The guard came to the driver’s window and asked for passes. The driver just waved to the back.
“Good evening, Corporal,” Gerasimov said. He held up his identification card. The youngster snapped to attention. “A plane will be here in a few minutes for me. The Americans must be holding things up. Is the security force out?”
“Yes, Comrade Chairman! A full company.”
“While we’re here, why don’t we do a fast inspection? Who is your commander?”
“Major Zarudin, Com—”
“What the hell is—” A lieutenant came over. He got as far as the corporal before he saw who was in the car.
“Lieutenant, where is Major Zarudin?”
“In the control tower, Comrade Chairman. That is the best place to—”
“I’m sure. Get him on your radio and tell him that I am going to inspect the guard perimeter, then I will come to see him and tell him what I think. Drive on,” he told the driver. “Go right.”
“Sheremetyevo Tower, this is niner-seven-one requesting permission to taxi to runway two-five-right,” von Eich said into his microphone.
“Nine-seven-one, permission granted. Turn left onto main taxiway one. Wind is two-eight-one at forty kilometers.”
“Roger, out,” the pilot said. “Okay, let’s get this bird moving.” The copilot advanced the throttles and the aircraft started to roll. On the ground in front of them, a man with two lighted wands gave them unneeded directions to the taxi-way—but the Russians always assumed that everyone needed to be told what to do. Von Eich left the parking pad and headed south on taxiway nine, then turned left. The small wheel that controlled the steerable nose-gear was stiff, as always, and the aircraft came around slowly, pushed by the outboard engine. He always took things easy here. The taxi-ways were so rough that there was always the worry of damaging something. He didn’t want that to happen tonight. It was the best part of a mile to the end of the number-one main taxiway, and the bumps and rolls were enough to make one motion-sick. He finally turned right onto taxiway five.
“The men seem alert,” Vasiliy observed as they crossed runway twenty-five-left. The driver had his lights off and kept to the edge. There was an airplane coming, and both driver and bodyguard were keeping their eyes on that hazard. They didn’t see Gerasimov take the key from his pocket and unlock the handcuffs of an amazed prisoner Filitov. Next the Chairman pulled an automatic pistol from inside his coat.
“Shit—there’s a car there,” Colonel von Eich said. “What the hell is a car doing here?”
“We’ll clear it easy,” the copilot said. “He’s way over on the edge.”
“Great.” The pilot turned right again to the end of the runway. “Fucking Sunday drivers.”
“You’re not going to like this either, Colonel,” the flight engineer said. “I got a light on the rear door again.”
“God damn it!” von Eich swore over the intercom. He flipped his mike to the cabin setting again, but had to adjust his voice before speaking. “Crew chief, check the rear door.”
“Here we go,” the sergeant said. Ryan flipped off his seat belt and moved a few feet as he watched the sergeant work the door handle.
“We got a short in here someplace,” the flight engineer said on the flight deck, forward. “Just lost the aft cabin lights. The breaker just popped and I can’t get it to reset.”
“Maybe it’s a bad breaker?” Colonel von Eich asked.
“I can try a spare,” the engineer said.
“Go ahead. I’ll tell the folks in back why the lights just went out.” It was a lie, but a good enough one, and with everyone buckled in, it wasn’t all that easy to turn around and see the back of the cabin.
“Where’s the Chairman?” Vatutin asked the Lieutenant. “He’s conducting an inspection—who are you?”
“Colonel Vatutin—this is Colonel Golovko. Where’s the fucking Chairman, you young idiot!” The Lieutenant sputtered for a few seconds, then pointed.
“Vasiliy,” the Chairman said. It was too bad really. His bodyguard turned to see the muzzle of a pistol. “Your gun, please.”
“But—”
“No time for talking.” He took the gun and pocketed it. Next he handed over the cuffs. “Both of you, and put your hands through the steering wheel.”
The driver was aghast, but both men did as they were told. Vasiliy snapped one ring on his left wrist and reached through the steering wheel to attach the other to the driver. While they did so, Gerasimov detached the receiver from his car’s radiophone and pocketed that.
