“McLanahan told me exactly what he hopes to accomplish, sir,” General Hayes said. “Draw the Russians out into the open,” the President said. “Attack Kazakov’s center — his oil empire — and force him to retaliate.”
“Exactly, sir.”
“Oil tankers first, then oil terminals next?”
“They’re fairly easy targets for the weapons McLanahan has at his disposal, sir,” Lieutenant-General Terrill Samson added.
“We can set up round-the-clock AWACS patrols and nab him as soon as he appears,” Hayes said. “We interdict every noncorrelated flight in the area. A few fighters and tankers on patrol should take care of it. We can set that up immediately.”
“Find him,” the President ordered bitterly. “I don’t care if you have to send every fighter in the force to do it. Find him. No more sneak attacks.” The President glanced again at Goff, then at Terrill Samson. “General, you can help me get in contact with McLanahan.”
“Sir?”
“That subcutaneous transceiver system you use at Dreamland,” the President said, pointing to his left shoulder with a jabbing motion. “That works almost anywhere in the world, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. But I’ve attempted to contact General McLanahan and other members of his team several times. No response.”
“He thinks you betrayed him.”
Samson looked frozen for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know what be—” He stopped when he saw Thorn’s knowing glance, then nodded. “Yes, he does, sir.”
“He thinks I betrayed him, too,” the President said. “He thinks I’m selling the United States down the river.”
“Sir, it shouldn’t matter what McLanahan thinks,” Samson said emphatically. “He’s a soldier. He was … I mean, he is supposed to follow orders.”
“You know where he is, don’t you, General?”
Samson swallowed hard. “Sir?”
“McLanahan may not be answering you, but those implants allow you to track and monitor anyone wearing them,” the President said. “You said so yourself. You know exactly where he is, but you haven’t told General Venti or Secretary Goff. Why?”
“What in hell is this, Samson?” Joint Chiefs Chairman Venti exclaimed. “You’ve been keeping this information from us the whole time?”
“No one ever ordered me to locate McLanahan, sir,” Samson said.
“You’re busted, General,” Venti thundered. “That kind of insubordinate bullshit just landed you in hock.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“Denied!” Venti shouted.
“Hold on, General,” the President interrupted. “Go ahead, General Samson.”
Samson paused, but only for a moment. He gave the President a fin-n look. “Sir, I don’t like what McLanahan’s doing — but only because he’s doing my job.”
“Your job?”
“My job is to track down wack-jobs like Kazakov and his stealth fighter-bomber and knock it out of the sky, not try to knock down one of our own,” Samson said. “Sir, you’re not prepared or not willing to get involved in this matter, that’s fine. You’re the President and my commander-in-chief, and your decision is the final word. But when honest fighting men like Patrick McLanahan do decide to act, they shouldn’t be persecuted by their own government.”
Samson looked at Venti, then General Hayes, the others in the Oval Office, and then President Thorn. “If you order me to find McLanahan and bring him in, sir, I’ll do it. I’ll use every means at my disposal to do it.”
“Fine. I’ll give you a direct order, General Samson,” the President said. He paused for a moment, then said: “General, I want you to install one of those subcutaneous transceivers in me. Today. Right now.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. Make the call, get one out here immediately.”
“But … but what about McLanahan?” Busick retorted. “How is that going to stop him?”
“I’m going to talk with him. I want to hear his voice,” Thorn said. “If he’s turning into some kind of high-tech terrorist or supervigilante, I need to find out for myself. If I determine he or the ones that fly with him are unstable, I’ll send every last jet and every last infantryman out to nail his ass.”
Tirane, Republic of Albania
For the second night in a row, the crowds had gathered in front of the four-story office building across from the German embassy in the Albanian capital of Tirane, the headquarters of the United Nations Protection Force, composed mostly of Russian and German troops, assigned to patrol the southern Albania — Macedonia border. Since the stories had broken in the world media about the deal between Pavel Kazakov and members of the Russian government, massive protests had broken out all over the Balkans, but none larger or louder than in Tirane. The German government, considered Russian collaborators, became equal targets for the protesters.
Tonight’s protests were the worst. Albanian troops were called in early, which only angered the protesters even more. Albanian labor unions, upset because Kazakov had not used union labor to build his pipeline, led the protests, and the army and police were not anxious to confront the unions. The crowd was unruly, surging back and forth between the United Nations headquarters and the German embassy. Shouting quickly turned to pushing, and the police and army had trouble controlling the massive crowds. Pushing turned to fighting, fighting turned to rock and bottle throwing, and rocks and bottles turned into Molotov cocktails.
Virtually unheard and unnoticed in all the confusion and growing panic in the streets was the wail of an extraordinarily loud siren, but not a police or fire siren — it was an air raid warning siren. Moments later, the lights on all Albanian government buildings automatically started to extinguish — another automatic response to an attack warning dating back to the German blitzkriegs of World War II. The sudden darkness, combined with the lights of emergency vehicles and fires on the streets, sent some protesters into flights of sheer panic.
The police had just started to deploy riot-control vehicles with water and tear gas cannons when hell broke loose. There was an impossibly bright flash of light, a huge ball of fire, and a deafening explosion that engulfed an entire city block, centered precisely on the German embassy. When the smoke and fire cleared, the Germany embassy was nothing more than a smoking hole and a pile of rubble. Everyone within a block of the embassy-protesters, police, army, embassy workers, and curious onlookers-were either dead or dying, and fires had broken out for several blocks around the blast.
The President’s study, The White House,
Washington, D.C.
“The devastation is enormous, sir,” Director of Central Intelligence Douglas Morgan reported, reading from the initial reports on the incident. “The entire Germany embassy is gone — nothing but a pile of concrete. Police and news media estimated a crowd of perhaps five thousand was outside the embassy involved in the protest, with another five to ten thousand police, news media, and onlookers within the blast radius. The joint United Nations-NATO headquarters across the street was severely damaged — casualty estimates there could top three hundred dead or injured.”
President Thomas Thorn sat quietly in his study next to the Oval Office. He was dressed in a casual shirt and slacks and wearing only a pair of sandals, having been awakened shortly after going to bed with news of the terrible blast in Tirane. His bank of television monitors were tuned to various world news channels, but he had the sound muted on all of them and was listening to his Cabinet officials feeding him reports as they came in, staring not at the televisions but at a spot on the wall, staring intently as if he could see for himself the horror unfolding thousands of miles away.