The copter, soaring below the thick cloud layer, swung northwest, heading toward the Simien mountain range. When Bourne finished his breakfast, he climbed into an extreme-weather jumpsuit and specially made snow boots with extra-thick soles studded with metal blades meant to give him support on icy and rocky terrain.
As he stared out the curved window, his thoughts turned inward again, this time toward his friend Martin Lindros. He’d met Lindros after his old mentor, Alex Conklin, was found murdered. It was Lindros who’d stood behind Bourne, believed in him when the Old Man had put out a worldwide sanction against him. Ever since, Lindros had been his faithful backup at CI. Bourne steeled himself. Whatever had happened to Lindros—whether he was alive or dead—Bourne was determined to bring him home.
Just over an hour later, he arrived on the north slope of Ras Dejen. Brilliant sunlight made shadows sharp as razor blades on the mountainside, which seemed to exist in a curling sea of cloud through which, now and again, vultures could be seen, soaring on the thermals.
Bourne was just behind Davis’s right shoulder when the young pilot pointed down. There was the wreckage of both Chinooks, pillowed in fresh snow, streaked with black, metal stripped back, twisted off as if with a mammoth can opener wielded by a maniacal demon.
“Damage is consistent with ground-to-air missiles,” Davis said.
So Soraya had been right. This kind of war matériel was expensive, a high cost only an alliance with organized crime could pay for. Bourne peered more closely as they neared the site. “But there’s a difference. The one on the left—”
“From what’s left of the markings, the chopper carrying Skorpion One.”
“Look at the rotors. That one was shot as it was about to take off. The second chopper hit the ground with a great deal of force. It must’ve been hit as it was coming in for a landing.”
Davis nodded. “Roger that. The opposition’s well armed, all right. Odd for this neck of the woods.”
Bourne couldn’t have agreed more.
Taking up a pair of field glasses, he directed Davis to circle the site. The moment the terrain came into focus, he was gripped with an intense feeling of déjà vu. He’d been to this part of Ras Dejen before, he was certain of it. But when? And why? He knew, for instance, where to look for hiding enemies. Directing the pilot, he searched every nook and crevice, every shadowed place around the periphery of the landing site.
He knew also that Ras Dejen, the highest peak in the Simien mountain chain, was within Amhara, one of the nine ethnic divisions within Ethiopia. The Amhara people made up 30 percent of the country’s population. Amharic was Ethiopia’s official language. In fact, after Arabic, it was the world’s second most spoken Semitic language.
He was familiar with the Amhara mountain tribes. None of them had the means—either financially or technically—to inflict such sophisticated damage. “Whoever it was isn’t here now. Take her down.”
Davis brought the copter to rest just north of the wreckage. It slipped sideways a bit on the ice beneath the layer of fresh powder; then he had it under control. The moment they were on solid ground, he handed Bourne a Thuraya satellite phone. Just slightly larger than a normal cell phone, it was the only kind that would work in this mountainous terrain, where normal GSM signals were unavailable.
“Stay here,” Bourne said as the pilot began to unstrap himself. “No matter what, wait for me. I’ll check in every two hours. Six hours go by without hearing from me, you take off.”
“Can’t do that, sir. I’ve never left a man behind.”
“This time is different.” Bourne gripped his shoulder. “Under no circumstances are you to go after me, got it?”
Davis looked unhappy. “Yessir.” He took up an assault rifle, opened the chopper door. Bitter-cold air shouldered its way in.
“You want something to do? Cover that cave mouth. Anything unknown to you moves or comes out, shoot first. We’ll ask questions later.”
Bourne leapt out. It was frigid. The high terrain of Ras Dejen was no place to be in winter. The snow was thick enough, but so dry that the constant wind had pushed it about, causing high dunes of Saharan proportions. In other areas, the plateau had been swept clean, revealing patches of burned-out grass and rocks irregularly spaced like the rotting teeth of an old man.
Even though he’d done a 360 visual from the air, Bourne moved cautiously toward the wreckage of the two Chinooks. He was most concerned about the cave. It could hold good news—wounded survivors of either of the crashes—or bad news, namely members of the cadre that had taken out the two Skorpion units.
As he came abreast of the Chinooks, he saw bodies inside—nothing more than charcoaled skeletons, bits of singed hair. He resisted the urge to look inside the hulks for any sign of Lindros. Securing the site came first.
He reached the cave without incident. The wind, slithering through knuckles of rock, sent up an eerie, keening cry that sounded like someone being tortured. The cave mouth leered at him, daring him to enter. He stood against the bone-chilling rock face for a moment, taking deep, controlled breaths. Then he leapt, rolling into darkness.
Switching on a powerful flashlight, he sent the beam into niches and corners where those lying in wait were sure to secrete themselves. No one. Rising to his feet, he took a step, then, nostrils flared, came to an abrupt halt.
Once, in Egypt, he’d been led through an underground maze by a local conduit. There had come to him an odd scent—at once sweet and spicy—something utterly beyond his previous experience. When he’d voiced his question, the conduit had switched on a battery-powered flashlight for perhaps ten seconds, and Bourne saw the bodies, dark skin stretched like leather, drying, awaiting burial.
