Cortez spoke from the heart. Moira, because of you I am again a man. You have done more for me. When next I come to Washington, we must We will.

He followed her most of the way home, to let her know that he wished to protect her, breaking off before getting so close to her home that her childrensurely they were waiting upwould notice. Cortez drove back to the apartment with a smile on his face, only partly because of his mission.

Her co-workers knew at once. With little more than six hours sleep, Moira bounced into the office wearing a suit she hadnt touched in a year. There was a sparkle in her eye that could not be hidden. Even Director Jacobs noticed, but no one said anything. Jacobs understood. Hed buried his wife only a few months after Moiras loss, and learned that such voids in ones life could never quite be filled with work. Good for her, he thought. She still had children at home. Hed have to go easier on her schedule. She deserved another chance at a real life.

Deployment.

THE AMAZING THING was how smoothly things had gone, Chavez thought. After all, they were all sergeants, but whoever had set this thing up had been a clever man because there had been no groping around for which man got which function. There was an operations sergeant in his squad to assist Captain Ramirez with planning. There was a medical corpsman, a good one from the Special Forces who already had his weapons training. Julio Vega and Juan Piscador had once been machine-gunners, and they got the SAWs. The same story applied to their radioman. Each member of the team fit neatly into a preselected slot, all were sufficiently trained that they respected the expertise of one another, and further cross-training enhanced that respect even more. The rugged regime of exercises had extended the pride with which each had arrived, and within two weeks the team had meshed together like a finely made machine. Chavez, a Ranger School graduate, was point man and scout. His job was to probe ahead, to move silently from one place of concealment to another, to watch and listen, then report his observations to Captain Ramirez.

Okay, where are they? the captain asked.

Two hundred meters, just around that corner, Chavez whispered in reply. Five of them. Three asleep, two awake. Ones sitting by the fire. The other ones got an SMG, walking around some.

It was cool in the mountains at night, even in summer. A distant coyote howled at the moon. There was the occasional whisper from a deer moving through the trees, and the only sound associated with man was the distant noise of jets. The clear night made for surprisingly good visibility, even without the low-light goggles with which they were normally equipped. In the thin mountain air, the stars overhead didnt sparkle, but shone as constant, discrete points of light. Ordinarily Chavez would have noticed the beauty, but this was a work night.

Ramirez and the rest of the squad were wearing four-color camouflage fatigues of Belgian manufacture. Their faces were painted with matching tones from sticks of makeup (understandably the Army didnt call it that) so that they blended into the shadows as perfectly as Wells invisible man. Most importantly, they were totally at home in the darkness. Night was their best and most powerful friend. Man was a day-hunter. All of his senses, all of his instincts, and all of his inventions worked best in the light. Primordial rhythms made him less efficient at nightunless he worked very hard to overcome them, as these soldiers had. Even American Indian tribes living in close partnership with nature had feared the night, had almost never fought at night, had not even guarded their encampments at nightthus giving the U.S. Army its first useful doctrine for operations in darkness. At night man built fires as much for vision as for warmth, but in doing so reduced that vision to mere feet, whereas the human eye, properly conditioned, can see quite well in the darkness.

Only five?

Thats all I counted, sir.

Ramirez nodded and gestured for two more men to come forward. A few quiet orders were given. He went with the other two, moving to the right to get above the encampment. Chavez went back forward. His job was to take the sentry down, along with the one dozing at the fire. Moving quietly in the dark is harder than seeing. The human eye is better at spotting movement in the dark than in identifying stationary objects. He put each foot down carefully, feeling for something that might slide or break, thus making noisethe human ear is much underestimated. In daylight his method of moving would have appeared comical, but stealth has its price. Worst of all, he moved slowly, and Ding was no more patient than any man still in his twenties. It was a weakness against which hed trained himself. He walked in a tight crouch. His weapon was up and ready to guard against surprise, and as the moment approached, his senses were fully alerted, as though an electric current ran across his skin. His head swiveled slowly left and right, his eyes never quite locking on anything, because when one stares at an object in the darkness, it tends to disappear after a few seconds.

