before carefully pouring it over the tea leaves. He heard movement behind him, and was not surprised when he turned and saw her there.
He handed her a cup, knowing that he should have steeped the leaves a little longer but guessing that the restorative effect was more important than gourmet considerations. “Bad?”
She nodded. Here, away from the rest of her staff, she let her true emotions show on her face. Hopelessness, and anguish that he saw all too often these days. “They won’t listen to reason.”
“Do they ever?”
Instead of answering, she slumped down into one of the plastic chairs pushed around the edge of the room. “Not often enough. I’ve tried everything I can think of, called in every favor. But I think they’re going to win the cote on the strikes.”
He poured her a refill of the tea, now at the correct strength. “You expected that, didn’t you?”
“It doesn’t make it easier.” She drained the rest of the second cup, although he knew it was too hot to drink that quickly. “There’s one last thing I can try, I suppose,” she said, almost herself. “It won’t work, but at least I’ll know I’ve tried.”
“What?” Jack asked, a cold shiver running down his spine. Not since the Spratley Islands conflict had he seen that look on her face: deep regret coupled with iron determination.
“I’ll have to talk it over with the president first,” she said. “It’s risky, but it might work.”
Jack felt a deep sense of foreboding. “What might work?”
“China,” she said softly. “T’ing holds the keys to this, and I don’t know what locks they fit.”
The president listened carefully as Ambassador Wexler briefed him on the previous day’s maneuverings. He nodded appreciatively at her description of the secretary general’s action. “Good teamwork. You bought me some time, anyway.”
“There’s too much that troubles me about this entire situation,” Wexler said after a moment. “The problem is, they are raising some good points. If the United Nations is truly supposed to be a force for peace in the world, then it makes sense to have all forces under one command. As it stands now, you can withdraw from participation at any time.”
The president nodded. “And that’s exactly the way I want it. Sure, I could give operational command of our forces to a UN commander. And most of the time, it would be no problem. If things started going wrong, I would simply revoke that chain of command. The other side of it is that I’ve got good men and women on the front lines out there. I suspect that if the NATO commander gave an order that was truly inconsistent with our national security policy, they’d find a way to stall until I had a chance to act. At least that’s the theory. But out there on the edge of a conflict, there’s never enough time. I won’t put them in the damning situation of having to evade a lawful order that’s damning to our national interests. That has to remain my decision. I can’t have them making national policy by proxy.”
“So it would really be just a sham,” Wexler said. “If we agreed, that is. I suppose it’s naive to believe that the UN could be what it’s supposed to be.” She felt a sense of disappointment. They had talked so often about the potential for good in the United Nations, but sometimes she’d wondered just how much of it the president believed.
He shook his head. “Not at all. The UN is a powerful force. If every member nation were as concerned about world peace as we are, then you can bet that I’d probably support allied command of U.S. forces… in some situations. But they’re not. Each one has his own rice bowl and their interests don’t always coincide with ours.”
“The other thing is this entire Macedonia/Greece issue. I’m fairly certain that the UN counsel will authorize military sanctions against Macedonia. But the truth is that Macedonia has some very real, valid complaints about Greece’s conduct. The whole idea of self-determination for nations is a central part of our national philosophy. But is that just for us and not for other nations around the world?” she asked.
“I haven’t really decided what role I want the U.S. to take in any action against Macedonia,” he said finally. “For the same reasons I’ve just mentioned. There are no easy answers, and I don’t want us to be part of a bad one.”
“So what do we need to accomplish in the UN?” she asked. “It’s coming to a head soon.”
The president stood, indicating the discussion was concluded. “If I knew, I would tell you. I’m intrigued by China’s connection with Singapore as it relates to Greece. I trust your instincts on this — it’s important, or the secretary general and Ambassador T’ing wouldn’t see it as an issue. See if you can find out what that’s about.”
She stood as well. “I’ll try, Mr. President. I’ll try.”
She left his office with no real answers, but in some way unaccountably cheered that the president was grappling with the same issues that bothered her. She would try to untangle the threads of self-interest that ran through her brethren and sistern in the United Nations and get the answers they both needed.
Colonel Zentos twisted uneasily in the left seat of the helicopter. It had been years since he’d spent much time airborne, and he found he disliked it now just as much as he had before. The terrain looked alien, unfriendly, particularly now with daylight finally fading.
They’d almost finished combing their assigned search area. So far there had been no trace of the downed helo, but there were still over one hundred and fifty square miles of ground to cover. From this altitude, it should have been easy to spot a twisted mass of metal wreckage on the ground.
The shuddering noise inside the helo changed pitch slightly, ratcheting higher. A few extra knots of speed, eked out from the fuel reserves, so that they could cover the entire area before darkness fell.
It hit him all at once as their speed over ground increased noticeably. Their minds were attuned to the wrong mental picture — the helo wasn’t in sight, it
Therefore, the wreckage wasn’t in sight. So what they should be looking for was signs of where a helo
Seven minutes later, scanning the landscape with his new perspective, he saw it. At the edge of a field, a dark swath of raw land amid the green. Not a farming track, not a cattle path. No.
“There,” he shouted, waving the pilot over toward the edge of the field. “Near the trees.”
The pilot shot him a puzzled look, but cut sharply away from his course toward the spot.
Hovering over it, Zentos felt relief surge through his body. “Can you set it down?”
The pilot nodded. He eased back on the power and drifted down. As soon as they touched the ground, Zentos popped his hatch open, ducked under the rotor blades, and jogged to the edge of the field. The first stars were visible overhead.
As soon as he reached the area, he knew he was right. The helicopter’s downdraft had kept the smell from reaching him at first. Aviation fuel — burnt aviation fuel. And the ground, not gashed — burned.
Then where was the helo? He walked around the perimeter of the burned spot, looking for signs that the helo had been moved. At the edge closest to the woods, the sod had been hastily replaced over part of the burned area. Beyond that, under the canopy of trees, he saw moonlight glinting off metal. He walked over to it and checked quickly to see if there were any bodies. None, but parts of it were so twisted by both the fire and the impact that he
