Next, Dr. Khan opened the bubble wrap sleeve of the largest component, a battery pack roughly the size of a small shoebox, before reaching for a voltmeter and pressing the probe leads to its terminals.
“Another problem,” he mumbled.
Zahra sat up again, and again shifted her leg as the medic worked the needle.
“What it is now?” she asked.
“The battery level in one of the cells … it’s low.”
Mani walked over, followed by Akhtar and bin Laden. “My people in Moscow checked it before we left. It was fully charged.”
“Well,” Dr. Khan replied, opening the compartment, “not anymore.”
“It’s a new pack,” Mani insisted, “and it doesn’t have a load draining it, so why would it be low?”
“Only one way to find out,” the professor said, opening the pack and using a small screwdriver to disassemble it, removing six batteries, each shaped like long cylinder resembling a stick of dynamite. “There are three primary cells required to power the electronics, plus three more in standby as backup, in case there is a problem with one or more of the primary cells. Good redundancy,” he explained, checking their respective voltage levels, nodding approvingly, until he reached the last one.
“It’s one of the backup cells,” he said. “It’s low and…”
He made a face.
“What is it, Professor?” asked Akhtar.
Dr. Khan didn’t reply. His hands toyed with the battery, and he ran his fingers along what looked like a very small seam toward the lower third of the cell. He twisted the top and bottom in opposite directions and the lower section began to unscrew.
“What the hell?” asked Mani.
“Not hell,” Dr. Khan said, removing something from the battery and inspecting it. “A transmitter.”
All of them looked at the device in his hands, and Zahra suddenly remembered the silent party on that ridge, shortly after she had rescued Pasha. Someone had fired on the enemy, allowing her to escape.
So they could follow me here.
And she suddenly recalled that woman at the meeting, the way one of the Russian captains had glanced in her direction.
“Your whore,” Akhtar hissed, glaring at Zahra before getting in Mani’s face. “She is the one who brought the enemy to our doorstep! Not Pasha! Where is my brother, whore? Where is he?”
“I don’t know where your brother is!” Mani retorted, an index finger in Akhtar’s face. “But what I do know is that my wife risked her life to bring your damn components! Which, by the way, cost me a fortune beyond your imagination!”
Zahra wasn’t surprised often, but Mani had just shocked her with the way he had defended her.
Bin Laden got between them as both men reached for their weapons. “Enough!” he said. “The enemy is outside!”
The room quieted as Akhtar and Mani stopped, keeping up the staring contest for a few more seconds before slowly backing off.
“Now,” bin Laden said, turning to the professor, “what are our options?”
“We turn the tables on them,” Zahra said, pointing at the transmitter.
“What do you mean?” asked bin Laden, glancing in her direction.
“If you can’t beat their technology … then deceive it.”
110
Déjà Vu
QAIS KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
“It is the Dubrovka theater all over again, yes?” she whispered, while focusing the ATN DNVM-4 digital night vision monocular he had loaned her.
Stark sighed, realizing the futility of an overt assault.
Kira huddled beside him under a thermal blanket, looking down on the entrance to the winding passage formed by two nearly parallel walls of rock more than fifty feet high, crested by jagged peaks. From the looks of it, the corridor continued for at least three hundred feet before reaching the side of the mountain, where he presumed the entrance to their hideout was located.
Snowflakes trickled from unseen clouds, through a sparse canopy of pine boughs, as temperatures dropped into the twenties on what promised to be a very cold night.
They had deployed their combined teams in pairs. Sergei and Larson were perched high on a rocky outcrop overlooking the entrance, with a clear line of sight into the first line of defenders. Martin and Hagen covered the lower ground, close to the actual snowy path leading into the corridor. The last two members of Kira’s team covered their rear, in case the Taliban decided to send a team from behind. Stark had ordered Ryan and Monica along the bend in the mountain that ran parallel to the towering wall forming one side of the corridor, to find a suitable spot to scale it in the hope of getting above the enemy.
“Just like the hot gates,” he mumbled. The corridor reminded him not only of that damn theater but also of the legendary Spartans defending the mountain pass against the Persian army in the historic Battle of Thermopylae. Problem was that the Taliban represented the Greek force, now armed with machine guns, against his smaller force.
“The hot gates?”
“Ever studied the Greeks fighting the Persians at Thermopylae?”
“I saw the movie,” she said. “Three Hundred?”
“Good enough,” he replied, thinking of a way to level the playing field, just as they had done in Moscow.
Just as the Persians did, he thought, recalling the goat path that led behind the Greek lines and had been revealed to the Persian army. He hoped Ryan and Monica would find such a path, though they had the darkness and a winter storm playing against them.
Stark frowned, staring at Kira’s profile in the dark as she worked the monocular. She had removed her helmet to use it, revealing not just that red hair but also the scar traversing her forehead and right temple. He recalled how she had pushed him out of the way in the final seconds of the assault, as a grenade fell on them from the stairs at the end of that corridor.
“What is it, Janki mishka?” she said, giving him a sideways glance before resuming her scan.
