Текст книги "Drone Strike"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

ADVENTURER

1

Iran

BY THE TIME GREASE LET TURK UP, THE GUNFIRE HAD stopped and the barn was empty.

“All right, let’s go,” said Grease, pointing. “Through the window.”

Turk pushed the control unit back into its pack, took his rifle and followed Grease to the window. He went out first, waiting while Grease jumped through.

“What’s going on?” Turk asked.

“Don’t know. We’ll find out soon enough. Keep your gun ready. This way.”

Grease led him across the flat yard to a small outbuilding that the team had agreed earlier would be a first regrouping area if they were attacked. Grease checked around the building, then had Turk kneel next to him on the side farthest from the road.

“Uh, thanks for watching out for me,” said Turk as they waited.

Grease didn’t respond.

You have to be the coldest son of a bitch I’ve ever met, thought Turk.

Sergeant Major Curtis trotted toward them a few moments later, followed by Dome. The younger man was carrying an M-240 machine gun.

“We’re clear,” said Curtis. “We move out as soon as the captain gives the signal.” He looked at Turk. “You OK, Pilot?”

“I’m good.”

“Careful with that rifle, all right? Especially if that safety is off.”

Turk realized he was pointing it at Curtis. “Sorry.”

“Someone told me you were a good shot.” Curtis smiled. “So you don’t need to prove it.”

Dome laughed.

“I’m all right,” said Turk defensively. “Not as good as you guys, I’m sure.”

“Don’t worry. Your job isn’t to shoot,” said Curtis mildly. “Wait for the truck.”

Curtis and Dome left, circling around behind the house as they checked the perimeter. Two troopers were moving near the front of the barn; Turk asked Grease what they were doing.

“Dunno. Probably hiding the bodies.”

“Shouldn’t we be getting out of here?”

“Relax, Pilot. We’ll get you where you got to go.”

They waited in silence until the truck emerged from the barn a few minutes later. Then Grease wordlessly nudged Turk into motion, trotting alongside him as the truck moved up to the front of the house. The others were waiting there in a semicircle, standing by a Toyota sedan.

“In,” said Grease, pointing to the truck.

“Where are we going?”

“We’ll find out when they tell us.”

2

CIA campus, Virginia

DANNY FREAH PAUSED FOR A SECOND, WAITING FOR the computerized security system to recognize him by his biometrics, then continued through the large, empty basement space surrounding the “Cube”—Whiplash’s secure command center on the CIA headquarters campus in McLean, Virginia. He walked directly toward a black wall, which grew foggy as he approached. The wall was actually a sophisticated energy field, which allowed him through as soon as he touched it and was recognized by the security system.

He went down the hallway—these walls were “real”—to the central command center, where Breanna Stockard, Jonathon Reid, and six specialists were monitoring the Iran operation in a small, theaterlike room. Three rows of curved console tables, arranged on descending levels, sat in front of large screen. The floor, chairs, and tables moved, allowing the room to be reconfigured in a half-dozen ways, including a bowl-like arrangement that reminded Danny of a baseball stadium. While the designers had hailed the flexibility, it turned out the room was almost exclusively used as it was now, in a traditional “mission control” layout.

Paul Smith looked up at Danny from the back bench. Smith was a military mission coordinator “borrowed” by Whiplash from the Air Force’s Space Reconnaissance Command. He’d worked as the liaison with Dreamland on the nano-UAVs, and was now the primary communications link to the command center with Turk and the ground team. Like the others in the room, he generally handled a variety of tasks, often all at once.

“He’s in-country,” Smith told Danny.

“Any trouble?”

“Not with the jump. They had to move, though. One of the owners came to the house where the Delta team had hidden. Just one of those things. Murphy’s Law.”

“Were they compromised?” Danny asked.

Smith shook his head. He wore civilian clothes to fit in with the rest of the team; only Danny was in uniform. “Bad luck for them.”

