“Lieutenant, I’ve been reviewing our satellite photos of the sector 77-T pass at 1800GMT.”
“Sector 77-T, sir?” Reed repeated. He was already in the process of locating the file, opening it, and trying to pull up the latest Rockwell report on his screen.
“That would be…?”
“That would be coded Katcar on the Turkish Iraqi border. Lieutenant. Look for Zakho on your reference map.” Sanders’s voice had rapidly deteriorated from caustic to impatient.
Jarvis Reed continued to scroll past a litany of cities and sector areas with unfamiliar names: Amadiya, Arbil, Dohuk, Sinjar, and a host of others.
Finally he reached the Sector 77-T map that included the area known as the Kurdish Autonomous Region, as it had been called in his orientation, and the city of Zahko.
“Got it,” he said.
There was an element of triumph in his voice. The last time one of the Rockwell analysts had called in, he had been unable to even locate the sector chart on his computer.
“Good. So tell me what you see. Lieutenant,” Sanders droned.
Reed studied the images on the screen and tweaked the intensification dial.
“Well, I see… gee, are those sheep. Major?” He referenced back twenty-four hours and saw a similar image.
“Is that what I’m supposed to be seeing. Major, a bunch of sheep?”
Sanders’s sigh was audible.
“Tell me, Lieutenant, doesn’t anything about those photos strike you as the least bit unusual?”
Jarvis Reed scoured the blurry images again.
“Well, sir,” he stammered. “I don’t think so — everything looks about the same to me.”
“That’s the problem, Lieutenant, think about it.
Everything looks the same. Count the sheep in the first image. Reference back twenty-four hours and what do you see? Answer, the same thing, the same number of sheep. Now, doesn’t that strike you as a bit odd?”
Reed waited. He was tempted to ask what was so damned peculiar about a bunch of sheep — but he knew better.
The man from Rockwell was droning on again.
“I’ve just spent the last two hours applying overlays to that 1800GMT image, Lieutenant. Not only do we have the same number of sheep in eight straight exposures, but even more curious, those sheep are in the exact same location on each pass.
What do you think the odds are of that happening?”
“Gee, I don’t know, sir. Sheep are sheep.”
“Those satellite images. Lieutenant, are giving us an area sweep with only a few degrees variation in each pass. Knowing that, I went back over forty-eight hours worth of images. Not one change, Lieutenant, not one single change. Do you have any idea what the mathematical probability is of those sheep being in the same damned identical position over a forty-eight-hour period?”
Reed cleared his throat.
“I don’t know much about sheep, sir. Maybe I should show this to Major Russell when he comes on at midnight.” What little bearing there had been in his voice when he answered the telephone had deserted him. He knew he sounded green, but it was the only thing he could think to say.
“Wise decision. Lieutenant. Then, after Major Russell has had a chance to study the situation, have him contact me…”
With that, his voice trailed off into silence. Still, Jarvis Reed waited to make certain; he continued listening until he heard the line go dead. Only then did he allow himself to nestle the phone back in its cradle and take a deep breath.
It occurred to him that, in the grand scheme of things, the major’s call might have been the most important one he had logged to date — but at that very moment, it meant one thing and one thing only. He would be expected to remain at his duty station until Major Russell had analyzed the satellite photos — which meant the small hours of the morning.
He picked up the phone again, this time to dial Janet’s number. He was rehearsing how he planned to break the news to her. When she answered, his voice sounded flat.
“Honey, better go on to bed. It looks like I’ll be here for a while…”
Jarvis Reed had anticipated some kind of expression of disappointment in his girlfriend’s voice, but the abrupt click that followed was the only thing that indicated how upset she really was.
It was the third time it had happened in two weeks. Now, with nothing better to do, he turned his attention back to the satellite photos.
“What the hell is so damned important about a bunch of damn sheep?” he muttered.
Air Force Major Simon Russell was a humorless little man who viewed any anomaly reported by the SAsC monitoring stations as a potential threat to national security. At forty-seven years of age, he was the senior analyst on the Center’s midnight shift, and delighted to be pulling his second tour of duty at the Center. It was a position he had held and relished for the last five years.
Now, with Jarvis Reed standing behind him, peering over his shoulder, Russell examined the sequence of satellite photos.
“When did you first notice this?” Russell finally asked.
“I wish I could say I did, sir,” Reed admitted, “but I missed it altogether. Major Sanders at Rockwell is the one that caught it.”
Simon Russell laid down his magnifying glass, pushed himself away from his desk, and rubbed his eyes.
“Don’t let Mel Sanders get to you. Lieutenant.
He gets a kick out of twisting the tails of the greenhorns.”
“I should have caught it, sir,” Reed apologized.
“So — what else did he point out?”
Jarvis Reed reflected back on Sanders’s call.
“That’s all, sir. Just that there were the same number of sheep in the same position over a forty-eight-hour period.”
Russell smiled.
“Did he neglect to mention that the sheep are all lying down?”
The young lieutenant bent down to get a better look at the sequence of photographs.
“You’re right, sir,” he said.
“Why do you suppose…?”
Russell pulled himself back up to the desk and picked up the magnifying glass again.
“Did you ever see sheep sleep, Lieutenant?”
Reed shook his head.
“Can’t say that I have. Major.
Back in Boston where I come from, most folks don’t keep sheep around the house.”
“Sheep, Lieutenant,” Russell began, “tend to sleep with their legs folded under them — like cattle.
They don’t very often sleep all sprawled out like the ones in this satellite image.”
“Meaning what, sir?”
“I’ll give you odds. Lieutenant, the sheep you see in these satellite images are either damn sick or all dead. Probably the latter.”
Kemal Gursel considered himself to be a man both cursed and blessed. A Turkish Muslim by birth, he plied his trade from a small fruit cart: selling pomegranates, apples, pears, and now and then an occasional basket of almonds and walnuts to Kurdish tribesmen who lived in the area north of Shaqlawa.
Gursel considered his blessing to be the fact that he had once been wed to a young Kurdish woman by the name of Aniqua. Their all-too-brief union had presented him with a daughter named Divan. The girl’s birth, however, both difficult and unattended, had resulted in Gursel’s curse, the death of his young wife. In retrospect, Aniqua had lived just long enough to bear him a daughter and for the local Kurd tribesmen to regard him as an outsider who could be trusted.
Now, seven years later, with his cherished Divan sitting beside him, he guided his donkey, a cantankerous beast once said to be owned by a rich man in Gully All Beg, and his creaking cart onto an unfamiliar trail. The trail, he had been told, would lead him through a narrow, rocky pass down to his destination, a remote highland meadow. The meadow, he had also been told, was surrounded by sheer granite projections dotted with caves along the base — and the Kurds who lived there were said to be kinsman of Arion, distantly related to Gursel’s late wife’s father.