“I … wish you didn’t call me that.”
“You didn’t seem to mind that night, da?” She tapped him sideways with her hip.
Stark felt color coming to his cheeks. No one besides her had been able to warm his very cold heart since Kate had walked out of his life. “In any case, I never thanked you,” he said, a finger shifting her hair out of the way and tracing the fine scar.
Kira grinned but kept her eye on the monocular. “You would have done the same for me, Janki mishka, yes?”
“In a New York minute.”
“I do not know what that means.”
He smiled. “Means da … yes.”
“Good.” She snuggled against him, though he wasn’t sure whether it was more for warmth or for affection.
Stark ran his fingers over her right shoulder, feeling the smooth surface of her battle dress.
“Enjoying yourself, yes?”
“Kevlar?” he asked.
“Woven with titanium fibers and polyethylene plates over vital areas … among other … classified features.”
“Impressive,” he replied.
Kira had already told him how they had tracked the components halfway around the continent, and about their powered HALO jump and the loss of a third of her team before they reached their designated landing site. Unfortunately, her GPS tracker had lost line of sight with the overhead satellites the moment the courier vanished inside that cave, which likely had a back door to another part of the mountain.
“Do you still have that tattoo?” he asked, since the battle dress covered her neck.
She turned to him and smiled before reaching just below her chin for a hidden zipper and tugging it down just enough to expose her neck and left clavicle, both covered in that amazing body art.
“You remember, yes?”
“Time of my life,” he replied, as he pictured it hovering over him.
She winked before zipping her suit back up and returning to her scanning.
He cleared his thr
oat, then asked, “Those components you sold them … they’re the real thing?”
“Da … unfortunately. We tampered with the primer circuit board, so it won’t detonate the conventional explosives. But they can still turn it into a dirty bomb.”
Stark had told her how they had gotten here, thanks to the combined intelligence of the CIA, the ISI, and that red-haired air force pilot who reminded him of this Russian woman he’d never expected to see again. For a moment Stark wondered how Vaccaro was doing. Last he’d heard via Harwich, she had been in surgery at the—
“Do you think there is another way out of that cave?” Kira asked, setting down the monocular, her eyes on him.
“It’s how they operate, which is why I requested those high assets,” he added, referring to the UAVs currently combing every inch of this mountain with their sophisticated arrays of electro-optical/infrared sensors. And to be on the safe side, they were armed with Hellfires, with orders to fire on anything that moved or that resembled a cave entrance.
And while all that sounded great, Stark cringed at the fact that the same NATO command that had nearly incinerated him and his team just a few days ago had its finger on the trigger of those drones circling overhead. He had been careful to detail the precise location of their combined teams, but the seasoned colonel still didn’t trust—
“Sierra Echo One, Delta One,” Ryan said over the operation frequency.
Stark exchanged a glance with Kira, feeling her warm breath on him as the blanket came over their heads, leaving just enough of an opening to use the monocular that rested between them.
“Go ahead, Delta One,” Stark replied.
“Delta One starting our climb.”
“Copy that, Delta One. Report back when you crest that wall.”
“Roger.”
“Now we wait,” he said, turning to face Kira, just as his Casio vibrated on his wrist.
“What is it?” she asked.
He frowned and reset the alarm before reaching for the Ziploc bag.
“What is that?” she asked again.
Tilting his head while removing the pills, then replacing the bag, he said, “They keep me from going crazy.” He popped them in his mouth and swallowed them with a sip from his canteen.
“I see,” she said, understanding. “But I heard they affect your … khuy.”
“Khuy?”
“Penis. And that would be … a shame.” She winked.
“Ah,” he said, his face blushing again. “I wouldn’t know. It’s been … awhile since … well…”
In the darkness and silence that followed, Kira surprised him by pressing a hand against his groin and smiling.
“Well, no problem so far,” she reported, giving him a slow romantic kiss on the cheek and squeezing twice before releasing him. “Just a little something to remember me, Janki mishka.”
Then she turned back to the night vision monocular and resumed her scanning of her side of the woods.
Stark needed a minute, filling his lungs with cold air to regain his composure. Finally exhaling heavily while settling behind the night vision scope on his MP5A1, he resumed his scan.
He quietly savored the moment, even while realizing that they were both professionals operating in the world’s most hostile nation, carrying out what could very well be the most important mission of their lives.
That small kiss and her playful touch was all that Kira could offer at the moment—maybe ever—as neither knew what the future would bring.
And it would have to be enough.
111
Painting
QAIS KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
“He wants us to report back when we crest “that?” asked Monica, staring up at almost a hundred feet of near-vertical rock, through the layers of snowflakes dancing overhead.
“That’s what the man said.”
“Well, that’s being hopefully optimistic.”
Ryan shrugged while inspecting the rock. “What can I say? He trusts our abilities.”
“How? He barely knows me.”
“My skills then.”
She smiled without humor before glancing back up the black granite. “It’s been a while since I’ve done this, and it looks ominous.”
“That’s what she said.”
