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The Next Day

Hunter's arms ached from being cuffed behind his back for so long; he guessed they had been riding in the van for ten or twelve hours. A black hood covered his head and they wouldn't allow him to talk, but he could sense at least four other prisoners on the transfer with him. He figured they were either taking him overland to Syria or to an airstrip so remote there was no chance of Black Management noticing them. His bladder was full and it hurt when he shifted his weight. At least just before the trip they had given him an MRE to eat, the first food he'd had in days. It wasn't enough, but he could feel some strength returning. With little warning, the vehicle came to a stop. They opened the door and hot air rushed inside. It was heavy with the smell of jet fuel.

So it was going to be a rendition flight—a secret flight to a secret prison.

Someone pulled his arm and he tried to climb out, but his legs were shackled with plastic zip-ties. He fell onto the hard ground, smacking his right shoulder. Someone laughed.

He climbed to his feet, then a guard unhooked the hood and pulled it off. The bright morning sun hurt his eyes and it unnerved him that they were allowing the prisoners to see the guards' faces. Clearly they were on a one-way trip.

There were three other prisoners. Scott Miller, a fellow Bushman from Force Zulu, nodded recognition. Hunter recognized a man with a funky jaw-line beard as a retired Delta operator, G
ENGHIS,
who worked for Black Management. Suddenly things were looking up. He had no idea how Stella managed to infiltrate the group of prisoners, but he was confident she had something clever worked out.

A guard had trouble with the buckle of the last man's hood. When he finally got it open and took it off, Hunter couldn't believe what he was seeing. The hook nose, deep-set eyes and chin that was too short for the face Hunter could've recognized anywhere. In fact he had—among the Taliban in Afghanistan, in the insurgent safe house, in the Rubicon offices in the middle of the night. He was staring at the man who had started Hunter on this entire hellish journey when he accused him of selling arms to the tangos: Ashland.

Now absolutely nothing made sense as he stood with his accuser, both of them cuffed, wearing Day-Glo prison jumpsuits and about to board a one-way flight on the torture shuttle.

Hunter laughed for the first time in days.

 

One guard was close enough for Hunter to take out, but the other two stood at a distance with their AKs pointing at the prisoners as they shuffled toward an American-flagged Gulfstream V, registration number N379P. Hunter had always wanted a chance to fly the latest Gulfstream, but somehow he didn't think he was going to get his wish today. His arms cuffed behind his back made escape difficult, but not impossible. The Rubicon guards hardly knew what they were doing and most of them were foreign nationals imported from low-wage countries, no doubt a Rubicon cost-saving measure that padded its already fat margins.

Back when there was at least some limited cooperation between Force Zulu and the OGA, Hunter and his teammates had prepared dozens of suspected terrorists for rendition flights. They called the process “a twenty-minute takeout” because that's all the time it took to package a prisoner for a safe flight. In contrast to the Rubicon staff, Hunter and his teammates had takeouts down to a fine art. Dressed in black with their faces covered like ninjas, they communicated with one another through hand signals. He had always kind of enjoyed doing it because of the slick teamwork involved—and because he was convinced they were packaging another bad guy who wanted to harm America. The rendition team took a blindfolded tango into a small room, shoved him to the floor, cut off his clothes and conducted a full body cavity search. Afterwards, they removed the blindfold and snapped a photograph before what Hunter thought was the grossest part: they shoved a sedative up the tango's ass. Then they diapered him, stuck him in a prison jumpsuit, shackled him, and shoved an earplug headset on him. As soon as they had bagged the tango's head in a long, dark hood, the takeout was ready for pickup.

 

The thought of takeout made Hunter hungry. Chinese. Man, he'd love some cashew chicken right about now.

The poorly trained Rubicon guards hadn't thought of diapers, so he yelled at one he guessed was Filipino. “Dude, do me a favor and unzip my pants and hold my dick. I've got to go bad.”

“Piss your pants,” the guard said.

Hunter motioned toward the Gulfstream with his head. “That looks like one of those fancy executive jets. You really want me to whiz on the leather seats?”

