The Bear and the Dragon

CHAPTER 60

It was the same Spetsnaz people they'd trained for the past month or so. Nearly everyone on the transport aircraft was a commissioned officer, doing sergeants' work, which had its good points and its bad ones. The really good thing was that they all spoke passable English. Of the RAINBOW troopers, only Ding Chavez and John Clark spoke conversational Russian.

The maps and photos came from SRV and CIA, the latter transmitted to the American Embassy in Moscow and messengered to the military airfield out of which they'd flown. They were in an Aeroflot airliner, fairly full with over a hundred passengers, all of them soldiers.

"I propose that we divide by nationalities," Kirillin said. "Vanya, you and your RAINBOW men take this one here. My men and I will divide the rest among us, using our existing squad structures."

"Looks okay, Yuriy. One target's pretty much as good as another. When will we be going in?"

"Just before dawn. Your helicopters must have good range to take us all the way down, then back with only one refueling."

"Well, that'll be the safe part of the mission."

"Except this fighter base at Anshan," Kirillin said. "We pass within twenty kilometers of it."

"Air Force is going to hit that, they tell me, Stealth fighters with smart bombs, they're gonna post-hole the runways before we drive past."

"Ah, that is a fine idea," Kirillin said.

"Kinda like that myself," Chavez said. "Well, Mr. C, looks like I get to be a soldier again. It's been a while."

"What fun," Clark observed. Oh, yeah, sitting in the hack of a helicopter, going deep into Indian Country, where there were sure to be people with guns. Well, could be worse. Going in at dawn, at least the gomers on duty would be partly asleep, unless their boss was a real prick. How tough was discipline in the People's Liberation Army? John wondered. Probably pretty tough. Communist governments didn't encourage back talk.

"How, exactly, are we supposed to disable the missiles?" Ding asked.

"They're fueled by a ten-centimeter pipe-two of them, actually- from underground fueling tanks adjacent to the launch silo. First, we destroy the pipes," Kirillin said. "Then we look for some way to access the missile silo itself. A simple hand grenade will suffice. These are delicate objects. They will not sustain much damage," the general said confidently.

"What if the warhead goes off?" Ding asked.

Kirillin actually laughed at that. "They will not, Domingo Stepanovich. These items are very secure in their arming procedures, for all the obvious reasons. And the sites themselves will not be designed to protect against a direct assault. They are designed to protect against nuclear blast, not a squad of engineer-soldiers. You can be sure of that."

Hope you're right on that one, fella, Chavez didn't say aloud.

"You seem knowledgeable on this subject, Yuriy."

"Vanya, this mission is one Spetsnaz has practiced more than once. We Russians have thought from time to time about taking these missiles-how you say? Take them out of play, yes?"

"Not a bad idea at all, Yuriy. Not my kind of weapons," Clark said. He really did prefer to do his killing close enough to see the bastard's face. Old habits died hard, and a telescopic sight was just as good as a knife in that respect. Much better. A rifle bullet didn't make people flop around and make noise the way a knife across the throat did. But death was supposed to be administered one at a time, not whole cities at once. It just wasn't tidy or selective enough.

Chavez looked at his Team-2 troopers. They didn't look overtly tense, but good soldiers did their best to hide such feelings. Of their number, only Ettore Falcone wasn't a career soldier, but instead a cop from the Italian Carabinieri, which was about halfway between military and police. Chavez went over to see him.

"How you doing, BIG BIRD?" Ding asked.

"It is tense, this mission, no?" Falcone replied.

"It might be. You never really know until you get there."

The Italian shrugged. "As with raids on mafiosi, sometimes you kick the door and there is nothing but men drinking wine and playing cards. Sometimes they have machinapistoli, but you must kick the door to find out."

"You do a lot of those?"

"Eight," Falcone replied. "I am usually the first one through the door because I am usually the best shot. But we have good men on the team there, and we have good men on the team here. It should go well, Domingo. I am tense, yes, but I will be all right. You will see," BIG BIRD ended. Chavez clapped him on the shoulder and went off to see Sergeant-Major Price.

"Hey, Eddie."

"Do we have a better idea for the mission yet?"

"Getting there. Looks like mainly a job for Paddy, blowing things up."

"Connolly's the best explosives man I've ever seen," Price observed. "But don't tell him that. His head's swollen enough already."

"What about Falcone?"

"Ettore?" Price shook his head. "I will be very surprised if he puts a foot wrong. He's a very good man, Ding, bloody machine-a robot with a pistol. That sort of confidence rarely goes bad. Things are too automatic for him."

"Okay, well, we've picked our target. It the north- and east-most silo. Looks like it's on fairly flat ground, two four-inch pipes running to it. Paddy'll blow those, and then try to find a way to pop the cover off the silo or otherwise find an access door-there's one on the overhead. Then get inside, toss a grenade to break the missile, and we get the hell out of Dodge City."

"Usual division of the squad?" Price asked. It had to be, but there was no harm in making sure.

Chavez nodded. "You take Paddy, Louis, Hank, and Dieter, and your team handles the actual destruction of the missile. I take the rest to do security and overwatch." Price nodded as Paddy Connolly came over.

"Are we getting chemical gear?"

"What?" Chavez asked.

"Ding, if we're going to be playing with bloody liquid-fueled missiles, we need chemical-warfare gear. The fuels for these things- you don't want to breathe the vapor, trust me. Red-fuming nitric acid, nitrogen tetroxide, hydrazine, that sort of thing. Those are bloody corrosive chemicals they use to power rockets, not like a pint of bitter at the Green Dragon, I promise you. And if the missiles are fueled and we blow them, well, you don't want to be close, and you definitely don't want to be downwind. The gas cloud will be bloody lethal, like what you chaps use in America to execute murderers, but rather less pleasant."

"I'll talk to John about that." Chavez made his way back forward.

"Oh, shit," Ed Foley observed when he took the call. "Okay, John, I'll get hold of the Army on that one. How long 'til you're there?"

"Hour and a half to the airfield."

"You okay?"

"Yeah, sure, Ed, never been better."

Foley was struck by the tone. Clark had been CIA's official iceman for close to twenty years. He'd gone out on all manner of field operations without so much as a blink. But being over fifty-had it changed him, or did he just have a better appreciation of his own mortality now? The DCI figured that sort of thing came to everybody. "Okay, I'll get back to you." He switched phones. "I need General Moore."

"Yes, Director?" the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said in greeting. "What can I do for you?"

"Our special-operations people say they need chemical-warfare gear for their mission and-"

"Way ahead of you, Ed. SOCOM told us the same thing. First Armored's got the right stuff, and it'll be waiting for them at the field."

"Thanks, Mickey."

"How secure are those silos?"

"The fueling pipes are right in the open. Blowing them up ought not to be a problem. Also, every silo has a metal access door for the maintenance people, and again, getting into it ought not to be a problem. My only concern is the site security force; there may be as much as a whole infantry battalion spread out down there. We're waiting for a KH-11 to overfly the site now for a final check."

"Well, Diggs is sending Apaches down to escort the raiding force. That'll be an equalizer," Moore promised. "What about the command bunker?"

"It's centrally located, looks pretty secure, entirely underground, but we have a rough idea of the configuration from penetrating radar." Foley referred to the KH-14 Lacrosse satellite. NASA had once published radar photos that had shown underground tributaries of the Nile that emptied into the Mediterranean Sea at Alexandria. But the capability hadn't been developed for hydrologists. It had also spotted Soviet missile silos that the Russians had thought to be well camouflaged, and other sensitive facilities, and America had wanted to let the Russians know that the locations were not the least bit secret. "Mickey, how do you feel about the mission?"

"I wish we had enough bombs to do it," General Moore replied honestly.

"Yeah," the DCI agreed.

