PAYBACK
by
J. c. POLLOCK

Published by Delacorte Press

Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 666 Fifth Avenue New York,
New York 10103

Copyright 1989 by J. C. Pollock
All rights reserved

ALSO BY J. c. POLLOCK

THE DENNECKER CODE

MISSION M.I.A.

CENTRIFUGE

CROSSFIRE

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written
permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

Design by Richard Oriolo

The trademark Delacorte is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pollock, J. C.
Payback / by J. C. Pollock.

ISBN 0-385-29830-7

J. Title.

PS3566.05348M55 1989

Manufactured in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada
September 1989

NORDHAUSEN, EAST GERMANY-DECEMBER 1988

The wind buffeted and tore at the parachute canopy, tossing it
erratically about the night sky. Captain Larry Manes swung wildly in
his harness, a pendulum gone mad. His hands held the steering toggles
in a death grip, fighting for control as gusts up to fifty miles an hour
drove him toward the swift-flowing river five hundred feet below.

Stealing a frantic glance over his shoulder, he searched the sky for the
rest of the team. Two of his men were a few hundred feet above him,
locked in the same deadly struggle. The fourth man was nowhere in
sight, having plummeted past moments before, his parachute hopelessly
tangled. Manes had watched anxiously as the young Special Forces
sergeant, with only seconds to spare, cut away the main chute and
deployed his reserve; still out of control, he was swept downwind toward
a distant ridgeline.

The tightly knit operation plan was coming apart at the seams. It was
Murphy's Law at its worst, starting shortly after takeoff from the
mission's launch site in West Germany. An electronics malfunction
aboard the aircraft had gone undetected, causing a navigation error that
resulted in the jump master releasing the infiltration team off course,
miles from the intended drop zone. Manes realized it upon exiting the
aircraft. The rolling countryside passing beneath him did not match the
terrain features of the satellite photographs he had studied.
Deteriorating weather was further complicating matters. the winds at
the lower elevations were much stronger than the mission planners had
predicted, and a snow squall had developed during the team's descent
from thirty thousand feet.

Manes's goggles began to fog, and his vision was blurred by the driven
snow. As the ground rushed toward him he fought to maintain the
delicate balance between panic and the positive force of the adrenaline
surging through his body.

A crescent moon filtered through a thin layer of clouds, casting a pale,
eerie glow over a dense pine forest that ran to the river's edge. His
eyes strained as he scanned the snowy terrain for an opening. Any
opening. Just large enough to squeeze his stocky frame into and avoid
being blown into the trees or the dark, icy water. He saw the lights of
a village off to the north, and in his peripheral vision he spotted open
fields, upwind and hopelessly out of reach.

Three hundred feet from the ground he got a brief reprieve. A lull in
the wind provided a few precious seconds to gain a semblance of control
before another powerful gust rocked him in the direction of the river.
At two hundred feet a low, rounded hill to his left broke the force of
the wind, and then he saw it: a small clearing, no more than thirty feet
square, just short of the river. Calling on all of the experience and
technique gained in over seven hundred jumps, he steered for it.

Pulling down hard on his left toggle, he descended in a tight spiral. He
was late in flaring his canopy to decrease his rate of descent and
landed with a bone-jarring jolt that sent him tumbling across the
clearing into the base of a tree at the water's edge. Momentarily
stunned, he quickly regained his composure and got to his feet.
Shrugging off his harness and pack tray, he glanced up and watched
helplessly as a horrible drama unfolded before him.

Despite a frenzied attempt to stay aloft for the few additional seconds
it would have taken to reach solid ground, the first man landed in the
middle of the river. He bobbed to the surface only to disappear again
as the swift, treacherous current caught his parachute and pulled him
under, carrying him to his death beneath an ice ledge extending out from
shore.

The second man landed in the water but closer to the bank. He managed
to unfasten the chest strap and pull the quick-release devices that
allowed him to shed his parachute and harness. Swimming with short,
powerful strokes, he angled for shore.

Manes plowed through the knee-deep snow, barely maintaining his balance
as he ran along the bank. He shouted against the wind, trying
desperately to throw his teammate a rope. But the dark swirling water
pulled the hapless soldier out of reach and into the main channel,
sweeping him farther downstream, beneath the same ledge that had claimed
the first man.

Manes stopped running and dropped to his knees, cursing as he stared at
the point in the river where his friends had disappeared, the anger and
frustration raging inside him. He forced these crippling emotions to
the back of his mind as he focused his thoughts on the mission and the
fourth member of the team--and the top-secret equipment the man carried
with him. Finally he shouldered his rucksack, took his bearings, and
headed toward the distant ridgeline where he had last seen the young
sergeant.

The cold wind stung his face as he emerged from the dark recesses of the
forest and trudged through the deepening snow. He skirted a field near
the base of a hill, paused to check his position, then moved on. He
carefully searched the heavily wooded hillside where he had seen his
teammate descend, crisscrossing the ground and scanning the thick
evergreen canopy above. As he neared the top of the ridge a flash of
light drew his attention back down to the field he had skirted; another
light winked in the darkness, and another. Someone was tracking him.

Faint voices carried on the wind drifted through the forest as the East
German Army patrol spread out and moved slowly up the side of the hill,
their flashlights probing the deep shadows. Manes unslung his weapon
and glanced about for a place to hide, immediately dismissing the gut
instinct upon realizing that his footprints, clearly visible in the
mantle of snow now covering the ground beneath the trees, would lead the
patrol directly to him. Glancing in the direction of the voices, he
considered the bleak possibility that his remaining teammate had already
fallen into the hands of the men following him and that continuing his
search could result in his own capture.

He crossed swiftly over the ridgeline to the far side of the hill and
stopped beneath a towering spruce to choose a line of march through the
valley below. Forty feet above him, concealed from Manes's view in the
upper branches, the young Green Beret sergeant dangled in his harness,
his neck snapped by the impact of his uncontrolled descent into the
trees. Still attached to the sergeant's load-bearing equipment by a
twenty-foot lowering line was a forty-pound canister in a specially
padded pack tray and carry bag. It was lodged in a crotch of the tree.
Thick intertwining limbs below made it all but invisible from the
ground. Manes moved down the hillside and distanced himself from the
approaching patrol. With the team radio at the bottom of the river, his
only hope of reporting the details of the failed mission was to evade
and escape back to the mission support site in West Germany. He could
well imagine the mounting tension in the operations center at the MSS
when the initial entry report failed to come In. Keeping to the edge of
the forest, he jogged at a steady pace until he reached a rail line he
knew led to the border. While he stopped to rest near a trestle
spanning a deep ravine, he heard the sound of a train before it rounded
a curve a few hundred yards farther up the tracks.

He let the engine pass before he broke cover and ran alongside the
slow-moving freight, keeping pace with an open boxcar as it reached the
trestle. He grabbed a handhold on the side of the car and tried to
swing his body up and through the open door. His gloves, frozen and
stiff, caused him to lose his grip first one hand, then the other as he
fought to stay on his feet, finally stumbling and falling, his upper
body landing beneath the wheels of the train.

His chest was crushed and he was dragged to his death before his boot
snagged on a crosstie, tossing him out from under the train, where he
bounced off the side of the trestle. He fell silently. The force of
the wind, in a powerful updraft, momentarily suspended him in midair;
then floating slowly downward in an almost graceful spread eagle, he
disappeared into the depths of the ravine.

NEW YORK CITY-TEN MONTHS LATER
Manhattan's Upper East Side, with some of the most desirable and
expensive real estate in the world, is a glamorous and exclusive enclave
for the wealthy, influential, and celebrated. Luxuriously housed in
security high rises and fortified town houses, they are, for the most
part, insulated from and impervious to the harsh realities surrounding
them.

Nipper Denton's niche in this chic and fashionable neighborhood, his
home for the night, was a bird-shit-stained bench along the stone wall
bordering Central Park. Bundled inside a damp, grimy furniture blanket
stolen off a moving van that morning, he was barely recognizable as a
human form. A light drizzle that had started around midnight, then
changed to a fine mist, had mercifully stopped. Nipper was chilled to
the bone, shivering uncontrollably as he tugged at the collar of one of
the three tattered coats that helped insulate his scrawny body. A
gnawing hunger had kept him awake most of the night despite the pint of
Mad Dog 20/20 he had sipped slowly to get numb and warm while carefully
avoiding getting drunk and senseless and unable to react to the
ever-present dangers of living in the street.

Outside his foul-smelling cocoon, the raw October night held the threat
of the coming winter, a harbinger not lost on Nipper or the other bench
dwellers and homeless wretches scattered along the tree-lined sidewalk
and throughout the park. The time was fast approaching when their
miserable nights would be spent on steam grates or in subway tunnels,
anywhere warmth was to be found. And there were always the shelters,
but Nipper hated them. Hated the rules, and the stink, and the fact
that when the lights went out it was everyone for himself. He had even
stopped going there for meals, preferring to panhandle, believing that
if he hung around with the crazies who gathered there he would end up
just like them. The street wasn't any day at the beach, but at least he
had a measure of independence and could pick and choose the company he
kept.

It was just past four o'clock in the morning when he pulled back a
corner of his blanket and peeked out at Fifth Avenue's glistening,
rain-slicked pavement. He glanced up at the trees, their autumn color
lost in the darkness, or anemic under the harsh, sterile light from the
streetlamps. A car streamed by and out of sight, and Nipper cast
another, wistful glance that lingered on the soft warm glow of an
eighth-story window in an apartment building across the street. Probably
some rich pervert insomniac, Nipper thought. Got a telescope trained on
the park ...  hoping for a rape or a mugging ...  wouldn't think of
helping or dropping a dime to the cops. Fuckin' creeps!

Clutching the blanket at his throat, he sat up and looked over his
shoulder, beyond the wall to the wooded knolls just inside the park,
where he knew others were having an equally fitful sleep, their senses
half alert for the predators who roamed the shadows. The sick ones were
the most dangerous; the psychos, motherfuckers, beat the shit out of
you, torched you for the fun of it. It was relatively safe on the
benches, though; the bright streetlights discouraged all but the
complete wackos. But you could never feel too safe, that was when they
got you. Like they got him three nights ago, beating him senseless and
robbing him of the fourteen dollars it had taken him a week to save. The
constant violence was bad enough, but when it happened to you, when it
was all over, there was no one to tell about the pain, no one to listen,
no one who cared. He winced as he gingerly touched the long,
half-healed scab across the bridge of his nose. A liquid cough rattled
deep in his chest as he felt under the bench for his sign-a square of
cardboard hand-lettered in crayon that read
"Even as you did it to the
least of them my brothers So did you do it to me-Donations accepted."

The sign was wet, but still serviceable, and he shoved it back under the
bench, reminded that it had earned him a grand total of three dollars
and twenty cents the previous day. He decided he'd put a new message on
the unused side in the morning, knowing he hadn't gotten it quite right
anyway, and besides, the guilt trip wasn't working, they weren't going
for the human-bond bit. He needed something upbeat, promising, more
appealing to the affluent passersby, who studiously averted his best
pathetic gaze. It seemed the more humbly he solicited, the more
invisible he became. He needed to make them think their money might
make a difference--maybe a con like that slimy bastard down near the
bookstand with the dog, a sign around the mangy mutt's neck, lying that
he needed to go to the vet, even taught the son of a bitch to limp on
command. Good scam, though.

But Nipper knew there was a fine line when working this neighborhood, an
unwritten, though well-defined, code of behavior. You didn't make
trouble, you stayed out of everybody's way, you shuffled, made yourself
as unobtrusive as possible while still bumming enough to stay alive. Up
here only so much was tolerated before the cops found an excuse to scoop
you up and put you in Bellevue's nut ward. The more bizarre and
deranged of the street people, the screamers and mumblers, those who
talked aloud to no one in particular in words that were
incomprehensible, knew enough to avoid the Upper East Side if they
valued their freedom. And despite his appearance, Nipper wasn't crazy,
and he wasn't stupid--having had a good job before the booze got him. He
wanted no trouble with the cops and was careful to stay on the
acceptable side of the line, not wanting to be locked up or banished to
the less lucrative and even more dangerous parts of the city.

He wrapped the blanket tighter around his neck and tried to come up with
a new message. He rummaged around in his outer coat, sorting through
his pocket litter: a cigarette butt, a sliver of soap wrapped in a
soiled handkerchief that served as a washcloth, part of a day-old
pastrami sandwich and a piece of an onion bagel found in a garbage can
behind a deli. He searched for his crayon, feeling secure only after
finding it. Then, fishing out the half-smoked cigarette, he lit it,
drawing the stale smoke deep into his lungs. Another cough shook him
violently.

 ... 
One block east and three blocks south of Nipper's bench, a New York City
police car moved slowly along Madison Avenue. Officers Mike Concannon
and Betty Fauzio were halfway through an unusually slow night of
assisting medical emergencies and responding to calls from citizens who
seemed more than a little lonely and suspiciously vague when questioned
about their assailants. Fauzio chalked it up to a full moon. Concannon,
with twelve years on the job, suggested a reason was superfluous, all
things considered. Fauzio was thankful it wasn't like the previous
night--vividly recalling the greasy, gray-green shapeless lump that used
to be a human being she had helped fish out of the East River. It had
been her first "floater." She shuttered involuntarily at the memory of
pieces of rotted flesh that had fallen away as they pulled it into shore
with grappling hooks.

But compared to her previous assignments, working the Nineteenth
Precinct was preferable. The diversity of calls could range from a dead
bag lady under the Fifty-ninth Street bridge to a burglary at some movie
star's luxury apartment to dealing with demonstrations at foreign
consulates. And the added stress of being responsible for protecting
this elite neighborhood, with the potential for messing up a delicate
situation involving a bigwig, had its pluses.

There was always the possibility of busting a professional burglar
breaking into a multimillionaire's town house. A collar like that, if
it helped clear up other unsolved burglaries in the area, and with
letters of gratitude from influential neighbors, could do a lot for an
officer's career.

%Her partner, Concannon, saw it differently. Having run afoul of a few
wealthy, arrogant residents and scofflaw diplomats who had caused him
problems, he was hoping for a transfer to a precinct with a lower
profile. Concannon shifted his huge frame behind the wheel and glanced
laconically about as they cruised the nearly deserted street. Madison
Avenue was as unique for what it lacked when compared to other parts of
the city as for what it had. No spray-painted streetgang graffiti
defaced the storefronts; none of the "riot Renaissance" look of less
affluent neighborhoods. The display windows of the outrageously
expensive shops and exclusive galleries were not obscured by steel
gratings or chain link. The local residents enjoyed window-shopping
during the evening hours, and the shopkeepers were not about to deny
them a pleasure that invariably resulted in sales the following day.

The fact that most of what Officer Fauzio saw in the passing windows was
well beyond her means--though she would have done far more justice to
the designer clothes than most of the women who bought them--did not
diminish her enjoyment in imagining what it would be like to own them.
She smiled inwardly, admiring a particularly attractive leather coat,
then tucked an errant strand of dark auburn hair back under her cap as
her trained eyes again moved slowly along the sidewalk. Concannon
slouched deeper behind the wheel, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup as
they continued up the avenue.

 ... 
Nipper Denton was drifting into a half-sleep when the approach of a
speeding car snapped him awake. Momentarily blinded by a flash of
headlights, he averted his eyes and blinked, then looked back to see a
gray limousine with darkened windows hiss by on the wet pavement. It
screeched to an abrupt halt and skidded into the curb not fifty feet
from where he sat. The rear door facing the park flew open and a woman
tumbled out, landing with a dull thud on the cobbled sidewalk at the
base of a tree.

Nipper squinted into the shadows beneath the tree. The woman's skirt
was bunched up high on her thighs; her legs, from the knees down,
dangled over the shallow curb into the gutter. And they were nice legs,
Nipper couldn't help noticing as he continued staring. And they weren't
moving.

The limousine stopped for only a few seconds, then roared off, heading
south, not about to honor the red light at the intersection of
Sixty-ninth Street less than a block away. Nipper saw the white Porsche
pull out from the cross street and slam on its brakes. He saw the
limousine swerve defensively just as the small sports car broadsided it,
sending it up onto the sidewalk. The crumpling of fenders and the
tearing of metal echoed off the buildings and out into the park. The
unrelenting blare of a car horn tore through the night as the driver of
the Porsche slumped over the steering wheel.

 ... 
At the intersection of Sixty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, Officers
Concannon and Fauzio heard the crash and caught a glimpse of the
accident. Concannon came alive. He hit the sound and light switches
under the dash, stomped the accelerator, and spun the wheel of the
blue-and-white hard as he sped west on Sixty-ninth Street toward the
park. The siren whooped and wailed and the red roof light flashed as
Fauzio radioed Central and concentrated on her responsibility as the
nondriver--her eyes expertly sweeping the sidewalks, alert for unwary
pedestrians who might step into the path of the car.

Still deep in the shadows of the park bench, Nipper Denton surveyed the
accident scene. The nose of the Porsche was embedded in the front end
of the limousine, which had slammed into a tree. He saw the driver of
the limousine force open his dented door and get out, apparently
uninjured. A tall, blond-haired man in a black raincoat threw open the
rear door facing the sidewalk. He climbed out and, closing the door
behind him, cast a quick glance in the direction of the patrol car fast
approaching the intersection. He paused to say something to the driver
of the limousine, pointing an admonishing finger at him as he spoke.
Then, crouching low, he ran across the sidewalk, vaulted the stone wall
with the grace and ease of an athlete, and disappeared into the park.

Concannon cut the strident cacophony of the siren as he pulled to a stop
behind the tangled vehicles. Nipper Denton got to his feet and, taking
his blanket and cardboard sign, moved farther down the sidewalk for an
unobstructed view. He stopped in the shadows and watched the two cops
get out of the car, their hips laden with the hardware of their
profession.

Nipper stared at the woman's body near the gutter, then back to the
cops. "Fuck this shit," he mumbled, and slid over the wall, taking
cover in a thicket of brush behind a fallen snow fence just inside the
park.

Concannon looked into the Porsche's open window. The driver was
groaning, only half conscious.

"You hurt bad?" Concannon asked, the scent of fine leather reaching him
as his eyes searched the interior of the car.

"My head ... ," the driver whispered.

Concannon carefully moved the dazed man off the steering wheel, quieting
the car horn, and rested him gently against the back of the seat. "My
neck ...  I think I hurt my neck too."

"There'll be plenty of time to build your case later, sport," Concannon
said. "Just stay quiet for now, we'll get you some help." Turning to
Fauzio, he said, "Call an ambulance for this guy. I'll check out the
limo."

Viktor Kirilenko, uninjured and only slightly shaken from the collision,
leaned against the rear fender of the limousine. He looked toward the
park, then quickly back as Concannon reached his side.

"You okay?" Concannon asked, his wary cop eyes assessing the squat,
solidly built man.

"I am not injured," Kirilenko answered stiffly, with more than a trace
of a Russian accent.

"What's your name?" Kirilenko made no response.

"Your name, pal. I need your name, driver's license, and registration
for the vehicle."

Again, Kirilenko remained silent.

"What's your problem?" Concannon asked, tensing slightly at the man's
behavior. He was clear-eyed and had no visible injuries, but something
about him wasn't right. Behind the calm, collected facade he seemed
unusually nervous and frightened.

"The ambulance is on the way," Fauzio said as she approached from the
rear of the limousine. "But I think we have a situation here."

She motioned with her head and Concannon followed her to the back of the
car, keeping one eye on Kirilenko.

"Diplomatic plates," Fauzio said, gesturing to the license plates.

"Shit!" Concannon said, staring at Kirilenko, who stared silently back.

"Get the sergeant over here while I try to talk to this guy. and run a
make on the plates," he added, wanting to know to whom the limousine was
registered and if it had been reported stolen.

Concannon returned to confront the Russian while Fauzio made the radio
call and checked on the driver of the Porsche. The sound of an
ambulance could be heard in the distance, no more than a few blocks
away.

"Are you a diplomat?" Concannon asked Kirilenko, only to face more stoic
silence. "Look, you already blew any chance at a deaf-and-dumb act, so
how about a little cooperation?"

"Sergeant's on his way," Fauzio said as she walked slowly around the
wrecked cars. "Central's checking out the plates."

She leaned into the open front door of the limousine and checked behind
the sun visors and inside the glove compartment for any personal or
vehicle identification.

"No ID or registration papers," she called out to Concannon. From the
front seat Fauzio shone her flashlight into the back. There was a
woman's taupe leather shoulder bag in one corner. She continued playing
the light over the rest of the rear compartment, then suddenly stopped
and held the beam steady. On the plush carpeted floor near the rear
door were a woman's shoe and a pair of panties. An acrid coppery scent
came from a dark, wet smear on the beige leather door panel. She backed
out of the car.

"Mike, I think we might have more than a run-of-the-mill fender bender."

She opened the rear door and, shining the light in, let her partner see
for himself.

Concannon turned back to Kirilenko, whose eyes again belied his calm
demeanor.

"Hey, pal," Concannon said. "I need some answers here. You talk to me
now, show me some ID, or things are going to get a little unpleasant."

Fauzio left the limousine, her flashlight probing the shadows as she
moved slowly along the sidewalk.

"Oh, Christ!" she said, stopping abruptly at the sight of the woman's
body a short distance away.

One of the woman's shoes was missing, and her skirt, hiked up around her
thighs, showed she wasn't wearing any underwear. "Mike," Fauzio called
out, "you'd better read him his rights."

Moments later Fauzio's radio came to life and told her something she did
not want to hear. The limousine was registered in the name of the
Soviet Mission to the United Nations, and it was not reported as stolen.
She knew chapter and verse of the
"Patrol Guide" procedures involving
diplomats. Properly identified, they were not to be detained and were
to be extended every courtesy and consideration. But the driver of the
limousine had not properly identified himself and she had found no State
Department
"Blue Book" inside the car. Until there was some
confirmation that he indeed had diplomatic immunity, Officer Betty
Fauzio fully intended to treat the man now stonewalling her partner as a
principal suspect in what appeared to be a homicide.

 ... 
A few hundred yards from the accident scene, inside the wooded confines
of Central Park, three young Puerto Ricans huddled at the entrance to a
pedestrian tunnel beneath an overpass where East Drive ran through the
middle of the park. Their minds on other matters, they had paid little
attention to the sounds of the collision and the police siren on Fifth
Avenue.

Hector held the remnant of a joint between the nails of his thumb and
forefinger and pulled the last of the sweet-smelling smoke into his
lungs.

"Come on, man," he said to his friend Jesus. "It's four in the fuckin'
morning. We're not gonna get no more action."

Miguel nodded in agreement, though a sharp look from Jesus quickly
changed his vote.

Jesus was a legend in his East Harlem neighborhood. Handsome, with dark
wavy hair and a smile that sparkled, he was tough and street smart, a
born leader. He sometimes worked the singles bars just below
Ninety-sixth Street--the DMZ, as it was called by the Yuppies who lived
on its border. He dressed well and was charming enough not to be
spotted for what he was while sizing up his mugging victims, always
waiting for the right prospects, then following them when they left. But
he had gotten greedy and sensed that some of the bartenders were getting
wise to him. So he had switched tactics, gone back to basics until
things cooled down. And despite the anxiety and reluctance of his two
friends, he had led them on their first foray to the Upper East Side.

"You wanna stay low-life spics forever?" he had chided them. "You wanna
live with rats and roaches, beat people over the head who ain't got
nothin'? We got abilities, man, talents, and down there's where the
money is. And they don't put up no fight. They know better, no
percentages. They're rich, they got insurance, so they just hand it
over and hope you don't cut 'em up."

And so Hector and Miguel bought into Jesus's dream. And the night had
gotten off to a promising enough start with Jesus snatching an elderly
woman's purse just off Central Park West that netted them eighty-five
dollars. But it had deteriorated rapidly into the rolling of three bums
for a total of a little over eight dollars, taking some of the glow off
the great adventure.

"Nobody worth a shit's walkin' through the park this time of night,"
Hector said.

"We give it another hour," Jesus snapped. "Some guy who lives on the
West Side could be screwin' somebody's old lady who lives on the East
Side and be headin' home through the park before the neighbors see him."

Hector accepted the logic and nodded in agreement. "Okay. Another
hour."

Jesus and Miguel moved back through the tunnel, taking their positions
at the far end, twenty yards from where Hector climbed a boulder to sit
astride a large bronze statue of a sled dog overlooking the path to the
tunnel.

 ... 
Nikolai Malik stood in the darkness on a wooded rise inside the park,
watching the proceedings at the accident scene. He got the sense of
what was happening and smiled smugly, secure in the knowledge that
Kirilenko was following orders. A few bums who had been sleeping nearby
were awakened by the commotion and moved to the wall to watch, but none
were aware of Malik's presence.

His pulse had quickened when the lady cop shone the light on the body of
the woman he had shoved out of the limousine; he still felt some of the
excitement at the thought of how easy it had been to simply pull up to
the curb, grab her, and shove her into the backseat. She had tried to
fight, until he hurt her. After that, with a few more timely
applications of pain, it had been easy. He relished his time with this
one and wished he could have prolonged it. She was beautiful, with an
excellent figure, still firm, and it had gone well. She had done
everything he told her to do, exactly the way he told her to do it. She
even made the right sounds, just as he instructed. His thoughts
returned to the accident, and he silently cursed Kirilenko for his
stupidity and lack of composure in speeding away from the scene--an
entirely unnecessary response. He failed to understand how Alipov could
have assigned such an incompetent to him--an insidious voyeur who stole
glances through the rearview mirror from beginning to end.

When the ambulance and another patrol car arrived Malik left his place
of concealment and followed a path to the west side of the park. He felt
a lump rising on his forehead where he had struck it on the divider
partition in the limousine. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed at
it. It was not bleeding, but he kept pressure on it in hopes of
containing the swelling. He continued along the path, admiring the
beauty of his surroundings--the glow of the lamplights on the wooded
walks and the glittering display of lights from the towering skyscrapers
bordering Central Park South in the distance. How different it was from
Moscow. How much more free and diverse, and uninhibited.

From the sled-dog statue Hector watched the paths that converged in
front of him. He was tired, cold, and hungry, and eager to get back to
the familiar sights and sounds of his own neighborhood. Everybody spoke
English down here, and they all dressed like the dummies in those fancy
store windows. He just wanted to get back to Theresa; today was his
nineteenth birthday and she was giving him a party this coming evening.

The echo of distant footsteps snapped him out of his reverie and he
shifted his position for a better view in the direction of the sound.
His eyes locked onto a tall blond man in a dark raincoat rounding a bend
in the path and heading toward him. Surrounded by darkness and having
knocked out the light in the lamppost near the statue earlier, Hector
felt secure and in control as he carefully sized the man up.

He was tall, bigger than him and Miguel, and Jesus. But he was holding
a handkerchief to his head. A drunk, maybe, who had fallen. But he
seemed steady on his feet and moved like he was in shape. And he didn't
look over his shoulder nervously, as though he was uncomfortable walking
in the park at night, a sign of weakness that would have marked him as
an easy target. Maybe he was just a dumb hick tourist who didn't know
no better, but Hector didn't think so as he continued watching. On any
other night a predator's instincts would have cautioned him to wait for
another victim, one smaller, older ...  but Jesus wanted one more score,
and Hector wanted to get out of this foreign land.

Malik and Hector had seen each other at the same moment, though the
Russian, having caught the flicker of movement atop the statue despite
the deep shadows, gave no indication, never broke stride. Putting his
handkerchief back in his pocket, he casually unbuttoned his raincoat,
letting it hang open as he walked. His senses heightened as the
adrenaline began to flow, and his eyes scanned the area, looking for the
most likely ambush site. He guessed the tunnel just past the statue,
and headed for it with no discernible acknowledgment of the man he was
keeping within his field of vision.

Hector sat motionless and, he thought, undetected as Malik passed
beneath him and continued down the path. When his quarry was partway
into the tunnel Hector dismounted the statue in a fluid catlike movement
and fell in behind him--the signal to his friends that would trigger the
mugging. His sinewy body was coiled and ready as he took a switchblade
from his jacket pocket and flicked it open.

The unmistakable sound caused Malik to smile--the urban Cossack had
committed to his course of action; his comrades would show themselves at
any moment if they were good at what they did. His attention was now on
the opposite end of the tunnel, thirty feet away, as he walked casually
toward it in an unsuspecting manner.

Jesus and Miguel appeared suddenly out of the darkness, their slender
frames silhouetted by a lamplight a short distance behind them. They
moved forward with a slow, cocky swagger, and the sound of two more
switchblades, opened almost in unison, resounded off the brick interior.

Malik stopped midway through the tunnel and moved off to the side,
placing his back against the wall as the three young men converged on
his position.

Hector stopped short of him, a few yards to his left, and Miguel an
equal distance on his right. Jesus stood directly in front of him, only
a few feet away, and raised his deadly stiletto, pointing it at Malik's
face.

"Hand it over, man, or I'll cut you open," Jesus said. "Everything you
got--money, watch, rings. I want it all."

Malik stood with his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, his face an
emotionless mask in the dim light that reached them from the tunnel
exit.

"I don't think so," he said, with no hint of an accent flawing his
perfect English.

"Don't fool with us, man," Jesus said, his tone more ominous. "Hand it
over, now, or you'll take one of your eyes home in a piece of cotton." A
threatening motion with the switchblade added further emphasis.

Malik shrugged a cooperative gesture. He took his hands from his
raincoat and slipped the right one inside the tweed sport coat, as
though reaching for his billfold in the chest pocket. With
lightning-quick reflexes he withdrew the .22-caliber automatic pistol
from his shoulder holster. Before Jesus could react the tip of the
silencer screwed onto the end of the barrel was only inches from his
head.

"Hey, man, I was only--" was all Jesus got out before two
sound-suppressed rounds tore into his left eye socket, dropping him to
the ground in an instant. A split second later two more rounds, placed
with equal accuracy, penetrated one of Miguel's eyes with the same
deadly result.

"No, man. No!" Hector pleaded. "Don't shoot." He dropped his knife
and tried to turn and run, but his muscles, rigid with fear, wouldn't
respond. He simply stood there, frozen in place, transfixed by the
weapon pointed at his head. "Please! I'll never do it again. I won't
say nothin' to nobody. I swear on my mother, man." He was crying now.
"Hey, come on, man. Today's my birthday. I'm only nineteen years old."

His wide, expressive eyes continued to plead as he swore a silent oath
that if only somehow he could get out of this alive, he would never
leave East Harlem again. But it was not to be. The man before him was
unmoved, his face devoid of compassion. Hector and Miguel and the
mighty Jesus were not only out of their territory, they were, in the
case of Nikolai Malik, completely out of their league.

"Happy birthday," Malik said softly, squeezing the trigger two more
times.

The last thing Hector saw before the rounds ripped into his head and
felled him like a young sapling before an ax was the small, cruel smile
on the face of the man standing before him.

Calmly putting the pistol back in his shoulder holster, Malik exited the
tunnel and followed a path in the direction of Central Park West, again
admiring the beauty around him and enjoying the scent of the crisp fall
air.

 ... 
With the increase in activity on Fifth Avenue, Nipper Denton had moved
even farther into the park, finding some high ground where he could not
be seen and still watch most of what was happening.

What had started as a police car and an ambulance responding to a minor
traffic accident had now become a three-ring circus. The first
ambulance had taken the driver of the Porsche to the hospital, and
another ambulance pulled up; the Emergency Medical technicians, in their
white smocks and green pants, carrying black satchels, conducted a
second cursory examination of the woman lying in the gutter,
reconfirming what the cops already knew. She was dead.

Three more squad cars had arrived, and traffic was detoured around the
crime scene. A twenty-man task force of detectives was brought in from
Borough Command to canvass the area. One detective copied down the
license numbers of the vehicles parked along the avenue in the immediate
vicinity while another questioned the cop stationed in a "box" down the
street, outside the residence of the Yugoslavian Mission, but he was too
far away to have seen anything. Other detectives conducted a
door-to-door inquiry of the high-rise apartments with a view of the
crime scene, hoping to find someone who had been awake at the time of
the accident.

A sense of morbid curiosity fixed Nipper's gaze on a member of the Crime
Scene Unit, who, in the process of gathering forensic evidence, took a
slide smear from the dead woman's vaginal area and placed plastic bags
on her hands to preserve any microscopic bits of hair or flesh under her
fingernails. Another man took photographs from all angles, and another
meticulously drew a chalk outline around the body.

Moments later the green windowless van, known as the "meat wagon,"
arrived from the Mortuary Division. Two attendants dressed in green
coveralls put the corpse in a body bag, loaded it in the van, then left
as quickly as they had arrived.

A well-dressed middle-aged man, who, Nipper judged by the deference paid
him, was in charge, moved away from the growing throng of reporters and
mobile television news crews contained behind a hastily erected
barricade.

 ... 
Captain Ed Maguire was not in the best of humor. Not only had he been
awakened from a much-needed sound sleep, he could see the handwriting on
the wall with this case. He stopped to say something to a young
uniformed officer, who immediately put strips of tape on the diplomatic
license plates to keep the press from seeing them.

Officers Concannon and Fauzio stood by their patrol car as Maguire
approached. Kirilenko was sitting in the rear seat, his hands cuffed
behind his back.

"Did the driver of the Porsche shed any light on this mess before they
took him to the hospital?" Maguire asked, stopping in front of the two
uniformed officers.

"No, sir," Concannon said. "He was pretty much out of it from the knock
he took on the head."

The captain gestured toward Kirilenko. "Has he said anything yet?"

"Nothing, sir," Fauzio replied. "Did you toss him?"

"The patrol sergeant did a body search, sir," Fauzio said. "No
identification of any kind on his person or in the limousine."

Maguire leaned in the open window of the blue-and-white and stared at
Kirilenko. The captain's bent nose and lopsided face suggested a
demeanor that was contrary to his even-tempered personality. The
tough-guy appearance came from a lack of a defense against a left hook
during a stint on the Marine Corps boxing team in his youth and later to
a collision with a windshield during a high-speed chase.

Kirilenko stared blankly at the man looking in the window. "One more
time," Maguire said calmly. "Are you a member or employee of the Soviet
Mission to the United Nations or a relative of anyone assigned there?"

Kirilenko's only response was to look away from the captain's steady
gaze.

"Do you have diplomatic immunity?"

Kirilenko continued to look away in silence.

Maguire straightened up to face Concannon and Fauzio. "Take him back to
the station house and put him in the cage. As far as I'm concerned,
he's a John Doe, and I don't want him sent down to Central Booking until
the DA gets a chance to try to talk to him. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Concannon and Fauzio answered to Maguire's back as he
marched off in another direction.

 ... 
Nipper Denton continued watching until the Emergency Services trucks
drove onto the scene. The highly specialized unit began to set up
floodlights and comb the area, searching for any physical evidence the
Crime Scene Unit may have overlooked. Nothing escaped their
scrutiny--sewers, garbage cans, every nook and cranny within reasonable
distance. It was when they trained their bright lights on the park and
began moving in Nipper's direction that he silently left his vantage
point and disappeared into the night.

 ... 
Lieutenant Bill Rafferty was a tough, hard-charging old-school cop who
evoked images of stake-outs, coffee in Styrofoam cups, and unfiltered
Camel cigarettes. His hairstyle, with the exception of the length of
his sideburns, hadn't changed in twenty years, but like most of the
Nineteenth Precinct's detectives, he dressed better than average owing
to the class of people with whom the job brought him in contact--garish
triple-polyester sport coats with hang-glider labels were too
conspicuous in the land of Gucci loafers and Armani suits.

He had opted for the middle-aged preppy look this morning, choosing his
blue blazer and gray slacks, his daughter's favorite. His borderline
good mood vanished at the sight of Deputy Chief Polikovic waiting in his
office. He glanced at his watch; it was seven-thirty. He was a half
hour early and now regretted not having gone for his morning run, a
routine that not only kept him in acceptable physical condition but
helped prepare him for the tension and stress that went with the job.
And having a deputy chief from Borough Command, with whom you had locked
horns on more than one occasion, waiting to greet you first thing Monday
morning, fell under the category of stress and tension.

Polikovic sat in the glass-partitioned office skimming over a handful of
reports. He spotted Rafferty in the squad room, got up and poured two
cups of coffee from a coffee maker perched on top of a filing cabinet;
he handed one to Rafferty as he reached the door. An appraising glance
at the blazer and slacks, with a questioning pause at the choice of an
orange-and-green-striped tie, brought a conditional nod of approval from
the deputy chief.

He pointed at the small sign prominently displayed on Rafferty's
cluttered, messy desk, which read, "A Tidy Desk Is the Sign of a Sick
Mind."

"If there's any truth in that," the deputy chief said, "you've got to be
the most mentally stable man I know."

"I have my moments," Rafferty said. With his idea of perfunctory social
amenities over, Polikovic immediately launched into the details of the
homicide investigation that he was now dropping in Rafferty's lap.
Rafferty listened with a growing distaste for what he was hearing.

"The assistant district attorney just left. He didn't get anything more
than the uniforms who were first on the scene." He jerked a thumb
toward Kirilenko, who was sitting on a bench in the detention cage at
the far end of the room, and added, "We still have no idea who he is."

"Has anybody called the Soviet Mission?" Rafferty asked.

"They've been informed that one of their cars was involved in an
accident, that we have the driver in custody, that he's refused to
identify himself and is at least a material witness to a homicide, if
not the principal suspect. The guy that answered the phone just
listened and said "we'll get back to you."

"He couldn't ID the driver?"

"He didn't ask for a description, or even acknowledge that the limo was
signed out. It was five-thirty in the morning when we called. My guess
is he doesn't know. Probably some low-level staffer with the weekend
graveyard shift stalling until he can check with the general," Polikovic
said, referring to the senior KGB officer with the Soviet Mission.

"That's not like those bastards," Rafferty said. "They usually have
someone here ten minutes after we call."

"It's possible the driver wasn't alone. My guess is he's protecting
someone, and the Russians want to talk to that someone first, before
they get their boy out of here. Anyway, it's your baby now. That's the
victim's shoulder bag on your desk with the preliminary reports."

Polikovic turned to leave, adding, "Proceed with caution, Bill. If you
don't get any feedback from Intelligence or the Russians within the next
few hours, then send him downtown and book him as a John Doe."

The deputy chief paused at the door and again gestured toward the
wire-mesh detention cage. "You believe the balls on that bastard, dumps
the body right on Fifth Avenue, didn't even bother to use an alley." He
marched out, casting one last baleful glance at Kirilenko.

Rafferty looked out into the squad room and caught the eye of one of his
sergeants pecking away at a battered manual typewriter. He motioned for
him to come in.

"Take a Polaroid shot of the guy in the cage and have a uniform run it
over to Intelligence, see if they can come up with a match," Rafferty
told the sergeant, making a note to call them.

The Police Intelligence Unit, through liaisons with the CIA and FBI
local offices and the State Department, kept extensive files on all
persons with diplomatic immunity in the city. All sixteen thousand of
them, Rafferty thought bitterly. Thirty-eight foreign mission
residences in the Nineteenth Precinct alone. The largest diplomatic
community in the world--foreign officials, their families and
staffs--immune from every criminal and civil law. In his twenty-two
years on the job he had seen those crimes run the gambut from acts of
terrorism, rape, child molesting, murder, drug smuggling, spying, to the
more mundane acts of shoplifting and parking in tow-a-way zones. They
committed at least one felony a week in the city, and the cops were
powerless to do anything about it. Their arrest records disappeared at
the request of the State Department, and the guilty walked, seldom if
ever punished by their own government officials.

Rafferty recalled one case in particular--the son of a minor official
with the Bolivian Mission to the United Nations. A rapist who had left
eleven victims in his wake. It had taken almost a year of intensive
investigation to find him, and he was cut loose, walked out of the
station house a free man minutes after six of the women he had raped
positively identified him. Rafferty had made a point to be at the
airport the day he was being sent back to his own country--the only
concession his government had made. The young man had spotted him and
flashed an arrogant smile as he boarded the plane. Two months later he
was back in the city, living in the same neighborhood where he had raped
at will.

Rafferty's stomach soured at the thought of what they got away with, a
reaction not uncommon to any cop who had to deal with them. The State
Department, to avoid inviting reprisals on our own diplomats in the
offender's country, exempted what amounted to the population of a small
town from the rules of civilized behavior. He had the sinking feeling
that the man in the cage, murderer or not, would be back on the street
before the day was out.

From the victim's leather shoulder bag on his desk he removed a wallet
and an address book. A laminated United States Army dependent's ID card
in the wallet identified her as Katherine Simpson Gannon, married to
retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John Edward Gannon and residing in
Fayetteville, North Carolina. The card gave her address and birth
date--she was thirty-eight years old.

His gaze lingered on a snapshot of her, and a man he assumed to be her
husband, on a deserted beach. She was a strikingly beautiful woman,
what Rafferty considered aristocratic good looks. There was another
photograph, a wallet-sized print from a posed studio portrait of a
ruggedly handsome man in an army class
"A" uniform--the same man in the
beach photo. A green beret sat at a jaunty angle on his head and his
chest was adorned with five rows of colorful ribbons. A Combat
Infantryman's Badge was pinned above the decorations and master jump
wings below them.

Rafferty put on his glasses and examined the small photo closely. He
recognized the Vietnam campaign ribbon, one, among others, he himself
had been awarded for his two years in-country during the early years of
the war. The Purple Heart the man wore had three oak-leaf clusters,
indicating he had been wounded four times. A Silver Star and a Bronze
Star for Valor with two oak-leaf clusters stood out, but one of the
ribbons, more than all the others, held his attention, as much from
respect as from professional interest. It was an award few men had
received, and of those who had, fewer still lived to wear it. The small
white stars on a field of light blue told all anyone needed to know
about a man's character. It was the Medal of Honor, the nation's
highest military award for valor. He next paged through the well-worn
address book, skimming over the entries written in a small, neat script.
An underlined number caught his attention: "Jack's number at "the
Ranch"--919-555-2436." An older number with the same designation had
been scratched out above it. Rafferty leaned back in the rickety wooden
desk chair, rubbing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose in an
attempt to relieve the tension that was building. He hated this part of
the job, the calls to the victim's family. But who knew, the husband
could be the perp, although he seriously doubted it.

Under normal circumstances he would have had the department's
Communications Division send a teletype to the local police, who would
then locate and advise the family of the death, telling them to call the
investigating officer for further information. But after looking again
at the photograph of the victim's husband, he dialed information in
Fayetteville, getting the telephone number of the Gannon residence. He
let the phone ring for a long time before hanging up.

When he dialed the number for "the Ranch" the telephone was answered at
once by a man who simply repeated the number in a no-nonsense tone.
Gannon was not there; could he take a message?

Rafferty left his name and number. The clipped, brusque voice on the
other end said, "Yes, sir, I'll have him call you," and hung up.

Rafferty picked up the preliminary reports on his desk and began reading
and making notes, his thoughts interrupted by the recurring image of the
man in the photograph. "Shit," he muttered under his breath, and stared
out across the room at the man in the cage.

 ... 
Fort Bragg, situated in the heart of North Carolina, is the largest army
installation in the world. It covers 135,000 acres and has over four
hundred miles of roads, twenty-eight miles of railroad, numerous ranges
and impact areas, and seven drop zones, which see an average of 146,000
parachute jumps a year. It has a post population of 124,000 personnel
and is home to the XVIII Airborne Corps, the Special Operations Command,
and the headquarters and training schools of the Army's famed Special
Forces. Its annual operating budget, including military pay, exceeds
one billion dollars.

Tucked away in a remote corner of the sprawling base, with extensive
security measures protecting its perimeter, is a highly classified
550-acre compound that officially does not exist. The large, low-slung
modernistic building that dominates the compound is the new
headquarters, operations center, and training facility for Delta Force,
the nation's elite counterterrorist unit.

Completed little more than a year ago, it is a far cry from the unit's
former make-do quarters in the old Fort Bragg stockade. Referred to as
"the Ranch" by Delta personnel, it is uniquely suited for their
specialized brand of training, which includes free-fall parachute jumps
of pinpoint accuracy from thirty thousand feet, storming buildings and
mock-up aircraft with live ammunition and live "hostages," the use of
high-tech optics and highly sophisticated man-portable satellite
communications equipment, special-purpose demolitions, seemingly endless
hours of combat and sniper shooting, assault tactics, high-speed and
specialized driving, small-boat and SCUBA insertions, hand-to-hand
combat, free-climbing techniques on buildings and rock faces, and any
other skill--from driving trains and heavy equipment to refueling
aircraft deemed necessary for a given mission. It is a constant,
rigorous, and demanding training schedule that prepares the highly
dedicated troops for operations that include deep-penetration raids,
intelligence gathering, hostage-rescue missions, and VIP protection.

Jack Gannon had been with Delta from its inception in November of 1977.
Although he had retired a year ago on his fortieth birthday, with
twenty-two years of army service, he had come back to work for the unit
in an advisory capacity as a civilian with the title of Operations and
Intelligence Specialist. As he sat in the mess hall eating his usual
breakfast of chipped beef on toast--the infamous "shit on a shingle"--he
watched the troops arrive. They had changed from civilian
clothes--their "uniforms" when not at the Ranch--and now had on the
olive drab one-piece jump suits they wore during their daily training.
Civilian-style haircuts and a casual dress code were all part of a
deliberate design to make them blend in with the population at large,
particularly in the event of clandestine deployment to a hot spot where
their special skills were needed.

A small smile creased the corners of Gannon's mouth as he studied the
way they, to a man, carried themselves. Even, he noted, the two members
of the Australian SAS temporarily assigned there as part of an
international cross-training program that incorporated most of the
world's counterterrorist units. He thought of it as an air of supreme
self-confidence bordering on the constructive side of arrogance, a
mind-set necessary for the harrowing work they did, and an attitude that
went with living on the cutting edge, where you could expect to be under
fire on any given day. They were men of above-average intelligence,
emotionally stable, all possessing the almost inhuman physical stamina
needed to make it through a recruitment, selection, and training process
with physical and psychological demands so punishing and grueling that
it wore down all but the very best. It was not unusual for only two to
four men out of a class of fifty to finish. More times than Gannon
cared to remember, an entire class had washed out of the program.
Despite its current efforts to add another squadron of troops to the
unit, Delta had not, and would not, lower its standards one iota.
Consequently, the self-esteem and enormous sense of accomplishment that
came with the end of a man's probationary period, following his initial
training, when he was finally accepted into the unit, was something that
would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Few people understood how effective and professional Delta was. Out of
an absolute necessity for secrecy, not one of its many successes had
seen the light of day. Only its rare failures had received any
publicity. And when the blame for those failures was wrongly attributed
to the troops instead of where it belonged--with bureaucratic ineptitude
and planning doomed to disaster by interservice rivalry among
turf-conscious generals and admirals, each wanting a piece of the glory,
the integrity of the mission be damned--Delta took the blows in silence.

Gannon, as a member of the assault team tasked with taking the embassy
and freeing the hostages on Rice Bowl, the code name for the raid on
Iran that resulted in the tragedy at Desert One, was painfully aware of
where the finger of blame should be pointed. The only positive result
of that hastily organized and improvised mission, he felt, was the
subsequent formation of a fully integrated and coordinated
counterterrorist capability to make certain it never happened again.

Gannon's pride in the unit, and his respect for the men with whom he
served, was what brought him back to work as a civilian. The 150
"shooters," as the assault teams and snipers were called, along with an
equal number of support personnel, were among the finest troops in the
world. A caliber of men who, if Delta were disbanded, their mission and
exotic weapons taken away, could say with complete honesty, "Give us a
week, sir, and we'll be the best artillery unit in the world." Or
anything else they set their minds to, Gannon believed, for at the core
they were the most outstanding group of NCOS with whom he had ever had
the privilege of serving.

The faces were mostly young now, in their twenties, Gannon never failed
to notice. In the beginning most of the men had a common background:
multiple combat tours in Vietnam with Special Forces and the Special
Operations Group. But the war had been over for thirteen years and most
of the original members had retired or left the Army. And the torch had
been passed. Gannon washed down the last of his breakfast with coffee
and walked out of the mess hall, nodding to a few of the men in response
to the familiar
"Morning, Boss" greeting they still gave him despite his
now-civilian status. Descending the stairwell to the lower level, he
tapped out some numbers on the cipher-locked door to the operations
center.

"You got a message, Jack," Tom Halstead said as Gannon was about to
enter his office. Halstead, a young-looking lieutenant colonel with a
tough, angular face, was the current operations officer, one of the few
remaining "old-timers." He had succeeded to this position when Gannon
retired. "The call came in about twenty minutes ago," he said, handing
him the memo.

Gannon glanced at the name and number on the slip of paper. "You know
this guy?"

"Never heard of him."

"Wonder how he knew to call me here?"

A photograph of Gannon's wife brought a smile to his face as he waited
for someone to answer the number he had dialed. Kate had only been gone
three days, but he missed her, and always did whenever they were apart,
which was a lot less now that he was no longer on active duty. And she
was due home this evening, he reminded himself, scribbling a note to
make sure he wasn't late for her flight.

"Lieutenant Rafferty here."

"Jack Gannon returning your call, Lieutenant." There was a brief
silence, then: "Mr. Gannon, I'm sorry to have to inform you that your
wife was the victim of a homicide in the city last night. It would be
best if you came to New York immediately."

Gannon sat stunned in disbelief. He continued staring at the photograph
on his desk, unable to speak.

"Mr. Gannon?" Rafferty said.

"Yeah. Are you sure there hasn't been some mistake?"

"I'm afraid not," Rafferty replied. "How soon can you come into the
city?"

Again Gannon hesitated, still not accepting what he was hearing.
"Homicide? You mean she was murdered?"

"Yes."

"Why would ...  who'd murder Kate? How did it happen?"

"We're not sure. We can discuss that when you get here," Rafferty said.
"Do you have any idea when that will be, Mr. Gannon? We need you to
identify the ...  to identify your wife."

"You mean it might not be Kate?"

"We have every reason to believe it is. But we do need positive
identification."

The finality of the man's tone told Gannon he was grasping at straws.
"I'll be there as soon as I can. Today." He hung up the telephone, his
gaze still fixed on the photograph as it began to blur from the tears
welling in his eyes.

Halstead stuck his head in the door. "You want to take a look at this
satellite photo from ...  What's wrong, Jack?"

Gannon looked up and simply shook his head. Halstead entered the office
and stood beside him. "Hey, buddy, what is it?"

"Kate," Gannon said, his voice just above a whisper. "She have an
accident?"

"She's dead."

"Ah, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Halstead said, his empathy for his friend
sincere and heartfelt. "What happened?"

"She was murdered," he said, barely getting the words out. "I got to go
to New York. Right away."

"I'll line up one of our aircraft. You'll be there in a couple of
hours." Halstead placed a consoling hand on Gannon's shoulder. "Jesus,
Jack. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

For the first time in his life Gannon felt incapable of making a
decision, even unable to move from where he sat, feeling numb, as though
his own life was being drained from him.

"I guess I can leave my car at the ...  or I could just ..." His voice
was weak and distant. His thoughts disoriented. "I need some clothes."

Halstead had known Gannon for twenty years, fought beside him in Vietnam
on numerous suicidal reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines where
every moment could have been their last, and had never seen him lose his
composure under any circumstances. He brought Gannon a cup of coffee
and sat in the chair opposite him.

"I'll take you by the house on the way to the airstrip," he said, and
dialed the number for Delta's aviation element at nearby Pope Air Force
Base.

Gannon nodded and continued staring at Kate's photograph, completely
unaware of Halstead's conversation until his friend pulled him to his
feet and ushered him out of the office to the questioning looks of the
other men in the operations center. If Tom Driscoll's instincts were
right, the seemingly unrelated message from the CIA's New York City
office was the first break he had had in four months of overseeing the
most extensive manhunt in the history of the Central Intelligence
Agency. The report was a tenuous connection at best, the information
from the police and coroner's office was preliminary, sketchy, but it
was Malik. He could feel it. The psychotic son of a bitch had finally
surfaced.

Driscoll reread the report as Nancy Edwards, the analyst who had brought
it to his attention, looked on.

"It was on my desk with the overnight cables when I came in this
morning," Edwards said. "A rape/murder isn't the usual diplomatic
incident, and it fits the 'possible sex offender' flag on Malik's
behavioral profile. But there's no mention of anyone else being with
the driver, Viktor Kirilenko."

"What do we have on him?" Driscoll asked. "Nothing that indicates he's
in any position to sign out one of their cars for his own personal use,"
she said, scanning a computer printout she had run on Kirilenko. "He's
on the staff at their UN mission, entry-level KGB, been there a few
weeks. Has a wife and two children back in Moscow. Too new to the game
for us to have anything in depth. But he does have diplomatic
immunity."

Driscoll glanced at the police report, then at his watch. It was 8:20
A.M. "The Soviet Mission was informed of his arrest at five thirty-five
and they still haven't picked him up?"

"As of fifteen minutes ago he's still in custody. But he hasn't been
booked."

"No way in hell that driver was out by himself at that hour of the
morning," Driscoll said as he stared across the room, his agile mind
sorting through possible scenarios. "Their staff drivers are virtually
sequestered in the mission or at Glen Cove when they're not working.

"Follow up with the coroner's office and the cops, get me everything
they have," he told Edwards. "And see if State and the FBI have
anything more on Kirilenko."

"What about the victim ...  Katherine Gannon?"

"Complete background check--family history, political affiliations, any
connections to known terrorist organizations, no matter how remote. You
know the drill. I doubt you'll find anything questionable about her,
but I want it all laid out before I take it to the DDO."

Edwards hesitated as she turned to leave. "Am I missing something here?

We've been spending an inordinate amount of time and manpower looking
for this guy. The effort's out of all proportion, considering we have
nothing that links him to any current KGB operations."

"You know what I know. The DDO wants to be kept abreast of his
activities," Driscoll lied, remembering the Deputy Director for
Operations' exact words to him: "Find the bastard, fast, or we'll both
be working as gate guards."

The DDO and Driscoll were the only two people outside the National
Security Council who knew the impetus behind the urgent search for
Malik. The operation had a classification higher than top secret,
carrying an SCI designationsensitive Compartmented Information-Code Word
"Viper." The bigot list was more restrictive than any in the history of
the Agency and specific code-word access was even limited within the
NSC.

"Come on, Tom. Why the full-court press?" Edwards probed again. "Before
this incident cropped up I honestly believed Malik had been taken out of
circulation and recalled to Moscow. And that look on your face says
there's a lot more going on than you're telling me."

Driscoll shrugged. "I don't know any more than I've already told you.
Now get on it and keep me posted."

He feigned further interest in the report until she left the office. He
knew that his denial hadn't fooled her for a second. She was the best
analyst on his staff and too intelligent and intuitive to believe that
the massive effort to find Malik was powered by nothing more than the
DDO's need to satisfy his curiosity about one KGB officer's whereabouts.

Out of his desk safe he pulled a thick file folder and removed an
eight-by-ten blowup of a photo taken of Malik three years ago in
Teheran--the most recent photo the Agency had of him. A hard Slavic
face stared back. The eyes were riveting, dark brown, almost black,
with diamond points at the back. A thin, cruel mouth turned up at one
corner in an ironic half-smile. The sight of him made Driscoll's skin
crawl. He had spent months compiling the information in the file and
knew as much about Malik as anyone outside of the KGB, probably more
than anyone other than his direct superiors. And what he knew evoked a
conflict of emotions--as a fellow professional there was a genuine,
albeit grudging, admiration for the man's mastery of the craft of
intelligence.

Though there had never been any direct contact when Driscoll was in the
field, Driscoll considered him the most resourceful, cunning, and
dangerous KGB officer he had encountered in his eighteen years with the
Agency. Elusive, instinctive, moving with swift precision, he left
behind a stunning list of bloody successes, with no one who could
positively identify him as having been involved or even say with any
degree of certainty that they had seen him. He had constructed such an
intricate labyrinth of cutouts that there were those who believed he was
more than one person or someone who existed only in theory.

Few men possessed his skills or used them as boldly, Driscoll had to
admit, and yet he could feel only disgust and contempt for Malik's
complete lack of moral fiber, his cold-blooded, ruthless indifference in
carrying out his assignments, and his sociopathic tendencies, which
Driscoll believed led him to brutally murder at least three women in the
past two years--four if the woman in New York proved to be his work. His
background left no doubt about the genesis of his unusual abilities. If
the Soviets had a social register for KGB aristocracy, Nikolai Petrovich
Malik would head the list. His grandfather had been a deputy in the
Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution, Speculation, and
Sabotage, a mouthful in any language, which became known by its acronym,
CHEKA, the forerunner of the KGB. Its first chief, Felix Dzerzhinsky,
invented mass arrests and mass executions, enforced the Great Famine and
collectivism, set up the forced-labor-camp system, had Leon Trotsky
assassinated, and facilitated Stalin's rise to power. Malik's
grandfather had been his right-hand man. His father had had an equally
distinguished, if somewhat less grizzly, intelligence career, rising to
the position of Chief of the Operations Department of the First Chief
Directorate of the KGB before dying of a heart attack in 1972.

Malik proved a worthy successor. He entered the KGB training school at
the age of fourteen and was soon singled out as an exceptionally gifted
student. He excelled in tradecraft and became fluent in German,
English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Farsi. Pulled from the school
shortly after his eighteenth birthday, he resumed his training and
education on a one-to-one basis under the auspices of Directorate "5" of
the First Chief Directorate--the KGB's elite
"Illegals" directorate.

Directorate "5" functioned independent of the other directorates and
conducted the most secret and sensitive of the KGBS functions. Its
officers knew no territorial boundaries, and though supported and
controlled by an "5" Directorate officer--known as a Line
"N" man--in
Soviet missions and embassies around the world, they held no diplomatic
immunity and had no discernible Soviet ties. They were deadly
chameleons, their training and ear for languages enabling them to switch
nationalities at will. With multiple sets of stolen or forged
non-Soviet passports and documents, they changed identities and
disappeared into the very fabric of a chosen society. Given elaborate
cover stories thoroughly prepared over a period of years and backstopped
to infinity, they were virtually indistinguishable from any citizen of
the country they infiltrated. No mission was beyond their purview,
whether a one-time assassination or a long-term infiltration involving
the organization and control of a parallel network of local agents to
carry out Moscow's instructions.

Malik, at the age of thirty-eight, was already a legend among his peers.
Illegals' identities were unknown to each other and to all other KGB
departments. Still, rumors of Malik's shadowy presence and daring
exploits circulated throughout the intelligence community. Only a month
ago Driscoll, in an attempt to pick up his trail, had taken part in the
debriefing of a KGB defector who, even after being securely tucked away
in an Agency safe house in Virginia, refused to acknowledge Malik's
existence, let alone discuss what little he knew of him. It was the
first time Driscoll had ever heard one KGB officer express such abject
fear of another who was not his immediate superior. Such was Malik's
reputation.

His specific area of expertise was exploiting international terrorist
organizations for the purposes of the Soviet Union. His most recent
known accomplishment was a well-conceived and planned operation that
delivered fissionable nuclear material, stolen from a research center in
Belgium, to Libya for use in their fledgling program to build nuclear
bombs. There was "soft intelligence" information of his involvement in
a series of terrorist bombings throughout Western Europe aimed at
civilian targets, and conclusive proof, as far as Driscoll was
concerned, that he had ferreted out and killed an extremely productive,
highly placed CIA asset within the PLO. Other recurrent rumors linked
him to various terrorist activities funded with drug money and weapons
smuggling in Central America and Mexico. Then, six months ago, they
suddenly stopped, along with all sighting reports. He had vanished,
pulled back and gone under deep cover for reasons that, once discovered
by the Agency, had touched off the current manhunt for him.

As the Agency's expert on Malik and head of its Counterterrorist Group,
the task of finding and stopping the Soviet agent-assassin fell to
Driscoll. CTG, as the group was called, was formed after the failed
Iran rescue mission, its purpose to provide the assault forces of Delta
and SEAL Team Six with intelligence information on terrorist activities.
With a comprehensive computer data bank on terrorists, a staff of highly
skilled analysts, and access to the CIA's thousands of intelligence
assets, it virtually assured that no mission would fail for lack of
local agents to provide timely and accurate on-the-scene intelligence
anywhere in the world. As the CTG's mission expanded into organizing,
training, and advising counterterrorist forces for friendly Third World
governments, this work was carried out by former SEAL and Delta Force
personnel under contract to the CIA. Later, an action arm, a small unit
of "trigger pullers," was added for highly sensitive "surgical" raids,
giving the group a limited paramilitary capability.

Driscoll had spent five years with the action arm before his promotion
and transfer to Langley. His new position was a step up the ladder, a
career move, but boring by comparison. The assignment to conduct the
urgent search for Malik made him feel alive and vital again. He threw
himself into it in his usual manner--with a vengeance that grew more
intense with each new revelation of the man's background. The
photograph on the desk reminded him that it was the first time in his
career he had let it become personal, something the DDO had noticed and
warned him against. People like Malik had that effect on him, on anyone
with a shred of decency in them, he thought as he closed the file and
put it back in the desk safe just as Nancy Edwards appeared in the
doorway.

"I've got some background on Katherine Gannon," she said. "More to the
point, on her husband. We have a rather extensive inhouse file on him."

"And ... ?" Driscoll prompted impatiently.

"And you're not going to like it; it raises a lot more questions than it
answers."

 ... 
Sergei Alipov blended in perfectly with the Monday-morning crowd
jostling and weaving its way along East Sixty-seventh Street. From his
manner and dress it would have been easy to mistake him for a typical
New Yorker on his way to work. But if anyone were to ask, he could
properly identify himself with diplomatic credentials as the Soviet
Union's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations. He was,
in fact, the highest-ranking member of the KGB in New York City. A
major general, known as the rezident, he controlled over three hundred
KGB officers operating under diplomatic cover out of the Soviet Mission
and the United Nations in what was their most important and productive
intelligence-gathering and recruiting area in the United States.

Unlike his predecessor, Alipov did not confine himself like a hermit to
his eighth-floor mission apartment or to the Soviet estate at Glen Cove,
Long Island. He took an active part in as many operations as his duties
allowed; his distinguished looks, surface charm, and warm demeanor
contributed to his high rate of success in recruiting new agents and
assets. Unknown even to his fellow KGB at the mission, he held an even
more important and secret post--he was the Line
"N" man for the "5"
Directorate's Illegals.

As Alipov approached the mission he slowed his pace and returned a nod
of recognition from the uniformed New York City policeman stationed, for
security purposes, in a booth on the sidewalk near the entrance to the
compound. The Nineteenth Precinct station house, directly across the
narrow street, was temporarily vacant due to extensive
renovations--renovations that Alipov knew would include the installation
of the latest in communications intercept equipment by the FBI's counter
intelligence agents, who maintained an observation and listening post on
the top floor. He cast an appraising glance at the progress on the
building; the work seemed to go on forever with nothing being
accomplished. The Soviet Mission, originally built as an apartment
house, was now a warren of offices and small private apartments for
diplomatic personnel and staff. As a result the building was often
heavy with the scent of cooking--borscht and cabbage being the most
pervasive--and it was not uncommon to encounter diplomats' wives, laden
with bags of dirty laundry, in the elevator on the way to the basement
laundry room.

The two Soviet guards at the bulletproof glass door inside the mission
stiffened to a more correct posture at Alipov's approach and quickly
pressed a button to open the inner door. Alipov brushed past them,
ignoring their greetings, preoccupied and still hung over from a weekend
seminar at a lodge in the Adirondack Mountains where he had been invited
to address the Soviet-American Friendship Society. Although he
considered such idealistic groups as no more than the "useful idiots"
that Lenin had branded them years ago, he found them fertile ground for
recruitment. And despite having drunk too much (something he had
promised himself he would not do) he had made significant inroads with a
politically naive physicist from Princeton University targeted months
before as a susceptible candidate. "Make them friends before you make
them traitors" was the tradecraft dictum, and he was in the process of
doing just that.

On the seventh floor Alipov went directly to the referentisra--the code
and communications room--to check on the weekend cable traffic. He
pressed the button hidden behind the light fixture outside the unmarked
outer door and tapped his foot impatiently until the buzzer allowed him
access to a small anteroom, where he was identified through a peephole
set in a steel door. An armed guard swung the heavy door open and
Alipov entered the soundproofed suite of rooms, where a constant hum
filled the air--one of the measures taken to prevent electronic
eavesdropping. As he stood before a half-door resembling a teller's
window, the cipher clerk retrieved his briefcase from one of the safes
and handed it to him. The briefcase contained summaries of current
operations, code names of agents, and other highly classified
intelligence documents. Each night, when the briefcase was surrendered
to the cipher clerk, it was affixed with a personalized wax seal,
imprinted with a disk Alipov wore around his neck. The first thing he
did each morning was check that the seal was still intact.

Alipov scanned the weekend cables flagged for him by the cipher clerk,
and finding nothing of any immediacy, he left the referentisra and took
the stairwell to the eighth floor, where he was greeted by one of his
subordinates, a KGB major.

"We have a problem that demands your immediate attention, Comrade
General," the major said. He was a small, thin man with bright blue
eyes that were constantly in motion, as though he were expecting
imminent disaster.

"What is it?" Alipov asked, noticing that the major was unusually
nervous this morning.

"I believe we should not discuss it here."

Alipov nodded, and the two men remained silent as they walked along the
corridor running the length of what was clearly the KGB's domain. All of
the doors lining the hall were blank and kept locked even during the
day, and each office was equipped with sophisticated countermeasures to
ensure that conversations could not be electronically monitored.
Alipov's office, with its double walls, was the most secure of all.
Music and background noise were continuously piped through the air space
between the walls. The major began talking the moment Alipov closed the
door behind them.

"One of our staff drivers, Viktor Kirilenko, has been arrested by the
police," he said. "He is being detained at the Nineteenth Precinct
station house, their temporary facility on East Ninety-fourth Street. He
has been there since five o'clock this morning."

Alipov felt his pulse begin to race. He struggled to conceal the
anxiety that was taking hold. "What is the reason for his arrest?" he
asked with a calm belying his inner turmoil.

"There was a traffic accident, and the authorities are claiming that a
woman was murdered while in the car prior to the accident." The major
took a deep breath and glanced about the room in a conspiratorial
manner.

"General, it was the under secretary general's car, and there is no
record of any authorization for Kirilenko to have been driving it. I
have no way of knowing if he was on official business, and if so, for
whom. It was not for the under secretary general. As you know, he has
been in Washington since Thursday. I was wondering if you authorized
its use for a special operation."

Alipov turned away from the major's questioning gaze. The anxiety had
given way to a rage he was having difficulty controlling.

"I know nothing about it," he said, slowly collecting himself. "Have you
questioned Kirilenko?"

"No, General. Since informed of his circumstances, I have been waiting
to confer with you before taking any direct action."

"Why wasn't he released upon identifying himself as a Soviet diplomat?"

"The police said he has refused to identify himself, indeed to say
anything at all. I determined it was Kirilenko by having all of our
drivers accounted for."

"Was he alone?" Alipov asked, involuntarily holding his breath in
anticipation of the answer.

"To the best of my knowledge. The police said nothing about anyone
being with him."

Alipov breathed a silent sigh of relief, taking solace in the hope that
so far the damage was being contained. If he acted quickly, perhaps he
could control the situation before it got out of hand.

"Get him from the police and bring him directly to me. And do not
question him," he instructed the major. "I will conduct the
interrogation once he is back inside the mission."

"Yes, General," the major replied, going to the door. "The ambassador's
car has been impounded; shall I have it picked up and brought back to
the mission?"

"Yes," Alipov answered absently, his thoughts now focused on the
potentially disastrous mess he had created.

With the major gone, he paced his office, silently cursing himself for
the stupidity of his actions. How could he have agreed to such a
flagrant violation of the most fundamental rules of tradecraft. Malik's
argument had had its superficial logic: with his forged United Nations
documents and an official car bearing diplomatic license plates, he
could keep his rendezvous with the Nicaraguan diplomat without fear of
being stopped or detained by the authorities. At first Alipov had
sternly refused to accommodate him, but Malik had been persuasive and
manipulative, exhibiting an insolence bordering on insubordination that
would have resulted in quick and harsh retribution for anyone else. His
eventual acquiescence to the demands for a car and driver was not from
any personal fear of him, but he was intimidated by Malik's direct line
of communication to the chairman of the KGB. The importance of Malik's
assignment was such that its failure and exposure would cause heads to
roll, starting with the chairman, who had personally sanctioned the
mission and ordered the full support of all Line
"N" officers.

"Fuck your mother!" Alipov muttered, gripped again by anger and
frustration. A woman murdered, raising the specter of past allegations
that had been ignored and hushed up for lack of hard evidence. How
careless had Malik been? It was unlikely that Kirilenko had learned
anything of his mission. Still, he could confirm Malik's presence in
the city and, if questioned by the chairman's internal enemies, set off
an investigation that could see them all end up in mental institutions
or forced-labor camps--if they were lucky.

