REDDING was right: The gorge was wide enough, but barely, and Fisher could hear Bird in the cockpit muttering, “Missed me . . . missed me . . . missed me . . .” as he made tiny course corrections to avoid rock outcrops. After thirty seconds of this, the walls begin to widen as the gorge smoothed into another valley.
“Landing zone coming up,” Redding called. “A gentle dogleg left, then you should see a narrow river. The north bank is your spot.”
A few seconds later, Bird called, “I see it, I see it. . . . Hot damn! If that ain’t the sweetest piece of dirt on the planet. . . .”
HE set the Osprey down and Fisher unbuckled and began donning his gear. Redding handed him the OPSAT. “It’s updated with the new map. There’s an Army outpost about four miles away in Qoppoz. They send out regular patrols, but with this terrain you should hear them coming a mile away.”
Fisher nodded and walked to the cockpit. Bird was leaning back in his seat, a bottle of Gatorade halfway to his mouth. His hair was wet with sweat. “Good flying, you two,” Fisher said.
“We aim to please,” Sandy replied.
“Keep the engines warm. If I need you . . .”
“Ninety seconds from your call I’ll have a rope dangling over your head.”
FISHER trotted down the ramp, then turned and started jogging. He had a mile to cover before the valley opened into the bowl in which Sarani sat, and at this time of night he doubted anyone would be about. Still, he varied his course, zigzagging between boulders and stopping every hundred yards or so to look for signs of movement or heat.
In the moonlight the terrain had an otherworldly feel: sharp spires or rock rising into the dark sky, sheer walls, and clumps of boulders, some as large as houses. The dirt was so fine it felt like flour; his every footfall kicked up a puff of dust that hung in the air.
After twelve minutes of running, OPSAT told him he was getting close, so he slowed down and began picking his way forward, moving from boulder to boulder until the ground sloped up to a ridgeline. He dropped flat and crawled to the edge.
Down the opposite slope, a quarter mile away, was Sarani. All was quiet and dark save for a few lighted windows. In the distance a dog barked twice, then went silent. The sound echoed off the rocks before fading away.
Sarani was a collection of a few dozen mud brick buildings in shades of ochre and cream. In the middle of the village was a central square and a small mosque. Some of the homes were perched in tiers on the far slope with the uppermost tier backed up against a bluff. Each house was fronted by an arched walkway.
Fisher checked the OPSAT map, rotating and zooming until he found Kavad Abelzada’s home. It was one of the homes sitting against the bluff. He zoomed in and scanned first with NV, which revealed nothing, then in infrared. Again, nothing. He was about to look away when a flicker of red caught his eye. Down the walkway beside Abelzada’s home, he saw a man’s arm move into view. Someone was there, sitting in the dark. Leaning next to him was an object. Fisher immediately recognized the shape: AK-47.
Where there was one bodyguard there would be more—especially given who Abelzada was. With thousands of fanatical followers, there was no telling how many people in this village—his own birthplace—would lay down their lives to protect him. Almost all, Fisher suspected, which was probably why Abelzada had fled here after being released from prison. If Tehran wanted him again, they’d have to fight their way in.
Fisher scanned the slope for weaknesses, and wasn’t pleased. The way to reach Abelzada’s home was through the village and up a narrow switchback path. If even one person looked out their window and saw him, he’d find himself trapped with no retreat.
That left him only one option.
52
HIS option would add an hour to his time on the ground, but there was no helping it. Going through the village would be suicide.
He back-crawled away from the ridge, then turned and slid butt-first down the loose rock until he reached the bottom. He called up his map screen on the OPSAT and spent five minutes scrolling and zooming until he found what he was looking for.
He started jogging.
HIS path took him on a wide arc around Sarani, starting with the notch in the canyon wall he’d seen on his way in. The cleft was no wider than ten feet and the walls five times that high. After a few hundred yards the notch forked, one branch heading east, the other west. Fisher chose the eastern one, and followed it until it was bisected by a dry creek bed, which he followed north for another mile until the walls widened into a dry gulch. The rock walls were smoother here, water-worn by millennia of seasonal rivers. Fisher stopped to catch his breath and check the OPSAT. He was dead west of Sarani.