The Politburo meeting had gone past midnight. "So, Marshal Luo," Qian said, "things went badly yesterday. How badly? We need the truth here," he concluded roughly. If nothing else, Qian Kun had made his name in the past few days, as the only Politburo member with the courage to take on the ruling clique, expressing openly the misgivings that they'd all felt. Depending on who won, it could mean his downfall, either all the way to death or simply to mere obscurity, but it seemed he didn't care. That made him unusual among the men in the room, Fang Gan thought, and it made him a man to be respected.

"There was a major battle yesterday between 34th Shock Army and the Russians. It appears to have been a draw, and we are now maneuvering to press our advantage," the Defense Minister told them. They were all suffering from fatigue in the room, and again the Finance Minister was the only one to rise to his words.

"In other words, a battle was fought, and we lost it," Qian shot back.

"I didn't say that!" Luo responded angrily.

"But it is the truth, is it not?" Qian pressed the point.

"I told you the truth, Qian!" was the thundering reply.

"Comrade Marshal," the Finance Minister said in a reasonable tone, "you must forgive me for my skepticism. You see, much of what you've said in this room has turned out to be less than completely accurate. Now, I do not blame you for this. Perhaps you have been misinformed by some of your subordinates. All of us are vulnerable to that, are we not? But now is the time for a careful examination of objective realities. I am developing the impression that objective reality may be adverse to the economic and political objectives on whose pursuit this body has sent our country and its people. Therefore, we must now know what the facts are, and what also are the dangers facing us. So, Comrade Marshal, now, what is the military situation in Siberia?"

"It has changed somewhat," Luo admitted. "Not entirely to our benefit, but the situation is by no means lost." He'd chosen his words a little too carefully.

By no means lost, everyone around the table knew, was a delicate way of saying that a disaster had taken place. As in any society, if you knew the aphorisms, you could break the code. Success here was always proclaimed in the most positive terms. Setbacks were brushed aside without admission as something less than a stunning success. Failure was something to be blamed on individuals who'd failed in their duty- often to their great misfortune. But a real policy disaster was invariably explained as a situation that could yet be restored.

"Comrades, we still have our strengths," Zhang told them all. "Of all the great powers of the world, only we have intercontinental missiles, and no one will dare strike us hard while we do,"

"Comrade, two days ago the Americans totally destroyed bridges so stout that one would have thought that only an angry deity could so much as scratch them. How secure can those missiles be, when we face a foe with invisible aircraft and MAGICal weapons?" Qian asked. "I think we may be approaching the time when Shen might wish to approach America and Russia to propose an end to hostilities," he concluded.

"You mean surrender?" Zhang asked angrily. "Never!"

It had already started, though the Politburo members didn't know it yet. All over China, but especially in Beijing, people owning computers had logged onto the Internet. This was especially true of young people, and university students most of all.

The CIA feed, http://www.darkstarfeed.cia.gov/siberiabattle/realtime.ram, had attracted a global audience, catching even the international news organizations by surprise. CNN, Fox, and Europe's SkyNews had immediately pirated it, and then called in their expert commentators to explain things to their viewers in the first continuous news coverage of an event since February of 1991. CIA had taken to pirating CNN in turn, and now available on the CIA website were live interviews from Chinese prisoners. They spoke freely, they were so shocked at their fates-stunned at how near they'd come to death, and so buoyantly elated at their equally amazing survival when so many of their colleagues had been less fortunate. That made for great verbosity, and it was also something that couldn't be faked. Any Chinese citizen could have spotted false propaganda, but equally, any could discern this sort of truth from what he saw and heard.

The strange part was that Luo hadn't commented on the Internet phenomenon, thinking it irrelevant to the political facts of life in the PRC, but in that decision he'd made the greatest political misapprehension of his life.

They met in college dorm rooms first of all, amid clouds of cigarette smoke, chattering animatedly among themselves as students do, and like students everywhere they combined idealism with passion. That passion soon turned to resolve. By midnight, they were meeting in larger groups. Some Leaders emerged, and, being Leaders, they felt the need to take their associates somewhere. When the crowds mingled outside, the individual Leaders of smaller groups met and started talking, and super-Leaders emerged, rather like an instant military or political hierarchy, absorbing other groups into their own, until there were six principal Leaders of a group of about fifteen hundred students. The larger group developed and then fed upon its own energy. Students everywhere are well supplied with piss and vinegar, and these Chinese students were no different. Some of the boys were there hoping to score with girls-another universal motivation for students-but the unifying factor here was rage at what had happened to their soldiers and their country, and even more rage at the lies that had gone out over State TV, lies so clearly and utterly refuted by the reality they saw over the Internet, a source they'd learned to trust.

There was only one place for them to go, Tiananmen Square, the "Square of Heavenly Peace," the psychological center of their country, and they were drawn there like iron filings to a magnet. The time of day worked for them. The police in Beijing, like police everywhere, worked twenty-four-hour days divided into three unequal shifts, and the shift most lightly manned was that from 2300 to 0700. Most people were asleep then, and as a direct result there was little crime to suppress, and so this shift was the smallest in terms of manning, and also composed of those officers loved the least by their commanders, because no man in his right mind prefers the vampire life of wakefulness in darkness to that in the light of day. And so the few police on duty were those who had failed to distinguish themselves in their professional skills, or were disliked by their captains, and returned the compliment by not taking their duties with sufficient gravity.

The appearance of the first students in the square was barely noted by the two policemen there. Their main duties involved directing traffic and/or telling (frequently inebriated) foreign tourists how to stumble back to their hotels, and the only danger they faced was usually that of being blinded by the flashes of foreign cameras held by oafishly pleasant but drunken gwai.

This new situation took them totally by surprise, and their first reaction was to do nothing but watch. The presence of so many young people in the square was unusual, but they weren't doing anything overtly unlawful at the moment, and so the police just looked on in a state of bemusement. They didn't even report what was going on because the watch captain was an ass who wouldn't have known what to do about it anyway.

"What if they strike at our nuclear arms?" Interior Minister Tong Jie asked.

"They already have," Zhang reminded them. "They sank our missile submarine, you will recall. If they also strike at our land-based missiles, then it would mean they plan to attack us as a nation, not just our armed forces, for then they would have nothing to hold them back. It would be a grave and deliberate provocation, is that not so, Shen?"

The Foreign Minister nodded. "It would be an unfriendly act."

"How do we defend against it?" Tan Deshi asked.

"The missile field is located far from the borders. Each is in a heavily constructed concrete silo," Defense Minister Luo explained. "Moreover, we have recently fortified them further with steel armor to deflect bombs that might fall on them. The best way to add to their defense would be to deploy surface-to-air missiles."

"And if the Americans use their stealthy bombers, then what?" Tan asked.

"The defense against that is passive, the steel hats we put on the silos. We have troops there-security personnel of Second Artillery Command-but they are there only for site security against intruders on the ground. If such an attack should be made, we should launch them. The principle is to use them or lose them. An attack against our strategic weapons would have to be a precursor to an attack against our nationhood. That is our one trump card," Luo explained. "The one thing that even the Americans truly fear."

"Well, it should be," Zhang Han Sen agreed. "That is how we tell the Americans where they must stop and what they must do. In fact, it might now be a good time to tell the Americans that we have those missiles, and the willingness to use them if they press us too hard."

"Threaten the Americans with nuclear arms?" Fang asked. "Is that wise? They know of our weapons, surely. An overt threat against a powerful nation is most unwise."

"They must know that there are lines they may not cross," Zhang insisted. "They can hurt us, yes, but we can hurt them, and this is one weapon against which they have no defense, and their sentimentality for their people works for us, not them. It is time for America to regard us as an equal, not a minor country whose power they can blithely ignore."

"I repeat, Comrade," Fang said, "that would be a most unwise act. When someone points a gun at your head, you do not try to frighten him."

"Fang, you have been my friend for many years, but in this you are wrong. It is we who hold that pistol now. The Americans only respect strength controlled by resolve. This will make them think. Luo, are the missiles ready for launch?"

