He stumbled out the door and into the heat.
The Indian woman took several water bottles from the small galley. She bowed her head briefly in thanks.
The Latin Wonder stopped in the middle of the aisle. “Sure you don’t want some company, lovely Señora? You and me, we could do some wonderful things.”
Elayne considered it, but he would just be a burden where she was going. Too many things to explain as she dragged Miranda Chase across the Syrian desert into Russian territory, then back into Mother Russia.
Pity. She liked a confident lover, and there was no doubting his fighting skills. She’d wager he still had more than the knife he’d strapped to his thigh, but he didn’t worry her.
“Maybe some other time.”
He nodded with a half smile of regret, but his dark eyes still shone. “Paolo Ortiz.”
“Holly Harper.” Elayne wasn’t about to give him her real name. But maybe he’d cause Holly trouble someday.
He pocketed a couple bottles of water himself, gave her an easy salute, then descended the steps.
She tracked him with her sidearm until he’d swung the door back into place and locked it.
Once more aloft, she climbed to just civilian high as she flew directly above the border between the Iraqis (who were too busy destroying themselves to notice anything) and the American-friendly Saudis (what a joke—there were few they hated worse than the US, except for Iran and all Shia Muslims).
Only one controller pinged her radio during the entire flight.
“This is unscheduled corporate flight for Saudi Aramco,” she shifted her flight to the Saudi Arabian side of the border. “I’m flying a Falcon 7X. My executive passenger wishes to remain anonymous.”
“Roger, flight.”
Nobody in the region would think to argue with a pleasure cruise flown by the eighth largest company in the world. The only surprise would be that it wasn’t a luxury Boeing 777 or Airbus A350. Top executives of Saudi Aramco didn’t travel in piddly little Falcons.
But they let her through.
When she jogged north along the Jordan-Iraq border, no one said a word.
Six minutes later, she was over Syria.
57
The team deplaned at the al-Tanf Garrison, Syria.
The heat slammed into Miranda.
One of the waiting military escort must have seen her reaction. “You’re lucky it’s October; just ninety-five degrees today. July cracks a hundred with room to spare most days.”
Al-Tanf was a small cluster of buildings set in a featureless expanse of brown-beige desert. The dry expanse and lifeless rounded hills were broken only by the gray sliver of the M2 Baghdad-Damascus Highway. The garrison was a small outpost surrounded by absolutely nothing.
There was nothing here. To the southeast, the Iraqi border twelve miles away. A Jordanian refugee camp, just twenty miles south by air, was almost unreachable by road. The nearest town lay over seventy miles in the opposite direction. Which, according to Jeremy, was no bigger than al-Tanf.
The outpost itself was surrounded by a continuous line of HESCO barriers. The cloth-and-wire mesh barriers stood seven feet tall. Each five-foot-square section was filled to the top with dirt.
She wanted to study the weight-to-load issues but—she could feel Holly quietly reminding her—there was a crash.
“Do you want to freshen up first or—” The officer who’d come over glanced out toward the desert.
“I wish to proceed to the crash.”
“Let’s go. It’s only a couple miles north.”
They moved in a caravan of vehicles. Her team was loaded in the back of two M-ATVs.
“Aren’t these sweet?” the driver called out. “We just got them in. Still way tougher than the old Humvees, but way smaller and way more agile than those monstrous first-generation MRAPs—that’s Mine Resistant Ambush Protected.”
“Are we safe out here?” Mike asked her across Andi, sitting in the middle.
The driver answered before Miranda could speak.
“This close to the garrison? You’re fine. We control the Deconfliction Zone out to fifty kilometers. Ruskies wouldn’t dare come this far. And any Syrial killers try?” He made his fingers into a handgun and pretended to shoot through the windshield. “Syrial? S-Y, not S-E. Get it?”
Miranda didn’t. “C-E would also be a homonym. Though why you would want to kill a bowl of cereal, I can’t imagine. Besides, that wouldn’t work.”
