"Checkpoint One," he said into his radio.
"Roger," Werner answered from three miles away. "Any problems?"
"Negative. Ready to move over the first ridge. Should have the objective in sight in fifteen minutes."
"Roger. Move in."
"Okay. Out." Paulson and his team formed line abreast to get to the first ridge. It was a small one, with the second two hundred yards beyond it. From there they'd be able to see the trailer, and now things went very slowly, Paulson handed his rifle to the fourth man. The agent moved forward alone, looking ahead to pick out the path that promised the quietest passage. It was mainly a question of looking where you walked rather than how, after all, something lost on city people who thought a forest floor was an invariably noisy place. Here there were plenty of rocky outcroppings, and he snaked his way among them and reached the second ridge in five minutes of nearly silent travel. Paulson snuggled up next to a tree and pulled out his binoculars – even these were coated with green plastic.
" 'Afternoon, folks," he said to himself. He couldn't see anyone yet, but the trailer blocked his view of where he expected the outside man to be, and there were also plenty of trees in the way. Paulson searched his immediate surroundings for movement. He took several minutes to watch and listen before waving for his fellow agents to come forward. They took ten minutes. Paulson checked his watch. They'd been in the woods for ninety minutes, and were slightly ahead of schedule.
"Seen anyone?" the other rifleman asked when he came down at Paulson's side.
"Not yet."
"Christ, I hope they haven't moved," Marty said. "Now what?"
"We'll move over to the left, then down the gully over there. That's our spot." He pointed.
"Just like on the pictures,"
"Everybody ready?" Paulson asked. He decided to wait a minute before setting off, allowing everyone a drink of water. The air was thin and dry here, and throats were getting raspy. They didn't want anyone to cough. Cough drops, the lead sniper thought. We ought to include those in the gear…
It took another half hour to get to their perches. Paulson selected a damp spot next to a granite boulder that had been deposited by the last glacier to visit the area. He was about twenty feet above the level of the trailer, about what he wanted for the job, and not quite at a ninety-degree angle to it. He had a direct view of the large window on its back end. If Gregory were there, this was where they expected him to be kept. It was time to find out. Paulson unfolded the bipod legs on his rifle, flipped off the scope covers, and went to work. He grabbed for his radio again, fitting the earpiece. He spoke in a whisper lower than that of the wind in the pine branches over his head.
"This is Paulson. We're in place, looking now. Will advise."
"Acknowledged," the radio replied.
"Jeez," Marty said first. "There he is, Right side."
Al Gregory was sitting in an armchair. He had little choice in the matter. His wrists were cuffed in his lap – that concession had been made to his comfort – but his upper arms and lower legs were roped in place. His glasses had been taken away, and every object in the room had a fuzzy edge. Thai included the one who called himself Bill. They were taking turns guarding him. Bill sat at the far end of the room, just beyond the window. There was an automatic pistol tucked in his belt, but Gregory couldn't tell the type, merely the unmistakable angular shape.
"What–"
"–will we do with you?" Bill completed the question. "Damned if I know, Major. Some people are interested in what you do for a living, I suppose."
"I won't–"
"I'm sure," Bill said with a smile. "Now, we told you to be quiet or I'll have to put the gag back. Just relax, kid."
"What did she say the crates were for?" the agent asked.
"She said that her company was shipping a couple of statues. Some local artist, she said – a show in San Francisco, I think."
There's a Soviet consulate in San Francisco, the agent thought at once. But they can't be doing that… could they?
"Man-sized crates, you said?"
"You could put two people in the big ones, easy, and a bunch of little ones."
"How long?"
"You don't need special tools. Half an hour, tops."
Half an hour… ? One of the agents left the room to make a phone call. The information was relayed by radio to Werner.
"Heads up," the radio earpiece announced. "We got a U-Haul truck – make that a small van – coming in off the main road."
"We can't see it from here," Paulson groused quietly to Marty at his left. One problem with their location was that they couldn't see all of the trailer, and could only catch glimpses of the road that led to it. The trees were too thick for that. To get a better view meant moving forward, but that meant a risk that they were unwilling to run. The laser range-finder placed them six hundred and eleven feet from the trailer. The rifles were optimized for two-hundred-yard range, and their camouflage clothing made them invisible, so long as they didn't move. Even with binoculars, the trees so cluttered the view that there were simply too many things for the human eye to focus on.
He heard the van. Bad muffler, he thought. Then he heard a metal door slam and the squeak of another opening. Voices came next, but though he could tell that people were talking, he couldn't make out a single word.
"This should be big enough," Captain Bisyarina told Leonid. "I have two of these and three of the smaller ones. Well use these to stack on top."
"What are we shipping?"
"Statuary. There's an art show three days from now, and we're even going to make the crossing at the point nearest to it. If we leave in two hours, we'll hit the border at about the right time."
"You're sure–"
"They search parcels coming north, not going south," Bisyarina assured him.
"Very well. We'll assemble the boxes inside. Tell Oleg to come out."
Bisyarina went inside. Lenny was stationed outside since he knew more about working in the wilderness than the other two officers. While Oleg and Leonid carried the crates inside, she went into the back of the trailer to check on Gregory.
"Hello, Major. Comfortable?"
"I got another one," Paulson said the moment she came into view. "Female, that's the one from the photos – the Volvo one," he said into the radio. "She's talking to the hostage."
"Three men now visible," the radio said next. Another agent had a perch on the far side of the trailer. "They're carrying crates inside the trailer. Say again, three male subjects. Female subject inside and out of sight."
"That should be all of the subjects. Tell me about the crates." Werner stood by the helicopter in a field several miles away, holding a diagram of the trailer.
"They're broken down, not assembled. I guess they're going to put 'em together."
"Four's all we know about," Werner said to his men. "And the hostage is there…"
"That ought to tie up two of them, assembling the crates," one of the assault team said. "One outside, one with the hostage… sounds good to me, Gus."
"Attention, this is Werner. We're moving. Everybody stand by." He gestured to the helicopter pilot, who began the engine-start sequence. The HRT leader made his own mental check while his men boarded the helicopter. If the Russians tried to drive him away, his men could try to take them on the move, but that kind of van had windows only for the driver and passenger… that meant that two or three of them would be out of sight… and perhaps able to kill the hostage before his men could prevent it. His first instinct was right: They had to go now. The team's Chevy Suburban with four men pulled onto the main road leading to the site.
Paulson flipped the safety off his rifle, and Marty did the same. They agreed on what would happen next. Ten feet from them, the machine-gunner and his loader readied their weapon slowly, to mute the metallic sounds of the gun's action.