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MONDAY, 28 MAY: 0705 HOURS GMT

PRA Flight 81

60,000 feet above the Pacific

Ocean

1605 hours Tokyo time

According to the data displayed on the seatback screen, the Pacific Rim Airlines Amagiri transport was nearly at its maximum altitude of sixty thousand feet. The countdown readout in the corner showed 30…29…28…

Kaitlin double-checked her seat restraints, then gripped the handrests firmly, not from terror but from excitement. She’d never flown a suborbital before, and this one—one of the Lockheed Ballistic 2020s, better known to the businessmen who flew them as Yankee Bullets—was just about to drop from the Amagiri and boost for space.

Space. She was excited by the idea, more excited than she’d thought she would be. Star Rakers employed on intercontinental runs typically cruised at 100,000 to 150,000 feet, but suborbitals actually grazed the arbitrary boundary of space—264,000 feet, or fifty miles. People who’d crossed that boundary were entitled to wear astronaut wings; PRA handed out gold-plated wings as souvenirs, she knew, as a promotion, to everyone who’d ridden one of their sub-Os. They could afford to, of course. She shuddered to think what her AmEx bill would look like next month, but it was worth it!

The countdown reached zero, and, for a few precious seconds, Kaitlin felt the elevator-descent sensation of free fall as the delta-winged sub-0 fell from beneath the broad, twin-fuselaged wing of the Amagiri transport.

The rocket boost, when it came, surprised her by being so gentle. The acceleration built steadily, though, until she was pressed deep into her seat. What a ride! She remembered her father’s v-mail description of the exhilaration he’d felt during his boost into orbit last year. “Like a real kick in the pants,” he’d told her.

I know what you mean now, Dad.

The boost dragged on until she almost wondered if the pilot had made a mistake and was going to take them into orbit after all, but then she began to feel lighter and lighter and then…nothing. The engines cut out, and she was weightless. The screen readout on the seatback in front of her showed altitude in both miles and kilometers. They were passing forty miles, now, and still rising higher with every passing moment.

Though it might have been fun, she thought, to float about the cabin, she was glad for the seat restraints. She was also suddenly very glad for the tridemerin patch on her left arm as she heard the unmistakable sounds of someone across the aisle being sick. Pacific Rim attendants had offered the antispacesickness patches to all the passengers, requiring all who refused the medicine to thumbprint a waiver; apparently at least one of her fellow passengers had availed himself of the waiver option…and was now availing himself of his complimentary comfort bag.

Fifty miles…fifty-one! She was in space! There were no windows in the sub-O’s passenger section, but a repeater screen at the front of the cabin showed a nose-camera view of the sky ahead, black above and black below, separated by a curved band of glorious blue radiance. The Bullet was passing the terminator now, plunging into night. She grinned suddenly. She’d actually made it past the magic fifty-mile barrier before Yukio! He’d be so jealous if he knew. It’d be good for him!

Now for Uncle Walt. She’d not wanted to transmit on one of the Japanese e-nets, not and run the risk of having her call intercepted. The suborbital, though, had a direct feed to a comsat, and the channel ought to be secure. Checking her wrist-top, she did a quick conversion in her head. With the eight-hour time difference, it would be about twelve-twenty at night at Camp Pendleton. She didn’t want to wake him…but she didn’t feel like hanging on to this message by herself for another eight or nine hours either. Tuning her wrist-top to the seatback screen in front of her, she pinged his home account. All right! He was in and hooked up. She transmitted a connection request…and in a few seconds was looking at the worry lines and prematurely receding hairline of one of her oldest friends.

Colonel Walter Fox broke into a huge grin when he saw her. “Kaitlin! So good to see you! How’re you doing? What’re you doing? Where are you?”

“That last is the easiest to answer, Uncle Walt,” she said with a mirror grin. “I’m at, oh, about fifty-five miles up over the Pacific right now.”

He whistled. “Flying high in more ways than one, aren’t you, Chicklet?” he said, using his own mangled version of her Japanese nickname. “Those suborbs don’t come cheap.”

