Patrick McLanahan Collection #1 (197 page)

“Screw Briggs, and screw you, too!”

“Pay attention, Macomber. I know you can do this. Now is the time to turn whatever you got
on
. Concentrate on the smell, isolate it, and eliminate it from your consciousness.”

“You don't know
shit
…”

“Just do it, Wayne. You know what I'm telling you. Just shut up and do it, or you'll be as wasted as if you've been on a three-day bender.”

Macomber was still blindingly angry at Turlock for being right there with him at this most vulnerable moment, taking advantage of him, but what she said made sense—she obviously knew something about the agony he was experiencing. The smell, huh? He never thought about smell that much—he was trained to be hypersensitive to sight, sound, and the indefinable sixth sense that always warned of nearby danger. Smell was usually a confusing factor, something to be disregarded. Shut it down, Whack. Shut it
off
.

Somehow, it worked. He knew that breathing through his mouth cut off the sense of smell, and when he did that a lot of the nausea went away. His stomach was still doing painful knots and waves of roiling convulsions, as bad as if he had been stabbed in the gut, but now the trigger of those awful spasms was gone, and he was back in control. Sickness was
not allowable
. He had a team counting on him, a mission to perform—his damned weak stomach was not going to be the thing that let his team and his mission down. A few pounds
of muscle and nerve endings were
not
going to control him. The mind is the master, he reminded himself, and he
was
the master of the mind.

A few moments later, with his stomach empty and the aroma erased from his consciousness, his stomach quickly started to return to normal. “You okay?” Charlie asked, offering him a towelette.

“Yeah.” He accepted the wipe and began to clean up, but stopped and nodded. “Thanks, Turlock.”

“Sorry about the shit I gave you about the knitting.”

“I get it all the time.”

“And you usually bust somebody's head for ragging on you, except it was me and you weren't going to bust my head?”

“I would have if I could've reached you,” Whack said. Charlie thought he meant it until he smiled and chuckled. “Knitting relaxes me, and it gives me a chance to see who gets in my shit and who leaves me be.”

“Sounds like a screwed-up way to live, boss, if you don't mind me sayin',” Charlie said. He shrugged. “If you're okay, drink some water and stay on pure oxygen for a while. Use the vacuum to clean up any pieces of vomit you see before we re-enter, or we'll never find them and they'll become projectiles. If they stick on our gear the bad guys will smell it yards away.”

“You're right, Tur—Charlie,” Whack said. As she headed back to her seat, he added, “You're all right, Turlock.”

“Yes, I am, boss,” she replied. She found his helmet lodged somewhere in the cargo section in the back of the passenger module and handed it back to him. “Just don't you forget it.” She then detached the cleanup vacuum from its recharging station and floated it over to him as well. “Now you
really
look like Martha Stewart, boss.”

“Don't push it, Captain,” he growled, but he smiled and took the vacuum.

“Yes, sir.” She smiled, nodded, and returned to her seat.

 

P
RESIDENT'S RETREAT
, B
OLTINO
, R
USSIA

A
SHORT TIME LATER

They didn't always meet like this to make love. Both Russian president Leonid Zevitin and minister of foreign affairs Alexandra Hedrov loved classic black-and-white movies from all over the world, Italian food, and rich red wine, so after a long day of work, especially with a long upcoming trip ready to begin, they often stayed after the rest of the staff had been dismissed and shared some time together. They had become lovers not long after they first met at an international banking conference in Switzerland almost ten years earlier, and even as their responsibilities and public visibility increased they still managed to find the time and opportunity to get together.

If either of them was concerned about the whispered rumors of their affair, they showed no sign of it. Only the tabloids and celebrity blogs spoke of it, and those were all but dismissed by most Russians—certainly no one in the Kremlin would ever wag their tongues about such things and about such powerful people in anything louder than a quiet thought. Hedrov was married and was the mother of two grown children, and they long ago learned that their lives, as well as the life of their wife and mother, belonged to the state now, not to themselves.

The president's dacha was the closest to security and privacy than anything else they could ever expect in the Russian Federation. Unlike the president's official residence in the Senate Building at the Kremlin, which was rather unassuming and utilitarian, Zevitin's dacha outside Moscow was modern and stylish, fit for any international business executive. Like the man itself, the place revolved around work and business, but it was hard to discern that at first glance.

After flying in to Boltino to the president's private airport nearby, visitors were driven to the residence by limousine and escorted
through a sweeping grand foyer to the great room and dining room, dominated by three large fireplaces and adorned with sumptuous leather and oak furniture, works of art from all over the world, framed photos of world leaders, and mementos from his many celebrity friends, topped off with a spectacular panoramic view of Pirogovskoje Reservoir outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. Special guests would be invited up the double marble curved staircases to the bedroom suites on the second floor, or down to the large Roman-style baths, indoor pool, thirty-seat high-definition movie theater, and game room on the ground floor. But all that was still only a fraction of the square footage of the place.

A guest being dazzled by the grand view outside the great room would miss the dark, narrow cupola on the right side of the foyer, almost resembling a doorless closet, which had small and unimpressive paintings hanging on the curved walls illuminated by rather dim LED spotlights. But if one stepped into the cupola, he would be instantly but surreptitiously electronically searched by X-ray to locate weapons or listening devices. His facial features would be scanned and the data run through an electronic identification system that was able to detect and filter out disguises or impostors. Once positively identified, the hidden door inside the cupola would be opened from within, and you would be admitted to the main part of the dacha.

