Danny remained silent as they drove to the house. Half a dozen soldiers had already set up positions near it without drawing fire, but when the guerrillas saw the truck, they began shooting ferociously.

“Time is on our side,” said Roma after they took cover.

“We will have them surrounded as soon as our reinforcements arrive.”

Had the guerrillas mounted a concentrated attack on one of the flanks, they might have been able to break through. But within ten minutes another platoon of soldiers arrived; a few minutes later, another.

The house sat in the middle of well-cleared plot of land, with good lines of fire for the army soldiers as they clustered behind vehicles and other cover. There would be no way for the guerrillas to escape this time. Their only hope would be some sort of negotiated surrender.

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Along with the reinforcements, senior officers began to arrive: first a company captain, then a major; before an hour passed, a colonel arrived and took charge.

Roma introduced him to Danny as Oz, without reference to his rank. He had a brush mustache and eyes that sat far back in his skull.

“This is something new,” Oz told Danny. “Ordinarily they don’t take prisoners. But then we usually don’t catch them like this. We are grateful for your help.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

“There are five girls in the house,” said Oz. “The neighbors say they have a grandmother and an uncle living with them as well. From five to fifteen. Girls.” The colonel shook his head. “Innocent people.”

“Maybe you can get them to release them.”

Oz frowned. “One of my men has already tried calling the house. No answer.”

“Can we wait them out?”

“What other choice do we have?”

About a half hour later two armored personnel carriers arrived. Oz climbed into the rear of one, then the two trucks slowly advanced onto the front lawn, stopping about twenty yards from the house. The guerrillas made no effort to stop them, and, as far as Danny could tell, didn’t appear at the windows.

The rear ramp of the vehicle Oz had gotten into slammed open. The colonel emerged, a microphone in his hand.

“What’s he saying?” Danny asked Roma as Oz began to broadcast a message.

“Telling them they have to surrender,” said the lieutenant.

“He’s giving them a phone number they can call to talk to us.”

The colonel paused, evidently waiting for an answer. When none came, he repeated his warning and plea.

This time there was an answer—an explosion so violent it knocked Danny to the ground.

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183

Aboard EB-52 Bennett,

above northeastern Romania

2235

EVEN THOUGH ZEN KNEW BETTER, THE EXPLOSION THAT

rocked the house was so intense that for a second he thought the Bennett had unleashed a missile on the building. The fireball rose over the Flighthawk.

“Colonel, you see that?” Zen asked.

“I have it on screen,” said Dog dryly.

“They blew themselves up. Shit.”

“All right, Zen. Tell Danny we’re standing by.”

Near Tutova, northeastern Romania

2237

BY THE TIME DANNY RECOVERED, THE FIREBALL HAD FALLEN

back into the ruins. Smoke and dust filled the air. All he could hear was the low rumble of the motor from one of the personnel carriers; the other had been choked and stalled by the air surge of the explosion.

Then the screaming began. A loud wail went up, as if all the world had begun to cry at once. A dozen men had been hit by shrapnel and were seriously wounded. Another two or three had been killed outright.

What remained of the house was on fire. The glow turned the night orange, casting long shadows around the yard. The Romanian soldiers began to move toward their comrades who had been wounded.

“Groundhog, are you all right?” asked Zen.

“Groundhog. Affirmative.”

“What the hell happened? It looked like a piece of hell opened up.”

The only thing Danny could think of was that the guerrillas had been carrying plastique explosives with them, and 184

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augmented their power with something they found in the house, natural gas, maybe.

“I heard there were kids in the house,” Danny told Zen, still in disbelief.

“God.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Though he didn’t have a med kit, Danny was a trained paramedic and realized he could be of more use helping the wounded than lamenting what had happened. He threw off his helmet and ran toward the bodies scattered along the lawn. Most were near the armored personnel carriers, lulled by the bulk of the big trucks into thinking they were safe behind them.

The first man he reached had been hit in the leg by a large piece of metal. The wound wasn’t deep. Danny checked for little shards or metal splinters up and down his thigh; when he didn’t find any, he made a bandage from the man’s handkerchief and had him press down on it to stop the bleeding.

The next man was dead, killed by a large piece of wood that had slit his neck and its arteries wide open.

Oz was sitting on the ground behind the APC, dazed.

The shock had thrown him off the open ramp of the carrier and he’d struck his head. His pupils seemed to react to the flashlight Danny shone in his eyes, but that didn’t necessarily rule out a concussion, and Danny told him he’d have to be checked by a doctor. Oz nodded, but still seemed dazed.

Lieutenant Roma walked up as Danny rose.

“You see what kind of people we’re up against, the criminals,” said Roma. He had tears in his eyes. “Devils. Worse.

Killers of children.”

“It’s horrible.”

“They’re slime,” said Roma. “Cowards.”

“Yes,” said Danny.

Roma crumpled.

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185

Danny knelt and saw that he’d been struck by something hard, a brick maybe, that had caved in the right side of his head. Blood trickled from his ear.

“Roma? Roma?” he said.

The lieutenant didn’t answer. He wasn’t breathing. He had no pulse.

Danny started CPR. A Romanian medic ran up; they worked together for a minute, two minutes, then five.

When ten minutes had passed and both men could no longer pretend there was still hope, they looked at each other for a moment. Then slowly Danny rose and went to see if there was someone else he might help.

IV

Burnt Wood and Flesh

U.S. Embassy, Bucharest

26 January 1998

0410

STONER RUBBED THE SLEEP FROM HIS EYES AS HE LOOKED

at the photo of the house and the aftermath of the guerrillas’

explosion. There was a torso in the foreground. The other photo showed a baby’s arm clutched around a doll.

The American ambassador to Romania pushed the rest of the photos toward the far side of his desk, no longer able to look at them. The ambassador, rarely seen in public without a tie, wore a hooded yellow sweatshirt and a pair of old jeans, as if he were going to work on his car when they were done.

“Pretty gruesome, I’d say.” The ambassador shook his head. “Bastards.”

“Yeah,” said Russ Fairchild, the CIA station chief. “This is what they’re up against.”

“Was it the Russians or the guerrillas?” asked the ambassador.

“Had to be the Russians,” said Fairchild. “That much explosives?”

Stoner leaned forward and took the rest of the photos.

Fairchild was probably right about the source of the explosives. But the description of the operation he’d heard from the Dreamland people made it sound too amateurish for Spetsnaz.

He flipped through the pictures, which had been taken 190

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by the Romanian army on the scene. The guerrillas were in pieces, their bodies shattered when the explosives blew.

Stoner found a severed leg. He slipped the picture onto the ambassador’s desk.