by John Weisman
“I do,” Rockman said. “And I think I know where we’re headed now—and I concur.”
“Thank you, Mr. Secretary.” Monica Wirth smiled in Ritzik’s general direction and noted that the major had no idea at all where she was headed.
So she told him. “Major, Miss Wei-Liu has just joined your insertion element.”
Mike Ritzik didn’t have to think too long about that one either. “No, ma’am, she has not.”
Monica Wirth gave Ritzik a hard look. “You don’t get a vote here, Major.”
Wei-Liu pushed herself to the edge of the cushion. “What about me, Dr. Wirth? Do I get a vote?”
“You’re the only one who does,” the national security adviser said. “You get the option of volunteering.”
“Ma’am,” Ritzik began.
“Shush, Major. You don’t know the full story.”
“Frankly, ma’am, I don’t give a damn what the full story is. I’m wasting my time here. I should be back at the compound, with my men, trying to anticipate everything that might go wrong so that we can deal with it. This device is just another problem. It can be overcome.”
“No, Major, this is different.”
Ritzik set his jaw. “I don’t think so. Let me be brutally honest, Dr. Wirth. Let’s say we get as far as the convoy, and we rescue our people, but we screw up with the MADM and it goes off. So what if it does?”
“So what? Ka-boom. Mushroom cloud, Major. And then—”
Ritzik cut her off. “Exactly, ma’am. Ka-boom. And when we vaporize, all the evidence that Americans were ever on Chinese territory goes with us. So far as the Chinese are concerned, it’s another nuclear accident caused by a bad detonator—just like the one in 1988.” He paused when he saw Wirth’s shocked expression. “Nobody here wants to die, ma’am. That’s not the point. The point is—”
Monica Wirth’s tone turned frosty. “You have no idea what the point is, Major. The point is way above your pay grade.”
Condescension was a quality Ritzik didn’t like. “Since I’m the one putting his men’s lives on the line, perhaps you’d be kind enough to fill me in, then … ma’am.”
Wirth didn’t give an inch. “I’ll let Miss Wei-Liu ‘fill you in,’ Major. She’s the nuclear expert in the room.” Wirth said, “Please, Miss Wei-Liu—give him a thumbnail.”
The young woman shook her head self-consciously, cascading longish, black hair around her shoulders. “I’ll certainly try, Dr. Wirth.” She turned to Ritzik, her hands folded on her lap. “Major, five years ago I had a small part in a program that designed the prototypes for the low-yield sensors the CIA team just inserted.”
“Congratulations.” Ritzik’s tone indicated he wasn’t in the mood for a history lesson.
Wei-Liu continued, undeterred. “In 1996 the Chinese stopped testing weapons with a yield greater than one kiloton.”
“In 1996,” he repeated, frustration evident in his voice.
“Yes, Major. But they didn’t stop testing.” “How did you know?”
“We didn’t—for sure. And the previous administration wasn’t interested in finding out. So the sensor program languished, until 2001, when it was revived.”
Ritzik nodded blankly, wishing she’d get to the point.
“Major, these sensors were designed specifically to identify ultra-low-level nuclear blasts—one kiloton or less.”
“So?”
“The MADM I saw in this morning’s photograph is a fifteen-kiloton device, Major Ritzik. The sensors were planted two hundred and sixty miles from the tunnel complex where we expect the Chinese to test their low-level nuclear capabilities. I checked the map over there.” Wei-Liu pointed at an easel where a thick green atlas sat open. “The distance from where the sensors were placed to the mountain range along the Chinese border is slightly less than four hundred miles. If the MADM explodes anywhere within that radius—whether you do it by accident, or the terrorists do it by design—the seismic shock wave, which will be somewhere in the four-point-six to four-point-eight Richter area, will jolt the sensors’ internal readers severely enough so as to render them essentially useless.”
The national security adviser broke in. “So your samurailike offer of seppuku, Major, is noted and appreciated, but respectfully declined.” She gave Ritzik a quick triumphal glance. “Not because it wasn’t heartfelt, either, I’m sure. But now you see that if you screwed up, you’d not only throw away your lives and the lives of the men you were sent to rescue, but you would, in fact, be doing the national security interests of the United States a great deal of damage.” Wirth paused. “A great deal of damage. And that, Major, is the point.”