Zevitin's office was as large as the great- and dining rooms combined, large enough for a group of generals or ministers to confer with each other on one side and not be heard by a similarly sized meeting of the president's advisers on the other—unheard except for the audio and video recording devices planted everywhere on the grounds, as well as out on the streets, neighborhoods, and roads of the surrounding countryside. Eight persons could expansively dine on Zevitin's walnut and ivory-inlaid desk with elbow room to spare. Video feeds and television reports from hundreds of different sources were fed to a dozen high-definition monitors located in the office, but none were visible unless the president wanted to view them.

The president's bedroom upstairs was the one made up for show:
the bedroom adjoining the office suite was the one Zevitin used most of the time; it was also the one Alexandra preferred, the one that she thought best reflected the man himself—still grand, but warmer and perhaps plusher than the rest of the mansion. She liked to think he made it so just for her, but that would be foolish arrogance on her part, and she often reminded herself not to indulge in any of that around this man.

They had slipped beneath the silk sheets and down comforter of his bed after dinner and movies and just held each other, sipping tiny glasses of brandy and talking in low intimate voices about everything but the three things both mostly cared about: government, politics, and finances. Phone calls, official or otherwise, were expressly forbidden; Alexandra couldn't remember ever being interrupted by an aide or a phone call, as if Zevitin could somehow make the rest of the world instantly comatose while they were together. They touched each other occasionally, exploring each other's silent desires, and mutually deciding without a word that tonight was for companionship and rest, not passion. They had known each other a long time, and she never considered that she might not be fulfilling his needs or desires, or he was disregarding hers. They embraced, kissed, and said good night, and there was no hint of tension or displeasure. All was as it should be…

…so it was doubly surprising for Alexandra to be awakened by something she had never heard before in that room: a beeping telephone. The alien sound made her sit bolt upright after the second or third beep; she soon noticed that Leonid was already on his feet, the bedside light on, the receiver to his lips.

“Go ahead,” he said, then listened, glancing over to her. His eyes were not angry, quizzical, confused, or fearful, as she was certain hers were. He obviously knew exactly who was calling and what he was going to say; like a playwright watching a rehearsal of his latest work, he was patiently waiting for something he already knew would be said.

“What is it?” she mouthed.

To her surprise, Zevitin reached down to the phone, touched a
button, and hung up the receiver, activating the speakerphone. “Repeat that last, General,” he said, catching and arresting her gaze with his.

General Andrei Darzov's voice, crackling and occasionally fading with interference as if talking across a vast distance, could still clearly be heard: “Yes, sir. KIK Command and Measurement Command sites have detected an American spaceplane launch over the Pacific Ocean. It crossed over central Canada and was inserted safely into low-Earth orbit while over the Arctic ice pack of Canada. If it stays on its current trajectory, its target area is definitely eastern Iran.”

“When?”

“They could be starting their re-entry burn in ten minutes, sir,” Darzov replied. “It possibly has enough fuel to fly to the same target area after re-entering the atmosphere after a complete orbit, but it is doubtful without a midair refueling over Iraq or Turkey.”

“Do you think they discovered it?” Hedrov didn't know what “it” was, but she assumed, because Zevitin had allowed her to listen in on the conversation, that she would find out soon enough.

“I think we should assume they have, sir,” Darzov said, “although if they positively identified the system, I am sure McLanahan would not hesitate to attack it. They may have just detected activity there and are inserting more intelligence-gathering assets to verify.”

“Well, I'm surprised they took
this
long,” Zevitin remarked. “They have spacecraft flying over Iran almost every hour.”

“And those are just the ones we can positively detect and track,” Darzov said. “They could have many more that we can't identify, especially unmanned aircraft.”

“When will it be within striking range for us, General?”

Hedrov's mouth opened, but at a warning glare from Zevitin, she said nothing. What in hell were they thinking of…?

“By the time the spaceplane crosses the base's horizon, sir, they'll be less than five minutes from landing.”

“Damn, the speed of that thing is mind-boggling,” Zevitin muttered. “It's almost impossible to move fast enough against it.”
He thought quickly; then: “But if the spaceplane stays in orbit instead of re-entering, it will be in perfect position. We have one good shot only.”

“Exactly, sir,” Darzov said.

“I assume your men are preparing for an assault, General?” Zevitin asked seriously. “Because if the spaceplane successfully lands and deploys its Tin Man ground forces—which we
must
assume they will have on board—”

“Yes, sir, we must.”

“—we will have no time to pack up and get out of Dodge.”

“If I understand you correctly, sir—yes, we would undoubtedly lose the system to them,” Darzov acknowledged, not knowing what or where “Dodge” was but not bothering to reveal his own ignorance. “The game will be over.”

“I see,” Zevitin said. “But if it does not re-enter and stays in orbit, how long will you have to engage it?”

“We should acquire it with optronic observation sensors and laser rangefinders as soon as it crosses the horizon, at a range of about eighteen hundred kilometers or about four minutes away,” Darzov replied. “However, we need radar for precise tracking, and that is limited to a maximum range of five hundred kilometers. So we will have a maximum of two minutes at its current orbital altitude.”

“Two minutes! Is that enough time?”

“Barely,” Darzov said. “We will have radar tracking, but we still need to hit the target with an air data laser that will help compute focusing corrections to the main laser's optics. That should take no longer than sixty seconds, assuming the radar stays locked on and the proper computations are made. That will give us a maximum of sixty seconds' exposure time.”

“Will it be enough to disable it?”

“It should, at least partially, based on our previous engagements,” Darzov replied. “However, the optimum time to attack is when the target is directly overhead. As the target moves toward the horizon the atmosphere grows thicker and more complex, and the laser's optics cannot compensate quickly enough. So—”

“The window is very, very small,” Zevitin said. “I understand, General. Well, we must do everything we can to be sure the spaceplane stays in that second orbit.”

There was a noticeable pause; then: “If I can help in any way, sir, please do not hesitate to call on me,” Darzov said, obviously completely unsure as to what he could do.