“Why not, ma’am?”
“Your windshield is rated bullet resistant to Level 8. That’s five rounds from a 7.62 mm. Your rifle is only 5.56 mm. If you shot from inside, you’d be far more likely to be injured or even killed by a ricochet.”
The driver laughed. “I’ll be sure to be careful about that, ma’am. Thanks for the warning. No shooting Syrial killers through bulletproof glass.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But I’m still okay shooting at bowls of cereal?”
“No, I—”
Mike rested a hand on her arm and shook his head.
“But he’s not making any sense,” Miranda whispered.
“That’s kind of the point, Miranda.”
She was never going to understand people.
The commander in the righthand seat ignored them.
Miranda looked out the window and began to wonder what they’d gotten into. Their two transports were being escorted by four other vehicles, each of which had a gunner standing at the ready with only their head and shoulders showing in a roof-mounted gun turret.
She looked up. Over Andi’s seat, there was a hatch in the roof. If she were to stand on her seat and open the hatch, she would be in position to operate the M240 machine gun.
Miranda didn’t often leave US soil. Sometimes, when a US-made aircraft went down overseas, the investigating agency would ask for the NTSB’s assistance. But it was her first military overseas crash.
She had extraordinarily little to judge by.
“Andi?” Miranda leaned close.
“What?” Andi’s shout definitely sounded like surprise. Then she continued closer to a whisper, “Oh, sorry. What is it?”
“Mike’s question. Are we safe?” It seemed like it was okay to repeat Mike’s question; especially as Andi’s yelp had him leaning in to listen for the answer. Besides, Andi would know far better than either of them would.
“What!”
Miranda had seen this look on Andi before. Her hands were clasped and pinched between her knees. Her breathing was too fast, and she was staring straight ahead but didn’t look as if she was seeing anything.
That’s when she remembered and looked out the window herself.
“Oh!”
“Oh what?” Mike’s voice sounded panicked, and Andi didn’t respond.
“This is al-Tanf Garrison, at the center of the American Deconfliction Zone. Andi’s copilot was killed here.” And her research into Andi’s condition had indicated that revisiting a location was a key factor in triggering a PTSD attack. Was Andi even now picturing her copilot curling up around a grenade to save her life as they flew from Syrian airspace into the DCZ? They’d been shoulder-to-shoulder—pilot and copilot—when he’d died aboard their tiny MH-6M Little Bird helicopter.
“Shit! I totally forgot. Sorry, Andi.” Mike wrapped an arm around Andi’s shoulders.
Offer comfort when a person is upset. The rule was in the personal interactions section of her notebook but she hadn’t recalled it soon enough. Or was delayed comfort still comfort? She tested the theory by placing her hand over Andi’s clenched ones.
Andi freed a thumb and used it to pin Miranda’s hand over hers.
Apparently, yes. Delayed comfort was still appropriate. How long a delay could occur with undiminished effectivity would have to wait for a separate set of tests.
“It was thirty-seven kilometers straight ahead. You know…before…when…” Andi’s voice was rough and her eyes were still wide. “Here we’re in the c
enter of the DCZ.”
“I’ve paid very little attention to geopolitical conflicts.” She glanced over at Mike.
He shook his head. “I always figured that was Holly’s or Taz’s gig.”
“Well, you’re in the middle of one of the worst ones here,” Andi’s color came back slowly as she was forced to explain. “We took over al-Tanf and formed the Deconfliction Zone when ISIS chased out the Syrians. We, in turn, drove ISIS out again. Then we kept it to support the Syrian rebels, not that we’ll ever admit that’s why we’re here.”
“And another crash here? Are you okay with that?” Mike pointed straight down at the floorboards though Miranda presumed that he meant the rough ground currently jouncing their vehicle. It was inherently inaccurate as Andi had said her crash was thirty-seven kilometers away.
Andi shook her head. “I don’t have a lot of choice, do I.”
