Tom Clancy's op-centre_ mirror image - Tom Clancy [50]
The shells picked a jagged line in the tarmac to his right, but they were several feet away from where Lee hit the ground. Crawling forward on his elbow, he stretched his arm out to shoot at the nosewheel; that would keep the plane on the ground long enough for someone to look into what was going on. Unless everyone at the airfield, including the security forces, had been paid off.
An instant before Lee fired, a burst erupted from behind him, chewing into his armpit and shoulder.
He hadn't expected that. His arm jerked up and he missed the tire, sending four shots into the wing and fuselage. Then another burst hit him in the right thigh.
He turned and saw the bloodied form of Ken Sawara standing above him.
"You couldn't just leave it," Sawara gasped as he dropped to his knees. "You couldn't let me go!"
Putting all his strength into his arm, Lee swung his.38 toward the soldier. "You want to go?" he said, sending a bullet into his forehead. "Go."
As Sawara dropped to his side, Lee turned his face toward the plane. He was struggling for air as he watched the men continue fueling the aircraft. This couldn't be it, he told himself. The crimefighter is betrayed by his partner and dies on oil-slick tarmac? No one to see, no sirens in the distance, no one to book the criminals or lend him a hand not even a conscience-stricken worker?
Simon Lee died feeling like he'd failed, utterly.
A half hour later, the plane took off, bound for Russia. Because of the darkness, no one on the ground or in the aircraft saw the thin stream of black smoke curling from the port engine as the Gulfstream pushed skyward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Monday, 12:30 A.M.,
Washington, D.C.
Over lunch ordered from the commissary, Lowell Coffey, Martha Mackall, and their aides worked in the attorney's wood-paneled office, picking through the legal minefield that was a part of every Striker mission.
Finland's President had approved a multinational Striker landing to examine radiation readings in the gulf, and Coffey's deputy, Andrea Stempel, was on the phone with the Interpol office in Helsinki arranging to get a car and fake visas for three team members to enter Russia. Nearby, on a leather couch, Stempel's assistant, paralegal Jeffrey Dryfoos, went over the wills of the Striker commandos. If the paperwork was not in order, reflecting up-to-date changes in marital status, children, and assets, documents would be faxed to the aircraft for signing and witnessing en route.
Coffey and Mackall themselves were looking at a computer monitor on the desk, drafting the "finding," the lengthy final-draft document that Coffey would need to present to the joint eight-person Senate and Congressional Intelligence Committee before Striker landed. They had already negotiated the kinds of weapons that could be used, exactly what type of operation would be run, the duration and other constraints. Coffey had been involved with some findings that had gone so far as to specify which radio frequencies could be used and what time, to the minute, the team would exit and enter. After all was said and much was done, approval from the committee to enter Russia did not actually give them the right to do so under international law. But without it, if captured, the Striker team would be disavowed without approval and left to twist in the wind. With it, the U.S. would work quietly through diplomatic channels to arrange for their release.
Down the hall, past the offices of Mike Rodgers and Ann Farris, was Bob Herbert's tidy command center. The narrow, rectangular room consisted of several banks of computers on a small table, with detailed world maps on three walls and a dozen television monitors on the far wall. Most of the time the screens were dark. Now, however, five of them were aglow with satellite images of Russia, Ukraine,