Goryanin blinked and shook his head. “Brazhnikov has joined up with Israelis? The lawyer is there?… I don’t—”
“There isn’t time to go into the whys and wherefores,” Chelenko interrupted. “The inauguration is taking place there at this moment. Don’t you see what this means? An act of war is about to be committed against the United States, and we have been set up to appear responsible. Somebody is out to destroy the regime, and they want it to look as if it were us.” Goryanin stared numbly at the wall of the map room, where Chelenko’s call, had found him. “Do something… now!” Chelenko’s voice pleaded.
Goryanin shook himself back to life. The correct thing now would be to refer the situation to Kordorosky as his direct superior. But he rejected the thought instinctively, even as it formed in his mind. Not with something like this. Kordorosky would be happy to sit back and let it happen. Even though it might get him shot, Goryanin would have to find another way. He picked up another phone that was lying on the desk, on which another officer was standing by for orders on a separate line.
“Get ahold of the defense minister, Marshal Androliev,” he instructed. “Interrupt him at once, whatever he’s doing. Tell him that it’s his nephew, and that we have an emergency.”
• • •
In the Situation Room beneath the Pentagon, General Sommerfield stood in an agony of suspense, watching the plots and data updates on the screens. Some aides were rushing this way and that in frenzied activity to keep their minds occupied; others had given up and just stood, petrified. It had all happened so quickly. There hadn’t been time to summon anyone. The course of the missiles was now unmistakable: straight at the Capitol.
“Two minutes, twenty-seven seconds,” someone announced. “Gremlin One has crossed the shore.” That was the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. Forty-two miles away from the target.
An Air Force general, surrounded by a numbed entourage, turned from where he had been talking frantically at a screen on the dais facing the room. “Not a chance. We’ll never get anything off the ground, never mind within range.”
“Gremlin Two is over the Bay,” someone called. The displays changed to an updated plot.
“What’s happening at Bolero?” Sommerfield demanded tightly.
“General Knowle in back now. Screen Six.”
Sommerfield strode back to the console he had been at shortly before, which was communicating with Strategic Defense Command. That was the only hope left now.
Knowle appeared back on screen as Sommerfield reached the console. “XDS-7 is primed and tracking. Target illumination radars have found it. We’ve gone to Red-Red. I’ve assumed command.” Sommerfield felt a little easier, although his brow was glistening profusely. Thank God they had enough birds up now to ensure permanent cover.
“Two minutes,” a voice called out.
Sommerfield could hear other voices coming from the screen, in the background behind Knowle.
“Fire inhibit is lifted. Go ahead, Delta.”
“Uplink holding steady, switch to seven-five-zero.”
“Seven-five-zero, roger.”
“On synch, yellow-five. Beam power is good.”
“Set count on—”
“Negative function! We’re losing it… the beam’s down.” On the screen, General Knowle whirled around.
“Bolero, what’s going on there for Christ’s sake?” Sommerfield shouted, his rising voice causing heads to turn all around the room.
“SYS Three has aborted. We’re dead here.”
Knowle shouted a stream of orders off screen, then turned back, looking dazed. “We can’t fire. It’s not responding. The satellite isn’t responding!”
“It’s the same thing that happened with Six in November,” a voice said somewhere behind him. “It’s spooking out the same way, all over again.”
• • •
There had been no time for Marshal Androliev to leave his office in the Kremlin. He had contacted General Roskovin, the commander of the Soviet Orbital Defense Force, directly via the communications screen by his desk.
“We have a channel to OCC now, ” Roskovin reported from the headquarters in Riga. “Satellite OBF-3 is within range. But active intervention would require Defense Council authorization.”
“Dammit, General, I am the defense minister! There isn’t time to call a meeting. The responsibility is mine alone. Do you understand? This is an emergency. You must obey my orders.”
“I need confirmation from at least another member. We have alerted the general secretary. He is on his way to your office now, with Comrade Kordorosky.”
