"What you got?" Lawhon asked from just down the slope.

"Bunker," Serris repeated. "Probably a 12.7. Maybe a 14.5. n.o.body outside." He paused as something, he wasn't sure what. "d.a.m.n, make that two...nothree bunkers. Any of them could have been firing."

"Could they see us?"

"Negative, wrong angle." Serris turned his head ever so slightly and verified that. Yeah, their whole approach had been out of sight. But if they'd gone another couple of hundred meters up the valley.

"They're securing the pa.s.s."

"I called in," Lawhon replied. "We're to pull back. Our job is not to get into a p.i.s.sing contest with them unless they come down from the mountains. Let's get the f.u.c.k out of here."

"Ay-firmative," Serris said, sliding ever so slightly backwards. "I don't want them taking my head off."

"Captain Bathlick," Colonel Nielson said. "Another familiarization flight?"

The pilot was just exiting her recently completed, there was still sawdust on the floor, ready room, helmet under her arm.

The first of the pre-fab hangers was in place. The structures were large versions of the venerable "Quonset" huts, large enough that the Hinds could be slid in with their rotors still on. They had come packed on dozens of pallets and the non-militia Keldara men had taken less than a day to get the first one up: the concrete holding up the curved metal skeleton was still drying.

Tacked onto one side was a small utility hut, the pilot "ready room." Kacey was pretty sure it was going to be cold as h.e.l.l when full winter hit.

"Not plowing one of the birds on the supply drop missions was luck as much as anything," Kacey said.

"The more time we get in the birds the better. Especially at night."

"I agree," Nielson replied. "However, you might want to wait up a bit. The first thing you need to know is that we just found out the Guerrmo Pa.s.s is secured by heavy weapons."

"d.a.m.n," Kacey said, shaking her head.GuerrmoPa.s.s was the lowest pa.s.s into the area of the Keldara operation. It was their primary route if they had to go in in support. All the other ways were much higher and, thus, they could carry less equipment in or casualties out. "That's bad news. How secured?"

"At least three bunkers with heavy machine guns at the opening," Nielson said. "Not sure what might be further in."

"The Hinds are tough, but..."

"But, indeed," Nielson admitted. "Not tough enough to take cross-fire from multiple heavy machine-guns. So stay away from the opening toGuerrmoPa.s.s. The second reason you might want to wait up is that we were just informed that there is a shipment from the Georgian military on the way. They said it was left over parts from their Hinds; they recently decommissioned them. You probably want to look it over. Chief D'Allaird as well."

"Great," Kacey said, grumpily. "DXed parts from the Georgians. These should be great."

"Never look a gift horse and all that," Nielson said, smiling.

"Oh, I'm not," the pilot replied. "But D'Allaird is going to have to fully cert them before they go in the bird. What are we going to do about the bunkers?"

"That is under discussion."

"Well ain't that some s.h.i.t," Captain Guerrin said.

"I think we can take 'em out," Sergeant Lawhon offered. "They've got the pa.s.s covered. But if we swing up on the shoulder of the mountain we can come in on them from behind and above. Either hammer them from up there with Carl Gustavs or get a team down on top. I don't think they can fire at each other or back up the pa.s.s."

"And if they have supports further up the pa.s.s?" J.P. answered. "No, our mission isn't to take out bunkers. Certainly not yet." Guerrin paused and thought about the situation, both the "known" situation and the potential mission to support the Keldara. "But we need to keep an eye on them. Keep your squad up here. No more patrolling. Put in good security and keep a watch on that trail. Stay defiladed from the machine-guns but if anything comes out of that pa.s.s I want to know about it."

"Yes, sir," Lawhon replied.

"I'm going to redirect the company in this general direction," Guerrin added. "So if you get in the s.h.i.t, holler for help and we'll come a runnin'."

"So far, so good," Rashid said as the Nissan pickup bounced down the potholed road.

Al-Kariya nodded but didn't answer, continuing to run a string of worry beads through his fingers.

The king-cab pickup was the third truck in a convoy of nine, each of them holding four to five hand-picked mujaheddin. Most of them Al-Kariya had known, off and on, for years.