“I not touch your dick.”

“Up to you if you want to smell piss for the next few hours.”

The American supervisor sighed. “Hold on. As soon as I cut you out, you have to immediately put your hands in front for me to cuff you again. You take as much as a second to think about it and you're full of lead.”

Another guard kept his AK aimed at Hunter and he knew the time wasn't right, but he could work with arms zip-tied in front. The guard sliced through the cuffs and Hunter complied while he fastened him back up.

“Do it yourself now. Hurry.”

“Thanks.” As Hunter turned away from the group and fumbled with his zipper, he heard the other guys requesting the same accommodation. Peeing on the sand, he focused on the rush of relief, knowing he had to grab every little pleasure he could. Things were only going to get worse.

 

They were individually marched onto the plane and chained into their seats, but their hands were left fastened in front and the hoods were left off. G
ENGHIS
was placed in the seat directly behind Hunter. He wanted to know Stella's plan immediately, but he couldn't risk the guards noticing any communication between him and G
ENGHIS
. He would have to be patient and wait for G
ENGHIS
to find the right opportunity to inform him.

When they hit cruising altitude, the guards passed out more MREs and threw them bottled water. Whatever they were going to do with him, they didn't intend to starve him into compliance. He ripped open the white plastic pouch. Just his luck—it was a frickin veggie burger in BBQ sauce. He devoured it and asked for seconds to try to regain his strength. They were stupid enough to give him another. This time he was luckier, he thought, as he read the outside of the pouch: meatloaf with gravy. Then he tore it open and a package of Charms fell out and onto the floor.

“Crap,” he said to himself. Unlucky Charms, It seemed that whenever someone in crew had eaten the Charms hard candy packed in an MRE, they had been ambushed or nearly had bit it from an IED. He had heard so many freaky stories about those cursed things, he couldn't understand why the Pentagon hadn't banned them. He kicked them under the seat in front of him.

 

The Gulfstream seats really were leather and Hunter felt comfortable for the first time in days—for the first time since he had been snuggled against Stella's soft body. She was all he could think of as he stared at the LCD view screen and watched the movement of an airplane icon along the projected flight path, south to the Persian Gulf, around Iran, then back north across the Pakistani air corridor. Stella had been so smooth, so wet.

Suddenly, it sunk in what he was looking at on the monitor. The flight plan overshot Afghanistan—they were headed deep into Uzbekistan.

“Okay, asswipes,” the American guard said over the intercom. “We here at Air Rubicon know that you have a choice in your rendition flights and we're pleased you chose us. In a few minutes we'll be playing our
Halfway to Hell
game. The captain will be giving us important information on total miles flown, airspeed, headwinds and all that crap and whichever one of you can guess the closest time to our halfway mark, wins his very last cold beer. But before that, we're giving you your last shot at democracy and you get to choose the movie.” He held up two DVDs. “We've got
Bourne Supremacy
with Matt Damon or the documentary
Manchurian Candidate
with Denzel Washington.” He read the plot descriptions and the cover blurbs. “Okay, which flick will be the last one you ever see in your lives? Raise those cuffed paws if you want
Bourne
.”

One of the guards snapped a picture with a digital camera of the prisoners with their cuffed hands in the air. They were far from professional and probably didn't have the training to handle any serious resistance, Hunter noted. He was pleased, too, that the dim lights for the movie would make it easier for G
ENGHIS
to slip a message to him.

“Last call for
Bourne,
” the guard said.

Hunter's choice was clear. One of the guys who had consulted on
Bourne
was a friend of his and even though they had some problems with their sniper weapons, some of the scenes were so realistic, they still gave him chills. He really didn't want to humor the guards by voting, but just in case it was his last movie, he raised his hands for
Bourne
.

 

A few minutes later, Hunter was getting into the chase scene in Goa, remembering one he had once had in Myanmar, when G
ENGHIS
started kicking his seat. He was using Morse code.

Hunter couldn't figure out how the movie got to a crime scene in Berlin, but he didn't care while he concentrated on deciphering the message: “B-L-K—M-G-M-T.”

