“You just press the button, Colonel?” She took it in her hands.
“That’s all, Luba. And then run like hell.”
Peter Kirov’s message to the Center in Moscow had put the state security forces at the laser on special alert. Inside a concrete blockhouse within the compound, a sharp beep echoed off the walls at 1:39 A.M. as infrared body-heat sensors signaled the presence of intruders. The duty officer rushed to a television monitor while a sergeant pushed a button to focus a camera on the violated sector.
The officer saw two badly blurred shapes standing just at the edge of a line of trees. He could not further identify them except that they seemed to be wearing uniforms. One of the strangers was holding something and examining it closely.
“What is their range?”
“Two hundred yards beyond dog-patrol boundary, sir.”
The duty officer nodded. “Take them now.”
Joe Safcek had wasted enough time. “Give it to me, Luba,” and she held the pistol out to him. As he reached for it, the gun began to dance away, and Luba slowly sank into the grass. Frantically, Safcek grabbed again at her hand, but it was gone, and the pistol had disappeared. The frustrated colonel was suddenly dizzy and nauseated. Struggling desperately to plant his feet firmly, he started to curse at Luba for falling asleep when he needed her. But he realized he, too, wanted to rest for a while, and his body went down onto the lush softness of the clearing, and he lay beside Luba.
Four men wearing grotesque gas masks approached the forms in the clearing. They moved slowly, warily. Their rifles were trained on the trespassers.
In the blockhouse, the duty officer watched the monitor while he spoke to the patrol by walkie-talkie.
“Be careful with them. They may not have gotten enough gas. We have a malfunction in the lines out there.”
The bodies had begun to move. One of them staggered to his feet, and looked wildly about for something on the ground. The other one was moving about on hands and knees. Both were shaking their heads as if to clear them. The one standing suddenly lunged toward an object on the ground, and the duty officer shouted: “Shoot them.”
Joe Safcek felt a terrible pain as a bullet hit him, and he fell onto Luba’s riddled body.
The masked men came up and one of them prodded Safcek with the tip of his rifle. He toppled over and lay face up in the meadow.
The patrol leader reported: “A colonel and a lieutenant. The lieutenant is a woman. The colonel has a bullet in his right shoulder. The woman is a mess, but she’s alive.”
“Any weapons on them?”
“The usual, a Walther pistol, an AK-47 rifle. It is too dark out here to tell if that’s all.”
“Bring them in. We will pick up any other equipment when it is light.”
The duty officer switched off the radio and noted the time in his log: 2:05 A.M.
In the Oval Room, Stark sat with Randall. The President was on the intercom to the Situation Room.
“Any news from Safcek?”
“No, sir.”
“How about the satellites?”
“Midas Twenty-Six reports nothing. Same for Samos Ten.”
Stark punched the button off and returned to his foreign-policy advisor.
“We’re already running late on the detonation, right?” Randall asked.
“I’m afraid so. It should have gone up by now, and the chopper will soon be at the rendezvous, a good two hours’ drive from the laser. Maybe he ran into trouble but is still in a position to set it off even though he may never get out. He’d do it that way if he had to.” Stark spoke with more optimism than he felt. After all the hours of waiting, the President was losing hope in Operation Scratch. For a fleeting moment he damned himself for ever putting so much faith in it. He felt foolish for okaying it, for having counted on it to solve his problem. Stark caught himself and told Randall, “Get ready for a long night.”
The time was 3:18 P.M. The ultimatum period had entered its final eight hours.
At 3:45 P.M., Washington time, the thing Herb Markle had feared happened. At an intersection in the Anacostia Flats, workmen had just started checking the natural gas pipeline. One of them dropped a tool on the pavement. It sparked, and great puffs of flame burst around the men and rose seventy-five feet into the air. Two of the workers were engulfed in the fire. While some of their co-workers tried to reach them and smother the flames, others ran about shouting at pedestrians and those in cars to get out of the area. It was too late. A monstrous explosion lifted the street four feet in the air, and fire erupted from the ground. One explosion followed another as buildings in a two-block area fell and burst into flame. Cars were melted down. Hundreds of witnesses to the disaster scurried back and forth looking for an escape route. Sirens sounded in the distance, and soon fire engines came charging into the holocaust. Hoses were quickly run out. Some hydrants had been destroyed, and the fire department had to splice lines in from working pumps many blocks away. Flames from the burning neighborhood reached into the sky to join the billowing clouds from Virginia and Maryland.
Herb Markle heard the news almost instantly. He buried his face in his hands, crying: “Oh God, what have I done?” His secretary heard him and wondered what the remark meant.
Markle called the White House and insisted on being put through immediately to the Oval Room. Randall answered and heard the hysterical Markle demanding to talk to Stark. Randall would not let the distraught man talk to the President in his condition and told him Stark was in a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Markle said he would not accept any further responsibility for the deaths, that it was Stark’s fault, Randall snapped: “Listen, Markle, you keep your mouth shut. Someday, you’ll know what this is all about, but in the meantime, you’d better get a hold on yourself and protect the President of the United States. I’m warning you, not asking you. For Christ’s sake, shape up!”
Almost incoherent by this time, Markle nevertheless haltingly agreed to maintain silence.
The last two agents from Operation Scratch were brought inside the compound they had tried to destroy. Luba Spitkovsky was placed on the table in the infirmary. The doctors examined her multiple wounds, conferred, and ordered her taken immediately by ambulance to the main hospital in Tashkent. Then they moved on to the unconscious Safcek. His single wound had bled profusely.
The doctors worked swiftly, removing the bullet and cleaning the gaping hole.
Two hundred miles to the southeast, a khaki-colored helicopter raced toward the Soviet border at an altitude of one hundred feet. In the cockpit, an anxious radio operator tapped out a message to Karl Richter in Peshawar. It began, “Dear John, Dear John.” At his desk, Karl Richter decoded the fateful words and transmitted them immediately to President Stark in the Oval Room of the White House:
“Mr. President, Safcek did not make the rendezvous. The chopper waited as long as it could — until three fifteen A.M. — and there was no sign of him on the road.”