Devil's Fortress, page 19
Van Horn’s PP-2000 stuttered, knocking down another of their enemies at point-blank range. Her target screamed and then fell silent.
Still on the move, Flynn swiveled toward the next Russian he could see trying to get up and fight back. He fired two more times. Hit in the stomach and chest, the Syndicate assassin dropped back to his knees and then folded onto his side, dying fast as he bled out. Off to his right, Van Horn shot another man crawling toward the cover offered by a black SUV.
That made four down of the five men they needed to kill, he thought coolly. So where was the fifth? Suddenly, he caught a flicker of motion at the very edge of his peripheral vision. More intelligent than his comrades, the last survivor among the Raven Syndicate hit squad had been lying doggo, playing dead behind another corpse. Now he reared up with the muzzle of his short-barreled submachine gun swinging toward Flynn.
Holy shit. Flynn spun toward this new threat—already aware that he was too late. His stomach muscles tensed, anticipating the impact of a hail of 9mm bullets that would rip him open.
Whaaackk. The Russian flew backward in a splash of red, hit straight in the center of mass by a 12.7mm armor-piercing round. He was dead before his mangled body thumped onto the tarmac.
“Tango down,” Flynn heard Kossak radio calmly.
Slowly, he let his breath out. “Dzięki, Tadeuszu. Thanks, Tadeusz,” he said in Polish.
“No sweat, Nick,” the other man replied from his camouflaged hide five hundred yards outside the perimeter fence. “I confirm all targeted hostiles are down.”
“Got a live one here!” Van Horn called from close by. “And it’s the big fish we were after.”
Flynn moved to her side. There, curled up close to the first man he’d shot, was Vasily Kondakov. The senior Raven Syndicate executive was still dazed. He was pawing over and over at the tarmac, futilely trying to get a firm grip on a 9mm pistol he must have dropped when the stun grenades went off practically right in his face. His wire-rim spectacles hung askew, with both lenses cracked. Behind them, his eyes appeared unfocused.
Coolly, Van Horn kicked the pistol out of his reach. It went skittering back toward the Toyota. Then she brought her PP-2000 to bear, aiming straight at Kondakov’s head. “Ready when you are, cowboy,” she told Flynn. “Let’s do this fast. Because I’m pretty sure this neighborhood is going to turn unhealthy real soon.”
While she kept the Russian covered, he knelt and roughly bound the other man’s hands and ankles using plastic flex cuffs, immobilizing him. They then dragged their prisoner over to the Toyota, unceremoniously stuffed him into the narrow gap between its front and rear seats, and slammed the rear doors shut. Flynn slid behind the wheel, while Van Horn went back to retrieve the small case Kondakov had been carrying when he climbed out of the Mi-8 helicopter.
When she got into the SUV beside him, Flynn nodded at the case. “Collecting souvenirs?”
She shrugged. “Figured it would be worth seeing what our boy Vasily back there thought was important enough to bring all the way from Moscow.” She patted the case. “I have a hunch it’ll make interesting viewing.”
“Most likely so,” Flynn agreed. He put the Toyota in gear and gave it some gas—cranking the steering wheel hard over to make a tight U-turn back toward the gap Hynes had blown for them in the wire perimeter fence. The moment they were through, he radioed Cooke. “Trawler Lead, we’re clear. Our catch is on ice. So go ahead and pop the scene.”
Just beyond the fence, Cooke eagerly flipped back the sheet of desert camouflage cloth he’d used to conceal his shallow foxhole from prying Raven Syndicate eyes. He levered himself up to a kneeling position, ignoring the protests from muscles and joints that had been inactive for far too long. It had taken him half the night to crawl into this hidden position without being spotted—and then he’d been forced to lie curled up and cramped for hours more, unable to do so much as twitch a single muscle without the risk of blowing his cover. Finally, it was time for his payoff, he thought cheerfully. The chance to blow up stuff made up for a lot of inconvenience.
Cooke settled a yard-long, olive-drab fiberglass cylinder onto his shoulder. He squinted through the attached diopter sight, carefully aiming at the knocked-out black SUV closest to the cluster of bodies strewn across the tarmac. Not quite satisfied, he adjusted the angle of the tube slightly, elevating it to be sure his shot would clear the razor wire fence ahead of him. In this case, missing low and hitting that fence would be fatal, not just embarrassing.