“The keys?” Gerasimov asked. The driver handed them over with his free left hand. The nearest uniformed guard was a hundred meters away. The airplane was a mere twenty. The Chairman of the Committee for State Security opened the car door himself. He hadn’t done that in months. “Colonel Filitov, will you come with me, please?”
Misha was as surprised as everyone else, but did as he was told. In full view of everyone at the airport—at least, those few who were bothering to watch the routine departure—Gerasimov and Filitov walked toward the VC-137’s red, white, and blue tail. As though on command, the after door opened.
“Let’s hustle, people.” Ryan tossed out a rope ladder.
Filitov’s legs betrayed him. The wind and blast from the jet engines made the ladder flutter like a flag in the breeze, and he couldn’t get both feet on it despite help from Gerasimov.
“My God, look!” Golovko pointed. “Move!”
Vatutin didn’t say anything. He floored his car and flipped on the high-beam lights.
“Trouble,” the crew chief said when he saw the car. There was a man with a rifle running this way, too. “Come on, pop!” he urged the Cardinal of the Kremlin.
“Shit!” Ryan pushed the sergeant aside and jumped down. It was too far, and he landed badly, twisting his right ankle and ripping his pants at his left knee. Jack ignored the pain and leaped to his feet. He took one of Filitov’s shoulders while Gerasimov took the other, and together they got him up the ladder far enough that the sergeant at the door was able to haul him aboard. Gerasimov went next, with Ryan’s help. Then it was Jack’s turn—but he had the same problem Filitov had. His left knee was already stiff, and when he tried to climb up on his sprained ankle, his right leg simply refused to work. He swore loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the engines and tried to do it hand over hand, but he lost his grip and fell to the pavement.
“Stoi, stoi!” somebody with a gun shouted from ten feet away. Jack looked up at the aircraft door.
“Go!” he screamed. “Close the fucking door and go!”
The crew chief did exactly that without a moment’s hesitation. He reached around to pull the door shut, and Jack watched it seat itself in a matter of seconds. Inside, the sergeant lifted the interphone and told the pilot that the door was properly sealed.
“Tower, this is niner-seven-one, rolling now. Out.” The pilot advanced the throttles to takeoff power.
The force of the engine blast hurled all four men—the rifleman had just arrived at the scene, too—right off the end of the icy runway. Jack watched from flat on his belly as the blinking red light atop the aircraft’s tall rudder diminished in the distance, then rose. His last view of it was the glow of the infrared jammers that protected the VC-137 against surface-to-air missiles. He almost started laughing, when he was rolled over and saw a pistol against his face.
“Hello, Sergey,” Ryan said to Colonel Golovko.
“Ready,” the radio told the Archer. He raised a flare pistol and fired a single star-shell round that burst directly over one of the shops.
Everything happened at once. To his left, three Stinger missiles were launched after a long and boring wait. Each streaked toward a guard tower—or more precisely, to the electric heaters inside them. The paired sentries in each had time enough only to see and be surprised by the signal round over the central region of the installation, and only one of the six saw an inbound streak of yellow, too fast to permit a reaction. All three of the missiles hit—they could hardly miss a stationary target—and in each case the six-pound warhead functioned as designed. Less than five seconds after the first round had been fired, the towers were eliminated, and with them also the machine guns that protected the laser facility. The sentry to the Archer’s front died next. He hadn’t a chance. Forty rifles fired on him at once, with half of the bursts connecting. Next the mortars fired ranging rounds, and the Archer used his radio to adjust the fire onto what he thought was the guards’ barracks.
The sound of automatic-weapons fire cannot be mistaken for anything else. Colonel Bondarenko had just decided that he’d spent enough time communing with a cold though beautiful nature and was walking back to his quarters when the sound stopped him in his tracks. His first thought was that one of the RGB guards had accidentally discharged his weapon, but that impression lasted less than a second. He heard a crack! overhead and looked up to see the star shell, then heard the explosions from the laser site, and as though a switch had been thrown, he changed from a startled man to a professional soldier under attack. The KGB barracks were two hundred meters to his right, and he ran there as fast as he could.