"I'll get the b.a.s.t.a.r.d this time," the gunner promised, adjusting his sights down a hair. The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d out there didn't even know he'd been shot at the first time . . .

"Fire!"

"Firing . . . "

Yet another recoil, and . . .

"Hit! Good shooting Vanya!"

Three Company was doing well. The time spent in gunnery practice was paying off handsomely, Komanov thought. This was much better than sitting in a d.a.m.ned bunker and waiting for them to come to you . . .

What is that?" Marshal Luo asked.

"Comrade Marshal, come here and see," the young lieutenant colonel urged.

"What is this?" the Defense Minister asked with a trailing-off voice . . . "Cao ni ma," he breathed. Then he thundered: "What the h.e.l.l is this?"

"Comrade Marshal, this is a web site, from the Internet. It purports to be a live television program from the battlefield in Siberia." The young field-grade officer was almost breathless. "It shows the Russians fighting Thirty-fourth Shock Army . . ."

"And?"

"And they're slaughtering our men, according to this," the lieutenant colonel went on.

"Wait a minute-what-how is this possible?" Luo demanded.

"Comrade, this heading here says darkstar. 'Dark Star' is the name of an American unmanned aerial vehicle, a reconnaissance drone, reported to be a stealth aircraft used to collect tactical intelligence. Thus, it appears that they are using this to feed information, and putting the information on the Internet as a propaganda tool." He had to say it that way, and it was, in fact, the way he thought about it.

"Tell me more."

The officer was an intelligence specialist. "This explains the success they've had against us, Comrade Marshal. They can see everything we do, almost before we do it. It's as though they listen to our command circuit, or even listen into our staff and planning meetings. There is no defense against this," the staff officer concluded.

"You young defeatist!" the marshal raged.

"Perhaps there is a way to overcome this advantage, but I do not know what it is. Systems like this can see in the dark as well as they can in the sunlight. Do you understand, Comrade Marshal? With this tool they can see everything we do, see it long before we approach their formations. It eliminates any possibility of surprise . . . see here," he said, pointing at the screen. "One of Thirty-fourth Army's mechanized divisions is maneuvering east. They are here"-he pointed to a printer map on the table-"and the enemy is here. If our troops get to this point unseen, then perhaps they can hit the Russians on their left flank, but it will take two hours to get there. For the Russians to get one of their units to a blocking position will take but one hour. That is the advantage," he concluded.

"The Americans do that to us?"

"Clearly, the feed on the Internet is from America, from their CIA."

"This is how the Russians have countered us, then?"

"Clearly. They've outguessed us at every turn today. This must be how they do it."

"Why do the Americans put this information out where everyone can see it?" Luo wondered. The obvious answer didn't occur to him. Information given out to the public had to be carefully measured and flavored for the peasants and workers to draw the proper conclusions from it.

"Comrade, it will be difficult to say on state television that things are going well when this is available to anyone with a computer."

"Ahh." Less a sound of satisfaction than one of sudden dread. "Anyone can see this?"

"Anyone with a computer and a telephone line." The young lieutenant colonel looked up, only to see Luo's receding form.

"I'm surprised he didn't shoot me," the officer observed.

"He still might," a full colonel told him. "But I think you frightened him." He looked at the wall clock. It was sixteen hours, four in the afternoon.

"Well, it is a concern."

"You young fool. Don't you see? Now he can't even conceal the truth from the Politburo."

h.e.l.lo, Yuri," Clark said. It was different to be in Moscow in time of war. The mood of the people on the street was unlike anything he'd ever seen. They were concerned and serious-you didn't go to Russia to see the smiling people any more than you went to England for the coffee-but there was something else, too. Indignation. Anger . . . determination? Television coverage of the war was not as strident and defiant as he'd expected. The new Russian news media were trying to be even-handed and professional. There was commentary to the effect that the army's inability to stop the Chinese cold spoke ill of their country's national cohesion. Others lamented the demise of the Soviet Union, whom China would not have dared to threaten, much less attack. More asked what the h.e.l.l was the use of being in NATO if none of the other countries came to the aid of their supposed new ally.

"We told the television people that if they told anyone of the American division now in Siberia, we'd shoot them, and of course they believed us," Lieutenant General Kirillin said with a smile. That was something new for Clark and Chavez to see. He hadn't smiled much in the past week.

"Things looking up?" Chavez inquired.

"Bondarenko has stopped them at the gold mine. They will not even see that, if my information is correct. But there is something else," he added seriously.

