The Cardinal of the Kremlin - By Tom Clancy Page 0,84

behind him, and Mancuso was a man who always looked forward. If he had to make one final deployment, it might as well be up north. His phone rang. "Captain speaking," he answered.

"Bart, Mike Williamson," said the Submarine Group Two commander. "I need you here, right now."

"On the way, sir." Mancuso hung up in surprise. Within a minute he was up the ladder, off the boat, and walking along the blacktopped quay in the Thames, where the Admiral's car was waiting. He was in the Group Two office four minutes after that. "Change in orders," Rear Admiral Williamson announced as soon as the door was closed.

"What's up?"

"You're making a high-speed run for Faslane. Some people will be meeting you there. That's all I know, but the orders originated at OP-02 and came through SUBLANT in about thirty seconds." Williamson didn't have to say anything else. Something very hot was up. Hot ones came to Dallas quite often. Actually, they came to Mancuso, but then, he was Dallas.

"My sonar department's still a little thin," the Captain said. "I've got some good young ones, but my new chief's in the hospital. If this is going to be especially hairy "

"What do you need?" Admiral Williamson asked, and got his answer.

"Okay, I'll get to work on that. You have five days to Scotland, and I can work something out on this end. Drive her hard, Bart."

"Aye aye, sir." He'd find out what was happening when he got to Faslane.

"How are you, Russian?" the Archer asked.

He was better. The previous two days, he'd been sure that he'd die. Now he wasn't so sure. False hope or not, it was something he hadn't had before. Churkin wondered now if there might really be a future in his life, and if it were something he might have to fear. Fear. He'd forgotten that. He'd faced death twice in a small expanse of time. Once in a falling, burning airplane, hitting the ground and seeing the instant when his life ended; then waking up from death to find an Afghan bandit over him with a knife, and seeing death yet again, only to have it stop and leave. Why? This bandit, the one with the strange eyes, both hard and soft, pitiless and compassionate, wanted him to live. Why? Churkin had the time and energy to ask the question now, but they didn't give him an answer.

He was riding in something. Churkin realized that he was lying on a steel deck. A truck? No, there was a flat surface overhead, and that, too, was steel. Where am I? It had to be dark outside. No light came through the gunports in the side of-he was in an armored personnel carrier! Where did the bandits get one of those? Where were they-

They were taking him to Pakistan! They would turn him over to Americans? And hope changed yet again to despair. He coughed again, and fresh blood erupted from his mouth.

For his part, the Archer felt lucky. His group had met up with another, taking two Soviet BTR-60 infantry carriers out to Pakistan, and they were only too happy to carry the wounded of his band out with them. The Archer was famous, and it could not hurt to have a SAM-shooter protect them if Russian helicopters showed up. But there was little danger of that. The nights were long, the weather had turned foul, and they averaged almost fifteen kilometers per hour on the flat places, and no less than five on the rocky ones. They'd be to the border in an hour, and this segment was held by the Mudjaheddin. The guerrillas were starting to relax. Soon they'd have a week of relative peace, and the Americans always paid handsomely for Soviet hardware. This one had night-vision devices that the driver was using to pick his way up the mountain road. For that they could expect rockets, mortar shells, a few machine guns, and medical supplies.

Things were going well for the mudjaheddin. There was talk that the Russians might actually withdraw. Their troops no longer craved close combat with the Afghans. Mainly the Russians used their infantry to achieve contact, then called in artillery and air support. Aside from a few vicious bands of paratroopers and the hated Spetznaz forces, the Afghans felt that they had achieved moral ascendancy on the battlefield-due, of course, to their holy cause. Some of their leaders actually talked about winning, and the talk had gotten to the individual fighters. They,