“Well, it…seemed important to get back to port right away. Listen, Uncle Walt,” she said quickly, before he started asking questions. “I got a message from, ah, a mutual friend. I’d like to transmit it to you now.”

He nodded and said nothing while the message was being transferred from Kaitlin’s wrist-top to the suborb’s communications relay to a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit and then to a downlink station at Camp Pendleton and finally to Fox’s wrist-top. He stared at his display, raised his left eyebrow, then studied the screen some more.

“Did our…mutual friend transmit this to you in the clear?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No.” Walter Fox knew all about the Garroways’ penchant for codes. There was no need for her to be more specific, especially over a channel whose security she wasn’t able to verify. Maybe she was being paranoid—there’d been no indication that she had been followed or was being watched while she was in Japan—but, hey, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

“Good. Okay, what flight are you on?”

“PRA 81 inbound for LAX. Uncle Walt? Do you suppose I could stay with you and Aunt Melanie for a few days?” She laughed, a mirthless chuckle. “My vacation sort of got interrupted, and I’m somewhat at loose ends right now.”

“Mmm,” he grunted, deep in thought. “Kaitlin, do you know how to get a message back to…our friend?”

“Yes. The, ah, normal channels seem to be down, but we have a back door.”

“Excellent. Okay, this won’t wait. Look…I’ll talk to you later.”

And Kaitlin was left staring, dumbfounded, at a blank screen. Uncle Walt wasn’t usually so abrupt. He probably wanted to let the base commander know about the message before it got any later. She was stunned, though, and a little hurt, that he hadn’t even responded to her inviting herself over. Well, she could always spend the night at an airport hotel and then call Aunt Melanie in the morning.

Then she realized that his abruptness was a confirmation. She’d been right. Getting her dad’s message through was important. She was now very, very glad she’d followed her hunch and taken the suborbital. If what had happened on Mars was a prelude to war, and if she’d stayed on in Japan, she might have found herself unable to leave. And she would have been the only one on the planet to know what had gone down …and she wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing about it.

In a surprisingly short time the descent warning sounded, followed by a period of gradually increasing weight and a growing shudder. The nose-camera view was beginning to show a pearly opalescence, deep red, tinted pink on the edges, as the Bullet plowed back into thicker atmosphere, killing velocity with a series of vast, computer-controlled S-sweeps across the northeastern Pacific.

She thought about what her father had always said, about the Marine Corps being like a family. She wondered what other members of that family would do when they found out about the takeover at Cydonia. Uncle Walt cared because he knew her dad, but what would his superiors think…and feel? Would they care…or was what happened to a few Marines a hundred million miles away not worth the risk of going to war?

She saw little of the actual landing—a sudden blur of city lights as the suborbital swept in over the coastline somewhere near San Jose, followed by a rapid descent and a final burst of power from the craft’s traditional ramjets as it maneuvered into the LAX landing pattern. By the time the suborbital touched down with a bump and a squeal she had worked herself into a real state. Kaitlin knew just how precarious the survival of the Marine Corps was right now. Damn it, nobody cared. Her father’s message would probably be ignored…or dismissed as a fake. It was a peculiarly helpless feeling, knowing that Dad was in trouble on another planet, and there wasn’t a thing she could do to help him.

As the aircraft came to a halt at the terminal, a warning sounded and display screens flashed in several languages, instructing all passengers to stay in their seats.

“Miss Garroway?”

She looked up at the flight attendant who’d just materialized by her seat. “Uh, yeah?”

He smiled politely. “Would you get your things and follow me, please?”

What? As she followed the attendant out the main door of the craft and into the transport tunnel, she heard rustlings behind her as the other passengers were at last allowed to move. Since when did she rate VIP treatment?

Then she wondered if her message to Uncle Walt had been intercepted by the Japanese government after all…but she was on American soil now. Surely, they couldn’t detain her here, no matter what the current UN situation might be.