Something bothered Chavez, but he didnt know what it was He stopped for a moment, looking around, searching with all his senses over to his left for about thirty seconds. Nothing. For the first time tonight he found himself wishing for his night goggles. Ding shook it off. Maybe a squirrel or some other night forager. Not a man, certainly. No one could move in the dark as well as a Ninja, he smiled to himself, and got back to the business at hand. He reached his position several minutes later, just behind a scrawny pine tree, and eased down to a kneeling position. Chavez slid the cover off the green face of his digital watch watching the numbers march slowly toward the appointed moment. There was the sentry, moving in a circle around the fire never more than thirty feet from it, trying to keep his eyes turned away from it to protect his night vision. But the light reflected off the rocks and the pines would damage his perceptions badly enoughhe looked straight at Chavez twice, but saw nothing Time.

Chavez brought up his MP-5 and loosed a single round into the targets chest. The man flinched with the impact, grasped the spot where hed been hit, and dropped to the ground with a surprised gasp. The MP-5 made only a slight metallic clack like a small stone rolling against another, but in the still mountain night, it was something out of the ordinary. The drowsy one by the fire turned around, but only made it halfway where he too was struck. Chavez figured himself to be on a roll and was taking aim on one of the sleeping men when the distinctive ripping sound of Julios squad automatic weapon jolted them from their slumber. All three leapt to their feet, and were dead before they got there.

Where the hell did you come from? the dead sentry demanded. The place on his chest where the wax bullet had struck was very sore, all the more so from surprise. By the time he was standing again, Ramirez and the others were in the camp.

Kid, you are very good, a voice said behind Chavez, and a hand thumped down on his shoulder. The sergeant nearly jumped out of his skin as the man walked past him into the encampment. Come on.

A rattled Chavez followed the man to the fire. He cleared his weapon on the waythe wax bullets could do real harm to a mans face.

Well score that one a success, the man said. Five kills, no reaction from the bad guys. Captain, your machine-gunner got a little carried away. Id go easier on the rock and roll; the sound of an automatic weapon carries an awful long way. Id also try to move in a little closer, butI guess that rock there was about the best you could do. Okay, forget that one. My mistake. We cant always pick the terrain. I liked your discipline on the approach march, and your movement into the objective was excellent. This point man you have is terrific. He almost picked me up. The last struck Chavez as faint praise indeed.

Who the fuck are you! Ding asked quietly.

Kid, I was doing this sort of thing for-real when you were playing with guns made by Mattel. Besides, I cheated. Clark held up his night goggles. I picked my route carefully, and I froze every time you turned your head. What you heard was my breathing. You almost had me. I thought I blew the exercise. Sorry. My names Clark, by the way. A hand appeared.

Chavez. The sergeant took it.

Youre pretty good, Chavez. Best Ive seen in a while. I especially like the footwork. Not many have the patience you do. We could have used you in the 3rd SOG. It was Clarks highest praise, and rarely given.

Whats that?

A grunt and a chuckle. Something that never existeddont worry about it.

Clark walked over to examine the two men Chavez had shot. Both were rubbing identical places on their flak jackets, right over their hearts.

You know how to shoot, too.

Anybody can hit with this.

Clark turned to look at the young man. Remember, when its for-real, its not quite the same.

Chavez recognized genuine meaning in that statement. What should I do different, sir?

Thats the hard part, Clark admitted as the rest of the squad approached the fire. He spoke as a teacher to a gifted pupil. Part of you has to pretend its the same as training. Another part has to remember that you dont get many mistakes anymore. You have to know which part to listen to, cause it changes from one minute to the next. You got good instincts, kid. Trust em. Theyll keep you alive. If things dont feel right, they probably arent. Dont confuse that with fear.

Huh?

Youre going to be afraid out there, Chavez. I always was. Get used to the idea, and it can work for you stead of against you. For Christs sake, dont be ashamed of it. Half the problem out in Indian Country is people afraid of being afraid.

Sir, what the hell are we training for?

I dont know yet. Not my department. Clark managed to conceal his feelings on that score. The training wasnt exactly in accord with what he thought the mission was supposed to be. Ritter might be having another case of the clevers. There was nothing more worrisome to Clark than a clever superior.

Youre going to be working with us, though.

It was an exceedingly shrewd observation, Clark thought. Hed asked to come out here, of course, but realized that Ritter had maneuvered him into asking. Clark was the best man the Agency had for this sort of thing. There werent many men with similar experience anywhere in government service, and most of those, like Clark, were getting a little old for the real thing. Was that all? Clark didnt know. He knew that Ritter liked to keep things under his hat, especially when he thought he was being clever. Clever men outsmart themselves, Clark thought, and Ritter wasnt immune from that.

