Everyone was supportive as hell, Ryan noted. He felt like a trespasser in this office, but Nancy Cummingssecretary to the DDI from long before the time Greer arrived heredid not treat him as an interloper, and the security detail that he now rated called him sir even though two of them were older than Jack was. The really good news, he didnt realize until someone told him, was that he now rated a driver also. The purpose of this was simply that the driver was a security officer with a Beretta Model 92-F automatic pistol under his left armpit (there was something even more impressive under the dash), but for Ryan it meant that hed no longer have to make the fifty-eight-minute drive himself. From now on hed be one of those Important People who sat in the back of the speeding car talking on a secure mobile phone, or reading over Important Documents, or, more likely, reading the paper on the way into work. The official car would be parked in CIAs underground garage, in a reserved space near the executive elevator, which would whisk him directly to the seventh floor without having to pass through the customary security-gate routine, which was such a damned nuisance. Hed eat in the executive dining room with its mahogany furniture and discreetly elegant silverware.

The increase in salary was also impressive, or would have been if it had matched what his wife, Cathy, was making from the surgical practice that supplemented her associate professorship at Johns Hopkins. But there was not a single government salarynot even the Presidentsthat matched what a good surgeon made. Ryan also had the equivalent rank of a three-star general or admiral, even though his capacity in the job was merely acting.

His first task of the day, after closing the office door, had been to open the DDI safe. There was nothing in it. Ryan memorized the combination, again noting that the DDOs combination was scribbled on the same sheet of paper. His office had that most precious of government perks: a private bathroom; a high-definition TV monitor on which he could watch satellite imagery come in without going to the viewing room in the buildings new north wing; a secure computer terminal over which he could communicate to other offices if he so wishedthere was dust on the keys; Greer had almost never used it. Most of all, there was room. He could get up and pace if he wanted. His job gave him unlimited access to the Director. When the Director was awayand even if he were notRyan could call the White House for an immediate meeting with the President. Hed have to go through the Chief of Staffbypassing Cutter, if he felt the needbut if Ryan now said, I have to see the President, right now! hed get in, right now. Of course hed have to have a very good reason for doing so.

Jack sat in the high-backed chair, facing away from the plate-glass windows, and realized that he had gotten there. This was as far as he had ever expected to rise in the Agency. Not even forty yet. Hed made his money in the brokerage businessand the money was still growing; he needed his CIA salary about as much as he needed a third shoegotten his doctors degree, written his books, taught some history, made himself a new and interesting career, and worked his way to the top. Not even forty yet. He would have awarded himself a gentle, satisfied smile except for the fatherly gentleman who was now at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, dying the lingering and painful death that had put him in this chair, in this office, in this position.

Its not worth it. It sure as hell isnt worth that, Jack told himself. Hed lost his parents to an airliner crash at Chicago, and remembered the sudden, wrenching loss, the impact that had come like a thrown punch. For all that, it had come with merciful speed. He hadnt realized it at the time, but he did now. Ryan made a point of seeing Admiral Greer three times a week, watching his body shrink, draw in on itself like a drying plant, watching the pain lines deepen in his dignified face as the man fought valiantly in a battle he knew to be hopeless. Hed been spared the ordeal of watching his parents fade away, but Greer had become a new father to him, and Ryan was now observing his filial duty for his surrogate parent. Now he understood why his wife had chosen eye surgery. It was tough, technically demanding work in which a slip could cause blindness, but Cathy didnt have to watch people die. What could be harder than thisbut Ryan knew that answer. Hed seen his daughter hover near death, saved by chance and some especially fine surgeons.

Where do they get the courage? Jack wondered. It was one thing to fight against people. Ryan had done that. But to fight against Death itself, knowing that they must ultimately lose, but still fighting. Such was the nature of the medical profession.

Jesus, youre a morbid son of a bitch this morning.

What would the Admiral say?

Hed say to get on with the goddamned job.

The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place. Of course, Jack admitted, CIA might seem to some a most peculiar place in which to do that, but not to Ryan, who had done some very odd but also very useful things here.

A smell got his attention. He turned to see that the coffee machine on the credenza was turned on. Nancy must have done it, he realized. But Admiral Greers mugs were gone, and some generic CIA-logoed cups sat on the silver tray. Just then came a knock on the door. Nancys head appeared.

