“Zach? Well . . . yeah, I guess you don’t know. There’s five people missing. We’re afraid they were taken by the attackers. If they were Chinese, like people are saying, they’re trying to take them back where they came from for questioning.” Kathy paused for a moment. “Jill . . . one of the missing is Chunhua.”
Jill wobbled and fought the urge to collapse straight to the floor. “Oh, no! Are they sure? She’s not just hiding someplace or injured?”
“No, they’ve searched every building several times to account for everyone. She and the others are definitely missing.”
“Anything being done to try and get them back? Is there any help on the way?”
“You’ll have to ask Andrew or one of the calmer communications people about that. I’ve heard that help is on the way, but it’ll be a while before they get here.”
“Isn’t there something that can be done?” Jill asked in desperation.
Kathy put a hand on Jill’s arm. “Zach’s gone after them.”
“Zach? You mean Zach and who else?”
“It’s just Zach. You’ll have to ask Andrew or Sinclair why. I didn’t know what was happening, but Andrew asked, or should I say ordered brusquely, that I run grab a dozen energy bars and a water bottle. He said they were for Zach. Later, I saw Zach talking to Sinclair before he left. He was dressed all in black and had weapons all over him. He left in a hurry and almost bumped into me. When he saw it was me, he stopped and said to tell you . . . well . . . I don’t know if I should tell you this right now, but he said he wishes you and he had met in a different lifetime. Then he asked me to look out for you and Bobby.”
It was all too much. The attack, what had happened between her and Zach in her room, and her jumbled feelings about two men who were the same person—the man who had jerked her from her old life, and the other man who had seeped into her mind more than she had been aware. This time, she didn’t fight the urge to drop to the floor, wailing.
Kathy, alarmed, knelt beside Jill and embraced her. People nearby turned to look at the new commotion. Emily Wilderman, the site doctor, was tending the wounded. She looked up when she heard Jill and started in their direction before Kathy held up a hand to signal it wasn’t necessary.
Kathy’s first thought was that Jill had broken down from the shock of the attack. Then something else occurred to her.
Zach? she thought. Oh, my God. Is there something going on between Jill and Zach? Bre’s been saying there is, whether they realize it or not.
CHAPTER 44
PURSUIT
Two miles southeast and six hundred feet higher, Zach reached the top of a ridgeline. Most of the altitude change happened in the last quarter mile when he climbed the slope as fast as his body would allow. It didn’t quite qualify as running but was as close as possible for the slope’s angle. Halfway up, he stopped, not to rest, but because his leg muscles had ignored the signals sent by his brain. After twenty seconds, he continued at a slightly slower pace. He wasn’t concerned. He’d expected the reaction. It had happened to him several times before when on operations and he’d exerted himself to his maximum.
***
He had been a newly promoted staff sergeant on his second deployment when helicopters dropped his company off to start a patrol fifty-eight miles west of Kabul, Afghanistan. Two hours into the patrol, his section of nine men came under fire from Taliban insurgents. A bullet hit one of his men in the abdomen, and the wound bleed severely. The steep terrain of their position and the Taliban fire precluded getting help from a helicopter medevac. While the rest of the men provided covering fire, Zach carried the wounded man upslope to where the rest of the company held a secure position a thousand feet higher, near a shelf wide enough for helicopter landings.
Zach raced against time to get the wounded man into medical care before he bled to death. Zach pushed harder than he otherwise would have thought possible as he climbed the slope. Halfway up, he stopped, not because he willed it but because his legs refused to respond. For several seconds, he couldn’t move his legs. When they finally responded, he started again, only to have it happen again twenty yards farther. This time he waited a full minute before willing their movement again. He got another hundred yards upslope before the third recurrence, a cycle that repeated until he got close enough to his company’s position that men spotted him and clambered down to relieve him of his burden.
The man died before the company medics started blood transfusions. Later, a medic told Zach it had been a near thing. Five minutes sooner and they might have saved him, but the medic cut short Zach’s self-blame.