It took Ritzik some seconds to digest what Wirth had said.
Finally, he replied. “I accept your premise, ma’am. And I apologize for jumping the gun.”
Wirth gave him an unexpectedly gracious smile. “Accepted, Major.”
“But I have to insist that taking a civilian along on such a hazardous mission is never done.”
“You’re wrong about that, too, son,” Rockman broke in. “It has been done—and successfully.”
Ritzik was shocked. “When?”
“During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis,” Rockman said. “A CIA missile analyst was assigned to accompany a Navy SEAL infiltration to Cuba.”
Rockman’s eyes crinkled. “The SEAL component commander, by the way, didn’t argue about it. He gritted his teeth and said, ‘Aye-aye, sir.’”
Ritzik winced internally. “Point taken, sir.”
“It was no cakewalk, either,” Rockman went on. ‘Two SEALs and the CIA officer were transported by the submarine Sea Lion to within two miles of the Cuban coastline. Then they locked out of one of the hatches and surfaced. Then the SEALs swam in—towing the analyst, by the way, because the fella couldn’t swim himself. Finally, they made their way ashore past the Cuban patrol vessels, right into Havana Harbor. The SEAL mission was to identify the warehouses used by the Soviets to store the missiles out of sight of our U-2 overflights so they could be attacked by aircraft without causing collateral damage to the civilians nearby. The SEALs did their job. Then they broke into the warehouses, which allowed the spook to get detailed photos of the missile components and warheads. Those pictures gave President Kennedy an accurate assessment of how far the Soviets had been able to develop their guidance systems and other design elements relating to ICBMs.”
The secretary paused to draw a breath. “So you won’t be the first to do this sort of thing, Major. Nor the last.”
Maybe not. But the original plan was out the window. They’d be dodging the Chinese now—and they couldn’t risk a chopper extraction. Not with Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy Tracy Wei-Liu in tow. Ritzik cursed silently. Now, because of Wei-Liu, every step of the op was going to have to be viewed through a political prism. Every move now had to be seen as a potential headline in The Washington Post.
SECRET U.S. UNIT CAUGHT,
DISPLAYED AS SPIES, by chinese
UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY GENERAL
DEPLORES U.S. SPY INCURSION
PRESIDENT TO FACE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR
IN CHINAGATE SPY SCANDAL
The political aspects meant Ritzik would now be doing a lot of improvising. Which made him extremely nervous. Improvisation got people killed.
But Ritzik didn’t say any of that. Instead, he said, “Except we won’t be doing any swimming, Mr. Secretary.”
He turned to Wei-Liu. “We’ll be using parachutes during the course of our mission, Miss Wei-Liu.” Ritzik paused, then flat-out lied: “I hope that doesn’t trouble you, ma’am.”
Unfortunately, it didn’t trouble her at all. “That’s all right, Major. I’ve jumped out of a plane.”
He was astonished. “You have?”
“Yes.” She smiled at his obvious discomfort, and a tinge of pride crept into her voice.
In spite of himself, Ritzik noted for the record that it was a lovely smile. “How many jumps do you have under
your belt, ma’am?”
“One, Major. On my thirtieth birthday. From five thousand feet. Floating down from a mile in the sky was the thrill of a lifetime.”
“I’m glad you thought so,” Ritzik said coldly, “because I’m about to increase your thrill factor by about five.”
She looked at him quizzically. “Five what, Major?”
“Five miles, Miss Wei-Liu, five long, freezing, windy, oxygen-deprived, dangerous miles.”
Ritzik’s words were followed by a long silence. Wei-Liu panned slowly, noting Rockman’s impassive face and Wirth’s tacitly encouraging expression. “It would seem the major’s made me an offer I can’t refuse,” she finally said.
The Second Forty Hours
TARFU
8
20 Kilometers Northeast of Almaty, Kazakhstan.
0210 Hours Local Time.
“ASSALAMU ALAYKIM, my brother.” Talgat Umarov wrapped Mike Ritzik in a tight bear hug and kissed him thrice on the cheek, heedless that he was blocking the bottom of the Lufthansa stairway and unmindful of the scant dozen disembarking passengers and the knot of ground personnel waiting to service the aircraft.
