Revolution

V Voyeurs at the Edge of Battle

It was the last time he'd see her.

They'd lain in bed all night, not talking, only their sides touching. Stoner slid away from her now, unsure of himself.

Had there been real emotion from the very beginning, lust, or gratitude because of her help? Something vulnerable and simple, frail, unworthy of a spy?

No matter how you steeled yourself — how you stole yourself away, hid the vulnerable part of the soul that everyone had behind a wall, in order to do your job — there was some small slither of humanity left, some piece of flesh vulnerable at the edge.

Stoner pulled on his pants, slipping in the button at the waist. They were loose. He always lost weight on a mission. Another week and he would need a belt.

Shirt on, he unrolled a fresh pair of socks and sat on the bed, his back to her.

Temptation lingered, her perfume and his sweat mixing in the stuffy room.

He took his shoes, ignored his chance for one last glance, and left.

A half hour later,Stoner turned his motorcycle off the main road just north of Bacau, riding down a narrow dirt trail that formed a horseshoe between a farm field and the road. Danny Freah was already waiting, sitting in a borrowed Romanian jeep. Stoner drove past quickly, checking the area, then spun back, kicking up dirt and rocks as he skidded to a stop next to Danny's window.

"How goes it?" asked Freah. He was dressed in civilian clothes, jeans and a heavy jacket.

"I'm OK. You?"

"This Romanian coffee could wake the dead," said Freah, holding up a plastic travel mug.

"One of Locusta's aides called me last night," Stoner told him. "They're going ahead with the raid tonight. Assuming they get approval."

"Yeah, I heard. Locusta's chief of staff called Colonel Bas-tian." Danny took a sip of the coffee, wincing as he swallowed. "You think their president's going to approve?"

Stoner shrugged. He had no idea. If he had to, he'd sneak into Moldova himself and check on the sites. It'd be far more dangerous, but in some ways much easier: He wouldn't have to worry about anyone but himself.

Danny took another pull from the coffee and once again made a face.

"If it's so bad, why are you drinking it?" Stoner asked.

"I guess I like the pain," said Danny. He laughed softly.

Stoner pulled a blank piece of paper from his shirt pocket. "You got a pen?" he asked.

Danny handed him one and he wrote out the directions to the house where Sorina was holed up.

"She's expecting you in an hour," Stoner said. "Be careful. She's pretty tough."

"Mind if I ask you a question?"

Stoner tensed, expecting that Danny would ask if he'd been sleeping with her.

Would he lie?

No. Tell the truth. No sense not to. "Aren't you freezing your buns off on that motorcycle?" asked Danny.

Stoner tried not to show his relief that the question wasn't the one he expected.

"It's handy. And it's what I have."

"If there were time, I'd ask to take it for a spin."

"Next time I see you," said Stoner.

"Deal."

"Good luck, Captain."

"Same to you. I don't trust Locusta much."

Stoner smirked, but instead of answering, he revved the bike and started in the direction of the Romanian army camp.

Breanna felt her heartbeat rise as Soomer's big engines cycled up, their massive thrust sending a rhythmic shudder through her spine as the afterburners lit. Despite the immense thrust, the big plane seemed to hesitate ever so slightly, her wheels sticking for a brief instant to the concrete pavement.

And then everything let go and she felt herself pushed back in the seat as the B-1 rocketed forward, quickly gathering momentum. Wind swept beneath the aircraft's wings and Boomer lifted off the ground, her nose pushing upward like the proud head of an eagle taking flight.

"Retract landing gear," said General Samson, sitting next to her in the pilot's seat.

"Cleaning gear," said Breanna as she did just that.

The big plane continued to climb, moving through 2,000 feet, through 3,000, through 4,000. Airspeed shot past 360 knots. It was a jolt compared to a Megafortress's takeoff, but by B-1 standards it was almost lackadaisical. Breanna told herself to stop comparing the planes and just fly.

There was a tickle in her nose. She hoped she wasn't getting a cold.

"Big Bird to Boomer. I have you in sight," said Sleek Top from the other B-1B/L. His voice was so loud he drowned out the engines.

"Boomer," acknowledged Samson. "How are you looking?"

"Purring like a kitten, General," responded Sleek. "We have your six."

"Roger that."

"First way marker in ten minutes, General," said Breanna. "Systems are in the green. Fuel burn is a little lighter than originally computed."

"Hmmmph."

"We have a bit more of a tailwind," said Breanna, explaining the difference.

"Good, Captain. Stay on it."

Not too many pilots would have been miffed that they were getting better mileage than expected, but that was Samson. His tone tended to be a bit gruff, but it wasn't anything Breanna wasn't used to from her father. In many ways the two men were similar — no wonder they couldn't stand each other.

General Samson checked his course on the computer screen. While he'd flown this B-1 during an orientation flight a few weeks before, it still felt a bit odd. In nearly every measurable aspect, the plane was superior to the "stock" B-1Bs he was used to. It was faster, a hair more maneuver-able, and could fly farther without refueling if the tanks were managed properly — which was almost a given, since the computer did the managing.

Boomer's internal bomb bays were taken up by the laser, but the weapon's comparatively lighter weight meant a heavier bomb load could be carried on the wings and fuselage. In this version, the aircraft didn't need the offensive and defensive systems officers; their jobs were completely replaced by the computer. The computer could even take over most if not all of the piloting tasks — not that Samson was about to give it the opportunity.

Still, there was something about Boomer and its sister ship, Big Bird, that bothered him. It was almost too slick, too easy to fly. It wasn't going to keep a pilot on his toes the way an older ship would.

But what the hell. It was good to be flying again, and even better to lead a mission. Samson knew there'd be flak from above at some point, but if Colonel Dog Bastian could do it, so could he.

Maybe it would earn him a new nickname: the Flying, Fighting General.

Now that was the sort of thing that helped you get confirmed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Alin Voda's political career had started in the most unlikely way when, at age seven, a family friend gave him a trombone. It was a worn instrument, with many scratches and two dents in the playing tube; the bell of the horn had been pushed slightly to one side. Even an accomplished musician would have had trouble coaxing a winning sound from the instrument. But it lit a fire in Voda's brain. He took lessons at his local elementary school, and within a few months had devoured the teacher's small store of sheet music. His notes, strained by the condition of the old horn, did not always have the best tone, but Voda's enthusiasm for the music burned so hot that it infected anyone who heard him.

His teacher happened to have a better trombone in storage, and one day decided to loan it to Voda, letting the boy play it first at school, and then, within a week or two, at home. The sound of the instrument was a revelation, and Voda's passion, already great, doubled. By the end of the school year he could play at the level of a competent teenager, and certainly practiced as much.

During the summer vacation, Voda returned to his own instrument, and immediately felt its limitations. It was not just the sound of the battered horn; trombones played in a relatively limited range, and while there was much to be mastered, it already seemed to the eight-year-old that the range would be too limited for his imagination. He was thinking and dreaming in notes.

Wild riffs played through his head. If a painter might be said to see the world in colors, Voda had come to hear the world in music. He pestered his parents — poorly paid workers for the state — to find him a piano. Even a used instrument was out of the question, but the same friend who had given him the trombone had a brother who was a janitor at a local school. Thanks to his job, he had the keys to the basement where the music room was, and one day the friend arranged for the brother to meet Voda and his mother so the boy could plunk on the piano.

Within a few minutes, Voda had figured out how to transpose the notes he played on the trombone to the keyboard. His playing was not good by any means; the piano itself was old and some of the keys fidgety, so none of the songs were recognizable except to Voda. But again, it fired his imagination.

He pestered his parents and the friend to allow him to return. A week later, he was able to coax a melodious version of a Romanian folk song from the instrument; after about fifteen minutes of playing it back and forth, his mistakes morphed into a pleasant improvisation, his mind hearing the notes as they might be, not necessarily as they had been originally intended.

The music attracted the attention of the school's principal, who happened to be working upstairs in his office. When he came down to investigate, he was surprised to see a thin, somewhat undersized eight-year-old at the keyboard. While the janitor and Voda's mother froze in fear that they were about to get into trouble for sneaking into the building, the principal strode to Voda. When the boy finished, the older man — a modest amateur pianist himself — began asking questions about the song and, eventually, about Voda's training, or rather, lack of it.

From that point on, coincidence no longer played a part in Voda's musical career. Admission was arranged to a special school in Bucharest, where he had access to some of the best teachers in the country. While the routine of becoming a true artist — the endless hours of practice and study — often bored Voda, it did not dull his love of music. He continued to throw himself into the work, making his fingers produce the notes he imagined in his head.

The teachers were divided over whether the boy should be considered a true "prodigy" or simply an extremely talented and gifted young man. Initially, his public concerts were limited to small performances at the school. He did not particularly stand out at these, not only because of the talent surrounding him on the program, but because the pieces he played tended toward the obscure and difficult. But those who knew what he did in the practice rooms never undervalued his talent, and pushed him to improve.

At fifteen, Voda discovered Mozart. Naturally, he'd played many Mozart pieces over the years and had a general understanding of the great composer's work, but until then he never understood the music the way an artist must understand it. Ironically, the moment came while playing the overture for Don Giovanni, not generally considered a pianist's showpiece when compared to the rest of Mozart's oeuvre. As he began the third measure, the notes suddenly felt different. For Voda, it was as if he had pushed open the door of a fabulous mansion and strolled in, suddenly at home.

His first performance of a Mozart piece at the school — Sonata K 310 — was a sensation. The small audience leaped to its feet when he concluded, and applauded so long that he had to do an encore. Within weeks he had his first concert outside the school's auspices; by the time he was eighteen, he was touring the country, playing on his own. He visited Russia and Warsaw. With classical music much more popular behind what was then the Iron Curtain than it was in the West, Voda became an emerging superstar and a national hero.

And then, when he was twenty years old, he made a mistake that changed his life. He played the folk song that the principal had overheard him play at the very beginning of his studies.

It was a second encore after a performance in Bucharest that mostly consisted of Mozart sonatas. It did not fit the program in any way. He hadn't thought of the tune in years, and certainly hadn't played it, or even planned to play it, since his education began.

There was a good reason not to. The Romanian government, in one of its periodic fits of paranoia, had banned all nationalistic movements and displays. The move was really a crackdown on dissidents, whom the government believed were using nationalistic sentiments to stir resentment against the regime. For whatever reason — some critics of the government believed it was looking for more backing from the Soviet Union — the ban extended to all the arts, and extended so far that a musical play based on a folk tale cycle was canceled two days before its opening in Bucharest: the day before Voda's performance.

It was never completely clear, even to Voda, why the song came into his head that evening, or why he allowed it to flow from his brain to his fingers. Perhaps he intended it as a protest against the state, though he had never harbored such political feelings before then. Maybe it was just misplaced nostalgia. In any event, the crowd heard it as a political statement, and their response was beyond anything he could ever have imagined. Had he stood up and declared himself king at the end of the concert, they would have gladly taken him on their back and carried him to the castle.

He did nothing of the sort. He bowed, went to his dressing room, and later walked to the small apartment he kept a few blocks away. He was sleeping soundly at two in the morning when a troop of policemen broke in and arrested him. He was held in jail for six months, put on trial secretly, and sentenced to six years imprisonment for "treasonous behavior."

It was there that Voda found his second career. Unlike music, politics was for him a difficult and unfriendly art. He came to it reluctantly, at first puzzled by the way other prisoners looked toward him as a leader. What they saw as an act of resolute defiance against overwhelming odds, he still viewed as a confused and confusing mistake. Only gradually did he come to understand the principles the dissidents were risking their lives for.

Democracy had never seemed magical to him. Surely a man should have control over his own life, but how far should that control extend? Used to long days of practice and grueling performance schedules, Voda didn't think it should go very far.

When he was let out of jail at the end of his sentence, Voda found that he was no longer allowed to perform. He began moonlighting in small venues as a poorly paid piano player performing covers of popular songs. As long as he did not use his real name and stayed away from classical music, he remained unmolested by the authorities. The gigs paid enough for a very modest apartment, and kept food on the table, though it had to be supplemented by dinners at the cafes where he played.

