The Tian Shan, which was part of the same Himalayan orogenic belt that included Everest and K2, encompassed an enormous swath of the earth, from the Takla Makan desert in the border region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur region of western China, all the way south to the Pamir Mountains, and into Xinjiang, northern Pakistan, and Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush.
True to her word, twenty minutes later Grimsdottir called back with his marching orders. Fisher had gathered his gear, caught a ride from the base commander’s driver, who drove him to the tarmac.
Misawa was the home of the Thirty-fifth Fighter Wing, which flew two squadrons of the Block 50 model F-16CJ and F-16DJ Fighting Falcons, which is what sat fully prepped and waiting when Fisher stepped out of the car. Two minutes later he was suited up and bundled into the Falcon’s rear seat.
The distance from Misawa to Peshawar, Pakistan — skirting China — was just shy of 5,800 miles, but with the Falcon’s conformal fuel tanks and running at twice its normal cruising speed, it took only one midair refueling from a KC-135 Stratotanker over the Pacific Ocean. Six hours after he took off, Fisher touched down at Peshawar air base, where he was met by the base commander’s chief of staff, a major, who took him to a hangar. Inside was a Douglas DC-3 Dakota transport plane. Decommissioned from the U.S. Air Force in the fifties, the first Dakotas came off the line in 1935. From what vintage this one hailed, Fisher had no idea, but best case, he was looking at a sixty-year-old aircraft. It looked well maintained, but he was reluctant to get any closer lest he notice something untoward.
“This is it, huh?” Fisher asked.
“Yes, sir, I’m sorry, but our forces are… otherwise engaged.”
Fisher understood. The Taliban, hiding and fighting in Afghanistan’s rugged mountain country, was using the turmoil in Kyrgyzstan to mount fresh offensives against Kabul, as well as cross-border raids into Pakistan’s northwest frontier. Like the U.S. military, Pakistan had little to spare for the effort in Kyrgyzstan.
“It will get you to your drop zone,” the major said with a smile. “Our special forces troops often use it on training missions. She’s well equipped, despite her appearance. And I can assure you the door is perfectly good for jumping out of.”
Though slow and lumbering, the Dakota had faithfully flown him north out of Pakistani airspace, over Tajikistan, then here, the southern fringe of the Tian Shan Mountain Range.
A voice came through Fisher’s headset: “Sir, we are approaching the area.”
“On my way.”
Fisher unbuckled himself and walked hunched over to the cockpit opening, where he knelt down between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. Both men were Pakistan Air Force reserve officers, called to duty especially for this mission.
The copilot jerked his thumb out the side window, which had been scraped free of frost. “There,” he called over the engine noise.
Fisher stood up and leaned forward over the man’s shoulder. Twenty thousand feet below and to the left he could see the dark blue, rounded rectangular shape of Issyk Kul, a lake that ran through the Tian Shan roughly northeast to southwest for nearly 120 miles. Sitting at an altitude of 5,200 feet, Issyk Kul was one of the world’s deepest mountain lakes at nearly 2,300 feet — nearly half a mile.
His destination, Omurbai’s secret mountain prison, was located a mile from the lake’s northeastern shore.
“Can you give me a flyover?” Fisher asked.
“No problem.”
Seven minutes later, the Dakota had dropped to eight thousand feet in a wide spiral that aligned the nose with the lake’s northern shoreline, which was covered in alpine meadow grasses and interspersed with rock outcroppings and stands of evergreen trees. Inland, ranging from a half mile to a mile from the shore, was a ten-mile-long granite escarpment that marked the start of Tian Shan’s northern elevations. It was late afternoon, and the sun was already dropping behind some of the higher peaks, leaving the valleys and shoreline cloaked in fog.
“One mile,” the pilot called.
Fisher raised his binoculars.
Where are you…?
Suddenly they swept over a tree-lined ridge, and below Fisher caught a glimpse of a man-made structure in a clearing: dark rock, square shapes.
On the plane’s console a red light started flashing, accompanied by a beep beep beep. The light was labeled EM WARNING. Fisher thought, Fire control.
“What, what—” the pilot called, head swiveling as he leaned toward the side window, looking.
The beeping turned to a steady whine.
“Lock!” the copilot called. “Fire control radar!”
“There,” Fisher called, pointing out the right-side window.
Far below, from somewhere in the stand of trees there was a mushroom of light, followed by a streaming contrail that rose from the ground like a smoking finger, curving toward them. In the setting sun Fisher saw a glint of light on steel. Missile nose cone, he thought, followed by, Too late.
“Hang on!” the pilot called, and turned the wheel hard right. Fisher dropped to his knees and grabbed the copilot’s seat bracket with both hands as the Dakota heeled onto its side and nosed over toward the ground.
It was a bold move on the pilot’s part, and his only chance, but Fisher knew, as did the pilot, that it wasn’t going to be enough. Recognizing that the Dakota had no chance of outrunning the missile, the pilot had chosen to turn into it in hopes of getting inside the missile’s turning radius. If they had less altitude to work with, it may have worked, but the missile, having already locked onto the Dakota — either by solid radar contact or by heat signature — had plenty of sky in which to maneuver. If it didn’t catch its quarry on the first pass, it would on the second.
Fisher’s mind clicked over. If they went down on the shore, whoever had fired on them would be on them quickly. If they managed to crash-land or get out higher in the mountains…
“Can you reach the escarpment?” Fisher called.
“What? Why—”
“They’ll be coming for us.”
The pilot, face pinched with the strain, neck tendons standing out, nodded. “I see. I’ll try!”
The missile flashed across the windscreen like a comet, and the pilot turned the wheel again, this time to the left as he and the copilot pulled back, trying to gain some altitude. Through the glass Fisher could see the escarpment’s granite wall looming before them, a half mile away. To the right was a narrow valley bracketed by snowcapped peaks.
“I see it!” the pilot called and steered for the opening.
In his mind, Fisher was picturing the missile, its computer-chip brain having already registered the miss, making the turn, coming back around, and aligning on the Dakota’s tail. Ten seconds, he thought. No more.
Eight… seven… six… five…
Unconsciously, he glanced over his shoulder.
The tail of the Dakota disintegrated in a flash of light.
46
Fisher stopped jogging, then stepped off the trail and dropped into a crouch behind a boulder. He’d been on the move without pause for forty minutes but had so far covered only a mile. He was still high up on the mountainside, well above the tree line, and still two thousand vertical feet above his destination. He checked his watch: just after one a.m. He glanced up and felt a moment of vertigo. The sky was clear, and at this altitude the number of visible stars was stunning, as though a giant cosmic hand had scattered diamond flakes across the black of space.