It was also an amazingly quiet aircraft. The first the team leader had heard its powerful engines was the moment before touchdown when the pilot activated the thrust reversal system.
And even that died quickly as the aircraft reached braking speed on the landing roll and then stopped and turned around on the runway.
Number three, now holding illuminated wands, directed it as it taxied up the runway, and then signaled for it to turn.
Before it had completed that maneuver, a ramp began to lower from the rear of the fuselage.
"Bring up number one truck," the team leader ordered.
The Ford F-150 came across the tarmac and backed up to the opening ramp at the rear of the now-stopped aircraft.
A small, rubber-tracked front-loader rolled down the ramp. The driver and the four men riding on it were dressed in black coveralls.
The team leader saluted one of the newcomers, who returned it.
"Problems?" the operation commander asked in Russian.
"None so far, sir."
"Cleanup?"
"Completed, sir."
"Cargo inspected?"
"Yes, sir," the team leader lied. He had forgotten that detail.
"Well, then, let's get it aboard."
"Yes, sir."
Instead of a bucket, the front-loader had modified pallet arms. To the bottom of each arm had been welded two steel loops. From each loop hung a length of sturdy nylon strapping.
The other two men who had ridden off the aircraft on the rubber-tracked vehicle climbed into the bed of the F-150, removed the tarpaulin which had concealed its contents-two barrel-like objects of heavy plastic, dark blue in color, and looking not unlike beer kegs. They then removed the chocks and strapping which had been holding the rearmost barrel in place.
That done, they carefully directed the pallet arms over the bed of the truck until they were in position for the nylon strapping to be passed under the barrel and the fastener at the free end to be inserted into the loop on the bottom of the arm.
The strapping had lever-activated devices to tighten the strapping-and thus the barrel-against the underside of the pallet arm.
"Tight!" one of the men called out in Russian when that had been accomplished.
The front-loader backed away from the F-150, pivoted in its length, and then drove up the ramp into the aircraft.
The two men in the F-150's bed now removed the chocks and the strapping from the other barrel, and very carefully rolled it to the end of the bed.
By then the front-loader had backed off the ramp, turned again in its length, and was prepared to take the second barrel.
"Bring up truck two," the team leader ordered.
Truck two arrived as truck one started to drive off. The procedure of taking the barrels from the trucks was repeated, exactly, for the two Toyota pickups. Truck four-the Land Rover-did not hold any of the barrels, but it held the discarded Kalashnikovs. These were carried aboard the aircraft.
"Set mechanical timers at ten minutes and board the aircraft," the team leader ordered.
"Check your memory to see that you have forgotten nothing," the operation commander ordered.
Thirty seconds later, the team leader replied, "I can think of nothing, sir."
The operation commander gestured for the team leader to get on the airplane. When he had trotted up the ramp, the operation commander almost casually strolled up the ramp, picked up a handset mounted on the bulkhead just inside, and ordered, "Get us out of here."
The ramp door immediately began to close.
When it was nearly closed, the aircraft began to move.
Thirty seconds later it was airborne.
The operation commander pulled off his masklike hood and looked at the team leader.
"Don't smile," he said. "Something always is forgotten, or goes wrong at the last minute, or both."
The team leader held up the radio transmitter which would detonate the thermite grenades.
The operation commander nodded. The team leader flicked the protective cover off the toggle switch and threw it. [TWO] The Oval Office The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 0930 2 February 2007 The door opened and a Secret Service agent announced, "Ambassador Montvale, Mr. President."
Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen, who had acceded to the presidency of the United States on the sudden death-rupture of an undetected aneurism of the aorta-of the incumbent twelve days before, motioned for Montvale to be admitted.
President Clendennen was a short, pudgy, pale-skinned fifty-two-year-old Alabaman who kept his tiny ears hidden under a full head of silver hair.
Charles M. Montvale came through the door. He was a tall, elegantly tailored sixty-two-year-old whose silver mane was every bit as luxurious as the President's, but did not do much to conceal his ears.
Montvale's ears were the delight of the nation's political cartoonists. They seemed to be so very appropriate for a man who-after a long career of government service in which he had served as a deputy secretary of State, the secretary of the Treasury, and ambassador to the European Union-was now the United States director of National Intelligence.
The DNI was caricatured at least once a week-and sometimes more often-with his oversize ears pointed in the direction of Moscow or Teheran or Capitol Hill.
"Good morning, Mr. President," Montvale said.
"Can I offer you something, Charles?" the President asked, his Alabama drawl pronounced. "Have you had your breakfast?"
"Yes, thank you, sir, I have. Hours ago."
"Coffee, then?"
"Please."
The President's foot pressed a button under the desk.
"Would you bring us some coffee, please?"
He motioned for Montvale to take a seat on a couch facing a coffee table, and when Montvale had done so, Clendennen rose from behind his desk and walked to an armchair on the other side of the coffee table and sat down.
The coffee was delivered immediately by a steward under the watchful eye of the President's secretary.
"Thank you," the President said. "We can pour ourselves. And now, please, no calls, no messages, no interruptions."
"Yes, Mr. President."
"From anyone," the President added.
Montvale picked up the silver coffeepot, and said, "You take your coffee…?"
"Black, thank you, Charles," the President said.
Montvale poured coffee for both.
The President sipped his, and then said, "You know what I have been thinking lately? When I've had time to think of anything?"
"No, sir."
"Harry Truman didn't know of the atomic bomb-Roosevelt never told him-until the day after Roosevelt died. General Groves walked in here-into this office-ran everybody out, and then told Truman that we had the atomic bomb. That we had two of them."
"I've heard that story, Mr. President," Montvale said.
"We had a somewhat similar circumstance here. The first I heard of the strike in the Congo was after it happened. When we already were at DefConOne."
Montvale didn't reply.
Clendennen went on: "And he never told me about this secret organization he had running. I heard about that only after he'd died. Secretary of State Natalie Cohen came in here, and said, 'Mr. President, there's something I think you should know.' That was the first I'd ever heard of the Analysis Operations Organization. They almost got us into a war, and I was never even told it existed."
Montvale sipped his coffee, then said, "It was called the 'Office of Organizational Analysis,' Mr. President. And it no longer exists."
"I wonder if I can believe that," the President said. "I wonder how soon someone else is going to come through that door and say, 'Mr. President, there's something you should know…'"
"I think that's highly unlikely, Mr. President, and I can assure you that the Office of Organizational Analysis is gone. I was there when the President killed it."
"Maybe he should have sent a couple of squadrons of fighter-bombers, the way he did to the Congo, to destroy everything in a twenty-square-mile area, and to hell with collateral damage," the President said.