"Hard to say. All the medical stuff is ripped out. Rest is all tied down. Looks like maybe life raft, flares, blankets, gas cans-junk, boss, only junk."

"But it's all tied down, nothing loose?"

"No, boss. All tight"-Including Levka, he thought but did not add. he thought but did not add.

"Okay. For now, what I want is for you to buckle up. I mean, strap in real solid. You follow?"

Levka was silent for a moment while he worked out the implications.

"Okeydokey, boss," he said, cinching his straps in and stuffing the ouzo bottle into a zippered pocket. "I follow. We are going for ride?"

"We are," said Dalton. Then he looked across at Mandy, checked out her straps and his, checked them both again, gave Mandy a look that said Brace yourself, Brace yourself, and then clicked the com-set to open. and then clicked the com-set to open.

"Escort Six Actual, this is Medevac, come back."

"Medevac, this is Escort Six."

"Six, I'm looking at my starboard engine temperature readout and it's saying I'm running at over red line. This may be an instrument malfunction since all my other parameters are nominal. Can you drop back and take a heat signature off my starboard engine?"

A pause.

"No, we cannot, Medevac. We are not equipped. Do you have redundant sensors?"

No infrared detection on board.

"Negative. This old bird is very tired. Taped together. Our avionics are ten years old. Do you have night vision capabilities?"

A pause.

"Negative. We are on approach to Ataturk. ETA, thirty minutes. Do you need to turn back and try for Bandirma?"

And no NVGs.

"Negative, Six. This heart is too urgent. We have to try for Ataturk. Can you drop back and see if I'm losing coolant?"

More silence.

Six Actual was a wary flyer. Young but smart.

"Yes, Medevac. We will drop back and do a visual on your starboard engine housing. Please hold your course and maintain altitude."

"Roger that. Appreciate it, Six."

The three choppers flew level for another few seconds, and then the Little Bird flared up slightly and dropped back, gaining altitude but losing speed. At the same time, taking his mind off the game, the pilot of the port Little Bird chopper let his ride drift a few degrees farther away. Dalton had his hand on the collective, waiting for his moment.

"Medevac, this is Escort Six. I am in your slipstream and cannot see any coolant leakage. Repeat, you are not losing-"

Dalton hit a flip-top button marked EMERGENCY FUEL DUMP. The multifunction display indicator started to flash bright red with the warning STARBOARD AUXILIARY FUEL DUMP. There was a hissing sound, and a vapor cloud of JP-6 fuel began to stream out from the starboard auxiliary tank, a teardrop-shaped bolt-on clamped to a stub wing.

Little Bird 1 was right in the cone of the fuel spraying out from the Blackhawk's slipstream. The pilot's reaction was quick but not quick enough.

"Medevac, this is Escort Six. You are losing fluid! I am in your stream, and you are losing coolant. Repeat, you are-"

But it wasn't coolant. It was high-octane aviation fuel, and it promptly did what JP-6 likes to do: it found a hot spark in the Little Bird's engine, there was a red flash, a blooming white light. Little Bird 1 caught fire and, a moment later, blew itself to pieces.

The concussion wave hit the tail boom, knocking the Blackhawk forward and into a yaw. Dalton, fighting to regain control, hit the com-set and radioed Little Bird 2.

"Escort Two, I am losing power. Repeat, I am losing-"

The com-set speaker crackled into life with a frantic burst of cross talk in Turkish as the pilot of Little Bird 2 radioed the news of the midair explosion to his base, wherever the hell that was. Right now, as what was left of Little Bird 1 was raining molten steel and burned body parts down onto the town of Bandirma, the pilot of Little Bird 2 was not thinking about the United Nations Blackhawk at all.

Dalton, seizing the moment, cut the radio off abruptly, at the same time that he turned off all the exterior airframe lights, including the rotor-hub strobes and the navigation lights under the nose and tail boom.

He hit the collective and shoved the Blackhawk into a controlled shallow dive, checking his parameters. He shut off FUEL DUMP, waited two seconds for the flow to tail off.

Then he pressed CHAFF/FLARE.

A spray of shredded aluminum foil and four red Very lights popped out of the flare pod and rocketed backward into the vapor cloud of fuel that was still drifting in the atmosphere behind them. In a moment, another blue-white light blossomed, illuminating the sky, followed by a dimly felt concussive boom. They heard a burst of panicky Turkish from Little Bird 2 on the com-set, a brief, terrified shout cut off abruptly.

Mandy, twisting to look through the side window, saw Little Bird 2, a thousand feet above them, watched it veer sharply up and to the south, trying to avoid flying into the second fireball burning in the cold night sky.

Dalton, knowing that the pilot of Little Bird 2 would get his nerve and his bearings back in a moment, kept the Blackhawk in a steep descent, right at the operational limits. The altimeter display was winding backward, the two RPM indicators were well into the red zone, and the PARAMETER alert was going off, a deafening klaxon wail.

Mandy watched the surface of the Sea of Marmara coming at them, glanced over at Dalton, whose tight face was locked and grim as he fought the collective and watched the control indicators. The rotor vibration was intense, shaking the airframe brutally, with things rattling around the floor of the cockpit, and the engines were shrieking.

At a thousand feet, Dalton pulled back on the stick, finally leveling the laboring chopper out at less than two hundred feet above the surface of the sea. They were still running dark, although the glow of her twin turbines would have been faintly visible against the water. The rotor wash was kicking up spray, and the windshield was streaming.

Dalton slowed the shuddering old machine to a near hover, looked out his side window, then through the glass overhead. He saw a faint strobe blinking far above them, the other Little Bird, circling aimlessly, probably on the radio calling in his position and scrambling a rescue chopper.