With his days largely free, Voda drifted toward the dissidents he'd known in jail, meeting them occasionally for coffee or a walk around town. Gradually, he began doing small things for the freedom movement — nothing brave, nothing outlandish, nothing even likely to earn him time in jail.

Until, in a fit of pique at a government decree against another musician who had dared play a piece by an American composer at a public concert, Voda gave an impromptu outdoor concert at Piata Revolutiei — Revolution Square, in the center of the city. For an hour, playing on a poorly miked upright piano, he serenaded the city with a selection of Mozart pieces he hadn't played in public for years. By the time the police moved in, the crowd had grown to over 10,000. Men, women, and children pushed and shoved away the first group of policemen who tried to drag him off. Water cannons were brought in; Voda continued to play. His last song was the overture of Don Giovanni. The music continued to soar in his head even as the clubs beat him over the back.

Two of his fingers were broken in the melee, though it wasn't clear whether it had been done purposely. This time he was put in jail without a trial.

That was in April 1989. Eight months later a far larger crowd gathered at Piata Revolutiei to denounce and chase out the country's dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. Voda was released from jail a few days later. He stood for parliament and was elected. From there his rise to president seemed almost preordained. Voda felt as if it was his fate — an increasingly heavy fate as time went on.

The end of the dictator brought considerable problems to the country. The guerrillas were a sideshow in many ways, annoying, deadly, but more a distraction than a real threat, at least as far as he was concerned. The economy needed to be jump-started. The manufacturing sector was stuck in the 1940s or worse, and agriculture was so underinvested that horses were used to plow fields. Ethnic differences that seemed nonexistent under the dictator became extremely divisive, fanned by politicians trying to boost their own careers.

Foreign relations were a nightmare. Russia pushed hard to bring Romania into its sphere of influence. Voda saw the country's future residing with the West, but deep-seated prejudices among many of the Europeans, especially those in Germany and France, had caused their politicians to drag their feet. On a personal level, Voda couldn't stand most foreign leaders, whom he thought were bigots and thieves. Even the Austrians tried to cheat Romania when the gas pipeline deal was brokered. At times, Romania's only true ally seemed to be the United States, which was pushing for it to join NATO. But even the U.S. could be fickle.

Voda got along personally with the American ambassador, who claimed to own the CD he had recorded when he was just twenty-one. He had met President Martindale twice, not nearly enough to form a real opinion of the man.

By the time he was elected president, Voda had been involved in politics long enough to have made many enemies. A whole section of the opposition viewed not only him but democracy itself as suspect; they would gladly bring back a dictator in a heartbeat — so long as he agreed with their positions, of course. But the worst were his old dissident friends. Most felt they, not he, should be the head of state.

The president's relationship with the military was, at best, difficult. He'd appointed Fane Cazacul as defense minister only in an attempt to placate some of the minor parties whose support was useful in parliament. Cazacul had his own power base, both in the military — with which Voda had problems— and in politics. But Cazacul was in many ways inept when it came to running a department; he had squandered much of the defense budget that Voda had worked so hard to get passed. Still, Cazacul commanded the loyalty of a number of generals, mostly in the western part of the country, and Voda had no choice but to keep him on.

Voda did not count General Locusta as an enemy, but he did not fully trust him either. Locusta was far more competent than Cazacul, and though nominally the equal of Romania's three other lieutenant generals, was clearly the leading light of the General Staff. He also clearly wanted more power— a natural ailment among military men, Voda believed, and perhaps among all men in general. For that reason, as well as financial concerns and problems with Cazacul, Voda had hesitated to send Locusta the additional troops he wanted to fight the rebels. But the attacks on the pipeline trumped everything else; he knew he needed to protect the line or lose considerable revenue.

Voda also realized that the gas crisis was having a serious effect on Western Europe and NATO. If he did not preserve the pipeline, his chances of having Romania join the alliance would probably be crushed.

His hopes of joining NATO led Voda to resist Locusta and others when they suggested sending troops across the border in Moldova to battle the rebel strongholds. But the events of the past week — the attack on the pipeline and the vicious, coldblooded killing of the family near Tutova — demonstrated that he must take decisive action. More important, the Americans were signaling that they not only approved, but would assist, albeit in a very limited way.

"You are far away," said his wife, Mircea, sitting next to him in the back of the sedan as they drove from Bucharest. "Are you already in the mountains? Or listening to music in your head?"

Voda smiled at her. He hadn't told her about Locusta's call or the real reason for his spur of the moment vacation weekend, though he thought she might have some suspicions.

"Music," he replied.

"Mozart?"

"A combination of different things."

He had met Mircea after being released from prison the first time. She'd been a dissident and had an excellent ear for politics, but not for music.

Mircea gave him a playful tap.

"When you see Julian, then your attention will be with us," she said, referring to their eight-year-old son, who was to meet them at their mountain home near Stulpicani with his nanny. "Until then, you are a man of the state. Or of music."

"Both." Voda smiled, then looked out the car window, admiring the countryside.

"You can put the gun away," Danny told the shadow in the hallway behind the open door. "I'm Danny Freah."

"Let me see your hands," a woman replied.

Danny held his hands out. "How many black guys you think there are in Romania? Black Americans? Up here? Looking for you?"

"Keep the hands where I can see them."

"Usually we say please." Danny raised his arms higher. "We have only a half hour to make the rendezvous. A little less."

The shadow took a step forward, and the woman's features became more distinct. She was about five-six, not much more than 110 pounds. Dark hair, green eyes, hard expression.

"Like I said, we have less than a half hour. And we have some driving to do."

Sorina Viorica took another step forward. The pistol in her hand was aimed squarely at his face.

"Where's your gun?" she asked.

"I don't have any."

"I don't believe you. Unzip your coat."

Danny slowly complied. He'd left his service pistol in the car, unsure what the local laws were about civilians carrying them.

"Turn around," she told him.

Danny sighed but complied again. He held his coat up. She took two steps toward him — he knew he could swing around and grab her, knock the weapon out of her hand. But there was no sense in that.

She patted him down quickly. A light touch — she had done it before.

"Why aren't you armed?" she asked, stepping back. "Because I thought it would be unnecessary," he said, turning back around. "All right. Let's go." "Don't you have a bag?" "I have everything I need."

Danny led her out to the street, crossing quickly. Sorina hung back, checking her surroundings, making sure she wasn't being set up. Inside the car, she pulled her jacket tight around her neck, though the heat was blasting.

"Do you have a cig?" she asked.

"Cigarette?"

"Yes."

"I'm afraid I don't." She frowned, looked out the window. "I haven't smoked in years," she said. "But today I feel like it."

"You want to know the itinerary?" "Mark explained it."

"I'll be with you until I hear from them. Myself and another one of my men."

She shrugged. Danny watched her stare out of the side of the car, her eyes focused far away.

She turned suddenly, caught him looking at her.

"Have you ever left your home?" she asked. She sounded as if she were accusing him of a crime.

"All the time," said Danny.

"And known you were not coming back?"

"No."

"It's different."

"I'd guess it would be."

She frowned, as if that wasn't the answer she wanted, then turned back toward the window.

It started to snow a few minutes before they got to the field Danny had picked for the rendezvous. The flakes were big disks, circles of white that flipped over like falling bingo chips scattering across the road. Though sparse, they were thick and heavy, slow to melt; as they landed on the windshield of the car they made large ovals, giving way slowly to the heat of the glass.

"An aircraft called an Osprey is coming for us," Danny told her as he pulled to the side of the road. "It can land like a helicopter but flies like a plane. It has some heavy cannon under the nose."

Sorina said nothing.

"I'm just telling you because it can look pretty fierce when you first see it. It's black."

"I've seen things much fiercer than helicopters, Captain." "You can call me Danny." She didn't answer.

Danny got out of the car and walked around to the trunk, where he'd left a rucksack with some gear. None of the lights in the houses across the street were on, but there was a glow farther down, near the church and the center of the city. Behind them to the east the thick layer of clouds were preventing the sun from opening the day with a grand display, tinting its rays dark gray and obscuring the horizon.

"The weather is my future," said Sorina. And then she continued speaking to herself in Romanian.

Danny felt no pity — the memory of her friends' massacre remained vivid — but he was curious about her. He wondered why she had decided to help; Stoner hadn't said.

Most likely, he thought, it had to do with money. Yet her austere air and simple clothes seemed to indicate a person not moved by material possessions.

Revenge? Perhaps. Or maybe she'd traded her life. But she moved like a person already dead, a wary ghost waiting for her ride to oblivion.

He heard the heavy whomp of the aircraft's rotors in the distance.

"They're coming," he said.

Sorina stared toward the glow of the church, opposite the direction of the Osprey as the plane came in. Just as he turned to start for the rear ramp, Danny saw her reach her finger toward her eye. But he couldn't tell in the dim light if she was brushing away grit or a tear.

General Locusta studied the lawn and surrounding property of President Voda's mountain retreat. It had been quite some time since it was farmed, and Locusta guessed it had never been very profitable. The property rose sharply behind the house and fell off across the road in front of it; there were large rock formations, and tilling the fields had to be difficult. With the exception of the front lawn, trees had long ago taken over whatever had been cultivated.

The driver stopped in front of the house. Locusta got out, taking his briefcase with him. A man in a heavy overcoat watched him from the front steps. He was a bodyguard, though his weapon was concealed under his coat. In accordance with Voda's wishes, only the president's personal security team was stationed at the house. Locusta had a company of men a half mile down the road, ready to respond in an emergency.

Or not, as the case might be.

"The president is waiting in the den," said Paul Sergi, meeting the general outside the door of the house.

"Very good," said Locusta, ignoring the aide's arrogant tone. Sergi, Voda's chief assistant and secretary, had never gotten along with anyone in the military.

Inside the house, Locusta turned to the left instead of the right. As he corrected his mistake, he caught a glimpse of

Voda's son, Julian, constructing some sort of contraption out of a set of Lego blocks. The boy whipped it upward — obviously it was meant to be some sort of airplane or spaceship, for he made whooshing noises as he moved it through the air.

Locusta smiled at the boy, then felt his conscience twinge. He hadn't realized the child would be here.

It was a brief twinge. These were the fortunes of war.

Sergi knocked on the study door, then pushed it open. The president was working at his desk, his wife standing next to him. Locusta gave her a feigned smile — he would have no qualms about her death; her record as an antipatriot was very clear.

"General, thank you for coming," said Voda, rising. He glanced at his wife as he extended his hand to shake.

"I'll leave you men to talk," said Mircea. She gave Locusta a patently phony smile as she left.

Voda sat in one of the chairs at the side, gesturing for Lo-custa to take the other. The seat was old, its leather well worn, but it was very comfortable.

"What do we have?" said Voda.

"As I said last night, the American agent has given us a general area, and promises precise locations once we are ready to strike," said Locusta. He opened his briefcase and took out a map. "I believe the information will be good, but of course it is a matter of trust. If we trust the Americans."

"Do you?"

"The agent seems knowledgeable. So far the Americans have been helpful. In these matters, there is always the possibility of error. We do have to accept that."

"Yes," said Voda.

He looked at the map. Locusta's staff had highlighted about a dozen possible areas, all about fifty miles from the border. The plans to attack were general, and had they not fit so well with Locusta's real goal, he would have demanded wholesale revisions.

"We will compensate for the uncertainty by adding force," said Locusta. "I have commandeered every available helicopter."

That did not amount to much — there was a total of thirty-two at last count. A good portion of the force would have to sneak in by truck.

Voda put down the map. "I have been speaking to the American ambassador this morning," he said. "He indicated they would have no problem with our going over the border against these targets. He also warned again of secret Russian involvement, and mentioned the incident with the plane."

"Will they send their aircraft over the border?"

Voda shook his head.

"They are not afraid to risk our lives," said Locusta, "but not their own. Very brave of them."

"Why would the Russians fire at the Americans, then blow up their missiles?" asked Voda.

"Because they are children." Locusta shrugged. "With airmen, it is a strange thing, Mr. President." He got up, anxious to work off some of his energy. "Fighting, for them is very… theoretical, I guess we would say. They almost see it as a game."

"It's not a game."

"Very true. But they must display their feathers, like a prize rooster. They want to convince the Americans they are not afraid."