Two Marines in khaki uniforms, a gunnery sergeant and a staff sergeant, were waiting for her in the terminal, and she felt a hot rush of relief. Marines she could handle.

“Miss Garroway?” the gunnery sergeant asked, and she nodded. “Please come with us, ma’am.”

As she sat down in the waiting transfer cart, she turned to the gunnery sergeant. “Colonel Fox sent you, didn’t he?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” was the uninformative reply.

“He didn’t? Well, who did? Where are you taking me? What’s going on here?” She was getting more than a little annoyed.

“Our orders come directly from Commandant Warhurst, ma’am. We’re taking you to Terminal E for transfer to a military Star Eagle transport.”

“The commandant! But why? What’s going on? Where am I going?”

The man finally turned and looked at her. She had the feeling that he was as puzzled about his orders as she was. “Ma’am,” he said apologetically, “we don’t exactly know what’s going on ourselves. But our orders are to take you by fastest available military transport to Andrews Aerospace Force Base and from there to the Pentagon. The commandant himself will be waiting for you.”

Suddenly he grinned. “Don’t know what you’ve done, ma’am, but I tell you, I haven’t seen the brass this worked up since the Colombian War…and believe you me, that takes some doing!”

TUESDAY, 29 MAY: 1830 HOURS GMT

National Security Council Conference Room,

Executive Building Basement,

Washington, DC

1430 hours EDT

I never thought an electronics specialist would be the one to start a damned war, General Warhurst thought, as he showed his special pass and ID to a grim-faced Army guard at yet another checkpoint. He followed Admiral Gray through the x-ray scanner and into the bustling subterranean labyrinth that was the Executive Building’s deepest basement levels. Still, given the high-tech nature of warfare these days, an electronics specialist and computer programmer was as likely to push the war initiate sequence button as anyone else, and maybe more so.

He thought about his son. He’d been thinking about Ted a lot, lately. It had been eighteen days since his death in Mexico, and eleven since the funeral at Arlington. Life, these past weeks, had become a vast and yawning emptiness…one that Montgomery Warhurst had been trying to fill with work.

He felt guilty about that. Stephanie seemed to be covering up her grief pretty well, but Janet was in a bad way; she and Jeff, Ted’s son, were staying at the house in Warrenton for a while, until things could settle out. At least he had work, something to occupy his mind.

The nights were rough, though. He hadn’t been sleeping much….

This new crisis on Mars was almost welcome. Any distraction was welcome now.

Admiral Gray led him down a long and gleaming passageway, guided him left into a comfortably appointed lobby, then ushered him between two more sentries and through an inner door that would have done a bank vault proud.

The room was lavish enough, with its rich oak paneling, thick carpet, and executive-style leather chairs, but it somehow didn’t match the mental image Warhurst had formed of the place when CJ had asked him to attend this morning’s meeting. He’d expected something larger and grander, frankly, a corner room, perhaps, with a splendid view of the White House grounds next door and the Capitol Building beyond. The room was large, with a low ceiling lit by fluorescents concealed behind plastic panels. One wall, the one opposite the room’s only door, was taken up by a floor-to-ceiling display screen which currently showed the NSC seal and was flanked by the American flag and a flag bearing the presidential seal.

There were no windows and, in fact, the entire room was a kind of vault more secure than any bank’s. It was easier to maintain security here, of course, four floors down from street level in the warren of tunnels, passageways, and rooms that honeycombed this part of the nation’s capital. For a good many years, now, the joke circulating through official Washington was that the city was like an iceberg; nine-tenths of the place was below ground, hidden where you couldn’t see it.

And beyond the reach of laser eavesdropping devices or cruise missiles or remote-piloted microdrone assassins. Even the president, these days, spent more of his time in the hardened bunkers of the old Situation Room Complex beneath the White House than he did upstairs in the exposed Oval Office. Especially these days, with a dozen terrorist groups sworn to strike at Satan America, with the threat of war looming so large and desperately close.