“Assalamu alaykim, Talgat.” Ritzik replied, happy to be breathing the cool, jet-fuel-tinged air after the nine-hour flight. “It’s great to see you again.”
“No—the pleasure is mine, I assure you.” The Kazakh officer beamed.
Ritzik stepped aside. “Allow me to introduce Miss Tracy Wei-Liu. Miss Wei-Liu is traveling with me.”
Umarov cocked his head at Ritzik’s obscure introduction. Then he bent slightly at the waist, pressed Wei-Liu’s right hand between his own two hands, and pumped it once, up and down, formally. “Assalamu alaykim, honorable Miss Wei-Liu. I welcome you to Almaty in the name of Kazakhstan Republikasy.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
The back of Umarov’s palm slapped air. “It is nothing.” He was an uncommonly big man for a Kazakh, barrel-chested, round-faced, and sloe-eyed, with a wispy, drooping mustache, an obvious direct descendant of Genghis Khan’s Mongol warriors. He towered over the two Americans in his starched Russian camouflage fatigues, scuffed jump boots, and pistol belt and Tokarev in its flapped holster.
Umarov snatched Wei-Liu’s carry-on out of her grasp and tucked it securely under his arm. “You have your baggage receipts?” he asked her.
“I do.” Wei-Liu pulled a ticket folder from her handbag.
Umarov took the document, turned, handed it off to a jug-eared teenager of a soldier, and machine-gunned five seconds of rapid-fire Kazakh. “Taken care of,” he said. “Now you will follow me, my friends.” Without waiting for a reply, the Kazakh led the way across the floodlit apron toward a squat, dented olive-drab 4x4 with Cyrillic military markings.
Wei-Liu followed self-consciously, thinking she probably looked like some tourist. Which she wasn’t. In fact, she was a veteran. She’d been a member of more than a dozen U.S. delegations. She’d visited Moscow and Beijing, Paris, London, and Brussels in her capacity as a top-ranking American nuclear nonproliferation official. Before that, as a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation, she had attended more than two dozen scientific conferences in places as varied as Budapest, Kiev, Oslo, and Tel Aviv. In the winter of 1998, as a consultant to CBS’s 60 Minutes II news magazine, she’d been the first American scientist allowed inside Krasnoyarsk-26, the former Soviet Union’s gargantuan secret underground nuclear city. There, buried deep beneath central Siberia, Moscow had, from 1950 on, manufactured tons of weapons-grade plutonium.
But from her undergraduate days at Princeton to her graduate work at MIT, her tenure at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory, RAND, and even DOE, all of Wei-Liu’s work had been … abstract. Until now.
That was the difference. Until twenty-six hours ago, she’d always lived in an academic universe, examining galaxies of conjecturals, theoreticals, and hypotheticals. But twenty-six hours ago, she’d been dropped into a frightening parallel universe, where all the what-ifs became jarringly, terrifyingly, real. People would die. She might, too. She’d always been able to deal intellectually with the consequences of thermonuclear war because the scenarios were abstract and the numbers surreal. She could calculate radiation exposure and ground-blast effects coolly on a spreadsheet because that’s what they were: numbers on a spreadsheet.
This was different. She was about to experience warfare on an intensely personal basis, and she wondered whether or not she could handle it, and how it would affect the rest of her life. She was already experiencing the consequences. Time, suddenly, had become a blur. Memory had become selective. Wei-Liu had gotten drunk—once—as a teenager. Over the past twenty-six hours she felt as if she’d experienced many of the same symptoms. She didn’t remember being driven to her home so she could pack a few items. But Talgat Umarov had her baggage-claim check, so she must have packed. She didn’t remember being photographed for a new passport, either. But there it was, in her purse, with visas for Germany, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan stamped in it.
She’d sat on the flight to Frankfurt in a stupor. She had hardly spoken to Ritzik. Well, there was a reason for that: he was remote, withdrawn, distant. Zoning, she’d felt, in his own thoughts. She was uneasy with him, too, and had trouble making small talk. It didn’t help that he had been very specific that he wasn’t going to talk about his job, her job, the past few hours’ events, or their impending business in public. So, in the first few minutes of the flight she tried broaching one or two safe subjects, like the weather, and Washington’s perpetual gridlock, and the problems of traveling in the post-9/11 security milieu. But after a few seconds of inane monologue she lapsed into embarrassed silence in much the way she did on the infrequent but always uncomfortable blind dates well-meaning friends arranged for her.
