Mirror Image o-2

by Tom Clancy

  Squires shouted down, "Private Honda, get me an ETA on the train!"

  The radio operator quickly set up the TAC-Sat as Squires and Newmeyer made their way toward Pupshaw. The officer settled in slightly above and to the right of the Private.

  "Sorry, sir," Pupshaw said. "I must've hit a real icy patch here."

  Squires looked at the soldier, who resembled a big spider plastered to a wall.

  "Private DeVonne," Squires said, "you get above him and dig in. I mean, hold on real tight. Private Newmeyer, we're going to use our rope to try and free him."

  Squires grabbed the line that held him to Newmeyer and whipped it up, so it was resting on Pupshaw's arms, in front of his face.

  "Pupshaw," Squires said, "let go with your left hand and let the rope fall to your waist. Then do the same thing with your right."

  "Yes, sir," Pupshaw said.

  Both Newmeyer and Squires lent him their hands for support as, cautiously, Pupshaw released his grip on the rock face with his left hand, then grabbed it again when the rope had slid down. He repeated with the right hand, and the rope was now level with his belt.

  "Okay," Squires said. "Private Newmeyer and I are going to climb down together. We'll put our weight on the rope so, hopefully, it'll slice through the ice. DeVonne, you be ready to take his weight when he comes free."

  "Yes, sir," she said.

  Slowly, Squires and Newmeyer descended in tandem, on either side of Private Pupshaw, the rope snagging on the ice where it had formed between the Striker and the cliff. It held for a moment, and the two men put more and more of their weight on the line until the ice shattered in a rain of fine particles. Squires had a firm grip on the cliff, DeVonne was able to hold onto Pupshaw, and after a tense moment when the rock beneath his right boot gave way, Newmeyer was able to regain his footing with a steadying hand from Pupshaw.

  "Thank you," Pupshaw said as the four of them made their way to the bottom of the cliff.

  When Squires reached the bottom, Sergeant Grey had the team gathered beside the track. There was a space of some ten yards between the base of the cliff and the track; to the west, roughly thirty yards away, was a clump of trees that appeared to have died sometime before the Russian Revolution. Private Honda was already on the TAC-Sat, and when he got off, he said that up-to-the-minute NRO reconnaissance put the train at twenty-one miles to the east, traveling at an average of thirty-five miles an hour.

  "That will have them here in just over a half hour," Squires said. "Not a lot of time. Okay, Sergeant Grey. You and Newmeyer rig one of those trees to blow across the track."

  Sergeant Grey was already unloading the C-4 from the pouches in his assault vest. "Yes, sir."

  "DeVonne, Pupshaw, Honda— you three start for the extraction point and secure the route. I don't expect we'll find any disagreeable peasants out here, but you never know. There could be wolves."

  "Sir," said Sondra, "I'd like—"

  "Doesn't matter," Squires cut her off. "Sergeant Grey, Private Newmeyer, and myself are all that's needed for this part of the plan. I need the rest of you to cover our retreat, if it comes to that."

  "Yes, sir," Private DeVonne saluted.

  Squires turned to Private Honda, briefing him about the remainder of the mission. "You report to HQ as soon as the bridge is in view. Tell them what we're planning to do. If there's a message from them, you'll have to deal with it. We won't be in a position to use our radios."

  "Understood," said Honda.

  As the three Strikers started off through wind-gusted snows that ranged from ankle-deep to knee-deep, Squires joined Sergeant Grey and Private Newmeyer. Grey was already pressing small strips of C-4 to the trunk of a large tree near the tracks. Newmeyer was cutting the safety fuse, leaving the timer fuses they'd brought for Squires to use later. The safety fuses were marked in thirty second lengths and he had measured out a piece ten lengths long.

  "Make it four minutes," Squires said, looking over his shoulder. "I'm a little antsy about the train being so close that they hear it."

  Newmeyer grinned. "We all did the fourteen-mile timed run in under a hundred and ten minutes, sir."

  "Not in snow with full gear you didn't—"

  "We should be okay," Newmeyer said.