“What you smell,” his conduit had said as he switched off the flashlight, “is human flesh after all the fluids are gone.”
This was what Bourne smelled now in the cave punched into the north slope of Ras Dejen. Desiccated human flesh, and something else: the nauseating stench of decomposition trapped in the rear of the cave like swamp gas.
Fanning the high-intensity beam out in front of him, he moved forward. There came from underfoot a sharp, crunching sound. Redirecting the beam, he discovered that the floor was covered in bones—animal, bird, human alike. He continued, until he saw something stuck up from the rock bed. A body sat with its back against the rear wall.
Hunkering down on his haunches brought him to eye level with the head. Or what was left of it. A pit had begun in the center of the face, fountaining its poison outward like a volcano spewing lava, obliterating first the nose, then the eyes and cheeks, peeling away the skin, eating the flesh beneath. Now even parts of the skull—the bone itself—was pitted and scarred by the same force that had feasted on the softer human materials.
Bourne, his heart thudding hard against his rib cage, realized that he was holding his breath. He’d seen this particular kind of necrosis before. Only one thing could cause it: radiation.
This answered many questions: what had so suddenly, compellingly brought Martin Lindros into the field; why this area was so important, it had been defended by ground-to-air missiles and God only knew what other ordnance. His heart sank. Everyone from Skorpion One and Two—including Martin—would have to have been killed to protect the mind-numbing secret. Someone was transshipping more than triggered spark gaps via this route; someone had in their possession uranium ore. That was what this person had died of: radiation poisoning from a leak in the uranium container he was transporting. By itself, yellowcake uranium ore meant nothing: It was cheap, fairly easy to obtain, and impossible to refine into HEU unless you had a facility more than a kilometer square and four floors high, not to mention almost unlimited funds.
Also, yellowcake would not have left this radiation signature. No, without doubt, what Dujja had somehow gotten its hands on was uranium dioxide powder, only one easy step away from weapons-grade HEU. The question he was asking himself now was the same one that must have launched Lindros so p
recipitously into harm’s way: What would a terrorist cadre be doing with uranium dioxide and triggered spark gaps unless it had a facility somewhere with the personnel and the capability of manufacturing atomic bombs?
Which could mean only one thing: Dujja was more extraordinary than anyone at Typhon realized. It was at the heart of a covert international nuclear network. Just such a network had been shut down in 2004, when Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan admitted selling atomic technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Now the terrifying specter had been resurrected.
Dizzied by this revelation, Bourne rose and backed out of the cave. He turned, took several deep breaths, even though the wind knifed into his lungs, and shivered. Giving the all-clear sign to Davis, he made his way back to the crash site. He could not stop his mind from buzzing. The threat to America that Typhon had intercepted was not only real, it was of a scope and consequence that was absolutely devastating.
He recalled the single-use triggered spark gap—the smoking gun of Martin’s recent investigation. Unless he could stop Fadi, a nuclear attack would be carried out on a major American city.
Seven
ANNE HELD corralled Soraya the moment she appeared back at CI headquarters.
“Ladies,” she said under her breath. “Now.”
Once inside the ladies’ room in the lobby, Anne went through the cubicles one by one, making sure they were alone.
“My part of the bargain,” Soraya began. “The NET came in contact with fire, which destroyed half of the circuits.”
“Well, that’s something I can give the Old Man,” Anne said. “He’s out for Bourne’s blood—and so is Lerner.”
“Because of what happened with Cevik.” Soraya frowned. “But what’s Lerner’s involvement?”
“That’s why I called you in here,” Anne said sharply. “While you were with Bourne, Lerner staged a coup.”
“He did what?”
“He convinced the Old Man to name him acting director of Typhon.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Soraya said. “As if things aren’t screwed up enough as it is.”
“I have a feeling you haven’t seen anything yet. He’s hell-bent on reorganizing everything in CI, and now that he’s got his claws into Typhon he’s going to shake that up as well.”
Someone tried to come in, but Anne discouraged the intrusion. “There’s a flood in here,” she said with authority. “Try upstairs.”
When they were alone again, she continued: “Lerner’s going to come after everyone he doesn’t trust. And because of your association with Bourne, I’d bet the house you’re at the top of his list.” She went to the door. “Heads up, poppet.”
Bourne sat, head in hands, trying to think his way out of this growing nightmare. The trouble was, he didn’t have enough information. There was nothing he could do other than keep going, trying to find Lindros or, failing that—if his friend was already dead—continue his mission to find and stop Fadi and Dujja before they made good on their threat.
At length, he rose. After inspecting the outside of the Chinooks, he bypassed the one closest to the cave and clambered into the copter that had brought Lindros.
The interior looked surreal, like a painting by Dalí: plastic melted into puddles, metal fused to metal. Seared beyond anything he could have imagined. This interested him. At this high elevation, there wasn’t enough oxygen to support a fire of such intensity for long, certainly not long enough to do this kind of damage. The fire must have come from another source—a flamethrower.
