"I'm sorry we needed to involve you, sir," Overholt said. "But the contractors were short of both men and time."

"Have you got the last vote?" the president asked. "Is Laos in the bag?"

Overholt glanced at his watch before answering. "Not yet, sir," he said, "but we will have it in about fifteen minutes."

"I'll instruct the amba.s.sador to the United Nations to call for a special vote in the morning," the president said. "If your guys can hold down the fort for six hours or so, we're home free."

"I'll notify them immediately, sir," Overholt said, rising.

399.

m going to catch a few hours of shuteye."

A Secret Service agent led Overholt down the elevator and into the secret tunnel. Twenty minutes later he was in his car and on his way back to Langley.

THE WHITE 747 cargo plane slowed to a stop at the end of the runway in Vientiane, then taxied over to a parking area and shut down the engines. Once everything was shut down, the pilot began the process of raising the entire nose cone in the air, opening up the immense cargo area. Once the nose was in the air, cargo ramps were attached to a slot in the open front of the fuselage.

Then, one by one, cars were driven out onto the tarmac.

The first was a lime-green Plymouth Superbird with a hemi-engine.

The second, a 1971 Ford Mustang Boss 302 in yellow with the shaker hood, rear slats over the window and the quarter-mile clock in the dashboard.

The third was a 1967 Pontiac GTO convertible, red with a black interior, red-line tires and air conditioning. The last was a 1967 Corvette in Greenwood green, with the factory speed package and locking rear differential.

The man who carefully removed the cars from inside the 747 was of medium height with thick brown hair. As soon as the last car, the Corvette, was on the runway, he reached into the glove box, removed a letter, then climbed out and lit up a Camel filter.

"You must be the general," he said to a man approaching followed by a dozen soldiers.

"Yes," the general said.

"I'm Keith Lowden," the man said. "I was told to give you this."

The general scanned the letter, folded it and placed it in his rear pants pocket. "These all original?"

"They are," Lowden said. "The serial numbers all match."

Lowden then motioned to the general to walk over to the Superbird 400 401.

and started explaining the car, the doc.u.mentation and the rare options.

By the time Lowden had finished with the second car, the Boss 302, the general stopped him.

"You want--" he started to say just as Lowden's cell phone rang.

"Sorry," Lowden said as he answered. He listened for a minute, then turned to the general.

"They want to know if it's a deal," he said, placing his hand over the telephone.

The general nodded his head in the affirmative.

"He said okay," Lowden said.

A second later he hung up the telephone and turned back to the general. "Now, what were you about to ask me?"

"I was wondering if you had time to spend the night here in my country," the general said, "so we might talk about the cars."

"I don't know," Lowden said, smiling. "This country have any beer?"

"Some of the best," the general said, smiling back.

"Good," Lowden said. " 'Cause you can't talk cars when you're thirsty."

PO AND HIS team were searching throughout Lhasa, but they had yet to turn up a single U.S. or European citizen. The six members of his team were all Tibetan, and Po didn't care for them much. First of all, like most people, he hated traitors--and any way you sliced it, Tibetans that worked for the PSB had sold out to the Chinese. In the second part, the men appeared lazy; they did the questioning in a haphazard fashion and didn't seem to be committed to finding the people Po was seeking. Thirdly, for being members of the country's crack police service, they didn't seem to have much training in police procedures.

Po, for his part, had little choice, so he doubled his own efforts and hoped for the best.

"^T^HE SON-OF-A-b.i.t.c.hES," CABRILLO said angrily, "it's like put-.A ting an atomic bomb in the Vatican."

Zhuren had just given them the site of the poison gas. It was in Potala, the home of the Dalai Lama, and one of the most sacred of structures in all of Tibet. The Chinese plan was evil, but ingenious.

Potala sat on a hill outside of town; if one waited until the winds were right, you could blanket Lhasa in a matter of minutes.

Seng nodded, then reached for his beeping radio. "Go ahead, Oregon," he said.

"Is Cabrillo there with you?"

"Hold on," Seng said, handing him the radio.

"Juan," Hanley said quickly, "we have the votes. All you need to do is keep it together for another few hours and help will be on the way."

"What's the latest on the Russians?" Cabrillo asked.

"They're five hours from the Mongolian-Tibetan border," Hanley said, staring at the large monitor on the wall, "give or take."

"Call and have them slow the tank column down," Cabrillo said.

"If they reach the border before the vote, we could have World War Three on our hands."

"I'll do it," Hanley said. "Now, what's happening on the ground?"

"I just found out the Chinese have one last trick up their sleeve,"

Cabrillo said. "A doomsday gas."

"Do you know the location and type?" Hanley said.

Cabrillo rattled off the chemical composition.

"We'll get to work here figuring out how to render the gas inert,"

Hanley said.

"Good," Cabrillo said. "That frees me up to pinpoint the exact location."

"Somehow," Hanley said, "I knew you were going to say that."

403.

The only hope was if the news media could shine the beacon of truth on China.

If the world could be shown via television that the Tibetans had overthrown their oppressors on their own and that the control of Tibet was in the hands of the people and their divine leader the Dalai Lama, then any bombing by China would be taken for what it was--a senseless act of brutality. The ensuing worldwide condemnation would be a burden even China could not bear.