His sight picture settled on target and held steady. “Shot out!” he warned over the radio and immediately triggered the weapon, which was a Russian-made MRO 72.5mm disposable rocket launcher.
whummph.
A small rocket flew out of the front end of the tube and streaked downrange. It carried a six-pound thermobaric warhead. Just above the black SUV, a small bursting charge went off inside the device—rupturing its casing and spraying atomized fuel in all directions. Milliseconds later, the warhead’s main explosive charge detonated and instantly ignited this still-spreading fuel cloud.
whaaaammm. With a searing orange flash, the SUV and everything for yards around vanished, first crushed by the blast’s powerful shockwave and then consumed by the ensuing fireball.
Cooke nodded in satisfaction when he saw the mound of blazing wreckage he had just created. Now it would be impossible for the Raven Syndicate to positively identify any of those who’d been killed here . . . and, most importantly, to realize that Vasily Kondakov was not among the dead.
He dropped the spent rocket launcher back into his foxhole and clambered out. Then he turned and sprinted toward Flynn’s Land Cruiser, which had just pulled up not far away. From other points outside the Raven Syndicate compound, he could see Hynes, Vucovich, and Kossak also loping toward the waiting vehicle. Now that they had what they’d come here for, it was high time they bugged out.
atbara airport, sudan
some time later
Atbara was another river city like Al-Ibediyya, a scattering of mudbrick houses, minaret-topped mosques, and other buildings lining the lifegiving Nile’s east bank. It sat roughly forty-five miles south of the Raven Syndicate’s gold processing plant.
Outside the city, Flynn surveyed the small structures clustered to one side of a single, mile-long dirt runway with a skeptical look. He and Van Horn stood shoulder-to-shoulder a few yards from their parked SUV. Its engine was still idling to provide air conditioning for the rest of the team and their prisoner. The only other vehicles in sight were a pair of derelict pickup trucks placidly rusting beside a tin-roofed building. This seemed to serve as a combination terminal, baggage handling facility, and ticketing office on the very rare occasions when a plane landed here. Right now, the building was deserted. “Airport’s kind of a highfalutin term for this place,” he commented.
“It is definitely on the rustic side,” Van Horn agreed. Orchestrating this part of the operation had been her job. “Which is just what we want now,” she pointed out. “No fussy officials asking inconvenient questions and demanding paperwork we don’t have, right? And no nosy tourists taking awkward, not-so-easily-explained pictures. No witnesses at all, unless you count them,” she jerked a thumb toward a couple of stray dogs taking refuge in the minimal shade provided by the nearby building.
Flynn laughed. “I imagine they’d sell us out for food scraps, but I doubt Voronin has any canine translators on staff.”
“See? That’s why this place is perfect.”
He nodded. Just then his palm-sized satellite phone pinged. He glanced at the text scrolling across its inch-wide screen: Pegasus inbound on final. Shading his eyes, he peered to the southwest. Sunlight glinted off wings as a single-engine turboprop, a Pilatus PC-12, banked toward the runway. Even at this distance, it was distinctive, with a sleek needle nose, wide, low wings, and a high, cantilever T-tail. Pressurized for high-altitude flight, fast, and long-ranged, the Swiss-made aircraft could also operate easily and safely from rough, unpaved landing strips like this one. That made it ideal for their purposes, and it also helped explain why the Pilatus’s military variant, the U-28A Draco, was a particular favorite of the U.S. Air Force’s Special Operations Command.
“Ah, right on time,” Van Horn said with a satisfied smile. “I do love it so when a brilliant plan comes together.”
Flynn nodded more cautiously. He was keenly aware that they were now approaching what was likely to be the most difficult, disagreeable, and, at the same time, the most vital phase of this mission. Nothing else they’d accomplished here would matter if they couldn’t pull off what he had in mind.
They watched in companionable silence as the PC-12 came in, descending swiftly toward the end of the runway. Despite the rough surface, it touched down with barely a jolt and taxied over to where they stood waiting. Dust and sand churned up by the aircraft’s five-bladed propeller drifted away on the light wind.