Your department-head meeting starts in two minutes, Dr. Ryan.

Thanks, Mrs. Cummings. Who did the coffee? Jack asked.

The Admiral called in this morning. He said you would need some on your first day.

Oh. Ill thank him when I go over tonight.

He sounded a little better this morning, Nancy said hopefully.

Hope youre right.

The department heads appeared right on schedule. He poured himself a cup of coffee, offering the same to his visitors, and in a minute was down to work. The first morning report, as always, concerned the Soviet Union, followed by the others as CIAs interests rotated around the globe. Jack had attended these meetings as a matter of routine for years, but now he was the man behind the desk. He knew how the meetings were supposed to be run, and he didnt break the pattern. Business was still business. The Admiral wouldnt have had it any other way.

With presidential approval, things moved along smartly. Overseas communications were handled, as always, by the National Security Agency, and only the time zones made things inconvenient. An earlier heads-up signal had been dispatched to the legal attachs in several European embassies, and at the appointed time, first in Bern, teletype machines operating off encrypted satellite channels began punching out paper. In the communications rooms in all the embassies, the commo-techs took note of the fact that the systems being used were the most secure lines available. The first, or register, sheet prepped the technicians for the proper one-time-pad sequence, which had to be retrieved from the safes which held the cipher keys.

For especially sensitive communicationsthe sort that might accompany notice that war was about to start, for exampleconventional cipher machines simply were not secure enough. The Walker-Whitworth spy ring had seen to that. Those revelations had forced a rapid and radical change in American code policy. Each embassy had a special safeactually a safe within yet another, larger safewhich contained a number of quite ordinary-looking tape cassettes. Each was encased in a transparent but color-coded plastic shrink-wrap. Each bore two numbers. One numberin this case 342was the master registration number for the cassette. The otherin the Bern embassy; it was 68designated the individual cassette within the 342 series. In the event that the plastic wrap on any of the cassettes, anywhere in the world, was determined to be split, scratched, or even distorted, all cassettes on that number series were immediately burned on the assumption that the cassette might have been compromised.

In this case, the communications technician removed the cassette from its storage case, examined its number, and had his watch supervisor verify that it had the proper number: I read the number as three-four-two.

Concur, the watch supervisor confirmed. Three-four-two.

I am opening the cassette, the technician said, shaking his head at the absurd solemnity of the event.

The shrink-wrap was discarded in the low-tech rectangular plastic waste can next to his desk, and the technician inserted the cassette in an ordinary-looking but expensive player that was linked electronically to another teletype machine ten feet away.

The technician set the original printout on the clipboard over his own machine and started typing.

The message, already encrypted on the master 342 cassette at NSA headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland, had been further encrypted for satellite transmission on the current maximum-security State Department cipher, called STRIPE, but even if someone had the proper keys to read STRIPE, all he would have gotten was a message that read DEERAMO WERAC KEWJRT, and so on, due to the super-encipherment imposed by the cassette system. That would at the least annoy anyone who thought that hed broken the American communications systems. It certainly annoyed the communications technician, who had to concentrate as hard as he knew on how to type things like DEERAMO WERAC KEWJRT instead of real words that made some sort of sense.

Each letter passed through the cassette player, which took note of the incoming letter and treated it as a number from 1 (A) to 26 (Z), and then added the number on the tape cassette. Thus, if 1 (A) on the original text corresponded to another 1 (A) on the cassette, 1 was added to 1, making 2 (B) on the clear-text message. The transpositions on the cassette were completely random, having been generated from atmospheric radio noise by a computer at Fort Meade. It was a completely unbreakable code system, technically known as a One-Time Pad. There was, by definition, no way to order or predict random behavior. So long as the tape cassettes were uncompromised, no one could break this cipher system. The only reason that this system, called TAPDANCE, was not used for all communications was the inconvenience of making, shipping, securing, and keeping track of the thousands of cassettes that would be required, but that would soon be made easier when a laser-disc format replaced the tape cassettes. The code-breaking profession had been around since Elizabethan times, and this technical development threatened to render it as obsolete as the slide rule.

The technician pounded away on the keyboard, trying to concentrate as he grumbled to himself about the late hours. He ought to have been off work at six, and was looking forward to dinner in a nice little place a couple of blocks from the embassy. He could not, of course, see the clear-text message coming up ten feet away, but the truth was that he didnt give a good goddamn. Hed been doing this sort of thing for nine years, and the only reason he stuck with it was the travel opportunity. Bern was his third posting overseas. It wasnt as much fun as Bangkok had been, but it was far more interesting than his childhood home in Ithaca, New York.

