“Okay, looping right. Transponder off,” the pilot commanded.
The copilot killed power to transponder one. “Powered off. We’re invisible.” That got Moose Jaw’s attention.
“Mike Foxtrot, Moose Jaw. Say altitude, over,” the voice commanded more crisply. Then a second call.
The Falcon completed its northern loop and settled down on a course of two-two-five. The ground below was flat, and the pilot was tempted to reduce altitude to five hundred feet but decided against it. No need. As planned, the aircraft had just evaporated off the Moose Jaw radar.
“Mike Foxtrot, Moose Jaw. Say altitude, over!”
“Sounds excited,” the copilot observed.
“I don’t blame him.”
The transponder they’d just shut down was for another plane entirely, probably parked in its hangar outside Söderhamn, Sweden. This flight was costing their charter party seventy thousand extra euros, but the Swiss flight crew understood about making money, and they weren’t flying drugs or anything like that. Money or not, that sort of cargo was not worth the trouble.
Moose Jaw was forty miles behind them now, and dwindling at seven miles per minute, according to the plane’s Doppler radar. The pilot adjusted his yoke to compensate for the cross-wind. The computer by his right knee would compute for drift, and the computer knew exactly where they were going.
Part of the way, anyway.
3
IT LOOKED DIFFERENT than it had in the imagery-they always did-but they were in the right place, that was for sure. He felt his exhaustion drain away, replaced by focused anticipation.
Ten weeks earlier a CIA satellite had tapped into a radio transmission here, and another had taken a photo, which Driscoll now had in his pocket. This was it, no question. A triangular formation of rocks over the top identified the spot. It wasn’t decoration, despite its man-made appearance, but rather something left behind by the last set of glaciers that had ground their way through this valley God knew how many thousands of years ago. Probably the same meltwater that had carved the triangle had helped bore out the cave. Or however caves were formed. Driscoll didn’t know, and didn’t especially care. Some of them were pretty deep, some hundreds of meters deep, perfect safe holes to hide in. But this one had originated a radio signal. And that made it special. Special as hell. It had taken Washington and Langley more than a week to localize this place, but they’d been oh-so-careful following it up. Almost nobody knew about this mission. Fewer than thirty people in total, and most of those were at Fort Benning. Where the NCO club was. Where he and his team would return in less than forty-eight hours. God willing-inshallah, as they said locally. Not his religion, but the sentiment made sense. Driscoll was a Methodist, though that didn’t keep him from having the occasional beer. Mostly he was a soldier.
Okay, how do we do this? he asked himself. Hard and fast, of course, but how to do it hard and fast? He was carrying half a dozen grenades. Three real ones and three M84 flashbangs. The latter were sheathed in plastic instead of steel, heavy on noise-making explosives, made from some kind of mix of magnesium and ammonium to make it seem as though the surface of the sun had paid an unexpected visit, to dazzle and blind anyone nearby. Again, the chemistry and physics of the things didn’t really concern him. They worked damned well, and that was what counted.
The Rangers were not in the business of fair fights. This was combat operations, not the Olympic Games. They might apply first aid to whatever bad guys survived, but that was as far as it went, and only then because survivors tended to be somewhat more talkative than the dead. Driscoll peered again at the cave’s entrance. Somebody had stood right in that spot to make his satellite phone call, and a RHYTHM e-lint satellite had copied it, and a KEYHOLE satellite had marked the location, and their mission had been authorized by SOCOM himself. He stood still, next to a large rock, close enough that his silhouette would blend with it. No evident movement inside. He wasn’t surprised. Even terrorists had to sleep. And that worked for him. Just fine, in fact. Ten meters. He approached with movements that would have appeared comical to the uninitiated, exaggerated straight-up-and-down movements of his feet and lower legs, carefully avoiding loose stones. Then he got there. Dropped to one knee and looked inside. He glanced over his shoulder to ensure that the rest of the team wasn’t bunching up. No worries there. Still, Driscoll felt the flutter of apprehension in his belly. Or was it fear? Fear of screwing the pooch, fear of repeating history. Fear of getting men killed.
A year earlier in Iraq, Captain Wilson’s predecessor, a green second lieutenant, had planned a mission-a straightforward insurgent hunt along the southern shores of Buhayrat (Lake) Saddam, north of Mosel-and Driscoll had concurred. Problem was, the young lieutenant was more interested in filing a glowing report than he was in the safety of his Rangers. Against Driscoll’s advice and with night falling, he’d split the team to flank a bunker complex, but as was their tendency, the hastily redrawn plan didn’t survive its first contact with the enemy-in this case, a company-sized gathering of Saddam ex-army loyalists who encircled and butchered the young lieutenant’s fire team before turning their attention on Driscoll and his men. The fighting withdrawal had taken most of the night, until finally Driscoll and three others made their way back across the Tigris and within range of a firebase.
Driscoll had known the lieutenant’s plan was a disaster in the making. But had he argued strongly enough against it? If he’d pushed it… Well. This was the question that had haunted him for the past year. And now here again in Indian country, but this time all the decisions-good, bad, disastrous-were all his own.
Eye on the ball, Driscoll commanded himself. Head back in the game.
He took another step forward. Still nothing ahead. The Pashto people might be tough-they damned well were tough, Driscoll had learned-but they hadn’t been trained beyond how to point a rifle and pull the trigger. There should have been somebody in the cave entrance doing overwatch. He saw some cigarette butts nearby. Maybe a sentry had been here and run out of smokes. Bad habit, Gomer, Driscoll thought. Bad fieldcraft. Slowly, carefully, he eased inside. His night-vision goggles were a godsend. The cave was straight for about fifteen meters, rough sides, mostly oval-shaped in cross-section. No lights. Not even a candle, but he could see a right turn coming, so Driscoll kept his eyes tuned for light. The cave floor was devoid of clutter. That told the sergeant much: Somebody lived here. They’d been given solid information. Will miracles never cease? Driscoll thought. As often as not, these hunting expeditions turned up nothing but an empty hidey-hole and a bunch of pissed-off Rangers holding their own dicks.
Maybe the right cave? He didn’t often allow himself to think such thoughts. Wouldn’t that be something? Driscoll thought for a bare instant. Big prize, this one. He set the thought aside. The size of the prize didn’t change how they did their jobs.
The soles of his boots were flexible. Easier on his feet, but more important, quiet. He tucked his M4 carbine in close to his shoulder. He’d left his backpack outside. No need for additional weight or bulk inside the cave. Driscoll was not overly big. A hair under six feet, he weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, lean and tough, his blue eyes tracing forward. He had two soldiers a few meters behind him, and while they heard his breathing over the radio links they all carried, he didn’t speak a word. Just hand signals, which were in any case data-dense in their content.