He tried to compose the cable he would send to the chairman, informing
him of the incident, but was unable to concentrate and decided to wait
until he had all of the information. He managed to calm himself enough
to begin a plan of action, part of which meant arranging another
clandestine meeting with Malik.

 ... 
"That was the Intelligence Unit," Rafferty said, hanging up the
telephone just as Captain John Hanratty entered the office. "They got
an ID on the Polaroid of the guy in the cage. He's for real. Viktor
Kirilenko, a staff driver for the Soviets."

"Yeah, I know. I just heard from his pals at the mission. They're on
their way over. Accusing us of the usual bullshit--the 'alleged murder'
is a CIA provocation to embarrass the Soviet Union."

"And I suppose the Quiet Man in the cage was on official business at
four in the morning."

"On his way to pick up one of their diplomats for an early flight,"
Hanratty said.

"Right. How come I knew that?"

"I got no choice but to hand him over when they get here."

"How much further you want me to go with this?"

"Once they take their boy out of here, there's nowhere you can go. The
answers we need go with him." There was an expression of disgust on
Hanratty's broad Irish face. As the commanding officer of the
Nineteenth Precinct, he had seen it happen all too often. "Talk to the
victim's husband and complete the paperwork. Unless the driver defects
and pleads to murder one before his buddies get here, which somehow I
don't see happening, it's over."

As Hanratty left the office Rafferty looked out into the busy squad
room, which had now reached its midmorning crescendo. Kirilenko still
sat impassively on the bench in the cage while the detectives went about
their work: some talked on the phone, others typed, hunting and pecking
out overdue reports. A black teenager with a shaved head and wearing a
leather suit and a Mr. T starter kit jangling around his neck grinned
and postured as a heavyset sergeant questioned him, the veins in the
sergeant's neck bulging in response to his growing iretation at the
kid's smart-ass attitude.

Out of the corner of his eye Rafferty saw someone enter the room and
pause in the doorway; he was wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket
and carrying a flight bag slung over his shoulder. After a moment
Rafferty recognized him from the photographs in the victim's wallet. He
wasn't as big as he thought he'd be, probably just under six feet tall,
with a tapered athletic build that suggested upper-body strength. But
there was a self-assurance and power emanating from him that was out of
all proportion to his physical size. After studying him for only a few
moments Rafferty knew his initial impression from the photographs was
right--this man had no more killed his wife than he had. Twenty-two
years as a cop told him things like that. They also told him that if
Gannon knew that the Russian in the cage at the end of the room had been
involved in his wife's death, he would kill him with his bare hands.

Rafferty got up from behind his desk and went out into the squad room.
"Mr. Gannon?" he said, extending his hand.

Gannon shook the proffered hand.

"Bill Rafferty." Rafferty glanced at his watch--it was eleven o'clock.
"You made good time, under three hours," he added, for lack of any other
small talk that came to mind.

"I got a military hop," Gannon answered flatly. "What happened to my
wife?"

"My office," Rafferty said, and led him through the noisy squad room
into the cluttered cubicle, where he gestured for him to take the chair
beside his desk.

"How did Kate die?" Gannon asked.

"I'll get to that in a minute, Mr. Gannon," he said evenly, noticing for
the first time the thin jagged scar running vertically down the right
side of Gannon's neck.

"It's Jack," Gannon said.

"Jack, then. First I have to ask you some questions you're going to
find offensive, but they have to be answered."

Gannon nodded and shifted in his chair to face Rafferty. "Were you in
the city last night?"

"No."

"Where did you spend the last twenty-four hours?"

"In Fayetteville, North Carolina. Except for six hours of sleep, I was
working."

"At your ranch?" Rafferty asked.

Gannon paused, then realized that Rafferty had come up with the
colloquialism for the Delta Force compound from Kate's address book.

"I don't have a ranch. That's just what Kate calls it. I'm a civilian
employee at the JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg," Gannon said,
using the cover story provided to conceal his true place of employment.

"What kind of work?"

"Survival-training instructor with Special Forces schools," he said,
adding the rest of his employment cover.

"You work on weekends?"

"Sometimes. Depending on the training schedule."

"Were you and your wife living together?"

"Yes."

"Any marital problems?"

"No."

"Did your wife have a history of drug or alcohol abuse?"

"No," Gannon said, his voice taking on an edge. The reference to Kate
in the past tense disturbed him more than the questions.

"What was she doing in New York City?"

"Visiting her mother."

"Where?"

"At the Carlyle Hotel. She has an apartment there."

"Has she been informed of your wife's death?"

Gannon visibly flinched at the last word. "Yes, I stopped in to see her
on the way here. She's old and her health isn't good, otherwise she'd
be here with me."

"Does she know what your wife was doing last night, where she went, and
with who?"

"Kate loves this city. She goes for a walk every night whenever she's
here. That's what she did last night--went for a walk after a late
dinner with her mother in the restaurant at the Carlyle."

"What time?"

"Around ten-thirty."

"Wasn't her mother concerned when she didn't come back?"

"She fell asleep. When she got up this morning she thought Kate had
already gone out."

Rafferty hesitated, then asked, "Do you have any reason to think your
wife might have been seeing another man?"

Gannon's eyes hardened, boring into Rafferty. He took a moment to
answer, getting control of the anger that had surged to the surface. "My
wife wouldn't cheat on me," he answered calmly. "We had a good
marriage."

"Things change."

"You didn't know Kate. If she wasn't happy, she'd have told me and
left, but she'd never cheat on me."

"Did your wife have any connection, professionally or otherwise, with
the United Nations, or specifically the Soviet Mission to the United
Nations?"

"No," Gannon said, taken aback by the question. "What do the Soviets or
the United Nations have to do with this?"

Rafferty held Gannon's gaze for a long moment, then told him what he
knew, with the exception of the significance of the man in the cage. As
Rafferty spoke Gannon seemed resigned, in control of his emotions, but
there was cold fire in the calm face and a hint of a dangerous
volatility just beneath the surface. When Gannon asked how his wife had
died, Rafferty left out the lurid details, simply stating that the cause
of death was a blow to the head.

"And you're telling me there's nothing you can do; he gets away with
killing my wife?"

"I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. We've got to live with it every
day, and believe me, we hate it as much as you do."

"You said he was a chauffeur. How does a chauffeur qualify for
diplomatic immunity?"

"When he's in the process of discharging his official duties. And
they're going to say he was even if he wasn't."

"That's not right ...  it's insane, for Christ's sake."

"Tell me about it," Rafferty said. "Can you think of any reason your
wife would have been in a limousine owned by the Soviet Mission?"

"I don't know ...  no. What are you asking me? Did she take rides from
strangers? Kate knew the city, she went to school here. She knew where
to go, where not to go."

"Did she work? Anything that brought her in contact with diplomats or
politicians?"

"Some volunteer charity work at Fort Bragg. She didn't even know
anybody at the UN. She came into New York four or five times a year,
for a few days at a time, always to see her mother."

A commotion in the squad room drew Rafferty's attention. Captain
Hanratty, accompanied by three men in business suits, had entered. Their
loud, demanding voices drew everyone's attention and carried into the
office. There was no mistaking the language the two men spoke when they
went to the cage to talk with Kirilenko. Rafferty got up to close the
door, but it was too late. Gannon had seen and heard them; he stood to
watch through the half-glass partition separating the office from the
outer room.

The third man with Hanratty spoke in slightly accented English. "I have
shown you the proper documentation, Captain. Release him."

Hanratty nodded to one of the detectives, who unlocked the cage.
Kirilenko hesitated briefly, then stepped out into the room, seeming
more afraid of his own people than he had been of the cops.

Gannon moved to the open office door. "They're Russians," he said to
Rafferty. "Why are they here?"

Rafferty's only thoughts were of how to avoid a potentially explosive
confrontation. He moved through the doorway past Gannon and placed
himself in front of him. Gannon was so intent on the Russians that he
didn't even notice.

"Come back in the office and sit down, Gannon," he said in a calm but
firm voice. "You can't do yourself any good out here."

Gannon didn't budge. Rafferty doubted he had heard what he said.

One of the Russians took Kirilenko by the arm and edged him toward the
door leading out into the hallway. Kirilenko reacted defensively and
pulled away from the man. He stopped in front of Hanratty.

"I did not kill woman!" he said. "I am not murderer!"

"Be quiet!" the Russian at his side ordered. "You are to say nothing
until we return to the mission." The words were in Russian, but the
tone and sense of what was said transcended any language barriers.

Jack Gannon had heard and understood. He was across the room before
Rafferty could stop him. He shoved aside two of the Russians, sending
one sprawling on the floor and the other over a desktop. He grabbed
Kirilenko's neck with one hand and began slowly squeezing his windpipe.

"Did you kill my wife?" His words were eerily calm and softspoken.

Kirilenko struggled to break free. Gannon only increased the pressure.
He pinned him against the wall and slammed a fist into his stomach.

"Did you kill my wife?"

One of the men Gannon had shoved aside sprang to his feet and attempted
to grab him from behind. With eyes trained to detect movement and
intuit thought in an opponent, Gannon saw him approaching from an angle
and reacted. He struck with his free arm just as the man reached for
him and landed a perfectly timed blow with his elbow that shattered the
Russian's nose, dropping him to the floor in excruciating pain.

"All right!" The Mr. T clone had jumped up from his chair across the
room and was shouting encouragement. "Good fuckin' shot!"

Gannon saw the second Russian get up and start toward him. He released
Kirilenko, who slid to the floor gasping for breath. Gannon turned to
face his attacker. He blocked a clumsy roundhouse right and grasped the
man's wrist. With precision control he spun him around and delivered a
quick, powerful punch to the kidney that sent him to his knees and kept
him there.

"Oh, shit! You a bad motherfucker," the black kid shouted
enthusiastically, an expression of mock pain on his face. "I felt that
over here." He bobbed and weaved in imaginary battle.

The sergeant who had been questioning the kid grabbed him by the scruff
of his neck and forcibly sat him back down in the chair.

Gannon's eyes were attacking and counterattacking now, watching, as an
experienced martial artist does, all movement and potential threats
around him, the information being processed by his brain into
simultaneous action in an acute focus of mind and body.

The third Russian, the one in charge, stood immobile beside Hanratty,
having decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

"Stop him!" he shouted at Hanratty and the cops in the room.

Rafferty was astonished by Gannon's quickness. No more than ten seconds
had elapsed since he had left the office doorway and charged across the
room. Now three men lay on the squad-room floor, and Gannon was headed
for the fourth. The lack of an immediate response by the cops, although
somewhat due to the speed of the attack, had its deeper motivations and
was not entirely unintentional. But it was about to go too far.

With the aid of a burly detective, Rafferty managed to grab Gannon and
pull him away from the startled Russian, who was ready to bolt for the
door.

"Jesus Christ, Gannon!" Rafferty said, keeping a firm grip on him until
he calmed down. "That was stupid."

Gannon said nothing. His eyes were on Kirilenko, who was being helped
to his feet by the Russian who had taken the blow to the kidney. None of
the cops in the room moved to help the man with the broken nose. The
Russian beside Hanratty, convinced that Gannon was under control,
finally did. He handed him a handkerchief to stem the flow of blood.
"Do you want to press charges against this man?" Hanratty asked the
Russian in charge, forcing the words out through clenched teeth.

The Russian stared at Gannon, then looked to Kirilenko and the two men
who had accompanied him. "No. No charges."

With a quick move of his head toward the door, he ordered his men to
escort Kirilenko out of the squad room.

"You lucked out, Gannon," Rafferty said, keeping a restraining grip on
him until the Russians were out of sight. "If those pieces of shit had
pressed charges, I'd of had no choice but to lock you up, and that would
really have made my day."

"Is that the son of a bitch who killed Kate?" Gannon said.

"He was driving the limousine," Rafferty said. "That's the only thing I
can prove. But it's all academic, Gannon, we can't touch him no matter
what he did. It's going to stick in your craw for a long time, but
you're gonna have to live with it." Rafferty felt the tension drain
from him and released his grip.

"No. This isn't where it ends." The look in Gannon's eyes said the
threat was not an idle one.

"Come on," Rafferty said. "This isn't going to be pleasant, but I've
got to take you down to the morgue to identify your wife."

Gannon followed him out into the corridor, the thought of seeing Kate
dead weighing heavily. He felt as though he was moving in slow motion,
disconnected, and it was all he could do to keep from crying.

The entrance lobby to the station house was noisy and crowded. Lawyers
looked for clients; a junkie, hands handcuffed behind his back, stood
before the tall desk with the arresting officer, and two uniformed cops
physically restrained a screaming woman from attacking a man hiding
behind another cop. As Rafferty led Gannon down the hallway a young man
in a tweed sport coat and jeans approached him.

"Hey, Lieutenant. Remember me? Bill Peters with the Post." Rafferty
ignored him and continued walking. The reporter followed alongside.

"What happened in there?"

"Three guys fell down."

"Three Russians from the Soviet Mission, right?" He stepped in front of
Rafferty to slow his progress.

"Get out of my way."

"Rumor has it that the woman whose body was dumped on Fifth Avenue last
night was thrown from a car with diplomatic plates."

"Just make up your own story," Rafferty said as he elbowed past him.
"You fuckin' people are real good at that."

"How about you, Mac?" the reporter said to Gannon as he walked by. "Did
the Russians kill that broad?"

Gannon lowered a shoulder and planted it in Peters's chest with enough
force to send him flying backward into the wall. He continued following
Rafferty out of the building as though nothing had happened.

"Did you see that!" Peters shouted to the sergeant at the tall desk.

"See what?" the desk sergeant yelled back, having clearly seen what had
happened. "You slipped, you clumsy fuck. Must be the floors. Hey!" he
called out to no one in particular. "Were these goddamn floors just
waxed?"

"Yeah, Sarge. This morning." A uniformed cop in the corridor picked up
on the ruse without missing a beat. "It's like a skating rink; people
falling' down all over the fuckin' place."

"There you have it, pal. Watch your step on the way out."

 ... 
As Deputy Director for Operations, David Wilson was in charge of all CIA
covert operations. He liked things carefully planned and well
organized. He did not like surprises, especially not the kind that made
the hair stand up on the back of his neck, as it was doing now.

"It's a coincidence," Tom Driscoll said. "Nothing more."

"I hope you're right," Wilson said as he looked up from the reports
Driscoll had brought to his office. "Because on the surface, if your
assumption about Malik is correct, it doesn't look all that encouraging.
A Delta Force advisor, with a top-secret clearance and access to highly
classified intelligence information the Russians would give their right
arms for, and his wife was in the company of their most effective
Illegal, who just so happens to be the catalyst for any number of
terrorist incidents. Convince me that I shouldn't be worried, Tom."

"Not about that," Driscoll said with confidence. "Gannon's military
record speaks for itself. He has more decorations than an Italian
street festival. Joined the Army when he was nineteen, spent his entire
career in Special Forces, direct commission from staff sergeant to
captain when he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Five tours in Vietnam
with the Special Operations Group running reconnaissance missions into
Laos and North Vietnam. He's held a topsecret clearance damn near from
the day he joined the service. There's absolutely no reason to question
the man's honor or loyalty."

"That's him. What about his wife?"

"She's a victim. That's all. In Munich, London, and Rome, the three
places we have reason to believe Malik did the same thing, all of the
murdered women were chosen at random, just pulled off the streets. They
had no previous connection to Malik, any terrorist group, or the
Soviets. Granted, Gannon's wife ending up as one of his victims is a
coincidence that makes you raise an eyebrow, but only when you isolate
it out of context."

"What's her background?"

Driscoll read from an annotated biography he had culled from the
in-depth background a research assistant had given him.

"Wealthy family, old money, only child. Graduate degree from Georgetown
Foreign Service School. She worked at our embassy in Bangkok right
after she finished school. That's where she met Gannon, in 1969. He was
on an R and R leave after he got the Medal of Honor. Whirlwind
courtship, they were married two weeks later. Believe me, Dave, she's
not the problem; he is, but not the way you're suggesting."

"You care to expand on that?"

"The best analogy I can give you is that Gannon's a truck full of
nitroglycerin on a steep mountain pass with faulty brakes. Everything
about him says he'll go after the man who murdered his wife. He's got
the training and the resources--access to Delta's data banks and his
buddies to help him. If he gets to Malik before we do, he'll scatter
our operation to the four winds."

"We haven't given anything on Malik to Delta, and Gannon's got nothing
to tie him to the murder of his wife. As far as he knows, or for that
matter, even the cops, the driver ...  Kirilenko is the only suspect."

"Right now. But we've got to consider the possibility that Gannon will
find some way to get to Kirilenko. Guys like him don't lie down and
roll over for anybody."

"If the Soviets follow their usual pattern, they'll ship Kirilenko back
to Moscow tomorrow. Even we'd have problems getting to him there."

"We can only hope they ship him back."

Wilson's eyes scanned Gannon's military service record. He was looking
for something that had caught his attention earlier. He found it under
the heading
"Specialized Training." He underlined one of the entries
and handed the file to Driscoll.

"Did you happen to notice this?" he asked pointedly.

Driscoll's brow knitted into a frown as he read. "Holy shit! I must
have skimmed over it. Talk about coincidence."

"I think the Director's going to want the President briefed," Wilson
said. "In the meantime, put surveillance on Gannon. If he gets onto
Malik, I want someone there to yank him."

 ... 
The New York City Medical Examiner's Office is in a squat, graygreen
building at Thirtieth Street and First Avenue near the Bellevue Hospital
complex. Its architecture, to say the least, is not pleasing to the
eye, but neither is what goes on inside.

The moment Gannon swung open the glass door and started up the stairs
the odor hit him. It was a smell that cannot be adequately described to
another person--you have either experienced it or you haven't. And once
having done so, it stays with you for the rest of your life. It was the
faint sickening sweet smell of death, drifting up from the basement
morgue and permeating the building. A rush of memories took Gannon back
twenty years, to the jungles of Laos and a mission to recover the bodies
of a reconnaissance team that had been lost for more than a week.

Rafferty glanced over his shoulder as Gannon paused on the steps,
shaking off the disturbing flashback.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Just some old memories."

Rafferty nodded knowingly. "I get the same feeling every time I come
down here."

The two men entered the lobby and crossed to the security officer's
desk, where Rafferty identified himself and led Gannon through a doorway
to a narrow corridor painted in a drab institutional beige. The smell
was stronger here, and Gannon forced another unwelcome vision from his
mind's eye.

In a small office off the hallway Gannon stood before the desk of a
large black woman with a kind face. She glanced at Rafferty's shield
and turned her attention to Gannon.

"Are you here to make an identification?"

Gannon nodded. The horror of what he was required to do had reached its
full impact. Until now Kate's death was not entirely real to him. Only
something he had to accept and deal with mentally, not physically face
as an undeniable reality.

"I have some questions to ask you for my records," the woman said. Her
voice was unusually soothing and sympathetic for someone who had to
repeat the process countless times a day.

Gannon gave her the required information, much of it a repetition of
what he had told Rafferty. No, Kate had no history of psychiatric care
or any significant medical history. No, she was not an alcohol or drug
abuser. He answered most of the questions without remembering having
done so. When the woman finished, Rafferty led him into a narrow and
cramped room where they faced a large window with a stainless-steel
partition behind it.

Rafferty pressed a button on the wall and Gannon heard the sound of an
elevator rising. The stainless-steel partition receded and a gurney
with a body on it appeared just beyond the glass window. Shrouded in
sheets, only the face was visible.

Gannon stared in revulsion and disbelief. It was Kate, but her face was
badly disfigured. "Oh, Christ," he said, turning away, no longer able
to stem the flow of tears. He pounded his fist against the wall and
breathed deeply, trying to regain control. He turned back to the window
and placed the palm of his hand on a level with his wife's face.

"Oh, Kate," he cried out softly. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry. I should have
been with you."
Rafferty, affected by Gannon's grief, said, "Come on, Gannon," as he
pressed the button that took the elevator back down to the morgue.
"Don't beat yourself up."

Transfixed, Gannon watched Kate's body slowly descend out of sight.

Gently placing a hand on his shoulder, Rafferty led him out of the
viewing room and back over to the woman at the desk, where he signed the
family identification form. He had regained sufficient composure to
remember the name of the funeral home Kate's mother had given him and
signed a permission slip to have the body released to them.

As they left the room a fellow cop in an office across the hall called
out to Rafferty.

"Hey, Pete, how ya doing'?" Rafferty responded to the former squad-car
partner from his uniformed days.

"Anything I can help you with?" Pete asked, stepping out into the hall.

"Just finished with a family identification," Rafferty said delicately.

"What the hell happened to her?" Gannon blurted out. "You said it was a
blow to the head. It looked like a lot more than that."

An overweight morgue attendant with a half-eaten doughnut sticking out
of his mouth stood just inside the office. "What's the name?" he asked.

"Katherine Gannon," Gannon said.

Before Rafferty could shut the morgue attendant up, he had flipped
through a clipboard of forms and found what he was looking for.

"Oh yeah," the attendant said, the doughnut clenched between his teeth.
"Somebody did a real number on this one. Beat the shit out of her.
Broken left and right wrists, broken nose, fractured cheekbones, broken
jaw, broken neck. Bottom line is the guy probably beat her to death
with his fists, then snapped her neck for good measure, but not before
he raped her. Also looks like she--"

Noticing Gannon's expression, Rafferty's friend stopped the attendant's
rapid-fire litany by slapping the doughnut out of his mouth.

"You fuck! You moron fuck!" he hissed at the startled attendant. "The
fuck's wrong with you? Guy asked me."

"He's the victim's family."

"I thought he was a cop," the attendant said, picking up his halfeaten
doughnut and wiping it off on his smock.

"Don't think, jerk-off, just get the fuck outta my sight!" He turned to
Rafferty and said, "Sorry, Bill. That's the kind of assholes they're
hiring these days."

Gannon had left the building as quickly as he could. Rafferty found him
leaning against the wall just outside the entrance.

"Did you know all that?" Gannon asked.

"Some of it."

"Kate was the best thing that ever happened to me ...  the most kind,
decent person you'd ever want to meet." He paused to fight back the
tears, then said, "What kind of an animal would do that to another human
being?"

"Animals don't do things like that. Just people."

"I know what you're thinking," Rafferty said, breaking a long silence as
he expertly steered his way through a traffic-snarled street. "But let
it lie."

"That's what you'd do? Let it lie?"

Rafferty met Gannon's gaze. "If I was a civilian? No. I'd hunt the
cocksucker down, rip out one of his eyes, and eat it in front of the
good one. For starters. But I'm a cop, and I have to face scumbags
like that all the time. If I let it get to me, I'd kill at least four
or five psychotic creeps a month. All I can do is arrest them and hope
the system works often enough to keep the worst of them off the
streets."

"I'm not a cop," Gannon said.

"No. But you have to know the cold, hard facts of this case. It's
going nowhere. We can't touch the guy. And just between you and me ..."

Rafferty hesitated. As a cop he knew he shouldn't say any more, but as
a human being he felt a bond of shared experiences, of war and loss,
with the man sitting beside him.

"What?" Gannon said. "You said 'just between you and me.'"

"I don't think the guy you decked in the squad room killed your wife."

"There was someone else in the car? Why didn't you tell me that?"

"Because I don't know it to be a fact. Nobody saw anyone else. Some of
the bums in the park were questioned; they didn't see anything. It's
just ...  the way he acted when he was busted, and the Russians took
their good-natured time about getting him out. Nothing you can sink
your teeth into, just inconsistencies."

"Is anyone trying to find him?"

"No. Find who?" Rafferty said as he honked the horn at a taxi that had
cut him off. "Look, you've got to realize that if there was someone
else in that car, and the driver clammed up to protect him, the guy is
another diplomat, so we're back to square one. What's the point in
finding him if we can't bust him? It's a descending spiral, Gannon.
This case is fucked no matter what we do."

"For you," Gannon said.

"Nothing I can say is going to stop you. I know that. It wouldn't stop
me. But you start fucking around with the Soviet Mission and the CIA's
going to come down on you, and they can play rough."

"I know how to play games they never heard of," Gannon said quietly.

Rafferty turned off Madison Avenue onto Seventy-sixth Street and pulled
up to the entrance to the Carlyle Hotel. He waved off the doorman and
turned to face Gannon. "Pretty fancy place your mother-in-law lives
in."

Gannon managed a semblance of a smile. "Yeah. When Kate married me her
mother considered it the equivalent of Tony the Pony breaking into the
paddock with the thoroughbred mare. But she got over it."

Rafferty laughed and took one of his cards from his jacket pocket,
scribbled his home number on the reverse side, and gave it to Gannon.
"I'm sorry about your loss."

"I know you are."

"You take care. If there's anything I can do, call."

"Thanks," Gannon said. "For everything." The two men shook hands and
Gannon got out of the car. As he reached the revolving door Rafferty
called out to him:

"Keep your powder dry, huh?"

Gannon gave him a thumbs-up and disappeared into the hotel lobby.

Rafferty pulled out into the street feeling certain he was going to see
Gannon again; he only hoped it wasn't with his hands cuffed behind his
back.

 ... 
Margaret Simpson sat in a pale-pink silk damask chair in the solarium of
her twenty-fourth-floor apartment. She had an exaggerated sense of
occasion and was exquisitely dressed in a designer suit adorned with
expensive jewelry, but the toll the brutal murder of her only child was
taking had begun to show. Her hands had a slight tremor, responsible
for the smear of lipstick that had strayed wide of the mark and a small
blotch of eyeliner on the bridge of her thin aristocratic nose. She
looked frail and weak, as if she had aged ten years since Gannon had
seen her that morning. Most of the dinner she had ordered for them from
the hotel restaurant had gone uneaten, and she had hardly spoken to
Gannon during the meal, her blank stare fixed on an antique credenza
where an arrangement of photographs taken of Kate since early childhood
were prominently displayed.

The glass-enclosed room offered a spectacular view of the Manhattan
skyline and Central Park. She sat silently looking out over the
terrace. An occasional wistful smile appeared at the corners of her
mouth. A Puerto Rican maid in a black dress with a starched white apron
had finished clearing the dining-room table and announced that she was
leaving for the night. Margaret Simpson nodded a weak "good night" and
went back to staring out into the brilliantly lit night sky. Gannon sat
opposite her, deep in his own thoughts. More than an hour passed
without conversation.

"She was so proud of you," Margaret Simpson finally said, and turned to
look at Gannon. "And she loved you very much."

"I know," Gannon said.

"I was against it at first, you know. Your marriage."

Gannon merely nodded. He remembered the terrible fight Kate had had
with her mother, who when informed of their marriage argued vehemently
for an annulment.

"You made her happy. That's all I ever wanted for her," she said, her
voice growing weaker.

Gannon watched as her eyes closed and her head slumped to one side. At
first he was worried and got up and went to her side and took her hand.
She murmured softly, falling deeper into a muchneeded sleep.

He placed an afghan over her and silently left the apartment. It was
nearly midnight, and the city, its daytime sense of urgency gone, was
relatively quiet. Gannon crossed Madison Avenue and followed
Seventy-sixth Street over to Fifth Avenue and the sidewalk paralleling
Central Park.

The crisp October air revived him somewhat. He was physically tired. He
had been up since six o'clock, but he knew sleep would not come easy
this night. He picked up his pace in the hope of wearing himself down
to the point of exhaustion.

His mind was flooded with memories of Kate. She had loved the city; he
had hated it and never understood its attraction for her. She had once
told him that it renewed her in a way she couldn't explain, so he never
argued whenever she wanted to spend a few days with her mother. He
remembered that she went to some sort of finishing school nearby. Finch
College, he recalled. He walked faster and tried to fight off the
grisly images that began flashing before him. But they forced
themselves on him. Tormenting him. He heard the morgue attendant's
words over and over again, unable to drive them from his conscious
thoughts. Oh God, Kate! How he must have hurt you. How frightened you
were by violence. He felt himself about to lose control and sat down on
one of the benches along the park wall.

A car sped down the broad avenue, then another. Gannon stared after
them. He forced himself to remember pleasant things, special moments:
their wedding in Bangkok when his rowdy, irreverent Green Beret buddies
had frightened most of Kate's embassy friends away from the reception at
the Oriental Hotel with behavior that bordered on barbaric. But they had
won her over when they stood on the terrace six floors beneath their
honeymoon suite and serenaded them until two o'clock in the morning. The
drunken, tuneless repertoire didn't matter, she had said later, it was
the thought that counted.

His memories faded as he became aware of his surroundings. The area was
brightly lit by vapor lamps spaced at intervals for as far as he could
see, which was a considerable distance. He noticed that two benches
down from where he sat there was a man sleeping. Gannon got up and
continued along the sidewalk. He passed a few more of the homeless
curled up on benches. And there were still more on the grass inside the
park. He paused and looked around again. It was past midnight, yet the
powerful streetlamps extended visibility for blocks in either direction.
He hurried back to the hotel.

From a pay phone in the small lobby off the Cate' Carlyle, he called
Bill Rafferty.

"This is Jack Gannon," he said to the groggy voice that answered. "Did I
wake you?"

"Don't worry about it."

"Where exactly did the police find Kate's body?"

Rafferty thought for a moment as he cleared the sleep from his mind.
"Fifth Avenue at Sixty-ninth Street, on the park side."

"Thanks."

"Gannon?"

He had hung up. Rafferty rolled over and propped his head up with a
pillow. His wife still slept soundly at his side. She had long ago
learned to unconsciously screen out the late-night calls.

He thought of his day with Gannon. In a world where putting together a
multimillion-dollar stock deal that benefited no one but the
manipulators was considered heroic, and where "he who has the most toys
when he dies wins" had taken on near religious connotations rather than
being understood for the sick joke it really wasin a world like that,
guys like Gannon got lost and forgotten. True heroes, who hated war and
had experienced its horrors and sacrifices firsthand, were debased by
the pretenders, the fantasy warriors, the clowns who put on camouflage
fatigues to cover up their inadequacies and played weekend war games
with guns that shot paint pellets. Wars where losing meant having to
buy the beer. Christ!

Rafferty reached for a cigarette, then remembered he had quit months
ago. He thought about the phone call and knew what Gannon was going to
do. Despite the futility, he understood. He drifted slowly back to
sleep thinking that it would be nice if the good guys could win one once
in awhile. As Bill Rafferty drifted slowly back to sleep in his
Manhattan apartment, 4,600 miles away, in the heart of Moscow, the
morning sun was already glistening off the windows of the headquarters
of the GRU. As the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Soviet
General Staff, the GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye) is a
secret and powerful organization whose methods of operation are
virtually identical to those of the KGB, including the use of Soviet
embassies and consulates around the world as cover for its officers, but
its mission is entirely different. Tasked with protecting the Soviet
Union from external enemies, as opposed to the KGB's focus on preventing
the collapse of the country from within, the GRU's operations range from
stealing technology from the West to controlling battalions of
special-purpose forces, known as Spetsnaz, for use in armed
reconnaissance and sabotage behind enemy lines in times of war or as
covert operators in peacetime. The KGB is the largest
intelligence-gathering and internal-security organization in the history
of the world. In addition to thousands of full-fledged KGB officers,
its ranks are swelled by millions of volunteers that form a massive
network of informants infesting every level of Soviet life.

The GRU has no volunteers. Its officers are selected from the elite of
the Soviet military, and in general they are better educated, more
professional, and more dedicated than the highly politicized KGB. Free
from involvement in assassinations and other "black" operations, they
have no responsibility for safeguarding party loyalty, suppressing the
people, guarding the borders, or operating the prison camps.
Consequently GRU officers consider themselves the professional and moral
superiors of their KGB opposites.

Unlike the KGB, whose headquarters are purposely located on a crowded
square in the center of Moscow as a constant reminder of its watchful
presence, the location, even the very existence, of the GRU headquarters
is virtually unknown. Surrounded by an airfield and highly restricted
buildings that house aircraft factories, the Institute of Cosmic
Biology, and a rocket assembly plant, its compound is the most secure
site in the city of Moscow. The airfield is restricted to GRU use for
receiving and transporting its latest acquisitions of foreign
technology. It is not unusual for a cargo plane to arrive in the middle
of the night and unload stolen military hardware or a mainframe computer
at a storage warehouse from which it will be transshipped to a remote
testing and evaluation site. Or to defense specialists for analysis and
eventual adaptation for use with existing Soviet weapons systems.

The GRU's headquarters building within the compound, a ninestory
extended rectangle called "the Aquarium," is surrounded by fortresslike
walls. Every inch of the facility is under constant surveillance by
closed-circuit television; at night attack dogs prowl the perimeter,
while during the day an equally ferocious group of GRU retirees living
in an apartment complex adjoining the headquarters report any unknown
faces to security guards. Admission is gained only after passing
through three highly sophisticated security checkpoints, and
restrictions are such that not even the General Secretary of the Soviet
Union can bring a car into the GRU complex, nor can those who work there
bring in a briefcase or so much as a pen. A fierce rivalry and often
open hostility exist between the KGB and the GRU. As a result all
overseas rezidents of each service have personnel specifically assigned
to spy on the activities of the other, and to occasionally conduct
covert missions to purposely foil each other's operations in attempts to
prove its rival incompetent and usurp their claim to specific arenas of
intelligence gathering. On a broader scale both services assign
officers to infiltrate the other's organization, and those officers may
spend their entire careers as long-term moles for their mother service.
The fierce and relentless competition assures that the quality of work
is maintained, and the incessant power struggle and jockeying for
favored position suits the Party well--one organization keeping the
other in check, a guarantee that neither will have a monopoly on
espionage and intelligence gathering, thus eliminating the threat of a
conspiracy to deceive the Politburo and upset the delicate balance of
internal power.

General Vladimir Petrovich Antonov, deputy chief of the General Staff of
the Soviet Armed Forces and head of the GRU, knew and understood the
machinations of the KGB well. He started his day as he always did and
sat at the circular green-baize conference table at one end of his
spacious office on the seventh floor of the Aquarium. He scanned the
stack of cables that had come in overnight from the Army Intelligence
Directorates, Groups of Forces, and Fleet Intelligence. The traffic from
the rezidents and the GRU Illegals always received his undivided
attention, particularly those from the United States. The cable he now
held in his hands caused him to grunt and nod his head with satisfaction
and vindication. Sent from the GRU rezident in New York City on a
special back channel free of the KGB's ubiquitous scrutiny, the message
confirmed what he had begun to suspect months ago.

Antonov looked up to see his second-in-command, Colonel General Yuri
Denisovich Volovich, enter his office and sit opposite him, then went
back to reading the cable. Volovich squinted against the bright morning
sun streaming through the windows and waited silently until General
Antonov had finished.

"It seems that Comrade Malik is up to his old tricks again," Antonov
said as he set the cable aside. "It is not easy to mistake his
handiwork."

Volovich nodded in agreement. "Our rezident in New York cannot be
certain it is Malik, but he is conducting his own investigation into the
incident. Unfortunately the KGB has denied him access to the driver of
the limousine."

"It's him," General Antonov said. "And despite the denials from our KGB
comrades, he is not operating without support and official sanction. My
problem, Yuri Denisovich, is how high does that support reach? Where
does his power lie?"

"The chairman of the KGB is still insisting that Malik is a rogue,
completely out of control, responding to no one's orders but his own."

"Chebrikov is a liar," Antonov said. "The KGB rezident in New York
would not act of his own volition. No. He is a Line "N' man and he is
doing as Comrade Chebrikov instructs."

"Do you think it is possible Malik is still in New York?"

"The men assigned to locate him believe he is using one of the KGB's
safe houses in the city, but so far they have been unsuccessful in
locating him. He has slipped through our fingers before. Let us hope
it does not happen again."

"If he already has, this may be of some help," Volovich said. He handed
him the cable that had brought him to Antonov's office. "If our Paris
rezident is correct, Malik may be on his way to France."

Antonov took the cable, his eyes moving quickly over the message. "Who
is Egon Zimmerman?"

"A terrorist, a West German national, and a member of the Red Army
Faction. He was the one with Malik in East Germany four months ago, and
he has been working closely with him ever since. They were reportedly
seen together in Nicaragua last month, and according to this cable, he
is now in Paris."

"Do we have him under surveillance?"

"No. We have not yet found him."

Antonov stared thoughtfully out a window and drummed his fingers on the
top of the conference table. "I want all of our people in Paris alerted
to this Zimmerman's presence. Find him and interrogate him. If he does
not lead us directly to Malik, he can perhaps at least shed some light
on his plans and his timetable."

"Has the General Secretary been advised of the incident in New York?"
Volovich asked.

Antonov shook his head. "The Comrade General Secretary wants to be
informed of results, not speculation. Find Malik, and we will have
something to tell him."

Antonov got up from his chair as Volovich left the office. He paced the
length of the room, his thoughts on the delicate situation in which the
General Secretary had placed him. He was firmly on Gorbachev's side,
but would he, in the end, be on the winning side? He had seen power
struggles before, and the signs were unmistakable. Thinly veiled attacks
on the General Secretary's policies were becoming bolder, allegiances
were shifting, loyalties were unknown. The rumblings had been there for
over a year, and the resistance had intensified and become overt
opposition from the Party conservatives and the Kremlin old guard. Now
the decisive struggle was beginning in earnest. Many of the
high-ranking bureaucrats saw the new policies of glasnost and
perestroika as a threat to their power and privileges and were not about
to give up without a fight. The intrigues and power plays within the
Central Committee were growing, and there were those who had broken away
from the Party Presidium and formed an anti-Gorbachev faction, accusing
the General Secretary of only paying lip service to Marxist-Leninist
ideology while secretly coveting the bourgeois way of life, of being
poisoned by Western influences and not seeing consumerism for the
philistine psychology that it was.

Most of the Kremlin's old guard hypocritically relished the life of the
privileged class that came with their power. Predatory and paranoid,
they wanted the game to continue as before. They believed that the
Soviet Union could not feel entirely secure until all other nations felt
entirely insecure. Gorbachev and his supporters believed that the Great
Game had to end; it was simply too dangerous to play by the old rules in
an age of nuclear weapons. They were a one-dimensional world power, a
midget with one giant arm, their superpower status based solely on their
military. Economic restructuring was his clarion call; deprive the West
of an enemy with a foreign policy of less confrontation and build an
economy that would provide the people with more than the basic
necessities of life. There lay the road to true power and strength and
the eventual triumph of the socialist cause.

The General Secretary knew that sheer power and influence and patronage
were what counted, not simply policy. He had moved swiftly and expertly
to consolidate his power base. He had purged many who opposed him and
diluted the influence of the old guard, but he had not yet succeeded in
dominating the Party. Even some of his new appointees to the ruling
Politburo, the KGB chief in particular, Antonov thought, could not be
counted on for full support. The new KGB chief, an orthodox ideologist
and guardian of Communist conformity, saw only a loss of power and
control for the KGB in the new policy of openness and left no doubt
about his views on the contamination of Soviet youth by Western ideas
and his contempt for dissidents and reactionary theological concepts.

Gorbachev's attempts to reorganize the military, a strategy Antonov had
helped plan, had been done with a political purpose, to get the military
out of politics, and in doing so, lessen their power. But it had left
Gorbachev with enemies on the General Staff, powerful members of the
Defense Council and the military establishment who saw his planned
reductions of weapons systems and conventional forces as a plot to
emasculate them and force large numbers of senior officers into
retirement. But his most dangerous enemies were the remaining old-line
ideologues, who, like their predecessors, had decided the succession of
power in the Soviet Union since the Revolution. In a calculated move to
debilitate them, the Minister of Defense, formerly second only to the
head of the Party in real power over the military, was relegated to just
one of ten equals on the Supreme High Command.

And each of those demoted or purged had their own supporters in the
Politburo, the Secretariat, the Central Committee, and the Party. Still,
Gorbachev was gaining ground, but his opposition was also gaining
strength, and outside of Moscow, among the Party hierarchy in the
fifteen republics that make up the Soviet Union, his policies were
viewed with skepticism and fear. To Antonov's way of thinking, this was
where his real weakness lay. And he believed that the KGB was fomenting
unrest in many of the distant republicsusing Armenian sectarianism and
nationalism in the Baltic States as stalking horses while encouraging
unrest in the Eastern Bloc countries--in an effort to undermine
Gorbachev's gains in the Kremlin, destroy his reputation as a reformer,
and provide his enemies with examples of the folly of his policies.

But Antonov knew that all of the General Secretary's gains, his efforts
to eviscerate his opposition and consolidate his power, would mean
nothing, the intricate power plays and intrigues would pale to
insignificance, if Nikolai Malik succeeded with his suspected objective.
With or without proof of KGB complicity in his actions, his success
alone would set off a brutal power struggle that would rock the very
foundations of the Kremlin and bring an end to the Gorbachev era.
Antonov's loyalty to the General Secretary was without reservations;
they had known and liked each other since meeting during their
university days. It was a friendship and mutual respect that had grown
and deepened over the years, but unless he could find and stop Nikolai
Malik, he would be powerless to prevent his friend's inevitable demise.

 ... 
The midtown Manhattan skyline rises dramatically above the trees just
outside Central Park, a perimeter of great buildings, massive facades of
limestone and brick face, shouldered together along the avenue as far as
the eye can see--a towering backdrop to the fragile, peaceful setting.
The park was one of the few places Gannon had enjoyed on the rare
occasions he had accompanied Kate to the city, and all morning he had
been haunted by painful memories, terrible, palpable, bittersweet
memories that seemed to transport him back in time to the days they had
spent there: to a picnic on the lawn at Bethesda Fountain and boating on
the lake and long autumn walks down wooded paths dappled with sunlight
and shade, much as they were now. He paused as he crossed the Bow
Bridge at the south end of the lake and stared into the glassy water
that mirrored the willows on the bank and a delicate cast-iron gazebo on
the far shore; he was beginning to realize that accepting Kate's death,
as difficult as it had been, was not as hard as living with it. Kate
had said that the park was a place she could come to and be a child
again: to run, fly a kite, fall in love (puppy love, she had quickly
added as Gannon raised an eyebrow in mock concern), or, on beautiful
autumn days such as this one, to cut classes and lie on her back in the
cool grass of the Sheep Meadow and make animals out of the clouds. So
many of the things they had done together were flitting in and out of
his conscious thoughts that he tried to find solace in them, in the
time, however short, he had been given with her, to treasure the moments
they had shared. But the loss was too great, the hurt too deep and too
new.

He had started his search at sunrise, entering the park just below the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, and had crisscrossed its breadth to Central
Park West and back to Fifth Avenue. He had worked his way down to
Sixty-sixth Street by midmorning and followed the network of footpaths
and trails through the wooded hills of the Ramble and around the Lake
and Conservatory Pond. He had questioned every homeless park dweller
willing to talk to him, which, as it had turned out, despite their
numbers, were few and far between. Some scowled and walked away, not
wanting to be disturbed, while others, lost in their own tormented
world, simply stared blankly, as though he was speaking in a language
that was foreign to them.

One man, dressed in a carnival of assorted clothes, none of which fit or
had been washed in months, had raised Gannon's hopes. He had seen it
all. "Yeah. I don't miss nothin' goes on around here. People look at
me, think I don't know jack shit, but I see everything. Fuckin' 'a.'"

Shortly into the conversation, Gannon left disappointed. The man was
lying, getting the type of car and the time of night wrong and placing
the scene on the west side of the park. A dapper-looking man, wearing a
Brooks Brothers suit and a snappy bow tie, sat on a stone bench before a
statue. As Gannon drew closer he saw that the man's hands were moving
constantly over his thighs, his trousers were worn to a sheen above the
knee. "Got to get some paperwork done," he repeated over and over in a
glassy-eyed litany, his words in rhythm with the movement of his hands.
Gannon passed him by and followed a path that led him to Fifth Avenue,
where he headed south along the chest-high sandstone wall that bordered
the park. As he neared the bookstands near the Grand Army Plaza, a bum
with a dog that needed medical attention, according to the sign around
the dog's neck, struck a nerve, and Gannon gave the man five dollars. He
returned a few minutes later with a soft pretzel for the dog and his
owner and one for himself to stave off a gnawing hunger. The man had
slept on Central Park West on Sunday night, but he'd ask around and if
he heard anything he'd let him know. Gannon gave him his telephone
number at the Carlyle.

Gannon continued past the statue of General Sherman, a stand of
horsedrawn carriages, and again entered the park, now from Central Park
South, and walked along a path that bordered the Pond. A tall, lanky
man with a full beard caught his attention. He was carrying a huge,
overstuffed tote bag, and his baggy pants were too long, their frayed
edges dragging on the ground as he walked over to a bench and sat facing
the Pond. One hand was deep in a pocket of an old army field jacket;
the other scratched and pulled at the ratty beard. Pinned to the chest
of the field jacket were three military decorations: a Vietnam Service
Medal, a Silver Star, and a Purple Heart.

"Smell that?" the bum said in a loud, gruff voice as Gannon stopped in
front of the bench.

Gannon nodded. There was a faint foul odor carried on the breeze coming
off the Pond.

"That's shit," the bum said. "And it ain't just from the dogs. Place is
like a giant latrine for every bum and loser in the city. And I ain't
no loser, if that's what you're thinkin'. I was okay before the "Nam.
Till they sold us out. You got a few bucks?"

"I might." Gannon was about to say something else, but the bum rambled
on.

"See that statue up there? General Sherman? Know what he did? I'll
tell you what he did. Maniac torched everything in his fuckin' path,
just like they made me do in the "Nam. Fucker marched through Virginia,
burned it to the ground."

"Georgia," Gannon said.

"What?"

"You're talking about Sherman's march through Georgia."

"Georgia. Virginia. One of them moron redneck states," he muttered,
hawking up a white liquid blob that congealed when he spat it on the
pavement. "Anyway, same shit we did in the "Nam, only we used napalm."

"What outfit were you with?" Gannon asked, deciding to let him talk
about the war if it calmed him down enough to question him.

"Green Berets," the bum said. He stared at Gannon with his best
I've-been-there-and-back look. "Spent two years at Ben Ho with the
Special Tactics Group. Assassinations and recon mostly. I could tell
you stories ...  chill your blood."

Gannon stiffened. His eyes turned cold. "That's where you got the
medals?"

"Damn straight."

Gannon propped a foot on the bench and leaned in close. "You'd think if
you spent two years at a place you'd know how to pronounce it. It's Bien
Hoa, not Ben Ho."

"I didn't have time to learn the language, man. I was too busy killin'
slopes."

"Well, your story's got another hole in it. I spent twenty-three years
in Special Forces and never heard of a Special Tactics Group."

Gannon tempered his response but, not about to let the man off
scot-free, reached over and tore the medals from the bum's jacket and
threw them out into the Pond.

"What the hell you think you're doing'? I'll take you apart like a
cheap watch. I'll knock your dick in the dirt. And don't you think I
can't do it, I got a tenth degree black--"

"Shut up!" Gannon leaned in even closer, his face only inches away from
the bum. The man's breath reeked of putrid wine and decaying teeth.
"I've got no use for people who steal a dead man's glory," Gannon said.
"I had friends who died for those medals, and so do a lot of other guys.
I strongly suggest you change your bullshit routine before you run into
a vet who isn't in the mood to let you slide."

The bum drew back; his street smarts told him that the man leaning over
him was in no mood to hear any more of his stories.

"Hey, we do what we gotta do, whatever works, ya know? No offense
meant." Then, without skipping a beat, he added, "Anyway, you got a few
bucks?"

Gannon shook his head in disgust but reached into his pocket and tossed
three one-dollar bills in the bum's lap. He saw no point in questioning
a self-admitted liar and continued along the path bordering the Pond.

 ... 
A niche dweller like Nipper Denton, an organism at one with its
ecosystem, could spot a tourist two blocks away--the way they walked was
usually a dead giveaway. They scanned their surroundings as though they
were on another planet, seeing what New Yorkers no longer bothered to
see. He had witnessed the exchange between Gannon and the bum he knew
as Rambo. At first he thought Gannon might be a cop and considered
disappearing into the park, but after a few minutes of observing him, he
dismissed it as unlikely that he was a cop or a local. And when he saw
Gannon drop the money in Rambo's lap, he decided to play out his hand;
the new message on his sign hadn't changed his luck, and the fifty cents
he had scrounged out of coin-return slots in telephone booths was all he
had to show for a morning's work.

His rheumy, bloodshot eyes followed Gannon as he walked along the path,
heading toward his bench.

"Rambo been telling you how he won the war?" Nipper asked as Gannon
approached.

"Rambo?"

Nipper jerked a thumb toward the bum Gannon had just talked to.

"Good name for him," Gannon said. "Why'd you throw his medals away?"

Gannon shook his head, dismissing the question. "Mind if I talk to you
for a few minutes?"

"I'm not going' anywhere."

"Were you around this area late Sunday night?"

"Might have been."

"There was a traffic accident at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-ninth Street
about four in the morning. Did you see it?"

"Maybe."

Gannon stared hard at what had once been a handsome face, now gaunt and
discolored by old scars and scabs about to become new scars.

"What's your name?"

"Nipper. Nipper Denton." His nose dribbled and he wiped it with a
crusty sleeve.

"Do me a favor, Nipper. Don't fuck with me. I've had a long morning.
If you can help me, I'll give you what I can."

Nipper nodded half of an apology. "I saw a lot more than a traffic
accident."

"What did you see?"

"Before the two cars smacked into each other, one of them, this big gray
limousine, pulls into the curb not too far from the bench I was sleepin'
on, and the back door flies open and this guy in the back throws this
woman out of the car. At first I thought she was just drunk or
something' and fell when she was getting'--"

"You're sure there was someone in the car besides the driver?"

"The driver didn't get out of the car, so unless he had arms like an
orangutan, there's no way he reached into the back of that limo and
threw that woman out. And besides, when he pulled out and crashed into
the other guy, someone got out of the backseat."

"Did you see him, the man who got out of the back?"

"Yeah. Not good though. It was dark. He was too far away."

"Can you remember anything about him?"

Nipper thought for a moment, then: "All I saw was that he was tall, well
built, had light hair, maybe blond, and he was wearin' a dark raincoat."

"Nothing else?"

"He said something to the driver, I didn't hear what, shook his finger
at him sort of, then crossed the sidewalk and took the walllike it
wasn't there and ran into the park. Moved fast, like he was in shape.
That's it. Then the cops came."

"Why didn't you tell them what you saw?"

"I don't go looking' for trouble. Why are you asking' all the
questions?"

"The woman who was thrown out of the car was my wife. One of the men
you saw, or both of them, murdered her."

"Oh," was all Nipper could think to say.

"Thanks, Nipper. You've been a great help," Gannon said, and extended
his hand.

Nipper hesitated, then after wiping his own hand on his trousers, shook
it tentatively, as though he felt the gesture was going to be withdrawn
at the last moment. Except for the random beatings and attempts to rob
him, it was the first time anyone had physically touched him in months.
He smiled at Gannon and revealed a broken upper incisor, a souvenir from
his last beating.

Gannon gave him one hundred dollars. Nipper stared at the five twenties
in disbelief.

"Jesus! Thanks! Hey ya know I think he hurt his head, the guy in the
backseat," Nipper said, remembering something he hadn't realized he had
seen. "I think he was holding his head when he got out of the car. Like
this." Nipper placed the palm of his hand over his forehead.

"Was he bleeding?"

"Couldn't tell. Hey, where ya from?" Nipper brushed at the tufts of
shaggy, greasy hair that curled over his ears and around the collar of
one of his shirts. "Not from around here, huh?"

"North Carolina." Gannon searched Nipper's eyes and got the feeling he
wanted more than the money. Conversation maybe.

"Nice state, North Carolina. Too hot in the summer though."

"How'd you like to have some lunch, Nipper?" Gannon asked, then gestured
toward a pair of Converse high-top sneakers that were disintegrating
around Nipper's feet. "Then we'll buy you some new shoes."

Nipper looked at the money clutched tightly in his hand. "My treat,"
Gannon reassured him.

"Or after lunch you could just give me the money for the shoes and I
could buy them."

"I think if I did that, you might just spend it on something else. What
do you think?"

"I think you might be right," Nipper said, "but it was worth a try." He
broke into a hearty laugh that ended in a violent fit of coughing.

"Come on," Gannon said. "We'll get something to eat."

"You mean a real sit-down meal? Inside?"

Gannon smiled and nodded. "Not too many places gonna let me in."

"You pick the place. We'll get in."

Nipper hitched up his trousers, tucked his sign and padded blanket under
his arm, and followed his benefactor along the path that led through a
pedestrian tunnel under the East Drive and on toward the Armory. He
told Gannon about his life in the streets, talking almost nonstop. He
paused to light a cigarette butt he had picked up earlier that morning
and noticed that Gannon's attention was focused on the tunnel they had
just exited. His whole demeanor had changed; he seemed tense and angry.

"Somethin' wrong?" he asked Gannon.

"Tell you what, Nipper. I want you to sit here on one of these benches
and wait for me. I won't be long."

"Sure. If you don't come back, it's okay."

"I'll be back."

This was the third time Gannon had seen the man in the tweed sport coat
and gray slacks. He had chalked the second sighting up to coincidence,
someone out for a walk. But the man had given himself away when Nipper
paused to light his cigarette; he had stepped quickly off the path and
pretended to admire a small statue just as Gannon looked in his
direction.

Gannon continued toward the complex of brick buildings that had once
served as the New York state armory and was now the headquarters for the
city's Department of Parks and Recreation. He cut down a narrow lane
and headed for a cluster of garages and utility sheds behind the main
building. He glanced quickly behind him before he ducked into a
passageway between two of the sheds and waited.

The sound of footsteps hitting the pavement at a steady pace stopped,
then started again, slower, more cautious. They grew fainter, then
louder as the man backtracked and headed toward where Gannon waited.

The man caught a glimpse of Gannon out of the corner of his eye, but too
late to avoid the arm that swept out and grabbed him by the hair and
pulled him into the passageway, where he was slammed against a brick
wall, pinned there with a forearm jammed in his throat.

"Talk to me," Gannon said, slowly applying pressure. "Back off,
Gannon," the man rasped. "After you tell me why you're following me."

"I'm a cop."

"I don't think so. Let's see your shield."

"I don't carry it when I'm undercover."

"Bullshit. Who are you?" He pressed harder, slowly cutting off the
man's air supply.

"Knock it off, Gannon." With a swift, practiced move the man broke free
and spun away.

As Gannon moved to grab him the man drew a 9mm pistol from a holster in
the small of his back, pointed it at Gannon, and backed out of reach.

Gannon stopped in his tracks and stared hard into the man's eyes. If he
was going to shoot, he would have done so immediately.

"You might kill me with that, but you're not going to scare me." Gannon
circled slowly to his left and maintained eye contact with his opponent,
who was nervously backing out of the passageway. The barrel of the
pistol followed Gannon's every move.

"You can either shoot me or you can put that away. But if you keep
pointing it at me, I'm going to take it away from you and shove it so
far up your ass it'll take a team of proctologists to get it out."

"You're in over your head here, Gannon. Go home," the man with the
pistol said as he continued to back out of the passageway.

"Hey!" Nipper Denton shouted from behind. The man with the pistol
looked for only an instant, but it was all the time Gannon needed to
close the distance and disarm him and break his thumb in the process. A
short, hard blow to the lower stomach put the man on his knees.

"Whoever you are, stay out of my way," Gannon warned as he left the
passageway.

The man groaned and fell onto his side.

"Jesus," Nipper said, "hanging' around with you could be hazardous to my
health." He looked back toward the man on the ground. "Nice jacket,
think he'd miss it?"

Gannon took Nipper by the arm and led him away. He discreetly tossed
the pistol into the Pond as they walked back toward Central Park South.
"I thought I told you to wait back there for me."

"I saw that guy take off after you. My mother didn't raise any fools; I
still got a meal and new sneakers coming'."

"You're a good man, Nipper Denton."

"Spread it around, will ya?"

Gannon put his arm around Nipper's shoulders, much to Nipper's surprise.

"What would you have done if that guy had reacted faster?"

"Died?" Nipper said.

 ... 
Sergei Alipov left the Soviet Mission on East Sixty-seventh Street at
9:00 A.M. and spent the next two hours "dry-cleaning" himself of the FBI
counter intelligence surveillance team that was assigned to follow his
every move.

He spent the first hour on a circuitous route that took him in the
opposite direction of his intended destination. At the garment district
he turned into a narrow street lined with workshops and warehouses and
jammed with young men pushing racks of clothes on hand trucks. He timed
his next move perfectly. Horns blared and drivers shouted epithets that
questioned his family's lineage as he squeezed past a truck that
completely blocked the street immediately after he passed. He glanced
into his rearview mirror and saw a dark blue sedan with two men in it.
They had driven up onto the sidewalk in an attempt to get through, only
to be hemmed in by another truck that backed out of a warehouse and
added to the traffic jam. Alipov knew there were more to be ferreted
out and evaded, and he continued the cat-and-mouse game he had learned
to enjoy. Expert at detecting and avoiding surveillance, his senses
were attuned to spot even the most subtle signs. Every location had its
own rhythm of activity that even the most experienced surveillant could
inadvertently violate--a reaction against the normal flow of movement
that caused visual incongruities that stood out against a composite of
normal patterns and eventually betrayed a surveillance effort. Alipov
never failed to spot them. He prided himself on his ability to lose his
"tail" and continue with his business, when less experienced men would
break off a meeting or the servicing of a drop at the first hint of
surveillance.

The second hour of dry-cleaning involved a more elaborate plan, which
Alipov, before leaving the mission, had carefully orchestrated and gone
over with four of his most experienced KGB officers. He assigned them
to separate relay points along the surveillance detection route he had
planned and drove past each of them three times. He had worked out the
route on a timing sheet so the men at the relay locations knew
approximately when Alipov would drive by, and after passing each man's
location he contacted them on their small hand-held portable radios. If
anyone was following him, the men would report the color and make of the
car and its occupants, or if necessary, after instructions from Alipov,
use their own cars to impede the progress of the surveillants. When
done properly it always worked. The surveillance team had only two
choices: follow him through all of his repetitive evasive maneuvers and
be spotted by the relays or fall back and lose him. Either way, Alipov
won in the end.

By the time he crossed the Brooklyn Bridge he was free of surveillance,
but he still drove past an apartment house on Ocean Avenue where he had
stationed a lookout. With the final all clear, he parked six blocks
away from the Brighton Beach safe house and went through the intricate
procedures to flush out anyone who might have spotted him and was
following on foot.

Once a decaying urban enclave, the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn
had been rejuvenated in recent years by an influx of Soviet emigres.
Entire blocks that had been boarded up were now crowded with Russian
delicatessens, discos, shops, and supper clubs. On summer nights, when
he was feeling particularly homesick, Alipov occasionally came to sit on
the boardwalk and drink kvass--a brew made from fermented black
bread--and listen to the minstrels play their balalaikas and sing of the
Motherland. But love of all things Russian was not the only reason
Alipov came to Brighton Beach. The thriving emigre community was
fertile ground for KGB support facilities. It provided ample
opportunities for recruitment operations and was a natural place for
Illegals to disappear into the immigrant population.

The
"Russian Mafia," a gang of criminals that operated in the community,
were a natural ally for Alipov. They specialized in fraud, extortion,
and counterfeiting, and preyed on other Russian immigrants who were
easily intimidated because of cultural unfamiliarity and language
barriers. The criminal element acted as "spotters" and notified Alipov
of any disenchanted patriots and those who were in need of money. Both
were a potential source of recruits for agents and assets who provided
safe houses and other support for his operations. He had an impressive
list of well-educated emigres who, either voluntarily or through
coercion, had become agents in place and sleeper agents, some of them
now holding sensitive jobs in the government and defense-related
research firms. A few had even acquired high-level security clearances.

Alipov walked around the block three times before ducking into an alley
where he entered the rear of a grocery on Brighton Beach Avenue. He
climbed the steps to the second-floor apartment that served as one of
his safe houses. He knocked twice, then twice again, and opened the
door to see Nikolai Malik sitting in an easy chair reading The New York
Times. A tray of breakfast dishes, brought up by the woman who owned
the grocery, sat on a nearby table. The food had not been touched.

"Sergei Grigorevich," Malik said, addressing him in a familiar way with
no respect for Alipov's rank. Although he put down his paper, he did
not bother to rise from the chair.

"You are late, Comrade," Malik said as he glanced at his watch. "I am
cautious, something you are not. And it is Comrade Genera, Colonel
Malik."

Malik grinned and two-fingered a cigarette out of a pack in his shirt
pocket--one of his practiced Americanisms he enjoyed showing off.

"When are you leaving the city?" Alipov asked.

"Shortly. I have some unfinished business with our Nicaraguan friends."

"That is not your only unfinished business?"

"Ah, yes. I thought that might be the purpose for this meeting."

"Kirilenko has said nothing to the police or anyone else, but I cannot
guarantee our GRU comrades will not find a way to interrogate him and
use his wife and children in Moscow as leverage."

"Fuck the GRU."

"No, Nikolai Petrovich. Fuck you! You have put our entire operation in
great danger by bringing us unwanted attention."

Malik's gaze hardened. His dark eyes threatened for a brief moment. "I
am your entire operation." He got up from the chair in a way that
caused Alipov to take a step back. Malik flashed another contemptuous
grin. "Besides, it will pass. No one other than yourself and Kirilenko
knows I am here."

"And how much does he know? He has eyes and ears, and there have been
times when you have not been the most circumspect operative."

Malik shrugged. "What does it matter? He will talk to no one."

"I want to be assured of that," Alipov said. "But I will not jeopardize
any of my officers to clean up your mess. The CIA and FBI will be
watching them closely. I have not sent Kirilenko back to Moscow or held
him under house arrest, which as you know is the usual procedure when
one of the mission staff is involved in an incident with the police, and
that in itself will alert the GRU."

"I will take care of it, Comrade."

Alipov bristled at his insolence. "See that you do. I have taken the
position that the incident was a CIA provocation and sent Kirilenko back
to work where you can get to him. He is on duty today; you will find
him at the United Nations. And please," Alipov added emphatically, "do
nothing on Soviet or United Nations property and try to at least give
the appearance that it was something other than what it is."

"I said I will take care of it."

"Without delay. The GRU rezident at the mission is due back tomorrow.
And there is one other thing," Alipov said. "There was an incident at
the police station when we picked up Kirilenko. A man, I believe the
husband of the woman who was murdered, attacked Kirilenko. If he gets to
him before you do, we could very well have another problem on our
hands."

Malik smiled; it was a smile without humor. "A grieving husband is the
least of my concerns."

Alipov studied the hard, emotionless face that stared defiantly back at
him. "Did you rape and murder that woman?"

"Is that what Kirilenko told you?"

"No. He said only that he did not do it."

"Do I look like a man who needs to force women to have sex with him? I
am what the American women call a hunk."

Alipov shook his head and looked away. He was becoming uncomfortable in
Malik's presence, a feeling he experienced on each of the few occasions
he had come face-to-face with him.

"You cannot use any of the forged passports and documents that have been
previously issued to you," Alipov said. "The GRU may have a list of
your cover identities by now. I have brought new documents for you to
use in getting out of the country in the event they learn of your
presence here ...  if they do not already suspect that you are in the
city," he added with enough invective to leave no doubt in Malik's mind
what he meant.

"I will take care of my own needs. Your documents would give me no more
assurance than those I already have."

Alipov went to the door and paused as he opened it. "If it were not for
your father's friends and your operational successes, Colonel Malik,
there are those of us who would prefer to see you in a labor camp where
you would cease to be an embarrassment and disgrace to your superiors
and the Committee for State Security."

"If pigs had wings," Malik said, and slammed the door in Alipov's face.

 ... 
Bill Rafferty entered the small coffee shop around the corner from the
Nineteenth Precinct station house to find Gannon already there. The
elderly waitress behind the counter caught his eye and held up the
coffeepot. Rafferty nodded and slid into the booth with Gannon.

"What's so important you couldn't tell me on the phone?"

Gannon waited until the waitress who brought the coffee left. "There was
someone else in the limousine. He ran into the park before the cops
arrived on the scene."

"Get a description?"

"Partial. Tall, probably blond, wearing a dark raincoat. Might have a
minor head injury from the accident."

"That's not a hell of a lot to go on," Rafferty said. "And there's
nothing I can do with it anyway. Like I told you before, whoever the
other guy is, you can bet he's got diplomatic immunity, and even if he
doesn't, what have you got? The driver sure as shit isn't going to
testify against him, we can't even subpoena him. Can the person who
told you they saw this guy get out of the limo that night positively
identify him?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe? Maybe doesn't cut it. Who's your witness?"

"A guy who lives in the park."

"A bum?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus. Smells like a distillery, right? Sometimes can't remember what
day it is or exactly where he was at any given time or maybe his full
name?"

"I get the point," Gannon said. "I'm not asking you to go chasing after
shadows, but if I can find out who this guy is, can you at least make
sure he's got diplomatic immunity before you write off my wife's
murder?"

"Hey, Gannon. I'm on your side. But I wouldn't be doing you any favors
by bullshitting you on what your chances are of seeing this guy brought
to justice. And what are you going to do if you find him and he does
have full diplomatic immunity?" Rafferty raised his hand. "Never
mind, don't answer that."

"That reminds me," Gannon said. "Did you have a tail on me?"

"No. Why?"

"Someone does."

"What happened?"

"I spotted him in the park and called him on it."

"Who was he?"

"Didn't say. He's American. And if he's not one of yours, then he's
probably CIA or FBI."

Rafferty leaned forward in the booth, hunched over his coffee. "Look,
Gannon, we didn't have this part of the conversation, okay?"

Gannon nodded in agreement.

"There's a lot of strange things going on with this case. And some of
them point to our Federal Father. A friend of mine is with our Police
Intelligence Unit and he told me the local CIA office got hyperactive
when they found out about your wife's murder and the Soviets sent
Kirilenko back to work as though nothing had happened. Normally they
would have had his ass on the first Aeroflot flight back to Moscow."

"What are you suggesting?"

"I don't know. Like I said, it's the inconsistencies. And if
Washington's involved in this, you're messing around with the wrong
people. They don't have to play by cop rules, you know. They'll take
you out if you get in their way, and they'll do it with impunity."

"They're not going to scare me off."

Rafferty sipped his coffee and carefully considered what he was about to
say. "Something else my friend turned up."

Gannon leaned forward in anticipation.

"The night your wife was murdered, the Emergency Services people who
went over the area around the crime scene found three Puerto Rican kids,
dead, in a pedestrian tunnel inside the park, not more than a hundred
yards from where the accident occurred. The bodies were still warm.
Medical examiner estimates the time of death around the same time as the
accident."

"What does that have to do with Kate's murder?"

"These kids were each shot twice in the eye socket at close range, .22
caliber. There were a lot of bums sleeping in the immediate area, yet
none of them heard the shots. That tell you anything?"

"Silencer," Gannon said.

"Yeah. And the way they were shot says a pro did it. Not your normal
Upper East Side response to an attempted mugging. Again,
inconsistencies. So, just for the hell of it, let's say it was the guy
who got out of the backseat of the limo. I don't know too many
diplomats who pack silenced weapons or would have the balls to take on
three muggers with switchblades even if they did have a weapon. You
beginning to get a picture of what you might be dealing with here?"

"I appreciate your concern," Gannon said, "but I'm not backing away from
this. I can't. I just can't let it go that easy."

"I understand that. I just want you to know what you're up against; I
don't want to see you end up dead or in prison."

"I'll watch my step."

"You do that," Rafferty said. "And when you leave here you might want
to go down to the United Nations. The Soviet drivers work in pairs.
They stay with their cars while the diplomats are inside. They're
usually in the underground garage or parked in the circle in front of
the Secretariat building. Sometimes one of them leaves the UN grounds
to get coffee or go shopping while the other one stays with the car."

"Thanks," Gannon said, "I owe you."

"Forget where you got it."

"Got what?"

"How long you been with Delta Force?"

"Since the begin-" Gannon caught himself and cast a questioning look at
Rafferty, who smiled and winked.

"Hey, I'm a detective."

"We have a saying in Special Forces when people ask us about our
classified missions," Gannon said as he got out of the booth.

"What's that?"

"If I tell you, I've got to kill you."

"How come I knew it would be something like that."

Gannon clasped Rafferty's hand. "I know you went out of your way for
me, and I'm grateful for your help."

"Be careful, it's a jungle out there."

"I'd feel a lot more at home if it was," Gannon said, and threw Rafferty
a choppy salute as he went out the door and disappeared into the rush of
pedestrians ... 
Towering thirty-nine stories above the United Nations Plaza and the East
River, the glass-and-steel structure of the Secretariat building
sparkled in the midafternoon sun. Just outside the main entrance Viktor
Kirilenko stood leaning against the fender of a black sedan parked at
the curb of the circular drive. He was still overwhelmed by his good
fortune. He had not been sent back to Moscow in disgrace as he had
feared, in fact he had not been punished at all, a turn of events that
puzzled him in light of what had happened. But General Alipov had been
understanding and not pressed him when he denied having any knowledge of
how the woman had died; he was grateful for that, not wanting to be
caught between the wrath of his direct superiors and the vicious threats
made by the man he knew only as "the Comrade Colonel."