"Will they attack us?"

"No," said Locusta quickly. He had not considered that possibility.

"If Russian commandos were responsible for the attack on the pipeline, then perhaps they will be at the camps when we attack."

Ah, so that was where this was going. Voda was looking for a reason to call off the attack.

"Who said the Russians attacked the pipeline?" asked Lo-custa.

"The ambassador suggested it was a possibility."

Locusta made a face. "Absurd. If the Russians had attacked, we would not have been able to repair it so quickly."

Voda nodded. Everyone believed in the invincibility of the Russian army, notwithstanding evidence to the contrary, like Afghanistan and Chechnya.

"The Russians — and the Americans as well — act like children. The top commanders cannot keep control of their men. That is the problem with too much democracy," Locusta added. "There is a lack of discipline even where it should be steel."

Voda looked at the plans. Even if he did not approve them, Locusta would move against him. But the general preferred to strike this blow against the guerrillas now, just before the coup. Not only would it set them back for weeks, if not months, but he could easily disavow it if there were too many diplomatic repercussions.

"How many civilian casualties will there be?" asked Voda.

"We can't worry about that."

"There will be casualties."

"Every precaution will be taken."

"Proceed," said Voda.

"Thank you. I will return when the mission is complete, and deliver my report in person. Assuming you will still be here."

"Yes. We'll be here for a few days. Mircea loves the mountains. And so do I. The pace is quieter."

Locusta smiled. He knew that once here, the president would be reluctant to leave.

"Will you stay for lunch?" asked Voda. "It should be ready by now."

The invitation took Locusta by surprise, and for a moment he was actually touched. It was a very brief moment.

"I'm afraid that there are details to be seen to," Locusta said. "With regrets."

"Another time," said Voda. He extended his hand. "Good luck."

"We will eliminate the criminals," replied the general. "I will return before dawn."

The flight from Dreamland to Romania was uneventful, but Samson still felt drained as he came down the B-IB/L's ladder.

Too bad, he thought. There were a million things to do.

"Ready for some chow, General?" asked Breanna Stock-ard, coming down the ladder behind him.

"Microwaved hash wasn't good enough for you?"

Breanna made a face. Among Boomer's newfangled amenities was a microwave oven and a refrigerator. Samson had liked the hash, though clearly his copilot hadn't.

"Back in my day, Ms. Stockard, we would have killed for a hot meal in the cockpit."

Breanna made another face. "This is your day, General."

Damn, I like that woman, he thought as he headed toward the Dreamland Command trailer.

Dog nodded at Stoner as he walked into the conference room at the Romanian Second Army Corps headquarters. The CIA officer stood with his arms folded, watching as two of Locusta's colonels took turns jabbing their fingers at a map spread over the table at the front of the room. They were debating some point or other about the mission.

"Colonel, would you like some tea?" asked a lieutenant in English.

"Coffee, maybe." "Very good."

Dog edged toward Stoner. Nearly three dozen officers were crowded into the room. Dog remembered a few from the other day, but it was difficult to put names with faces.

"Danny's all right," Dog told Stoner. He'd spoken to the captain just before leaving to come to the meeting.

Stoner nodded.

"You sure you're going to get the truth?" Dog asked. "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."

General Locusta pushed the door of his staff car open as it pulled in front of the building, springing out before the car stopped. He was ready to do battle — not just against the criminals and murderers, but against the political regime that made it possible for the criminals and thieves to thrive. Everything was in motion.

He hadn't felt this sort of energy since he was a very young man. The day seemed more vivid, the air crackling. Even the building had a glow to it.

The guards snapped to attention. Locusta smiled at them— there was no suppressing the grin he felt.

"Gentlemen, today is an historic day," he said as he entered the meeting room. His officers stepped back to clear his path as he continued toward the front, speaking as he went. "Tonight we will strike the criminals where they live. I expect nothing less than a full victory. We must be bold, we must be swift, and we must be resolute."

The general turned the meeting over to Colonel Brasov, who would have charge of the mission. Brasov, nodding at the American CIA officer, said the attack area had been narrowed to two ten-mile swatches fifty-seven miles from the border. Each camp was small, housing from one hundred to three hundred guerrillas.

Brasov's attack plan called for strikes by six companies on each hideout, giving them at worst a two-to-one advantage against the rebels. They would be ferried across the border in helicopters that had come up from southern Romania earlier that day, and in trucks that would cross into Moldava between two border stations to lessen the chance of detection.

There would be no direct air support, but the Americans would be able to use their sensors to monitor the attack areas from Romanian territory.

Locusta watched the hollow-eyed CIA officer as Colonel Brasov spoke. Stoner stared as if his face were rock, betraying no emotion; not fatigue, not excitement, not boredom.

Locusta thought it was possible that he was being used and the troops would find no guerrilla hideout. Possibly they would even be ambushed, though Brasov's preparations were designed to meet that possibility and turn the tables on the guerrillas if it occurred.

Whatever happened, thought Locusta, the path was set. By this time tomorrow he would control Romania.

Stoner studied the topo map, examining the areas where Sorina Viorica had said the attacks should be concentrated. He could make a pretty good guess where the camps were within those squares, and suspected that Brasov had as well. One was centered around a mine abandoned sometime in the 1920s. The other, less obvious, was a farm isolated from the nearby settlements.

"Did you want to add anything, Mr. Stoner?" asked Colonel Brasov.

"You were very thorough. There should be evidence of Russian involvement at these camps. There may even be a few Russian agents or soldiers," added Stoner. "So I would be prepared. Very, very prepared."

General Samson had arrived by the time Dog returned to Iasi. He'd told Dog he was coming, of course, and Dog tried hard not to interpret Samson's arrival as yet the latest example of his distrust. It was hard, though.

"So, what are the Romanians doing?" Samson asked without other preliminaries when Dog reported to him at the Command trailer.

Dog outlined the overall Romanian plan as well as their role in it. The EB-52s would give advance warning of any large troop movements without going over the border, though of course real-time video from the Flighthawks would be impossible.

"You think they'll pull it off?" Samson asked.

"If they can handle the logistics side. They only have about thirty helicopters, and they're fairly old. The problem will be getting enough men in the field quickly."

"I'd feel better if we could go over the border and support them directly," said the general.

Samson's remark caught Dog by surprise. "I agree with you, General. Maybe we should make that point to Washington."

Samson seemed to consider it, but then reverted to his career officer mentality, anxious to protect his stars. "No. We'll carry on as is. I've brought two B-IB/Ls with me."

"Yes, sir, you explained that."

"They can get into the mix as soon as it's appropriate. We'll fly them in tandem with a Megafortress. If you think that's a good idea."

Now Dog was really surprised. Was Samson asking for his opinion?

"They may be useful," said Dog. "Depending on the circumstances. If they were able to pinpoint a target on the ground—"

"That's exactly what I was thinking," said Samson. "I want to see if these fancy lasers are really as good as they're advertised."

"If we were supporting the Romanians, they'd have a real role," suggested Dog, taking one more shot at encouraging the general to argue with Washington about the absurd restriction in their orders.

"No. No. That will come in time," said Samson. "I'm sure there will be plenty of changes in the future."

The sun had already set by the time the Osprey neared its rendezvous north of the Bosporus Strait at the southern edge of the Black Sea. The Bosporus was like a funnel, sending a never-ending flow of ships down from the lake, past Istanbul on their way to the Sea of Marmara, and from there to the Mediterranean, the Suez, the Atlantic.

Ideally, Stoner would have found an American warship for Danny and his "companion" to transfer to, but the U.S. Navy rarely found it necessary to enter the Black Sea, and no ship could be diverted in time. Instead, the CIA had arranged for Danny, Boston, and Sorina Viorica to be disembarked on a tanker sailing south toward Istanbul; they'd ride south and slip off near the city.

"That's our ship there, Captain," said the Osprey copilot, pointing toward a small collection of dim lights in the distance. "We'll be over her in a minute."

"Thanks."

Danny turned to Boston and motioned with his head. Sorina was sitting in the middle of the bench on the starboard side of the aircraft. She was so light her body barely made an impression in the stretched fabric sling that formed the seat.

"We'll be going down," Danny told her. "Can you fast-rope?"

He pointed to the side. Besides the rear ramp, the Dreamland Osprey had a side door that slid open like a traditional rescue helicopter, allowing a boom to be swung out so passengers or cargo could be lowered.

"Rope?" asked Sorina Viorica.

"Can you slide down the rope to the ship, or should we lower you by harness?" Sorina looked dubious.

"It's all right. We'll winch you down," said Danny. He had to yell to make himself heard over the engines, which roared loudly as the aircraft settled into hover mode. "We'll put you in a sling. Boston, you hear me? We'll get her in a sling."

"That's what I figured you'd want to do, Cap."

Danny got a harness for her and held it out. Sorina didn't look scared, exactly, but clearly she didn't like the idea.

"It's either this or we fly into the airport," said Danny. "We can do that."

She'd already vetoed that idea. Still, she made a face as she pulled the safety harness on. The harness provided more protection than a standard sling.

Meanwhile, the flight engineer — the only crewman on the flight besides the two pilots — came back and punched the automatic door opener. A red light came on and the door began sliding toward the rear of the aircraft. Wind swirled through the cabin.

"You going first or last, Cap?" asked Boston. Like Danny, he was dressed in civilian clothes: jeans, a heavy sweater, and a dark down vest.

"I go first. Then send Sorina. You come down behind her."

"Gotcha."

"Wait till I make sure everything's kosher." Though the ship had only its normal navigational lights on, it stood out clearly against the darkness of the sea. A small flashlight began blinking on the forward deck near the bow. The Osprey dipped slightly to the left, then corrected, leveling itself about twenty feet from the deck, moving sideways to keep pace with the ship.

Twenty feet wasn't much for an aircraft, but it was a long fall for a man. The Osprey tucked a few feet lower, nudging toward fifteen. Danny grabbed the rope, then pushed off, shifting his weight as he quickly dropped to the deck.

The dim yellow glow of the ship flashed around him; rather than falling, Danny felt as if the tanker was coming up to get him. He landed with both feet, picture perfect, though this was more a matter of luck than skill on the tanker's rolling deck. He took a half step to his right, steadied himself, then spotted one of the crewmen coming toward him.

The man looked as if he had a gun in his hand. As Danny started to reach for the Beretta hidden below his vest, his eyes focused and he realized the man was only carrying a walkie-talkie.

Boston had already started lowering Sorina. The sling spun slowly as it descended, and though the journey wasn't very long, Sorina looked dizzy when she stepped onto the deck. As soon as Danny released her from the harness, she slipped down, and needed the sailor's help to get back to her feet. It was the first time since they'd met that she seemed vulnerable — or maybe not vulnerable, but at least human.

Boston shot down the line after her, bouncing away from the rope as easily as if he were doing a dance routine. He had a small rucksack with him; inside were two MP5 submachine guns in waterproof plastic sacks.

Not that they should need them. But…

The sailor led them back toward the superstructure of the ship, located near the stern. The first mate was waiting on the starboard side, in front of a closed door.

"You have to stay outside," he told Danny. "The crew should not see."

Danny thought that was a ridiculous precaution — surely the crew had seen the Osprey hanging over the bow — but he was in no position to argue. The mate led them along the railing to a coiled rope ladder.

"When the signal is given, you can descend," the mate told him. "We will be two kilometers from Istanbul." The mate was Indian, and between the wind, the engines, and the retreating Osprey, his words were difficult to understand.

"How long?" asked Danny.

"Thirty minutes. Sometimes there are patrols," added the mate. "If this happens, you must get off the ship immediately."

Boston shot him a look that said no way. With assorted adjectives.

"Not a problem," Danny lied.

The mate left them, walking around the front of the superstructure, perhaps to emphasize that the door nearby was locked. Danny led the others toward the stern, stopping just aft of the superstructure in a darkened spot where he could see across to both sides of the channel.

"Why'd he say we had to jump?" Boston asked. "Are we being set up?"

"I don't think so," answered Danny.

"I don't like this bullshit," said Boston. "It's cold, Cap."

"Not too much I can do about the weather, Boston. Don't tell me you haven't had worse."