“Have a seat, Monty,” Gray said, gesturing. Other men were already filtering in and taking their places at the table. Admiral Gray had met Warhurst personally in the basement lobby and walked him through the security gates. Now, for the first time, he found himself inside the National Security Council’s main conference room, a place he’d heard of often enough but never seen.

Since 1989, the National Security Council had been organized into three subgroups; the NSC Principals Committee was the senior of these, tasked with coordinating and monitoring all national-security policy. Currently, it was chaired by Louis Carlton Harrel, the president’s national security advisor. Its regular members included John Matloff, secretary of state; Archibald Severin, secretary of defense; Arthur J. Kinsley, director of central intelligence; Charles Dockery, the president’s chief of staff; and Admiral Gray, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Other people might attend at the president’s invitation, and that was the case for Warhurst, who’d received a scrambled call from Harrel himself only two hours ago.

Harrel was the last to arrive, hurrying through the vault door with a wave to the guards to seal it off behind him. Warhurst didn’t know the man personally. He was a tall, kindly faced black man in his late fifties who had the reputation for being one of the sharper and more aggressive of President Markham’s personal advisors.

“General Warhurst,” Harrel said, taking his seat at the head of the table. “Allow me to express, for all of us, our sincere regrets about your son. We know how you must feel, and we appreciate your being with us this morning, despite your loss.”

Memories burned, but Warhurst held them in check. “Thank you, sir. My son gave his life for his country and for his fellow Marines, and I’m proud of him for that.”

“We’ve asked you to come here,” Harrel went on, “because of this remarkable message we understand reached us through the daughter of one of the Marines with the MMEF.”

“Yes, sir. That would be Kaitlin Garroway.”

“You’ve seen the message?” Matloff demanded. He was a lean, white-haired, hawk of a man in his sixties. He touched a key on his wrist-top, and the display screen on the wall lit up with the Garroway message.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, what do you make of it?”

“I’d say it’s legitimate, Mr. Secretary. My people have already checked it out, and I’ve spoken at length both with Colonel Fox and with Garroway’s daughter. Both are convinced that this is a genuine message.”

“Now, Colonel Fox is Garroway’s commanding officer, is he not?” Matloff said. “This, this first sentence of the message isn’t exactly the sort of thing a military officer writes to his superior, is it?”

“Major Garroway and Colonel Walter Fox are old friends, Mr. Secretary. They were both mustangs, and they were stationed together several times, in Japan, and at Camp Pendleton. According to Fox, they maintained a good-natured rivalry, especially after Fox passed Garroway up on the promotions list. The, ah, language of that first line was intended to convince Fox that it was, indeed, Garroway who was writing it.”

“Why all the damned cryptic gobbledygook, General?” Severin demanded. “It was my understanding that this message was transmitted in some kind of secret code.”

“A Beale code, Mr. Secretary,” Arthur Kinsley said with a smile. “I gather that Garroway used it to keep parts of his e-mail correspondence with his daughter private.”

“So why use indirect language? I don’t understand some of this stuff at all. Red Planet? We know he’s on Mars….”

“Beale codes,” Kinsley pointed out, “are among the most secure codes there are, since, to crack one, you have to know which book is being used to provide page, line, and character numbers for the correspondents. Even so, any code can be broken with enough information. Major Garroway might have been afraid that the wrong people would intercept this.”

“It’s my feeling, Mr. Secretary,” Warhurst added, “that the major was playing it safe. He’s a careful man with a high security clearance for the electronics and communications work he does, and he’s well aware of what codes can and cannot guarantee. The cryptic references are probably there just in case one of the UN security agencies had already cracked his code. He’d been using it throughout the cycler flight to Mars, after all, and it’s possible that someone had picked up on it. His use of circumlocutions is designed to sidestep any automated search program set up at Mars, something set to flag any transmissions of the words ‘Heinlein Station’ or ‘UN’ or ‘Candor Chasma.’ His use of ‘Red Planet’ doesn’t mean Mars, Mr. Secretary. That’s the title of a book written almost a century ago by a writer named Robert Heinlein. Heinlein Station. ‘Blue boys’ means the UN. ‘Complete openness’ is ‘candor,’ as in ‘Candor Chasma.’ He’s telling us exactly where he is going.”