Although he was now a "senior financier" he had not always had that job. After getting a degree in finance fromPrinceton he had disappeared for several years in the late 1970s. The first stop of his wide travels had been to the new government ofIran , where the Ayatollah Khomeini had recently overthrown the Shah and inst.i.tuted shariah law. This was a goal towards which the Prophet, praise be upon him, decreed all good Muslims must strive. And the young Al-Kariya, then using the name Al-Dubiya, had reveled in the triumph of the True Faith over the secularism of that pig the Shah. Yes, Khomeini had been, in many ways, a blasphemer. The Shia branch of Islam was in many ways apostate. But Khomeini had made much of the oil wealth of the nation available to any group that was willing to strive for world-wide jihad and the imposition of shariah.

Managing that wealth, stealthily, was difficult. Moving the money was a pain when the Americans, French, Germans and Israelis were always poking in where they weren't wanted. Al-Kariya had seen his proper place in the world-wide jihad clearly. He knew the theoretical details of international finance back and forward. He knew the gaps, the hidden ways.

But you didn't just get handed a bunch of money no matter what your financial CV. You had to prove you truly supported the jihad. You had to be "made" in the fraternity of the mujaheddin.

Thus, after a brief trip to theBekaaValley for training in a PLO camp, his next stop had beenAfghanistan where the war against the pig Russians was in high gear. There the Americans, for reasons everyone recognized as cynical, were pouring in material and funds. And there the young man with the soft hands and mind of a calculator had been "made" killing Russian conscripts patrolling in the mountains they feared and hated.

That was a long time ago, though. Now he remembered the smells, the fear, of those missions. It had been a long time since he had had his kidneys jolted out by horrible roads. A long time since he'd been surrounded by unwashed fighters.

Some of them, though, he knew from those long ago days. The fighters in this convoy were the best the jihad had to offer. These weren't human bombs or half-trained zealots that pointed their weapons in the direction of the enemy and sprayed their fire. Every member of this security detail had been on multiple battlefields, fighting the Russians, the Israelis and, especially, the Americans in multiple countries. They had fought, survived and often triumphed. Most were older though few as old as Al-Kariya. Haza Saghedi, though, the team leader riding in the fourth truck, he was an old comrade in arms fromAfghanistan . Pashtun, raised in the fiercest of warrior traditions, he had even fought on the side of the Saudis in the war againstIraq . Then, later, he had been inIraq fighting the Americans. He had taken the path of true jihad, fighting the infidels on every front and surviving. It was he who had picked most of the fighters in the convoy.

Al-Kariya a.s.sumed that if the Russians saw an advantage they would try to betray them. Piled next to him in the back seat of the truck was a king's ransom; any king you'd care to name. And the areas they were traveling through could not be considered "safe" by any rational human. Thus he had ensured that the very best were guarding it, and him. Yes, things were going well.

But all he could think as they bounced down the atrocious road was how much he wished he were back in his comfortable office, sitting in his two thousand dollar chair, with a gla.s.s of tea by his hand and clicking on his laptop.

Instead of having his kidneys jolted out.

"I'm getting too old for this," was his reply.

"I'm getting too old for this s.h.i.t."

Mike looked down the slope and wondered if he should have stopped earlier. He had been in the lead on the last stretch of the ascent so it was all his fault if they had. He unzipped his jacket all the way, feeling a bite of cold sink into his mid-layer of fleece pullover, and pulled out his rangefinders. The range finders, along withall their batteries, had to be carried under their clothes to keep the power from being drained by the cold.

He looked through the binos and pressed the b.u.t.ton for range-finding. An invisible laser, good for about ten miles much less this short distance, lased the ground below and returned a range of nearly five hundred feet.

f.u.c.k.

They had a couple of thousand foot ropes with them but he would have liked a bit more safety margin.

However, this was as good as it was going to get.

He waved to Gregoriya and Mikhail then dumped his ruck in the snow. The serious climbing gear was in an outside pouch and he pulled out the pre-rigged harness. Some climbers would have clucked in horror at the piton hammer and pitons he pulled out. However, at the moment environmental consciousness was the last thing on his mind.

He used his ice axe to clear away some of the snow until he found solid granite then looked for a crack in the face. The air-driven piton hammer would drive one of the stainless steel spikes straight into the granite he had to do that. But a crack to start it was preferable. Thegood news was that itwas granite.

Feldspar or limestone, both prevalent in the area, had the possibility of being highly friable. Friable rock had a tendency to shatter under pressure and release pitons. That would bebad .

He found a crack, finally, and loaded the piton hammer then laid the tip of the piton on the crack, leaned into the hammer, and fired it.