  "We also need to leave time to throw snow on the tree, so it looks like it's been there a while," Squires said. "And me 'n' Grey have another little job to do."

  The Lieutenant Colonel looked ahead. In five minutes, they could reach a concave area of granite some three hundred yards ahead, one that would protect them from the blast— assuming the concussion didn't bring the cliff down on them. But Grey was experienced enough, and the explosives were small enough, that that wasn't likely to happen. That would still leave enough time for one of them to come back and clear away any traces of their tracks in the snow: it had to look as though the tree had cracked and come down by itself.

  Grey rose when he was finished, and Squires squatted as Newmeyer lit the fuse.

  "Let's go!" Squires said.

  The Lieutenant Colonel helped Newmeyer up and the three men ran toward their little sanctuary, arriving with a minute to spare. They were still catching their breath when the sharp report of the low-explosive blast tore through the night, followed by the brittle cracking of the tree trunk and a dull thud as it hit the train tracks.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Tuesday, 11:08 P.M., Hokkaido

  The two-crewmen "glass cockpit" was low, flat, and dark behind a narrow, curved windshield. Three of the six flat color screens in the cockpit formed a single tactical panorama, while an extra wide HUD— heads-up display— provided flight and target information that expanded upon the data contained on displays mounted inside the visor of the pilot's helmet. There were no dedicated gauges. The displays generated all of the information the pilot required, including input from the sophisticated sensors mounted to the exterior.

  Behind the cockpit was a matte-black fuselage sixty-five feet, five inches long. There were no sharp angles on the flat-bellied craft, and the NOTAR tail system— no tail rotor— and advanced bearingless main rotor made the Mosquito virtually silent in flight. Ducted air forced, under pressure, through gill-like sections in the rear fuselage provided the craft with its anti-torque forces; a rotating directional control thruster on the tail boom enabled the pilot to steer. Already relatively lightweight because of the absence of driveshafts and gearboxes, the craft had been stripped of all extraneous gear, including armaments, which cut the aircraft's empty weight from nine thousand to just six thousand, five hundred pounds. With an extra tank of fuel carried outside and burned off first— so the bladder could be jettisoned over the sea and recovered— and coming home from a mission fifteen hundred pounds heavier than it went in, the Mosquito had a range of seven hundred miles.

  It was a breed of flying machine the press and lay public called "Stealth," but which the officers of the Mosquito program at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base preferred to call "low-observable." The point of such aircraft was not that they couldn't be seen. Enough radar energy directed at the F-117A or the B-2A or the Mosquito would enable an enemy to see it. However, there was hardly a weapons system in the world that could track and lock onto such an aircraft, and that was its advantage.

  None of the low-observable aircraft currently in service would have been able to execute the mission at hand, which was why the Mosquito program had been inaugurated in 1991. Only a helicopter could fly in low over mountainous terrain at night, deposit or extract a team, turn around and get out again— and only a low-observable could hope to do that in the carefully monitored and cluttered skies of Russia.

  Flying at two hundred miles an hour, the Mosquito would reach its target at just before midnight, local time. If the helicopter took more than eight minutes to complete its pickup in Khabarovsk, it wouldn't have enough fuel to reach the carrier that would be waiting for it in the Sea of Japan. But having run through every aspect of the mission on the cockpit computer s
imulator, pilot Steve Kahrs and copilot Anthony lovino were confident in the prototype, and anxious for it to earn its wings. If the special forces team did their job, this would send them back to Wright-Patterson heroes and, more important, would deliver yet another body blow to the once proud Russian military.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Tuesday, 3:25 P.M., St. Petersburg

  "General Orlov," Major Levski said, "I've had rather distressing news."

  Only the Major's voice came in over the headphones plugged into the computer in Orlov's office. The naval base on the outskirts of the city was not yet equipped with video capabilities; nor, with the budget cuts in the military, was it ever likely to be.

  "What is it, Major?" Orlov asked. He was tired, and his voice sounded it.

  "Sir, General Mavik ordered me to recall the Molot team."

  "When?"

