The Korean Intercept Read Free Page B

anything."
    "Take it easy, Terri. We'll get you out of here." Kate turned to see Ron Scott carefully lowering himself from the upper deck. "Al and Leo didn't make it," she told him. "Terri's in bad shape."
    The flight commander moved aft, favoring but not slowed by the broken leg. "I'll get the door open. You two help Terri."
    Kate unfastened Terri's safety harness. Terri's head lolled to the side again, her breathing a muffled gurgle. Kate slid an arm under Terri's back, pausing only when she realized that she was working alone. "Bob, come on," she said impatiently. "We've got to get out of here."
    "But the others…"
    "We can't help Al and Leo right now. We barely have time to help ourselves."
    "All right, all right."
    They made quick work of removing the semiconscious woman from her seat, moving her across the gloom of the living quarters to an exit. A ladder was lowered and, after considerable angling of her this way and that between them, Kate and Bob managed to lower Terri to the ground outside.
    Breathing the cold night air in long measures completed the process of clearing Kate's senses. She became aware of her surroundings, of the shapes of trees swaying in the wind. She looked around at the silhouettes of mountains against the night sky full of stars, and shivered. Playing her flashlight past
Liberty's
heavily-dented fuselage and beyond, she saw the long path of smashed trees and sheared-off limbs along a ridge that had acted as a runway of sorts. The slope of the ridge—going down, not up—had helped avoid a direct head-on impact into the ground. The trees had somewhat cushioned the crash.
    Scott stood, supporting himself on his good leg, against the fuselage. He held a pistol, one of the Colt .45 automatics from
Liberty's
extremely limited armory. The wind moaned.
    Kate said, "Good work setting us down, Commander."
    Scott shook his head. "Not good enough for Al and Leo. You two hop back inside. We'll need canteens, weapons and the camouflage netting. The two of you are going to have to cover this bird before we move out."
    "Right." Kate started briskly toward the hatch before becoming aware of Bob's hesitation, as if he was hesitant to reboard the orbiter from which they had so narrowly escaped. "Come on, Bob," she said. "Move it. What are you waiting for?"
    "Nothing," Paxton said quickly, self-consciously. "Here I come."
    Kate let him board first. When she started to follow, she became aware of two things: the first dry flakes of snow, whipped by the wind, stinging her cheeks… and some sixth sense that told her she was being watched. She swung the flashlight around.
    There, among the trees, the beam picked out the figure of an elderly man, a scraggly figure wearing a frayed woolen jacket, baggy trousers and straw hat, who stood silently, watching them from behind the swirling veil of snow.
    Scott saw him too. "Uh oh," he whispered, raising his pistol.

Chapter Two
    Â 
    Camp David, Maryland
    Â 
    Sunshine, drenching the rolling hills, made the bark of the birch trees seem whiter, and dappled through their bare branches over a winding gravel path. Halfway into his three-mile run through the Camp David forest, the president of the United States noted with satisfaction that he was not short of breath as he crested a steep rise. He'd been a confirmed two-pack-a-day man before the last election, when his campaign advisors had convinced him that a non-smoking image would be far more appealing to voters.
    The chief executive was a vigorous man. At sixty-five years of age, he looked at least a decade younger. Five-foot-ten, he weighed in at a solidly-built one-eighty. His face was naturally round, but with strong features and striking eyes that were penetrating and direct. The salt and pepper hair was worn military style, unfashionably short. The fact that he was an ex-military officer, not a professional establishment politician, had contributed largely to his being selected as his party's vice