by David Poyer
OVER the next few minutes she tried to make peace with … whatever. It didn’t take all that long. Really, she’d done what she wanted to do with her life. Except maybe Congress. And frankly, her work now at DoD was more vital to the war than holding down a plush seat in the House. Her mom would miss her. Dan too, of course. For that matter, so would her cat. As for the rest … well, she’d done the best she could.
But she couldn’t just sit still. Finally she unbelted and went forward. The cockpit door was unlocked. When she peered in, Ackert and the two pilots were deep in discussion over a paperbound manual. “What’s going on?” she asked.
The general looked up. “Might be a solution. It’s off-the-wall, but…”
“Hey, I get it. What?”
“If we have corrupted flight-control logic … we’re going to have to completely depower in flight.”
“And that will—?”
“Conceivably, that might let us regain control.”
“But you already tried to reboot,” she pointed out.
The pilot nodded. “But that just reinitialized the bad code. This time, we’ll disconnect the engine-driven generators. Turn off the control breakers. Then cycle the battery switch off momentarily.”
“That should depower all systems,” Ackert said.
“Yes, sir. We pull out the breakers for the computers. Then, flip the battery and the generator control breakers back on. That might repower the flight controls, while leaving the computers out of the loop.”
The engines spooled downward just then. Both men glanced out the window, as if looking at the turbines might restart them. “Out of fuel,” the pilot sighed.
She couldn’t believe it. “We’re out of fuel?”
The copilot kept flicking switches. He mumbled, “We dumped it, remember?”
“But will we even fly without the computer?” Blair feared it was a dumb question, but she had to ask.
“That’s what we don’t know,” Ackert said. “How ’bout it, Jack?”
“Sometimes we electrically depower on the ground.”
“And do you have control then? When you do that?”
“We don’t try the control surfaces then. I’m just gonna hope they left some residual control built in.” The pilot was flicking switches again. The engines had stopped, leaving only a whistling, rushing roar from outside the skin of the falling plane.
She clung to the back of the copilot’s seat, staring past him at the onrushing ground. At mountains. Canyons. Mesas. At tan-and-russet rock, revealing itself now in all-too-high-resolution detail.
“You two better get belted back in,” the pilot said, not looking away from his controls. “I’m looking for somewhere flat. You know the drill, General. Head down, and if we make it in one piece, exit the aircraft as soon as you can.” He reached overhead and pulled a block of black plastic out of the overhead. The breakers, she assumed.
Back in her seat, she assumed the position. Belted in, head down, folded forward. Clutching her knees. The aircraft shuddering, still nose down, still headed for the now terrifyingly close arid-looking surface rushing toward them.
At the last moment the nose lifted. She felt suddenly heavy, then light, then heavy again. The right wing came up. Something tan and brown and frighteningly close flashed by at incredible speed.
They slammed down with a bang. She screamed, shaken like a battered child as the belt all but cut her in two. The interior blurred. The window burst apart. The last thing she registered was the piercing, never-ending scream of metal being ripped apart like rotten cloth by hurtling rock. Then it all went black.
18
In the Tien Shan Mountains
THE dark was impenetrable at the bottom of the valley. At fourteen thousand feet Teddy gasped for breath at each uphill. His head swam.
The younger men around him plodded on, chattering among themselves. They’d grown up at altitude. But he had to keep up. To lead.
He was the Lingxiù, after all. Lingxiù Oberg al-Amriki, as they called him now.
He grunted, hoisting one boot after the other, leaning into the climb. Little more than a goat trail, the valley-bottom route the locals were leading them on wound along a rushing nullah, a snowmelt-fed stream, between boulders and over the sloped rubble-piles of landslides. Each step had to be studied before he took it, while the locals scampered along as if living under a different regime of gravity.
The stars were emerald pinpoints in the optics of the night vision. The mountains, obsidian shadow. The men were blobby amoebas with legs, their packs and rifles showing up darker, colder, in the infrared. At night it was below freezing this high up. In the daytime, men fell out from sunstroke, and the rock valleys trapped the heat until it was like an oven set on Bake.
