He could tell White was mulling it over. Knowlton hadn't seen him this agitated in ages, which meant he was pretty damn sure of his I.D. of this guy. White had long joked he'd always forget a name, but never a face. Now he'd remembered both. "Look, Paul.. . send an urgent message in the photo packet to alert the intelligence section, then wait until we get to Oslo-the embassy has the facilities you need, and everything will be waiting for us. We can delay the CV-22 a few minutes until you draft a message.~~

White was ready to go connect the channel himself, but realized the best thing to do was wait. If he alerted Intel, God knows where it would end up. Some asshole looking for one less problem to deal with would just sweep it under the rug. And Paul White was damned if that was going to happen.

OVER WESTERN LIThUANIA

LATER THAT MORNING

"There it is," the Lithuanian Self-Defense Force helicopter pilot radioed to his passenger.

"My God, look at what the bastards have done to that farm." He nodded toward the crash site. Several helicopters, dozens of Vehiclesincluding some BTR armored combat vehicles-and hundreds of soldiers had surrounded a small dark splotch on the muddy ground.

The troops had used combat-engineering vehicles to carve a wide path from the main road to the crash site, shearing straight through several hundred meters of wire, wood, and stone fencing, bulldozing down a corral and six acres of corn and cutting down about four acres of pine forest to get to the crash site. The three kilometers from the main road to the crash site looked like the path of a tornado.

"The Byelorussian infantry is efficient, that's for sure," General Dominikas Palcikas, commander of the Lithuanian military, said as he studied the area carefully from the front copilot's seat. "The trucks have been dispersed throughout the area," he told the pilot.

"See? They're blocking all the roads and open areas nearby with armored vehicles. They don't want us to land."

The chopper pilot nodded in understanding. Although Lithuania had separated from the Soviet Union in 1990, it wasn't until the USSR fell and the Commonwealth of Independent States was created that a transition treaty between the CIS and Lithuania allowed a CIS

military presence within the Baltics-ostensibly to keep the peace. But it was a concern of every Lithuanian that these forces-especially the Byelorussians- would overstep their

"obligations" and someday make a play for Lithuania.

"What do you want me to do, sir?" the pilot asked.

"Try the bastards again on the radio. Get them to clear that parking area there."

The pilot radioed, trying to get a reply.

Palcikas waited for a response from the Byelorussians, his expression getting angrier and darker with every passing second. General Dominikas Palcikas was a fifty-three-year-old combat veteran, born in Lithuania but trained and educated in the former Soviet Army. His father had been a Russian general, commander of a Lithuanian division nicknamed the Iron Wolf Brigade after the Lithuanian Grand Duke's fierce armies of medieval times. Palcikas'