The Pilatus rolled to a stop only a short distance away. Its prop kept turning and with a low whine, the plane’s forward clamshell-style door swung down.
On cue, the Toyota Land Cruiser’s ignition switched off. Cooke and the rest of the team climbed out with their captive and headed toward the waiting aircraft. Flynn and Van Horn moved to join them. As a precaution, they hustled Kondakov along at the center of the group—using their bodies to shield him from scrutiny. The Russian was blindfolded, with his hands cuffed behind him. His mouth was taped shut.
Once aboard the PC-12, Kossak led the Raven Syndicate officer to the back of the passenger cabin. Without saying a word, the Pole roughly forced the other man into a seat and strapped him in. All the window shades were pulled down, leaving the interior dimly lit.
Equally quietly, Cooke and the others took their seats and buckled in. The cabin was surprisingly large for a single-engine aircraft. It had room for them all, with a couple of empty seats left over. The unnatural-seeming hush was a direct result of Flynn’s earlier instructions to keep conversation to a bare minimum. Kondakov, though still plainly shocked by this sudden reversal of fortune, was not a fool. It would be better all around to avoid giving him any clues as to where they were now headed or what might happen to him once they arrived.
Up at the front of the aircraft, Flynn pulled the door back up and closed it. The high-pitched, howling whine of the PC-12’s twelve-hundred horsepower Pratt & Whitney engine fell away sharply, muffled by the plane’s excellent soundproofing. He turned and poked his head into the cockpit.
Van Horn had just finished strapping herself into the copilot’s seat. The pilot was a former colleague of hers from Alaska’s Air National Guard, Jack “Ripper” Ingalls. Like Flynn himself, she’d recruited Ingalls into the Quartet Directorate in the aftermath of a failed hunt for a hijacked Russian stealth bomber prototype. Four always sought out people with specialized skills and an ingrained willingness to take risks in a good cause.
“Take her up when you’re ready, Rip,” Flynn said quietly.
Ingalls nodded. He released the brakes and increased his throttle setting a notch. The PC-12 started moving again, bumping northeast along the dirt runway’s rutted surface.
When it reached the far end, Ingalls swung the aircraft through a tight half-circle, lining up on the center of the brown strip that now stretched ahead to the southwest. He reapplied the brakes, and they rocked to a stop. His eyes ran over his gauges and displays one more time. On his right, Van Horn did the same.
Satisfied by what he saw, Ingalls ran his throttle forward, increasing power to the PC-12’s engine. The noise level inside the cockpit increased markedly.
“Still looking good, Rip,” Van Horn reported. Her eyes were fixed on the engine readouts. “Pressure and temperature look good. No faults. No anomalies.”
Ingalls nodded. “Rolling now,” he said. He released the brakes again and began his takeoff roll. The Pilatus almost leaped ahead, speeding down the dirt runway. When it reached an indicated speed of eighty-two knots, he pulled back slightly on his yoke. Like the thoroughbred it was, the aircraft smoothly lifted off and climbed into the sky—gaining altitude and air speed with astonishing swiftness for a prop-driven plane. Its landing gear whirred closed within seconds of leaving the ground.
At ten thousand feet, Ingalls banked gently around to the northwest, settling on a course that would take them most of the way to their next destination. Flynn went back to the main cabin. Cooke and the others had unbuckled their seat belts and were either stowing their weapons and equipment or silently changing into fashionable civilian clothes. He joined them. Where they were headed now, the last thing they could afford was to appear as they were in reality—a group of heavily armed, highly trained special operators who’d just carried out a successful surprise attack against a superior enemy force. For the next phase of this mission, discretion was, by far, the better part of valor.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
dakhla oasis airport, egypt
some hours later
At the feel of a hand gently laid on his shoulder, Nick Flynn woke from a light doze in his seat. With nothing to do on the flight north from Atbara except worry about what came next, he’d allowed himself to drift off. He opened his eyes to find Laura Van Horn leaning over him. She nodded toward the open cockpit. “We’ve started our descent into Dakhla,” she murmured softly into his ear.