Bourne saw Hiram Cevik’s face in his mind’s eye. Fadi was behind the ambush. The advanced weaponry, the precise coordination of the attacks, the high level of tactics that had caused two of CI’s crack field teams to be killed: All evidence pointed to it.
But another question gnawed at him. Why had Fadi allowed himself to be captured by CI? Several answers presented themselves. The most likely one was that he was sending CI a message: You think you have me in your sights, but you don’t know who you’re dealing with. To some extent, Bourne knew that Fadi was correct: They knew next to nothing about him. But it was exactly this act of bravado that might provide Bourne with the opening he needed. Bourne’s success had come from being able to get inside his adversaries’ heads. Experience had taught him that it was impossible to do this with someone who remained in the shadows. Now, however, Fadi had emerged into the light of Bourne’s vision. He’d shown his face. For the first time, Bourne had a template—rough and imprecise as it might be—from which to begin his pursuit.
Bourne returned his full attention to the interior of the Chinook. He counted four skeletons. This was nothing short of a revelation. Two people were missing from the dead. Could they be alive? Was Martin one of them?
The CI’s Skorpion units were run military-style. All the men wore dog tags that identified them as being attached to an Army Ranger unit that didn’t exist. As quickly as he could, he collected the four dog tags. He rubbed off the snow, ash, and soot to read their names, which he’d memorized from the packet of intel he’d gotten from Typhon. Martin wasn’t here! The pilot—Jaime Cowell—was also unaccounted for.
Moving to the final resting place of Skorpion Two, he discovered the five skeletons of the Skorpion complement. Judging by the number of limb bones strewn about, it was safe to say none of them was in operational condition when the Chinook crashed. They’d been sitting ducks. Bourne hunted around, gathering up their dog tags.
All at once there came the hint of movement in the shadows of the interior, then the brief glitter of eyes before a head turned away. Bourne reached into the recessed space beneath the instrument panel. He felt a sharp pain in his hand, then a blur rushed him, knocking him backward.
Regaining his feet, he followed the figure out of the shell of the Chinook and took off after it, all the while waving at Davis to hold his fire. He glimpsed the bloody semicircle of tooth marks on the back of his hand just as the figure slipped over the low stone wall on the northeast side of the site.
Bourne flung himself into the air, came down feet-first on the top of the wall, and, orienting himself, leapt off it onto the back of the figure.
They both went down, rolling, but Bourne kept a firm grip on the hair, yanking it back to see the face. He was confronted with a boy of no more than eleven.
“Who are you?” Bourne said in the local Amharic dialect. “What are you doing here?”
The boy spat into his face, clawed him, trying to get away. Holding his crossed wrists behind his back, Bourne sat him down in the lee of the wall, out of the howling wind. The boy was thin as a spike, the bones prominent in his cheeks, shoulders, and hips.
“When was the last time you ate?”
No response. At least the boy didn’t spit at him again, but possibly that was because he was as dry inside as the snow crunching beneath their feet. With his free hand, Bourne unhooked a canteen, opened it with his teeth.
“I want to let you go. I’ve no wish to hurt you. Would you like some water?” The boy opened his mouth wide like a chick in the nest.
“Then you must promise to answer my questions. Is that fair?”
The boy looked at him for a moment with his black eyes, then nodded. Bourne let go of his wrists, and he reached out for the canteen, tipped it, drank the water in great, convulsive gulps.
While he drank, Bourne built up snow walls on either side of them, to reflect back their own heat. He took back the canteen.
“First question: Do you know what happened up here?”
The boy shook his head.
“You must’ve seen the flash of weapons, the balls of smoke rising up over the mountain.”
A small hesitation. “I saw them, yes.” He had the high voice of a girl.
“And naturally enough, you were curious. You climbed up here, didn’t you?”
The boy looked away, bit his lip.
This wasn’t working. Bourne knew he had to find another way to get the boy to open up.
“My name is Ja
son,” he said. “What’s yours?”
Again that hesitation. “Alem.”
“Alem, did you ever lose anyone? Someone you cared about a great deal?”
“Why?” Alem asked suspiciously.
“Because I’ve lost someone. My best friend. That’s why I’m here. He was in one of the burned-out birds. I need to know if you saw him or know what happened to him.”
Alem was already shaking his head.
“His name is Martin Lindros. Have you heard it spoken by anyone?”
Alem bit his lip again, which had begun to tremble slightly, but not, Bourne thought, from the chill. He shook his head.
Bourne reached down, scooped snow onto the back of his hand where Alem had bitten it. He saw Alem’s eyes following his every movement.
“My older brother died six months ago,” Alem said after a time.
Bourne went on with packing the snow. Best to act casual, he reasoned. “What happened to him?”
Alem drew his knees up to his chest, crossed his arms over them. “He was buried in a rockslide that crippled my father.”
“I’m sorry,” Bourne said, meaning it. “Listen, about my friend. What if he’s alive? Would you want him to die?”
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