After that ? He'd deploy his men into two sections of almost a hundred each. The Major would take one and go left. He'd take the other and go right. The Archer had selected his objective as soon as he saw the mountain top. That building, he told himself, was where the people were. That was where the Russians lived. Not the soldiers, but those the soldiers guarded. Some of the windows were lighted. An apartment building built atop a mountain, he thought. What sort of people would they be that the Russians would put up a building of the sort found only in cities? People who needed comfort. People who had to be guarded. People who worked on something the Americans were afraid of. People he would kill without mercy, the Archer told himself. The Major came down to lie at his side. "All the men are well hidden," the man said. He trained his own binoculars on the objective. It was so dark that the Archer barely saw the man's outline, only the contours of his face and the vague shadow of his bristling mustache. "We misjudged the ground from the other hilltop. It will take three hours to close in."
"Closer to four, I think."
"I don't like those guard towers," the Major noted. Both men shivered with the cold. The wind had picked up, and they no longer were sheltered from it by the bulk of the mountain. It would be a difficult night for all of the men. "One or two machine guns in each of them. They can sweep us off the mountainside as we make the final assault."
"No searchlights," the Archer noted.
"Then they'll be using night-vision devices. I've used them myself."
"How good?"
"Their range is limited because of the way they work. They can see large things, like trucks, out to this distance. A man on a broken background like this one perhaps three thousand meters. Far enough for their purposes, my friend. The towers must go first. Use the mortars on them."
"No." The Archer shook his head. "We have less than a hundred shells. They must go on the guard barracks. If we can kill all of the sleeping soldiers, so much the easier for us when we get inside."
"If the machine-gunners in those towers see us coming, half of our men will be dead before the guards wake up," the Major pointed out.
The Archer grunted. His comrade was right. Two of the towers were sited in a way that would allow the men in them to sweep the steep slope that they'd have to climb before getting to the mountain's flat summit. He could counter that with his own machine guns but duels of that sort were usually won by the defender. The wind gusted at them, and both men knew that they'd have to find shelter soon or risk frostbite.
"Damn this cold!" the Major swore.
"Do you think the towers are cold also?" the Archer asked after a moment.
"Even worse. They are more exposed than we."
"How will the Russian soldiers be dressed?"
The Major chuckled. "The same as we-after all, we're all wearing their clothing, are we not?"
The Archer nodded, searching for the thought that hovered at the edge of his consciousness. It came to him through his cold-numbed brain, and he left his perch, telling the Major to remain. He came back carrying a Stinger missile launcher. The metal tube was cold to the touch as he assembled it. The acquisition units were all carried inside his men's clothing, to protect the batteries from the cold. He expertly assembled and activated the weapon, then rested his cheek on the metal conductance bar and trained it on the nearest guard tower
"Listen," he said, and handed the weapon over. The officer took it and did as he was directed.
"Ah." His teeth formed a Cheshire-cat grin in the black night.
Clark was busy, too. Obviously a careful man, Mancuso noted as he watched, he was laying out and checking all of his equipment. The man's clothing looked ordinary, though shabby and not well made.
"Bought in Kiev," Clark explained. "You can't exactly wear Hart, Schaffner, and Marx and expect to look like a local." He also had a coverall to put over it, with camouflage stripes. There was a complete set of identity papers-in Russian, which Mancuso couldn't read-and a pistol. It was a small one, barely larger than the silencer that sat next to it.
"Never seen one of these before," the Captain said.
"Well, that's a Qual-A-Tec baffle-type silencer with no wipes and a slide-lock internal to the can," Clark said.
"What-"
Mr. Clark chuckled. "You guys have been hitting me with subspeak ever since I got aboard, skipper. Now it's my turn."
Mancuso lifted the pistol. "This is only a twenty-two."
"It's damned near impossible to silence a big round unless you want a silencer as long as your forearm, like the FBI guys have on their toys. I have to have something that'll fit in a pocket. This is the best Mickey can do, and he's the best around."
"Who?"
"Mickey Finn. That's his real name. He does the design work for Qual-A-Tec, and I wouldn't use anybody else's silencer. It isn't like TV, Cap'n. For a silencer to work right, it has to be a small caliber, you have to use a subsonic round, and you have to have a sealed breech. And it helps if you're out in the open. In here, you'd hear it 'cause of the steel walls. Outside, you'd hear something out to thirty feet or so, but you wouldn't know what it was. The silencer goes on the pistol like this, and you twist it"-he demonstrated-"and now the gun's a single shot. The silencer locks the action. To get off another round, you have to twist it back and cycle the action manually."
"You mean you're going in there with a twenty-two single-shot?"
"That's how it's done, Captain."
"Have you ever-"
"You really don't want to know. Besides, I can't talk about it." Clark grinned. "I'm not cleared for that myself. If it makes you feel any better, yeah, I'm scared, too, but this is what they pay me for."
"But if-"
"You get the hell out of here. I have the authority to give you that order, Captain, remember? It hasn't happened yet. Don't worry about it. I do enough worrying for the both of us."
25
MARIA and Katryn Gerasimov always got the sort of VIP treatment that they deserved as the immediate family of a Politburo member. A KGB car took them from their guarded eight-room apartment on Kutuzovskiy Prospekt to Vnukovo Airport, which was used mainly for domestic flights, where they waited in the lounge reserved for the vtasti. It was staffed by more people than ever seemed to use the facility at any one time, and this morning the only others present kept to themselves, An attendant took their hats and coats while another walked them to a couch, where a third asked if they wanted anything to eat or drink. Both ordered coffee and nothing more. The lounge staff eyed their clothing with envy. The cloak-room attendant ran her hands over the silky texture of their furs, and it struck her that her ancestors might have looked upon the czarist nobility with the same degree of envy that she felt toward these two. They sat in regal isolation, with only the distant company of their bodyguards as they sipped at their coffee and gazed out the plate-glass windows at the parked airliners.