Graphic images of what the colonel had done, vignettes that both
terrified and disturbed Kirilenko, were still fresh in his mind. He
wished now that his morbid curiosity had not drawn him to watch in the
rearview mirror, but the brutality had been both hypnotically
fascinating and repulsive at the same time. He had never seen anyone
beaten and raped. The beautiful woman's screams and pleas for mercy
were twice directed at him. She had begged him to intercede. But the
colonel finally silenced her and continued to violate her in ways
Kirilenko had never imagined possible. The man was the essence of evil,
Kirilenko thought. He had frightened him more than anyone he had ever
met, and he hoped he never had the misfortune of seeing him again and
that the horrid images of that night would soon go away and allow him to
sleep without being awakened in the middle of the night soaked with
perspiration and shaking uncontrollably.

The General Assembly was in session and the two trade delegation
officers Kirilenko had been assigned to drive would not be back until
late afternoon. Today he had enough money left, after having sent most
of his meager salary home to his family, to treat himself to a good
meal--something he never got at the mission's Glen Cove estate, where he
lived. He left the car in the custody of his partner and walked past
the security guards and out through the drive-in gate. He headed up
First Avenue, past the array of flags in front of the General Assembly
building, where he crossed against the traffic and continued up East
Forty-sixth Street to the corner of Second Avenue. The scent of Chinese
cooking made him smile as he entered the restaurant and took a table
overlooking the sidewalk. It was his favorite food, a taste acquired
since coming to the United States, and he would enjoy it thoroughly; he
had good reason to celebrate. ...

Jack Gannon had been watching Kirilenko for the past two hours. He had
followed him from the moment he left the United Nations, staying well
back for fear that he would be spotted and recognized from the incident
at the police station. When a waiter approached Kirilenko and held his
attention, Gannon fell in behind an elderly couple, entered the
restaurant, and took a table in a corner near the door where Kirilenko
would have to turn completely around to see him. He peered over the top
of his unfolded newspaper, watching Kirilenko's hand lift and set down a
cup of green tea.

A group of Japanese tourists, fresh from a tour of the United Nations,
cameras dangling from their necks and laden with tote bags stuffed with
souvenirs, came in the door and momentarily blocked Gannon's field of
vision. After what seemed an interminable amount of time and
discussion, they decided on a table and took their seats.

Gannon looked up to see that Kirilenko was gone. He anxiously scanned
the room and saw him go into a hall at the rear of the restaurant. A
sign on the wall said, "To Rest Rooms." Gannon settled back in his
chair and kept one eye on the doorway and the hall leading off it. The
area was busy with waiters coming in and out of the kitchen and patrons
entering and exiting a rear door. Although it was difficult to see the
hallway clearly at all times, Gannon opted against moving to another
table closer to the back of the restaurant. He did not want to be
forced into acting before he was ready. He planned to confront
Kirilenko after he left the restaurant. It would be easy to pull him
into one of the narrow alleyways along the street.

Outside the restaurant, parked at the curb across the street, a
surveillance team from the CIA's Counterterrorist Group waited in a dark
gray sedan. The man in the passenger seat sat up with a sudden start.

"That's him!" he said to his partner.

"You sure?" The man at the wheel craned his neck to see. "Going in the
rear door."

"I don't see him."

"He's inside now. It's Malik, I'm sure of it. I've been studying the
bastard's photograph all morning."

"We'll take him when he comes out," the driver said. "He's not going to
go down easy, and I don't want any gunplay in a crowded restaurant."

"Call it in. I want another team here for backup. If we lose him,
Driscoll will have us guarding empty warehouses in Greenland."

"The closest backup's over in Brooklyn, checking out safe houses. We're
on our own."

The two men got quickly out of the car. They stayed on the opposite
side of the street and took up positions where they had a clear view of
both the front and rear doors to the restaurant.

A waiter poured Gannon a cup of tea and handed him a menu, from which he
absently ordered something by its designated number. He glanced at his
watch and began to feel uneasy. His view of the hallway was now
obscured by a small party of businessmen who had come through the rear
door. Near the center of the dining room two of the Japanese tourists
excused themselves from their table and headed for the rest rooms.

Gannon got up and walked slowly toward the back of the restaurant,
wondering if Kirilenko had returned to a different table. As he neared
the opposite end a commotion broke out. The two Japanese tourists
rushed out of the hallway, obviously frightened, shouting hysterically
in rapid-fire Japanese to their friends and the clientele at large.
Gannon angled his way past the waiters at the entrance to the kitchen
and nearly knocked down another man making his way to a table. Sprinting
down the hallway to the men's room, he threw open the door. A pair of
shoes, cocked at an odd angle, edged out of a stall. The stall door was
cracked open, and Gannon looked inside. Kirilenko sat sprawled on the
toilet, his head tilted upward, his bullet-punctured eyes staring
blankly at the ceiling as bright red rivulets of blood streamed from the
sockets.

Gannon ran back to the dining room. The entire table of Japanese were
now chattering and gesturing wildly to the manager. Gannon caught
something in his peripheral vision-someone running outside in the
street. He pushed his way through the excited crowd of diners and threw
open the rear door to the sidewalk.

Two men, pistols in hand, dodged and weaved their way through the
one-way traffic, their attention on someone farther down the block.
Gannon looked in their direction and caught a glimpse of a man ducking
into an alley. He was tall, blond, and wearing a black raincoat.

Gannon gave chase and followed the two men ahead of him. Halfway down
the block they turned into the alley. Gaining on them, Gannon rounded
the corner and immediately dived to the ground as two silenced shots
ricocheted off the building only inches from his head. He rose to a
crouch behind a trash container and peered around at the two men lying
motionless farther up the alley. The tall blond man turned to face him;
they locked eyes for a brief moment, long enough for Gannon to see the
small discolored lump on his forehead, and then he was gone,
disappearing around the corner of another building.

Gannon stayed low and scurried to where the two men lay dead from head
wounds. He picked up one of their automatic pistols, then decided
against it and threw it away. Up and moving, he ran down the narrow
passage between two buildings where the man had gone. He saw him, fifty
yards ahead, exiting the passageway onto First Avenue. With smooth,
powerful strides, Gannon began to close the distance.

Malik darted across the avenue, repeatedly glancing over his shoulder.
The third man had surprised him. He had spotted the two men in the gray
sedan on his way into the restaurant and had planned to deal with them
when he had finished with Kirilenko. But where had the third man come
from? Perhaps a plain-clothes cop who had happened onto the scene. He
slowed to a brisk walk and blended with the tourists crowding the
sidewalk in front of United Nations Plaza as he headed for the
delegates' entrance to the General Assembly building.

Gannon was running flat out as he reached the street. He hurtled a
stack of crates being unloaded from a van and dashed out into First
Avenue with an abandonment born of desperation. Cars swerved and tires
squealed as startled motorists leaned on their horns and braked
frantically. Traffic came to an abrupt halt. An irate taxi driver, his
head out the window, cursed Gannon as he scrambled over the hood of his
car and jumped down onto the sidewalk in front of the visitors' entrance
to the United Nations, directly into the midst of a group of
schoolchildren exiting a tour bus that was parked at the curb.
Momentarily losing sight of the man he was chasing, he stopped to search
the crowd of people on the sidewalk ahead of him. He looked in the
opposite direction, then back, finally spotting the blond hair and the
shoulders of the black raincoat above the crowd as the man stopped at a
security gate.

Malik walked calmly up to the security guard at the delegates' entrance
and flashed his forged identification. The guard nodded and stood aside
as Malik continued on toward the General Assembly building. Again
looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the third man was still with
him. He picked up his pace and followed the curved elevated rampway
leading to the entrance of the building.

Gannon sprinted the distance to the gate, quick-cutting his way through
the pedestrian traffic. Directly in front of him, he saw the security
guard alert to his approach.

The guard stepped out of his glass booth and placed himself squarely in
the center of the opening in the wrought-iron fence, his eyes fixed on
Gannon, who gave no indication of stopping.

As Gannon reached the gate the security guard grabbed him by the arm to
slow him down, but Gannon spun away, intent on the door he saw the blond
man approaching.

"That man killed my wife," he shouted as he shook off the guard. "He's a
murderer."

The guard pressed the button on a small remote pager kept in his pocket,
then reached for the .38 Special he carried out of sight on his hip. He
drew and cocked the weapon and took aim at Gannon's back.

"Halt!" the guard shouted in a high-pitched voice that revealed his
anxiety about having to draw his weapon for the first time and the fear
that he might have to use it.

Gannon broke stride. He slowed down at the sound of the guard's shouted
command and the sight of two more armed guards ahead of him, who burst
out of a door at the top of the entrance ramp, weapons in hand. The
futility of his actions hit him, and he stopped running. In the
distance, at the top of the ramp, he saw the tall blond man pull open a
door and pause before entering the building; he thought he saw him smile
just before he stepped inside. Gannon turned and walked slowly back
toward the uniformed guard at the gate, his hands at his side, spread
open in a gesture of surrender. The guard slowly, gratefully, lowered
and holstered his weapon.

"That man just killed three people," Gannon said. "I don't know
anything about that," the guard said. "But this entrance is for
delegates and official UN personnel only. Get on the other side of the
gate or I'll have you arrested."

"Arrest him, goddamnit!"

Gannon could see that the guard's only concern was getting what he
considered to be a possible madman back outside the perimeter security
fence, and his better judgment made him move in that direction.

The uniformed guard waved an all clear to the two men who had come out
of the General Assembly building. They disappeared inside as quickly as
they had appeared.

"There are two men lying dead in an alley a few blocks from here and
another one in a restaurant," Gannon said. "And that son of a bitch
killed them. At least call the goddamn police."

"Just calm down, mister."

"How did he get past you and I didn't?"

"He's got a pass."

"He's a diplomat? What's his name?"

"I didn't check the name. Just looked at the picture. Now get away
from the gate or I will call the police, but not about the other guy."

Gannon remembered Rafferty's admonitions and saw no point in pressing
the issue. He looked back in frustration to where Malik had
disappeared, then walked slowly away from the delegates' entrance and
crossed to the other side of First Avenue. He returned to the small
park-like setting directly across from the drive-in entrance to the
Secretariat building and sat on a bench, resuming his vigil from the
same vantage point where he had watched Kirilenko.

 ... 
Twenty-five minutes after Gannon walked away from the delegates'
entrance to the United Nations, a report of the incident, along with the
preliminary details of the deaths of Kirilenko and the two CTG officers,
had reached CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Ten minutes later
another report arrived: Malik had been found. and lost.

The United Nations, considered under the law as international territory,
was off limits to the FBI but not to the CIA, whose Foreign Resources
section ran operations there ranging from simple intelligence gathering
to false-flag recruitments. The FR officer trawling the delegates'
lounge when Nikolai Malik entered had immediately recognized him. He
tried, without success, to eavesdrop on his conversation with a
Nicaraguan diplomat, then left the lounge for no more than a few minutes
to call the local office. He returned to find Malik gone. With the
help of three other FR officers, he conducted an exhaustive search of
the building and the garage, but Malik was nowhere to be found. A
garage attendant told him that two Soviet-owned vehicles had left within
the past few minutes, none carrying a passenger matching the description
of the man they were looking for. But then he couldn't see inside the
trunks of the cars, and hiding someone in the trunk of one car, with
another car leaving at the same time as a decoy, was a ploy the Soviets
occasionally used to secret someone out of the building.

"There's no doubt it was Malik," Tom Driscoll told the Deputy Director
for Operations. "The security guard at the gate confirmed it from the
photo we showed him."

David Wilson shook his head in exasperation. "That slimy son of a
bitch! And I see Gannon damn near botched the operation before we even
got a chance at Malik. I thought you said you had him under
surveillance and under control."

"As I told you earlier, he's a loose cannon. We'll just have to
increase the pressure."

"Two of our men dead," Wilson said in disgust as he looked at the report
on his desk. "First one with a broken thumb. Now this. How did he
break his thumb anyhow?"

"Gannon did it for him," Driscoll said. "The man was new, his first
field assignment. When Gannon ambushed him, he panicked and drew his
weapon."

"I don't want any more interference from that cowboy. Medal of Honor or
not, make sure he gets the message that things are going to get nasty,
fast, if he persists."

"He was only a threat as long as Kirilenko was alive to lead him to
Malik. Without that he's reached a dead end. He's got nowhere to go
but home."

"See to it that he does just that," Wilson said. "If he doesn't listen
to reason, I want him pulled in and put on ice for a while. Put the arm
on the Police Intelligence Unit, they owe us a few. If he's still in
the city tomorrow and goes anywhere near the Soviet Mission or the UN,
see if they can make his life miserable. Arrest him as a suspect in the
murder of Kirilenko. Give him something else to occupy his mind."

"I don't want to come down too hard on him, Dave," Driscoll said. "He's
trouble, but he's not doing anything you or I wouldn't do in the same
situation."

"Then turn the heat up in increments. Give him a chance to back off of
his own volition," Wilson said, his tone softening. "But I want him out
of the equation."

"I'll take care of it." The Peace Park, as it was designated by a bronze
plaque bolted to a small fence, was no more than a narrow slip of an
island planted with trees and shrubs in the center of an extended
sidewalk across the street from the United Nations. Park benches lined
a white marble wall, part of which bore the inscription
"They shall beat
their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn
war any more."

Dream on, Isaiah, Gannon thought as he looked away after reading the
inscription. He had been watching the main entrance to the General
Assembly building for over an hour, his intellect telling him that it
was foolish to expect the man he was after to simply walk out as if
nothing had happened, but his emotions would not let him give up.

A car swung into the curb directly in front of the bench he was sitting
on, partially blocking his view across the street.

"Get in," Bill Rafferty called out from behind the wheel.

"I can't leave yet. The man who murdered Kate could still be in that
building."

"Use your head, Gannon, there's a dozen ways out of there. Get in!"

Rafferty demanded. "You'll leave with me now or in about five minutes
you'll leave under arrest and wearing handcuffs."

Gannon got up and crossed to the car. "I didn't kill Kirilenko."

"I know that, and they know that," Rafferty said. "But I told you these
people don't play by the rules, and the game's about to start."

"You know about the two guys who bought it in the alley?"

"Yeah, I know about them."

"I think they were CIA," Gannon said.

"They were."

"Well, if they aren't after the guy for Kate's murder, what do they want
with him?"

"They've got their own agenda, Gannon, and they don't consult me.
Someone once described their profession as a wilderness of mirrors. I've
found it's best just to stay out of their way. Now, let's go."

"If I leave now, I don't know if I can pick up his trail again."

"He's gone, for Christ's sake!" Rafferty saw the fatigue in Gannon's
face; he had seen it before, in men so distraught and tired that it
drastically affected their judgment. Acting irrationally was the next
step in the debilitating process.

"Look, Gannon, my head's on the block. This isn't my precinct and I've
got no business being down here, certainly not to warn you that you're
about to be busted for disturbing the peace, loitering, or any other
bullshit charge they can pull you in on. And the word is, if you're
still hanging around tomorrow, you become the principal suspect in a
homicide. Now get the fuck in the car."

Gannon got in and Rafferty pulled quickly out into the stream of
traffic. As he put on his turn signal to turn onto a cross street
heading west, he looked in his rearview mirror and saw two detectives in
an unmarked car pull into the space he had just left.

"How'd you know where to find me?"

"It's where I'd be if I were you," Rafferty said. "You've got to go
home, Gannon. There's nothing more you can do here except hurt
yourself."

"Go home and do what? Forget it? We've already been through that."

"Go home and regroup. Think it through; find another approach to
getting this guy if that's what you have to do. But if you stay around
here and start harassing the Soviets, the Feds are going to be on you
like white on rice."

Gannon slumped down in the seat. He felt tired, physically and
emotionally drained. "You're right," he said, his voice cracking with
exhaustion. "I know you're right; I just can't let go."

"Just go home," Rafferty said. "If I can find out anything, and I mean
anything, about this sick son of a bitch, I'll let you know immediately.
But believe me, Gannon, it's over for you here in the city. The Feds
are calling in markers with the department to get you out of their
hair."

"I need a name to go with the face," Gannon said. "I'll see what I can
do."

"I've never done anything like this in my life, you know, gone off half
cocked. I'm a firm believer in having a good operational plan."

"Then put one together. Your background suggests you might be able to
tap a network of your own for a little help."

"Maybe," Gannon said, the strength and spirit gone from his voice. "Drop
me at the Carlyle, will you? Kate's mother's arranged for a private
service tomorrow. I'll leave when it's over."

"Where's the funeral being held?" Rafferty asked.

"No funeral. Just a prayer service in the Presbyterian church on
Madison Avenue down from the hotel. Kate hated funerals; she wanted to
be cremated."

Rafferty made a mental note to stop by and pay his respects.

Gannon felt depleted, a hollow shell. He couldn't stop thinking about
Kate or what would physically remain of her, an urn full of ashes. He
laid his head back on the seat and closed his eyes; it was all he could
do to keep the tears from flowing uncontrollably. "It isn't over,
Kate," he said, his voice barely audible. "I promise you, honey, it
isn't over."

 ... 
Alain Casson had spent the better part of the day touring the narrow,
quiet streets of Greenwich Village with his friends. It was the last
day of his week-long vacation in New York City. Tomorrow night he would
be back in Paris and the following morning back behind his desk at the
bank. He was thoroughly bored. He had seen enough quaint curio and
antique shops, galleries, open-air art displays, and craft shops to last
him a lifetime. The attempt to evoke the atmosphere of Montmartre and
St. Germain des Pros failed on all counts as far as he was concerned.
And besides, he hadn't come to the Big Apple to be reminded of Paris.
His friends, still in the company of the two women they had met over
lunch, opted for an evening at an Off-Broadway theater and a late-night
tour of the clubs and coffee houses. Casson declined the invitation to
join them. He had had his fill of culture for one day and felt
uncomfortable as the odd man out. With his friends gone, and a
rendezvous point agreed on for early the next morning, he walked through
Washington Square Park, fending off the entreaties of street hustlers
and drug dealers, and a wild-eyed vagrant whom he believed to be some
kind of religious zealot. At the central water fountain he joined a
group of students from nearby New York University who had stopped to
listen to an impromptu twilight concert by a trio of folk singers of
questionable talent. A scattering of raggedly dressed and mostly
unscrubbed middle-aged hippie types, left over from a previous
generation, drifted in and sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, gazing
wistfully as they sang and swayed to the decades-old songs that Casson
suspected had once been their anthems.

With the addition of a growing number of concurrent performances, the
area around the fountain was taking on a circus atmosphere: A
leather-clad duo of ersatz cowboys cracked whips and lassoed each other,
while a noisy demonstration of disco roller skating by young blacks with
huge radios balanced on their shoulders competed with the folk singers.
A unicyclist caught Casson's attention. The man was in desperate need
of instruction; if not for the helmet and kneepads he wore, his repeated
tumbles to the pavement would have resulted in serious injury.

Casson soon left, walking west from Washington Square into the heart of
the Village, where he wandered along the Londonesque jumble of little
streets and browsed in small shops with names like Serendipity and As
You Like It.

He was hungry, having eaten only a small portion of the poorly prepared
quiche he had ordered for lunch at a sidewalk cale'. When he entered an
overdecorated nook of a restaurant on a quiet street, his senses were
again assaulted by another failed attempt at Parisian bistro ambiance.
Bare brick walls were adorned with ugly still lifes of flowers and
tablescapes, and the tiny dining room, crammed full of what could best
be described as insubstantial stick furniture, had far more plants than
customers. The murky lighting caused him to bang his shins twice as he
followed an overly solicitous waiter to a table in an even darker
corner. The meal turned out to be commensurate with the decor, and the
price was something Casson preferred to forget.

When he left the restaurant he began following the directions his friend
in Paris had given him. As he turned onto Christopher Street it was
soon apparent that he was headed in the right direction. Men, casually
walking arm in arm in the cool night air, some with their hands in each
other's back pockets, appeared from apartment buildings and small clubs
and bars.

A lone stroller, a young man, attractive enough, Casson thought, slowed
his pace and smiled warmly as he approached from the opposite direction.
Casson made no response. He felt awkward, unsure of what to do. It was
his first venture into the gay world. If you don't try it, his friend
in Paris had told him, you will never be sure. No one knows you in New
York, it is the perfect place for your initial tryst. The sound of
music and laughter carried out into the street from a dimly lit
nightclub. Casson gathered his courage, and after a cursory appraisal
by a well-muscled man blocking the doorway, he entered a large room hung
with a forest of ferns and crowded to the point of anonymity.

He ordered a drink at the bar, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the
lighting, he saw that the dance floor was jammed with men in every
imaginable type of embrace. The throbbing disco beat encouraged the
most sensuous of movements and Casson stared openly, slowly becoming
somewhat more comfortable with his surroundings as well as the feelings
that stirred inside him. But not comfortable enough to handle the
advances from a man standing elbow-to-elbow with him at the bar; he
ignored him, more out of nervousness than the fact that he thought he
was singularly unattractive. The man who made the second approach fared
no better, being rejected with an urgent shake of the head when he asked
Casson if he wanted to dance.

The third man who approached, Casson found intriguing as well as
exotically attractive. They were approximately the same height and he
looked vaguely familiar, until Casson realized that it was the strong
resemblance they bore to each other that accounted for the deja vu.

"We could be brothers," Casson said.

"Yes," Nikolai Malik said. "You are smaller-boned and your features are
more refined, but there is a certain resemblance." A resemblance that
had caused Malik to follow him when he came out of the restaurant,
ending a search that had begun when he left the United Nations.

"You are an American, from New York?" Casson said.

"Yes. My name is Nick," Malik said. "And your name is?"

"Alain. I am French. A Parisian, actually." Casson found himself
almost shouting above the music, which had increased in volume.

"I have spent a great deal of time in Paris," Malik said. He switched
from English to French with a smoothness and fluency that both impressed
and relaxed his listener.

"It is my last night in New York," Casson said.

"Then perhaps we should not spend it here." Malik flashed a charming
smile and winked.

He was pleased with his stroke of good luck; the man would have a
passport, and the photograph and physical statistics would favor him
enough to pass any superficial examination by immigration officials. He
had three current passports of his own, but Alipov's concern was valid.
All of his pseudonyms and the passport numbers could be retrieved from a
computer at the Center in Moscow, and there was no guarantee that GRU
moles could not gain access to them.

"What would you suggest?" Casson said. His voice betrayed his
uneasiness.

"My apartment is not far from here. It is much quieter and far more
comfortable." Malik gestured with his head toward the door.

Casson hesitated, then shrugged and followed Malik outside. It was now
or never, he thought, and never would not answer the questions or
assuage the secret desires that had plagued him for the past two years.

"I should tell you that I am inexperienced," he said. "The truth is, it
is my first time."

"How intriguing," Malik said. "Then the introductory course is in
order."

"You're not rough, are you?"

"Gentle as a lamb."

Casson forced a faint smile as Malik put an arm around his shoulder and
led him into a alley.

"A shortcut to my apartment," Malik said in response to Casson's tensing
as they entered the dark narrow corridor between two buildings.

Malik glanced back toward the street as they moved farther into the deep
shadows.

"This is a dead end," Casson said, noticing that they were headed toward
a chain-link fence blocking the other end of the alley.

"So it is," Malik said, taking a step back and placing himself directly
behind Casson. Quickly, expertly, he gripped his unsuspecting victim
with his powerful arms and, with a vicious twisting action, snapped his
neck before he could cry out.

Casson went limp in his arms, and Malik lowered him slowly to the
ground, propping him in a sitting position against a trash container
where he could not be seen from the street. He took off his black
raincoat and exchanged it for the light gray silk-and-cotton one Casson
was wearing. He then rifled the dead man's pockets and took his wallet
and passport. Again checking the street, he conducted a more complete
search and stripped Casson of anything that could immediately provide
the police with his identity: an airline ticket, hotel-room key,
restaurant receipts, and a wristwatch bearing his initials.

Malik exited the alley and paused momentarily on the sidewalk, adjusting
his new raincoat; he liked the silken feel of the fabric. Smiling to
himself, he walked back to the gay bar he had just left.

 ... 
The only light in the ranch-style house on Cottonwood Avenue in
Fayetteville, North Carolina, came from the television screen in the
den. The cozy wood-paneled room was filled with sounds and images of
Kate Gannon, laughing, clowning, posing, grinning mischievously as she
held up a trout that dwarfed the one her husband had caught. For Gannon
they were moments outside of time now that only increased the pain of
loss rather than providing the solace he sought. His eyes red and
puffy, his face lined with fatigue and covered with a two-day growth of
beard, he pointed the remote control at the video recorder and played
back a scene where he had captured Kate crawling out of their tent on
the shore of a Maine lake, her hair a mess, her face full of sleep; she
flicked him the bird in protest as she ran and dived into the cold,
clear water.

Videotapes were stacked on a table next to where he sat, and empty beer
cans from three twelve-packs of Coors littered the floor near his feet.
When the tape ended he stared blankly at the snowy static, finally
getting up and ejecting it, only to insert another and remove a fourth
twelve-pack from the refrigerator before returning on unsteady legs to
sit heavily in the chair. He popped the top on another beer as a
tropical beach at sunset appeared on the screenan R and R leave in
Hawaii in 1970, the first time he had seen Kate since their brief
honeymoon the previous year. Magnificent in a scant bikini, she swam to
shore and walked out of the surf.

Gannon pressed the freeze-frame button and smiled to himself at the fond
memories of the week they had spent together. A week he had desperately
needed after eleven months of harrowing over-the-fence missions into
Laos and North Vietnam, where he had seen three close friends die
horrible deaths. The frequency of their suicidal reconnaissance
missions had increased drastically following the Tet Offensive and so
had the casualties, reaching a killed-inaction rate of 80 percent in the
previous six months. He had never been a man who loved violence, but he
was at home with it. Lately it had begun to seem meaningless, with no
end or goal in sight, and Kate, nonjudgmental despite her deep-felt
opposition to the war, had understood and helped him gain some
perspective before he returned for his fifth and final combat tour.

His gaze shifted from the television to the coffee table and the black
cloisonne vase containing Kate's ashes, then to the 12-gauge shotgun
propped against the arm of the chair. Twice, during the small hours of
the morning, he had placed the cold, shiny barrel in his mouth, and
twice something other than the fear of death had kept him from pulling
the trigger. "A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with
inward courage dares to live," he remembered reading in one of Kate's
oriental philosophy books. He was struggling to find that inner
courage.

He had returned home to a house full of memories and Kate's things,
returned to face a life without her. It had been the last and most
difficult stage in accepting the permanence and finality of her absence.
He had spent most of the night in her closet, taking a bottle of Jack
Daniel's and the telephone in with him. Her scent was strongest there,
particularly on the dark-green silk blouse she had worn recently. He
had closed the door behind him and sat on the floor and held the blouse
in his arms, being careful not to soil it with tears. It was her
favorite blouse. There, in the darkness, he called his four closest
friends, men he had fought beside and with whom he had faced death and
life and shared his hopes and dreams. Kate had been his anchor all
these years, now they were all he had left.

Despite the intended purpose of the calls, he was unable to tell them
about Kate's death. Until the last call, to Scott Lyon in Las Vegas.
They had rambled on about old times and old friends who never came home.
Swapped funny stories, some funny only now that time and distance had
dimmed the fear and terror that had surrounded them. Remember the night
we sang to Kate on the terrace of the Oriental Hotel? Lyon had said. It
was your honeymoon, right? You lucky bastard, that's one gorgeous,
terrific lady. Tell her I'm looking forward to seeing her at the next
reunion.

Yes, Gannon assured him, he would give Kate his best. Hey, remember the
day before your wedding, when we all went for that boat ride down that
river in Bangkok, kind of a floating picnic, and Monaghan, drunker than
shit, fell in and Kate thought we were going to let him drown, we kept
throwing food and beer cans at him every time he came up for air? She
was ready to go in after him if we hadn't pulled him out when we did.
Monaghan's worshiped her ever since, like Androcles and the lion.

Kate's dead! Gannon had finally brought himself to say it. He blurted
it out to Lyon and then hung up and took the telephone off the hook when
it began ringing incessantly.

Kate's dusky laugh rose above the background noise of the rowdy crowd at
the Special Forces Association picnic held a few months ago in
Fayetteville, the last pictures he had taken of her. Gannon turned up
the volume to hear the animated conversation she was having with the
wife of a longtime friend with whom he had gone through Special Forces
training. He didn't hear the two young men who entered the house and
now stood in the doorway of the den; nor did he see them until they came
between him and the television screen. Through hazy vision he finally
recognized them as Delta Force troopers from his old squadron.

"Hey, Boss," one of them said. "The colonel sent us to bring you over
to his house. A buddy of yours from Las Vegas called, thought it might
be best if you were with friends for a while."

"I'm okay," Gannon said. "Just need some time."

The young man's eyes surveyed the room and came to rest on the shotgun
propped against the chair.

"Sorry, Boss. Colonel said don't come back without you." One of the
young men turned off the television and the VCR while the other took
Gannon's arm and slung it around his shoulders, grasping the wrist
tightly while placing his other arm around his waist as he pulled him
out of the chair.

Gannon offered no resistance; his feet dragged across the floor as he
was half carried out of the house. ...

The body of Alain Casson was found at six o'clock in the morning by a
sanitation worker. Casson's friends, worried when he didn't show up at
the hotel restaurant for breakfast, had called the police, and by late
afternoon the John Doe in the morgue, who had been found in a Greenwich
Village alley, had a name. On learning that Casson had had his passport
with him and that it was now missing, the Police Intelligence Unit sent
his name and description to Interpol to be added to the list of stolen
passports provided to customs and immigration officials around the
world.

"Malik went through British immigration at London's Heathrow airport
this morning," Tom Driscoll told the Deputy Director for Operations. "He
was using the passport of a French tourist murdered in New York the
other night."

"They've got him?" Wilson said.

"No such luck. Interpol was slow in getting the information out and the
Brits didn't get the alert until he was long gone. But the man who
checked him through tentatively identified Malik from a photo one of our
people from the London station showed him."

"Any line on where he's headed?"

"Nothing. MI6 says they'll let us know if he turns up."

 ... 
The Marais Quarter of Paris, despite the sandblasted cleanliness of
urban renaissance, still evokes the Paris of another era. Twenty years
ago its magnificent buildings, with gables and turrets and steep slate
roofs, had deteriorated almost beyond recognition; a third of its houses
lacked even running water. Today it is an elite residential enclave,
one of Paris' most patrician addresses. Located on the Right Bank of
the Seine, removed from the grand boulevards and extravagant esplanades
of the postcard image of Paris, even the light is different. Soft
off-white and ocher gently illuminate the architecture of centuries past
on slivers of streets hemmed in by brooding medieval houses recently
transformed into luxury town houses and co-op apartments. Hundreds of
carriage-trade galleries, boutiques, designer showrooms, sidewalk
bazaars, and quaint cafes line the cobbled walkways through the ancient
neighborhood that now caters to its new, affluent residents leading
quietly expensive lives.

From the fifth floor of a scaffolding-draped building in the midst of
refurbishment, three men looked down on the midmorning strollers on a
tree-lined square just off the Rue des Francs Bourgeois. In the center
of the square a pretty girl sat at the edge of a fountain watching a
young mime apply makeup in preparation for his noontime performance
aimed at the Gallic preppies who converged on the area for lunch. On a
far corner an artist set up his easel as a woman with plump arms and
eyes of heartbreaking sadness came out of a bakery, her shopping basket
brimming with loaves of bread and pastries. A priest swept the sidewalk
in front of his church with a crooked straw broom; he greeted the
sad-eyed woman as she turned and disappeared through an arched entrance
to an alleyway that led to a maze of courtyards, gardens, and cloisters.

Inside the fifth-floor apartment Sam Pavlik and Mike Duggan watched the
activity below with trained professional eyes. The third man in the
unfurnished and recently painted living room of the apartment, Steve
Markum, adjusted the telephoto lens on his video camera, changing the
focal length to take in as much of the square as possible. Pavlik and
Duggan, positioned at an adjacent window, used lenses of a dramatically
different nature. Duggan's spotter scope magnified the tables of a
sidewalk cale' directly across the street from the apartment, while
Pavlik's sniper rifle, equipped with a telescopic sight, rested on a
cloth "shot" bag filled with Styrofoam popcorn that positioned the
weapon at the proper angle on the floor before the partially open
floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the square.

Markum watched in fascination as Pavlik and Duggan prepared for their
lethal task with cool, practiced precision. The civilian clothes they
wore did little to soften their military bearing; though only in their
early thirties, their hard, intense eyes were those of seasoned
professionals, and their quiet manner did nothing to encourage idle
conversation. All Markum knew about them was their names and that they
were both Green Berets, members of Omega Group, a top-secret team formed
within Delta Force and patterned after the Israeli
"Wrath of God" units
that had hunted down and killed the terrorists responsible for the
Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes. The Omega Group was similarly
tasked with tracking down and assassinating terrorists responsible for
deaths of American citizens.

The end result of a decision made at the highest levels of
government--to take the war on terrorism to the terrorists--Omega had
been operating with devastating effectiveness for the past two years. No
longer limited to broad-spectrum messages, like the raid on Libya, to
simply deter those who sponsored and gave sanctuary to terrorists, the
focus was now on the individuals and organizations who actually carried
out the senseless slaughters and manipulated and brainwashed the
disfranchised, the dispossessed, and the fanatics for their own
political purposes. What Omega did was unheralded and done with
surgical precision; they eliminated the mindless pathologicai
degenerates who reveled in killing and escaped justice, often protected
by Western governments who refused to extradite them for fear of
reprisals.

The principal was sound: Destroy them before they destroy us and our way
of life. And if it was a war on terrorism, then it would be fought as a
war, where enemies were killed, not taken to court. The decision was
firm. Nothing justified the indiscriminate killing of children and
innocent civilians-not national liberation, not political grievances,
not for the restoration of a homeland. Omega's missions were limited
and carefully thought out: They selectively removed the most effective
leaders and the most dangerous, murderous practitioners, disrupted their
networks, demoralized their followers, and caused temporary leadership
gaps. The principle had its roots in the controversial Phoenix Program
in Vietnam--a program that after the war the North Vietnamese military
leadership admitted was the most effective operation the United States
had carried out, the thing they feared most. Selectively assassinating
high-level military and political leaders in North and South Vietnam,
the program at its zenith had virtually destroyed the Vietcong
infrastructure and delivered crippling blows to the Communist war effort
until left-wing political pressure at home brought it to a halt.

When Markum thought about it, Pavlik and Duggan, and what they did,
scared him. It was his first assignment since being transferred to the
CIA's Counterterrorist Group a week ago. Formerly part of the Company's
Technical Services Division, his experience with the darker side of the
intelligence business was nonexistent, and he had viewed with
trepidation his orders to report to the CIA safe house that Omega Group
was using as a base of operations on the outskirts of Paris.

"You enjoy what you do?" Markum asked Duggan after a long silence.

"Sometimes," Duggan said as he continued to stare through the spotter
scope.

"I don't think I could do it."

"Your job is to take pictures," Duggan said coldly, without taking his
eye from the scope. "So take pictures."

Markum returned to his video camera. He slowly turned the focusing ring
on the powerful telephoto lens and brought the images below into even
sharper focus. Satisfied with the effect, he turned to look at the
exotic rifle Pavlik had positioned at the window. It was unlike any
Markum had ever seen, equipped with the latest in space-age technology.
The butt plate and cheekpiece were fully adjustable and provided the
shooter with a custom fit, and inside the buttstock was an integrated
miniature ballistic computer connected to a laser range finder mounted
under the barrel. The computer made minute corrections inside the
telescopic sight to compensate for range and weather: when the laser
pinpointed the target, the combination day/night scope was automatically
adjusted by the computer for perfect hits at ranges up to fifteen
hundred meters. Digital displays on the scope screen told the sniper
the distance to the target as well as information about ambient
humidity, wind drift and direction, and temperature--all factors that
can alter the speed and course of a bullet and affect first-shot
accuracy, possibly throwing the point of impact off enough to kill the
hostage rather than the hostage taker. With its integral sound and
flash suppressor, and its subsonic ammunition, the weapon was virtually
undetectable from a concealed position, making no sound that could be
identified as a gun shot above normal street and traffic noise.

Deployed as a team of two men who could spell each other, the Omega
Group snipers avoided the inherent problems of their demanding
profession: problems of vision deterioration from looking through
optical devices for extended periods of time, and physical discomfort,
fatigue, and boredom from remaining motionless for long periods in which
total concentration was required.

Duggan, taking his eye from the spotter scope for a short break, watched
a small traffic jam in the narrow street that circled the fountain. The
driver of a battered Fiat, leaving no doubt as to how it got that way,
attempted a U-turn against the flow of traffic. He used complicated
hand signals to order a produce truck and van into a series of minuscule
geometric maneuvers that only worsened the situation and brought traffic
to a complete standstill until he gave up and continued in the direction
he was originally headed.

"Goddamn Frogs are the worst drivers I've ever seen," Duggan said. "They
wouldn't last five minutes on the L.A. freeway before some crazy blew
them away."

"What time is it?" Pavlik asked. He was stretched out in a prone
position behind the sniper rifle, a lightweight foam pad between him and
the hardwood floor. He cross-checked the minute adjustments to windage
and elevation that the miniature computer in the stock of the weapon had
automatically made as he changed his point of aim by no more than a few
yards.

"Ten o'clock," Duggan replied. "If our information's right, he should
be along any minute."

Paris is a city of cafe's, with virtually two on every corner and a few
on the street in between, but with lunchtime two hours away, the
professional cafe' sitters were the only patrons at the sidewalk tables
across the street from the apartment house. Three men carried on a
heated discussion as they sat hunched over glasses of wine and small
cups of l'express, a black foamy liquid served with a sugar cube that
they dipped in the potent coffee and ate. A couple looked deeply into
each other's eyes, while a man, sitting declaratively alone, looked into
his cup. Another man smoked, munched, and sipped in sullen silence,
totally immersed in the rhythms of time and place as he watched the
interlocking mini-dramas unfolding in the square.

Duggan was looking through the spotter scope, amused by a dog who was
obviously a regular at the cafe'. The old mutt wandered among the
customers, butting their legs with his head, demanding food scraps.
Judging from the dog's healthy condition, Duggan guessed he was either
well liked or feared by those who responded to his persistent nudges. A
short, dark-haired man, out of sync with his surroundings, came into
Duggan's field of vision. The man had a thin, heavily pockmarked face,
his hair was combed to perfection, and his expensive double-breasted
gabardine suit was well tailored. He paused at the fountain to survey
the area, then continued across the cobbled street and sat at a table
overlooking the square.

"Come to Papa," Duggan said. The remark got Pavlik's immediate
attention. "There he is--the fifteen-hundred-dollar suit with the
ten-cent face."

Markum put his eye to the video camera lens and watched the man who had
caused the atmosphere in the apartment to crackle with tension.

"Who is he?" Markum asked. He had been told none of the details of the
Omega operation, just that he was to capture it on film.

"Egon Zimmerman," Pavlik said, his right eye now pressed against the
eyecup on the telescopic sight. "We've been tracking this bastard for
eight months ...  now we've got him." His voice was an icy monotone.

"What did he do?"

"He's a scumbag," Pavlik answered without looking up from the scope.

Markum didn't press the issue and returned to peer through the camera
lens. He was suddenly gripped by the realization that he was looking at
a man who was about to die.

"Just tell me when you want me to start filming."

"Now," Duggan said.

Egon Zimmerman fastidiously adjusted his suit coat, then picked up a
newspaper from the table. He snapped it open and neatly folded it as he
glanced casually about the square and the half-empty cafe'. Two young
couples, who had arrived just as he did, sat nearby, and a few more
customers drifted in; one was an elderly woman whose poodle sat in her
lap and snarled at the resident mutt, who paid it no attention.
Zimmerman's gaze returned to the paper, shifting occasionally back to
the people around him. He again tugged at a lapel on his coat and
smoothed out a wrinkle. Unlike most terrorists, Zimmerman had no
deep-seated political convictions or philosophies; the only reason the
ugly little fucker became a terrorist, Pavlik had said earlier that day,
was so he could get laid. A virulent psychopath who had become involved
with the Red Army Faction through friends with whom he had lived in a
Frankfurt commune, he had carried out a series of vicious attacks on
German industrialists and politicians and their families, then
disappeared into the terrorist underground, where he stayed until
fourteen months later when he reemerged with a vengeance. He had made
the Omega "wanted" list after two extremely monstrous, bloody bombings
in West Germany. The first had killed twenty-six American grade-school
children on a bus leaving Bitburg Air Base for a school outing; the
second had killed thirty-two American servicemen and dependents in the
PX at the Rhine-Main base. On both occasions he had left a letter near
the sight of the blast to take personal credit for the bombings.
Arrested two days after the Rhine-Main attack by the Amsterdam police,
he was released on a questionable technicality that saved the timid
Dutch government from having to deal with his friends. Again going
underground, he finally surfaced in East Germany six months ago,
eventually turning up in Paris, where his trail had been picked up by an
electronic surveillance team from the Army's Intelligence Support
Activity who had been monitoring the telephones of Action Direct, a
French terrorist organization. An intercepted phone call had tipped
them to the cafe' Zimmerman used as a meeting place.

Pavlik stared through the telescopic sight with no more emotion than if
he were about to kill a rabid animal, which was an analogy he had often
used. He centered the cross hairs directly between Zimmerman's eyes
just as the fastidious terrorist ran a hand through his hair.

"Don't worry about your hair, asshole," Pavlik muttered. "I'm gonna put
a permanent part in it for you in about six seconds."

As Pavlik slowly increased pressure on the trigger a man entered his
sight picture and obscured his target. The scalloped edge of the
blue-and-white awning that extended out over the cafe' dining area hid
the man's face as he stood talking to Zimmerman.

"Who the hell is that?" Pavlik said, and released the pressure on the
trigger.

"Never saw him before," Duggan said as he watched Nikolai Malik sit down
and take a chair that placed him between Zimmerman and the men in the
apartment.

Markum observed the two men through the camera lens. "They seem to know
each other."

Pavlik picked up a small hand-held radio and pressed the transmit
button.

"We've got an unsub," he said into the radio, using the Omega vernacular
for an unknown subject. "Just joined the target."

There was a brief hesitation from the man in the communications room at
the safe house on the outskirts of the city, then the radio came to
life.

"Get him on film and continue the mission," came the reply. Pavlik
pressed the transmit button briefly to acknowledge the command.

"I don't have a shot until that guy moves," Pavlik said, his eye back on
the scope.

"We'll wait him out," Duggan said. "If they leave together, we'll take
him when they get up."

A gap-toothed waiter wearing a traditional white shirt with black bow
tie and vest approached Zimmerman's table and took Malik's order for a
glass of wine. Shortly after the waiter left Malik stopped talking in
mid-sentence. His eyes locked onto a man getting off a motorcycle that
had pulled into the curb farther up the sidewalk.

Zimmerman turned to see what had caught Malik's attention as a black
Mercedes with smoked windows crept slowly into the square, circled the
fountain, and drove past the cafe' before it stopped in front of the
bakery across the street.

The man getting off the motorcycle unzipped the jacket of his leather
riding suit as he walked toward the cafe'. To the casual observer it
was an innocuous scene--a man stopped at the cafe' for lunch, opening
his warm leather jacket to relax and cool off. But the way the man's
hand remained poised at his waist made Malik recognize it for what it
was.

Slowly, imperceptibly, Malik slipped his hand inside the open raincoat
he wore and gripped the butt of the 9mm pistol resting in the
inside-the-belt holster just to the left of his belt buckle. His eyes
swept the cafe'; he hadn't missed the black Mercedes, but parked across
the square as it was, he didn't consider it an immediate threat. He
glanced over his shoulder and spotted a second man. He had gotten out
of the Mercedes and was approaching from the opposite direction.

The man from the motorcycle made eye contact with his accomplice, who
nodded and continued toward Zimmerman's table. Malik saw the signal and
reacted instantly. He jumped to his feet and pulled Zimmerman up with
him, holding him in front of him as a shield. He fired twice at the man
from the motorcycle and killed him instantly as the rounds impacted in
his head and neck.

Malik quickly turned to face the man behind him. His powerful arm still
held the frantic Zimmerman as a shield as he fired again, a split second
after his startled target fired a sustained burst from a mini-Uzi. The
flurry of rounds from the deadly submachine gun tore into Zimmerman,
killing him and a couple sitting at an adjacent table. The man with the
Uzi dropped to his knees from Malik's well-placed shots, then, in a
final reflexive action, fired wildly across the square before falling
facedown on the sidewalk.

The cafe and the surrounding area were in chaos. People screamed and
dived under tables; others ran across the square in blind panic. The old
woman with the poodle lay dead; the dog whimpered and shook at her side.
Sprawled across the lip of the fountain, the young mime's white makeup
was streaked with blood from a bullet hole in his forehead.

From across the square an engine roared and tires howled as the black
Mercedes tore away from the curb and skidded around the fountain toward
the cafe. Malik stepped onto the sidewalk and fired into the windshield
as the big car sped by and out of sight as it turned onto a narrow
street leading away from the square.

The three men in the fifth-floor apartment had watched, stunned, as the
scene rapidly unfolded. Markum had filmed it all as he watched through
the camera lens.

"Shit!" Pavlik said. "Where's the tall blond guy? I lost him."

"He ran down an alley," Duggan said.

Pavlik grabbed the radio. "We've got a situation here," he said. "The
unsub just took out two gunslingers. Zimmerman's dead."

"Clear out," was the order that came back. Pavlik turned to Duggan and
Markum. "Pack up. We're outta here."

 ... 
Pavlik's debriefing report and Markum's videotape were transmitted via
satellite link to Delta Force headquarters at Fort Bragg, North
Carolina, within two hours of the carnage at the Paris cafe. The
windowless briefing room inside the operations center at the Ranch was
set up to show the tape to the Delta Force officers and men who had been
called in to see it after an initial viewing by the commanding officer
and his immediate staff.

Lieutenant Colonel Tom Halstead, the operations officer, was about to
close the door to the briefing room when Gannon appeared in the doorway.
"Hey, Jack," Halstead said, clapping him on the back. "How's it going',
buddy?"

"A little better each day," Gannon said. He forced a smile for his
friend.

Colonel Bill Mize, Delta's commanding officer, crossed the room to greet
him. "Thought you were going to stay at the house, Jack, take a few
more days off."

"And do what, knock back a twelve-pack every few hours? No. If I don't
get back to work, I'm going to lose it completely," Gannon said. "I'm
ashamed of myself, Bill. Kate would have been ashamed of me if she
could have seen me the last three days."

Mize put a fraternal arm around Gannon's shoulders. "You're pulling out
of it. That's what counts." He led him farther into the briefing room
and added, "Come on, sit in on this one."

"What do you have?"

"Somebody stepped all over Omega's Paris mission. We've got it
on tape." Gannon took a seat at the large conference table that filled
the center of the room as Mize gave the signal to roll the tape.
Halstead closed the door and turned off the lights. A video projector
came on, illuminating the large rear projection screen at the back of
the raised briefing platform.

Egon Zimmerman's image appeared on the screen in a close-up shot, then
the camera lens backed off and took in most of the cafe and part of the
square. Gannon recognized the terrorist immediately from the Omega
mission-planning sessions. He watched as a tall man in a light gray
raincoat approached the table; the camera angle obscured his head behind
the cafe' awning. As the man sat down Gannon leaned forward in his
chair, his eyes hard on the profile of the blond-haired man. As Nikolai
Malik turned to look out over the square, his full face toward the
camera, Gannon bolted from his seat and moved closer to the screen.

"Stop it!" he shouted. "Stop the tape!"

The tape stopped on a frame with a distant shot of Malik's face. "What
is it, Jack?" Mize asked.

"Can you zoom in on that frame?" Gannon said, his body rigid, his eyes
glaring at the image on the screen.

The projectionist hit a few buttons on the control console and a grainy,
extreme close-up of Malik filled the screen.

"You know him, Jack?" Mize asked.

"That's him," Gannon said. "That's the guy who killed Kate."

"You sure?" Mize said. He got up and went to Gannon's side.

"Positive. I got a good look at him in an alley in New York and right
before he ran into the UN. Who is he?"

"That's what we've been trying to find out," Mize said. "I looked at
the tape when it first came in and checked our files, then I faxed a
blowup of him out to CIA, DIA, FBI, State, NSA, DOE, everybody with a
data bank on known terrorists. Nothing. Nada. Nobody can match the
face with a name."

"What about doing a run on descriptions of Zimmerman's associates?"
Gannon said. "Look for any intersects?"

"We already tried that. Same story," Halstead said. He got up from the
conference table and handed Gannon a printout of the negative responses
they had received.

"Watch the rest of the tape," Mize said. "Then tell me what you think."

"An attempted snatch," Gannon said moments later. "The two guys he blew
away were trying to grab him, not kill him. They could have taken him
out before he had time to react, if that was the plan. You notice the
trunk of the Mercedes was popped as it drove by. That's where they were
going to put him."

Mize nodded in agreement. "My thoughts exactly."

"Did you get a make on the two shooters?"

"The Company's Paris station identified the one on the motorcycle as a
low-level GRU officer from the Soviet Embassy in Paris."

"GRU?" Gannon said. "Not KGB?"

"Gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn't it?" Mize said. "That's not a
GRU-type operation."

"No it isn't," Mize said. "And I've got a serious problem with the
across-the-board negative responses we got back. This mystery man
travels in elite terrorist circles, draws heat from the GRU, and handles
himself like a pro, and nobody knows anything about him, like he was
born yesterday. You know the odds against that? Remember where all our
information on Zimmerman came from?"

"The Company," Gannon said. "They had an in-depth bio on him."

"Right," Mize said. "But it took them only twenty minutes to get back
to us today when we sent them the other guy's photo. When's the last
time we got an answer that fast from them on anything?"

"Whenever they have the information we're requesting and don't want to
give it to us," Gannon said. "They've got to know who he is. He killed
two of their people in New York who were chasing him after he killed the
driver who was with him the night Kate was murdered."

"One of the intel reports in Zimmerman's bio had an interesting entry
under 'suspected connections.'"

"I remember," Gannon said. "They had reason to believe he had KGB
connections ...  to an Illegal no one's been able to identify."

"Now," Mize said. "I'll show you something that's enough to puke a
buzzard off a gut wagon." He gestured to the projectionist and said,
"Start the tape where the camera pans the people at the cafe after the
unsub showed up."

The tranquil scene at the Parisian square again came on the screen and
again erupted into the violent, bloody exchange.

"Okay," Mize called out. "Stop it there and blow it up."

The aftermath of the gun battle was on the screen; the tape was stopped
at the point where Malik had dropped Zimmerman to the ground. The scene
included the couple sitting at an adjacent table who had been gunned
down by the blast from the mini-Uzi. They now lay on the ground near
Zimmerman. As the projectionist enlarged the still frame the faces of
the couple were clearly visible.

Mize stepped up on the briefing platform, took a telescopic pointer from
the podium, and moved close to the screen.

"One of our intelligence analysts recognized the girl," Mize said. "She
was Army, an undercover operative for the Intelligence Support Activity
until last year when she resigned her commission. Guess where she went
to work?" Mize said, pausing for effect. "The Company's
Counterterrorist Group, that's where."

"What was she doing there?" Gannon said. "CTG knew about the Omega
operation, their man was behind the camera. Why would they put someone
that close to the target?"

"I don't think she knew anything about Omega's mission," Mize said. "The
Company's so goddamn turf conscious and compartmented that not only
don't they tell the rest of the intelligence community what they're
doing, they don't even tell their own people when their operations
overlap. They're uncomfortable when the left hand knows what the right
hand's doing."

Mize moved in closer to the screen and placed the tip of the pointer on
the girl's shoulder bag lying at her side; the top flap had fallen open.
"Blow this section up," he called out again.

"Look closely at the shoulder bag," Mize said to Gannon. "What do you
see?"

Gannon stared for a moment, then: "A pistol grip. Looks like the H&K we
use; fires tranquilizer darts."

"That's exactly what it is," Mize said. "Same thing with the guy lying
next to her." He used the pointer again. "You can see part of the grip
in a shoulder holster where his jacket's hanging open."

Mize stepped down from the platform and signaled for the projector to be
shut off and the lights to be switched on.

"There were two cars parked just up the street on the same side as the
cafe. One of them's probably theirs," Mize said. "So what do we have?

Two rival factions trying to grab the same guy. Not kill him, but
snatch him. And the fact that one of them is the GRU, and the guy
they're after is in all probability a KGB Illegal, really muddies the
water. The man obviously has access to some pretty valuable
information ...  to both sides."

"How do you want to proceed?" Gannon asked.

"I don't," Mize said. "Our operation's over. Zimmerman's dead. That
was the objective. The rest is somebody else's business."

"And mine," Gannon said.

Mize raised a hand to silence Gannon, then turned to the officers and
men in the briefing room to dismiss them. When they had all filed out
of the room, he turned to Gannon.

"I know what you have in mind," he said. "And I'll do whatever I can to
help you, unofficially, and so will the rest of your buddies. But I
can't get Delta overtly involved in a personal vendetta no matter how
much I'd like to."

"I understand," Gannon said. "I wouldn't ask you to. But I'd like an
eight-by-ten blowup of the blond guy's face."

"You got it."

"And I'll need a leave of absence, open-ended."

"For health reasons?" Mize said with a smile.

"For health reasons."

He moved in close to Gannon and spoke softly. "Remember Dan Pitzer?"

"Yeah. He was with Delta for six or seven years."

"Well, after he retired, he went to work for the Company. CTG," Mize
said. "He's here at Bragg for a few weeks, some coordinating work with
the Joint Special Operations Command. I stopped by to see him after I
looked at the tape. He's a good friend, wouldn't bullshit me. I asked
him if he had any idea why CTG was trying to snatch a probable KGB
Illegal. He swore he knew nothing about the operation, and he's in a
position to know if there was one."

"It's obvious there is," Gannon said.

"Right. Which tells you that it's pretty goddamn highly classified if
it's compartmented enough to exclude Pitzer; he's one of their top
intelligence analysts."

"I want that guy, Bill," Gannon said. "And I'm going after him. I
don't give a shit whose throat I have to step on."

"I'm not trying to talk you out of anything, Jack. Just keep in mind
that you're going up against a couple of real heavyweights."

"I'll keep it in mind."

"Anything else I can do for you now?" Mize said as the two men left the
briefing room.

"I'd like an hour or so alone in the computer room, then I'll be on my
way."

 ... 
The CIA's Special Operations computer system consists of only a few
terminals located in a cipher-locked room and is completely separate
from all other Agency data bases. Access to the SO data base is
severely restricted, with multilevels of security requiring specific
code-word access for individual operations. Anyone interrogating the
system, trying to break in without the proper code words and using
invalid commands, will encounter the computer's security safeguards and
be denied access, setting off a series of alarms resulting in the
automatic tracing of the person trying to gain entrance. Various
outside intelligence agencies and military intelligence units, including
DIA, FBI, NSA, and the Army's Delta Force, have subject-specific access
to the SO data base, but only for intelligence information pertinent to
their ongoing joint operations with the Agency.

The call that came in over the secure line from Delta Force headquarters
at first drew no attention. Not until the caller began to ask the
Special Operations computer for information exceeding his clearance
level. After three "invalid command" responses, the caller was
disconnected, only to call back two more times, unsuccessfully
attempting to gain entry through another path, his objective being the
systems photo data base and the CTG's current operations files.

Tom Driscoll had been alerted and informed that the source of the call
was Delta Force headquarters; the nature of the system interrogation
left no doubt in his mind who was behind it ...  and why.

"It's Gannon," Tom Driscoll told the DDO. "Our surveillance team
reported that he returned to work today."

"Which means he identified Malik on the Omega tape," Dave Wilson said.
"And he now has a photo of him."

"We tried to keep the tape out of Delta's hands," Driscoll said, "but in
all the confusion we didn't find out that Malik was on it until it was
too late. We couldn't make an issue out of it without drawing a lot of
unwanted attention to our operation."

"Gannon's like a bad penny," Wilson said. "If I remember correctly, you
assured me he would cease to be a problem after Kirilenko was taken out
of the picture."

"The photo of Malik won't do him any good," Driscoll said. "Outside of
the Soviets, we're the only ones who know who Malik is and what he's
involved in."

"What the hell were your people doing at that cafe, in the middle of the
Omega operation?"

"They didn't know anything about it. Neither did I. CTG's part was
minor, just to get it on film," Driscoll said. "Our intel section set
it up with Delta. I wasn't briefed. That Omega team's been looking for
Zimmerman for six months. We gave them the bio on him before we found
out he was connected with Malik. Anyway, when I learned that Malik was
using a French passport, and that Zimmerman was in Paris, I put him
under surveillance on the off chance that he would lead us to Malik. As
it turned out, I was right."

"And we lost two more people."

"There was no way to anticipate the GRU action," Driscoll said without
apology. "We almost had him."

"Do you have any idea why Malik went to see Zimmerman?"

"I've got an opinion."

"Let's hear it."

"I think he went there to kill him," Driscoll said. "Zimmerman's the
only one who was with him in East Germany, from the beginning of this
mess. He knew too much, maybe enough that if we, or the GRU, got our
hands on him, he could bring Malik and a few others down with him."

"Why wasn't Zimmerman picked up before?"

"He just surfaced. He was our alternate target at the cafe. We were
going to grab him if Malik didn't show. Malik was feeling the heat from
us, and the GRU, and knew Zimmerman was a weak link. I think he made
the decision to go the rest of the way alone."

"Which makes him all the more dangerous and difficult to find."

"That's why I want to conduct the rest of this operation from the
field," Driscoll said. "Where I'm in a position to react faster."

"Whatever it takes," Wilson said. "But I want results. I want Malik,
and I don't want any more interference from Gannon."

The DDO's secretary tapped on the door, stepped into the office to hand
Driscoll a message, and left. "Gannon's withdrawn every cent he has in
the bank. twenty-three thousand four hundred dollars," Driscoll said, a
concerned look on his face. "Converted it all to traveler's checks. And
he called a friend, asked him to stay at his house for an indefinite
period."

"He's going operational," Wilson said. "This is getting out of hand,
Tom. No more assurances of what he can or can't do, I want him stopped.
Reel him in and put him on ice. Now!"

Driscoll's face tinted with embarrassment as he handed Wilson the
message. "Three of his Delta Force buddies jammed up our surveillance
team while Gannon broke away. They have no idea where he is or where
he's going."

 ... 
General Vladimir Antonov's voice thundered off the walls of his office
at GRU headquarters. His fist slammed onto the top of the green-baize
conference table. A carafe of water and eight crystal glasses crashed
to the floor.

"You were to abduct him!" Antonov shouted at the major standing before
him. "Not attempt to kill him."

"My men did not fire first, Comrade General," the major said. He
remained at rigid attention, his eyes straight ahead. "They had no
choice but to defend themselves."

"According to the report I received, they panicked when he began
shooting and left without even attempting to complete their mission,"
Antonov said. "You killed one and lost the other. Now there is no
doubt in Malik's mind that we are after him. You didn't even think to
leave someone behind to follow him."

The major remained silent, perspiration beaded on his forehead. "Get
out!" Antonov bellowed.

Colonel General Yuri Volovich, Antonov's second-in-command, entered the
office as the major hurried out into the hallway.

"Incompetent fools," Antonov grumbled as Volovich sat down opposite him.
"With Zimmerman dead, we no longer have a direct link to Malik."

"I have reason to believe that the KGB warned Malik that Zimmerman was
known to us," Volovich said. "If the major's men hadn't unintentionally
killed him, Malik would have."

"The man has nine lives," Antonov said. "And an uncanny ability to
anticipate and counter our every move."

"He is only human. He will make a mistake, and then we will have him."

"Soon, Yuri Denisovich," Antonov said. "We'd better have him soon."

"I have a list of safe houses outside of Paris that Zimmerman has been
known to use," Volovich said. "It is possible Malik will go to one of
them."

Antonov looked up at the large framed photograph of Gorbachev on the
wall opposite the portrait of Lenin. "The General Secretary is in need
of more than possibilities. His enemies are beginning to circle; they
have caught the scent of blood."

"I have instructed our Paris rezident to place all of the locations
under surveillance. It is somewhere to start."

"And if he has already left the country?"

"I still believe his ultimate destination is Nicaragua," Volovich said.
"That is where his support base is, I am certain of it."

Antonov nodded in agreement. "Then I will inform the General Secretary
that that is where we will concentrate our efforts."

 ... 
Low-lying clouds scudded across a dreary, slate-gray sky, shrouding the
rolling hills and meadows of the northern Virginia countryside in a cold
autumn mist. Four miles west of the town of Middleburg, the gentleman's
farm, with a nineteenth-century stone farmhouse and barn set in the
middle of eighty acres of lush green pastures and hardwood forest,
looked much the same as it did 170 years ago, thanks to the efforts of
its owner, retired Army Lieutenant General Maxwell Taylor Stanton.
Meticulous in his efforts to preserve the period appearance of the farm,
General Max, as he was affectionately known by the men who had served
under him, had had the telephone and power lines placed underground and
the macadam drive put in by the previous owner torn up and replaced with
gravel.

He found great pleasure and peace of mind in walking the wooded trails
around his property, and after Jack Gannon's call that morning,
disturbed and saddened by the news of Kate's death, he had taken a light
lunch his housekeeper had prepared for him and, despite the damp cold,
had spent most of the afternoon following well-worn footpaths through
the October woods with Bubba, his golden retriever, at his side. There
was little about the trim, vigorous, and distinguished-looking old
war-horse that suggested his sixty-four years as he kept a strong,
steady pace on a narrow trail that led up a rise and through a stand of
cedars.

His thirty-five-year army career began when he was parachuted behind
German lines as a nineteen-year-old second lieutenant with the newly
formed 055 Jedburgh Teams, and it drew to a close with a two-year tenure
as Deputy Director of the CIA followed by an equal amount of time as
Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The years in between were
spent mostly in special operations units, with a stint as a CIA case
officer running agents into Eastern Europe during the cold war and an
assignment as a Defense attache to the Soviet Union, where, while
stationed at the Moscow Embassy, he was at the same time the de facto
CIA station chief. Few military careers were as distinguished or
demanding, yet he had found time to continue his civilian education: he
had earned a doctorate in Russian studies and become fluent in the
language. Immensely courteous and cordial, yet tense and alert, his
rifle-barrel eyes, a cool blue-black, gave no sign of emotion, yet told
anyone with an ounce of sense to beware. An aide had once instructed a
newly assigned staff officer, "Don't mistake kindness and decency for
weakness; he's a good man, but fuck with him and he'll bury you so fast
you won't know where the dirt came from." It was a fair and accurate
appraisal.

His friendship with Gannon went back twenty years, when, as a colonel
and chief of the Special Operations Group in Vietnam, he had put him in
for the Medal of Honor and given him a direct commission from staff
sergeant to captain. He had known Kate almost as long, being the best
man at their wedding, and his relationship with Gannon was such that,
with no family of his own,Gannon had listed him in his service record as
"next of kin," after Kate, to be contacted in the event of an emergency.

As he reached the top of the rise and walked along the crest, his
thoughts returned to a late-night call eleven years ago, when he was
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency: Kate, in her sixth month of
a difficult pregnancy (her first and last, owing to medical
complications), had been rushed to the army hospital at Fort Bragg. He
had arranged for an Air Force jet based in England to bring Gannon home
from a joint training exercise the fledgling Delta Force was conducting
with the British SAS, and he had spent the night at the hospital with
him, where they kept a prayerful vigil while Kate, after losing the
baby, fought for her life. And now someone had taken that life from
her, violently, senselessly, and he knew, with the loss of his own wife
to cancer two years ago, some of what Gannon must be going through.

A wind came up and swayed the white birches that lined the footpath. It
rattled the slender branches and sent a flurry of tiny red and gold
leaves fluttering to the path at his feet. The mist changed to a
drizzle and dripped heavily on the forest floor as he glanced at his
watch, then faced into the wind and turned up the collar of his parka as
he headed back toward the house. The sound of a car on the gravel
driveway could be heard as he skirted the pond behind the house, and
Bubba sprinted in the direction of the intrusive sound, his warning bark
at full volume. General Max saw Gannon get out of his car and kneel to
pet the dog, then, at the sight of his former commanding officer, rise
and snap a casual salute.

The two men embraced in silence and, with arms draped over each other's
shoulders, walked toward the house.

"I share your loss, Jack. Kate was a wonderful woman," General Max said
with genuine warmth. "We have to believe she's in a better place."

"I wish I could be there with her."

"Someday you will be."

In the study off the center hallway General Max saw that his handyman
had started a cheerful blaze in the fireplace that drove the chill from
his bones and brought a warm glow to the room. He poured Gannon a
scotch, and one for himself, and they sat in leather wing chairs facing
the fire.

Raising his glass in a toast, he said, "To Kate."

"To Kate," Gannon echoed, and tossed down the contents of the glass.

"You said you needed my help," General Max said. "You know I'll do
whatever I can."

Gannon told him everything that had happened from the time he arrived in
New York City until his attempts to gain entry to the CIA's Special
Operations data base. General Max listened silently, missing nothing.
No one had ever been able to anticipate the reactions of this
judiciously distant, cautious, guarded man. He was a person who kept
himself to himself, but when he spoke it was with a firm grasp of the
problem at hand and, more often than not, with a workable solution. And
once he had given his word, he would never go back on it. He had been a
man of action in a difficult world and was also a gambler of sorts,
self-assured to the edge of recklessness but never crossing the line.
Experience had taught him that once in the game, you had to accept that
sometimes failure came with the play, but you never walked off the
field. Gannon shared many of the same qualities, which was part of the
reason their friendship had lasted and grown.

"And I thought, with your connections in the intelligence community, you
might be able to find out who he is and how I can get to him," Gannon
concluded, and handed him a print of the full-face photograph of Malik.

General Max studied the harsh-looking face before setting the photograph
aside.

"The few close friends I had at the Agency retired about the same time I
did," he said. "And if what you're after is that closely held, the
people I know over there now are going to stonewall me."

General Max stared into the fire and slowly sipped his scotch, then
glanced again at the photograph and turned back to Gannon.

"You said the two men this man killed in Paris were GRU?"

"According to the Omega debriefing report."

"And they were trying to abduct him?"

"That's what it looked like."

General Max nodded slowly, then, in a measured response, said, "There's
one possibility. I'll give it a try tomorrow. In the meantime, you're
my house guest, and we have a lot of catching up to do."

He poured them both another drink and raised his glass again. "To old
times and old friends ...  and to those who never came home." Brussels'
Grand Place, bordered on all four sides by rare steeproofed buildings
dating back to the twelfth century, is one of the most striking public
squares in all of Europe. An aura of soft amber, rich with age, glowed
from the ancient structures as the late morning sun cast its golden
light on their ornate facades. Nikolai Malik, heedless of the
architectural beauty around him, strode through the crowded square,
weaving his way through sidewalks crammed with cafe tables and past
flower sellers with carts that brimmed with an infinite variety of
blossoms. He passed beneath the brightly colored flags of Brussels'
provinces that flew from the Maison de Roi and turned sharply down a
narrow cobbled alley. He followed the alley until he emerged onto a
small crooked street that paralleled the west side of the square.

At a shop window he feigned interest in a display of antique porcelain
and checked the street in both directions before he continued on. After
walking three more blocks he doubled back and made sudden stops and
changes of direction. Certain he was not under surveillance, he
continued directly to his destination.

The sign above the door of the small bar at 42 Rue Marche all Charbon
read
"La Renaissance," but in Belgium, as well as in select circles
around the world, it was known by another name--Bar Simba. So named
when the Katanga Brewery closed and left it as the only watering hole
outside of Africa where former Congo mercenaries could drink Simba-Tembo
beer and recall their exploits in the short-lived Republic of Katanga.

Slanted rays of sunlight streamed through the leaded windows, helping to
illuminate the heavily paneled, dimly lit room, its walls hung with
campaign and battle maps, yellowed and cracked with age, and other
esoteric memorabilia from mostly long-forgotten wars and conflicts. As
the headquarters of the Brussels branch of the French Foreign Legion
Association, and the Force Publique Association that had once maintained
order in Belgium's equatorial African colonies, it was a gathering place
for a unique breed of men. Because of its reputation it attracted
mercenaries, real and imagined, from every corner of the world--some to
role-play and posture, recounting hair-raising feats and extraordinary
acts of heroism from battles fought only in their dreams, while others,
their manner and bearing answering any questions about their
authenticity, left messages for friends and comrades-in-arms with whom
they had lost contact. Veterans from World War I to the Falklands came
to drink, sing songs, and swap war stories, and the wall behind the bar
was decorated with cap badges, unit patches, and airborne wings, all
amounting to an impressive display of elite unit insignia donated by
regular customers and clientele who had stopped to pay homage while
passing through Brussels.

