"Allah's blessings upon this house," the Archer said when he finished the first glass. That he had waited until drinking the apple juice was as close as the man ever came to making a joke. Ortiz saw the fatigue written on the man's face, though he displayed it no other way. Unlike his young porter, the Archer seemed invulnerable to such normal human concern It wasn't true, but Ortiz understood how the force that drove him could suppress his humanity.
The two men were dressed almost identically. Ortiz considered the Archer's clothing and wondered at the ironic similarity with the Apache Indians of America and Mexico. On of his ancestors had been an officer under Terrazas when the Mexican Army had finally crushed Victorio in the Tres Castillos Mountains. The Afghans, too, wore rough trousers under their loincloths. They, too, tended to be small, agile fighters; And they, too, treated captives as noisy amusements for the knives. He looked at the Archer's knife and wondered how it was used. Ortiz decided he didn't want to know.
"Do you wish something to eat?" he asked.
"It can wait," the Archer replied, reaching for his pack He and Abdul had brought out two loaded camels, but left the important material, only his backpack would do. "I fire eight rockets. I hit six aircraft, but one had two engines and managed to escape. Of the five I destroyed, two were helicopters, and three were bombing-fighters. The first helicopter we killed was the new kind of twenty-four you told us about. You were correct. It did have some new equipment. Here some of it."
It was ironic, Ortiz thought, that the most sensitive equipment in military aircraft would survive treatment guaranteed to kill its crew. As he watched, the Archer revealed six green circuit boards for the laser-designator that was now standard equipment on the Mi-24. The U.S. Army Captain who'd stayed in the shadows and kept his mouth shut to this point now came forward to examine them. His hands fairly trembled as tie reached for the items.
"You have the laser, too?" the Captain asked in accented Pashtu.
"It was badly damaged, but, yes." The Archer turned. Abdul was snoring. He nearly smiled until he remembered that he had a son also.
For his part, Ortiz was saddened. To have a partisan with the Archer's education under his control was rare enough. He'd probably been a skilled teacher but he could never teach again. He could never go back to what he'd been. War had changed the Archer's life as fully and certainly as death. Such a goddamned waste.
"The new rockets?" the Archer asked.
"I can give you ten. A slightly improved model, with an additional five-hundred-meter range. And some more smoke rockets, too."
The Archer nodded gravely, and the corners of his mouth moved in what, in different times, might have been the beginnings of a smile.
"Perhaps now I can go after their transports. The smoke rockets work very well, my friend. Every time, they push the invaders close to me. They have not yet learned about that tactic."
Not a trick, Ortiz noted. He called it a tactic. He wants to go after transports now, he wants to kill a hundred Russians it a time. Jesus, what have we made of this man? The CIA officer shook his head. That wasn't his concern.
"You are weary, my friend. Rest. We can eat later. Please honor my house by sleeping here."
"It is true," the Archer acknowledged. He was asleep within two minutes.
Ortiz and the Captain sorted through the equipment brought to them. Included was the maintenance manual for the Mi-M's laser equipment, and radio code sheets, in addition to other things they'd seen before. By noon he had it all fully catalogued and began making arrangements to ship it all to the embassy; from there it would be flown immediately to California for a complete evaluation.
The Air Force VC-137 lifted off right on time. It was a customized version of the venerable Boeing 707. The "V" prefix on its designation denoted that it was designed to carry VIP passengers, and the aircraft's interior reflected this. Jack lay back on the couch and abandoned himself to the fatigue that enveloped him. Ten minutes later a hand shook his shoulder.
"The boss wants you," another member of the team said
"Doesn't he ever sleep?" Jack growled.
"Tell me about it."
Ernest Allen was in the VIP-est accommodations on the aircraft, a cabin set exactly atop the wing spar with six plus swivel chairs. A coffeepot sat on the table. If he didn't have some coffee he'd soon be incoherent. If he did, he'd be unable to go back to sleep. Well, the government wasn't paying him to sleep. Ryan poured himself some coffee.
"Yes, sir?"
"Can we verify it?" Allen skipped the preliminaries.
"I don't know yet," Jack replied. "It's not just a question of National Technical Means. Verifying the elimination of so many launchers–"
"They're giving us limited on-site inspection," noted a junior member of the team.
"I'm aware of that," Jack replied. "The question is, does that really mean anything?" The other question is, why did they suddenly agree to something we've wanted for over thirty years… ?
"What?" the junior member asked.
"The Soviets have put a lot of work into their new mobile launchers. What if they have more of them than we know about? Do you think we can find a few hundred mobile missiles?"
"But we have surface-scanning radar on the new birds and–"
"And they know it, and they can avoid it if they want to – wait a minute. We know that our carriers can and do evade Russian radar-ocean-recon satellites. If you can do it with a ship, you can damned sure do it with a train," Jack pointed out. Allen looked on without comment, allowing his underling to pursue the line in his stead. A clever old fox, Ernie Allen.
"So, CIA is going to recommend against – damn it, this is the biggest concession they've ever made!"
"Fine. It's a big concession. Everyone here knows that. Before we accept it, maybe we ought to make sure that they haven't conceded something that they've made irrelevant to the process. There are other things, too."
"So you're going to oppose–"
"I'm not opposing anything. I'm saying we take our time and use our heads instead of being carried away by euphoria."
"But their draft treaty is – it's almost too good to be true." The man had just proved Ryan's point, though he didn't see it quite that way.
"Dr. Ryan," Allen said, "if the technical details can be worked out to your satisfaction, how do you view the treaty?"
"Sir, speaking from a technical point of view, a fifty-percent reduction in deliverable warheads has no effect at all on the strategic balance. It's–"
"That's crazy!" objected the junior member.
Jack extended his hand toward the man, pointing his index finger like the barrel of a gun. "Let's say I have a pistol pointed at your chest right now. Call it a nine-millimeter Browning. That has a thirteen-round clip. I agree to remove seven rounds from the clip, but I still have a loaded gun, with six rounds, pointed at your chest – do you feel any safer now?" Ryan smiled, keeping his "gun" out.
"Personally, I wouldn't. That's what we're talking about here. If both sides reduce their inventories by half, that still leaves five thousand warheads that can hit our country. Think about how big that number is. All this agreement does is to reduce the overkill. The difference between five thousand and ten thousand only affects how far the rubble flies. If we start talking about reducing the number to one thousand warheads on either side, then maybe I'll start thinking we're on to something."