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and cut their engines.
    Trailed by his Spetsnaz bodyguards, Voronov and his hosts moved off toward the headquarters building. Behind them, the other Romanian and Belarusian arms control monitors dispersed, with some heading for their posts at the Ukrainian customs plaza and others to their off-duty living quarters. Voronov’s pilot climbed out of the Ansat-U’s cockpit and stretched, easing shoulders cramped during the long flight.
    The truck driver clicked the intercom again. “The whores are in bed. It’s time.” Then Pavlo Lytvyn popped open the cab door and dropped lightly onto the grass verge running along the road. He carried an AKS-74U carbine wrapped in a lightweight windbreaker.
    Inside the semitrailer, Fedir Kravchenko stood up. He turned to the others crowding its otherwise empty interior. A quick, warped grinflitted across his scarred face. “Right. Keep it nice and easy, boys. You’re just getting some fresh air, remember? Stretching your legs during a short break from a long drive, eh?”
    His men nodded. Most wore the set, grim expressions of those who had already killed enemies in battle and seen friends and comrades die. A few of the youngest, those without combat experience, looked pale but determined.
    He unlatched one of the heavy back doors and stood aside. “Then off you go. Remember the plan. Follow your orders. And good luck!”
    They filed out past him, ambling along the road toward OSCE post in scattered ones and twos. A few had leather jackets thrown over their shoulders to hide slung submachine guns—a mix of Israeli-designed UZIs, older Czech-made Skorpions, and newer Polish PM -84s. Others carried duffel bags carefully unzipped to allow quick access to the assault rifles and other weapons stashed inside.
    Kravchenko was the last one out. Appreciatively, he slapped the thick insulation that had hidden them from the thermal sensors carried by the Russian helicopters. Voronov’s flying guard dogs had gotten lazy, he thought. They’d switched on their high-tech IR gear and switched off their brains.
    Pavlo Lytvyn joined him and together they strolled along the edge of the highway, bitching amicably and loudly about the lousy roads and the extortionate price of petrol.
    Fifty meters from the front entrance to the OSCE headquarters building, Kravchenko knelt down, pretending to tie a shoelace. He risked a glance ahead. The Russian general’s bodyguards were bunched around the door, joking and smoking cigarettes.
    Sloppy, the Ukrainian thought coldly. With their boss safely tucked away inside that building, those supposedly elite commandos were acting as though they were off duty until it was time to escort the general back to his helicopter. He looked up at Lytvyn. “Everything set?”
    The bigger man nodded, his eyes roving along the highway and around the OSCE compound. Their strike force was in position—carefully dispersed around the perimeter of their target. Some wereprone in a drainage ditch that paralleled the road. Others crouched behind trees or had concealed themselves among the vehicles parked next to the compound’s buildings, white official SUVs assigned to the joint Romanian and Belarusian arms control team.
    â€œRozkryty peklo,” Kravchenko said stonily. “Unleash hell.”
    Still down on one knee, Kravchenko reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a metal egg shape. It was a Russian-made RGN offensive fragmentation grenade. Without hesitating, he pulled the pin, making sure to keep a tight grip on the arming lever. Then he stood up and started walking steadily toward Voronov’s bodyguards, holding the grenade low at his side.
    Lyvtyn walked beside him, now grousing loudly about the crummy food at their last rest stop. “So I told that stupid cow of a waitress if I wanted to die of food poisoning, I’d eat my wife’s cooking. I wouldn’t pay fifty hryvnias for your