The man Malik was looking for sat in the shadows at a corner table at
the far end of the room. With his waxed handlebar mustache, ruddy,
freckled complexion, and bulging eyes, Jean-Louis Lecard was not
difficult to spot. Nor was he difficult to find. Being a creature of
habit, he drank and conducted business at the corner table every day
from 10:00 A.M. until midnight. A master forger, he specialized in
passports, birth certificates, and other documents of identification,
sometimes creating elaborately backstopped legends needed to convince
authorities and enlistment officers that you were someone other than who
you really were. French by birthright, Lecard claimed no nationality
and did not subscribe to the politics of any nation or organization.
Unconcerned with whom he dealt, as long as they could pay his price, he
did not ask questions.

Business had been slow for Lecard; even his most lucrative customers
from the international terrorist community had slacked off. They were
lying low after a particularly bloody six-month rampage. The terrorists
preferred to operate in spasms of violence, one spectacular feat
following another, quickly and violently, before the authorities could
recover from the initial shock and react with heightened security
measures. Attacks were stopped once the security apparatus shifted into
full motion. Having made their point and grabbed the public's
attention, dominating headlines around the world for a period of time,
there was no need to expose themselves further. Security would
eventually be downgraded and normal routines would return, then it would
be time to strike again. Lecard merely had to bide his time through the
slack periods, knowing it was inevitable that his valuable services
would again be required by those needing to temporarily disappear from
the face of the earth. In the meantime there were the old customers,
like the one who had just come through the door.

Malik had used Lecard before, when he had wanted even the false
identities of people he had personally recruited for specific missions
kept from his KGB superiors. He saw Lecard's eyes follow him from the
entrance across to the bar without so much as a blink of recognition,
then the small, wiry man rose and left by the rear door. Malik ordered
a beer, drank it slowly, and left by the front door ten minutes later.

The window of the tiny curio shop on a side street two blocks from the
bar was piled high with pawned jewelry and antiques of questionable
validity. A bell tinkled as Malik opened the door and stepped inside.
Lecard appeared from behind a curtain strung across a doorway that led
to a cluttered and dusty back room. He beckoned with a toss of his head
and held the curtain aside as Malik crossed the shop and followed him
into his office workshop.

"There have been people asking questions about you, my friend," Lecard
said. He squinted against the smoke that curled into his eyes from a
cigarette dangling out of a corner of his mouth. "The wrong kinds of
people."

"When?"

"Just this morning."

"Anyone I know?"

"Countrymen of yours. They didn't identify themselves, but they offered
to pay well for any information. Unusual for your people."

"And your prices have gone up accordingly," Malik said with contempt.

"Business is business," Lecard said with a Gallic shrug. "What can I do
for you?"

"Three passports," Malik said, and handed him an equal number of
snapshots. "Nationality doesn't matter as long as the spoken language
is English, French, Spanish, or German."

Lecard took the snapshots and placed them on his desk. He removed an
array of stamps and seals and three blank passports from a drawer.
"United States, Austria, and Great Britain," he said as he carried them
over to his workbench. "Adequate, yes?"

"Yes," Malik answered, and wrote down three names that fit the
nationalities and handed them to Lecard. He was getting an uneasy
feeling about the nervous look in the forger's eyes. A sixth sense, one
that he had learned to listen to through hard experiences, told him that
something wasn't quite right.

Lecard, perched on a stool at his workbench, went about his work. He
affixed the snapshots in the passports and applied the seals and stamps
of exit and entry from various countries. An inch-hlong ash hung
precariously from the tip of his cigarette and finally dropped onto one
of the pages of the passport on which he was working. "Authenticity."

Lecard grinned as he brushed the ash away.

Malik's eyes swept the room. They searched each darkened corner and
came to rest on the door to a storage room near the rear entrance to the
shop. The door was cracked open a few inches. As Lecard worked Malik
moved slowly and positioned himself off to the side of the door. Lecard
glanced anxiously over his shoulder, turning back to his work when Malik
looked in his direction.

Malik withdrew the silenced 9mm pistol he had used at the Paris cafe'.
Just as it cleared the shoulder holster the storage-room door flew open,
hit him in the chest, and knocked him off balance.

A short, burly man lunged at him, but Malik quickly regained his
balance. He adroitly sidestepped and tripped the charging man and fired
two rounds into the back of his head as he landed facedown on the floor.
A pool of blood formed and spread as the man's skull was shattered by
the hollow-point bullets.

Out of the corner of his eye Malik detected the movement of another
figure from within the storeroom. He spun around and dropped into a
crouch and fired just as the man burst through the doorway swinging a
leaded truncheon in a wide arc that missed Malik's head by only a few
inches. Two rounds impacted in the man's chest, both tearing into his
heart. He was dead before he hit the floor with a loud thud.

Lecard sat motionless on the stool at the workbench, his eyes wide with
terror.

"They threatened to kill me," he pleaded.

"Are there others?"

"Two more," Lecard said, his hand trembling as he pointed to the rear
door. "In a car in the alley."

"You called them when you left the bar?"

Lecard nodded. "They swore they only wanted to talk to you."

"Finish your work," Malik said coldly.

Lecard hunched over the workbench with one eye on Malik, cringing with
his slightest move. He put the finishing touches on his forgeries and
handed them over. Malik checked that the passports were in order while
Lecard remained seated on the stool, resigned to his fate. It came with
swift precision. The two rounds that penetrated his eye socket knocked
him off the stool and blew apart the back of his head.

Malik moved to the rear wall and peered from the corner of a dusty
window. A dark blue Audi sedan with two men in the front seat was
parked a short distance down the alley, its occupants unaware of the
carnage inside the shop. Methodically checking the workbench to make
certain Lecard had not left behind any death-bed clues to his new
identities, he left by the front door and circled the block. He entered
the alley behind the shop and approached the Audi from the rear. The
windows were down, and the attention of the two men was directed at the
rear door of the shop. Coming abreast of the car, without so much as a
word, he leaned into the window on the passenger side and fired two
rounds into the head of each man, then continued walking casually to the
end of the alley, where he hailed a taxi.

 ... 
Of the five hundred-plus Soviet diplomats and employees of Soviet
agencies in Washington, at least a third of them are GRU officers whose
primary purpose is to gather military and scientific intelligence
information through conventional tradecraft methods as well as to
recruit Americans willing to commit treason for money. It is the task
of the FBI counter intelligence teams to prevent them from achieving
their goals. The clandestine game is played on the home team's turf,
throughout the Washington area: Capitol Hill, Georgetown, the cocktail
bars and restaurants of Virginia and Maryland's rural countryside, any
area not designated as off limits to the Soviets.

The GRU are good at what they do, managing to stay out of the public
eye, and with the exceptions of their Illegals, follow the rules and
provide a constant challenge to the FBI surveillance teams. If caught,
the worst that can happen is being declared persona non grata by the
State Department and sent back to the Soviet Union, shortly to be
replaced by a new player in the never-ending game. In most cases, when
there are no ulterior motives involving political one-upmanship,
expulsions for spying are unpublicized. With the United States
conducting identical operations out of its Moscow embassy, publicity
would simply result in the expulsions of Americans from the Soviet Union
in retaliation and lead to a disruption of normal diplomatic relations.
The game is a mirror image of relations between the two superpowers,
harassing each other on a daily basis while privately working toward
maintaining and gradually improving the status quo.

Over three thousand of the FBI's nine thousand agents are involved in
counter intelligence operations. The Washington field office alone has
twenty counter intelligence squads--designated CI- 1 through CI-20. The
squads, each containing thirty agents, keep tabs not only on the Soviets
but track the movements of diplomats from the Eastern Bloc nations and
the People's Republic of China as well. On occasions, when situations
require it, diplomats from other nations, friend and foe alike, are
subjected to the same scrutiny but on a smaller scale. CI-6, known in
the Bureau as the
"GRU Busters," are assigned to the GRU officers that
operate out of the Soviet Embassy under diplomatic cover as opposed to
the more overt GRU officers working out of the Soviet Military Office as
defense attaches, who are the responsibility of CI-3.

It was two members of the CI-6 squad that sat in a car near the Soviet
Embassy complex, known as
"Mount Alto," watching the two-story-high
electronically operated entrance gate. Every time the agents thought
about the location of the new embassy compound, and they tried not to
think about it, it rankled them. It was a bureaucratic blunder, the
great intelligence giveaway. Situated at 350 feet above sea level on
the second highest point in Washington, the location gives the Soviets
an unobstructed view of the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and
CIA headquarters. Laserbased sound-surveillance systems trained on the
windows of these buildings are capable of picking up vibrations from
within, transmitting back conversations to Soviet listening devices.

Perched high above the electronic clutter of the city, and in sight of
microwave relay towers, the Soviets have the capability to intercept
communications ranging from long-distance and local telephone
conversations to facsimile and data transmissions. Computer technology
allows them to designate specific "high yield" telephone numbers and
automatically listen in and record conversations. Key words that occur
in those conversations (such as missile, Stealth, Trident, NSA, or CIA),
denoting subjects and areas of interest targeted by the GRU, are
programmed into the software and, upon being recognized by the computer,
trigger the automatic recorders. Other, more mundane conversations
often pay equally high dividends of another sort: intercepted personal
calls from military and government officials with access to classified
information can reveal disgruntled employees or those with marital and
financial problems, indicating who might be in a vindictive frame of
mind or in need of money and companionship, and therefore receptive to
recruitment as Soviet agents. The stakes are high; the stolen
technology saves the Soviet Union hundreds of millions of dollars in
research and development costs, and the efforts of the skilled GRU
officers are relentless and often ingenious. Their success rate is
impressive considering the parameters of the game and the sophistication
and determination of the forces allied against them.

The CI-6 agents watching the entrance to the Soviet compound knew by
name every GRU officer who operated out of the embassy, even though they
had never met nor spoken to any of them. Their faces, studied from
photographs and constant surveillance, and their personal habits and
histories, gleaned from Bureau files, were known by heart. Some of
them--those who had earned respect for their operational capabilities
and the degree of challenge they presented--had been given nicknames by
the CI-6 agents. The man whose car was approaching the Soviet-compound
gate was one of those.

"Old Smoothie's" dark green Volvo sedan pulled out onto Tunlow Road,
then turned onto Wisconsin Avenue and headed into the heart of the city.
The CI-6 agents fell in behind, purposely following too close. The
red-white-and-blue diplomatic license plates prefixed with the letters
FC identified it as a Soviet-owned vehicle, one driven exclusively by
the man now at the wheel.

As the senior GRU officer and rezident, Old Smoothie, General Anatoli
Alessevich Belchenko, was on his fifth tour at the Washington embassy. A
seasoned professional who operated under diplomatic cover as a cultural
affairs officer, he had the distinction of never having had one of his
operations or agents compromised, and he was responsible for some of the
most important intelligence coups to come out of the United States. No
longer personally recruiting and controlling individual agents or
servicing dead drops (the nuts and bolts of the intelligence game),
Belchenko now planned and orchestrated all GRU operations in the
Washington area, a position that did not keep him under surveillance on
a daily basis; rather, he appeared on the CI-6 agents' rotation schedule
every few weeks.

Belchenko specialized in "honey pot" operations--the use of beautiful
women to form liaisons and carry on as many affairs as possible with
State Department officials, White House and Pentagon staffers,
congressional aides (especially those working for senators and
representatives on the intelligence and military oversight
committees)--and he was not surprised that this type of operation had
not diminished in its effectiveness, despite the deadly menace of AIDS
that loomed darkly in the background. His take from these operations
had actually increased, confirming what he had always believed, that
love and lust were powerful emotions that held sway over even the threat
of a slow, painful death. One current operation in particular brought a
smile to his face: a beautiful and sexy Englishwoman, recruited in
London and brought to Washington, was now sleeping with a senior Defense
Department official with access to top-secret information. She was one
of fifteen such honey-pot operations under his control but was proving
to be the most valuable; her conquest felt the need to boast of his
high-level position and impress her with his knowledge of top-secret
projects while they made love, which, Belchenko was grateful for, was as
often as four nights a week, with occasional matinees when he could get
away.

As Belchenko rolled to a stop at the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue
and K Street, he was well aware that he was under surveillance. He had
spotted the FBI car shortly after leaving the embassy complex. He had no
need to take any precautions; his purpose and destination had nothing to
do with clandestine activities. He was simply on his way to one of the
many legal areas of intelligence gathering available to even the general
public. The openness of the American society had always amazed him;
much of what is tightly guarded in the Soviet Union is readily available
in the United States to anyone who knows where to look. He could even
remember picking up valuable intelligence information while attending
open congressional hearings, when blustering and unthinking politicians
had inadvertently let slip highly classified information.

He left his car two blocks from the Convention Center and noticed that
the FBI had either broken off their surveillance or had chosen not to
follow him into the building once it had been established as his
destination. He chalked it up to a show of presence, to remind him that
he hadn't been forgotten, rather than a serious surveillance effort. He
entered the massive structure on the Eighth Street level, which opened
onto a sprawling exhibition hall crowded with people, display booths,
and representatives of companies gathered for the Electronics and
Micro-Computer Trade Show. He walked casually down the aisles and
paused briefly at each booth to study the fascinating array of
sophisticated equipment, then stopped and joined a small group watching
a demonstration of a powerful information storage device known as a CD
ROM, capable of storing as much as one quarter of a million printed
pages of information on a single five-and-one-quarter-inch disk.

He felt, rather than saw, someone brush past him and glanced over his
shoulder.

"Excuse me," a tall, distinguished-looking man with a military bearing
said.

"Of course," Belchenko replied pleasantly as their eyes made
split-second contact.

Belchenko looked after the retreating figure, dressed in a dark business
suit. Even with only a momentary glimpse, he had recognized General Max
and refrained from staring after him as he continued on his way to the
end of the aisle and disappeared around the corner. The last time he
had seen his old adversary, ten years ago, he was head of the Defense
Intelligence Agency and was wearing the uniform of a lieutenant general
of the United States Army.

Anyone who had seen the seemingly innocuous contact would have thought
nothing of it, would not even have noticed anything out of the ordinary.
People throughout the exhibition hall were jammed together, standing
shoulder-to-shoulder at many of the display booths. To untrained eyes
it was an occurrence in keeping with the rhythm and bustle of a crowded
place.

Belchenko returned his attention to the demonstration he had been
watching, and he waited until the instructor finished. He then
continued walking up and down the rows of exhibits for another half hour
before he left the Convention Center. Once outside he put his hand in
the pocket of his overcoat and felt the slip of paper that had not been
there when he entered the building.

Neither Belchenko nor General Max had spotted the man who now went to
the bank of pay telephones near the exit and dialed a number for the
direct line the Deputy Director for Operations had set up exclusively
for those working on the mission called Operation Viper--the hunt for
Nikolai Malik. Although the CIA's charter prohibited them from
conducting operations inside the United States, the all-out manhunt for
Malik was another case where the Director of the CIA, with the
President's stamp of approval, deemed that the current crisis precluded
any restrictions on their activities. With the knowledge of the GRU
attempts to abduct Malik, the DDO had assigned surveillance teams to
watch all high level GRU officers.

"You'll never guess who just made a 'brush contact' with Belchenko," the
man said to the operations officer who answered the phone.

"I'm not in the mood for twenty questions," came the terse reply.

"Maxwell Stanton," the caller said.

"Lieutenant General Maxwell Taylor Stanton."

The voice was tinged with disbelief. "The former head of the DIA?"

"The very same," the caller said.

"Stay on him, and put another team on Belchenko."

"Already done. My partner's got him covered."

"Don't lose him."

"Not a chance," the caller said. He immediately hung up the phone and
hurried out the door to join his partner.

 ... 
The two sections of the polished black-granite wall are each 250 feet
long. The east wall points directly at the Washington Monument, the
west at the Lincoln Memorial. They converge at an obtuse angle ten feet
below the meadow into which they are embedded. It is the most visited
monument in our nation's capital, ten thousand visitors a week, a place
of remembrance where people come to mourn and reflect, a place of
catharsis and consolation where some find the solace of final
reconciliation. Called a black gash of shame, a tombstone, and a ditch
of disgrace by its detractors, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, inscribed
with 58,022 names, is the only national monument in the world to
individually honor every man who died in the service of his country in a
given war. On the far side of the memorial site, across a grassy meadow
on a small rise, stands a bronze statue of three "grunts" dressed in
fatigues and carrying automatic weapons; they face toward the wall as if
their weary eyes are scanning for their own names. The statue is a
concession to those who disapproved of "the Wall" and demanded a more
conventional figurative sculpture. And along with the Wall it also
serves as a haunting reminder that the posturing of politicians can
swing the national fist into the collective stomachs of a generation,
taking the best of them from us.

Families, loved ones, and former comrades-in-arms of the dead come to
the memorial to cry and to leave mementos: flowers, dog tags, unit
insignia, photographs, a can of beer, and letters ("We didn't mean to
leave you behind, but we had to get out of there"). They talk in hushed
tones as at no other monument. It is a procession with liturgical
overtones: the visitors move slowly, reverently, talking less and less,
then fall silent as they read the names of the first man killed, in July
1959, an advisor watching a movie in Saigon, and the last to die, in May
1975, during the rescue of the freighter Mayaguez.

The Wall is a touchstone for the veterans of the Vietnam War, a place
where they can come to feel the presence of their fallen buddies and to
pay to each other the tribute denied to them elsewhere. The reflective
black granite is dark, dreamy, and redemptive, a threshold where the
living confront the dead and come to terms with the past. There is an
overwhelming sense of union, and time spent there is not ordinary time.
Nor is it an ordinary place--it is a sanctum, both beautiful and
terrible, where a hand reaches out, touches the Wall, and traces a name
with a finger in a tactile prayer. When facing the highly reflective
surface you can see yourself clearly among the names. When it rains the
names seem to disappear.

General Max stood before a panel near the vertex of the walls, his eyes
fixed on a name a few lines from the top--the name of his only child,
his son Matthew, killed in action at Phu Bai in April of 1966. Lost in
his memories, he did not notice the reflection of the figure that
stopped and stood beside him.

Belchenko's eyes scanned the panel and found the name upon which General
Max's attention was focused.

"A relative?"

"My son," General Max said, snapping abruptly out of his reverie.

"Ah, yes. I remember now."

General Max turned to face Belchenko. The GRU general looked much the
same as he had when they had first met, a few silver hairs highlighted
the temples of the handsome Slavic face, but he was tall and erect and
looked every inch the professional soldier despite the civilian clothes
he wore. General Max reached out to shake his hand and said, "It's good
to see you again, my friend. You look well."

"I owe it all to clean socialist living," Belchenko said with a grin. A
few "professional" veterans, those who for one reason or another still
had not put their lives back together, stopped nearby. Unkempt and
dressed in pieces of uniforms--ragged field jackets covered with
military insignia and decorations, and "boonie" hats festooned with
badges and buttons--they stared blankly at the Wall, occasionally
looking around as if to see if there was anyone who wanted to hear their
stories. General Max glanced in their direction and noticed
incongruities in the array of decorations and unit insignia three of
them wore, an indication that much of what they were wearing wasn't
earned, and that their stories, if told, would be fabricated from what
they had read or heard and not from what they had experienced.

General Max gestured toward the Constitution Gardens pool and the
Washington Monument towering in the distance. "Let's walk."

The two men left the memorial site and crossed the meadow to the path
around the free-form-shaped reflecting pool. Their relationship, which
went back to General Max's tour as a defense attache in Moscow, was
unique. As the Soviet Armed Forces liaison to the U.S. Army, Belchenko
had been General Max's Soviet counterpart. Both colonels at the time,
their duties brought them together in an official capacity and in the
insular world of diplomatic social functions. Shortly after General
Max's arrival in Moscow, they had met at a reception given by the
Hungarian ambassador, the beginning of a feeling-out process that soon
convinced them that they were both too circumspect to let slip
classified information, nor would either of them ever entertain the idea
of crossing over to the other side. Their relationship, based on mutual
respect, was cordial and correct, but a wary friendship soon developed
out of shared experiences and common interests. General Max never
completely gave up hope of recruiting Belchenko, and when he cropped up
again, at the Soviet Embassy in Washington during General Max's stints
with the CIA and DIA, an assignment that was decidedly not a
coincidence, the arm's-length friendly relationship was continued on an
official basis. An incident that happened the year before General Max
left the Defense Intelligence Agency found them working together for a
purpose neither could have anticipated. They had, with the approval of
the highest councils of both their governments, secretly conducted a
"white flag" operation requiring the cooperation of the two military
intelligence services to defuse a volatile situation created by a
militaristic splinter group in South America that could have resulted in
destabilizing the entire region--an outcome that would have benefited
neither country at the time.

As the two men walked Belchenko glanced reflexively over his shoulder
and studied the ground in front of him.

"The FBI's people terminated your surveillance when you entered the
Convention Center," General Max said.

"It is not them I'm concerned with," Belchenko said. "My KGB brothers
spend more time watching me than your government does."

General Max was familiar with the practices of the KGB's KR section, an
internal security force that wiretaps, bugs, and conducts surveillance
on Soviet overseas personnel to make certain they have not become double
agents.

"Our meeting has a plausible explanation," General Max offered. "Two old
adversaries, still playing the game, looking for an edge."

Belchenko grunted. "I must admit, I did not expect to see you again,
Maxwell, certainly not under such curious circumstances. I know you can
no longer harbor any hope of recruiting me, so I must assume you have
finally seen the error of your ways and have decided to be embraced by
the great Russian bear." He flashed a smile, then added, "But, please,
say it isn't so. I am an old man, ready for retirement, you must leave
me some illusions."

"Your illusions are safe, Anatoli Alessevich," General Max said. "I'm
here to ask for your help with a delicate matter."

Belchenko's eyes narrowed. "I had heard that you were now comfortably
retired, a gentleman farmer."

"I am."

"Then this is not an official request?"

"Unofficial and very personal."

"How did you know where to find me?" Belchenko asked.

"I remembered that technology trade shows always held a fascination for
you."

General Max took the photograph of Malik from the inside pocket of his
overcoat and handed it to Belchenko without saying a word.

The GRU general stared at the image but said nothing. The look on his
face told General Max that he knew who the man was. and a lot more.

"Who is he?"

Belchenko remained silent and handed the photograph back as they walked
along the path around the reflecting pool.

"Let me tell you what he's done," General Max said. "About a week ago
that man raped and murdered the wife of a close personal friend. You and
I both know there will be no justice from within the system."

"A personal vendetta?" Belchenko said. "That's unlike you, Maxwell,
very unprofessional."

"An accounting," General Max replied. "We can both remember when only
the players were targets and behavior such as this wasn't tolerated. And
on the rare occasions when it did happen, the people responsible were
dealt with swiftly and harshly."

Belchenko nodded in agreement. "Times change."

"I'm asking you as a friend and fellow human being--this man cannot be
allowed to rape and murder with impunity under the guise of intelligence
operations."

Belchenko didn't respond. He stopped to look back toward the memorial;
his eyes suggested he was wrestling with a weighty decision. He was a
principled man, a true professional soldier, who loved his country, and
his family, and had lived his life in the belief that politics and the
necessities of his chosen profession did not preclude honesty and
decency.

"He is not GRU," he finally said. "We would have quickly disposed of
him with the rest of the trash. He is KGB, and this is not the first
time he has committed such a crime. We have reason to believe there
have been at least four other victims."

"If he's not GRU, why are your people trying to abduct him?" General Max
asked.

Belchenko smiled. "For the same reason your CIA is." The cagey general
saw from the look in General Max's eyes that he did not know why Malik
was being sought by both sides. "But how did you know about our
interest in this man?"

General Max told him about the Paris incident, but left out the Omega
team's mission, and how Gannon had recognized him as the man he chased
in New York.

"I'd like his name and anything else you can tell me about him."

Belchenko looked away again, then nodded to himself. He made his
decision and turned back to General Max.

"We have helped each other in the past, Maxwell, so in deference to
that, and for my own personal reasons, I will tell you all that I can,
but not all that I know."

"Fair enough."

"His name is Nikolai Malik," he said with disdain. "He is a KGB Illegal
and a very dangerous man."

"Why are your people looking for him?"

Belchenko hesitated, then: "There is a faction within our government,
the hard-line Bolsheviks, who are not happy with the direction in which
the General Secretary is taking our nation. They feel he is going too
far, too fast. He has made many powerful enemies, especially among the
KGB."

"We have conservatives in our own government who feel the same way about
the concessions we've made," General Max said.

"But they are not plotting to overthrow your government."

"That's not how we solve our problems," General Max said. "But if you
know the KGB is behind it, surely Gorbachev has the power to weed out
those responsible."

"It is not that simple, my friend. The opposition is strong and
widespread, and they are conducting a clever and insidious clandestine
campaign. Nikolai Malik holds the key to their success, but the KGB is
denying him, they are saying he is a rogue, a loose cannon over whom
they no longer exercise any control. They are lying, but the General
Secretary is not in a position to move against them at this time. Too
many whose support he needs are waiting to see which way the wind blows.
And if Malik is not found and stopped, the General Secretary's days are
numbered, as you Americans put it."

General Max was familiar with the pervasive influence and awesome power
of the KGB. Their paramilitary arm alone--the Border Guards
Directorate--had more than half a million armed men, better trained and
better equipped than most of the Red Army. They gave the KGB the
strength to control not only their own citizens but the military and the
Party as well. Though formed to serve the Party and the State, they
were more inclined to serve only themselves, and their huge numbers and
secret ways had created the illusions that they were everywhere, even
when they weren't. But the Central Committee and the Politburo, with
the help of the military and the GRU, had ways of keeping them in check,
and General Max found it difficult to believe what Belchenko was telling
him.

"One KGB Illegal has it within his power to cause Gorbachev's downfall?"
he said.

"An oversimplification, but more or less correct."

"And somewhere in what you're not telling me is the reason you want this
Malik alive and not dead."

"As I said, Maxwell. I will tell you what I can."

"If you were conducting the search for him, where would you look?"

Belchenko smiled. "Perhaps Nicaragua. The General Secretary has
angered many of those who have grown accustomed to our aid to keep their
failing revolutions alive. It is expensive enough to prop up those
whose economies are in shambles, let alone those who are fighting a
protracted war against local anti-Communist insurgencies. Gorbachev has
focused on breathing new life into our own economy through his policy of
perestroika. Consequently he has put the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua,
and Vietnam and others on notice that we can no longer afford to send
them billions of dollars in military aid, they have got to do some
restructuring of their own. Nicaragua is deeply resentful of what they
consider a betrayal, and there is reason to suspect that they, along
with Cuba, have thrown their lot in with the anti-Gorbachev faction and
the KGB."

General Max listened patiently to the lecture. He knew that it was
Belchenko's indirect way of answering his questions.

"I'm aware of the reduction in aid, it's the only thing that brought the
Sandinistas to the peace table with the Contras. It's also the reason
they've expanded their narcotics smuggling and distribution efforts to
include drug-processing labs and marijuana cultivation. But how does
this all tie in to Malik?"

"Our GRU rezident in Managua has learned that Malik, with the support of
the Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior and the KGB, has been secretly
assembling and training an elite terrorist force comprised of recruits
from many nations."

Having kept in touch through the "old boy" network of ex-intelligence
officers, General Max was also aware of the increased presence of
terrorist groups in Nicaragua. Recent reports had confirmed the
presence of PLO, IRA, Basque ETA, and Italian Red Brigade terrorists,
some even holding Sandinista army rank. It was nothing new, simply an
extension of the Sandinistas' ties to the international terrorist
community, which had supported and helped finance their revolution since
it was founded in the early 1 960s. In the seventies, while General Max
was still at DIA, he had received confirmed intelligence information
that PLO-trained Sandinistas took part in several terrorist operations
in the Middle East, including an attempt to overthrow the government of
Jordan's King Hussein. "We suspect he's using the terrorist training
camp as a base of operations," Belchenko added.

164

"Why haven't your people acted on the information?"

"It's a remote, mobile jungle camp, always constructed under heavy,
triple canopy where our satellites cannot easily detect it," Belchenko
said. "And they don't stay in one location for extended periods. On
the two occasions when we have pinpointed the location of the camp,
Malik's KGB friends learned of our efforts and warned them before we
could mount an operation."

"What is it you fear most from Malik, an assassination attempt on
Gorbachev?"

"If it were that, we would simply have killed him," Belchenko said, then
looked away as he was about to continue, but stopped himself.

"That's the part you can't tell me about?"

"I would not have told you as much as I have were it not for the fact
that if your friend, or your government, is successful in finding and
stopping Malik, it will serve our purpose as well as yours."

"Our purpose?" General Max said. "How would it benefit us?"

Belchenko waved off the question.

General Max patted the GRU general on the shoulder. "You've given me
more than I had any right to expect, Anatoli Allessevich. I'm
grateful."

"Your friend will be going after Malik?"

"Yes."

"Alone?" Belchenko said, arching an eyebrow.

"Probably."

"Whatever action he decides to take, tell him to be careful, Maxwell. It
is a very high-stakes game he is getting into. And Malik is
exceptionally capable and very ruthless."

"I'll tell him."

General Max crossed Constitution Avenue to the small side street where
he had parked his car. His call to Gannon completed, he decided to
visit an old friend in Arlington before returning to his farm. As he
inserted the key in the car door, he saw two men dressed in dark
three-piece suits approach from across the street. They were young,
trim and fit, full of purpose, and, from the way they carried
themselves, armed. General Max pegged them as Secret Service agents.

The taller of the two flashed his Treasury Department identification and
confirmed General Max's assessment. "General Stanton, I've been
instructed to ask you to come with us."

"Do you mind telling me where?" General Max said.

The taller man repeated his exact instructions. "The White House, sir.
The President would like to see you."

General Max followed the two agents to their car and climbed into the
backseat. An ironic smile spread slowly across his face; he was more
than a little chagrined at not having spotted whoever had had him under
surveillance.

 ... 
Gannon accelerated out of the entrance ramp and merged into the flow of
traffic on Route 66, heading east toward Dulles International Airport.
He went over in his mind all of the things General Max had told him and
smiled at his request--"Don't tell me what you're going to do or how
you're going to do it; the less I know the better."

Gannon reached over the front passenger seat and unzipped one of the
outside pockets of his black nylon carry-on bag. He removed the
photograph of Malik and held it in place on the hub of the steering
wheel. "Nikolai Malik," he said aloud, and stared at the image as he
drove. He burned the hard, unyielding features into his memory. Again
he said the name out loud: "Nikolai Malik!"

His thoughts went back to the over-the-fence missions he had run in
Vietnam. Top-secret missions, where he had been given photographs of
North Vietnamese Army political cadre and high-ranking military
officers. Inserted inside North Vietnam and Laos, sometimes his small
four-man team would spend weeks deep behind enemy lines before locating
their target. They were "black" operations, assassinations,
shoot-on-sight missions planned and orchestrated by the CIA and carried
out by the Special Operations Group. And now there was another
photograph, and he was on his way to another jungle. If you stay around
long enough, he thought, everything comes full circle.

Mentally sorting through possible plans of action as he drove, one plan
continued to reassert itself over the others and he settled on it, his
gut instincts telling him it was the right approach. What General Max
had said about Kate not being Malik's first victim kept forcing its way
back into his conscious mind, interrupting his thoughts. "But she'll be
your last innocent victim, Malik," he vowed. "I swear to God, she'll be
your last."

He felt in control now. He had a name to go with the face, and a
probable base of operations, and a network of uniquely qualified friends
to draw on. He pressed down on the accelerator and sped toward the
airport and his flight to Miami.

 ... 
The Secret Service agents brought General Max into the White House
through the underground tunnel leading from the Treasury Building, a
precaution taken to avoid drawing attention to his being summoned by the
President. They escorted him down the West Wing basement corridor, past
the White House Mess, to a heavy oak door with a small brass plaque that
read
"Situation Room." The taller of the two agents rang the buzzer and
stepped back. The door opened almost immediately, and General Max stood
face-to-face with an old colleague. Robert Burton, Director of the
Central Intelligence Agency, had been head of Clandestine Services when
General Max was Deputy Director. They had had a good working
relationship for the two years they had served together.

The DCI's broad Irish face flashed a disarming smile as he extended his
hand. "Losing your touch, Max," he said with a wink, and nodded toward
the Secret Service agents flanking the door.

"Looks that way."

General Max glanced about the cramped, somber room designed for
close-quarter crisis management. No larger than eighteen by twelve
feet, most of the space was taken up by a teak conference table. Three
of the walls were covered with rich, dark walnut panels that concealed
an assortment of high-tech electronic equipment that included built-in
video monitors, telecommunications terminals, and the remote controls
for the equipment used to project and manipulate images on the large
screen behind a curtain that was drawn across the fourth wall.

It was not the first time General Max had been in the White House
Situation Room; he had been there on a number of occasions as CIA Deputy
Director and DIA chief, to brief the National Security Council, and on
two occasions since his retirement, again, as the country's foremost
specialist in unconventional warfare, to brief the NSC on matters
concerning the use of special operations forces. It was, however, his
first visit since the new President, whom he had never met. He was
accustomed to seeing the conference table, and the chairs lining the
walls, filled with people as they usually were when the full National
Security Council met, but there were only four people in attendance now,
their suit coats off, collars and ties loosened, and shirt sleeves
rolled up in what was obviously an intense working session.

Burton gestured toward the President, who was seated at the head of the
table. "Mr. President, I don't believe you know General Maxwell
Stanton."

"Only by reputation." The President rose from his plush leather chair
to shake General Max's hand. He turned to introduce the others at the
table. "My national security advisor, Bill Clinton," he said, and
indicated the pudgy, nervous academic who was seated to his immediate
right. "And Dave Wilson, the Agency's Deputy Director for Operations.
And of course you know my DCI, Bob Burton."

General Max completed the cursory handshakes and gave Wilson a friendly
pat on the arm in recognition of the time when the DDO, then a young
case officer in the CIA's Moscow station, had worked for him. He then
took the chair offered by the President and sat to his left, halfway
down the table.

"Two of your former colleagues who are present in this room have assured
me that you are a direct and forthright man who has no equivocations
about his duty to his country," the President said. "Your distinguished
military record alone confirms that, so I'll get right to the point.
What was the purpose of your clandestine meeting with General
Belchenko?"

"Strictly a personal matter, Mr. President."

"A personal matter?" the national security advisor interrupted. He
leaned forward, his baby-blue eyes too large and bland to turn into the
hard, penetrating stare he had hoped for. "What personal matter could a
former Deputy Director of the CIA possibly have with a GRU general?" His
high-pitched voice rose to a nasal whine that General Max thought he was
not alone in finding irritating. It was a voice that seemed tailor-made
for the pudgy, sullen face.

"One of little or no significance to anyone in this room, I would
imagine," General Max said.

The President raised a cautioning hand at Clinton, who was about to
launch into a tirade. He turned his calm gray eyes on General Max.

"An old war-horse like you knew the minute the Secret Service approached
you that this was no invitation for a casual chat. Succinctly put, it's
a most urgent matter of national security, and whatever is discussed at
this meeting has the highest possible security classification attached
to it. Do we understand each other, General?"

"Yes, Mr. President," General Max answered stiffly.

"Good, then let's cut to the chase." The President nodded toward
Burton, then said, "The DCI tells me that you are close friends with a
man by the name of Jack Gannon, and that he has reasons to believe your
meeting with Belchenko was on behalf of this man to learn the identity
and whereabouts of a KGB Illegal by the name of Nikolai Malik. Is that
true?"

"Yes, it is," General Max said. He had no intention of withholding
information from the President.

"And what did you learn?"

"That there is a strong possibility that Malik is in Nicaragua at a
secret terrorist training camp set up by the KGB."

Dave Wilson, the DDO, spoke up. "That squares with my Foreign Resources
people, who spotted him talking to a member of the Nicaraguan Foreign
Ministry in the UN delegates' lounge, and the information we got from
French intelligence that the terrorist Zimmerman, who was killed in
Paris, had an airline ticket to Managua in his coat pocket."

The President nodded and resumed questioning General Max. "And you
passed this information on to your friend Gannon?"

"I did," General Max replied.

"And he is going to Nicaragua to find Malik to avenge the murder of his
wife?"

"I don't know that to be a fact, but I would feel safe in assuming that
is the case."

"And the fact that this Gannon is ADM trained is purely coincidental, I
suppose," Clinton broke in, his eyes flashing as he held up Gannon's
service record and jabbed a finger at the section on specialized
training. "Well, for my tastes, there are too many coincidences
involving this Gannon's entry into the equation, and I'm not buying any
of it."

General Max stared at the national security advisor in genuine
confusion. The connection between avenging Kate Gannon's death and
Gannon's training in the use of Atomic Demolition Munitions while a
Green Beret completely escaped him. But it did sound an internal alarm
that alerted him to the fact that there was far more at stake than he
had imagined.

The President shook his head slowly, his eyes fixed on Clinton. "If you
don't mind, Bill, I'd like to continue without any further
interruptions."

The national security advisor crossed his arms, leaned back, and settled
into what looked like the posture of a sulking child.

"Gannon didn't confide his plans to you?" the President asked General
Max, who was still running possible scenarios through his mind that
could explain Clinton's puzzling, seemingly unconnected statement.

"No, he did not, and I didn't ask." Out of the corner of his eye he saw
a small smile spread slowly over the DCI's face. Ever the spook, Burton
thought.

The President took a long, thoughtful pause, then said, "In light of my
national security advisor's untimely outburst, I think it advisable at
this point that you be briefed on the situation we're dealing with."

The President glanced around the table. The DCI and the DDO both nodded
in agreement. Clinton's face expressed his disapproval, but after a
stern look from the President, he reluctantly made it unanimous.

"For reasons you will immediately understand, General Stanton, there are
only a handful of men who know what I'm about to tell you. Your
expertise and experience, along with your knowledge of your friend
Gannon, might be of considerable help. So I would appreciate your full
cooperation."

"I'll do what I can, sir."

The President paused for a long moment and then began. "You are of
course aware of the scandal that rocked the previous administration
involving a 'secret army,' for lack of a better term, made up of
high-ranking officers in the CIA, Department of Defense, the National
Security Council, and White House staff?"

"I'm familiar with most of what happened," General Max said, and poured
himself a glass of ice water from the carafe in front of him. Through
the old-boy network, before the story had broken in the press, he had
heard rumors about the secret cabal at the Pentagon and the CIA and
about the subsequent investigations that led to secret courts-martial
and forced retirements that had ended a number of once-promising
careers.

The President continued, "My predecessor in this office was more often
than not ill advised and manipulated by a group of men who turned every
international confrontation into a pecker contest. In effect, certain
members of the National Security Council and the White House staff had
assumed an operational role with off-line links to the CIA. They were
running their own unauthorized covert operations, aided and abetted by
elements of the Army's Special Operations Division who were virtually
out of control."

"It was my understanding that all of that was quietly put to bed during
the Iran-Contra hearings," General Max said.

"It was. At least the part that became public knowledge. But what the
press latched onto and what the rumor mills circulated only scratched
the surface. Those paranoid maniacs had decided that they alone knew
what was best for the country, indeed for the entire Western world. And
acted on it. And I was handed the legacy of cleaning up the worst of
the mess." The President paused, as though reliving the unpleasant
revelations that had startled him on the day he took office. "When I
took over ten months ago I received a briefing from the previous DCI
that shook me to the core."

"It would shake this entire country and all our allies to the very core
if it ever became known," the national security advisor chimed in.

The President turned to the DCI and said, "Bob, if you'll fill in the
General."

Burton cleared his throat and sat forward in his chair, resting his arms
on the table. "The operation in question started about six months
before the former President left office. Some of his staff and advisors
and most of the 'secret army' they controlled were literally up in arms
about the concessions made to the Soviets through the disarmament
treaties and in the spirit of detente. They considered anyone an
imbecile who believed the Soviets had given up spreading their brand of
communism merely to settle for protecting the Motherland and improving
their economy. They were from the spendthem-to-death school of thought
and had a profound distrust of the Soviets and considered it folly to
give them a breather to deal with their social unrest and a ruinous
economy. As far as they were concerned, the sheer destructive power of
nuclear weapons, and not treaties and defensive systems, was a cheap and
deadly way to keep the peace. But what riled them most was our
bargaining away our European-based intermediate-range missiles in the
face of the enormous improvements the Soviets had made in conventional
arms and in their increased capability for short-warning attack against
our NATO allies. They wanted to make certain that this country didn't
leave NATO bare-assed naked against a conventional ground attack by the
Soviets. They wanted something in place that would disrupt and stall a
Soviet invasion, delay their advances until we could bring our Rapid
Deployment Forces into play."

Burton paused and raised a meaningful eyebrow at General Max. "The
decision was made to 'seed' a number of Saydums in Eastern Europe," he
said, pronouncing the acronym SADM, which stood for Special Atomic
Demolition Munitions. "They were deployed at strategic points along
known invasion routes and left in place to be remotely detonated by
satellite signal in time of war. Their thinking was, if they didn't do
it now, the weapons would be lost through negotiations, and if they
weren't in our inventory at the nuclear storage sites at the time they
were to be accounted for, it would appear that we had complied with the
treaty."

General Max stared in disbelief. He was more than familiar with the
miniature nuclear weapons known as SADMS. He had written the training
manual on methods of their deployment and use by Special Forces units.
Light enough, at less than forty pounds, to be man-portable, they were
designed as tactical weapons, intended for use in demolishing bridges,
mountain passes, dams, railroad beds, airport runways, and missile
launch sites, with the added effect, through radioactive fallout, of
denying access to a considerable area around ground zero for periods
ranging from months to years, depending on placement of the weapon and
atmospheric conditions at the time of the blast.

He recalled a top-secret plan under consideration during the last years
of the Vietnam War. SADMS were proposed as a method of denying the use
of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the North Vietnamese Army by deploying them
at Mu Gia Pass, the main supply artery and choke point where the Trail
entered Laos and snaked its way through the mountainous jungle to the
south. The mission plan was to parachute an ADM-trained Special Forces
team from the Special Operations Group into Laos, deploy the weapon, set
the timers for a twenty-four-hour delay, and extract the team once they
had reached a predesignated extraction site. Jack Gannon was to have
been the team leader on the mission. General Max had argued against
using the weapon and had prevailed only after a protracted, and at times
heated, debate.

General Max glanced at the President. The Chief Executive's face was
expressionless, but the telling dark circles beneath his eyes underlined
the seriousness of the present situation. General Max's mind raced
ahead; the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into horrifying place.
"How many weapons were seeded?" he asked.

"Six," Burton said. "All fourth-generation models--4.5 kilotons each."

General Max was taken aback by the last statement. The weight-to-yield
ration had improved significantly since he had retired. The
nine-thousand-pound, ten-kiloton bomb carried by the B-29 Enola Gay and
dropped on Hiroshima required nine hundred pounds of weight per kiloton
yield. With miniaturization and other technological advances, the ratio
had been reduced to less than thirty pounds per kiloton while he was DIA
chief and was now down to just over seven pounds.

"Who deployed them?" he asked.

"Special Forces teams stationed at Bad Tolz, West Germany. They were
parachuted into East Germany on six separate missions during December of
1988."

"Goddamn Green Beret cowboys," Clinton muttered, loud enough for all to
hear.

General Max shot a withering glance at the national security advisor. He
had instantly disliked the man, having seen his type before--a
think-tank academic with no hands-on experience who had never put his
ass on the line in his life. In his younger days, he thought, under
different circumstances, he would have backhanded the arrogant,
pencil-necked little shit off his chair. In light of his present
position and status, he settled for a stern rebuke.

"For your information, Clinton, no one in the military gets up in the
morning and decides he'll start a war. Those decisions are made in this
room, by people like you. We don't make policy, we carry it out,
regardless of how stupid or inane."

The forcefulness of General Max's words, and the deadly look in his cold
blue eyes, instantly quieted the national security advisor. An equally
sharp look from the President stopped the confrontation before it
escalated.

"Are the weapons still in place?" General Max asked.

"I ordered them removed within two days of learning they had been
deployed," the President said.

"We sent in some of our paramilitary people," the DCI added. "We pulled
five of them out."

"And the sixth?" General Max said. He dreaded the answer he had already
figured out.

"One of the Special Forces teams was lost ...  along with the weapon,"
Burton said. "They were dropped off course. We sent in three recovery
teams, but came up empty. About a week later, through our agents in
East Germany, we were able to piece together what had happened. The
body of the team leader was found at the bottom of a ravine beneath a
railroad trestle, apparently run over by a train. Two of his teammates
drowned, and their bodies were washed up on a river bed. And the fourth
man, the one carrying the 'item,'" Burton said, using the euphemism for
the SADM, "was killed on impact upon landing in a tree."

"And the Saydum?" General Max prompted the DCI.

"An East German Army patrol found it and turned it over to their
commanding officer. It eventually ended up in the hands of the
commander of the Group of Soviet Forces Germany, who entrusted it to the
care of the GRU's Spetsnaz troops at their secret training facility at
Furstenburg in East Germany until he received further orders from
Moscow."

"And you believe Nikolai Malik now has the weapon?" General Max said.
The analogy that came to mind was letting a chain saw fall into the
hands of a termite.

"All indicators point in that direction," Burton said. "Once we learned
what had happened, we activated every agent and asset we had in East
Germany to pinpoint the Saydum's location. Six months ago, within days
of our learning it was being kept under heavy guard in a warehouse at
the Spetsnaz base, Malik got hold of it before our recovery team could
mount an operation to get in there and snatch it. From what we've been
able to learn, Malik and three of his East German terrorist buddies
posed as high-ranking GRU officers and drove a van onto the base and
presented phony orders to transport the weapon to Moscow. By the time
the ruse was discovered, the Saydum and Malik were long gone. Our
people picked up his trail and followed it as far as Rostock, where we
believe the Saydum was loaded onto a freighter ...  That's where we lost
track of it."

General Max stared at the far wall for a few moments, then said, "Since
they found the bodies of the team leader and the man carrying the
Saydum, that means they got both sets of numbers necessary to open the
combination lock and arm the device."

Burton nodded, again cursing their bad luck. In order to arm the weapon
the lock-secure cover had to be removed. For security purposes the
combination to the lock was not known to any one man on the team. It was
given to two men, the team leader and the man carrying the weapon. Each
had a set of three numbers that when combined would unlock the cover and
provide access to the arming chamber. Had both sets of numbers not been
found, the PAL safety device, built into the SADM's lock-secure cover,
was equipped with a limited-try feature that permanently locked the
weapon after three failed attempts at entering the combination. The
Permissive-Actionlink safety device would have rendered the SADM
inoperable and useless, preventing it from being armed--any attempt to
dismantle it would have activated internal denial devices that would
have set off a conventional shaped charge, completely destroying the
weapon and anyone within fifty yards of it in a non-nuclear explosion.

"How many people know the weapon is missing?" General Max asked the DCI.

"Besides the Soviets, most of the National Security Council, those of us
in this room, the head of my Counterterrorist Group, and three of his
people who led the recovery teams we initially sent into East Germany,"
Burton said. "Everyone else involved in the hunt for Malik has no idea
why we want him."

"How many of the European Theater commanders knew about the six weapons
that were deployed?"

"Only three," Burton said. "And they were told that all of the weapons
were recovered. Our agent net in East Germany was told that the team
had lost highly classified satellite communications equipment. They had
no reason to suspect differently, since the item was sealed in its jump
container and, according to our sources, the East Germans didn't have
time to figure out what they had before the Soviets took it from them
and clamped a lid on the whole matter once they had the Saydum tucked
away."

"And we've taken every precaution to ensure that the fact that one of
our nuclear weapons is missing doesn't leak to the press or the public,"
the national security advisor said. "If even a hint of this got out,
the panic that would ensue in this country and Europe could bring down
governments," he added pointedly.

"Did Belchenko say anything about the Saydum or allude to it in any
way?" the President asked.

"Yes. He alluded to it. And with what I've learned in this room, his
sense of urgency about finding Malik is fully understandable," General
Max said. "The GRU believes that Malik is under the control of an
anti-Gorbachev faction in the KGB and that whatever he has planned is
intended to cause Gorbachev's downfall."

"That's the reading we got," the President said. "At first we believed
they intended to use the Saydum to embarrass us by exploding it in one
of the NATO countries, make it look like an accident at one of our
storage sites, or a weapon we had lost to terrorists through a lapse in
security, and then reap the political benefits from the international
repercussions. At the very least it would have given the antinuclear
groups the added impetus they need to succeed in getting all nuclear
weapons out of Western Europe and Great Britain."

"But since they're accomplishing their goals through diplomatic
negotiations, they no longer stand to benefit from an action as
desperate and dangerous as that," the national security advisor added.
"We believe that's why the anti-Gorbachev faction stepped in. They saw
an opportunity to discredit his policies, especially his openness with
the West."

"It's a win-win situation for them," Burton said. "If Malik detonates
that weapon and the KGB tie it to us, it makes Gorbachev look like a
fool for trusting us to live up to the disarmament treaties. But even
if they're exposed as the culprits, the anti-Gorbachev faction still
benefits from the adverse effects the Soviets' diplomatic efforts would
suffer because of it. They'd be international pariahs again, the
hard-liners would be back in control, and Gorbachev and his reforms
would fall by the wayside."

"And aside from the geopolitical ramifications is the specter of
thousands of innocent people being killed," the President said. "So you
can understand why we don't want this friend of yours, Gannon, killing
Malik. He's the only direct link we have to the weapon. If he's out of
the picture, we lose track of the Saydum."

General Max sat silently for a few moments. "Have you received any
threats or ultimatums concerning the weapon?"

"None," the President said. "The Soviets have never even admitted to
having it."

"Do you have any idea of a timetable for Malik's mission?" He directed
the question at the DCI.

"Nothing concrete," Burton said. "But time's running out on him, so
he's got to act soon. Gorbachev obviously knows or suspects what Malik
has in mind or the GRU wouldn't be out in force to stop him. And Malik
knows by now that they're onto him, so the longer he waits, the better
the chance they'll grab him."

"Mexico," General Max said.

"What about Mexico?" the President asked.

"If he's taken the Saydum to Nicaragua, Mexico is the most likely
target."

"Why?" the President asked.

"One of the Soviet-Cuban strategic goals is to cause and support a major
revolution in Mexico," General Max said. "If that weapon is detonated
in Mexico City, the effects would be monstrous--tens of thousands killed
outright, thousands more from radioactive fall-out, and with very few of
their buildings made of steel-reinforced concrete, the blast damage
would level every structure for three square miles. But the result that
would appeal most to the KGB would be the five million or so refugees
who would flood this country. The effect on our economy alone would be
disastrous, not to mention the number of agents they could infiltrate
with the refugees and the political mileage they'd get from claiming
we've introduced nuclear weapons into Central America."

"It's a scenario we've seriously considered," the DCI said.

"Who would believe we'd introduce nuclear weapons into Central America?"
Clinton said. "It's illogical. Preposterous."

"Logic has nothing to do with it," General Max said. "It would be a
powerful emotional issue backed up by the fact that one of our weapons
did indeed detonate in Mexico City. The media would never believe us
and neither would most of the world."

"Let's get back to the matter at hand," the President said, noticeably
disturbed by the thought of a worst-case scenario. "Are you certain,"
he said to General Max, "that Gannon knows nothing about the Saydum?"

"Yes. His only purpose in going after Malik is retribution for what he
did to his wife."

The President reached across the table and picked up Gannon's service
record and skimmed the contents. "Gannon's got to be found and stopped
before he gets to Malik. What do you suggest?"

"Finding him is one thing, stopping him is another matter altogether,"
General Max said. "I only know that his point of departure was Dulles
airport, but it shouldn't be any problem to find out where he went from
there. He'll be traveling under his own name."

"And if his destination is Nicaragua," Clinton said, "then he'll
eventually turn up in Managua."

General Max smiled at the national security advisor's naivete. "He's not
about to enter Nicaragua posing as a tourist. Any American who shows up
there is automatically suspect. They'd pull him off the streets within
twenty-four hours."

"Then he'll probably go through Costa Rica or Honduras," Burton said.
"We can stake out the airports in San Jose and Tegucigalpa. If he
manages to get past us, he's still got to get equipment and weapons if
he's going into the boonies after Malik. And his chances of
accomplishing that without our people finding out about it are
nonexistent."

General Max shook his head. "He won't surface in San Jose or
Tegucigalpa, or anywhere else you have a heavy presence and might spot
him. He knows you don't want him to get to Malik. He doesn't know why,
but he knows you'll try to stop him. Be advised, gentlemen, you're
dealing with a clever, resourceful man with extraordinary skills he can
apply with devastating results. He's also the best damn recon man I've
ever known. So, believe me, he's not going to do anything you'd expect
him to do."

"Then what will he do?" the President asked. "You were once his
commanding officer, you know him, what would you do in his position?"

"He won't trust anyone he doesn't know," General Max said. "He'll go to
his SOA buddies."

"SOA?" the President said.

"Special Operations Association," General Max said. "It's a fraternal
organization for those who served in combat in Southeast Asia with SOG,"
he added, pronouncing as a word the three-letter acronym for the Special
Operations Group.

"What good would that do him?" Clinton asked.

"They're a unique group of men with interesting backgrounds and even
more interesting occupations in every corner of the world," General Max
said, smiling with inward pride at the fond memories of his time in
command of SOG.

"From the time SOG was formed in 1964 until it was deactivated in 1972,"
he continued, "its reconnaissance teams ran some of the most daring and
dangerous missions of the war. Most of the men were pulled from Army
Special Forces units, but there were a few Navy SEAL and Marine Corps
Force Recon troops involved too. Out of a total of roughly thirty-six
hundred Americans who ran over-the-fence missions during that nine-year
period, only three hundred and fifteen are still alive. Less than a ten
percent survival rate, gentlemen. Consequently, they're a tightly knit
group who take care of their own. If I were Gannon, I'd look for one of
my old buddies, someone who's run covert ops into Nicaragua at one time
or another and knows the area, and I'd tap into any current sources he
might have."

Dave Wilson, the DDO, nodded knowingly. "We've had a number of ex-SOG
personnel working for us at different times as contract employees.
Mostly paramilitary work."

The President put Gannon's service record back on the table. "What
about letting Gannon go after Malik?" the President said. He directed
the question to Burton. "Don't interfere with him."

"Recruit him to work with us?" the DCI said.

"If we can get to him, yes. If not, let him go after Malik for his own
reasons. Let him lead us to him if he can," the President said. "He's
certainly qualified for the mission, and he's familiar with the Saydum,
he'd recognize it on sight and know what to do with it. We can keep
track of him and step in at the right moment."

"And if he's caught, he's deniable," Burton said, with a quick glance at
his DDO.

Wilson nodded his approval. "We limit our exposure, and if he screws
up, the press will eat up his story--a distraught and grieving husband
bent on revenge, with no provable connection to us."

"What makes you think he has any chance of succeeding? You've sent four
paramilitary teams into Nicaragua in the last year trying to locate that
terrorist camp," the national security advisor said. "And according to
your reports, you never heard from any of them again except for two
Miskito Indian guides from the last team who straggled back across the
Honduran border half dead. If memory serves, they claimed they found
the camp but were ambushed and shot to hell by well-trained troops that
definitely weren't run-of-the-mill Sandinista soldiers."

"He can't do any worse," the DCI said. "And we can't keep pushing our
luck. If any of our people are caught and tied to us, the anti-Contra
clique on the Hill will be all over us."

"And we can't openly hunt for the weapon without the distinct
possibility that the press and Congress will get wind of it and start
digging," the President said. "And the last thing we need is this whole
sordid mess about the Saydum seedings getting out. Even though its
roots are in the past Administration, I'll end up bearing the brunt of
it." He turned to General Max. "Well, General Stanton, what about it?

Can your boy Gannon get to him?"

"There are no guarantees," General Max said. "But I can tell you this
much--Gannon doesn't know the meaning of the word quit. He'll get into
Nicaragua, and if Malik's there, he won't come back until he finds him."

He paused again, smiling at a flash of memory from a particularly hairy
mission Gannon had run in Vietnam, then added, "There's only one way to
stop Gannon and that's to kill him, and as a lot of highly trained
people have found out, that's easier said than done."

"Then it's settled," the President said. "If we find him before he goes
into Nicaragua, we'll recruit him. But either way, we let Gannon take
the point." Jim Boos sat staring at a fat cross-eyed cat and laughing
into his beer. The huge white cat was perched contentedly on the crude
plank bar; his ample stomach sagged over the edge, his insouciant,
comical yellow eyes surveyed his kingdom--a one-room run-down shack of a
bar and restaurant in a back alley of Montego Bay, Jamaica, called
Daniels. The windows and front door of the crowded, noisy room were
open to the humid evening air, and a large dog lay just outside the
front stoop keeping a baleful eye on the cat with the hope that an
occasional scrap, or the cat, would be tossed his way. A loud,
pulsating reggae beat, a soulful synthesis of African, Caribbean, and
Black American music, reverberated off the flimsy walls; its earthy,
sensuous melody and lyrics, born of the Rastafarian movement, a lesson
in Jamaican attitudes and feelings for those who took the time to listen
carefully.

The oilcloth-covered tables were full without a tourist in sight.
Daniels was a place the locals frequented; and the surly, brooding
Rastamen, some with colorful berets set at jaunty angles on their
sun-reddened shoulder-length hair, matted and twisted into dreadlocks,
were not inclined to welcome outsiders or to make those who accidentally
wandered in feel the least bit comfortable. A bluish-white cloud of
smoke, heavy with the sweet, pungent smell of ganja, floated among the
ceiling rafters and drifted slowly out into the alley.

A pretty young Jamaican girl brought a steaming bowl of goat stew to Jim
Boos's table.

"Made fresh this very afternoon, Captain Jim," she said with a friendly
smile.

Boos tasted the local delicacy and nodded his approval, to the girl's
pleasure.

Seated with his back to the wall, a habit from the old days, his eyes
scanned the crowded room from the corner table. His past was subtly
evident in his manner and presence. Tall, broad-shouldered,
narrow-waisted, with long, knotted muscles, he had been a warrior, a
former Navy SEAL with four combat tours in Vietnam. He had lived in a
world of action and danger for most of his adult life. But now he found
himself content, even happy sometimes, living life at ten knots under
sail. A boyishly handsome face, framed in shortcropped sandy-blond
hair, belied his forty-three years and was offset by a slightly crooked
nose and an uneven, engaging smile. His eyes were expressive and
intense, and though he appeared easygoing, there was a vaguely
disquieting edge to him-a hint of unpredictability, of still flirting
with the brink.

His eyes abruptly stopped scanning the room when a familiar figure
approached his table, a black nylon carry-on bag slung over one
shoulder.

"Look at that cat," Boos said. "Is that the fattest, dumbest-looking
goddamn cat you ever saw or what?" His greeting to Gannon would have
led anyone listening to think it had been two hours rather than two
years since he had seen his old friend.

"What in the name of God are you eating?" Gannon said, his gaze fixed on
the semicongealed bowl of stew as he sat down.

"Whatever didn't make it across the road this morning," Boos quipped.
"Where you at, Jack?" he said, his voice purposely heavy with the
regional patois of his Louisiana Cajun background.

"If I take too many deep breaths in here," Gannon said, glancing at the
cloud of marijuana smoke that clung to the ceiling, "in about five
minutes I probably won't know where the hell I am."

"Cheapest high in town," Boos said. "How'd you find this place?"

"I asked some guy at the Yacht Club dinghy dock where I could find you.
He suggested I didn't come unarmed."

"It's okay if you're with me." He gestured to the pretty waitress to
bring Gannon a beer. The conversation lapsed, as it often does when two
men with a shared history feel no need for extraneous talk in each
other's presence. Gannon surveyed the room and sipped his beer. He
took note of some of the scariest-looking characters he had seen in a
long while. His thoughts returned to when he had first met Boos, in
Vietnam in 1967 at the Special Operations Group, Command and Control
North compound outside of Da Nang. Boos and three other SEAL from the
nearby euphemistically named Naval Advisory Detachment were to blow up a
bridge deep inside North Vietnam. Gannon's Special Forces recon team,
in a combined operation, was to lead the SEAL to the target area and
provide security for the mission. After repeated U.S. air strikes had
knocked out the bridge, located on a major trail leading to the North
Vietnamese Army's supply routes to the south, the NVA had reconstructed
it under three feet of water a few miles downstream. Invisible to the
American reconnaissance planes from the air, it again served the purpose
of allowing the enemy truck convoys to ford the broad, muddy river.
Gannon's team had discovered it on a previous mission and four members
of the elite SEAL team had been called in to apply their special skills
in underwater demolitions.

The mission had initially gone well. The combined eight-man team had
reached the target area without incident, the SEAL had set the pressure
charges to blow the next time a truck attempted to cross the bridge, and
the team began the long trek back to a safe area where helicopters could
be brought in for their extraction from behind enemy lines. As night
fell Gannon spotted lights coming up trails on both sides of the
river-flashlights flickering in the dense jungle growth. There seemed to
be no end to them. The team had inadvertently walked into the middle of
a battalion of North Vietnamese troops heading south. Six hundred men
against eight was not Gannon's idea of good odds, although Boos had
optimistically looked at it as an opportunity to drastically up his
personal body count. But as team leader, Gannon had led the men back
into the water to hide among the exposed mangrove roots along the bank.

The enemy battalion had chosen the immediate area as a bivouac for the
night, and Gannon and his men, afraid of moving from their places of
concealment, spent the next ten hours in water up to their necks. At
dawn, after the NVA troops moved out, Gannon and his team continued on
to the preselected extraction site. They ran into a squad of NVA
stragglers, killing them with little trouble, but drawing the attention
of the entire enemy battalion just ahead. They had run for their lives,
calling in air strikes and helicopter gunships from the extraction site,
until at last a helicopter was able to slip into the clearing after a
series of napalm strikes. Gannon recalled the appearance of the team
when, safely back at the compound, they had stripped to shower; to a
man, their wrinkled skin resembled albino prunes from the extended
period of time they had spent in the water. There had been two other
combined top-secret missions with Boos and his SEAL, both infiltrations
from submarines off the coast of North Vietnam: the first a raid to
destroy a surface-to-air missile storage site south of Hanoi, the second
a prisoner-snatch operation when they had crept into an NVA staging area
and captured a colonel--it was that mission for which Gannon was awarded
the Medal of Honor. He had refused to leave the beach for the scheduled
rendezvous with the submarine waiting offshore until he had accounted
for all of his men. His heroic efforts resulted in the rescue of three
critically wounded members of his team despite an onslaught of enemy
troops intent on saving their captured commanding officer. Bleeding
profusely and in great pain from multiple wounds, Gannon had returned
three times, under heavy fire, each time carrying one of his men to the
beach and loading him into the rubber boat before going back for the
next man. Boos had provided covering fire for him on the first rescue,
before being wounded himself and knocked unconscious from a grenade
blast.

After Gannon left Vietnam he and Boos lost touch for a few years but
renewed their friendship after the war when both became members of
counterterrorist teams--Boos with the Navy's SEAL Team Six and Gannon
with Delta Force, where, as fate would have it, they were again involved
in a number of joint operations. Boos, who retired from the service
five years earlier than Gannon, had opted to spend as much of what
remained of his life at sea, his first and, as Gannon had often
suspected, only love. But they had made it a point to get together
whenever possible at the Special Operations Association reunions, and
failing that, an occasional letter or telephone call just to touch base.

"How's Carole?" Gannon asked, remembering that Boos and his wife were
not on the best of terms the last time he had seen him.

"Fuck her," Boos said flatly. "Never trust anything that bleeds for a
week out of every month and lives."

Gannon chuckled. "I take it that means it's over."

Boos shrugged and flashed a playful grin. "Rumor has it she was
trampled to death during a balloon drop at a mall opening. bitch lived
to shop." Taking a long drink from his mug of beer, he said, "You're
the only guy I know with a wife worth a shit. Is Kate with you?"

Boos immediately detected the change in Gannon's mood. "Something
wrong?"

He listened quietly, his face a solemn mask, as Gannon told him what had
happened to Kate and how the man who did it had escaped unpunished. When
Gannon finished Boos sat silently for a few moments, slowly shaking his
head.

"Those striped-pants State Department pussies," he spat out. "They're in
the middle of a love feast with that Commie fuck with a wine stain on
his head so they don't want anybody rockin' the goddamn boat." He
reached across the table and placed a hand on Gannon's shoulder. "I'm
sorry, Jack. I'm really sorry. I loved Kate. She had a way of making
me feel I was worth something to somebody."

Both men fell silent again and nursed their beers. Boos stared off into
the distance, the unsettling news of Kate's death evident in his subdued
expression.

"In your last letter you said you got a job on a yacht, a sailboat,"
Gannon finally said.

"I'm the H.M.W.I.I.C.," Boos said, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

"The what?"

"The Head Motherfucker What Is in Charge," Boos said. "I'm the
captain."

"Is it a charter boat?" Gannon asked.

"No way," Boos said. "She's the sweetest thing God ever put under sail.
Her owner hired me last year--best job I ever had. I've probably died
and gone to heaven and don't know it."

"What kind of work schedule do you have?"

"The owner has two boats, the Mi Gaea, a motor yacht he keeps at Antibes
on the French Riviera, and the Cheetah, the sailboat he keeps here in
the Caribbean. He spends his summers on the Mi Gaea and winters on the
Cheetah. He's sort of in between right now. I've got a little over two
weeks to myself before he's due."

"What do you do during the summer months?" Gannon asked.

"The thousand and one things that have to be done to keep the Cheetah in
top condition, and the owner sends regional vice presidents of his
corporations down for complimentary cruises. Sort of perks for doing a
good job."

"What does the owner do?"

"He owns things. Lot of things."

Gannon sipped his beer and stared into the mug. "You have nothing on
for the next ten days?"

"Nothing pressing, why?"

"I found out that the son of a bitch who killed Kate is in Nicaragua ... 
at some sort of secret terrorist training camp he set up for the KGB."

"Yeah. I've heard rumors about that place. Nobody's been able to pin
it down." Boos held Gannon's gaze, then added, "You know Walt Shumate?

One of your Green Beanie SOG types, ran recon with Command and Control
Central and Project Delta?"

"Yeah, he's a good friend."

"Well, he's running some kind of special ops for the Company across the
Honduran border into Nicaragua. Might be able to help you out."

"Can't chance it," Gannon said. "I'd trust Walt with my life, but like
I told you, for some reason the spooks don't want me getting anywhere
near Malik. I don't want to put Walt in the middle if he's under
contract to them."

"If they wanted you out of the way bad enough, they'd just kill you,"
Boos said. "It's not like it matters to them."

"Maybe if I get too close, they will."

Boos ordered another beer and propped the back of his chair against the
wall. He leveled a knowing gaze at Gannon. "Okay, pardner, out with
it. What you got in mind?"

"Can you get me into Nicaragua ...  without anyone knowing about it?"

Boos grinned. "Hell, I can do that in a New York minute. What part of
the coast are we talking about?"

"Caribbean side. Best guess is north of the Rio San Juan area and the
mountains near the Costa Rican border, but they keep moving the camp."

Boos thought for a moment and pictured his navigation charts in his
mind. "That would mean inserting you south of the Bluefieldsel Bluff
area. Maybe around Monkey Point."

"Are any of your old contacts still in-country?" Gannon asked. He
recalled from their conversations at the SOA reunions that Boos, for a
short time after he retired from the Navy, had done some contract work
for the CIA--highly specialized agent insertions and extractions into
and out of high-risk areas, including Nicaragua.

Boos hesitated, then nodded in response. "One ...  that I can trust.
Remember Tony Santana?"

"Sandman Santana?" Gannon said. A vivid image came to mind of the Navy
SEAL, who, when with the infamous Phoenix Program, was considered to
have been the deadliest assassin and "black" operator of the entire
Vietnam War era. The nickname
"Sandman" was more than appropriate:
Santana put people to sleep --permanently.

"Yep," Boos said. "The very same."

"I thought he was dead, never made it back from one of his kill-on-sight
operations."

"Nope. Alive and well and roaming the mountains of Nicaragua. Last time
I talked to him he was working the area you're talking about."

"For the Company?"

"Occasionally, but mostly for personal reasons. He was born in Managua,
came to the States when he was six or seven. Still has relatives in
Nicaragua. After "Nam he was with a SEAL detachment at the spook base
on Tiger Island off Honduras, running covert ops into Nicaragua. He
retired as a master chief about seven years ago and went under contract
with the Company on an off-and-on basis. Not so much for the money. He
just hates the Sandinistas as much as he hated Somosa. He's one of the
true believers, wants his country free without getting ripped off and
stomped on by some clique of power-hungry psychopaths. Actually, I think
it's just that he's not happy unless someone's trying to kill him. You
know the type."

Gannon nodded. "Are you in contact with him?"

Boos again hesitated, then: "Yeah. We've got a sort of informal
schedule of communications. Every odd-numbered day from 2100 hours
until 2110 he listens on a prearranged frequency on the single
sideband ...  in case I've got anything for him, or vice versa."

"Were you running covert ops with him in Nicaragua?" Gannon asked.