Maybe, he admitted reluctantly. It wasnt that he minded associating with these men, but Clark worried about the circumstances that might make it necessary, later on. Can you still cut it, Johnny boy?

So? Director Jacobs asked. Bill Shaw was there, too.

So he did it, sure as hell, Murray replied as he reached for his coffee. But taking it to trial would be nasty. Hes a clever guy, and his crew backed him up. If you read up on his file, youll see why. Hes some officer. The day I went down, he rescued the crew of a burning fishing boattalk about perfect timing. There were scorch marks on the hull, he went in so close. Oh, sure, we could get them all apart and interview them, but just figuring out who was involved would be tricky. I hate to say this, but it probably isnt worth the hassle, especially with the senator looking over our shoulder, and the local U.S. Attorney probably wont spring for it either. Bright wasnt all that crazy about it, but I calmed him down. Hes a good kid, by the way.

What about the defense for the two subjects? Jacobs asked.

Slim. On the face of it the case against them is pretty damned solid. Ballistics has matched the bullet Mobile pulled out of the deck to the gun recovered on the boat, with both mens fingerprints on itthat was a real stroke of luck. The blood type around where the bullet was found was AB-positive, which matches the wife. A carpet stain three feet away from that confirms that she was having her period, which along with a couple of semen stains suggests rape rather strongly. Right now theyre doing the DNA match downstairs on semen samples recovered from the ruganybody here want to bet against a positive match? We have a half-dozen bloody fingerprints that match the subjects ten points worth or more. Theres a lot of good physical evidence. Its more than enough to convict already, Murray said confidently, and the lab boys havent got halfway through their material yet. The U.S. Attorney is going to press for capital punishment. Ill think hell get it. The only question is whether or not we allow them to trade information for a lighter sentence. But its not exactly my case. That earned Murray a smile from the Director.

Pretend it is, Jacobs ordered.

Well know in a week or so if we need anything they can tell us. My instincts say no. We ought to be able to figure out who the victim was working for, and thatll be the one who ordered the hitwe just dont know why yet. But its unlikely that the subjects know why either. I think we have a couple of sicarios who hoped to parlay their hit into an entre to the marketing side of the business. I think theyre throwaways. If thats correct, they dont know anything that we cant figure out for ourselves. I suppose we have to give them a chance, but I would recommend against mitigation of sentence. Four murdersbad ones at that. We have a death-penalty statute, and to this brick-agent, I think the chair would fit them just fine.

Getting nasty in your old age? Shaw asked. It was another inside joke. Bill Shaw was one of the Bureaus leading intellectuals. He had won his spurs cracking down on domestic terrorist groups, and had accomplished that mission by carefully rebuilding the FBIs intelligence-gathering and analysis procedures. A quintessential chess player with a quiet, organized demeanor, this tall, spare man was also a former field agent who advocated capital punishment in a quiet, organized, and well-reasoned way. It was a point on which police opinion was almost universal. All you had to do to understand capital punishment was to see a crime scene in all its vile spectacle.

The U.S. Attorney agrees, Dan, Director Jacobs said. These two druggies are out of the business for keeps.

As if it matters, Murray thought to himself. What mattered to him was that two murderers would pay the price. Because a sufficiently large stash of drugs had been found aboard the yacht, the government could invoke the statute that allowed the death penalty in drug-related murders. The relationship was probably a loose one in this case, but that didnt matter to the three men in the room. The fact of murderbrutal and premeditatedwas enough. But to say, as both they and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama would tell the TV cameras, that this was a fight against the drug trade, was a cynical lie.

Murrays education had been a classical one at Boston College, thirty years before. He could still recite passages in Latin from Virgils Aeneid, or Ciceros opening salvo against Catiline. His study of Greek had been only in translationforeign languages were one thing to Murray; different alphabets were something elsebut he remembered the legend of the Hydra, the mythical beast that had seven or more heads. Each time you cut one off, two would grow to take its place. So it was with the drug trade. There was just too much money involved. Money beyond the horizon of greed. Money to purchase anything a simple manmost of them werecould desire. A single deal could make a man wealthy for life, and there were many who would willingly and consciously risk their lives for that one deal. Having decided to wager their lives on a toss of the dicewhat value might they attach to the lives of others? The answer was the obvious one. And so they killed as casually and as brutally as a child might stamp down his foot on an anthill. They killed their competitors because they didnt wish to have competition. They killed their competitors families whole because they didnt want a wrathful son to appear five, ten, twenty years later with vendetta on his mind; and also because, like nation-states armed with nuclear weapons, the principle of deterrence came into play. Even a man willing to wager his own life might quail before the prospect of wagering those of his children.

