The gully Safcek had picked for the detonation point lay in darkness, too, except for moments when the searchlights found it and examined it for intruders.
As Luba started to work cautiously down the hill, Safcek whispered to her to hold, and he watched the searchlights closely to establish whatever pattern they might have in the gully area. It was irregular, obviously hand-manipulated by guards in the watchtowers. Safcek cursed audibly, and Luba turned to him.
“What’s the matter, Colonel?”
“Those damn lights are unpredictable. I can’t get a fix on them, and we need one in order to make our run into the gully.” He hesitated and watched them for a time, hoping to find he was wrong. He was not. From the trees, the guards sent random probes into the gully, directing their beams in a careless, infuriating manner.
Safcek nudged Luba and said, “We can’t wait.” He pointed toward the shadowy gully and added: “Let’s make straight for there. When I touch you again, stop. Don’t speak in the meantime.”
She headed down the slope without a word, and he followed with his container. She was going even slower now as they came closer to the danger zone. Her detector moved ceaselessly over the ground as she placed her feet down gingerly. At each step she halted to consider the next.
Six hundred yards from the fence around the laser complex, Luba heard the first noise. She dropped to the ground. Safcek fell behind her. The voices of two men drifted to them on the warm air, and a man laughed. Luba looked back over her shoulder to Safcek and pointed into a clump of trees just outside the fence and off to their right. Safcek felt his breath coming in short gasps. The voices seemed to come closer and then suddenly faded and were gone. Only the labored breathing of the two agents broke the stillness. After some minutes they got up and inched forward again.
The maddeningly slow pace continued. Luba was ten feet in front, probing the ground with the detector, when Safcek looked one more time at his watch and did some quick arithmetic.
He trotted ahead to her and touched her on the shoulder. “Luba, all the delays,” he whispered. “It’s one twenty now. The only way we might make the rendezvous with the chopper would be if we started back this minute. And even so, we’d have trouble going through that block on the highway again.”
As she waited for him to continue, she stood still beside a tree. Her face was shadowed by the limbs, which blocked out the moonlight.
“So I want you to take the chance to get away. Take the car and keep heading north. You can melt into the countryside. You’re a native here. And your mother will hide you.”
He saw her teeth suddenly as she smiled at him.
“Colonel, I can never see my mother again. It would mean her death if I did. And I have no other life that I care about.”
Joe Safcek looked down at the tiny girl. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure, Colonel. Please believe me.”
“OK, then, let’s keep moving.” He pushed her forward.
It was 10:25 P.M. inside the Kremlin walls.
Marshal Moskanko appeared enraged with the man before him. Vladimir Krylov leaned against the desk as he tried to focus his mind on his benefactor. Why was Moskanko glaring at him? Why didn’t he go and glare at someone else? Krylov decided to bring great powers of concentration upon the formidable face of the man who was directing his nation’s government.
“Vladimir Nikolaievich,” Moskanko said disgustedly, “you are a disgrace. Look at yourself. You are nothing but a dope addict. And you call yourself Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!” The defense minister’s expression had changed to a mocking grin.
Krylov drew himself up. “Comrade Moskanko, I cannot stand the thought of what you intend to do to the people of America.” He felt he had put that well and forcefully. “So I”—he paused, feeling time flowing by him on all sides as he searched his mind—“so I have no intention of being available for consultation on what to do in the next hours.” His hands, at least would be clean.
The defense minister laughed loudly as if from a great distance. “Vladimir Nikolaievich, we never had any intention of seeking your advice. We knew you were a coward.”
The premier of the Soviet Union flushed. “I am no coward, Marshal, but I do have a conscience and could never live with myself if I was part of a plot to kill millions of people.” Again he paused for he did not know how long. “I’ve done some bad things in my life but never have I contemplated the cold-blooded deaths of half the inhabitants of the world.” Krylov stood straight before his master. “Your group has gone mad.”
Moskanko was not offended. “Vladimir Nikolaievich, you may say whatever you want. You do not matter anymore. You are just excess baggage to us now. When we are ready, we will give you a nice little dacha out in the country, where you can brood and smoke and rot. In the meantime, stay out of my way. It will all be over in nine hours.”
Vladimir Nikolaievich Krylov was not finished. He sat down heavily and waved his finger at the bemedaled soldier. “Comrade Moskanko, you will bring desolation to our land.… The Americans will fight in the end.… Stark may be torn, but he will finally face you down and send his missiles against us.” Rarely had Krylov felt so confident of himself, of his words.
Yet Moskanko replied. “You are wrong, Vladimir Nikolaievich. His position is hopeless. He will be lucky not to lose his job before the ultimatum expires.”
Krylov disdained to reply. He gave his attention instead to the music of balalaikas playing only for him.
“If he fights,” the defense minister was now saying, “he will have to be a completely different man from the Stark we know. He has always been eager to make accommodations with us. First in the Middle East, where he left the Israelis more or less on their own. Then in Asia, where the United States has lost much of its influence. No, my dear Vladimir Nikolaievich, Stark is a compromiser, an appeaser who takes the course of least resistance. That is why we will win.”
The marshal rose from his chair. “So you see, Comrade Premier, you have no guilt to worry about. And after this, you will have nothing else to worry about. You are quite finished.”
He stared at Krylov, whose hand rubbed his two-day growth of beard in a rhythmic movement. The premier’s face was furrowed in concentration, looking as if he were about to say something portentous. But Krylov said nothing to his tormentor, who was now moving rapidly toward the door.
Moskanko issued an order to the guard in the next room: “Don’t let him out. Make sure his phones are disconnected.” The defense minister strode briskly out of the building where Vladimir Nikolaeivich Krylov was now a prisoner listening to distant music.
The searchlights continued to probe unrelentingly around the perimeter. Safcek and Luba were now only 250 yards from the entrance to the gully. She was being even more careful as she made the final approach. Her hand counter swept in a wider arc, and she moved more hesitantly.
Safcek checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was 1:37 A.M. When he heard a low whistle off to the left behind a group of saplings, he knew they might soon stumble upon a dog patrol. It was enough to make up his mind. Safcek ran to Luba and whispered: “This is OK.”
“But it’s out in the open!”
“That’s all right. It won’t take long.”
She crouched beside him while he pulled the box handles apart and lifted the lid. She looked inside and saw hundreds of tiny Styrofoam pellets. Safcek reached into them and drew forth a Colt .45 automatic pistol, which the Styrofoam had cushioned from buffeting. He took the gun out and held it gingerly by the barrel. In the moonlight, it glinted dully. Even in his haste, Safcek had to marvel at the sophisticated weapon. In the butt of the gun, a marble-sized ball of Einstinium 119 particles rested inside a thin coating of plastique. Above it was a transitorized battery; two wires ran from the battery into the plastique cover. Attached to one of the wires was a tiny vial of prussic acid. On the outside of the butt was a single black button. When forcefully pressed it would break the vial, causing the acid to eat into the wire. In thirty minutes’ time, with the electrical contact broken, the plastique would implode onto the transuranic particles, forcing them into a precise density. In a millisecond, the resultant nuclear explosion would obliterate the laser works.