“I think you got him up here as fast as possible . . . probably faster than it should have been possible. Stop blaming yourself for taking rest stops. It sounds like you pushed your body past its limit. That’s likely what happened with your legs. Lactic acid builds up in the muscle tissue, and they quit responding. It takes time, maybe seconds, for your blood to flush out the excess lactic acid. Once that happens, the muscles work again. Normally, there’s the sensation of muscles burning or even hurting before this happens, but I guess all the adrenaline pumped you up so much, you didn’t notice.”
***
Today, north of the Arctic Circle, Zach noticed the same effect.
From that first and from subsequent experiences, Zach could judge his body’s limits by monitoring the warning signals. He trained himself to allow maximum exertion without passing over the threshold where his legs wouldn’t respond. Thus, when he reached the top of the ridgeline, he only glanced back briefly to where he’d come from before taking a quick swallow of water and forging on. Each succeeding crest was lower, with only occasional detours needed around impassable rock formations.
It was still officially twilight, which this time of year lasted five to seven hours, changing as days became darker. To catch the Chinese, he estimated he had three hours. He had a pair of night-vision goggles, and he expected that so did the Chinese. He assumed theirs to be Russian models, consistent with their using only Russian equipment to confuse the United States. With luck, they would be the older Russian versions—pieces of shit. A window of opportunity existed between the time there was enough light to see clearly and the time when a person needed night vision goggles. In that window would be his chance to act.
Three miles and seventy-two minutes later, he descended into a valley floor. This was the farthest point in this direction he’d explored after arriving at Site 23. He passed within a mile of where Logan should be, but time and twilight prevented them from meeting. From here on, he would be guided by remembering aerial photographs. He had no way of knowing whether he was on schedule or course to intercept his quarry, so he focused on what he controlled.
He crossed the valley floor, splashed through a braided stream no more than a foot deep, and stopped in the middle of one of the braids to refill his water bottle. The water was silty and gritty as he swallowed. He didn’t bother with purifying tablets, not in this climate, so relatively devoid of life. Past the last braid, he started up the first of five low, parallel undulations—if he remembered right.
His body ached. He was once again pushed to his limits. He couldn’t keep this up forever, but he knew he would later be sure he had done his best.
After thirty-two minutes, he started down the last of the undulations. His memory of the photos had proved accurate. Next came a daunting climb to the low point of a high, jagged ridgeline. He didn’t bother groaning. It served no purpose. However, he knew this was the last and most difficult section before a long downhill slope, where he’d find out whether his effort to get ahead of the Chinese had been successful.
When he reached the top, he gave himself an entire two minutes to lie on his back. He worried about physical collapse. Despite his experience controlling a muscular shutdown, either he had pushed himself harder than ever before or it was a matter of age catching up with him.
As expected, when he rose back to his feet, more than a few parts of his body tried
to resist. As an attempt at supplication, he pulled out an energy bar, tore off the wrapper, and wolfed down the contents. He tossed aside the wrapper with only a momentary recognition that he was littering a pristine environment. Not that, at the moment, he gave a shit.
When he came to the point where he’d planned to turn back into the expected route of the attackers and their prisoners, the twilight had continued its phasing into darkness. He could still see a couple of hundred yards ahead, but that would change fast. He estimated he had a mile to go before intersecting with the Chinese. Thus, he narrowly avoided disaster when after only a third of a mile he heard an exclamation. He had stumbled directly into the path of the pursued.
He didn’t speak Chinese, but he didn’t need to. A fractional second later, he heard more words, these more muted and loaded with anger.
Gotta be one of them stumbled and fell or something like that, he thought. Then an officer or senior NCO jumped on the guy for breaking silence. Although I don’t know how necessary that is because no one should be around to hear them.
Zach allowed himself a grin, though it wasn’t a grin of amusement but more the expression of a predator giving a negative evaluation of his prey.
