Abul looked at her as if she were an alien.
He held out his hands and said in Arabic that he didn’t understand what she was saying.
“Get in the aircraft,” she told him.
Something moved in the rocks about forty feet from the Osprey. Breanna began running to it. There was a large gray-green bag there — a body bag.
It was moving.
God, she thought, did they put McGowan inside when he was still alive?
She ran faster. The bag slumped. Breanna reached it and started to pull upward. She heard a moan.
“I’ll get you out,” she said, but something wasn’t right. The body was stiff and heavy, not moving. She pulled it up, dragged it to the side, then saw Sugar beneath it.
“Come on, come on!” Breanna yelled.
She reached down, grabbed Sugar’s shirt and pulled. But Sugar was too heavy and her grip too loose; she slipped and fell back.
Sugar’s right leg had wedged into the rocks. She pounded with her hands and elbow and pushed, but that only moved the rocks tighter around her.
Another mortar shell hit the hill behind them, shaking the ground with a ferocious jolt.
“We have to get the rocks first,” yelled Breanna. She grabbed the biggest she thought she could handle and found it was too much. She took a smaller one and barely got it out of the way.
“My leg,” cried Sugar, suddenly feeling the pain.
“Push, push!” yelled Boston, huffing and out of breath as he ran over. He grabbed two rocks and threw them away.
“Help me with this big one,” said Breanna.
Together they rolled it to the side. Boston leaned down, wrapped his upper body around Sugar and hauled her up.
“Out, let’s go, let’s go!” he yelled.
Breanna turned, then remembered the body bag. She grabbed it but couldn’t lift it over her head. She had to drag it toward the Osprey.
“Blow our gear,” Sugar told Boston. She thought she was shouting, but the dust had strangled her voice, and Boston didn’t understand what she was saying. He got her into the Osprey, then went back and helped Breanna with McGowan. They had to drag it the last ten feet, both of them spent.
Realizing the position was no longer being held, the mercenaries charged up the hill, firing as they went. Two more mortar shells hit near the peak. For a few seconds the ground felt as if it were made of water.
Breanna punched the door panel to close the ramp, then scrambled forward.
“Emergency takeoff,” she yelled to the Osprey’s computer as she reached the flight deck. “Authorization Stockard. Go!
The aircraft launched. As it rose, a hail of bullets began spraying from the hill. The aircraft stayed on course, ignoring bullets and everything else once placed in emergency takeoff mode.
They were flying through a hail of tracers.
Breanna scrambled into the pilot’s seat. She grabbed the controls.
“Emergency override. Authorization Stockard!”
The aircraft bucked sharply to the side as she ducked away from the gunfire. She held it in the air, mostly by instinct, climbing away over the Ethiopian lines.
Breanna’s heart pounded in her throat.
“Computer control. Authorization Stockard. Orbit here at three thousand feet. No, five thousand feet. Climb to five thousand feet and orbit.”
The computer flashed the command in the center display. Breanna got up and went into the back.
Boston was cleaning Sugar’s leg, which had bruised and been cut by the rocks. One of her ribs felt broken. Her right elbow and wrist were sprained.
“You’re the bus driver?” Breanna asked Abul.
He stared at her, then nodded.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you. My name is Breanna Stockard.”
It took him a second to respond. “Amin Abul.”
“We didn’t blow up the gear,” mumbled Sugar.
“What are you saying?” Breanna asked, dropping to her knee next to Sugar.
“The gear,” said Boston. “She didn’t get a chance to blow it.”
“The detonator is in my pocket,” managed Sugar.
Boston slipped his hand in — delicately — and retrieved it. The device was essentially a short-range radio. Once the proper code was punched in, it would blow the charges. But they had to be within a half mile for it work: Nothing happened when Boston pushed it.
“We’ll go back,” said Breanna.
60
The perimeter of the fields behind the building where Tarid and Aberhadji had met was surrounded by what appeared at first glance to be a dilapidated wire fence. With posts poked down in places, and strands bent and twisted in others, it looked like the forgotten remnants of the farm’s old boundaries, a doomed attempt to keep out ruin as much as animals and other trespassers.
But looks were not everything. Examining the series of satellite images taken of the area, Danny realized the wire was part of a perimeter surveillance system. Video cameras were placed near or on a dozen posts. Small transformers indicated the wire was powered. He suspected that it was a tripwire as well, rigged to sound an alarm if it was moved more than a very minimal amount. Motion sensors, with floodlights and video cameras, were stationed close to the building. More subtly, there were several spots on the property that looked as if they could be used as defensive positions in case of an attack.
MY-PID analyzed the security system and showed several vulnerabilities, giving Danny a crooked but easy- to-follow path to the rear of the building. The only difficulty would be getting over the fence without touching it — a problem solved by stopping at a Tehran hardware store just before it closed.
The only stepladder the store had was an eight-foot aluminum model. Sturdy enough inside a building for light maintaining or maintenance, the legs were somewhat rickety on the uneven terrain where Danny wanted to cross the fence.
“Don’t hit the wire,” he hissed at Hera as she helped him get it into position. “We don’t know how sensitive it is.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose. The damn thing keeps shifting.”
The ground where she was standing was wet, and the leg kept sagging. She pulled it to one side, finally finding a sturdy spot.
Danny jiggled the ladder back and forth, testing how wobbly it was.
Very. No way it was going to hold him.
“Get some rocks and slip them under the right leg,” he told Hera. “I’ll hold it.”
The rocks made it a little sturdier, but not much.
“Are there any ground units in the rear of the building?” Danny asked the Voice. They had launched an Owl UAV before approaching the fence.
“Negative. Path remains clear.”
As far as they could tell, there was only one security person on duty, and he was down in a command post near the main building. Aberhadji had left the building some hours before nightfall.
“You climb over the ladder while I hold it,” Danny told Hera. “Then you hold it while I come over behind