“You could have stayed on the plane.”
Andi shook her head. “Holly said that Taz and I had to protect you guys. I don’t think pissing off Holly would be a good choice right now.” She eased the pressure of her thumb over Miranda’s hand, finally slipping her hands free to scrub at her face. “Besides, I already spent long enough lying awake in that bunk trying to pretend I wasn’t coming back here.”
“Will you be okay?” Miranda withdrew her own hand now that it was no longer providing comfort, belated or otherwise.
Andi shrugged. “When I met you three months ago, I can promise I wouldn’t have been. Now? How the hell should I know?”
“Well, I would think that through self-assessment—”
“It was a rhetorical question, Miranda. I don’t have an answer and I wasn’t looking to get questioned on it. Do you think I have any idea of how I’m feeling other than screwed up? I’m afraid of my own feelings.” Andi’s voice seemed to be getting louder and more strident.
“Oh,” Miranda forced herself to not continue her interrupted sentence as it didn’t appear to be welcome. Besides, “I didn’t know anyone else felt that way. I almost never know what I’m feeling.”
Andi went still and just looked at her.
So intently that Miranda actually looked back without having to dodge her gaze aside.
“What do you do?” her whisper was almost softer than the racing M-ATV.
Even leaning in from Andi’s other side, Mike didn’t seem able to hear them.
Andi’s soft voice prompted her again, “When you’re feeling that you don’t know what you’re feeling?”
“Well,” Miranda knew the answer to that one. “I remember to breathe. It’s what I do when the world is becoming too much.”
Andi laughed roughly. “Yeah. That’s actually good advice.”
The rest of the way to the crash, they sat side-by-side in silence—breathing.
58
Elayne was flying over the desert two miles north of the American base at al-Tanf. The American air controllers had picked her up the second she crossed the border from Iraq. Once ascertaining who she was, or rather who she said she was, they advised her with a tone of polite threat to avoid al-Tanf by a minimum of two miles and to remain above ten thousand feet—if she didn’t wish to be “accidentally” shot out of the sky.
She complied.
The planned crash zone for the US Senators’ plane was fifty kilometers to the north anyway. There, the Syrian and especially the Russian forces patrolled the edge of the American’s precious DCZ line in the desert sand.
She’d planned that point of impact most carefully. It would allow the Americans to feel safe investigating the crash inside the DCZ. And the Russians could easily cross the short distance undercover to grab Miranda Chase.
Now she could reconnect with Spetsnaz Special Operations Forces herself. Then together, they could wreak some bloody retribution on Holly and her whole team of precious crash investigators.
Down on the desert floor, she spotted a line of six dust plumes. A phalanx of six vehicles were heading across the DCZ.
“Where are you headed in such a hurry?”
And then she saw it.
An airliner lay shattered across the desert sand another kilometer past the racing vehicles.
“No. No. No! You’re not supposed to be in their backyard. You’re supposed to be crashed at the edge of Syrian space.” When she found out who’d screwed up her explicit instructions, she was going to murder them—personally! In ways that would…
Think. She had to think.
The crashed American plane was supposed to be at the edge of the DCZ so that the Russian forces could grab Miranda Chase and whisk her into Syrian-controlled terrain before anyone could stop them.
Here. There was no chance of them striking this deep into the DCZ.
She made a bet with herself that her contact hadn’t even contacted the Russians, even after she gave them the emergency direct phone code and password.
Oh, what she would do to him would paint the very skies red. She’d—
Think.
Right. He was for later. Now was Miranda. Then Holly. Then the bastard on the phone who—
Why was it always up to her to do things right?
She circled once more high over the wreck.
At least ten vehicles were already at the site. It was busy, cluttered with personnel poking through the wreckage. There was no way to snatch one person from that confusion.
Confusion.
That gave her an idea…if she could just find the right solution.