He froze and cupped his hands to his ears to amplify the sound reception. There were no more voices, but he heard a regular series of sounds he interpreted as boots crunching gravel and rocks together. The men moved in single file, the obvious tactic on uneven and unfamiliar terrain. The first man would be a trailblazer, assessing the best route in the next tens of yards, with the other men following.
Zach searched for a spot to hide and still be close as they passed him. The series of leaps of faith didn’t escape him.
He took advantage of an outcropping that hid his movements and allowed him to watch the men’s backs as they passed. He waited. Two minutes. Three. Just as he estimated that four minutes had passed, the first man came into view, his back to Zach’s position thirty yards away. Then the second man five yards behind the first. The following men kept the same approximate spacing. When the eleventh man appeared, there was something different. He kept looking backward and seem to be tugging on something, although Zach couldn’t see what until the next figure came into view—a tall man with hands tied behind his back. Probably Gorski, the Russian expert. A rope around his neck connected him to the next prisoner. Albertson. The fourteenth figure led two women, also with their hands tied and rope around their necks.
Finally, three more soldiers came up the rear of the single file. Zach waited until they were a hundred yards away before quickly retracing his steps back to the parallel route. He hurried this time and created more noise than before. Stealth was important but not preeminent. Although the Chinese might hear his movement, their own noise would hide any he made, as long as he moved at the same time as them. He had to be alert in case they stopped to listen, though he doubted they thought it necessary.
Vision was something else. The time approached when they might use night vision goggles. His goggles would function in the existing light, but he refrained from their use, believing it best if he saw with the same degree of resolution that they did.
It took Zach twenty minutes to reach his estimated interception point. The Chinese were no more than three hundred yards away, with visibility less than thirty yards. The immediate terrain was among the smoothest yet, with no place for Zach to be concealed. He moved quickly south and stopped every few minutes to listen again, making sure they hadn’t changed direction. Time and space were running out. He searched his memory of the aerial photographs but wasn’t certain what lay ahead. The fading light gave him no choice but to continue and hope the terrain changed.
Seven minutes later, irregular shapes resolved in his direction of movement. Thank you, Lord, he whispered when he recognized a boulder field in front of him. Another thirty yards and he came to a rugged slope cresting perhaps forty feet high. Then he remembered a photograph. The sea lay a thousand yards farther.
As he approached the slope, the crest’s outline resolved enough from the sky that he could see a section slightly lower than the rest and with smaller boulders. It would have to be there. From his position, he couldn’t see an easier path to the top and doubted in the dim light that the Chinese would choose any but the easiest route.
When he got to the boulder jumble, he made a best guess at where the pursued would pass and found a depression five yards off that route. He pressed himself into it as low as possible. Dressed in black and hunched down, he didn’t think anyone would see him, even if they looked straight at him. At least, he hoped they would all be watching where they put their feet in the faint light.
He pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch. He was six minutes overdue to check for the air cover. He lowered his head with his mouth facing a narrow cleft between boulders and activated his radio after putting an ear bud in one ear.
“Zulu One. This is Ghost One. Over.”
The response came immediately.
“Ghost One. This is Zulu One. What is your sitrep?”
“Zulu One. Hostiles minutes away. Will attempt Papa-Oscar-Whiskey recovery. I need you to stay clear, so they don’t know I’m around.”
“Roger, Ghost One. Be advised we can only give you fifteen minutes.”
Shit, Zach thought, I need more time.
“Zulu One, that’s not enough. I need twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes.”
“Ghost One, do what we can. No guarantees. If you call on us, remember this is ‘No joy.’”
Well, no shit! thought Zach. As if I didn’t already know you won’t be able to see me.
“Zulu One, I’ll turn on my GPS. When I need your load, I’ll pop a flare at my position. Dump everything fifty yards due south.”
“Ghost One, that’s a supreme pucker factor. We’re not driving golf carts here.”
