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By Root 951 0

to change his own patterns. What if he used different houses to count his cash or only used one for a few nights? If that was true, any wait beyond a day or two might invalidate his whole reconnaissance effort, forcing him to start again with a new disguise - if he could select something equally effective, which was not immediately likely. Kelly told himself that he'd killed six people to get this far - the seventh was a mistake and didn't count... except maybe to that lady, whoever she was. He took a deep breath. If he'd watched her get hurt worse, or killed, how would he be able to look in a mirror? He had to tell himself, that he'd made the best of a bad situation. Shit happens. It ran the risks up, but the only concern there was failure in the mission, not in danger to himself. It was time to set his thoughts aside. There were other responsibilities as well. Kelly lifted his phone and dialed.

'Greer.'

'Clark,' Kelly responded. At least that was still amusing.

'You're late,' the Admiral told him. The call was supposed to have been before lunch, and Kelly's stomach churned a little at the rebuke. 'No harm done, I just got back. We're going to need you soon. It's started.'

That's fast, Kelly thought. Damn. 'Okay, sir.'

'I hope you're in shape. Dutch says you are,' James Greer said more kindly.

'I think I can hold up, sir.'

'Ever been to Quantico?'

'No, Admiral.'

'Bring your boat. There's a marina there and it'll give us a place to chat. Sunday morning. Ten sharp. We'll be waiting, Mr Clark.'

'Aye aye.' Kelly heard the phone click off.

Sunday morning. He hadn't expected that. It was going too fast, and it made his other mission all the more urgent. Since when had the government ever moved that quickly? Whatever the reason, it affected Kelly directly.

'I hate it, but it's the way we work,' Grishanov said.

'You really are that tied to your ground radar?'

'Robin, there is even talk of having the missile firing done by the intercept-control officer from his booth on the ground.' The disgust in his voice was manifest.

'But then you're just a driver!' Zacharias announced. 'You have to trust your pilots.'

I really should have this man speak to the general staff, Grishanov told himself with no small degree of disgust. They won't listen to me. Perhaps they would listen to him. His countrymen had vast respect for the ideas and practices of Americans, even as they planned to fight and defeat them.

'It is a combination of factors. The new fighter regiments will be deployed along the Chinese border, you see-'

'What do you mean?'

'You didn't know? We've fought the Chinese three times this year, at the Amur River and farther west.'

'Oh, come on!' This was too incredible for the American to believe. 'You're allies!'

Grishanov snorted. 'Allies? Friends? From the outside, yes, perhaps it looks as though all socialists are the same. My friend, we have battled with the Chinese for centuries. Don't you read history? We supported Chiang over Мао for a long time - we trained his army for him. Мао hates us. We foolishly gave him nuclear reactors, and now they have nuclear arms, and do you suppose their missiles can reach my country or yours? They have Tu-16 bombers - Badgers you call them, yes? Can they reach America?'

Zacharias knew that answer. 'No, of course not.'

'They can reach Moscow, I promise you, and they carry half-megaton nuclear bombs, and for that reason the MiG-25 regiments are on the Chinese border. Along that axis we have no strategic depth. Robin, we've had real battles with these yellow bastards, division-size engagements! Last winter we crushed their attempt to take an island that belongs to us. They struck first, they killed a battalion of border guards and mutilated the dead - why do that, Robin, because of their red hair or because of their freckles?' Grishanov asked bitterly, quoting verbatim a wrathful article in Red Star. This was a very strange turn of events for the Russian. He was speaking the literal truth, and it was harder to convince Zacharias of this than any one of a number of clever lies