"Sir, the Soviet reply reads: "Ryan:

" 'On my order, being sent out as you read this, Soviet strategic forces are standing down. We will maintain our defensive alert for the moment, but we will stand down our offensive forces to a lower alert level which is still higher than peacetime standards. If you match our move, I propose a phased mutual stand-down over the next five hours.' "

Jack's head went down on the keyboard, actually placing some characters on the screen.

"Could I have a glass of water? My throat's a little dry."

"Mr President?" Fremont said.

"Yes, General."

"Sir, however this happened, I think it's a good idea."

Part of Bob Fowler wanted to hurl his coffee cup into the wall, but he stopped himself. It didn't matter, did it? It did, but not that way.

"What do you recommend?"

"Sir, just to make sure, we wait until we see evidence of a stand-down. When we do, we can back off ourselves. For starters - right now - we can rescind SNAPCOUNT without any real degradation of our readiness."

"General Borstein?"

"Sir, I concur in that," said the voice from NORAD. "General Fremont: Approved."

"Thank you, Mr President. We'll get right on it." General Peter Fremont, United States Air Force, Commander-in-Chief Strategic Air Command turned to his Deputy Chief of Staff (Operations). "Keep the alert going, posture the birds, but keep them on the ground. Let's get those missiles uncocked."

"Contact bearing three-five-two range seven thousand six hundred meters." They'd been waiting several minutes for that.

"Set it up. No wires, activation point four thousand meters out." Dubinin looked up. He didn't know why the aircraft overhead hadn't already executed another attack.

"Set!" the weapons officer called a moment later.

"Fire!" Dubinin ordered.

"Captain, message coming in on the ELF," the communications officer said over the squawk box.

"That's the message that announces the end of the world," the captain sighed. "Well, we fired our shots, didn't we?" It would have been nice to think that their action would save lives, but he knew better. It would enable the Soviet forces to kill more Americans, which wasn't quite the same thing. Everything about nuclear weapons was evil, wasn't it?

"Go deep?"

Dubinin shook his head. "No, they seem to have more trouble with the surface turbulence than I expected. We may actually be safer here. Come right to zero-nine-zero. Suspend pinging. Increase speed to ten knots."

Another squawk: "We have the message - five-letter group: 'Cease all hostilities!' "

"Antenna depth, quickly!"

The Mexican police proved to be extremely cooperative, and the literate Spanish of Clark and Chavez hadn't hurt very much. Four plainclothes detectives from the Federal Police waited with the CIA officers in the lounge while four more uniformed officers with light automatic weapons took unobtrusive positions nearby.

"We don't have enough people to do this properly," the senior Federate worried.

"Better to do it off the airplane," Clark said.

"Muy bueno, Senor. You think they may be armed?"