Hunter moved his elbow back and forth between his body and the airframe where G
ENGHIS
could see it, sometimes pulling it back quickly, other times leaving it there for a couple of seconds. “P-L-A-N?”

“N-O. C-A-P-T-U-R-E-D.”

“F—”

Gora Muruntau, Kyzyl Kum Desert, Uzbekistan

The sun rose as Camille was lying on her belly in a ghillie suit in the saddle between two sand dunes, tasting dust, smelling of camel droppings and trying to become one with the desert. Every bug in the sun-baked wasteland seemed to have been waiting its entire existence for someone as sweet as she to come along, but she couldn't swat, she couldn't scratch. As a good sniper, she was the Kyzyl Kum and microterrain didn't claw at itself, no matter how badly it wanted to.

Iggy was positioned a good eight hundred meters away from her, across the runway at her twelve o'clock. The winds were still coming off the mountains as they did at night. In the day, when the desert floor heated up, the prevailing winds blew into the valleys and up the mountainsides. Since planes landed into the wind, Camille needed to make sure she and Iggy were positioned so that the main cabin door would be facing them. If it came in now, she would be the only shooter. As soon as the winds shifted, she would begin her slow creep to join Iggy's side of the runway so that they would both have a clear shot at the cabin door throughout the day.

Camille peered through the scope on the Dragunov sniper rifle, happy to be working with the gorgeous old girl again, particularly in such a grimy environment. As long as it wasn't over oiled, it could withstand a sandstorm without choking. The Dragunov was Soviet made—designed for abuse.

Gerbils scrambled across ripples of the red sand, but there was no sign of any larger life forms—or a jet for that matter. Hunter had better be on his way. If she had guessed wrong, she would never forgive herself, but this was the only airstrip within hundreds of kilometers aside from the commercial one at Zarafshan. The KGB had used this one to ferry prisoners to Gora Muruntau and if Rubicon was running the place now, they would do the same—she hoped.

She didn't like it that they were working without a net. The third operator that Iggy had brought along for overwatch was a longtime mercenary who had somehow caught the attention of Uzbek authorities. They had turned him away at the border. One man short, she and Iggy had decided to take Pete along to the target to provide some support, although they knew she couldn't handle being on her own in the third position.

Camille was a loner when it came to sniping. She didn't like doing it military style, working in teams of two, a sniper and a spotter, but Iggy had insisted that he could do it by himself and she wasn't about to challenge his abilities.

So Pete was working with her, lying prone off Camille's right calf, ready to help calculate distances and wind. Pete could drive her crazy with nonstop chatter, but today she was strangely quiet. She guessed Pete wasn't comfortable with the fact that she was about to help several people meet their deaths. Camille knew Pete hadn't seen much combat and she suspected she had never killed anyone. Camille didn't like killing either, but the mission required it and rescuing Hunter was worth ridding the world of a few more bad guys.

Camille scanned the skies for any sign of a plane, then studied a patch of dead weeds alongside the runway so she would be ready if one arrived. “Wind, south, southeast, twenty-two to twenty-five knots. Gusts at forty. Range me. Verify.”

“Affirmative,” Pete said.

“They've shifted.” Camille slowly pulled a clunky Soviet-era walkie-talkie from her pack. “L
IGHTNING
S
IX
on the move.”

Camille inched her body through the sand, beginning the long creep around the runway. Sand was pelting her, but at least her trail would be almost immediately covered.

 

An hour later Camille's forearms were burning from the coarse sand now embedded into her skin, but she and Pete were almost at the end of the runway—halfway.

 

Another hour later Camille and Pete had slithered the final inches to their new perch, some three hundred meters away from Iggy, with him at their three o'clock. The desert tasted saltier than in Iraq. Camille spat and slowly took a handful of peanut M&Ms from her pack and inched them to her mouth. The chocolate inside was liquid. She swirled it around in her mouth and chomped down on the peanuts as she set up the high powered rifle's bipod.