The message had seventeen thousand characters, which probably corresponded to about twenty-five hundred words, the technician thought. He blazed through the message as quickly as he could.

Okay? he asked when he was finished. The last word had been ERYTPESM.

Yep, the legal attach replied.

Great. The technician took the telex printout hed just typed from and fed it into the code rooms own shredder. It came out as flat pasta. Next he removed the tape cassette from the player and, getting a nod from the watch supervisor, walked to the corner of the room. Here, tied to a cable fixed to the wallactually it was just a spiraled telephone cordwas a large horseshoe magnet. He moved this back and forth over the cassette to destroy the magnetic information encoded on the tape inside. Then the cassette went into the burn-bag. At midnight, one of the Marine guards, supervised by someone else, would carry the bag to the embassys incinerator, where both would watch a days worth of paper and other important garbage burned to ashes by a natural-gas flame. Mr. Bernardi finished scanning the message and looked up.

I wish my secretary could type that fast, Charlie. I count twoonly two!mistakes. Sorry we kept you late. The legal attach handed over a ten-franc note. Have a couple of beers on me.

Thank you, Mr. Bernardi.

Chuck Bernardi was a senior FBI agent, whose civil-service rank was equivalent to that of brigadier general in the United States Army, in which he had served as an infantry officer, long ago and far away. He had two more months to serve here, after which hed rotate home to FBI Headquarters and maybe a job as special-agent-in-charge of a medium-sized field division. His specialty was in the Bureaus OCOrganized CrimeDirector-ate, which explained his posting to Switzerland. Chuck Bernardi was an expert on tracking mob money, and a lot of it worked its way through the Swiss banking system. His job, half police officer and half diplomat, put him in touch with all of the top Swiss police officials, with whom he had developed a close and friendly working relationship. The local cops were smart, professional, and damned effective, he thought. A little old lady could walk the streets of Bern with a shopping bag full of banknotes and feel perfectly secure. And some of them, he chuckled to himself on the walk to his office, probably did.

Once in his office, Bernardi flipped on his reading light and reached for a cigar. He hadnt shaken off the first ash when he leaned back in his chair to stare at the ceiling.

Son of a bitch! He reached for his telephone and called the most senior cop he knew.

This is Chuck Bernardi. Could I speak to Dr. Lang, please? Thank you. . . . Hi, Karl, Chuck here. I need to see you . . . right away if possible . . . its pretty important, Karl, honest. . . . In your office would be better. . . . Not over the phone, Karl, if you dont mind. . . . Okay, thanks, pal. Its worth it, believe me. Ill be there in fifteen minutes.

He hung up the phone. Next he walked out to the office Xerox machine and made a copy of the document, signing off that it was he who had used the machine and how many copies had been run off. Before leaving, he put the original in his personal safe and tucked the copy in his coat pocket. Karl might be pissed about missing dinner, he thought, but it wasnt every day that somebody enriched your national economy to the tune of two hundred million dollars. The Swiss would freeze the accounts. That meant that six of their banks would, by law, keep all the accrued interestand maybe the principal also, as the identity of the government which was entitled to get the funds might never be clear, forcing the Swiss to keep the funds, which would ultimately be turned over to the canton governments. And people wondered why Switzerland was such a wealthy, peaceful, charming little country. It wasnt just the skiing and the chocolate.

Within an hour, six embassies had the word, and as the sun marched across the earth, special agents of the FBI also visited the executive suites of several American commercialfull-servicebanks. They handed over the identifying numbers or names of several accounts, all of whose considerable funds would be immediately frozen by the simple expedient of putting a computer lock on them. In all cases, it was done quietly. No one had to know, and the importance of secrecy was conveyed in very positive termsin America and elsewhereby serious, senior government employees, to bank presidents who were fully cooperative in every instance. (After all, it wasnt their money, was it?) In nearly all cases, the police officials learned, the accounts were not terribly active, averaging two or three transactions per month; always large ones, of course. Deposits would still be accepted, and it was suggested by a Belgian official that if the FBI had the account information for other such accounts, transfers from one monitored account to another would be allowedonly within the same country, of course, the Belgian pointed outto prevent tipping off the depositors. After all, he said, drugs were the common enemy of all civilized men, and most certainly of all police officers. That suggestion was immediately ratified by Director Jacobs, with the concurrence of the AG. Even the Dutch went along, despite the fact that the Netherlands government itself sold drugs in approved stores to its more jaded younger citizens. It was, all in all, a clear case of capitalism in action. There was dirty money around, money that had not been rightly earned, and governments did not approve of such money. Which was why they seized it for their own approved ends. In the case of the banks, the secrecy to which they were sworn was every bit as sacred as that by which they guarded the identity of their depositors.

