by Tom Clancy
Peggy pretended to sneeze so that she could turn away from the painting. She saw the woman, her eyes in her book, though she was holding her head very steady and definitely watching Volko with peripheral vision.
"Good catch," Peggy said. "They've got both exits covered. But that doesn't mean they know who we are."
"Maybe that's why they sent Volko," George said. "They're using him as bait. And he was letting you know that."
A minute had passed and, looking at his watch, Volko began walking away from the painting. The round-faced man began to turn away as Volko approached, but the woman only half turned. The way she was standing, she could still look into the room. The round-faced man stopped.
"Why did she keep watching?" Peggy wondered aloud as she and George wandered over to the next painting.
"Maybe our friend Ronash described us to him."
"It's possible," she said. "Let's split up and see what happens."
"That's crazy. Who'll watch our backs—"
"We'll have to watch our own backs," Peggy said. "You go out behind Volko and I'll go past the woman. We'll meet in the ground-floor main entrance. If one of us gets in trouble, the other gets out of here. Agreed?"
"No way," said George.
Peggy opened her own guidebook at random. "Look," she said quietly but firmly, "someone's got to get out and report on what's happened. Describe these people, break them. Don't you see that?"
George thought, That's the difference between a Striker and an agent. One is a team player, the other a lone wolf. In this case, however, the lone wolf had a point.
"All right," he said. "Agreed."
Peggy looked up from the book and pointed to the room with the Michelangelo. George nodded, glanced at his watch, then pecked her on the cheek.
"Good luck," he said, then set off in the direction Volko had headed.
As George approached the round-faced man, he felt a kind of undertow pulling them together. He kept his face averted, searching the crowd for Volko as he entered the Loggia of Raphael, a gallery copied from one of the same name in the Vatican. He didn't see the round-faced man as he walked beside the spectacular murals by Unterberger, nor could he find Volko- "Adnu minutu, pazhahlusta," someone said from behind him. "A moment, please."
George turned, his muscles tensing as the round-faced man approached. He understood "please," and gathered from the raised index finger that the man wanted him to wait. Where the conversation would go from here, though, he had no idea.
He was smiling pleasantly as, suddenly, Volko came rushing from behind the round-faced man. He'd doffed his windbreaker, which was why George had lost sight of him, and had it stretched tightly between his hands. In one quick motion, he wrapped it around the throat of the round-faced man while he was looking at George.
"Damn You, Pogodin! " he yelled, his own face turning crimson from the strength he put into the attack.
Two security guards from down the hall came running toward Volko, radios pressed to their mouths, calling for support.
"Go!" Volko gurgled at George.
The Striker backed toward the entrance to the Western European gallery. He glanced over his shoulder to see if Peggy would come back and saw that both his partner and the woman were gone. When he looked back at Volko, Pogodin had already drawn a small PSM pistol from inside his jacket. Before George could move, Pogodin had reached around his chest and fired backward at his assailant.
He shot just once and the Russian fell to a knee and then onto his back, blood pooling at his side. George turned away quickly and, resisting the urge to go after Peggy and make certain she was safe, he headed toward the magnificent Theater Staircase and made his way downstairs.
As he departed, George was unaware of another pair of eyes that had been watching from behind an archway at the southern end of the gallery, spetsnaz-trained eyes as sharp and carnivorous as those of a hawk
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Tuesday, 11:47 P.M., Khabarovsk
It moved like Peter Pan's shadow, an ever-changing black shape barely seen against the dark objects below it and the dark sky around it.
The matte-black, swept-tip rotors and seamless, round-surfaced fuselage of the Mosquito threw off little reflected light and were RAM-coated— covered with radar-absorbing material. The engines made very little sound, and the armored crew seats, shoulder harnesses, lumbar support cushion, seat cushion, seat bucket, and helmets of the two crewmen were also flat black so they wouldn't be seen inside the cockpit.
