He could see it on the monitor.
He had programmed the delay between target one and the taking of target two so there would be time for the cam-era to restore picture function, time for him to visually con-firm the strike.
One instant—the Aeroflot aircraft carrying the Polit-buro, the premier, the leaders of the KGB—one instant it was there. A blinding flash of light, Rozhdestvenskiy invol-untarily closing his eyes against it, counting from the flash. “...fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.” He opened his eyes—the airliner was gone, “eighteen, nineteen, twenty—” Another flash, the flash brighter now, the camera totally disfunctioning.
“We have lost our video, Comrade Colonel Rozhdest-venskiy.”
Rozhdestvenskiy began to laugh. “We have lost our video— indeed — but we have gained something far greater. Tell me—to please stand by,” and he laughed so loudly he realized all of them must have thought he had suddenly be-come insane.
But the master of an entire planet could afford the luxury.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Holy shit—what the hell was that—it’s starting!” Reed stared skyward, Rourke looking upward as well. There was fire in the sky, a pencil-thin beam of light visible for an in-stant—Rourke shouted, “Look away!” He turned his own head away, the roar from above deafening now, Rourke sweeping Natalia into his arms, pulling her to the ground.
The roar gradually died.
Rourke opened his eyes, Natalia’s blue eyes staring at him.
“Was that it?” Reed snarled. “But we’re still alive—”
“That wasn’t the ionization,” Rourke rasped. “It was the particle beam system.”
“But what is it that they were firing at to make such a loud—”
Rourke interrupted Vladov. “Those weren’t drones. It wasn’t a test.”
Natalia, still in his arms, beside him on the ground. Her voice was low, even, steady. “My uncle had predicted Rozhdestvenskiy would do this thing. And he was right. He has just destroyed the entire Soviet government. He has killed them all. The premier. The Politburo. The heads of the various branches of the KGB. It must have been that for Rozhdestvenskiy to utilize the particle beam system.”
Rourke pushed himself up to his elbows, the fire gone from the sky.
“All those people—he just murdered them,” Reed whis-pered.
“Assassination—that’s the better term,” Rourke advised.
“I cannot believe this thing,” Vladov murmured.
Natalia sat bolt upright from the ground, her blue eyes saucer wide as she spoke. “He has made himself— Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy has—he has made himself the master of the entire world should we fail. The total master. Rozhdest-venskiy alone.”
It was one of the U.S. II troopers who spoke, one of the two black men of the group.
“Me—ma’am—I don’t like folks what thinks they’re somebody else’s master. We’re gonna have to get that sucker. Get him good, we are.”
Rourke got to his feet, helping Natalia to stand. Her hands were shaking as he took them in his.
“The corporal said it, we’re gonna have to get Rozhdestvenskiy—gonna have to get him good. Reed, you and Vladov pick some men—ones who can be good and quiet. Put out a recon ele-ment so we don’t go walking into something.”
“I’ll take ‘em, sir,” Sergeant Dressier said, pulling his fa-tigue cap off, running his five pound ham-sized right hand through his hair then replacing the cap.
“All right, Sergeant, co-ordinate with Captain Vladov,” Reed nodded.
“I think,” Vladov said quietly, “that the good Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy has just made all of us into one unit, has he not?”
Reed nodded. “Agreed, Captain, for now at least,” and Reed started forward.
Vladov just shook his head, turning to converse with Ser-geant Dressier.
As Rourke started ahead, he held Natalia’s right hand in his left—somehow that had become more important to him.
And her hand still shook.
Chapter Twenty-six
Rourke imagined himself in Rozdestvenskiy’s shoes. He doubted the KGB commander had any more precise data on the exact time of terrestrial destruction than did anyone else. With his armored Bushnell 8x30s now, Rourke peered across the corridors of granite and toward the entrance of Cheyenne Mountain. A level plain was before it, surround-ing this when Rourke had seen the complex once years ago — only from the outside—there had been a single twelve foot high chain link fence with electrified barbed wire at the top. Now, some distance forward of this, there was a sec-ond fence of identical seeming construction. He judged the distance between the fences as perhaps twenty yards.
Men armed with M-16s traveled the area between the fence in pairs, one of each pair restraining a guard dog on a leash, the dogs either Dobermans or German Shepherds.
The sentries were at three minute intervals, hardly enough time to cross the outer perimeter electrified fence and reach the inner fence, let alone cross it. Natalia had been given detailed information gathered by the GRU in her uncle’s behalf, detailing as much as GRU had been able to ascertain pertaining to Womb defenses. Included in this in-formation was the fact that in addition to the human and canine sentries, the area between the two fences was cov-ered with closed circuit television cameras with at least four operators manning the camera monitors at all times.
Beyond the interior fence for a distance of twenty yards was a mine field, the exact nature of the mines something GRU had been unable to fathom. A smaller fence—perhaps eight feet high—formed the third and innermost boundary.
Running through the boundaries was one road, two lanes wide at best, which passed through the gates and toward the base of the mountain. Forming an outside perimeter some five yards or so before reaching the first twelve foot electri-fied fence were concrete barriers, these made of a special formula concrete of the type used to circle the White House following the attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Leba-non, forming a shield against vehicles, explosives-laden or otherwise.
Rourke scanned along the roadway, toward the base of the mountain. Flanking the main entrance were a brace of 155mm M198 Howitzer guns—he imagined in the event something somehow penetrated the three fences, the con-crete barrier and the mine field, not to mention the teams of armed sentries and their guard dogs. The doors themselves were fabricated of a special titanium alloy, given special heat treatment, constructed of various layers, the spacing between the layers of interlaced chain link and wire mesh. These were only the exterior bombproof doors. A short dis-tance inside, a similar single door, twice the thickness, weighing literally tons, was positioned, this a massive vault door rigged to a combination lock system and automati-cally closing when the facility went to final alert status and unable to be opened until the alert status was cancelled in a specified manner. When this door was closed, automati-cally the climate control system for the complex would take over and the complex was hermetically sealed.
To Rourke’s left—to the south—lay the airfield which served the mountain. A central section of the main runway functioned like the elevators aboard an aircraft carrier, able to raise or lower planes to or from the runway surface.
It would have been obvious to suppose, he realized, that here lay the chink in the armor. But a similar system of fences, guards and blast barriers formed a perimeter sur-rounding the field —
although GRU doubted the area be-tween the second and third (smaller) fence would be mined, this in the event of a landing or take-off difficulty. Teams of sentries utilizing guard dogs roamed the field in seemingly random patterns. As an aircraft would make an approach, the sentries would disperse, then claxons would sound again and the sentries would resume their random seeming pat-terns of movement across the field.
Once the elevator would lower an aircraft to the below ground hangar complex, there was a system of doors
