Rubens frowned at her. “I had a nap earlier, Marie. And I want to see the boys out of Tajikistan. I notice
“I’m working late tonight.”
“Well, then …”
She nodded and looked up at the big screen. The CF-1 imagery had been replaced by a detailed color map of Tajikistan, an image also based on satellite photos. A green square marked the position of the Hunter as Dean and Akulinin drove south, plotted by satellite triangulation of the signals from their communicators. Red squares for ground units and triangles for air units swarmed behind them to the north, each accompanied by a small line of alphanumerics identifying it.
The aircraft were being pegged by an AWACS E-3 Sentry flying north of Kabul.
Technically, that Sentry was flagged as an aircraft from Luxembourg, the one NATO member with no air force of its own. The twenty people on board, however, were U.S. Air Force personnel serving with NATO. The Pulse- Doppler radar within the rotating thirty-foot saucer mounted above the fuselage could pick out aircraft at low altitudes as distant as 250 miles — as far north as Dushanbe. With Pulse (BTH) beyond-the-horizon radar, they could spot aircraft at medium to high altitude all the way out to four hundred miles, almost all the way to Tashkent, in Kazakhstan.
The ground targets were being identified by radio and cell phone signals intercepted by SIGINT satellites, passed through the NSA’s Torricelli Computer Center, then routed through the Signals Analysis Department. Those positions could only be updated when the vehicle in question called in, but there was a
“What are those?” Rubens asked, pointing at a close-spaced pair of triangles south of Kolkhozabad. They were the two pursuers closest to the Hunter’s current position, just south of the town of Dusti.
“Two Hip-Cs,” Telach told him. “Out of Ayni. FSB registries.”
They were less than fifteen miles out from the Hunter.
“Patch me through to Dean and Akulinin,” he told her.
“Yes, sir.”
This was going to be damned close.
“Charlie? This is Rubens.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You might want to keep a close eye on your six. We’re picking up two Hips coming after you. Range twelve miles. Speed … a hundred and twenty knots.”
Dean scowled as he turned in his seat, looking out the passenger window at the northern horizon. At a speed of about 140 miles per hour across twelve miles, those helicopters would catch up in something like five minutes, even allowing for the Hunter’s high-speed bump-and-jolt down the road.
They’d turned off the main highway in the town of Dusti, less than five miles north of the Panj River and Afghanistan. Their course, however, kept jogging from one narrow dirt road to another as they zigzagged past canals and cotton fields. The river now was just two miles south; the bridge, however, according to the map- readers back at the Art Room, was about eight miles ahead, toward the southwest.
Dean ran the math through his head. The helicopters would catch them long before they could make it across the river.
It wasn’t as though they could blend in with the local traffic, either. For the past hour, there’d
“Turn here,” Dean said, pointing. “Left!”
“What are you doing, Charlie?” Telach demanded. “That’s not the quickest way to the bridge!”
“We’re not going to
“I see what he’s trying to do,” Rubens added. “Recalculate for him.”
“How deep is the river here?” Dean asked. “And how wide?”
“Depth varies with the season,” Telach said. “Right now … it’s about thirty yards wide, around five … maybe ten feet deep.”
“Masha?” Dean called back to her. “We’re going to have to ford a river up here on foot. It might be five or ten feet deep in places, and we’ll need to swim. You okay with that?”
“Charlie … Ilya …
Damn, damn,
“You’re coming up on a bridge over an irrigation ditch,” Telach said.
“I see it,” Akulinin replied.
“There’s a dirt road on the left just beyond. Take it.”
“Right.”
“Masha,” Dean continued, “you’ll have to trust us. We’ll work out a way to float you across. Ilya will swim with you. You’ll be okay, so long as you don’t panic.”
“
He scanned the sky behind for the helicopters again, then turned and searched the landscape closer at hand for any type of cover at all. The land here was utterly flat, checkered with fields of cotton, crisscrossed by canals and irrigation ditches.
Even above the roar of the engine, Dean could now hear a faint fluttering sound in the air. Turning in his seat again, he could see the helicopters, two tiny specks just above the horizon to the northeast.
If he could see them, they could see the Hunter. Dean pulled one of the AKM assault rifles they’d taken from the guards at the Ayni tower from the backseat and clicked off the safety. It was possible that the pilots of those Hips would miss seeing the Hunter this far off the main road — it looked like they might be following the highway, in fact — but he wasn’t going to count on that. The car had been leaving a billowing dust trail since turning off the paved road, and that would make them stand out like a roach on a dinner plate.
“There’s the river,” Akulinin said. “Ahead and on the left.”
“Great!” Dean said. “Get as close to the river as you can manage.”
“Right!”
Akulinin swerved sharply left, sending the Hunter off the road and bouncing across a field of cotton plants. Dean lost sight of the helicopters and had to lean far out of the passenger-side window to spot them again. They were closer — and showing a narrower aspect. They’d spotted the car and were headed directly toward them.
“Stop here, Ilya,” Dean said. “Everybody out! Bring the briefcase and the black bag.”
“And both rifles,” Akulinin said. “I think we’re going to need them!”
The three of them jogged through the rows of cotton plants, crouched low. Dean could see the water now, less than fifty yards ahead. The flutter in the air was much louder, a thrumming buzz swelling to a pounding
An irrigation canal opened up in front of them, cement walled, three feet deep, a couple of yards wide.
A thundering chatter sounded behind them, clearly audible above the pounding of the rotors. Dean turned and looked back; one of the helicopters was hovering a hundred yards from the abandoned car. A door gunner behind a side-mounted 7.62 mm PK machine gun was hammering the Hunter, sending sprays of shattering glass exploding into the air. After a few moments, the gunner began sweeping the cotton plants around the car with gunfire. The other helicopter hung farther back, perhaps half a mile away.
“Reconnaissance by fire,” Dean said. “They haven’t seen us, don’t know we’re here. C’mon. Stay low … as low as you can get!”
Single file, they made their way down the canal, heading for the river. The water was cold, the bottom thick with mud.
