The men’s shirt would never fit over his vest, but the loose hajib went on easily enough. He and Kee had to dump their helmets to pull on scarves, but they were able to keep most of their gear hidden. Maybe they could simply stroll back to the hut in broad daylight.
Emily was grinning at him dressed up as an Arab woman. She controlled her expression quickly, then offered him a salute.
He returned it, hoping it wasn’t the last time he ever saw her. Her face sobered as she must have reached the same thought. They turned for the door as he heard a truck roar to life in the barn.
“You’re driving.” Archie closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. His temple throbbed to remind him how close he had come to dying. “I have a headache.”
Dilya grabbed The Kee’s sleeve before she could leave. She had never seen The Kee kill before. But she had been in the dark, ten steps behind and listening when the father had shot the String Man. Only Dilya had seen him fall.
She’d opened her mouth to scream and then remembered. Her mother had screamed when the Two Dogs shot her father. They’d struck her, shouted at her, but she wouldn’t stop. They had shot her to make her silent.
The Kee had turned so fast and shot faster. Dilya hadn’t had time to blink between the String Man being hit and The Kee shooting the father.
The family who knelt and shook in fear beside her had come so close to losing their father. If The Kee had, would they now hate The Kee? Hate her the way she hated Dog One and Dog Two?
Maybe. But the father had shot at the String Man with a gun. Her own parents had had no guns. No food. No water.
She tugged once more on Kee’s sleeve until she knelt again.
“Dilyana say Good.”
The Kee nodded clear-eyed. Nodded again, then rose and walked into the night.
Dilyana would wait. The Kee always came back. She hoped. She didn’t want to live with this family that shot people in the dark.
51
In the barn they found an old Russian truck, John under the hood. As they inspected it, the engine settled, ran smoother. A flatbed good for hauling hay, no doors or windshield, but the tires were wide and had large if worn tread. It should handle the sandy soil well.
Now they were in business. Kee handed Archie her H&K sniper rifle, which he propped between his knees as Kee shoved the truck into gear. John dropped the hood and sprinted off to cover the helicopter with a camouflage net.
“We have half an hour to first light. Absolute maximum of an hour until they fly.”
He was talking to her but she had to concentrate to make sense of the words. Archie had been a half inch from death. Less.
Focus, Kee, goddamn it. Focus.
She got the old truck rolling and turned it down the track along the narrow tree line that wandered north and west. Must be a stream running along here whenever they received any rain.
She held her breath as she decided to risk second gear. It was rough, clearly unused, but it ground into place. The truck picked up speed from a fast trot to a solid run.
“So, Kee. How do you want to play this?” The trees ran out. In the dim headlights, she could still make out the streambed, so she followed that.
Nothing. She tried to think, but all she could see was Archie lying against the outside wall of the hut.
“It’s pretty flat out here.” Archie’s words were slowly coming into focus. “I’ve taken SERE, but I never took the sniper course. How do you hide on flat terrain?”
Kee looked up and out where the windshield was supposed to be, squinting at the landscape.
They crossed a dirt road. Kee was about to turn onto it when Archie spoke.
“Don’t. There’s another line of trees ahead. We’ll run north along that.”
Kee shifted back down to first as they crawled over the rough field. When they hit the tree line, which was actually a sandy ditch with tall bushes, they turned right. “Cross it where you can. We need to be on the other side before we hit the irrigation channel.” The truck wallowed but made it through.
Kee knew that Archie had only about fifteen seconds to memorize the map back at the Hawk. She’d had about the same when she went back for her weapon. She’d seen the layout and the distance to the airfield. It was all a blur. Archie had seen a tactical landscape to be crossed. She’d only seen the vast expanse of flat all around the runway. How was she to get close enough for the kill shot?
“At the channel, about five hundred meters ahead, turn left.”
His voice. She’d focus on his voice. Keep listening to that.
“Hurry.”
She spared a glance at the night sky. Still dark, but the fainter stars were disappearing.
She took the left and continued. Rough or not, she put it in second and stayed there. Thankfully there was a trail along the channel. More a wide goat path than a road, but the truck tackled it gamely enough. They were moving faster than a dead run. Not much, but enough to matter.
“In another mile, you’ll run into a cross ditch. Drive down into it.”
The edge was so abrupt that Kee barely avoided driving down into it unintentionally. Only by standing on the brakes and stalling the engine did she manage to stay out of it.
“We won’t get out of that.”
“Do it. Then turn left at the bottom.”
“But…” Kee checked the compass in her head. “Left is away from the airfield.”
“I know. Do it.”
She took a deep breath. They were now operating within Archie’s specialty, not her own. She hated the out-of-control feeling, but you had to trust your team.
The engine fired off reluctantly, she nudged the truck over the edge and down the steep bank. It was deeper than it looked, turning left trickier than it sounded. By what miracle she avoided rolling the truck, she didn’t know, but it stayed upright.
They rode in silence for another hundred meters. “Kill it.”
Kee stopped the truck. “If I shut off the engine, it doesn’t sound as if it will restart.”
“Don’t worry. We won’t need it again.”
