While he managed to keep Hawk One from getting a clean shot, he couldn't set one up for himself either. The Flight-hawk kept closing, angling to stay above the laser's angle of fire. Finally, there was only one way to extricate himself: Dog reached for the throttle and lit his afterburners, out-accelerating the smaller craft.
Or running away, depending on your point of view.
"I'd say that's a draw," said Starship over the radio.
"Draw my foot," answered Sleek Top. "We got one of yours."
"I kept you from accomplishing your mission," said Star-ship smugly.
"Our mission was to shoot you down."
Dog laughed. He was going to miss these guys when he left Dreamland.
Stoner put his head down and held his breath as the truck passed a few yards away. There was a hole in its muffler, and the engine coughed every fifth or sixth revolution, chuttering and sending smoke out from the side. The noise drowned out the sound from the second truck, and was so loud Stoner wasn't sure there were any others behind them. He waited a few seconds, then raised his head cautiously. There were no other vehicles.
"Smugglers," said Deniz, the Romanian army corporal.
"What are they taking across?"
"This way, nothing. They can come back from our country with anything. Food. Medicine." He paused and smiled. "Women."
Stoner couldn't tell whether that was meant to be a joke.
"How do they pass the checkpoints?"
"Twenty euros. I tell you, we could have driven."
Stoner got up from behind the stone wall. Deniz whistled to Kyiv, the other Romanian soldier, who came out from behind the tree where he'd been hiding. The three men resumed their walk along the dirt road. It had taken nearly three hours for them to cover five kilometers, largely because Stoner was being overly cautious, stopping even when he heard aircraft passing overhead. Being late, he knew, was not as big a problem as not arriving at all.
The long trek had given him more time to judge his guides. As soldiers, they were more competent than he'd thought at first, good at spotting possible ambush points and wary enough to plot escape routes before moving through fields they weren't already thoroughly familiar with. He trusted them, to a point, but knew that if they were captured by guerrillas, it wouldn't take much for them to give him away.
Deniz said something to Kyiv and the two men laughed. Stoner frowned, figuring it was probably some sort of joke at his expense.
"We are almost there. We stay on the road unless we hear something," said Deniz, gesturing. "Two hundred meters."
Stoner grunted, thinking, watching. He had a pair of night vision goggles in his pack, but there was more than enough light from the moon to see along the road and well into the nearby fields. The steeple of a church stood up on the right, marking a hamlet. Two houses sat near a bend in the road ahead. Otherwise, the way was clear.
Even though there were no lights shining in the windows or smoke coming from the chimneys, Stoner had Kyiv lead them into a field opposite the two houses so they could pass without taking any risks. The field connected with another; a narrow farm lane ran north along the end of this second field, separated from a neighboring farm by a thick row of trees.
Stoner put his night vision glasses on as he walked, growing warier as the shadows in the distance multiplied. But nothing was stirring.
The detours cost them another fifteen minutes. Finally, he saw the ramshackle barn where he was supposed to meet his contact. It stood above the field on the opposite side of the road, its foundation built into the crest of the hill.
He scanned the building carefully, then shook his head.
"So?" asked Deniz.
"I don't see anyone."
"No?"
Stoner turned his view to the nearby field. It too was empty.
The Romanians watched him silently. They weren't joking any more, nor whispering. For most of the night they'd left their rifles slung lazily over their shoulders. Now they held the guns with both hands, ready.
Stoner began moving to his right, keeping the barn in sight. The dirt and dead grass had heaved up with the evening frost, and it crunched as he walked. After he'd gone about thirty yards, he stopped and once again carefully examined the barn and nearby fields.
No one.
Slowly, he made his way up the hill, the two Romanian soldiers trailing behind him. About five yards from the barn, Stoner saw a shadow on the ground in front of it. He froze, steadied his gun.
"Champagne," he said loudly.
The shadow moved, revealing itself as a man with a rifle.
"Champagne," repeated Stoner. He curled his finger against the AK's trigger, slowly starting to apply pressure.
"Parlez-vous frangais?" said the shadow. Do you speak French?
That wasn't the agreed upon phrase, and the accent was so un-French that Stoner had trouble understanding it.
"Champagne," he said again.
"Vin blanc," answered the shadow. White wine.
That was the right answer, but the delay made Stoner wary. Had it been just a human mistake, or a giveaway that something was wrong?
"I don't speak French," said Stoner in very slow Russian.
"Anglaise?" responded the man.
Was it a trick? The contact would surely expect him to speak English. It had to be a trick.
"You don't speak Russian?" said Stoner. The man again asked, in English, whether they could use that language.
Stoner exhaled very slowly. He had to either trust the man — or shoot him. Doing nothing was more dangerous than either.
"I can speak English," said Stoner.
The shadow took two steps forward. Though his voice was deep, he stood barely five feet tall, and had a scraggly beard that matched his thin body. He stopped abruptly, spotting the other two men a few yards behind Stoner.
"They're with me." Stoner gestured with his left hand. His right continued to hold the gun, his trigger finger still ready to plunge.
"This way, we go," said the man, pointing to his right.
Stoner let him start. His stomach had tightened into a boulder. They walked eastward across the field, down to a narrow creek, then began following it northward. His escorts fell farther and farther behind; twice Stoner stopped for them.
"You trust him?" asked Deniz when he caught up the second time.
Of course not, thought Stoner. But he only shrugged. After about a half hour of walking, the stream entered a culvert under a paved road. The stream was wider here; and while it remained shallow, it was more than four feet across.
"Wait," said the man who had met them. He put up his hand.
Stoner nodded. The man went up the embankment to the road.
"I don't trust him," said Deniz when he caught up again. "What is he doing?"
Stoner shook his head. The elaborate precautions made sense — if a man was going to betray his comrades, he would have to expect himself to be betrayed.
"Maybe we should find some cover," suggested Deniz. "To cover you."
"Do it," said Stoner.
He'd already spotted two good places on the right bank of the stream, both protected on three sides by large rocks or thick tree trunks. The Romanians saw them as well and moved toward them.