59
Sergeant Charlie Wiggins raced his M-ATV across the Syrian desert. Two soldiers cruising all day along the DCZ border was not the kind of sexy deployment he’d been imagining when he’d signed up for the Minnesota Army National Guard.
Every day at 1600 hours, drive the fifty klicks with his border partner out to the edge of the DCZ. Then spend eight hours running back and forth along his hundred-kilometer section of the zone’s perimeter. He’d run it so many times that he knew every damn pothole and dust mound intimately—an M-ATV was made to be tough, not comfortable.
The Russians—dressed as Syrians, of course—had run a parallel course so many times that there was another worn track a hundred meters to the north. He had no interest in crossing the line and the Russians didn’t dare because he could have a line of attack helos tromping their asses faster than your hand froze to your car door handle during a Minnesota winter.
No friendly camaraderie across the line. No trading whiskey for vodka, or even peanut butter for their syrniki. These guys looked like bad asses with heavy weapons and no sense of humor.
After only her first week, Corporal Betty Glaser looked as bored shitless as he was. She was okay. New enough to still believe, but the shine was already coming off. Another couple months and she’d shake out as either in for the long haul or a sour bitch. He’d seen it often enough to know. Gender didn’t matter. Bitchy guys weren’t any less of a drag. The women, if anything, adapted better. They—
“Holy fuck!” His rearview was blotted out by the nose of a jet. Objects may be closer than they appear! Fuckin’ A! It was right up his ass!
He swerved aside, barely not rolling the M-ATV as a plane screamed by not twenty feet to the side. Not an airliner, but not some crazy fighter jet-jock either. Bizjet.
“They’re landing,” Betty shouted out. “Without gear.”
Even as she spoke, the plane bellied onto the sand a hundred meters ahead of them.
It bounced aloft, then slammed down once more. He twisted back onto the track it had flattened across the landscape and raced after it.
Just before it slowed to a stop, it caught a wingtip and slewed around.
Charlie stopped nose-to-nose with the plane.
Now that he’d chased it down, he wondered if he should back up in a hurry. He knew shit-all about planes and had no idea if they hadn’t exploded when they hit, were they about to?
Then a pilot raised her head and looked at him through the windshield with shocked-to-be-aliv
e wide blue eyes and wheat-white hair.
Both he and Betty jumped out of the M-ATV.
He grabbed his rifle. Glaser hadn’t. She’d learn that you never got separated from your weapon. But she had her sidearm, which should be fine. They wouldn’t need it. A crashed civilian aircraft in the middle of the desert didn’t seem likely to be much of a threat.
At the door, there was a clear sign: Pull handle for emergency release. He figured this counted and yanked it.
The door flopped down onto the sand.
He stepped in.
The main cabin was seriously classy. The airplane seats looked more like armchairs. In a space that would fit twenty economy seats, there were six.
“Fancy,” he commented to Glaser as he turned for the cockpit.
Then Sergeant Charlie Wiggins froze in his tracks.
The blonde was dressed in a blood-stained Army uniform. All down one side. Then he saw the carpet.
“Holy shit!” He’d never seen so much blood. It squished beneath his boots.
He looked back up at the pilot.
“Are you okay?”
She held a pair of handguns with silencers. One aimed at Glaser’s face; one aimed at his own.
“Weapons in the front seat. Then walk backward away from them.”
He just stood there, trying to figure out what was happening. She didn’t look ready to faint.
Ready to faint?
“All this blood, you should be dead.”
That’s when he finally connected the two guns and all the blood. It wasn’t hers. Which meant it was someone else’s blood that covered her. It must be—
“Now!”
Her shout was loud enough to jolt him into swinging his rifle partway up from his side.
The next moment his shoulder erupted with pain. He looked down at the blood pouring from the wound just one inch to the side of where his left shoulder emerged from his Kevlar vest. His rifle clattered to the deck.
There was a scream of pain. It might have been his.
He clapped a hand over the bullet hole, but the blood kept spilling out.
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