"No, he runs a twelve-man team he trained himself," Boos said. "But
before I hired on as captain of the Cheetah, I was running a coastal
freighter in and out of Panama, San Andres Island, and Miami, trading
mostly in tropical hardwoods. I got to know the Nicaraguan coast on the
Caribbean side like the back of my hand, so every once in a while some
of my old spook buddies asked me to drop off some live cargo to
rendezvous with the Sandman."

"How'd you do it?" Gannon asked.

"We'd put the guy in a wet suit, gloves, boots, the whole works, and
drop him off in an old wooden fishing boat ...  five, six miles offshore.
He'd run the boat up on the reef about a mile from shore where it would
break up, then he'd crawl across the reef and the coral heads and swim
the rest of the way to the beach. Pieces of the boat would wash up on
shore later, but a busted-up fishing boat in that area is
run-of-the-mill stuff."

"I'll need you to bring me back out once I find Malik," Gannon said.
"That present any problems?"

"Depends on how long it takes you to get to the guy," Boos said. "I
could anchor in any one of a number of secluded coves in that area, hang
around for a few days. The Nicaraguans don't patrol their Caribbean
coast as heavily as they do the Pacific side, and a pleasure yacht
doesn't draw much heat from them. Besides, their radar sucks, we can
probably slip in and out without anyone even knowing it."

"What about your boss?" Gannon asked. "You putting your job on the
line?"

"He's a cool head. We got this agreement--as long as I do nothing
illegal, no drugs, arms smuggling, shit like that, he's got no problem.
He knows about my past affiliation with the Company. If I do any
special stuff for them on my own time using the Cheetah, he doesn't want
to know about it. He'll deny me if I'm nailed. So I guess it's sort of
a tacit consent to put my ass on the line if I want to."

"What kind of ops is Santana running?" Gannon asked.

"He was originally sent into Nicaragua under deep cover, part of the
CIA's 'pathfinder' operations. Looks and talks like a native. In the
beginning he was secretly marking routes, setting up safe houses,
landing zones, and support mechanisms in case the U.S. Embassy in
Managua ended up in the same situation as the one in Iran--or if we had
to invade the assholes for some other reason. He entered the country
illegally, using a false passport that ID'ed him as a Bolivian, dropped
from sight, then eventually joined up with a Contra element and formed
his own special operations team."

"Will he help?"

"I got markers to call in on the Sandman till the next century," Boos
said. "He'll help if he can."

Gannon tensed at the sight of a Rastaman, his bulging muscles
threatening to tear his tie-dyed T-shirt apart at the seams as he
approached the corner table, turned a chair around, straddled it, and
sat down facing Boos. Gannon relaxed as the expression on Boos's face
indicated the huge black man was a friend.

"What's up, Joseph?" Boos asked.

Joseph gestured to Gannon. "Your friend ...  he has two men waiting for
him at the end of the alley," he said, the upward lilt of the Caribbean
in his voice.

Boos looked to Gannon, who said, "I came alone."

Joseph eyeballed Gannon. "My friend tells me they followed you from the
dock."

"Spooks?" Boos said.

Gannon nodded. "Probably."

"That's what my friend thinks," Joseph said. "He knows one of them,
from Kingston. The other one he's never seen."

"Can you and a couple of your boys sort of detain them when we leave?"
Boos asked.

Joseph smiled broadly. "Consider it done. My compliments." He
signaled to three of his friends, each as menacing-looking as he was,
and they left the crowded, smoky room. Joseph paused in the doorway and
called back to Boos, "Cool runnings, Captain Jim."

Boos snapped off a brief salute.

"Those bastards never quit," Gannon said. "What the hell is it with
them and that goddamn Russian?"

"We'll shake them," Boos said confidently as he got up from the table.
"Let's go."

Gannon and Boos left by the front door. Boos tossed a piece of bread to
the dog and leaned down to pet his head.

As they entered the alley and headed in the direction of the harbor,
Gannon saw headlights flash on at the opposite end of the alley. An
engine started, then stopped as three large black men stood in front of
the car. Joseph stuck his head in the driver's-side window.

Tom Driscoll was at the wheel. "Get the hell out of the way!" he
ordered Joseph, who simply smiled.

"Seems my friends don't want you following them," Joseph said calmly.

Driscoll reached inside his windbreaker to his shoulder holster but
thought better of it as the CIA's Jamaican chief of station, seated
beside him, nudged him. All three of Joseph's friends at the front of
the car had pulled MAC-10 submachine guns from beneath their shirts.
They jacked rounds into the chambers and aimed at the windshield.

"You're interfering with official government business," the CIA station
chief tried.

"And whose government might that be, mon?" Joseph said.

Driscoll stepped from the car and called out to the two figures
approaching the opposite end of the alley.

"Gannon! Hey, Gannon, I only want to talk. Give me a few minutes."

Gannon and Boos disappeared around the far corner. "You stay here with
us for a while," Joseph said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out
a flat tin, pried it open, and removed a tightly rolled joint. "Ganja,"
he said with another of his broad smiles, "it will help you relax. Go
on, mon, try it."

Both men waved off the invitation. Driscoll slammed the steering wheel
with the palms of his hands in anger.

"I think I know the man with Gannon," the station chief said just above
a whisper. "I've seen him around. We'll check it out as soon as these
clowns leave."

The narrow, winding alley opened on to St. James Street, where Gannon
and Boos moved quickly past the carnival of sights, sounds, and smells
of the marketplace and across the square to Harbor Street into the
center of Montego Bay with its old sugarport ambiance. The dock area
was busy with fishermen unloading their catch and burly stevedores
handling fruit, produce, and other local goods for shipment to foreign
ports. Gannon and Boos weaved their way through the dock workers and
watched over their shoulders as they continued on toward the dinghy
dock. A final backward glance as they stepped into the small rubber
boat revealed that Joseph had done his job well. No one had followed
them.

The last of the evening light faded as the Cheetah's rubber dinghy
skimmed across the surface of the translucent patchwork-bluegreen waters
of Montego Bay. The sea contrasted with the darker greens of the hills
and rugged mountains rising dramatically along the shore--a seascape of
breathtaking beauty with a sculpted coastline trimmed with white-sand
beaches. For Gannon the brief ride across the bay in the inflatable
rubber boat brought back flash memories of insertions into North Vietnam
more than twenty years ago, but they were quickly driven from his
conscious thoughts as the elegant yacht came into view.

Two hundred yards from shore, the Cheetah, her nine-story mast rising
majestically above all the other yachts in the harbor, looked fast even
at anchor. A sixty-five-foot aluminum racing sloop, a converted
maxi-racer, small for her class but designed for optimum speed and to
contend with the most stringent nautical conditions, she had won more
than her share of silver.

In the past three years she had undergone a massive two-year refitting
and rebuilding at a cost in excess of one million dollars--with no
corners cut and no details overlooked in assuring that she retained her
original incomparable sailing characteristics and finesse while being
transformed into a true luxury yacht.

Her stainless-steel-rod rigging and aluminum boom complemented modern
performance sails, ensuring long life and speeds in excess of ten knots.
At first glance her uniqueness was readily apparent only to the
aficionado, such had been the painstaking efforts to retain her classic
lines. On closer inspection, however, her innovative design and
construction became evident. A high-tech, state-of-the-art Lewmar
Hydraulic Commander winch and sail-handling system, supplemented by a
Navtec mast-control system, made her safe enough to be sailed by two
people. A Mercedes-Benz diesel engine provided her auxiliary power,
with electric power coming from a 1 2-kw generator that, among other
things, provided the below-deck areas with individually zoned
air-conditioning.

As the dinghy came alongside Gannon climbed up the swim ladder onto the
deck while Boos secured the line. On board, the two men sat in what
used to be the crew work cockpit, now the entertainment cockpit, with
cushioned bench seats flanking a varnished teak table.

"Beautiful boat," Gannon said, taking it all in.

"You'll never see another one like her," Boos said proudly. "She's a
one-off."

Gannon's attention was drawn to the starboard side, just forward of the
cockpit. Someone was coming up the swim ladder. "You expecting
anyone?" Gannon asked.

"It's Maria," Boos said. "She goes for a swim every evening."

Gannon watched as a slim young woman of medium height, probably in her
late twenties, ascended the ladder. Her smooth, flawless olive-toned
skin glistened with beads of seawater as she stepped on deck and cast a
calm, assessing glance directly at Gannon--her dark Spanish eyes
sparkling with the reflection of the lights from shore. With the deck
shower's flexible hose, she rinsed herself off with fresh water and
tilted her head back to let the water stream through silken
shoulder-length sable-brown hair and down over her high-cut bikini.

Gannon was captivated by her haunting classic beauty. She had a subtle
erotic appeal, a poised self-assurance, and yet there was a vulnerable,
gamine quality about her.

"For someone who's sworn off women," Gannon said softly, "you seem to
have done all right for yourself."

"It's not like that," Boos said. "The boss hired her; she's a
firstclass sailor. I'm the captain, she's the mate. Strictly business.
Her choice, not mine," he added with a wistful smile.

"She's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen," Gannon said.

"Oh yeah, she's that and a lot more," Boos said. "Got one hell of an
interesting background too. Word of caution though, old buddy--don't
piss her off, she's got a mean streak a mile wide."

Maria finished washing off the saltwater residue, and after toweling off
pulled on an oversized white T-shirt that fell to mid-thigh and clung to
her lithe, shapely body. Emblazoned across the shirt, front and back,
in bold blue letters were the words WINCH APE. She stepped down into
the cockpit, sat next to Boos, and stared at Gannon.

"Jack Gannon, Maria Padron," Boos said in the way of an introduction.

Gannon offered his hand. Maria gave it a quick, perfunctory shake,
taking in the prominent scar on the side of his neck.

"Take off your shoes," Maria said, casting a disapproving glance at
Gannon's running shoes.

"Why?" Gannon asked.

"They'll scuff up the deck. You won't need them while you're on board."

Her expression clouded and changed to one of caution as she noticed
Gannon's black-nylon carryall. Her gaze shifted back to Gannon, her
intelligent dark-brown eyes penetrating. "Have you sailed before?"

"No," Gannon said as he removed his running shoes and socks.On closer
inspection, his initial impressions of Maria were confirmed. Despite the
hint of vulnerability in the exotically beautiful woman sitting across
from him, he detected a tough, tensile quality that lurked just beneath
the surface, a solid, eerie self-esteem found in the very strong that
seemed completely out of place. Yet there was no role-playing or
posturing. She was what she appeared to be, Gannon thought. A bruised
angel with a will of granite and a formidable spirit. An intriguing
paradox.

"We have some of those patches you stick behind your ear if you get
seasick," Boos told Gannon in an attempt to contain Maria's mounting ire
until he could talk with her alone. "They really work. Some people
have a reaction to them--dizziness, blurred vision, brief psychotic
episodes, stuff like that--but it goes away in a few hours. No big
thing."

"No," Maria said. "No big thing. After all, how much damage can a
psychopath do in two hours ...  on a boat ...  in the middle of the
ocean?" There was a brief mischievous twinkle in her eyes that was gone
as quickly as it had appeared.

"I think I'll be all right," Gannon said.

"Why don't you go below and stow your gear?" Boos said to Gannon. "Take
the guest stateroom just forward of the main salon."

Gannon nodded to Maria and disappeared down the companionway with his
nylon carryall.

With Gannon out of earshot, Maria stared hard at Boos. "Who's he?"

"An old friend."

"And ...  ?" Maria prompted.

"We'll be making an offshore passage," Boos said tentatively. "If you
agree, of course."

"Where?"

"Caribbean coast of Nicaragua."

Maria shook her head and smiled indulgently. "You incorrigible Coon
Ass. Your friend Gannon has trouble written all over him. I told you I
didn't want any part of your CIA business."

"It's not for the Company," Boos said. "Word of honor."

"Then let's hear the rest," Maria said.

Boos filled her in on Gannon's wife and his hope of linking him up with
Santana in pursuit of Malik, finishing with, "I owe him and he's a good
friend. So was Kate."

"We just made a two-week passage from St. Barts," Maria protested, "and
the deal was we'd lie around and relax until the boss got here."

"We're talking nine days max," Boos said. "Sailing straight through, we
can be there late afternoon of the third day, contact Santana, drop off
Gannon that night, give him two, three days to take care of business,
and be back in plenty of time to hook up with the boss."

"What if your friend doesn't find the Russian in three days?"

"That's all the time I can give him. He's aware of that."

"Sail straight through?" Maria said. "Your friend Gannon can't stand
watch, that means the two of us doing four on and four off."

"Only on the way down," Boos assured her. "Like I said, he's my
friend."

"And you owe him," Maria said resignedly. "Okay, Boos, but you owe me
for this one."

"Anytime. Just name it."

"Count on it," Maria said. "Anyway, I sort of like him," she admitted
after a brief silence. "His eyes didn't roam all over my body when he
talked to me."

"I always knew there was something strange about him," Boos said with a
broad grin.

Gannon stowed the contents of his carryall in an overhead compartment in
the guest stateroom, separating his rucksack, load-bearing harness, web
gear, jungle boots, ammunition pouches, canteens, a combat knife, and
camouflage fatigues from the few civilian clothes he had brought. He
pulled on a pair of swim trunks and T-shirt and paused to admire his
surroundings. The guest stateroom's appointments were impressive:
beautifully decorated in teakwood with leather trim, there was a
full-sized double berth swathed in a fur blanket, a vanity, and ample
overhead storage space. Secured on a shelf at the foot of the bed was
an audio/video entertainment center with a monitor, video recorder, and
tape deck.

The main salon, however, was as elegant as anything Gannon had ever seen
on land or on sea. Expensive silk oriental rugs on the teak deck and
fine art on the bulkhead. A bar, complete with fine crystal, its
cabinets fronted with smoked Lexan. The entire salon was paneled in
warm hand-rubbed teak and fitted with wraparound cushioned seating of
butter-soft pale-green leather. An intricately designed adjustable
dining and gaming table and the bar counter were finished in exquisitely
buried olive ash. Soft music played through a surround-sound system of
eighteen speakers, the likes of which Gannon had never heard.

He decided to have a quick look around the rest of the belowdeck area.
There was a galley equipped with every imaginable modern convenience,
including a four-burner stove, oven, and refrigerator. He continued
down the starboard side and paused to look at the navigation and control
station just aft of the main salon. Everything about it was
ultramodern, from the systems-monitoring display panels to the precision
instrumentation and communications console. There was even a full-size
chart table and a custom-made leather Recaro seat.

Looking aft, beyond the navigation area, he could see into the master
stateroom: it was even more spacious, elegant, and luxurious than the
guest stateroom; again, paneled with teak and trimmed in leather, with a
fur-covered queen-sized berth, a well-stocked private bar, and an even
more elaborate audio/visual entertainment center. He returned to the
main salon and went forward, through the guest head, which contained a
vanity, shower, and electric water closet, and entered the
self-contained crew quarters, outfitted with three bunks.

A sharp wolf whistle from behind startled him as he was about to go back
on deck. He spun around and was greeted by the impertinent stare of a
yellow-nape Amazon parrot standing on a wroughtiron perch secured to the
deck.

"Whatcha doing'?" the parrot promptly said.

The forward hatch to the crew's quarters--formerly the sail-handling
hatch before the refitting--was directly overhead and open. Gannon
looked up to see Boos on deck, laughing.

"Cute, huh? That's Clyde. Doesn't like anybody but Maria. Moron bites
me every time I get near him; take your finger off if he gets the
chance," he said. "If he wasn't Maria's bird, I'd stick the
loud-mouthed son of a bitch in the microwave."

In the distance Gannon heard Maria's voice. "You do and it'll be your
last act in this life."

The brilliant green bird with the bright yellow neck cocked his head and
one-eyed Boos, who was still staring down through the open hatch. "Coon
Ass," Clyde said, followed by a raucous, squawking laugh. "Coon Ass," he
repeated.

"Fuck you," Boos said to Clyde.

Gannon walked over to the parrot's perch and cautiously extended his
hand. Clyde climbed onto it and sat on his wrist, squawking a cheery
"Hello."

Gannon stroked the bird's chest feathers and said, "Good boy, Clyde."

"Bird's got no class," Boos grumbled, then said to Gannon, "We need you
on deck--time to get under way before your spook buddies get the scent."

Maria appeared at the open hatch. "I'll take him," she said, and
reached down through the hatch to get Clyde and move him to the
custom-designed perch just aft of the entertainment cockpit he occupied,
weather permitting, while they were under way.

Gannon pulled himself up through the hatch and onto the deck. He looked
slightly bewildered as to what he could do to help.

"You can help me strike the awning," Maria told him.

"Should I use a left hook or an overhand right?" Gannon said with a
grin, not quite sure what she meant.

"Untie the small lines, here," she demonstrated, "and roll it up tightly
as you go along. I'll take the other side."

Gannon followed her lead and, under Maria's direction, helped take down
the awning. They stuffed it into a long canvas bag and tossed it into
the open forward hatch to be stored in the forepeak. Gannon then went
back to the steering cockpit at the stern of the boat and helped Boos
with the halyard as they hoisted the dinghy's outboard motor on board
and clamped it to the rail. Next came the dinghy, which was deflated
and stored in the forepeak with the awning.

Maria took her position at the wheel in the steering cockpit. She
raised the anchor with the remote button on a panel before her and
started the engine with the push of another button on the same panel.
Boos had removed the sail cover and used the electric-powered hydraulic
winch to raise the mainsail by simply pressing yet another button.

Gannon sat on the padded wraparound bench seat in the steering cockpit
as the Cheetah motored slowly out of the harbor under a brilliant canopy
of stars. The music he had heard below could now be heard through two
speakers built into the base of the bench seat--Maria had turned up the
volume and changed the selection to a tape of the Miami Sound Machine.

Boos sat in the entertainment cockpit, where Clyde rested contentedly on
his perch. When he thought no one was watching he handed Clyde a
peanut, one of his favorite treats. Clyde took the peace offering and
gripped it tightly with one foot, then, with lightning-quick reflexes,
nipped Boos on the finger.

"Ungrateful little shit," Boos mumbled. Maria, who had seen the whole
thing, laughed. Boos moved away from the parrot and stretched out on
the padded seat. He propped a pillow under his head to catch a short
nap before it was time to relieve Maria at the helm; he was fast asleep
in a matter of minutes.

Gannon shifted his position on the bench seat. He propped up his feet
and leaned against the railing on the starboard side. He stared out at
the darkening sea and relaxed in the cool ocean breeze and the rhythm of
the gentle swells. His thoughts returned to Kate and how she had often
talked fondly about her days as a young girl, sailing off Martha's
Vineyard, and of how she had tried to convince him to take up the sport.
Well, I'm sailing now, Kate, he said to himself. And you were right. It
is beautiful and it is peaceful.. and I miss you, terribly.

"I'm sorry about your wife," Maria said, as though she had been reading
his thoughts. "Jim told me what happened." She stared straight ahead,
and after a long silence, spoke again. "In a while only the most
pleasant memories will be left, though sometimes they're the most
painful." Her voice seemed distant, as though recalling some
long-forgotten pain of her own. "But at other times they give you the
most comfort." She fell silent again and glanced at the digital
readouts on the instrument panel and at the compass as she returned her
full attention to the task of keeping the Cheetah on course.

 ... 
Tom Driscoll and the CIA's Jamaican chief of station walked slowly along
the dock near the Montego Bay Yacht Club. The Cheetah was well out of
sight, but they already had most of the information they needed. CIA
headquarters had extensive files on Jim Boos as far back as his
affiliation with SOG while a Navy SEAL. "I knew I'd seen him before,"
the station chief said. "His bio's in our inactive files in my office.
He did a few contract jobs for my predecessor."

Tom Driscoll looked out across the bay, his thoughts on Gannon and his
need to keep track of his movements.

"We know where they're headed," Driscoll said. "And if I'm right, Boos
will try and insert him on the Caribbean side."

"You're talking about roughly three hundred miles of coastline," the
station chief said.

"We'll have it narrowed down in time," Driscoll said. "The Director has
pulled out all the stops on this one. I've got access to whatever I
need to do the job."

 ... 
General Vladimir Antonov pulled out of the parking area of his luxury
apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt in the heart of Moscow and headed west,
out of the city. He had left GRU headquarters at his usual time and
changed into civilian clothes at his apartment. He dismissed his driver
and bodyguard and drove his own personal car, avoiding the center
traffic lane reserved for the government hierarchy--to which he was
entitled--and moved slowly along with the rest of the evening traffic.

An early October snow had begun to fall. Wet and heavy, it momentarily
stuck to the windshield and the road, then quickly melted. It was at
least a two-hour drive to the General Secretary's dacha, as General
Antonov knew from past visits, ample time to organize his thoughts and
fine-tune the rudimentary operation he had formulated in his mind when
he received the updated intelligence information on Malik. He turned up
the collar of his overcoat against the ineffective car heater, lit a
cigarette, and settled back in his seat. The gloomy slate-gray horizon
and thick cloud cover that drifted in from the north drew his attention.
The snowfall increased and a thin layer began to accumulate on the
rooftops and elaborate spires and domes of the Kremlin--a heralding that
another brutal Russian winter was slowly, inexorably closing its grip
over the land.

Dressed casually in gray worsted slacks and a thick wool sweater, the
General Secretary of the Soviet Union paced before a roaring blaze in
the huge stone fireplace in the great room of his private estate in the
countryside west of Moscow. What was commonly called a dacha, or
country cottage, had long since lost its humble meaning when it came to
the sprawling, elaborate, and luxurious estates the Soviet ruling class
had built for themselves. Set among hundreds of acres of evergreen and
birch forests, patrolled and guarded by specially selected bodyguards
from the KGB's Ninth Directorate, the General Secretary's dacha in Usovo
had the atmosphere of a comfortable hunting lodge as opposed to the more
opulent homes of other government elite.

His thoughts as he paced the great room were on the special meeting he
had called that morning of the inner quorum of the Defense Council. A
few weeks ago there was only a suspicion of backsliding by his
staunchest supporters, but now he was certain that they were quavering,
on the brink of going over to the side of his opponents.

Fools, he thought as he sipped the fine cognac that had been a gift from
the President of France. Orthodox automatons who spouted slogans from
the past, dogma that had never worked and never would. They had branded
his policies an anathema to the socialist cause. How could they
possibly question the wisdom of the INF treaty--dismantling Soviet
missiles that could strike only at the heart of Western Europe in
exchange for American missiles that could easily and accurately strike
anywhere in the Soviet Union. And his detractors who decried the
reduction in conventional forces in Eastern Europe--still leaving them
with overwhelming superiority--and the removal of Soviet troops from
Afghanistan. With no way of stopping the mujahedin rebels from being
supplied with Stinger antiaircraft missiles by the United States, they
had lost their air cover, which in turn meant the dismal prospect of
either escalating the war beyond international tolerance or settling in
to fight a protracted war of attrition that would inevitably lead to
unrest at home and the disruption of his economic and social
restructuring programs. They had to be made to realize that continuing
to waste Soviet lives, funds, and energy in foreign adventures was
counterproductive; internal restructuring and retrenchment required
external harmony. He still had a tentative hold on those whose support
he most needed, but if the undermining by his KGB and Politburo enemies
continued unabated, it would all soon slip from his grasp.

The thought of a nuclear weapon in the hands of one of the KGB's most
capable Illegals was something he couldn't have anticipated. He could,
however, anticipate the consequences if the madmen responsible for the
plot against him succeeded. Chernobyl was never far from his conscious
thoughts when he thought of Malik and the SADM. Chernobyl had given him
a glimpse of the horrors of a nuclear war, a brief window opened to a
future that must be avoided at all costs. The two trips he had made to
the region were indelibly imprinted in his memory.

There had been the chilling, bleak landscape, deserted apartment
complexes and villages, an entire collective farm frozen in time: neatly
trimmed, small white farmhouses with clothes hung on lines never to be
taken down, children's toys scattered about, left where they were at the
moment of the hurried, frantic evacuation. Once well-tended gardens now
to remain forever fallow and tractors and farm implements deserted in
the fields--large tracts of land that could not be entered for
generations. And then there were the unanswered questions: How many
thousands would die terrible deaths from cancers caused by the accident?

Will the river ever sustain life again, and if so will the fish be safe
to eat? Perhaps, the scientists say, if the contaminated sediment is
not disturbed by the current. All this caused by one terrifying
incident, an accident, that was only a small fraction of the massive
destruction that would result from an all-out nuclear war. Chernobyl
had forced him to face the facts: nuclear weapons were no longer pure
and logical, no longer the panacea for other weaknesses, and the idea of
surviving through civil defense was nonsense. There were better, more
intelligent ways to strengthen his country and promote socialism, and
that strength would be found in the people and the economy, and a
determined conventional military force that would discourage all but a
lunatic from attacking the Soviet Union.

The General Secretary's troubled ruminations were interrupted by one of
his housekeepers, who informed him that the main gate had telephoned to
report that General Antonov had just entered the estate. While he waited
Gorbachev refilled his own glass with the excellent French cognac and
poured another for his old friend. How far they had come since their
days together at the university, he thought as he walked over to the
French doors that opened onto a broad stone terrace. He peered through
the frosted glass and watched the snow-covered grounds. Headlights
winked and approached in the distance through the forest.

The snowfall, now fine and granular, and driven by strong gusts of wind,
accumulated at a rapid rate. General Antonov drove slowly along the
slippery surface, up the long, curving drive that led through a forest
of birches, their supple limbs bent to the ground--a few remaining
golden autumn leaves clung tenaciously to the branches under the weight
of the snowy mantle. Up ahead, through the trees, he could see the
General Secretary's dacha ablaze with lights. On the circular drive he
stopped at the front entrance and got out of the car, his footsteps
crunching on the new-fallen snow.

The General Secretary waved away a bodyguard and opened the door
himself. He embraced his old friend and escorted him into the warmth of
the great room as Antonov removed his overcoat.

"It is good to see you, Vladimir Petrovich," Gorbachev said, a broad
smile spreading over his somber face.

"It is good to see you, Comrade General Secretary," Antonov replied more
formally. Despite their close personal relationship, he had stopped
using the familiar form of address on the day Gorbachev had ascended to
power, more out of respect than from any fear of admonishment for not
doing so.

Gorbachev handed him the glass of cognac he had poured and raised his
own glass in a toast.

"To the future," he said soberly, "if indeed we have one."

"To the future," Antonov repeated, and added, "a future toward which we
have made some progress."

Gorbachev gestured to two facing overstuffed sofas in front of the
fireplace and the two men sat opposite each other. Gorbachev placed his
glass of cognac on the coffee table between them and said eagerly, "Tell
me, what have you learned?"

"We have traced the route of the weapon," Antonov said. "The freighter
that transported it from Rostock was unloaded at Rotterdam. Its cargo
was then transferred to another freighter under KGB control, which set
sail for Central America. However, we are not certain where the second
freighter off-loaded its cargo; it stopped at two ports of call--in Cuba
and Panama."

"Then you have not found the weapon?" the General Secretary said, his
voice full of disappointment.

"No," General Antonov said. "But one of our agents in Managua has
learned the location of the KGB's secret terrorist training camp in
Nicaragua. There can be no doubt that the camp is the ultimate
destination for Malik and the weapon. All reason dictates that the camp
will be the staging area for whatever operation he has planned."

Gorbachev's face brightened. "Can you be certain that the weapon is at
the camp?"

"We have reason to believe that Malik is on his way there, and when he
arrives the weapon will be there," General Antonov said with conviction.

"Then what are your plans?" Gorbachev asked.

"Malik has surrounded himself with some of the best, most highly trained
and dedicated terrorists in the world," Antonov said. "The size of the
training cadre at the camp is estimated to be between fifteen and twenty
men, and they are well armed. Our intelligence information estimates
the trainees at the camp at perhaps another twenty or thirty men and
women--"

"Then we must send our best to deal with them," the General Secretary
interrupted.

"Yes," Antonov said. "The GRU has a company of Spetsnaz troops in Cuba.
I would like your permission to personally take charge of the
operation ...  to go to Cuba, select a twelve-man team, and brief them
for their mission."

"Yes. Of course. You have my permission, Vladimir Petrovich,"
Gorbachev quickly replied. "But only twelve men?"

"Twelve Spetsnaz," Antonov said with pride. "This is the type of
mission for which they constantly train. Mobilizing a larger force
would only assure that word of the operation would inevitably reach your
enemies. Do not worry," Antonov added confidently, "with the element of
surprise on our side, the terrorists will be no match for them."

"I have learned to trust your judgment," Gorbachev said. "You do what
you think is best."

"I have taken precautions to cover my absence and my destination,"
Antonov said. "I do not want our KGB friends alerted to my actions."

The General Secretary rose to his feet. Antonov stood and the two men
walked from the great room to the entrance foyer, where Gorbachev again
embraced his old friend.

"You must stop this madman," he told Antonov, the passion rising in his
voice.

"I will, my friend," Antonov said, and opened the door to a cold gust of
wind. "And then we can deal with those who would see you destroyed."

 ... 
The early evening sun hung low on the horizon, bathing the Panamanian
seaport of Colon in an orange-red glow. Raucous and earthy, the dock
area was crowded with fishmongers, merchants, stevedores, hawkers, and
hustlers. The harbor, accustomed to handling two billion dollars' worth
of cargo annually, was busy with container ships, tankers, freighters,
trawlers, and tugboats. The pungent smells of fish, saltwater, and
diesel fuel, and the din of piercing blasts from ships' whistles, the
grinding and clanking of machinery, the squawking of gulls, and the
yelling of men at work overwhelmed the senses.

Located on the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal, Colon was a paradigm
of a bawdy, steamy, decrepit, exotic seaport, an open invitation to
adventure, intrigue, and danger as well as a gateway to the sea. Ships
passing through the canal moved in and out of the harbor at all hours.
The docks were crowded and busy around the clock. Merchant seamen from
all over the world and American servicemen from the U.S. Southern
Command roamed the streets and bars in the mean parts of town, most of
them in search of women and entertainment. The women were a unique
mixture of races; many owed their heritage to laborers brought from the
West Indies to build the canal. Dressed in halters and hot pants, with
bright smiles and impudent eyes, they plied their trade with the same
practiced, vulgar charm common to hookers the world over.

The city itself was run-down and grimy. Unpainted and peeling buildings
and houses lined narrow, ugly streets that reeked of urine and rotted
fish. Brightly painted buses and old cars spewed clouds of blue exhaust
into humid, fetid air, while music blared and neon signs beckoned from
dingy bars where drunken brawls spilled out into streets filled with
sinister, desperate men; and migrant workers, their eyes blank with
hopelessness and misery, or feral with resentment, constantly watched
for likely victims.

It was through this foul, decaying neighborhood that Nikolai Malik
walked. His eyes missed nothing around him as he made his way to the
docks. None of the potential muggers who watched his progress even
considered making an attempt on him--there was something about the way
he walked, one had said. No, another said, it's the eyes. None of them
wanted any part of the tall blond man with the long, confident stride.

Malik continued along the harbor until he caught sight of the Soviet
container ship Sverdlev berthed at one of the major cargo docks. Three
other freighters of medium tonnage were being unloaded at adjacent
docks, but the Soviet ship, Malik noticed, was preparing to get under
way. The Sverdlev's main function was not maritime trade, but under the
subterfuge of a legitimate merchant ship, a base from which the KGB
infiltrated agents, collected intelligence information, or transported
technology stolen from the West as well as smuggled drugs and arms. Part
of her cargo, the part Malik was interested in, had originated at the
Baltic port of Rostock; the rest was transferred from another ship in
Rotterdam. She ostensibly carried raisins from Afghanistan and
machinery from East Germany, but what was concealed among these mundane
products was worth millions--precisely sixty million dollars' worth of
heroin, its origins in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and the poppy fields of
Afghanistan. The drugs were one of the KGB's sources of hard Western
currency, used to help support its operations around the globe. Thanks
to Panama's banking laws--more secret and stringent than those of
Switzerland--the tiny Central American country had become Latin
America's busiest banking center, a haven for the illicit funds of the
drugs-and-arms-smuggling crowd as well as the espionage community. But
Malik's mind was not on the massive shipment of heroin either. That
would be stored and later sent through the convoluted distribution
network to the lucrative markets in the United States and Europe, the
proceeds going into an account designated for the special operations of
the KGB's Illegals Directorate. His only concern was the small
forty-pound canister hidden inside one of the containers. The miniature
nuclear weapon not even the captain of the Sverdlev knew he had
transported across the ocean.

Malik knew his deadly, precious cargo had arrived. The Sverdlev's decks
revealed she had already taken on new containers for another
destination. Teams of heavily muscled, sweaty stevedores were leaving
the dock, making their way down narrow alleys to cafes and bars. A
four-man cast-off crew, two men to a line, fore and aft, stood by the
pilings. The gangplank that led to the forward deck was hauled aboard
as the cast-off crew slipped the giant hawsers off the pilings and freed
the huge ship from the dock. A basstone departure signal sounded,
filling the humid air, followed by shrill, high-pitched sounds that gave
warning of her departure to all the vessels in the immediate area. From
the bowels of the ship came the muted rumble of the engines and the
meshing of gears as the giant screws churned up the dark, oily water at
the Sverdlev's stern.

Malik left the harbor and followed a debris-littered alley to the
Trans-World Marine Agency building located just one block from the
docks. The squat three-story building was a huge warehouse. Part of
the upper story was used as office space. Antonio Rodriquez was the de
facto owner of what operated as a legitimate import/export firm but was
in reality a KGB proprietary company--a front for its narcotics
trafficking and weapons shipments to Central and South American Marxist
groups.

Malik entered the building by a small side-door. His footsteps echoed
throughout the huge open-storage bays as he walked to a back staircase
that led to a balcony of offices two stories above the main floor of the
warehouse.

Rodriquez, dressed in a soiled, badly wrinkled white linen suit and a
shiny lavender silk shirt open at the collar, looked up from his desk as
Malik entered. He forced an unconvincing welcoming smile. Malik was
not one of his favorite people.

"Good evening, Senor Malik," he said, getting up from behind the desk
and not bothering to extend a hand Malik was never inclined to shake.

Malik reached across the desk and picked up the telephone, quickly
dialing a number. There were a few moments of silence until someone on
the other end answered.

"Twenty minutes," was all Malik said into the receiver, then hung up.

"The cargo from the Sverdlev," he said to Rodriquez. "Where are the
machine parts from East Germany stored?"

"Come, I will show you," Rodriquez answered nervously. He hurried out
of the office, eager to be rid of the man who made him perspire more
than the ever-present humidity. "I have had the crates separated and
placed in a private bay, as you instructed," he said as he led the way
down the narrow open staircase.

Rodriquez led Malik to a section of the warehouse where various
containers were secured in padlocked bays enclosed in chain-link
fencing.

"Here are the containers you cabled me about," Rodriquez said, and
handed Malik the key to the lock.

"Bring me a crowbar," Malik said.

Rodriquez smiled a toothy grin. "I thought you might be in need of
one," he said. "It is just inside the bay."

"Leave," Malik said. "I won't be needing you anymore."

"Yes, Senor Malik," Rodriquez said in his most obsequious tone. "It has
been a pleasure seeing you again." There was no reply as he
quick-stepped out of the private storage area.

Malik waited until the door was closed, then unlocked the chainlink gate
to the bay and immediately checked the crates. He found the identifying
mark he had placed on the one for which he had personally supervised the
loading. He pried loose one end of the six foot-square crate and
reached inside, over a heavily padded piece of machinery. A smile
spread slowly across his face as he felt the web straps of the jump
container in which the SADM was still stored.

He then reached farther into the crate and, using both hands, hoisted
the SADM from its hiding place. The olive drab jump container, padded
with foam rubber and fitted with straps attached to a pack tray, allowed
the weapon to be carried like a rucksack, which is what Malik did,
slinging it over his shoulders as he left the bay.

When Nikolai Malik reached the side door to the warehouse, a Toyota Land
Cruiser pulled sharply into the alley. The man at the wheel nodded to
Malik, who opened the door, carefully placed the SADM in the back, and
climbed into the vehicle.

Fourteen miles outside the city of Colon, at a deserted grass airstrip
in the countryside, a twin-engine Cessna waited. Its engines coughed
and turned over as the pilot saw the Toyota bounce across the grassy
field.

Malik secured the SADM in the rear passenger compartment and went
forward. He took the copilot's seat as the Cessna began its takeoff run
down the bumpy, seldom-used strip. Once airborne, the aircraft gained
altitude until it leveled off at five hundred feet and headed a few
miles off the coast, where it slowly turned to a northerly heading.

"Our estimated time of arrival?" Malik asked. "No more than two and
one-half hours," the pilot answered. Malik relaxed in his seat. He
watched the darkening horizon and smiled to himself again, this time in
anticipation. Nothing could stop him now, he thought. Nothing. The
twelve men, dressed in camouflage fatigues, olive drab bandannas tied
around their heads, their faces streaked and blotted with green, brown,
and black greasepaint, were virtually indistinguishable from their
surroundings as they lay hidden in the tall grass and scrub brush
overlooking a bend in the river. Tony Santana, his lean, wiry body
tensed, his handsome face fixed in concentration, lifted the field
glasses that hung from a strap around his neck and focused them on the
point where he knew the boat would first appear. His men were spread
out along the hillside in a modified line ambush watching for Santana's
signal to open fire. Armed with shoulderfired rocket launchers, grenade
launchers, M-60 machine guns, and automatic assault rifles, they were
equipped to take out their target with devastating proficiency.

Santana was proud of his men, all of whom he had personally trained and
fought with for well over a year. Only two days ago they had blown up
three Soviet-installed radars used by the Sandinistas to monitor Contra
communications and detect resupply aircraft. And during the past few
months he had led them on a string of highly successful ambushes and
raids, from mining river ports to blowing up oil-storage facilities.
They were as well conditioned, well trained, disciplined, and as
experienced as any combat troops with whom he had ever served. The
proof lay in the team's casualty rate--one man wounded in the past year,
and he was now back in action.

Santana's official mission was to provide intelligence to the CIA on
Sandinista weapons-supply routes and the shipments of Communist Bloc
weapons arriving at the port of El Bluff. He kept track of the massive
numbers of small arms, howitzers, armored vehicles, trucks, and
helicopters that poured into the country--occasionally taking it upon
himself to ambush the convoys transporting the equipment inland and any
other targets of opportunity he deemed worthy of his attention. He and
his team were expert at interdicting the Sandinista supply routes and
sabotaging key industrial installations and other soft targets that
disrupted the Nicaraguan economy. They took pride in the fact that they
could operate independent of any outside aid.

Santana knew that this was the direction in which the Contra movement
had to go--a leaner, self-sufficient guerrilla force comprised of
hard-core, dedicated men. The Sandinistas' repressive programs and
ruinous economy were uniting the people behind the Contras, providing an
invaluable and effective intelligence and support network across the
entire country. The Sandinistas were using the on-again, off-again
cease-fires and peace talks to give the Contra opponents in Washington
the opportunity to kill the reinstatement of any large-scale aid
program, while they used their own troops to regain ground they had
previously lost. But, ironically, the Marxist junta in Managua had done
something they had not counted on--proved to the determined Contras that
they could fight, and win, a guerrilla war without the assistance of the
United States or anyone else.

Operating in small groups, such as Santana's, they could employ the
classic guerrilla strategy: establish base camps in remote areas and
limit their ambushes and raids to weaker, smaller Sandinista patrols and
isolated outposts. Thus they forced the Sandinistas to dispatch even
larger patrols, which could be easily detected and avoided or ambushed,
using hit-and-run tactics that inflicted heavy casualties. By
demonstrating their capabilities they were gaining even more popular
support. The weapons and ammunition captured from the Sandinistas were
all they needed to continue fighting.

Santana had been doing just that for almost a year. Increased support
from the local population provided food and other necessities for their
continued existence. If organized and controlled properly, a nationwide
Contra political organization could be formed, mobilizing even more of
the citizens for Contra activity. Small-scale aid of crucial items from
the CIA, such as demolitions equipment and Redeye missiles to use
against the Soviet-supplied helicopters, could easily be provided
without raising an eyebrow among the anti-Contra forces in Washington.
It would work, Santana knew. It had worked in somewhat the same fashion
for the Vietcong and other guerrilla armies throughout history, and he
was determined to make it work here, in the land of his birth.

The hum of an outboard motor snapped Santana's thoughts back to his
deadly task and he felt the rush of adrenaline begin to flow. He
steadied his field glasses on the bend in the river, expecting to see
another small supply boat heading upriver to a remote Sandinista
outpost. The sound of the motor grew louder as the boat appeared around
the bend, its bow plowing through the muddy water, a .30-caliber machine
gun mounted on her deck.

Santana lowered the field glasses and shouldered a LAW--a one-shot,
Light Anti-tank Weapon with an effective range of two hundred yards, it
was essentially a mini-bazooka, just under three feet in length when
extended, with a powerful 66-mm rocket packed into a throwaway launcher
and capable of penetrating twelve inches of armor. The weapon could
demolish the boat with one well-placed hit.

Santana removed the rear cover and strap, extended the launcher, and
released the safety. He peered through the open sights as the boat drew
closer and used the range-estimation lines in the front sight to
determine the distance to his target. Then he aligned the lead crosses
to ensure a hit on the center of the boat. He aimed carefully, then
slowly applied pressure to the firing mechanism. His well-disciplined
men patiently waited for his signal before opening fire. The supply
boat carried more soldiers than usual; its sides bristled with the
barrels of assault rifles. But they would present no problems, they
were sitting ducks. It would all be over in a matter of seconds.

Suddenly a frown creased Santana's brow and he lowered the LAW. He
again trained the field glasses on the boat, this time focusing on a man
sitting cross-legged on the deck near the stern. He stared in confusion
and disbelief as the boat came abreast of their position and continued
upstream. The men on his immediate flanks glanced impatiently in his
direction, wondering why he had not opened fire on the easy, vulnerable
target. The boat would soon be out of the primary kill zone.

Santana made a minor adjustment in the focus of the field glasses, his
attention now riveted on the olive drab, canister-shaped backpack the
tall blond man held in his lap. He read the military-style black
stenciling on the front of the container: H-9 12. He looked away, then
quickly back to make certain his eyes were not deceiving him. No, it
read H-9 12, there was no doubt.

"I don't believe this shit!" he said in a low whisper. "I do not
believe this!" No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the
powerful throb of diesel engines could be heard as a seventy-foot
Sandinista river-patrol boat rounded the bend; twin .50-caliber machine
guns mounted on its forward deck added significantly to the firepower of
the weapons of the troops crowded on board. The big boat roared through
the kill zone, escorting the much smaller supply boat upriver, and to
his horror, Santana clearly understood why.

With both boats out of sight, he silently signaled his team to regroup
on the other side of the rise. The men had at first been disappointed,
then relieved that they had not hastily opened fire and been caught in
the open within range of the river-patrol boat's twin 50s and assorted
lethal firepower of the troops on her deck. Santana shook off questions
about what had made him hesitate before the patrol boat had come into
view. He was too stunned by what he had seen to be certain whether or
not it could possibly be. He had recognized some of the men on board
the supply boat and knew they were part of the terrorist training cadre
from the camp he was intent on finding, but he had never seen the tall
blond man before.

The team rose to their feet and followed Santana down the backside of
the hill to a narrow valley, where they disappeared into the deep
shadows of the jungle, each of the men puzzled by the unusual silence
and the strange look on their leader's face.

 ... 
The Cheetah had made a pleasant, fast passage from Jamaica to the
Nicaraguan coast. Under full sail, with a poled-out headsail, the trade
winds behind her most of the way, she had run with the wind. A
following sea with small whitecaps and six- to eight-foot swells created
surfing conditions where the boat was picked up to surge down a wave,
increase her speed, then picked up again to surge once more. The wind
had died down only twice, for a few hours, and Boos and Maria had used
the auxiliary power, motoring at eight knots to keep them on schedule.

The navigation aids between Jamaica and Nicaragua were few and
unreliable. With the loran navigation useless, Boos had relied on the
Cheetah's satellite navigation equipment, which gave him an exact
position fix every few hours. Between fixes he used dead reckoning,
computing his course and speed to determine where he was.

When the Cheetah approached the Cabo Gracias a Dios, the northernmost
point on the Nicaraguan coast, with its low, swampy shoreline and no
identifiable objects for reference points, Maria had rounded the cape
and stayed at least four miles offshore, using the surface radar to
determine the Cheetah's distance from the coast between Satnav fixes.
She proceeded south through the Miskito Channel and gave wide berth to
the numerous off-lying cays and coral islets, their vegetation stripped
clean by heavy seas and gales from previous storms. She had handled the
boat through the dangerous waters with a professional ability that drew
praise even from Boos.

It was hurricane season, and Boos, using the charts from the weather
facsimile printer, had kept a careful watch, getting weather updates
three times a day. His caution was well founded. A few years ago,
working on a coastal freighter, a sudden gale had brought the seas up
twenty feet and more just off the bow, and winds of Force 8 and 9 had
howled around the bridge. He had heard distress messages from big ships
farther north where it was blowing Force 11, creating great waves with
overhanging crests, foamy patches blown in dense white streaks, and
heavy, tumbling seas. Later, when it had ended, he had come across
salvage operations on a vessel blown high on a reef; the storm had been
a "true norther," and he wasn't eager to repeat the experience.

But their luck had held, it had been an uneventful passage. They had
spotted an occasional freighter on the distant horizon and, the previous
night, had come close to only one other boat. A luxury motor-sailor had
passed a few hundred yards off their port side, but thanks to Maria's
quick reactions, the Cheetah had gone undetected. Once certain that they
were not on a collision course, Maria had cut the Cheetah's running
lights. In the darkness they had watched the elegant 1 20-footer, aglow
with lights that sparkled in the dark sea. There was a party on board
and couples danced on her aft deck. As the sounds of music and laughter
had drifted out to them across the water, Maria had observed that the
motor-sailor's radar antenna wasn't turning. That explained why the
Cheetah had slipped by completely unnoticed.

It was early evening on the third day when the Cheetah dropped anchor in
a sheltered, isolated cove at one of a small cluster of islands eight
miles off the coast of Nicaragua, just south of the Bluefields-El Bluff
area. Boos had chosen the anchorage for its seclusion and for the fact
that it was only a two-hour sail to the area where he hoped to insert
Gannon that night. No more than a few hundred yards wide, it was
located on the only island around for miles that wasn't flat. The cove
was surrounded by high limestone cliffs, and in the last glow of the
setting sun, pelicans, nesting in the jagged cliffs, soared and dived
for food into the shallow water near shore.

Maria, dressed in her WINCH APE T-shirt and shorts, tired from three
straight days of four-hour catnaps, reclined in the entertainment
cockpit, a pillow propped beneath her head. Clyde was perched on her
stomach, making contented chirping noises as he tugged at the letters on
the T-shirt. Gannon, wearing swim trunks, was stretched out on the
padded circular bench seat in the steering cockpit, enjoying the natural
beauty and the serenity of the place. His skin glowed with the deep
reddish-bronze tan that fair sailing had provided. Boos was below at
the chart table measuring distances with a pair of dividers and
reviewing his notes on the area around Monkey Point, personal notes he
had made on past trips that appeared on no nautical charts.

Maria raised her head slightly, cocking an ear, then sat up and put the
parrot on her shoulder.

"Good boy," Clyde said. "Whatcha doing'?"

Using the binoculars stored in a small deck compartment forward of the
cockpit, Maria studied a vessel on the horizon until it became clearly
recognizable as a fishing boat.

"What is it?" Gannon called from the stern. "Local fishermen,
probably," she said. "If they come alongside and ask if we want to buy
any fish, just tell them no." She took Clyde with her and disappeared
down the companionway and into the crew's quarters.

Gannon watched the boat draw closer. She was an old thirty-foot wooden
fishing boat with a forward pilothouse. Her grimy white hull was
painted with faded orange, blue, and yellow stripes. Aft of the
pilothouse, covered with hatch boards and canvas, was a fish hold where
two dark-skinned fisherman in faded cutoff jeans and ratty T-shirts
stood waving and smiling as the boat drew abreast of the Cheetah. The
hollow, high-pitched sound of her diesel engine and sputtering exhaust
reminded Gannon of a city bus.

The fishing boat cut back on her power and drifted alongside, holding
thirty feet off the Cheetah's starboard side. The two fishermen now
held up a large grouper and a red snapper and called out in Spanish,
asking Gannon if he wanted to buy any fresh fish. "Not interested,"
Gannon called back, not quite sure if the men understood English.

There was something about the look of the two men that set Gannon on
edge--again, the same sixth sense that had kept him alive in the jungles
of Vietnam. The bulwarks that surrounded the deck were high, and Gannon
thought he saw something move on the side closest to the Cheetah. His
mind sorted quickly through his options, which were virtually
nonexistent save the choice of diving overboard on the port side.

There was more movement behind the bulwarks. Suddenly a third man stood
up, an Uzi submachine gun in his hands. Before Gannon could dive for
cover he was startled by an elongated burst of automatic fire, clearly
recognizable to him as coming from an M-16.

The rounds tore into the man with the Uzi and sent him reeling across
the deck into the bulwarks on the opposite side of the fishing boat. A
split second later the two men who had been holding the fish dropped
them and reached down and grabbed AK-47 assault rifles from under the
canvas. Two short, accurate bursts from the forward deck of the Cheetah
cut them down before they could fire.

Gannon looked toward the bow of the boat, genuinely astonished to see
Maria down on one knee just outside the forward hatch, an M-203 held
snugly to her shoulder. Gannon was more than familiar with the
weapon-an M- 16 with a grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel.

Boos scrambled up the companionway, a stainless-steel 12-gauge pump
shotgun in each hand. He immediately tossed one of the weapons to
Gannon and shouted: "Five rounds, double aught buck, chamber empty,
safety off!" Gannon and Boos pumped shells into their weapons almost
simultaneously. They crouched low and moved forward. Their eyes swept
the deck of the fishing boat for targets.

Maria also scanned the deck of the fishing boat, then fired an HE round
from the deadly grenade launcher at the pilothouse. The high-explosive
40mm grenade crashed through one of the windows and blasted out the port
side. Shards of glass and a storm of wood splinters flew in all
directions.

One man, a semiautomatic shotgun in his hands, was blown out onto the
deck, his chest torn open. A second man could be seen just inside what
remained of the pilothouse. He was slumped over the jagged and
splintered bulkhead. Half of his head was missing.

Maria moved forward cautiously; her eyes swept the carnage on the
fishing boat's decks. She reloaded the grenade launcher with the speed
and proficiency of someone who had trained with the weapon and continued
to watch for any signs of life. When the boat had drifted at least
another fifty feet from the Cheetah, she fired a second HE round, this
time into the area of the fishing boat's fuel tanks. The stricken
vessel continued to drift away, flames engulfing her charred and
shattered pilothouse and aft deck. When she was another hundred yards
away, burning like a funeral pyre, she exploded into an orange-black
ball of fire and broke in half. She sank out of sight within a matter
of minutes.

Gannon stood beside Boos and stared at Maria with a somewhat
disbelieving if open admiration. "She sort of takes repelling boarders
to heart, doesn't she?" Gannon said.

"Did I tell you she was something special ...  or what?" Boos said, a
broad grin on his boyish face. "What are your chances of ever meeting a
women like her again? Beautiful enough to show off out on the town,
sexy enough to take home and make mad, passionate love to, and when
you're finished, intelligent enough to lie back, smoke a cigarette, and
talk fuckin' weapons systems with you. Huh? I'm tellin' ya, Gannon,
they don't make 'em like that anymore."

Maria swung gracefully down into the forward hatch and disappeared. She
reappeared in the main companionway moments later, unarmed. She came
back on deck with a very subdued and slightly stressed-out Clyde on her
shoulder and returned to her seat in the entertainment cockpit.

"Think we should move?" Gannon said.

"No. This is an isolated area," Boos replied. "The only thing for
miles around onshore are local Indians. Even if they heard the
explosion and saw the smoke, they don't give a shit about anything that
doesn't directly concern them."

Gannon gave his shotgun back to Boos, who took it below. He sat
opposite Maria and stared at her quietly for a long moment, studying
her. There was not the slightest sign of emotional tension or any trace
of the "combat high" that followed a firefight. With the exception of
an increased breathing rate and a harder look in her eyes, she was
perfectly calm, as though nothing had happened, as though what had just
transpired was an everyday occurrence.

"How did you know?" Gannon finally asked. "The identification letters
and numbers on the side of the boat," Maria said. "CTG-174 identified
her as being out of Cartagena, Colombia. Pretty far from her normal
fishing grounds, wouldn't you say?"

"I guess so," Gannon said. "What the hell did they want?"

"The boat," Maria said. "These waters are full of pirates. drug
smugglers looking for boats to use or just low-life thieves looking for
people to rob."

Gannon had heard stories of the resurgence of piracy in the past decade.
In Southeast Asia especially, where thousands of refugees had been
robbed, raped, beaten, and killed by pirates, and of the scores of ships
that had disappeared in the waters off Singapore, West Africa, and the
Mediterranean, usually at the rate of one a week. Luxury yachts were
prime targets for narcotics traffickers. Hundreds sailing the Caribbean
had vanished. No distress signals were ever heard, no evidence of
shipwrecks, and no trace of the passengers or crew were ever found.

"If you suspected trouble," Gannon asked, "why didn't you alert us to
it?"

Maria flashed a charming, radiant smile. "I wasn't sure," she said.
"And besides, I thought I was capable of handling the situation."

"Can't argue with that," Gannon said, smiling back. "Where did you get
the M-203?"

"The owner of the boat is a devout believer in the old adage that an
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," Maria said. "A few years
ago some friends of his sailing in the Bahamas were attacked by pirates.
They murdered everyone on board and stole the yacht. The DEA found it
about six months later in the coastal waters off Florida, disguised with
a new paint job. Some small-time drug runners were using it to
transport cargoes of marijuana and hashish. They never found the bodies
of the passengers or crew, just bloodstains."

Maria set Clyde on his perch and said, "Come with me. I want to show
you something."

Gannon followed Maria down the companionway and forward to the crew's
quarters. A cleverly designed elongated cabinet was built into the
bulkhead, and when opened with the key Maria held, it folded down to
reveal a gun cabinet with an assortment of automatic weapons that even
Gannon found impressive. Neatly mounted on individually padded racks
were two M- 1 6s, the M-203 that Maria had used, two CAR- 155 (the
shorter version of the M- 16 that Gannon had used almost exclusively in
the Special Operations Group in Vietnam), an M-79 grenade launcher, an
M-60 machine gun, and the two stainless-steel pump shotguns. Held in
place with Velcro straps was a variety of hand grenades and 40mm
grenades for the M-203 and M-79. On built-in shelves just below the gun
racks were what Gannon estimated to be at least two thousand rounds of
ammunition.

"Quite an arsenal," Gannon said. "Looks like your boss knows some
interesting people."

"He just decided that what happened to his friends wasn't going to
happen to him ...  or us. And if it did, we weren't going down easy."

"I'd say you're on the right track," Gannon said with a grin as Maria
closed the compartment and locked it.

 ... 
Like spies throughout history, military satellites live in the shadows,
their technology, launches, and missions highly secret--the guardians of
whatever peace exists in the world. The CIA's satellite
intelligence-collection capabilities fall into two main categories. The
first, imaging techniques acting as surrogate eyes--taking photos from
two hundred miles up, detecting heat sources with infrared devices,
pinpointing metal with magnetic detectors, distinguishing between barely
moving and stationary objects through the use of Doppler radar, and
radar that can detect objects that are covered or hidden by darkness.
And second, communications-intercept techniques that act as surrogate
ears, eavesdropping on all manner of signals from the human voice to
electronic radio waves.

Orbiting over the South Atlantic in the cold silence of space, the
electromechanical eyes of the KH-13--the United States' most secret
strategic reconnaissance satellite--recorded the images below in digital
form. To complicate the Soviets' efforts to intercept its data, it
relayed its real-time imagery up to another satellite, which in turn
coded and down-linked the signal to the innocuously named Defense
Communications, Electronics, Evaluation and Testing Activity, otherwise
known as the CIA's Office of Imagery Analysis, located in a large,
windowless, two-story concrete structure at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, just
outside Washington, D.C.

The KH- 13 was tasked with a variety of missions: monitoring military
bases, missile test sites, naval maneuvers, radar installations, ships
at sea, and terrorist camps. Its system capabilities were such that it
used no film. Instead it recorded elements of a scene as digital
electronic impulses that could be relayed almost instantaneously, making
it possible for the viewer on the ground to see things as they were
actually happening. Once the down-linked imagery was received it was
decoded, digitally restored by computers, and its extraordinary
high-resolution pictures then projected on screens and scrutinized by
photointelligence specialists who could, using computerized lenses, zoom
in on objects and details of particular interest that had been
previously hidden from the human eye. The images could then be
transferred to film or tape and digitally manipulated to highlight
particular features or characteristics.

Operating at high orbit when not engaged in reconnaissance, the KH- 13
had the added capability of dropping to a much lower altitude when
close-look scrutiny of a particular area was required, a maneuver that
could be accomplished within the time frame of an hour. On request from
the Central Intelligence Agency for just such close-look scrutiny, the
Air Force Satellite Control Facility at Sunnyvale, California--the place
from which all U.S. military satellites are controlled and known as the
Big Blue Cube to those who work there--had transmitted the necessary
commands to the KH- 13's navigation and attitude-control systems to
change the ultrasecret satellite's orbit.

Moved from its previous moderately elliptical orbit of 144 by 186 miles
and an inclination of 96.4 degrees, the commands it received had
maneuvered it into a position that allowed it to circle the earth once
every eighty-nine minutes. It passed over every spot on its ground
track once in daylight and once at night during each twenty-four-hour
period, permitting it to take close-up photos from as near as eighty
miles away. Infinitely maneuverable, with ultra-enhanced real-time
imaging and space-shuttle-compatible refueling capability, the KH-13 was
the ultimate imaging platform. It was able to change orbits over long
periods, thereby altering its ground track by substantial margins,
extend its coverage, and make it unpredictable to Soviet satellite
trackers. Its ability to produce three-dimensional images of a
150-square-mile area and detect objects six inches in size from eighty
miles away was unparalleled. Its astonishing close-up detail was sharp
enough to distinguish the name on a mailbox on a country road, the
headline of a newspaper being read by someone on a Berlin street corner,
or actually follow the pucks during ice hockey games at outdoor rinks in
Moscow.

Its current mission, however, was far less challenging. Some eighty
miles above the Caribbean Sea the KH- 13 went about its silent, eerie
work with a mechanical detachment. Its lenses accurately recorded the
coast of Nicaragua, nothing escaping its cold, blank stare.

 ... 
The CIA safe house in the resort city of La Ceiba on the Caribbean coast
of Honduras sits on a large corner lot two blocks from the beach. The
eight-room Spanish-style villa, surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall, is
patrolled around the clock by CIA paramilitary personnel armed with H&K
submachine guns and satchels full of hand grenades. The grounds are
implanted with infrared sensors, and because of the top-secret nature of
the encryption and transmission equipment in the second-floor
communications center, the entire villa is wired with explosives, to be
triggered by remote control in the event the safe house is overrun.

As Tom Driscoll glanced at the satellite photos coming out of the
facsimile machine direct from the Company's Office of Imagery Analysis
at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the operations room came to life.

A smile of satisfaction slowly replaced the knitted brow and sullen
expression that had been with Driscoll most of the day.

On a large cork board at one end of the operations room, Driscoll pinned
a set of enlarged satellite photos together sequentially, forming a
mosaic of ten square miles of the Nicaraguan coastline that included the
small offshore islands south of the Bluefields-E1 Bluff area. Beneath
the first row of photos he pinned a second row of blowups of the KH13's close-look shots that revealed the Cheetah and the secluded cove.
He turned on a row of hooded spotlights on a track above the cork board
and studied the photos. Phil Travis, the CIA's station chief in
Tegucigalpa, looked over Driscoll's shoulder as he paused at an extreme
close-up of the Cheetah's deck at the time of the pirate attack. The
electro-optical resolution of the photos was so good that even the scar
on Gannon's neck was faintly visible.

"That must be Gannon with the M-203," Travis said. Driscoll, who was
studying the aft deck, where Boos and Gannon stood, gave Travis a
questioning look, then glanced at the forward deck and said, "Not unless
he's grown a nice set of tits and a great ass in the last three days, it
isn't."

Travis looked again, closer. "Oh, sorry. Then who's she?"

"Don't know," Driscoll said. He looked at the close-up of Maria with a
viewing lens that magnified and clarified the photo even more. "Must be
one of the crew."

"Whoever she is," Travis said, "it looks like she just put a round from
the grenade launcher into the pilothouse of that fishing boat."

The fishing boat could clearly be seen at the moment of impact. Another
series of photos, taken from a reverse angle as the satellite passed
over, showed her breaking apart and about to sink.

Driscoll copied the identification numbers of the fishing boat and
handed the slip of paper to an assistant. "Check this out," he said.
"My guess is it's just some local small-time smugglers trying to grab
themselves a yacht."

The assistant glanced at the photos. "Looks like they picked the wrong
one."

Driscoll continued to study the mosaic of the ten-square-mile area,
concentrating primarily on the coastal section between El Bluff and
Monkey Point.

A junior Honduran naval officer standing beside Driscoll spoke for the
first time after examining the photographs.

"I think he's going to try and go in here," the naval officer said, and
indicated a stretch of coastline that extended south from Monkey Point.
"He anchored in that cove to put himself within easy reach of an
insertion point. And it can't be too close to El Bluff, the port is the
alternate point of entry for the Warsaw Pact's seaborne military
deliveries. It's too well patrolled, and there are large concentrations
of Sandinista troops providing security for the new military air base
nearby."

Another Honduran, the junior naval officer's direct superior, added,
"I'm familiar with that area. There's a lot of uncharted reefs and
coral heads just beneath the surface. It's unpatrolled, but for a good
reason. Nobody in their right mind would try to take a boat of any size
through those waters."

"Unless he'd done it before and knows what the charts don't show,"
Driscoll said.

"Boos might know the area," Travis said. "According to his file, he's
made a number of drops for us around there in the past. We're still
checking for any debriefing reports from his old operations. They might
give us the exact drop-off points he's used before."

"That's where he'll do it," Driscoll said without doubt while pointing
to the coastline just south of Monkey Point. "It's the place he's least
likely to run into any Sandinista patrols on the water or on the beach."

Travis checked the time; it was just after 7:00 P.M. "Do you think
they'll insert tonight?" he asked Driscoll.

"Probably. But Boos has got to have a contact on the ground," Driscoll
said. "He's not going to drop Gannon off cold. If our luck holds,
we'll find out who, when, and where when he tries to make radio contact
with him."

 ... 
In a high-security compound in a remote corner of the Sovietbuilt air
base at San Antonio de lose Banos on the island of Cuba is a company of
Spetsnaz troops whose area of operations is Central and South America. A
specially selected unit from Headquarters, Group of Soviet Forces
Germany, their current assignment was extended training in a jungle
environment and advanced training in guerrilla tactics.

The Soviet Union's Spetsnaz (Special Designation) units come under the
direct command of the GRU-Soviet Military Intelligence. Made up of
noncommissioned officers and junior field grade officers, they are the
elite of the Soviet military, the only troops in the Soviet military
structure that are encouraged to be innovative and operate with a high
degree of independence. Their training consists of airborne operations,
SCUBA diving, silent killing, assassination, infiltration and
exfiltration into and out of enemy-held areas, demolitions, clandestine
communications and operations, psychological warfare, and extensive
training in hand-to-hand combat. Their missions include assassination
and kidnapping of enemy political and military leaders, sabotage,
espionage, reconnaissance, and various counterinsurgency operations.
They are, without doubt, the most highly trained, effective, and
dangerous troops in the Soviet military.

The Spetsnaz very existence is classified, and their forces are known by
"cover" unit designations, depending on the military district in which
they are stationed. In the Group of Soviet Forces Germany they are
called Reydoviki, or "raiders." In the Siberian Military District they
are known as Okhotniki, or "huntsmen." As a result of this subterfuge
Spetsnaz from different districts may meet each other by chance and each
believe the other belongs to a totally different organization--such is
the extent of the secrecy surrounding their existence and function.

Captain Vasili Fomenko had just returned with his Spetsnaz team from a
rough-terrain jump and a seven-day field-training exercise in the
mountains. He ran across the compound and entered the company
headquarters building, proceeding down the hallway on the double. His
mind sorted through the possible reasons for the urgent summons from his
commanding officer. At the entrance to the major's office he brushed at
his camouflage fatigues and cleaned off, as best he could, ground-in
layers of dust and grime from the week spent in the mountains.

The door to the major's office opened immediately on the first knock.
The major nodded to Fomenko, then stepped aside and left the office.
Fomenko, confused, stared after the retreating major, then directed his
attention to the man with the overpowering presence who sat behind the
major's desk.

A chill ran down his spine. It took all of Fomenko's willpower to keep
from physically trembling. The civilian clothes the man wore did
nothing to conceal his military bearing or prevent Fomenko from
recognizing the chief of the GRU. Fomenko snapped to rigid attention
and saluted smartly.

General Vladimir Antonov gestured to a chair set before the desk. "Sit
down, Captain Fomenko."

Fomenko sat as ordered, removed his cap, and placed it in his lap. His
mind again raced through possible scenarios--from an imminent
declaration of war to a top-secret assignment for which he and his men
had been specially selected. Whatever the reason, the captain knew it
had to be something of a highly classified nature for the GRU chief
himself to be here. General Antonov read through a file folder that
Fomenko suspected was his personal service record.

Antonov was simply reviewing information he had had on file at GRU
headquarters in Moscow. Fomenko's exemplary record and those of his
team were familiar to him. Although the forty-five-year-old captain
sitting before him had started his military career as a private, his
skills were such that he had been chosen for a four-man Spetsnaz team
secretly sent to Vietnam in 1972 to test the then-new SVD sniper rifle
on U.S. forces operating across the borders into Laos and North Vietnam.
The twelve-man team he now commanded had served with him in Afghanistan,
running long-range insertions into mujahedin-held
territory--specializing in assassinations of the rebels command
structure and cross-border operations into Pakistan against commanders
of the mujahedin base camps and staging areas. Fomenko and his team had
performed with devastating effectiveness, one of the few success stories
of Soviet operations in Afghanistan.

General Antonov looked up from Fomenko's service record and smiled. "I
see you have been trained in the use of miniature nuclear weapons," he
said. "Are you familiar with the American weapons of the same nature?"

"Just the exterior, Comrade General," Fomenko said. "And only in
principle. We have had only photographs of their man-portable tactical
nuclear weapons with which to conduct our studies."

"You would recognize an American weapon called the Saydum if you saw
it?" Antonov asked. "And know how to handle and transport it safely?"

"Yes, Comrade General," Fomenko said, his curiosity aroused.

Antonov went on to explain in detail the mission to recover the SADM and
of the GRU officer in Managua who had learned the location of the KGB's
secret terrorist camp. Fomenko restrained himself from showing the
surprise and excitement he felt as the details of his mission were
revealed to him.

"And I want no confrontation that could prove embarrassing to us,"
Antonov concluded. "Your main objective is to secure and recover the
Saydum and to kidnap Nikolai Malik. If conditions preclude taking him
alive, kill him."

"Any Contra or Sandinista troops you inadvertently encounter are not to
be engaged in combat. You will disperse your men and rendezvous at a
prearranged location and continue with your primary mission. You will
limit any offensive actions to the personnel at the terrorist camp. Is
that clearly understood, Captain Fomenko?"

"Yes, Comrade General," Fomenko said. "Very clearly."

"You will have your men ready to embark at 1730 hours tomorrow. Your
departure from here will be timed to assure your insertion into
Nicaragua at last light."

"And the method of insertion, Comrade General?" Fomenko asked.

"High-Altitude-Low-Opening parachute drop," Antonov said, aware that
Fomenko and his team were expert in HALO jumps. "You will be thoroughly
briefed by one of our experts for that area of operations who will
select a suitable drop zone as close to the camp as possible."

"And who will provide security for the drop zone?" Fomenko asked, not
relishing the thought of jumping into the heart of guerrilla territory
without someone on the ground to secure the clearing in which they would
be landing.

"The GRU rezident in Managua will personally see to the proper security
arrangements," Antonov said. "If there is nothing else, Comrade, I
suggest you gather your men and report to the briefing room."

"Yes, sir," Fomenko said. He rose and snapped to attention, and after
delivering a proper salute, turned on his heel and rushed from the
office. A mission, he thought as he half walked, half jogged down the
hallway. Finally, after all the months of monotonous training and
garrison life. Finally, a mission with a purpose, and one that could
see them all decorated and promoted if successfully accomplished.

 ... 
In the remote, mountainous jungle six miles southeast of Nicaragua's
Punta Gorda River, Tony Santana was walking point as he and his team
moved warily along a dark, narrow trail that was little more than an
animal track. The light from a full moon filtered through the towering
trees and dappled the ground. They had moved past the place they had
chosen to stop and continued scouting the immediate area ahead before
fishhooking back to the tiny clearing ten yards into the dense
underbrush off the trail.