Kee looked out the side where the truck doors should have been. Only a few feet to either side rose the banks of the ditch. The truck would be well hidden from the fields above. It was aimed away from the air base and had been driven that direction. So if someone did find it, they’d look south, not north toward the air base. Smart.
“How are we getting home? Never mind.” If they were alive, they were walking. Four, maybe five miles back up the irrigation channel. They’d only used the truck because they were out of time. “Let’s go.”
Kee was speaking to herself. Archie had already jumped out of the truck with her sniper rifle slung over his shoulder. Kee checked that they’d left no clues behind and jumped down herself.
He was already trotting up the ditch. Kee recognized the pace, not the fastest, but a steady mile-eater that you could run for hours if need be. She fell in behind Archie wondering at that. Time was essential. Why not a full run?
Another piece of her training clicked in. More essential than time would be getting Kee herself into position and still physiologically able to fire. That’s why the fast jog-trot.
In a mile, they turned left and followed a hedgerow. Her nerves were sparking. She unslung her SCAR rifle and kept checking behind them. No one. Not so much as a rooster yet, though a faint lightness now sketched the entire horizon in that shimmer of predawn light.
Archie stopped so abruptly that Kee ran into his back.
“What?” She had to gasp it out between breaths. Archie squatted and pointed, barely breathing hard.
She had to get control of herself. She was breathing wrong, running wrong.
Ahead of them lay Karshi-Khanabad Air Base. No runway lights, all silhouette and shadow. A long strip of runway. On the far side, the rounded mounds of the hardened hangars—protecting jets under a layer of concrete covered with soil and such foliage as could survive here. They rose like Hobbit hills. As he
r eyes adjusted, she made out the smaller shapes. Scores, maybe hundreds of jet fighters were parked along the taxiways.
And she’d suggested shooting down one in the air? Why had anyone listened to her? If they’d followed the original plan and done that, they’d have faced a hundred fighters so fast they’d have died on the spot. Even if Viper were still with them.
Kee swallowed hard.
At the last report Major Henderson was safely south of the border and limping his way home. Her own chances were feeling less certain with each moment.
52
Kee focused on the terrain ahead and didn’t like what she saw. Not one bit. This sucked on so many levels.
Closing her eyes, she clamped her teeth down on the side of her tongue. The pain brought clarity and focus as it brought the taste of blood. She’d been clamping down since the moment she’d seen Archie leaning against the wall calling her Helen of Troy through a haze of shock. She knew her nerves were shot, and now it was all up to her.
Focus, damn it. She pulled her rifle off Archie’s shoulder and removed the caps from the scope. She’d mounted the day scope when she’d grabbed the rifle. There was barely enough light to see.
They were atop a nice rise, well hidden but much too far from the airfield. The hedgerow they’d been following curved away to the left. Where she’d expected to see another irrigation ditch, she saw a wall. The satellite photo had shown a geometric line, like the ditches. And she hadn’t had time to inspect it more carefully. A dozen feet high and nearly as wide, built of concrete and stone. She followed the wall with her scope, a lone guard tower stood a mile away.
“That’s where I’d like to be.”
Archie unslung his own rifle and used his much-lower-power scope.
“I see buildings beyond it. That could become tricky.”
Kee smiled to herself. The captain had just told her, tactfully, that it was a fast way to commit suicide.
“How about there?”
Kee glanced to the side to see where Archie’s scope was aimed. She swung her own rifle until she spotted it.
A small shack, well isolated. Maybe two-thirds of the way from their position to the airfield. She didn’t like the angle, or that it was a thousand yards on the other side of the wall across a low field, young wheat perhaps, but she didn’t see any other options.
“Let’s go.”
This time she ran, ran hard. And found the groove. They covered the distance to the wall fast. As she hoped, the wall was older and needed work. In moments they were both up and over, digging boots and fingers into crumbling cracks in the concrete.
They sprinted for the shack, staying as low as they could. No windows on the side they approached from. They stood with their backs against the wooden frame. Kee reslung her rifle and pulled out a knife and her handgun. Quiet. They had to do this quietly.
Archie did the same. Then they traded a nod and peeled off around opposite sides. No windows.
They met at the door. She didn’t waste time trying the handle, simply laid a shoulder into it and the wood gave way with a puff of dry-rot dust.
The tiny room was filled with racks of equipment—and two men. She jammed her knife under the first one’s chin as his hands grabbed for the rifle leaning nearby, the point driving up and back.
She heard a muffled shot as Archie took down the other. But Archie was holding his knife.
He looked at her strangely.
“You okay?”
He nodded. “You?”
“Fine.” She inspected the room.
Racks of electronics right out of a ’50s mad-scientist movie, so dust-covered it probably hadn’t been used since. Despite the scuffle, a bottle of clear liquor still stood in the dirt. They’d found themselves a quiet place to drink where no one would come looking for them.
She peeked out the door and liked it less. The runway was awfully far away. The night breeze, which had been from the east, continued. So Evans and Arlov would be starting their roll at the far end of the runway and coming toward her. They’d be rotating for takeoff a mile away. At that distance, she needed a .50-cal Barrett, not her H&K.
Archie watched her.
