Anatoli's experience had been similar. He used his connections to help get an army commission. He found, however, that he'd had his fill of politics much sooner than his brother. He saw quickly that the military and the political made a distasteful mixture, like fine cognac diluted with inferior brandy. Military decisions influenced by politics inevitably brought difficulty, if not downright disaster. He chose to make his way on what he knew, not who. He studied hard and trained hard and fought hard. After surviving the quagmire of Afghanistan, he figured he should be able to contend with whatever rigors the army chose to throw his way. And with the exception of the weapons theft inquiry, he had managed well, especially when spared the necessity of dealing with needless interference from above. Situations such as he was now confronted with by this curious KGB contingent. While Captain Shumakov stood staring down at the crates of weapons, the General quietly took a step toward the gate, gave a nod to the men near the counter and suddenly barked, "Now!"
The KGB men fired silenced pistols, instantly dropping the Sergeant and the two soldiers. Shumakov looked up in surprise at the sound of the General's voice. What he saw stunned him like a chilling blast of Siberian air. The KGB major had drawn a silenced pistol. He fired it at point blank range before the Captain could utter a sound. He hardly had time to notice that the gun was an old Tokarev, which had long since been replaced by the 9mm Makarov that hung from his belt. The Tokarev fired 7.62mm cartridges similar to many of the rounds stacked in boxes across the way. The Captain slumped to the dirt floor and lay motionless, bright red blood oozing from the neat round hole that appeared in his forehead.
"Viktor," the General ordered, "get the sentry."
The man nearest the front door jerked it open and called to the guard, "The Captain wants you inside."
The soldier spun in alarm and rushed through the doorway. As he did, another silenced round spit from a Tokarev. His rifle fell to the floor as he toppled against the counter.
"Quickly," snapped the General, "load these cases into the truck and let's get out of here."
While others began to lift the heavy boxes containing the chemical agents and toxins — they left behind one mortar shell and one canister to provide evidence that the weapons were still there — the major placed three small incendiary devices connected to tiny radio-controlled detonators at strategic spots among the stacks of ammunition. The explosion they set off would start a chain reaction of detonating shells that should reduce the building to a scrap heap. In the unlikely event any of the bodies remained recognizable, it would be assumed they had been felled by the exploding ammunition.
The driver out front reported all was clear. They loaded the weapons into the back of the truck and shut off the signal generator that had jammed the radio inside the building. The telephone wire had been snipped some distance down the road. The two vehicles moved quickly back toward the guard post. General Malmudov returned the sentry's salute, and they headed out the road.
As soon as the Chaika dropped over the first hill, the General pressed a button on the small radio transmitter in his lap. The roaring blast they heard a moment later signalled mission accomplished.
Malmudov smiled. The operation had been a total success. The weapons they had acquired, in complete secrecy, possessed enormous potential. People in the West worried constantly about nuclear arms. But they were mostly destructive of "things." Structures could easily be rebuilt. Nuclear radiation's effects took years to play out.
Nerve gas, on the other hand, was a silent, almost instant killer. A direct hit was unnecessary. They only needed to be delivered close. Spread by a modest breeze in the vicinity of a high concentration of people, these weapons could produce more than a hundred thousand casualties. Anyone unafraid to use them, and innovative enough to assure that retaliation would be unlikely, could wield tremendous power.
2
General Philip Ross Patton was not a charismatic leader like H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the popular commander of Desert Storm. He was a tough, critical, often-abrasive man. His maxim, with a little more finality than the sneaker motto, was "Just get it done!" Not noted for his reticence, he normally came to a meeting brimming with caustic comments and questions. But though not loved, he was effective, and he didn't hesitate to let anyone within earshot know about it. He had raised horn-blowing to an art form.
Even the President, who had met with him on only a few occasions, noticed that General Patton was uncharacteristically quiet, almost brooding, that morning during the critical National Security Council meeting at the White House. It was the start of the final countdown to Operation Easy Street. The Secretary of Defense, a balding former congressman who had cut his legislative teeth on knotty issues of national security, wondered if the General was having second thoughts about the mission. But when it came his turn, the Air Force Chief of Staff gave his unequivocal support to the plan. Knowing that despite his celebrated brusqueness, Patton had a typical commander's compassion for the people who faced the bullets, everyone from the President on down dismissed his curious mood as the result of an overabundance of concern for the men who would be putting their lives on the line.
They were wrong.
After the meeting, the General's driver headed down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Hart Senate Office Building, newest and most grandiose of the congressional Taj Mahals that faced the legislative wings of the Capitol. Patton had been invited to lunch on The Hill with his chief ally in the battle to save the beleaguered B-2 stealth bomber.
A modestly tall man with a pleasant though chiseled face, distinguished by the wisps of graying hair that framed it, Patton was the son of a celebrated colonel who had been killed when his B-26 was shot down in Korea. He had easily won an appointment to the first class of cadets at the Air Force Academy. Since then he had chased his personal dream with the tenacity of a greyhound half a stride back of the mechanical bunny. At fifty-seven, he could see the finish line just ahead and he was determined to reach it no matter what.
Wing Patton — a nickname bequeathed by a couple of Air Force Academy classmates to distinguish him from the other General Patton, the Army's George S. of World War II fame — was recognized as a brilliant strategist and a skilled tactician, but he had not gained his present status by inspiring personal loyalty among his colleagues. Those who had stood in his way could show the heel marks he had inflicted as he ran roughshod over them. As it turned out, the shrewdest move he ever made was when, as a young B-52 pilot, he had married the daughter of Army General Fredrick Parker Strong. Now a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State, Strong was eighty and still a formidable figure on the Washington scene. It was widely and correctly rumored that the old man had promised Wing the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs if he kept his nose clean.
At the Hart Building, General Patton strode toward the corner office of Senator Ev Weesner of Illinois, ranking minority member on the Armed Services Committee. The doors of each office suite carried the name and state of its occupant. About halfway down the long corridor, he spotted a name that sent his blood pressure rocketing. Senator Tyler Thrailkill of Pennsylvania, the man whose call last night had triggered his current apprehension.