Now to see if he’d paid attention in high school geography class.
During the rainy season, this gulch would be coursing with runoff from the Köpetdag’s higher elevations, and the RADSAT’s pictures of the area had revealed the rims of the plateau’s above were crenellated from thousands of years of overspill. In the monsoon season, overspill meant waterfalls; in the dry season, natural stairways.
It took fifteen minutes to find what he was looking for: a deep, vertical fissure in the rock with a gentle grade and plenty of handholds. He started climbing.
Five feet from the top, he froze. He closed his eyes and listened. The wind had shifted, whistling down the fissure and bringing with it the scent of burning tobacco. He adjusted his feet so he was braced in the fissure, then drew the SC-20 and thumbed the selector to ASE. He gauged the wind and then fired.
He holstered the SC-20, then changed screens on the OPSAT and adjusted the ASE to infrared. The plateau showed as a cool blue oval. To Fisher’s left, over the edge of the plateau, he could see tiny blooms of dull orange; these would be the dying fires of cookstoves in the houses in Sarani.
Fifty hundred yards to his front were two prone figures cast in yellow, red, and green. They were hidden behind rocks along the northern and western edges. Snipers, one for each canyon leading into Sarani.
Tricky, gentlemen, Fisher thought. But not tricky enough.
The ASE was drifting away, gliding over Sarani and down the canyon. He let it go a half mile, then transmitted the self-destruct signal.
He climbed the last few feet to the top, then eased himself over the edge and crawled a few feet to a nearby boulder. He braced the SC-20 against it and peered through the scope. Since he now knew where to look and what to look for, each sniper stood out clearly in the green of the NV. Fisher wasn’t worried about the distance, but the wind over the plateau was moving at a good clip.
He zoomed in until the scope’s crosshairs were centered on the back of first man’s head, then adjusted his aim eighteen inches to the right. He fired. In a blossom of dark mist, the bullet struck the man behind the right ear. Fisher zoomed out, refocused on the next man, zoomed back in and adjusted for windage, then fired.
With the wind—and therefore sound—at his back, Fisher took his time crossing the plateau, using his OPSAT to adjust his position until he was directly above his target. He stopped a few feet from the edge, then crawled the rest of the way and peered down.
Gotta love GPS, he thought.
He was looking down into the rear courtyard of Abelzeda’s home.
The courtyard was done in rough-hewn brick and hemmed in by a six-foot-tall mud wall. At the base of the bluff, in the corner of the courtyard, was a pomegranate tree. To Fisher’s right, sitting on a bench in the side walkway, was the AK-47-armed man he’d seen earlier. Now the man had the rifle laying across his lap and appeared to be polishing it with a rag.
Fisher backed away and creeped to his right until he was over the pomegranate tree, then shimmied back to the edge. He pulled a chemlite from his waist pouch and tossed it over. It landed behind the tree. The impact activated the phosphorescence. The glow immediately caught the attention of the man, who stood up and started walking toward it. He came around the tree and stooped to pick up the chemlite. Fisher shot him in the back of t
he head.
FISHER inserted a rock screw into a crack, clipped his rope into the D ring, then rappelled down the face. Ten feet from the bottom, as he drew even with the house’s roofline, he slowly leaned backward until he was upside down.
The rear double doors were open. Through them Fisher saw what looked like a dining nook and next to it, a kitchen. Down a hallway, he could see the shadow of flickering flames dancing on a wall.
He righted himself, dropped the last few feet, then unclipped and sidestepped behind the pomegranate. He waited for a full minute, watching and listening. Nothing.
He moved to the rear doors.
From the side walkway, the gate creaked open, then clanged shut. Footfalls crunched on gravel. Fisher drew his pistol, stepped to the wall, pressed himself against it. A second later, the tip of an AK-47 appeared on the walkway, followed by a man.