Mandy broke the short silence.

"Did you know that was going to happen?"

Dalton looked over at her.

"Yes, Mandy, I did."

Mandy looked away.

"Those poor kids."

"Yes," said Dalton. "And that's what we do. You understand that?"

She flared back at him.

"Yes. I started this, didn't I? I shot a dead man in the back of the head a few hours ago, so I imagine I can handle this."

Dalton held her look for a moment, and then got on the CREW net.

"Levka, you okay?"

Levka had lost his bottle of ouzo in the dive. It was rolling around the floor of the cabin, and he was trying to retrieve it. He jerked back in his straps and hit the squawk button.

"Yeah, boss. Okeydokey."

"I'm going to hover here for sixty seconds. I want you to open the bay door, pop that life raft into the water, and dump everything we have back there into the raft. You copy that?"

"Everything? Also luggage of miss?"

Dear Saint Boris, not the ouzo!

"No. Not the damned luggage. And not the camouflage tarp. But everything else!"

Dalton held the machine in hover. Through the boards, they could feel Levka dragging cargo to the open bay, and they could hear the splash as materiel hit the waves. The open door let in a cold, wet wind and the smell of diesel oil and dead fish. Dalton and Mandy spent the minute trying to see where Little Bird 2 was-so far, still circling at six thousand feet, judging from the position of the blinking strobe on its belly.

Down at this level, they could make out the hulls of freighters crowding the entrance to the Bosphorus, a constellation of navigation lights blinking on the horizon, their black masts silhouetted against the low-mounded glimmering of Istanbul. Levka was back on the headset radio.

"All okay, boss. Now what?"

"You keep one of the flares?"

Levka swore to himself.

"No, boss, sorry. You say dump everything!"

"Got a match?"

"Yes, boss."

"Still got some of that ouzo left?"

"Ouzo, boss?"

"I can smell it up here. Grab a bottle, stick a rag in it, light the rag, and toss it into the raft. Do it!"

Levka, sighing, did what he was told. The bottle, fire flickering at its neck, tumbled into the raft, shattering into licking blue flames just as Dalton put the chopper into a forward glide, skimming the top of the waves. They were a hundred feet away when the flare box went up. And then the ammunition belts cooked off, a fireworks display that could be seen on the shoreline a mile behind them. It lasted a few moments, and then, as the raft burned and deflated, winked out, there was nothing but darkness.

Dalton was hoping that brief flare-up against the black plain of open water would be taken as the UN Medevac chopper crashing. The water depth off the coast of Bandirma was over six hundred feet, and the bottom was littered with iron wrecks from Gallipoli and two world wars, so any sonar scan would be pretty inconclusive.

Dalton lined the nose of the Blackhawk up on the misty lights of Istanbul and pushed the collective forward. The chopper picked up speed, its wheels just brushing the waves.

"Levka?"

"Yes, boss?"

"You know Istanbul?"

"Pretty okay. I know good whorehouse in Aksaray-"

"I need to put this machine down somewhere out of sight. If the military don't buy the idea that we crashed off Bandirma, they'll tear the town up looking for this chopper. And they'll find it sooner or later. On the GPS charts, there's open land on the east side of Ataturk Field-"

"Yes. Is soccer stadium. Across from airport parking lot. Next to that is sewage place. Big open field, but no good to hide chopper. Too much people all around."

"Okay, I'm open to suggestions."

Levka gave it some thought while they swooped in toward the lights of the city. The mist on the water coated the windshield. Freighters and tankers and container hulks were all around them now, some of them close enough for the rows of porthole lights and the rust on the hulls to be seen as they ghosted past them, most of them moored in the shallow waters, showing only navigation lights. The rotors churned up the water as they drifted over it, sending a large circular fan of ripples outward, dragging it along behind them like a white lace net on a black velvet tablecloth.

"Micah," said Mandy during the pause, "there's only one place where a helicopter won't stand out and that's at an airport. Is there another one around, maybe a small private one?"

Dalton hit a few buttons on the GPS chart screen and a list came up, along with lats and longs and bearings from their position.

"There's another big public one on the Asian side, at Sabiha Gokcen . . . There's a little one, Samandira, looks like mainly private planes. Not used much, according to the data file, but it's a long way east of our position-twenty miles, anyway-and it's seven miles inland. Over a lot of towns and villages. Levka, you copying?"

"Yes, boss?"

"You know a private airport on the Arab side of Istanbul east of the Bosphorus, seven miles inland, called Samandira?"

"No, boss. But is private private field? On Asia side of Bosphorus? Not on Europe side?" field? On Asia side of Bosphorus? Not on Europe side?"

"Yes, looks like it."

"We have money?"

"We have money."

"Then Asia Istanbullus have good word for this. Vermek Vermek is word." is word."

"Vermek? What does it mean?" What does it mean?"

"Means 'bribe.' "

"Would a straight bribe be enough to get them to take a risk like that? If they got caught with a chopper involved in the deaths of Turkish military personnel, they'd be lucky to just get shot."

"Asia side hate Europe-side Turk soldiers. Arab side lie to Turk soldiers for free. With big smile on. Vermek Vermek is for them honey on top of pretty girl's belly." is for them honey on top of pretty girl's belly."

"I'm not sure I get that, but vermek vermek works for me," said Dalton. works for me," said Dalton.

"Vermek work for work for everybody, everybody," said Levka. "Is proof God love us."

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY.

FORT MEADE, MARYLAND.

THE BLUE BOX, CRYPTO CITY.