Nichole Duffy heard the first helicopter somewhere off to the south, but she didn’t look up because she was busy dialing Josh’s satellite phone again. She didn’t expect to get through, but it was just the busywork that she needed at the moment, because she wasn’t in command of anything here, and her only real job was to look out the window in front of her and wait for rescue.
To her utter astonishment, however, the call went through to the other line, meaning the downlink was no longer jammed.
“It’s ringing!”
Julian was back outside, signaling the approaching helicopters with a small flashlight along with the one man from the President’s Own Guard Regiment who had a satellite phone, but Costa was here and he had heard her exclamation.
Costa immediately reached for the phone and, as much as she wanted to talk to her husband, Nichole handed it off to him, knowing it was the right decision.
“It’s Josh’s phone,” she said.
Costa took it and hit the speaker button as Duff answered. The RSO said, “Duff? Good to hear your voice, man. Been trying to raise you on comms.”
“Yeah, lost my radio down in the dam.”
“What’s your poz and status?”
“I’m in a ladder well, I don’t know where it leads out of, but I’ve got a Russian above me. He’s got the detonator, but he’s obviously still in the blast radius so he can’t use it. He’s stuck in the building, some damage to the door, I guess, and I’ve got coverage on the broken roof, so he can’t climb out without getting shot. I heard him talking on a radio but couldn’t make out what he was saying. Figure he’s trying to get some help to come his way.”
“Will do. Can he hear you now?”
“Negative.” Duff added, “The three other guys who came with me didn’t make it.”
“Understood,” Costa said. “I’ve got the plant operator here, describe where you are.”
Duff described the ladder well, explained that it sounded like the structure above him was damaged and the man he was in pursuit of was stuck.
Costa looked around but couldn’t see the top of the dam from the front of the garage.
Mensah said, “There are three ladder wells with elevators alongside them. One on this side of the dam. One in the center that comes out near the administration building, and one on the far side used for plant maintenance.
Costa said, “Duff, there is no way we can go up there and check all three. That’s nearly a half mile of ground to cover, we’re low on ammo, have wounded, and the extraction helos are inbound.”
“Understood. I’ll keep this guy occupied so he can’t get away to blow the dam. You just work on getting everyone the fuck out of here, and I’ll do my best to make it to the last bird out.”
Outside, all three Caracals rocketed over the dam from south to north. Flares fired from the sides of the helicopters, an attempt to spoof any heat-seeking missiles, but none of the aircraft took any ground fire.
Costa said, “Look, man, I’ve got to call the embassy. You just keep your ass alive, and keep that Russian from detonating the explosives, you got me?”
As a response Duff said, “You need to get in contact with Bob Gorski at CIA. Tell him he was right about everything he said. This whole operation is being run by—”
Duff’s voice stopped coming through the speaker. Costa brought the phone up to his ear. “Duff? I lost you. How copy?”
When he didn’t get an answer, he looked back down to the phone. “No signal. Shit!” he yelled.
Just then, Julian Delisle and the president’s guard ran back into the warehouse. Delisle said, “The helicopters will land in the parking lot one building over. We checked it, no power lines or other obstructions, but there’s only room to land one at a time. Mr. President, you and your people, along with the remaining media personnel, will leave in the first helo, EU will take the second with the wounded, and U.S., you take the last bird out to give you more time to recover your man.”
Costa told Julian they had a brief sat communication with Duff, who was fighting for the detonator inside the dam, but then the signal had gone away again. Both he and the president’s security man checked their phones and saw no hint that the jamming had ever stopped.
“All right,” Julian said as he put away his phone. “Everyone get ready to move.”
Josh Duffy put his phone in his pocket, then climbed back up to where he could see the room above. He knew he was fighting a race against time, so he knew he had to force a mistake by his adversary.
Thinking quickly, he called back upstairs. “What’s your name, Ivan?”
He heard a scuffling above. Then, “It’s not Ivan.”
“How long you been with Sentinel?”
“Why do you care?”
“I used to work as a contractor myself. That’s how I know Tremaine.”
“I don’t know a Tremaine.”