Androliev’s heart sank. “There isn’t time. I order it.”
Roskovin shook his head. “Washington isn’t worth my neck. Sorry.”
“I—”
The door burst open and Kordorosky strode in, looking tight-lipped and even whiter than usual. Vladimir Petrakhov, the general secretary of the Party, appeared close behind him. He came over to Androliev’s desk and pivoted the screen around to face him. “Very well, we are in control here, now,” he told Roskovin. “What is the situation?”
Roskovin consulted briefly with somebody offscreen. “We now have long-range optical and infrared contact. Two missiles have been launched.”
“Remain standing by.”
Kordorosky looked at Androliev with contempt. “What do you think you were trying to do, you old fool? This is the best thing that could have happened for us.”
Androliev slumped down in his chair and lifted a cigarette to his lips with a shaking hand.
• • •
Someone had ordered the siren alarms to be sounded in the city. Newell stood bewildered at the top of the Capitol steps, cut off in midsentence as the noise swelled. Police radios were squawking and babbling everywhere, and some people started running blindly in any direction, impelled by some animal instinct that sensed disaster. Then the entire crowd broke up into massive eddies, swirling turbulently. McCormick came forward, looking from side to side in bewilderment. “What’s happening?”
Newell could only shake his head helplessly. “How do I know?”
An assistant rushed out of the doors behind the steps and over to them, clearly panicking. “It’s an attack! An aircraft off the coast has fired missiles! They’re coming right at us!”
The defense secretary was at the center of a flurry of figures in suits and uniforms. “What’s happening with the satellites?”
Somebody proffered a radio phone. “Situation Room on the line now.”
“How far out are they?”
“We have to evacuate.”
“No way. We’ve got less than two minutes.”
“Oh my God!”
A man with a bald head ran past, clutching his brow. “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die. Shit, it’s real, I’m gonna die…”
“They’ve got a bead on ’em with the lasers! The lasers have got em’! It’ll be okay.”
Newell wiped his brow. There was nothing to be said. Running around and demanding answers would only be getting in the way now.
The defense secretary looked up from the handset he was holding. His face had gone pale. “Something’s wrong,” he choked. “They can’t fire the laser. The satellite’s gone dead up there.”
• • •
In the darkness of the Syrian desert, the Americans and the Israeli and Russian troops were sitting in a tense, silent huddle around the cave, where Zvi and Brazhnikov were crouched by the radio pack. They had already been in contact with the Russians’ commander in Damascus, even before Mel realized what the aircraft, the missiles, the date, and the time of day added up to. There hadn’t been time to get through to the authorities in Washington via the Israelis. And besides, after the experience with Oberwald, nobody knew if the top levels of the U.S. defense hierarchy could be trusted, anyway. And even if they could, it wouldn’t have done any good; Brett had already told them that the U.S. space defense system could be neutralized.
So they had
done the only thing they could and let Brazhnikov try to do something through his command chain—as Mel had pointed out, what was happening was no more in the Soviets’ interests than the Americans’. And it had turned out that the Russian commander in Damascus was already holding a channel open to Moscow.
The radio crackled suddenly. “Hydro calling Snowball.”
Brazhnikov leaned closer and acknowledged. A brief exchange ensued. Then Brazhnikov spoke in Russian to Zvi.
“What’s happening?” Mel hissed.
“Damascus is through to the Kremlin via the KGB. But there’s a lot of confusion there, and General Secretary Petrakhov himself is involved now…” Then the voice crackled again from the radio, sounding excited and somehow despairing, even in the foreign tongue. Mel looked at Zvi questioningly.
“What was that?” Mel said. He could see the horror-struck expression on Zvi’s face, even in the darkness.
“We were too late,” Zvi choked. “The missiles have been fired.”