"Oh, I've had worse." He leaned on the rail. Sorina was standing a few feet away, gazing at the water. "I don't trust her either, Cap. She's got to be planning something."

"Like what?"

"Something."

They'd run a metal detector around her back at Iasi before boarding the Osprey; she didn't have any weapons.

"Maybe she has second thoughts," said Boston. "I would if were her. And third and fourth. She's giving up her own people."

"Boston, shut your mouth," said Danny.

"Just sayin' the truth, Cap."

Danny walked over to Sorina Viorica. She'd raised the direction of her stare somewhat, and was now gazing at the dark outline of shore as the ship entered the channel. There was a small Turkish warship tied up near the cliff; from this distance, it looked as if everyone aboard were asleep.

"You ready to talk?" Danny asked. "At the train station." Sorina continued to stare at the opposite bank.

"It's going to take a while. Why don't we just get it over with?"

"So you can arrest me?"

She flung her head around. Her eyes shone with fierce anger.

"I'm not going to do anything to you," Danny said. "I'm going to let you go. That's the deal. You tell me where the targets are, I put you on the train."

"I put myself on the train."

"However you want to do it."

She turned back to the water.

The ship had been alone on the Black Sea, but once in the strait, company was plentiful. Several ships sat just outside the navigation channel, stopped for one reason or another. A large, well-lit ferry was just pulling out from a town on the eastern side of the passage. It had obviously been rented for a party, and the sound of music wafted across the water. Danny watched the passengers dance in what seemed like slow motion, their world a million miles from his.

"Another navy ship over there, Cap," said Boston. "Moving."

Danny looked at the eastern shore to their south, following the sergeant's finger. A 150-foot patrol craft was moving out from the shadows, curving in their direction. A 72mm gun turret dominated the front deck.

"Think the Romanians sold us out?" asked Boston.

"They don't know where we are."

Danny looked toward the western shore. It was under a mile away. Both he and Boston could swim that distance, but maybe not Sorina.

And the water would be very, very cold.

"Worse case, that's a life raft up there," said Boston, pointing to a rigid-sided inflatable raft lashed to the side of the superstructure a deck above them. "Or should we take that thing there?"

"That thing" was a lifeboat, which would have to be swung out on its davits. The raft would be easier and less noticeable.

Damn, Danny thought.

Damn. Who the hell gave us away?

A searchlight from the patrol boat cut across the waves, heading toward the hull of the tanker. Danny motioned for the others to move behind the superstructure, where they couldn't be seen. He kept his post, watching the searchlight move in a slow arc back and forth across the water, cursing to himself and considering his next move.

He'd use the tanker as a shield. Would the patrol boat come up alongside? Or would it put down its own boats to board them?

Not very long ago he had worked with a Navy boarding team. Danny tried to remember their procedures. They'd used only one boat, but they had air support to watch in case anyone tried to run away.

The patrol boat continued toward them, its search beam growing stronger. There must be a place to hide inside the ship, he thought. But what sense would that make if the crew was ready to give them up?

Sorina stood near the rail, her expression as stoic as ever.

"How well do you swim?" Danny asked her.

She shook her head.

"You understand the words?"

"I understand," she told him. "I cannot swim."

The searchlight arced upward, sweeping the bow and then the superstructure.

"All right, get the raft," Danny told Boston. "See if there's some sort of rope with it, something we can use to lower her."

"This is part of your plan?" asked Sorina.

"We're ad-libbing."

Boston climbed up over the catwalk above them, examining the raft and how it was held to the ship.

"Don't throw it over yet," Danny told him. "Wait until I tell you."

He trotted aft, planning — once the patrol boat closed in, it would be harder to see them going over.

The boat's searchlight caught the corner of his eye as he cleared the end of the superstructure. It seemed brighter than any light he'd ever seen, a star exploding in his face.

The searchlight swung upward. Danny thought for a moment that it had somehow caught Boston working on the raft, but of course he was out of view. The light moved to the north, toward another ship.

The patrol boat was headed toward that ship, not theirs.

Danny watched for another minute, making sure.

"All right. We don't need the raft," he yelled to Boston. "Not yet, anyway."

The tanker moved more slowly than the mate had predicted, and it was nearly an hour before they got close enough to the city to see its lights. The Blue Mosque sat on a hill at the tip of the oldest quarter, glowing yellow in the distance, spotlights illuminating its dome and minarets.

A long string of ships sat in the water to the east of the mosque, some resting before moving northward or to the west, others waiting to unload cargo at the docks, which were out of sight beyond the jutting land. A train poked along the shore, heading in the direction of the sultan's palace and the ruins beyond, ferrying workers to their late night jobs and returning others home.

The Indian mate appeared from inside the ship, popping out on deck as if sprung there.

"Time," he said loudly. "Time. You must go."

Boston climbed up and undid the raft, lowering it from a pulley set on the stanchion.

"You are taking our raft?" asked the mate.

"You didn't expect us to swim, did you?" asked Boston.

"Our raft."

Danny stepped over to the mate. "Is this a problem?"

"Yes."

"How much?" said Danny.

"Big."

"That wasn't what I mean." He reached into his pocket and took out a roll of American bills. Quickly, he peeled off five hundred dollar bills and gave them to the mate. "That makes it a small problem, right?"

The man looked embarrassed. "No, big problem. You cannot have the raft. It belongs to the ship. Big trouble if you take it."

The mate tried to give the money back but Danny wouldn't take it. Finally he dropped the bills and they scattered over the deck.

Boston had already gotten the raft into the water. Sorina Viorica was standing nearby, watching the bills flutter away in the wind but saying nothing.

"No — you cannot. No."

"I'm taking the raft," Danny told him.

The mate shook his head.

Enough, thought Danny. He pulled out his pistol.

The Indian moved back, shocked.

"I'm sorry, but I'm taking the raft," Danny told him. "There is no F-ing way we're swimming. Sorina, Boston — go."

The Romanian took hold of one of the ropes and climbed over the rail. Boston followed. The Indian mate continued to stare at Danny, his eyes wide with surprise.

"Thanks for your help," Danny told him, reaching over and grabbing the line. "We appreciate it."

He tucked the pistol into his belt and started down. He hadn't had a chance to put his gloves back on, and the wet rope cut into his palms. After a few feet he considered dropping but stuck with it, hands burning. He felt a hand on his leg and lowered himself into the raft, which bobbed beneath his weight but remained afloat.

"Did you shoot him?" asked Sorina as Danny settled in.

"No, I didn't shoot him."

"You cannot corrupt everyone," she told him.

"I didn't want to corrupt him. I just didn't want you to freeze to death in the water."

Boston started the small outboard at the stern of the raft. The high-pitched sound was so loud, the sides of Danny's head began to vibrate.

Istanbul straddled the Bosporus, its eastern and western precincts connected by bridges and ferries. The train station where they were headed was on the eastern bank. Boston circled to the north, crossing behind the tanker and then heading toward the shore. But as they approached, blue lights appeared on the highway above the water. A police car flashed southward. A moment later another one came north, then pulled off the road almost directly opposite them.

Boston cut the engine. "What do you think, Cap?"

It was unlikely that they were waiting for them, but Danny didn't want to take any chances.

"Let's land on the other side," he said.

"You got it, Cap."

Boston spun the boat around, starting out slowly and then picking up speed. A large cruise ship sat docked to the north on Danny's right as they came across, its deck and cabins a yellow glow against the pale black of the night.

"Bring it into that marina?" Boston asked, leaning forward and shouting in Danny's ear.

"No. Somebody might be watching in there. Go up the shoreline a bit, to my right. That way." Danny pointed.

"Probably have some sort of security near that cruise ship."

"Don't get that close. The marina will probably have somebody there too. We want to be in the middle."

Boston found a clump of rocks near what looked like an abandoned field, but that Danny realized was a park when they were about five yards from shore. Despite the cold, a pair of teenage lovers huddled together on one of the benches, oblivious not only to the boat but to the rest of the world.

Sorina hopped out as the raft began to slide sideways back toward the water. Danny jumped out behind her, trotting forward and grabbing her arm.

"I'm not running away," she said. Though she kept her voice soft, she managed to make it sound like a hawk's warning hiss.

"I didn't think you were," Danny told her.

"You don't have to lie, Captain. It doesn't suit you."

Boston, ruck over his back, joined them. By now the two teenagers had broken their embrace and stared at them as they walked past.

"We have to get across," said Danny. "There's a bridge this way."

They began walking, Sorina and Danny in the lead, Boston trailing nonchalantly, the pack over his shoulder. The area mixed small apartment buildings with clusters of commercial buildings in between. They picked their way uphill, following a side street that veered away from their destination, then found themselves in a tangle of streets that were so narrow they would barely rate as alleys back home. A taxi passed on the boulevard just as they reached it. Danny started to hail it, then remembered he hadn't gotten any local money yet. It was too late anyway — the driver was already past.

"This way," he said, pointing to the left.

He checked his watch. It was 2105—five minutes past nine. They were supposed to call at 2130.

A block later he spotted a bank. Stoner had given him a credit card to use for a cash advance or whatever incidentals he needed; Danny slipped his hand into his pocket to make sure it was still there.

"Let's see if there's an ATM," he told the others, nudging Sorina toward the street.

Sorina hesitated.

"They have cameras in the machines," she said. "I don't want to get close."

"Right." He hadn't thought of that. "You stay here with Boston."

Inside the bank's vestibule, he slid the card into the machine and began punching the PIN number. Just as he hit Enter he realized he'd used his PIN, not the one Stoner had given him. He cursed himself, then waited for the machine to tell him he had made a mistake.

The screen stayed blank. It seemed to have eaten his card.

Be patient, he told himself, stifling the urge to punch the machine. Just be patient.

Finally the card spit out. Ignoring the Turkish words on the screen, since he had no idea what they said, Danny put the card back into the machine and typed the right PIN. A few seconds later a screen came up, again in Turkish, asking how much money he wanted.

Fortunately, the numbers were familiar. He pressed the largest denomination: a thousand liras.

Boston and Sorina started walking as soon as they saw him come out. Danny trotted to catch up. He suddenly felt cold — the vestibule had been heated.

"Look for a taxi," he told Boston when he got close. "We're behind on time."

Zen banked the Flighthawk northward, skirting the Moldovan border by less than ten feet. There was no way to gauge where the line would have been on the ground, much less in the air, and he knew that the Moldovan air defense radar couldn't spot the Flighthawk if it flew right in front of the dish. But Colonel Bastian would know, and the mission tapes would reveal the incursion. And that's what counted.

The Romanian forces had just boarded their helicopters a few miles to the southeast. Zen could see them on his sitrep or God's eye-view radar — little bumblebees starting in his direction.

"Force Bravo is en route," he told Dog. "Roger that."

"Any sign of our Russian friends?" "Negative."

"Hopefully, they got that out of their system yesterday," said Zen. "Or maybe they fired the only missiles they had."

The soldiers gave Stoner an AK-47 and four magazine boxes of ammunition. He checked them, then sat on the bench next to Colonel Brasov as the helicopter — an Aerospatiale Puma — skimmed over the ground at treetop level toward Moldova.

The wound in his leg had been a dull, low-level pain, pushed to the back of his consciousness over the past few days. Now the pain spiked, as if provoked by the geography.

Colonel Brasov clapped him on the back. "We are a few miles from the border, Mr. Stoner," he said. "Now would be a good time to find out where we are going."

Stoner glanced at his watch. "It should only be a minute or two."

There was a flood of traffic ahead, cars, buses, and people descending from the tourist area along Istiklal Caddessi. Danny, Boston, and Sorina had walked for nearly fifteen minutes without seeing a cab.

"Wait for the trolley, or go across?" asked Boston.

Danny looked at his watch. The trolleys, modern two-car trains, passed every twenty minutes or so.

"It's time for us to call," he told Sorina.

"Only from the station," she insisted.

"Let's walk across the bridge," he said.

He took Sorina's arm, steering her around a cement toadstool placed to prevent cars from going up on the sidewalk. During the day, both sides of the bridge would be crowded with fishermen, even during the winter months. At night, though, the entire bridge was relatively empty. A few tourists and a pair of aging lovers stared out at the water from the rails.

