sometimes a nation needs something as awful as a military to help it stand upright. You have homeless in your country as well, Miss Greenfield, yet you too have bombers and nuclear warheads.”

He paused, then smiled. “Why, you’ve even built and deployed a new aircraft that can take off and land like a helicopter but cruises like an airplane Your Congress and your Secretary of Defense say you’re going to cancel it, but here you’ve gone and built dozens of them, for the Air Force, for the Coast Guard, for the Marine Corps. I wonder who else?”

Greenfield’s eyes widened in surprise, which pleased him.

He went on. “I see it being used by your new Border Security Force — but there are other applications for that wonderful machine. Civil transportation, law enforcement, offshore oil derrick supply — the possibilities are endless. “He paused, making sure he had Sharon’s full attention, then added with a smile, “Why, I’ll bet you can launch one or two of those things off the deck of, say, an old cargo ship right in the Baltic Sea. You could even fly it into Liepaja, land it, retrieve a Commonwealth spy, a band of U.S. Marines …”

Sharon Greenfield hoped some color was still left in her face. Things were bad in the capital, and the Soviet Union was history, but the old KGB spy network was still intact. And Dvornikov was the master.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Boris Georgivich,” Sharon Greenfield said. “It would make a very good book, though. Perhaps an American publisher will offer you a deal, and you can become a novelist. You know, like John Le Carré.”

“Now, that is a fine idea, Sharon Greenfield.” He paused, his smile disappearing, and in clipped, stern Russian ordered the soldier to leave. Sharon took a moment and searched the adjacent rooms and found them all empty. Dvornikov did not question or impede her search — he would have done the same thing if the situation was reversed.

“Let me help you write chapter two of your novel, Boris,” Greenfield said finally. “You invented this Soviet man that was kidnapped by Marines …”

“A Commonwealth officer of Lithuanian birth. A lieutenant,” Dvornikov corrected her. “And not kidnapped. He went willingly. Obviously he was feeding information to the Americans for months and was about to be caught.”

“You can work out the details in your book later, Boris,” Greenfield said, still disturbed by how much Dvornikov knew about the RAGANU operation. “Let’s go to chapter two. Say the Commonwealth officer told his benefactors some interesting tales — like about an American military officer being held captive in a certain Commonwealth research institute for several years. The Americans might want this officer back.”

Dvornikov’s eyes widened in complete surprise.

Sharon had been around Soviet and Commonwealth agents, bureaucrats, and other government officials long enough to know when they were really surprised and only faking it — the CIA teaches a class in body language — and Dvornikov was really surprised. “What do you think, Mr. Dvornikov?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that you are a better novelist than I am.”

Sharon could only guess what Boris was thinking. She had information he did not have. That meant that the CIS or Russian government — Dvornikov had high-level contacts in both places and probably in many other government houses as well — probably didn’t know it, either. But that also meant that REDTAIL HAWK, the new code name of the Air Force officer inside the Fisikous Institute, most likely wasn’t under the control of the Commonwealth or Russian government. Whoever had REDTAIL HAWK had him in secret. Bleed the man dry, discard him, and no one, not even the central government, would know about it. She was gambling with REDTAIL HAWK’s life. She knew that. Dvornikov had all he needed to know to find out about the American officer in Fisikous himself, and then he could just walk away. But Dvornikov had called this meeting, not she. Dvornikov wanted something.

Maybe he was willing to trade for it. His government contacts would pay big money for this information, especially if it meant destroying a political foe or helping set up a new political friend. The power struggles in the new regimes created from the shattered Soviet Union were endless.

“What else might you put in my novel?” he finally asked.

“Here’s where the story could start getting interesting,” Greenfield said. “This could be the first novel where the good guys and the bad guys actually help one another.”

“Now this certainly is fiction.”

“Fine. Then make up your own story, Boris,” Greenfield said irritably. “Listen, I’m very busy. Can we—?”

“Not just yet. I asked you here not to discuss novels, but the situation in the Baltic.” He motioned to an insulated pot and two cups, and poured very rich, dark coffee into two china cups. “You see? I’ve even prepared a small libation for us.” He withdrew a silver flask from his coat pocket and offered some to Greenfield, who declined. It was an interesting gesture, since Sharon knew that Dvornikov disliked alcohol except as a policy-making tool directed against others. This had to be part of the act. Of course he knew that she would refuse a drink, so Dvornikov could have just plain water in that hip flask. Or maybe things here in Moscow were driving him to drink…

“As you know, Sharon, my country imports much food, dairy products, eggs, and other such necessities from our former Baltic republics as well as from other former Soviet states. We would like to keep this arrangement in operation, as distasteful as it is to many former Soviet bureaucrats who dislike paying huge sums of hard currency to a former republic. But there appears to be a move afoot to perhaps reunite one or more of the Baltic republics with its parent republic.”

“Reunite? You mean one of the Commonwealth states might invade the Baltic states?”

“There appears to be strong historical precedent for a… reunion to take place between certain Commonwealth and Baltic states,” Dvornikov Said warily. “All of the Baltic states once belonged to Russia, even before the advent of the Soviet Union; and other states, such as Byelorussia and the Ukraine, were closely allied to the Baltics. But history lesson aside, what might be the American response?”

“You know damned well what the response would be, Dvornikov,” Greenfield replied, dropping all politeness despite herself. “The United States has always stood in defense of any country whose government is freely elected by the people and that operates under a set legal standard.”