"What's that, Yuriy?" Clark asked.

"We are concerned that they might launch their nuclear weapons."

"Oh, s.h.i.t," Ding observed. "How serious is that?"

"It comes from your President. Golovko is speaking with President Grushavoy right now."

"And? How do they plan to go about it? Smart bombs?" John asked.

"No, Washington has asked us to go in with a special-operations team," Kirillin said.

"What the h.e.l.l?" John gasped. He pulled his satellite phone out of his pocket and looked for the door. "Excuse me, General. E.T. phone home."

You want to say that again, Ed?" Foley heard. "You heard me. They've run out of the bombs they need. Evidently, it's a pain in the a.s.s to fly bombs to where the bombers are."

"f.u.c.k!" the CIA officer observed, out in the parking lot of this Russian army officers' club. The encryption on his phone didn't affect the emotion in his voice. "Don't tell me, since RAINBOW is a NATO a.s.set, and Russia's part of NATO now, and since you're going to be asking the f.u.c.king Russians to front this operation, in the interest of North Atlantic solidarity, we're going to get to go and play, too, right?"

"Unless you choose not to, John. I know you can't go yourself. Combat's a kid's game, but you have some good kids working for you."

"Ed, you expect me to send my people in on something like that and I stay home and f.u.c.king knit socks?" Clark demanded heatedly.

"That's your call to make. You're the RAINBOW commander."

"How is this supposed to work? You expect us to jump in?"

"Helicopters-"

"Russian helicopters. No thanks, buddy, I-"

"Our choppers, John. First Armored Division had enough and they're the right kind . . ."

They want me to do what?" d.i.c.k Boyle asked.

"You heard me."

"What about fuel?"

"Your fueling point's right about here," Colonel Masterman said, holding the just-downloaded satellite photo. "Hilltop west of a place called Chicheng. n.o.body lives there, and the numbers work out."

"Yeah, except out flight path takes us within ten miles of this fighter base."

"Eight F-117s are going to hit it while you're on the way in. Ought to close down their runways for a good three days, they figure."

"d.i.c.k," Diggs said, "I don't know what the problem is exactly, but Washington is really worried that Joe is going to launch his ICBMs at us at home, and Gus Wallace doesn't have the right bombs to take them out reliably. That means a special-ops force, down and dirty. It's a strategic mission, d.i.c.k. Can you do it?"

Colonel Boyle looked at the map, measuring distance in his mind . . . "Yeah, we'll have to mount the outrigger wings on the Blackhawks and load up to the max on gas, but, yeah, we got the range to get there. Have to refuel on the way back, though."

"Okay, can you use your other birds to ferry the fuel out?"

Boyle nodded. "Barely."

"If necessary, the Russians can land a Spetsnaz force anywhere through here with additional fuel, so they tell me. This part of China is essentially unoccupied, according to the maps."

"What about opposition on the ground?"

"There is a security force in the area. We figure maybe a hundred people on duty, total, say a squad at each silo. Can you get some Apaches out there to run interference?"

"Yeah, they can get that far, if they travel light." Just cannon rounds and 2.75-inch rockets, he thought.

"Then get me your mission requirements," General Diggs said. It wasn't quite an order. If he said it was impossible, then Diggs couldn't make him do it. But Boyle couldn't let his people go out and do something like this without being there to command them.

The MI-24s finished things off. The Russian doctrine for their attack helicopters wasn't too different from how they used their tanks. Indeed, the MI-24-called the Hind by NATO, but strangely unnamed by the Russians themselves-was referred to as a flying tank. Using AT-6 Spiral missiles, they finished off a Chinese tank battalion in twenty minutes of jump and shoot, sustaining only two losses in the process. The sun was setting now, and what had been Thirty-fourth Shock Army was wreckage. What few vehicles had survived the day were pulling back, usually with wounded men clinging to their decks.

In his command post, General Sinyavskiy was all smiles. Vodka was snorted by all. His 265th Motor Rifle Division had halted and thrown back a force more than double its size, suffering fewer than three hundred dead in the process. The TV news crews were finally allowed out to where the soldiers were, and he delivered the briefing, paying frequent compliments to his theater commander, Gennady Iosefovich Bondarenko, for his cool head and faith in his subordinates. "He never lost his nerve," Sinyavskiy said soberly. "And he allowed us to keep ours for when the time came. He is a Hero of Russia," the division commander concluded. "And so are many of my men!"