Smith meant for the people who had undoubtedly been killed, though Danny didn’t ask.

Luck, good or otherwise, was the wildcard of life. It was also the one ingredient of every operation, covert or conventional, that could never be fully factored in. Things happened or didn’t happen; you planned for as many contingencies as possible, then thought on your feet.

As it happened, the team’s presence at the farm was already part of a contingency plan—they’d moved from what had been an abandoned warehouse complex when workmen showed up suddenly to start tearing down the place. But then the entire operation was a cascading series of contingencies, revamped on the run.

“They have another site about two miles farther north,” added Smith. “They have two guys there who’ve been watching it from a hide nearby. They should be OK there.”

“Danny, do you have a minute?” asked Breanna, rising from her seat at the front. She came up the stairs slowly, obviously tired. Danny guessed that she hadn’t slept the night before. “Just in my office. Coffee?”

“No thanks. Too much on the plane.”

Danny followed Breanna as she detoured into the complex’s kitchenette. The smell of freshly brewed coffee tempted him.

“How was he?” she asked.

“He looked good. He nearly beat one of the trainers to a pulp.”

“There’s yogurt in the fridge,” she told him, going over to the coffeepot. “Good for your allergies.”

“Haven’t been bothering me lately. Desert helped.”

“How was Ray?”

“A sphinx, as usual.”

A smile flickered across Breanna’s face as she brought the coffee to one of the two small tables and sat down. She put both hands around her coffee cup, funneling the warm vapors toward her face.

“Cold?” asked Danny.

“A little,” she confessed. “It’s sitting in one place, I think. What did Sergeant Ransom say?”

“Sergeant Ransom knows his duty,” Danny told her.

“I wish we could have trained someone else for the mission. The timetable just made it impossible. It wasn’t what we planned.”

“I think it’ll be better this way. Easier to train Turk to get along with the snake eaters than to have one of them try and figure out the aircraft.”

“But—”

“They’ll make it out,” Danny told her, reading the concern on her face. “I would have preferred it if it were our team,” he admitted, “but they were already there. They’ll do fine.”

“God, I hope you’re right.” Breanna’s whole body seemed to heave as she sighed; she looked as if she were carrying an immense weight. “The second orbiter will be launched tomorrow night. Once it’s in place so we have full backup, we’ll proceed. Assuming nothing happens between now and then.”

“Sounds good,” said Danny.

Breanna rose. “I don’t think it will be necessary. I think they’ll make it out.”

“So do I,” answered Danny. “I’m sure of it.”

3

Iran

THE NEW HIDING PLACE WAS A COLLECTION OF CRAGS at the back end of what had been a farm in the foothills. It hadn’t been tilled in years, and the two men who’d been watching it reported that they hadn’t seen anyone nearby since they’d arrived some forty-eight hours before.

“We’re near a road the Quds Force uses to truck arms from the capital to the Taliban in western Afghanistan,” said the captain, leading Turk and Grease to a shallow cave where they could rest. “That’s good and bad—good, because we’re likely to be left alone. Bad, because if someone spots us, they’re likely to be armed. And there’ll be a bunch of them.”

“We’ll be ready, Cap,” said Grease.

“Probably never come. Pilot, you should get some rest.” The captain took a quick look around. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to go. You got about eight, nine hours.”

Turk set the control pack down against the back wall of the cave, then leaned against it. There were no blankets or sleeping bags—they would have been dead weight on the mission.

Better bullets than a pillow.

One of the trainers had said that in Arizona. Not Grease. But who? And when? The sessions, so intense at the time, were now blurred in his memory. Everything was blurred.

He should sleep. He needed to be alert.

“What’d they do with the car?” he asked Grease.

“They’ll get rid of it somewhere.”

“Were they civilians? The people who came to the house. It was a civilian car.”

“I don’t know who they were. Would it matter, though?” added Grease. “We have to do this. We have to succeed. If we don’t do it, a lot more people are going to die. A lot.”