By the close of business hours on Friday, all had been accomplished. The banks computer systems stayed up and running. The law-enforcement people now had two full additional days to give the money trails further examination. If they found any more money related to the accounts already seized, those funds would also be frozen, and, in the case of the European banks, confiscated. The first hit here was in Luxembourg. Though Swiss banks are those known internationally for their confidentiality laws, the only real difference in security between their operation and those of banks in most other European countries was the fact that Belgium, for example, wasnt surrounded by the Alps, and that Switzerland hadnt been overrun by foreign armies quite as recently as her European neighbors. Otherwise, the integrity of the banks was identical, and accordingly the non-Swiss bankers actually resented the Alps for giving their Swiss brethren such an additional and accidental business advantage. But in this case, international cooperation was the rule. By Sunday evening, six new dirty accounts had been identified, and one hundred thirty-five million additional dollars were put under computer lock.

Back in Washington, Director Jacobs, Deputy Assistant Director Murray, the specialists from the organized-crime office, and the Justice Department left their offices for a well-deserved dinner at the Jockey Club Restaurant. While the Directors security detail watched, the ten men proceeded to have themselves a superb meal at government expense. Perhaps a passing reporter or Common Cause staffer might have objected, but this one had been well and truly earned. Operation TARPON was the greatest single success in the War on Drugs. It would go public, they agreed, by the end of the week.

Gentlemen, Dan Murray said, rising with hishe didnt remember how many glasses of Chablis had accompanied this fishof coursedinner. I give you the United States Coast Guard!

They all rose with a chorus of laughter that annoyed the other customers in the restaurant. The United States Coast Guard! It was a pity, one of the Justice Department attorneys noted, that they didnt know the words to Semper Paratus.

The party broke up about ten oclock. The Directors security men shared looks. Emil didnt hold his liquor all that well, and hed be a gruff, hungover little bear tomorrow morningthough hed apologize to them all before lunch.

Well be flying down to Bogot Friday afternoon, he told them in the sanctity of his official car, an Oldsmobile. Make your plans but dont tell the Air Force until Wednesday. I dont want any leaks on this.

Yes, sir, the chief of the detail answered. He wasnt looking forward to this one either. Especially now. The druggies were going to be pissed. But this visit would catch them unawares. The news stories would say that Jacobs was remaining in D.C. to work on the case, and they wouldnt expect him to show up in Colombia. Even so, the security for this one would be tight. He and his fellow agents would be spending some extra time in the Hoover Buildings own weapons range, honing their skills with their automatic pistols and submachine guns. They couldnt let anything happen to Emil.

Moira found out Tuesday morning. By this time she, too, knew all about TARPON, of course. She knew that the trip was supposed to be secret, and she had no doubt that it would also be dangerous. She wouldnt tell Juan until Thursday night. After all, she had to be careful. She spent the rest of the week wondering what special place he had in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

It no longer mattered that the uniform clothing was khaki instead of woodland pattern Battle Dress Uniform. Between the sweat stains and the dirt, the squad members were now exactly the same color as the ground on which they hid. They had all washed once in the stream from which they took their water, but no one had used soap for fear that suds or smell or something might alert someone downstream. Under the circumstances, washing without soap wasnt even as good as kissing your sister. It had cooled them off, however, and that for Chavez was a most pleasant memory. Forwhat was it?ten glorious minutes hed been comfortable. Ten minutes after which, hed sweated again. The climate was beastly, with temperatures reaching to one hundred twenty degrees on one cloudless afternoon. If this was a goddamned jungle, Chavez asked himself, why the hell doesnt it rain? The good news was that they didnt have to move around a great deal. The two jerks who guarded this airstrip spent most of their time sleeping, smokingprobably grass, Chavez thoughtand generally jerking off. They had, once, startled him by firing their weapons at tin cans that theyd set up on the runway. That might have been dangerous, but the direction of fire hadnt been toward the observation post, and Chavez had used the opportunity to evaluate the weapons skills of the opposition. Shitty, hed told Vega at once. Now they were up to it again. They set up three bean cansbig onesperhaps a hundred meters from the shack, and just blazed away, shooting from the hip like movie actors.

