Ransom didn't know. Confused, he looked down at the tracker, noting that it showed all three of them almost directly below the helicopter.

"They should be down there," he replied, pointing at the screen with his finger.

But all they saw was horses.

Ransom peered carefully down into the herd below him, looking for a sign, something to confirm what he suddenly suspected, something that would prove-

There!

A horse split off from the herd, the saddle on its back now clearly visible, the blip on the screen representing the tracking bug sliding away to the left just like the animal below them.

Enraged, Ransom clambered in the back, grabbed the rifle from a bewildered Santiago and began firing at the galloping beast. It took him a couple of tries, but eventually one of his shots went true and the horse toppled forward to lie still in the gra.s.s.

The pilot was ordered to land and Ransom got out, Santiago at his heels.

The horse was still alive, though just barely, when they reached it. Ransom didn't care; all he wanted was to prove his suspicions were correct. Ignoring the animal's labored breathing, he dug around in its saddlebags until he found a folded piece of paper in which his tracking transponder had been placed.

Drawn on the inside of the sc.r.a.p of paper was a smiley face.

Ransom screamed in fury at the sight.

Without another word he turned and stalked back to where the helicopter was waiting.

That was it, he thought. That was the last time Davenport or his minions were going to get the better of him. By the time this was over, their bodies would lie rotting beneath the Mongolian sun.

He intended to make certain of it, if it was the last thing he did.

27.

As the sun crept over the horizon it found Kent already up and about, preparing a quick breakfast of powdered eggs with Cukhbaatar's help. They had driven well into the night, not stopping until they had backtracked most of the way out of the Restricted Zone. The entire place gave Kent the creeps and he wanted to be rid of it as quickly as possible. He figured the tank base they had pa.s.sed the day before was only another mile or two up the road, which meant they would be back on the steppes by midmorning at the latest.

When he'd finally decided to call it quits for the night, he'd simply pulled over, turned off the lights and gone to sleep in the driver's seat, the other three men already snoring away in the back.

He handed two plates to Cukhbaatar, one for him and one for Harris, and then shoveled his own share of the lukewarm eggs into his mouth before taking a plate over to D'Angelo. The wounded man could barely eat, the infection in his leg filling him with fever and threatening to overwhelm his immune system if he didn't reach a hospital soon.

"Hang in there, man," Kent said, partially to himself, as he dosed D'Angelo up with another round of antibiotics and painkillers. He was starting to see the wisdom in Mason's decision to send them back.

A few moments later they got under way once more.

The first hour pa.s.sed without incident and Kent was almost ready to cheer when they drove past the abandoned tank base right about the time he'd expected them to do so. The edge of the Restricted Zone wasn't too far ahead.

Unfortunately, things weren't going to be that easy.

It was Harris who saw it first. A quick glance, it was nothing more than a dark speck framed against the clouds in the distance. But something about the way it moved bothered him and so he kept his eyes on it.

A few moments later he was glad he had, for as he watched, it changed course slightly. Calculating quickly in his head, he could see that it had just moved from a parallel course to one that would intersect with their own in short order. His unease grew like a monstrous tendril deep in his gut.

That's no eagle, a voice in the back of his head told him.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the pair of binoculars out of the case he wore on his belt and brought them up to his face.

Under the high-power magnification of the military-quality gla.s.ses, the dark speck suddenly resolved itself into the bulbous front end of a Soviet-made helicopter. A Gatling gun was mounted just beneath the c.o.c.kpit and what looked like rocket pods or fuel tanks hung from the body of the aircraft.

"Contact!" he shouted, so loudly that Kent flinched and nearly drove them into a ditch.

"What the h.e.l.l, Harris?" Kent swore, but the other man quickly cut him off.

"We've got a military helicopter, exact model unknown, coming directly for us at two o'clock!"

Even as he said it he was pulling out his rifle and rolling down his window. While they had no evidence that the helicopter meant them any harm, none of them could forget the description the boy at the monastery had given of the men with guns who had arrived in the helicopter and killed everyone in sight. This far out in the middle of nowhere, chances were better than good that the men in the helicopter worked for Ransom and that meant they were not not going to be friendly. going to be friendly.

Harris knew it was crazy, thinking that he could cause any kind of significant damage to an armored chopper with just an a.s.sault rifle, but then again, stranger things had happened before. The Afghan mujahideen had fought the Soviet army to a standstill with weapons older than the one he now carried, hadn't they? So at least it was possible, right?

He did his best not to think about how many Afghans the Soviets had killed in the process.

"I see it," Kent said.

Harris's only answer was to rack the slide on his rifle. With Kent behind the wheel and D'Angelo unconscious from his injuries, it was going to be up to him to defend them if it came down to it.

Up front, Kent ordered Cukhbaatar to get down on the floor of the car beneath the dash, hoping the heaviness of the engine block would give the youth some protection. Then he began scanning the landscape, looking for somewhere that might provide them some measure of protection.

There wasn't much.

Most of the land in front of them was the same flat, rock-strewn landscape that they'd been driving through for the past several hours. Off in the distance he could see a few small rises, but it was going to take several long minutes to reach them.

Kent drove grimly on.

To their surprise, the chopper roared overhead, giving no indication that it cared about them at all.

A BOARD THE CHOPPER BOARD THE CHOPPER five hundred feet above, Santiago keyed the mike and informed Ransom that the vehicle below them was, indeed, from Davenport's group. five hundred feet above, Santiago keyed the mike and informed Ransom that the vehicle below them was, indeed, from Davenport's group.

"Good. Try to take them alive," Ransom replied. "They might know where Davenport is headed."

Santiago gave directions to the pilot and the chopper swung about, angling downward and headed for a position to the side of the moving vehicle.

H ARRIS WAS WATCHING ARRIS WAS WATCHING the helicopter through the rear window and as it swung back in their direction, he said, "They're turning about!" the helicopter through the rear window and as it swung back in their direction, he said, "They're turning about!"

In the front of the truck, Kent swore loudly.

There was no doubt about it now. Whoever was in that chopper wanted something from them and it didn't take a genius for them to guess what it might be.

Kent's hands tightened on the wheel and his foot pushed down harder on the accelerator as he gave in to the instinct to run. But his mind kept returning to the same essential question.

Where, exactly, were they going to go?

T HE CHOPPER TOOK UP POSITION HE CHOPPER TOOK UP POSITION to one side of the fleeing vehicle. Santiago reached for the minigun controls, a grin a mile wide splashed across his face. to one side of the fleeing vehicle. Santiago reached for the minigun controls, a grin a mile wide splashed across his face.

"Let's see what they think about this," he said happily and triggered the weapon.