Turk didn’t disagree. And yet he was disturbed by the idea that they had killed the civilians.

“Rest easy, Pilot,” said Dome, checking on them. “You got a busy night ahead of you.”

“Is that my nickname now?” Turk asked.

“Could be. There’s a lot worse.”

Turk shifted around against the backpack, trying to get to sleep. As his head drifted, Turk remembered falling asleep with Li the night before he left. He relived it in his mind, hoping it would help him nod off, or at least shift his mind into neutral.

4

Washington, D.C.

“I’VE NEVER SMOKED IN MY LIFE.” PRESIDENT TODD rose from the chair, defiant, angry, ready to do battle. “Never.”

“I know.” Amanda Ross raised her gaze just enough to fix the President’s eyes. Dr. Ross had been Todd’s personal physician for nearly twenty years, dating to Todd’s first stay in Washington as a freshman congresswoman. “I’m sorry. Very sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Todd folded her arms and tried to temper her voice. They were in the President’s Sitting Room on the second floor of the White House, used by Todd as a private, after-hours office, a place she could duck into late at night while her husband slept in the bedroom next door. Now it was two o’clock in the afternoon, and with the exception of the Secret Service detail just outside the door, the floor was empty, but Todd didn’t want to broadcast her condition to even her most trusted aides. “Just give me the details plainly.”

“It’s a relatively . . . well not rare, but lesser, um . . .” The doctor stumbled for words.

“Lung cancer,” said Todd, a little sharper than she wished. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Chris. Madam President.”

“Chris is fine. We’ve known each other long enough for that.” Todd reached her hand to the doctor’s arm and patted it. “I do want to know everything. And I’m not blaming you.”

“I know.”

Todd squeezed the doctor’s arm, then sat back down in the chair. “Tell me everything you know about large cell undifferentiated carcinoma. I won’t interrupt until you’re done.”

“I’M NOT RESIGNING.” PRESIDENT TODD POINTED HER finger at her husband. For just a moment he was the enemy, he was the cancer.

“Resectioning your lung, followed by chemo? Chris-tine.”

The way he said her name, dragging it out so that it was a piece of music—it took her back in time to a dozen different occasions, all difficult and yet somehow happily nostalgic now. She loved him dearly—but if she didn’t stay hard, if she didn’t stay angry, she would crumple.

“I did not take my oath only to give up two years into my term.”

“Three, I think.” He looked over his reading glasses. He was sitting up in bed, reading his latest mystery novel, as was his bedtime habit for all the years she’d known him. “And don’t think I haven’t counted the days.”

“In any event, I’m not giving up.”

“Jesus, it’s not giving up, Christine.”

“I have a responsibility to the people who elected me. To the country.”

“Not to yourself?”

“The office comes first.”

“Well maybe you should think about the sort of job you’ll be doing when you’re vomiting twenty-four/seven from the chemo.”

Her lip began to quaver. She felt her toughness start to fade. “You’re so cruel.”

Daniel Todd put the book down and got out of bed. He glided across the room, forty years of wear and tear vanishing in an eye-blink. He reached down to the chair and pulled her up, folding her gently in his grasp. He put his cheek next to hers. She smelled the faint sweetness of the bourbon he’d drunk earlier in the evening lingering in his breath.

“I love you, Chris. I’ll stand by you, whatever you decide. But honestly, love, just for once, could you please think about yourself? Your health. The Republic will survive.”

“I know it will, Dan.”

The President bent her face toward his shoulder, wiping away the single tear that had slipped from her eye.

And then she was over it, back in control.

“I get to the point where I can’t carry out my duties, then, yes, yes, then I will resign. But the doctor assures me—”

“Now listen—”

“The doctor assures me that it is at an early stage. There’s hope. A lot of hope. And a plan to deal with it.”

“I know there’s hope.”

