land, and Lithuania for raw materials for its factories. It would be difficult to stop Belarus if it decided to stretch its legs a bit.

So far his theory had no basis in fact, but White could see the signs. Something was brewing out there. .

"The pickup point is here," the intelligence officer continued, pointing to a forested area several miles north of Liepaja, "and here's the helicopter they're looking at. It's been in the target area for two days and seems to be hanging on for another day. The area is flat and marshy, and land navigation is pretty bad. Farther south is a resort area, very popular in the summer, but this is too early in the season. Railroad tracks and a highway farther east, very well traveled and patrolled."

"What a damned stupid place for an exfiltration," White muttered. "Less than ten miles from a military base. Hell, let's just pick him up in a limo at the base!" But White knew they had no choice. According to the CIA, their subject, a lieutenant stationed at a research facility in Vilnius, Lithuania, had gone home to Siauliai, a town between the coast and the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. The young Lithuanian Army officer had been a longtime informant for the CIA, code-named RAGANU (Lithuanian for "witch"), but he was not a professional spy. He had inadvertently delivered a batch of fake data on a CIS Air Force deployment to Lithuania, an error that pointed directly at him as the infiltrator. Fortunately RAGANU was home on leave when the Americans discovered his cover blown, and he was told by his American handlers not to return to his unit but to execute one of his pre-planned exfiltration plans, the best of which was to send RAGANU to the coast to await pickup.

RAGANU was obviously clever enough to keep out of sight for one or two days, but as soon as his disappearance was noticed, the hunt for him would be on. From his hometown of Siauliai, they would track him down easily. After four days AWOL, the net would be very, very tight around him. He was probably a dead man, White thought, at least by daylight if not right now. The pickup plan was for RAGANU to meet at a predetermined spot and monitor it.

Eventually someone would be inserted to retrieve him at that location.

That "someone" was MADCAP MAGICIAN.

White looked at his watch and cursed again-time was running out. It would take the Marines almost two hours to paddle into the drop area and travel overland to the target area-then they had to find RAGANU, travel to the pickup point, and find the CV-22, all before daylight.

To make matters worse, the Valley Mistress's cover was going to run out soon. She was scheduled for a port call in Kalmar in southern Sweden just seventy miles away, and it would attract a lot of attention if she was late. The Italian-flagged cargo vessel Bernardo LoPresti was going to rendezvous with the Valley Mistress in twelve hours to off-load the mission containers before the Mistress pulled into port-the mission had to be over by then. A decision had to be made.