Now he felt just a bit like a coward.
But caution was always in order, especially when dealing with the Americans.
“What now?” asked Amara behind him.
“We’ll go back inside the house,” said Li Han, thinking. “They won’t attack again tonight.”
They would be watching. He’d have to lay low for a while.
What if he sold the UAV back to the Americans? They’d certainly be motivated buyers.
Amara might be able to broker the deal. He was a little puny physically, but he was smart. And the sight of Swal being shot hadn’t unnerved him; he’d disposed of the body quietly. He seemed to realize that Li Han had done it for him, to reinforce his authority with the others.
“Are we going?” asked Amara. “How long can we stay in this city?”
“Your English is getting better all the time,” said Li Han.
“You didn’t answer the question.”
Li Han smiled to him, then turned and led the way back to the house.
Chapter 16
Reid flicked off the viewer as the Osprey took off. He didn’t like monitoring the missions; there was too much temptation to micromanage. When he was in the field, he would never have allowed it.
But times were different now. The best he could do was not interfere.
He was about to call Breanna when the computer announced that she was holding on the line.
“You’re psychic,” he told her, picking up the phone. “I was just about to contact you.”
“Do we have it?”
“Regrettably, no. The tracking transmitter was removed from the body of the UAV. It was booby-trapped, but we had no injuries.”
“Well that’s something, at least.”
“We’re reasonably sure that the UAV itself remains in Duka. But at the moment I think even that’s a guess. Nuri is planning to go in tomorrow and check around. I don’t know that there’s much alternative.”
“The replacement satellite should be on station in a few hours,” said Breanna. “In the meantime, I’ve found a Global Hawk to augment the Tigershark so Turk can get some rest. We’ll have surveillance, but no connection to MY-PID.”
“That shouldn’t be an immediate problem.”
“We may need more force there,” added Breanna. “And I’m going to get more of their equipment over there. This is more serious than we thought at first.”
“The military side is your prerogative,” said Reid. “But I can’t emphasize enough that we have to be very quiet about it. If the Iranians or the Chinese or anyone else sees we’re making a big fuss, they may get nosy. Even if we recover Raven at that point, we may have jeopardized the weapon.”
“I understand, and Danny does, too. Did you talk to Ray Rubeo?”
“I did.” Reid stopped pacing. “I’m going to talk to Edmund again. Based on that conversation… Based on that conversation, I may have to talk to the President. A number of things trouble me.”
“Do you want me to come?”
“I think under the circumstances it would be best if I handled that myself,” said Reid. “I still don’t have the whole picture. Whether Edmund will give it to me or not remains to be seen.”
Chapter 17
Milos Kimko stood in the shadow of the small hut, watching the aircraft fade into the distance. He was nearly three miles from where it had landed, but even without his binoculars he could tell it was an Osprey: only the American aircraft could move so quickly from a hover.
And what were the Americans doing in this forsaken corner of Africa? Taking sides with one of the two rebel groups who shared control of the town? Simply meeting with them?
Possibly. But what to make, then, of the explosion that had woken him?
The Russian rubbed his eyes. He was tired, physically worn by his job to assess the rebel movements in eastern Sudan. The SVR — Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, or Foreign Intelligence Service — had sent him to Khartoum a few weeks before, and he’d been traveling in the brush ever since.
He had a cover, and a side job, as an arms dealer. It was an excellent entrée to the locals, given the prices he was able to offer. The SVR subsidized the price; in fact, Kimko suspected his supervisors were keeping a portion of the money he sent back for themselves.
The sound of the Osprey’s engines faded. Kimko debated with himself. Should he go and see what they’d been up to now, or should he wait for the morning?
He’d been planning on continuing north at dawn, but that could be changed; it wasn’t like anyone there was setting their watches by him.
But why not take a look around now? He had nothing better to do, truly. The fresh air felt good.
It would also take his mind off the fact that he desperately wanted a drink.
Kimko went back inside. The round hut was tiny, a one room refuge that combined a bedroom, sitting area, and primitive kitchen in the space of four or five square meters. He went to his knapsack on the far side of the bed and took out his gun and holster; he picked up his thick sweater from the floor where it had fallen. He was still losing weight — even with the sweater and the shoulder holster, the jacket hung from his shoulders like an oversized bathrobe, two or three sizes too large. Not long ago it had been tight.
But that’s what Africa did to you. It shriveled you to nothing. It was terrible to foreigners, but just as hard on the natives; everyone he met had an empty look in their eyes, as if their souls had drilled through their skulls and fled.
A pile of clothes lay at the foot of the bed. Kimko took a five euro bill from his wallet and dropped it on the clothes. Hopefully, the woman who owned the clothes would be gone before he returned.
Chapter 18
The Whiplash team was quiet the entire way back to Ethiopia. Even Sugar, who normally could have been counted on for a dozen wise cracks and half as many put-downs, said nothing.
Red, who’d been closest to the IED when it went off, had been cut in several places and badly bruised, but was spared more serious injury by his helmet and armored vest. A large piece of shrapnel had sliced past the outer fabric into the carbon-boron layer, exposing the intricate web of the protective material. He stared at the slice the whole trip back.
“I’m sorry, Cap — I checked for wires and didn’t see anything,” he told Danny after they hopped out of the Osprey. “I looked underneath, in the back — I didn’t see explosives in the seat or anything — I just — I don’t know.”
“Forget it,” Danny told him. “Focus on the mission.”
“Lettin’ him off easy,” said Boston, watching Red head toward the hut the team had taken over for quarters.
“The bomb kicked him harder in the butt than I could,” answered Danny.
“I doubt he checked it right,” said Boston. “His helmet should’ve picked something up, even if it was a grenade.”
“I’m sure he forgot to reset it inside,” said Danny. “He won’t forget next time. That’s what counts.”
The Whiplash helmets had embedded chemical sniffers designed to warn of IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. But these could easily be confused in a combat situation, where the detection threshold was fairly high — you didn’t want your own grenade or explosive pack setting off the alarm. So the settings could be dialed back, or what the designers called “normalized,” with a reading taken before the actual operation. That reading was supposed to pick up the presence of the chemicals already in the group making the assault. That reading set the threshold for subsequent readings. Roughly speaking, the gear would see that the team had twelve ounces of PETN before the action, and the chemical sniffers would sound the alert only when a thirteenth was detected.