“Can you tell us, General,” Harrel said, “what the devil ‘Derna’ might refer to? We’ve had our staff looking it up, and all they can find is the obvious geographical reference to the city in North Africa.”

“The shores of Tripoli, sir.” Warhurst managed a smile. “Any Marine would pick up on that right away.” He proceeded to tell them briefly about Presley O’Bannon and his 1805 march through the desert.

“Your conclusion, then,” Harrel said when Warhurst had finished the tale, “is that Garroway is marching from Heinlein Station across some…how far is it?”

“Almost four hundred miles,” Kinsley replied.

“He’s crossing four hundred miles of Martian desert to Mars Prime?”

“That is the way I would read it, sir,” Warhurst replied.

“The real question then,” Matloff said, “is what Garroway intends to do once he reaches Mars Prime. He doesn’t make any cryptic references to his plans in this message, does he, General?”

“I think that’s clear enough from the context, Mr. Secretary,” Warhurst replied. “He says he ‘capped’ the guards at Heinlein Station. That’s old-time infantry slang for ‘shot’ or ‘killed.’ The Derna reference suggests he plans on taking Mars Prime, the way O’Bannon took Derna.”

“Damn it, General!” Matloff exploded. “What kind of mad dog is this Garroway? We’re not at war!”

“It would appear that Major Garroway believes differently, John,” Harrel said gently. “What do you think, General?”

“He obviously couldn’t say much,” Warhurst replied. “But Garroway is not the sort of man who would run off half-cocked. The Pearl Harbor reference seems clear enough. The UN launched some sort of a coup and took over the base. I, ah, must point out that the MMEF was sent to Mars expressly to counter such a move on the UN’s part.”

“It seems they didn’t do the job they were sent to do, then,” the DCI suggested.

“It looks that way, sir. But I’d rather wait and hear what Major Garroway has to say about it. The Marines were probably not on full alert, and they were operating in a situation where their precise responsibilities and operational parameters were not clear. They were there in the hope that their mere presence would discourage any hostile activity by the UN military forces stationed there. And there is always the danger of mischance in war. You can’t prepare for every—”

“I repeat,” Matloff interrupted, “we are not at war! My people are negotiating with the UN right this moment at Geneva, trying to prevent this kind of mass insanity!”

“What have we heard officially from Mars?” Harrel wanted to know. “Last I heard there was some sort of communications problem.”

“Since Sunday morning,” Kinsley said, “there’s been nothing from either Mars Prime or Cydonia Prime but a COMMUNICATIONS DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAND BY message. This sort of thing happens sometimes, nothing unusual about it, but it does tend to corroborate Garroway’s message. If UN forces took over our facilities on Mars, they might drop a commo blackout for a time, while they get things organized. Maybe they’re preparing some sort of cover story.”

“Or preparing a parallel operation of some sort here on Earth,” Severin suggested.

“But why?” Matloff said. “Why would the United Nations want to do such a thing? Their people are on Mars purely as observers—”

“Including those fifty Foreign Legion troops?” Severin said, interrupting the SECSTATE. “It sounds to me like they’ve started doing a damned sight more than observing.”

“I must insist,” Matloff said, a bit stiffly, “that the peace process here be allowed to continue, that it be given a chance. We have the opportunity here to guarantee a lasting peace with the rest of the world!”

“For a moment there, John,” Harrel said, “I thought you were going to tell us that we were guaranteeing peace in our time.”

“I do not find that funny,” Matloff replied. “Perhaps you are not aware of just how serious our position is, vis-à-vis the United Nations. Their trade embargo against us has all but crippled our economy. Our only allies are Russia and Great Britain, and both of them are even worse off economically just now than we are. We are a nation of some five hundred million people, gentlemen, against a world of nearly eight billion. We cannot play games here. If we are to preserve any shred of our sovereignty as an independent nation, we must cooperate completely. We must work and we must compromise in order to establish a firm basis of mutual trust with the other nations of the world. If we fail, if we allow ourselves to be goaded into an ill-considered war, we cannot hope to survive.”

