At lower elevations, the Tian Shan Mountains were alpine-esque with gently rolling hills and valleys covered in a lush blanket of green interspersed with wildflowers, but up here, amid the jagged granite peaks, towering spires, and plunging cliffs, the Tian Shan's terrain was as brutal as any Fisher had encountered. Then again, he thought, simply getting here had proved a tall--and costly--order all by itself.
THEmissile had struck the Dakota's fuselage just below and behind the port engine, shearing off the wing and most of the tail capsule. The plane had immediately tipped over as the pilot and copilot had tried to regain level, but it was a lost cause. As the Dakota, smoking and shuddering, crossed over the escarpment and into the valley beyond, the pilot ordered Fisher and the copilot out, then followed them moments later as the Dakota nosed over and spiraled into a granite ice-veined spire jutting from one of the peaks.
Fisher's chute, a ram-air parafoil, had opened seconds after he leapt from the plane, but the pilot and copilot, equipped with old American MC1-1C series round parachutes, dropped like stones and weren't able to deploy in time. Gliding above them, Fisher watched in horror as they spiraled and tumbled, their chutes only partially inflated, into the spire a few hundred feet below the Dakota's impact point.
Once on the ground, Fisher briefly considered searching for them but reluctantly dismissed the idea; neither man would have survived the impact, let alone the fall down the mountainside. He'd gathered his parafoil, buried it, gave a silent thanks to the two pilots, and set off, heading east at as much of a sprint as the terrain would allow, hoping to put as much distance as he could between himself and the plane. However unlikely it was that whoever had shot down the Dakota would send searchers, Fisher didn't want to take the chance.
After two hours, having gained a couple thousand feet from the crash site, he'd stopped and studied the valley below. He took his time, looking for the slightest sign that he'd been followed. He saw none, so he set off again, this time on a curving course that took him south and west, back toward Omurbai's prison.
NOW,four hours from the crash site, he pulled out his binoculars and scanned the trail ahead, which wound its way down the boulder-littered mountainside to a shallow draw that ran east for two miles and terminated at a two-hundred-foot vertical escarpment overlooking Omurbai's mountain prison, which had no name as far as Grimsdottir could tell, and which sat at the foot of the escarpment a quarter mile from the lake.
In his ear came Grimsdottir's voice. "Sam, you there?"
"I'm here."
"You sound close."
"I'm about a mile and a half above sea level. That's got to help."
"I have some more info for you. Omurbai's prison has a long history. It's actually a fortified outpost that he revamped. In 1876, when the Russians invaded Kyrgyzstan and took it from the Quqon Khanate, they knew they were going to have a hard time with a multitude of tribes and warlords, so they built these outposts all over the country and garrisoned troops there to put down rebellions and general mischief."
Fisher could see it. From the satellite photos, the compound looked more like a Wild West cavalry fort than a prison, with high stone walls and rough mud-and-grass brick buildings. Most of the roofs appeared new, however, and were made from slate. Short wooden bridges connected each building's roof to the fighting catwalk that lined the interior side of the fort's stone walls. Fisher assumed that during battle the Russian soldiers would have climbed through some unseen trap in each building's roof, then crossed the bridge to take up defensive positions along the wall.
"Don't suppose you happened upon some Imperial Russian blueprints of the place, did you?" Fisher asked.
"After a fashion, I did," Grimsdottir replied. "Found a professor in Prague who wrote a book on Russia's time in Kyrgyzstan. He says most of the forts were constructed on three levels: the ground level, with bunkerlike buildings inside the walls, and two subterranean levels, the second for living spaces and stores, the lowermost for stables. In his book, he talked about--"
"You read it?" Fisher asked, amazed.
"Searched it. It's in e-book format on the university's website. He said the Russians were fond of a tactical trick they used on the natives laying siege to the fort: a flanking cavalry attack launched from a secret passage--"
"Secret passage,"Fisher said. "One of my favorite phrases."
"How well I know. Anyway, if this fort is anything like the others the Russians built there, the tunnel would lead away from the underground stables and come up about a hundred feet away--probably tucked into a stand of trees nearby. The passage wouldn't be very big. Just tall and wide enough to accommodate a horse and rider on foot."
"I'll look around. After a hundred and thirty years, I'm not counting on it, though."
"Worth a look. Okay, here's the colonel."
Lambert came on the line. "Sam, DOORSTOP is under way. The lead Apaches should be hitting Bishkek right now."
"Any luck prying anyone loose to send my way?"
"Sorry, no. We're spread paper thin as it is. The Joint Chiefs are confident we can take Bishkek, but holding it for any length of time is another thing."
"Understood," said Fisher. "I'm about two hours out. I'll call when--if--we find our girl."
"Luck," Lambert said.
NINETYminutes later, Fisher jogged over a rise, then trotted to a stop, his boots crunching and sliding on the scree. A few hundred yards ahead lay the edge of the cliff. He took his time now, moving on flat feet from boulder to boulder until he was within fifty yards of the edge. He crouched down and did an NV/IR scan. There was nothing moving, nothing visible, just the cool blue background of the rocks interspersed with the pale yellows of the still-warm foliage. He walked up a few feet from the edge, then dropped flat and crawled forward.
Two hundred feet below him, sitting a mere thirty feet from the face of the escarpment, was Omurbai's prison. It sat in a shallow draw above the lake, bracketed on the east and west by pine forests. As it appeared on the satellite photo, the compound was laid out as a square, with the brick buildings lining the perimeter of the wall and a single fifty-foot guard tower rising from the center. Two olive drab trucks were parked in the compound, one beside the guard tower, the other backed up to one of the buildings. A third vehicle, this tracked like a tank and parked alongside the first truck, answered a question Fisher had been pondering: What had taken the shot at the Dakota?
It was an SA-13 Gopher mobile SAM system. It carried Strela-10 missiles with infrared guidance systems and a ten-kilometer range. The Dakota had never had a chance.
Beyond the compound, a mile to the south, he could see the shore of Issyk Kul, its surface glass-flat and black, a perfect mirror for the star-sprinkled sky above. A narrow dirt road paralleled the shore, disappearing to the east and west. Fisher tracked it until he saw what he wanted: a fork in the road that wound up the hillside and ended at the fort's front gate.
Fisher switched his goggles to IR, scanned the grounds, then zoomed in on the guard tower until it filled his vision.
There you are. . .