Warren Murphy: The Sky is Falling

The parachute was found within four minutes of Remo's landing.

General Ivanovich, in charge of this elimination, was informed immediately. He had bunkered down at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square in his old KGB office.

There was no body attached to the chute. Ivanovich made a note: "Possible decoy?" If so, where was the body? On the other hand, he himself had seen what this man had done in Hanoi. It was possible that the American had such good control of his body that he could survive a fall that would kill others. Not, of course, a fall from five miles up. But a lesser one.

"Was the parachute opened?" asked Ivanovich.

"Yes, it was, Comrade General, but at two hundred feet . . ."

Ivanovich hung up. All right, the American had landed alive. But they were ready for him. They had been given special orders for this very special single person. The blood faces had shown which tactics were useless. Now all personnel were told never to wait for a clear field of fire, but just to fire, filling the entire area with flame and bullets. One could not expect to hit this man aiming. Blanketing was the only answer.

It was 11:15 P.M. Moscow time. By 11:30 there was a report from the Rossiya Hotel that the entire top floor of the building had been penetrated. The top floor was allocated to the director of state information, who was hysterical and accusatory.

The Rossiya was the finest hotel in Moscow.

"General. Your men attracted him. He got through your men. He got through my men. Stop him. This is Moscow. Stop him."

"What did he do?"

"He made a mockery of your men. Not a scratch on them or him."

"Did he do anything to you?"

"He created lies."

"What lies?"

"I am in charge of truth. I give no credence to anything Americans say."

"So you spoke with him. You know he's an American. What lies are you talking about?"

"Under duress I was forced to sign a statement which is an obvious lie."

"What was the lie?"

"That we are defenseless against him, and that I would be a dead man if I didn't sign. And you know, he was right. "

"Thank you, director," said Ivanovich.

At the apartment house atop Lenin Hills, overlooking Moscow on Verobyevskoye Way, the supreme commander of the KGB refused to sign any paper. He paid for it with his ribs. They were torn out of his body.

Again, none of the officers or enlisted men guarding him was hurt.

Report:

"We only knew he was in the apartment complex when the body was discovered."

Report:

Dacha near Kaluga just outside of Moscow invaded. Again, none of the enlisted men injured. Admiral murdered for strangest reason. Did not write fast enough.

Report:

Minister of Defense crushed to death in the Kremlin complex while eating a light snack of cheese and crackers.

And so on through the night. Through every secured place, into every trap. Occasionally the guards saw someone enter and got off a few rounds. It was hoped that by morning, this invader would be more vulnerable. But in the morning, the crushing truth came home.

The Premier's complex had not only been successfully invaded in daylight, but the Premier had written out several prayers and promised, in writing, to build a shrine to the gods of a small fishing village in North Korea. The invader was now waiting to speak to "the guy who really runs things."

"You win," said Ivanovich. He notified Zemyatin. They had failed. They had not found the flaw.

"This person-this thing-has taken apart our government."

"I will talk with him," said Zemyatin. "Tell him where I live."

"Should I bring him to you?"

"Boychik, this may surprise you, but I have never killed or ordered killed anyone I did not have to. And I am not going to start now. You stay there. Let's not lose anyone else to this crazy animal. Maybe America is telling the truth. Eh?"

"Maybe we can slip someone close to him when he enters. Maybe we can use the North Koreans. They have something as awesome as . . ."

"This front has collapsed, boychik. But I tell you, son, that you have done well. You will be a field marshal sooner than you think."

"But we lost."

"Both of us have seen that you can make the right decisions. That is the kind of man Mother Russia needs, not someone who is lucky because two hundred thousand men somewhere suddenly do something better than expected. I am ordering you now, young bureaucrat with the smooth face, to coordinate everything should I not live."

And then, by hand messenger because he wanted to take the greatest precaution about the missiles, Zemyatin sent the message that could not be listened in on by American electronics to the young general who could think. The message explained about the simple, crude, and malevolently dangerous new Russian missiles now ready to fire.

Ivan Ivanovich was going to replace the Great One as adviser to the leaders of Mother Russia, but strangely this young man with so much ambition did not rejoice in the promotion. Because he realized while working with the Great One, Field Marshal Alexei Zemyatin, that the thrill was not in wearing more buttons on one's shoulders, but in winning.

Without being told, Ivanovich stationed men at a distance from the old man's apartment house and ordered them to do nothing. He was almost tempted to shoot one of the guards to wake them up. Zemyatin might have done that.

Zemyatin did not see the guards and would not have cared about them anyway. He saw this young American stride into his apartment without knocking and began giving instructions.

The American, strangely, could speak an old form of Russian dating back to Ivan the Terrible, but not too well. Zemyatin's English was rusty but better than the American's Russian. The American was under the impression that he had showed he could conquer Russia.

"So you see you can trust us. We don't control that fluorocarbon thing, or whatever it is. So put down your new missiles, and let us work together in getting this beam thing."

"Are you done?" said Zemyatin.

"I guess," said Remo. "Do you want me to kill some more?"

"No. You have done enough of that. You may even be able to destroy our government. But you alone cannot conquer Russia. You can kill but you cannot rule."

"I don't want this dump. Nothing works right here."

"You did not perform that demonstration around our capital because we don't have something that works." Remo glanced at the bodyguard. He was an old man, but there was a way he carried his body around the big pistol in his belt that showed he had used that weapon. It was obviously not an ornament.

"You want to win an argument or do you want your gizzard on the floor?" asked Remo. He waved some of the signed statements in front of Lemyatin. The old man flipped through them, amused at who had buckled and who had not.

"I do believe your people would believe that you might be a superior weapon to that fluorocarbon beam that lets in the deadly rays of the sun. Which means you may be telling the truth."

"You must know what America is like. Who would want your place when we have ours?"

"Son, I have seen the workings of the minds of counts and commissars, so do not bring something so absurd to my table as the dish that governments act rationally. You have earned a degree of my trust."

"Then put down your missiles," said Remo.

"There is a problem with that. You are going to have to think now. We created those missiles because we were sure at that time that America was responsible for the device and that it was a weapon. Further tests conducted in your country, young man, appeared to confirm our original estimate. We had to create a missile you could not damage. Not to say that such a device could put out our missiles. But it would place them in a category of unreliability we could not accept. Are you following me?"