“Yeah, you do. I get it, you can’t say that you do. I respect that.” He paused. He stood on the landing now, his eyes up towards the darkened room with the open hole in the roof, the weapon trained on what he could see in the hopes that he’d detect some sort of movement in the darkness he could fire at.
But the Russian was clearly somewhere off to the side of his view.
Duff said, “I met that South African prick in Afghanistan. Worked for him. He actually got fired from my company, and it was a company that was just about impossible to get fired from.” Duff added, “And now he’s your boss.”
The man above said nothing.
“He uses people. He’s using you. I don’t know how, maybe you don’t know how, but you’ll figure it out.”
“Shut up,” the man said.
“I mean,” Duff continued, “it’s likely you won’t figure it out until you’re drawing your last breath. Tremaine will leave you to bleed out in the street if it serves his purpose, I’ve seen him do it.”
“That’s the job, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Duff said. “I thought the job was to seek your fortune, then retire young and rich.”
Above him, the man laughed. “We Russians don’t believe in fairy tales.”
“What, you just fight other people’s wars till you die?”
There was no response.
“Hey,” Duff said, peering through the sight of the rifle, concentrating like he’d never concentrated before. “I guess it beats going home to Russia. Your country is a shit show, isn’t it?”
He heard fresh shuffling, and he put his finger on the trigger of the R5.
He didn’t see any movement, but a gunshot crashed in the tight confines of the ladder well. The flash came from the left above, and Duff could tell the man wasn’t even trying to aim down the ladder; instead he was just firing in frustration.
The boom of the pistol shot caused a little more stone to cave in from the mortar hole in the roof, and as it fell into the room and the crumbling debris tumbled down the ladder around Duff, he quickly moved up several rungs, letting the sounds mask the noise of his movement. Now he was halfway up, pressed to the left wall of the ladder well so he couldn’t be seen by the man on the left side of the room.
His rifle remained in his right hand, and he froze so as not to make any noise.
The Russian couldn’t have known that he’d ascended, and he told himself if the man fired wildly again that he would ascend even higher, even though he was well aware that a bullet striking a concrete wall could ricochet right back into him from where he stood.
But then, however, he heard the sound of a helicopter again, and this time it was flying over much lower.
The Russian called down. “Your helicopters are landing. Can you hear them? I guess your people are getting out of here, leaving you behind.”
Duff said nothing; he’d give his position away if he did so.
The sound grew and grew, as if they were flying low over the dam, and slowing down even more, as if to hover. Duff realized the noise would mask his footfalls if he climbed higher, and he also realized the Russian might figure this out, too.
Still, with the roar of the rotors directly overhead, he flipped his weapon’s fire selector switch to full auto, then moved up the ladder, pulling himself with his left hand.
He fell forward on his stomach, out into the room.
It was too dark to see anything without turning on the weapon light, and he didn’t have time for aimed fire anyway, so he just pressed down on his trigger, firing to the left, sweeping the rifle back and forth, using the light from the muzzle flashes to hunt for his target. He saw the man there in the corner, and he laid down fire until he’d expended an entire thirty-round magazine.
The flash and the noise were ungodly, and he was temporarily blinded and deafened, and therefore unable to detect if any return fire came his way.
He hadn’t been shot, however, so as soon as his mag ran dry he pushed back out of the line of fire, dropped his rifle, and pulled his pistol.
Waiting several seconds for his head to clear, he finally heard the scratchy labored breathing and moans of a wounded man who had clearly been shot through the windpipe.
The scuffing sounds of arms and legs on the rubble indicated a man lying on his back.
Duff climbed back up, brought his head and his pistol around the left wall, and listened for the sounds. Almost immediately he had pinpointed the Russian’s location, just a half dozen feet away, and he fired three rounds from the Beretta, silencing the man’s labored breathing.
The helicopters had moved off to the north, but not far, and it sounded like one was landing just a couple hundred yards from where he stood.
He thought it doubtful he’d make it onto one of those helicopters, but he told himself he was going to try.
But first he had work here to do.
He moved through the dark, stumbling over broken pieces of the roof and the wall, moving in front of the elevators to where he kicked the boot of the man on his back. He didn’t take time to check for a pulse; instead he lifted one of the man’s eyelids and thumped the eyeball with a finger from his other hand.
