Caffey glanced through the broken doorway toward the breaker. The oil was still spreading. Both vehicles were stuck in the stuff, their tracks churning in it. Soldiers were moving in all directions trying to get away from it. Caffey looked at Parsons. “We just have one more thing to do, Lieutenant.” He withdrew a phosphorus grenade from his jacket and pulled himself up. “Help me shut off this bleeder-valve. The idea’s to burn the sonofabitches, not blow up the goddamn station.”
It took their combined strength and more than a minute’s straining against the pipe’s back pressure to turn the valve wheel a full revolution to the closed position. When it was done they ran to the rear door without looking back. Kate lay with her head down and her weapon pointed at the rocket launcher as Caffey and Parsons dove into the hole behind her. The side of the building above her position was chewed and scarred by a hundred bullet holes.
Caffey pulled the pin and held the safety spoon against the grenade in his tight grip. “Keep your faces covered after I throw this little mother,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of heat and a lot of smoke and God knows what else.”
Parsons nodded.
“Kate.” Caffey nudged her. “Goddamn it, forget the sonofabitches and get down here!” But she didn’t move. “Goddamn — Kate? Major!” He pulled her cartridge belt and she slid backwards into his arms.
“Kate!” He rolled her on her side. A ribbon of dried blood streaked the side of her face from a wound above her hairline. The M-16 she was holding still had its original clip locked in it. She’d been killed in the first minute. “Oh, no,” he said in a whisper. “Oh, shit… no!”
“You’d better throw that thing,” Parsons urged beside him. “There’s just two of us left… and I think they know it.” He made a gesture toward the column. “They’re coming, Colonel.”
Caffey emptied the air from his lungs in a raging scream and threw the grenade with all his strength.
The safety spoon sprang clear in the air, starting the chemical reaction that ignited the phosphorus. The grenade sailed in a long parabolic arc, trailing smoke through bright sunlight. The clouds had finally broken and let through great shafts of light. But the static scene lasted only as long as it took the grenade to return to earth.
The oil ignited with a rolling phhump as the brilliant grenade splatted in the black-snow. A wall of fire shot up, spreading out from the spot like waves from a stone dropped in a pond. The sun disappeared as suddenly as it had come, blotted out by the plumes of black smoke. The fire raced across men and machines like a terrible scourge. A vehicle blew up like a Roman candle, its exploding reserves of ammunition streaking the holocaust with trails of red tracer bullets. Men ran blindly in the confusion, gasping for air.
And Caffey fired into them. He was impervious to the wound that seeped blood into his eye, to Parsons, to the smoke that billowed up and engulfed everything around him. He just fired into them, one clip after another, spraying everything in front of him until he didn’t have anything left to shoot with and Parsons took the weapon away.
“I think that’s enough, Colonel,” he said grimly. “I think you proved your point.”
MOSCOW
1515 HRS
Rudenski paced the floor behind Madame Kortner. All the appropriate officials were present — Prime Minister Temienko, Foreign Minister Venchikof, Madame Kortner, Marshal Budner, and, of course, Gorny. He sat beside Venchikof. The chair at the head of the table — Rudenski’s place now — was vacant.
They were all waiting for Rudenski’s aide, KGB Colonel Suloff, formerly Major Suloff, lately released from custody by Gorny’s special police with all records of charges against him destroyed.
When he finally entered the room, Rudenski was nearly in a rage.
“Where have you been?” Rudenski bellowed. “We speak to the president in less than a quarter of an hour!” _
Suloff set his briefcase at Rudenski’s place at the table. “I am sorry, comrade General. The delay was unavoidable.”
“What does Vorashin say? He is at the pipeline, isn’t he?”
“We expect that he is, yes, sir.”
Rudenski frowned. “You expect? Is he or isn’t he? We must know, Colonel! What did he say?”
“Our last Communication was incomplete,” Suloff said. He glanced at Gorny. “Our last communication had the task force within sight of the objective, but”—he shook his head—”unaccountably, the transmission was cut off. We have tried to raise them again… we are still trying, comrade General, but so far we have not been successful. We think that the Americans are somehow jamming the radio frequency.”
“And how long ago was this transmission?”
“Forty minutes.”
“Then they are there,” Rudenski said confidently. He turned to Gorny. “The Americans think they are being clever. This trick will not work. The task force has reached its objective, comrades.”
Gorny got Suloffs attention by tapping a pencil. “When you say ‘within sight of the objective,’ what distance are we speaking of? A few hundred yards? A mile? Ten miles?”
Suloff didn’t look at him directly. “Within sight means very close, comrade Chairman.”
Gorny nodded. “Yes, of course,” he said politely. “I’d forgotten that.”
“It doesn’t matter where they were forty minutes ago,” Rudenski said angrily. “Only where they are now. And Colonel Vorashin’s command has reached the pipeline station. There was nothing to stop them.”
“Then why would the Americans interfere with the radio frequency now?” Gorny asked. “If they haven’t done it before, why now?”
“It does not matter, comrade Gorny,” Rudenski said. “When you speak to the president you may tell him that the station at White Hill is now under our control.” He glanced at the other faces around the table. “We are convinced that the task force is there.” He looked at Suloff. “And the Backfire bombers are airborne?”
“Yes, comrade General,” the colonel said with a nod. “They left their bases five minutes ago.”
“Good.” Rudenski sat in his chair. “Soon, comrades, we will add a new page to the history books.”
Gorny leaned toward him. “Just not the last page, eh, Aleksey,” he whispered.
THE WHITE HOUSE
1526 HRS
“Yes, I see,” McKenna said into the phone. He glanced at the anxious faces around the Oval Office.
The entire contingent from the Crisis Room was present plus Wayne Kimball, his administrative chief of staff. “You’ve been very helpful, Colonel. Thank you.” The president replaced the phone and stared at it a few moments before looking up. “TAG COM reports that they’ve just talked to Fairbanks. And Fairbanks just spoke to a Corporal Simms at Caffey’s command post. Caffey left this morning for White Hill. There hasn’t been any radio contact with him or his command since one o’clock… that’s one our time.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, Mr. President,” Max Schriff from the army said.
“Colonel Caffey was instructed to call before two, General,” McKenna said. “He hasn’t called anyone.”
“He may have lost his radio,” Schriff added lamely.
“Yes,” McKenna said. He glanced at the pad he’d made notes on. “Corporal Simms also relates that he heard an explosion. He says he stood outside and — oh, the weather has cleared, incidentally, for you who didn’t know. Not that it makes much difference now.” He sighed. “Corporal Simms says he stood outside and saw dense smoke on the horizon in the direction of White Hill. Apparently, the CP and the pipeline station are only twenty or thirty miles apart.”