The sound rebounded across the rocks. If there were any Chechens around he'd just definitively given their position away.

He punched in three pitons then connected caribiners to each of the pitons. The military called caribiners "D rings", a metal "ring", generally some form of oval with a sprung-loaded opening bale. Some people used them as key-rings but they were originally designed for climbing. Finally, he took one of the ropes Mikhail handed him, uncoiled it and then recoiled it in two heaps. Taking the center section, he began tying it off. That was a bit complex. He didn't want to leave the rope behind so he had to put in a recovery knot. However, he also wanted to make sure that n.o.body fell, thus the three pitons. Putting in a three-way recovery knot was a pain in the a.s.s. Finally, he managed it. The knot had a slip-knot built into it that permitted someone on the ground to untie it by a hard yank on one of the two dangling ropes. The problem was that they could start to untie all by themselves under heavy use. The answer was to slide a pin of some sort into the loop of the slip-knot until the last climber was ready to go down.

Finally he had the entire rig set up and stood up, groaning as his bad knee protested. One of these days that d.a.m.ned thing was going to go out entirely. Hopefully not today.

Mikhail looked at him quizzically for a second and then picked up the two coils and tossed them over the side. Both, fortunately, fell straight and true without tangling and the tips. .h.i.t the ground, barely.

The reason for the quizzical look, Mike realized, was that he should have tossed the loops. His brain wasreally working slow.

Nonetheless, he pointed to Sawn and then at the rappel at which Sawn nodded and stepped forward.

Everyone had already donned their climbing harnesses. These were padded nylon that ran around the upper body and under the arms. Earlier harnesses and those used for "light" mountaineering were a seat.

But the upper body harnesses were necessary when you were working with rucks. Without them you tended to dangle upside down.

Sawn picked up the doubled ropes and attached them to his figure-eight. There were, Mike swore, as many ways to rappel as there were climbers. However, one of the simpler involved wrapping the rope through a doubled metal circle that looked vaguely like an 8 with one end much smaller than the other.

They were only good for relatively short rappels, longer ones required a device called a "ladder." But Mike wasn't planning on doing any ten thousand foot rappels on this mission.

Sawn looped the ropes through the figure-eight, hooked it to his harness with a carabiner and stepped to the edge. He seated the ropes by leaning back on them while holding himself in place by the rappel line.

The method of descent was simple. The tied rope ends, called the standing end, ran to the figure-eight then through a complex double loop. The untied end, the running end, then was held in the right hand of the climber. If he pulled the rope around his back it stopped him. Pulling it out to the side permitted the rope to slide through his hand. The left hand was placed on the standing end for stability. The important thing was to remember to bring the arm around rather than "grabbing" the running end. Grabbing didn't get you anything but a burned glove. The gloves Mike had ordered had leather palms specifically for rappelling but if the rope ran through the palm too fast or was gripped too hard it was going to burn through, anyway.

When he was sure the ropes were set Sawn walked backwards to the edge of the cliff, looking down over his shoulder, placing his feet carefully on the ice-covered edge of the cliff and shaking the rope slightly to keep it from binding. At the top of a long rappel the weight of the rope tended to stop the climber from descending due to friction across the figure-eight. Once his full weight hit, though, it would smooth out.

Finally, he was in an "L" shape, feet planted on the wall, body straight out in defiance of gravity. At that point he began bounding slightly outwards from the cliff, falling a short distance on each bound, stopping when his feet hit the wall then bounding out and down again. He took it slow, which was good, but it meant the team was going to be rappelling when the sun came up. Bad.

Mike started putting in another set of ropes. G.o.d he was tired. Hopefully something was goingright on this mission.

It was less than twenty minutes before first one, then two and finallyseven tractor trailers made the sharp final bend into the valley. By the time the seventh was on the flats a machine-gun toting GAZ, a Russian made military SUV, had pulled into the newly laid helo-port in the lead of the first truck.

"Colonel Nielson," the captain said in crisp faintly Brit accented English. "Good to see you. My father-in-law sends his regards." He snapped a crispy salute and dropped it at the colonel's reply.

"Ah, Captain Kahbolov, we've never met," Nielson said, shaking the captain's hand. "Captain Bathlick, Captain Efim Kahbolov. His father-in-law is the Georgian Chief of Staff. And he's a pilot as well."

"Good to meet you, Captain," Kacey said, shaking his hand.