“I thought you said that there was no proof the United Nations was acting in a hostile manner,” Severin said.

“They have acted in a completely reasonable fashion so far. If these rogue Marines on Mars drag us into a war, however, I don’t see how we can hope to survive as a nation. Do you all remember what happened to Brazil?”

Brazil had been the first of the world’s nations to feel the full brunt of the United Nations after the new UN charter had been adopted. Accused of continuing to cut down vast tracts of fast-dwindling rain forest in direct violation of several world treaties, Brazil had been invaded by UN forces in September of 2026. The rain forest, what was left of it, had been declared a “special world protectorate” and was now administered by a UN bureau operating out of Brasilia, in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Rio.

The US had formally severed its long-unraveling ties with the UN in 2020 and was not involved in the takeover. Polls taken at the time had suggested that a large majority of Americans had disapproved of and mistrusted the UN’s high-handed—some said dictatorial—approach to curbing various global problems. Many though, in particular the Internationalists, were more concerned with the fact that something had to be done about global warming and the biosphere die-off, even if that something violated national sovereignty.

“The president is concerned,” Harrel said quietly, “with the demands the UN is making of us. Geneva has ordered us to hold a plebiscite within our Southwestern states on the Aztlan question, a plebiscite which, if held, might well result in the loss of a major portion of the American Southwest. They have threatened us over our space stations in orbit and our bases on Mars. They’ve threatened us over the whole question of technology gleaned from the Mars excavations. The president compromised on that one to the extent of allowing UN observers to travel to Mars. Their ‘observers’ turned out to be a few legitimate scientists and fifty armed men, a deliberate challenge to our control of the Martian excavations and our own facilities on the planet.

“Now, how long are we supposed to keep giving in and compromising and backpedaling before we find ourselves with our proverbial backs against the proverbial wall? I can tell you right now, Mr. Secretary, that the president is not going to yield on the Aztlan thing. He has already promised to share any alien technology that we find on Mars, and I can’t see what further concessions he could make there, either. And if it’s true that those UN thugs have just moved in and taken over our bases on Mars, lock, stock, and barrel, well, I can’t see any room there for compromise either, can you?”

“Well then, perhaps it’s time we started looking a little harder for compromise,” Matloff said, “for some means of surmounting the difficulties that have separated us from the member states of the United Nations for so long. We need a unified world, gentlemen, for the survival of mankind, and I, for one, will not stand still for loose-cannon opportunists who are risking everything we have built!”

“Mr. Secretary, there’s really very little we can do about Major Garroway at the moment,” Admiral Gray pointed out. “He’s something like a hundred million miles away, right now, and we don’t even have a secure communications link with the man.”

“I think we should concentrate our efforts on what we should be doing on this end,” Severin said. “Garroway’s actions could significantly impact the situation here.”

Warhurst looked sharply at Severin. The SECDEF might be the next step up the ladder from the Joint Chiefs, but he was not himself a military man. He was a civilian, a politician who’d started off with one of the big defense contractors, a man whose lobbying efforts and financial contributions had been rewarded by a succession of cabinet posts. It was, Warhurst mused, the way Washington worked, but it left him uneasy to think that the lives of people, his people, depended on decisions made by men who cared more about covering their asses than they did about the lives of men and women farther down the chain of command.

“General?” Harrel said, turning to him. “Just what are the chances of Garroway and his people getting our facilities on Mars back?”

Warhurst spread his hands. “I wish I could answer that, sir, but I can’t. The message seems to indicate that Colonel Lloyd is wounded or otherwise incapacitated, and we can’t know how many more Marines might have been killed or wounded at this point. We don’t know Garroway’s logistical situation—food, water, ammo…though chances are they have either no weapons at all or damned few. And, more to the point, perhaps, we don’t know what he’s up against. If the UN troops are split between Cydonia and Candor, he might, might have a chance of taking down one group before the other is alerted, but it seems like a damned slender chance to me. His best shot may be to grab something the UN needs at Candor and hold it hostage.”

