Masago's attention drifted back to the video display. Suddenly he stiffened.
'Got something.' The toneless voice of one of the operators murmured in Masago's headset.
Masago could see two people, and a third, approaching the other two, a hundred yards away. A quarter mile up the canyon, a figure lay supine.
'Zoom in to 900mm on the southernmost target,' said Masago.
The new image jumped on the screen. A man, lying against the canyon wall. A large stain-blood. A dead man. He had known of the monk and these two from his debriefing of the cop, Wilier. But this third man, this dead man, was an unknown.
'Back out to 240mm.'
Now he could see the three figures again. The one to the north had broken into a run. He could see his white upturned face for a moment. It was the CIA meddler, the so-called monk. Masago stared in surprise.
'Looks like we missed the girl in the dress,' murmured the MTS controller.
Masago leaned intently over the picture, staring at it as if to suck out its essence.
'Give me a closer look at the middle target.'
The camera jumped and the figure of a man filled the screen-Broadbent. The man he was looking for, critical to the plan. Broadbent had found the dying dinosaur prospector and he was therefore the one most likely to know the exact location of the fossil. According to Wilier, both the wife and the monk were involved, although how it all fitted together wasn't clear. Nor did it need to be. His goal was simple: obtain the locality of the fossil, clear the area of unauthorized personnel, get the fossil, and get out. Let some paper pusher assemble the details for the ex post facto classified report.
'Back me out to 160mm,' he said to the payload console operator.
The image on the screen jumped back. The three had joined up and were running for the shelter of the canyon walls.
'Activating MTI,' said the controller.
'No,' murmured Masago.
The controller cast him a puzzled glance.
'I need these targets alive.'
'Yes, sir.'
Masago scanned the canyon. It was eight hundred feet deep with stepped-back walls, narrowing at a bottleneck before opening up to the big valley of stone. The few side canyons all boxed up. It was almost a closed area, and it presented them with an opportunity.
'See that point where the canyon narrows? About two o'clock on your screen.'
'Yes, sir.'
'That's your target.'
'Sir?'
'I want you to hit that canyon wall in such a way to bring down enough material to block their route forward. We've got a chance to trap them.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Heading one-eighty, descend to two thousand,' said the pilot.
'Tracking stationary target. Ready to fire.'
'Hold until my signal,' Masago murmured into his head set. 'Wait.' He could already see the drone was going to overshoot. The canyon rim loomed up and suddenly the targets were gone, hidden behind the thousand-foot wall of stone.
'Son of a bitch,' the pilot muttered.
'Come around on a one-sixty heading,' said Masago. 'Get the vehicle down, follow the canyon.'
They’ll see-
'That's the point. Buzz them. Panic them.'
The scene shifted as the drone banked.
'Back me out to 50mm.'
The scene jumped back farther to a wide-angled field of view. Now Masago could see both rims of the canyon. As the Predator came around, the three targets reappeared: three black ants running along the base of the sheer canyon walls, heading for the valley.
'Target good,' murmured the operator.
'Not yet,' murmured Masago. On his wide angle view he could see a turn in the canyon, then a straight stretch of at least four hundred yards. It was like running wildebeest from a helicopter. He watched the figures, which from that altitude seemed to be moving as slowly and helplessly as insects. There wasn't much they could do sandwiched between eight-hundred-foot cliffs. They cleared the bend, now running in the flat, still hugging the canyon wall, hoping it would provide cover.
'At firing,' Masago murmured, 'switch me to video feed from the missile.'
'Yes, sir. Still locked on T.'
'Wait. . .'
A long silence. They were running, faltering, clearly exhausted. The woman fell, helped up by the man and the monk. They were now four hundred yards from the target. Three fifty. Three twenty-five . . .
'Fire.'
The screen jumped again as the video feed switched from the Predator to the camera onboard the missile, first a stretch of empty sky, then the ground swinging up, fixing on the left canyon wall, high up. The wall rapidly grew in size as the missile zeroed in with laser tracking. As the missile made contact the feed automatically switched back to the Predator's television camera, and suddenly they were back above, looking down-at a silent cloud of dust billowing upward along with soaring chunks of rock. The figures had dived to the ground. Masago waited. He wanted them badly shaken up-but not dead.
The movement of air in the canyon began to push the dust cloud away. And then the figures reappeared- running back the way they had come.
'Look at those sons of bitches go,' muttered the controller.
Masago smiled. 'Bring the UAV back to ceiling and keep tracking them. I'm putting the bird up. We've got them now, three rats in a hot tin can.'
7
T0M RAN JUST behind Sally, the roar of the explosion still ringing in his ears, dust from the explosion boiling down the canyon toward them. They rested for a moment in the shelter of the canyon wall. Tom paused, leaning on the rock, breathing hard, as Ford joined them.
'What the hell is going on-?' Tom gasped.
The monk shook his head.
'What was that firing at us?'
'A drone. It's still up there, watching us. It's out of missiles, however. They only carry two.'
'This is surreal.'
'I think the drone fired only to block the canyon. They want to trap us.'
'Who's they!'
'Later, Tom. We've got to get out of here.'
Tom squinted up and down the canyon, examining the walls on both sides. His eye was arrested by a broad, sloping crack, at the bottom of which stood a long pile of talus. The sloping crevasse offered plenty of handholds and footholds, where falling rocks had jammed, creating natural climbing chocks.
'There,' Tom said. 'We can climb that crack.' He turned to Sally. 'Can you do it?'
'Hell, yeah.'
'You, Wyman?'
'No problem.'
'There's a good climbing line up the right-hand side to that ledge.'
Ford said, 'You lead the way.'
'You know what's beyond?'
'I've never been this far into the high mesas.'
