Davis, on point, waved. The other team had taken up their position at the end of the runway across from the jet.
“All right, let’s move out,” Tyler told his men. “If that’s okay with you, Fisher.”
“I’m right behind you,” said the FBI agent.
Luksha heard the pop of the smoke canisters behind him. He had decided he would not run: This was, after all, Russian land, disputed or not. Nonetheless, he quickened his pace as his last two soldiers trotted behind him. Up ahead, the men had tied a rope around the American pilot and had begun to lower her down the cliff.
He grabbed the rope. An acrid taste rose from his stomach and burned his chest: He’d been defeated by unlucky circumstance, cheated, and now was being forced to run away with nothing to show for his efforts.
The man to his left slipped on the rocks. Luksha grabbed his arm, pulling him to safety. He saw the fear in the man’s eyes.
Yes,he thought to himself.
He smiled, helping the paratrooper grab on to the rocks.
“Another day,” Luksha said loudly, before starting downward.
Unable to stop herself from swinging because her hands were tied, Megan banged against the rocks so sharply she lost her breath. She wheezed as she reached the sand, collapsing into the shallow water. Someone picked her up and threw her into the boat. Voices screamed above her, people yelling at her.
She thought of the fire and smoke her uncle had flown through.Never again, she thought.
And if the Russians had the weapon too? What then?
They didn’t, though. They were leaving without it.
The boat rocked. An engine roared, then another. She thought of trying to throw herself out, then felt a sharp pain in the back of her neck as someone stepped on her as he scrambled into the boat.
Luksha did not realize until the boats had started to back away from the island that some of his men had been cut off by the Americans at the end of the runway. But he was committed now; there was no option but to retreat.
He held on to the rail at the side as the small boat began to pick up speed. The woman pilot was crumpled on the floor beside him. Luksha reached over and helped her into the hard-backed seat.
“We have much to discuss,” he told her.
Her mouth moved but she said nothing. Belatedly, Luksha realized she was trying to spit at him.
He raised his hand to slap her but started laughing at her instead.
Howe finally found the right frequency for the SF ground team as he swept across the northern side of the atoll, his speed held back so he could get a good view of what was going on. A cloud of smoke and dust separated the main groups of fighters, or at least seemed to; though he was low and slow, it was still difficult to pick out exactly what was going on. There was movement near some rocks at the base of the island; as he moved past he caught sight of a boat.
“I think you have a group escaping in a boat,” he told the ground team as he banked around.
If there was an acknowledgment, it got lost in the general scramble of things as Howe positioned for another pass. The overlong mission had heaped fatigue on the pilot’s head like steel weights; his eyes burned and even his most mechanical, practiced motion felt awkward.
“Two boats — three. Coming out of the island. There’s another there,” he told the commandos as he started toward the island.
He had his gun selected, and the cue lined up in the HUD.
“They have one of the people from the plane, a woman,” said the SF commander, taking over from the communications man.
A woman?
Megan.
The realization froze him, as if he’d been hit by a taser. His hands moved; he flew the plane past the island and into a bank.
I can kill her.
I will kill her.
Fisher scrambled to the edge of the rocks and grabbed the line. It wasn’t that far down but he didn’t want to risk jumping into the water, since he couldn’t tell how shallow it was.
He also couldn’t swim.
“Where the hell are you going?” yelled Tyler, running to catch up.
“They have my suspect,” the FBI agent told him. He pulled off his jacket and wrapped the cloth around the line to keep his hands from burning as he went down. “I want her back.”
“We’ll never catch up.”
“We will if we don’t overload the boat.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“I’ve heard that,” said Fisher, stepping off the rocks.
By the time Fisher got the boat started, Tyler and one of the SF men had made it down as well. Three others stood at the top of the rocks.
“This is all we’re taking!” yelled Fisher. “Throw down the megaphone.”
“What?” shouted one of the men.
“The loudspeaker!”
Fisher grabbed at the megaphone as it flew through the air. He deflected it into the water but managed to grab it before it sank, just as the boat started in pursuit of the Russians. He dumped the water out and tested it. The squawk seemed a little off-key but it was working.
“You really think they’re going to stop?” Tyler asked him.
“If we threaten them, they may throw her overboard.”
“How are we going to threaten them?”
Fisher thumbed toward the sky.
“We don’t have a radio with us to order in a strike,” said Tyler.
“You gonna tell them?”
Tyler nodded. “We’ll take this as far as we can,” he said. “But we’re not going to get ourselves killed.”
“Sounds like a plan. Want a cigarette?”
“The Russians are not important,” Gorman told Howe. “We have the laser. We have Navy assets en route and we’re landing a fresh team on the island. You can let them go.”
“Tyler and Fisher are in pursuit,” Howe told her, relaying the word the SF people had sent. “The Russians have at least one of the aircraft’s crew members.”
“He’s not important,” said Gorman. “We’re trying to reach Fisher and tell him to turn back. Leave them.”
Howe’s radar indicated that there was a helicopter approaching from the northwest. The F-15s had also spotted it; they kicked toward it to check it out.
He could shoot up the boats, no problem. At this point no one was going to question what happened. The whole scrum was too confusing, too fluid.
No one would criticize him for killing a traitor. On the contrary, Fisher and the others were trying to stop her. He was completely justified.
The boat sat in the center of the target box, held there by the computer. He could kill the bitch, have revenge or whatever it was — vent his rage.
She had betrayed his country and everything he believed in.
She had betrayed him.
He pushed his side stick, closing in.
He really did love her, in ways he hadn’t understood at the time. And now it was gone. It had shot past him, the way a meteor traveled once through the atmosphere and burned up.
His finger rested lightly on the gun trigger. But something held it back.
Love? Duty? Fear?
He couldn’t sort it out. He had loved her, and then hated her, and now, as his plane rushed toward the earth, he decided — unconsciously, without words, with thoughts that were fragmentary and fleeting — that it was what he had thought that mattered, and what he did now that was the important thing. Not Megan: She had made her choice; she was gone. Tearing up the boat, killing her — that wasn’t where his duty lie. Revenge, anger — they weren’t who he was or who he would be.