In any case it hadn’t mattered: within half an hour after they’d departed Dulles, Ritzik was asleep. And he didn’t wake up until they were on the ground in Frankfurt. He’d pulled the same damn routine on their flight to Almaty, while she’d sat wide-awake, unable to get any rest.
It was, she thought, bizarre how crises brought disparate personalities together. No one in her household spoke Chinese. She’d grown up in Westwood, a fashionable, upperclass Los Angeles neighborhood that adjoined the UCLA campus. She’d gone to Catholic schools. Her father, Henry, was a third-generation American, a senior partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, & Flom, a huge downtown law firm, where he represented multinational corporations. Her mother, Sybil, was a Shaker Heights aristocrat with a Harvard Ph.D. who taught art history at Marymount College. Not a single one of Wei-Liu’s friends or classmates had entered the military. For young men and women of her upperclass background, it wasn’t seen as a viable option.
Ritzik was from a different planet—West Point. She had no idea how to read the man. He was bright—that was obvious—and attractive, in a compact sort of way. But who he was and what he did were totally foreign to her. Because, when you came right down to it, he killed people for a living. Equally astonishing, he spoke about his vocation without apology or euphemisms. Ritzik didn’t talk about “neutralizing,” or “getting rid of the bad guys,” or any other politically correct term. Back in the national security adviser’s office he’d said point-blank he was going to kill the terrorists—kill every one of them—in order to give her the opportunity to do her job and render the MADM safe.
Later, on the plane, watching him sleep, she realized that what had shocked her most was that she’d found his bluntness reassuring.
“WE WILL WAIT for the others on the military side of the field.” Talgat Umarov’s thick accent interrupted Wei-Liu’s thoughts. The Kazakh said, “I have shashlik and fresh cucumber for you and good hot sweet tea that will drain the pain of your long trip away.”
“Frankly,” Ritzik said, “before you feed us, Talgat, I figure Miss Wei-Liu would like to freshen up a bit. I know I’d like to get out of these clothes.” He fingered his blue suit and wrinkled shirt as if
they were contaminated. “I’ve been in them for two days now and I’m beginning to get pretty ripe.”
The Kazakh’s face fell as he turned to Wei-Liu. “I am apologetic for my behavior, Miss Wei-Liu. You have been traveling long and hard. I am pleased to offer you my meager hospitality.”
“I am sure it is anything but meager, Colonel,” Wei-Liu said.
“This Miss Wei-Liu is a seasoned diplomat, I see.” The Kazakh roared with laughter. “So she must work for your State Department.” When he did not receive a direct answer, he punched Ritzik’s upper arm hard enough to make it numb. “No matter. We have uniforms that will suit you—and even hot water, too. You will look good as a Kazakh officer, my brother. Maybe it will fit so well, you will decide to stay, God willing.”
“Are you asking me to defect, Talgat?”
“There is always that hope, God willing.” The Kazakh laughed. “My brother-in-law has a cousin who has an unmarried sister-in-law who is a beautiful gem of a woman. I have seen her and can vouch for it. She would bear you many sons, Michael. You would make a good life here.”
Ritzik’s face flushed. “I am grateful for the offer,” he said. “But I am married to my job.”
“As am I,” Umarov said. “As are all soldiers. Still, if there is time perhaps we will pay my brother-in-law’s cousin’s sister-in-law’s parents a visit anyway.” Umarov opened the front passenger door of the vehicle and held it for Wei-Liu. “Marhamet—please, miss.”
Wei-Liu climbed in. “Thank you, Colonel.”
“It is nothing.” He slapped the door shut behind her, walked around the flat hood, and slid behind the wheel. He waited until Ritzik climbed in, then stepped on the starter button.
Ritzik said, “How’s the baby?” He glanced toward Wei-Liu. “Talgat and his wife, Kadisha, just had a son.”
“Congratulations. What’s his name?”