Danny hurried along, trying to remember the layout of the streets on the opposite shore. The train station was to their left, a few blocks from the ferries. They could walk, but it would be faster with a cab.

Taxis tended to congregate near the foot of the bridge, where there was a tram stop as well as nearby ferry stations and a large mosque. He saw a short line of taxis across the way, but to get there they'd have to cross a solid wall of cars zooming along the highway.

A sign indicated an underground passage near the end of the bridge.

"This way," he said, pointing left and nudging Sorina with him.

The stairs opened into a tunnel lined by shops. The walkway itself had been turned into a bazaar. Dealers hawked a variety of wares from blankets. Everything from baseball caps to 1970s vintage television sets was on sale.

A knot of people appeared before them. Suddenly, Danny found himself in the middle of the swarm, unable to move.

Sorina Viorica slipped from his grasp. Danny edged to the left, following her, but a river of people were descending a set of stairs nearby and the crush separated them. She turned to the left, heading up the stairs; he pushed his way through, momentarily losing her. He became more forceful, shoving to make sure he could get through.

Sorina ran up the stairs. Danny followed, barely able to see her. An elderly woman spun a few steps above him, tumbling into him. He pushed her aside as gently as he could manage, struggling upward.

Sorina was gone.

Danny cursed to himself. He reached the open air and took a step, ready to bolt as soon as he spotted her.

She was sitting on her haunches, leaning against the cement wall of the entrance to his right, breathing hard.

"I can't take it," she said, looking up at him. "So many people."

"Cap?" said Boston, coming up behind him. "Make the call," said Danny, holding the phone out to her. "Go ahead."

Her face was pale, her lips thin. But she shook her head. "The station," she insisted. "Here's a taxi!" yelled Boston.

Everyone in the helicopter stared at Stoner, waiting. They were hovering near the border, waiting to proceed.

"Where are our targets?" asked Colonel Brasov.

"I'll find out in a minute," Stoner told him.

"You said that fifteen minutes ago. I have no time for these games."

Stoner didn't reply. There was no sense saying anything until he heard from Sorina.

The colonel turned around to one of his men and began speaking in loud, fast Romanian. Stoner caught a few words, including an expression he'd been told never to use because of its vulgarity.

Had she played him? Or did she simply have second thoughts?

He hoped it was the latter. He didn't like to think he could be fooled.

But everybody could be fooled. Everybody. The sat phone rang.

Stoner continued to stare out the front of the helicopter's windscreen for another second, then reached for the phone.

"I'msorry we're so late," Danny told Stoner when he answered the phone. "It's all right."

Two trains were coming in, pulling head first into the platform. Danny stepped forward, watching Sorina punch the buttons on the automated ticket machine. She'd already bought four tickets; she was trying to make it hard for them to trace her.

"He's on the line." Danny held the phone out to her. Sorina shook her head and reached into her pocket for a piece of paper.

"You tell me now," said Danny. She gave him the paper.

He took a step toward the light and opened it. They were GPS coordinates in Moldova.

"Stoner, plug these coordinates into your GPS," said Danny.

Danny read them off. Sorina stood at the machine, buying even more tickets.

A few yards away, Boston eyed the station warily. There were about a dozen people on the platform, young people mostly, going or coming from a night out; it was impossible to say. Two women in traditional Muslim dresses, long scarves covering their heads, stood together near a small patch of bushes where the trains would stop.

Sorina looked down at her tickets, shuffling through them.

"All right, Captain, we have them," said Stoner. "You can let her go."

Danny held the phone out toward her.

"You want to say good-bye?" he asked.

She hesitated for just a second before shaking her head.

And with that she turned and ran to the nearby train, reaching it just as the door slapped shut to keep her out. She drew back; the doors opened again and she slipped in. Danny watched it pull from the station.

"Hey, Cap, you know what's strange?" asked Boston.

"What's that?" said Danny, without turning around.

"Clock has different times on each side," said Boston. He pointed to the large disk just overhead. "You'd think they could synchronize it."

"Yeah," said Danny, not paying attention as he watched the train disappear around the curve.

Stoner checked the coordinates against the map and satellite photos. The camp to the north was a small farm with a single large barn, an outbuilding, and a few small cottages nearby. Three-quarters of the boundary was formed by a ragged, meandering creek. The last side of the property was marked by a road that ran along the base of a long rift in the hills. The high spot provided a good area for the main landing; a field about a half mile away would allow a smaller group to land and circle around the rear of the property. The trucks, which had already crossed the border and were nearly thirty miles into Moldova, would arrive roughly ten minutes after the helicopters touched down.

The second target was a church and related buildings in the middle of a small town. A single main street zigged through the hamlet, ducking and weaving around a quartet of gentle hills. An orchard of small trees and an open field sat to one side of the church; a row of houses were on the other. A cemetery spread out behind the church. The easiest landing here would be in the field near the orchard; the geography would make it difficult to surround the building before beginning an attack. The trucks would take another twenty minutes to reach the church; they'd be reinforcements only.

The fact that the target was a church bothered Colonel Brasov a great deal.

"This will be a propaganda coup if you are wrong," he told Stoner.

"Yes."

"And if you are right, it is a great sacrilege." Stoner nodded.

"You will be with me in this group," the colonel told him. "Our helicopter will be the first down."

"Right."

Again Stoner wondered if it was a setup, if he'd been fooled. Perhaps the charges had been set weeks before and were waiting now for the troops — waiting for him.

Doubt gripped him. He thought about the Dreamland pilots, watching from across the border. He envied them. Their jobs were entirely physical. They could push their bodies to perform, rely on their trained reactions, their instincts. They trained and retrained for different situations, dogfights and bombing runs, missile attacks and low level escapes. But Stoner had no such luxury. There was no way to train for what he did. Knowing how to fire a gun into a skull at close range, to fake a language — these were important and helpful tools, but not the substance of his success. His test had come days before in Bucharest, when he'd stared into Sorina's eyes, when he'd stroked her side, when he'd gauged her intent.

That moment was dark to him, lost somewhere down the gap between the ledges he was jumping between. "We are ten minutes away," the colonel told him. "I'm ready," said Stoner.

Zen nudged the throttle, pushing Hawk One closer to the last of the helicopters carrying the Romanian troops. The chopper was flying just above treetop level, tail up, moving fast for a helo but slow compared to the Flighthawk.

"Border in zero-five seconds," warned the computer.

"Thanks," mumbled Zen. He pulled hard on the stick, banking away just before crossing the line.

"They have two targets," Dog told Zen, relaying the information passed along by Stoner. "Sullivan is entering the coordinates. Both are a little more than fifty miles into Moldova. We won't be able to go there, but we can see what's going on."

Dog meant that the radars on the Megafortress would give them a good idea of where the helicopters and the trucks were, and would also allow them to warn the Romanians if a large force of guerrillas or Moldovan soldiers suddenly appeared. But as far as Zen was concerned, they were voyeurs at the edge of battle, watching helplessly.

General Locusta put down the satellite phone and raised his head, scanning his command center at the Second Army Corps headquarters. He needed to keep his head clear, needed to be as calm as possible. It was coming together beautifully, everything going exactly as he had hoped, as he had planned.

"Colonel Brasov has touched down," announced the captain coordinating communications from the assault teams. "No resistance yet."

"Yea!" yelled one of other officers.

"Who said that?" shouted Locusta.

The room fell silent. The general turned his gaze around the room.

"General, it was me," said one of his lieutenants, rising. The young man's face was red.

"This is not a time for youthful exuberance," said Lo-custa. The man's forthrightness impressed him and he tried to soften his tone. "We will each of us do our duty. We have jobs to do."

"Yes, General. I apologize."

"Accepted. Get back to work. All of you, work now. We will capture the criminals and make them pay."

Stoner tightened the strap on the AK-47 and waited as the helicopter closed in on the target in the dark. The pilots had night goggles, but even without them he could see the outlines of the spire in the distance.

Someone began shouting in the back. The helicopter bucked to the side. There was a rush of air.

Now!

Go!

The dim red of the interior lights gave the men just enough light to see as they jumped into the field, the helicopter just touching down.

There was an orange flash near the dark hull of the church, then small polka dots of yellow, tiny bursts of color that glowed into red curlicues.

They're shooting at us, he thought.

She wasn't lying. Thank God.

Behind him, the helicopter moved backward, escaping as a flurry of slugs began sailing through the air. Stoner ran forward, then threw himself down behind the last row of headstones in the large churchyard. Bullets exploded above his head.

The Romanian soldiers began moving up along the graves, yelling directions to each other. Stoner pushed himself to his knees, still struggling to get his breath. The stone to his right exploded into shards, raked by the heavy gun. He threw himself back down, working on his elbows and belly to his right.

The machine gun was in a stairwell next to the church. A low thud shook the ground. The machine gun fire stopped. One of the Romanians had fired a mortar point-blank into the stairwell, killing the gunner.

Someone shouted. Another person, to Stoner's left, shouted back. A flare went off, turning the night white and black.

Six, seven dark shadows ran to the building, jumped down the stairwell. Others came toward them from the road. The mortar fired again; this time it landed short, scattering the guerrillas but not stopping them as they flowed out of the church.

A squad of soldiers had fast-roped down onto the street. They came up now, guns blazing, catching the guerrillas from the rear unawares. Their attack had been coordinated with the mortarman; no shells fell as they worked they way toward the basement stairs.

A loud series of booms followed as the soldiers forced their way inside. A second group, this one from the cemetery, ran up to reinforce them.

Stoner waited, watching. If it was a setup, the place would explode now, booby-trapped.

It didn't. He started in motion again, picking his way through the headstones toward the houses on the other side of the church, guessing that the rebels would be housed there.

The graves were laid out in a haphazard pattern, some very close together, others wide apart, and it took Stoner time to weave his way forward. As he turned to go through a tight cluster, he spotted four or five shadows to the east of the church. His first thought was that he was seeing clothes fluttering in the wind. Then he saw sticks waving with the clothes.

He brought the AK-47 up and fired, screaming as he did. "The guerrillas! They're coming from the other side of the church!"

He shot the magazine so quickly he was surprised when the bolt clicked open. The guerrillas quickly got down and fired back.

Stoner reloaded, then began moving again, sure he would be killed if he stayed where was. He caught part of his arm on a crumpled rosebush. The thorns ripped his flesh.

He kept going, moving to the left. There was more gunfire now, not only in front of him but behind.

Pulling himself along the ground, Stoner felt his hand scrape on cement. He'd come to the path that ran along the east side of the church and went up toward the back of the houses.

The gunfire intensified, rifles flashing back and forth, occasionally interrupted by a grenade blast. Stoner tried to sort out where the forces were. He was facing south, crouched at the corner of the cemetery. The church was in front of him and to his right, a little to the west of his position. The guerrillas had come from a yard to his left.

But the real danger, he thought, was the houses behind him. If there were guerrillas there, they could come in and attack the attackers from the rear. The colonel had detailed a squad to come through the cemetery and head in that direction, but apparently they had been pinned down somewhere along the way.

Stoner turned around so that his back was to the church. Then he began crawling back along the cement walkway.

A line of thin bushes provided some cover to the right, throwing him in shadow. They thickened into a row of hedges after fifteen or twenty feet. Stoner hunkered next to them, trying to listen hard enough to sort the sounds of the night into some kind of sense. But he couldn't hear much over the echoing gunfire behind him.

Stoner rose upright about halfway, just enough to see shadows moving on the other side of the hedges. Dropping to his knee, Stoner sighted the AK-47 along the row of bushes. The cold of the night froze him into position, pushing away time, pushing away fear and even adrenaline. It swathed him in its grasp, and he waited, a stone in the night.

Finally, shadows pushed through an opening thirty yards away. One, two… Stoner waited until five had come through, then pushed his finger hard on the trigger, moving across to his left, taking down the black shapes. Cries of pain and agony rose over the fierce report of the gun. The Kalashnikov clicked empty.

Stoner cleared the mag, slammed in a fresh one, and fired in what seemed to be one motion, one moment. The cold of the night intensified, freezing his breath in his lungs as the shouts and screams crescendoed.

His rifle once more empty, Stoner stomped his right foot down and threw himself to the left, spinning amid the gravestones.

