“And then,” Natalia smiled, “the captain could replace the three soldiers with three of his own men. It would merely be a matter of changing uniform blouses. The vehi-cle proceeds down the highway toward a convoy of suffi- ciently small size which we had pre-selected. The vehicle stops the convoy. If another of the patrols comes by, it can be waved on. The suspicions of the convoy would not be aroused—there are so many of the road patrols that they must by now be a familiar sight to them.”
“Maybe the Jeep could be given a flat tire or something and stopping the convoy would seem more natural.”
“Exactly,” Natalia told Reed. “And once the convoy is stopped, the rest of us sweep down to attack.”
“We eliminate the personnel of the convoy,” Vladov said, as if thinking out loud. “Assuming they are KGB, we take their uniforms—”
“Knives would be better than guns if we can get away with it,” Rourke noted.
“Knife holes are more easily covered up,” Natalia nod-ded. “And if the knifework is done properly, there can be little bleeding to stain the uniform.”
“We get the convoy orders, drive up there and we fake it,” Reed nodded.
“Maybe a little more precise than that,” Rourke began. “Between Natalia, Captain Vladov and Lieutenant Daszrozinski, we should be able to get all the information from the convoy leadership that we need—and their orders—we can work on that after we make the switch and start back up the road. We won’t have more than ten minutes or so until an-other convoy comes along. Vladov and Daszrozinski can do most of the talking—and we’ll have to find the smallest waisted of the convoy personnel so we can get Natalia inside looking at least moderately convincing.”
“I must dress as a man—I don’t like that,” she smiled.
“I like you better as a woman, too—but,” and he laughed. Then he looked to Reed, “Why don’t you send some of your guys down the road where it bends there to find a likely convoy—space men a half mile apart to use as relay runners to get the information back to us. We can’t risk radio here. Don’t know what frequency the convoys use, or what fre-quency the patrols use.” He looked at Natalia. “You go with Reed’s men—run the thing—” and he looked at Reed, “Un-less you have some objections.”
“I wanna get the job done — however we do it — I can ob-ject later, if there is a later.”
“Agreed,” Natalia nodded.
Rourke told her, “You pick the convoy—you’ll have the best idea of how many uniforms we should be able to net out of how many vehicles. Start the runners, then get back around here. I’ll be up in the rocks, riding herd on Vladov and Daszrozinski’s men in case they bump into problems. One of your men,” and he turned to Captain Vladov. “I saw him with a 7.62 SVD with a PSO-1 telescopic sight—have him leave that with me so I can long distance any trouble you might have if I need to. I left my SSG at the Retreat.”
“Yes, of course, Doctor.”
Rourke looked at Vladov, Reed, and Natalia in turn. “We all set then?”
Reed said to Vladov, “Good luck—I mean with nailing that patrol vehicle, Captain.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
Natalia smiled.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Reed had stayed behind in the rocks with Rourke. Ac-companying Natalia, leading the American force, was the veteran, white-haired Sergeant Dressier. They moved along a ridge line at a brisk, stiff-legged, wide-strided Commando walk, Natalia mildly amazed that Dressier seemed to show no fatigue. There was still some distance to go and she” opened conversation with Dressier. “Tell me, Sergeant, what did you do as a civilian, between the period of the Viet Nam conflict and your being recalled to active duty.”
Dressier, sounding barely out of breath, laughed good-naturedly. “Not much to tell, Major, really. Farmer. Worked my farm, helped my wife meddle in the children’s lives, watched my grandchildren come into the world— that’s what I did. Had a part-time job with the city we lived near, worked on vehicle maintenance. But all I ever been mostly is a soldier or a farmer. How about you, Major, did you do anything before you joined the KGB?”
“Interesting?” she laughed. “I studied at the Polytechnic. I suppose I am qualified as an engineer of sorts, in electron-ics. I studied ballet — I studied that a great deal.”
“I never did see a ballet, ma’am, not a real one, anyways. One of my daughters took ballet some when she was little. Watched her dance in some of them recital things they’d have every year or so. I bet you was pretty as a ballerina, Major.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” she smiled. “I enjoyed it—a great deal. And when I became involved in the martial arts, it was vastly easier for me because of my ballet training.”
“Ma’am,” Dressier began walking beside her now, “you think we got a prayer of gettin’ in there and doin’ what we gotta do?”
She looked at him a moment, then nodded her head, brushing her hair back from her face with the back of her gloved left hand. “A prayer, Sergeant—I should think we have that at least.”
She had loaned Vladov her silencer fitted stainless Walther PPK/S. Rourke waited with the 7.62mm SVD sniper weapon to back him up.
A prayer—it was likely all they had, she thought. And the thought of that amused her and at once frightened her.
Prayer was not something taught in the Chicago espio-nage school inside the Soviet Union.
But as she walked beside Sergeant Dressier, she tried to formulate one.
Chapter Thirty
Captain Vladov walked briskly along the trail leading down from the rocks, Lieutenant Daszrozinski beside him, the ten other men of the Special Forces unit walking two abreast. He had intentionally taken no security precau-tions — friendly forces in friendly territory needed no such precautions and to bring off the ruse, openness, inno-cence—these were necessary, more crucial than guile.
He raised his right hand, signalling a halt. “Order the men, Lieutenant, to charge their weapons but to leave the safety tumblers in the normal carrying mode. We do not wish a sharp-eyed soldier to see something amiss. And not a shot is to be fired without my order.”
“Very good, Comrade Captain,” Daszronzinski re-sponded, then turned to the men. “You have heard your commander, charge your weapons, leave the safety tum-blers in the standard carrying mode. No shot is to be dis- charged—none—unless on the specific order of Comrade Captain Vladov.” There was the rattle of bolts being cycled, the shuffling of feet, a murmur of conversation from one man to another.
“Silence now,” Vladov ordered.
He withdrew the Walther pistol loaned to him by Major Tiemerovna from beneath his tunic.
He edged the slide slightly rearward, re-checking that a round was chambered. He gave the longish, chunky silencer a firm twist, but the silencer was already locked firmly in place.
The safety on, he tried withdrawing the weapon from be-neath his tunic several times until he could do it smoothly.
His first target would be the machinegunner at the back of the vehicle. If his men had not dispatched the driver and the second man by the time he had killed the machinegunner, he would turn the pistol on these other two.
None of his men had spoken of it, but he knew his men well enough to read what they thought—to kill their fellow soldiers was something no training, however rigorous, could have prepared them for.
It was not to be looked upon as combat—but as murder, he knew.
He turned to his men. “Your attention. I shall say this once and once only. The cause we serve is the cause of the people, because it is the cause of humanity. Alone, we rep-resent the noble spirit of the Soviet People against a menace to all humankind which we ourselves have created. The ulti-mate expression of Communism has been and is to serve the worker, to break the chains of oppression. Working with our American allies this day, however uncomfortably, we shall be doing just that. Serving the cause of the People of the Soviet Union and oppressed people throughout the world. Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy and the KGB—they have ceased to be Communists. They are
