As he did, something smacked him hard on the side of the head. He caught a glimpse of a shadowy reflection in the right display. then blacked out.

Blitz couldn’t stop himself.

“How? How?” he demanded, pacing back and forth in the secure communications center below the Pentagon. “How?”

“I sure as shit would like to know that myself,” said Pierce.

Actually, they had just been told how it had happened-or rather, the sequence of events that had followed Howe’s landing at Misawa in northern Japan. According to the colonel who had made the report, a dozen men-obviously North Koreans-had infiltrated the base sometime after the Berkut had taken off. Wearing Japanese uniforms, they had killed the two American crewmen assigned to ride out to the Berkut when it landed and had taken over their truck. They had then diverted Howe to the abandoned area, where they knocked him out and spirited his passenger away. The Japanese unit tasked as escorts had been delayed, apparently with false orders. As it was, an American backup team had narrowly missed grabbing the scientist-or whoever he was-and may have saved Howe’s life.

Had the Koreans somehow learned of the operation and then managed to thwart it? Japan was said to be filled with North Korean spies, but it didn’t seem possible.

Blitz thought there was a more logical if equally outrageous explanation: The operation had been planned to get the passenger out of Korea. There were sketchy reports of intrusions at other bases and airfields as well, and while the information was vague, he thought this meant that the North Korean had tried to cover as many contingencies as he could without knowing all of the details of the operation. He must be fairly important, obviously, and thought that he would be recognized once in American custody. But who the S-37/B had transported remained a mystery.

In the meantime, the situation in Korea had dramatically changed. There had been a coup, and apparently in mistaken and unordered retaliation-or at least there was no intelligence indicating that orders had been given-two artillery units had fired on Seoul.

The American reaction had been swift and fierce. Within a few minutes ninety percent of the artillery tubes in the DMZ area had been bombed, shelled, or hit by missiles. The North Korean warheads had been destroyed by B-2s, and a phalanx of Tomahawk cruise missiles had destroyed command centers, barracks, and weapons depots deep inside the country.

And last but certainly not least, a Cyclops airborne laser had wiped out a medium-range intercontinental missile that had managed to get off the ground from a heretofore unknown base, blasting it out of the sky as it headed toward Japan.

It had not yet been determined whether the missile was armed with a nuclear weapon or not. It was irrelevant, in Blitz’s mind: just so much more piling on in the geopolitical calculus.

American troops had taken over two military airports in the southern portion of the country. The President had ordered the Joint Chiefs to proceed with a plan dubbed Righteous Force, cooperating with the South Koreans to secure the area near the DMZ and protect South Korea from further attack. In the meantime two different North Korean army commanders had proclaimed that they were in control of their capital. Depending on the report, North Korea ’s dear leader Kim Jong Il had either been killed, fled the country, or was fighting back from one of three strongholds.

Blitz stared at a computer screen, where a fresh casualty report had just been flashed up. Three thousand South Koreans had died and about twice that number had been injured.

Could that number be true? It was a ridiculously small price to pay-absurdly small.

The first reports were always wrong, he told himself. The first rumors from the field at Manassas proclaimed a great Union victory. But with a relatively low number of casualties-horrible as any deaths were-the U.S. might yet achieve the goals Blitz and the President envisioned without the catastrophe that everyone, Blitz included, had feared.

Should he be happy? Their hands were tied; they’d had no choice but to respond. The fact that the plan had gone off so well-assuming the reports were true, assuming there weren’t other surprises-that was cause for celebration. Serious cause.

And yet, it felt sacrilegious. He wasn’t a warmonger-the opposite in fact. He hated it. But ironically that made it necessary, at least in some circumstances.

“Sir, did you want to send a message regarding Colonel Howe before you left for the White House?” asked an Army captain. The young man had been tapped as a liaison to keep Blitz up-to-date.

“Just that I hope he’s all right,” Blitz told him. He turned to the defense secretary. “Myron, are you coming?”

“Yes,” said the secretary of defense. “I don’t know how you manage it, Professor.”

“ ‘Manage it?’”

“To come out smelling like a rose when the rest of the world goes to shit.”

The Japanese doctor was speaking English, but Howe couldn’t understand a word.

“I’m okay,” he said. “Really. Except for my ego.”

The doctor patted the back of his own skull and repeated what he said earlier: This time Howe caught the words concussion and rest and what he thought was observation. The man’s English was actually quite good, but between his accent and the pounding pain in Howe’s head he couldn’t process it.

“I will rest,” he told the doctor, standing unsteadily. “Honest. I will.”

The physician frowned and shook his head. Howe took a few steps from the bed, pulling back the white curtain that separated the area from the rest of the small emergency-room suite. The doctor told him to wait. Howe waved his hand no but then saw that the physician was holding out a small envelope of pills; Howe took them, though he didn’t know what they were.

His eyes hurt with the hard white glare of the lights as he walked toward the double doors at the end of the curtained corridor. Howe had no idea where he was, either in the hospital or even Japan. He pushed through the door, wondering if he was supposed to sign some sort of form or other paperwork and maybe pay. He had a credit card in his wallet and wondered if that would be good enough-and even if it was, whether his credit line would cover whatever his treatment cost was.

There was a desk just ahead, and beyond it a set of glass doors that led outside. He decided his best bet was to keep his head down and simply walk out and keep going until he was clearly beyond the hospital’s care, then try to find a taxi or something back to the airport where he’d landed. But before he reached the doors a group of men in business suits poured into the passage.

“Colonel Howe, you’re all right?” asked a short, bald man.

Howe stopped; the accent was American.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Pete McCormack. I’m with the embassy. We’d like to talk to you about what happened.”

“I think I’m supposed to check in with someone,” said Howe.

“That would be us,” said one of the others. Tall and thin, the man’s cheeks were so hollow, he looked more like a corpse than a live person.

“We’re in touch with Dr. Blitz,” said the first man. “And General Jacobs.”

Jacobs was the Air Force commander who had made the arrangements for refueling and looking after the S-37/B. On paper he would appear to be Howe’s boss, though he was actually working for USSOCCOM, the special operations command.

“We want to debrief you,” added the man. “We want to know what happened.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Howe. “You guys got a car?”