“Samad?” the man whispered. “Samad—”
Fisher shot him in the side of the head, then rushed forward to catch the falling body. As he did so, the man’s left foot slid out from under him, kicking a shower of gravel against the wall. Fisher lowered him the rest of the way to the ground, holstered the pistol, and drew the SC-20. He stepped back to the doors, peeked through.
A figure darted across the nook and down the hall.
Fisher stepped through the doors, cleared the nook and kitchen, started down the hall. There were doorways to his left and right, both dark. He checked them: empty bedrooms. From the end of the hall came the sound of steel banging on stone and and image flashed through Fisher’s mind: a steel lid banging open against the stone floor. He heard fluttering papers and the whoosh of flame.
Fisher rushed down the hall. At the end, he peeked right, saw nothing. Left, a small living room with a tattered Oriental rug, floor cushions, and an open-hearth fireplace. A man was crouched before it, tossing papers into the flames.
“Stop right there!” Fisher called.
The man froze. He turned. His profile was lit by the flames. It was Abelzada.
He studied Fisher for a moment, then narrowed his eyes.
“Don’t do it!” Fisher warned.
Even as the words left his mouth, Abelzada’s hand was moving. From beside his foot, he snatched up an object, started swinging it around. The gun glinted in the fire-light. Abelzada yelled something, a cry for help.
He needed Abelzada alive, had to have him alive. But crouched as he was, there was no guarantee of a wounding shot and there was no time to change the SC-20’s setting. Fisher fired a round into the hearth beside Abelzada’s head. The man didn’t flinch, kept moving, bringing the gun around. . . .
Fisher adjusted his aim and fired.
ABELZADA rocked back on his heels, then crumpled over into the fetal position. His gun clattered to the stone floor. Fisher rushed forward and checked him. Dead. The bullet had missed Abelzada’s bicep by a half inch and entered under his armpit. It was a heart shot.
Fisher looked around, thinking, thinking. . . . The box at Abelzada’s feet was still mostly full of papers He spotted a leather satchel lying on a nearby chair. He snatched it up, stuffed the papers inside.
In the distance, he heard alarmed voices shouting in Farsi.
He keyed his subdermal. “Pike, this is Sickle, over.”
“Go ahead, Sickle.”
“Pike, I am Skyfall; I say again, Skyfall.” Translation: now operating in Escape and Evasion mode. “Home on my beacon, LZ is hot.”
“Roger, hold tight, Sickle. We are en route.”
SHANGHAI
“MESSAGE from Sarani, Uncle.”
Zhao looked up. “Yes.”
“There was an attack. Gunfire in the village.”
“How big a force?”
“Small. They estimate less than a dozen soldiers.”
“Not the Iranians, then. Abelzada?”
“Dead. He was in the process of burning material when he was shot. But if he talked—”
“He didn’t,” Zhao said, then went silent. He folded his hands on his desk and closed his eyes for a few moments. The board had changed; a piece had fallen. Zhao imagined the breach suddenly opening in his line, saw his opponent, now confident, moving ahead. Would Abelzada’s involvement be enough to unravel the strategy? he wondered. No, the Iranian government had no credibility with the rest of world. Any denial would ring hollow.
“What about Abelzada’s team?” Zhao asked.
“In place and ready.”
“Then it doesn’t matter. He’s served his purpose. In fact, this is a lucky coincidence. Do you know why?”
Xun thought for a moment. “Abelzada’s a zealot. He might have been tempted to speak out—to claim credit.”
Zhao smiled at his nephew. “Very good. I’m impressed.”
Xun smiled back. “Synchronicity, yes?”
“Perfect synchronicity.” One more move left.
53
TWO hours later, they were out of Iranian airspace and 110 miles southeast of Ashgabat, crossing the Garagum Desert on their way to Afghanistan.
Bird had been true to his promise. Eighty seconds after Fisher’s call, the Osprey had come roaring through the canyon and swept over Sarani’s rooftops, then popped up, did a tidy hover-turn over the plateau, and dropped the ramp twenty feet from Fisher.
After scooping the papers into the satchel, he’d locked the front door, planted a wall mine opposite it, then gone out the back and planted two more mines along the side walkway before scaling the bluff to await the Osprey. As he mounted the ramp, he’d heard an explosion from inside Abelzada’s house, followed by screaming, then by two more explosions from the walkway.