So in this case theyd cut off two heads from the Hydra. In three months or so the government would present its case in Federal District Court. The trial would probably last a week. The defense would do its best, but as long as the feds were careful with their evidence, theyd win. The defense would try to discredit the Coast Guard, but it wasnt hard to see what the prosecutor had already decided: the jury would look at Captain Wegener and see a hero, then look at the defendants and see scum. The only likely tactic of the defense would almost certainly be counterproductive. Next, the judge had to make the proper rulings, but this was the South, where even federal judges were expected to have simple, clear ideas about justice. Once the defendants had been found guilty, the penalty phase of the trial would proceed, and again, this was the South, where people read their Bibles. The jury would listen to the aggravating circumstances: mass murder of a family, probability of rape, murder of children, and drugs. But there was a million dollars aboard, the defense would counter. The principal victim was involved in the drug trade. What proof of that is there? The prosecutor would inquire piouslyand what of the wife and children? The jury would listen quietly, soberly, almost reverently, would get their instructions from the same judge who had told them how to find the defendants guilty in the first place. Theyd deliberate a reasonable period of time, going through the motions of thorough consideration for a decision made days earlier, and report back: death. The criminals, no longer defendants, would be remanded to federal custody. The case would automatically be appealed, but a reversal was unlikely so long as the judge hadnt made any serious procedural errors, which the physical evidence made unlikely. It would take years of appeals. People would object to the sentence on philosophical groundsMurray disagreed but respected them for their views. The Supreme Court would have to rule sooner or later, but the Supremes, as the police called them, knew that, despite earlier rulings to the contrary, the Constitution clearly contemplated capital punishment, and the will of the People, expressed through Congress, had directly mandated death in certain drug-related cases, as the majority opinion would make clear in its precise, dry use of the language. So, in about five years, after all the appeals had been heard and rejected, both men would be strapped into a wooden chair and a switch would be thrown.

That would be enough for Murray. For all his experience and sophistication, he was before all things a cop. He was an adulthood beyond his graduation from the FBI Academy, when hed thought that he and his classmatesmostly retired nowwould really change the world. The statistics said that they had in many ways, but statistics were too dry, too remote, too inhuman. To Murray the war on crime was an endless series of small battles. Victims were robbed alone, kidnapped alone, or killed alone, and were individuals to be saved or avenged by the warrior-priests of the FBI. Here, too, his outlook was shaped by the values of his Catholic education, and the Bureau remained a bastion of Irish-Catholic America. Perhaps he hadnt changed the world, but he had saved lives, and he had avenged deaths. New criminals would arise as they always did, but his battles had all ended in victories, and ultimately, he had to believe, there would be a net difference for his society, and the difference would be a positive one. He believed as truly as he believed in God that every felon caught was probably a life saved, somewhere down the line.

In this case he had helped to do so again.

But it wouldnt matter a damn to the drug business. His new post forced him to assume a longer view that ordinary agents contemplated only over drinks after their offices closed. With these two out of circulation, the Hydra had already grown two new heads, Murray knew, perhaps more. His mistake was in not pursuing the myth to its conclusion, something others were already doing. Heracles had slain the Hydra by changing tactics. One of the people who had remembered that fact was in this room. What Murray had not yet learned was that at the policymaking level, ones perspective gradually changed ones views.

Cortez liked the view also, despite the somewhat thinner air of this eyrie. His newly acquired boss knew the superficial ways to communicate his power. His desk faced away from the wide window, making it hard for those opposite the massive desk to read the expression on his face. He spoke with the calm, quiet voice of great power. His gestures were economical, his words generally mild. In fact he was a brutal man, Cortez knew, and despite his education a less sophisticated man than he deemed himself to be, but that, Flix knew, was why hed been hired. So the former colonel trained in Moscow Center adjusted the focus of his eyes to examine the green vista of the valley. He allowed Escobedo to play his eye-power games. Hed played them with far more dangerous men than this one.

So?

I have recruited two people, Cortez replied. One will feed us information for monetary considerations. The other will do so for other reasons. I also examined two other potential prospects, but discarded them as unsuitable.

Who are theywho are the ones you will use?

