The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

that.'
'Russell was a suspected terrorist, and we think he might – shit!' Murray
exclaimed.
'What's that, Dan?'
'Tell Records I want the photos from Athens that're in the Russell file.' The
deputy assistant director waited for the call to be made. 'We had an inquiry
from the Greeks, one of their officers got murdered and they sent us some
photos. I thought at the time it might be Marvin, but . . . there was somebody
else in there, a car, I think. We had him in profile, I think . . .'
'Fax coming in from Denver,' a woman announced.
'Bring it over,' Murray commanded.
'Here's page one.' The rest arrived rapidly.
'Airline ticket . . . connecting ticket. Pat – '
O'Day took it. 'I'll run it down.'
'Shit, look at this!'
'Familiar face?'
'It looks like . . . Ismael Qati, maybe? I don't know the other one.'
'Mustache and hair are wrong, Dan,' O'Day thought, turning away from his phone.
'A little thin, too. Better call Records to see what they have current on the
mutt. You don't want to jump too fast, man.'
'Right.' Murray lifted his phone.
***
'Good news, Mr President,' Borstein said from inside Cheyenne Mountain. 'We have
a KH-11 pass coming up through the Central Soviet Union. It's almost dawn there
now, clear weather for a change, and we'll get a look at some missile fields.
The bird's already programmed. NPIC is real-timing it into here and Offutt
also.'
'But not here,' Fowler groused. Camp David had never been set up for that, a
remarkable oversight, Fowler thought. It did go into Kneecap, which was where he
should have gone when he'd had the chance. 'Well, tell me what you see.'
Will do, sir, this ought to be very useful for us,' Borstein promised.
'Coming up now, sir,' a new voice said. 'Sir, this is Major Costello, NORAD
intel. We couldn't have timed this much better. The bird is going to sweep very
close to four regiments, south to north, at Zhangiz Tobe, Alyesk, Uzhur, and
Gladkaya, all but the last are SS-18 bases. Gladkaya is SS-11s, old birds. Sir,
Aleysk is one of the places they're supposed to be deactivating, but haven't yet
. . .'
***
The morning sky was clear at Alyesk. First light was beginning to brighten the
northeastern horizon, but none of the soldiers of the Strategic Rocket Forces
bothered to look. They were weeks behind schedule and their current orders were
to correct that deficiency. That such orders were nearly impossible was beside
the point. At each of the forty launch silos was a heavy articulated truck. The
SS-18s – the Russians actually called them RS-20s, for Rocket, Strategic, Number
20 – were old ones, more than eleven years, in fact, which was why the Soviets
had agreed to eliminate them. Powered by liquid-fueled motors, the fuels and
oxidizers in question were dangerous, corrosive chemicals – unsymmetrical