  "I've just gotten off the phone with him," said Levski. "Sir, I'm sorry but I must carry out—"

  "I understand," Orlov interrupted. He took a sip of black coffee. "Be sure to thank Lieutenant Starik and his team for me."

  "Yes, sir, I will," Levski said. "You understand, General, that whatever is happening, you're not alone. I'm with you. So is Molot."

  Orlov's mouth perked at the edges. "Thank you, Major."

  "I don't pretend to know what's going on," Levski continued. "There are all these rumors of an impending coup, of black marketeers being behind this. All I know is that I once tried to pull a vintage Kalinin K-4 out of a nosedive, sir. It had a bear of an engine— a BMW IV, very stubborn."

  "I know the plane," Orlov said.

  "I remember thinking as I burst through the clouds, looking straight down, 'This is a vintage beauty, and I've no right to give up on her, however temperamental she gets.' It wasn't just a duty, it was an honor. Instead of bailing out, I wrestled her to the ground. It wasn't pretty, but we both made it. And then I personally— personally— took that bastard Bavarian mechanism apart and fixed it."

  "She flew?"

  "Like a young sparrow," Levski said.

  Orlov knew he was tired because that Young Boy's Digest story touched him. "Thank you, Major. I'll let you know when I get my hands on the damn engine cowl."

  Orlov hung up and drained his coffee cup. It was nice to know he had an ally, other than his devoted assistant, Nina, who was due back at four. And then there was his wife. She was with him always, of course, but like the dragon slayer who carried his lady's colors into battle, he still rode out alone. And at this moment the sense of isolation was stronger than any he'd experienced, even in the bleakness of outer space.

  Using the keyboard, he switched back to the channel the militia used to monitor their field forces.

  " want to be left alone," a female voice was saying in perfect Russian.

  "Leave a surgical assault force free in Russia?" Rossky laughed. He was obviously communicating with his quarry on his cellular telephone, patched together either through the Operations Center or the local police station.

  "We're not an assault force," said the woman.

  "You were seen entering the Presidential Palace with Major Pentti Aho—"

  "He arranged our transportation. We came to try and find out who killed a British businessman—"

  "The official report and remains were turned over to the British Embassy," said Rossky.

  "Cremated remains," said the woman. "The British don't accept that he died of a heart attack."

  "And we don't accept that he was a businessman!" said Rossky. "You have another nine minutes to turn yourselves in or join your dead friend. It's that simple."

  "Nothing is ever that simple," said Orlov.

  Only the faint crackle of static filled the line for what seemed like a very long time.

  "To whom am I speaking?" the woman said.

  "To the highest-ranking military officer in St. Petersburg," said Orlov, more for Rossky's sake than the woman's. "Now who are you? And spare us the cover. We know how you came here and from where."

  "Fair enough," said the woman. "We're COMINT officers who work with Defense Minister Niskanen in Helsinki."

  "You are not!" Rossky bellowed. "Niskanen wouldn't risk his resources to disinter a corpse!"

  "DI6 could not agree on a course of action," the woman explained, "so they consulted the CIA and the Defense Minister. They agreed that it would be less provocative for myself and my colleague to come in and try and find out why he was killed— and, once that was accomplished, to try and arrange a dialogue to avoid retaliation."

  "Cutouts?" Rossky sneered. "You would have taken a direct flight with cobbled passports, gotten in quickly to make your case. You came by midget submarine because you didn't want to be seen at the airport. You're lying!"

  "Which route crosses the Gulf of Bothnia?" Orlov asked.

  "Route Two," the woman replied.

  "How many provinces are there in Finland?"

  "Twelve."

  "This proves nothing!" said Rossky. "She was schooled!"

  "That's right," she said. "In Turku, where I was raised."

  "This is futile!" Rossky added. "She's in our country illegally, and in four minutes my forces will close in on her."

  "If you can find me."

  Rossky said, "The Kirov Theater is to your left, at the ten o'clock position. And there's a green Mercedes behind you. If you try to flee, you'll be shot."

