The waiter said something to the cook. They spoke for a few minutes.
“No. There is no vent here — this is a closet,” said the waiter finally. “In the kitchen — over the range. That is where the ventilation is.”
“Is it wide enough for someone to get through?” asked Zen.
“You’re not thinking of climbing through, are you?” asked Lynch.
“I was thinking someone with legs would be more useful,” said Zen.
“Kess could fit,” said the waiter. “She’s thin.”
Zen glanced at her. She was fairly small.
“The shaft goes to the second floor and out,” continued the waiter, translating for the chef. “There are two large fans at the side, on the wall where the vent opens. She would have to push them out.”
“Could she?” asked Zen.
He turned toward the young woman. It was too dark to see much of her face.
“Do you think you can climb through?” he asked.
“I will try.”
“To do this, she would have to be in the kitchen,” said the waiter.
“How do we get in the kitchen?” asked Lynch. “The door is locked.”
“We’ll have to get them to open it,” said Zen.
72
Danny turned on his sat phone as soon as they landed, checking to see if Zen had replied to his message.
He hadn’t.
He decided to try him by phone. He punched in the number and waited for the call to connect, watching out the window as the plane trundled toward the terminal.
The call was just about to go to voice mail when the line clicked open.
“Zen?” said Danny. “Jeff — are you there? Zen? Yo, Zen?”
There was no answer. But there was definitely someone on the line.
“Zen? Hey, it’s Danny Freah. What do we have, a bad connection? Are you there? Zen?”
“Who are you looking for?” said the voice.
“Zen. I—”
The line clicked dead.
Danny looked at the phone, making sure the preset number had dialed correctly. It had. He tried again. This time it went to voice mail.
What the hell was going on? Had the lines crossed?
He gave another call. This time someone picked up, but there was no answer.
“Zen? Jeff? Zen?”
It clicked off.
The plane had stopped. The other passengers were starting to get off. Danny remained in his seat, punching the quick dial to get the night operator who handled Whiplash operations.
“I know it’s pretty late over there,” he told her when she came on the line. “But I want to talk to Ms. Stockard. Or Reid. Can you wake one of them up?”
“Ms. Stockard is in Prague,” said the operator. “At Kbley Airport. She just landed.”
“She did? Let me talk to her. Right away.”
73
Nuri’s head was pounding and his lungs felt as if they were coated with dirt. His clothes were caked with grit. But his fun time in the hole did bring one positive: he was wide-awake. Very, very awake, and thirsting for revenge.
The UAVs patrolling the area had returned to their base, but the Rattlesnakes were still at the staging area they had used a few miles away. After telling the others he was all right, Nuri called Boston, who was overseeing the load-out.
“I can have them in the air in ten minutes,” promised Boston. “We just have to get them off the pallet under the blimp.”
“Do it,” said Nuri.
Flash had left on the earlier blimp to supervise the load-out on the other end. Nuri hadn’t been trained to handle the aircraft directly, so Boston channeled control through MY-PID. He was as good as his word — Nuri heard the aircraft overhead before he reached the house.
The Moldovan captain in charge of the local security force wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. All he knew was that the deputy minister had just reamed him out, told him there were traitors in the force, and ordered him to secure the farm. Nuri filled in some of the blanks quickly, describing the men and the box he was looking for. Then he turned his attention to the Rattlesnakes, which were feeding their infrared scans to MY-PID.
The first thing he noticed on the small screen of his control unit was a car about a mile south, traveling at close to ninety kilometers.
“Stop the vehicle,” he told MY-PID.
The Rattlesnakes swooped toward it. One buzzed the vehicle from behind, then turned sharply in front of it, pivoting to spin its nose — and the Gatling gun there — directly toward the windshield. The other aircraft came at the car from the side, passing so close to the vehicle that its skid scraped the roof. The maneuvers had the desired effect — the driver turned the wheel hard, pushing the car off the side of the road and into the woods, where it hit a tree.
Nuri watched on the screen as the driver stumbled out of the car. It was a woman, not one of the guards.
An accomplice?
It took him a few minutes to explain where the vehicle was to the Moldovans. MY-PID, meanwhile, sent one of the helicopters back to continue searching the farm, while the other one orbited the wrecked car.
By now the Moldovans had tightened their line around the farm. It didn’t appear anyone was hiding on the property. But Nuri assumed that the two men who had attacked him and taken the box would blend in easily with the others — they were, after all, policemen just like the rest.
The captain had another theory: the men weren’t policemen at all, but imposters who had come in with the others. Insisting they weren’t among his men, he suggested they might be hiding in the trunk or somewhere else on the post.
“We are checking to see who left their post,” said the Moldovan. “So far we have not found anyone who was out of place. So, these must have been imposters.”
“Maybe,” said Nuri.
“Let us talk to the prisoner.” The captain gestured toward the driveway, where one of his cars was waiting. Nuri, a little wary, got in.
“MY-PID — keep watching the area,” he told the computer. “If anyone else leaves, let me know — and follow them with one of the Rattlesnakes.”
“Command accepted.”
Then he had another idea.
“Tell the people at the car scene that I’m coming, too,” he told the captain.
“Why?”
“Try it.”
The Moldovan gave the order.
Nuri watched on the small screen. Six officers had responded. They had the driver in custody and were seeing to her injuries. Two were searching the car. Suddenly they stopped searching and headed for one of the police SUVs.
“Flash — stop the police vehicle near the accident scene.”
“Identify vehicle,” said MY-PID.
“The one that’s moving, damn it.”
“Command unknown.”
“The SUV in the southwest.” Nuri thumbed up the grid markers. “Grid AB–23. Damn it. Stop it — don’t use weapons. No weapons. I want to talk to those bastards.”
And punch each one in the face when he was done. Maybe before that.
The captain was on the radio, barking his own commands. Their driver stepped on the gas, hurrying toward the stopped vehicle. He swerved down the road so sharply that Nuri thought they were going to spin off the road.
Someone ahead started shooting — a fireball shot up from around the bend.
“What the hell?” shouted Nuri.
“Unknown command,” responded MY-PID.
They skidded to a stop a few meters from the scene. The SUV was on fire, flames shooting in all directions.
Nuri got out of the car. He didn’t mind the fact that the bastards were burning to death — that part he liked. But the box was probably burning with them.