• • •
It was all over. Sommerfield could only stand looking numbly at the data displays. All activity in the Situation Room ceased as one by one the operators at the rows of consoles and terminals rose slowly to their feet. One man had broken down and been taken out by MP guards. A deathly hush fell, broken only by one operator, reciting mechanically in a trancelike voice, “Twenty-one miles, sixty seconds to target… Nineteen miles, fifty-five seconds…”
• • •
Marshal Androliev flicked at the lighter several times. It was empty. He tossed it back onto the desk and opened the top drawer to search for matches. Somebody at the door was calling for the general secretary. Petrakhov went over, and a moment later disappeared outside. The screen was still turned away from him, but Androliev could hear Roskovin in Riga.
“Targeting radars are tracking and locked. What do you want us to do?”
Kordorosky was standing a few feet away, still looking in the direction of the door, away from Androliev and outside the viewing angle from the screen. The situation would last for a few seconds at the most. Androliev looked down again at the Luger automatic lying in the drawer. He lifted it out and raised it above the edge of the desk, aimed in Kordorosky’s direction. The KGB chief caught the movement from the corner of his eye and turned his head. His eyes just had time to widen before the bullet hit dead center between them.
Androliev got up and moved around the desk to face the screen.
“We have reached a unanimous decision,” he told Roskovin. “Shoot the missiles down.”
“Yes, sir.”
Androliev pivoted the screen back to point at the empty desk, at the same time turning down its sound control so that anything else wouldn’t be heard. A second later, the general secretary rushed back in through the doorway, officers and guards behind him.
“What was that? It sounded like—” He saw the body of Kordorosky, sprawled full length on the floor. “Good God!…” The others came to a confused halt behind.
The old marshal rose from his chair and covered them with the gun. “We just wait for thirty seconds, gentlemen,” he said. “After that, you may do with me as you wish.”
• • •
“Seventeen miles to target, fifty…” The voice faltered and stopped. The silence persisted for a few seconds.
“What’s going on?” another voice asked, sounding bewildered.
“I don’t know. It’s disappeared from the display… What’s the situation with the second… What?”
Sommerfield stared up at the big display screen disbelievingly. Around him the statues were beginning to move and speak again.
“That one’s gone, too. I don’t understand it.”
“They’ve both just… vanished!”
“That’s impossible.”
Sommerfield looked at the screen still showing Knowle at Strategic Defense Command. “Did you do that?”
Knowle shook his head, looking equally bemused. “Negative. The bird’s still dead.”
“Get an ADS update and confirmation,” Sommerfield told an aide.
“I already have, sir. Radar has lost both missiles.”
“Evaluation?”
“None possible at this stage, sir.”
“Does anyone know what’s going on?” Sommerfield demanded, stepping back and asking the room in general. Nobody did.
Then a telephone rang nearby. An Air Force major took the call, listened for a few seconds, and then looked up. “Sector Five has a visual confirmation,” he informed the room. “Both missiles exploded in flight east of the city. First reports put it at somewhere near the Patuxent River.”
Minutes later, four F-15 interceptors formed up around the Ilyushin, radioed orders to it to land, and escorted it down to Langley Air Force Base, Virginia.
CHAPTER 68
It was late the next morning when the C-130 landed at an air base fifteen miles northeast of Tel Aviv with its complement of nine weary but relieved Israeli paratroopers, along with Mel, Dave, Brett, and the agent that they now knew as Hamashad. The original plan—to lift them out of Syria via the temporary strip in Turkey in the same way that they entered—had been scrapped late the previous evening. Instead, with clearance from the Syrian authorities, the transporter had flown directly to collect them from the airstrip at Domino the first thing next morning, and had sent the helicopter out from there to pick up Rafael’s squad from the desert. By the time the plane left Domino, newspapers and TV reporters were already informing the world, still recovering from the shock of what had almost happened in Washington, of the Soviet commando force from Armenia that had landed during the night and freed the passengers from a Syrian airliner that most people hadn’t even known was hijacked. Syrian troops had landed there, too, and the Israelis had left a scene of excited questionings and interrogations in progress among the Russians, the Syrians, and the Palestinians, with every sign that it would all be continuing for some time.
