A ten-foot piece of rough concrete slag was mostly buried in the muck, with a low hole created beneath the tilted side where the water had washed around it. Kyle dumped his parachute and helmet into the depression, and Beth added hers as he set a demolition charge that would explode in thirty-six hours to erase that evidence of their landing. They stacked stones to cover the hole, then headed higher up the hillside, neither slow nor fast, blending with the shadows, disappearing.
IN THE CONTROL ROOM at the bridge, two red dots began to blink on a map of the valley, displayed on a flat-screen monitor, where motion sensors had detected movement on the wide southeastern end of the funnel- shaped terrain. The computer slaved to the map automatically registered the coordinates of the intruders and marched the positions across the bottom of the screen. The round cover of a pipe set vertically into the ground popped open, and the long-range video camera nearest to the target automatically hissed up from its nest and swung toward the correct azimuth. Two figures were portrayed on a portion of the screen in the control room, heat signatures of glowing green, yellow, and red blobs. A narrow rectangular lid hidden in the hillside slowly opened, and the barrel of a machine gun nosed out, gyros guiding it to face the threat.
The overhead lights were off in the control room, but tiny lights shone on the servers and computers to confirm they were receiving power. The place was empty of humans, off-limits until another qualified chief engineer could take over. No one was seated at the console to monitor movement in the field. This electronics wonderworld was the lair of the Djinn, who was again lashed down in the infirmary, and he had trained no deputies to sit in his chair, so his lethal hardware sat forgotten and useless for the time being. It was stiflingly warm, and the hum of the cooling fans was the only noise, other than a low but insistent
The door was closed and locked.
TWENTY MINUTES SINCE THEY had jumped at one o’clock. Good time. No hitches. Kyle checked to be sure Coastie was right behind him, and she was on his heels, step for step, as if on an invisible leash. Dark shapes were all around, and it looked more like a junkyard than a lush forest after a flood. Trees had been torn out by their roots, limbs chipped into sharp splinters, gullies and hillocks gouged by the force of water and boulders that scoured the floor of the floodplain. It reeked of damp and rot, but the area was strangely dry since the sun had baked the mudflats left behind by the river’s rampage.
He found a hide beneath a large tree that had been partially uprooted and slanted to one side at about a thirty-degree angle. Ropes of big roots thick with dried mud hung from it like a heavy curtain, and brush had caught against it as the water passed. Kyle stuck his head inside and turned on his flashlight for two seconds, shielding the light with his hand. About six feet wide and five feet long, low overhead. Invisible from outside. Safe. He wiggled in. “Come on in, Coastie. We’re home.”
17
SWANSON SETTLED ONTO HIS belly and pawed between the roots to clear a line of sight. Coastie was another set of eyes and was responsible for watching their six, the way they had come in, to be sure no one was following. While rear security was necessary, the real unknowns lay ahead, in the places he had not yet seen. He did not even need his night-vision gear to see the fire below. It flared brightly in the darkness about a thousand meters down from their hide. “Check this out,” he said, rolling away so Ledford could look through the opening. “There’s your little bridge, Coastie, and what looks like an enemy patrol is camped at the high end.”
Ledford scrunched closer. “I can’t see much from up here. My brother was down a lot lower when he took that picture. Down by the riverbank.”
“Yeah. What do you make of that campsite?”
“I see what looks like some guys sleeping near the little fire. One of them is standing, drinking from a cup, and looking around. Weapons on the ground. ”
“Right. So two questions: Why are they out here at all? And why aren’t they patrolling instead of catching z’s?” Kyle had his binos focused. “They’re just hanging out there like a bunch of clowns.”
“Isn’t that good?” she asked. “Since they aren’t looking for us, our insertion wasn’t compromised.”
Swanson slowly examined the entire area. Something about it seemed wrong, like a framed picture hanging at an angle. “Nobody is moving anywhere down there. Kind of weird. They should be roaming around, but the campsite is as far out as they go.”
“So do you think it would be OK for us to go down closer? Get a better angle?”
Swanson did not reply. He moved his glasses up to scan the larger, newer bridge two thousand meters away. That canopy of bright work lights gave it the look of a carnival, and he could see workmen and vehicles moving about. Sheets of dust blew in the night wind, and the rumble of heavy equipment could be heard in the distance. Seeing it from the ground was totally different than viewing it from an overhead satellite picture. It rose like an old- fashioned castle of stone, dominating the upper end of the valley. “That’s a big damned bridge,” he said.
“So let’s go look around. We have tons of time. Go check it out and be back up here before dawn.”
“Take it easy, Coastie. We have to be very careful, or else we can stumble into an ambush or a mine field. This ain’t no walk in the park. Overconfidence can get you killed. We will go soon, but we move quietly and slowly.”
Ledford chewed on her lower lip. She knew she was anxious, while Swanson had done this kind of thing before. “I know that,” she said.
“Then shut the hell up,” Swanson told her. “We go when I’m ready.” He looked at his wristwatch. Less than an hour ago, they had still been in the plane, and now she wanted to sprint down into bad-guy country. Rookie nerves. He went back to combing the area with his night-vision binos, checking the map and making notes with a ballpoint pen in his pocket notebook.
“Are you ready yet?” Fifteen minutes had passed, and Ledford was impatient. There was nobody down there but those few guys at the fire.
“Keep your voice down. Sound carries,” he said.
“We can’t just stay here. What do you want to do?” She was exasperated. The answer to what Joey had seen was right down the hill.
Swanson switched off his flashlight, put away the notebook and binos, took a sip of water, and rolled onto his back. “I’m going to sleep for an hour. Stay awake and don’t say another fucking word.”
TWO THIRTY IN THE morning. Sergeant Hafiz stifled a yawn as the need for sleep pulled at his eyes. The radio on his belt buzzed, and he acknowledged the incoming call, listened carefully, and terminated it. The convoy of visitors was only two miles away now, paused on the roadway, ready to come in. Before giving the signal, Hafiz made a quick call to the replacement patrol that was now down in the valley. “What’s going on?” he asked the leader.
“Nothing. Very quiet.” The voice was calm, which was good. Hafiz did not want anything else unexpected happening.
“Keep it that way. We’re going dark up here for a few minutes. Keep those people alert and spread out. No errors, not now.”
“Yes, Sergeant. I’m at the old bridge if you need me.”
“Very well. Base out.” Hafiz changed channels on the portable radio and inhaled deeply to steady himself. The vehicles, carrying the party of Ayman al-Masri from the New Muslim Order, were waiting nearby, ready to come in. At the sergeant’s order, sirens along the bridge whined to life. All engines shut down, every light was turned off, and when the sirens stopped thirty seconds later, the area was enveloped by total silence.
At the campfire beside the old bridge, the patrol leader sipped his tea and stared back toward the massive bridge that had just vanished before his eyes, as if it had been sucked into a hole in the night. The wail of the sirens bounced off the sides of the valley, bringing curses from the Taliban fighters trying to sleep on the ground. They were hard men but had refused to go any farther than this point. He was going to accuse them of being afraid of the Djinn, hiding like scared children, but they probably would have killed him on the spot for insulting their manhood.