He was retracing his steps, in a way. He, Ragger Fierros, and the two Vietnamese, the aged, blinded Major Trinh and Sergeant Vu, had marched this way in their epic escape from POW Camp 576. Though not over these exact trails, which were much higher and deeper in the mountains. They’d lost Magpie, the Australian, getting through the wire. Then left Vu crumpled in a crevasse after a failed traverse.
His bones were still out here somewhere, probably picked white by the vultures.
Teddy halted and bent, trying to catch his breath. In four days they’d made only fifty miles, led by local guides paid with Vladimir’s gold Krugerrands. Marching at night, holing up by day in the caves and clefts that rived these precipitous steepnesses. The most energetic outflankers carried the drone detectors, setting them up on peaks ahead of their progress. They carried short-range radios, too, to serve as outer security.
The main body stuck to the valleys, unless they had to cross a ridgeline. A hundred men, with MANPADs, light machine guns, and RPGs. They traveled in column, twenty meters between each squad, Teddy up with the first fire team.
Slung on his back, adding to the load, he toted the beam gun. He glanced back at a thin short form burdened with gear as well. Dandan climbed ten steps behind, carrying his rice, their blankets, and his rifle. Behind her came two of his sturdiest rebels, with the Package slung between them. The sleek black ovoid was wrapped in heavy canvas and padded with dried grass. In case the worst happened, on some perpendicular incline.
The line halted. Teddy looked up. “Oh, crap,” he muttered.
The cliffside was studded with wooden pegs and flattish rocks hammered into crevices. A blurry blob swung from one to the next, like a sailor up a ratline. One of the guides. But they weren’t burdened the way his men were.
The column waited while the lead man belayed a climbing rope. Teddy squatted, chewing on a piece of corn-and-apple bread. The line moved up a few yards, then halted again.
Finally it was his turn. He shrugged his burden higher and searched with his fingers for a hold. A splintery balk of wood, already worn slick by many hands and feet. His boot started to slide off, and he grabbed for the rope. Balanced there, clinging like a baby opossum to its mother’s fur, he swore and groped for the next step.
Up, and up. The chuckle of the nullah grew distant. He panted, wheezing, and almost fell again. Hands reached down to help him along. After a hundred feet the vertical climb gave way to a two-foot-wide shelf that led upward at a steep angle, but that at least meant he could dangle his hands. The gulf to his left seemed to call to him. It exerted a magnetic force. All he’d need to do would be lean out from the rock face, let the drop take him … Gazing into the abyss, it gazes into you.… He couldn’t remember where he’d read that. A bumper sticker? This would make a hell of a movie. Once, he’d wanted to make movies.
Once upon a time, a lifetime ago.
* * *
A chasm opened between two peaks. The green shadows of the goggles showed dizzying cliffs thirty meters deep. A storming river was wedged between, foaming and leaping in a long stone-punctured ladder down the mountain. A chilly mist wetted his face like cold sweat. A flashlight-flicker outlined a figure ahead, kneeling seemingly in midair, swaying between the
craggy faces of rock.
“You got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
When he reached the spanning, he had to take deep breaths. It was barely recognizable as a bridge. Just three ropes. A hemp cable, maybe two inches in diameter, where the men ahead of him were placing their feet. To each side, smaller lines were strung for handholds. Thin lashings of braided leather every couple of yards connected the side-ropes to the central cable. But there was more empty air than actual bridge, and from the lip of the cliff the cable headed almost straight down before leveling out halfway across, then climbing again. The guides danced over it, crooning some native song that merged with the clashing roar of the waterfall below. The rebels followed more cautiously, gripping the handropes, halting occasionally to stare down.
Behind him Dandan squeaked, “Obe, wo hàipà.”
“Jin jin zhua zhù shéngzi,” Teddy told her, pulling her after him. “Rúguo ni diào xiàlái wo huì jie zhù ni.” Then thought: Why in the heck am I reassuring her? She’s gotta cross it anyway.
His troops were watching. He couldn’t hesitate. Grabbing the ropes on either side, he forced himself out. The first couple of steps were okay, but then his boot slipped again.