Thank you for that, Yuriy Andreyevich, and, yes, for that you will get your next star," the theater commander told the television screen. Then he turned to his staff. "Andrey Petrovich, what do we do tomorrow?"

"I think we will let Two-Six-Five start moving south. We will be the hammer, and Diggs will be the anvil. They still have a Type-A Group army largely intact to the south, the Forty-third. We will smash it starting day after tomorrow, but first we will maneuver it into a place of our choosing."

Bondarenko nodded. "Show me a plan, but first, I am going to sleep for a few hours."

"Yes, Comrade General."

CHAPTER 60.

Skyrockets in Flight It was the same Spetsnaz people they'd trained for the past month or so. Nearly everyone on the transport aircraft was a commissioned officer, doing sergeants' work, which had its good points and its bad ones. The really good thing was that they all spoke pa.s.sable English. Of the RAINBOW troopers, only Ding Chavez and John Clark spoke conversational Russian.

The maps and photos came from SRV and CIA, the latter transmitted to the American Emba.s.sy in Moscow and messengered to the military airfield out of which they'd flown. They were in an Aeroflot airliner, fairly full with over a hundred pa.s.sengers, all of them soldiers.

"I propose that we divide by nationalities," Kirillin said. "Vanya, you and your RAINBOW men take this one here. My men and I will divide the rest among us, using our existing squad structures."

"Looks okay, Yuriy. One target's pretty much as good as another. When will we be going in?"

"Just before dawn. Your helicopters must have good range to take us all the way down, then back with only one refueling."

"Well, that'll be the safe part of the mission."

"Except this fighter base at Anshan," Kirillin said. "We pa.s.s within twenty kilometers of it."

"Air Force is going to hit that, they tell me, Stealth fighters with smart bombs, they're gonna post-hole the runways before we drive past."

"Ah, that is a fine idea," Kirillin said.

"Kinda like that myself," Chavez said. "Well, Mr. C, looks like I get to be a soldier again. It's been a while."

"What fun," Clark observed. Oh, yeah, sitting in the back of a helicopter, going deep into Indian Country, where there were sure to be people with guns. Well, could be worse. Going in at dawn, at least the gomers on duty would be partly asleep, unless their boss was a real p.r.i.c.k. How tough was discipline in the People's Liberation Army? John wondered. Probably pretty tough. Communist governments didn't encourage back talk.

"How, exactly, are we supposed to disable the missiles?" Ding asked.

"They're fueled by a ten-centimeter pipe-two of them, actually-from underground fueling tanks adjacent to the launch silo. First, we destroy the pipes," Kirillin said. "Then we look for some way to access the missile silo itself. A simple hand grenade will suffice. These are delicate objects. They will not sustain much damage," the general said confidently.

"What if the warhead goes off?" Ding asked.

Kirillin actually laughed at that. "They will not, Domingo Stepanovich. These items are very secure in their arming procedures, for all the obvious reasons. And the sites themselves will not be designed to protect against a direct a.s.sault. They are designed to protect against nuclear blast, not a squad of engineer-soldiers. You can be sure of that."

Hope you're right on that one, fella, Chavez didn't say aloud.

"You seem knowledgeable on this subject, Yuriy."

"Vanya, this mission is one Spetsnaz has practiced more than once. We Russians have thought from time to time about taking these missiles-how you say? Take them out of play, yes?"

"Not a bad idea at all, Yuriy. Not my kind of weapons," Clark said. He really did prefer to do his killing close enough to see the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's face. Old habits died hard, and a telescopic sight was just as good as a knife in that respect. Much better. A rifle bullet didn't make people flop around and make noise the way a knife across the throat did. But death was supposed to be administered one at a time, not whole cities at once. It just wasn't tidy or selective enough.

Chavez looked at his Team-2 troopers. They didn't look overtly tense, but good soldiers did their best to hide such feelings. Of their number, only Ettore Falcone wasn't a career soldier, but instead a cop from the Italian Carabinieri, which was about halfway between military and police. Chavez went over to see him.

"How you doing, BIG BiRD?" Ding asked.

"It is tense, this mission, no?" Falcone replied.

"It might be. You never really know until you get there."

The Italian shrugged. "As with raids on mafiosi, sometimes you kick the door and there is nothing but men drinking wine and playing cards. Sometimes they have machinapistoli, but you must kick the door to find out."

"You do a lot of those?"