Christ, what fuck-ups, he observed, watching through his binoculars.

Lemme see. Vega got to watch just as one of them knocked a can down on his third try. Hell, I could hit the damned things from here. . . .

Point, this is Six, what the fuck is going on! the radio squawked a moment later. Vega answered the call.

Six, this is Point. Our friends are doing some plinkin again. Their axis of fire is away from us, sir. Theyre punchin holes in some tin cans. They cant shoot for shit, Capn.

Im coming over.

Roger. Ding set down the radio. The Capns coming. I think the noise made him nervous.

He sure does worry a lot, Vega noted.

Thats what they pay officers for, aint it?

Ramirez appeared three minutes later. Chavez made to hand over his binoculars, but the captain had brought his own pair this time. He fell to a prone position and got his glasses up just in time to watch another can go down.

Oh.

Two cans, two full magazines, Chavez explained. They like to go rock-and-roll. I guess ammos cheap down here.

Both of the guards were still smoking. The captain and the sergeant watched them laugh and joke as they shot. Probably, Ramirez thought, theyre as bored as we are. After the first air-craft, there had been no activity at all here at RENO, and soldiers like boredom even less than ordinary citizens. One of themit was hard to tell them apart since they were roughly the same size and wore the same sort of clothinginserted another magazine into his AK-47 and blazed off a ten-round burst. The little fountains of dirt walked up to the remaining can, but didnt quite hit it.

I didnt know it would be this easy, sir, Vega observed from behind the sights of his machine gun. What a bunch of fuck-ups!

You think that way, Oso, you turn into one yourself, Ramirez said seriously.

Roger that, Capn, but I cant help seein what Im seein.

Ramirez softened his rebuke with a smile. I suppose youre right.

The third can finally went down. They were averaging thirty rounds per target. Next the guards used their weapons to push the cans around the runway.

You know, Vega said after a moment, I aint seen em clean their weapons yet. For the squad members, cleaning their weapons was as regular a routine as morning and evening prayers were for clergymen.

The AKll take a lot of abuse. Its good for that, Ramirez pointed out.

Yes, sir.

Finally the guards, too, grew bored. One of them retrieved the cans. As he was doing so, a truck appeared. With little in the way of warning, Chavez was surprised to note. The wind was wrong, but even so it hadnt occurred to him that he wouldnt have at least a minute or two worth of warning. Something to remember. There were three people in the truck, one of whom was riding in the back. The driver dismounted and walked out to the two guards. In a moment he was pointing at the ground and yellingthey could hear it from five hundred yards away even though they hadnt heard the truck, which really seemed strange.

Whats that all about? Vega asked.

Captain Ramirez laughed quietly. FOD. Hes pissed off at the FOD.

Huh? Vega asked.

Foreign Object Damage. You suck one of those cartridge cases into an aircraft engine, like a turbine engine, and itll beat the hell out of it. Yeahlook, theyre picking up their brass.

Chavez turned his binoculars back to the truck. I see some boxes there, sir. Maybe we got a pickup tonight. How come no fuel cansyeah! Captain, last time we were here, they didnt fuel the airplane, did they?

The flight originates from a regular airstrip twenty miles off, Ramirez explained. Maybe they dont have to top off . . . Does seem odd, though.

Maybe they got fuel drums in the shack . . . ? Vega wondered.

Captain Ramirez grunted. He wanted to send a couple of men in close to check the area out, but his orders didnt permit that. Their only patrolling was to check the airfield perimeter for additional security troops. They never got closer than four hundred meters to the cleared area, and it was always done with an eye on the two guards. His operational orders were not to take the slightest risk of making contact with the opposition. So they werent supposed to patrol the area even though it would have told them more about the opposition than they knewwould tell them things that they might need to know. That was just good basic soldiering, he thought, and the order not to do it was a dumb order, since it ran as manyor morerisks than it was supposed to avoid. But orders were still orders. Whoever had generated them didnt know much about soldiering. It was Ramirezs first experience with that phenomenon, since he, too, was not old enough to remember Vietnam.

