"All air assets are up," Knowlton relayed to Paul White in the number-two MISCO trailer, where the tactical communications gear was set up to monitor the mission. "All reporting in the green."

White smiled: ten sophisticated aircraft, about thirty highly trained men, plus a three-hundred-million-dollar high-tech spy vessel, directly involved in an operation to extract a non-American individual from a republic in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In two hours they would all converge on the eastern Baltic and the game would be played to its conclusion. If you included the men and women of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, standing by in Norway and in the Mediterranean Sea, and the 93rd Air Force Special Operations Wing in England, there were nearly six thousand Americans involved in trying to get one man out of Lithuania.

Countering them, of course, was the awesome might of the CISByelorussian Army, Air Force, and Navy in the occupied Baltic states. Even after wholesale troop withdrawals in recent years, there were still over fifty thousand foreign troops in the three Baltic republics themselves, plus over a half-million more Belarus troops within a few hours' flying time.

The odds clearly were not in the Marines' favor.

Only three things gave the Americans any chance for success-the speed, bravery, and stealth of the eight men who at that very moment Were setting foot on Lithuanian soil to put their hands on a Lithuanian peasant officer.

"Urgent message from PATRIOT," Knowlton said, grabbing White's attention. "That chopper is heading back to the target area. It'll be on top of the assault team in ten minutes, maybe less."

"Shit," Paul White swore. They all knew the helicopter was going to be a factor. "Have PATRIOT relay the contact to the assault team. I'll get on the horn to Colonel Kline."

White hustled to the communications console and put his hand on the phone that was tied directly to the Amphibious Task Force commander, Marine Corps Colonel Albert Kline, commander of the 26th MEU's (SOC) Ground Combat Element, on the amphibious-assault carrier Wasp-then stopped. What would he recommend? He had sent this team on its way knowing the helicopter, which had been dogging them for days, was in the area and would probably be a factor. Should White now recommend additional assets be brought in? One of the F- 15's escorting COMBAT TALONs could make short work of a helicopter, but it would blow the whole mission if the Gagarin radar ship saw it barreling in toward the coast.

No, they had to use the CV-22. "I need a status report from Ladybug," White snapped. "Give me the location of WILEY COYOTE as well."

The locations of both aircraft and an estimate of the CV-22's aircraft's fuel status were laid out for White on a chart in the MISCO trailer. The MC-130 COMBAT TALON

special-operations support aircraft was in its standby orbit seventy-five miles north, near the southern tip of the Swedish island of Gotland, well within view of the Gagarin-class spy ship but presently being left pretty much alone. The CV-22 was headed back to the Valley Mistress for refueling and rearming, sweeping well to the south and west to stay away from the Soviet radar ship.