“Even dead, which you’ll be soon enough, you serve a purpose. Today’s events will reshape not only this area, it will be a final nail in the coffin for your little group. Pakistan, as the world knows it, will end. Afghanistan too, Kashmir, some of India. Maps drawn up by old colonial masters will be redrawn again. This is the beginning of the end—for your Volunteers too, buying us the time we need to build up.”

“The ICC and UN will be all over this.”

“I don’t think so,” Chernayev said, a smile on his face. “We kill you Volunteers and more will come—better organized, more resourced. I get that. But we implicate you in this and your organization will be as dead as you.”

Middleton looked at the president, at the hundred-yard line from Marine One, about to come into view of the assembled press, the only group here who seemed to be enjoying what was going on around them.

“My men,” Archer said, “all fifty of them are pointing their cameras at your president now. Behind their lenses, copper discs.”

They’d be concave, up to an inch thick. Shaped charges, designed to penetrate armored vehicles, like in Iraq and Afghanistan. Middleton knew all about them, he’d seen what they could do. It will be like fifty sabot tank rounds going off: nothing would be left. Nothing. Shaped charges kill with kinetic energy, such incredible force that converted to heat, blasting and melting through anything and everything. Game over.

Chernayev lifted his sleeve, revealing above his watch a thin copper bracelet, slightly different than the one Middleton had seen on Balan’s wrist. “This bracelet? Nothing more than off-cuts from the process, made into intricate gifts, worn with pride by those involved.”

“Chernayev, think about it,” Middleton said. “This will start a war. . . .”

He shook his head, resolute. Took the remote detonator from Archer. Thumb over the button.

“This region will need many peacekeepers—I have a proposal with the UN right now for a hundred thousand of my BlueWatch contractors to move in to fill the security void. Where else would they come from? The U.S.? I don’t think so.”

A hundred thousand—that was a big army in any nation’s book. Middleton couldn’t imagine that the Russian had that many boots to field. But he had the money.

Then he understood. “China,” Middleton said. “This is ultimately all about China, right?” His stalling tactic was tinged with genuine interest. China’s secret political leadership, the Te-Wu, must have been behind the schooling of the three men. “This is so that China can move in on Kashmir?”

“They already run part of it and there’s no doubt they need the living space. And water. The giant panda is dying of thirst.”