"General, you took a very big chance there," Kolginov said in Lithuailian. He shouldered his rifle and held tightly to the sling, hoping that he Could keep his hands from shaking. "True, they had at least six twenty-and thirty..imllimeter guns on the Defenders, but they also had a few tWelve..point..sevens trained on us. I thought we were dead."

"We were dead," Palcikas stressed. "I saw the murder in Voshchanka's eyes. He would have ordered his men to open fire, had he himself not been in the area. Colonel Gurlo was ready to mow us all down, too."

Palcikas motioned for the Mil-8 to land in a clearing a few hundred meters away.

"Unfortunately, we haven't seen the last of him. He'll be back, with more troops, sooner than we think. He's a hungry pig."

Kolginov watched his superior officer searching the skies and the fields around him as if he were already commanding the battle he knew was coming.

Finally Palcikas said, "Let's go check the farmer and his family; they're probably scared out of their minds right now."

They found the farmer, who was mad enough to chew on horseshoes, a few moments later.

Palcikas and Kolginov had no choice but to endure the old man's blistering tirade against all military men in general and Byelorussian soldiers in particular. "Why, they can't even drive a tank properly!" the old man shouted. "In the Great Patriotic War, I drove all kinds of vehicles, from sidecar motorcycles to tanks. I was half their age and I could maneuver a tank around a fencepost or outhouse like nobody's business!"

"If the General could just get your name, sir . . ." Kolginov tried, but the man ranted on for a few minutes more until a young woman entered the room.

"His name is Mikhaus Egoro Kulikauskas," the woman said. She touched the old man's shoulder to silence him. "He is my father. He doesn't hear very well, and he has seen more strangers this morning than he has all month."

"And you are Anna Kulikauskas, the famous young revolutionary," General Palcikas said. "I recognize you from your photos in the Sajudis newspapers. I now see where you get your temper from."

The woman, no older than her late thirties, nodded and smiled as she carefully returned Palcikas' gaze. Anna Kulikauskas was one of the new breed of young, fiery politicians in the

"new" Lithuania, a left-wing (many, including Palcikas, would call her "radical") advocate of making Lithuania part of a "New European Order." Palcikas recalled that her idea of a New European Order did not include such things as armies, navies, military facilities of any kind, nuclear-power plants, taxes, heavy industrial plants that could pollute the environment, and foreign companies that wanted to invest in Lithuanian businesses that owned farms and forests. Anna Kulikauskas was active in the formation of the Sajudis independent political party and first gained international prominence as the leading voice of protest that finally resulted in the closing of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in northwestern Lithuania-photos of her facing down hundreds of armed Red Army and Black Beret soldiers were published worldwide. She was strong-willed, intelligent, quick-tempered, bold, and aggressive.