The Defense Minister shook his head. "No, yesterday we did not agree to ready them. To do so takes about two hours-to load them with fuel. After that, they can be kept in a ready condition for about forty-eight hours. Then you defuel them, service them-it takes about four hours to do that-and you can refuel them again. We could easily maintain half of them in a ready-launch condition indefinitely."

"Comrades, I think it is in our interest to ready the missiles for flight."

"No!" Fang countered. "That will be seen by the Americans as a dangerous provocation, and provoking them this way is madness!"

"And we should have Shen remind the Americans that we have such weapons, and they do not," Zhang went on.

"That invites an attack on us!" Fang nearly shouted. "They do not have rockets, yes, but they have other ways of attacking us, and if we do that now, when a war is already under way, we guarantee a response."

"I think not, Fang," Zhang replied. "They will not gamble millions of their citizens against all of ours. They have not the strength for such gambling."

"Gambling, you say. Do we gamble with the life of our country? Zhang, you are mad. This is lunacy," Fang insisted.

"I do not have a vote at this table," Qian observed. "But I have been a Party member all of my adult life, and I have served the People's Republic well, I think. It is our job here to build a country, not destroy it. What have we done here? We've turned China into a thief, a highway robber-and a failed highway robber at that! Luo has said it. We have lost our play for riches, and now we must adjust to that. We can recover from the damage we have done to our country and its people. That recovery will require humility on our part, not blustering defiance. To threaten the Americans now is an act of weakness, not strength. It's the act of an impotent man trying to show off his gau. It will be seen by them as a foolish and reckless act."

"If we are to survive as a nation-if we are to survive as the rulers of a powerful China," Zhang countered, "we must let the Americans know that they cannot push us farther. Comrades, make no mistake. Our lives lie on this table." And that focused the discussion. "I do not suggest that we launch a nuclear strike on America. I propose that we demonstrate to America our resolve, and if they press us too far, then we will punish them-and the Russians. Comrades, I propose that we fuel up our missiles, to place them in a ready posture, and then have Shen tell the Americans that there are limits beyond which we cannot be pushed without the gravest possible consequences."

"No!" Fang retorted. "That is tantamount to the threat of nuclear war. We must not do such a thing!"

"If we do not, then we are all doomed," said Tan Deshi of the Ministry of State Security. "I am sorry, Fang, but Zhang is correct here. Those are the only weapons with which we can hold the Americans back. They will be tempted to strike at them-and if they do…"

"If they do, then we must use them, because if they take those weapons away from us, then they can strike us at will, and destroy all we have built in sixty years," Zhang concluded. "I call a vote."

Suddenly and irrationally, Fang thought, the meeting had struck out on a path with no logic or direction, leading to disaster. But he was the only one who saw this, as for the first time in his life he took a stand against the others. The meeting finally broke up. The Politburo members drove directly home. None of them passed through Tiananmen Square on the way, and all of them fell rapidly asleep.

There were twenty-five UH-60A Blackhawks and fifteen Apaches on the ramp. Every one had stubby wings affixed to the fuselage. Those on the Blackhawks were occupied with fuel tanks. The Apaches had both fuel and rockets. The flight crews were grouped together, looking at maps.

Clark took the LEAD. He was dressed in his black Ninja gear, and a soldier directed him and Kirillin-he was in the Snowflake camouflage used by Russian airborne troops-to Colonel Boyle.

"Howdy, Dick Boyle."

"I'm John Clark, and this is Lieutenant General Yuriy Kirillin. I'm RAINBOW," John explained. "He's Spetsnaz."

Boyle saluted. "Well, I'm your driver, gentlemen. The objective is seven hundred sixteen miles away. We can just about make it with the fuel we're carrying, but we're going to have to tank up on the way back. We're doing that right here"-he pointed to a spot on the navigation chart-"hilltop west of this little town named Chicheng. We got lucky. Two C-130s are going to do bladder drops for us. There will be a fighter escort for top cover, F-15s, plus some F-l6s to go after any radars along the way, and when we get to about here, eight F-117s are going to trash this fighter base at Anshan. That should take care of any Chinese fighter interference. Now, this missile base has an associated security force, supposed to be battalion strength, in barracks located here"-this time it was a satellite photo-"and five of my Apaches are going to take that place down with rockets. The others will be flying direct support. The only other question is, how close do you want us to put you on these missile silos?"

"Land right on top of the bastards," Clark told him, looking over at Kirillin.

"I agree, the closer the better."

Boyle nodded. "Fair enough. The helicopters all have numbers on them indicating the silo they're flying for. I'm flying LEAD, and I'm going right to this one here."

"That means I go with you," Clark told him.

"How many?"

"Ten plus me."

"Okay, your chem gear's in the aircraft. Suit up, and we go. Latrine's that way," Boyle pointed. It would be better for every man to take a piss before the flight began. "Fifteen minutes."

Clark went that way, and so did Kirillin. Both old soldiers knew what they needed to do in most respects, and this one was as vital as loading a weapon.

"Have you been to China before, John?"

"Nope. Taiwan once, long ago, to get screwed, blued, and tattooed."

"No chance for that on this trip. We are both too old for this, you know."

"I know," Clark said, zipping himself up. "But you're not going to sit back here, are you?"

"A Leader must be with his men, Ivan Timofeyevich."

"That is true, Yuriy. Good luck."

"They will not launch a nuclear attack on my country, or on yours," Kirillin promised. "Not while I live."

"You know, Yuriy, you might have been a good guy to have in 3rd SOG."

"And what is that, John?"

"When we get back and have a few drinks, I will tell you."

The troops suited up outside their designated helicopters. The U.S. Army chemical gear was bulky, but not grossly so. Like many American-issue items, it was an evolutionary development of a British idea, with charcoal inside the lining to absorb and neutralize toxic gas, and a hood that-

"We can't use our radios with this," Mike Pierce noted. "Screws up the antenna."

"Try this," Homer Johnston suggested, disconnecting the antenna and tucking it into the helmet cover.

"Good one, Homer," Eddie Price said, watching what he did and trying it himself. The American-pattern Kevlar helmet fit nicely into the hoods, which they left off in any case as too uncomfortable until they really needed it. That done, they loaded into their helicopters, and the flight crews spooled up the General Electric turboshaft engines. The Blackhawks lifted off. The special-operations troops were set in what were-for military aircraft-comfortable seats, held in place with four-point safety belts. Clark took the jump seat, aft and between the two pilots, and tied into the intercom.

"Who, exactly, are you?" Boyle asked.

"Well, I have to kill you after I tell you, but I'm CIA. Before that, Navy."

"SEAL?" Boyle asked.

"Budweiser badge and all. Couple years ago we set up this group, called RAINBOW, special operations, counter-terror, that sort of thing."

"The amusement park job?"

"That's us."

"You had a -60 supporting you for that. Who's the driver?"

"Dan Malloy. Goes by 'BEAR' when he's driving. Know him?"

"Marine, right?" "Yep." Clark nodded.

"Never met him, heard about him a little. I think he's in D.C. now."

"Yeah, when he left us he took over VMH-1."

"Flies the President?"

"Correct."

"Bummer," Boyle observed.

"How long you been doing this?"

"Flying choppers? Oh, eighteen years. Four thousand hours. I was born in the Huey, and grew up into these. Qualified in the Apache, too."

"What do you think of the mission?" John asked.

"Long" was the reply, and Clark hoped that was the only cause for concern. A sore ass you could recover from quickly enough.

"I wish there was another way to do this one, Robby," Ryan said over lunch. It seemed utterly horrid to be sitting here in the White House Mess, eating a cheeseburger with his best friend, while others-including two people he knew well, Jack had learned-were heading into harm's way. It was enough to kill his appetite as dead as the low-cholesterol beef in the bun. He set it down and sipped at his Coke.