Hanley placed a call to Bhutan and ordered the C-130 to prepare to evacuate his team.

'/^ LIMBER ONE," MURPHY said, "to Rescue."

THE OREGON WAS surging into the Bay of Bengal in preparation for the team's extraction. Word of the street fighting in Lhasa had reached the news media. Television crews, newspaper and magazine reporters, and radio teams were making final preparations to enter the country. To maintain the veil of secrecy necessary for the Corporation to conduct business, they needed to be away from Tibet before the reporters appeared.

So far the plan had worked like clockwork, but there was still a wild card to contend with.

The Russian ruse had successfully tied up the Chinese army far to the north, but the risk now was from the Chinese air force. If Beijing ordered squadrons of bombers and fighter planes to attack the country, the results would be catastrophic. The Dungkar forces had limited means to wage ground-to-air warfare. Carpet bombing of Lhasa would result in heavy losses.

Gurt was steering the Bell 212 above a mountain plain with jagged peaks to each side. Several miles in the distance, the rescue helicopter was visible on the ground. As Murphy watched through his binoculars, the rotor blade started to spin, then gain speed until it was just a blur.

"Rescue One," the radio squawked. "We have visual and will follow along."

Murphy watched as the helicopter lifted into a high hover, then slowly began to move forward. Pa.s.sing to one side, Murphy craned his head to the rear and confirmed they were in formation behind and to one side.

"How are you feeling?" he said over the intercom to Gurt.

"My shoulder feels like I've been kicked by a mule," he noted, "but all in all, I'm not doing too bad."

"I'd like to know what Gampo gave you," Murphy said.

"Some ancient Tibetan potion," Gurt said, staring at the gauges. "I just hope it lasts."

"I spoke to the Oregon," Murphy said. "One of the backup pilots will fly you back to Bhutan."

f404 .

"Heck of a deal," Gurt said. "I thought I was a goner."

"Me too, old buddy," Murphy said quietly. "Me too."

FOR THE CHINESE, the battle for Lhasa was all but over. They had lost the initiative when King stopped the movement of the armored column. From that point on, the Dungkar forces had been seized by a rage that showed no boundaries.

Teams under the leadership of General Rimpoche had spread out through Lhasa, rounding up Chinese troops in their barracks and elsewhere.

The war for the motor pool was b.l.o.o.d.y, but after forty minutes of fierce fighting, the Dungkar had taken control.

"This was all the red paint available in town," a Dungkar warrior said as he slid to a stop inside the fenced yard of the motor pool.

General Rimpoche was sitting in the pa.s.senger seat of a Chinese jeep with a b.l.o.o.d.y bandage wrapped around his lower leg. A red-hot chunk of shrapnel from a fragmentary grenade had hit him as he was leading the last charge in the battle. A red-hot chunk of shrapnel from a fragmentary grenade had hit him as he was leading the last charge in the battle.

"Mark the captured armored personnel carriers and the three remaining tanks with the Dalai Lama's symbol," he said, coughing, "then alert our forces that these vehicles are under our control."

The man scurried off to fulfill the request while at the same time his aide approached.

"I've found a dozen men with at least basic knowledge of how to drive," the aide said. "We can have the vehicles on the streets of the city as soon as they are painted."

"Good," Rimpoche said. "We need to show we're in control."

Right at that instant, he heard a helicopter approaching from Gonggar.

He watched as it pa.s.sed overhead and headed for Potala.

D.

ETECTIVE PO AND his Tibetan underlings had just escaped a mob of Tibetans intent on capturing them. Po was now on the out 405 skirts of Lhasa at the east end of the city. More and more he was considering his mission a failure. Either there was no one answering the description of the people he sought, or the Tibetans he and his men had questioned were lying. But the situation went deeper than that. In the last half hour, Po had felt the tide turn.

More and more he was feeling like the hunted, not the hunter.

His last call to the Public Security Bureau had gone unanswered, and although it might be a figment of his imagination, he was thinking the Tibetans a.s.signed to help him had begun eyeing him differently.

Right then, a helicopter flew overhead and slowed to touch down on the flats below Potala.

"Stop the truck," Po ordered.

The driver slowed and stopped. The helicopter was only two hundred yards away and the skids had just touched the ground. Straining to watch with his binoculars, Po waited until the dust from the rotor wash had cleared and the occupants climbed out. The leader of the group was wearing a helmet, and he was pointing out a spot on the palace grounds to the other men who had climbed out. At that instant, Po saw the man remove a portable telephone from his belt. Then he removed the helmet to hear.

Po stared through the binoculars. The man's hair was worn in a short blond crew cut, but his face was familiar. Po watched.

YOU'RE SURE, MAX?" Cabrillo asked.

"I just received confirmation," said Hanley, a thousand miles away on the Oregon, "Good, I'm going in," Cabrillo said.

"The media is on their way," Hanley said, "and the Dalai Lama has already left India. Both are due to arrive in Lhasa in just over an hour.

We need you all out of there posthaste. I've dispatched the C-130 from Thimbu, and Seng is rounding everyone up. Just get this done--and get out of there."

406.

407.

"All I can say is that you'd better have some beer on board that plane," Cabrillo said, laughing.

"Bet on it," Hanley said.