“We got a short in here someplace,” the flight engineer said on the flight deck, forward. “Just lost the aft cabin lights. The breaker just popped and I can’t get it to reset.”
“Maybe it’s a bad breaker?” Colonel von Eich asked.
“I can try a spare,” the engineer said.
“Go ahead. I’ll tell the folks in back why the lights just went out.” It was a lie, but a good enough one, and with everyone buckled in, it wasn’t all that easy to turn around and see the back of the cabin.
“Where’s the Chairman?” Vatutin asked the Lieutenant.
“He’s conducting an inspection—who are you?”
“Colonel Vatutin—this is Colonel Golovko. Where’s the fucking Chairman, you young idiot!”
The Lieutenant sputtered for a few seconds, then pointed.
“Vasiliy,” the Chairman said. It was too bad really. His bodyguard turned to see the muzzle of a pistol. “Your gun, please.”
“But—”
“No time for talking.” He took the gun and pocketed it. Next he handed over the cuffs. “Both of you, and put your hands through the steering wheel.”
The driver was aghast, but both men did as they were told. Vasiliy snapped one ring on his left wrist and reached through the steering wheel to attach the other to the driver. While they did so, Gerasimov detached the receiver from his car’s radiophone and pocketed that.
“The keys?” Gerasimov asked. The driver handed them over with his free left hand. The nearest uniformed guard was a hundred meters away. The airplane was a mere twenty. The Chairman of the Committee for State Security opened the car door himself. He hadn’t done that in months. “Colonel Filitov, will you come with me, please?”
Misha was as surprised as everyone else, but did as he was told. In full view of everyone at the airport—at least, those few who were bothering to watch the routine departure—Gerasimov and Filitov walked toward the VC-137’s red, white, and blue tail. As though on command, the after door opened.
“Let’s hustle, people.” Ryan tossed out a rope ladder.
Filitov’s legs betrayed him. The wind and blast from the jet engines made the ladder flutter like a flag in the breeze, and he couldn’t get both feet on it despite help from Gerasimov.
“My God, look!” Golovko pointed. “Move!”
Vatutin didn’t say anything. He floored his car and flipped on the high-beam lights.
“Trouble,” the crew chief said when he saw the car. There was a man with a rifle running this way, too. “Come on, pop!” he urged the Cardinal of the Kremlin.
“Shit!” Ryan pushed the sergeant aside and jumped down. It was too far, and he landed badly, twisting his right ankle and ripping his pants at his left knee. Jack ignored the pain and leaped to his feet. He took one of Filitov’s shoulders while Gerasimov took the other, and together they got him up the ladder far enough that the sergeant at the door was able to haul him aboard. Gerasimov went next, with Ryan’s help. Then it was Jack’s turn—but he had the same problem Filitov had. His left knee was already stiff, and when he tried to climb up on his sprained ankle, his right leg simply refused to work. He swore loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the engines and tried to do it hand over hand, but he lost his grip and fell to the pavement.
“Stoi, stoi!” somebody with a gun shouted from ten feet away. Jack looked up at the aircraft door.
“Go!” he screamed. “Close the fucking door and go!”
The crew chief did exactly that without a moment’s hesitation. He reached around to pull the door shut, and Jack watched it seat itself in a matter of seconds. Inside, the sergeant lifted the interphone and told the pilot that the door was properly sealed.
“Tower, this is niner-seven-one, rolling now. Out.” The pilot advanced the throttles to takeoff power.
The force of the engine blast hurled all four men—the rifleman had just arrived at the scene, too—right off the end of the icy runway. Jack watched from flat on his belly as the blinking red light atop the aircraft’s tall rudder diminished in the distance, then rose. His last view of it was the glow of the infrared jammers that protected the VC-137 against surface-to-air missiles. He almost started laughing, when he was rolled over and saw a pistol against his face.
“Hello, Sergey,” Ryan said to Colonel Golovko.
“Ready,” the radio told the Archer. He raised a flare pistol and fired a single star-shell round that burst directly over one of the shops.
Everything happened at once. To his left, three Stinger missiles were launched after a long and boring wait. Each streaked toward a guard tower—or more precisely, to the electric heaters inside them. The paired sentries in each had time enough only to see and be surprised by the signal round over the central region of the installation, and only one of the six saw an inbound streak of yellow, too fast to permit a reaction. All three of the missiles hit—they could hardly miss a stationary target—and in each case the six-pound warhead functioned as designed. Less than five seconds after the first round had been fired, the towers were eliminated, and with them also the machine guns that protected the laser facility.
The sentry to the Archer’s front died next. He hadn’t a chance. Forty rifles fired on him at once, with half of the bursts connecting. Next the mortars fired ranging rounds, and the Archer used his radio to adjust the fire onto what he thought was the guards’ barracks.
The sound of automatic-weapons fire cannot be mistaken for anything else. Colonel Bondarenko had just decided that he’d spent enough time communing with a cold though beautiful nature and was walking back to his quarters when the sound stopped him in his tracks. His first thought was that one of the KGB guards had accidentally discharged his weapon, but that impression lasted less than a second. He heard a crack! overhead and looked up to see the star shell, then heard the explosions from the laser site, and as though a switch had been thrown, he changed from a startled man to a professional soldier under attack. The KGB barracks were two hundred meters to his right, and he ran there as fast as he could.