Todd rested against her husband’s arms for another few seconds, then gently pushed him away. She took his hands, and together they went and sat on the edge of the bed.

“When are you going to go public?” he asked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“You can’t keep it a secret.”

“I realize that. But there’s a lot going on at the moment.”

“Chris-tine. There is always a lot going on.”

“I think what I’ll do is announce it right before the surgery. That’s the most appropriate time.”

“Says you.”

“Yes, but I’m paid to make that decision.” She smiled at him; Reid was always telling her the same thing. “Besides, there’s no sense worrying people beforehand.”

“You won’t tell your staff?”

“I will. But doing that is almost a sure guarantee that it will go public.”

“What about your reelection campaign?”

“That—That is a problem.”

“You’re not running for reelection.”

“No. I agree.” Todd had given it a great deal of thought. Even if things did work out right—and she was sure they would—she didn’t think the public would vote for someone who’d had lung cancer. True, attitudes about cancer were changing, but they weren’t changing that much. Todd herself wasn’t sure whether she would give someone a job knowing he or she had cancer that would require aggressive treatment. So the best thing to do would be not to run. She’d been on the fence anyway; this just pushed her off.

“I’ll avoid the issue for a while,” she told her husband. “If I make myself a lame duck, Congress will be even more of a pain.”

“Avoid the issue, or put off a decision?” asked her husband.

“The decision is made, love.” She let go of his hand and patted it, then moved back on the bed. Her nightgown snagged a little; she rearranged it neatly.

“They’ll hound you until you say something, once the news about the cancer is out.”

“True. But I’m used to that. The big problem is lining up a successor.”

“You’re going to line up a successor?”

“If I can, yes.”

“How?”

“With my support. I have my ways.”

“Not Mantis?” He meant Jay Mantis, the vice president.

“Don’t even think it.” Privately, Todd called him the Preying Mantis, and it was anything but a compliment. He was the most duplicitous person she had ever met in politics, and that was saying a great deal.

“Who then?”

“I’ll tell you when I’ve made up my mind.”

“I have some ideas.”

“I’ll bet you do.” She pulled back the covers and pushed her feet under. “I have more immediate problems to worry about over the next few days.”

“Chris.”

“Don’t be a mother hen.”

“A father hen.”

Todd let her head sink into the pillow. Her health would wait; she had to deal with the Iranian mess first. Which meant a few hours nap, then back to work.

“Feel like going to sleep?” she asked her husband.

“To bed, yes. Sleep no.”

“That sounds a lot like what I was thinking. Let me turn off the light.”

5

Iran

BY NINE O’CLOCK TURK HAD GIVEN UP ALL ATTEMPTS at sleeping and lay on his back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling of the cave they were huddled in. He was ready for the mission, ready to succeed. But time moved as if it were a man crawling across the desert inch by inch.

He got up and left Grease sleeping to see what the others were doing outside. Dread, the medic who had looked him over, was pulling a radio watch, manning the communications gear with Gorud, the CIA officer.

“How we doing?” Turk asked Dread. The main com gear was a surprisingly small handheld satellite radio-phone that allowed the team to communicate with Whiplash and its parent command. Dread also had a separate device to talk to other team members who were working in Iran, including two-man teams watching the target. There was a backup radio, much larger, in a pack.

“We’re all good,” answered Dread. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“Can’t.”

“I have some sleeping pills. Like Ambien, but stronger.”

“I heard that stuff will make you sleepwalk.”

“Not this. Puts you down and out.”

“Then I might not get up. You got any coffee?”

Dread shook his head. “Can’t cook here. Might see the smoke or the flame. Or maybe smell the coffee. If we had any.”

“None?”

“Got something that’s basically Red Bull. You want it?”

“No, maybe not.”

“Caffeine pills?”

“Maybe I’ll try to sleep again in a little while.” Turk sat down next to him, legs crossed on the ground. “Any sign that we were followed?”

