“What’s the plan, anyway,” Ames asked, “when we touch down?”
“And who is this guy? What did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t.”
“What, you don’t trust me?”
“Nobody else knows, either. It’s compartmentalization, Ames.”
“How’re we tracking him?”
“Pixie dust.” Fisher had to suppress his smile. His statement was almost closer to truth than fantasy.
“So let me get this straight: You won’t tell us who we’re after or how we’re tracking him, and we don’t have jack for a plan.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Great, just great.”
It was after ten at night when their plane began its approach to Irkutsk International Airport. Having spent the last three hours of the flight staring out the window at thick cloud cover, Fisher was surprised to see an expanse of white. For as far as he could see the terrain was clad in moonlit snow. While they’d been traveling east, a late-spring snowstorm had come in from the west. Located so close to the Angara reservoirs, the airport had its own microclimate that left the area fogged in for much of the year, and with the drop in temperature, that fog had turned into a frost that clung to trees and telephone poles and power lines. Three years earlier an S7 Airlines Airbus A310-300 had crashed here, overshooting the runway before smashing into a concrete barrier and exploding. Of the 203 passengers aboard, only 76 survived.
“Just our luck,” Ames said as the aircraft’s gear squelched on the runway. “A Siberian blizzard.”
“This is a win for us, Ames.”
“How do you figure?”
“Our friend probably arrived just as the storm started rolling in. Everything would have slowed down until the plows started rolling. This storm might have cut his lead by half.”
Customs went slowly but smoothly. Stripped of their wristbands, the team’s OPSATs were taken for PDAs, which in essence they were. Fisher had divvied up the Ajax shaving-cream cans, giving one each to Noboru and Hansen. The darts, still inside his barrel pen, were inside his carry-on rucksack.
Fifty minutes after they landed the team pulled onto the airport’s approach road in a pair of Lada Niva SUVs. The snow had stopped falling, but the clouds to the southwest were dark with moisture. More was coming. In the lead SUV, Fisher checked his iPhone’s signal and was pleased to see five bars. Siberia or not, Irkutsk was still a metropolitan area, boasting six hundred thousand in the city itself and another hundred thousand within a fifty-mile radius. Irkutsk would lack many of the conveniences of a Western city of comparable size, but he and his team were far from being in the boondocks. Past that fifty-mile radius, however, was another story.
At the first sight of an open diner, Fisher, in the lead SUV, pulled into the lot. They went inside. The place was empty. The hostess gave them a “take your pick” shrug of her shoulders. They took the booth nearest the door. Fisher waited for the waitress to deposit the water glasses and silverware and leave before saying, “We’ve got some legwork to do. We need weapons, equipment, and cold-weather gear.”
“Caches?” Gillespie asked.
“Nearest one is three hundred miles north of here in Bratsk. That’s a single; the nearest multiple cache is… too far. We’re going to have to get inventive. Noboru, you did some work in Bratsk once, right?”
“How did you?… Never mind. Yeah, I spent a couple of weeks there a few years ago. Great town. A lot of gray cinder-block buildings. Very Soviet.”
“Can you make some calls? We’ll need a local contact.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Fisher nodded. “Who’s got the best Russian?”
“I do,” Maya Valentina said immediately.
“We’ve got OPSATs but no SVTs or subdermals. We’re going to need to improvise. I’ll give you a list. You and Kimberly hit electronics stores and hobby shops.”
“Got it.”
“Hansen, you and Ames find some army-surplus stores. Look for cold-weather and camouflage gear and anything else we can use.”
Hansen nodded. Ames shrugged.
Fisher’s iPhone chimed, signaling a text message. It was from Grimsdottir:
Q halted at lat 53?50?15.61? N, long 108? 2?35.13? E, 210 miles northeast Irkutsk.
No movement three hours.
Stand by.
Grim had hyperlinked the latitude and longitude. Fisher clicked on the link and Google Earth opened and zoomed in. Qaderi’s location put him on the western shore of Lake Baikal. Fisher shared the update with the group.
“What the hell is he doing there?” Ames asked.
Hansen said, “That’s what we’re here to find out.”
They talked for a few more minutes, then got another text from Grim:
Road blocked at Q location (Rytaya River estuary) for last six hours. Plows working. Estimated time to clear, six hours.
“We just got another break,” Fisher said, then explained. He checked his watch. “We’re not going anywhere tonight. Let’s find a place to settle in and wait for daylight. If we get on the road by noon, we’ll only be four hours behind our target.”
“Our yet-to-be-named target,” Ames corrected.
“You’ll know when you need to know,” Fisher replied.
As arranged, Fisher and Hansen met in the hotel’s lobby an hour after they checked in. Aside from the desk clerk, who stood leaning over the desk with his head in a paperback novel, they were alone. They found a seat on one of the settees. The lobby was a pastel nightmare of light blue upholstered furniture, peach carpet, and gold curtains.
“Ames is pushing hard for information,” Fisher told Hansen.
“That could mean nothing. He’s that way — always trying to get over on people.”
“Could be. When we’re closer to catching up with Qaderi, I’m going to give everyone a few more details. If Ames has been waiting until he has more to feed Kovac, that should do it. Since he hasn’t got a phone, he’ll try the OPSAT.”
“Then do we get to string him up by his ankles?”
“Something like that. In the end we’re going to need him to cooperate, so we can’t do anything… permanent to him.”
“But he doesn’t know that.”
Fisher returned Hansen’s smile. “No.”
With their body clocks scrambled from the flight and the rapid jump in time zones, the team awoke at seven and met in the lobby as planned. Beyond the revolving doors was nothing but white. Snow had begun falling again since a few hours before dawn, and now a foot of it lay on the ground.
The restaurant was just opening. They found a large round table near the back, and then helped themselves to the buffet and filled up on eggs, sausage, bacon, black bread with butter, blini with sour cream, and assorted pastries. This could be the last time they would have a regular meal until the mission was over, Fisher told them. Where their target seemed to be headed there would be no grocery stores or fast-food restaurants.
Over coffee Fisher once more went over individual assignments. There were a few questions, but aside from Ames, who wore his characteristic sneer, the team members were steady and focused, and Fisher could see the glint of anticipation in their eyes as they talked.