"Well, there is-if you want to wait the two days it's going to take Lockheed-Martin to assemble the bombs, then a day to fly them to Siberia, and another twelve hours to fly the mission. Maybe longer. The Black Jet only flies at night, remember?" the Vice President pointed out.

"You're handling it better than I am."

"Jack, I don't like it any more than you do, okay? But after twenty years of flying off carriers, you learn to handle the stress of having friends in tight corners. If you don't, might as well turn in your wings. Eat, man, you need your strength. How's Andrea doing?"

That generated an ironic smile. "Puked her guts out this morning. Had her use my own crapper. It's killing her, she was embarrassed as a guy caught naked in Times Square."

"Well, she's in a man's job, and she doesn't want to be seen as a wimp," Robby explained. "Hard to be one of the boys when you don't have a dick, but she tries real hard. I'll give her that."

"Cathy says it passes, but it isn't passing fast enough for her." He looked over to see Andrea standing in the doorway, always the watchful protector of her President.

"She's a good troop," Jackson agreed.

"How's your dad doing?"

"Not too bad. Some TV ministry agency wants him and Gerry Patterson to do some more salt-and-pepper shows on Sunday mornings. He's thinking about it. The money could dress up the church some."

"They were impressive together."

"Yeah, Gerry didn't do bad for a white boy-and he's actually a pretty good guy, Pap says. I'm not sure of this TV-ministry stuff, though. Too easy to go Hollywood and start playing to the audience instead of being a shepherd to your flock."

"Your father's a pretty impressive gent, Robby."

Jackson looked up. "I'm glad you think so. He raised us pretty good, and it was pretty tough on him after Mom died. But he can be a real sundowner. Gets all pissy when he sees me drink a beer. But, what the hell, it's his job to yell at people, I suppose."

"Tell him that Jesus played bartender once. It was his first public miracle."

"I've pointed that out, and then he says, if Jesus wants to do it, that's okay for Jesus, boy, but you ain't Jesus." The Vice President had a good chuckle. "Eat, Jack."

"Yes, Mom."

"This food isn't half bad," Al Gregory said, two miles away in the wardroom of USS Gettysburg.

"Well, no women and no booze on a ship of war," Captain Blandy pointed out. "Not this one yet, anyway. You have to have some diversion. So, how are the missiles?"

"The software is fully loaded, and I e-mailed the upgrade like you said. So all the other Aegis ships ought to have it."

"Just heard this morning that the Aegis office in the Pentagon is having a bit of a conniption fit over this. They didn't approve the software."

"Tell 'em to take it up with Tony Bretano," Gregory suggested.

"Explain to me again, what exactly did you upgrade?"

"The seeker software on the missile warhead. I cut down the lines of code so it can recycle more quickly. And I reprogrammed the nutation rate on the laser on the fusing system so that I can handle a higher rate of closure. It should obviate the problem the Patriots had with the Scuds back in '91-I helped with that software fix, too, back then, but this one's about half an order of magnitude faster."

"Without a hardware fix?" the skipper asked.

"It would be better to increase the range of the laser, yes, but you can get away without it-at least it worked okay on the computer simulations."

"Hope to hell we don't need to prove it.'

"Oh, yeah, Captain. A nuke headed for a city is a bad thing."

"Amen."

There were five thousand of them now, with more coming, summoned by the cell phones that they all seemed to have. Some even had portable computers tied into cellular phones so that they could tap into the Internet site out here in the open. It was a clear night, with no rain to wreck a computer. The Leaders of the crowd-they now thought of it as a demonstration-huddled around them to see more, and then relayed it to their friends. The first big student uprising in Tiananmen Square had been fueled by faxes. This one had taken a leap forward in technology. Mainly they milled around, talking excitedly with one another, and summoning more help. The first such demonstration had failed, but they'd all been toddlers then and their memory of it was sketchy at best. They were all old and educated enough to know what needed changing, but not yet old and experienced enough to know that change in their society was impossible. And they didn't know what a dangerous combination that could be.

The ground below was dark and unlit. Even their night-vision goggles didn't help much, showing only rough terrain features, mainly the tops of hills and ridges. There were few lights below. There were some houses and other buildings, but at this time of night few people were awake, and all of the lights were turned off.

The only moving light sources they could see were the rotor tips of the helicopters, heated by air friction to the point that they would be painful to touch, and hot enough to glow in the infrared spectrum that the night goggles could detect. Mainly the troops were lulled into stuporous lassitude by the unchanging vibration of the aircraft, and the semi-dreaming state that came with it helped to pass the time.

That was not true of Clark, who sat in the jump seat, looking down at the satellite photos of the missile base at Xuanhua, studying by the illumination of the IR light on his goggles, looking for information he might have missed on first and twenty-first inspection. He was confident in his men. Chavez had turned into a fine tactical Leader, and the troops, experienced sergeants all, would do what they were told to the extent of their considerable abilities.

The Russians in the other helicopters would do okay, too, he thought. Younger-by eight years on average-than the RAINBOW troopers, they were all commissioned officers, mainly lieutenants and captains with a leavening of a few majors, and all were university graduates, well educated, and that was almost as good as five years in uniform. Better yet, they were well motivated young professional soldiers, smart enough to think on their feet, and proficient in their weapons.

The mission should work, John thought. He leaned to check the clock on the helicopter's instrument panel. Forty minutes and they'd find out. Turning around, he noticed the eastern sky was lightening, according to his goggles. They'd hit the missile field just before dawn.

It was a stupidly easy mission for the Black Jets. Arriving overhead singly, about thirty seconds apart, each opened its bomb bay doors and dropped two weapons, ten seconds apart. Each pilot, his plane controlled by its automatic cruising system, put his laser dot on a preplanned section of the runway. The bombs were the earliest Paveway-II guidance packages bolted to Mark-84 2,000-pound bombs with cheap-$7.95 each, in fact-M905 fuses set to go off a hundredth of a second after impact, so as to make a hole in the concrete about twenty feet across by nine feet deep. And this all sixteen of them did, to the shocked surprise of the sleepy tower crew, and with enough noise to wake up every person within a five-mile radius-and just that fast, Anshan fighter base was closed, and would remain so for at least a week. The eight F-117s turned singly and made their way back to their base at Zhigansk. Flying the Black Jet wasn't supposed to be any more exciting than driving a 737 for Southwest Airlines, and for the most part it wasn't.

"Why the hell didn't they send one of those Dark Stars down to cover the mission?" Jack asked.

"I suppose it never occurred to anybody," Jackson said. They were back in the situation room.

"What about satellite overheads?"

"Not this time," Ed Foley advised. "Next pass over is in about four hours. Clark has a satellite phone. He'll clue us in."

"Great." Ryan leaned back in a chair that suddenly wasn't terribly comfortable.

Objective in sight," Boyle said over the intercom. Then the radio. "BANDIT SIX to chicks, objective in sight. Check in, over."

"Two." "Three." "Four." "Five." "Six." "Seven." "Eight." "Nine." "Ten."

"COCHISE, check in."

"This is COCHISE LEADER with five, we have the objective."

"Crook with five, objective in sight," the second attack-helicopter team reported.

"Okay, move in as briefed. Execute, execute, execute!"

Clark was perked up now, as were the troops in the back. Sleep was shaken off, and adrenaline flooded into their bloodstreams. He saw them shake their heads and flex their jaws. Weapons were tucked in tight, and every man moved his left hand to the twist-dial release fitting on the belt buckle.

COCHISE flight went in first, heading for the barracks of the security battalion tasked to guard the missile base. The building could have been transported bodily from any WWII American army base-a two-story wood-frame construction, with a pitched roof, and painted white. There was a guard shack outside, also painted white, and it glowed in the thermal sights of the Apache gunners. They could even see the two soldiers there, doubtless approaching the end of their duty tour, standing slackly, their weapons slung over their shoulders, because nobody ever came out here, rarely enough during the day, and never in living memory at night-unless you counted the battalion commander coming back drunk from a command-staff meeting.