Mortar rounds were falling, he saw. They were falling on the big new machine shop just beyond the barracks. Men were stumbling out the door of the latter when he arrived, and he had to stop and hold up his arms to avoid being shot.
“I am Colonel Bondarenko! Where is your officer?”
“Here!” A lieutenant came out. “What—” Someone had just learned of his mistake. The next mortar round hit the back of the barracks.
“Follow me!” Bondarenko screamed, leading them away from the most obvious target in sight. All around them was the deadly chatter of rifles—Soviet rifles; the Colonel noted at once that he couldn’t use sound to identify who was who. Wonderful! “Form up!”
“What is—”
“We’re under attack, Lieutenant! How many men do you have?”
He turned and counted. Bondarenko did it faster still. There were forty-one, all with rifles, but there were no heavy weapons, and no radios. The machine guns he could do without, but radios were vital.
The dogs, he told himself stupidly, they should have kept the dogs . . .
The tactical situation was appallingly bad, and he knew that it would only get worse. A series of explosions sundered the night.
“The lasers, we must—” the Lieutenant said, but the Colonel grabbed his shoulder.
“We can rebuild the machines,” Bondarenko said urgently, “but we cannot rebuild the scientists. We’re going to get to the apartment building and hold that until relieved. Send a good sergeant to the bachelor quarters and get them to the apartments.”
“No, Comrade Colonel! My orders are to protect the lasers, and I must—”
“I am ordering you to get your men—”
“No!” the Lieutenant screamed back at him.
Bondarenko knocked him down, took his rifle, flipped off the safety, and fired two rounds into his chest. He turned. “Who’s the best sergeant?”
“I am, Colonel,” a young man said shakily
.
“I am Colonel Bondarenko, and I am in command!” the officer announced as forcefully as a command from God. “You take four men, get to the bachelor barracks, and bring everyone up the hill to the apartment building. Fast as you can!” The sergeant pointed to four others and ran off. “The rest of you, follow me!” He led them into the falling snow. There wasn’t time for him or them to wonder what awaited. Before they’d gone ten meters, every light in the camp went out.
At the gate of the laser site a GAZ jeep sat, with a heavy machine gun aboard. General Pokryshkin ran from the control building when he heard the explosions, and was stunned to see that only blazing stumps remained of his three guard towers. The commander of the KGB detachment raced down to him on his vehicle.
“We’re under attack,” the officer said unnecessarily.
“Get your men together—right here.” Pokryshkin looked up to see running men. They were dressed in Soviet uniforms, but somehow he knew that they were not Russians. The General climbed into the back of the jeep and brought the machine gun around over the head of the astonished KGB officer. The first time he pressed the trigger nothing happened, and he had to ratchet a round into the chamber. The second time, Pokryshkin had the satisfaction of watching three men fall. The guard force commander needed no further encouragement. He barked rapid orders into his radio. The battle under way degenerated at once into confusion, as it had to—both sides were wearing identical uniforms and using identical weapons. But there were more Afghans than Russians.
Morozov and several of his unmarried friends had stepped outside when they heard the noise. Most of them had military experience, though he did not. It didn’t matter—nobody had the first idea what they should do. Five men came running out of the darkness. They were wearing uniforms and carrying rifles.
“Come! All of you come, follow us!” More weapons started firing close by, and two of the KGB troops went down, one dead, one wounded. He fired back, emptying his rifle in one long burst. There was a scream in the darkness, followed by shouts. Morozov ran inside and called for people to make for the door. The engineers needed little prompting.
“Up the hill,” the sergeant said. “To the apartment block. Fast as you can!” The four KGB troops waved them along, looking for targets, but seeing only flashes. Bullets were flying everywhere now. Another of the troops went down screaming out his last breath, but the sergeant got the one who killed him. When the last engineer left the room, he and a private grabbed the spare rifles and helped their comrade back up the hill.
It was too big a mission for eighty men, the Archer realized too late. Too much ground to cover, too many buildings, but there were many unbelievers running around, and that was why he’d brought his men here. He watched one of them explode a bus with an RPG-7 antitank round. It burst into flames and slid off the road, rolling down the side of the mountain while those inside screamed. Teams of men with explosives went into the buildings. They found machine tools bathed in oil and set their charges quickly, running out before the explosions could begin the fires. The Archer had realized a minute too late which building was the guard barracks, and now that was ablaze as he led his section in to mop up the men who’d been kept there. He was too late, but didn’t know it yet. A stray mortar round had cut the power line that handled all of the site’s lighting, and all of his men were robbed of their night vision by the flashes of their own weapons.
“Well done, Sergeant!” Bondarenko told the boy. He’d already ordered the engineers upstairs. “We’ll set our perimeter around the building. They may force us back. If so, we’ll make our stand on the first floor. The walls are concrete. RPGs can hurt us, but the roof and walls will stop bullets. Pick one man to go inside and find men with military experience. Give them those two rifles. Whenever a man goes down, retrieve his weapon and get it to someone who knows how to use it. I’m going inside for a moment to see if I can get a telephone to work—”
“There’s a radiotelephone in the first-floor office,” the sergeant said. “All the buildings have them.”