“What?” Severin wanted to know.

“I don’t know. The food stores, maybe. O’Bannon’s Marines seized their expedition’s food supplies to put down a mutiny among the Arab rebels in the party. Maybe that’s his plan.”

“That might make sense,” Kinsley said. “Mars isn’t like Earth, where you can live off the land. They’ve got major, centralized stockpiles of the stuff they need. Food. Water. Air. That makes them vulnerable.”

“Where are the food supplies kept?” Severin wanted to know.

“There are stockpiles at both of the major bases, sir,” Warhurst replied. “Candor and Cydonia. But the main stores are at the big base at Candor. I gather shuttles fly supplies out to all of the active bases every week or so.”

“So does he have a chance?” Harrel asked. “I’ll tell you, General, I’ve got to walk over and talk to the Man next door when this meeting is over. What do I tell him? Can a handful of US Marines take back our bases on Mars? Or at least get us something to bargain with?”

“They are United States Marines, sir,” Warhurst replied evenly. “If anybody can do the job, they can.”

“There have already been casualties,” Admiral Gray pointed out. “Certainly UN casualties. Apparently Marines as well…at least Colonel Lloyd. We may already be over the brink on this thing.”

“You’re saying we can’t micromanage things on Mars from here,” the DCI said with a grin. “Kind of galling for us behind-the-lines types, isn’t it?”

“I believe,” Warhurst said, “that we can trust Garroway’s assessment of the situation. He’s experienced. He’s well trained. He will take whatever action he feels is justified, given his understanding of the tactical and political situation on Mars. I don’t think we should try second-guessing him on that. And if there’s any way to support him, we should—”

“My suggestion, my strong suggestion,” Matloff said, interrupting, “is to disavow Garroway’s people. Immediately. If necessary, explain to the UN that some of our Marines may have, ah, misunderstood their orders…ah, may have interpreted them too strongly, in fact, and that UN forces on Mars should take measures to beef up security around the Candor site….”

Warhurst was on his feet. “You can’t do that!”

“Sit down, General,” Admiral Gray said.

“Sir! With respect! We can’t just—”

“We understand your concern, General,” Harrel said. “I think, however, that it would be best if you would wait outside. Please.”

“The Marine Corps has a tradition, gentlemen,” Warhurst said. “A very old one. We never leave our people behind. Never.”

“That’s quite enough, General,” Harrel said.

Gray took Warhurst by the arm. “Come on, Monty,” he said. “Wait outside until this is over.”

“That…that bastard is about to throw away the lives of our people!”

He turned to glare at Matloff, but the man refused to meet his eyes…probably out of an instinctive sense of self-preservation.

Fists clenched, not trusting himself to speak further, Warhurst shook off Gray’s hand and slowly walked for the door.

Beyond the conference-room door was an outer office and waiting area manned by a couple of Army Special Forces security guards standing at rigid and unresponsive attention. Furious, Warhurst paced the blue-and-white carpet for several moments, trying to organize his thoughts. When he’d told the tale of O’Bannon and his Marines at Derna, he’d neglected to tell them the ending. The very day that O’Bannon’s men stormed the fortress, an agent of the US State Department had signed a humiliating treaty that granted a $60,000 ransom to Tripoli in exchange for the freedom of captured American seamen and an end to hostilities, though news of the treaty didn’t reach Derna for another week. Eaton and the Marines were forced to abandon their Arab allies by slipping quietly out of the harbor on an American ship.

There would be a fine comparison with history, Warhurst thought…to have the diplomats resolve this whole business on Earth while Garroway’s Marines were embroiled in a small war!

He cooled his heels in the outer office for another fifteen minutes before the members of the NSC Principals Committee began filing out of the vault door. Except for Admiral Gray, none stopped to speak or even look his way, and Warhurst had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. They couldn’t follow Matloff’s advice. They couldn’t….