Their heads twisted slightly when they thought they heard something strange, but the four-bladed rotor on the Apache was also designed for sound suppression, and so they were still looking when they saw the first flash-

–the weapons selected were the 2.75-inch-diameter free-flight rockets, carried in pods on the Apaches' stub wings. Three of the section of five handled the initial firing run, with two in reserve should the unexpected develop. They burned in low, so as to conceal their silhouettes in the hills behind them, and opened up at two hundred meters. The first salvo of four blew up the guard shack and its two sleepy guards. The noise would have been enough to awaken those in the barracks building, but the second salvo of rockets, this time fifteen of them, got there before anyone inside could do more than blink his eyes open. Both floors of the two-story structure were hit, and most of those inside died without waking, caught in the middle of dreams. The Apaches hesitated then, still having weapons to fire. There was a subsidiary guard post on the other side of the building; COCHISE LEAD looped around the barracks and spotted it. The two soldiers there had their rifles up and fired blindly into the air, but his gunner selected his 20-mm cannon and swept them aside as though with a broom. Then the Apache pivoted in the air and he salvoed his remaining rockets into the barracks, and it was immediately apparent that if anyone was alive in there, it was by the grace of God Himself, and whoever it was would not be a danger to the mission.

"COCHISE Four and Five, LEAD. Go back up Crook, we don't need you here."

"Roger, LEAD," they both replied. The two attack helicopters moved off, leaving the first three to look for and erase any signs of life.

Crook flight, also of five Apaches, smoked in just ahead of the Black-hawks. It turned out that each silo had a small guard post, each for two men, and those were disposed of in a matter of seconds with cannon fire. Then the Apaches climbed to higher altitude and circled slowly, each over a pair of missile silos, looking for anything moving, but seeing nothing.

BANDIT SIX, Colonel Dick Boyle, flared his Blackhawk three feet over Silo #1, as it was marked on his satellite photo.

"Go!" the co-pilot shouted over the intercom. The RAINBOW troopers jumped down just to the cast of the actual hole itself; the "Chinese hat" steel structure, which looked like an inverted blunt ice cream cone, prohibited dropping right down on the door itself.

The base command post was the best-protected structure on the entire post. It was buried ten meters underground, and the ten meters was solid reinforced concrete, so as to survive a nuclear bomb's exploding within a hundred meters, or so the design supposedly promised. Inside was a staff of ten, commanded by Major General Xun Qing-Nian. He'd been a Second Artillery (the Chinese name for their strategic missile troops) officer since graduating from university with an engineering degree. Only three hours before, he'd supervised the fueling of all twelve of his CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missiles, which had never happened before in his memory. No explanation had come with that order, though it didn't take a rocket scientist-which he was, by profession- to connect it with the war under way against Russia.

Like all members of the People's Liberation Army, he was a highly disciplined man, and always mindful of the fact that he had his country's most valuable military assets under his personal control. The alarm had been raised by one of the silo-guard posts, and his staff switched on the television cameras used for site inspection and surveillance. They were old cameras, and needed lights, which were switched on as well.

"What the fuck!" Chavez shouted. "Turn the lights off!" he ordered over his radio.

It wasn't demanding. The light standards weren't very tall, nor were they very far away. Chavez hosed one with his MP-10, and the lights went out, thank you. No other lasted for more than five seconds at any of the silos.

"We are under attack," General Xun said in a quiet and disbelieving voice. "We are under attack," he repeated. But he had a drill for this. "Alert the guard force," he told one NCO. "Get me Beijing," he ordered another.

At Silo #1, Paddy Connolly ran to the pipes that led to the top of the concrete box that marked the top of the silo. To each he stuck a block of Composition B, his explosive of choice. Into each block he inserted a blasting cap. Two men, Eddie Price and Hank Patterson, knelt close by with their weapons ready for a response force that was nowhere to be seen.

"Fire in the hole!" Patterson shouted, running back to the other two. There he skidded down to the ground, sheltered behind the concrete, and twisted the handle on his detonator. The two pipes were blown apart a millisecond later.

"Masks!" he told everyone on the radio… but there was no vapor coming off the fueling pipes. That was good news, wasn't it?

"Come on!" Eddie Price yelled at him. The three men, guarded now by two others, looked for the metal door into the maintenance entrance for the silo.

"Ed, we're on the ground, we're on the ground," Clark was saying into his satellite phone, fifty yards away. "The barracks are gone, and there's no opposition on the ground here. Doing our blasting now. Back to you soon. Out."

"Well, shit," Ed Foley said in his office, but the line was now dead.

"What?" It was an hour later in Beijing, and the sun was up. Marshal Luo, having just woken up after not enough sleep following the worst day he'd known since the Cultural Revolution, had a telephone thrust into his hands. "What is this?" he demanded of the phone.

"This is Major General Xun Qing-Nian at Xuanhua missile base. We are under attack here. There is a force of men on the ground over our heads trying to destroy our missiles. I require instructions!"

"Fight them off!" was the first idea Luo had.

"The defense battalion is dead, they do not respond. Comrade Minister, what do I do?"

"Are your missiles fueled and ready for launch?"

"Yes!"

Luo looked around his bedroom, but there was no one to advise him. His country's most priceless assets were now about to be ripped from his control. His command wasn't automatic. He actually thought first, but in the end, it wouldn't matter how considered his decision was.

"Launch your missiles," he told the distant general officer.

"Repeat your command," Luo heard.

"Launch your missiles!" his voice boomed. "Launch your missiles NOW!"

"By your command," the voice replied.

"Fuck," Sergeant Connolly said. "This is some bloody door!" The first explosive block had done nothing more than scorch the paint. This time he attached a hollow-charge to the upper and lower hinges and backed off again. "This one will do it," he promised as he trailed the wires back.

The crash that followed gave proof to his words. When next they looked in, the door was gone. It had been hurled inward, must have flown into the silo like a bat out of-

–"Bloody hell!" Connolly turned. "Run! RUN!"

Price and Patterson needed no encouragement. They ran for their lives. Connolly caught them reaching for his protective hood as he did so, not stopping until he was over a hundred yards away.

"The bloody missile's fueled. The door ruptured the upper tank. It's going to blow!"

"Shit! Team, this is Price, the missiles are fueled, I repeat the missiles are fueled. Get the fucking hell away from the silo!"

The proof of that came from Silo #8, off to Price's south. The concrete structure that sat atop it surged into the air, and under it was a volcanic blast of fire and smoke. Silo #1, theirs, did the same, a gout of flame going sideways out of the open service door.

The infrared signature was impossible to miss. Over the equator, a DSP satellite focused in on the thermal bloom and cross-loaded the signal to Sunnyvale, California. From there it went to NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, dug into the sub-basement level of Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. "Launch! Possible launch at Xuanhua!" "What's that?" asked CINC-NORAD.

"We got a bloom, a huge-two huge ones at Xuanhua," the female captain announced. "Fuck, there's another one."

"Okay, Captain, settle down," the four-star told her. "There's a special op taking that base down right now. Settle down, girl."

In the control bunker, men were turning keys. The general in command had never really expected to do this. Sure, it was a possibility, the thing he'd trained his entire career for, but, no, not this. No. Not a chance.

But someone was trying to destroy his command-and he did have his orders, and like the automaton he'd been trained to be, he gave the orders and turned his command key.

The Spetsnaz people were doing well. Four silos were now disabled. One of the Russian teams managed to crack the maintenance door on their first try. This team, General Kirillin's own, sent its technical genius inside, and he found the missile's guidance module and blew it apart with gunfire. It would take a week at least to fix this missile, and just to make sure that didn't happen, he affixed an explosive charge to the stainless steel body and set the timer for fifteen minutes. "Done!" he called.

