23.

THIRD ECHELON SITUATION ROOM.

LESS than a day after the first mortar round landed in Bishkek, the moderate government collapsed from within. With most of its armored vehicles destroyed along with what few strike aircraft it could field, the government forces had taken a crippling blow, and the battle for Bishkek quickly turned into a house-to-house fight as the insurgent army poured down from the mountains surrounding the capital and drove into the city proper under a steady stream of mortar fire that sometimes simply blanketed an area, wiping it clean of soldiers and vehicles alike, while other times taking out single targets, but always doing so with frightening speed and precision. than a day after the first mortar round landed in Bishkek, the moderate government collapsed from within. With most of its armored vehicles destroyed along with what few strike aircraft it could field, the government forces had taken a crippling blow, and the battle for Bishkek quickly turned into a house-to-house fight as the insurgent army poured down from the mountains surrounding the capital and drove into the city proper under a steady stream of mortar fire that sometimes simply blanketed an area, wiping it clean of soldiers and vehicles alike, while other times taking out single targets, but always doing so with frightening speed and precision.

By the time the government forces recovered from the initial a.s.sault and managed to regroup, half the city was already lost, under insurgent control as thousands of Bishkek residents took to the streets and marched on government buildings and the presidential residence.

The Kyrgyz government's pleas for intervention from its neighbors fell on deaf ears, as did an official request to the U.S. State Department for immediate relief. What few forces the U.S. Army had on ready-alert were bogged down in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountain range, where the resurrected Taliban had begun to push south toward Kabul.

And so, twenty hours after it began, the Kyrgyz president appeared, pale and haggard, before the podium in his private office and announced his resignation.

The world's news networks had immediately picked up the BBC feed of the Battle for Bishkek and the president's surrender and began playing it on a near constant loop, along with commentary from an alphabet soup of experts, both military and civilian alike.

The monitors behind the situation room's conference table, set to mute, were tuned to CNN, MSNBC, and BBC World.

"Well, that was quick and tidy," Lambert said.

"Like they were being led by a resurrected G.o.d," Fisher murmured, taking a sip of coffee.

An hour after ex-filtrating Ingonish, he had met the Osprey at an airstrip in Grand River, and four hours after that he arrived back at Fort Meade, having caught a shower and an hour's nap.

His planting of the Sticky Cam on the Sikorsky was an insurance policy. The truth was, there was no guarantee Stewart, an untrained civilian, would hold up under even the lightest of interrogation. And if he broke, one of the first things he would do is give up the thumbnail beacon. Similarly, the beacon might not pa.s.s an electronic frisking. Their grasp on Stewart was tenuous at best. The Sikorsky was a poor subst.i.tute, but it was better than nothing.

"Any numbers on casualties?" Redding asked.

"None yet," Lambert replied. "The DIA is working on it."

"Well," Grimsdottir said from her workstation at the other end of the table, "if the satellite BDA is any indication, civilian casualties are likely to be low." As soon as the fighting had started, the entire U.S. intelligence community had turned its collective eyes and ears toward Kyrgyzstan. Overhead satellite battle damage a.s.sessments had begun pouring into the National Reconnaissance Office. "Take a look," Grimsdottir said.

She pointed the remote at one of the LCD screens and a black-and-white satellite image of what Fisher a.s.sumed was Bishkek appeared. Throughout the city hundreds of tiny craters had been highlighted in blue.

"Mortar strikes?" Lambert asked.

Grimsdottir nodded. "Current as of an hour ago. According to the Pentagon, about eighty percent of those craters were sites of ammunition and weapons depots, truck and APC parks, fuel dumps, and command-and-control centers. The rest were likely cover-for-fire barrages for when the insurgents moved in.

"The Brits have agreed to attach a plainclothes SAS team to a Red Cross mission that's on its way there. With luck, they'll be able to bring back sh.e.l.l fragments, unspent rounds, tubes-anything that might tell us where and who the mortars came from."

"If they get in," Fisher replied. "Those Kyrgyz insurgents could give the Taliban a run for their money for Extremist Group of the Year. First thing they'll do is close down every border outpost."

"Agreed," Lambert said. "Grim, how about it? Anything?"