He lay on his back, reloading. Stoner heard a rocket-propelled grenade whistle over his head; the sound was more a hush than a whistle, and the explosion a dull thud against the wall of the church.

A second grenade flew past, even closer. But there was no explosion this time; the missile was a dud.

Meanwhile, the squad that had been pinned down rallied to fight the guerrillas near the hedge. The next ninety seconds were a tumult of explosions and gunfire, tracers flashing back and forth, the darkness turning darker. The mortar began firing again, the thud-pump, thud-pump of its shells rocking the ground.

Cries of the wounded rose above the din. Finally, a pair of soldiers ran forward from Stoner's left — Romanians, rushing the last guerrillas. Three more followed. A man ran up to Stoner and dropped next to him, putting his gun down across his body, obviously thinking he was dead.

"Hey, I'm OK," Stoner said.

The Romanian jumped.

"It's OK," said Stoner. "It's the American. I'm all right."

The soldier said something in Romanian, then got up and followed the others surging into the other yard. Stoner rose slowly. When he saw that the soldiers wouldn't need his help, he turned toward the church.

The trucks had finally arrived, and soldiers were now swarming into the area. The church had been secured; soldiers climbed up the stairs, boxes of documents in their arms. Two guerrillas, bound and blindfolded, sat cross-legged a few feet from the basement entrance. The Romanian soldier behind them raised his rifle toward Stoner as he approached, then recognized him and lowered it.

Stoner pulled his small flashlight from his pocket and shone it into the men's faces, which were bruised and swollen; both looked dazed.

"You speak English?" he asked them, kneeling so his face was level with theirs. "What are your names?"

Neither man said anything.

"English?" Stoner asked again. "Tell me your names." Nothing.

"I can get a message to your families that you're OK," Stoner said. "If I knew who you were."

Their blank stares made it impossible to tell if they were being stubborn or just didn't understand what he was saying.

Stoner switched to Russian, but there was no recognition. The men were Romanian.

"It would probably be better for you if people knew you were alive," he said in English. "There'd be less chance of accidents."

But the men remained silent.

Two other prisoners had been taken, both of them superficially wounded. Neither wanted to talk. At least thirty guerrillas were dead. The Romanians had lost only three men.

With the church and the immediate ground secured, squads of soldiers worked their way through the nearby houses, searching for rebels or anything they might have left behind. Stoner watched them move down the nearby street, surrounding a house, then rousting the inhabitants. Meanwhile, the papers and a computer that had been found in the church basement were loaded into a truck, to be transported to the helicopters and then flown back to Romania.

"Ah, Mr. Stoner," said Brasov when the colonel found him at the front of the church. "Good information, yes. Good job, American."

"What are you going to do with the dead guerrillas?" asked Stoner.

"They come back with us," replied the colonel. "Evidence. If needed."

"Good. Any of these guys look Russian?" "You want them to be Russian?" "Not if they're Romanian." The colonel shrugged.

"I have you to thank. I was not always trusting you," said the colonel, his English breaking down either because of his fatigue or perhaps his excitement. The operation would make him look very good with the general. "I will not forget."

The colonel went off to check with his platoon leaders, urging them to move quickly. The phone lines in and out of the hamlet had been cut, and a pair of cell phone blockers had been set up near the church at the start of the assault, but there was no way to guarantee that word of the operation wouldn't get out. The troops were to muster on the road in ten minutes; they would ride and march back to the helicopters.

Stoner went back over to the dead men, looking at their shoes. To a man they were battered and old; most wore cheap sneakers. He took a few photos with his digital camera, then went down the steps into the church basement to see what the troops had found. The steps opened into a meeting room about thirty by twenty, punctuated by cement columns that held the ceiling up. A small kitchenette sat at the back. There were a few metal chairs scattered to one side, along with a pair of tables propped against the wall. The place looked like a bingo hall between meetings.

Things were different behind the cheap wood panel wall at the back of the kitchenette. A steel door, pockmarked with bullets, had been pushed down off its hinges to reveal a room stacked with bunk beds. At the far end, tables set up as desks with computers and other office gear had been stripped bare by the soldiers. Paper was strewn everywhere; there were stacks of cardboard boxes in the corner. A pair of AK-47s and three crates filled with ammo lay nearby. Two steel footlockers were being guarded by a soldier. Stoner guessed they contained weapons; the letters on the top were Cyrillic.

Russian, though that didn't prove much. He took photos anyway.

Quite a bit of blood had been splattered on the floor and walls.

By the time he came back outside, the soldiers were wrapping up, getting ready to leave. Colonel Brasov saw him and walked over, extending his hand.

"Now I hear from my men you are a hero," said the colonel.

"How's that?"

"You stopped an ambush." The colonel pointed toward the back of the churchyard, where Stoner had cut off the guerrillas. "They had a second barracks in that house. You surprised them when they came to surprise my men."

"Yeah, I guess I did."

Brasov slapped him on the back. "You are a funny American. You kill two dozen men, you take no credit." "I don't think it was two dozen."

"Come on," Brasov told him. "Time for us all to leave. I'll buy you drinks when we are back. Come, come."

Stoner fell in with one of the groups leaving on foot, walking back through the village. The houses were dark. He suspected that the villagers were watching now from behind the curtains and closed doors. Surely they'd known what was going on here. Maybe they were glad to be rid of the guerrillas, or maybe they sympathized with their cause. They were pawns in any event, bystanders whose deaths would not have mattered to either side.

Most of the helicopters had already taken off. The trucks were departing. It was a dangerous time. The operation wasn't over, but it felt like it was, and the adrenaline that had pushed everyone had dissipated. Officers yelled at their men, trying to remind them of that, trying to get them to move quickly, to look alive. But they were slacking too, and the brief but intense fight had left their voices hoarse.

There were less people here than Sorina had predicted. But maybe the evidence he wanted would be in the papers, or on the computer.

Stoner pulled his jacket tighter, suddenly feeling the chill of the night.

Brasov began yelling. The lieutenants started waving their arms, urging the men to board the helicopters immediately.

"What's going on?" Stoner asked the colonel.

"The border stations have been alerted. We have to move quickly."

"Let's play soccer,Dad."

"Julian, not only is it cold outside, but it's dark." "I meant in the basement."

Voda looked at his son, then glanced over at his wife, who was reading on the couch.

"I believe it is past your bedtime, young man," Mircea said.

"Papa said I could stay up late all the weekend."

"I did," conceded Voda. While on most matters he considered himself strict, he could not bring himself to enforce an early bedtime, since the night was the only time he had to play with his son.

"Can we play?" asked the boy.

"All right. Let's go."

"Mama too."

"I can't play," said Mircea. "You can keep score." She rolled her eyes.

"We can keep score ourselves," said Voda. "Let Mama read."

Julian had already grabbed the ball. "If I win, I get extra time to stay up."

"Even more?" said Mircea.

"And what if I win?" said Voda.

"Nothing. Everyone knows you should win."

Voda told the security man on duty in the hall that they would be downstairs, so he wouldn't be alarmed by odd noises. Then he went down the hall and around to the butler's pantry, where the single door to the basement was located. The stairs, two hundred years old and made of rickety wood, creaked as he came down. The landing was poorly lit, and Voda paused, knowing that his son was lurking nearby, preparing to leap out from the shadows to try and scare him.

"Boo!" yelled Julian, charging at him from his left.

Even though he was expecting him, Voda was a little surprised. He jumped back, amplifying his real shock with a mock expression of horror.

The basement of the old building was a fairly scary place, or at least one that could give rise to the sort of stories common in Transylvania. It was all that was left of the first structure built there, around 1650; it had a dirt floor and very solid stone walls. The original building had burned down or perhaps simply been knocked down to make way for a replacement in the early nineteenth century. It had a footprint three times as large as the original, though it was not nearly so large as the castles and mountain palaces that still dotted the region. Most likely, the house had been built as a summer retreat for a well-to-do but not quite noble family, which is how Voda modestly thought of it now.

"The wine cask is one goal," said Julian, leading his father into the open space behind the stairs. "The workshop is the other."

"Whose goal is the cask?" said Voda, as if he didn't know what the answer would be.

"Mine. You have the door to the workshop."

"It's wider than the wine cask."

"Should we put the cask on its side?"

The barrel was empty, so it would have been easy to do, but Voda declined. He knew that Julian wanted him to protect the doorway because he didn't like to go into the dank space they called the workshop. It was actually a storage area dug out behind the old foundation. Covered with spiderwebs, it had a double wall and led to an old root cellar. There was no electricity in that part of the basement, and the bare bulbs in this part of the basement sent only dim shadows in its direction.

"First one to five wins," said Voda.

Julian put the ball down, faked a kick left, then swatted it against the wall on his right. As it bounced back, he ran and toed it forward. Voda couldn't quite hit it with his foot as it dribbled past him, rebounding softly off the wall near the door. Before he could scoop it up, Julian executed a sliding kick that sent the ball soaring through the open door.

"Goaaaaal!" yelled the boy.

"I do not think sliding kicks are legal in our game," Voda teased. "The ground is too hard. You'll rip your pants." "Then we can get new ones."

"Clothes do not grow on trees," said Voda, very serious now as he stepped into the darkness to find the ball amid the clutter of the old storeroom. His son's sense of entitlement bothered him. He did not want him to have to suffer, of course, but still, Justin should understand the value of hard work.

There was a pile of barrels staves immediately to the left of the doorway. Their shapes confused Voda, and he thought for a moment that the ball was among them. Finally he realized it must have gone farther in, and began poking forward cautiously, his eyes still having trouble adjusting to the dark. Ducking toward a shadow in the corner that looked as if it might the ball, he found his head tangled in several long strands of a spiderweb. He tried to pull off the threads, but they stuck to his ear and eyelids even after he rubbed at his face with his sleeve.

"Papa?"

"I'm coming, Julian. It's hard to see the ball." There was a sharp rap and a thud above him. "What was that?" Voda asked his son. "I don't know."

There was another thud, this one toward the back of the house. Then a shock so strong that the ground shook. Voda rushed out of the room. "Papa, what is it?" The boy's face was filled with fear. "Go in there," Voda told him. "Go behind the shelves.

Go."

"Is it an earthquake?"

"Do as I say, Julian."

"I'm afraid. There's spiders, and—"

"Go. I'll be right back."

Voda had already started for the stairs. The ground was shaking heavily now, and while he could not be sure, he thought he heard the pop of automatic rifle fire. He charged up the stairs just in time to hear Oana Mitca, Julian's young nanny and bodyguard, shouting that they were under attack.

"Mircea!" Voda yelled for his wife. "Mircea, where are you?"

The guard from the hall was crouched near the door, watching the exterior through the small side window. He had unholstered his gun.

"Where's my wife?" demanded Voda, but the man didn't react. Bullets burst through the front of the house, shattering the windows.

"Lights! Lights! Kill the lights!" yelled one of the security people.

Voda ran into his office. He ducked down behind the desk and began working the combination to the small safe. He missed the second number and had to start again.

The tumblers clicked; he slapped open the safe and reached into the bottom, where he had two pistols, one a relatively new Glock and the other an ancient American revolver.

As he rushed from the room, bullets began hitting the rear of the house. The security forces outside were firing furiously; one was firing from upstairs.

Oana Mitca, gun drawn, appeared in the hall.

"Where is my wife?" demanded Voda.

"She's in the kitchen. Mr. President, we are under attack."

"Call the army post up the road," said Voda, rushing past. He yelled for Sergi, his assistant, forgetting that he had left about an hour earlier for a dinner date.

He found Mircea huddled behind the counter of the kitchen with Lienart, the security shift supervisor, who was yelling into his satellite phone.

"We are under attack by the guerrillas," said Lienart, who had already called the army. "Send everyone you have. Send them now!"

"Mircea." Voda grabbed his wife's hand. "Come on."

She looked up at him from the floor. "Why?" she said. "Why are they after us?"

"The army is five minutes away, Mr. President," said Lienart.

Just then a rocket-propelled grenade or perhaps a mortar shell struck the back of the house. The brick walls held, but the blast blew out the glass from the windows, sending the shards flying through the rooms. Lienart ran to the window, peered out, then began firing his submachine gun.