The helicopter passed without notice over the concrete buildings of small cities and the wood or stone shacks of villages. Inside the cockpit, the radar and full-color topographical displays, working in conjunction with the CIRCE autopilot— computer-imaged route, correction-enabled— helped the pilot adjust to sudden changes, allowing him to avoid other aircraft that might spot them, or to change his course away from peaks that rose higher than the four thousand feet at which it was flying.
A British ship in the Arctic Ocean picked up radio communications from Moscow to Bira ordering aircraft sent to rendezvous with the train. Copilot Iovino's quick calculations using the on-board computer showed that the planes would be reaching the train just as the Mosquito was leaving. Unless the Russians picked up a decent tailwind or the Mosquito slammed into an unyielding headwind, they should get away without being seen.
Unless there was a delay, said pilot Kahrs. In that case, his orders were to abort the mission and head for the Sea of Japan. The commitment of the Air Force to recovering the strike force was not dictated by compassion, but by the size of the Mosquito's fuel tank.
"Coming up," said copilot lovino.
Kahrs looked at the topographic display. The solid images moved and shifted on the twelve-inch screen, having been mapped by satellites and translated into point-of-view images by Pentagon computers. Objects as small as large tree branches showed up on the screen.
As the helicopter slashed low over a flat-topped hill and ducked down into a valley, the computer map showed the trackbed.
"Going to RAP," said Kahrs— real airspace profile, indicating that he'd be looking out the window instead of using the tactical displays.
Kahrs looked up from the screens and peered through the night-vision sensor, with its wide field-of-view forward-looking infrared scanner. Roughly a mile ahead, he saw a fire in the snow and people strung around it. That would be the off-loaded crew.
He touched a button beside the HUD. All the Strikers carried a locator signal in the heels of their shoes. He scanned for the pulse, which was superimposed on an overhead map. Three beeped red in one area, four in another.
Kahrs raised his eyes higher. Behind high hills in the distance he saw knots of smoke coiling toward the sky.
Three of the signals were coming from there.
"Got the train," Kahrs said.
Iovino punched coordinates into a keyboard and looked at the topographic display. "The extraction site is one-point-five miles northwest of our current position. Obviously, the team split up."
"How are we on time?" the pilot asked.
"Fifty-three seconds ahead of schedule."
Kahrs began to descend, simultaneously swinging the Mosquito toward the northwest. The aircraft handled like the balsa-wood gliders Kahrs used to throw when he was a kid, slicing the air lightly and cleanly, the silence of the rotors enhancing the sensation.
Clearing the walls of the first of three roughly parallel gorges, the pilot leveled off at five hundred feet and flew due north.
"Trestle sighted," he said as he saw the old iron structure that crossed the three gorges. "Target located," he added when he saw the Strikers at the mouth of the trestle.
"Contact forty-six, forty-five, forty-four seconds," lovino said after punching coordinates into his keypad.
Kahrs looked toward the southeast, saw the churning smoke of the train.
"I only see four of the six," Kahrs said. "Get the low-down ASAP."
"Roger," said Iovino.
While Kahrs sped toward the target, Iovino watched the digital numbers of the countdown clock on his screen. At seven seconds to contact, he pressed the button that caused the aft hatchway to slide forward into its pocket. That took one second. At five seconds to contact, the Mosquito slowed and he touched a second button that caused a roller arm to swing over and a twenty-five-foot-long black ladder to unroll. It deployed in four seconds, and the Mosquito glided to a halt twenty-seven feet above the ground.
Ishi Honda was the first one on board. lovino turned toward him.
"Where are the others?" the copilot asked.
"On the train," Honda said as he snuggled into the tight space and helped pull Sondra aboard.
"What are they planning to do?"
"Get off and meet us," Honda said as he and Sondra both reached down to Pupshaw.
Iovino looked at Kahrs, who nodded to indicate that he'd heard.
"What do we gain by meeting them?" Kahrs asked Iovino.