She studied tumbleweeds at the edge of the runway and recalculated the wind speed. The temperature had already climbed to one hundred and eleven and the humidity was so low she knew she had to take care not to overshoot the target; the round would easily tear through the hot, dry air. She could only guess where the plane would end its taxi and where her target would appear, so she calculated multiple ballistic scenarios, keenly aware that direct sun on the target could trick her into thinking it was farther away and any shadows combined with rising heat from the desert floor could jack her up just as easily.

 

Camille was lying in position on her belly, her weight supported by her left side and she was looking through her scope, studying plants for any change in the wind and distracting herself from worry about Hunter when Pete nudged her.

“Company,” Pete said.

A small white van drove up the only access road, a dust trail blowing away from it in the strong wind. Only parts of the road were visible; the rest had returned to desert. The van crossed the runway and parked on the edge of the tarmac. The driver and passenger were both Caucasian, a Rubicon greeting party no doubt. Camille shoved in her ear plugs.

“Watch the skies. They should be getting close.” Camille double checked to make sure there were no unusual antennae mounted on the vehicle because she couldn't risk neutralizing them if they were in communication with the plane. There were none. “Hand me the radio.” Camille called Iggy. “I count two.”

“That's affirmative.”

“I'm clear for both,” Camille said.

“Same here. I'll take the passenger.”

“Confirmed. Passenger is yours. Advise when target acquired. W
ILDCAT
will countdown from three. Make contact on one.” Camille turned her head slightly toward Pete. “Anything?”

“Negative.” Pete searched the horizon.

Camille shoved the radio toward Pete, checked the wind, then the range to the van. The men sat inside with it running, probably enjoying the air conditioning. The crosswind of twenty-five knots would try to play games with the round. She adjusted the dope and confirmed her reading of five hundred seventy-five meters to the van.

The driver was a clean-cut blond, no older than thirty, wearing reflective sunglasses. Camille aimed just above them, at the middle of his forehead

Iggy's voice crackled over the radio. “Target acquired. Standing by.”

“Start the count,” Camille said to Pete.

“Three.”

Camille took a deep breath.

“Two.”

She held it.

“One.”

She squeezed off.

 

Tariq was lying on a sand dune with his brother Habib, watching the abandoned Soviet-era airstrip through binoculars. He had seen the sleek private jets banking over the camp and more often than not, they came on Thursday afternoons and Monday mornings. It was time to practice his new reconnaissance skills on a real target. No one at al-Zahrani's midday teaching would miss him and his brother. He had shoved an al-Zahrani tract in his pocket to study so he didn't fall behind the others even though he didn't want to admit that he was growing weary of the lectures about purity within their ranks. He had left his family in Saudi Arabia to learn how to kill Westerners, not to purge their movement of other misguided Muslims. They were forbidden to leave the camp, but what good were skills at infiltration and evasion if they only tested them on each other? He'd had enough of the exercises with the other
mujahedin
. If he was going to succeed in New York, he needed real-world practice. Just as he had expected, he saw movement and followed it with his binoculars. Through a cloud of dust, he could see a white van approaching the runway.

Using binoculars, Tariq was studying the infidels in the van when he saw the driver's forehead explode in a spray of blood and flesh. As he refocused he saw the passenger's head fall forward, even though the body remained upright, the seatbelt holding it in place. Tariq immediately scanned the dunes, but the sniper was invisible.

He whispered to his brother, “Go to the base. Inform Nasim the CIA plane is on its way. We will smite the infidels here,
masha'allah
—Allah's will.”

“But we're not supposed to be here. We'll get lashings.”

“Trust me. Nasim is the one who first pointed the plane out to me. He will understand. Go!”

His brother nodded and ran down the dune. Tariq remained on his belly, studying every weed, every pattern in the sand, dreaming of being that sniper, hidden like a scorpion in the dunes.

He watched and waited.

 

Camille reloaded, expecting to see the jet at any moment. No plane arrived. A half hour passed, then an hour, but still no plane. “Maybe they're not coming,” Pete said, the first thought she had volunteered all day.