What now?
True leans forward to get a look at the lights and swears softly to herself. Khalid was not exaggerating. A long line of traffic is coming toward them, headlights yellowed by the dust.
“Take it easy, everyone,” Lincoln says in his gravelly, one-note voice. “That is not an army. It’s a merchant convoy, still a few klicks out.”
“Lincoln is watching over us,” Chris reminds Khalid. “We’ve got high-altitude surveillance, and the Hai-Lins patrolling the road.”
“Okay,” Khalid says. “Good. But convoys out here run armed. There are guards on those trucks, and a lot more of them than us.”
Chris says, “Just because they have weapons doesn’t mean they’re looking for trouble.”
Lincoln speaks again: “Khalid, I want you to turn your headlights on. Let the convoy see you. Let them know you’re not a threat.”
Khalid doesn’t rush to embrace this idea. “How about if we just wait off-road?”
Chris is first to reject the suggestion. “No. They’ll assume we’re waiting to pick off the last truck in the line. We don’t want to look like bandits.”
“Agreed,” Lincoln says. “These are not Hussam’s soldiers. They’re merchants, and they know an op just went down. Guaranteed someone in Tadmur called them. And they’ve heard the jets. They are not going to risk their cargo or give us any reason to hit them. And if they do? The Hai-Lins are watching. We’ll nail them before they get a window open. So turn on your headlights and make nice.”
Khalid turns the headlights on.
“What else is out there?” Chris asks. “Are we going to have quiet time to make the transfer?”
“Time enough,” Lincoln tells him. “Once the convoy is past, we’re looking at a twenty-two-minute window with no traffic. That’s your timeframe to rendezvous, transfer, and get clear.”
“We’ll get it done,” Chris assures him.
True eyes the convoy. If a firefight does break out, she’s in a bad position, on the wrong side of the DF-21 to return fire. No reason to think it will come to shooting, though.
As the convoy approaches, her visor filters the brightness of the headlights. The lead truck takes longer to arrive than she expects. “They slowing down, Lincoln?” she asks.
“Roger that,” he says. “Looks like they’re being cautious.”
“They’re as nervous as we are,” Chris adds.
True thinks about it, imagining how they must look to the lead driver: this lone armored vehicle, racing away from a night raid in Tadmur.
The first of the headlights pierces the cab. Fatima turns her head away, hunching her shoulders and hiding her face against True’s shoulder. The lead truck roars past, accelerating as it goes, rocking the DF-21 with its pressure wave. Khalid keeps their own speed steady, their course straight, as six more trucks sweep past.
Then the road ahead is empty.
“Holy shit,” Khalid swears, switching the headlights off again.
Lincoln says, “It’s good to remember not everyone in the world is out to kill us.”
True knows he’s right, but the tricky part comes in recognizing the enemy in time to thwart an attack—and that requires constant vigilance and a hair-trigger willingness to react in the face of partial evidence and half-imagined clues.
After another minute, Lincoln announces, “The H215 has reached the rendezvous.”
Khalid acknowledges this: “I see it.”
True leans forward to look. Her visor reveals a dust storm kicked up around the bulk of a large transport helicopter settling onto the highway maybe fifteen hundred meters out. It’s an H215, another piece of equipment provided by their regional ally, Eden Transit, but this time with a flight crew.
She looks past the dust for Blackbird but doesn’t see the little helicopter.
“You know your roles,” Lincoln tells them. “Team Red receives the merchandise. Team Gold escorts the civilians.”
“Blackbird in the vicinity?” Chris wants to know.
“Couple minutes out.”
Fatima turns wide, fearful eyes to True. “What’s going on? Is he here?”
“He’s our prisoner, Fatima. He can’t hurt you anymore. And we’re going to get you home. That helicopter is going to get us out of here.”
Khalid brakes hard, bringing the DF-21 to a skidding stop just outside the reach of the transport helicopter’s rapidly spinning rotor. “Switching to self-driving mode,” he announces.
True shoves her door open onto a night rumbling with the bass, bone-shaking sonics of multiple engines: the DF-21, the transport helicopter, the circling Hai-Lins. She exits the cab along with Chris and Jameson. Chris disappears into the night. Jameson slams the front door shut with help from the wind. Dust hazes the cold air, limiting True’s night vision.
She shoulders her KO and speaks over comms. “Rohan, keep the civilians back there until I have a chance to talk to them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Felice, I need you up here.”
“On my way.”
True returns her attention to Fatima, still in the cab’s backseat. Bound in her restraints, she looks dazed and lost. A prisoner still. True would like to remove the restraints, allow her some measure of control over her body, her fate. But if she balks or tries again to fight against her own rescue, she could endanger everyone.
“Fatima,” True says, striving for a nurturing tone, although that’s a challenge given that she has to shout over the engine noise. “We need to move you again, but no one is going to hurt you.”
