"Right," Rodgers said. "Now, we've run war simulations along these lines, so none of this is that far afield. In fact, the President has just asked the Pentagon to send them over. If the Chinese put their five Border Guard divisions on alert to threaten Russia with a second front, the Russians will not back down. Never have, never will. Skirmishes will break out, and war will follow unless a cool head in this case, Zhanin-- prevails. Our policy in that situation is to back the pacifist, but to do so we will have to align ourselves with Zhanin and perhaps even support him militarily--"

"Breaking our agreement with Grozny," Hood said. "Helluva situation. We help keep Beijing and Moscow apart and get peppered with terrorist strikes for our efforts."

"It's a real possibility," Rodgers said. "Which is why our aerial 'sneak attack' wing of other Stealth aircraft becomes real important. The longer we can be involved in the situation without Grozny finding out, the better off we'll be."

The phone beeped. Hood looked at the digital code on the LED band at the bottom. It was Stephen Viens at NRO.

Hood picked up the receiver. "What's doing, Stephen?"

"Paul? I thought you were on vacation."

"I'm back," Hood said. "What kind of intelligence organization are you running, anyway?"

"Funny," Viens said. "Bob wanted us to watch that Trans-Siberian train, and there's been a change."

"What kind?"

Viens said, "Not a good one. Have a look at your monitor. I'll send the image over."

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Tuesday, 9:13 A.M., Seoul

The windows of the hangar at the base outside of Seoul were bulletproof and painted black. The doors were locked, sentries were posted at each of them, and no one other than members of the Air Force's M-Team were allowed near the structure. The Mosquito unit was under the command of General Donald Robertson, a sixty-four-yearold dynamo who had discovered bungee jumping when he was sixty and did it once a day before breakfast.

Inside, the twenty-soldier team had run this drill dozens of times with a plastic and wood prototype. Now that the emergency and the cargo were real, they moved with even greater speed and precision, exhilarated by necessity, handling the surprisingly light, matte-black components confidently, silently. They had rehearsed loading it onto various aircraft, from the Sikorsky S-64 helicopter for missions under 250 miles to cargo planes ranging from the StarLifter to the RAF's old Short Belfast for runs of 5,000 miles or more. For the 750-mile trip to Hokkaido, General Milton A. Warden had okayed the use of a Lockheed C-130E. It had the largest cargo bay of any aircraft presently in South Korea, and the rear access to the main cargo hold, with its hydraulically operated ramp, made the process of getting in and out relatively easy. As Mike Rodgers had told Warden, speed would be desperately important once the Hercules landed in Japan.