Even before Pupshaw was inside, lovino was using the computer to calculate the extra fuel it would take to fly to the train as opposed to hovering here and waiting. The one incalculable was when the three Strikers would get off the train, but he had to assume that would be before they arrived.
"We're better off meeting them," lovino said as he pressed the buttons that caused the ladder to withdraw and the hatch to shut. Those were battery-controlled and didn't cost anything, fuel-wise; an extended ladder with the hatch opened added to the drag to the craft, which did eat into their fuel.
"Let's give 'em a lift," Kahrs said, keeping the Mosquito at twenty-seven feet as he pivoted to the southeast, smooth and delicate as a compass needle, and sped toward the oncoming train.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Tuesday, 8:49 A.M., Washington, D.C.
"What kind of Oil Can Harry operation are you guys running, Paul?"
Paul Hood looked at the puffy face of Larry Rachlin in his TV monitor. The thinning gray hair was plastered neatly to the side, and the light hazel eyes were angry behind the gold-framed glasses. An unlit cigar moved up and down as the CIA Director spoke.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Hood replied. He looked at the clock on the bottom of the screen. Just another few minutes until Striker was safe, and then two hours after that until the Mosquito was tucked away on a carrier, all evidence of the incursion gone.
Rachlin removed the cigar and pointed with it. "Y'know, that's why you got that job instead of Mike Rodgers," he said. "You got a poker face like Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind. 'Who, me, Larry? Running a covert operation?' Well, Paul, despite Stephen Viens's noble attempts to try and tell me a satellite was off-line, we've got some photos from a Chinese sky-spy showing commandos attacking a train. Beijing asked me about it and, unlike you, I really didn't know a damn thing about it. Now, unless some other country has gotten hold of an Il-76T— which the Chinese put at the scene of the crime, and which I happen to know the Pentagon owns— this makes it your operation. The CIC tells my guys they didn't authorize any kind of shooting war over there. They, too, would like to know exactly what you're doing over there. So I repeat: what's going on?"
Hood said casually, "I'm as mystified as you are, Larry. I was on vacation, you know."
"I know. And you came back fast."
"I forgot how much I loathe L.A.," Hood replied.
"Oh, sure. That was it. Everybody hates L.A., so why do they keep going?"
"The well-marked freeways," said Hood.
"Well, how about I ask the President what's going on?" Rachlin said, poking the cigar back into his mouth. "He'll have all the information right there on his desk, right?"
"I wouldn't know," Hood said. "Give me a few minutes to talk to Mike and Bob and I'll get back to you."
"Sure, Paul," Larry said. "Just remember something. You're new here. I've been at the Pentagon, the FBI, and now here. This isn't the City of Angels, friend. It's the City of Devils. And if you try and pull anyone's tail, you're gonna get burned or pitchforked. Understand?"
"Message received and appreciated, Larry," Hood said. "As I said, I'll get back to you."
"Do that," said the CIA Director, using the tapered tip of his cigar to punch off his image.
Hood looked over at Mike Rodgers. Everyone else had left to attend to departmental business, leaving the Director and his deputy to wait for word from the Mosquito.
"Sorry you had to hear that," Hood said.
"No sweat," said Rodgers. He was sitting in an armchair, his arms crossed, his brow creased. "You don't have to worry about him, though. We've got photos. That's why he has to bluster so damn much. He doesn't really carry a lot of weight."
"What kind of photos?" Hood asked.
"Of him on a boat with three women who weren't his wife," Rodgers said. "The only reason the President replaced Greg Kidd with him is that Larry had wiretaps of the President's sister trying to hold a Japanese company up for under-the-table campaign contributions."
"That lady's a piece of work." Hood smiled. "President Lawrence should have given the CIA to her instead of Larry. At least she'd have used it to spy on our enemies instead of on us."
"Like the man said," Rodgers told him, "this is Purgatory. Everyone's an enemy here."
The phone beeped. Hood thumbed the speaker button.
"Yes?"
"Incoming from Striker," said Bugs.
