"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.