"And you, Captain," the Georgian said, grinning. "I was originally trained on the Hind. I understand the Js are sweet birds. Hopefully these will help." He pulled an envelope out of the GAZ and handed it to Nielson.

"This is certainly generous," Nielson said, ripping open the envelope and sliding out the contents. He looked at the papers and then blanched. "Holy f.u.c.k, captain."

"Which one?" Kacey asked, looking over his shoulder. However, the doc.u.ments were in Cyrillic and incomprehensible.

"Thank your father-in-law, captain," Nielson said, awe in his voice. He looked up at the trucks and shook his head. "Thank him very VERY much for us."

"They were going to be sold," the captain replied with a shrug. "My father thought that using them in the defense of the homeland made a better choice. Use them well, captain. That will be worth the very long, very cold, ride."

"What?" Kacey asked, frowning. "What's the big deal about parts?"

"They're not parts, Kacey," Nielson said, handing her the doc.u.ments while continuing to look at the trucks in wonder. "The lead truck is three complete gun systems for a Hind. The second has rocket launchers. The rest...is ammo."

"Well,that certainly makes things more interesting."

The whole team was down, the sun was coming up and it was time for Mike to descend.

The view across the glacier was spectacular in the pre-dawn light. The blue pre-morning twilight reflected off the glacier and filled the valley with a glow quite unlike anything Mike had seen before in his life. It was something like being in the middle of a blue-white diamond. The figures of the Keldara below, rapidly setting up a camp and getting camouflage in place, seemed to walk through a mist of blue-white.

However, this wasn't a good time for sight-seeing; it was time to get down to business.

The only incident during the descent was that one of the Makanees ended up getting tangled down half way down the cliff. The guy was utterly unable to free himself so the next rappeller down stopped alongside and managed to get him freed, mainly by cutting on his outer wear. That was gonna require patching. Then the two of them went down the rest of the way.

Mike had already tossed the second rope and now, with difficulty, yanked out the pins securing the primary. Storing those he hooked up and stepped to the edge, pulling carefully on both ropes to ensure they were secure. So far, so good.

Someone was on belay below and he looked down and waved. The belay man was in place as a safety measure. If the climber descending lost control of the rappel, the belay man could, by putting pressure on the rope, stop him in place.

Mike stepped over the edge and got in a good L position then bounded out. All good. It wasn't like he hadn't done this a thousand times.

However, about half way down, the entire rig trembled and went momentarily slack, dropping him into freefall for a moment and then jerking him to a stop.

He'd done slack rappels enough times to recognize the signs. The primary slip-knot had released.

Whether it was the cold working on the ropes to make them more slippery or what, the slip-knots were coming undone. If all three let go, he was going to fall three hundred feet onto solid ice covered in about an inch of snow.

The term was "splat."

As his feet touched the face he bounded instantly outward and threw his right arm out to the side, removing all pressure on the rope and falling, effectively, in freefall, the rope screaming through both hands with the smell of burning leather.

The fall, however, wasn'tquite freefall: the friction of the rope running over the figure-eight prevented that. So in keeping with simple Newtonian physics, Mike was pulled back to the face in a long, slow swing. The arc of pendulum was very long, but inexorable. Thus about two hundred feet over the ice he had to slow, again, for a bound. As he did he felt the shock of the second knot giving way.

This time he pushed off, hard, and let loose of the rope almost instantly. He'd never really stopped at the bound and was falling fast enough it wasn't much different than a freefall jump. He wasn't sure whether he should do a parachute landing fall at the bottom or not. However, doing it with the ruck on his back was pretty much out.

He had one more, probably shaky, knot between him and splatsville. He had about two hundred pounds of gear wearing him down and nasty ice right underneath. And he was falling at about terminal velocity.

Oh, and he was inexorably swinging in towards the face.

On the other hand, he had to admit that this was the sort of thing he f.u.c.kinglived for. Adrenaline was pumping, the time seemed to slow and endorphins were riding high in antic.i.p.ation of sudden and incredible pain. A degree of skill and one h.e.l.l of a lot of luck were the only things between life a very messy death. Forget s.e.x, forget gambling, this was life on the blade. The only moments better than this was the kill after a long stalk or being in the center of a f.u.c.k-load of enemies, a larger number than a b.u.t.tload and just shy of a s.h.i.tload, with several full magazines and a mild amount of cover.