But then, he knew Washington well enough to know that that was exactly what they would do, if they felt they had to.

Gray clapped a hand on Warhurst’s shoulder. “That’s got to be a first, Monty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guest at one of these meetings go for a cabinet member’s throat before.”

“I apologize for my behavior, Admiral.” The words came woodenly, without feeling. It was impossible to really mean them.

“I think everyone knew how you felt, Monty. And, well, they know about Ted.”

“Sir, I—”

“Matloff can be a thoroughgoing bastard. If a war starts after all of the negotiating he’s been doing here and in Geneva, he’s going to look very bad. It could ruin his whole career.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for the man!” Warhurst managed to pack the words with acid. “So they’re going to turn our people over to the enemy to save his career. Is that it?”

Gray didn’t meet his eyes, and the sinking feeling got worse. “They’re not turning them over to the UN, no. But Harrel’s going to tell the president that we should adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Matloff, I’m afraid, is going to see the president later today and pass on his own recommendations. Which is his right, of course. He is the cabinet member tasked with maintaining peaceful relations with the rest of the world…however unreasonable they seem, sometimes.”

“So? What do you think the president is going to do?”

“If I knew that, Monty, I’d be president.” He shrugged. “Hell, Markham’s pro-military, which is a point in our favor, and I have the feeling he’d grab at just about any chance, however slim, to get us out of this bind with our honor intact as well as our territory. But I also know that Matloff is right about the odds we’re facing. Our best hope, the country’s best hope, is for a settlement with the UN that gives them most of what they want…and lets us maintain our sovereignty a little bit longer.”

“Admiral, you can’t agree with that…man.” He stifled the urge to use a stronger word, and it nearly choked him.

“The trouble is, Matloff is right. Sooner or later, that one-world state we’ve been hearing so much about is going to happen, just to make sure food and resources get properly distributed all over the globe, if nothing else. When it does, the United States is going to lose an awful lot of its power, its prestige, and maybe its territory as well. If it comes down to a choice between giving up on what we’ve built on Mars, and having the UN occupy the US the way they did Brazil, well, I know what I would have to choose.”

“So…our people are on their own.” He thought of Ted, alone on the embassy rooftop as the transport lifted off without him. He felt sick.

Gray hesitated for a brief moment, then dropped his eyes. “Yes.”

“I’d like to work out a way of getting a message back to Garroway, sir. I know we can’t send e-mail back the same way we got it, not without risking tipping the bad guys off, but Garroway’s daughter may have a back door for us.”

“That’s a negative.”

“But—”

“I said negative. Harrel was specific on that point, and he made sure to tell me to pass it on to you, loud and clear. If the president needs negotiating room on this, he can’t have us undercutting his position by sending messages to Garroway.”

“What?”

“If the UN intercepts our messages to Garroway, they could claim that Markham was negotiating with one hand and managing some kind of guerrilla operation on Mars with the other. We can’t take that chance, Monty. We can’t even acknowledge that we got his message in the first place. The fact that we know the UN pulled an offensive move against us up there when they don’t know that we know what they did, well, that might provide us with some leverage in Geneva. As far as you and I and everybody else on Earth is concerned, we have no idea where Garroway is or what he is up to.”

“You’re abandoning him, then.” The words were hard and bitter.

“Call it plausible deniability. Anyway, it’s not as though we could do anything to help. The next cycler’s due for Earth return next week, but we don’t have time to put together a reinforcement mission. Even if we did, it’d be another eight months before they could reach him.”

“Just knowing that you’ve got people pulling for you can help sometimes, Admiral. Right now, I’d guess that Garroway and his people are about as lonely as any US military detachment has ever been in history.”

“Well, God help them,” Gray said. “Because we can’t.” He stopped and held Warhurst with his gaze. “I mean that, Monty. That’s a direct order. No communications with Garroway until this matter is resolved.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

In thirty-six years of military service, Montgomery Warhurst had never disobeyed an order…but damn, he was tempted to now.