The horses were right where he’d left them. Rumps turned toward the storm, they munched contentedly on a pile of hay Quinn had dragged from the feed yurt. He lay Garcia on the ground long enough to bring the horses to the leeward side of the structure out of the direct blast of wind. As gently as he could, he lifted Garcia’s thigh over the larger animal’s back. Hunt held her in place while he climbed up behind and let her slump back against his chest. With no stirrups and only a single lead rope from a leather halter for control, the going would be tricky-but at least they were moving. The driving snow would cover their tracks.
Hunt reined up beside him in the darkness on the other runty horse. “You’re going to have to lead,” she yelled above the wind. “I was under a tarp when I came in.”
Two hours later Quinn’s horse slipped. Both knees slammed into the ice with a sickening crack. They were already headed downhill and both Quinn and Garcia tumbled over the animal’s head to land in a tangled heap on the snowy mountainside.
The raging storm and palpable darkness made it impossible to see more than a few inches. Heavy with worry, Quinn reached under Garcia’s shirt to put a hand against her ribs. She winced at the sudden chill. That, at least, was a good sign. He checked the catheter. It was still in place. Her breathing was strained but steady. The biggest danger now was the cold. None of them was dressed for this sort of weather. Without movement to warm her, Garcia’s body temperature was falling fast.
“Put her up here with me,” Hunt shouted. She coaxed her little horse down the side hill below Quinn to make loading Garcia easier. “I’ll try to warm her up while you lead the horse. Looks like yours is a goner.”
The second horse collapsed a half an hour later. Past the point of exhaustion, Quinn stooped to muscle Garcia over his shoulder. He struggled back to his feet under the press of Garcia and the howling wind. Unsure if she was alive or dead, he’d resolved to get her out of these mountains or die along with her. Trudging forward, nearly blind on feet that felt like wooden stumps, he began to hear the sweet notes of his daughter’s violin.
He remembered there was someone behind him, but who they were and why they were there escaped him. His world was one continuous stumbling movement, falling forward, catching himself, then repeating the process over and over again. He’d drawn his hands inside the sleeves of his wool coat, but his fingers were numb-likely frostbitten. He could only imagine what was happening to Ronnie.
Mattie’s violin grew louder in his head. He saw her little face in the darkness, dark hair swirling in plumes of snow and ice. She shook her finger back and forth as if to scold him. Her little cheeks pooched into a disappointed frown. She looked so much like her mother when she did that. Heaven knew he’d done enough to disappoint them both.
Quinn stopped in the trail to stare at his daughter. The sight of her made him warm and sleepy. Something bumped into his back, knocking him face-first into the driven snow and shattering his beautiful vision.
“You smell that?” A voice rose up from the blizzard behind him.
He remembered now. There was another woman with him. Hunt. That was her name. He grabbed for the fleeting thought as he fumbled with Garcia’s arms, trying to tug her limp body back up on his shoulder.
“I don’t smell anything,” he groaned.
“I’d know that stink anywhere…” Hunt shouted. “It’s yak.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Arlington, Virginia
Thibodaux stood beside Palmer’s leather sofa at parade rest, eyes intent on an angry-looking radar image on a flat-screen monitor. “So,” the Cajun said, “we’ve found him then?”
Win Palmer sat behind his desk fiddling with a computer keyboard to zoom in tighter on the image. He put the cursor over a map of western China and the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan, where a red and yellow blotch marched across the screen. Beside the blinking arrow were the letters: LKP.
“His last known point was here.” Palmer used the mouse to wiggle the cursor slightly. “This is where he called in the Hellfire strike. I sent another agent over to talk to Dr. Deuben. She sent them somewhere over here…” He moved the cursor three inches to the west. “… to talk to a Kyrgyz woman about the orphanage.
“And what does this Kyrgyz woman say?” Thibodaux moved up next to the screen, as if closer scrutiny might reveal his friend’s location.
“That’s the glitch.” Palmer frowned. “That red blob there is the storm that’s been dumping snow on the area since late yesterday. We sent a Blackhawk over Boroghil Pass from the Pakistani side. Those Kyrgyz migrate down from the high pastures every year about this time before the big snows hit. There was no sign of the camp Deuben sent them to. They could have already headed down to Sarhad to get ahead of the storm. The Blackhawk had to get back to base before it got caught in a whiteout-no time to do a thorough search. They can barely keep a bird in the air at those altitudes anyway.”
“What about this spot here?” Thibodaux ran his finger along a band of light greens and blues on the map. “A break in the weather?”
“Bingo,” Palmer said. “Not big enough to get an aircraft on the ground, but if we run it through time lapse on Damocles it does show us something interesting.”
Palmer tapped that keyboard and brought up the same map with a time stamp of an hour before. The gap in the weather had passed over a mountain valley roughly ten miles from the spot the Kyrgyz camp was supposed to have been. Centered in the rocky scree along the mountain side was a small purple dot, nearly invisible to the naked eye.
“What am I looking at?” Thibodaux rubbed his jaw.
“Maybe nothing.” Palmer shrugged. “Maybe a fire.”
Thibodaux sighed. “I’ve been to that part of Afghanistan, sir. There’s not much to burn in those mountains except yak shit.”
“What we do know is that the dot wasn’t there five hours before. It’s some sort of anomaly and fire is the best guess.”
“If it’s a fire big enough to see from a satellite, it’s likely Quinn’s handiwork. Let’s get someone in there to get him out.”
Palmer leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across the flat of his stomach. “My thoughts exactly.” The muscles in his jaws and neck flexed like taut cables. “But we can’t. The next band of weather has moved in and stalled. All the technology in the world and we’re stymied by clouds. Until they move, we’re not getting anyone in or out.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
“I need to talk to Bundy,” Fargo said, walking through the back door of the remote farmhouse set in the middle of a twenty-acre parcel, five miles from the Gettysburg Battlefield. His collar was unbuttoned and a frayed red power tie hung loose around his neck. He was at the end of his rope and he needed answers.
Two young Echoes wearing black Doc Martens boots and sporting military buzz cuts sat at the kitchen table playing cards. Neither stood when he entered, though they knew he outranked them.
Castelleti, a big-eared kid with the beginnings of a beard, looked up with a sneer.
“I asked you a question, men,” Fargo snapped. “Is he here?”
They grunted, nodding to the stairs leading to the basement.
The one named Jimenez peered up over his cards. “We got a new client who didn’t show up for his hearings with the congressman.” He suddenly began to look around the room as if trying to locate something out of place.