“Fuck,” he muttered, realizing it was because the mist was freezing on the foot-cable. Not only was he swaying a hundred yards above a river full of rocks, he was walking on ice. Dandan, behind, was crowding him, almost hugging him. “Back off,” he snapped over his shoulder.
A low moan behind him. “Wwo hàipà … wo hàipà.” Her little voice, already high, was shaking.
“I know you’re fucking scared. Just suck it up, bitch.” He caught a back-turned grin; one of the guerrillas. “Or you’re gonna get yourself a beating tonight,” he told her.
Facing front again, he hauled himself another few paces forward. Midway? Nearly midway? Maybe this wouldn’t be too bad.
Then, under his boots, the bridge started to sway.
He leaned the other way, but somehow that made it worse. He caught a glimpse of the men ahead leaning in the opposite direction. The bridge swung out, hesitated, then headed back. It apexed, then reversed its swing with a whiplashing, violent twist. Someone was retching so violently it was audible over the roar of the rock-echoing river.
“Give me a break,” Teddy muttered. “Don’t barf on the fucking cable.” The bridge swayed back, gathering momentum for another wild crack-the-whip. Crouching, he gripped the handropes so hard his fists cramped, cursing desperately as he rose, floated sickeningly, then plunged downward again. Even if it didn’t snap under them, this thing was going to dump them all into the gorge.
Behind him Dandan whimpered something about him not caring, about no one ever caring. A rebel behind them laughed. Jesus, it was as bad as being married! Enraged, he twisted on the swaying ropes, and aimed a vicious backhand. His flattened hand slammed into something soft, and she gave a short scream just as his boots slipped again on the icy hemp, almost sending him into the roaring chasm below.
When he recovered his balance and looked back again, she was gone. Just that quickly. Leaving only the echo of her scream, a wider than usual gap in the lashings, and her cap, fluttering away, being sucked down into the boiling mist.
As if pacified, the rope-span lost its rhythm, gentling again to something resembling navigability. The men carrying the Package were looking down, into the thundering emptiness from which fresh eddies of chill moisture eddied up. “Where’d she go?” Teddy asked them.
A white-eyed glance was his only answer.
* * *
TWO hours on, he was still thinking about Dandan. Guilty, a little, but angry, too. The stupid bitch had taken his rifle, ammo, food, batteries, his prayer rug, and his bedroll down into the river with her. When all she’d had to do was keep her fucking mouth shut and follow him. He’d treated her well, considering. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have been a slave for somebody really nasty.
His stewing was interrupted by the crackle of his short-range radio. He crouched against an icy boulder on slanting slippery scree. “This is Lingxiù. Go.”
“Forward outpost. Drone signal detected. Signal strength weak.”
He considered. Signal strength should be at least medium before the drone was close enough to pick them up. On the other hand, the mountains barriered electronic signals. Meaning that if the detector wasn’t absolutely on the highest point around, the incoming machine could suddenly pop over a ridge and have them in its sights before they could react.
Well, at least it hadn’t come by when they were on the cliffside, or even worse, pinned to that fucking bridge. Reluctantly, because they were already behind schedule, he raised his voice. “Drone detection. All hands take cover.”
A scuffling in the dark, mutters and the scrape and clack of rock. He made sure the TA-4’s bearers were well concealed, then bent and crawled beneath a shelf of icy stone. He switched off his optics—he’d have to conserve charge now, since the spare batteries were gone—and lay staring up into total blackness.
Some minutes later a faint bee-hum, a distant whine mingled with the sigh of the wind. One of the motorized, longer-ranged UAVs. They seemed to comb the mountains on a schedule he hadn’t yet figured out, or maybe run on a random search pattern.
Regardless, it was up there. Stripping off the goggles, wriggling until his eyes just cleared the ledge, he peered upward.
A dim light pulsed high above. Red and green, alternating flashes that stood out even amid the glaring stars, which shone fiercely and unwinking this high in the mountains. It drifted very slowly across the sky, tracking east to west.