Eyes fixed on the computer monitor, she held a finger up for quiet, then punched a few more keys and looked up. "Maybe. Chin-Hwa Pak's Treo phone had a lot of goodies, but one thing in particular interested me. In a couple of phone calls we intercepted, both incoming and outgoing, Pak mentions someplace called Site Seventeen. Sam, about an hour before you heard Bakiyev get his call-which also came from Pak-Pak himself got a call. I'm tracking down the origin, but I can tell you it came from Asia. Listen to this. I had to do a quick and dirty translation from Korean, so it's a tad rough, and it hasn't been verified."

She tapped a key on her keyboard, and from the wall speakers came a Stephen Hawking-esque voice of the computer's recitation software: "Can he do it? Does he have the knowledge?"

"Yes. He has the knowledge, and he seems cooperative."

"We're sending for you ..."

The speakers began hissing.

Grimsdottir said, "Here we got some interference for a few seconds."

". . . which one?"

". . . teen. St. Johns to to a pot then to the site."

Grimsdottir tapped another key. "That's pretty much it. I'm guessing the 'teen' is Seventeen-as in Site Seventeen."

" 'To a pot'," Fisher said. "What is that? A computer glitch?"

"No, I double-checked it; it's a verbatim quote, which means it's a word the computer couldn't find in its linguistic database. a.s.suming Pak and the other man are talking about flying somewhere, and a.s.suming the St. Johns they're talking about is St. John's, Newfoundland-which is the only St. Johns within range of the Sikorsky-that means they touched down there, either for refueling or for an aircraft change.

"I took the former first," Grimsdottir continued, "and did a search for any location within the Sikorsky's range that the computer might have mistaken for the words 'to a pot.' Came up with zilch. So that means they probably changed aircraft in St. Johns for something with a longer range. Plus, Sam, your Sticky Cam beacon hasn't moved from St. Johns since it arrived. So I expanded my search, spiraling outward from St. Johns, until I found a village on very southern tip of Greenland called . . . drumroll, please . . . Tuapaat-to a pot."

She gave them a grin and spread her hands.

"Grim, you're a wonder," Fisher said. "Okay, so what's in Tuapaat?"

"Another aircraft change, I'm guessing, this time back to a helicopter. They'd need it for where they were going."

"Explain," Lambert said.

"For the last two hours I've been scouring every database I can beg, borrow, steal, or hack my way into. Five minutes ago I finally found mention of a Site Seventeen: a decommissioned Exxon deep-water oil exploration platform in the Labrador Sea, about a hundred eighty miles east of Tuapaat."

"Owned by?" Lambert asked.

"Working on that right now. The t.i.tle on the deed belongs to an environmental group out of Australia, but I'm betting that's just a front."

Redding said, "Why in the world are they taking Stewart there?"

No one answered for a few seconds, then Fisher said, "Safety buffer."

"Huh?"

"Where better to handle and experiment with something like PuH-19." Fisher turned to Lambert. "Colonel?"

Lambert thought for a moment, thumbs tapping the rim of the coffee cup clasped in his hands. "Okay. Suit up. I'll get Bird and Sandy prepping."

He reached for the phone.

24.

LABRADOR SEA.

THE Osprey bucked to one side, rain slashing the fuselage. Fisher tightened his seat belt and gripped the armrests a little tighter. Into his headset microphone he said, "How're we looking, guys?" Osprey bucked to one side, rain slashing the fuselage. Fisher tightened his seat belt and gripped the armrests a little tighter. Into his headset microphone he said, "How're we looking, guys?"

"Not good," Sandy replied.

In the background, Fisher could hear Bird muttering to himself, which he did during only the most perilous of situations. "Come on, sweetie, don't be like that . . . Ah, now, that's not nice . . ."

Sandy said to Fisher, "You hear?"

"I hear."

Since leaving St. John's, Newfoundland, with every mile northward the weather had deteriorated, until finally eighty miles south of the Site 17 platform, the Osprey was being battered by sixty miles per hour gusts and horizontal rain. Ten thousand feet below them, the ocean was roiling with fifteen-foot waves.

"Can you get me there?" Fisher asked.