No. Cortez shook his head. I have told you that the identity of my agents must remain secret. This is a principle of intelligence operations. You have informers within your organization, and loose talk would compromise our ability to gather the information which you require. Jefe, he said fawningly. This one needed that sort of thing. Jefe, you have hired me for my expertise and experience. You must allow me to do my work properly. You will know the quality of my sources from the information which I give you. I understand how you feel. It is normal. Castro himself has asked me that question, and I gave him the same answer. It must be so.

That earned Cortez a grunt. Escobedo liked to be compared with a chief of state, better still one who had defied the yanquis so successfully for a generation. There would be a satisfied smile now on the handsome face, Flix knew without bothering to check for it. His answer was a lie for two reasons: Castro had never asked the question, and neither Flix nor anyone else on that island would ever have dared to deny him the information.

So what have you learned?

Something is afoot, he said in a matter-of-fact voice that was almost taunting. After all, he had to justify his salary. The American government is putting together a new program designed to enhance their interdiction efforts. My sources have no specifics as yet, though what they have heard has come from multiple sources and is probably true. My other source will be able to confirm what information I receive from the first. The lesson was lost on Escobedo, Flix knew. Recruiting two complementary sources on a single mission would have earned him a flowery commendation letter from any real intelligence service.

What will the information cost us?

Money. It is always money with him, Cortez told himself with a stifled sigh. No wonder he needed a professional with his security operations. Only a fool thinks that he can buy everything. On the other hand, there were times when money was helpful, and though he didnt know it, Escobedo paid more money to his American hirelings and traitors than the entire Communist intelligence network.

It is better to spend a great deal of money on one person at a high level than to squander it on a large number of minor functionaries. A quarter of a million dollars will do nicely to get the information which we require. Cortez would be keeping most of that, of course. He had expenses of his own.

That is all? Escobedo asked incredulously. I pay more than that to Because your people have never used the proper approach, jefe. Because you pay people on the basis of where they are, not what they know. You have never adopted a systematic approach to dealing with your enemies. With the proper information, you can utilize your funds much more efficiently. You can act strategically instead of tactically, Cortez concluded by pushing the proper button.

Yes! They must learn that we are a force to be reckoned with!

Not for the first time, Flix thought that his main objective was to take the money and run . . . perhaps a house in Spain . . . or, perhaps, to supplant this egomaniacal buffoon. That was a thought. . . . But not for now. Escobedo was an egomaniac, but he was also a shrewd one, capable of rapid action. One difference between this man and those who ran his former agency was that Escobedo wasnt afraid to make a decision, and do it quickly. No bureaucracy here, no multiplicity of desks for messages to pass. For that he respected El Jefe. At least he knew how to make a decision. KGB had probably been that way once, maybe even the American intelligence organs. But no longer.

One more week, Ritter told the National Security Adviser.

Nice to hear that things are moving, the Admiral observed. Then what?

Why dont you tell me? Just to keep things clear, the DDO suggested. He followed it with a reminder. After all, the operation was your idea in the first place.

Well, I sold Director Jacobs on the idea, Cutter replied with a smile at his own cleverness. When were ready to proceedand I mean ready to push the buttonJacobs will fly down there to meet with their Attorney General. The ambassador says that the Colombians will go along with almost anything. Theyre even more desperate than we are and You didnt No, Bob, the ambassador doesnt know. Okay? Im not the idiot you take me for, his eyes told the CIA executive. If Jacobs can sell the idea to them, we insert the teams ASAP. One change I want to make.

Whats that?

The air side of it. Your report says that practice tracking missions are already turning up targets.

Some, Ritter admitted. Two or three per week.

The wherewithal to handle them is already in place. Why not activate that part of the operation? I mean, it might actually help to identify the areas we want to send the insertion teams to, develop operational intelligence, that sort of thing.

Id prefer to wait, Ritter said cautiously.

Why? If we can identify the most frequently used areas, it cuts down on the amount of moving around theyll have to do. Thats your greatest operational risk, isnt it? This is a way to develop information that enhances the entire operational concept.

The problem with Cutter, Ritter told himself, was that the bastard knew just enough about operations to be dangerous. Worse, he had the power to enforce his willand a memory of the Operations Directorates recent history. What was it hed said a few months back? Your best operations in the last couple of years actually came out of Greers department. . . . By which he meant Jack Ryan, Jamess bright rising starpossibly the new DDI the way things looked. That was too bad. Ritter was genuinely fond of his counterpart at the head of the Intelligence Directorate, but less so of Greers ingratiating protg. But it was nevertheless true that the Agencys two best coups in recent years had begun in the wrong department, and it was time for Operations to reassert its primacy. Ritter wondered if Cutter was consciously using that as a prod to move him to action. Probably not, he decided. Cutter didnt know enough about infighting yet. Not that he wouldnt learn, of course.

