ABOARD THE RIVET JOINT, Gold stood at the galley and poured cups of coffee for Irena and herself. As she made her way back to her seat, she heard a thump. Very strange. The noise came from somewhere underneath her feet. Felt like driving a car over a shallow pothole. Hot coffee sloshed over Gold’s fingers.
She put down the cups by Irena’s console, wiped her hands with a handkerchief. From the murmurs and furrowed brows, she could tell the crew was puzzled by the noise.
A louder bang shook the jet. The airplane began to vibrate. Gold strapped into her seat, glanced over at Irena. Irena yanked her shoulder straps tight. She met Gold’s eyes with an expression that said, I have no idea what’s going on.
Gold’s ears popped. She swallowed hard and they popped again. She put on her headset and listened to the crew on interphone and the radios.
“What the hell was that?” a crew member asked.
“I don’t know, but we’re depressurizing.”
“Everybody on oxygen.”
Gold donned her sweep-on mask. The first whiff of pure oxygen flooded her lungs with coolness. Irena donned her own mask, gave Gold a thumbs-up. The blinkers on their oxygen regulators flipped from black to white with each breath. Gold felt light in her seat. She heard the crew sort through the emergency in clipped voices.
“Control, Motown Eight-Six is in an emergency descent to flight level two-five-oh. Rapid decompression.”
“Motown Eight-Six, we copy your emergency. Report level at two-five-zero.”
“Can you give us vectors for Sarajevo?”
“Affirmative. Turn left heading one-seven-zero.”
“Crew, check in.”
“Markovich up on oxygen,” Irena said.
Gold fumbled for her talk switch. “Gold up on oxygen,” she called.
The rest of the linguists and aviators checked in—nearly thirty people—and the aircraft commander addressed his crew.
“I have no idea what just happened,” he said, “It sounded like something near the landing gear, so we’ll see if all the wheels come down. Whatever it was obviously opened a hole in the pressure hull. We’ve lost some hydraulics, too. Just stay on oxygen for now. We’ll get on the ground in a few—”
The aircraft rolled hard to the right. Gold felt the g-forces press her into her seat. Someone cried out off interphone, clearly startled by the wounded airplane’s spasm. Unlike airlift crews used to low-level banking and yanking, these linguists usually cruised in more tranquil flight. Now the Rivet Joint pitched down. Irena grabbed her armrests. For this jet to pitch and roll like a C-130 zipping through mountain passes, something had to be wrong.
The plane leveled for a moment, yawed left. As the pilots fought for control, something else seemed to draw Irena’s attention. She tapped at her keyboard. What the heck was she doing? Gold realized Irena was still monitoring her channels even as the aircraft staggered on the edge of controlled flight in an emergency descent. The hole in the plane be damned, she still had a job to do.
“Two-alpha again,” Irena said. “Lock it up.”
“We’re on it,” a crewmate called. “What you got?”
“Signal but no voice. Dušic just turned on a phone. Where is he?”
“Right where we thought he’d be.”
• • •
THE MACHINE GUNNER at the checkpoint lay sprawled against sandbags, most of his head blown away. Parson was trying to see where the shot came from when the call came.
“Dragnet,” the Rivet Joint crewman said, “we have a signal lock at your position.”
Strange tone of voice. The man sounded scared, with a lot of ambient slipstream noise behind him. What was wrong up there? Parson wanted to ask but had no time.
“Copy that,” Parson said. He switched frequencies and transmitted to Cunningham and Dragan, “Motown advises they have a lock.”
“Copy that,” Dragan radioed.
The murdered gunner proved Dušic was here, and now Dušic had turned on a cell phone. So where was the son of a bitch? Parson did not have to wonder long.
A black Citroën nosed out of the backed-up traffic and jumped the curb. Policemen shouted orders in Serbo-Croatian. The car charged toward the Patriarchate’s entrance.
Oh, God, this is it, Parson thought. Just as in his worst dreams, he could not make his mind or his body work fast enough to do any good. Nothing seemed to move quickly but the Citroën. Must be the car bomb. In an instant, the theoretical worst case became reality.
Rooftop snipers opened up on the Citroën. The booms of their heavy-barreled rifles echoed through the falling drizzle. Rounds punched into the car’s hood and windshield, but the vehicle kept coming. Rifle fire chattered from points all around the Patriarchate. Who was firing? In front of the mobile command post, Dragan kneeled, brought up his Vintorez. Before he could fire, something knocked him sideways as if he had been kicked.
Now Parson understood. Dušic had sent an assault team to take out the checkpoint, to clear the way for a vehicle-borne IED. The front of the Patriarchate had become a kill zone. Next, it would become ground zero.
Parson tore off his headset and ran outside. A bullet scorched past his face and slammed into the side of the command post. These bastards had their own sniper.
Men with AK-47s came from somewhere within the traffic. They sprayed on full auto, firing at policemen. One officer fell; others took cover behind police vehicles and returned fire. Shots from the rooftop dropped one of the gunmen, then another.
Parson grabbed Dragan by the arms and pulled him behind the command post. The Serbian officer groaned.
“I’m all right,” Dragan said. Saved by his body armor.
Rounds peppered the Citroën as it lurched to the Patriarchate’s facade. Parson expected flame and steel to swallow him at any moment. But a strange thing happened. The driver’s door opened and a man got out and ran. Not a suicide attack, then.
The sound of automatic fire lifted in a crescendo. One sniper atop the Patriarchate slumped over the edge of the roof. His weapon plummeted to the concrete below. Someone shouted “Allah-hu akbar!” The man who’d leaped from the Citroën stumbled, fell, regained his footing, and ran toward a side street.
• • •
A SEARING PAIN from a bullet wound burned Dušic’s left calf. The round had hit him just after he’d exited the car. Run, he told himself. Just run. Covering fire has got you this far.
Bullets cracked in front and behind. He could not tell if they came from his team or the policemen trying to kill him. Spray-and-pray from the razvodniks seemed at least to force the officers behind cover. And the odds improved every time Stefan pressed the trigger of that M24.
He saw the van on the street perpendicular to Kralja Petra, Stefan barely visible behind it, aiming over the hood. The vehicle’s rear door stood open, waiting. His deliverance. Victory so near. Had Prince Lazar felt like this as he fought his way to death and glory across the Field of Blackbirds?
Dušic dived into the back of the van. Stefan racked the bolt of the M24, fired once more. He threw the rifle into the van and swung himself into the driver’s seat. Slammed the door shut, put the vehicle into gear, and stomped the accelerator. Dušic closed the rear door as the van sped away. He heard the impact of rounds hitting the engine compartment. Blood all over the floor now. He paid it no mind. Dušic dug for his cell phone.