“I’m a weather officer. I came to Bodrum to help investigate the crash of a United States Air Force aircraft.”
“Weatherman? I doubt that very much. Maybe you are something else.”
“Okay, you got me. I’m a United States Navy SEAL.”
The big man looked at Conza’s prosthesis, which was jutting out from a torn pant leg, then back at his cohorts. They all broke out laughing.
“Okay, Mr. SEAL. But tell me this—who else might be looking for us?”
“Pretty much the entire Turkish military.”
A long sigh. “I think not. We have heard and seen nothing. We also have sources, and they tell us that things are mostly quiet. Which means you have lied a second time. In your game of baseball there are three strikes, but I give you only two.”
The big man waved his hand, and the other two closed in on Conza. Beanie pinned his shoulders to the floor. Neck Tat picked up a two-by-four.
And without another question, without any wavering, the beating commenced.
—
Turkish first responders reached the downed Black Hawk to find one crewman alive, the crew chief who had crawled clear of the wreckage. He was in critical condition and was immediatelymedevaced to the nearest hospital. It would be another hour before the sharp-eyed copilot of a second military helicopter, a Eurocopter Cougar that had carried in a team of MPs to cordon off the scene, recognized a telltale shrapnel pattern on the exhaust shroud of the downed aircraft’s starboard engine. Only when he radioed this observation into headquarters did the Turks realize their aircraft had been shot down. By that time, the C-41 carrying Task Force 99 was closing in on the three-vehicle convoy as it neared the Georgian border.
But they hadn’t caught up yet.
As the GAZ truck and its accompanying vehicles barreled eastward, they were traveling marginally above the speed limit. Speed enforcement in this part of Turkey was virtually nonexistent, and the Russian commander of the unit reasoned that on the off chance they were stopped by a patrol car, any lone policeman would be overwhelmed by the firepower his twelve men could lay down. All were experienced mercenaries with a variety of backgrounds and nationalities. Three from Belarus, four Serbs, two Nepalese, a smattering from the various “Stans.” They were experienced shooters, one and all, and eager to get their payday—and that meant getting across the border.
Neither the Turks nor the Americans would follow them into another country—on that point, the commander was confident. Doing so would require diplomatic negotiations with a prickly Georgian government, and with a mere two-hour crossing of the Caucasus afterward, reaching Russia would be all but guaranteed. Cross the first border, and they would be home free. By this time tomorrow, his men would be boarding flights to points across the globe and the GAZ would be getting pushed off a barge into the Black Sea. They were nearly to the finish line, the only limitation being the GAZ itself—even with the acceleratorhard on the floor, the big truck topped out at sixty-two miles per hour.
What none of the men in the truck knew was that hundreds of miles overhead two low earth orbit satellites in the Blackjack constellation, coordinating with MAADN, had their convoy under continuous surveillance. The system tracked the vehicles ruthlessly, a digital Ahab pursuing its whale.
For a brief interval, the two Blackjack birds lost sight of the convoy when an operator overrode the surveillance to concentrate on the downed Black Hawk. When the command was given to reacquire the moving targets, MAADN’s algorithms took over.
There were, in that moment of indecision, four hundred and six vehicles on the roads and tributaries leading to the Georgian border. For MAADN it had been child’s play, on a supercomputer level, to discern which of them was their quarry. To begin, it identified three sets of headlights that moved as one for nearly thirty minutes, creating a high mathematical probability that they were linked. This was combined with the size and shape of the vehicles, and the possible routes leading from the crash of the Black Hawk. Most damning of all: the convoy drove past three cameras. The first was at a gas station, the second mounted on the dash of an idling semitruck. These MAADN cracked into effortlessly, harvesting good-quality video. The final camera was part of a surveillance network operated by Turkish intelligence—a network that had recently been hacked by the NSA. This camera had unusually good resolution and high-speed imaging, meaning a clearer view of the vehicles’ occupants was obtained. The force estimate was refined to be between ten and thirteen individuals.
This was forwarded immediately to a grateful Task Force 99, who were ten miles behind and closing in fast.
26
Turkey/Georgia Border
2246 Local Time
“Range?” Clark asked. He was seated on the jump seat behind the two pilots, a nighttime panorama before them.
“Five nautical,” Ross called out from the right seat. She was wearing NODs, giving her the best view of their target. The distance wasn’t exact—there was no laser or radar ranging—but it was close enough for Clark.
“Tally three sets of taillights,” Wheeler added, using nothing more than his Mark-1 eyeball. He pointed slightly left. Clark leaned forward and spotted them.
“How far are they from the border checkpoint?”
Ross referenced her map display. They had identified two possible border-crossing points between Georgia and Turkey, and twenty minutes ago their quarry had chosen the southernmost of the two—probably because it was the smaller of the two checkpoints. The road looped north around Kartsakhi Lake, and Ross had pointed out that they weren’t far from the tri-border junction with Armenia.
As if I needed more complications, Clark thought.
“I show the crossing point thirteen miles in front of our targets,” said Ross.
“And they’re going a mile a minute,” said Wheeler. “It’s going to be close. How do want to do this, Mr. Clark?”
Clark had seen this scenario coming: a race to stop the GAZ while it was still on Turkish soil. His thoughts hammered away at the tactical question: How to stop a speeding convoy, which included a ten-ton truck, with light weapons? Variables churned. Options were discarded.