“But, dear, you have also propped up dictatorships and oppressive governments: Marcos, Noriega, Pinochet, the Shah; shall I go on?”

“Let’s stick to the Baltics, Dvornikov,” Greenfield said testily. “They’re as independent as the United States or Ireland or the United Kingdom. If one or more of them asked the United States for support, the President would be inclined to give it.”

“Military support? Your president would go to war against the Commonwealth to protect the Baltics?”

“Yes,” Greenfield replied firmly. “The President may have slashed the U.S. military budget by one-third and closed a hundred military bases in three months, but he knows his role as leader of the free world. Yes, he would commit troops to Europe to back the Baltics.”

“Even if it meant a nuclear confrontation?”

“Nuclear confrontation?” Greenfield’s eyes registered her surprise. “Russia would risk a nuclear war to occupy the Baltics?”

“That was a very amateurish diversion, Sharon,” Dvornikov said with a smile — obviously he enjoyed verbal jousting as much as Greenfield hated it. “I never said Russia wanted to invade the Baltics.”

Greenfield was seething. “Look, can I be blunt? Let’s cut the shit. If you really called me here to play political mind-games, then it’s time I left. An attack on the Baltics could re-ignite the Cold War and erase all the gains that have been made over the years.”

“Sharon…” Dvornikov sighed, lost in thought. “What the West sees as gains are seen by many in the former Soviet Union as losses. Some say that all perestroika has resulted in is confusion and uncertainty.”

“Your current political and economic mess is a result of decades of mismanagement in the communist government, not of democracy and peace,” Greenfield said. “Attacking the Baltics — which are now as free and independent as any other country in the world, despite your so-called historical precedent — is a serious act of aggression. The United States will respond as such.”

“Sharon, there are immense pressures on the Commonwealth and the Russian government to do something about the current state of affairs. Citizens are starving on a massive scale. There is unrest everywhere. Deep factions are developing in the central government. The peace of the entire world may be threatened if a military junta is successful or even attempted in Russia. If the Commonwealth breaks apart and Russia becomes a military dictatorship, the whole world will be affected.”

“So what do you want the United States to do about it?” Greenfield asked. “You’ve spurned all attempts to reform your government and your society. Your government leaders can’t stand the thought of some successful private-venture sausage-stuffer wielding more political power and becoming wealthier than they.”

“I tell you, Sharon Greenfield, some government leaders will be forced to act just to hold on to their lives — not just their political life, their earthly life,” Dvornikov said seriously.

“What will the Commonwealth do if one of the member republics invades the Baltic states?” Greenfield asked.

“What can they do? What power do they have?”

“What power? The Commonwealth has a three-million-man army, two-thirds of which are in the western half.”

“And many of the member republics have nuclear weapons,” Dvornikov said. “They were supposed to be deactivated or sent back to Russia, and most of the intercontinental weapons were deactivated, but most of the tactical and battlefield weapons were not. At worst, a nuclear confrontation between Commonwealth states is very likely if one state acts independently of the others. But more likely, the Commonwealth might endorse an invasion of the Baltics in order to prop up its own government. Either way, a nuclear conflict is possible — very possible — if the West gets itself involved. This is not like Iraq and the Persian Gulf War, Sharon Greenfield — the nuclear weapons, and the resolve to use them, truly exist here.” Dvornikov stepped closer to Sharon and said, “The United States must not act if there is an invasion of the Baltic states.”

Well, there you go, Sharon thought. He’s put it on the table. “Is this how it sounded in the conversation between Hitler and Stalin in 1939? ‘In exchange for peace and solidarity, you can take Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; I will take Czechoslovakia and Hungary…’”

“Ah, Sharon, that delightful sense of humor I love so well. You haven’t lost it in all our years together.”

“Get off it, Boris,” Greenfield snapped. “I’ve been here too long already. The information you’ve given me is very valuable, but we’ve been monitoring the situation in the Baltics carefully. Your information is nothing but a big ‘so what?’ What I want is the American at Fisikous. Information on him would be extremely valuable, and direct assistance might buy you an entry visa and green card, courtesy of the CIA. You can go on the lecture circuit and make more than the President of the United States Let me get a person close enough to the American, check him out, and help me set up an extraction, and you can name your price.”

“How intriguing,” Dvornikov said, “but the lecture circuit sounds dull. Besides, why would I leave my beautiful Russia? The place is falling apart at the seams, and I may be able to put together enough pieces for myself.”

She turned to the door. “Fine. Just get me the information I want, Boris, and you’ll get whatever you want. You know how to contact me. But make it quick.”

After she’d departed, Boris Dvornikov thought about what she had said. Greenfield was so smug in her assumptions, so confident in her position. Well, he would help her with this matter concerning the American at Fisikous. The only question Boris had was, how much and in what manner would he extract payment from the Americans — and from her. He felt a stirring in his loins. Yes, what price will you be, Sharon Greenfield? He had wanted that bitch for a very long time. He had tried, but each time she had rejected him. Not merely declined, but made him feel worthless and undesirable.

That was okay. Her time would come. Boris massaged his crotch, fantasizing about all the things he would to do her. The pain she would suffer. Yes, that would be quite wonderful … seeing her in pain … and ecstasy.

To no surprise, Boris realized he had grown quite hard just thinking about her.