“How does it feel to be back on the ground outside Syria?” Mel asked Brett as the giant plane slowed and swung off the runway to taxi to its dispersal area. “Did you ever think that maybe you’d never get out?”
Brett grinned and shook his head. “No way. You can’t sink me. I’m a rubber duck.”
“You mean you still remember that?”
“Sure.” Brett frowned. “Say, where did it come from?”
“That party the night before I left Pensacola, remember? There was some idiot in the pool.”
“That’s right… that was it, yes.”
“Do you guys still remember things from back then?” Dave said, sitting by them. “It seems like a thousand years ago.”
“It was in a way,” Mel said. “That was back in the nineteen hundreds.”
Dave gave him a funny look. “That’s right. I never thought about it like that.”
The aircraft rolled to a halt, and the Israelis got up and moved back to cluster around the tail door. “A long hot bath and clean sheets tonight,” Ehud said to them as he gathered his equipment. “Looking forward to it?”
“You could say that,” Mel agreed.
“We couldn’t persuade you to take this up full-time, then? Why not? You’d be a natural at it.”
“I think I’ll stick to lawyering, thanks,” Mel said.
“You won’t, you know,” Dave told him.
Ehud was looking at Mel quizzically. “I still don’t know what to make of that,” he said. “Are you really a lawyer? You sounded serious when you said it.”
Mel leaned close to his ear. “Classified,” he whispered. Ehud gave a laugh and shrugged.
The tail ramp swung down. The arrivals walked down it into the sunlight as the airscrews stopped spinning, and ambled in a loose gaggle across to the two pickup trucks waiting to take them to the terminal area. Mel waited for the boots ahead of him to lift clear, then swung his pack and Uzi up over the tailgate and hauled himself up between Dave and Brett. Hamashad was sitting opposite, looking distant, and in
a way, surprisingly, somewhat sad. “What’s the matter?” Brett asked him. “I thought you’d be on top of the world to be back.”
Hamashad sighed and returned a smile. “Oh, it isn’t all as simple as people think. Living among the Palestinians as one of them, you learn to understand them. It’s a recognized fact among us that some of the strongest spokesmen for their cause are Israeli agents who’ve infiltrated them.”
“Just more people who wanted to be left alone, eh?” Dave said as the truck pulled away.
“Their fathers’ land was taken away from them by foreigners, and given to other foreigners,” Hamashad said. “How would you feel?”
The trucks passed a line of helicopters painted olive with Army markings, crossed the concrete apron, and drove in front of a hangar with a fire truck and rescue wagon parked outside to the aircrew buildings and control tower. There, by a parked Land Rover, Colonel Shlomo Hariv and General Shimon Lurgar were waiting for them. And there was a third figure with them also, Mel saw as the pickup lurched to a halt and the khaki-clad figures began tumbling out.
She was wearing a white shirt with tan slacks, and her long, fair hair was loose and billowing in the wind. In the message that Mel had asked Yigal Uban to deliver just before the U.S. delegation left for home, he had asked Slade not to tell Stephanie the reason for leaving her behind. There was always the chance that Mustapha might not have been Brett. Mel wouldn’t have wanted to raise her hopes that high, only to be dashed. If Mustapha had turned out to be someone else, they would simply have fobbed her off with an excuse and that would have been that.
Mel hadn’t realized until late the previous night, while they were still in Syria, that Brett had received information through Hamashad—official, but wrong—that Stephanie was dead. He suspected that Brett still hadn’t recovered from the emotional effect of learning the true story—the way that Brett had been talking about anything else ever since, suggested that he was still coming to terms with it internally. Brett was still collecting things together on the floor of the truck and hadn’t seen her yet. Mel hadn’t said anything about her being at the airfield for the simple reason that he’d had no reason to suppose that she would be.
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