Near Donetsk—an hour later
“The only way we can find out is to go in there.” Tolevi folded his arms. With all but two of the team inside—the others were standing watch on the road—the tiny front room of the farmhouse felt almost claustrophobic. He could smell Dan’s sweat. White paced behind Chelsea, who was sitting in one of the chairs. The rest of the chairs were empty; none of the others wanted to admit they were tired.
“Huge risk,” said White. “You go in, there’s no guarantee we can get you out.”
“We run the same play we were going to run on the prison,” said Tolevi. He’d thought about it the entire ride back, pluses and minuses, every contingency. “I spot him, you come in and get us out.”
“The robot can only carry one person,” said Chelsea. “And it’s not armed.”
“We don’t need the robot,” argued Tolevi. “I only need a diversion. You have your little airplane things tell us where people are. We wait until they’ve gone out on their mission—they go every afternoon and they’re away for most of the night?”
“We don’t know that for sure,” said Dan.
“I do,” said Tolevi. “They have a dozen people. Just about everyone goes on a mission—there’s only a skeleton crew there. Blow up the front of the building, start a fire. I go out the back with the butcher, grab a vehicle, and we’re out.”
“Pretty chancy,” said White. “I don’t like it.”
“Then come up with a better plan. Because we can’t stay here forever. We don’t even have enough food in the house for the rest of the week.”
Chelsea listened as the debate continued. It reminded her of the single college debate she had witnessed, where both sides made arguments but neither could really make a convincing case. Tolevi said it was their only choice; White said it was too risky. Dan wasn’t sure.
Who was right? Impossible to say.
“We could do some reconnaissance,” she suggested finally. “Fly one of the drones overhead, see how many people are inside with the infrared. Maybe we can figure out where he is.”
“The building is two stories,” said White.
“It should be able to pick up heat signatures. It’s an old building, right? Minimal insulation. It’s worth a try.”
“Can it see into the basement?” asked White. “That’s where they’re likely to be held.”
“If the sensors were good enough to see inside the prison building,” said Tolevi, “it’ll see inside this. It’s an old building. Impressive from the outside, but once you look closely you see everything’s thin and falling apart. Besides, what’s our other option?”
“You’re awful damn gung-ho,” said White.
“You’re awful damn cautious.”
“The first goal of any mission is to survive it,” said White. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“Let’s try the recon then,” said Tolevi. “The alternative is packing it in. Because we’re not going to pick up anything on the street. We’d know already. So it’s this or we go home.”
“When do you check in with the butcher’s brother?” asked White.
“An hour. But he would have called if he had something.”
“Let’s try the drone,” said White.
An hour later, Chelsea entered the barn where they’d stashed the robots. The two vans were parked in the middle of the open space; the gear boxes were arranged along the side.
The place smelled like cows. Her nose began to itch, and her stomach—still slightly queasy from the night before—growled.
Work to do.
She had the case open before Bozzone and the others were even inside.
“We’ll launch from the field at the back,” she announced. “You better make sure it’s clear.”
It’d seemed so easy when she’d said it back at the house. Now she only saw problems: What if she couldn’t launch it? What if someone saw them from one of the fields down the road? What if the UAV was spotted? It was black, designed to fly at night. During the day, with the sun fairly bright, it would be a lot more obvious.
Just do it.
“Help me with the wings,” she asked Bozzone.
Tolevi paced around the barn, waiting as Chelsea got the UAV ready.
He thought of Borya, back home.
Not good—concentrate.
One million bucks. The solution to a lot of problems.
And if this didn’t work, then damn it, Johansen was going to pay him something. Half at least. Three-quarters.
I risked my life. You owe me.
Owe you what? Johansen would say.
Hardass.
That was the only way you survived in that job. Tolevi had to admire that; he was a hardass himself.
“Ready to launch,” said Chelsea. She looked at him. “Coming?”
The Russian building was some ten miles to the north. Besides the main house and the barnlike garage at the rear Tolevi had seen when he was their prisoner, there were two small sheds on the other side of the copse to the south. There was only one vehicle outside; the unit was obviously out on a mission.
“Let’s look inside the house,” Tolevi told Chelsea. “Put on the infrared.”
“I have to fly right overhead and fly a circuit,” she told him. “Those men at the road may be able to see the Nighthawk.”
“Chance we take.”
Chelsea decided to take the UAV low, hoping that the trees at the front of the property would shield it from view. They would probably hear it, though.
Three passes, she decided. Three passes and we should have enough.
She thought of plotting the course and letting the controller fly the aircraft but decided against it. If someone came out of the house, it would be faster to abort if she was at the controls.
Her hand started to tremble as she tucked toward the house on the first pass.
I can do this. Just like dancing.
Not really. But I can do it.
The small aircraft came across the back of the building faster than she thought it would. By the time she had it turning, it was nearly at the tree line. She tightened the turn and banked over the building. The controller was recording the infrared feed; they’d look at it when she was done. She needed her full attention on the ground.
Banking again, she spotted a figure walking near the barn.
Concentrate. One more pass.
Chelsea took the UAV so close to the roof that she nearly hit it.
Three turns, done.
She jammed the throttle. The nose of the aircraft pitched up suddenly, starting to stall. Gently she backed off power, managed to catch it, and sailed back over the open field.
“They saw something,” said White, who was standing behind her. “I saw the guy at the back look up.”
“Did he raise his gun?” asked Dan.
“No.”
“Whatever,” said Tolevi. “What do we got?”
Chelsea set the plane on a slow course south, then activated the autopilot. She pulled up the infrared screen and reviewed the video over the house.
It was shorter than she’d thought—barely forty-five seconds.
“Two guys there, one there,” said White. “That’s it?”
Tolevi leaned over the screen. “This is where I was. This looks like a kitchen. Maybe it’s the command room or team room. That’s why there’s two guys there.”
“How do you know that’s the kitchen?” asked White.
“Look. You can see this is a sink, right? The heat outline? And a stove.”
“OK.”
“This guy is by himself,” said Tolevi, pointing to the other side of the house.
“Prisoner?” asked White. “Or just someone taking a nap?”
Chelsea zeroed in on him, enlarging the image. His hands were together. Possibly tied, maybe not.
“Is that the basement?” White asked.
“It looks like it,” said Chelsea. “That’s how the computer is interpreting it.”
The program wasn’t sophisticated enough to make a full 3-D image, but the different angles indicated that the third person was below the others. Which did mean the basement.
“All right, well, with only three people in there, the time to go is now,” said Tolevi.
“There are four outside around the property,” said Chelsea, zooming back. “Two at the front, two at the garage area.”
“Yeah, I got that. Better than twenty.” He went over to the case that had their tracking device, which had been engineered to look like a watch. He took out the reader, then tested it by pressing the lower right button twice.
“Make sure this works,” he told Porter, who was standing nearby.
“We keep a UAV watching the place,” suggested White. “They come back early, we pull the plug.”
“Fine,” said Tolevi. “I’ll be back.”
Chelsea went back to the Nighthawk’s visual feed. It was flying toward a small hamlet.
Damn.
She banked to the north, pushing it to gain altitude.
“How long before dark?” she asked.
“Two and a half hours before sunset,” said White. “People spot it?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep it south of the homestead, and watch those roads. This way if they see it, they may not put two and two together.”
“Maybe they’ll think it’s Russian,” said Bozzone. “Or a bird.”
“Or a psycho ceiling fan with wings,” said Chelsea.
For the first time since the mission had begun, everyone laughed.