Bird answered: "h.e.l.l, yes, I can get you there. Getting there ain't the problem. The problem is, getting Lulu Lulu here to sit still in the crosswind long enough for you to fast-rope to the deck. Odds are, you'd get bashed to a pulp on the cranes and derricks as soon as you went out the darn door." here to sit still in the crosswind long enough for you to fast-rope to the deck. Odds are, you'd get bashed to a pulp on the cranes and derricks as soon as you went out the darn door."

"In that case, how about we call that plan B," Fisher said.

"Suits me. We aborting?"

"Nope," Fisher said. "New plan A."

"Which is?"

"If we can't come in from the top, we'll come in from the bottom."

TWENTY-FIVE minutes later, Bird called, "About three miles out, Sam. Slowing to one fifty and descending through five thousand feet." minutes later, Bird called, "About three miles out, Sam. Slowing to one fifty and descending through five thousand feet."

"Any radar?" Fisher asked. However unlikely it may be, Bird and Sandy had been watching their gauges for any EM transmissions coming from the platform.

"Not a peep."

Fisher reached above his head and hooked his safety tether to the overhead cable, then unclipped his seat belt and made his way to the rear of the cabin. In the middle of the ramp, secured to the deck by quick-release ratchet straps, was a Mark IX ISDS, or individual swimmer delivery sled. To Fisher, the sled looked like a miniature version of a Jet Ski whose tail end had been hacked off, leaving only the nose cone-containing a pair of horizontally mounted propellers driven by four marine batteries-a dash panel, a tapered fairing, and a throttle bar/rudder. Attached to the sled's underside was a pair of streamlined scuba tanks; attached to each side of the nose cone, a bow plane for depth control.

Fisher pressed the dash's power b.u.t.ton, and the digital gauges lit up, amber on black. A thumb-size screen in the middle of the dash flashed the words SELF-DIAGNOSIS RUNNING. Sixty seconds later the screen flashed again: SELF-DIAGNOSIS COMPLETE. NO ERRORS FOUND.

"Sled checks out," Fisher told Sandy and Bird. "Prepping."

"Roger."

Fisher slipped a one-piece dry diving suit over his tac suit, made sure all the cuffs were sealed tight, then took off his headset, pulled on his hood and face mask, which he tightened for fit, then knelt beside the sled and hooked the loose end of his mask hose into the air-port. He pressed the dash b.u.t.ton labeled AIRFLOW ON. Cool, metallic air gushed into his mask. He punched AIRFLOW OFF, then pushed the mask back onto his forehead and put the headset back on.

"Two miles," Bird called. "Three minutes."

"Sea state?"

"Running between five and six," Sandy replied. "Crests to sixteen feet."

"Give me half ramp," Fisher called.

"Half ramp."

"Switching to SVT." He took off his headset and hooked it on the bulkhead, then keyed the SVT. "Read me?"

"Loud and clear," replied Bird.

With a hum, the ramp's hydraulics engaged. The ramp parted from the fuselage's curved upper rim, revealing a crescent of black sky. Sea spray burst through the opening and misted Fisher's face. The rain sounded like shrapnel striking the Osprey's aluminum skin.

"Hold ramp," Fisher ordered. The ramp stopped. "Lovely evening out there."

"I love your sunny disposition," Bird said.

"Everyone does."

"One mile out. Coming to hover." The Osprey's engines changed pitch, and Fisher felt their forward momentum begin to slow, then stop altogether. "Hovering. Stand by . . . Couplers engaged."

Sandy said, "We're at thirty feet, Sam. Sorry. Any lower, and we might net some water."

"No problem."

Fisher knelt behind the sled. From the left calf pouch on his dry suit, he pulled a D-ring knotted to some blaze-orange 4mm parachute cord. In his pouch was another 100 feet of it. The sled was buoyant, and in these seas, Fisher wanted to be able to reel it to him-or vice versa-should they get separated during the drop.

"Ready," Fisher called. "On my mark."

"Roger," Bird replied. "We'll be nearby. Call when you're done playing."

"Will do. Give me full ramp."

The ramp groaned downward until it locked fully open with a dull clunk. Rain whipped through the opening. Fisher could see the sea below heaving and breaking, the wave crests serrated edges of white water.

He popped the sled's release toggle, watched it slide into the darkness, then counted five seconds and followed after it.

25.