"You were always damn good at finding a way around them, then," said Zen. He spun back to his computer.
Dog didn't want to let him have the last word. He wanted to say something, anything, in response. But his tongue wouldn't work.
Maybe Zen was right. Maybe, with Samson taking over, he'd lost a bit of his initiative.
Or maybe heroes started to fade the moment they were called heroes.
Dog couldn't think what to say. That the country's needs were greater than the individual's? Honor and duty were important, but there were situations where fulfilling your duty and maintaining your honor were not the same — were, in fact, mutually exclusive.
Zen finished his report, closed the program and the laptop, then backed away from the table.
"Good night," Dog told him as he rolled past.
Zen didn't answer.
When he was gone, Dog sighed heavily, then took a sip of his beer.
It tasted bitter in his mouth.
"Hey, Colonel, something's going on with the Romanian command," yelled Sergeant Liu from the communications shack at the back of the Command trailer. "They're issuing all sorts of orders, and units are moving all over the country."
Dog emptied the beer in the sink and went back to see what was going on.
"Some of Locusta's units are moving toward Stulpicani, way up in the mountains," Liu told him. "They're talking about guerrillas."
Liu brought a map up on the screen. Stulpicani was a quiet town in the Suceava area of Romania, about eighty-five miles northwest of Iasi. There had been no guerrilla attacks that far north or west, as far as Dog knew.
"They're talking about a presidential retreat," said Liu. "A villa or something."
"Call the NSC right away. Tell them something big is going on. I'll go wake up General Samson."
Bynow the NSC staff had arranged a live feed from two Romanian news organizations via their satellites. One feed showed a news program in progress, and since it had not yet been translated, wasn't of immediate use. The other was a frequency used by reporters in the field and at stations around the country to upload raw video and reports to their national headquarters in Bucharest. Jed watched as one feed showed at least a dozen troop trucks moving out of the capital.
The NSC's Romanian translator was sitting at a nearby station, scribbling notes from the video. Jed went over and took a peek at them. The reporter was talking about unexplained troop movements near Bacau.
When the transmission ended, Jed tapped the translator on the shoulder. The woman, a Romanian-American in her thirties, pulled her headphones back behind her raven black hair and turned toward him.
"Have they said anything about guerrilla attacks or the president?" Jed asked.
"No."
"They report on the operation in Moldova?" She shook her head.
"Watch some of the live broadcast and see if that comes up," he told her. "As soon as the CIA transcripts come in, give them to me, OK?"
Then he went back to his desk and called the National Reconnaissance Office — the Air Force department that supervised satellite surveillance — to see how long it would be before a satellite was available. He was still on the phone with them when Freeman called in.
"The president of Romania thinks the army is staging a coup," Jed told him. "Our ambassador is in contact with him. The Dreamland people just heard that there was a guerrilla attack near the president's house in the mountains. There are reports that the Romanian army is moving in the capital. Big movements, enough to get the attention of the media."
"Is it the guerrillas or the army that's moving against Voda?"
"We don't know. We haven't monitored any official reports of an attack on the president's house and the Dreamland units were not notified."
"What does the defense minister say?"
"We're still trying to get in touch with him."
"You think it's a coup?" Freeman asked.
"Um, I wouldn't, um," Jed stumbled, his stutter returning. "It's too early to say what I think. But it, uh, has that feel. Like in Libya last year."
Jed ran down some of the other developments. Freeman listened without interrupting, then told him to have Dreamland get a plane aloft to monitor the troop movements on the ground and see if they could find out what was going on.
"CIA director was trying to set up a phone conference for 1330," added Jed. "White House chief of staff already knows some of what's going on."
"Where's the President?"
"A reception at the Smithsonian," said Jed. "Secretary Hartman's there too. Due to end at three. Are you going to call him?"
"We'll wait until after the phone conference. I may break away. Alert the chief of staff that we'll need to talk."
When he had decided to come to Romania,General Samson had somehow forgotten that the troops were sleeping on cots in a large hangar. Clearly this was not going to be a workable arrangement in his case.
For this one night, however, there was no other choice.
Good for esprit de corps, he reasoned, though his back muscles might never be the same. Worse, he had trouble falling asleep, even though he was dead tired. He'd had one of the bomb handlers rope off a little section for him, stringing blankets as a temporary barrier for privacy, but they did nothing to shut out the noise. The hangar's metal walls and ceiling amplified every creak and cough.
Samson lay awake for hours, staring at the bluish black ceiling high above his head, breathing the stale air that smelled vaguely of exhaust, trying to fall asleep.
And now that he had finally drifted off, some jackass was shaking him awake.
Who?
"Who the hell is it?" he grumbled, trying to unstick his eyes. "It's Dog." Bastian! It figured.
"What the hell, Colonel?"
"General, something's up," Dog told him. "Troops are mobilizing. There's a report of a guerrilla attack on the Romanian president's house about a hundred miles east of here."
It took Samson a second to process the words. Then he sprang up.
"An attack on the president? By the guerrillas?"
"It may be."
"Get a plane in the air."
"The Johnson just took off."
Dog told Samson about what had happened on the mission as they walked to the Command trailer. Samson, who didn't know Stoner, did not seem particularly bothered by the loss of the helicopter.
He also wasn't impressed by the downing of the MiGs, which Dog assured him had taken place inside Romanian territory.
"As long as you obeyed orders and didn't go over the border," he muttered, trotting up the trailer steps ahead of Dog.
Sergeant Liu had just gotten off the phone with the Romanian Second Army Corps headquarters. The sergeant con firmed that there was "some action taking place," but told them there was no need for Dreamland units at the present time.
"The hell with that," said Samson. "We should have more than the Johnson up. Get the B-1s ready. And your plane, Bastian."
Dog nodded. "The Bennett should be ready in an hour. I sent someone to wake up the crew."
"Make it thirty minutes."
Dog couldn't help but smile.
"What?" snapped Samson.
"If I said five minutes, you'd say one."
Samson frowned — but then the corners of his mouth twisted up.
"You expect anything less?" the general asked.
"Jed Barclay on the line," said Liu.
Out of habit, Dog took a step toward the communications area, then stopped. Talking to Washington was Samson's job now.