Santana had only to give a brief hand signal and six of his men
immediately vanished into the brush to take up perimeter security
positions. The remainder of the team settled beneath thick
triple-canopy jungle that blocked out the moon and cast the clearing
into almost total darkness. Without a word another of the men strung a
wire antenna over a high branch as Santana set up the radio and tuned in
the four-megacycle frequency. He glanced at his watch; it was three
minutes after nine o'clock. He sat motionless and listened on the
handset to the oscillating hum and static hiss on the single sideband
frequency.

Jim Boos sat in the leather Recaro seat at the communications console
aboard the Cheetah. Tuned to four megacycles on the single sideband
radio, he keyed the microphone.

"Sandman, this is Coon Ass. Do you read? Over."

The hum and static on the frequency were immediately broken with a clear
response.

"Sandman here. Go," came the reply.

Boos gave a confident thumbs-up to Gannon, who was standing off to the
side. "Request rendezvous," Boos said. "Can you accommodate tonight?"

"That's affirmative," Santana replied. "When and where?"

Boos, aware that they were talking in clear voices, without scramblers,
on a frequency that could be monitored by anyone for hundreds of miles
around, kept his instructions cryptic. He knew Santana would understand
the message.

"Coon Ass to Sandman," Boos repeated. "Remember the last insertion?"

"That's affirmative," Santana came back.

"Same time. Same place," Boos said. "Confirm."

"Confirmed," Santana said, and immediately got off the frequency.

Boos turned off the radio and flashed his boyish grin at Gannon. The
tension in Gannon's face was gone, replaced by a look of satisfaction
and eager anticipation.

"Midnight," he told Gannon. "A little beach area six miles south of
Monkey Point. It'll take us about two hours to get there from here."

"You going in with me?" Gannon said.

Boos grinned again. "You don't think for one goddamn second I'm going
to miss a chance to get back in harness? Come on, Gannon, you know me
better than that."

Gannon nodded. "Can't think of anyone I'd rather have along."

"Somebody's got to watch after your Green Beanie ass," Boos said. "God
knows you couldn't handle it by yourself."

Gannon simply smiled and left for his stateroom, where he began sorting
through his gear.

With the insertion set for midnight, Boos and Gannon began the process
of preparing for a mission into enemy territory, a ritual both men had
gone through dozens of times in Vietnam. This time was no different.
The jungle and the enemy had different names, but the game, the rules,
and the stakes were still the same.

 ... 
Twenty-five miles off the coast of Nicaragua, at an altitude of twenty
thousand feet, the specially configured Beechcraft King Air flew wide
figure-eight patterns, covering large tracks of the Nicaraguan coastline
and the Caribbean Sea.

Ostensibly, the King Air belonged to the Pan-American Technical Services
Company and was conducting electromagnetic and navigation surveys for
the Honduran government. Its true function was as a CIA spy plane.
Painted in civilian colors and carrying no military crew, if shot down
or involved in a crash, it could be plausibly denied, despite the
sophisticated electronic equipment on board.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of state-of-the-art
communications and prototype electronic eavesdropping equipment was
mounted in the back of the plane, where signal-intelligence technicians,
known as "knob turners," monitored and operated the consoles. The
composite antennas built into the fuselage of the aircraft were
ultrasensitive, capable of picking up ground-radio communications,
high-frequency radio signals, ship-to-shore, and citizens-band
transmissions while flying at altitudes in excess of twenty-five
thousand feet.

At times the "take" was so phenomenal that the knob turners were able to
pick up transmissions that disclosed Sandinista troop movements and
locations. With the information relayed, the Contras were able to take
defensive measures, set up devastating ambushes, or simply disappear
into the Nicaraguan jungle until they could mount their own offensive.
Also, as a result of the communications intercepts, Sandinista
cross-border raids into Honduras, aimed at the Contra camps there, were
often thwarted along with the interdiction of weapons-supply routes from
Nicaragua into neighboring El Salvador.

The short transmissions between Boos and Santana had not escaped the
knob turner at the King Air's communications console. It was the type
of transmission his superiors at the safe house in Honduras had told him
to be alert for. With a flip of a toggle switch, the message, which had
automatically been recorded, was relayed to the communications room at
the CIA's safe house at La Ceiba.

Another message, from Havana to Managua, intercepted only fifteen
minutes earlier, had puzzled the technician, but his gut instincts told
him that due to its unusual coding and back-channel method of
transmission, it was somehow related to whatever operation it was that
had the local station chief's blood pressure up. He sent it along to La
Ceiba for good measure.

Tom Driscoll took the printout handed him by the radio operator, who had
rushed down from the second-floor communications room.

"Coon Ass?" Driscoll said.

"Boos's code name when he worked for us," Travis, the local CIA station
chief explained. "He's a Louisiana Cajun."

"And Sandman?" Driscoll said. He stared blankly across the room,
searching his memory. "That name rings a bell. Who's Sandman?"

Travis smiled grimly. "Tony "Sandman' Santana," he told Driscoil.

"He's one of ours, isn't he?" Driscoll said.

"Yes and no."

"Well, which is it?" Driscoll said, the irritation evident in his voice.

"He's done a lot of work for us in the past. Former Navy SEAL, used to
be under contract," Travis said. "When we had to cut back support and
supplies to the Contras, he more or less told us to fuck off. He's gone
native. Runs his own team by his own rules."

"Do you know where he's operating now?"

"No," Travis said. "According to the last report we had, a little over
a month ago, he was running most of his ops in the San Juan River area
along the border with Costa Rica. But he moves around a lot, depending
on the intelligence information he gets on Sandinista activities from
his network of local agents."

"Can you contact him?"

"He maintains communications with us," Travis said. "But it's always on
his terms. When he has something he thinks we can use, or he needs
something only we can supply, he contacts us on a special frequency we
use for agents-in-place. It's monitored twenty-four-hoursaday."

"What the hell is he?" Driscoll snapped. "A free-lance rogue?"

"Worse," Travis said. "A patriot."

"Christ!" Driscoll said. "Were they able to get a fix on his position
when he transmitted?"

"He's too smart for that," Travis said. "He wouldn't stay on long
enough."

The radio operator who had brought the printout to Driscoll spoke up.
"There's something else," he said as he handed Driscoll the decoded
message the King Air knob turner had relayed along with Boos's message
to Santana. "This was sent from a GRU officer in Cuba to the GRU
rezident in Managua. They sent it on a back channel but used a code one
of our agents inside the Soviet Embassy managed to get for us last
month."

Driscoll read the message. The deep frown again furrowed his brow.
"They want a special team to secure a drop zone at last light tomorrow?"

Driscoll studied the coordinates given for the drop zone, then handed
them to Travis. "Pinpoint this DZ for me."

"You said they used a back channel?" Driscoll said to the radio
operator.

"Yes, sir. That's what the King Air reported."

Travis gave the message to his chief of operations, who went to the
large-scale map of Nicaragua on the opposite wall. In a matter of
seconds he stuck a red pin in the sector the coordinates indicated. It
was a small mountain valley fourteen miles north of Barra del Rio Maiz.

Driscoll studied the location. His face twisted into a puzzled
expression that was slowly replaced with one of dawning realization.

"They've located the KGB's terrorist camp," he said to Travis. "I'd
stake my reputation that they're sending in a Spetsnaz team to take it."

"That would explain the back channel to avoid the KGB intercepting the
message," Travis said.

"Goddamn!" Driscoll said. "If we could get a message to this Santana,
he could track the Soviets to the camp."

Travis shook his head. "There's no way to reach him. He doesn't
monitor the frequency he uses to contact us." Travis thought for a
moment, then said, "I could put one of our paramilitary teams into the
area before the Soviets make the drop. Their message said the DZ must
be secured by last light tomorrow; that's about seven, seven-fifteen.
Plenty of time to have our people in place."

"No," Driscoll said adamantly. "That's all we need--personnel who can
be tied directly to us ending up in a shoot-out with Soviet troops. And
if Santana is in that area, we'll have people tripping all over each
other. No, we'll have to stick with Boos and Gannon and hope that
Santana can lead them to that camp before the Soviets get there."

"Any word from Langley on the debriefing reports from Boos's past
operations?" he asked his assistant.

"Nothing yet, sir."

"Get back to them," Driscoll said. "Tell them the only one we're
interested in is his last operation into Nicaragua, specifically the
point of insertion and the time."

Driscoll then turned to the senior Honduran naval officer. "Get your
people cranked up to get under way in two hours. I want to be en route
to the general area of operations before this thing gets out of hand. My
people will install the necessary communications equipment on your
boats."

"The intended destination?" the Honduran asked.

"For now," Driscoll said, "we'll head for the cove where the Cheetah is
anchored. It probably won't be there by the time we arrive, but at
least we'll be within striking distance."

"We will be ready when you are, Senor Driscoll," the Honduran said. He
motioned with a quick snap of his head to his junior officer, and they
both strutted from the room, looking for all the world like bantam
roosters in search of a fight.

Travis pulled Driscoll aside, out of earshot of the others in the room.
"Don't you think it's about time you told me what's so goddamned
important about getting to that camp before the Spetsnaz troops and what
the fuck the GRU is doing trying to kill off a bunch of KGB-sponsored
terrorists? And, more to the point, why we should give a shit if they
do?"

Driscoll stared blankly at the CIA station chief and said, "No."

 ...
A hunter's moon shimmered on the calm turquoise sea, softly illuminating
the deck of the Cheetah as she settled into an easy rolling motion with
the tidal rhythm. A tangible primeval aura engulfed the secluded cove
as the ocean rose and fell in gentle swells against the base of the
steep-to shore; bats squeaked and fluttered from the small caves that
pockmarked the face of the limestone cliffs, their ominous sound echoing
out across the water.

Gannon, dressed in camouflage fatigues, a black bandanna tied around his
forehead, sat in the forward cockpit. The CAR-15 he had chosen as his
personal weapon rested on the padded bench seat beside him,
field-stripped, cleaned, and reassembled. He finished loading his
magazines with ammunition and carefully placed them in the pouches
attached to his web belt. He had cut away the upper seams of the
pouches for easy access and placed the tops of the magazines facedown,
directed outward, to explode away from his body if struck by an enemy
round. Each of the five ammo pouches contained six twenty-round
magazines, giving him a total of six hundred rounds plus the
twenty-round magazine loaded in the weapon. In addition to the two
canteens of fresh water hooked to the rear of his belt, another canteen
cover was used to carry four hand grenades. His combat knife was
positioned upside down on the left side of his chest in the sheath
attached to his harness.

He took a roll of black tape from an outside pocket of his rucksack and
began taping the swivels on the CAR-15's sling as well as all the metal
clips, snap links, and buckles on his load-bearing equipment and
rucksack. As he sat silently, meticulously applying the tape that would
eliminate noise and glare, the soft sound of music drew his attention to
the forward deck.

Maria, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt against the cool breeze coming
off the ocean, was on deck just outside the forward hatch. Unaware of
Gannon's presence, she was dancing, slowly, sensuously, to a throbbing
rock beat that flowed from the speakers in the crew's quarters below.
Clyde, the parrot, was perched at the open hatch, his head bobbing and
weaving comically off-tempo. Maria seemed to be in her own world, her
body movements one with the music, her silken hair waving its own rhythm
with the night wind. Gannon stared in appreciation until she turned in
his direction and stopped upon seeing him in the forward cockpit.

"Sorry," Gannon said as Maria approached. "I didn't mean to intrude."

After an awkward pause he added, "Kate ...  my wife. She loved to
dance."

Maria stepped down into the cockpit, placed Clyde on his perch, and sat
on the bench seat across from Gannon. She studied his face and how
different he looked in the military clothing and gear. He seemed to
belong in them. Even his eyes had changed--they were harder, more
distant. She had seen the look before, known men like him all of her
life.

She saw Boos sitting in the steering cockpit, arranging his gear. He was
dressed identically to Gannon, with the exception of his camouflage
fatigues bearing a tiger-stripe pattern as opposed to Gannon's woodland
pattern. Boos, too, had chosen a CAR-15, but had also slung an M-79
grenade launcher over his shoulder along with a bandolier of 40mm rounds
for the deadly weapon. He was so intent on preparing himself and his
equipment for the mission, he took no notice of Maria or Gannon.

"Jim told me you were awarded the Medal of Honor in Viet nam," Maria
said, her eyes again drawn to the prominent scar on Gannon's neck.

Gannon nodded, then redirected the conversation. "Where did you learn
to handle weapons?" he asked.

Maria sat silently for a moment, as though deciding whether or not she
wanted this near stranger to know any more than he had to about her
personal life. Then, after fixing her deep brown eyes on him, a curious
stare that Gannon returned, she made her decision.

"My father died in 1961, when I was about two months old," she said. "My
mother died a few months later."

"Accidents?" Gannon said.

"My mother, yes," Maria said. "An automobile accident. My father was a
leader of the anti-Castro movement--the Revolution Recuperation
Movement. He was killed at Giron Beach during the Bay of Pigs invasion
while he was commanding Assault Brigade 2506."

"You must be proud of him," Gannon said. "And not too pleased with the
way the three-piece-suits in Washington sold him and his men out."
Maria avoided Gannon's gaze and said softly. "I never knew him, except
through the eyes of his friends and my relatives. But yes, I am proud
of what they tried to do. I still have relatives in Cuba grandparents,
cousins ..." Her voice trailed off. "We still don't know what's
happened to them."

"You didn't answer my question," Gannon prodded gently. "Where did you
learn to handle weapons?"

Maria hesitated, then: "After my mother died I was raised by my uncle
and aunt. They were both involved in the Cuban liberation movement. My
uncle worked for the CIA. He coordinated the training of the
anti-Castro guerrilla fighters, set up the camps, acted as liaison
between the CIA and the liberation leaders, and organized and
occasionally led commando raids into Cuba from gunboats and mother ships
stationed offshore."

"I spent most of my life, until I was seventeen, moving from one secret
training base to another--the Bahamas, Florida Everglades, any number of
places in the Caribbean. After hearing all the tales of my father's
exploits, I started to show an interest in the training. To make a long
story short, my aunt made sure I got a formal education, while my uncle
took care of the guerrilla warfare schooling. There are very few small
arms I can't handle," she added with more than a trace of pride.

"The Company never tried to recruit you?" Gannon said.

"Oh, they tried," Maria answered. Her voice took on an edge. "When I
was in high school in Miami, when I was in college in New York. They
finally got the message that I wasn't interested. I haven't heard from
them since."

"You were born in the States?" Gannon asked.

"Miami. Little Havana."

"And Spanish is your first language?"

"Yes. Why?"

"It's just that there's no trace of an accent. You sound like the
allamerican girl."

"I worked on it," Maria said. There was an almost instantaneous change
in her expression, as though she had decided she had given enough of
herself away. Then a bit of her gamine quality surfaced. She winked,
flashed a dazzling smile, and in an affected singsong Spanish accent
said, "I kleen your house for a month. I chine your choose."

Gannon laughed and found himself smiling at the beautiful face before
him. It was the first time he had sincerely smiled since learning of
Kate's death.

"You're a charmer, Maria."

"So they tell me."

 ... 
A sultry, husky-voiced singer, draped over the side of a piano, belted
out a nearly unrecognizable rendition of
"September Song," trying in
vain to be heard above the din of the crowded, smoke-filled dining room.
The small restaurant off Managua's Avenue Bollvar, known for its
excellent steaks, was filled to near capacity with representatives of
Eastern Bloc governments and those few Nicaraguans fortunate enough to
afford the outrageous prices, which limited the local clientele to midand high-level government officials.

Seated at the opposite end of the room from the piano player and the
singer, as he had emphatically requested, General Pavel Olenev, the
KGB's rezident in Managua, glanced repeatedly at the ample cleavage of
his escort, provided for the evening by his dinner company and host, an
assistant to the Minister of the Interior, who was accompanied by an
equally eager-to-please young woman.

The young lady with the ample cleavage removed something from her purse
and, beneath the table, slipped it into Olenev's hand. When the waiter
brought the menus, Olenev, seated with his back to the wall, spread open
the oversized menu and read the message he had just been handed. Despite
his galvanic reaction to what he read, his outward composure remained
unchanged. The message was from one of his agents on the GRU rezident's
staff and required his immediate attention. General Olenev made his
excuses, feigning a bad headache and a loss of appetite, and thanked his
host for the dinner invitation and returned to the embassy, where he
went directly to the communications room.

The KGB's terrorist training camp lay hidden two hundred yards from the
banks of a tributary of Nicaragua's Punta Gorda River. Expertly
concealed beneath triple-canopy trees, in a connecting series of small
clearings hacked from near-impenetrable jungle, the cluster of detached
shelters blended so well into their surroundings that one could walk
within ten yards of the camp's perimeter and not know it was there.

Most of the camp consisted of simple, open-sided structures with
thatched roofs, some with crude bench seats and tables used for
classrooms; one served as a mess hall and others were strung with jungle
hammocks as sleeping quarters. The only buildings completely enclosed
were the communications and supply shacks and five individual huts for
the upper-echelon instructors. Constructed of logs and thatch, the huts
were as well camouflaged as the rest of the camp.

The twenty-man training cadre that Nikolai Malik had assembled as course
instructors were accomplished blooded and infamous members of the
international terrorist community. They were among the top
practitioners of their murderous trade, with almost an equal number of
them being Palestinians, Cubans from Castro's DGI (Directorate of
General Intelligence), and members of a special unit of East German
State Security.

The in-camp students were limited to thirty at a time--six five person
teams, each from different nations. The present class, now more than
halfway through their course of instruction, had teams from France, West
Germany, Spain, Ecuador, Northern Ireland, and Italy. The students had
been secreted into Nicaragua by various means--some by Soviet freighter
or fishing boat, others under false passports aboard civilian airlines.

Malik believed in creating small teams of expert killers, not turning
out large groups of half-trained zealots. He insisted on thoroughly
realistic training. This included an actual operation successfully
conducted by each team before graduating. The grueling, demanding
six-month course encompassed extensive training in the use of small
arms, assault weapons, submachine guns, demolitions--including bomb
making and improvised explosives and detonators--making and reading
maps, planning operations, cryptography, photography, document forging,
physical disguise, first aid, subversive techniques, guerrilla and urban
warfare tactics, clandestine communications, including the jamming of
police radios and setting up of safe houses and secure meeting sites.
The constant relocation of the camp was also part of the training.

Physical conditioning and practical skills were not overlooked. A
punishing regime involved long marches over rough terrain, establishing
base camps, mountain climbing, swimming, canoeing, handling motor- and
sailboats, escape and evasion, and hunting for one's own food. In
addition, a particularly brutal course in resisting torture and
interrogation in the event of capture was taught. The graduates Malik
sent out into the world were not the mindless religious or political
fanatics who hijacked aircraft or took over embassies, willingly giving
up their lives for some nebulous cause. They were highly motivated and
valued professionals--the next generation of leaders of the
international terrorist community.

The occasional student who excelled and held promise received additional
instructions in conducting intelligence-gathering operations in their
home countries for the KGB, as well as organizing terrorist networks.
They were often sent to Moscow for advanced weapons and technical
training with the KGB's notorious Department V assassination and
sabotage units. On the whole, Malik was pleased with the caliber of
students that the program he had personally devised and supervised was
turning out, and he hoped to expand the operation into other countries
once he had proven to his superiors that his methods were sound.

A Coleman lantern burned in the crude log-and-thatch hut that was
Malik's quarters when he was in camp. It was isolated from the other
structures, on the side of the camp closest to the river. The glow of
the lamp was barely visible through the heavy black sackcloth that hung
across the openings cut into two of the walls. A rough-hewn log table
and bench took up the center of the small hut. The only other creature
comforts were a footlocker and a jungle hammock strung across one corner
of the room.

Malik, dressed in jungle fatigues, turned up the flame on the lantern
and stared at the drab olive-green container on the table. A wave of
pure pleasure swept through him as he unsnapped the nylon straps and the
rubber cushioning pad that allowed the SADM to be carried as a backpack.
He removed the top of the jump container, its aluminum honeycombed base
used to further cushion the weapon. Carefully he pulled out the nylon
bag that aided in removing the SADM from the tight-fitting compartment.
Undoing the zipper around the large end of the weapon, he slipped off
the bag and laid the SADM on its side on the table.

The size of the SADM was deceptive in light of its tremendous
destructive power. Greenish-gold, and only twelve inches in diameter
and eighteen inches in length, it resembled a large .45-caliber bullet.
Malik had always marveled at the simplicity of design and operation of
the weapon. The KGB, unlike the GRU, had managed to compromise and
bribe a former U.S. Army officer who had knowledge of the weapon and the
arming procedures--information that at the time was considered only of
mild interest, due to the lack of possession of an actual weapon. But
filed away in the top-secret vaults at KGB headquarters, the information
had eventually come to serve a completely unexpected purpose. The flat
end of the SADM contained a combination lock in the center of the
lock-secure cover that permitted access to the internal arming
mechanism. Metal ribs led out in a star pattern to locking lugs on the
rim, which held the cover in place. At the lower right hand side of the
cover was the external arming switch, used when the SADM was to have a
radio receiver attached to it so that it could be detonated by a remote
signal. On the upper right-hand side of the lock-secure cover was a
small--approximately four inches--half-moon-shaped observation window
through which the Arm Well could be observed, determining if the
explosive wave generator was in place, which in turn revealed whether
the weapon had been armed.

From inside his shirt pocket Malik removed the slip of paper with the
combination for the lock. He dialed in the numbers. Beads of
perspiration formed on his forehead and ran down the side of his face.
It was an uncommon reaction for him, but then it was the first time in
his life he had worked with a 4.5-kiloton nuclear weapon. With the last
click-stop of the combination lock, he slid the metal ribs away from the
locking lugs on the rim and was about to remove the cover when he heard
someone outside the hut.

Fritz Graber, an East German who served as chief instructor and Malik's
operations officer on the occasions when he used some of the instructors
on actual missions, called out, announcing his presence, as he knew
Malik insisted on everyone's doing before entering his quarters.

"Nikolai?"

Malik, recognizing Graber's voice, quickly grabbed a poncho liner from
the top of his footlocker and covered the weapon before telling Graber
to enter.

Graber's eyes fell on the bulge under the poncho liner. "So, this is
the surprise you have been telling me about?" Graber said, his eyes
still fixed on the table. "How much longer do you plan on keeping me in
suspense?"

"We leave for Mexico City in two days," Malik said. "Then you will
know. Has the team you have selected for the mission been thoroughly
briefed and rehearsed in their assignments?"

"Yes," Graber said. "To the point of exhaustion. I have chosen the
team from Italy. The woman with them is quite steady and reliable. I
have made her the team leader."

"She shows great promise," Malik said, recalling the attractive young
woman, for whom he had had other ideas had she failed the course. "She
is intelligent enough to acknowledge her own fears, yet courageous
enough to carry out her assignments despite them."

Graber remembered the reason for his visit and handed Malik a coded
radio message. "This just came in for you."

Malik glanced at the identifiers at the top of the message and knew
immediately it was from the KGB rezident in Managua. He took his
codebook from the rucksack propped against his footlocker and deciphered
the message, which had been sent using a one-time pad. A cruel smile
appeared at the corners of his mouth as he turned to Graber.

"It seems my GRU comrades have discovered the location of our camp," he
said. "They are sending in a team of Spetsnaz to eliminate us once and
for all."

Graber tensed. "When?"

"Tomorrow at last light. They are parachuting into a drop zone only a
few kilometers from here."

"Then we must move the camp immediately," Graber said.

"That would be too disruptive," Malik said calmly. "Our mission is
planned for two days from now, and that is when it will be carried out.
Moving the camp now would only cause an unacceptable delay."

"But ...  Spetsnaz," Graber said. "They are not to be taken lightly."

"It is only a twelve-man team, Fritz," Malik said. "Twelve men who will
be parachuting into a drop zone for which we have the coordinates and
the estimated time of arrival. A duck shoot, as the Americans say."

Graber nodded. He knew better than to argue with Malik, but wanted more
information. "It would seem the GRU in Managua would arrange a security
team for the drop zone."

"Six men," Malik said, glancing at the message. "It will be an
excellent training exercise for some of our students. You and four
instructors of your choice will take two of the teams in training. That
will give you fifteen men with which to eliminate the GRU team securing
the drop zone, then ambush the Spetsnaz and kill them before they ever
reach the ground."

Graber thought for a moment, then said, "I'll take the Irish, they have
proven the best in the ambush exercises. And the team from Ecuador,
they have excelled in patrolling in this terrain."

"Fine," Malik said. He again looked at the decoded message and gave
Graber the coordinates of the drop zone. "Make certain your people are
properly briefed and familiar with the terrain features. You have until
tomorrow afternoon to prepare them."

"They will be ready," Graber said. He cast one last glance at the shape
of the object under the poncho liner, then quickly left the hut.

Malik returned to his work. He uncovered the SADM and removed the
lock-secure cover to reveal the interior of the weapon. He again
marveled at the simplicity of its design. The interior arming face
contained two wells, or slots, into which fitted the explosive wave
generator--the generator's size and configuration reminded Malik of a
miniature travel iron. The Safe Well, which was green, was where the
explosive wave generator was kept while the weapon was unarmed. Once
the explosive wave generator was moved to the red Arm Well, and in
contact with the electrical conductor, the weapon was ready to be
activated.

Just below the openings for the two wells were the digital clock
readouts for the timing mechanism--one readout for hours, the other for
minutes--and immediately below them were the clocksetting knobs, which
enabled the clocks to be set from zero hours to twenty-four hours and
zero minutes to fifty-nine minutes. Below and just to the right of the
clock readouts was the internal arming switch for manual detonation,
which started the clock generators and, subsequently, the countdown. The
arming switch had three positions: Arm-Safe-External Arm. The switch
was now in the Safe position.

A simple process of placing the explosive wave generator into the Arm
Well, setting the clocks for the desired length of time for detonation,
moving the arming switch to Arm, thereby activating the clock generators
and starting the countdown, then replacing the lock-secure cover were
all that was necessary to ready the weapon for deployment.

Malik had reread the intelligence information gained from the
compromised army officer regarding the actual sequence of reactions
before the SADM exploded. It was again an uncomplicated, deadly
effective chain of events. When the clocks reached zero an electrical
current, transmitted through a circuit to the electrical conductor in
the Arm Well, ignited the electrical ignition system and fired the
shaped charge inside the explosive wave generator. This in turn caused
conventional energy to be converted to electrical energy, which was then
transmitted through circuits to detonators that set off conventional
explosives that initially formed a convex burning wave, which in turn
ignited plastic explosives that inverted the convex burning wave into a
concave burning wave. The concave burning wave, simultaneously from all
sides, reached the vacuum in which the nuclear mass was suspended.
Increasing speed in the vacuum, it crushed the nuclear mass uniformly to
one third its original size, further increasing the density of the
U-235, which was surrounded by a beryllium shell, and in turn crushing
the nemo initiator, which was designed upon being crushed to create a
huge influx of electrons, causing nuclear fusion and a supercritical
mass. The result: a nuclear explosion.

Malik smiled again at the thought of being entrusted with a mission
that, if successful, would have such far-ranging repercussions--possibly
changing the face of international relations for decades. Carefully
replacing the lock-secure cover, he ran his hand over the smooth
surface, caressing the weapon before he zipped it back into its nylon
bag and returned it to the jump container. He carried the container
across the room and placed it gently on the floor beside him before he
climbed into his jungle hammock.

He removed his H&K MP5 9mm submachine gun from where it hung by its
sling from a nail in the wall and placed it across his chest. He closed
his eyes. He was tired, but sleep didn't come, only the night sounds of
the jungle and thoughts of the endless details and meticulous planning
needed over the next two days. The Cheetah slipped silently through the
calm sea, leaving a trail of phosphorescent plankton glowing in her
foamy wake. She responded like a high-performance sports car to the
slightest course correction as Boos expertly sailed her through the maze
of small offshore cays. He spotted his first radar-conspicuous target,
a large, prominent cay a mile from shore, then, minutes later, his
second reference point, an ominous reminder of the vagaries of the sea:
an old rusted wreck lay on its side high on a reef due east of his
destination. Another half mile and the brilliant moonlight revealed a
spur of the reef that marked the entrance to the narrow channel he was
looking for. The full moon and gentle seas were godsends, perfect
conditions for navigating through the treacherous uncharted reefs and
shoals to the hidden horseshoe-shaped bay where he was to rendezvous
with Santana. It had been three years since Boos had used this
insertion point, and there was always the possibility that new reefs and
shoals had grown. The area was also known for strong, irregular, and
unpredictable currents that often reversed themselves for no apparent
reason, and numerous live coral heads lurked just beneath the surface.
The situation demanded extreme caution and an experienced hand at the
helm. Boos was up to the challenge, relaxed, with the calm
self-assurance of a professional, but still intensely focused on the
perilous task that lay ahead.

The Cheetah's high-visibility factor under the full moon was of little
concern in this remote section of coastline, an extremely hazardous area
that was never patrolled and was avoided by all but the local fishermen,
who knew it well. And once through the channel and inside the bay, the
Cheetah would be virtually invisible to anyone on the seaward side of
the reef.

The sea breaking over the jagged coral reef had been visible for several
miles, and now, a few hundred yards from shore, the sound of the
breakers informed Boos that he was closing on the narrow deep-water
channel between the reef spur and the sandbar. He made a course
correction that lined up the Cheetah to enter the channel at the proper
angle. His eyes began their constant vigil, darting from the fathometer
and the compass on the instrument cluster in the steering cockpit to
landmarks onshore that told him he was not straying off course. They
would use the dinghy for the actual insertion. Reinflated and outfitted
with a silent-running electric motor before they had left the offshore
cove, it bobbed and swayed in the Cheetah's wake at the end of the
towing line.

The Cheetah was completely dark. Maria and Gannon were on the bow,
keeping watch for local natives night-fishing for turtles in small
skiffs and dugout canoes ...  and any other obstructions in their path.
Ahead, along the shore, bold promontories and high bluffs rose above the
beach. Gannon studied the coastline with the passive night-vision scope
Boos had provided. The steeply rising jungle-covered terrain and the
inland summits in the background reminded him of the mountains in Laos,
misty, mysterious, and full of menace.

He thought of something Joseph Conrad had written, about a shadow line,
that nearly imperceptible demarcation between a way of life that is
vanishing and another that is inexorably taking its place. He and Boos
represented two of the fortunate few who had survived the Special
Operations Group's missions in Vietnam and were now nearing the end of
their time for great adventures. He accepted that that was as it should
be--the torch being passed to the next generation, as it was with Delta
Force. But at that very moment he could not help but feel that his past
and present and future were one and that whatever he had left to give
would be called upon on this mission. He suspected it was to be his
swan song, and maybe Boos's, too, the last time they would ever go into
battle, in the military sense of the word.

There had always been a part of him that missed the old days, the
dancing on the edge, the camaraderie, the inexplicable triumphant
feeling of facing death and living to tell of it, of challenging the
gods. But just beyond the selective memories of the good times and the
pride of beating Charlie at his own game, of daring, suicidal missions
accomplished under impossible conditions, lurked the darker memories of
the horrors and pain, the loss of friends who died too young, without
purpose, for an ungrateful nation. Those were the memories that
restored the crucial balance; reminded him that war was not a game, not
a macho challenge of will and skill, not a right of passage, but a
brutal, vicious conflict with a price to be paid, sacrifices to be made,
and that the reason he was here off this lonely stretch of beach in a
foreign land, once again to fight in the jungle, was the pain of loss of
the one person who had meant the most to him. Death and revenge had
brought him here, as the deaths of his friends, the need to exact a
price for those who had died in his arms; had kept him going back to
Vietnam again and again, not wanting to die himself, but not wanting to
desert his buddies in a war that was growing more costly with each
passing year.

Gannon's thoughts abruptly returned to the present as Maria shouted an
alert to Boos, who steered clear of a large coral head just breaking the
surface off the port side only to have to make another quick maneuver to
avoid an even larger coral head that Gannon had sighted on the starboard
side. But their luck held again, and Boos's personally annotated charts
had proven accurate. They had left the treacherous channel and entered
the hidden bay. Boos turned the boat into the wind. Maria furled in the
headsail and let loose the mainsail, spilling wind and slowing the boat
to less than one knot. Gannon operated the electric windlass, as he had
been previously instructed to do, and lowered the anchor.

With the Cheetah secured fifty yards off the small, palm-fringed
crescent of beach Boos remembered well, there was no time to waste. It
was almost midnight. Standing on the bottom rung of the swim ladder,
Boos took the rucksacks and weapons that Gannon handed him from on deck
and put them in the dinghy, which he had pulled alongside the boat.

"Let's do it," Boos said.

Gannon and Maria descended the swim ladder and boarded the dinghy.
Maria's task was to come back to the Cheetah with the dinghy and stand
anchor watch until Boos and Gannon returned. Just in case there were
any surprises waiting onshore, she took the M-203 and a satchel that
contained ten extra magazines of ammunition and six 40mm rounds for the
grenade launcher. Boos and Gannon slipped into their rucksacks and
slung their weapons across the tops of their shoulders in preparation
for the landing.

"Don't forget," Boos said to her, "monitor four megs on the single
sideband. I'll keep you posted on what we're into, and if you run into
any problems here, give us a holler. We'll listen in for five minutes
every two hours."

"You take care of yourself," she said. There was a tenderness in her
voice and eyes as she gave Boos a brief hug. She turned to Gannon. "You
too." Then she added, "I hope you get the son of a bitch."

Maria unclasped the swing hinge on the electric motor and lowered the
propeller shaft into the sea. She started the engine, and the dinghy
moved slowly but silently toward shore. A few yards from the beach she
skimmed over a tidal pool brimming with minnows. She pulled the
propeller shaft out of the water and let her forward momentum and a
small swell carry the rubber craft up onto the beach. Transparent sand
crabs whirred into their holes as Gannon and Boos jumped out and,
without a word, shoved the dinghy back out into the surf, where Maria
came about and headed back to the Cheetah.

Thirty or forty yards from the high-tide line, the ground rose in a
craggy 150-foot wall, and Gannon and Boos, crouching low, immediately
ran for cover. The short strip of jungle directly behind them was the
only level ground before the terrain began its steep incline. It was
quiet, except for the rustling of palm leaves and the sound of a gently
foaming surf. Too quiet, Gannon thought as his eyes swept the area
around them.

Suddenly, without a sound, Gannon felt the presence of someone beside
him. His head snapped to his right and he was staring into the face of
a small bronze-skinned man, who placed a hand on his shoulder, then
motioned for him to follow. Another man, so well camouflaged as to be
invisible in the dense undergrowth, appeared at Boos's side and motioned
with his head in the same direction. The two men guided Boos and Gannon
to the base of the rocky incline. With their eyes adapting to the
increased darkness of the jungle, they had both glimpsed other barely
visible figures posted at perimeter security posts around the spot where
the two men brought them to a halt with a hand signal. Gannon was
impressed with what he had seen so far; Boos's friend had trained his
team well. Though heavily laden with equipment and weapons, they had
slipped through the dense jungle with an economy of movement, strictly
adhering to noise discipline.

Boos and Gannon surveyed their surroundings. Patches of bright
moonlight shone through breaks in the overhead canopy and cast strange
shadows that made identifying the perimeter guards they had previously
spotted impossible. A slender, raw-boned man of medium height appeared
out of the darkness. His leathery skin had a few days' growth of
stubbly beard, and his cold, black eyes glistened like polished onyx.
There was more of the Castilian than the Carib in his high-bridged nose
and well-defined chin. The small smile he directed at Boos contrasted
sharply with a deeply suntanned face streaked with camouflage paint. He
reached out and clasped Boos's shoulders with both arms and drew him
close for a hug and a pat on the back.

"Good to see you, Coon Ass," Tony Santana said, his voice a raspy
whisper.

Boos placed both hands on the sides of Santana's head and kissed him on
the forehead. "Don't ever die, you sweet motherfucker," he said,
following with his own embrace. The words had once been a ritual within
the Special Operations Group, spoken with emotion and deep-felt meaning
to friends who were leaving on an operation. They still held the same
power for the two men who now separated and smiled at each other.

Here was a man Boos knew to be among the best at what he did, yet he was
completely out of place anywhere but running special operations. It had
been the same in Vietnam. There wasn't anyone who wouldn't jump at the
chance to go on an operation with the Sandman, but everyone, except his
closest friends, steered clear of him in any situation that required the
usual chickenshit military discipline and regulations. He was a man who
thrived on combat but did not function well in garrison life. And had
it not been for his constant exemplary performance in combat, Boos
believed that the SEAL would have mustered him out after his first
Vietnam tour of duty. Now, seeing him here in another jungle, dressed
in combat gear, Boos couldn't help feeling as though he was in a time
warp, transported back twenty years to the Naval Advisory Detachment at
Da Nang, with the intervening years having never happened, with Charlie
still out there waiting and Santana ready to continue the mission.

Santana's attention shifted to Gannon. He stared hard at the face he
had never seen. "Who's your friend?" he asked Boos, his wary eyes never
leaving Gannon.

"Jack Gannon, this is Tony Santana," Boos said. Santana did not extend
his hand; he simply nodded. "You got history?"

"SOG, CCN," Gannon said, knowing precisely what Santana meant.

Santana nodded again, acknowledging Gannon's credentials and all they
implied in the way of expertise. He, too, had run a few combined
missions out of the Command and Control North compound with the Special
Operations Group. He paused for a moment, placing the name with
something else he recalled, then said, "Gannon. Special Forces. Medal
of Honor."

"Yeah," Gannon said.

He extended his hand and Gannon shook it. "What do you want?" Santana
was nothing if not direct.

Boos answered the question, telling Santana the purpose of the
rendezvous. When he was finished Boos was confused by the angry,
impatient look on Santana's face.

"And you believe that shit," he said. "Goddamnit, Coon Ass, you must be
losing it in your old age."

"What are you talkin' about?" Boos said.

Santana turned to Gannon, his voice still just above a whisper, but now
hard and demanding.

"You deserve respect for the Medal, and whatever you did to earn it," he
said to Gannon. "But that doesn't give you the right to insult my
intelligence. I know why the fuck you're here, and if you lie to me
again, I'm out of here and you can go back to wherever it is you came
from. My guess is Company headquarters."

"I don't understand," Gannon said, confused by Santana's angry outburst.

"I think you do."

"Am I missing something here?" Boos said. "Your friend's been lying to
you," Santana said.

"Hold on, Tony. You're out of line. I've known Jack a lot of years, we
busted bush together. He doesn't lie, especially not to me, and never
about Kate."

"You're former SOG," Santana said to Gannon. "You've got access to the
old-boy network. You could have had one of your buddies get you into
this country any number of ways. Why this way?"

"The friends I have who are in a position to help are doing contract
work for the Company," Gannon said. "For some goddamn reason the
Company doesn't want me getting anywhere near Malik. I didn't want to
put my friends in a difficult position."
What Gannon had said struck a chord, and Santana fell silent, his dark
eyes expressionless. Then: "Tell me what this guy who killed your wife
looks like."

"Tall ...  about six-two, blond hair, prominent cheekbones, Slavic
features," Gannon said. "He's a Russian, a KGB colonel."

"Are you ADM-trained?" Santana said. He had also been one of the select
few who had been through the Atomic-Demolitionsmunitions training course
when on active duty with the SEAL.

"Yeah. I went through the course in '67. What the hell has that got
to--"

"What does H-912 mean to you?"

Gannon stared at Santana, his mind searching for the meaning of the
vaguely familiar designation. Then he remembered. "H-912 is the
designation for the Saydum jump container."

"Right," Santana said. "And two days ago I saw a man fitting the
description you just gave me coming up the Punta Gorda River with a jump
container with H-9 12 stenciled on it. Now, you still telling me you're
here because this guy murdered your wife?"

"That's exactly what I'm telling you," Gannon said. "And what you just
told me explains why the Company's been trying to throw a net over me
ever since Kate's death." He went on to tell Santana about his problems
with the CIA preceding his contacting Boos to get him into Nicaragua.

Santana's mood and tone changed. Gannon was telling the truth. "He's
probably taken it to the camp," he told Gannon.

"The terrorist training camp?" Gannon said. "You know where it is?"

"The general area," Santana said. "We've been closing in on it for the
past two weeks but haven't nailed it down."

"Have you got a radio that can get a coded message to the Company?"

Gannon asked.

"Yeah," Santana said. "One of our radios is a satellite relay with
burst transmission capabilities."

"Do you have a Company control officer?"

"That's what he likes to think he is."

"Can you contact him?"

"When I want to."

"Then do it," Gannon said. "Tell them we know what their situation is
and we'll do what we can. And tell them to stay the hell out of our way
while we're doing it."

Santana grinned. "Is that all, General?"

"Sorry," Gannon said. "It's your show. I just know what a cluster fuck
those clowns can put together if they're not kept in check."

"You're all right, Gannon," Santana said with a laugh. "We'll contact
them in the morning. Right now I want to put some distance between us
and this place in case anyone saw you two insert."

Santana motioned to one of his men who was resting on one knee in the
deep shadows. The man disappeared into the jungle to bring in the
perimeter guards. "We don't have any choppers to extract you here,
Green Beanie," Santana said good-naturedly to Gannon. "You go out the
same way you came in. Think you can still hump that ruck on your back?"

"I'll do my best to keep up," Gannon said with a grin.

With Santana's other eleven men gathered around, Gannon looked them
over. They were all dressed in well-worn Special Forces-issue jungle
camouflage fatigues, faded and frayed at the cuffs and at the edges of
the trousers' bottoms, where they were bloused paratrooper fashion over
the tops of their jungle boots. They had on mountain rucksacks and
harnesses and web belts laden with ammunition pouches and canteens, and
a few wore camouflage boonie hats with the brims cut down, while others
had simply tied olive drab bandannas around their foreheads. Gannon
looked at the individual faces streaked with expertly applied camouflage
paint, and taking into consideration the obvious ethnic differences, was
reminded of the fierce, highly dedicated Nungs and Montagnards he had
served with in Vietnam.

The mountains and highlands of Nicaragua, part of the Central American
cordillera, were similar in appearance to the central highlands of
Vietnam. They extended south from Honduras almost to the Costa Rican
border. To the east of the mountains lay the Caribbean lowlands, a
broad swath of savannas, pine forests, swamps, and jungles covering the
entire length of Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. The people along the
coast were a diverse group: descendants of British pirates and planters,
escaped slaves, West Indian laborers who had been brought in to work the
plantations, and indigenous Miskito Indians and black Caribs.

Four of Santana's men were Miskito Indians, with their typical high
cheekbones, copper skin, and raven-black hair. Their villages had been
ripped apart by the Sandinistas and the people relocated to keep them
from rebel influence--an action that had had the reverse effect, sending
many of the young Miskito men to fight with the Contras. The rest of
the team was composed of a Creole black, a Rama Indian, with the
remainder being Nicaraguan campesinos, one a former sergeant in Somoza's
National Guard.

All of them, with the exception of the man with the M-60 machine gun who
had an M-79 grenade launcher as a backup, carried Soviet-made AK-47
assault rifles as their primary weapons. Gannon took note of the
ammunition belt for the M-60. It was coiled inside the man's rucksack,
feeding over his shoulder and down to a C-ration can set between the
flanges that fed the ammo into the weapon. The C-ration can assured a
smooth, even feeding of the ammo, virtually eliminating the possibility
of jamming. It was a technique that experienced recon men had used in
Vietnam and left no doubt in Gannon's mind that the man had learned it
from Santana. One of the men carried the deadly effective Redeye
shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles for use against the Sandinistas'
Soviet-supplied helicopters, and Gannon noticed that six others carried
disposable LAW rocket launchers slung over their shoulders across the
tops of their rucksacks. Another man carried an RPG-7--a
rocket-propelled grenade launcher designed as a tank killer capable of
penetrating eleven inches of steel, but with an even more devastating
effect when used as an antipersonnel weapon. A short, powerfully built
man carried a 60mm mortar; Santana and another man each had a silenced
9mm pistol secured in a shoulder holster. From the sag and bulges in
most of their rucksacks, and the satchels carried at their sides, Gannon
suspected they were well stocked with claymore mines and an ample supply
of rockets, grenades, and ammunition for all of the weapons. He
 estimated that each man was lugging at least ninety pounds of equipment.
The extent of the team's professionalism and attention to detail was
impressive. Even the butt stocks of their weapons were partly covered
with old camouflage T-shirt material, and the barrels were wrapped with
foliage. Unnatural silhouettes of rucksacks and head gear were broken
up by branches and strips of camouflage cloth attached to shoulder and
pack straps. And, as Gannon had done aboard the Cheetah, Santana and
his men had covered all buckles, snap links, anything that could jingle
or shine, with a layer of black tape. They were a hard-looking bunch,
lean, tough, and seasoned, and the look in their eyes said they weren't
exactly happy about having two unknowns tagging along.

When Santana gave the signal to move out the men slipped expertly
through the dense jungle and up the steep incline, finding foot- and
handholds by the light of the moon or by feel on the sections of the
rocky wall cast in shadows. Despite their heavy burdens, they all moved
well. The only sounds alien to the jungle night were an occasional
scrape of a boot against a rock or the soft whisper of uniform cloth
brushing against itself or a bush.

The climb was grueling, almost straight up for more than an hour before
they reached the ridgeline and descended the other side. They used an
entirely different set of muscles to keep their bodies under control on
the almost equally steep descent. Gannon followed a strict physical
training regime at Delta Force headquarters and was in excellent shape.
Boos, removed from anything remotely resembling the top physical
conditioning he had maintained as a SEAL, suffered the most. But his
only complaint was an occasional groan and muttered curse.

Santana's team were all locals. Unlike the U.S. troops in Vietnam, who
had needed extensive training to fight and survive a jungle war and
acclimate to their environment, these men knew the jungle, its moods,
its dangers, and how to move through it leaving barely a trace of their
passing. They could wield a machete to make a shelter, find the yucca
and breadfruit, and hunt the wild boars, turtles, iguanas, and turkeys.
They were experts in silently stalking their prey. Santana had merely
honed their inherent skills and directed their native talents into
finding and killing the enemy without being killed themselves.

Gannon heard Boos breathing heavily and muttering behind him. "You
okay?" Gannon whispered over his shoulder just as a patch of soft ground
broke loose from under Boos's foot, almost causing him to lose his
balance and fall. "Shut up, Gannon," Boos wheezed. "I'm a SEAL, not
some common goddamn ground pounder. We're a little more technically
oriented."

"I understand," Gannon whispered. "Putting one foot in front of the
other without falling on your face isn't something that comes easy to
you technical types."

"Fuck you."

Gannon stifled a laugh.

 ... 
Twenty miles off the coast of Nicaragua, Tom Driscoll stood on the
bridge of the converted one-hundred-foot radar-equipped Cam Craft Point
cruise boat, one of the Honduran Navy's heavily armed patrol vessels
used to attack guerrilla-controlled coastal areas. Armed with four
.50-caliber machine guns, a 20mm cannon at the bow, and a combination 8
mm mortar and .50-caliber machine-gun rig at the stern, the boat was a
formidable adversary for any of the Nicaraguan patrol boats.

Driscoll raised his voice above the roar of the three Detroit Diesel
engines, each capable of developing 470 horsepower. They were running
at near full throttle, carrying the eighty-ton dreadnought through the
night at a steady twenty-five knots.

Driscoll glanced at his watch. It was three-thirty in the morning.
"Where are we?" he asked the Honduran naval officer at the wheel.

"We are approaching the Miskito Cays off our starboard side," the
captain said. He looked up from the radar scope and gestured to a group
of tiny dots barely visible on the moonlit eastern horizon.

The Cam Craft was serving a dual role--as patrol vessel and as a mother
ship. She carried extra fuel for the two twenty-seven-foot Piranhas
that skimmed along as outriders, held back from their top speed of
thirty-five knots to stay abreast of the slower Cam Craft. Each of
these bone-jarring speedsters was powered by two 50-horsepower Johnson
outboards, radar-equipped, and armed with a .50-caliber machine gun at
the bow and an M-60 machine gun port and starboard. Their primary use
was as pursuit craft against gun-running boats or for inland waterway
operations, where their shallow draft allowed them to cruise close to
shore.

"How much longer?" Driscoll asked the officer at the helm.

"If the weather holds, we will reach the Cheetah's last known location
at approximately 1600 hours," the captain said.

Driscoll looked outside the pilothouse at the high-speed outriders
skimming along on the surface, his thoughts on Malik and the SADM, and
the possibilities of Gannon being able to find him before it was too
late.

 ... 
The jungle terrain was straight up and down. Steep mountain trails
descended into narrow valleys surrounded by more near-perpendicular
slopes. Extinct volcanoes, their peaks reclaimed by the jungle, jutted
prominently on the moonlit horizon. The valleys, crisscrossed by animal
trails and countless streams, some bridged only by narrow logs less than
a foot in diameter, required a delicate balancing act by the column of
men burdened with weapons and gear. Twice Santana led them across broad
rivers, up to their chests in cool, muddy water, their weapons held high
over their heads. And twice they had recrossed shallow streams and
walked backward up a hill to throw off any Sandinista trackers. They
had spent the last hour walking down the middle of an ankle-deep
gravel-bottom stream, and now cut into the jungle again and climbed
another steep hill.

There had been only two five-minute rest stops in the past five
hours--to monitor the frequency on which Maria was instructed to contact
them in the event of danger. Despite his excellent physical
conditioning, Gannon was feeling the effects of the punishing forced
march through the hot tropical night. At times the climb had been so
steep that the boots of the man in front of him were at eye level. He
reached deep inside for the necessary stamina to keep up with the steady
pace Santana had set, a pace that his men were accustomed to on a daily
basis.

Boos held his own, but just barely. He began to feel the pain, first
between the shoulder blades, then in the lower back and sides. He
shifted his load higher on his back and adjusted the straps on his
shoulder harness. The relief was only temporary, but he pressed on,
keeping pace, fighting the steep, slippery animal trails and the dense
underbrush. His eyes, still alert despite the fatigue, constantly swept
the dark green foliage and moonlit patches on his flanks for a glimpse
of an uncamouflaged face or the glint of a gun barrel.

There was still no relief for Boos in the descent into the next valley.
It took all of his strength and agility to keep from tumbling forward or
sliding down the slick, muddy trail. The impulse to reach out and grab
a vine for support was instinctively rejected--lessons learned from
Vietnam, where two-inch thorns that caused blood poisoning would
penetrate the palms of the careless and uninitiated. The lush green
beauty held other dangers as well: wait-aminute vines that entangled
legs and equipment, neurotoxic snakes with venom that killed in minutes,
and poisonous caterpillars and spiders.

Once they reached the valley floor the terrain again leveled out. Then
Santana halted the column and sent one of his men ahead as he signaled
the others to take cover. Gannon and Boos dropped into prone positions
at the side of the narrow trail and watched; the sudden change in
routine snapped them to full alert. The man who had disappeared into
the jungle reappeared on the trail ahead and motioned for the column to
continue. Gannon and Boos followed, more cautious and wary now, not
certain what had precipitated the sudden halt. The reason became clear
a few minutes later when the jungle ended at the banks of a broad,
smooth-flowing river.

Four of Santana's men pulled two long dugout canoes from beneath a
covering of palm leaves and underbrush. The four men slid the canoes
into the water. Inside were paddles and outboard motors equipped with
special exhausts for silent running. The motors were quickly clamped to
the sterns of the boats.

The native canoes, hewn from huge cedar logs, held seven men each and
were much more stable than they had appeared at first glance. Fully
loaded, the boats moved swiftly with the current. Mosquitoes filled the
air like a fine mist. The damp, fetid fragrance of the jungle carried
out over the water as howler monkeys, beginning their predawn patrols,
roared their territorial complaints, drowning out the waking chatter of
exotic birds and the squawks of parrots as the canoes passed beneath
their roosts. Another troop of howlers answered from deep within the
jungle. Bats, silhouetted against the night sky, flashed beneath the
trees and across the bow of the boats, hunting for insects. The thin
gray line of first light began to spread slowly over the horizon.

With a friendly smile, one of the Miskito Indians in the lead canoe
silently handed Gannon a bottle of mosquito repellent. Gannon took it
gratefully, applied it liberally on his exposed skin, and passed it back
to Boos. The pitch-black jungle growth along the shoreline occasionally
opened up into stretches of grassland, desolate in the faded-blue light
of the now cloud-covered moon. Patches of fog drifted across a bend in
the river a short distance ahead; it changed into phantomlike shapes as
it reached the opposite shore and drifted through the trees. The night
became still again, the only sound the low sputter of muffled exhaust
from the outboard motors.

Boos and Gannon, like Santana and his men, sat close together at the
gunwales, their weapons trained on alternating sides of the riverbanks.
Gannon pointed to some shacks set back from shore and gave the man
behind him a questioning look.

"Amigos. Friends. Helpers," the man whispered. Gannon understood why.
Nicaragua was flat broke, with an inflation rate accelerating like an
ICBM. They exploited their own people while working hand in glove with
the Colombian drug cartels to earn hard cash, using their diplomats to
smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of narcotics into the
United States. They were arrogant ideologues who assumed they were
above the law. Their machinations and complete disdain for their
people, Gannon believed, would make Augusto Sandino roll over in his
grave if he knew how they had manipulated his beliefs and debased his
name in the name of the people. He doubted that the Sandinistas would
ever completely eradicate the Contra movement unless drastic changes
were made that gave the people a sense of worth and hope for a better
life.

The farther downstream the canoes traveled, the narrower the river
became. Tops of trees on opposite banks intertwined almost two hundred
feet overhead and formed a dense canopy that extinguished the moonlight
and blocked out the stars. Trees draped with moss and lichen,
supporting secondary growths of ferns and orchids, lined the shore.
Overhanging limbs trailed braided vines into the water, and they brushed
lightly across the men in the canoes.

Gannon was startled for a brief second as a turtle plopped off a log,
followed by a bullfrog bat that skimmed the water, missed its prey, and
swooped low over the canoe and back up into a tree whose decaying bark,
used by the peasants to decorate their Christmas trees, cast an eerie
blue-white glow along the edge of the forest. Boos was fascinated with
what appeared to be hundreds of pin-dot lights flickering on and off
just ahead. A few moments later they were surrounded by them--a dense
swarm of fireflies that dispersed and regrouped after the canoes had
passed.

The thin gray line on the horizon grew as the predawn light spread
quickly across the eastern sky. The man steering the lead canoe slowed
down. On reaching a spot where the river broadened at the confluence of
two small feeder streams, he cut the motor. The man in the second canoe
did the same. Four men in each canoe took up paddles and the journey
continued at a slower pace.

The Miskito Indian who had given Gannon the insect repellent leaned back
and whispered, "Piris."

"Piris?" Gannon said.

"It's short for piricuaco," Boos said, leaning forward. "It's what they
call the Sandinistas. Roughly translated, it means 'rabid dog' or
'beggar dog." There must be an outpost around here."

The two canoes moved closer to shore. No one paddled now; they drifted
silently under overhanging branches. Onshore the jungle was quiet, now
darker than the predawn sky. The sounds of cicadas and katydids rose to
a deafening crescendo as Gannon and Boos followed the lead of the other
men, bending over and lowering their silhouettes as they passed by a
stretch of open grassland that reached to the river's edge.

A few hundred yards farther and the men began to paddle again. The dawn
light was nearly upon them and the jungle seemed to soak up the
early-morning mist. A low-lying fog shrouded the shoreline and scudding
clouds obscured the mountain peaks. They were deep in the rain forest
of southern Nicaragua, and as the fog dissipated and the clouds thinned
out, the pinkish morning light began to spread over the serene beauty of
the emerald landscape.

The Miskito Indian in the lead canoe swung the long, narrow craft into
shore; the second canoe followed immediately. Santana and his men
quickly disembarked. Gannon and Boos helped pull the boats out of the
water and camouflage them in the dense underbrush. Santana took the
point and led the column through a particularly dense section of jungle
to a narrow, deeply rutted trail that switchbacked up the face of yet
another mountain. Near the ridgeline Santana halted the column and
signaled to Gannon, Boos, and his radioman to come forward. The four
men knelt off to the side of the trail while the rest of the team took
up defensive positions to secure the area.

"We'll give the Company boys a shout," Santana said as he removed a
small satellite radio from the rucksack of his radioman. He set up and
oriented the small circular antenna, then coupled it to the
state-of-the-art radio, approximately the size of a dictionary. He then
took a whisper microphone that fitted over his mouth like an oxygenmask,
plugged the cable end into the radio, and began to record his message in
clear text.

"Sandman to Nighthawk," he said, his voice inaudible beyond three feet
of where he knelt. "Coon Ass and friend are with me. Aware of your
delicate situation. We are in the process of trying to locate and
recover your package. Stay out of area of operations until further
notice. Will keep you advised."

Santana pressed a button on the radio to scramble the message. Then
another button that burst transmitted it up to a satellite and back down
to a ground station in Honduras. The transmission of the recorded
message sounded much like a tape recorder being played back at extremely
high speed for a split second.

Santana disassembled the radio and returned it to the radioman's
rucksack. He again took the point and, in the growing light of the
morning sun, continued on the trail at the same demanding pace he had
set earlier.

 ... 
"Stay out of the area of operations?" Phil Travis, the local station
chief said to Driscoll. He was reading the message that had been
relayed from the communication room at the embassy in Honduras to the
bridge of the Cam Craft as it continued south off the coast of
Nicaragua. "Who the hell do they think they are, telling us to stay out
of their way?" he shouted above the roar of the diesel engines.

Driscoll chuckled and shook his head. "They're the same guys we would
have sent in to do the job had we had the choice," he said. "We let
them run with it. They're the best chance we have right now, probably
the only chance."

"And what is 'the package' Santana's talking about?" Travis said, more
than a little put out that Driscoll had not yet confided in him on the
purpose of the mission.

"You're not cleared for that information," Driscoll said. "If they're
successful, you'll know soon enough. If they fail, the whole goddamn
world will know."

 ... 
Following cattle paths that laced the steep-sided hills, Santana led the
team deeper into the jungle. He gave a wide berth to isolated farms and
villages known to be patrolled by the Sandinistas. It was late in the
afternoon, and the hazy orange sun slipped slowly behind the sharp edges
of the mountains on the western horizon as he halted the team in heavy
underbrush, just below a ridgeline that commanded the terrain around
them. Seen from this vantage point, the surrounding wilderness had a
breathtaking beauty. Slow-moving clouds drifted above the hills and the
long, deep valleys that stretched for miles in a patchwork of fields and
forests in infinite shades of green.

A rusted, burned-out Soviet-built reconnaissance vehicle, disabled by
Santana's men months ago, sat at the edge of a distant clearing in the
valley immediately below them. Dark green groves of coffee bushes
overflowed with ripe red berries and crowded the slopes of the ridges on
the far side of the valley, with banana trees scattered along the lower
elevations, where a small cluster of scraggly cattle enclosed by a crude
fence grazed a grassy meadow on the perimeter of one of the small,
nameless villages hacked from the jungle by campesinos.

There were times when the local and migrant workers refused to work in
what they considered a combat zone, and militiamen, government
employees, and "volunteers" from the Sandinista Front's political
apparatus had to harvest the coffee crop. Although few, if any, had
military training, they carried weapons with them in the groves. They
were little more than cannon fodder against Santana and his men, who
harassed and ambushed them in successful efforts to further ruin a
failing economy by disrupting a harvest that earned the Marxist
government vital Western currency.

Temperature fluctuations were minimal, and the humidity in the valleys
was oppressive. A steamy heat, heavy with the fetid odor of the jungle,
carried up the side of the mountain and brought back a rush of memories
to Gannon as he sat on the ground, his back propped against a tree. Boos
dropped to his knees beside him, clearly exhausted from the long, hard
trek, which had begun at midnight. Their clothing was soaked with
perspiration and still damp from the frequent stream crossings. It
chafed in all the wrong places. The ocean breezes that made conditions
tolerable along the coastline did not penetrate the inland jungle. In
addition to the intense radiant heat of the near-equatorial sun, the
team had to deal with a high thermal load, unable to lose body heat
through evaporation in the high humidity. Santana and his men were
acclimatized, but Gannon and Boos were ready to drop.

The well-disciplined team sat in the shadows of trees, eating beans and
rice, canned tuna, and sucking on pieces of sugarcane they had hacked
from a deserted field earlier. Immediately after finishing the
nourishing, if sparse, meal, they began to field-strip and meticulously
clean their weapons; some used toothbrushes in the process.

"Great to be back in harness," Boos said with a wry smile. "Time and
distance have a way of making us forget the unpleasant side of this
shit, ya know?" He adjusted the straps on his harness and leaned back
against a tree. "Christ, what I wouldn't give for a green hornet," he
added, referring to the powerful amphetamine capsules the recon teams
had been issued in Vietnam to keep them awake for days at a time while
on missions.

"Where's your buddy taking us?" Gannon said. He looked to where Santana
knelt on one knee, studying a map and talking with one of his men.

"He says we're in the general area of the camp now," Boos said. "That
guy he's talking to, Tigrillo--means "Little Tiger'--he knows this area
better than anyone."

Gannon stared at the stolid mahogany face of the young man with Santana.
He was leaning over the map spread out on the ground, his black,
almond-shaped eyes, pure Indio and impenetrable, darting from the map to
the terrain features across the valley.

"The Sandman says he's the best point man and night stalker he's ever
worked with," Boos said. "He's never seen unless he wants to be."

Claudio, a twenty-four-year-old kid with a wispy beard and a three-inch
scar on his cheek, approached Gannon and Boos and sat down beside them.
He was a former campesino whose family had been run off their land by
the Sandinistas. He had long black hair and lively intelligent eyes. He
smiled and a gold-capped front tooth glistened. He was in the process of
wolfing down a ration of rice and beans. From his rucksack he produced
two bananas that he had picked along the way. He handed one to both
Gannon and Boos. They were eagerly accepted.

"I could tell this was not your first time in the jungle," he said to
Gannon and Boos. "You served in Vietnam with Santana."

Boos and Gannon nodded.

"Snake said you got the Medal of Honor," Claudio said to Gannon,
repeating what his teammate had told him. Many of the Contras adopted
pseudonyms such as Snake and Little Tiger to protect their families from
retaliation if it became known that they were fighting against the
Sandinistas.

"That was then," Gannon said, uncomfortable, as always, when the subject
of the Medal was brought up. "This is now."

Claudio grinned. "No, Senor Gannon. That is forever." He noticed that
Boos and Gannon had finished their bananas and handed them each an
orange, more of his booty picked along the route of march.

Snake, curious about the newcomers, came over and sat beside Claudio.
With the exception of Santana, Snake was the oldest man on the team. He
had been a Sandinista with the rank of lieutenant in the infamous
Special Destiny Company--his mission to infiltrate the Contras and
disrupt their infrastructure through assassination and sabotage. He had
been trained in subversive techniques in Nicaragua by Argentine
montoneros terrorists, but he had defected to the Contras before
completing his first mission. Although distrusted by most of the Contra
leaders, Santana immediately recognized his unusual abilities and
recruited him for his team.

Small and wiry, with sharp features, Snake had hard eyes that were a
strange golden color, sensitive to the sun and penetrating in the dark,
which suggested to Gannon how he had earned his nickname. Gannon also
noticed Snake's skin. Like Claudio's and the rest of the team, it bore
the same telltale signs--signs of men who had been living in the jungle
for extended periods. Their faces were blotched by fungus infections,
their hands and forearms covered with scratches and welts from the
fleas, chiggers, and mosquitoes that attacked them daily. Gannon saw
himself, twenty years ago.

Gannon noticed Santana and Tigrillo rise and walk together along the
military crest of the ridge. Santana talked and pointed in the
direction of the dense jungle at the far end of the valley below.
Tigrillo nodded, then disappeared into the underbrush.

Santana gave the signal to prepare to move out. The copperorange glow
of the setting sun disappeared as evening shadows lengthened across the
floor of the valley. Clouds that threatened rain appeared in the east.
The team descended the steep slope and moved along an animal track in a
staggered column. They stayed inside the edge of the jungle as they
passed an abandoned farm with a grove of ripe oranges. The country they
were moving through now was contested, a combat zone, and slowly
becoming uninhabited.

Claudio, walking immediately in front of Gannon, stopped dead in his
tracks, almost causing Gannon to trip over him. With a lightning-quick
strike of his machete, Claudio cut off the head of a deadly pit viper.
Gannon glanced at the snake's still-writhing body as he stepped over it.

Three miles from where Santana's team skirted the abandoned farm,
Malik's second-in-command, Fritz Graber, and the four other men he had
handpicked, two Palestinians and two of his East German comrades, led
the column of Irish and Ecuadorian terrorist trainees along a jungle
trail. They were eager, Graber thought. Maybe too eager. The Irish
whispered to each other as they moved through the thick underbrush. The
five-man team from Ecuador maintained silence, their eyes alert for
impending danger. They were far more professional and less cocky than
their Irish counterparts. Graber stopped to check his map and the
terrain features, then angled off onto a small animal trail that,
according to the map, would lead them directly to the clearing the
Spetsnaz team had chosen as a drop zone.

Tigrillo had heard the column approaching long before they were within
his range of vision. He took cover at the side of the trail and waited
until they had passed, then shadowed them from a distance. The team all
wore olive drab fatigues and baseball-style hats, as opposed to
Sandinista uniforms, and Tigrillo watched as their apparent leader, a
tall, dark-haired Yanqui, brought them to a halt, then went forward with
two other men, Arabs, Tigrillo guessed, and began scanning the perimeter
of the clearing.

Tigrillo soon spotted the object of their search. Scattered along the
edge of the clearing he counted six men, all wearing Sandinista uniforms
and armed with assault rifles. Their shoulder patches identified them
as a special unit attached to the Ministry of the Interior. One man had
a flashlight with a red filter clipped to his harness. They were all
resting, unconcerned. They sat on the ground, their eyes on the sky.

Tigrillo's curiosity was further aroused as he watched the tall,
dark-haired Yanqui and the Arabs return and point out the positions of
the six men at the edge of the clearing to two other men, who seemed to
be older and more comfortable with their weapons and equipment than the
others. The five men, each carrying H&K MP5 submachine guns fitted with
sound suppressors, moved swiftly into position. Within a matter of
moments Tigrillo heard the barely audible bolt clatter from six
individual bursts. The men at the edge of the clearing fell over dead.
Tigrillo watched in total confusion as the Yanqui leader and the other
four men hid the bodies in the dense underbrush and returned to direct
the ten men they obviously commanded into ambush positions around the
clearing. Tigrillo shook his head in disbelief. Surely this ambush was
not being set up for them? These men could not possibly expect the
Sandman to lead his team across an open clearing with nothing but
knee-high grass for cover? And who were these men? And who were the
six Sandinistas they had killed and what were they doing here? No other
Contra units were operating in the area. Of that he was certain. He
continued to observe, counting a total of fifteen well-armed men. Five
of them were Latinos, he was sure, and the other ten were definitely
not. The leader and the two Arabs he had seen before, but couldn't
remember where. Then it came to him: they had been on the supply boat
that Santana had, for some reason he had never explained, chosen not to
ambush.

Tigrillo silently withdrew from his position just behind two of the
Latinos and moved away from the area. He headed quickly back to the
trail on which he knew Santana was approaching with the rest of the
team.

Santana suddenly stopped in mid-step. He stood stock-still, then
dropped to one knee and halted the column behind him by raising his
hand; his fist was tightly clenched at first, then his open hand rotated
in a circling motion. Gannon, Boos, and the rest of the team
immediately crouched low and disappeared into the underbrush on both
sides of the trail. They took defensive positions in the dense cover,
their weapons trained up ahead. Santana's attention was on the thick
tangle of vines and underbrush near a bend in the trail. Tigrillo
appeared out of the jungle and Santana relaxed. He signaled again, this
time for everyone to gather around as Tigrillo reported what he had seen
during his reconnaissance patrol.

"If we move quickly, we can set up our own ambush and take them out
before they know what hit them," Santana said when Tigrillo had
finished.

"No," Gannon said. "Let's move in close and see what they're up to. It
sounds like they're securing a drop zone. Think about it," he said to
Santana. "Nothing else makes any sense."

Santana stared at Gannon, then slowly nodded his head. "Travis, the
station chief at Tegucigalpa," he said. "I'll bet that moron fuck is
sending in some of his paramilitary people."

Gannon disagreed. "The six men Tigrillo saw the others kill were
Sandinistas, probably sent to secure the DZ. They sure as hell aren't
working for the Company."

"Then who?" Santana said.

"Maybe the GRU," Gannon said. He recalled what he had learned at the
Delta Force headquarters briefing after the incident in Paris and what
General Max had told him after his meeting with the GRU officer.