“No. That house hadn’t been lived in for at least three months,” added Dread. “Don’t know what they were up to. Came to buy it or maybe have sex. Two guys, though.”

“Weird, being in somebody else’s country.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just—nothing. They don’t seem to know it’s a war.”

“It’s not a war. We don’t want one. That’s why we’re here, right?”

“Are you ready to do your job?” asked Gorud. His voice sounded hoarse.

“Yeah,” answered Turk.

“Then worry about that.”

“I don’t have to worry about that. I can do it,” added Turk, feeling challenged.

Turk stayed away as the Delta team traded shifts. Around noon he had something to eat—a cold MRE—then tried once more to sleep. This time he was successful; nodding off after nearly an hour, he slid into a dull blackness.

The next thing he knew, Grease was shaking his leg back and forth.

“Time to get up,” said the sergeant.

Turk rolled over from his back and pushed up to his knees. His neck was stiff.

“We’re leaving in five,” said Grease.

“Got it.”

“We’ll get food at the airport.”

“OK.” Turk unzipped the control backpack and checked it, more out of superstition than fear that it had been taken or compromised. Satisfied, he secured the pack and put it on his back.

It was three o’clock. He wished it was much later.

“Car’s here,” said someone outside.

Turk was surprised to see the civilian Toyota from the night before making its way up the rock-strewn trail. He thought they’d gotten rid of it.

“The three of us will use the car to get to the airport,” said Grease. “We’ll be less conspicuous. The rest of the team will be in the troop truck a short distance away. Put the backpack in the trunk.”

“I don’t want the control unit out of my sight.”

“You’re not going to leave the car.”

“It stays with me.” Turk’s only concession was to take it off his back and put it on the floor between his legs.

“If we are stopped at a checkpoint, you are Russians,” said Gorud after Turk and Grease climbed into the backseat. Gorud was at the wheel and a Delta soldier named Silver took the front passenger seat; his accent was old New York, so thick it could have been a put on.

“We are all Russians,” repeated Gorud, making sure they knew their cover. “We are looking for new oil fields and business opportunities.”

“Right,” said Turk.

“You all speak Russian,” answered Gorud.

“Da,” said Silver.

“Yeah,” said Grease, who then added a phrase that translated to the effect that Gorud could perform several unnatural acts if he had any question of the sergeant’s abilities.

Gorud scowled but turned to Turk. “Captain?”

“Ya govoryu na russkim dostatochno khorosho?” answered Turk.

“Tell me that you’re an engineer.”

“I don’t know the word.”

“Inzhenr.”

Gorud worked him through a few different phrases. Turk couldn’t remember much—it had been years since he’d spoken much Russian, and then it was mixed with English as he spoke with his aunt and grandmother. But any Iranians they met were very unlikely to speak any themselves, and in any event, the CIA officer had told him he shouldn’t talk at all.

“For once we agree,” said Turk.

“Use a Ruuushan accent with your Enggg-lish,” said Gorud, demonstrating. “You speak like this.”

“I’ll try.”

“Say ‘I will’ instead of ‘I’ll.’ Do not use slang. You are not a native speaker. You don’t use so many contrac-shuns. Draw some syllables out. Like Russian.”

Turk imagined he heard the voices of his relatives and their friends speaking in another room, then tried to emulate them. “I will try to remember this,” he said.

“Hmmph,” answered Gorud, still disappointed.

Turk folded his arms, leaning back in the seat. The CIA officer passed out passports and other papers that identified them as Russians, along with visas that declared they had been in the country for three days, having landed in Tehran. Among his other documents was a letter from a high ranking official in the Revolutionary Guard, directing that he be admitted to an oil field for inspection; the letter of course was bogus and the oil field far away, but it would undoubtedly impress any low ranking police officer or soldier who was “accidentally” given it to read.

The euros they were all carrying would impress him even more. Or so Turk believed.

