It went quickly. A joint team of Special Air Service and GSG-9 commandos collected their Soviet counterparts, handcuffed them, and led them off to be blindfolded. Soon only two were left. The grenade made it tricky. By this time the captain had seen the futility of his action, but it proved impossible to locate the pin for the grenade. The sergeant shouted a warning to Chernyavin, who wanted to come forward himself, but couldn't. The captain came out last. He wanted to throw the grenade at the officer who, he thought, had betrayed his country, only to see a man whose legs were swathed in plaster.
Chernyavin could see the look on the man's face.
"Andrey Ilych, would you prefer that your life should end for nothing?" the major asked. "The bastards drugged me and learned enough to drugged me and learned enough to kill you all. I could not let them do this."
"I have a live grenade!" the captain said loudly. "I will throw it into the truck." This he did before anyone could shout to stop him. A moment later the truck exploded, destroying the group's maps and plans for escape. For the first time in a week, Chernyavin's face broke into a wide grin. "Well done, Andrushka!"
Two other Spetznaz groups were less lucky, and were intercepted within sight of their targets by German units privy to Chernyavin's capture. But twenty additional groups were in the Federal Republic, and not every NATO site had gotten the word in time. A score of vicious firefights erupted on both sides of the Rhein. A war to involve millions began with squad- and platoon-sized units fighting desperate actions in the dark.
The view would have been frightening to most men. There were solid clouds overhead at four thousand feet. He flew through showers that he more heard than saw on this black night, and the dark outlines of trees appeared to reach up and snatch at his speeding fighter. Only a madman would be so low on such a night-so much the better, he smiled inside his oxygen mask.
Colonel Douglas Ellington's fingertips caressed the control stick of his F-19A Ghostrider attack fighter, while his other hand rested on the side-by-side throttle controls on the left-side cockpit wall. The head-up display projected on the windshield in front of him reported 625 knots Indicated Air Speed, a hundred six feet of altitude, a heading of 013, and around the numbers was a monocolor holographic image of the terrain before him. The image came from a forward-looking infrared camera in the fighter's nose, augmented by an invisible laser that interrogated the ground eight times per second. For peripheral vision, his oversized helmet was fitted with low-light goggles.
"Raisin' hell over our heads," his back-seater reported. Major Don Eisly monitored the radio and radar signals, as well as their own instruments: "All systems continue nominal, range to target now ninety miles."
"Right," the Duke responded. It had been an automatic nickname for Ellington, who even looked vaguely like the jazz musician.
Ellington relished the mission. They were skimming north at perilously low level over the angular terrain of East Germany, and their Frisbee, never more than two hundred feet off the ground, jerked up and down to the pilot's constant course adjustments.
Lockheed called her the Ghostrider. The pilots called her the Frisbee, the F-19A, the secretly developed Stealth attack fighter. She had no corners, no box shapes to allow radar signals to bounce cleanly off her. Her high-bypass turbofans were designed to emit a blurry infrared signature at most. From above, her wings appeared to mimic the shape of a cathedral bell. From in front, they curved oddly toward the ground, earning her the affectionate nickname of Frisbee. Though she was a masterpiece of electronic technology inside, she usually didn't use her active systems. Radars and radios made electronic noise that an enemy might detect, and the whole idea of the Frisbee was that she didn't seem to exist at all.
Far over their heads on both sides of the border, hundreds of fighter aircraft played a deadly game of bluff, racing toward the border and then turning away, both sides trying to goad the other into committing to battle. Each side had airborne radar aircraft with which to control such a battle and so gain the advantage in a war which, though few yet knew it, had already begun.