"Out!" Kirillin ordered. The lieutenant general, now feeling like a new cadet in parachute school, gathered his team and ran to the pickup point. As guilty as any man would be of mission focus, he looked around, surprised by the fire and flame to his north-

–but more surprised to see three silo covers moving. The nearest was only three hundred meters away, and there he saw one of his Spetsnaz troopers walk right to the suddenly open silo and toss something in-then he ran like a rabbit-

–because three seconds later, the hand grenade he'd tossed in exploded, and took the entire missile up with it. The Spetsnaz soldier disappeared in the fireball he'd caused, and would not be seen again-

–but then something worse happened. From exhaust vents set left and right of Silos #5 and #7 came two vertical fountains of solid white-yellow flame, and less than two seconds later appeared the blunt, black shape of a missile's nosecone.

"Fuck," breathed the Apache pilot coded CROOK Two. He was circling a kilometer away, and without any conscious thought at all, lowered his nose, twisted throttle, and pulled collective to jerk his attack helicopter at the rising missile.

"Got it," the gunner called. He selected his 20-mm cannon and held down the trigger. The tracers blazed out like laser beams. The first set missed, but the gunner adjusted his LEAD and walked them into the missile's upper half-

–the resulting explosion threw CROOK Two out of control, rolling it over on its back. The pilot threw his cyclic to the left, continuing the roll before he stopped it, barely, a quarter of the way through the second one, and then he saw the fireball rising, and the burning missile fuel falling back to the ground, atop Silo #9, and on all the men there who'd disabled that bird.

The last missile cleared its silo before the soldiers there could do much about it. Two tried to shoot at it with their personal weapons, but the flaming exhaust incinerated them in less time than it takes to pull a trigger. Another Apache swept in, having seen what CROOK Two had accomplished, but its rounds fell short, so rapidly the CSS-4 climbed into the air.

"Oh, fuck," Clark heard in his radio earpiece. It was Ding's voice. "Oh, fuck."

John got back on his satellite phone.

"Yeah, how's it going?" Ed Foley asked.

"One got off, one got away, man."

"What?"

"You heard me. We killed all but one, but that one got off… going north, but leaning east some. Sorry, Ed. We tried."

It took Foley a few seconds to gather his thought and reply. "Thanks, John. I guess I have some things to do here."

"There's another one," the captain said.

CINC-NORAD was trying to play this one as cool as he could. Yes, there was a spec-op laid on to take this Chinese missile farm down, and so he expected to see some hot flashes on the screen, and okay, all of them so far had been on the ground.

"That should be all of them," the general announced.

"Sir, this one's moving. This one's a launch."

"Are you sure?"

"Look, sir, the bloom is moving off the site," she said urgently. "Valid launch, valid launch-valid threat!" she concluded. "Oh, my God…"

"Oh, shit," CINC-NORAD said. He took one breath and lifted the Gold Phone. No, first he'd call the NMCC.

The senior watch officer in the National Military Command Center was a Marine one-star named Sullivan. The NORAD phone didn't ring very often.

"NMCC, Brigadier General Sullivan speaking."

"This is CINC-NORAD. We have a valid launch, valid threat from Xuanhua missile base in China. I say again, we have a valid launch, valid threat from China. It's angling east, coming to North America."

"Fuck," the Marine observed.

"Tell me about it."

The procedures were all written down. His first call went to the White House military office.

Ryan was setting down to dinner with the family. An unusual night, he had nothing scheduled, no speeches to give, and that was good, because reporters always showed up and asked questions, and lately-

"Say that again?" Andrea Price-O'Day said into her sleeve microphone. "What?"

Then another Secret Service agent bashed into the room. "Marching Order!" he proclaimed. It was a code phrase often practiced but never spoken in reality.

"What?" Jack said, half a second before his wife could make the same sound.

"Mr. President, we have to get you and your family out of here," Andrea said. "The Marines have the helicopters on the way."

"What's happening?"

"Sir, NORAD reports an inbound ballistic threat."

"What? China?"

"That's all I know. Let's go, right now," Andrea said forcefully.

"Jack, "Cathy said in alarm.

"Okay, Andrea." The President turned. "Time to go, honey. Right now."

"But-what's happening?"

He got her to her feet first, and walked to the door. The corridor was full of agents. Trenton Kelly was holding Kyle Daniel-the lionesses were nowhere in sight-and the principal agents for all the other kids were there. In a moment, they saw that there was not enough room in the elevator. The Ryan family rode. The agents mainly ran down the wide, white marble steps to the ground level.

"Wait!" another agent called, holding his left hand up. His pistol was in his right hand, and none of them had seen that very often. They halted as commanded-even the President doesn't often argue with a person holding a gun.

Ryan was thinking as fast as he knew how: "Andrea, where do I go?"

"You go to KNEECAP. Vice President Jackson will join you there. The family goes to Air Force One."

At Andrews Air Force base, just outside Washington, the pilots of First Heli, the USAF 1st Helicopter Squadron, were sprinting to their Bell Hueys. Each had an assignment, and each knew where his Principal was, because the security detail of each was reporting in constantly. Their job was to collect the cabinet members and spirit them away from Washington to preselected places of supposed safety. Their choppers were off the ground in less than three minutes, scattering off to different preselected pickup points.

"Jack, what is this?" It took a lot to make his wife afraid, but this one had done it.

"Honey, we have a report that a ballistic missile is flying toward America, and the safest place for us to be is in the air. So, they're getting you and the kids to Air Force One. Robby and I will be on KNEECAP. Okay?"

"Okay? Okay? What is this?" "It's bad, but that's all I know."

On the Aleutian island of Shemya, the huge Cobra Dane radar scanned the sky to the north and west. It frequently detected satellites, which mainly fly lower than ICBM warheads, but the computer that analyzed the tracks of everything that came into the system's view categorized this contact as exactly what it was, too high to be a low-orbit satellite, and too slow to be a launch vehicle.

"What's the track?" a major asked a sergeant.

"Computer says East Coast of the United States. In a few minutes we'll know more… for now, somewhere between Buffalo and Atlanta." That information was relayed automatically to NORAD and the Pentagon.

The entire structure of the United States military went into hyper-drive, one segment at a time, as the information reached it. That included USS Gettysburg, alongside the pier in the Washington Navy Yard.

Captain Blandy was in his in-port cabin when the growler phone went off. "Captain speaking… go to general quarters, Mr. Gibson," he ordered, far more calmly than he felt.

Throughout the ship, the electronic gonging started, followed by a human voice: "General Quarters-General Quarters-all hands man your battle stations."

Gregory was in CIC, running another simulation. "What's that mean?"

Senior Chief Leek shook his head. "Sir, that means something ain't no simulation no more." Battle stations alongside the fucking pier? "Okay, people, let's start lighting it all up!" he ordered his sailors.

The regular presidential helicopter muttered down on the South Lawn, and the Secret Service agent at the door turned and yelled: "COME ON!"

Cathy turned. "Jack, you coming with us?" "No, Cath, I have to go to Kneecap. Now, get along. I'll see you later tonight, okay?" He gave her a kiss, and all the kids got a hug, except for Kyle, whom the President took from Kelley's arms for a quick hold before giving him back. "Take care of him," he told the agent. "Yes, sir. Good luck." Ryan watched his family run up the steps into the chopper, and the Sikorsky lurched off before they could have had a chance to sit and strap down.

Then another Marine helicopter appeared, this one with Colonel Dan Malloy at the controls. This one was a VH-60, whose doors slid open. Ryan walked quickly to it, with Andrea Price-O'Day at his side. They sat and strapped down before it lumbered back into the air.

"What about everybody else?" Ryan asked.

"There's a shelter under the East Wing for some…" she said. Then her voice trailed off and she shrugged.

"Oh, shit, what about everybody else?" Ryan demanded.

"Sir, I have to look after you."