He unbuckled and went forward with her. While she slid back into the copilot’s seat, he squatted down to get a better view through the cockpit window. The arid wastes of Egypt’s vast Western Desert extended in every direction—a brown, waterless expanse littered with gray and black boulders and stretches of wind-blasted gravel. The single visible exception lay directly ahead, where a fifty-mile-wide swath of groves of palm trees and green, irrigated fields surrounded towns of mudbrick and quarried brown stone.
This was the Dakhla Oasis, deep in the desert—more than two hundred miles west of the Nile River valley. It was the largest and most populated of the seven oases scattered across this otherwise hostile environment. It had been inhabited for thousands of years despite its isolation, or perhaps because of it. Dakhla’s archaeological treasures ranged from prehistoric rock carvings to ruins and clay tablets from Egypt’s Old Kingdom to a Roman fort and temple that dated back to the time of Nero, as well as fortifications and a minaret erected early in the Islamic conquest.
A little south of the settled area, Flynn could see the long, mottled, gray and brown line of what had once been an eight-thousand-foot-long paved runway. Since there were no longer any scheduled commercial flights to Dakhla’s airport, it had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Nearly half the landing strip’s surface was cracked and pitted or half-buried by drifting sand. What was left was kept open for the smaller aircraft used to fly in archaeological teams, parties of wealthy adventure tourists, or the occasional central government administrator from Cairo.
Ingalls glanced back over his shoulder. “We’ll be on the ground in about ten minutes.”
“Did you get any probing questions from the airport operations folks?” Flynn asked.
“Nope,” Van Horn assured him. “This airport’s practically a ghost town, except when it’s tourist season or some wannabe Indiana Jones–types show up looking for the Holy Grail or the Lost Ark. Right now, there’s just one guy in charge, and his whole work force adds up to a couple of aircraft and fuel handlers, plus maybe a night watchman to guard the gate.” She shrugged. “From what I can tell, the airport manager, a Mr. Nabil Bashir, is bored out of his skull most of the time. So he’s really looking forward to welcoming our Mr. Hopper and his party to the oasis and arranging ground transportation and lodging for them at the finest local hotel.”
“Lucky Mr. Hopper,” Flynn said with a wry grin. He went back to his seat and buckled back in.
During their planned stay on the ground here, Shannon Cooke would become Mr. Francis Hopper, a wealthy American entrepreneur with a passion for Egyptology. According to the flight manifest they’d prepared for the local Egyptian authorities, he was accompanied by his personal pilot, Ingalls, an executive aide, Kossak, and two bodyguards, Vucovich and Hynes. No mention was made of Flynn, Van Horn, or their prisoner. As far as the official paperwork went, they simply didn’t exist.
Ingalls was as good as his word. The PC-12 touched down right on time and taxied north along the weathered runway. Looking out the aircraft’s left side, the slowly setting sun produced a glare off yellow-brown dunes of quartz-rich sand. Off to its right, the Pilatus rolled past huge circular fields of wheat grown using center-pivot irrigation. While they were still rolling, Van Horn climbed out of the copilot’s seat and came back to join Flynn. When they arrived, it wouldn’t do for anyone to spot a second pilot, especially a woman, in the cockpit.
Near the far end of the runway, Ingalls swung the plane through a tight right turn and slowly taxied across a concrete apron toward the airport’s small, whitewashed terminal and tower building. Three Egyptians stood waiting to greet them at the designated parking stand. One, a thin, young-looking man in a light cotton suit, was undoubtedly the local manager, Nabil Bashir. The other two were older and wore reflective vests that identified them as ground crew. One carried a bright yellow cable to connect the PC-12 with the nearest AGPU or Aircraft Ground Power Unit. The AGPU would provide electrical power for the Pilatus’s systems while it was on the ground.
Once the Pilatus came to a full stop, Flynn slid his window shade up a few inches and peered out. He was pleased to note that the only aircraft currently on the ground at Dakhla was a twin-engine Embraer Legacy 500 business jet in the nondescript colors of a Europe-based charter airline. If all went well, he thought, mentally crossing his fingers, the presence of that plane should let him tie up one of the loose ends of this particular mission, at least temporarily. He pulled the shade back down.