"They want Malik as badly as the Company does." He went on to explain
what General Max had told him about the probability of the Soviets
wanting to stop Malik for their own reasons, which now made sense in
view of the SADM if the KGB and the GRU were involved in some sort of
arcane power struggle.

"We'll try it your way," Santana said. "And if Tigrillo is right about
recognizing three of them from the supply boat we saw the Russian on,
then the probabilities are they're from the terrorist training camp and
we can follow them right to it."

"Or we can snatch one of them," Boos said. "Make him tell us where the
camp is."

"Whatever works," Santana said.

"Boos is right. We grab one of them," Gannon said. "Even if they are
from the camp, if we tried to follow them, they could lead us right into
a Sandinista outpost, or they may damn well have road guards out that
we'd have to engage and give away our position."

"All right," Santana said, and got to his feet. "We'll see what they're
up to and take a prisoner if the opportunity presents itself."

Santana took out a terrain map and Tigrillo indicated the location of
the clearing. He scraped away the debris on the ground and drew a crude
sketch of the approximate positions of the fifteen men he had seen.
Santana diagramed the approach the team would take to the clearing,
assigned each man an observation post, and selected a rendezvous point
if they got separated. The team came alive, expectant, ready for
whatever it was that lay ahead. Gannon felt the soreness and stiffness
of the arduous day leave his body as if by the touch of some magic hand.
His senses were heightened, his mind alert and focused. He was close
now, he could feel it.

Tigrillo took the point. At first he moved quickly along a narrow,
rutted animal track. As they neared the clearing he paused every ten
yards to stop and listen before signaling the team to continue. With
the clearing in sight, the team dispersed to their assigned positions.
They advanced cautiously through the jungle to within twenty yards of
the unsuspecting men set up in an L-shaped ambush in one corner of the
drop zone. Gannon and Boos stayed together and settled into the brush
directly behind the short end of the L. Gannon's eyes were fixed on the
evening sky, waiting for what he knew would be the inevitable blossoming
of parachutes.

 ... 
The last of the evening light was beginning to fade. From an altitude
of eight thousand feet the terrain below looked like a solid blue-green
mass of interwoven triple-canopy jungle. The drop-zone clearing was
nowhere in sight. Vasili Fomenko descended to earth at a speed in
excess of 130 miles an hour. His body was in the tracking
position--head up, arms at his sides, his legs stretched out and spread
shoulder width apart--an airfoil configuration that gave him forward
momentum as he tracked thirty-five degrees horizontal to the ground. The
force of the rushing air tore at his jump suit and stretched the exposed
skin on his face.

The Soviet AN-30 reconnaissance aircraft, disguised as an Aeroflot
commercial airplane, had taken off from the Cuban air base at San
Antonio de lose Banos and climbed to thirty thousand feet. It had
stayed within the commercial airline corridors except for a slight
detour to the release point for the drop. Two miles off the coast of
Nicaragua the twelve-man Spetsnaz team, equipped with individual oxygen
bail-out bottles, exited the aircraft and began the exhilarating
free-fall part of the High-Altitude-Low-Opening parachute jump.

Fomenko, with the rest of his team stacked at intervals above him,
tracked over two miles of open water. Upon reaching the coastline he
began to scan the ground for reference points. He could clearly see the
junction where the two rivers converged and the ridgelines that formed a
V a few kilometers to the west, but not the clearing. His wrist
altimeter confirmed that he was now twenty-five hundred feet from the
ground. He changed his body position, pulling his arms forward and
arching his back into a full spread-eaglea maneuver that caused him to
flare from the tracking position, stopped his forward momentum, and
slowed his vertical rate of descent. He grabbed the D-ring on his
harness, pulled his rip cord, and seconds later felt a powerful force
jolt him upright as his canopy unraveled and filled with air. As he
unsnapped his oxygen mask and shoved his goggles up onto his helmet, he
took hold of the steering toggles and over his shoulder watched eleven
other parachutes pop open in rapid succession.

Fifteen hundred feet from the ground, Fomenko breathed a sigh of relief.
As he crossed over a series of low ridges, he spotted the clearing in a
bowl-like, remote mountain valley surrounded by jungle-covered hills.
The drop zone was approximately one hundred yards long and half again as
wide, an easy target for experienced parachutists such as Fomenko and
his men. Swinging gently beneath the risers, Fomenko's eyes searched
and found the bright orange fluorescent panel, laid out in the shape of
an arrow, indicating the direction of the wind.

As the twelve canopies approached the ridge Gannon recognized the
jumpsuit camouflage pattern of the Soviet Spetsnaz units. Their oxygen
masks hung off to one side of their helmets as, one after the other,
they turned into the wind and began a controlled descent into the
clearing. Gannon watched with a lump in his throat. It was every
airborne soldier's nightmare, landing in a drop zone believed to be
secure while an ambush awaited. Russians or not, it was no way for a
soldier to die.

He watched as the leader pulled down on both steering toggles of the
highly maneuverable ram-air parachute, almost stalling the canopy in
preparation for a near-perfect stand-up landing. With his boots only
inches from the ground, the quiet, peaceful evening erupted into
ear-shattering bursts of automatic weapons fire. From among the
unmistakable reports of AK-47s, Gannon picked out the distinctive sound
of a Type-56 Chinese-made light machine gun.

The leader was riddled with bullets and crumpled to the ground. His men,
startled by the sudden turn of events, hung helplessly below their
canopies. The fire from the tree line tore into their bodies as they
tried to defend themselves by unslinging the weapons strapped to their
sides. But from above the clearing it was impossible to see muzzle
flashes as the gunfire continued to crack in rapid bursts from within
the dense jungle. Even if the men made it to the ground safely, Gannon
realized, they were trapped in a large, open killing zone with nothing
but knee-high grass for cover.

Within thirty seconds from the time the ambush was sprung, twelve men
died, eleven of them hanging limp in their harnesses as they collided
with the ground.

As the fifteen-man ambush team withdrew from their positions and
regrouped, Gannon watched the eight men who were obviously not Latins or
Arabs. Malik was not among them. He heard the clearly recognizable
sound of an Irish brogue when five of the men loudly congratulated each
other on the slaughter of the Spetsnaz team. Gannon nudged Boos. One
of the Irishmen left the others and walked toward the Sandinista
soldiers' bodies, stacked like cordwood nearby. Boos nodded his
understanding. A souvenir hunter.

Unaware that one of the team was lagging behind, the leader of the
ambush formed the men into a column and in the pale evening light moved
down a trail away from the clearing. Gannon noticed the awkward
duck-walk peculiar to all Cuban-trained combat troops. They pivoted
their entire bodies from side to side, their weapons ready to fire.

The lone Irishman knelt beside the dead bodies and tore the unit
insignias off two of their uniforms. He stuffed them into a pocket of
his fatigue jacket and set out on the trail to close the distance
between him and his teammates. He got no more than a few steps before
Gannon's arm swept out of a thicket of twisted vines and heavy brush. He
cupped a hand over the Irishman's mouth and swiftly pulled him out of
sight. The only sound had been the rustle of the brush, which had gone
completely unnoticed by the retreating team, now nearly out of sight.
The startled man ceased struggling when he felt the razor-sharp edge of
cold steel on his neck.

"Make a sound and I'll slit your throat," Gannon whispered into his ear.

Boos forced the frightened man's mouth open and stuffed in a rag, which
he secured with a bandanna tied around his head. With the prisoner's
hands bound behind his back, Gannon marched him away from the clearing
with the barrel of his CAR-15 planted firmly at the base of his skull.

Gannon shoved the Irishman to the ground as the team stopped at the base
of a hill where the terrain was flat and covered with thick brush. A
golden patchwork of maize and tobacco fields spread outward across a
valley and halfway up the surrounding hills to the edge of the jungle.
Directly across from them was the run-down farm of a campesino who was
part of Santana's intelligence network.

Santana removed the binoculars from his rucksack and studied the scene
around the farm. He watched for anything out of the ordinary, and in
particular for the placement of a hoe with a broken handle by the fence
gate near the barn--a signal that would warn him it was not safe to
approach. The hoe was not in sight.

The campesino who worked the farm had once produced a substantial
tobacco crop, only to have it confiscated by Sandinista officials, who
issued him a ration card with which to draw food from a
government-controlled storehouse that seldom provided the basic
necessities without at least a few weeks wait. His tobacco was sent to
the Soviet Union, along with sugarcane and coffee, to pay for weapons.
Like most of the campesinos, he had been an easy recruit to the Contra
cause.

Santana observed him in the failing light: he was tilling a small
vegetable garden beside an unpainted, dilapidated shack that housed him
and his family. The shack, made of scraps of wood and tin, was built on
stilts for protection against the flash floods that came with the rainy
season. Ragged, faded clothes hung from a line strung across one end of
a rickety thatched-roof porch, while the man's wife lay in a hammock
made of corn sacks that was stretched across the opposite end. She was
watching two naked children play with a deflated ball in the dusty patch
of ground in front of the shack. Pigs roamed the yard, where raw sewage
ran in rivulets down the hill from the outhouse.

Behind him Santana heard and then saw the approach of the six men he had
left behind to strip the dead Sandinistas and the Spetsnaz team of their
weapons and equipment. The men were loaded down with assault rifles,
ammunition pouches, silenced pistols, spring-blade knives, hand
grenades, night-vision optics, and everything of military value the
soldiers had carried, including their rucksacks and personal effects.

With the return of the six men, Santana left his place of concealment.
He warily approached the farm along a hedgerow between two fields.
Gannon followed, keeping the prisoner under close guard at his side,
while Boos and the rest of the team stayed ten yards apart, their
weapons covering all points of the compass as they crossed the open
area. Three emaciated, mangy dogs ran from beneath the shack and
stopped at the edge of the field, barking at the sight of the strangers.
The campesino looked up from his work and, recognizing Santana, came to
greet him. The dogs gathered around, jumping and twirling in hopes of
getting a few scraps of food.

Despite his outward appearance, there was a quiet dignity in the scrawny
campesino's bearing. His trousers were torn and tattered, buttons were
missing from his faded, almost threadbare shirt, but he held himself
erect and looked directly into Santana's eyes as he spoke. His wife,
dressed in a patched and stained shapeless shift, got out of the hammock
and watched; she stood silently for a few minutes while her husband
talked to Santana and led him toward a long tobacco barn with slatted
walls.

Her eyes were fixed on the Yanqui, who was bound and gagged. As Santana
led the team past the shack the naked little girl stopped kicking the
deflated ball and smiled at Gannon, revealing the black edges of
decaying teeth.

Gannon glanced at the silent mother's deformed feet, then at her stoic
expression.

"Piris," Snake said as he noticed Gannon's questioning gaze. "They
pulled out her toenails, then smashed her feet with rifle butts. She
told them nothing."

Once inside the tobacco barn, the campesino lighted two kerosene lamps
hanging from the rafters. He nodded to Santana and silently left.

Santana grabbed the Irishman, pulled the gag from his mouth, and dragged
him by the scruff of his neck to an old wooden chair, forcefully shoving
him into a sitting position.

"What's your name?" he asked the Irishman, who was now collected enough
to flash a cocky grin.

"Gallagher," he said. "And that's all the information you'll be
getting' from me."

Santana struck him with a vicious backhanded blow that brought tears to
Gallagher's eyes and a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. He
still managed a confident smirk.

"I want the location of the training camp your Russian friends set up
for you and your buddies."
Gallagher grinned and said nothing.

Santana drove a fist solidly into Gallagher's stomach, eliciting a loud
grunt and sudden expulsion of air. The Irishman gasped for breath, but
again said nothing.

"Where's the camp?" Santana repeated as he delivered another powerful
blow. This time to the man's kidney.

Gallagher doubled up and groaned in pain, but still remained silent.

Gannon sat on his heels in a corner of the barn, studying the Irishman's
face. In his twenties, tall and handsome, with deep blue eyes and a
strong chin. A ladies' man, Gannon guessed.

Santana approached Gannon and squatted down beside him. "This guy
presents a problem, Gannon," Santana said in a low voice. "If I had a
hand generator and the better part of a day, with a little electrical
interrogation I could make him tell us everything he knows and then
some. But this clown's smart enough to know he'll go unconscious from
the beatings soon enough or get to the point where the pain doesn't make
any difference. I've heard they teach them that shit at the camp."

Gannon continued to stare at Gallagher. The Irishman was grinning
again, sure of himself, confident he could take whatever was coming
next. Gannon's eyes hardened into a steady glare. The terrible image
of Kate's battered, swollen face as she lay on the stainlesssteel table
in the morgue elevator kept superimposing itself over the face of the
man in the chair.

"Strip him to his shorts," Gannon said coldly, and got slowly to his
feet. "Then tie his hands and legs to the chair."

Santana ordered Snake and Claudio to strip and bind the Irishman
securely to the chair. Gallagher's eyes were fixed on Gannon as he
walked toward him. "Gannon is it?" Gallagher said. "Then it's Irish
you are. One of us."

Gannon's voice was deadly calm. "No," he said. "I'm an American. My
grandparents came from County Monaghan, but they weren't cowardly sneaks
and murderers like your lot."

"The 'troubles' weren't of our making', Mr. Gannon. The cause is just,"
Gallagher said.

"The cause is an excuse for simpleminded psychopaths who enjoy killing
innocent people in the name of the 'old sod,'" Gannon said. He remained
silent for a moment, then added, "Are you familiar with the term
O.B.E.?"

Gallagher shook his head. "Can't say that I am."

"It means "Overtaken by Events,'" Gannon went on, his voice still flat,
his eyes hard and penetrating. "It's a military term applied to
intelligence information that will be useless after a certain period of
time."

"You'll not be getting' any information from me, Mr. Gannon, O.B.E. or
not."

"Your pals are going to realize you're missing, if they haven't
already," Gannon said. "They'll send a patrol back to the ambush site
to look for you. They might even think you were hit by a stray round.
But they're going to find that the Russians and the Sandinistas have
been stripped of their gear, and they'll put two and two together and
realize what's happened. So," Gannon said, looking at his watch, "in
about another two hours the information concerning the location of your
camp will be O.B.E. They'll relocate the minute the patrol gets back
and reports what they've found."

"Two hours or two days, Mr. Gannon," Gallagher said. "The results will
be the same. I have nothin' to tell ya."

Gannon's face smiled but his eyes didn't. The chilling effect was not
lost on the Irishman. It caused his cocky grin to lose some of its
believability.

"You a tough guy, Gallagher?" Gannon said. "Tough enough."

Gannon smiled the nonsmile again and nodded. He turned and walked over
to where Snake and Tigrillo were carrying the confiszcated Russian and
Sandinista weapons and equipment down through a trapdoor into a hidden
storage room excavated from beneath the floor of the barn.

"Do you have any time fuse?" Gannon asked Snake, who quickly confirmed
that he did. "And I'll need two nonelectric blasting caps, some army
green tape, and an igniter for the fuse."

"No igniter," Snake said. "Broke."

"Then get me a handful of stick matches." Snake nodded and disappeared
into the subterranean cavern. Gannon walked over to Santana and said,
"Just stand back and let me do this without interruption."

291The look on Gannon's face gave even Santana pause. "What do you have
in mind?"

"We've all got a darkness inside us," Gannon said in an icy monotone. "I
thought I'd buried mine for good after "Nam."

Without any further explanation Gannon walked over and stood in front of
Gallagher. Picking up the gag that had been used previously, he roughly
forced open Gallagher's mouth and stuffed it inside. Snake arrived with
the items Gannon had asked for and put them on the floor beside him, his
curious golden eyes staring at Gannon's calm but menacing expression as
he stood back to watch what the hard-looking Yanqui was up to.

Gannon cut a strip from the roll of army green tape and stretched it
across Gallagher's mouth to hold the gag in place. From the spool of
time fuse he cut off a two-foot length, which, along with one of the
nonelectric blasting caps and three stick matches, he took to a wooden
workbench set against the far wall of the barn.

All eyes were on Gannon as he tapped a small amount of black powder from
one end of the cut fuse and broke off two match heads, packing them
inside the fuse. Crimping the other end of the fuse to the nonelectric
blasting cap, he taped the cap to the three-inch-thick leg of the bench.
With the third match he lighted the match heads inside the fuse, thereby
providing enough concentrated heat to start the fuse without the use of
an igniter. He stood back and watched the sweep hand on his watch.
Exactly twenty seconds later the blasting cap exploded, blowing the
thick leg off the workbench as though it were a twig.

He walked back over to Gallagher. "The fuse burns at the rate of one
foot every ten seconds. Put it to memory. That little piece of
information is going to become very important to you."

Gallagher stared at the shattered bench leg, signs of the brave front
draining from his once-defiant Irish eyes.

Gannon began unraveling the spool of quarter-inch-thick time fuse. He
wrapped it in evenly spaced coils, four to five inches apart, around
Gallagher's body. He started at his right ankle, continued up around
his thigh, around the back of the chair to his right wrist and arm, up
and around his neck, and down his left arm and leg. At Gallagher's left
ankle Gannon measured out another four feet of fuse, cut it from the
spool, and crimped the other nonelectric blasting cap to the end.
Dropping to one knee in front of the chair, he taped the blasting cap to
the seat of the chair directly beneath the Irishman's genitals.

Gannon stood up and faced the man, whose full attention he now had.
"There's eighteen feet of time fuse wrapped around your body. At a burn
speed of ten seconds per foot, that gives you exactly three minutes from
the time I light the fuse until you've got a serious problem on your
hands."

A muffled, unintelligible protest came from Gallagher's mouth; his eyes
were now terror-stricken.

"Believe me," Gannon said without emotion, "they will be the longest,
most painful three minutes of your young life."

Pointing to Claudio, he added, "That man's the team medic. He'll stop
your bleeding and I'll personally make sure you get to a hospital. The
bottom line being, Mr. Gallagher, you will live a long, uneventful life
looking like an Irish zebra without any balls and with a prosthesis
between your legs that's good only for taking a piss."

Another muffled sound, this time longer in duration, came through the
tape covering Gallagher's mouth. His face was red with rage, the veins
in his head throbbing as he struggled to make his epithets understood.

Gannon got the terrain map from Santana and spread it out on the floor
at Gallagher's feet. "It's your call, tough guy. I personally don't
care one way or the other. I'll find your camp sooner or later. But for
you, my Provo friend, it's now or never. Just nod your head when you're
ready to give me what I want."

Gannon again dropped to one knee in front of the chair. He purposely
prolonged the process of packing the match heads into the end of the
fuse that began at Gallagher's right ankle. He struck a match, paused,
then brought it close to the fuse. "Say when, tough guy.

The match heads inside the fuse flared and the powder ignited and
burned. Gallagher's entire body stiffened and his back arched in a
violent spastic motion that rocked the chair backward to the point where
Gannon had to steady it to keep it from falling over. The green
rubberized covering on the exterior of the fuse bubbled from the intense
heat and a gray-white plume of smoke rose in a spiral. Gallagher's leg
tightened and twitched in pain. The smell of smoke from the powder
mixed with that of burning flesh. The fuse burned through all three
layers of skin and partway into the underlying tissue as it worked its
way around the shin and on toward the knee.

Gallagher's muffled screams shook his entire body. His eyes watered and
his face was distorted from the strain of attempting to overcome the
intense pain. Gannon was close enough to hear the Irishman gnash his
teeth in an attempt to take his mind off the agony of his tortured
flesh.

Snake's fear-filled eyes looked at Santana, who seemed mesmerized by
what he was watching. Santana, while with the Phoenix Program, had seen
any number of interrogations in the small isolated buildings to be found
inside the Embassy House compounds in the provinces of South Vietnam.
Some techniques had been more brutal and vicious, but he had never seen
any with such prolonged, calculated torment or as diabolical and
psychologically terrifying. The entire team was transfixed by the sheer
horror on Gallagher's face, his eyes, wild, bloodshot, bulging. Even
Boos, who was no stranger to field interrogations, winced at the muffled
screams and the uncontrolled spasms that rattled Gallagher's body.

Gannon stood off to one side of the chair, his face impassive. He saw
the first sign that Gallagher was losing the will to resist. The fuse
had burned halfway up his right thigh when he made eye contact with
Gannon. Gannon stepped in front of the chair. The spiral band of
burned flesh was now spreading upward toward the groin, where it would
then offer a brief respite as contact with Gallagher's body was broken
until it burned down the length of fuse that ran behind the chair before
continuing up his right arm.

Gallagher went limp as the burning fuse bypassed his body and worked its
way around the back of the chair. One of the intended effects in having
lengths of fuse burn away from the body, giving the victim relief, was
that it made the thought of having it all begin again that much more
horrible.

Gallagher nodded his head vigorously, his eyes pleading with Gannon.
Gannon pretended not to understand. Gallagher's muffled shouts and
thrashing increased as he felt the heat of the burning fuse approach his
right wrist. Gannon pulled the knife from the scabbard on his harness
and cut the fuse just as it was about to begin burning flesh again. It
had been exactly forty-eight seconds since Gannon had lighted the fuse.
To Gallagher it had been a lifetime, an experience he would never
forget--the permanent spiral burn scars on his right leg serving as a
constant reminder.

An atmosphere thick with the tension of every man's worst nightmare left
the room as though driven out by a strong wind. Santana and each of his
men seemed relieved that they had not had to see the outcome if the
Irishman had not broken.

Gannon pulled the tape from Gallagher's mouth, the strong adhesive
abrading a layer of skin as it came off. Gallagher spat out the gag,
breathing in and exhaling huge gulps of air.

"You're an inhuman bloody bastard!" he shouted at Gannon, his voice
cracking with hysteria.

Gannon didn't respond. He simply reached into his pocket and pulled out
three more stick matches, holding them in front of Gallagher's face.
Nothing needed to be said.

"All right," Gallagher said. "All right."

Gannon moved behind the chair and cut the ropes binding Gallagher's
hands and feet. He picked up the map and, saying nothing, put it in the
now acquiescent Irishman's lap.

Gallagher studied the map for a few moments, then pointed out the
location of the camp.

Santana looked over Gannon's shoulder and smiled. "I know the area. We
can be there in less than an hour."

"Where do you post your perimeter security?" Gannon asked. Gallagher
pointed out the various positions where the guards were posted.

"Is Nikolai Malik at the camp?"

Gallagher's face expressed his surprise that Gannon knew of the
secretive KGB agent of whom he knew next to nothing. "Yes. He arrived
three days ago."

"Where are his quarters?"

"He has a small hut on the west side of the camp, closest to the river."

"What are his immediate plans?" Gannon asked.

Gallagher shrugged. "All I know is that one of the teams in training is
to provide support for a special mission he has planned within the next
two days. I know none of the details."

Gannon pulled Gallagher to his feet. "If you've lied to me, I'll be
back. And the next time there'll only be enough fuse to allow me to get
out of the way after I light it. Do I make myself clear?"

Gallagher nodded his head vigorously, all signs of resistance gone.

"Tie him up and put him down in the storage area until we get back,"
Santana said.

A few moments later Snake and Claudio locked the trapdoor and pulled the
tobacco drying racks back into place, hiding any trace of the entrance
to their secret cache ...  and their prisoner.

"Where did you learn that little trick?" Santana finally asked Gannon,
seeing that his expression was once again relaxed.

"From a man who knew how to get exactly what he wanted when he wanted
it," Gannon said. "He was the most malignant sociopath I'd ever met,
but the best goddamn field interrogator in Vietnam, if not all of
Southeast Asia. Never saw anyone hold out past the neck."

Boos looked at the map; his finger traced a route along the coastline.
The camp lay only a few hundred yards from the banks of a tributary of
the Punta Gorda River. The coastline of the Caribbean Sea was only four
miles east of the camp.

"Set up your radio," he told Santana. "I want Maria to move the Cheetah
down the coast to about here." He pointed to a cove almost due east of
the terrorist training camp. "Once we hit that camp whoever else is in
the area is going to come down on us in a hurry. I don't want to have
to hump that Saydum back over the terrain we just crossed, not with half
the fuckin' Sandinista Army on our asses."

"The Company's going to pick up your transmission," Santana warned.

"Considering the stakes, something tells me they've got assets in the
area," Boos said. "The sooner we turn the weapon over to them, the
happier I'll be. If they're listening in, I think I can give them
enough to find us without giving our position away to the Sandinistas."

Maria Padron sat in the Cheetah's forward cockpit, the M-203 at her side
and Clyde roosting on her shoulder, his head turned back into his wing.
Her eyes moved slowly from the entrance to the hidden bay, along the
shoreline and back in a near constant vigil. A light breeze had picked
up, but the seas were still calm and the night bright and crystal clear.
The sudden increased volume of the static hiss from the radio, followed
by Boos's voice, startled her from her thoughts and Clyde from his
sleep.

"Winch Ape, this is Coon Ass. Do you copy?" His voice was loud and
clear and could be heard on deck.

Maria quickly put Clyde on his perch, and grabbing the overhead support,
she swung agilely down into the main salon and ran over to the
navigation station. She grabbed the microphone and keyed it. "I copy,"
she said. "What is your situation?"

"I want you to move the boat."

Maria stared blankly at the microphone. There was a prolonged silence.

"Acknowledge, Winch Ape," Boos came back.

"By myself?" Maria said.

"Yes, you can do it."

"How far?"

"Precisely twelve point five miles south of your present position.
You'll have to motor all the way," Boos said, knowing it would be
impossible for Maria to sail the boat at night by herself. "The water
is deep enough if you stay equidistant between the reef and the shore."

Boos paused for a moment, then added, "Do not under any circumstances
attempt to go back through the channel we used to pass through the
reef."

Maria's brow furrowed--that was the last thing she would attempt to do
without Boos on board. "I might be a little crazy, Coon Ass, but I'm
not stupid."

"Understood," Boos said. "Remember, exactly twelve point five miles and
stay equidistant from the beach and the reef."

"I copy. Will motor twelve point five miles south from present
position."

"Good luck," Boos said. "Out."

Maria studied the charts before going back on deck. She found where
twelve and one half miles would place her on the coastline, a sheltered
anchorage with the closest inhabited area of any size being San Juan del
Norte, a small Nicaraguan port town at the mouth of the San Juan River
that had once served as a haven for Henry Morgan, the
seventeenth-century British pirate. It was eighteen miles farther
south, with nothing but tiny isolated fishing villages in between.

"Whatcha doing'?" Clyde said as Maria came back on deck. "Good boy.
Whatcha doing'?"

"Not now, Clyde," Maria said, and glanced about the Cheetah. After
returning in the dinghy from taking Gannon and Boos ashore, she had
furled in the mainsail, made up the lines, and readied the boat for a
quick departure. She went over in her mind the procedures and the
timing necessary for what she was about to do, then set about doing it.

She went to the steering cockpit and pulled the dinghy in close to the
boat, securing the line to keep it from getting tangled in the
propeller. She started the engine and left it in the neutral position
as she ran up to the bow and engaged the electric windlass, pulling the
anchor chain in and the Cheetah forward to where it was directly over
the anchor.

She stopped the electric windlass and ran back to the steering cockpit
and put the engine in gear, with just enough throttle to take the
Cheetah out over the anchor to free it. She then put the engine back in
neutral, ran forward, and again engaged the electric windlass to haul
the anchor up into the anchor chock.

Back in the steering cockpit, she put the Cheetah in gear and added
power to keep the boat from being blown into shore as she steered it out
of the bay and into the deep-water channel that ran between the reef and
the beach. She briefly put the boat on autopilot and went forward once
again, just to make certain the anchor was secure in the chock before
returning to the helm and disengaging the autopilot.

The Cheetah cruised along at an easy six knots. Maria was thankful for
the full moon as her eyes constantly moved from the palm trees onshore
to the water breaking on the reef to the fathometer on the instrument
cluster in the steering cockpit. She had memorized the prominent
landmarks that would tell her when she had reached her destination and
relaxed a little, hoping there were no hidden coral heads or other
unpleasant surprises awaiting her along the unfamiliar route.

 ... 
The Cam Craft and the two Piranhas were anchored in the secluded cove in
which the Cheetah had hidden prior to contacting Santana. Driscoll and
Travis had a chart spread open on the bridge. The captain of the Cam
Craft stood beside them.

"He told her not to attempt to go back through the channel they took
through the reef," Travis repeated. "There was no need to tell her
that. Boos had to know we'd be monitoring any transmission and he's
trying to tell us where he's moved the Cheetah."

The Honduran naval officer studied the chart, then put his finger on a
section of the reef. "This is the only opening with water deep enough
for a yacht that size to get inside the reef," he said confidently.
Measuring off twelve and a half miles from the point where the
deep-water channel wound its way through the reef, he pointed to a
sheltered anchorage approximately eighteen miles north of San Juan del
Norte. "This is where the Cheetah is going. I am certain of it."

"How long will it take us to reach it?" Driscoll asked.

"Only a little more than an hour," the captain said. "Maybe less."

"Then let's haul ass," Driscoll said.

The Cam Craft's diesels roared to life, followed shortly by the
higher-pitched sounds of the outboards on the Piranhas. The three
heavily armed patrol boats moved quickly out of the cove into the open
sea and headed due south, no longer bothering to stay outside the range
of Nicaragua's mostly ineffectual coastal radar as they sped along only
six miles offshore.

 ... 
Tigrillo moved silently through the deep shadows, avoiding the bright
silver-green patches where moonlight shone through the openings in the
triple-canopy jungle. The scent of rotting logs and earth hung heavy in
the night air. Broad-leaved plants brushed softly against his thighs as
he carefully parted the tangled waisthigh scrub and thick strands of
twisted vines that hung from every tree. The jungle was as dense as any
Tigrillo had ever stalked, slowing his progress around the perimeter of
the camp. Yet, despite the heavy cover, he had crept close enough to
kill three of the guards instantly with a single shot angled upward from
the base of the skull with his silenced 9mm pistol.

He completed his reconnaissance of the perimeter nearest to the river
and began to work his way toward the far side of the camp. A stiff
breeze coming down off the hills rustled the leaves and helped mask his
movement. He crouched low and froze in position at the crack of a twig,
followed by the sound of a man clearing his throat just ahead. He
slowly lowered his silhouette until he was kneeling in the thick
underbrush. A shadow moved in his direction; a man was hitching up his
pants, having just relieved himself. Tigrillo lay directly in his path.

Rising slowly to his feet, Tigrillo stood behind the trunk of a huge
mahogany tree and waited for the man to come abreast of his position.
The sound of footsteps drew closer and Tigrillo held the silenced
semiautomatic pistol at his side. The footsteps stopped, and after the
sound of a zipper being pulled up, they started again. The man passed
by unaware of Tigrillo's presence.

Stepping from behind the tree, Tigrillo placed the tip of the sound
suppressor at the base of the man's skull and pulled the trigger. The
only sound was the hammer dropping. The round in the chamber did not
fire.

The startled man tried to spin around, but Tigrillo reacted instantly.
He dropped the pistol and clamped one arm across the man's throat in a
powerful choke hold that kept him from crying out. Tigrillo kicked him
in the back of the knee, and as he stumbled backward he drove his
shoulder into the back of the man's head and leapt off the ground. They
both fell simultaneously, the man's back and Tigrillo's stomach hitting
the ground at the same time. With Tigrillo's arm tight across the man's
throat and under his chin, acting as the fulcrum, the force of his body
weight and his leverage snapped the man's neck.

The brief struggle was heard by the perimeter guard Tigrillo had been
stalking. He began firing blindly into the jungle. The rounds came
nowhere near Tigrillo, but the damage had been done, the element of
surprise was gone.

The frightened guard's tracer rounds streamed through the darkness,
giving away his exact position. Tigrillo quickly unslung his AK-47 and
killed the man before moving away from the area and back to where
Santana and the rest of the team were set up for the attack on the camp.

 ... 
Nikolai Malik rolled out of his hammock when the bursts of
automatic-weapons fire shattered the silence of the jungle night. He
was rattled for a brief moment, puzzled by the unexpected attack, then
grabbed his submachine gun and ran to the window that looked toward the
main part of the camp.

Santana had assigned positions around the perimeter. The first order of
business was to take out the communications shack the moment the assault
began. With the premature shots coming from the rear of the camp,
Santana wasted no time. He braced himself against a tree, shouldered a
rocket-propelled grenade launcher--a Soviet-made RPG-7-and turned
briefly to make certain no one was within range of the back blast. He
sighted in on the roof, alive with antennas, cocked the hammer at the
rear of the trigger-housing handgrip, and squeezed the trigger. The
85mm high-explosive rocket roared from the launcher with a loud
whooshing sound. It left a fiery tail behind as it streaked toward its
target. Impacting in the side of the communications shack, the rocket
first penetrated, then erupted into a powerful flash of orange-white
light that blew the structure apart, leaving nothing but small fires of
scattered thatch that had once been part of the roof.

At the sound of Tigrillo's and the guard's automatic-weapons fire and
the explosion of the RPG, men dived out of hammocks strung beneath
open-sided shelters and grabbed their weapons, running in all
directions, seeking cover from the unseen attackers. Never drilled for
a defense of the camp, they had no plan for a coordinated counterattack.

Santana's men opened up, cutting down twelve of the trainees and three
instructors who had scrambled out of a hut. Tigrillo, now at Santana's
side, fired the LAW he was carrying into another of the huts, blowing
out two of the walls and caving in the thatched roof. As Santana had
taught him, he then fired his AK-47 on full automatic in crossing arcs,
cutting down four more instructors as they ran from the burning hut.

No longer in doubt about the force of the attack, Malik left the window
and quickly removed the SADM's lock-secure cover. He stared briefly at
the interior arming mechanism, took a deep breath to steady himself, and
made his decision. If he was to be killed or captured, he was
determined that his mission would not fail, though the plan would be
somewhat altered. He carefully removed the Explosive Wave Generator
from the Safe Well, placed it into the Arm Well, and gently lowered it
until the sensitive transducer plate on the base made contact with the
Arm-Well locking cams.

Outside, the camp and surrounding jungle had erupted into a succession
of powerful explosions from the LAWS and grenade launchers that
Santana's men were firing into the camp structures and areas where some
of the trainees had taken cover. Bursts of automatic-weapons fire were
now being returned as the remaining instructors rallied their men into
defensive positions and instilled a semblance of fire discipline.
Santana reloaded his RPG-7, took deadly aim, and the supply shack
exploded into a fireball, setting off secondary explosions from crates
of ammunition that sent towers of flame shooting up into the jungle
canopy.

Removed from the immediate area of the firefight, Malik paused to stare
at the clock-setting knobs on the SADM. He wiped the perspiration from
his forehead and, after another deep breath, set the timers. There was
a grim smile on his face as he quickly, methodically put the lock-secure
cover back in place and gave the combination dial a spin before he
slipped the SADM back inside its nylon bag and into the jump container,
which he then reattached to its pack tray. With an anxious look in the
direction of the main part of the camp, he grabbed his submachine gun,
slipped the pack tray over his shoulders, and moved to the back of the
hut. The sounds of the raging battle covered the noise of the three
powerful kicks he used to knock a large hole in the thatch and wood rear
wall. Once outside, he disappeared into the jungle.

Snake and Claudio had taken three men down near the tall grass by the
river's edge to set up an ambush for any reinforcements that might come
from that direction. Gannon and Boos were positioned outside of Malik's
hut. Their plan was to rush the hut, using neither Boos's grenade
launcher nor firing any weapons until they located the SADM.

"Ready?" Gannon said.

"Ready," Boos replied, standing off to one side of the door to Malik's
hut.

Gannon raised his foot and kicked in the door, immediately diving inside
and rolling into a kneeling position, his weapon ready to fire. Boos
rushed in right behind him. One look at the hole in the rear wall and
they knew Malik had escaped. Gannon motioned in the direction of the
river, considering it the most likely avenue of escape.

Snake and Claudio and the three men they had taken with them to secure
the approach from the river were set up in a point ambush--a tactic most
effective in wooded jungle terrain when the attacking force is less than
forty feet away from the killing zone. The five men were good at what
they did. The element of surprise would allow them to seize and control
the situation: deliver coordinated fire into the killing zone, isolate
the attackers, and prevent escape or reinforcements. If the attacking
forces became overwhelming, they were prepared for a coordinated
withdrawal from the ambush site, using a visual and audio signaling
system among themselves and then a walkie-talkie to establish a
rendezvous point with Santana once the attack was over.

Snake was the first to hear the low, powerful throb of diesel engines
coming up the river. Claudio, lying nearby, heard them too. He cast a
knowing glance at Snake, who settled in behind his M-60 machine gun and
made certain the ammunition coiled inside his pack had an unobstructed
route to the gun. Two of the other men had set up claymore mines along
the trail leading from the river to the camp to cover their withdrawal
if necessary. They lay in position, the clacker detonators for the
antipersonnel mines held in their hands. The third man, crouched beside
Claudio, had preregistered the 60mm mortar along the most likely avenue
of approach, laying the six rounds he had at his side.

Gannon and Boos heard the sound of the diesel engines too. They picked
up their pace, afraid that Malik was headed for the patrol boat. Making
no attempt to cover the noise of their advance, they ran through the
thick jungle vegetation, swatting at overhanging branches and trailing
vines. Then Boos caught sight of someone up ahead, moving swiftly in a
zigzag motion but headed in the general direction of the river.

He ignored Gannon's warning to slow down and picked up his pace to a
near flat-out sprint and began closing the distance. Bringing his
CAR-15 up into firing position, he raked the area in front of him,
firing off an entire magazine and reloading on the run. He was still
gaining ground on the man ahead of him and could now clearly see that he
was carrying a pack tray with a cylinder-shaped container strapped to
it.

Malik, aware that with the SADM he could not outrun the man firing and
advancing on him, ducked off the narrow trail and tucked his submachine
gun into his shoulder. Moments later Boos appeared, charging with wild
abandon through the thick brush. Malik fired two three-shot bursts and
watched as Boos tumbled head over heels to the ground and lay
motionless.

Malik jumped to his feet and continued running toward the river. The
noise behind indicated someone else was still chasing him but was not
close enough to make a target of him.

Gannon raced to where he had heard the shots, knowing by the sound that
they had not been fired by a CAR-15 and fearing the worst. He saw Boos
lying just ahead. He knelt at his side and cradled him in his arms.
There were two holes where rounds had entered Boos's head just below the
eye at an upward angle. His eyes were rolled back, with only the whites
visible. The wet, sticky mess Gannon felt oozing onto his hands as he
held his friend's head told him all he needed to know. The back of
Boos's head was completely blown apart.

"You crazy coon-ass son of a bitch," he said, the tears welling in his
eyes. "You crazy son of a bitch," he repeated, and rocked him in his
arms. "I told you to slow down. Goddamnit!"

Gannon regained his composure by focusing on his reinforced hatred of
Malik. He gently lowered Boos's head to the ground, then ran in the
direction of the river, where he could hear the boat drawing closer and
the sound of someone thrashing through the underbrush.

From behind him Gannon heard the tempo of the firefight at the camp
increase. The staccato roar of machine guns and the chatter of assault
rifles, mixed with the explosions of rockets and grenades, echoed off
the nearby hills, carrying for miles down the river and out over the
countryside. Gannon ran straight for the river, hoping to reach the
shore before Malik, cut him off, and get a clear shot before he could
reach the boat. And then he saw him.

Malik's pace had slowed considerably; he had tripped on an exposed root
and twisted his ankle. With the injury and the added weight of the
SADM, he was moving at little more than a jog. The jungle was thinning
out as it approached the riverbank and Gannon saw a chance for a shot.
He dropped to one knee, squeezed off a burst from his CAR-15, and saw
Malik stumble and fall to the ground fifteen yards ahead.

Malik felt a wave of pain and dizziness sweep over him, but he fought it
off and crawled into a dense thicket. He made a cursory examination of
his wound by probing the hole in his fatigue shirt with his finger. He
was relieved to find that it was only a flesh wound, the bullet having
passed through his upper arm and out the other side without hitting the
bone. His eyes immediately swept the area where he had fallen, looking
for the SADM pack tray. It lay only six feet away, but to get to it he
would have to crawl into an open area. He could no longer hear the
hurried advance of the man who had shot him and reasoned that whoever it
was, was now approaching cautiously, closing in for the kill.

Gannon saw the SADM and again dropped to one knee. He scanned the
shadows where the jungle thinned out near the river's edge. As he moved
toward it a thundering noise caused him to dive back under cover. A
huge seventy-foot Sandinista patrol boat roared past close to the bank,
then backed off on its engines as it maneuvered into shore. The deck of
the boat was crowded with troops. Gannon estimated the reinforcements
at thirty or forty men, probably from the outpost five miles down river
that Santana had mentioned.

The volume of fire that broke loose on the riverbank, twenty yards away
on Gannon's right flank, was deafening. Snake and Claudio had triggered
their ambush. The seventy-foot patrol boat unleashed a devastating
barrage of fire from the twin .50-caliber machine guns mounted on her
bow and the pedestal-mounted .30caliber machine gun on her starboard
side. The dense jungle foliage was shredded by the continuous covering
fire as the soldiers prepared to jump ashore.

Trees and scrub were torn up all around Gannon and rounds cracked
overhead. He hugged the ground, unable to move from his prone position
without being shot to pieces. He heard the hollow thump of a mortar
round leaving its tube just off to his right, followed by a loud
explosion and screams of pain as it landed amidships on the seventy-foot
patrol boat, hurling half a dozen men off the deck and into the river.
Another hollow thud and the boat was struck farther aft, blowing away a
part of the stern and sending a storm of shrapnel into a squad of
soldiers waiting to jump ashore.

The Sandinista barrage stopped long enough for Gannon to dash out into
the small grassy area near the bank and pull the SADM pack tray back
under cover at his side. His eyes swept the surrounding area for any
sign of Malik. But nothing moved. He felt certain he had only wounded
him, and judging from the way he had fallen, he suspected the round had
struck him in the arm or the shoulder.

Malik had been applying a tourniquet to the flesh wound on his upper arm
when Gannon had crawled out to get the SADM. He had looked up just in
time to catch a brief glimpse of him as he disappeared back into the
underbrush. Malik knew better than to give away his position by firing
at a target that might already have moved. Instead, he began a slow,
steady crawl to the river. The thought of the SADM now being in the
hands of the Contras made him smile. Before they figured out what they
had it would be far too late.

Gannon slipped the pack tray over his shoulder and began lowcrawling in
the direction he had seen Malik fall. He could hear the ambush off to
his right reaching a crescendo. The Sandinistas resumed laying down
covering fire with their deck guns as twenty or so men rushed ashore
into the hail of fire the ambush team was directing toward them. More
than half of them were cut down by Snake's M-60 as they ran and dived
for cover in the scrub and tall grass.

A smaller boat, a Boston Whaler, carrying only a squad of men, appeared
out of nowhere and pulled into shore. It immediately took a direct hit
from the 60mm mortar that set the stern on fire. The man at the helm
was blown into the river, and the troops that were not wounded or killed
jumped into the water and swam to shore. The abandoned Boston Whaler
continued to burn as the current began taking it back down river.

More than 80 percent of the Sandinista troops on board the boats had
been killed by the deadly attack. Snake and Claudio signaled to the
rest of the ambush team and quickly withdrew to a second defensive
position, using the radio to alert Santana to their situation and the
strength of the Sandinista reinforcements.

Santana had the camp under control. It was now a smoldering ruin with
only a small pocket of resistance remaining. He told Claudio to
withdraw back to the camp, where they could regroup. Snake stayed
behind as Claudio and the rest of the ambush team moved quickly away.
The remaining Sandinistas were now organized and advancing slowly along
the trail that led to the camp. Snake was more than familiar with the
Russian-trained Cuban style of combat the Sandinistas had adopted. It
took three ambushes to neutralize the large numbers of men and mortars
they usually sent: the first a frontal attack, then another at the
middle to take out the officers, and finally one to the rear to take out
the heavy weapons.

At this moment Snake was concerned with only one man, and he spotted him
ten yards in front of the column, leading the Sandinista troops along
the trail. He was a Nicaraguan peasant, a dangerous man with knowledge
of the jungle and of this specific area. To kill him was to slow down
the enemy advance. Snake took aim when the peasant came into full view
and cut him nearly in half with a prolonged burst from the M-60. The
Sandinistas spotted his muzzle blasts and returned fire, but by the time
they did Snake had already crawled off into the jungle and was headed
back to join Claudio and the others.

Gannon rose to his knees behind a rotted deadfall. The rate of fire
from the Sandinista patrol boat had died off now that the troops were
ashore and in pursuit. He had watched them pass by on his right flank,
knowing that they were headed directly into another of Claudio's and
Snake's ambushes. A sudden movement ahead on his left flank
materialized into the crippled boat that had caught fire. It was
drifting back downstream, scraping and bumping along the shoreline. A
column of thick gray smoke rose from her stern. In his peripheral
vision Gannon saw a man silhouetted against the flames. It was Malik,
and he was making a run for the boat as it passed his position.

Gannon got to his feet and gave chase. He closed to within twenty yards
before Malik dived from the riverbank and landed on the bow of the boat
just as it bumped against the shore. Gannon tried desperately to reach
the boat before it drifted back out into midstream, but saw that he
could not possibly make it. He stopped running, dropped to a kneeling
position, and fired at Malik, whose body was half hidden by the smoke
from the fire. The rounds ricocheted off the steering cockpit. Malik
ducked down, gave the engine full throttle, spun the boat around, and
roared off down the river.

Gannon stopped on the bank and continued to fire, even though the boat
had reached a bend in the river, far out of range of the CAR-15. Then
Gannon saw a sudden flash spread across the deck like a napalm strike.
The fire reached the fuel tank, causing a tremendous explosion that blew
the stern completely apart and sent the bow crashing into the bank and
the rest of the boat to the bottom of the river.

Gannon continued to watch the distant river bend to see if Malik had
somehow gotten off the boat before the explosion, but the darkness, the
smoke and debris prevented him from getting a clear view. The explosion
had erupted with such force and spread so quickly, he doubted anyone
could have survived it. Using the walkie-talkie Santana had given him,
Gannon tried to raise someone on the radio. It was Claudio who
responded. He gave Gannon their position, but told him to rejoin
Santana as they continued their rearguard action.

Gannon, the SADM slung over one shoulder, made his way back to the camp,
to find it totally secure. Santana had taken no prisoners. His men had
killed all of the terrorists, instructors, and trainees while suffering
only one casualty to the team--one of the campesinos had taken a round
in the leg, but it had been a clean wound and the man was ambulatory.
Sporadic fire came from the trail leading down to the river. Snake and
Claudio and the three men with them had the remaining Sandinistas pinned
down, their numbers now dwindled to four survivors, who were trying
desperately to get back to the patrol boat rather than continue pursuing
the Contras. Snake waited patiently as he spotted the four men,
crouching low and moving single file, heading for the river. They were
within ten feet of a claymore mine. Having overrun the point where the
mine was placed before it could be triggered, the Sandinistas were now
unknowingly retreating back into the kill zone. Snake waited until the
first two men were a few feet past the claymore, then he squeezed the
detonator. All four men were blown into the air; two of them had the
clothes torn from their bodies and arms and legs severed. When the smoke
cleared, the last of the reinforcements lay dead. Snake signaled to
Claudio, who alerted the rest of the ambush team, and they returned to
the campsite.

Santana's men were scavenging what weapons and supplies they could from
the bodies and debris scattered around the camp when Santana called to
Gannon. "Where's Boos?"

"Dead," Gannon said. "Down near the river."

"The Russian?"

Gannon nodded. "Did you get him?"

"I think he went up in flames when one of the boats exploded," Gannon
said. "But I can't be sure."

Santana called two of his men over and told them to bring Boos's body
back to the camp.

"But you got the Saydum," Santana said, staring at the container as
Gannon lowered the pack tray to the ground. "Yeah, but I need you to
get whoever it is that's monitoring the four-megacycle frequency on the
single sideband. There's something about this that's making me
nervous."

"What's that?"

"Malik gave it up too easy," Gannon said. "He simply made a run for it,
never tried to recover the weapon."

"So?"

"It doesn't make sense for him to back off without a fight, not
unless ..." Gannon quickly undid the straps on the pack tray and removed
the SADM from its container and the nylon bag.

"Shine your light down here," he said to Santana, who unclipped the
flashlight from his harness and aimed the beam at the small observation
window for the Arm Well. Both men stared at each other, their eyes
locked in a mutual expression of both horror and fear.

"The motherfucker's armed!" Santana said. He looked again to make
certain his eyes and the shadows weren't playing tricks on him. The
Explosive Wave Generator was in the Arm Well. The 4.5kiloton nuclear
weapon was indeed armed.

"The clocks?" Santana said. "What are the countdown clocks set for?"

"I have no way of knowing without removing the cover," Gannon said. "And
I can't do that without the combination."

"Who has the combination?" Santana said.

"Malik had to have had it, but whoever has been tracking us down here
has got to have it too."

Santana immediately set up the team radio, dialed in the frequency, and
handed the handset to Gannon.

"Who's your control officer?" he asked Santana.

"Travis," Santana said. "The station chief in Honduras."

"What's his call sign?"

"Nighthawk," Santana replied.

"Get him on the hook, then give him to me."

"I suggest we evacuate the area first," Santana said.

"If my hunch is right, we may not have time," Gannon said.

Santana keyed the microphone. "Nighthawk, this is Sandman. Over."

The Piranhas, and the Cam Craft carrying Travis and Driscoll, were
within fifteen minutes of where Maria had relocated the Cheetah.
Santana's voice could barely be heard above the noise of the diesel
engines as his transmission broke the static hiss on the frequency.

Travis immediately grabbed the microphone from the radio on the bridge
of the Cam Craft and cranked up the volume control.

"Go, Sandman," he said.

"We've got an emergency situation here. I'm going to turn you over to
the man Coon Ass brought in. Code name"--he paused and looked at
Gannon--"code name "Bird Dog,'" he said, using the call sign used by
forward air controllers in Vietnam--men whose skill and extraordinary
courage the reconnaissance teams often depended upon.

Gannon took the handset and keyed the mike. "Nighthawk, I need the
combination for the item we have just recovered. I have reason to
believe that disaster is imminent."

There was a long pause, then Travis replied, "Can not comply, Bird Dog.
That information has the highest classification. Bring the item to us
as quickly as possible and we will handle the emergency."

"I do not believe we have enough time," Gannon said. "I have to get a
look at the clocks."

"Negative, Bird Dog," came the reply from Travis. "I repeat, I can not
comply."

"Then patch me through to someone who can," Gannon shouted into the
mike. "If not, I'll leave the item where it is and evacuate the area
A.S.A.P. We're dealing with a borderline psychopath who's capable of
anything. He would not abandon his mission this easily."

A middle-aged man stepped from behind Travis and took the microphone. It
was the nuclear weapons specialist from the Department of Energy's
Nuclear Emergency Search Team who had been taken on board the Cam Craft
in Honduras. "Sorry, Travis," he said. "It's my show from here on in."

The NEST team commander man had the power and authority to usurp command
in any situation involving a missing nuclear weapon and did just that.

"Bird Dog," the NEST man said. "Are you ready to copy?"

"Ready," Gannon came back immediately. The NEST man read off the
combination, then waited for Gannon to read it back to him. Gannon then
set about dialing in the numbers and removing the cover from the SADM.

"Lock-secure cover removed," Gannon transmitted to the NEST man on the
bridge of the Cam Craft, a nervous edge to his voice that came through
on the other end.

"What do the clocks read?"

"Seven minutes, thirty-eight seconds and counting," Gannon said.

"Son of a bitch," Santana whispered as he looked over Gannon's shoulder.

"Are you prepared to disarm the item?" the NEST man asked.

"Yes," Gannon replied, "but we'll have to cut out the shorthand
conversation because I'm a little rusty at this."

"Roger that," the NEST man said. "Proceed and inform me of each
procedure as you prepare to do it."

Gannon was confident he remembered precisely how to disarm the weapon;
it was a simple yet dangerous process. The clocks could not simply be
reset to zero, stopping the countdown. The weapon had been designed to
prevent anyone from doing that. Conventional explosives could be
attached to the outside of the weapon to destroy it before the nuclear
explosion, but they did not have the right conventional explosives at
hand.

The process was to remove the Explosive Wave Generator from the Arm Well
by giving it a half-turn to release the locking cams at the bottom and
pulling it out of the well, replacing it in the safe well. The problem
lay in the delicate technique of getting it out of the well, a problem
Gannon was immediately reminded of when the NEST man's voice came over
the radio.

"Before you remove the EWG from the Arm Well, you must lubricate the
sides of the well," he said. "If you cause any friction while
withdrawing it, it may cause the electric conductor at the top of the
well to set off the EWG. Do you understand?"

Gannon was already in the process of using a can of gun oil to lubricate
the Arm Well when the NEST man transmitted his warning. That done, he
took the EWG by its handle and slowly began drawing it up out of the
well. The clocks now read three minutes and seven seconds.

Halfway out, the EWG caught against the sides of the well. Gannon
immediately stopped pulling and applied more oil to the sides. The EWG
still didn't budge. He informed the NEST man on the Cam Craft. The
clocks were now at two minutes and forty-three seconds.

"Slowly push it back down into the well and try again," the NEST man
instructed Gannon.

Gannon did, and this time the EWG moved up past the point where it had
previously snagged. Pausing to steady his hands, Gannon brought the EWG
alongside the electric conductor, squirting a liberal dose of oil over
the spot where the conductor would come in contact with the transducer
plate on the base of the EWG. The Explosive Wave Generator cleared the
conductor and came smoothly out of the Arm Well with exactly fifty-six
seconds left on the clock.

"Wait until the clocks are completely wound down before you put the EWG
in the Safe Well," the NEST man advised.

Gannon did, breathing a sigh of relief as a whirring and clicking sound
came from the clock circuitry, transmitting a current to the electrical
conductor at the top of the Arm Well. There was a brief spark at the
tip of the conductor, but with nothing to carry the current forward, the
sequence of events stopped. Gannon placed the Explosive Wave Generator
into the Safe Well and replaced the locksecure cover.

"Good work, Bird Dog." It was Driscoll's voice that came over the
radio. "Now get the item to us as soon as possible. We are in the
immediate area of Winch Ape and have support waiting once you reach the
designated area."

"Let's get that goddamn thing out of here now," Santana said. "I won't
feel comfortable until it's completely out of the realm of possibility
of it falling into that asshole Ortega's hands."

Gannon put the SADM back into its container and shouldered the pack tray
as Santana rounded up his men. They set out on the three-mile trek
through dense jungle to the coastline. The camp they left behind was
littered with bodies, its structures nothing but charred and smoldering
piles of debris.

The two men who had dug a shallow grave and buried Boos showed Santana
and Gannon where he lay at rest. With Boos having no family, Gannon had
made the decision to bury him in the jungle, where he had always been at
his best. He and Santana paused and stared at the fresh mound of earth
covered over with leaves and twigs. They each said their silent
good-byes before moving on.

 ... 
At first Nikolai Malik thought he was dreaming, floating weightless in
the night sky, then his senses began to return. He was floating faceup
in the shallow water at the bank of the river. The sound of the
explosion and the sensation of being thrown into the air were the last
things he remembered. He began to take inventory, moving his
extremities one at a time, finding that they all worked. There was a
dull ache in his upper left arm, but he remembered that it was from the
flesh wound he had received before jumping onto the boat.

He looked about and saw that his shoulders had come to rest on a small
sandbar along the shore, and the rest of his body was floating. He
pulled himself up onto dry land and sat for a moment, then was jolted
back to his full senses at the thought of the SADM. He looked at his
watch. The weapon should have exploded twenty minutes ago. He should
be vaporized, nothing but ashes at the bottom of a crater a mile deep
and twice as wide. He cursed his failure while wondering what had gone
wrong. He tried to assuage the wave of anger and frustration that swept
over him by telling himself that perhaps the clocks were faulty and the
weapon would still detonate. But reason told him that it was more
likely it had fallen into the hands of the Americans, not the Contras,
and was now disarmed.

He got slowly to his feet and found that every muscle in his body ached
as he shuffled away from the grassy bank and into the shadows of the
brush. He heard a helicopter off in the distance, then the sound of
three, possibly four, Nicaraguan patrol boats coming upriver, heading
toward the camp. He didn't even turn to look as he began to make his
way inland through the dense jungle. His mission was over. But there
would be other missions. There were always other missions for men with
his talents.

 ... 
To everyone who served in combat in Vietnam the sound of a helicopter is
one never to be forgotten or mistaken for anything else.

Gannon and Santana heard the familiar sound at the same time. They were
halfway across a bright, moonlit clearing they were forced to use to
avoid a swampy area. The sound of the helicopter was immediately
followed by the crack of automatic-weapons fire a mile or so behind
them, where Claudio and Snake and four other members of the team had set
up an ambush to fight a rearguard action against the Sandinista
reinforcements brought by the three patrol boats that had arrived as the
team left the camp.

The rhythmic beat of the helicopter grew louder as it suddenly appeared
over the crest of the hill at the south end of the grassy clearing. It
was flying map-of-the-earth and dropped even lower as it cleared the
hill and headed for the seven men the pilot saw advancing in a staggered
column.

Santana led the team at a dead run for the mangrove swamp on their right
flank. The Soviet-made MI-8 Hip twin-turbine helicopter was primarily a
troop carrier but was armed with a heavy machine gun and two missile
pods carrying S7mm rockets. Its main weakness was its vulnerable fuel
system. A weakness of which Gannon was well aware.

On its first pass the helicopter strafed the edge of the clearing. Its
heavy machine gun ripped up the grassy turf and cut down two of
Santana's men as they ran for cover. The rotor wash from its massive
blades as it thundered low overhead flattened the knee-high grass when
it pulled into a steep climb and banked into a turn to position itself
for a second pass.

One of the men killed in the strafing run had been loading the team's
Redeye missile launcher when he was gunned down. Gannon ran back into
the clearing and grabbed the launcher. Standing in the open, he
shouldered the weapon and took aim, holding his fire until the
helicopter, which had turned for another pass, was close enough for him
to see the outline of the pilot in the glow of the cockpit lights.
Rounds from the aircraft's machine gun ripped into the ground around
him. He waited until the last possible second, then squeezed the
trigger and sent the surface-to-air missile streaking upward toward its
target.

The helicopter had fired two 57mm rockets a split second before Gannon
fired. They roared overhead, exploding far off target in the jungle
behind him. The Redeye missile struck home, rupturing the fuel tanks
and blowing the helicopter from the sky in a huge fireball. The
crippled aircraft banked into a steep dive and crashed just below the
ridge behind Gannon. A plume of black smoke, marking its point of
impact, rose through the jungle canopy. "Take off," Santana said to
Gannon as he ran back into the mangrove thicket and retrieved the SADM
pack tray. "My men are in some deep shit, I've got to go back and help
them." The sounds of grenade blasts and increased automatic-weapons
fire came from the camp.

"You've got only about a mile and a half to go to the cove where Boos
had the boat moved," Santana said. "The trail at the end of the
clearing will take you directly to it."

Gannon hesitated, looking back in the direction where Santana's men were
engaged in the firefight.

Santana read his thoughts. "I can manage without you, Gannon. Just get
that goddamn nuke out of this country."

Gannon shook Santana's hand. "Thanks for your help."

"No problem," Santana said. "I'll radio Travis that you're on your way.
Now get the fuck out of here."

Swinging the SADM pack tray over one shoulder, Gannon took off at a dog
trot along the edge of the clearing until he reached the trail and
disappeared into the jungle.

Snake and Claudio and four of their teammates had their hands full even
though the line ambush they had set up had worked well enough, killing
the first twenty or so men who had entered the area. Positioned
parallel to the enemy's route of march, the line ambush placed maximum
firepower into the kill zone. The terrain was well suited to the
tactic. Due to natural obstacles, the Sandinistas were forced to travel
in close line-formations, making them vulnerable to attack on their
flanks and disrupting their patrol formations. On the far side of the
kill zone, where, once under attack, the enemy dived for cover, Snake
had set up a line of claymore mines, and two men with grenade launchers
were zeroed in on that area. The ambush team was approximately
twenty-five yards from the kill zone, using aimed fire, which was far
more effective in this situation than full rock 'n' roll.

But the reinforcements were greater than they had anticipated--at least
two companies of crack troops from an elite Sandinista battalion trained
in antiguerrilla warfare by Vietnamese and North Korean military
advisors. Snake and Claudio and the others had settled into a
well-rehearsed fire discipline. They fired three-round bursts at
individual targets of opportunity barely visible in the pale moonlight
that filtered through to the ambush site. Claudio had spotted three tan
Cuban officer's uniforms among the olive green of the Sandinista ranks
and had made it his personal goal to kill all three of them.

Heavy bursts of probing fire ripped through the jungle. No longer
bunched together on the trail, the Sandinistas quickly got out of the
kill zone. They moved effectively over the rough terrain and organized
counterambush tactics while they returned as much suppressing fire as
possible and maneuvered to outflank and surround the ambush team and
form their own assault.

Claudio and Snake were on the verge of being overwhelmed. Enemy mortar
rounds impacted too close for comfort, and a steady stream of
automatic-weapons fire cracked through the brush overhead and thudded
into trees. They both tossed smoke and tear-gas grenades to cover their
withdrawal as their ambush team broke off contact with the Sandinistas
and retreated to a preselected rallying point to be used as a secondary
line of defense.

As he ran along the trail, bringing up the rear, Snake snapped open a
canvas bag that was slung over his shoulder and rested at his hip. It
was full of foot-poppers, deadly Soviet-made antipersonnel mines they
had captured from the Sandinistas. Clay-red, with a hard plastic casing
and a rubber gasket bearing numbers and Russian Cyrillic lettering, the
OTK- I 0 pressure-detonated mine was no larger than a hockey puck, yet
powerful enough to blow the foot or leg off the person who stepped on it
and disable anyone else within a ten-yard radius of the explosion.
Pausing every ten to fifteen yards, Snake quickly armed and placed them
along the trail, covering them with leaves and debris from the jungle
floor.

At the top of a steep rise that overlooked the trail, Snake stopped
where the rest of the team was already positioned. Claudio had set up
the 60mm mortar but had only three rounds left. Two claymores had been
hidden just off the trail at the bottom of the rise, their detonating
wires leading up to the team's position.

There had been no panic on the part of the team, just fast, proficient
actions. They had retreated from cover to cover until they reached the
top of the rise. Their tactics were sound: a guerrilla force maximizes
the number of enemy killed but never holds ground to the last man.
Defensive actions are taken by dropping back to the next line of defense
as soon as the enemy exerts overpowering force.

Snake heard the first of the foot-poppers explode and knew that the
Sandinista advance would now be slowed down while the point man
proceeded with more caution, searching for other mines. A voice came
over the walkie-talkie Snake had clipped to his harness. It was
Santana. He and the other team members were only a hundred yards behind
them, on their way back to reinforce their position.

Gannon stopped running as he saw and heard the ocean through breaks in
the thick jungle terrain. He caught a glimpse of the Cheetah gently
rocking in the shimmering sea forty yards from shore. As he drew closer
to the cove he saw the rubber dinghy pulled partway up onshore and
caught a flicker of movement and what appeared to be a silhouetted
figure in a thicket just in from the beach. He crouched low, circled,
and closed in from behind on the spot where he had seen the movement in
the brush. The silhouette was no longer there. Hit with a sudden blow
to his solar plexus that knocked him backward, he swung his CAR-15 into
position to fire and found himself looking up at the face of Maria
Padron and the barrel of the M-203 pointed at his head. He released the
pressure on the trigger and got to his feet.

"Sorry. Had to be sure who it was," Maria said as she lowered her
weapon. "I heard Santana's radio call to the guy on the boat. I
figured you'd be along soon, so I came ashore to wait." Maria looked
about expectantly, her eyes searching the shadows around them. "Where's
Jim?"

The look on Gannon's face gave her the answer she didn't want to hear.
"Oh, no," Maria said. She started to speak again, but simply shook her
head and turned away.

"It was quick," Gannon said. "He never felt a thing."

Maria made no reply as she stepped out of the jungle and onto the beach.
Gannon followed, loading the SADM pack tray in the small rubber boat.

"What's that?" Maria asked.

"You don't want to know," Gannon said.

"I want to know," Maria demanded. "If it has anything to do with the
reason Jim Boos died, I want to know."

"It's a man-portable nuclear weapon."

"Ours or theirs?"

"Ours."

"Where the hell did you get it?" Maria paused for a brief moment, then
before Gannon could answer said, "Never mind, you're right. I don't
want to know."

Gannon shoved the dinghy out into the surf and jumped aboard as Maria
started the electric motor and headed for the Cheetah. "What did you do
with Jim's body?"

"We buried it in the jungle. It was--"

Maria raised her hand to stop any further explanation. "I didn't even
get a chance to say good-bye," she said softly, more to herself than to
Gannon.

Maria pulled the dinghy alongside the Cheetah and Gannon climbed the
swim ladder, taking the SADM with him. After securing the dinghy Maria
came aboard and paused to look at the SADM container. The thought of
what it represented made her shudder involuntarily.

A sudden roar of powerful engines startled them both as two Piranha
patrol boats entered the cove and sped past the Cheetah, port and
starboard. One stopped and kept its bow pointed toward shore. The
other made a tight showboat turn, spinning around to face the Cheetah,
its .50-caliber machine gun manned and aimed at her deck. The Cam Craft
stayed on station outside the reef, her powerful array of deck guns
trained on the shoreline.

Cutting back on the power, the crew of the Piranha that faced the
Cheetah tossed out fenders and came alongside. Two men Gannon judged to
be Americans boarded the Cheetah; Gannon kept his CAR-15 pointed at
them. Maria did the same with the M-203; the grenade launcher affixed
to the barrel was loaded and ready to fire.

"Gannon," the taller man said, "I'm Tom Driscoll, CIA."

"I've seen you around," Gannon said. "Montego Bay, wasn't it?"

Driscoll smiled sheepishly, then gestured to the man beside him.

"This is Clayton Thomas, Department of Energy Nuclear Emergency Search
Team. He's here to take charge of the item." Driscoll spotted the pack
tray and SADM container on the deck and his eyes fixed on it.

"Not until I see some ID," Gannon said, fully aware of his tenuous
situation. He and Maria didn't stand a chance against the men and
weapons on board the Piranhas.

Both men flashed their identification cards and Thomas immediately went
to the SADM. He opened the container and gave it a complete inspection.

"Good work, Gannon," Thomas said as he handed the SADM over to Travis,
who was waiting on the deck of the Piranha, then jumped back on board
himself and again took possession of the weapon.

"Boos with you?" Travis called from the deck of the Piranha.

"He's dead," Gannon said flatly.

"He was a good man," was all Travis said.

"You Travis?" Gannon asked.

Travis nodded.

"What's Santana's situation?"

The sound of a heavy firefight could be heard in the distance. Bursts
from machine guns, grenades, and mortar rounds echoed out over the hills
and down through the valleys to the coastline.

"It's about to dramatically improve," Travis said with a grin. Driscoll
paused before going back aboard the Piranha. He locked eyes with
Gannon. "You get your man, Gannon?"

Gannon shrugged. "I think so. The boat he was on blew up. Couldn't
verify it."

"Too bad," Driscoll said. "The sick son of a bitch deserved to die
slowly and painfully." He looked at Maria. "These two boats are going
to escort you out of Nicaraguan waters. You'll be in good hands."

"Do you need me on board?" Gannon asked Maria.

"There's no way I can get this back to Montego Bay alone."

"You know I don't know anything about sailing."

"I'll teach you what you need to know."

"Good luck," Driscoll called out as he boarded the Piranha. "Your
country owes you a debt, Gannon, as I'm sure you're aware."

Gannon helped Maria bring the dinghy aboard and prepare the Cheetah for
the passage back to Jamaica. They would motor until out of Nicaragua's
territorial waters, with the Piranhas as outriders, then sail the rest
of the way. The two Piranhas, their drafts shallow enough to allow them
to skim over part of the reef, waited until Maria guided the Cheetah
through the deep-water channel they had marked for her with buoys on
their way in.

Clyde, intimidated by the strangers on board, had sat quietly on his
perch until they were gone and the Cheetah was under way. Ruffling his
feathers, he looked quizzically about the deck. He cocked an eye at
Gannon, then at Maria. "Good boy, Coon Ass," he squawked. "Whatcha
doing', Coon Ass?"

Maria tried to fight back the tears, then turned her head so Gannon
couldn't see them stream down her face.

 ... 
The pounding of rocket-propelled grenades punctuated the rolling
crescendo of machine guns along with the chatter of automaticweapons
fire and explosions from grenade launchers. The sounds of the intense
attack grew to deafening proportions as the main body of the Sandinista
troops coordinated their assault on Santana's position.

The blast effects and shock waves from the Sandinista mortar rounds
fired in rapid succession rippled the ground around Santana and his team
as they lay atop a ridge that overlooked the small valley into which
they had drawn the Sandinista troops. Blast followed blast as the
Sandinistas walked the mortar rounds up the slope toward the top of the
ridge, zeroing in on and bracketing Santana's position. More than a
hundred men were approaching from across the valley, heading for the
ridge, with at least another hundred coming behind them. Santana was
beginning to doubt Travis's word when the voice came over the radio.