Fatima watches her with frightened eyes but says nothing. True can’t tell if her words have gotten through. Nothing to do about it now.
She retrieves her pack from the floor, and then steps back, keeping one hand on the door to hold it open against the wind. Jameson is waiting. “Ready?” he asks.
True nods.
He leans in. Fatima rears back, trying to wriggle out of reach, her mouth open in a silent scream. He backs off, speaking to her in a low, confident, reassuring tone.
True crooks her fingers, signaling Felice to step in close so they can talk without comms. “You’re taking care of Fatima,” she instructs. “Jameson will get her aboard the flight, but I want you to stay with her. Make sure she’s up front, and rig a shelter for her if you can. I do not want her to see the merchandise. And I don’t want the rapist seeing her either.”
“You got it, ma’am.”
Jameson backs out of the cab, holding Fatima cradled in his arms. She isn’t struggling anymore but whether that’s because she’s decided to trust him or because she’s in shock, True can’t say. He turns and carries her to the transport helicopter, Felice following a step behind.
True moves on to the next task. Opening her pack, she slips out her tablet and calls up a formal document. Then the roar of yet another engine draws her attention, and she looks up. Night vision shows her Blackbird coming in from the north, gliding slowly above the road, around forty meters away. It still carries its cargo suspended at the end of a long tether, dangling just above the pavement. Right action, she thinks with a grim smile.
But Chris and Red Team have the task of handling Hussam. Her job is to shepherd the civilians.
With her tablet in hand, True walks to the back of the DF-21 where Rohan is standing watch, facing the open tailgate doors. He looks menacing behind his MARC’s half-visor, with his Fortuna held across his body. She gives him a skeptical look, one eyebrow raised. I told you to keep them in place, not scare them to death.
A smile quirks the corner of his mouth as he steps back, lowering the weapon.
All three civilians wait, crouched just inside the door, still wearing their borrowed helmets. They watch her with anxious expressions: Miles Dushane, former Ranger and more recently an independent journalist; Ryan Rogers, a petroleum engineer; and Dano Rodrigues, a Brazilian doctor kidnapped at the same time as Fatima.
Dushane grips the LED flashlight she gave him, holding it so the red beam points down at a haze of blowing sand. He starts to speak, but Blackbird roars overhead and for several seconds words become impossible. True turns to follow the little helicopter’s flight, startled because there is a figure at the end of the tether and it’s not Hussam. The Kevlar cargo pouch that carried him has been removed, and the troop carrier deployed. One of their soldiers rides standing up on the small platform, leaning against a short safety line.
This wasn’t in the mission plan.
Her finger twitches as she links into comms. “Who’s with Blackbird?”
It takes Lincoln a few seconds to answer. “I’m sending Juliet to look over the debris from the Arkinson. Status on the civilians?”
“Getting signatures now,” she snaps, not pleased at being left out of the loop, but it’s a gripe she’ll save for the debriefing.
She drops out of comms. Though Blackbird is gone, the ambient noise is still overwhelming, and she has to shout just to be heard. “Don’t talk,” she warns the civilians. “Just listen.” She turns the tablet so they can read the document on display. “This is your ticket out of here. It’s a nondisclosure agreement. It says that you agree not to identify us or to describe the actions we undertook on this mission without prior written approval from our company’s chief executive. There is of course an exception allowing you to speak to American officials with top-level security clearances in a confidential setting. Sign it if you want a seat on that helicopter.”
No hesitation from Rogers. “Hey, not a problem. I’m in.” He takes the tablet and scrawls a signature with his index finger, adding his fingerprint in the adjoining box. “Done,” he says. “And what the fuck. I’m not going to write a book.”
But Dushane looks suspicious while Rodrigues sputters in outrage. “This is coercion. You can’t—”
True cuts him off. “We don’t have time to argue,” she shouts over the general cacophony. “Take it or leave it. We’re here for Dr. Atwan, not for you. Your rescue is bonus points as far as we’re concerned. But we’re willing to handle it on a pro bono basis. We will not be sending you a bill.” She takes the tablet back from Rogers, pulls up a fresh copy of the document, and hands it to Rodrigues. “All we’re asking is your signatures on these documents. And you can write a book. You’re free to tell the story of your captivity. That belongs to you. It’s the details of your rescue that you won’t be able to disclose. Small price to pay for your lives.”
“Come on, Dano,” Rogers urges. “Do it. So we can go.”
Rodrigues glowers but he signs. Dushane goes next. When he hands the tablet back, he asks, “What about Dr. Atwan? You going to make her sign one of these?”
“She already has,” True tells him. “Through a power of attorney. She just doesn’t know it yet.” She steps aside, clearing the way for them to exit the DF-21. “Rohan, escort them to the ship.”