"We're going to the basement," Voda said, pulling his wife with him.

"Go!" yelled Oana Mitca.

"Come with us!" Voda told her.

She hesitated for a moment. Voda grabbed her arm.

"Now!" he said.

Another shell rocked the house. This one landed on the roof and descended into the second floor before exploding.

Debris showered from above, and part of the kitchen wall crumbled. A beam slapped downward, striking the nanny across the shoulder and throwing her to the floor. Voda let go of his wife and ran to her. As he tried to pull the timber off, another shell hit the house. Red flashed through the house, the air filled with dust and smoke. "Go," whispered Oana.

Voda glanced across the floor, made sure his wife was still there, then reached under the fallen beam. He leveraged his back against it, pushing it upward. Oana Mitca crawled forward, groaning as she came free.

"We need to protect you," she said. Her voice was practically drowned out by the sound of submachine guns.

"Yes, protect us downstairs," said Voda. "Stay with the boy. That's your post."

He pushed her next to his wife, then led them to the door. Just as they started down the stairs, another large round hit the house. The rumbling explosion shook Voda off his feet; he fell down the stairs, tumbling into the women.

They helped each other up. Voda gave his wife the Glock, figuring she would do better with it than the revolver.

"Where's Julian?" asked Oana Mitca.

"This way, come on," said Voda, leading them back to the storage room. He kept flashlights near the entrance to the room, but it wasn't until he started through the doorway that he remembered them. He went back, calling to his son as he grabbed them.

"Julian, Julian, we're here," he said. "Papa's here."

There was no answer. He switched a flashlight on, worrying that Julian had somehow snuck by him and was upstairs. Then he realized he must be in the root cellar around the back of the workshop, unable to hear. He moved through the cobwebs and dust, snaked around the shelves which had once held preserved vegetables, and pulled up the trapdoor.

"Julian?"

"Papa, I'm scared."

"It's OK. Here's a flashlight." He tossed down the light he was holding and lit another. "Down. Come on," he told his wife and Oana, shining the light for them.

Mircea hesitated.

"Julian's down there," he told her.

"Oh, thank God," she said, squeezing by.

"Come on," he told Oana Mitca.

"No. I will stay here."

"The army is already on its way," Voda told her. "They'll be here in a minute."

"Then I won't have to wait long. Here." Oana Mitca dug into her pocket. "My phone."

Voda took the phone. His impulse was to stay with her, but he didn't want to leave his wife and son alone. "You'll be OK?" he asked.

"Alin, please," said the young woman. "Let me do my job."

"Knock twice on the door," he told her. "Twice, then pause, then again. All right?"

She nodded. Voda gave her his flashlight, then squeezed around the shelves. It was hard to see the stone stairs down to the door of the root cellar, and he slipped on the third step, crashing down to the bottom, against the heavy door. He reached for the doorknob and tried to push it open, but it wouldn't budge.

"Mircea!" he yelled. "Mircea, it's me!"

He couldn't hear anything. He pounded on the door, then tried it again. It still wouldn't budge. Desperate, Voda raised the pistol and was about to fire when he heard the loud creak of the door's hinges.

"It's me, it's me!" he yelled, sliding inside.

"Papa!" yelled Julian.

"Alin, what's going on?" asked his wife.

"The army will be here in a second," he said. "How did you lock this door?"

"I didn't. I jammed the hatchet head against the handle."

She showed him. The blade slipped in under the handle, sliding against the spindle and keeping it from turning.

He took the flashlight from Julian. The walls on either side of the door had iron hooks positioned so a board could be placed across it and keep it closed, but there was no board nearby to lock it down with. He glanced around the cellar, looking for something to use. There had once been a set of shelves against the wall, but the wood was long gone; all that remained were the stones that had supported them.

An old rug sat on the floor. Desperate, Voda grabbed at it, hoping it hid boards. Instead, he saw a smooth piece of metal — a small trapdoor they had never explored.

The explosions were continuing, and growing more intense.

"What happened to the army?" his wife asked.

"They're on their way," Voda told her, dropping to his knees to see if he could open the metal. It was solid, but more the size of a grate than a door.

"Papa are we going to be OK?"

"We're going to be fine Julian. Mircea, help me."

"If we're going to be fine, why are we hiding?" asked Julian.

"Help me with this. Let's see how strong you are," Voda told his son, straining to pull up the metal.

Though thin, the trapdoor was very heavy. Finally, with Mircea's help, Voda managed to push it slightly aside, then pushed with his heels to reveal an opening about two feet by a foot and a half.

It was part of an old cistern system, designed at some point in the very distant past to supply water to the house. The walls were overgrown with blackish moss. About four feet down, it opened into what looked like a tunnel.

"We can't go down there, Voda," said Mircea.

"I didn't say we were going to."

He went back to the door.

"I'm going up and getting some of the boards to block us in," he told his wife. "I'll knock twice, pause, then knock again. Twice. You'll hear my voice."

"Where is the army?" Mircea demanded. "Why aren't they here?"

"Just give them time. I'm sure they're on their way," he said, removing the hatchet. He left her the flashlight. "Lock it behind me."

Zen watched the long-distance radar plot, marking the progress of the helicopters as they left the field near the church. From all reports, the operation had been a resounding success. Both sites had proven to be rebel strongholds, and the guerrillas taken completely by surprise. Roughly a hundred guerrillas were killed or captured at the farm; a little less than half that at the church. Weapons had been stockpiled at both. The church had also yielded a treasure trove of documents and a computer.

"A lot of activity at border post M-2," said Spiff, operating the ground radar upstairs. "Looks like the Moldovans have finally woken up."

Zen switched his video view to Hawk Two, which was near the border post. He was too far to see anything however, and the terrain and nearby trees made it difficult to get much of a view of the small guardhouse unless he went into Moldovan territory — which of course he couldn't do.

"First helicopter is over the line," said Rager, who working the airborne radar.

Zen felt his body starting to relax. The operation would be over inside an hour, and they could stand down.

It wasn't that he felt exhausted. It was that feeling of use-lessness that he wanted to lose.

"Shit — MiGs are back!" said Rager, practically yelling over the interphone. "Afterburners — they're coming west, high rate of speed. Touching Mach 2."

"Here we go again," said Sullivan.

"Colonel, they don't look like they're coming for us," said Rager a minute later. "They're on a direct line for the helicopters."

The inside of the helicopter was so loud it was hard to hear Colonel Bastian's voice over the roar of the blades. Overloaded, the aircraft strained to clear the trees at the edge of the field. It cleared the top branches by only a few feet, but continued to steadily rise.

"This is Stoner!" Stoner yelled into the sat phone.

"Stoner, tell your pilot and Colonel Brasov there are four MiGs headed in your direction," said Colonel Bastian. "They're about ten minutes away."

"Four what?"

"Four MiGs. Russian fighters. Get the hell out of there. Get over the border."

"We're working on it, Colonel."

Stoner turned to Colonel Brasov and tugged on his arm.

"There are fighter jets headed in our direction," he said. "They're about ten minutes away."

Brasov's face blanched — he'd said on takeoff that it would take the helicopter roughly thirty minutes to reach the border— then went forward to the cockpit to tell the pilots.

There were thirty soldiers in the rear of the helicopter, along with two of the prisoners, several boxes from the church, and the two footlockers. There were also several bodies stacked at the back. The Aerospatiale was designed to hold about twenty-five men, counting the crew.

Brasov returned, a frown on his face.

"We will stay very low to the ground," he said, shouting in Stoner's ear. "They may not see us on their radar. But it will be tight."

Dog swung the Megafortress to the south, pushing it closer to the border. The MiGs were definitely heading east in a big hurry, but while they were flying in the general direction of the Romanian helicopters, it was hard to tell if they knew exactly where they were.

"They shouldn't be able to see them on their radar until they're a lot closer," Rager said. "But they will see them. Those are Fulcrum C's. Their radar is almost as good as an F-15's."

"Almost as good" covered a wide ground, but Dog wasn't about to argue the point. Even if the radars' look-down ability wasn't up to American specs, the MiG pilots were on a course to fly almost directly over the choppers.

"Stoner, tell the helicopter pilots to cut south," said Dog. He'd decided to use the sat phone to avoid their conversation being monitored by the Moldovans or Russians. "They're riding right on the vector the Russians are taking."

"Copy." Stoner's voice was nearly drowned out by the heavy whirl of the helicopter engines above him.

"Colonel, we can take them down," said Sullivan. "I have an intercept plotted."

"We can't do it, Sully," said Dog.

"Those helicopters are dead ducks if they attack."

Dog didn't answer. He knew that what Sullivan had said was absolutely true — if the MiG pilots decided they were going to shoot the helicopters down, only luck would save them.

And what was he going to do? Just watch? Dog punched the preset for the Dreamland Command com circuit.

"This is Bastian. I need to speak to General Samson." "Colonel, he's in bed," said Sergeant Louch, who was handling the communications duties at Iasi. "Wake him up." "Yes, sir. Right away."

Zen banked Hawk Two to the north, still watching the border. The helicopters were about twenty miles from Romanian soil. That translated into roughly ten minutes of flying time. The MiGs, afterburners spent, had slowed to about 800 knots, and were about three minutes' flying time from an intercept.

The helos began changing course, turning south. They were in four groups. One group, which had taken off from the farm, was already over the border and thus out of harm's way. The other three groups, with eight helicopters apiece, were strung out in a semicircle approaching northeastern Romania. The helicopters in each group were flying in slightly offset single file, with the groups themselves forming three parallel hashes as they flew.

The trucks, meanwhile, were moving along a pair of parallel roads to the north. They too could be easily targeted, if the MiGs realized they were there.

One flick of his wrist and a push of his finger on the throttle slide at the back of his control yoke and Hawk One would be lined up perfectly for an intercept on the lead MiG. Zen wouldn't even have to shoot it down to protect the helicopters — once he got their attention, he figured, they'd lose interest in everything else.

At least long enough to let them get away.

Surely the colonel was thinking the same thing. Orders or no orders, they had to protect their people. Stoner was in one of the choppers.

Zen pulled back on the Flighthawk's control, adding a little more altitude as he waited for the order to attack.

"What the hell is it, Bastian?"

"We have four Russian MiGs pursuing the Romanian force out of Moldova. I want permission to intercept."

"Where? Romania? You have it."

"No. The MiGs may hit them in Moldova. If I go over the border, I can save them."

"We went over this, Bastian. No. You can't go over the border. No."

"The helicopters will be easy pickings."

"The President's order was nothing over the border. No."

"But—"

"What part of no don't you understand?" "General—"

"This conversation is done, Colonel. If those planes come over the border or attack you directly, take them down. But you stay on our side of the line. Is that clear, Lieutenant

Colonel?"

"Crystal, General."

It was Stoner's idea.

"When its nest is being attacked, a mother bird pretends to be wounded, drawing the predators away," he told Colonel Brasov. "You could do the same — have one of the helicopters peel off, get the MiGs interested, then land. Everyone runs for it — the MiGs come down and investigate. The other choppers get away. We make our way home by foot."

Instead of answering, Brasov went forward to the cockpit. Stoner glanced around the cabin. The troops were quiet now, aware they were pursued. "You are full of good ideas, Mr. Stoner," said the colonel, returning. Then he added, "The Russian aircraft are almost on us."

"How far is the border?"

Brasov just shook his head.

"I would not ask my men to make a sacrifice I was unwilling to make myself," said the colonel. "Neither would I," said Stoner.

Alin Voda clutched the revolver close to his belly as he went up the open stairs into the back of the root cellar beneath his house. In his years since joining Romania's government, and certainly in his time as president, he never thought it possible that he would come under this kind of attack. It seemed a fantasy — an evil fantasy, one where the world had turned upside down.

He knew that the guerrillas — the criminals — were evil, but hadn't allowed himself to think they were this evil.

Hubris. And foolishness.

Someone had killed the lights to the basement area. Voda couldn't see into the rest of the basement, and in fact could barely see a few feet in front of him.

The gunfire was louder, closer, right above them — that must be a good sign, he thought; the army had finally arrived.