It was the AC- 130 Spectre gunship that Travis had called in from the
CIA base in Honduras. "Sandman, this is Spooky," said the pilot of the
gunship. "Turn on your strobe so I can get a fix on your position."

Santana put the small strobe light into the barrel of an M-79 grenade
launcher to prevent any lateral reflections and pointed it upward.

"We're on top of the ridge north of the valley," Santana said. "The bad
guys are all right where you want them."

The Spectre pilot spotted the strobe immediately. "Gotcha, Sandman.
Keep your heads down. It's danger close."

From fifteen hundred feet up the pilot dumped a series of flares that
lit up the valley with an unearthly glow. At least 150 Sandinista
troops were caught out in the open. Once locked on target, the pilot
unleashed the Spectre's awesome firepower. A constant barrage from the
aircraft's computerized gun system, consisting of a 105mm howitzer, a
40mm cannon, two 20mm cannons, and four 7.62mm mini-guns capable of
firing six thousand rounds per minute, devastated the valley floor,
tearing up huge chunks of earth as well as bodies. When the Spectre
completed the first run, spreading its deadly fire over the entire open
area, nothing moved on the valley floor. On its second pass the pilot
directed his fire into the jungle at the far end of the valley, where
the few remaining Sandinista troops had taken cover from the first pass.
Again the ground erupted from the terrifying fusillade that streamed
from the night sky. The leafy canopy was shredded; rocks, debris, and
dismembered bodies were tossed into the air and bounced across the
ground; huge trees were uprooted as though they were mere seedlings.
Within the span of seven minutes the Spectre's attacks had killed an
estimated two hundred troops. The withering fire had been so accurate
and so pervasive that the 150-square-yard valley once covered with
waisthigh grass now looked like newly mown lawn.

"That should do it, Sandman," the pilot said.

"And then some," Santana replied. "I owe you one."

"Travis said to tell you that you owe him three or four."

"Tell him not to press his luck," Santana said. "I'll be in touch.
Out." With that Santana and his team withdrew from the ridge, each man
looking down into the smoking, moonlit valley and the carnage that the
Spectre had left behind. Santana had lost two of his men and a close
friend, but at least two hundred enemy troops had paid with their lives.
It was a kill ratio that would have made even Boos happy, Santana
thought, a sad smile at the corners of his mouth as he looked back in
the direction where his friend lay buried in a shallow jungle grave.

"I'll miss you, you sweet motherfucker," he said just above a whisper.

 ... 
Montego Bay Harbor sparkled beneath the last of a late afternoon sun,
reflecting the shining brilliance of the Caribbean like a sea of
diamonds. A soft breeze drifted in from the ocean. It gently fluttered
the awning over the Cheetah's entertainment cockpit, where Gannon sat
watching the sun hang briefly above the distant mountains before it
dropped slowly below the mainland horizon. The Cheetah had sailed into
Montego Bay that morning and docked at the yacht club. Gannon, his
black-nylon carryall sitting on the deck, was packed and ready to leave
for the airport for his evening flight to Miami. Maria had prepared a
special meal and began handing the plates up through the galley
pass-through. It was a Cuban menu of poached red snapper in a delicate
sauce, with dishes of rice, black beans, and sweet fried plantains.
Maria was as expert a cook as she was at whatever else she put her hand
to.

"It's excellent, Maria," Gannon told her halfway through the meal, but
they had little else to say to each other. Boos's absence was still
tangible. The rough six-day passage back to Montego Bay had given them
little time to think of anything except the tasks at hand. And now,
anchored in the quiet harbor, each fell silent, privately reliving the
times they had shared with a friend they had both admired and loved.

Maria had been particularly upset when she had called the Cheetah's
owner and informed him of Boos's death. He had taken the news as hard
as Maria and told her he would arrive within the week, his concern for
her heightened upon hearing the pain and sorrow in her voice.

"The owner keeps a car here at the club," she said to Gannon after a
long silence. "I'll drive you to the airport."

"I can take a cab," Gannon said. "Someone should stay with the boat."

"No," Maria said. "I want to." She had grown to like Gannon, felt
closer to him, as people do when thrown together in difficult situations
and are forced to depend on each other. On the return voyage she had
seen some of his strength of character along with the gentleness and
compassion that lay just beneath the surface of what at first had seemed
an impenetrable warrior exterior. She had never heard a man speak so
endearingly about his wife and their life together and how much he
missed her. Once, while he had been sleeping on deck, she had heard him
murmur Kate's name in a dream.

A few passersby strolled along the dock. One in particular stopped at
the end of the Cheetah's gangway and waved a brief hello.

"May I come aboard?" Tom Driscoll asked.

Maria nodded. She recognized him from the cove in Nicaragua. Driscoll
slipped off his Gucci loafers as he stepped on deck and came forward to
the entertainment cockpit. He sat beside Maria, opposite Gannon.

"Would you like something to eat?" Maria offered.

"It all looks delicious," Driscoll said, "but I have a plane waiting for
me. A glass of wine would be nice, though."

Maria poured him one as he leaned forward and spoke to Gannon in a
conspiratorial tone.

"Nikolai Malik is still alive."

The words went through Gannon like a jolt of electricity. "Where is
he?"

"One of our people in France on another assignment spotted him in
Antibes," Driscoll said. "He's on a motor yacht, the Jameel, docked at
the high-security area at the International Yacht Club, the guest of
some high-powered Arab gun-runners who dabble in terrorism."

Maria's eyes widened at the mention of Antibes, but she remained silent.

"Where's Antibes?" Gannon asked.

"French Riviera, about ten miles west of Nice," Driscoll said. "I
passed the information on to some friends of yours. They're sitting on
him until you can get there."

Gannon's eyes grew distant, then he leaned over and clasped Driscoll's
hand. "Thanks. I know how you people work. You didn't have to do
this."

Driscoll smiled. "Malik is no longer of any immediate interest to us.
We personally don't give a shit what happens to him. And you're wrong
about how we work if you think we don't appreciate those who help us. We
owe you."

Driscoll nodded to Maria, then got up and walked back to the gangway,
pulling on his loafers. "By the way, Gannon. I wasn't here."

"Never saw you before in my life," Gannon said. Maria, having contained
herself until Driscoll was out of sight, grabbed Gannon by the arm, her
voice full of excitement. "I know where Malik is ...  I mean I know the
area and the boat. The owner of the Cheetah keeps his motor yacht, Mi
Gaea, docked at the same place--the International Yacht Club d'antibes.
He has a slip there. I worked on the Mi Gaea before I came aboard the
Cheetah."

"I've got to do this myself," Gannon said, shaking his head. "I
appreciate the offer, but--"

"Bullshit!" Maria said. "That Russian son of a bitch killed Jim. I have
almost as much at stake in this as you do now. And believe me, I'm not
exaggerating when I tell you I can be an asset to you when we get
there--as a matter of fact, before we get there."

Gannon saw the fire and determination in Maria's eyes. "You're right,"
he said. "I've got no right to cut you out. But this isn't a game.
Malik's a psychopath and a professional."

"I have a girlfriend, Sally Hooper," Maria said. "She's the chief
stewardess on the Mi Gaea. She and a couple of her friends keep an
apartment in Antibes as a home base."

"So?" Gannon said.

"The Mi Gaea's in port. I can give her a call before we leave here,"
Maria said. "The Jam eel's slip is only four or five down from the Mi
Gaea. You'd be surprised how much she can find out for us about who's
on the Jam eel and what's going on. The crews from all of the yachts
based there know each other and get together socially when they're in
port."

"Call her," Gannon said. "I've got a call of my own to make." He had
spoken to General Max on the day he got back to Montego Bay, but with
this new development he wanted to call him again and ask one more favor
of him.

"I have a friend here who'll take care of Clyde and the boat," Maria
said. "Give me ten minutes to make the arrangements and I'm ready to
leave."

Gannon and Maria made use of the car the Cheetah's owner kept at the
yacht club. Gannon drove through the streets of Montego Bay en route to
the airport. They stopped at Maria's request, and Gannon waited while
she entered a Catholic church just off the main square.

"What was that all about?" Gannon asked as Maria returned to the car.

"I lit a candle for Jim," she said solemnly. "And one for you."

"Can't hurt," Gannon said, accelerating out of a hairpin turn as they
passed through the congested part of town and onto the main road to the
airport.

 ... 
Backdropped by deep green forest, silvery olive trees, and white
limestone hills, the French Riviera has few rivals for natural beauty
and climate. From Monte Carlo to St. Tropez brilliant sunshine bathes
seemingly endless stretches of beach on a magnificent coastline that
ranges from sheltered inlets to great sweeping bays, some with flat,
gentle shores, while others plunge steeply into the deep blue of the
Mediterranean Sea.

The coast along the ancient town of Antibes is flat and open, with wide
bays. It is a gentle coast, with the Cap d'antibes Peninsula its only
promontory. The town of Antibes, founded in the fourth century B.C. by
the Greeks of Massilia, was originally named Antipolis--meaning opposite
city--a name derived from its location across the water from Nice. When
the Romans supplanted the Greeks it was renamed Latinum Antipolis and an
arsenal and aqueduct were built, while sailors and fishermen settled
along its shores. The barbarian invasions destroyed its prosperity and
until the early fourth century A.D., when the first markets were
established, it was a virtual ghost town. Upon realizing its military
significance, the kings of France later made it a frontier post,
reinforcing it as a stronghold against the dukes of Savoy, who
controlled Nice.

Today all that remains of the old fortifications is Fort Carro, a square
blockhouse of a structure overlooking the entrance to the harbor and the
seventeenth-century seafront ramparts. But the town of Antibes
flourishes as a tourist mecca and as one of Europe's primary centers for
the commercial production of flowers. A large marina, capable of
holding up to six hundred boats, now replaces the old harbor, making the
port of Antibes a major international yachting center. Lying just
beyond the remnants of the seafront ramparts, the picturesque old-town
section still maintains the charm and wistful air of ancient times, with
its covered outdoor market, sunny squares, and maze of tiny side streets
crammed with pricey boutiques, craft shops, and art galleries.

Separated from the crowded, busy main marina is the International Yacht
Club d'antibes. The club was built by the French Mafia and an Arab
cartel as a high-security large-yacht basin. It provides berths for
nineteen heavy-tonnage yachts and claims to be the most secure yacht
harbor in the world. The cost of two million dollars for a thirty-year
lease on a single berth makes it the exclusive domain of billionaires
and multimillionaires to whom security considerations are a necessary
part of their everyday lives.

Closed-circuit television cameras are positioned to cover every square
inch of the half-mile-long quay and its facilities. Vapor lights come
on and off automatically at dusk and dawn, and a twenty-four-hour
security guard mans the only entrance to the quay, making it impossible
for anyone to enter and roam the area undetected. The yacht basin was
created by dumping thousands of tons of rocks to create a breakwater
that slopes into the sea, forming a private peninsula. Behind the
breakwater a fifteen-foot-high concrete seawall, with a walkway on top,
extends the entire length of the yachtclub area to the harbor entrance.
A modern capitainerie at the far end of the quay contains administration
offices on the lower level, with the upper level being a circular
glass-enclosed observation deck, serving to control the arrivals and
departures of the member yachts and as the center where the console of
security-camera monitors are located.

The dock area, as wide as a two-lane road, provides parking for the
yacht owners' vehicles against the seawall directly across from their
berths. Tourists are allowed to enter the area on foot and walk along
the quay, which, during the height of the season, from May to October,
ensures a near constant stream of admirers hopeful for a glimpse of the
rich and famous. It is a practice that does little to violate the
security of the area, considering that everyone entering must pass
through the guarded entrance gate, and most of the yachts have their own
private security forces, preventing anyone from coming on board.

The Mi Gaea was berthed midway down the quay. She was flanked on either
side by two slightly larger yachts with modern high-performance hulls,
sleek, streamlined decks, and smoked-glass windows. They, along with
most of the luxury motor yachts moored at the exclusive berths, were new
boats, built within the last five to seven years. Although all were in
the twenty- to thirty-million-dollar price range, alongside the Mi Gaea
they had all the ambiance of a string of Quality Court motels erected
next to New York's Carlyle Hotel.

A classically eloquent yacht, the Mi Gaea was a 120-foot oceangoing
vessel, designed and engineered for unmatched seagoing comfort and
luxury. Built in Scotland in 1963, she had undergone a massive
three-year rebuilding and redesign in 1984, with workmanship of
incomparable quality and detail. In stark contrast to the fiberglass
and space-age plastics look of the newer yachts, and their garish
ultramodern interior decors, the Mi Gaea had an aura of elegance and a
prestigious stature, evoking an era when the great yachts ruled the sea.

Her quality and elegance were visible at a glance, even to the
uninitiated. Meticulously maintained, her exterior had a mirrorlike
finish, with teak railings that glowed with the high gloss of multiple
coats of varnish. Beveled-glass doors framed in teak led from the aft
deck to the main salon--a genial, intimate room paneled with the rich,
warm patina of solid teak and the golden gleam of a brass wet bar,
evoking an Edwardian atmosphere of Old World gentility. As on the
Cheetah, exquisite silk oriental carpets and fine art accented the
gracious decor; but dominating the salon, from a paneled wall in the
center of the room facing the aft deck and visible to passersby through
the beveled-glass doors, was a stunning, priceless Renoir.

Just aft of the main salon, in a lavishly equipped office/study,
finished in finely detailed raised paneled oak and complete with a fully
computerized satellite communications system, Sally Hooper had taken the
call from Maria on the land line. Maria had made repeated attempts to
call Sally at her apartment in town before leaving the airport in
Jamaica, finally reaching her aboard the Mi Gaea during her four-hour
layover in London for the final leg of the flight to Nice.

Sally, a pretty, blue-eyed English girl with short-cut blond hair and an
engaging personality, sat staring at the telephone after hanging up. It
was five o'clock in the evening when she got up and left the office, a
mischievous smile spreading slowly across her coquettish face.

It was a slow, restful time aboard the Mi Gaea. With the owner gone
until the following spring, the crew was mostly concerned with
maintenance and general upkeep. Steve Jacover, the Mi Gaea's captain,
his stern, handsome features framed with a mass of naturally curly
reddish-brown hair, was on the aft deck having a drink when Sally rushed
out from the main salon.

"Good news?" Jacover asked. His piercing blue eyes searched for a clue
to the unusual exuberance prompted by the telephone call.

Sally shook her head and grinned, then continued onto the gangway,
turning back to smile and wave. "I've always wanted to be a spy. I
truly have."

"Whatever you're drinking, you'd better back off it a bit," Jacover
called after her good-naturedly. He watched her cross the quay, climb
on her motorcycle, and roar off in the direction of the yacht club's
entrance gate.

Sally Hooper's departure had not gone unnoticed by Sam Pavlik, but her
activities were of no interest to him; in fact, he had no idea who she
was or of the role the Mi Gaea would eventually play in what was about
to unfold. Pavlik's attention was riveted on the Jameel, a
two-hundred-foot motor yacht six berths down from the Mi Gaea. Two
garishly painted Mercedes-Benz limousines-one candy-apple purple, the
other a bright off-green color that Pavlik referred to as camel-shit
yellow--belonging to the Jameel's owner were parked against the seawall
across from the yacht. They flanked a small motor home with blacked-out
windows that served as a security van for the Jameel's four exterior
guards, who patrolled the quay and the walkway atop the seawall in the
immediate area of the yacht.

Nikolai Malik, the Arab owner of the yacht, and two of the owner s Arab
companions were aboard the Jam eel. From his vantage point, using a
high-powered scope, Pavlik could look down on the boat deck where the
four men sat around a table engaged in animated conversation. Malik was
drinking a bottle of wine, while the Arabs abstained. Adjusting the
scope, Pavlik scanned the decks for the three on-board security guards
he had pegged as mercenaries, probably of West German origin. One stood
on the aft deck guarding the entrance to the main salon, another was
forward on the boat deck, and the third was out of sight, stationed
inside the yacht. All, he had noted earlier, carried mini-Uzi
submachine guns in shoulder holsters under loose-fitting jackets.

Mike Duggan sat eating a candy bar on a wooden crate behind Pavlik. They
had staked out the Jam eel for the past two days, and sandwich and snack
wrappers and empty soda cans littered the dusty barren room. They had
taken videotape of everyone boarding and leaving the yacht and made
notes on the routines of the security guards on board and those assigned
to the van on the quay.

The surveillance of Malik, on the rare occasions when he left the yacht,
was carried out by another Delta Force Omega Team member--Staff Sergeant
Dave Maurer--who had volunteered his services on learning that Malik was
the man who had killed Gannon's wife. Pavlik and Duggan had grown close
to Gannon when he was their squadron commander and felt a bond that all
men have with those with whom they have faced death. But Maurer's
respect and admiration for Gannon knew no bounds; Gannon had not only
been Maurer's mentor, but as Maurer often said, "If I have a hero, it's
Jack Gannon."

Maurer had rented a motorcycle, a common conveyance around the quay and
the town, making it possible to stay close to the limousines without
drawing attention to himself. But the habit pattern of Malik and his
Arab friends when leaving the yacht was an uninteresting routine that
involved nothing more than a quiet dinner at a restaurant in town or a
visit to a local disco.

Their observation post was one of the many flaws the Delta Force men had
immediately spotted in the yacht club's highly touted security
arrangements. Adjoining the seawall near the entrance gate, actually an
integral part incorporated into the seawall, was the rear wall of a
deserted boatyard building. From a broken third-story window that
overlooked the entire yacht-club area, Pavlik and Duggan could not only
observe every activity but by simply crawling out of the window and
lowering themselves to the rocky breakwater under the cover of darkness,
they then had easy access to the walkway along the top of the private
seawall.

The entrance to the deserted boatyard was outside the yacht club's
security gate, fronting on the crowded quay along the public marina, and
gaining access to it was a simple matter of climbing a section of its
ten-foot chain-link fence, which was hidden from view by old machine
parts and parked cars. Once inside the yard one had only to proceed to
the floor above the huge two-story open bay, which had once been the
work area, to the windows facing the Mediterranean and the yacht club.

Pavlik stifled a yawn, removed his eye from the scope for a few minutes,
then went back to observing the Jameel and the quay. At this time of
evening the tourist traffic strolling along the quay and admiring the
yachts was at its peak--couples, arm in arm, dreaming childish what-if?
dreams, enthralled by the wealth and opulence around them. A tall,
broad-shouldered older man, walking alone, caught Pavlik's attention. He
had a distinct military bearing and looked vaguely familiar.

"Hey, Mike," Pavlik called to Duggan. "Come here. Take a look at this
guy."

Duggan came to the window and put his eye to the scope. After a few
moments he said, "That's General Max!"

"I knew I'd seen him before," Pavlik said. "Christ, he's virtually the
patron saint of Special Operations."

"If it wasn't for him," Duggan added, "Delta Force wouldn't exist. Is
this a coincidence ...  or what?"

"Get a grip, Duggan," Pavlik said. "Considering what's going on here,
it's no coincidence when someone like General Max appears on the scene.
The man's a living legend."

Duggan continued to peer through the scope, following the casual pace of
General Max as he approached the end of the Mi Gaea's gangway and
engaged Jacover in a brief conversation before being invited on board.

Picking up the small hand-held portable radio at his side, Pavlik keyed
the microphone. "Hey, Maurer," he said. "A blonde with short-cut hair
riding a maroon Harley-Davidson sportster passed by you a few minutes
ago."

"I saw her," came Maurer's quick response, never one to miss a Harley or
an attractive woman.

"Pick up on her and stay close," Pavlik came back. "There's something
weird going on here."

"I'm on her," Maurer said. He was parked outside the yacht club's
security gate at an opening in the ramparts that led to a public beach
he had named
"Titty City" due to the abundance of topless sunbathers. It
was an observation post he had personally selected for the view.
Starting the rented BMW motorcycle, he spun around and weaved his way
along the crowded quay in the direction he had seen the Harley and the
blonde go.

Sally Hooper made a left turn off the quay and drove through the old sea
gate--a tunnel through the ancient ramparts--and onto Rue Aubernon in
the old-town section of Antibes. She followed the narrow, crowded
street for a short distance and pulled into the curb in front of Chez
Harry's Shack, better known as Harry's Bar to those who frequented it on
a regular basis. It was the crew bar, the unofficial gathering place
for all those who worked on the big yachts, a place to drink, have a
snack, and catch up on the latest gossip. As Sally extended the
kickstand and slid gracefully off the Harley, she took no notice of the
man on the silver BMW who passed by and parked farther up the street.

The evening crowd had already spilled out onto the sidewalk tables, and
small groups of mostly Englishmen and other Brits filled the tables, the
overwhelming majority wearing knit polo-style shirts with the names of
the yachts on which they worked embroidered on the front. Sally's eyes
roamed the crowded, noisy cafe as she smiled back at a few friends and
would-be boyfriends.

Spotting Calvin Hardiment, a rugged-looking Englishman with a sporty
mustache and a no-nonsense face, she approached his table at a corner
inside the bar where he sat alone, putting the finishing touches on a
pitcher of beer.

Hardiment was the engineer aboard the Mi Gaea and a former
airborne-qualified Royal Marine who had served with the Special Boat
Squadron and fought in the Falklands. His first love was the sea; his
second, jumping out of airplanes. Having indulged the second for a
ten-year military career, he was now thoroughly enjoying the first.

"Here to drive the lads wild?" he said to Sally with a friendly smile
reserved for those he liked.

"I need some information," Sally said. "On the q.t."

"What sort of information?"

"Do you know anyone who works on board the Jameel and talks too much?"

"Sure," Calvin said. He pointed with his glass at a table out on the
sidewalk. "See that lad with the greasy brown hair. Harry Bingham's
his name. Ugly enough to turn a funeral up an alley."

Sally looked where he was pointing. "Oh, my God! I damn near have to
beat him off with a club every time he gets near me."

"Grin and bear it," Calvin said with a wink. "He couldn't keep a secret
if his life depended on it. Just passed on an interesting tidbit to me
earlier."

"What was that?" Sally asked.

"The Jameel's owner's son wipes his ass with washcloths. Different one
every time. Consequently, the job of laundress aboard the Jam eel isn't
exactly a highly sought-after position."

"That's disgusting," Sally said, making a face.

"It's him that does it, love. Not me."

"Thanks, Calvin," Sally said. "You're a dear. Guess I'll have to bite
my tongue and work whatever charms I have on Mr. Bingham."

"Your charms are considerable. I wouldn't worry about that," Calvin
said, refilling his glass with the last of the beer. "Your immediate
problem may lie in keeping him from biting you. Then there's the
tetanus shots to consider. Nasty business."

Calvin watched Sally as she walked outside and bestowed a flirtatious
smile on the rather unattractive young man. Bingham rose to offer her a
chair and in his enthusiasm sent a bottle of wine to the sidewalk, where
it smashed and splashed all over Sally's white deck shoes.

"I'm so sorry," Bingham said. "How clumsy of me." He started to drop
to his knees to wipe off her shoes with a napkin. Sally patted him on
the shoulder. "It's quite all right, Harry. They needed a bit of
color." She sat at the table, and what appeared to be another smile was
really the manifestation of her gritting her teeth to keep her anger
from boiling over.

She looked back to see Calvin giving her the victory sign. It was just
past six o'clock in the evening when Gannon and Maria drove into Antibes
from the Nice airport. They parked their rented car on a side street
just off the Rue Aubernon and walked the short distance to Harry's Bar,
where Maria saw Sally seated at a sidewalk table. There was a look of
unqualified relief on Sally's face as she waved and stood up and
embraced her friend Maria. She had gleaned all the information there
was to he had from her companion and was eagerly looking for a graceful
way out.

Maria pulled Sally aside. "Doesn't that man you're talking with work on
the Jameel?"

Sally nodded and smiled. "I suggest we find somewhere to talk." She
turned back to Bingham and said, "Thank you for the wine and the
conversation, Harry. I must be going."

"I'll be in port for two more days," Harry said, a somewhat pleading
look in his eyes.

"I'll remember that," Sally said, and excused herself. She led Maria
and Gannon down the street in the direction of the marina.

Sally cast an appreciative glance at Gannon and smiled. Maria
introduced them.

"You wanted information, deary, I got you information," Sally said as
they walked out of earshot of the sorely disappointed Bingham. "The
interior layout of the Jameel the guards' habits and posts, and which
stateroom this Russian fellow is in.

"Did he say why the Russian is here?" Gannon asked.

"I don't think he knows."

As they reached the sea gate through the old ramparts, Sally led them
left on to the Boulevard D'Aguillon, a narrow side street that ran
parallel to the ramparts. The crowded street, closed to vehicular
traffic in the evenings, was little more than a continuous row of
outdoor cafes on one side; on the opposite side, along the ramparts,
street vendors had set up stalls beneath colorfully striped umbrellas
and awnings that displayed paintings, jewelry, questionable objets
d'art, and knickknacks. It was the most popular section of the old town
in the evenings and late into the night.

Maria and Gannon followed Sally to a cafe midway down the block. They
took a table overlooking the constant stream of pedestrian
traffic--mostly groups of young singles in search of each other, with
occasional clinging couples oblivious to their surroundings.

Gannon's attention was drawn to an attractive French girl sitting at a
corner table. A young man with a guitar sat with her, accompanying her
as she began to sing a melancholy love song that brought a rush of
painful memories back to Gannon. Kate, a student in France for a time,
used to play the guitar and sing to him in French when they were alone.
The song he was listening to now, which carried over into the adjoining
cafe's and stopped people in the street to listen, was one Kate had
sung. Gannon closed his eyes for a terrible moment, caught hold of his
emotions, then continued to stare at the girl, enthralled by the song
and her beautiful, untrained natural voice. He continued to stare, lost
in his memories, after the song had ended.

Dave Maurer had seen Gannon when he and Maria reached Harry's Bar and
had followed on foot. Slipping into an alleyway, he took the portable
radio from inside his jacket.

"The boss is here," he reported to Pavlik.

"Where is he?"

"He and some great-looking broad I think I'm in love with met the blonde
you put me on at Harry's Bar. They're at one of those Frog cafes just
inside the ramparts having a drink."

"Keep 'em in sight," Pavlik said. "I'm on my way." Pavlik hurried from
the room overlooking the yacht club, leaving Duggan in charge of the
observation post.

"If Malik or any of the sand niggers make a move," he told Duggan, "give
me a holler."

The cafe was a brisk five-minute walk from the deserted boatyard, and it
took Pavlik only a few minutes more to find Gannon on the busy,
cluttered street. He took a seat next to Sally as though he was
expected, put his arm around her, and kissed her cheek, much to Sally's
surprise. "Play along," Pavlik said with a charming smile. "I'm with
him." He nodded toward Gannon, who was surprised to see one of his
former squadron troopers sitting across from him.

"Hello, Boss," Pavlik said, using the term of affection and respect
afforded to Delta Force commanders by their troops. "Good to see you."

"What are you doing here?" Gannon said. He had not realized that
Driscoll had been referring to active-duty Delta Force personnel when he
stated that "friends" were keeping an eye on Malik.

Pavlik made a slight motion with his head, indicating that Gannon should
look off to his left. Gannon did and saw Maurer feigning interest in a
painting at a stall across the street. He made eye contact with Gannon
but gave no visible sign of recognition. It was a practice followed by
all Delta Force personnel when working undercover; putting two or three
of them together in a public place alerted any astute observer that
these were not ordinary tourists. They looked too much like what they
were.

Maria began to tell Sally what had happened to Jim Boos, but, as Gannon
had requested, she did not mention anything about the SADM or the CIA's
part in the mission into Nicaragua. With Sally and Maria involved in
their own conversation, Pavlik leaned across the table, the music and
crowd noise concealing his words from all but Gannon.

"You remember Duggan?" Pavlik asked.

"Of course," Gannon said, recalling the bull-like trooper who had been
one of his best shooters, second only to Maurer.

"He's over at the observation post we set up at the yacht club."

Gannon shook his head emphatically. "I appreciate the effort," he said
to Pavlik, "but I can't involve active-duty personnel in this."

Pavlik grinned. "Hey, Boss. We're on official leave. And besides, we
all have false ID backstopped to the nth degree by your spook buddy
Driscoll in the event anything goes wrong. And we got the unofficial
word that the Ranch's position on this is what they don't know they
can't prevent, and if push comes to shove, they can blame it on the
Company. We never were just your troops, Boss. We're your friends."

Gannon smiled and slowly shook his head. "Sounds like you've got it all
figured out."

"Most of it," Pavlik replied with a confident grin. "Except why General
Max is here. He just boarded the yacht the blonde works on." He
gestured to Sally.

Gannon nodded. "I called him in."

"Do I need to know why?"

"Not now," Gannon said.

Pavlik eyed Maria, then said, "What's she doing here?"

Maria overheard the question and bristled at all that it implied. "She's
here to help," she said, answering for herself.

"Civilians, especially the female type, just screw things up, honey,"
Pavlik said. "No offense, but you can go powder your nose until this is
over."

"She's in," Gannon said. "Malik killed a good friend of hers. And
she's no amateur. Trust me on that."

Pavlik acquiesced immediately. "If you say so, Boss." Looking to
Sally, he asked, "And her?"

"I've got information you need," Sally said. Again leaning close to
Gannon, Pavlik said, "Want to take a look-see from the observation
post?"

"The man I'm after got a good look at me in New York," Gannon said. "I
don't want him spotting me before we're ready to move."

"Not to worry, Boss," Pavlik said, getting up to lead the way. He
looked back at Maria and Sally and added, "Come on, you can come too."

"Oh, golly gee," Maria said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "We can?

How neat. Can I hold your gun?"

Pavlik grimaced. A further evaluation after a long look into Maria's
eyes told him he had made a hasty, erroneous snap judgment.

It was approaching dusk when Gannon peered through the highpowered scope
in the third-floor window of the deserted boatyard. He felt a wave of
hatred and loathing pass over him as Malik's hard Slavic face filled the
lens. He was still at the table on the Jameel's boat deck, laughing and
drinking with his Arab companions.

Eleven of the club's nineteen berths were occupied. Moored stern-to,
they were an impressive array of oceangoing vessels. One stood out
above all the others: docked in the slip closest to the entrance was the
Jessica, a two-hundred-foot, three-masted topsail schooner, reminiscent
of turn-of-the-century schooners. Under sail she was a breathtaking
sight, capable of leaving even the most jaded yachtsman speechless. A
few berths up from the Mi Gaea, and almost as elegant, was the 186-foot
motor yacht the Belle France. A few, especially those flanking the Mi
Gaea, stood out more for their lack of style and elegance, despite their
hefty price tags.

"Nice toys, huh?" Pavlik said as Gannon looked up from the scope and
scanned the quay and the luxury yachts. "This is where the big boys
come to play, Boss. The real heavy hitters."

"Yeah," Duggan said, gesturing toward the Jameel. "But look at what
that rag head's done to that boat." He was referring to the striped
awnings and other garish exterior decorations on the Jameel. "Who else
could take a thirty-million-dollar yacht and turn it into a fuckin'
double-wide trailer? Only thing missin' are Florida plates."

"Do yourself a favor, Duggan, and save yourself some embarrassment,"
Maria said with a friendly smile. "Don't ever take the foreign service
exam."

"No?" Duggan played along. "Damn, and here I was considering being' a
career diplomat after I left the Army."

Gannon went back to the scope, concentrating on Malik and his
companions.

"Easy shot, huh, Boss?" Maurer said, taking his sniper rifle from its
case. "I could turn his head into road pizza from here. No sweat."

"I want him alive," Gannon said. "Nobody gets killed. We neutralize
the people we have to, but nobody gets killed," he emphasized a second
time.

"What if it's us or them?" Maurer asked.

"Only if your life is in danger," Gannon replied. "But I want this
planned and carried out so everything possible is done to avoid that
contingency."

Pavlik looked to Maurer and Duggan. They both nodded. "That calls for
a different approach."

"Break down the security setup for me," Gannon said, still looking
through the scope.

Gannon listened carefully, asking no questions until they had finished
reporting what they had observed.

"The biggest obstacle is the three guards on board," Pavlik said. "One
stays on the aft deck guarding the entrance to the main salon. One
patrols the boat deck, watching for any approach by water, SCUBA divers,
and like that. And one stays inside all the time. He's the only
unknown. Hard to tell where he is at any given time."

"The one who has the night shift is lazy. He spends most of his time in
the crew's entertainment lounge below decks watching videos," Sally
Hooper said. "The lounge is forward, just below the main dining salon."

"Any electronic security?" Gannon asked.

"Yeah," Pavlik replied with a Cheshire-cat grin. "The key pad that
activates and deactivates the internal alarm system is on the bulkhead
on the aft deck, to the left of the doors leading into the main salon."

Pavlik paused for effect, then continued. "Took me two days. I put the
scope on them every time they punched in the code and got it a piece at
a time." He held up a slip of paper with the code numbers for the
security system on it.

"You get an 'atta boy' for that," Gannon said.

"They have another electronic surveillance system inside the yacht,"
Sally contributed again.

"What's it for?" Gannon asked.

"It seems the owner is a bit of a voyeur. He has audio bugs and
infrared cameras hidden in all the staterooms. I should think that
might present a problem if you want to take the Russian off the boat
alive."

"Who monitors the system?" Gannon asked.

"The owner does," Sally said. "The video monitor and recorders are in
the master stateroom."

Gannon thought for a moment, then said, "We'll have to deal with that if
it comes up. The first order of business is how to get aboard the yacht
in the first place without starting a gun battle. I take it they're all
armed?"

"Mini-Uzis, every one of them," Pavlik said.

"How qualified are they?"

"They're efficient and in shape," Pavlik said. "Every indication is,
they can handle themselves."

"They speak German to each other," Maurer, who was fluent in the
language, added. "Good probability some of them are former GSG-9 men,"
he said, referring to the elite West German antiterrorist group.

"What's the routine for the guards at the security van?" Gannon asked.

"They work in shifts," Pavlik said. "Two of them stay locked inside
while the other two patrol the immediate area, one on the walkway on top
of the seawall, the other on the dock. When they rotate, two knocks on
the van door, followed by a pause and one more knock gets the guys
inside to open up. The windows are blacked out and they've got curtains
pulled across them. They never look outside, just open up when their
buddies knock. One possible problem. I don't know what's inside the
van other than the two guys. Could be nothin', but you never know."

"What about the monitors for the outside surveillance cameras?"

"There's a bank of them in that glass observation deck on top of the
capitainerie," Pavlik said. "You can see part of them if you put the
scope on it."

Gannon did, then asked, "How many guards in the capitainerie?"

"Just one after midnight," Pavlik said.

"What about the guard in the booth at the entrance gate?"

"The guy who takes the graveyard shift's got an H&K squeezecocker. 380
in an inside-the-belt holster. By the looks of him I'd say he's no
problem. He works for the Yacht Club, not for the Arabs."

"On the way over here I saw another guy manning a pole barrier on the
dock along the public marina," Gannon said. "What's his story?"

"He's an unarmed one-legged drunk who goes off duty around 10:00 P.M.,"
Pavlik said. "The only other variable is a harbor cop who drives around
with a German shepherd in the car with him. The dog's afraid of his own
shadow and the guard does a turnaround at the entrance to this area once
he gets the wave-off from the guy in the booth. If he shows up while
we're making our move, he won't be any problem. Maurer can bullshit his
way out of anything. We'll have him take out the guy in the booth and
replace him. In the event the cop with the dog gets wise, he can always
neutralize him."

"What have you got in the way of equipment?" Gannon asked.

"We've all got nine-mike-mikes with hush puppies," Pavlik said, using a
colloquialism for the silenced 9mm pistols they all carried in shoulder
holsters. He handed Gannon the pistol and holster they had thought to
bring along for him. "Just in case it all falls apart."

"As far as takin' people out without killing them," Pavlik continued,
"we've got a couple of spring-loaded Syrettes with a fast-acting
knockout drug; takes a couple of seconds if you stick them in the neck.
We got a bunch of chloroform pads sealed in foil pouches and our hands."

"All right," Gannon said. "Let's brainstorm it and come up with a
plan." They all gathered around, pulling up crates and whatever else
was available to sit on. Maria sat cross-legged on the floor and said
to Gannon, "I've got an idea for getting you on board the Jameel without
any gunplay."

"Let's hear it," Gannon said.

"The crews from the different yachts are always paying social calls on
each other. It's an everyday occurrence, nothing out of the ordinary."

They all sat and listened to Maria's plan, each adding suggestions and
extemporaneously improvising on how to make it even better and
coordinate it with the rest of the actions that would need to be taken.
Dusk faded into night and the vapor lights came on as the deadly serious
discussion continued unabated.

 ... 
Steve Jacover, the captain of the Mi Gaea, could not believe his ears.
The man who had identified himself as retired General Maxwell Taylor
Stanton was on the bridge. He had rigged a highly sophisticated
scrambler to the radio and was transmitting on a special frequency,
speaking fluent Russian, rapid-fire, like a native. Jacover listened
for a few moments. He recognized the language but understood none of
it, and he stepped out of the pilothouse and leaned on the railing. Some
things were better left unexplained, he decided. Besides, the general
had the boss's blessing.

It was three-thirty in the morning when the Harley-Davidson roared up to
the small space between the wall and the entrance barrier to the
International Yacht Club d'antibes. Sally slowed down just enough to
wave a cheery hello to the sleepy guard in the booth. It was her usual
way of saving him the trouble of raising the barrier, one he appreciated
more often than not. He took notice of Maria sitting on the jump seat
behind Sally. Maria smiled and waved. The guard waved back, recalling
that he hadn't seen the beautiful dark-haired girl in the past year but
remembering her well, as everyone did who ever saw her.

The timing for their arrival had been carefully chosen: midway through
the graveyard shift, when the guards would be most inattentive and weary
of their monotonous routines. The on-board yacht parties were over for
the night or had moved inside for more intimate activities. The quay was
deserted with the exception of the Jameel's guards. Sally gunned the
Harley to a throaty howl and sped up the quay, slowing as she approached
the security van, where she and Maria again waved and smiled, this time
to the guard on the wall and the one standing off to the side of the
van. Both men were thoroughly bored and returned the greetings with
wistful looks. Sally got the distinct feeling that she and Maria were
being mentally undressed as they drove by.

Pulling into a space at the seawall across from the Mi Gaea, they got
off the Harley. Sally boarded the yacht while Maria, dressed in shorts
and a Mi Gaea crew shirt, removed a bottle of champagne that was
protruding from her shoulder bag and uncorked it. She giggled
hysterically when the cork blew off and began walking unsteadily down
the quay toward the Jameel. Stopping to take a long drink of the bubbly
liquid, she giggled again, kicked off her shoes, and continued on her
way, barefoot and swaying.

At the far end of the seawall, near the entrance to the quay, Gannon,
Duggan, and Pavlik lowered themselves the short distance from the
third-floor window of the boatyard to the jagged rocks of the
breakwater. The walkway atop the seawall was only six feet above the
top of the sloping breakwater, and the three men began making their way
along the rocks on the seaward side of the wall. The security guard was
approximately one hundred yards ahead. Gannon's only reservation about
the plan was Maria's exposure to a considerable amount of danger for a
period of time when she would have no immediate available backup. He
cringed inwardly at the thought of her falling into Malik's hands, but
there had been no other way, without killing the guards, to accomplish
what he had in mind.

Maurer had exited the boatyard onto the quay along the public marina. He
approached the pole barrier at the entrance to the yacht club and walked
around it. Crossing to the half-glass-enclosed security booth, he
stepped inside, much to the amazement of the guard. Before a word of
protest could be said, Maurer hit the man with a powerful overhand right
that knocked him cold. Propping him in a sitting position in a corner
of the booth, out of sight of anyone passing by, he took a roll of tape
from his jacket and bound and gagged the unconscious man. He took his
position at the door to the booth, his pale gray eyes--a sniper's
eyes--focused halfway up the quay, intent on the area around the Jameel.

The guard walking the seawall followed Maria's every move, his rapt
attention having nothing to do with security. Fifteen feet below him on
the quay, leaning against the side of a small concrete transformer house
that jutted out from the seawall near the van, the second guard was
equally attentive to Maria's physical attributes.

Maria waved to him as her eyes alertly swept the area, flicking from the
guard on the aft deck of the Jam eel, whose attention she had also
drawn, to the man on the wall and back to the one near the van. She
began to sing to herself, moving her body sensuously to the self-made
music.

Occasional power surges and fluctuations caused some of the vapor lights
to dim intermittently. The ones closest to the Jameel were among those
affected, possibly due to the amount of power being drawn to keep the
entire yacht ablaze with lights. The dimmed vapor lights threw areas
into deep shadows, which provided Gannon and Pavlik with an unexpected
bonus. Reaching the point in the breakwater close to where the guard
was walking the seawall, Gannon and Pavlik stopped, taking cover among
the large jagged rocks. Duggan continued walking. He hugged the wall
as he passed unnoticed beneath the guard, the sound of the gentle surf
masking any inadvertent noise. He was heading to where the seawall made
a sharp left and connected to the building housing the capitainerie, a
few hundred yards farther on.

Maria, still singing and swaying to her tuneless song, approached the
Jameel's stern. Flashing her most seductive smile, she stepped onto the
end of the gangway and stopped.

"Hi," she called out to the tall, stoic-looking man standing before the
doors that led into the Jam eel's main salon.

The guard smiled but didn't reply.

"Permission to come aboard," Maria said. She purposely slurred her
words as she moved farther up the gangway, half dancing, half walking.
Soft music could now be heard coming over the outdoor speakers on the
Jameel's aft deck and she moved provocatively to its rhythm. "I'm
sorry," the guard said in a stiff, formal tone, "you must not come on
board. It is forbidden." His English was heavy with a German accent.
His eyes took in the Mi Gaea crew shirt and he relaxed a bit.

Maria continued up the gangway, one enticing step at a time, maintaining
eye contact with the aft-deck guard. "Aren't you lonely?" she said,
using her put-on singsong Spanish accent. "I am lonely, very lonely."

She had now reached the top of the gangway. She held out the bottle.
"Champagne?"

The guard glanced about, tempted not by the champagne but by the
possibility of spending time with Maria when his shift ended. "Perhaps
you could come back in the morning," the guard said.

"Oh, but I have to work in the morning," Maria said. "But tonight I can
play." She held her breath as she stepped off the gangway and onto the
aft deck. If the guard didn't insist she leave at this point, she knew
she had crossed the first major hurdle.

Pavlik peered over the top of the seawall, and seeing that Maria had
positioned herself so the aft-deck guard's view was obstructed, nodded
to Gannon, giving him a thumbs-up.

Maria approached the guard, dancing and smiling. "Dance with me," she
said, setting the champagne bottle on the outdoor dining table in the
middle of the deck. "It is no fun to dance alone." The music changed
to a romantic ballad, and Maria moved in closer, smiling and singing
along with the song she knew well.

The guard lost some of his hesitancy as Maria stopped directly in front
of him. She put her arms around his neck and pressed her body against
his, still swaying with the music. The guard began to respond, placing
his hands around Maria's waist.

The security guard on top of the seawall was no longer walking. He
stood with his back to the breakwater. His attention had been on Maria,
but she was no longer in sight. The Jameel's upper deck extended out
over the aft deck, forming a roof, and from the top of the seawall the
angle of view prevented him from seeing the doors leading to the main
salon, where Maria and the guard were standing.

Gannon and Pavlik again made eye contact. This time Gannon nodded and
they both moved with lightning speed up onto the seawall.

The guard on the wall had his back to Gannon. He struck him a solid
blow with the edge of his hand at the base of the neck and literally
threw him off the wall down onto the rocks on the breakwater. Jumping
down after him, Gannon began binding and gagging him with tape. He had
moved so quickly that his exposure had been limited to less than five
seconds.

Pavlik was crouched on top of the seawall, above the guard standing in
the shadows next to the transformer house. He dropped directly onto the
unsuspecting man, his solid 220 pounds driving him to the ground. The
guard's head had hit the cement quay with such force that he was already
unconscious, but Pavlik, using a sap, hit him again for good measure
before he dragged him behind the van and began taping him.

What little scuffling noise Gannon and Pavlik had made was not heard on
the aft deck of the Jameel. The music was still playing, and the
guard's attention was elsewhere.

"Oh," Maria said as they swayed together to the music. "You have such
strong hands. You take me home with you, I kleen your house for a
month, I chine your choose."

The guard laughed. He wrapped his arms tighter around her, his body
moving with her. Maria let one of her hands slip from the man's neck
down to his chest. "And such hard muscles," she said, letting her hand
drop lower, into the open top of her shoulder bag. Removing the
spring-loaded Syrette, she brought her hand back up slowly, then,
without a moment's hesitation, jammed the needle into the base of the
man's neck.

The powerful drug's reaction was nearly instantaneous. The full weight
of the guard's 190 pounds slumped in her arms, knocked her off balance,
and sent them both to the deck. Rolling out from underneath the inert
body, she heard the sound of footsteps approaching across the boat deck
directly above her. She cursed silently. The boat-deck guard usually
stayed forward, near the wheelhouse; he must have heard her come aboard.
Thinking quickly, she grabbed the champagne bottle and stepped into the
shadows beneath the companionway leading to the upper deck.

"Klaus?" a man's voice called out as he came down the steps. He saw his
friend lying on the deck and knelt at his side.

Maria stepped from beneath the companionway and swung the champagne
bottle with all her strength. There was a loud thud as the bottle
struck the man's head and knocked him unconscious. Despite the dead
weight of the two large men, she managed to drag them off to the side of
the deck, out of view of anyone who entered the main salon.

In the guard's booth at the entrance gate, Maurer saw a flash of
headlights along the public quay. A car was moving slowly, and as it
drew closer Maurer saw it was the port police car. The head of a dog, a
German shepherd, was sticking out the open rear window.

The local cop drew to a stop at the barrier and got out of the car,
stretching muscles that were cramped from a long night behind the wheel.
He opened the rear door, snapped on the dog's leash, and let him out.
The big-boned German shepherd immediately lifted his leg and sprayed a
rear tire. When the security guard didn't come out to talk with him, as
was his custom, the cop walked around the barrier toward the booth.
Seeing it was empty, he approached with caution, his hand on the grip of
his holstered pistol.

Maurer stood in the dark against the wall, a few yards from the booth.
He had his silenced pistol cocked and ready, pointed at the dog as
opposed to the cop. The cop looked inside the booth and into the angry
eyes of the now wide-awake security guard, bound and gagged on the
floor. He spun around at the sound of his dog's halfhearted bark.

Maurer, having grown up with dogs, read the animal's intentions
correctly. He was not about to attack, if he was indeed even trained to
do so. Closing fast on the cop, Maurer, a firm believer in the simplest
methods being the most effective (and inclined to use his fist in
settling most disputes), caught the cop with a perfectly executed left
hook, followed by an overhand right, dispatching the inept man before
his weapon cleared his holster. The dog barked once, then whimpered,
licked his master's face, and lay down beside him, resting his head on
his chest.

Maurer secured the cop with the roll of tape, offered the dog a candy
bar, which he eagerly accepted, then went back to watching the entrance
and the quay. A few moments later the dog sat at his side, nudging his
hand, looking for another treat, which Maurer gave him.

At the opposite end of the quay Duggan swung up onto the seawall and,
crouching low, sprinted across to the door leading to the upper-level
observation deck of the capitainerie. The door was unlocked. He
slipped inside and moved along the hallway toward the control room. The
room was dark with the exception of the bluishwhite light from six video
monitors set in a console with a telephone and a toggle switch that when
activated sent a direct signal to the local police.

The man sitting at the monitors had his back to Duggan. Removing a
chloroform pad from its foil pouch, Duggan silently crossed the room to
where the guard sat flipping through a nudist magazine in the dim light.
He cupped the hand with the pad over the man's face and held it in place
until he felt the body go limp. From the windows facing the quay he
flashed a small penlight twice in the direction of the security van.

Gannon and Pavlik saw the signal and moved around to the side entrance
door to the van. Gannon pulled the silenced 9mm pistol from his
shoulder holster and stood out of sight as Pavlik knocked twice, paused,
then knocked again.

When the van door handle turned, releasing the lock, Pavlik grabbed the
door and flung it all the way open. Gannon rushed in, knocking the
sleepy, dazed man before him into the opposite side of the van. He
immediately scanned the rear of the vehicle for the second man. Pavlik
jumped inside, closed the door behind him, and quickly held a chloroform
pad to the face of the stunned man Gannon had sent sprawling.

Gannon found the second guard half asleep, swinging out of the bottom
level of a double-decker bunk bed at the back of the van. He knelt
before him, clamped a one-handed viselike grip on the man's throat, and
jammed the silencer on the 9mm automatic into his mouth.

"Which stateroom is the Russian in?" Gannon asked, wanting to confirm
the information Sally had given him.

The man, now wide awake, said nothing.

"We can do this easy or we can do it hard," Gannon said. He cocked the
hammer on the automatic. "I don't want your boss. Just tell me where
the Russian is and you'll all walk away from this clean."

The guard hesitated, then nodded. Gannon took the gun from his mouth.

"The main guest stateroom. All the way aft." Sally's information had
checked out.

"Take care of him," Gannon said to Pavlik, who had already begun
stripping off pieces of tape with which to gag the guard. "Then keep an
eye on the dock and the other yachts for any sign of unusual activity."

As Gannon headed for the door Pavlik put a hand on his shoulder. "If you
aren't off that Abdul's tub within ten minutes, Boss, I'm calling in
Maurer and Duggan and we're coming after you."

"It won't take me that long," Gannon said as he stepped over the man who
had opened the door and went back out onto the quay.

Maria saw him coming and glanced inside the Jameel's main salon, making
certain the interior guard had not made an unexpected appearance. Gannon
crossed over the gangway and went directly to the keypad, punching in
the code Pavlik had given him. The status light went from red to green,
indicating that the internal alarm system was disarmed.

"Good work," he said to Maria, glancing at the man she had crowned with
the champagne bottle. He handed her one of the foil pouches containing
a chloroform pad and gestured to the man, who was now beginning to stir.
"Hold it over his face for about thirty seconds, then get out of here ... 
fast."

Gannon quietly opened the door to the main salon and entered, picturing
in his mind the simple sketch Sally had drawn of the stairwell that led
to the main guest stateroom. He found it just aft of the main salon and
slowly descended the thickly carpeted stairs. To the left and right at
the bottom of the stairs were two staterooms bearing brass plaques
identifying them as port and starboard guest staterooms. The main guest
stateroom lay directly ahead at the end of the passageway. Reaching the
door, Gannon listened for a few moments, then, hearing nothing, drew his
pistol and slowly turned the doorknob until it clicked. He carefully
opened the door a few inches and peered inside. It was dark, but the
night-lights on the stairwell and in the hallway cast a glow into the
room, revealing a queen-sized bed with a human shape beneath the covers.
The rush of air from the air-conditioning system was the only sound to
be heard.

Behind the bed were decorative smoked-glass panels, and as Gannon inched
the door open a little farther, a thin, humorless smile spread slowly
across his face.

The stateroom being directly beneath the aft deck, Malik had undoubtedly
heard the disturbance caused by Maria. His age-old tactic of arranging
pillows beneath the covers to make it appear he was sleeping would have
worked had it not been for the glass panels at the head of the bed. In
their murky reflection Gannon could see Malik's outline behind the door,
a pistol in his hand. Waiting.

Drawing himself up, Gannon put every ounce of his considerable strength
into driving the door open and slamming it into the body behind it. He
repeated it again and again with devastating speed and force. He finally
entered the room, but kept his shoulder to the door, effectively pinning
Malik to the bulkhead behind it as he did.

Once inside, his own pistol cocked and ready, he pulled the door closed.
Malik dropped forward like a felled tree, unconscious, his nose broken
and his face bloodied from the repeated impact of the row of solid-brass
clothes hooks on the back of the door.

Gannon threw a shoulder into him and caught him at the waist as he fell.
He carried him from the room and down the passageway toward the stairs.
A sharp click made him freeze in position. To his right he saw the door
to the starboard guest stateroom open and a sleep-filled Arab face
appear. A single, sharp blow to the temple from the barrel of Gannon's
pistol sent the man reeling back into the room, where he crumpled onto
the end of the bed. Gannon paused, listening for any movement in the
stateroom across the hall, but its occupant was obviously a heavy
sleeper.

Ascending the stairwell with Malik draped over his shoulder, Gannon
reached the main deck only to stare into the barrel of an Uzi submachine
gun as he entered the main salon. No doubt the owner had summoned the
interior guard when he viewed the attack on Malik on the monitor in the
master stateroom. A short, stocky Arab with a neatly trimmed beard,
dressed in silk robe and pajamas, stood beside the armed German guard.

"Drop your weapon," the guard ordered.

Gannon stood motionless, his pistol pointed at the Arab, Malik hanging
limply over his shoulder.

"Drop your weapon!" the guard shouted.

Gannon motioned with his head toward the Arab, keeping his eyes locked
on the guard for the first sign that he was ready to fire. "I can kill
him before you get off a shot," he told the nervous guard. "And you will
die," the guard said.

The tension in the room was such that no one noticed nor heard the door
leading from the aft deck to the main salon click open. Maria entered
and stood behind the guard. She placed the barrel of a Walther PPK
pistol at the base of his skull. "And so will you," Maria said, this
time without her affected Spanish accent.

The guard stiffened, afraid to look behind him for fear of giving Gannon
an opening.

The Arab studied Gannon's face. "How many of my men did you kill?"

"None," Gannon replied. "They'll all have headaches in the morning,
that's it."

"It seems we have reached an impasse," the Arab said with a weak grin.

"No impasse," Gannon said. "I only want the Russian. Have your man
here put down his weapon and we'll leave. No one has to get hurt."

The Arab shrugged. "I care nothing for the Russian. They will send
another with whom I can make the same deal." Looking to his security
guard, he said, "Do as he says."

The guard reluctantly dropped the Uzi. Maria immediately brought the
barrel of the Walther down on the back of his head, knocking him
unconscious.

"We made a deal," the Arab protested indignantly. "I can't have you
sounding any alarms until we're out of the area, he told the now
frightened and angry man. "But I can assure you better treatment than
him," he added, gesturing to the guard lying on the thick carpet. He
placed his pistol inside his belt and tossed Maria another chloroform
pad, which she opened and applied with no struggle from the Arab, gently
lowering him to the deck as he passed out.

Gannon dropped Malik onto a sofa while he bound and gagged the Arab and
the guard. He looked up at Maria, who was keeping watch on the interior
hallway and the aft deck.

"I thought I told you to leave."

"And if I had, do you think you would have walked away from this?"

Gannon didn't answer her directly. "How'd you get that Walther into the
country?"

Maria smiled and winked. "The customs officer's attention was on my
swooping neckline, not the contents of my bags."

Gannon chuckled. "Like I said, Maria. You're a real charmer."

Hoisting Malik back onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry, Gannon
followed Maria out onto the aft deck and down the gangway, where they
moved quickly toward the Mi Gaea.

Sally Hooper opened the door to the Mi Gaea's main salon with an audible
sigh. "Thank God! I've been having conniptions." Her eyes fell on the
bloodstained face of the man slung over Gannon's shoulder and she
winced.

"That's him?" she said to Gannon. "The Russian?"

"That's him," Gannon replied.

General Max came forward from the bridge with Jacover and smiled at the
sight of Gannon and his quarry. He gave him a pat on the back as he
carried Malik down the hallway to one of the staterooms where Calvin
Hardiment, the engineer, waited, shotgun in hand. Hardiment had been
told that the Russian had killed Jim Boos as well as Gannon's wife. Boos
had been his friend.

"I'll take great personal pride in watching over this one," Hardiment
said. "Don't you worry about a thing."

"I want him alive when we reach our destination," Gannon told the
hard-eyed engineer.

"Oh, and it's alive he'll be, sir," Hardiment said. "And if he should
try to escape, I'll use only the force necessary to subdue him."

Throwing Malik on the bed, Gannon left the room. Hardiment sat in a
lounge chair opposite the bed, the shotgun pointed at Malik's head.

Back on the aft deck, Gannon took the small hand-held radio from his
jacket pocket.

"All clear," was all he said into it.

"See you back at the Ranch, Boss," came Pavlik's reply. "Take good care
of our boy. Out."

Returning to the main salon, Gannon and General Max proceeded to the
bridge. Jacover, following General Max's earlier instructions, had had
the crew ready the yacht for an unscheduled departure.

"I'm taking you at your word, General," Jacover said as he started the
Mi Gaea's engines. "There'll be no gunplay. The owner takes a dim view
of bullet holes in his yacht."

"You have my word, Captain."

Gannon stepped outside and leaned on the railing, looking out to sea as
the Mi Gaea got under way. In his heart he knew what he was doing was
right, but his gut feeling, his more primal instincts, wanted him to go
below and tear Malik apart a piece at a time.

 ... 
Twenty-five miles off the coast of San Remo, Italy, the morning sun
peered over the horizon, casting a shimmering orange glow across the
gently rolling Mediterranean Sea. Steve Jacover sat in the captain's
chair, his eyes moving in a constantly sweeping arc as he maintained the
course and speed General Max had requested. For the past half hour he
had been tracking a blip on the radar screen that would shortly
intersect the Mi Gaea. Then he saw it. Grabbing the binoculars, he
focused on the distant object approaching them from the southeast. At
first he couldn't believe what he was looking at, then he turned to
General Max, who stood just outside the pilothouse, his eyes fixed on
the same spot on the horizon.

"Is that what we're waiting for?" Jacover asked. "That looks like her,"
General Max said.

"General," Jacover said, the incredulity heavy in his voice, "that ship
is flying a Soviet flag. And if I'm right, she's an
intelligencecollection vessel."

"You're right."

"Then correct me if I'm wrong," Jacover said, "but isn't the man we're
holding captive a Russian KGB agent?"

General Max nodded. "Right again."

"You don't think that might upset them a little if they find out,"
Jacover said. "I don't mean to be an alarmist, General, but that vessel
has guns that can blow us clean out of the water, not to mention the
surface-to-surface missiles she's carrying."

General Max smiled and stepped inside the pilothouse. "That's the last
thing she wants to do," he told Jacover. "You'll have to trust me on
this one."

Jacover shook his head and went back to the binoculars, watching the
Soviet BAL'ZAM-class intelligence-collection ship steadily approaching,
her decks and superstructure brimming with radomes and assorted
signal-collection antennas. At 360 feet from stem to stern, she dwarfed
the Mi Gaea. After receiving a coded message from Moscow she had left
her station in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Dubrovnik and
immediately sailed toward the secret rendezvous with the luxury yacht.

"There'll be no radio contact," General Max said. "She'll come
alongside and hold about thirty feet off your port side. They'll send a
tender over to pick up our passenger."

"Are they coming aboard?" Jacover asked.

"No," General Max said. "Just lower your swim ladder and we'll send
Malik down to them."

Jacover smiled and again shook his head in disbelief. "I wish my boss
could be here to see this."

"As he told you, it's got his stamp of approval," General Max said,
having personally contacted the Mi Gaea's owner after Gannon's call from
Jamaica.

"No disrespect, General," Jacover said, "but if he hadn't told me I was
to cooperate fully, I wouldn't be doing this. I can guarantee you
that."

General Max patted Jacover on the shoulder, then went below to where
Gannon was sitting on the aft deck talking with Maria and Sally. They
had also seen the huge Soviet ship approaching.

"It's time," General Max said.

Gannon had avoided going below since carrying Malik aboard for fear of
breaking his prayerful promise to Kate.

Malik was sitting upright on the bed, his nose and eyes swollen, his
face streaked with dried blood. Gannon again felt the overpowering urge
to send Hardiment from the room and have Malik to himself.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Gannon," Hardiment said, rising and handing Gannon
the shotgun, "our Russian friend has been behaving himself. Not so much
as a peep from him."

Gannon gave the shotgun back to Hardiment, still afraid of what he might
do in a moment of blind hatred. He took Malik by the arm and led him up
to the main deck and forward to where General Max waited at the swim
ladder that had just been set in place.

Hardiment followed, still holding the shotgun, hoping against hope that
the man who had killed Jim Boos would give him a reason to blow his head
off.

Malik's battered face was impassive until he saw the Soviet ship
approaching off the port side. His eyes widened and his head snapped in
the direction of Gannon, then to General Max. The anxiety and fear he
was feeling were quite evident in his expression.

"You can't be serious about this?" he said to General Max and Gannon.

"Oh, but we are," General Max said. "Deadly serious."

"I can be invaluable to your Central Intelligence Agency."

"You have nothing we want, Mr. Malik."

"You're a fool if you believe that," Malik said, his eyes now fixed on
the Soviet ship as she came alongside and kept pace with the Mi Gaea. A
large inflatable rubber boat with an outboard motor was being lowered
over her side and four armed GRU officers stood by ready to descend.

Resigned to his fate, Malik turned to Gannon. "I know this man by
reputation," he said, referring to General Max, "but who are you? I've
seen you before. Where?"

Gannon was still struggling with the violent urges just beneath the
surface, but managed to remain calm. He didn't answer.

"Who are you?" Malik shouted.

Gannon didn't reply. He stared coldly at Malik, then fixed his eyes on
the rubber boat as it reached the Mi Gaea. One of the GRU officers on
board took hold of the swim ladder and looked up at the men standing at
the top.

Gannon grabbed Malik by the scruff of the neck and forced him toward the
first step on the ladder. Malik resisted.

"Do it on your own or I'll throw your ass overboard and they can fish
you out of the water."

Malik glared at Gannon as he descended and was pulled into the rubber
boat, which immediately cast off.

General Max's attention was on the Soviet ship. A tall, heavily built
man stood on the forward deck. He wore the uniform of a Soviet Army
general and was staring directly at General Max.

It had been years since General Max had seen the man, then a young GRU
colonel, who had been one of his adversaries while stationed in Moscow.
But he had no problem in recognizing the head of Soviet Military
Intelligence. Though dressed in civilian clothes, General Max drew
himself to attention and saluted the chief of the GRU.

General Vladimir Petrovich Antonov smiled broadly, drew himself to an
equally correct posture of rigid attention, and returned the salute. He
held it until General Max lowered his hand, then disappeared inside the
ship.

As the rubber boat pulled away from the Mi Gaea, porpoising through the
gentle swells, Malik braced himself and stood up in the bow, shouting
above the sound of the outboard engine:

"Who are you?"

Gannon turned away, returning to the aft deck, where he sat listening to
Malik's repeated shouts growing fainter. Then there was nothing at
all--only the sight of the GRU officers dragging Malik aboard,
retrieving the rubber boat, and the huge ship moving steadily away to
become a dot on the horizon, taking the rage inside Gannon with her.

 ... 
A car, sent by the CIA's station chief at the American Embassy in Paris,
had picked up General Max upon the Mi Gaea's return to Antibes. Gannon
had accepted Jacover's friendly invitation to stay on board for a few
days to rest up. He had spent most of the time sleeping and lounging in
the warm October sun on the boat deck. The Jameel was no longer in
port, and the gossip among the crews and the locals was that there had
been an attempted robbery aboard, but it had been successfully repelled
by the Jameel's security guards even though the criminals had escaped.

Gannon's plane back to the United States left from Nice in an hour, and
a taxi was waiting for him at the entrance to the yacht club. He was at
the head of the gangway, his carryall slung over his shoulder, when
Maria came out onto the aft deck and stood beside him.

"You still haven't told me why you consented to turning that animal back
over to his own people," she said. "He'll probably get nothing more
than a slap on the wrist for what he did or a few years in a labor camp
at worst."

Gannon looked out across the quay, then turned back to Maria. Malik had
killed a friend she had loved, she had a right to know.

"Kate hated violence," Gannon said softly. "I had no right to kill him
in her name. It would have demeaned everything she believed in."

"But how could you just let him walk away like that?" Maria said. "Jim
Boos was your friend, too, and I can assure you, he wouldn't have shown
that bastard an ounce of mercy if Malik had killed you."

Gannon saw the pain and disappointment in Maria's eyes. "I think, in
the end, both Kate and Jim will be satisfied," he told her.

"Would you care to explain that?"

"Malik was running operations for a faction of the KGB that was trying
to overthrow Gorbachev," he said. "That faction, including the KGB
chief and most of his cronies, has been ousted. Malik, however, is a
sort of special case. He exceeded acceptable limits. Both the KGB and
the GRU reserve a special treatment for those who have violated their
oaths and disgraced their service. They use them as an object lesson
for others."

"What?" Maria said. "Cleaning latrines at their training school?"

Gannon smiled and shook his head. "No. General Max told me about a
building inside the top-secret GRU compound in Moscow. There are
bleachers set up to hold a few hundred officers. There's also a blast
furnace inside that building, with a specially constructed conveyer belt
feeding into it. The man who is to be the object lesson for the
hundreds of present and future intelligence officers in attendance is
strapped naked onto the belt and fed feet first into the furnace, an
inch at a time. I've been told it is one of the most gruesome, painful
deaths imaginable."
Maria said nothing at first, repulsed by the image that had formed in
her mind, then a smile spread slowly across her face. "Jim would have
liked that."

"Kate wouldn't," Gannon said. "But then I won't have a hand in it, will
I?"

Maria embraced Gannon, kissing him on the cheek. "You take care of
yourself."

"I'll do that," Gannon said. As he walked toward the taxi waiting at
the entrance barrier, he heard Maria call out from the aft deck and
turned to look back.

"Hey, Gannon! Maybe I'll stop at Fort Bragg and pay you a visit on my
way back to Jamaica." With a broad wink and a stunning smile, she
added, "I kleen your house for a month. I chine your choose."

Gannon laughed and waved as he climbed into the waiting taxi.

 ... 
Lieutenant Bill Rafferty shoved a stack of files off to one side of his
desk and propped his feet up on the edge. He rubbed his tired eyes, red
and sore from the city grit, and glanced at his watch. It was six
o'clock and he was again going to be late getting home. So what else is
new? he thought as he arched his back and stretched his arms over his
head. It had been a long and trying day.

Jack Gannon entered the Nineteenth Precinct station house and stopped at
the tall desk. A sergeant shouted above a domestic argument the cops
were trying to get under control and told Gannon that Rafferty was in
his office in the detective squad room. Two of the detectives pecking
away on typewriters looked up and nodded to Gannon as he stood at the
entrance to the crowded, noisy room. They recognized him from three
weeks ago when he had laid into the Soviets.

"You looking for the lieutenant?" one of the detectives asked.

"Yeah," Gannon said.

"Hey, Lou," the sergeant yelled, calling Rafferty by the diminutive used
throughout the department for lieutenants. "You got company."

Rafferty opened his eyes and swung his feet off the desk as Gannon
entered his office.

"Hey, Gannon. How you doing'?" His cop eyes made a quick appraisal.
"Got yourself a nice tan. Been on vacation?"

"Sort of," Gannon said. "I'm on my way back to Fort Bragg from France.
My connecting flight to Charlotte isn't until tomorrow morning. Thought
I'd stop in and say hello."

"Glad you did," Rafferty said. "I've thought about you every now and
then. It's good to see you're working it out. Little vacation time,
trip to France never hurt, huh?"

"I thought I might treat you to a nice dinner," Gannon said. "You pick
the restaurant."

"You're on," Rafferty said. "I know this great Italian restaurant over
in Brooklyn, wiseguy place. Best pasta you ever ate. Let me give my
wife a call and we're outta here."

Gannon watched the activity in the squad room as Rafferty made his call.
The cage at the back of the room was filled to capacity with an
assortment of unsavory types--one demanding to see his lawyer, another
sitting in a corner, knees drawn up to his chest and shaking
uncontrollably. A huge detective with massive hands nodded to Gannon;
it was the one who had shoved the black kid back into the chair during
the fight. Gannon smiled and nodded back.

"So," Rafferty said as he slipped on his overcoat and stepped out of the
office. "How was France?"

"To tell you the truth," Gannon said, "I didn't see much of it. Mostly
Antibes."

"Never heard of it," Rafferty said. "What's there?"

"An old friend of ours was there," Gannon said with a grin.

Rafferty stopped walking and held Gannon's gaze. "You got the son of a
bitch, didn't you? You got the slime-ball."

Gannon nodded and smiled.

"Hey!" Rafferty shouted to the room at large, drawing the attention of
everyone in it. "You guys remember the Gannon case? Well, the good
guys finally won one."

"All right!" one of the detectives shouted, accompanied by
"Fuck them
where they live" and a variety of other remarks that were followed by a
few congratulatory pats on the back.

"I hope the bastard burns in hell," Rafferty said.

"That's more of an appropriate analogy than you might think," Gannon
replied.

Rafferty put an arm around Gannon's shoulder and escorted him out of the
room and down the hallway past the tall desk. "Feels good, huh? So tell
me all about it."

"If I tell you, I've got to kill you," Gannon said with a grin.

Rafferty laughed. "Hey, fuck you, Gannon. I'm a squad commander in the
NYPD. This is my fuckin' city, and I got the gun. Now I want to hear
every last detail."

"You got it," Gannon said.

The end