and operators.
“You don’t think they could get around that?” said Dean.
Karr shrugged.
“If it were me, I’d find a way,” Dean told him.
“Good thing it wasn’t you, then,” said Karr.
“Maybe your gear doesn’t work right.”
“Hey, look around. Definitely. I’m not thrilled with the results myself. Like I told Lia, I doubt there were more than two bodies fried into the mush there.”
“Maybe they were there and left.”
“Nah. Doesn’t work that way. The sniffer—” Karr jerked his head around midsentence. Lia was already running across the road, taking a position on a knoll that overlooked the wreckage.
“Just a car,” Karr said. “Keep working. She’ll cover us.”
The vehicle, which looked as if it dated from the end of the Soviet Union, slowed but did not stop. Dean stripped off his shirt as it passed. This might be Siberia, but the afternoon had turned remarkably warm. Karr had given him an ointment to ward off the flies; it had an overly sweet citrus smell but was infinitely better than having to swat the things away.
“Jesus, put your shirt back on,” squealed Lia from her vantage across the road.
“Hey, I like his pecs,” laughed Karr.
“Why don’t you take off yours, Lia?” said Dean.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t,” said Karr. “My stomach’s not strong enough.”
They finished removing the blackened classified section of the aircraft around three o’clock. Lia, meanwhile, had been looking at a piece of the tailplane that had been left behind. As Karr tied up the rear of the truck, she announced that the plane had been taken down by a radar-guided missile.
“How do you know?” Dean asked.
She ignored him, repeating the information for Karr, who only shrugged and went to sit in the shade next to the truck. Sweat had soaked his shirt, and the skin exposed at his neck and arms was beet-red from the sun.
“How do you know it was a radar missile?” Dean asked. “Are you an expert?”
She made a face and tapped her ear. Obviously the people in the Art Room had been feeding her data.
“How do they know?”
“Number one, because the engines were intact,” Lia told him. She went to the driver’s side of the truck, returning with a large bottle of Gatorade. She gave it to Karr, who polished off about half before handing it to Dean. To Dean’s surprise the liquid was so cold it hurt his back teeth.
“Don’t drink it all,” said Lia.
Dean glanced at her and realized she was trying not to be caught staring at him. He held the bottle over toward her, then started to jerk it away, but she was too quick, grabbing it from his tired grip.
“If it had been a heat-seeker, it would have hit one of them. There also would have been burn marks on the tail,” she said. “And there weren’t, at least not that we saw. That confirms that the shootdown was done from a reasonable distance.”
“And?”
“No visual ID. They knew what they were firing at.”
“Or maybe they didn’t,” said Dean. “Maybe they were too far away to see but assumed they were right.”
“True.”
“Or maybe the mission was compromised,” said Dean. “So they were targeting it all along.”
“Then why is it still here?” said Karr. “If we shot down a spy plane in Nebraska, would we leave it sitting on the ground until someone else came and picked it up?”
“Another car,” said Lia. She grabbed her gun and ran back across the road.
“Art Room warns us,” said Karr. “They sowed small detection units along the approaches before we got here.”
“They’re not watching us from space?” said Dean.
“Not in real time. We’re too low a priority,” said Karr, who could dish out sarcasm but obviously had trouble detecting it, at least from Dean. “Besides, you can only get stills every sixty or ninety seconds, and they tend to lag even further. Real-time video from space doesn’t really work too well.”
Dean wanted to ask why they weren’t high-priority, but Karr had taken one of the A-2s and surreptitiously crouched behind the truck in case it was needed. A small Fiat approached from the north, slowing as it came close. Two men, both so large they seemed comical in the small car, stared at him. They were wearing suits and ties.
Dean glanced toward the ground, making sure his own rifle was nearby. For a moment he thought the Fiat would stop, but the driver downshifted and it picked up speed.
“Not good,” said Karr. “But we’re leaving anyway.”
By the time they got to the small airport where Fashona was waiting with the helicopter, it was close to 6:00 P.M. Karr and Dean had changed into military fatigues that bore no insignias, and sat in the cab of the truck. Lia had managed to wedge herself among the wreckage and curled beneath a tarp in the back. Their weapons were hidden beneath the seat of the truck, with the exception of a miniature pistol that Karr passed to Dean as they pulled up to a post guarding access to the cargo section of the airport.
Karr took some papers from the dash and spoke to the police officer in a tired voice. Dean had no idea how fluent his Russian was, but undoubtedly the stack of euros he’d passed with the papers spoke eloquently enough. Cleared through, they rounded a dusty access road past a row of military transports, then headed across weed- strewn concrete to a row of hangars that looked big enough to house a Saturn rocket. Their Hind sat in front of one, so dwarfed it appeared almost forlorn.
“Everybody’s corrupt here,” said Dean.
“Everybody’s hungry,” said Karr. His face was serious for a second, as if contemplating that fact; then it shifted back to its usual bright smile. “This used to be a big military base. They had IL-76s in the hangars, along with some weird-looking planes with their engines on top of their wings. Big mo-fos. When they decided to rent out the hangars, they took the planes and pushed them off into the field over there. We’re thinking of buying one. Apparently they’re real dogs, though. Pilots don’t want to fly them. Don’t even mention them to Fashona. He’ll bite your ear off, no shit.”
Karr backed the truck around to the helicopter, whose cargo doors were open. While Lia went to find Fashona, Karr and Dean loaded the chopper.
“College education,” said Karr as they hauled the piece in, “and I end up a schlepper anyway. My father always told me, you can’t do much with math.”
The salvaged wreckage formed a pile about five feet high and almost eight feet square. They strung a large heavy-duty net in front of it to secure it, though Dean was dubious.
Lia returned with Fashona, who in the space of a few hours had managed to grow what looked like a three- day-old beard. They’d been introduced before, but the pilot didn’t seem to remember. He stuck his hand out.
“Fashona,” he said.
“Dean.”
“Don’t call me
“I won’t.”
“Nice helicopter, huh?”
“Looks OK.”
“Want to sit up front?”
“Up front where?” asked Dean.
“Gunner’s compartment,” said the pilot. “No gun on this flight, though. Our weapons are packed away until we need them. We look like we’re civilians. Well, almost.”
Even without weapons strapped to its hard points and no chin gun, the helicopter hardly looked innocent, but Dean didn’t argue.