Kee could look all she wanted, but the answer would be the same. She shook her head.
After taking a second to make it look as if the two men might have killed each other, he ran out the door without so much as a nod of acknowledgment. If Kee said no, then it was no. She followed, trusting to whatever next step he saw that no one else could.
Wide open. They were running in the wide open field. She didn’t need to squint to make out all of the planes. The guard tower that stood west along the wall now towered barely half a mile distant, etched clear against the pre-dawn pink of the sky. The last of the stars had gone, and still they ran.
He dodged and weaved for no reason she could see. It was better to run straight line when avoiding detection, better to weave only when being shot at, but Archie must have a reason so she followed and did the same.
Then Archie disappeared and Kee dove to the ground. Crawling forward, she spotted the end of a drainage ditch. Archie lay in the bottom of it, four feet below.
Kee took her knife and began harvesting the young wheat all around her. She tossed it down in large handfuls. When her nerves could stand it no longer, she rolled over the edge and landed hard against Archie.
His grunt of pain was out of all proportion to the hit. He began scooping dirt on her. Kee squeezed her eyes shut and did her best not to sneeze. Now she was the same color as the trench. Good thinking. They’d use the wheat as additional cover when it was full daylight.
When the dirt shower stopped, she pointed up the side of the ditch. They popped their heads up and over the edge.
It was a good position.
From here she had a decent line on most of the runway. She tried not to glance over her shoulder and see how good a view the guard tower had of them.
She couldn’t resist. Actually, it wasn’t bad. Whoever dug the ditch had left more dirt on the southern bank. They were fairly well hidden. Fairly. She pointed.
But Archie wasn’t beside her. He was back in the bottom of the ditch holding his arm with a hand, with a drenched-red hand.
She slid down beside him.
“Are you hurt?” Stupid question. She pulled out a switchblade and flicked it open. In moments she’d cut back the hajib and exposed his flight suit. More red. In seconds she was down through that as well.
“Archie, you’ve got to stop getting shot. It’s not good for you.”
“Noticed. That. Mysel—Ow! Shit!” A whispered hiss, “That hurts!”
She found the entry hole. Almost no blood there, as it was naturally clamped by his arm held tight against his body.
“He got me. Under the arm. Feelsh wrong.”
Kee didn’t like the sudden slur in his voice. She shifted his arm. He went sheet white and clamped his teeth on a groan.
“It feelsh more than wrong,” she imitated his slur trying to make something that scared her so much at least a tiny bit funny.
She found the bullet lying against the back of his shoulder. It had punched through, and been trapped against him by his body armor. Tiny white shards of bone were scattered through the bloody mess. The fact that there was no pumping blood was the only good thing about the whole situation.
She yanked her medical kit free and opened it. She pulled out a field ampule of morphine.
“No.” Archie caught her wrist. “Not yet. I need to think still.”
“Well, this is gonna hurt like a bitch.”
“Do it. You know. You love. Causing me pain.”
Kee scrambled to the edge of the ditch and scanned the airfield quickly. No activity, but she didn’t dare look at the sky. It was plenty bright enough to see what she was doing without a flashlight. Time was running short. If it was going to hurt him, better to do it fast.
She used tweezers to pick out most of the bone shards, rinsed the holes with antiseptic, a
nd then hit them with glue to close the wounds. Then she slid a rolled bandage up between his arm and body and tied it tight over the top. A quick flip with a triangular bandage and she had him in a sling. Then she pulled out her Vetrap bandaging tape and began binding his arm, sling and all, to his body. He looked near to passing out. She asked him a question to keep him conscious.
“Do you think they’ll be fooled by the setup you did on those two bodies back there?”
He flopped his head until he faced in the direction of the hut, though it remained hidden from view. He blinked rapidly a few times as she continued wrapping his arm.
“If not, maybe we could pretend that Evans and Arlov did that. It will be the least of today’s mysteries that we leave behind if this all works.”
“And what are the chances of that?” Kee didn’t actually want an answer to that question, but she wanted to keep his attention. If she lost him right now, she didn’t know what she’d do. He’d battered down most of her defenses, defenses that had served her well for her entire life. She didn’t know if she could resurrect them after the craters he’d punched through them.
Archie clearly struggled to concentrate, but his guess was as bad as hers and she could see him trying to hide his thoughts.
Their chances were beyond lousy and, with his injury, suddenly far worse.
When she finished, he nodded, sweat streaming down his face. He pointed to the south edge of the trench and the stalks of wheat scattered about them.
She didn’t have to be told. They remained in sync. Kee grabbed a handful of the wheat. Crawling up the south side, she reached a hand over the edge and began planting the stalks upright in the soil. Another dozen inches of shield. In moments, a line of waving stalks blurred the sightlines of the guard tower.
Kee returned her attention to the field. Still no plane on the runway. They weren’t too late. So many jets were parked here that it was hard to decide where to look.
Tires? She tried to identify the ones with flat tires so that she could discount them. Through her scope and the heat shimmer already rising off the runway, the flat angle of sight made that impossible to see. Besides, the dome-shaped hangers could be hiding anything.
I Own the Dawn Page 28