“So, Bird, is that what you call a jink?” Fisher called.
“No, son, that’s a super jink. Walk in the park.”
“Last radar station dead ahead, one mile,” Redding called.
Fisher glanced at the monitor. The Osprey was flying low and level over a boulder-strewn valley floor. The altitude gauge read eighteen feet. The radar alarm chirped, then went silent for a few seconds, then chirped again.
“We’re skimming below the detection nadir,” Redding announced. “The waves are skipping along the fuselage.”
“Nadir?” Sandy repeated. “Been reading the dictionary again, Will?”
“It means—”
“I know what it means, you dummy.”
“Gimme steering,” Bird called. “The ground is sloping up. They’re gonna paint us.”
“Hard right turn in seven seconds,” Redding replied. “Course zero-nine-eight.”
“I don’t see anything!” Sandy called.
“It’s a gorge. Trust me, it’s there.”
“How wide?”
“Wide enough. Stand by. . . . Three . . . two . . . one, now!”
REDDINGwas 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. . . .”
HEset 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.”
FISHERtrotted 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 feeclass="underline" 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
HISoption 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.
HISpath 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.