When he felt no involuntary jerking response from the body, he began feeling through the Russian’s equipment. He found the man’s pack next to his body, dumped out the contents, and rifled through them in the near darkness for a moment, finding nothing of value.
The dead man wore body armor like the other Russians he’d faced off with, so he frantically began unzipping the pouches he could find on the bulky load-bearing vest.
The deputy plant operator had explained that the detonator was a tablet computer, so he checked every pocket large enough to hold one. Finally, in a zippered administrative pouch just behind the dead man’s row of rifle magazines, he discovered what he was looking for.
Holding the black tablet up, he saw that it was rubberized, military grade, and he thought it likely that this was the device that was set up to detonate the sophisticated explosives.
He also saw that he’d put two bullet holes through it when he shot the Sentinel man, and the machine was dead.
Just then the radio on the shoulder of the corpse’s body armor squawked.
“Condor for Bear. How copy?”
Hearing Tremaine’s voice sent a chill up his spine, but he did his best to ignore the radio. He began taking the man’s rifle magazines, replacing one in his empty rifle and stuffing a second and a third into the dead man’s backpack. Along with the two left from the other Russian he’d killed in the elevator doorway below, he now had one hundred fifty rounds of ammunition.
He put the tablet in the dead Russian’s pack, as well, then began rummaging through the man’s pockets, and here he found a cell phone, a wallet, and a folding knife.
Condor called for Bear again.
Duff tossed the wallet and the phone—either could be used to track him—but he pocketed the knife.
Another radio transmission crackled in the dark little room. “Condor, Bear, over.”
Duff walked over to the door and pulled on it, but it didn’t budge an inch. He turned around, looked at the hole in the roof above the ladder shaft, and realized he was going to have to climb out, so he began placing broken bricks and pieces of mortar directly under it in an attempt to build a mound of debris he could use.
The sound of the helicopter to the north diminished some; Duff thought it had landed and was now idling while it loaded up, and he heard other helos circling nearby.
This made him pick up his pace.
The radio squawked once more, and the voice of Conrad Tremaine came over the net yet again. “Well…I’m guessing that if I’m not speaking to Bear, then that means I’m speaking to Duff.”
Duff stopped what he was doing. Turned and faced the dead man with the radio on his shoulder.
When he again heard nothing, the South African said, “You know I’m here, I know you’re there. Let’s not play around, kid.”
Duff walked over to the body, found the radio, and unhooked it from the man’s rig. It had blood on it; Duff had shot the man multiple times, it seemed, and one of his rifle rounds had struck the Russian’s neck, just a few inches away from where the device had been attached on his shoulder strap.
He pressed the talk button now. “This isn’t a game, Condor.”
The South African barked back, “There you are! You slotted my man, did you?”
“If you’re in charge of the three Russians I’ve met in the past hour, then I’ve slotted them all.”
“Respect, brother. Just like old times, you’ve made quite a show for yourself.”
Duff went back to putting bricks on top of each other, trying to build a two-tiered base that he could use to climb out. He clicked the radio. “Flattery will get you nowhere, asshole.”
“I suppose my man Belov did not blow himself up with a grenade, then?”
Duff didn’t understand why Tremaine said that, but he answered back honestly. “No. I shot him with another Sentinel boy’s rifle.”
Tremaine said, “I hope you’re in the mood to do a little horse trading.”
“Meaning?”
“Your life for his possessions.”
Duff looked down at the backpack. “You want the tablet so you can blow up this dam. Well…you can go fuck yourself.” He knew the computer was destroyed, but he didn’t bother to tell this to the South African.
He hooked the radio on the sling of his rifle, then turned his concentration to the project he’d been working on. He positioned one more cinder block on the lower stack, then carefully put his weight on his right leg, because balancing on his prosthetic left leg was exponentially harder.
Duff made it up onto the higher of the two structures he’d made, then let go of his rifle, letting it hang on his chest so he could reach up with both hands and check the hole above him. Twisted rebar there felt like it would take his weight, but he realized he’d have to throw the backpack up onto the roof first.
A minute later he rolled onto the roof and looked up at the night sky a moment, catching his breath.