  There was another silence. While the woman may have swept the car for transmitters, Orlov knew that she probably hadn't noticed the cellular telephone in the trunk. The line was kept open when an agent was on the job. It didn't show up on transmitter detectors, but allowed them to triangulate the position of the car at all times.

  The woman said calmly, "If anything happens to us, you'll lose an opportunity to communicate directly with your counterpart. Sir— I'm addressing the ranking officer, not the ruffian."

  "Yes?" Orlov said. In spite of himself, he liked the way she'd said that.

  "I believe, sir, that you are more than just the military head at St. Petersburg. I believe that you are General Sergei Orlov, and that you're in charge of an intelligence unit here in the city. I also believe that more can be accomplished by putting you in touch with your counterpart in Washington than by killing me and returning my ashes to Defense Minister Niskanen."

  Over the past two years, Orlov and his staff had tried to find out more about their "doppelgänger" in Washington, their mirror image. An intelligence and crisis center that functioned much as theirs did. Moles at the CIA and FBI had been turned loose to discover whatever they could. But the Washington Op-Center was much newer, smaller, and tougher to penetrate. What this woman offered— because she was either very clever or very afraid— was the one thing he could not afford to let go.

  "Perhaps," said Orlov. "How would you communicate with Washington?"

  "Put me through to Major Aho at the Palace," she said. "I'll arrange it through him."

  Orlov considered the offer for a moment. Part of him felt uneasy about cooperating with an invader, but a larger part felt comfortable trying diplomacy rather than giving an order that was certain to result in bloodshed. "Release the man you're holding," he said, "and I'll give you your chance."

  The woman said without hesitation, "Agreed."

  "Colonel?" said Orlov.

  "Yes, sir?" Rossky replied, his voice taut.

  "No one moves except by direct order from me. Is that understood?"

  "It is understood."

  Orlov heard rustling and the sounds of muffled conversation. He couldn't tell whether it was from the car or from the Technological Institute Metro stop, where Rossky had gone to catch his rats. In either case, he knew the Colonel wouldn't be idle, that he'd do something to save face and to make sure that the two operatives did not get away.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Tuesday, 7:35 A.M., Washington, D.C.

  Hood had learned that the paradox of crisis management was you invariably had to lop off the head of
Medusa, face the heart of the situation, when you were most tired.

  The last time his head had rested on a pillow, Hood was in a Los Angeles hotel room with his family. Now here he was, more than twenty-four hours later, sitting in his office with Mike Rodgers, Bob Herbert, Ann Farris, Lowell Coffey, and Liz Gordon, waiting for the first reports from a pair of Striker teams that had been sent to attack a foreign country. However they dressed up the language— which was what Ann would have to do in press releases if the teams were discovered or captured that's exactly what Striker was doing. Attacking Russia.

  Hood's staff was marking time as they waited to hear from either team, and he only half listened as he considered the ramifications of what they were doing. From the out-of-sorts look on Mike Rodgers's face he was evidently doing the same.

  Coffey hooked a finger under his sleeve and checked his watch.

  Herbert scowled. "Checking Mickey's hands every minute isn't going to make the time go any faster," he said.

  Liz sat up and jumped to his defense. "It's like chicken soup, Bob. It doesn't hurt."

  Ann started to say something but stopped when the phone beeped. Hood rapped the speaker button.

  "Mr. Hood," Bugs Benet said, "there's a call for you relayed through Major Pentti Aho's office from St. Petersburg."

  "Put it through," Hood said. He felt like he did on hot summer mornings, when the air was still and silent and it was difficult to breathe. "Any guesses, Bob?" he asked, hitting mute on the phone.

  "Our Striker man there may have been caught and forced to call," he said. "I can't think of any other—"

  "This is Kris," said Peggy.

  "Scratch that," said Herbert. "Kris is Peggy's code name if she's free. Kringle if she's stuck in the chimney, so to speak."

  Hood unmuted the phone.

  "Yes, Kris," he said.

  "General Sergei Orlov would like to speak with his counterpart," Peggy said.

  "Are you with the General?" Hood asked.