fool.”
Minister Shen wasn’t fully behind his country’s policy, but nodded anyway. It seemed the best way to avoid a personal confrontation, which Xu would not handle well. His ministry was still trying to get a feel for how to handle the American President. He was so unlike other governmental chiefs that they still had difficulty understanding how to speak with him.
“What of our answer to their note?” Fang asked.
“We have not given them a formal answer,” Shen told him.
“It concerns me that they should not be able to call us liars,” Fang said. “That would be unfortunate, I think.”
“You worry too much, Fang,” Zhang commented, with a cruel smile.
“No, in that he is correct,” Shen said, rising to his colleague’s defense. “Nations must be able to trust the words of one another, else no intercourse at all is possible. Comrades, we must remember that there will be an ‘after the war,’ in which we must be able to reestablish normal relations with the nations of the world. If they regard us as outlaw, that will be difficult.”
“That makes sense,” Xu observed, speaking his own opinion for once. “No, I will not accept the call from Washington, and no, Fang, I will not allow America to call us liars.”
“One other development,” Luo said. “The Russians have begun high-altitude reconnaissance flights on their side of the border. I propose to shoot down the next one and say that their aircraft intruded on our airspace. Along with other plans, we will use that as a provocation on their part.”
“Excellent,” Zhang observed.
So?” John asked.
“So, he is in this building,” General Kirillin clarified. “The takedown team is ready to go up and make the arrest. Care to observe?”
“Sure,” Clark agreed with a nod. He and Chavez were both dressed in their RAINBOW ninja suits, black everything, plus body armor, which struck them both as theatrical, but the Russians were being overly solicitous to their hosts, and that included official concern for their safety. “How is it set up?”
“We have four men in the apartment next door. We anticipate no difficulties,” Kirillin sold his guests. “So, if you will follow me.”
“Waste of time, John,” Chavez observed in Spanish.
“Yeah, but they want to do a show-and-tell.” The two of them followed Kirillin and a junior officer to the elevator, which whisked them up to the proper floor. A quick, furtive look showed that the corridor was clear, and they moved like cats to the occupied apartment.
“We are ready, Comrade General,” the senior Spetsnaz officer, a major, told his commander. “Our friend is sitting in his kitchen discussing matters with his guest. They’re looking at how to kill President Grushavoy tomorrow on his way to parliament. Sniper rifle,” he concluded, “from eight hundred meters.”
“You guys make good ones here,” Clark observed. Eight hundred was close enough for a good rifleman, especially on a slow-moving target like a walking man.
“Proceed, Major,” Kirillin ordered.
With that, the four-man team walked back out into the corridor. They were dressed in their own RAINBOW suits, black Nomex, and carrying the equipment Clark and his people had brought over, German MP-10 submachine guns, and .45 Beretta sidearms, plus the portable radios from E-Systems. Clark and Chavez were wearing identical gear, but not carrying weapons. Probably the real reason Kirillin had brought them over, John thought, was to show them how much his people had learned, and that was fair enough. The Russian troopers looked ready. Alert and pumped up, but not nervous, just the right amount of tenseness.
The officer in command moved down the corridor to the door. His explosives man ran a thin line of det-cord explosive along the door’s edges and stepped aside, looking at his team leader for the word.
“Shoot,” the major told him—
—and before Clark’s brain could register the single-word command, the corridor was sundered with the crash of the explosion that sent the solid-core door into the apartment at about three hundred feet per second. Then the Russian major and a lieutenant tossed in flash-bangs sure to disorient anyone who might have been there with a gun of his own. It was hard enough for Clark and Chavez, and they’d known what was coming and had their hands over their ears. The Russians darted into the apartment in pairs, just as they’d been trained to do, and there was no other sound, except for a scream down the hall from a resident who hadn’t been warned about the day’s activities. That left John Clark and Domingo Chavez just standing