“Good! Hold the perimeter, Sergeant. I’ll be back to you in two minutes.” Bondarenko ran inside. The radiotelephone was hanging on a wall hook, and he was relieved to see it was a military type, powered by its own battery. The Colonel shouldered it and ran back outside.
The attackers—who were they? he wondered—had planned their attack poorly. First they had failed to identify the KGB barracks before launching their assault; second, they hadn’t hit the residential area as quickly as they should have. They were moving in now, but they found a line of Border Guards lying in the snow. They were only KGB troops, Bondarenko knew, but they did have basic training, and most of all they knew that there was no place to run. That young sergeant was a good one, he saw. He moved from point to point along the perimeter, not using his weapon but encouraging the men and telling them what to do. The Colonel activated the radio.
“This is Colonel G. I. Bondarenko at Project Bright Star. We are under attack. I repeat, Bright Star is under attack. Any unit on this net respond at once, over.”
“Gennady, this is Pokryshkin at the laser site. We’re in the control building. What is your situation?”
“I’m at the apartments. I have all the civilians we could find inside. I have forty men, and we’re going to try to hold this place. What about help?”
“I’m trying. Gennady, we cannot get you any help from here. Can you hold?”
“Ask me in twenty minutes.”
“Protect my people, Colonel. Protect my people!” Pokryshkin shouted into the microphone.
“To the death, Comrade General. Out.” Bondarenko kept the radio on his back and hefted his rifle. “Sergeant!”
“Here, Colonel!” The young man appeared. “They’re probing now, not really attacking yet—”
“Looking for weaknesses.” Bondarenko got back down to his knees. The air seemed alive with gunfire, but it was not yet concentrated. Above and behind the two, windows were shattering. Bullets pounded into the pre-cast concrete sections that formed the building wall, spraying everyone outside with chips. “Position yourself at the corner opposite this one. You’ll command the north and east walls. I’ll handle these two. Tell your men to fire only when they have targets—”
“Already done, Comrade.”
“Good!” Bondarenko punched the young man on the shoulder. “Don’t fall back until you have to, but tell me if you do. The people in this building are priceless assets. They must survive. Go!” The Colonel watched the sergeant run off. Perhaps the KGB did train some of its people. He ran to this corner of the building.
He now had twenty—no, he counted eighteen men. Their camouflage clothing made them hard to spot. He ran from man to man, his back bowed by the weight of the radio, spacing them out, telling them to husband their rounds. He was just finishing the line on the west side when there came a chorus of human voices from the darkness.
“Here they come!” a private screamed.
“Hold your fire!” the Colonel bellowed.
The running figures appeared as though by magic. One moment the scene was empty of anything but falling snow—the next, there was a line of men firing Kalashnikov rifles from the hip. He let them get to within fifty meters.
“Fire!” He saw ten of them go down in an instant. The rest wavered and stopped, then fell back, leaving two more bodies behind. There was more firing from the opposite side of the building. Bondarenko wondered if the sergeant had held, but that was not in his hands. Some nearby screams told him that his men had taken casualties, too. On checking the line he found that one had made no noise at all. He was down to fifteen men.
The climb-out was routine enough, Colonel von Eich thought. A few feet behind him, the Russian in the jump seat was giving the electrical panel an occasional look.
“How’s the electricity doing?” the pilot asked in some irritation.
“No problem with engine and hydraulic power. Seems to be in the lighting system,” the engin
eer replied, quietly turning off the tail and wingtip anticollision lights.
“Well ...” The cockpit instrument lights were all on, of course, and there was no additional illumination for the flight crew. “We’ll fix it when we get to Shannon.”
“Colonel.” It was the voice of the crew chief in the pilot’s headset.
“Go ahead,” the engineer said, making sure that the Russian’s headset was not on that channel.
“Go ahead, Sarge.”
“We have our two . . . our two new passengers, sir, but Mr. Ryan—he got left behind, Colonel.”
“Repeat that?” von Eich said.
“He said to move out, sir. Two guys with guns, sir, they—he said to move out, sir,” the crew chief said again.
Von Eich let out a breath. “Okay. How are things back there?”
“I got them in the back row, sir. I don’t think anybody noticed, even, what with the engine noise and all.”
“Keep it that way.”
“Yes, sir. I have Freddie keeping the rest of the passengers forward. The aft can is broke, sir.”
“Pity,” the pilot observed. “Tell ’em to go forward if they gotta go.”
“Right, Colonel.”
“Seventy-five minutes,” the navigator advised.
Christ, Ryan, the pilot thought. I hope you like it there . . .
“I should kill you here and now!” Golovko said.
They were in the Chairman’s car. Ryan found himself facing four very irate KGB officers. The maddest seemed to be the guy in the right-front seat. Gerasimov’s bodyguard, Jack thought, the one who worked close in. He looked like the physical type, and Ryan was glad that there was a seatback separating them. He had a more immediate problem. He looked at Golovko and thought it might be a good idea to calm him down.