He felt the vaguest sense of panic as a car approached from the opposite lane. It eased slightly as the car passed, then snuck back despite the open road ahead. It was hours before dusk; Gorud was vague about how long it would take to get to the airport, and not knowing bothered Turk.

Gorud’s attitude bothered him more—the CIA operative ought by all rights to be treating him with respect, and as a coequal: without him, there was no mission.

A pair of white pickup trucks sparked Turk’s anxiety; similar trucks were used throughout the Middle East and much of Africa by armies and militias. But these were simply pickups, with a single driver in each. Turk closed his eyes after they were gone.

“Just get me to the damn helicopter,” he muttered.

“What?” asked Grease.

“I just want to get on with it. You know?”

“It’ll be here soon enough. Don’t wish yourself into trouble.”

The rugged terrain around them was mostly empty, though occasionally a small orchard or farm sat in a sheltered arm of a hill along the highway. They passed a small village to the west, then passed through a larger collection of battered buildings, metal and masonry. Sand blew across the lot, furling and then collapsing on a line of concrete barriers, which were half covered in sand dunes.

“Old military barracks,” said Silver. “Abandoned a couple of years ago.”

“Glad they’re empty,” said Turk.

Gorud raised his head and stared out the window as they came around a curve at a high pass in the hills. The city lay ahead, but he was looking to his left, past the driver. Turk followed his gaze. He could see a rail line in the distance and tracks in the rumpled sand. What looked like several revetments lay a little farther up the hills. A large dump truck sat in the distance, the setting sun turning its yellow skin white. There were more beyond it.

“What’s going on here?” Silver asked.

“Good question,” said Gorud. “There are mines—but . . .” His voice trailed off.

“But?”

“Missiles, maybe,” he said. “Or something else.”

A reminder, thought Turk, that the problem they were dealing with was vast, and might not—would not—end with this operation.

The airport appeared ahead, a crooked T of tarmac in the light red dirt and lighter sand. They turned with the road, skimming around an empty traffic circle and then toward the terminal complex, driving down an access road four lanes wide. It was as empty as the highway they’d come down on. An unmanned gate stood ahead, its long arm raised forlornly. They passed through quickly.

The troop truck with the rest of their team continued on the highway, driving around to the south of the airport. They were on their own now; any contingency would have to be handled by Gorud, by Silver, by Grease, by himself—he touched the butt of his rifle under the front seat with the toe of his boot, reassuring himself that he was ready.

Immediately past the gate the road narrowed. Tall, thin green trees rose on either side; beyond them were rows of green plants, studded between sprinkler pipes. Two white vans sat in front of the parking lot in front of a cluster of administrative buildings. The buildings themselves looked empty, and there was no traffic on the access road that continued past the largest building and went south. Just beyond the building, they turned and drove through the lot to another road that ran around the perimeter of the airstrips. This took them past a truck parking area on the outside of the complex, beyond a tall chain-link fence. Turk caught a glimpse of their truck moving on the highway, shadowing them.

The access road took them to the front of the civilian passenger terminal, dark and seemingly forgotten. They turned left and drove around the building, directly onto the apron where the aircraft gates were located.

“Nothing here,” said Silver as they turned. “No plane.”

“I see.” Gorud looked left and right.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Keep going.”

“Onto the runway?”

“No. Onto the construction road at the far end. We’ll take it back around.”

“If it’s sand we may get stuck.”

“Chance it. We don’t want to look like we took a wrong turn if we’re being watched. We’re examining the airport—we would fly equipment in through here. We’re all Russian. Remember that.”

“Problem?” asked Grease.

“The Israeli and the helicopter should have been at the terminal,” said Gorud. “I don’t see it.”

“What Israeli?” said Turk. “Is that who is bringing the helicopter?”

Gorud said nothing. He didn’t have to; the expression on his face shouted disdain. Belatedly, Turk realized that “the Israeli” could only be their contact. He also guessed that the man was likely a Mossad agent or officer; the Israeli spy unit would have numerous agents studded around the country, and they would surely cooperate with the U.S. on a mission like this.

