"Never heard about Lykes Lines?" his copilot chuckled. "They used to say they wouldn't hire a guy 'less he had a Southern accent. I never believed it until now. Nothing like tradition. He is kinda off the beaten track, though."

"Yeah, but until the convoys form up, hell, I'd try to bounce from one protected area to another. Anyway, let's finish the visual." The pilot increased power and headed in closer while his copilot lifted the recognition book.

"Okay, we have an all-black hull with 'Lykes Lines' on the side, midships. White superstructure with black diamond, a block L inside the diamond." He lifted his binoculars. "Lookout mast forward of the superstructure. Check. Superstructure is nicely raked. Electronics mast is not. Proper ensign and house flag. Black funnels. Winches aft by the barge elevator-doesn't say how many winches. Damn, she's carrying a full load of barges, isn't she? Paintwork looks a little shabby. Anyway, it all checks with the book; that's a friendly."

"Okay, let's give her a wave." The pilot turned the yoke to the left, taking the Orion directly over the barge-carrier. He waggled his wings slightly as he passed overhead, and two men on the bridge waved back at them. The flyers couldn't pick out the two men tracking them with handheld SAMs. "Good luck, fella. You might need it."

MV JULIUS FUCIK

"The new paint scheme will make visual spotting difficult, Comrade General," the air-defense officer said quietly. "I saw no air-to-surface missiles attached."

"That will change quickly enough. As soon as our fleet puts to sea, they will load them. Besides, if they identify us as enemy, how far can we run while they call up other aircraft, or simply fly to their base to rearm?" The General watched the aircraft depart. His heart had been in his throat for the whole episode, but now he could walk out to where Kherov stood on the open bridge wing. Only the ship's officers had been issued American-style khaki uniforms.

"My compliments to your language officer. I presume he was speaking English?"

Andreyev laughed jovially, now that the danger was past. "So I am told. The Navy requested a man with his particular skills. He's an intelligence officer, served in America."

"In any case, he succeeded. Now we may approach our objective safely," Kherov said, using the last word relatively.

"It will be good to be on land again, Comrade Captain." The General didn't like being on such a large, unprotected target and would not feel safe until he had solid ground under his feet. At least as an infantryman you had a rifle with which to defend yourself, usually a hole to hide in, and always two legs to run away. Not so on a ship, he had learned. A ship was one large target, and this one was virtually unprotected. Amazing, he thought, that anything would feel worse than being on a transport aircraft. But here he had a parachute. He had no illusions about his ability to swim to land.

SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA

"There goes another one," the chief master sergeant said.

It was almost boring now. Never in the colonel's memory had the Soviets had more than six photographic reconnaissance satellites in orbit. There were now ten, plus ten electronic-intelligence gatherers, some launched from the Baikonor Cosmodrome outside Leninsk in the Kazakh S.S.R., the other half from Plesetsk in northern Russia.

"That's an F-type booster, Colonel. Burn time is wrong for the A-type," the sergeant said, looking up from his watch.

This Russian booster was a derivation of the old SS-9 ICBM, and it had only two functions-to launch radar ocean reconnaissance satellites, called RORSATS, that monitored ships at sea and to loft the Soviet antisatellite system. The Americans were watching the launch from a newly launched KH-11 reconnaissance satellite of their own, sweeping over the central region of the USSR. The colonel lifted the phone to Cheyenne Mountain.

USS PHARRIS

I should be sleeping, Morris told himself. I should stockpile sleep, bank it away against the time when I can't have any. But he was too keyed up to sleep.