“All right. You’re going to have to assume — we have to assume — that anyone you see right now is the enemy.Anyone. We’re going to try to get your location; I think we’re going to be able to get it. The NSA has been looking for your signal, so I’m sure we’re going to get it; I just haven’t been able to get them yet. I don’t want your battery to die, though. Can you get somewhere safe — somewhere we could send in a team and find you?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, I have to. Yeah.”
“A good-sized field, someplace in the open, but with a place you could hide….”
McIntyre started to laugh. “I’ll just check the Michelin guide.”
Brott started to apologize, but McIntyre held the phone down; he heard the truck downshift again, the motor revving as it started up opposite him.
“Look, I don’t think this is a good place. I’m going to move,” he told him.
“Don’t hang up yet,” said Brott. “I want to make sure I have the location.”
“I have to save the battery,” McIntyre told him. If they had been looking for him, the NSA had more than enough to find him now. “I’ll call in an hour.”
“McIntyre, listen—”
He hit the End button, then got up and began running toward a low thicket he’d seen to his left.
Chapter 10
Fisher sat on the long canvas bench, staring at the pile of retrieved aircraft remains in the center of the Osprey and wondering if the odds of finding a trace of an explosive could be measured in the billions or simply the millions.
Millions, he decided. But it was also likely that whoever had worked this out had probably also been smart enough to set it up in a way that would be hard to pin down, maybe making the fuel do most of the work.
He had the boot and the cloth sample, which appeared to contain a hair. Could they trust a DNA sample?
His cell phone began vibrating. Fisher took it out of his pocket.
“Fisher.”
“Mr. Fisher, this is Matt Firenze.”
“Hey, Doc, whatcha got?”
“Well, we took apart the environmental control system, and there it was.”
“Back up. What are we talking about?”
“It’s like a Trojan Horse virus. Actually, we didn’t find the code, but we found that something had erased something, and we figure that’s where it has to be. We couldn’t duplicate it on the bench units. It had to be there. We have a model—”
Fisher let the boy genius explain how he thought a rogue program could have caused a power surge in the circuitry connected to the shared radar sections and at the same time knocked out the controls. It was rather convoluted, but the agent knew better than to cut off a scientist mid-theorem.
“It’s just a spike, a temporary hit,” concluded Firenze, “and that fits with what happened.”
“Who developed that system?”
“It was purpose-built for this model of the plane,” said Firenze. “I think Carie Electro Controls. But it could have been Jolice too.”
“Jolice?”
“They have a lot of little divisions and things. It’s hard sometimes to keep them straight.”
“They owned by Ferrone?”
“No, it’s the other way around, I think,” said the scientist. “I think Jolice is the bigger company.”
“Why don’t you work for them?” Fisher asked Firenze, whom the records had shown was working on the project under a special contract with the Air Force.
“Jolice, NADT, all those people — they make you rich, but then they figure they own you,” said Firenze.
“I know how that goes,” said Fisher. “Except for the rich part.”
Chapter 11
McIntyre watched the wheels of the truck bounce up the trail. He could tell it was something small and relatively old, but he was too afraid to rise and get a good view of it. When he was sure it had passed, he sat up and tried to take stock of his situation.
They’d be working on finding him. The NSA would have the location of his transmission by now. But could they do anything about it? He was half a world away.
There’d be Navy units in the Indian Ocean. Somebody could come up and get him.
It might mean staying another night at least. He’d have to find a place to hide.
Something to eat would be good too. And drink.
McIntyre rose and shouldered his guns, then began walking toward the road, going in the direction the truck had come from. It took only a few minutes to reach the nearest curve, which made its way across a notch on the side of a series of hills. There was a switchback in the distance, but he couldn’t tell if the one-and-a-half-lane pressed-chip-and-tar road led to it or not.
He began to walk. Two or three minutes later he heard a vehicle coming up behind him. There were some trees a short distance away and he managed to get to them before the truck passed. It was a pickup, and it moved at a pretty good clip. Just as he started out from behind the tree he heard another truck. He slid down, watching a military vehicle speed past. It was a Russian-made KAMAZ 6x4, or possibly an Indian knockoff. The six-wheeled truck had a canvas backing, the kind that might be used for light cargo or soldiers, but what it was loaded with or even if it was loaded at all he couldn’t see.
Was it even Indian? He might actually be over the line in Pakistan. The border in Kashmir wasn’t very well defined, and now there might not be a line at all.
McIntyre walked for a long while, his head gradually stooping closer to the ground. Finally he heard noises. Thinking it was another truck, he climbed over the stones at the side of the road and hid in a small depression a short distance away. Minutes passed without anything appearing, and he finally realized the sound wasn’t getting any louder. It seemed to be an engine of some sort, but it was standing still.
A large boulder stood on the slope across the road from him. Thinking it might give him a vantage to see ahead, he slipped back across the road and clambered up the slope. But the rock was higher than he’d thought, and tired and battered as he was, he couldn’t get to the top, not even when he put down the rifles. He settled for sidestepping across the slope below it, pushing through the bushes to see.
Something orange flashed in the distance.
A tiger.
He reached for a rifle, realizing belatedly that he had left them on the ground. He took a step and then the tiger sprang forward, charging him from the distance.
McIntyre tried to run but quickly lost his balance and slid down the rocks. He covered his head, cowering against the dirt and scrubby vegetation, waiting to be torn apart.
Except that he wasn’t; the tiger had stayed where it was.
It wasn’t a tiger. There were no tigers here, or other large cats; even the snow leopards had long ago fled, leaving man as the only predator. The orange was a piece of cloth, and as he walked toward it he realized it wasn’t even orange but yellow. It was draped over a bush, and it wasn’t moving.
McIntyre looked past the cloth and saw a building in the distance, set back near a clearing. This, he thought, might be a good place to arrange the pickup, though he’d have to scout it first, see if there were people nearby. He checked his watch: He had a half hour left before he was supposed to call.
The bushes in the back didn’t provide much cover, but the building looked run-down and possibly abandoned. McIntyre gathered his courage and walked down a shallow slope toward what seemed to be the back or a side wall, studying two large metal housings on the roof. There was no sound, and he could see no vehicles nearby. The highway swung around somewhere ahead, passing in front of the building.
The door must be on that side. Here there were only windows, one boarded, the other’s glass covered with a thick layer of grime.