“Zulu One, can’t be helped. It’s the only option. My responsibility.”
“Ghost One, that’s a roger. We’ll be five mikes coming east-west at Angels one. Strafe and fox 2. Single file. Up to you to adjust.”
Zach mentally translated. It would take them about five minutes to arrive east to west at a thousand feet and utilize their 20 mm Vulcan cannon and Sidewinder missiles. The latter were antiaircraft weapons, but he appreciated that the F-16 lead driver was telling him they would give him everything they had. The cannon would grind up a lot of rock, and Sidewinders would at least make the Chinese duck.
The lead pilot also left the option of Zach adjusting the strike zone after the first plane passed. That was assuming he was alive.
“Zulu One, that’s a roger here. I’m out until I give you a ‘clear to come in hot.’”
“Roger, Ghost One. Zulu One out.”
Zach turned off the radio and raised his head to listen, keeping his body pressed into the depression. He didn’t hear anything, which encouraged him to think he hadn’t been overheard. Cautiously, he rose to his knees and cupped his ears to the north. He heard them. Boots over rocks. An occasional murmur. Sounds as if someone stumbled and fell. Maybe one of the prisoners, he thought. But there was another sound. He swiveled his head to the south, ears still cupped. It had to be the ocean—a faint rolling sound as of waves on rocks. It confirmed his position.
Sounds from the north slowly rose in intensity. Twice, he thought he could make out words. Once, he might’ve heard a sob, quickly followed by a sound like flesh meeting flesh. One of the prisoners? Struck to be silent?
He estimated they were only fifty yards away before he was confident they would pass his hiding position and not walk right over him. Seconds later, he silently cursed. Their route would take them farther from his position than he’d estimated. He needed to be closer. He snaked from his depression ten yards west to lie at the base of a six-foot-tall, ten-foot-long jagged rock protruding from smaller boulders and rocks. He snuggled under a slight overhang. There was no way the single-file line could pass on his side of the rock. The only question was whether they
would go by just on the other side or farther away.
He didn’t wait long. Previously muffled sounds grew in intensity. He thought he made out the rhythm of the footprints of the lead man, boots impacting rock and gravel. He didn’t look up as the first man passed, seven feet away on the other side of Zach’s rock. Neither did he look up for the second man, but when his ears told him the third man had gone by, he moved his head enough so that one eye could see their backs as they filed past him.
His M4 was slung tight to his back. He slowly drew a knife from its sheath on his webbing, keeping the metal under his chest to negate a chance that starlight might glint off the blade. He put his head back down and counted. When the eleventh man approached, he looked up again, this time with both eyes. He figured the man would be too intent on his own footing and pulling along two prisoners to notice anything else.
Zach had momentary flashbacks to other times, other places, and other enemies. Flashbacks he’d hoped would have faded. Memories shared and unshared. During the months at Site 23, he had thought he could move on from that phase of his life to something else, anything else. Yet here he was again.
The first prisoner was a man. Tall. Zach recognized Gorski, the Russian expert. The second prisoner had a broader physique. John Albertson. Neither man was blindfolded, but they had a hard enough time with the footing. Both were gagged.
Then came the next Chinese, also leading two prisoners. Zach thought the first woman had light-colored hair. April Weaver. She sobbed once when the soldier jerked the rope. The second woman was small. She had to be Chunhua.
Zach waited for the next soldier. When more seconds passed than expected, Zach’s pulse spiked. Where were the last three soldiers? He resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder to see if somehow they had come up behind him. If so, he was dead. If not, he might give his position away, so he waited.
He heard a grunt, then footsteps again as the next soldier passed, now with double the average spacing as before. Then the penultimate soldier went past. Zach tensed and waited until the last man walked by and was six feet upslope. Then Zach rose and stepped around his rock. If he had miscounted, he would be emerging in front of the next soldier. Nothing happened.
Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1) Page 58