Theyre gonna be out there all day, Chavez said. It appeared that the truck driver was making them count their brass, and you never could find all of the damned things. Vega checked his watch.

Sundown in two hours. Anybody wanna bet well have business tonight? I got a hundred pesos says we get a plane before twenty-two hundred.

No bet, Ramirez said. The tall one by the truck just opened a box of flares. The captain left. He had a radio call to make.

It had been a quiet couple of days at Corezal. Clark had just returned from a late lunch at the Fort Amador Officers Clubcuriously, the head of the Panamanian Army had an office in the same building; most curious, since he was not overly popular with the U.S. military at the momentfollowed by a brief siesta. Local customs, he decided, made sense. Especially sleeping through the hottest part of the day. The cold air of the vanthe air conditioning was to protect the electronics gear, mainly from the oppressive humidity heregave him the wakeup shock he needed.

Team KNIFE had scored on their first night with a single aircraft. Two of the other squads had also had hits, but one of the aircraft had made it all the way to its destination when the F-15 had lost its radar ten minutes after takeoff, much to everyones chagrin. But that was the sort of problem you had to expect with an operation this short of assets. Two for three wasnt bad at all, especially when you considered what the odds had been like a bare month before, when the Customs people were lucky to bag a single aircraft in a month. One of the squads, moreover, had drawn a complete blank. Their airfield seemed totally inactive, contradicting intelligence data that had looked very promising only a week before. That also was a hazard of real-world operations.

VARIABLE, this is KNIFE, over, the speaker said without preamble.

KNIFE, this is VARIABLE. We read you loud and clear. We are ready to copy, over.

We have activity at RENO. Possible pickup this evening. We will keep you advised. Over.

Roger, copy. Well be here. Out.

One of the Operations people lifted the handset to another radio channel.

EAGLES NEST, this is VARIABLE . . . Stand to . . . Roger. Well keep you posted. Out. He set the instrument down and turned. Theyll get everyone up. The fighter is back on line. Seems the radar was overdue for some part replacement or other. Its up and running, and the Air Force offers its apology.

Damned well ought to, the other Operations man grumbled.

You guys ever think that maybe an operation can go too right? Clark asked from his seat in the corner.

The senior one wanted to say something snotty, Clark saw, but knew better.

They must know that something odd is happening. You dont want to make it too obvious, Clark explained for the other one. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes. Might as well get another piece of that siesta, he told himself. It might be a long night.

Chavez got his wish just after sundown. It started to rain lightly, and clouds moving in from the west promised an even heavier downpour. The airfield crew set out their naresquite a few more than the last time, he sawand the aircraft arrived soon after that.

Rain made visibility difficult. It seemed to Chavez that someone ran a fuel hose out from the shack. Maybe there were some fuel drums in there, and maybe a hand-crank pump, but his ability to see the five or six hundred yards came and went with the rain. Something else happened. The truck drove down the center of the strip, and the driver tossed out at least ten additional flares to mark the centerline. The aircraft took off twenty minutes after it arrived, and Ramirez was already on his satellite radio.

Did you get the tail number? VARIABLE asked.

Negative, the captain replied. Its raining pretty heavy now. Visibility is dogshit. But he got off at twenty-fifty-one Lima, heading north-northwest.

Roger, copy. Out.

Ramirez didnt like the effect that the reduced visibility might have on his unit. He took another pair of soldiers forward to the OP, but he just as well might not have bothered. The guards didnt bother extinguishing the flares this time, letting the rain wet things down. The truck left soon after the aircraft took off, and the two chastised runway guards retired to the shack to keep dry. All in all, he thought, it couldnt be much easier.

Bronco was bored, too. It wasnt that he minded what he was doing, but there really wasnt much challenge in it. And besides, he was stuck at four kills, and needed only one more to be an ace. The fighter pilot was sure that the mission was better accomplished with live prisonersbut, damn it, killing the sons of bitches was . . . satisfying, even though there wasnt much challenge to it. He was flying an aircraft designed to mix it up with the best fighters the Russians could make. Taking out a Twin-Beech was about as difficult as driving to the O-Club for a couple of brews. Maybe tonight hed do something different . . . but what?