Fortunately he’d carried the beam gun himself. His fingers crept around the stock, then paused. Dropping a drone might signal its operators there was something of interest at, or near, the point where it went down. In the morning the gunships would arrive, or heavier UAVs with air-to-surface missiles.
He flexed his finger, then edged it away from the trigger. The lights above circled lazily, leisurely, then continued their drift westward. He waited until they were out of sight, and the rear guard reported no emissions. Then slid out, brushed off, and called to the others that it was time, once more, to get on the trail.
* * *
THE cliff, the bridge, then waiting out the drone, put them behind where he’d hoped to get tonight. Dawn caught them still descending the mountain face. But as the sky paled and gneisses and schist and bands of darker rock took shape around them, he shoved apprehension aside. Tightening bleeding fingers on sharp rock, he hustled downward, as fast as he could without losing his footing, intent on the cave-mouth looming ahead.
Qurban’s squat form pirouetted there, with the new joins all gathered around him. ‘Gray Wolf’ was older, but he didn’t look as tired as Teddy felt. The new guys were jumping around in place, chanting. He caught the chorus: “Take up your guns. Take up your guns, and kill. The evil Han, and all kafirs and mulhids.” He’d heard the tune before, on the march.
“Inside,” Teddy told them. “Get out of sight.”
The dancing petered out, the men looking unhappy about it. The short man said calmly, “Lingxiù. Why did we not march farther today?”
Teddy gave him a SEAL master chief glare that would have wilted any enlisted man in the Navy, or any officer up to at least O-3, but Qurban didn’t seem to register it. His seamed, leathery, gray-bearded visage maintained its gentle smile. He spread his hands. “It would not harm anyone if we marched for another hour. In the daylight, we can make better progress.”
“In the daylight, they’ll fucking spot us in a second,” Teddy said. “We hole up. Just like I said.”
But instead of inclining his head, as the rebels typically did in response to an order, this one turned to his clique. Younger men, wildly bearded, the recruits Qurban had brought in from mountain fastnesses and madrassas, Islamic schools. “What do my friends think? Trust Allah, and go on? Or follow al-Amriki? True warriors do not cower like frightened dogs. They advance,
in the knowledge they are following His will.”
Teddy gripped the thin-blade in his loose trousers. But suppressed the urge. Not the time to take down this fucker. Not with so many witnesses, anyway. Use reason first. Only if that didn’t work, go to the knife. Past them he caught sight of Nasrullah, inside the cave, holding an AK muzzle-down, watching.
“I remind you of your honor,” he told them. “You are sworn to me and to your imam, Akhmad. But above all, sworn to obey the orders of those who lead you. Is this not what you agreed to, when you joined us in resisting the godless ones who oppress the Uighur?”
The young men glanced at one another. Qurban waited, arms crossed, a patient smile curling his lips. Finally one youngster, no more than fifteen, mumbled, “Hiding is not the way to win battles. And you have the magic rifle, for the ghost-eyes, do you not, Lingxiù-Sahib.”
Teddy stared him down. “You want to fight gunships in the open, like mice before the hawk? Wasting your life is not the way to defeat the Han. Use your fucking head, ahmoq maymun, that’s what I’m trying to get you people to do.” He caught himself; never diss your troops as a group. “Forgive my harsh words. I was angry. I find no fault; you have marched well. Hajji Qurban and I must confer. The rest of you, into the cave. Get dal and chapatis, then sleep. We will rise early, before the dark comes again, and march even harder tonight.”
They all got the glare this time, and after a moment even the most sullen gazes dropped. They shuffled their feet, and finally filed inside.
“Over here,” Teddy snapped to the ex–al Qaeda soldier. Still smiling, the squat man accompanied him into a niche in the rock. “We’re on our way to battle. In enemy territory. Is that the time to question the leadership?”
“I merely hoped we could make more progress. I did not mean to contradict you,” the man said in his strangely accented, oddly formal English. Which he must have learned, Teddy figured, at Gitmo. Picking it up the same way he himself had learned Han Chinese: from his jailers.
“These aren’t your men, Hajji. They’re ITIM, not whatever off-brand of al-Qaeda or Daesh you’re trying to push.”