Going too early is a classic error in field operations, the DDO offered lamely.

But were not. Essentially we have two separate operations, dont we? Cutter asked. The air part can operate independently of the in-country part. I admit itll be less effective, but it can still operate. Doesnt this give us a chance to check out the less tricky side of the plan before we commit to the dangerous part? Doesnt it give us something to take to the Colombians to show that were really serious?

Too soon, the voice in Ritters head said urgently, but his face showed indecision.

Look, do you want me to take it to the President? Cutter asked.

Where is he todayCalifornia?

Political trip. I would prefer not to bother him with this sort of thing, but It was a curious situation, the DDO thought. He had underestimated Cutter, while the National Security Adviser seemed quite able to overestimate himself. Okay, you win. EAGLE EYE starts day after tomorrow. Itll take that long to get everyone up and running.

And SHOWBOAT?

One more week to prep the teams. Four days to get them to Panama and meet up with the air assets, check communications systems and all that.

Cutter grinned as he reached for his coffee. It was time to smooth some ruffled feathers, he thought. God, its nice to work with a real pro. Look on the bright side, Bob. Well have two full weeks to interrogate whatever turns up in the air net, and the insertion teams will have a much better idea of where theyre needed.

Youve already won, you son of a bitch. Do you have to rub it in? Ritter wanted to ask. He wondered what would have happened if hed called Cutters cards. What would the President have said? Ritters position was a vulnerable one. Hed grumbled long and loud within the intelligence community that CIA hadnt run a serious field operation in . . . fifteen years? It depended on what you meant by serious, didnt it? Now he was being given the chance, and what had been a nice line to be spoken at the coffee sessions during high-level government conferences was now a gray chicken come home to roost. Field operations like this were dangerous. Dangerous to the participants. Dangerous to those who gave the orders. Dangerous to the governments that sponsored them. Hed told Cutter that often enough, but like many, the National Security Adviser was mesmerized by the glamour of field ops. It was known in the trade as the Mission: Impossible Syndrome. Even professionals could confuse a TV drama with reality, and, throughout government, people tended to hear only that which they wished to hear, and to ignore the unpleasant parts. But it was somewhat late for Ritter to give out his warnings. After all, hed complained for years that such a mission was possible, and occasionally a desirable adjunct to international policy. And hed said often enough that his directorate still knew how to do it. The fact that hed had to recruit field operatives from the Army and Air Force had escaped notice. Time had been when the Agency had been able to use its own private air force and its own private army . . . and if this worked out, perhaps those times would come again. It was a capability the Agency and the country needed, Ritter thought. Here, perhaps, was his chance to make it all happen. If putting up with amateur power-vendors like Cutter was the price of getting it, then that was the price hed have to pay.

Okay, Ill get things moving.

Ill tell the boss. How soon do you expect well have results . . . ?

Impossible to say.

But before November, Cutter suggested lightly.

Yeah, probably by then. Politics, too, of course. Well, that was what kept traffic circling around the beltway.

The 1st Special Operations Wing was based at Hurlburt Field, at the west end of the Eglin Air Force Base complex in Florida. It was a unique unit, but any military unit with Special in its name was unique by its very nature. The adjective was used for any number of meanings. Special weapons most often meant nuclear weapons, and here the word was used to avoid offending the sensibilities of those for whom nuclear connoted mushroom clouds and megadeaths; it was as though a change of wording could effect a change of substance, yet another characteristic of governments all over the world. Special Operations, on the other hand, meant something else. Generally it denoted covert business, getting people into places where they ought not to be, supporting them while they were there, and getting them out after concluding business that they ought not to have done in the first place. That, among other things, was the business of the 1st.

