lost coverage for a time. It took getting the vice president involved, but now they had another satellite to use for a short three-hour window. Not that it was doing much good. They were totally blind to the events transpiring in Kadwan. Inexplicably the advanced optics on the NRO satellite were incapable of penetrating the cloud cover. All she could verify was Holmes’s location, currently in the middle of a cricket field.
As he rode, they devised a way for him to intersect Hoover. The dog was moving at a steady clip, but traveling east of Walker’s position through the jungle. By their estimation, Hoover should reach Kadwan within an hour. If he was able to continue traveling by motorcycle, even at its reduced rate because of the crash, Walker would be there half an hour before the dog, which was plenty of time for them to engage.
But ten minutes after that calculation, the motorcycle stopped for good. Not only was it out of gas, but the rear tire had lost its air. Walker was now on foot.
He hung the improvised radio around his neck. He had his Stoner and a single AK with three magazines. The Stoner and the AK both used 7.62mm, although the diameter of the AK’s rounds was slightly smaller, so he tossed the AK and settled on the better rifle. Although the ammunition wasn’t what he was used to, what he’d lose in cyclic rate of fire he’d gain in accuracy and distance. If the
He kept to the center of the road. He considered sloughing through the jungle, but the going would be slow and any attempt at speed would mean that he’d be heard well in advance. He kept his eyes and ears open for everything, lowered his head, and pretended he was back on the Coronado. For as bad as his legs had felt during his all-expense-paid vacation at the BUD/S resort, the stress and danger were nothing compared with this mission. On the island he’d been concerned with making it through each day. Here he was concerned about making it, period.
The image of Yaya’s expression of surprise as he was hauled into the trees bore through his attempt at concentration. He felt his cheeks burn, but ignored it as best he could. He made seven kilometers before he was forced to rest. He kept walking, but he couldn’t run until his breathing found a rhythm.
“You okay?” Jen asked over the radio.
“Sure.” Cramps in his stomach and legs were already tightening.
“You’ve stopped running.”
“Glad … glad you noticed.”
There was a pause. “I have an update. You ready?”
“Sure.” His breathing was coming around.
“In five hours Kadwan will be removed from the map.”
“What?” He stopped, hands on his knees, and stared at the ground. “What does that mean?”
“The strange cloud above the city is spreading. People are finally starting to pay attention and they’re getting worried. Nothing we have in orbit can penetrate it, which means we don’t have a clue what’s going on beneath. So, a squadron of Tornado jets are en route. After in-flight refueling, they’re scheduled to deliver bombs on target at 0800 hours local time.”
“So it’s 0300 now?”
“Check.”
“And how far do I have to go?”
“About ten kilometers.”
It was doable.
“Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“If for any reason you can’t make it, don’t get in the kill radius.”
“What’s the kill radius?”
“They’re dropping GBU-38 JDAMs. Do you know what that is?”
Joint Directed Attack Munitions. Five hundred pound bombs. “How many?”
“Four bombs per plane.”
Which meant forty-eight bombs—twenty-four thousand pounds of explosive on target.
“That gives you a standoff of five kilometers,” she said, her voice breathless. “Do you hear me, Jack? Do you hear me?
“I have to, Jen. I have to.” There was no way he could not try and save his friends. For too long he’d been fighting for the dead. Now he was fighting for the living and it had never felt more right. Wasn’t it she who’d told him that?
It took a few moments for her to answer. When she did, she said simply, “I know.”
“Going to go silent for a while,” he said. “Save batteries. I’ll contact you when I’m close.”
Then he turned off the set. The silence was at once welcome and foreboding. He began to run faster. He narrowed his vision. He thought about everyone he’d lost, from Yaya to Fratty, to Holmes, Laws, and Ruiz, to his father, his brother, and that little boy who’d done nothing to anyone except be taken by a demon sent by someone keen on getting back at his father. Walker thought of all of them and created a fuel by which he could run.
He began to whisper cadence, using his breathing to propel the air one syllable at a time.
And on and on he sang his barely audible motivational cadence, letting the mindless motivation push him forward. It was all he had.
60
KADWAN. EARLY MORNING.
A small hill overlooked the flat plane of Kadwan, all the way to the sea. A long narrow city with rolling hills to the east and the Gulf of Martaban to the west, it had once held a hundred thousand people. But that had been before all the buildings had all been destroyed.
Musso had told them that a direct translation of the original name of the land of the Karen—Kawthoolie—was “land burned black.” Now it seemed the only name this place deserved. Fire burned everywhere. A pall of acrid smoke gripped the length and breadth of the city, hanging low and thick. The occasional scream broke the silence, from what or whom Walker didn’t know.
That this virtually unknown group, lost to the whims of history, could be so powerful was unanticipated by all the analysts. But it shouldn’t have been. After all, it was the Karen who’d stopped the Mongols. It was the Karen who’d stopped Alexander. They’d once been as dominant a group as ever lived on the earth. But the centuries had taken their toll. Now they were a minority, scattered across several countries in the backwater of Southeast Asia, and it seemed that one madman was determined to bring them back to prominence. Saw Thuza Tun believed that for a new country to grow, the old one had to be destroyed. Their language was filled with double meanings. Kawthoolie meant both “land burned black” and “flowerland.” There couldn’t be one without the other. For the flowers to grow, the land of the Karen must be destroyed. And if Walker didn’t do something to stop it, they’d fertilize the earth with the bodies of dead SEALs and fill the world with
Walker searched the horizon and spotted the cricket field, or pitch, as it was called. This was where the others were. He staggered down the hill into a street below. Cars were overturned. Pieces of rubble, parts of homes, and personal possessions lay upon the ground like they’d grown there. Doll heads and kitchen utensils jutted from the ground like vegetables in a mad hatter’s garden. Pieces of brightly colored cloth whipped from the hard edges of scorched bushes. He’d seen the aftermaths of major attacks in Somalia and Iraq. He’d seen cities destroyed. But this was something more. This was as if the hand of an angry god had come down to sweep the city aside. The closest he’d come to this sort of devastation had been when Katrina had scraped entire communities from the Gulf Coast.
Walker limped down the center of the street. He held his Stoner in his hands. The holster on his right thigh was unclipped. He was past exhaustion, walking into a universe he’d never been in before. He felt alert, but like a
