leg without causing a burst of white light to erupt behind his eyes. As Lee approached, he looked at the ground crew as they watched him. They were working quickly without wanting to appear as though they were hurrying, as if to say they'd taken the money and would do the job, but this wasn't their fight.
It was Lee's fight, however. One he'd been trained for, one from which he wouldn't run. Not when he had his quarry pinned in a plane that was suckling on a fuel tank, unable to go anywhere.
When he was nearly at the nose of the plane, one of the two men reemerged in the cabin door. He was holding a German Walther MP-K submachine gun, and he wasted no time firing a burst at Lee. Having expected that, the FBI agent pushed off on his good leg and dove toward the opposite side of the plane, putting the nose of the aircraft between himself and the gunman. He wondered where airport security was: they had to have heard the gunfire, and he didn't want to believe that they were all on the take like the ground crew and that son of a bitch Sawara.
The shells picked a jagged line in the tarmac to his right, but they were several feet away from where Lee hit the ground. Crawling forward on his elbow, he stretched his arm out to shoot at the nosewheel; that would keep the plane on the ground long enough for someone to look into what was going on. Unless everyone at the airfield, including the security forces, had been paid off.
An instant before Lee fired, a burst erupted from behind him, chewing into his armpit and shoulder.
He hadn't expected that. His arm jerked up and he missed the tire, sending four shots into the wing and fuselage. Then another burst hit him in the right thigh.
He turned and saw the bloodied form of Ken Sawara standing above him.
'You couldn't? just leave it,' Sawara gasped as he dropped to his knees. 'You couldn't let me go!'
Putting all his strength into his arm, Lee swung his.38 toward the soldier. 'You want to go?' he said, sending a bullet into his forehead. 'Go.'
As Sawara dropped to his side, Lee turned his face toward the plane. He was struggling for air as he watched the men continue fueling the aircraft. This couldn't be it, he told himself. The crimefighter is betrayed by his partner and dies on oil-slick tarmac? No one to see, no sirens in the distance, no one to book the criminals or lend him a hand? not even a conscience-stricken worker?
Simon Lee died feeling like he'd failed, utterly.
A half hour later, the plane took off, bound for Russia. Because of the darkness, no one on the ground or in the aircraft saw the thin stream of black smoke curling from the port engine as the Gulfstream pushed skyward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Over lunch ordered from the commissary, Lowell Coffey, Martha Mackall, and their aides worked in the attorney's wood-paneled office, picking through the legal minefield that was a part of every Striker mission.
Finland's President had approved a multinational Striker landing to examine radiation readings in the gulf, and Coffey's deputy, Andrea Stempel, was on the phone with the Interpol office in Helsinki arranging to get a car and fake visas for three team members to enter Russia. Nearby, on a leather couch, Stempel's assistant, paralegal Jeffrey Dryfoos, went over the wills of the Striker commandos. If the paperwork was not in order, reflecting up-to- date changes in marital status, children, and assets, documents would be faxed to the aircraft for signing and witnessing en route.
Coffey and Mackall themselves were looking at a computer monitor on the desk, drafting the 'finding,' the lengthy final-draft document that Coffey would need to present to the joint eight-person Senate and Congressional Intelligence Committee before Striker landed. They had already negotiated the kinds of weapons that could be used, exactly what type of operation would be run, the duration and other constraints. Coffey had been involved with some findings that had gone so far as to specify which radio frequencies could be used and what time, to the minute, the team would exit and enter. After all was said and much was done, approval from the committee to enter Russia did not actually give them the right to do so under international law. But without it, if captured, the Striker team would be disavowed without approval and left to twist in the wind. With it, the U.S. would work quietly through diplomatic channels to arrange for their release.
Down the hall, past the offices of Mike Rodgers and Ann Farris, was Bob Herbert's tidy command center. The narrow, rectangular room consisted of several banks of computers on a small table, with detailed world maps on three walls and a dozen television monitors on the far wall. Most of the time the screens were dark. Now, however, five of them were aglow with satellite images of Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. Old pictures morphed into new ones every.89 seconds.
There was a long-standing debate in intelligence circles about the value of ELINT/SIGINT spies in space as opposed to reliable data gathered from HUMINT personnel on the ground. Ideally, agencies wanted both. They wanted the ability to read the odometer on a jeep from a satellite fifty miles in space, and ears on the ground to report on conversations or meetings held behind closed doors. Satellite spying was clean. There was no chance of getting captured or interrogated, no risk of double agents feeding false information. But it also didn't have the capacity of an intelligence officer on the ground to distinguish between real and false targets.
Satellite surveillance for the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, and Op-Center was managed by the highly secretive National Reconnaissance Office in the Pentagon. Run by the meticulous Stephen Viens, a college buddy of Matt Stoll, it consisted of banks of television monitors set in ten rows of ten. All of them watched different sectors of the earth, each generating an image every.89 seconds providing a total of sixty-seven live black-and-white images a minute at various levels of magnification. The NRO was also responsible for testing the new AIM-Satellite, first in a series of orbiting audio-imaging monitors designed to provide detailed pictures of submarine and aircraft interiors by reading the sounds and echoes of sounds produced by people and instruments therein.
Three of the NRO's satellites were watching troop movements on the border of Russia and Ukraine, while two kept an eye on forces in Poland. Through a source at the United Nations, Bob Herbert had heard that the Poles were getting antsy with the Russian buildup. Though Warsaw had not yet authorized the mobilization of troops, leaves had been canceled and the activities of Ukrainians living and working in Poland, near the border, were being monitored by Warsaw. Viens agreed with Herbert that Poland deserved watching, and had the photos sent directly to his office, where Op-Center's surveillance analysis team was studying them as they appeared.
The printout of the day's activities of the soldiers in Belgorod indicated nothing unusual to Bob Herbert and his team of analysts. For nearly two days, the routine had been the same:
Time Activity
0550 First Call
0600 Reveille formation
0610–0710 Physical training
0710–0715 Make Beds
0715–0720 Inspection
0720–0740 Orders of the day given
0740–0745 Wash
0745–0815 Breakfast
0815–083 °Cleanup
0830–0900 Preparation for duty
0900–1450 Training
1450–1500 Prepare for lunch
1500–1530 Lunch
1530–1540 Tea
1540–1610 Personal time
1610–165 °Care and cleaning of weapons and equipment
1650–184 °Cleaning camp and general sanitation