Colonel Paul JohnsPJdidnt know everything the wing did. The 1st was rather an odd grouping where authority didnt always coincide with rank, where the troops provided support for the aircraft and crews without always knowing why they did so, where aircraft came and went on irregular schedules, and where people werent encouraged to speculate or ask questions. The wing was divided into individual fiefdoms that interacted with others on an ad hoc basis. PJs fiefdom included half a dozen MH-53J Pave Low III helicopters. Johns had been around for quite a while, and somehow had managed to spend nearly all of his Air Force career in the air. It was a career path that guaranteed him both a fulfilling, exciting career, and precisely zero chance at ever wearing generals stars. But on that score he didnt give much of a damn. Hed joined the Air Force to fly; something generals dont get to do very much. Hed kept his part of the bargain, and the service had kept its, which wasnt quite as common an arrangement as some would imagine. Johns had early on eschewed fixed-wing aircraft, the fast-movers that dropped bombs or shot down other aircraft. A people-person all of his life, Johns had started off in the Jolly Green Giants, the HH-3 rescue helicopters of Vietnam fame, then graduated to the Super Jolly HH-53, part of the Air Rescue Service. As a brash young captain hed flown in the Song Tay Raid, copilot of the aircraft that had deliberately crashed into the prison camp twenty miles west of Hanoi as part of the effort to rescue people who, it turned out, had been moved just a short time before. That had been one of the few failures in his life. Colonel Johns was not a man accustomed to such things. If you went down, PJ would come get you. He was the third-ranking all-time rescue specialist in the Air Force. The current Chief of Staff and two other general officers had been excused a stay in the Hanoi Hilton because of him and his crews. PJ was a man who only rarely had to buy himself a drink. He was also a man whom general officers saluted first. It was a tradition that went along with the Medal of Honor.

Like most heroes, he was grossly ordinary. Only five-six and a hundred thirty pounds, he looked like any other middle-aged man picking up a loaf of bread in the base exchange. The reading glasses he now had to wear made him look rather like a friendly suburban banker, and he did not often raise his voice. He cut his own grass when he had the time, and his wife did it when he didnt. His car was a fuel-efficient Plymouth Horizon. His son was studying engineering at Georgia Tech, and his daughter had won a scholarship to Princeton, leaving him and his wife an overly quiet house on post in which to contemplate the retirement that lay a few years in the future.

But not now. He sat in the left seat of the Pave Low helicopter checking out a bright young captain who, everyone thought, was ready to be a command pilot himself. The multimillion-dollar helicopter was skimming treetops at a hair under two hundred knots. It was a dark, cloudy night over the Florida panhandle, and this part of the Eglin complex wasnt brightly lit, but that didnt matter. Both he and the captain wore special helmets with built-in low-light goggles, not terribly unlike what Darth Vader wore in Star Wars. But these worked, converting the vague darkness ahead into a green and gray display. PJ kept his head moving around, and made sure that the captain did the same. One danger with the night-vision gear was that your depth perceptiona matter of life and death to a low-level flyerwas degraded by the artificial picture generated by the masks. Perhaps a third of the squadrons operational losses, Johns thought, could be traced to that particular hazard, and the technical wizards hadnt come up with a decent fix yet. One problem with the Pave Lows was that operational and training losses were relatively high. It was a price of the mission for which they trained, and there was no answer to that but more training.

The six-bladed rotor spun overhead, driven by the two turboshaft engines. Pave Low was about as big as helicopters got, with a full combat crew of six and room for over forty combat-equipped passengers. The nose bulged at various places with radar, infrared, and other instrumentsthe general effect was of an insect from another planet. At doors on each side of the airframe were mounts for rotary miniguns, plus another at the tail cargo door, because their primary mission, covert insertion and support of special-operations forces, was a dangerous businessas was the secondary role they practiced tonight, combat search-and-rescue. During his time in Southeast Asia, PJ had worked with A-1 Skyraider attack bombers, the Air Forces last piston-engine attack aircraft, called SPADs or Sandys. Exactly who would support them today was still something of an open question. To protect herself, in addition to the guns the aircraft carried flare and chaff pods, IR jamming and suppression gear . . . and her crew of madmen.

Johns smiled within his helmet. This was real flying, and there wasnt much of that left. They had the option of flying with the aid of an autopilot-radar-computer system that hedgehopped automatically, but tonight they were simulating a system failure. Autopilot or not, the pilot was responsible for flying the airplane, and Willis was doing his best to keep the helicopter down on the treetops. Every so often Johns would have to stop himself from flinching as an errant tree branch seemed certain to slap against the choppers underside, but Captain Willis was a competent young man, keeping the aircraft low, but not too low. Besides, as PJ knew from long experience, the top branches on trees were thin, fragile things that did nothing more than mar the paint. More than once hed brought home a helicopter whose underside bore green stains like those on a childs jeans.

Distance? Willis asked.