any longer.
He was exhausted already, though, and not sure he could keep moving for that long. Besides, while the Russians across the river appeared to be appallingly bad shots, they might well get lucky — or decide to swim across themselves and pick him up.
He surfaced again, gulping down air. He could hear thunder in the sky.
Great. What now?
The aircraft, two of them flying low and wingtip to wingtip, howled overhead. Dean had just a glimpse of the gray shapes — twin-tailed Russian MiG-29 Fulcrums — but then he blinked and almost yelled out loud because he’d caught just a glimpse of the red, white, and green roundels on the undersides of the wings.
Not Russian!
Those MiGs must be patrol aircraft out of either Ayni or, more likely, Farkhor, off to the southwest.
The jets banked above the Panj, circling back to the north. The Russian troops on the northern bank watched them for a moment, then appeared to arrive at a consensus, turning away from the river and jogging back into the cotton fields beyond.
After a moment, Dean crawled out of the water. North, he could see more Russian soldiers, but they appeared to be converging on the downed Hip, the manhunt forgotten.
South, the second Russian helicopter burned in the marsh, while two more jet aircraft made a thundering turn in the sky. He began walking.
Five minutes later, he caught up with Akulinin and Maria Alekseyevna.
“Charlie!” Ilya cried. “You made it!”
A helicopter, a ponderous U.S. Air Force HH-53 Super Jolly, was approaching from the south, easing its way toward the pillar of black smoke.
“Where the hell are my pants?” Dean asked his partner.
“Delta Green One reports three people on board,” Marie Telach said. The stress in the Art Room over the past few moments had been twanging tight. She sounded utterly drained now.
“That’s good,” Rubens said, nodding. “That’s good.”
“They are en route now and will be in Kunduz within half an hour.”
“I think,” Rubens said, “they can make it the rest of the way on their own. I’m going home to bed. I suggest you do the same.”
“Sounds like a great idea, sir.”
“Before you go, please convey my thanks to the commander of NATO’s German contingent. I know they didn’t want to engage.”
Although it was widely seen as an American war, Afghanistan was NATO’s first combat deployment outside of Europe.
Since December of 2001, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance had forces in Afghanistan. The embattled country had been divided into quarters. Although a number of NATO nations shared the responsibilities for each sector, and some commands rotated among several nations, the United States had the primary responsibility for the southeast, Canada for the southwest, Italy for the northwest, and Germany for the northeast, including the district of Kunduz. A fifth zone had been established around the capital of Kabul, with primary jurisdiction there belonging to the French.
In the late summer of 2009, German troops at Kunduz, thirty-seven miles south of Afghanistan’s northern border, had spotted two NATO fuel tanker trucks recently hijacked by Taliban insurgents. They’d called in an air strike, and a U.S. fighter had been vectored in, destroying both trucks. Ninety people had been killed.
Unfortunately, at least forty of those killed had been civilians — a fuzzy distinction, perhaps, in an insurgency where a Taliban fighter could simply drop his rifle and become an instant civilian … but there’d been kids among the dead as well. New rules of engagement had immediately been clamped into place, further hampering the U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. There’d been a lot of recriminations in Germany over the incident and elsewhere in Europe as well, questions about what NATO was doing fighting a war so far from Europe.
The Immelmann squadron commander had not been eager to engage Russian helicopters on the northern border, and it had taken a phone call by Rubens to the four-star U.S. general in command of the entire NATO force structure in Afghanistan to get a pair of Tornado fighter-bombers airborne. At that, the Germans had announced that they would
Now NATO and the United States had a genuine border incident on their hands. Russia was going to be furious — but at least now the shooting would take place at embassies and, perhaps, at the United Nations.
At least Dean and Akulinin were safe.
And Rubens, finally, could go home and get some long-overdue sleep.
Except…
He looked at his watch, then at the line of clocks on the wall. Almost midnight — but there was one final task that
Ilya Akulinin slumped back in the hard, narrow seat of the Jolly Green, letting the tension, the stress, the fear all fall away, leaving behind only exhaustion.
His arm was around Masha’s shoulders, and she smiled as he pulled her a bit closer. Charlie Dean sat across the aisle from them, head slumped back, eyes closed. The helo’s crew chief had given the three of them blankets and scalding coffee from a thermos. Real lifesavers …
“Ilya?” Marie’s voice said in his ear. “I’m switching you to a private channel.”
“Uh … right …”
“
“What about the word ‘professional?’” Rubens said, interrupting. “I ask merely so that I can be sure you and I are speaking the same language.”
Akulinin straightened up, his arm sliding out from behind Masha. She looked at him curiously, and he gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Yes, sir.”
“You violated tradecraft protocol when you took it upon yourself to rescue a foreign national during the course of an operation.”
“But she’s—”
Rubens shouted in Akulinin’s ear. Akulinin didn’t think he’d ever heard the old man even raise his voice. The effect was startling. “The mission comes first, Mr. Akulinin. The mission
Akulinin’s face burned red. How the hell had Rubens found out about that?