Monica punched him on the shoulder.
“It’s like riding a bike. Just follow my lead and my route and you’ll be fine. It’ll come back to you,” he said, wedging the toe of his right boot into a small protrusion at knee level, hoisting himself up, then reaching for a small ledge with his right hand and sticking the fingers of his left hand into a vertical crevice that ran almost the entire length of the wall. In fact, the long crack had been the selling point for Ryan to select this spot.
“Remember to relax your grip,” he added. “If you overgrip you’ll wear out your forearms, and then you’re done. Use your legs to support most of the weight.”
He demonstrated how to hang, using the friction of his right sole against the rock while using fingertips for balance, keeping his upper body angled toward the rock. His left leg hung for a moment, before he lifted it up to reach another small imperfection in the wall.
Monica squinted, trying to see the foothold. It was barely visible, just a slight flaw, but enough for his left sole to grip it, allowing Ryan to climb another two feet. Again he rested his weight on his legs while keeping his arms stretched.
“It’s called hanging smart,” he said. “Avoid bending your arms, ’cause that overworks your biceps, triceps, and shoulders.”
He shot back up again, making it look too damn easy.
Here we go, she thought, following his movements, leveraging the friction between the rock and her rubber soles, climbing a couple of feet but flexing her arms in the process. Slowly, she bent her legs to stretch her arms, noticing the instant relief on her muscles.
I’ll be damned.
Running the fingers of his left hand up the vertical crevice, Ryan continued his slow ascent, foothold after foothold, though most weren’t more than slightly angled sections of rock. She mimicked him, keeping her upper body away from the rock while resting her weight on her legs, forcing the soles into the rock.
They moved in nearly vertical fashion, with an occasional shift here and there for better footing. She tried hard to minimize bending her arms but kept catching herself trying to lift with them instead of her legs, which Ryan explained from above was a classic rookie mistake. Slowly, she got into a rhythm, left hand running up the crevice, legs bent to force her weight into the rock, and arms stretched, building her confidence.
Roughly two-thirds of the way, Ryan reached a narrow ledge, no more than a foot deep by three feet wide, but enough to sit on. He helped Monica up onto it.
Despite constant reminders to keep her arms straight, they still throbbed. She shook them while breathing lungfuls of cold air, exhaling wisps of warm air.
“You’re doing great,” he said, smiling as snowflakes fell on them, peppering their armored vests.
“Yeah, sure, but what goes up must come down,” she said, looking down at the wall.
“No sweat,” he said, reaching into his backpack and producing a climbing rope. “Standard equipment when on a mission with the colonel.”
“You mean to tell me you could have climbed up here and then tossed a rope down for me?”
He grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”
She punched him on the shoulder.
“Ever done it on a ledge, Miss Cruz?” he said, embracing her.
“In the words of the great Prophet Tyler … ‘Dream on,’” she said, but she didn’t push him away. The man was very warm, and she was freezing.
“I really meant to call,” he said.
“Whatever.”
“Let me show you how much I care about you,” Ryan said, reaching into the rucksack and producing a couple of heavy-duty carabiners, clipping one to his utility vest and another one to hers.
“W
hat’s this?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “Now, stay where you are … and control yourself. No monkey business.”
“What are you talking about?”
Getting up and turning around, Ryan placed his legs on either side of her for balance while reaching up and inserting an anchor into the vertical crevice, running it down until it caught. Doing so, however, pressed his groin into her face.
“Really, Ryan?” she said, shifting her head to the side.
“Boys will be boys,” he said, helping her to her feet before running the climbing rope through the anchor and threading it through each carabiner before working some strange knots she had never seen.
“Now we’re officially hitched,” he said with a wink.
She ignored him, inspecting the setup, noticing how they were still free to climb, but any sudden motion, such as in a fall, would tightened the rope, arresting it. “Not bad,” she said.
“Not bad, my ass,” he said, scrambling up again like Spider-Man.
She waited until he was a good five or six feet above her before following, the safety rope dangling between her legs. The wall angled inward as it neared the top, making it easier to scale. She focused on the basics, legs bent and arms stretched, left fingers in the crevice and at least one boot pressed against the rock, right hand gripping something above her, usually another crack or some protuberance.
Again she developed a tempo, controlled, relaxed, managing her breathing, remaining over her center of balance while in motion, and allowing enough rest in between. Her movements became precise, deliberate, visually locating a hand- or foothold before committing to it. As she started to feel good about herself, she managed an upward glance to see how Ryan was making out, but she was staring at nothing, just rock, snowflakes, and dark skies. He was gone, already on top somewhere.
Bastard, she thought, clambering away, getting through the moves quickly to save upper body strength, using arms to shift weight and legs for support, fluidly covering the final dozen feet.
Ryan lay on his belly along the ridge and waved her over, pointing at the corridor below. It resembled a snake poised to strike, with armed men at every curve, leading to an entrance protected by a heavy metal gate. Metallic oil lamps flickered among them, casting a yellow glow on the granite walls.
Without Fear Page 42