"Morning, Ben," Fisher said pleasantly.
"Uh . . . morning sir."
"He'll tell us what we're looking at," Grimsdottir said. "Lambert and Redding are here, too."
Lambert said, "Sam, it looks like Pak's prediction was dead-on. They're mobilizing everything in the area. Right now it's about a company's worth--maybe a hundred fifty men. On the plus side, they're not organized. I think your ruse at the checkpoint might buy you more time than we'd thought. We're seeing a good-size cluster of vehicles around the crash."
After dispatching Pak, Fisher had done a series of things in short order: picked up the shell casings he'd expended, stripped Pak's car of its license plate and any documentation inside, cut Pak's hands free of the wheel and pocketed the flexicuffs, maneuvered the dead soldiers, including their rifles, back to the jeep and arranged them as they'd arrived, then plucked a pair of grenades off one of their belts and pushed the jeep forward until it rolled down the embankment and bumped into Pak's door.
He'd then stepped back to check his handiwork. Satisfied, he'd shouldered his rucksack, then pulled and popped the grenades and dropped one each into the jeep's and Mercedes's gas tanks.
He was fifty yards away, crouched in the undergrowth, when the explosion turned the sky orange.
"Long shot as it is," Fisher said now, "with luck it'll take them a while to figure out it was more than an accident. With even more luck, they won't figure it out, but I'm not counting on that."
"Probably wise," Lambert said. "You've made good time. Three miles in twenty-two minutes."
Fisher had taken a previous five-minute break to strip out of his civilian clothes, bury them, and slip into his tac suit and gear. Tactically, the change had of course made sense, but on an intangible but no less important level, it had also helped him switch mental gears. He was on the run, deep inside Indian country. This was his element.
"Getting old," Fisher said. "Used to be a little faster."
Fisher checked his watch, then looked eastward. The horizon was fringed with orange light, but directly above him the sky was swollen with rain clouds. Daylight was fifty minutes away. He needed to find a bolt-hole.
"Any ideas?" Fisher asked. "I need to disappear in the next thirty minutes."
"We're looking," Grimsdottir said.
Ben's voice came on the line. "Sir, within a quarter mile of you--to the east and west--are two SAM sites," he said, referring to surface-to-air missiles. "The normal complement for these are twelve men apiece. They're not hardened soldiers, but I'd still give them a wide berth. To the south, where you just came from, is that NKWP retreat and checkpoint, another SAM site, a radar station, and a supply depot. To the north, where Miss Grimsdottir tells me you're headed, are some empty artillery positions--basically crescent-shaped sandbag revetments; a barracks, which we believe is only partially manned; and an abandoned sewage disposal plant."
"How far?" Fisher asked.
"Half a mile."
"Will is downloading a higher-resolution annotated map to your OPSAT right now," Lambert said.
Twenty seconds later it was on Fisher's screen. He studied it. Three hundred yards to the west of his position, at the end of the drainage ditch in which he lay, was a grove of trees running from north to south.
"What is that?" he asked.
"Pecan orchard," replied Ben. "It runs north for about a mile, right past the sewage plant."
"My kind of place," Fisher said. "I'm moving."
TWENTYminutes later, having picked his way from tree to tree through the pecan grove, Fisher dropped to his belly in the tall grass that bordered the sewage plant's fence. He switched his goggles first to NV, then infrared, scanning the plant's outbuildings and roads for activity. The plant, which roughly covered a square mile, was laid out in an L-shape, with a pair of rectangular Quonset hut-style buildings aligned on each arm of the L and a filtration pond situated between them. Running into the pond on a raised, cross-girdered platform was a six-foot-diameter sewage pipe.
He saw neither movement nor signs of habitation on the grounds. No lights, no cars. He zoomed in on one of the buildings. The windows were covered in an even layer of dust and grime. He studied the dirt parking lot and was about to zoom back out when something caught his eye: a pattern in the parking lot's dirt.
"Grim, do we have any data on the weather around here? Specifically, wind patterns."
"Hold on," Grimsdottir said. She came back thirty seconds later. "This time of year, steady winds; northerly; average speed, about twenty miles an hour."
"Bingo," Fisher muttered.
"What's that?"
"Tell you later." Fisher flipped a switch on his goggles, linking them to his OPSAT. "Are you seeing this?" he asked.
"We see it," Lambert replied. "Bad feeling about those buildings, Sam."
"I agree. They'll eventually get to them. Grim, how long has this plant been abandoned?"
"Checking . . . Best guess, about two years. Why?"
"The sewage pipe running into the filtration pool . . . Just wondering how dry it's going to be."
There was a long pause, then Grimsdottir said, "Oh, boy. Better you than me."
"Lamb?"
"I agree. It's your best bet, Sam."
"Okay, I'm moving again."
RACINGthe coming dawn, Fisher scaled the fence and sprinted, hunched over, across the open ground to the edge of the parking lot, where he crouched down. He could now see the windblown streaks in the dirt lot. But in lee of the buildings, along their southern walls, the dirt showed no streaks. The plan Fisher had been contemplating solidified in his mind.
He sprinted across the lot to the nearest building's long wall and knelt at a mullioned window. He looked over his shoulder. Perfect. Where he'd passed over ground not shielded by the buildings, his footprints were clearly outlined in the dirt. Before long, with the coming of daylight, the wind would come up and hopefully wipe them clean.
Fisher drew the Sykes from its sheath and smacked the handle against the glass. The mullioned square shattered. Fisher reached through the opening, unlatched the window, and slid it up. He crawled through, closed the window behind him, and looked around. The building's interior was dominated by three open, steel-sided storage pools topped by a catwalk.
He found what he needed almost immediately. Fisher ran forward, ducked between two of the pools, then to the opposite wall, where he crouched before a window. He unlatched the window, slid it up a half inch, then back-stepped to the ladder, carefully stepping in his own footprints.
Fisher climbed the ladder to the catwalk and sprinted down its length to the far wall and the opposite ladder. Where the catwalk met the wall, there was a waist-high railing; above this, a louvered vent leading to the outside.
Fisher climbed the railing and balanced himself on the top rung as he wrestled the vent free from the wall. He placed the vent beside him on the railing so it was balanced against the wall, then pulled from one of his waist pouches a six-foot length of parachute cord. He secured one end to one of the vent's louvers, the other to his ankle.
Next he boosted himself in the opening, rolled onto his back, and wriggled through until he was suspended, his torso outside, his legs inside. A few feet above his head was the roof's peak. He grabbed the edge with both hands, then gradually drew his legs through the vent and slowly let them drop until the vent cover, still attached to his ankle, popped back into the opening. He gave the cord a firm tug to ensure the vent was locked into place, then released his right hand from the roof and undid the knot.