Should he even bother getting the wood he'd come for? He wanted a piece of the shelves that formed a wall between this corner and the rest of the storeroom. Pulling off a piece, though, would be not be easy.

He put his left hand out, feeling his way, when light flashed through the basement.

"Oana," he started to say, calling for the bodyguard he'd left behind, when there was another flash and a loud bang. The word died on his tongue, his voice stolen by the shock of the sound.

"What?" yelled Oana Mitca.

Before he could answer, Oana began cursing and screaming. Gunfire flashed in the outer part of the basement. There was another flash and Voda felt himself falling, knocked off the slippery stone step to the bottom of the root cellar. He pushed around, pounded on the door.

"It's me," he told his wife, lowering his voice to a stage whisper, forgetting that he'd said he would knock in a pattern. "Open."

The door pulled back. Mircea shined a flashlight on his face.

"I think they're in the basement," he whispered.

They slapped the door closed and reset the hatchet blade into the handle, restoring the makeshift lock.

Voda leaned against the door. For a moment, he despaired. The dankness of the root cellar reminded him of the prison he'd been locked in the first time he played the piano in defiance of the old regime. The thick, musty scent choked him, paralyzing his will, just as it had the first few months he was in jail.

His younger self had been steadied by music. One by one Mozart's strong notes had returned to his imagination and steeled him for the struggle. But that was long ago. He'd left music behind, rarely played now, either in real life or in his daydreams, contrary to what those around him thought.

What would save him now?

"Papa, what will we do?" asked Julian.

Voda saw his son's face across the room, lit by the dim reflection from the flashlight. It was filled with fear, and it was that fear that brought him back from the abyss. In worrying about his son, he remembered how to act.

"You are going to hide with Mama," he said, springing from the door and moving to the metal trapdoor covering the cistern. "Down into this hole. Both of you."

"But it's a well," said the boy.

"You can hide down there," said Voda.

"Alin, what if it's too deep?" asked his wife.

"Come on. Shine the light." He pushed the metal covering fully aside, then squeezed down. The sides of the hole were slimy, but the stones were spaced far enough apart to let him get a good grip.

There was water four feet down, but it was shallow, less than an inch. The tunnel was wider than the hole, and nearly tall enough for him to stand.

"Mircea, the flashlight!"

She handed it to him. Voda shone it down the tunnel. He couldn't see the end of the passage.

Did it lead out? Or was it simply a trap?

Where would you collect rainwater from?

The roof maybe. Gutters. This might just be a reservoir, with no opening big enough to escape through.

Voda tucked the flashlight into his pants and climbed back up.

"Come on," he told his wife. "Let's go."

"I don't want to die like a rat in a hole," she said.

There was a burst of gunfire from somewhere above. Voda turned the flashlight back on and saw his son's eyes puffing up, on the verge of tears.

"We're not dying." He picked up the boy. "Come on. Out this way. I'll be with you."

Even though it was only four feet, it was difficult to climb down with Julian in his arms. Voda slipped about halfway down. Fortunately, he was able to land on his feet, his back and head slapping against the wall.

Julian began to cry. "That hurt," he wailed.

"Come on, now," Voda told his son. "No tears. And we must be quiet. We're only playing hide and seek until the army comes."

Mircea came down behind him, then reached back and started pulling at the metal top to the hole. "I was going back up," he told her. "No. We stay together."

Voda handed her the flashlight, then reached up and put his fingers against the metal strip that ran along the back of the cistern's metal top. He could hear, or thought he could hear, voices in the basement.

"Come on," he said, turning to get into the tunnel, but the others were ahead of him. His pants were soaked. He pushed ahead, slipping occasionally on the slime and mud, trying not to think that this was a perfect place for rats.

Lined with stone, the tunnel ran straight for about fifteen feet, then made a sharp turn to the left and began sloping upward. It narrowed as it turned, then the ceiling lowered to two feet. They began to crawl.

"I can stand!" shouted Julian suddenly.

"Wait," said Voda. Then, as the sound echoed through the chamber, he added, "Talk in whispers. Or better, don't talk."

Mircea played the light through the black space before them. They were in a round room about the size of the one they had come down to from the basement. At the far end they found another hole leading upward, similar to the one they had used to enter, though it was about eight feet deep and a little wider. There was a piece of metal on top, again similar to what they'd found in the root cellar.

"Maybe they're waiting above," said Mircea.

"Maybe." Voda climbed up the sides of the well. He thought he knew where he was — the barn about thirty feet from the eastern end of the house, used by the security people as a headquarters so they didn't disturb the family.

Centuries before, water would have been collected from the roofs of the building, piped down somehow, then stored so it could be distributed from these wells, both in the house and in the barn. The gutters or whatever had fed them were long gone, but the reservoir system remained.

Would they be safer in the tunnel or in the barn?

He wasn't sure.

It might be a moot question — the metal panel seemed impossible to move.

He braced himself by planting his shoes into the lips between the stones, then put his hand against the metal, pushing.

Nothing.

"Mama, I need the light!" yelled Julian below.

"Hush. Papa needs it."

"I think there is another tunnel this way!"

Voda climbed back down. Again he slipped the last few feet. This time he landed on his butt, but at least didn't hit his head again.

"Let's see this tunnel," he told his son.

It was narrower than the others, but also ended in an upward passage, only four feet off the ground. It too had a metal panel at its end, and Voda levered himself into position, putting his shoulder against it and pushing.

It moved, but just barely — so little in fact that at first he wasn't sure if it actually had moved or if he was imagining it. He braced himself again, and this time Mircea helped. Suddenly, it gave way, and they both slipped and fell together, bashing each other as they tumbled down.

The pain stunned him; the hard smack froze his brain. He found himself trapped in silence.

"Papa?" said Julian.

"Are you all right, Mircea?" he said.

"Yes. You?"

He rose instead of answering. "Up we go," he said, his voice the croak of a frog. "Up, up."

Gripping the edge of the trapdoor, he levered it open. He pulled himself up into darkness. It took a few moments to realize that he wasn't in the garage at all.

"Give me the flashlight," he hissed down to his wife.

"Voda, we can't stay down here."

"Just wait," he said, taking the light. He held it downward, hoping the beam wouldn't be too obvious if someone outside were watching.

The well had a stone foundation, and came up in the middle of a stone floor. Rotted timbers were nearby, some on the ground, others against the wall. But the ceiling and parts of the wall beyond the wood seemed to be stone. He got up, then saw casks against the wall, covered with dirt. Now he could guess where he was: an abandoned cave about seventy-five feet from the house, at the start of a sharp rise. It had once been used as a storehouse for wine or beer.

And probably for making it, if the cistern was here, though that was not important now.

"Alin?"

He went back to the hole and whispered to his wife. "Come up."

"I can't lift Julian."

Voda clambered back down. He had his son climb onto his shoulders, and from there into the cave. Voda turned back to help his wife, but she was already climbing up.

They slipped the metal cover back on the hole. Did they hear voices coming from the tunnel behind them? Voda didn't trust his imagination anymore.

"We're in the cave, aren't we?" said Julian, using their name for the structure.

"Yes."

"How do we get out?" asked Mircea. The cave door was locked from the outside. There was a small opening at the top of the rounded door, blocked by three iron bars. The space between the bars was barely enough to put a hand through.

Voda went to it and looked out into the night. Compared to the darkness of the tunnel and the cave, the outside was bright with moonlight. He saw figures in the distance, near the driveway and the garage.

They were soldiers, or looked like soldiers. An army truck had pulled up to the driveway. Men jumped out.

Thank God!

But Voda's relief died as he saw two men dragging a woman into the light cast by the truck's headlights.

He recognized her clothes and hair. It was Oana Mitca.

The soldiers dumped her the way they would dispose of an old rag. She lay limp.

Another man came up; an officer, he thought. He had a pistol. Oana Mitca's head exploded.

Why would they kill his son's bodyguard?

"Voda?" whispered his wife. "What's going on? I hear trucks, and I heard a shot."

"There's more trouble than I thought," he said, sliding back from the door.

The MiGs had finally realized the helicopters were to their south. They were ten miles from the closest group. Even if the pilots took their time and waited for the perfect shot, they'd be in position less than three minutes from now. And still far from the border.

"Why the hell aren't we doing something?" snapped Zen over the interphone. "Colonel, you can't keep us here."

"We have our orders," responded Dog.

Zen checked the positions on his screen. He could get Hawk One over the border, tell the computer to take out the lead MiG. Even if the Megafortress flew west, out of control range, the onboard computer guiding the robot plane would take it in for the kill.

He had to do it. He couldn't let the men aboard those choppers die.

If he did that, he knew he'd be disobeying a direct order. He'd be out of the Air Force, maybe even imprisoned.

"Colonel, we have to do something."

"No, Zen. Keep the planes where they are. Be ready if they come over the border. If you can't follow my orders, you'll be relieved."

Fuck that, thought Zen.

It was only with the greatest self-control that he managed to keep his mouth shut — and the planes where they were.

On the sitrep view of the radar screen Dog was watching, it looked as if one of the helicopters stopped in midair.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"He just popped up, gaining altitude," said Rager. "He's making himself a target. It's a decoy."

Dog saw the helicopter peeling back, trying to decoy the MiGs away. It was a noble idea, but it wasn't going to work— there were too many MiGs.

"Sully, open bomb bay doors. Prepare to fire Scorpions."

"You got it, Colonel."

Sullivan quickly tapped the controls and the Megafortress rocked with the opening of the bay doors.

"Scorpion One is locked on target!" yelled Sullivan. "Fire. Lock the second — lock them all, and fire." Sullivan quickly complied.

Not one member of the crew objected. They'd all put their careers, possibly a good portion of their lives, in Dog's hands. They knew the orders, realized how explicit they were: Do not under any circumstance cross the border or fire across the border, do not engage any Russian aircraft.

Under any circumstance.

Everyone aboard the Johnson wanted to disobey those orders, Dog realized, and would, gladly it seemed, if he led the way.

Was it because he had a Medal of Honor?

They were good men, men who knew right from wrong and valued honor and duty as much as he did; they weren't easily influenced by medals.

Dog checked his radar screen. The first MiG had suddenly jinked back east. Missile one, tracking it, jerked east toward the border.

"Self-destruct missile one," said Dog.

"Colonel?"

"Sully, hit the self-destruct before it goes over the border. Now!"

Dog tapped his armament panel to bring up the missile controls, but it was unnecessary — Sullivan did as he was told. He did the same for missile three as its target also turned east, taking its missile with it.

The last two aircraft continued toward the helicopters.

"Missile two, tracking and true," said Sullivan. There was a tremor in his voice. "Missile four, tracking and true."

"Self-destruct missile two," said Dog as the missile neared the border.

"Colonel?"

Dog ignored him, reaching for the panel and killing both missiles himself.

"Missile launch," said Rager, his voice solemn.

A launch warning lit on his dashboard. One of the MiGs had just fired a pair of heat seekers at the helicopter.

Stoner grabbed onto the spar as the helicopter whirled hard into the turn. The pilot had spotted a small clearing on the hillside ahead. He launched flares in hopes of decoying the Russian missiles, then pushed the nose of the helicopter down, aiming for the hill.

The helicopter blades, buffeted by the force of the turn,made a loud whomp-whomp-whomp, as if they were going to tear themselves off.

Everyone inside the helicopter was silent, knowing what was going on outside but not really knowing, ready but not ready.

"When we get out, run!" Brasov yelled. "Run from the helicopter. As soon as you can, make your best way over the border. It is seven miles southwest. Seven miles! A few hours' walk."

The men closest to him nodded, grim-faced.

The helicopter pitched hard to the left.

"You are a brave man, braver than I gave you credit for when we met," Colonel Brasov told Stoner as the force of the turn threw the two men together.

"You too," said Stoner.

"Until we meet."

Brasov held out his hand.

As Stoner reached for it, he thought of Sorina Viorica, the way she'd looked on the street in Bucharest. He thought of the mission he'd had in China a year before, where he came close to being killed. He thought of his first day at the Agency, his graduation from high school, a morning in the very distant past, being driven by his mom to church with the rain pouring and the car warm and safe.

There was a flash above him and a loud clap like thunder.

And then there was nothing, not even pain or regret.