He turned to Woody after finishing his inventory of Kate. ‘Speak English?’ he asked in a thick Russian accent. Woody nodded ‘American?’ Woody nodded again. ‘You want to go places?’
‘We want to go to the front,’ Kate said.
The man turned to her. His beard thinned raggedly at the tops of his cheeks revealing pock-marked skin every bit as red as his eyes. He didn’t grow the beard, Kate thought. He simply never shaved.
‘Hah!’ he belched. It took Kate a moment to realize he’d laughed. The man rose at the same lethargic speed with which he had sat. He was easily three feet across at his widest point, Kate thought. He leaned over the table — eclipsing the long bar with its row of stools. He picked up Woody’s shot glass and threw the vodka back just as Woody had done. He shook the glass to drain every drop into his open and waiting mouth. His thick tongue darted inside the glass like a frog. Kate cringed. Woody stared up at him. He didn’t seem scared of the man. He appeared more in awe, the way humans tend to be on seeing wonders of the animal kingdom.
The woolly beast ambled away.
Woody raised the bottle of vodka and took a swig. His face contorted in pain. A shudder rippled down from his head to his shoulders. ‘I don’t think he wants to go to the front, Katie.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Too damn bad!’ He was beginning to slur. ‘Pro-bably a pos-thumous Puh-ulitzer Puh-rize, too!’ His stupid grin threatened to crack open his chapped face.
‘Schedule A,’ Valentin Kartsev said. ‘Next?’
‘Victor Afanaseyev,’ the young aide read in a matter-of-fact tone. Their limousine raced down the center lane of the broad boulevard. ‘He snorted, kind of like a laugh, when Program 412B was mentioned at a dinner party.’
‘What Program is that?’
‘The aborted plan to retrain steel workers for the lumber industry.’
‘Oh,’ Kartsev chuckled. Through the curtains he could see lines of people waiting for something — patient as always. Food, he guessed. ‘That one was a real fiasco,’ Kartsev said. Who would’ve guessed that steelworkers didn’t want to be lumberjacks?
The aide waited — staring at him. It made Kartsev highly uncomfortable. He loathed the dreary administrative work, but especially this. ‘Schedule A. Next?’
There was a second’s pause before the young aide returned to his list. Kartsev kept his eyes on the man. Surely there was a better way.
‘Lyudmila Vavarov,’ the man read.
‘Who is she?’
‘She’s a substitute secretary in the typing pool.’ Kartsev shrugged, not recognizing the name. ‘She was working on a sensitive typing job. Each secretary got a different page. She took hers up to hand it in, but she stopped and talked to another secretary. When she left the other secretary’s desk, she picked up the sheet her friend had just finished typing. She said it was a mistake.’
‘Did she have a chance to read it?’
The aide shrugged.
‘What were they typing?’
‘This report doesn’t say.’
The young man’s eyes now studied Kartsev. Kartsev stared back at him. The aide looked away. Kartsev made a mental note to consider computerizing this particular process. He really shouldn’t risk so much contact with people anyway. And things would get worse before they got better.
‘You know,’ Kartsev said, ‘power — the accumulation of power — is the ultimate achievement of man. Everything else — fame, fortune, political office — it’s all just a means of attaining the real goal of all humans, which is power over others. The ultimate power is the power to make each and every human being do what you want, when you want it done. That requires a close attention to every detail and the willpower to act when you know in your heart what is necessary.’
His aide’s eyes betrayed no hint of comprehension. No hint of anything, for that matter. Such was the extent of his fear of Kartsev… which was good. But it didn’t make for stimulating conversation. For that he needed someone fearless. He wondered just where Miss Dunn was? Kartsev sighed. ‘One more for Schedule A,’ he said, feeling fatigued. One more bullet to the back of the head.
Chapter Twelve
Clark watched their approach through the windshield of the Blackhawk helicopter. Night was falling slowly. But even in the waning light he saw the ring of smoke that rose around the airbase. Guns on both sides contributed to the haze that defined the perimeter defenses. But most of the fires were from the massive, round-the-clock air raids. They churned the earth just beyond the last string of wire.
Clark stood braced in a wide stance. Trees slid under the helicopter’s belly at astonishing speed. He gripped the crew’s seats as they weaved to avoid small arms fire. The corridor down which they flew was particularly smoky. The area had been marked for intense ‘preparation’ like a single spoke from the wheel of the airbase. All the traffic to and from the besieged base would fly down that corridor. In a couple of hours, they’d prepare another spoke.
Choppers headed in with special forces. The Green Berets were Clark’s only ready reserve. The same choppers headed outbound filled with wounded. Clark had seen casualties unloaded before he and the dozen Green Berets climbed aboard.
Out of the upper left-hand corner of the windshield roared an inbound C-130. Painted white, the transport plane blotted out the sky momentarily. It passed close overhead. The turbulence buffeted the smaller helicopter. Clark watched a massive parachute blossom behind the transport. It pulled a pallet down the open rear ramp. Securely strapped crates fell twenty feet to the ground. They burst open and scattered their contents over the near end of the runway.
Clark was distracted by a single clang. A bullet struck somewhere in the rear. When he looked back through the windshield, the C-130 was practically scraping the runway’s pavement. Parachute after parachute popped open. The pallets now had less than ten feet to fell. They skidded to a halt — braked by the parachute and the friction. It was a race — prodigious rates of fire versus mammoth payloads. Three thousand men and women firing their weapons continuously. It was the greatest test the U.S. Air Mobility Command had ever faced.
The helicopter neared the base perimeter. It was a scarred zone of felled trees and thick black smoke. A barrage of orange flame boiled from the trees. Streaking tracers lit the growing darkness. It was remarkable, ferocious fighting. There must have been an attack under way that very moment. Several more bullets clanged off the helicopter. Clark turned to look into the crowded but still cabin. He remembered the flailing arms of a man swatting at the burning tracer in his body like at a bee. The coughing splutter from the old Huey’s single engine.
They burst out over the airbase and dropped still lower. The Blackhawk banked steeply. Clark feared their rotors would strike the earth. Clark’s knees buckled. The nose rose. The G-forces ended with a jarring thud. The landing threw Clark forward. Pain shot through his ribs. When he tried to breathe he could draw no air. Pain spread hot fingers across his chest. He couldn’t straighten up.
The side door slid open behind Clark. The roar of the rotors’ downblast poured in. The engines still whined at high pitch. Reed helped him stumble to the door. The cabin was empty. The first litter was being loaded aboard. On it was a man covered in bloody bandages. Clark leapt to the ground. A searing jolt of pain nearly felled him. The Green Berets with whom he’d arrived reached up for him. They pulled him roughly to the ground.