The Osprey lifted off and Bird went to full power, leaving the same way he came in. A half-dozen desultory rifle shots trailed after them, but Osprey had turned down the canyon and was lost in the darkness.
The trip out of Iran went smoothly. Having had a couple hours to study and refine his flight plan, Bird took them past the radar stations along the border without incident and with a minimum of beeping from the warning alarm.
Now Redding and Fisher sat in the cabin, sorting through Abelzada’s papers.
“Yeah, it’s all in Farsi,” Redding said.
“Got some Mandarin here,” Fisher replied.
He checked his watch: six hours until the Reagan’s destroyers moved into the Strait of Hormuz.
There had to be something coming, Fisher thought. Zhao had meticulously planned his game—had probably spent two or more years laying the groundwork. He wouldn’t be satisfied to simply let momentum and chance finish it for him. So what was his final move? Every base on the U.S.’s East and West Coasts were on full alert.
What was the last task Abelzada had sent his followers on?
TWO hours later they entered Afghanistan airspace. Fisher sat down at the com console and waited for his call to be patched through to Third Echelon’s Situation Room. Lambert’s face appeared on the screen. Fisher said without preamble, “Abelzada’s dead,” and then explained. “When I found him he was making a bonfire. I got most of it—a few dozen pages in Farsi; some in Mandarin. And we’ve got Marjani. I suspect with the right incentives, he’ll have more to say.”
“Stand by.” Lambert was back ten seconds later. “Our best bet for translators and interrogators is CENTAF.” This would be the U.S. Central Command’s Air Force Headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base in Doha, Qatar. “Give me your ETA; I’ll get you cleared through Reagan ’s airspace.”
Fisher changed channels, got an answer from Bird, then switched back. “We have to refuel at the Marine base in Herat. From there, it’ll be five hours.”
“I’ll make it happen,” Lambert said. “Tell Bird to find a tailwind.”
THEY didn’t catch a tailwind, but a headwind, and five hours later they were just crossing Pakistan’s Makran Coast into the Arabian Sea. Their escorts, a pair of Pakastani Air Force Mirage III’s, waggled their wings and peeled off, their navigation strobes disappearing into the night. Da
wn was still an hour away, but Fisher could see a fringe of orange on the horizon, toward India and the Himalayas.
Bird banked the Osprey west and headed into the Gulf of Oman. As they settled on the new course, Fisher walked to the opposite window and looked out. It took him a moment to find what he was looking for on the ocean’s surface: a rough concentric circle of lighted dots—the Reagan Battle Group, steaming toward the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz. Farther still, out of sight from here, the warships of DESRON 9 would already be moving through the Strait, ready to meet the Iranian Navy should Tehran decided to contest the shipping lanes. It would be a mismatch, Fisher knew, but any exchange of shots would signal the end of the parrying and jockeying and the start of war.
From the cockpit, an American voice came over the intercom, “Pike, this is CoalDust Zero-Six, come in, over.”
“Roger, CoalDust, we read you.”
“Here to escort you to Doha. Stay on current heading and switch to button five for ATAC control from Port Royal.”
“Roger,” Bird replied.
Fisher saw the wing strobes of an F-14 Tomcat slide into view out the window.
Behind him, Redding groaned. He was still sitting on the cabin floor with Abelzada’s papers spread all around him.
“Problem?” Fisher asked.
“I’ve got some Farsi and some Mandarin, but I’m not fluent enough to make any sense of this.”
“Another hour and we’ll be at Al Udeid. Let them worry about it.”
“Yeah, yeah . . . I mean, look at this here,” Redding grumbled, and held up a sheaf of papers. “Clearly, Abelzada or someone was translating this, but we’ve only got bits and pieces. For example, this character here . . .”
Fisher walked over. As he passed Marjani, who was still strapped to the bulkhead, he glared at Fisher and tried to yell through his gag. Fisher leveled a finger at him. “Mind your manners.” He squatted next to Redding. “Show me.”