The entrenching tool whirred by the side of her face and smashed into the Korean's head. His grip loosened on her arm and he slipped beneath the surface. Tai collapsed to the ice then, and Burke slid down beside her, dropping the e-tool.

Tai struggled to her feet. There was no sign of the Korean. The bomb sat alone on the ice near them. Tai walked over to it. The cover on the control panel was off.

"Oh crap," she muttered. "Vaughn!"

Vaughn managed to crawl almost ten feet, leaving a trail of red on the ice before he could go no farther. A coldly logical part of his mind knew he was going into shock from the combination of loss of blood and the cold, but that didn't bother him much. It would only be moments before the Korean finished entering the code and the bomb went off, so oblivion wasn't far off either way.

As he retreated into the numbness, a persistent voice intruded. With great difficulty, he cracked his eyes and peered up. A stinging blow across his cheek barely elicited feeling from his frozen skin.

"Wake up, goddamnit!"

Vaughn found a scrap of energy and focused. "What?" he muttered.

"The Korean was messing with the bomb. We stopped him, but I need to know if he finished arming it." As Tai grabbed his arms, the pain brought Vaughn fully alert. He tried to help her and Burke drag him across the ice with little pushing movements of his feet.

"I can't land on the ice," the pilot said for the third time. "This aircraft needs fifty-six inches of solid ice to support it, and you can't tell that by looking out the window." The Osprey's engines were in the helicopter position, and they were cruising at forty knots above the ice.

Bellamy accepted the inevitable. "All right. Then give me a hover and we'll fast-rope out."

"Okay."

Bellamy turned to Captain Manchester and signaled. Manchester and an NCO began rigging the fast rope to bolts in the ceiling of the Osprey, while Bellamy looked out over the pilot's shoulder. He could see both the submarine and the ship that was slowly making its way out of the ice pack.

"Where's the bomb?" he asked.

The pilot did a gentle bank right. "There," he called out.

The sled was a long black spot on the ice. Bellamy noted the three figures, two dragging one, less than twenty feet away. He ran back to the rear of the plane as his team lined up on the rope.

"There're three people on the ice near the bomb. They make a move for it, take them out."

The first man nodded and slipped the selector switch on his MP-5 sub off safe. The plane came to a halt, and Manchester threw the door open, heaving the fast rope out.

Tai and Burke propped Vaughn up so he could look at the LED screen. He scanned it for ten long seconds and then shook his head. "He entered five of the six numbers on the PAL code. You stopped him before he could enter the last one."

They looked up as the Osprey came to a hover overhead and a thick rope uncoiled out the door. Vaughn watched the first man emerge with the MP-5 over his shoulder, quickly followed by a line of men, slithering down to the ice less than thirty feet away.

"Get me away from the bomb," he said to Tai. "Now!"

She grabbed his jacket and pulled him back onto the ice, the bomb between them and the men, just as bullets cracked by overhead.

"Cease fire!" someone was yelling. "We don't want to hit the bomb. Alpha team, fan right. Bravo, cover."

"I think we'd better surrender," Vaughn suggested. "Just keep your hands far away from your sides and start yelling in English."

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" Tai and Burke called out as four men rushed up, weapons at the ready.

"Freeze! You on the ground-hands away from your sides."

"He's wounded," Tai informed them.

"Step away." she was ordered. One of the man carefully rolled Vaughn over as another kept a weapon on him. "Shit," the man muttered as Vaughn's blood-encrusted jacket came into view.

"Berkman, get over here. We've got some work for you."

As the medic went to work on the wounded man, Major Bellamy checked the bomb. His heart gave a jump when he noted that five of the six numbers for the PAL code were entered. They'd made it just in time. He didn't understand what had happened and who these three people were. His job was to secure everything. It would be up to the powers-that-be to determine what to do about the prisoners.

He ordered Manchester to find a spot with sufficient ice depth to land the Osprey. As soon as the aircraft settled down, he loaded the bomb, the prisoners, and his men on board. They lifted, heading back for the Kitty Hawk.

As soon as they took off, the Russian submarine slowly sank under the surface and disappeared. There was nothing left except Vaughn's blood and the rapidly retreating freighter.

Area 51, Nevada

RESUME

Without their leader, the eleven remaining members of Majestic-12 were jockeying as much for position as for solving the problem of his disappearance. They sat around the long table at which they-and their forebears-had decided the course of the United States for over half a century, politically and economically.

They were so engrossed in their in-fighting none of them noticed the odorless gas that wafted in through the ventilation system. The first indication of trouble came when the oldest man in the room-the current director of the CIA, grabbed his chest in distress.

When the second man did the same, the others scrambled for the door, only to find it locked. Within two minutes every man in the room was dead.

8th Army Headquarters, South Korea

"Sir, we have a reversal of several key indicators. Elements of the KPA I Corps are reported to be standing down. Three merchant ships that we have been tracking that were suspected to have KPA Special Forces troops on board have turned back."

Patterson nodded. He knew that the message he had just received from the Pentagon had quite a bit to do with that. Apparently the Confederation of Independent States had talked to their former friends in North Korea and informed them that it would not be in their best interest to conduct offensive operations against the South. There had also been a veiled reference from General Morris that the Kitty Hawk Battle Group had been involved in a joint U.S.-CIS operation that affected events here. Reading between the lines, the message between had been clear to Patterson: don't complain about the deployment of 7th Fleet elements anymore.

For the time being, things on the peninsula would stay the same-a wary watching across barbwire and antitank trenches. "Inform all units to reduce to a level four alert status."

South Pacific Sea

"You failed," Araki said.

The sun was shining, and Fatima stood on the wing of the bridge, feeling the rays warm her skin. It was the first nice day they'd had since leaving Antarctica. She looked forward to getting back to the Philippines.

"We did not fail."

"The Koreans-" Araki began.

"The Koreans failed," Fatima said, "which actually was what I was hoping would happen. Otherwise I would have had to use my men aboard this ship to kill them all."

Araki stared at her. "You never planned on letting the Koreans do whatever they planned with the bomb."

"That's right," Fatima said. "It would be the worst thing that could happen if a nuclear weapon went off, killing innocent people. In this my uncle was wrong: terrorism at a high level only succeeds in stiffening the resolve of those you fight against. The battle must be much more subtle and psychological."