" But-what-"

Then Special Agent Price-O'Day started retching. Ryan saw and pulled out a barf bag, one with a very nice Presidential logo printed on it, and handed it to her. They were over the Mall now, just passing the George Washington Monument. Off to the right was southwest Washington, filled with the working- and middle-class homes of regular people who drove cabs or cleaned up offices, tens of thousands of them…there were people visible in the Mall, on the grass, just enjoying a walk in the falling darkness, just being people…

And you just left behind a hundred or so. Maybe twenty will fit in the shelter under the East Wing… what about the rest, the ones who make your bed and fold your socks and shine your shoes and serve dinner and pick up after the kids-what about them, Jack? A small voice asked. Who flies them off to safety?

He turned his head to see the Washington Monument, and beyond that the reflecting pool and the Lincoln Memorial. He was in the same line as those men, in the city named for one, and saved in time of war by another… and he was running away from danger…the Capital Building, home of the Congress. The light was on atop the dome. Congress was in session, doing the country's work, or trying to, as they did… but he was running away… eastern Washington, mainly black, working-class people who did the menial jobs for the most part, and had hopes to send their kids to college so that they could make out a little better than their parents had… eating their dinner, watching TV, maybe going out to a movie tonight or just sitting on their porches and shooting the bull with their neighbors-

–Ryan's head turned again, and he saw the two gray shapes at the Navy Yard, one familiar, one not, because Tony Bretano had-

Ryan flipped the belt buckle in his lap and lurched forward, knocking into the Marine sergeant in the jump seat. Colonel Malloy was in the right-front seat, doing his job, flying the chopper. Ryan grabbed his left shoulder. The head came around.

"Yes, sir, what is it?"

"See that cruiser down there?"

"Yes, sir." "Land on it."

"Sir, I-"

"Land on it, that's an order!" Ryan shouted at him.

"Aye aye," Malloy said like a good Marine.

The Blackhawk turned, arcing down the Anacostia River, and flaring as Malloy judged the wind. The Marine hesitated, looking back one more time. Ryan insistently jerked his hand at the ship.

The Blackhawk approached cautiously.

"What are you doing?" Andrea demanded.

"I'm getting off here. You're going to KNEECAP."

"NO!” she shouted back. "I stay with you!"

"Not this time. Have your baby. If this doesn't work out, I hope the kid turns out like you and Pat." Ryan moved to open the door. The Marine sergeant got there first. Andrea moved to follow.

"Keep her aboard, Marine!" Ryan told the crew chief. "She goes with you!"

"NO!” Price-O'Day screamed.

"Yes, sir," the sergeant acknowledged, wrapping his arms around her.

President Ryan jumped to the nonskid decking of the cruiser's landing area and ducked as the chopper pulled back into the sky. Andrea's face was the last thing he saw. The rotor wash nearly knocked him down, but going to one knee prevented that. Then he stood up and looked around.

"What the hell is-Jesus, sir!" the young petty officer blurted, recognizing him.

"Where's the captain?"

"Captains in CIC, sir."

"Show me!"

The petty officer led him into a door, then a passageway that led forward. A few twists and turns later, he was in a darkened room that seemed to be set sideways in the body of the ship. It was cool in here. Ryan just walked in, figuring he was President of the United States, Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, and the ship belonged to him anyway. It took a stretch to make his limbs feel as though they were a real part of his body, and then he looked around, trying to orient himself. First he turned to the sailor who'd brought him here.

"Thanks, son. You can go back to your place now."

"Aye, sir." He turned away as though from a dream/nightmare and resumed his duties as a sailor.

Okay, Jack thought, now what? He could see the big radar displays set fore and aft, and the people sitting sideways to look at it. He headed that way, bumping into a cheap aluminum chair on the way, and looked down to see what looked like a Navy chief petty officer in a khaki shirt whose pocket-well, damn-Ryan exercised his command prerogative and reached down to steal the sailor's cigarette pack. He lifted one out, and lit it with a butane lighter. Then he walked to look at the radar display.

"Jesus, sir," the chief said belatedly.

"Not quite. Thanks for the smoke." Two more steps and he was behind a guy with silver EAGLEs on his collar. That would be the captain of USS Gettysburg. Ryan took a long and comforting drag on the smoke.

"God damn it! There's no smoking in my CIC!" the captain snarled.

"Good evening, Captain," Ryan replied. "I think at this moment we have a ballistic warhead inbound on Washington, presumably with a thermonuclear device inside. Can we set aside your concerns about secondhand smoke for a moment?"

Captain Blandy turned around and looked up. His mouth opened as wide as a U.S. Navy ashtray. "How-who-what?"

"Captain, let's ride this one out together, shall we?"

"Captain Blandy, sir," the man said, snapping to his feet.

"Jack Ryan, Captain." Ryan shook his hand and bade him sit back down. "What's happening now?"

"Sir, the NMCC tells us that there's a ballistic inbound for the

East Coast. I've got the ship at battle stations. Radar's up. Chip inserted?" he asked.

"The chip is in, sir," Senior Chief Leek confirmed.

"Chip?"

"Just our term for it. It's really a software thing," Blandy explained.

Cathy and the kids were pulled up the steps and hustled into the forward cabin. The colonel at the controls was in an understandable hurry. With Three and Four already turning, he started engines One and Two, and the VC-25 started rolling the instant the truck with the steps pulled away, making one right-angle turn, and then lumbering down Runway One-Nine Right into the southerly wind. Immediately below him, Secret Service and Air Force personnel got the First Family strapped in, and for the first time in fifteen minutes, the Secret Service people allowed themselves to breathe normally. Not thirty seconds later, Vice President Jackson's helicopter landed next to the E-4B National Emergency Airborne Command Post, whose pilot was as anxious to get off the ground as the driver of the VC-25. That was accomplished in less than ninety seconds. Jackson had never strapped in, and stood to look around. "Where's Jack?" the Vice President asked. Then he saw Andrea, who looked as though she just miscarried her pregnancy.

"He stayed, sir. He had the pilot drop him on the cruiser in the Navy Yard."

"He did what?"

"You heard me, sir."

"Get him on the radio-right now!" Jackson ordered.

Ryan was actually feeling somewhat relaxed. No more rushing about, here he was, surrounded by people calmly and quietly going about their jobs-outwardly so, anyway. The captain looked a little tense, but captains were supposed to, Ryan figured, being responsible in this case for a billion dollars' worth of warship and computers.

"Okay, how are we doing?"

"Sir, the inbound, if it's aimed at us, is not on the scope yet."

"Can you shoot it down?"

"That's the idea, Mr. President," Blandy replied. "Is Dr. Gregory around?"

"Here, Captain," a voice answered. A shape came closer. "Jesus!"

"That's not my name-I know you!" Ryan said in considerable surprise "Major-Major…"

"Gregory, sir. I ended up a half a colonel before I pulled the plug. SDIO. Secretary Bretano had me look into upgrading the missiles for the Aegis system," the physicist explained. "I guess we're going to see if it works or not."

"What do you think?" Ryan asked.

"It worked fine on the simulations" was the best answer available.

"Radar contact. We got us a bogie," a petty officer said. "Bearing three-four-niner, range nine hundred miles, speed-that's the one, sir. Speed is one thousand four hundred knots-I mean fourteen thousand knots, sir." Damn, he didn't have to add.

"Four and a half minutes out," Gregory said.

"Do the math in your head?" Ryan asked.

"Sir, I've been in the business since I got out of West Point."

Ryan finished his cigarette and looked around for-

"Here, sir." It was the friendly chief with an ashtray that had magically appeared in CIC. "Want another one?"

"Why not?" the President reasoned. He took a second one, and the senior chief lit it up for him. "Thanks."

"Gee, Captain Blandy, maybe you're declaring a blanket amnesty?"

"If he isn't, I am," Ryan said.

"Smoking lamp is lit, people," Senior Chief Leek announced, an odd satisfaction in his voice.

The captain looked around in annoyance, but dismissed it.

"Four minutes, it might not matter a whole lot," Ryan observed as coolly as the cigarette allowed. Health hazard or not, they had their uses.