Rodgers jumped over.
"Private Honda reporting in," said a clear voice from a sea of quiet.
"I'm here, Private," said Rodgers.
"Sir, myself, Pups, and Sondra are on board the extraction craft—"
Rodgers felt his gut tighten.
" — the other three are still on the train. We don't know why they haven't stopped yet."
Rodgers relaxed slightly. "Any indication of resistance?"
"There doesn't appear to be," said Honda. "We can see them moving in the windows of the cab. I'll keep the line open. Contact in thirty-nine seconds."
Rodgers's hands were fists and he leaned on them as he stood beside the desk. Hood's hands were folded beside the phone, and he took the opportunity to pray for Striker.
Hood looked at Rodgers. The General raised his eyes to meet the Director's. Hood could see the pride and concern in those eyes, understood the strength of the union between these men, a union deeper than love, closer than marriage. Hood envied Rodgers that bond— even now, when it was causing him so much concern.
Especially now, Hood thought, for those fears made the bond even stronger.
And then Honda's voice came back on, with an edge that hadn't been there moments before.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Tuesday, 4:54 P.M., St. Petersburg
The distance between Peggy and the main entrance of the Hermitage couldn't have been greater if she were still in Helsinki. At least, that was how the English operative felt as she walked briskly toward the next gallery to the south, paintings of the School of Bologna. From there, if she could make it, the walk to the State Staircase was a short one.
Peggy knew the woman was following her and would also have backup, someone who would be watching and reporting back to a command center. Perhaps the one right here in the Hermitage, operating with or without Orlov's approval.
Peggy stopped to look at a painting by Tintoretto, just to see what her stalker would do. She watched her intently, as though she were a fingerprint under a magnifying glass.
The woman paused in front of a Veronese. There was no playacting. She stopped abruptly, obviously, wanting Peggy to know that she was being followed. Perhaps, Peggy thought, the woman was hoping she would panic.
Concentration put two little creases above her nose. Peggy considered and rejected a number of options, from taking a painting hostage to starting a fire. Counterattacks like those invariably brought more forces to the scene and made escape less likely. She even contemplated trying to reach the TV studio and surrender to General Orlov. But she quickly rejected that
idea: even if he was willing to arrange a spy swap, Orlov wouldn't be able to ensure her safety. Besides, the first lesson fifth columnists learned was never to box themselves in, and that basement was more than just a box, it was an already-buried coffin.
Peggy knew, though, that she wouldn't be allowed to run for long: now that she and George had been spotted, exits would be closed to them, then corridors, and finally galleries. And then they would be boxed in. Peggy'd be damned if she was going to let the Russians control the time and place of their confrontation.
The thing to do was to blind them until she could get out of here, or at the very least draw their attention away from Private George. And the best way to do that was to start with the art connoisseur on her tail.
Peggy wondered what would happen if she offered herself to the woman in a way that was just too inviting to refuse— before the Russians were all in place and ready to receive her.
Turning suddenly from the Tintoretto, Peggy began walking briskly, nearly jogging, toward the State Staircase.
The woman followed, keeping pace with her quarry.
Peggy hurriedly rounded the corner of the gallery and reached the magnificent staircase, with its walls of yellow marble and two first-floor rows of ten columns each. Starting down the steps, the Englishwoman knit her way through the sparse late afternoon crowd, headed toward the ground floor.
And then, halfway down, she slipped and fell.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Tuesday, 11:55 P.M., Khabarovsk
It had been two minutes before Squires had planned to stop the train when the Russian officer said, "Cigaryet?"
The Strikers had been standing in the cab of the train, securing their gear, when Squires looked down.
"We don't smoke," the Striker commander had said. "It's the new army. You got any on you?"
The Russian didn't understand. "Cigaryet?" he said. He used his chin to point to his left breast.
Squires had looked back out the window as the train went into a gentle curve. He slipped down his night vision goggles. "Newmeyer," he'd said, "see if you can help the man."