But it was also quite possible the man wasn’t Mossad at all. Everything was subterfuge—they were Russian, they were Iranian, they didn’t even exist.

“Place looks abandoned,” said Grease.

“It is,” replied Gorud. “More or less. Most airports outside Tehran look like this with the sanctions. Even if they have an air force unit, which this one doesn’t.”

“There was an aircraft on the left across from the terminal as we came in,” Turk said. “I didn’t get much of a look. Maybe that was it.”

“Was it an Mi-8?”

“I don’t think so. It looked a little small for an Mi-8.”

“We’ll go back.”

“Can you call your contact?” Grease asked.

Gorud shook his head. Turk guessed that he was afraid the missed connection meant that the man on the other end had been apprehended. Calling would only make things worse—for them.

“We can do it by ground if we have to,” Turk said. “If we have to.”

Silver took them across the dirt roads at the side of the terminal. A half-dozen excavations dotted the surrounding fields; all were overrun with dirt and sand that had drifted in. There were construction trucks on the other side of the entrance area, parked neatly in rows. As they drove closer, Turk saw that they were covered with a thick layer of grit. They’d been parked in the unfinished lot for months; work had stalled for a variety of reasons, most likely chief among them the Western economic boycott.

They had just turned back toward the administrative buildings when Turk spotted a light in the sky beyond the main runway.

“Something coming in,” he said.

“Take the right ahead, bring us back to the edge of the terminal apron,” Gorud told Silver.

Turk craned his head to see out the window as they turned and the aircraft approached.

“It’s not a helicopter,” he told them. “Light plane—looks like a Cessna or something similar. No lights.”

“What should I do?” asked Silver.

“Keep going, as I said,” snapped Gorud.

They parked at the edge of the terminal road, across from the gates and close enough to see the runway. The plane was a high-winged civilian aircraft, a Cessna 182 or something similar. The aircraft taxied to the end of the runway, then turned around quickly and came over to the terminal apron.

“Wait here,” said Gorud, getting out.

“Something is fucked up,” muttered Silver as the CIA officer trotted toward the plane.

Turk continued sketching an alternative plan in his head. In some ways it would be easier to work from the ground, he thought. His part would be easier: there’d be no possibility of losing a connection, and he wouldn’t have to worry about the distraction of working in a small aircraft. It’d be harder to escape, of course, but that was what he had the others for.

The key would be getting there. It was a long way off.

Gorud ran back to the car.

“It’s our plane,” he said. “Only two of us will fit. Come on, Captain.”

Grease put his hand on Turk’s shoulder. “I go where he goes.”

“You won’t fit in the aircraft,” said Gorud.

“Then you stay on the ground,” said Grease.

Turk pushed out of the car, leaving Gorud and Grease to sort out the situation themselves. The man in the right front seat of the aircraft—the copilot’s seat—got out to help him. He pushed his seat up and nudged Turk into the plane.

“What happened to the helicopter?” Turk asked as he got in.

The pilot shook his head.

“You speak English?” Turk asked.

Another head shake. The cockpit smelled like a locker room after an intense basketball game: sweat, and a lot of it. Perspiration ran thick on the back of the pilot’s neck. His shirt was drenched.

Grease slipped in next to him.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said the Delta sergeant. “Come on.”

The man who’d gotten out of the plane climbed back in. Turk assumed he was the Israeli.

“What happened to the helicopter?” asked Turk again.

“Contingency,” said the man. “This will have to do. Gorud is not coming?”

“Not unless he sits on your lap,” said Grease.

“Too much weight anyway,” the man said as he slammed and secured the plane door. The plane moved fitfully back toward the runway.

“I’m Turk,” said Turk, reaching toward the front.

“No names,” said the Israeli.

Turk slipped back and looked at Grease. “At least I know now I’m on the right plane,” he muttered.