"Captain, I have a radio call for the President, sir."

"Where do I take it?" Jack asked.

"Right here, sir," yet another chief said, lifting a phone-type receiver and pushing a button.

"Ryan."

"Jack, it's Robby." "My family get off okay?"

"Yeah, Jack, they're fine. Hey, what the hell are you doing down there?"

"Riding it out. Robby, I can't run away, pal. I just can't."

"Jack if this thing goes off-"

"Then you get promoted," Ryan cut him off.

"You know what I'll have to do?" the Vice President demanded.

"Yeah, Robby, you'll have to play catch-up. God help you if you do." But it won't be my problem, Ryan thought. There was some consolation in that. Killing some guy with a gun was one thing. Killing a million with a nuke… no, he just couldn't do that without eating a gun afterward. You're just too Catholic, Jack, my boy.

"Jesus, Jack," his old friend said over the digital, encrypted radio link. Clearly thinking about what horrors he'd have to commit, son of a preacher-man or not…

"Robby, you're the best friend any man could hope to have. If this doesn't work out, look after Cathy and the kids for me, will ya?"

"You know it."

"We'll know in about three minutes, Rob. Get back to me then, okay?"

"Roger," the former TOMCAT driver replied. "Out."

"Dr. Gregory, what can you tell me?"

"Sir, the inbound is probably their equivalent of one of our old W-51s. Five megatons, thereabouts. It'll do Washington, and everything within ten miles-hell, it'll break windows in Baltimore."

"What about us, here?"

"No chance. Figure it'll be targeted inside a triangle defined by the White House, the Capitol Building, and the Pentagon. The ship's keel might survive, only because it's under water. No people. Oh, maybe some really lucky folks in the D.C. subway. That's pretty far underground. But the fires will suck all the air out of the tunnels, probably." He shrugged. "This sort of thing's never happened before. You can't say for sure until it does."

"What chances that it'll be a dud?"

"The Pakistanis have had some failed detonations. We had fizzles once, mainly from helium contamination in the secondary. That's why the terrorist bomb at Denver fizzled-"

"I remember."

"Okay," Gregory said. "It's over Buffalo now. Now it's reentering the atmosphere. That'll slow it down a little."

"Sir, the track is definitely on us, the NMCC says," a voice said.

"Agreed," Captain Blandy said.

"Is there a civilian alert?" Ryan asked.

"It's on the radio, sir," a sailor said. "It's on CNN, too."

"People will be panicking out there," Ryan murmured, taking another drag.

Probably not. Most people don't really know what the sirens mean, and the rest won't believe the radio, Gregory thought. "Captain, we're getting close." The track crossed over the Pennsylvania/New York border-

"System up?" Blandy asked.

"We are fully on line, sir," the Weapons Officer answered. "We are ready to fire from the forward magazine. Firing order is selected, all Block IVs."

"Very well." The captain leaned forward and turned his key in the lock. "System is fully enabled. Special-Auto." He turned. "Sir, that means the computer will handle it from here."

"Target range is now three hundred miles," a kid's voice announced.

They're so cool about this, Ryan thought. Maybe they just don't believe it's real… hell, it's hard enough for me… He took another drag on the cigarette, watching the blip come down, following its computer-produced velocity vector right for Washington, D.C.

"Any time now," the Weapons Officer said.

He wasn't far off. Gettysburg shuddered with the launch of the first missile.

"One away!" a sailor said off to the right. "One is away clean."

"Okay."

The SM2-ER missile had two stages. The short booster kicked the assembly out of its silo-type hole in the forward magazine, trailing an opaque column of gray smoke.

"The idea is to intercept at a range of two hundred miles," Gregory explained. "The interceptor and the inbound will rendezvous at the same spot, and-zap!"

"Mainly farmland there, place you go to shoot pheasants," Ryan said, remembering hunting trips there in his youth.

"Hey, I got a visual on the fucker," another voice called. There was a TV camera with a ten-power lens slaved into the fire-control radar, and it showed the inbound warhead, just a featureless white blob now, like a meteor, Ryan thought.

"Intercept in four-three-two-one-"

The missile came close, but exploded behind the target.

"Firing Two!" Gettysburg shook again.

"Two away clean!" the same voice as before announced.

It was over Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, now, its speed "down" to thirteen thousand miles per hour…

Then a third missile launched, followed a second later by a fourth. In the "Special-Auto" setting, the computer was expending missiles until it saw a dead target. That was just fine with everyone aboard.

"Only two Block IVs left," Weps said.

"They're cheap," Captain Blandy observed. "Come on, baby!"

Number Two also exploded behind the target, the TV picture showed.

"Three-two-one-now!"

So did Number Three.

"Oh, shit, oh, my God!" Gregory exclaimed. That caused heads to snap around.

"What?" Blandy demanded.

The IR seekers, they're going for the centroid of the infrared source, and that's behind the inbound."

"What?" Ryan asked, his stomach in an instant knot.

"The brightest part of the target is behind the target. The missiles are going for that! Oh, fuck!" Dr. Gregory explained.

"Five away… Six away… both got off clean," the voice to the right announced again.

The inbound was over Frederick, Maryland, now, doing twelve thousand knots…

"That's it, we're out of Block IVs."

"Light up the Block IIIs," Blandy ordered at once.

The next two interceptors did the same as the first two, coming within mere feet of the target, but exploding just behind it, and the inbound was traveling faster than the burn rate of explosive in the Standard -2-ER missile warheads. The lethal fragments couldn't catch up-

"Firing Seven! Clean." Gettysburg shook yet again.

"That one's a radar homer," Blandy said, clenching his fist before his chest.

Five and Six performed exactly as the four preceding them, missing by mere yards, but a miss in this case was as good as a mile.

Another shudder.

"Eight! Clean!"

"We have to get it before it gets to five or six thousand feet. That's optimal burst height," Gregory said.

"At that range, I can engage it with my five-inch forward," Blandy said, some fear in his voice now.

For his part, Ryan wondered why he wasn't shaking. Death had reached its cold hand out for him more than once… the Mall in London… his own home… Red October… some nameless hill in Colombia. Someday it would touch him. Was this the day? He took a last drag on the smoke and stabbed it out in the aluminum ashtray.

"Okay, here comes seven-five-four-three-two-one-now!"

"Miss! Fuck!"

"Nine away-Ten away, both clean! We're out of missiles," the distant chief called out. "This is it, guys."

The inbound crossed over the D.C. Beltway, Interstate Highway 695, now at an altitude of less than twenty thousand feet, streaking across the night sky like a meteor, and so some people thought it was, pointing and calling out to those nearby. If they continued to look at it until detonation, their eyes would explode, and they would then die blind…

"Eight missed! Missed by a cunt hair!" a voice announced angrily. Clear on the TV, the puff of the explosion appeared mere inches from the target.

"Two more to go," the Weapons Officer told them.

Aloft, the forward port-side SPG-62 radar was pouring out X-band radiation at the target. The rising SM-2 missile, its rocket motor still burning, homed in on the reflected signal, focusing, closing, seeing the source of the reflected energy that drew it as a moth to a flame, a kamikaze robot the size of a small car, going at nearly two thousand miles per hour, seeking an object going six times faster… two miles… one mile… a thousand yards… five hundred, one hun-

–On the TV screen the RV meteor changed to a shower of sparks and fire-

"Yeah!" twenty voices called as one.

The TV camera followed the descending sparks. The adjacent radar display showed them falling within the city of Washington.

"You're going to want to get people to collect those fragments. Some of them are going to be plutonium. Not real healthy to handle," Gregory said, leaning against a stanchion. "Looked like a skin-skin kill. Oh, God, how did I fuck up my programming like that?" he wondered aloud.

"I wouldn't sweat it too bad, Dr. Gregory," Senior Chief Leek observed. "Your code also helped the last one home in more efficient-like. I think I might want to buy you a beer, fella."