“Where is she?” asked Danny.
“She got a lead on the aircraft and she went to check it out.”
“By herself?” asked Nuri.
“Melissa is like that.”
“You’re in charge?” asked Danny.
“Melissa is.”
“Where’s the rest of your team?” asked Nuri.
“With the aircraft down, we were ordered to move to a more secure location. We’re pretty wide-open over here. So it’s just me, Ferny — who drove out to get you — and two Ethiopian nationals working as bodyguards.”
“You trust them?” asked Nuri.
“Only until the shit hits the fan,” said Jordan. “Then they’ll take off for the hills. Come on into the other building and we’ll get something to eat. I’ll brief you on the way.”
Chapter 9
It took Li Han several hours to reach the crash site, most of it on foot. A boy in a village allied with the Brothers had seen the aircraft fall from the sky. He showed Li Han the way himself, plunging down hillsides and scrambling over the rocks like it was a game. The Brothers who were with Li Han couldn’t keep up, and in fact even Li Han, who prided himself on his excellent condition, had a hard time toward the end. The moon kept poking in and out of the clouds, and he stumbled several times, twisting his ankle and knee, though not so badly that he gave up.
And then they were there.
One of the wings had broken off in flight, but the rest of the aircraft was nearly whole. It looked like a black tent, sitting in the ravine where it had landed. Li Han approached it cautiously, afraid that the Americans had booby-trapped it. They were capable of anything.
Li Han knelt down next to the fuselage, examining the strange-looking aircraft. It had landed on its back. A missile was attached to the wing.
Li Han caught the boy as he started to scramble onto the wing near the missile.
“No,” said Li Han. He used English. The child may not have understood the language, but the tone was enough to warn him away. Li Han pointed, telling the boy to move back.
Li Han rose and walked to the nose of the small plane. Its skin was covered with a black, radar-absorbing paint, obviously intended to lower the radar profile. He took an LED flashlight from his pocket and ran its beam over the wreckage. The antennas might be hidden under the wreckage; they would be on the top of the aircraft most likely, where they could receive signals from satellites. But where was the sensor pod with its cameras?
Integrated into the hull. The material seemed almost porous.
The two Brothers who’d accompanied him came over the hill, huffing for breath. They slid down the ravine on the sides of their feet.
“Careful,” said Li Han, forgetting for a moment and speaking in his native Mandarin.
They looked at him sheepishly.
“We must get the wreckage out of here before the satellite comes,” he said, switching to English. “Before it is dawn. We have only three hours. Do you understand?”
The taller one, Amara of Yujst — they all had odd, African names — said something in Arabic.
“Pick it up and carry it out,” Li Han told him, still in English.
“It will be heavy,” said Amara.
“Then get more help,” said Li Han.
Chapter 10
“We’ve been targeting him,” said Damian Jordan, pointing at the hazy black-and-white image of an Asian man on the screen. “Mao Man.”
“Sounds archaeological,” said Danny, looking at the face.
“Li Han,” said Nuri coldly.
“You know who he is?” asked Jordan. He cracked his knuckles, right hand first, then left. The sound echoed in the room. Except for a pair of cots and a mobile workstation, the room was empty.
“I never heard him called Mao Man,” said Nuri. “But I know who he is. He’s a technical expert, and a weapons dealer. A real humanitarian. You’ve heard of A.Q. Khan, right?”
Khan was the Pakistani scientist who had helped Iran — and possibly others — develop their own nuclear weapons program.
“This guy is similar, except he’s Chinese,” said Nuri. “He had some sort of falling out with the government and military. Probably over money. Anyway, he’s been in a number of places in the last few years, selling his services. He’s pretty smart. And absolutely no morals.” Nuri turned to Jordan. “He has a team here?”
“Not a team. He’s working with the Sudan Brotherhood.”
“Lovely.” Nuri turned back to Danny. “Muslim fanatic group. Gets some money and help from al Qaeda.”
“I don’t know about the link—” started Jordan.
“I do,” said Nuri flatly.
“Well you know more than me,” said Jordan. “All I know is we’re targeting this guy. It’s a noncontact situation.”
Nuri frowned. “How long?”
“We’ve been here almost five weeks,” said Jordan. “Most of that time was getting the aircraft ready, though. We only just started tracking him.”
Jordan began briefing them on Raven, an armed UAV they had used to track Mao Man. Its function was similar to Reaper — the armed Predator drones — but it was newer, more capable.
“How?” asked Danny.
Jordan shrugged. “Faster. A little smaller. More robust.”
Nuri snorted.
“This was its first mission,” said Jordan. “Really more of a shakedown cruise. They picked a quiet area for a maiden flight. Afghanistan was too hot.”
“Yeah,” sneered Nuri.
“Have to try it somewhere,” said Jordan. “It wasn’t my choice. There was some sort of mechanical problem about a third of the way through the mission. There were temperature spikes in the right engine. My guess is that there was impurity in the fuel and something blew in the chamber. The power profiles were off, and we got a lot of ambient sound, kind of like you’d get in a car if there was a hole in the muffler. It may have been loud — that’s what may have tipped off Mao Man and the guerrillas he’s working with. Or maybe they heard the Predator, or saw something somehow. Anyway, they came out of the mine and fired a couple of MPADs — shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles. It was a Stinger Block 2.”
“An American missile?” asked Danny.
“Oh yeah.”
“How’d they get that?”
“Don’t know. They get a lot of stuff out here.”
“Sold by a friendly government,” said Nuri. “Allegedly friendly.”
Danny shook his head. “So they shot it down.”
“No, that’s the damn shame of it. Raven was flying with a Predator on overwatch. The two aircraft collided.”
“You know where it went down?” asked Danny.
“Roughly. That’s where Melissa went. We have transponders, but the accident knocked one of them out, and separated the other two. So it’s in one of two spots. At first there was no signal because of a sandstorm.”
“A sandstorm?” asked Danny.
“Happens all the time here,” said Nuri.
“The particles screw up the low-power transmissions,” explained Jordan. “It’s a trade-off — if you have a transmission that’s too strong, anyone can find you. At any rate, we can see them now. It’s over the border about fifty miles.”
Nuri whistled. “That’s not the best place for a woman.”
“It’s not that bad,” said Jordan. “She’s been out there before.”
“How is one person going to bring back an aircraft?” asked Danny.
“She said she just wants to locate it.” Jordan shrugged. “When they told us you were coming, she said she’d get there and you could follow.”