Book and Mother squeezed through the small cockpit and into the tight space behind it: a bomb storage bay that had been converted into a . . . holding cell.
‘Just get in!’ Knight yelled from behind them. ‘I’ll be joining you!’
Knight squeezed in with them. Schofield jumped into the cockpit last of all, climbed into the rear gunner’s seat, looked up.
The vertically-sliding snowdrift had taken on the appearance of a crashing ocean wave: blasting explosions of white preceding the full weight of the avalanche.
Knight called forward, ‘Er, Rufus . . . !’
‘Already on it, Boss!’ the large man in the front seat hit the throttles and the Sukhoi rose.
‘Faster . . .’ Schofield said.
The avalanche came rushing down at them, tumbling, rumbling, smashing, crashing.
The Sukhoi lifted higher, hovering for a moment before it powered out over the edge of the cliff just as the avalanche rushed past it, the falling wall of snow rushing by with a colossal roar, gobbling up the turnaround in a single enormous bite before rumbling past the floating black fighter jet and disappearing into the abyss below.
‘Now that was close,’ Knight said.
Three minutes later, the Sukhoi S-37 landed in a clearing on the Afghan side of the mountain, about a mile away from Schofield’s parked Yak-141.
Schofield, Knight, Book and Mother all climbed out, while the pilot—an enormous bushy-bearded individual whom Knight introduced simply as ‘Rufus’—killed the engines.
Schofield walked a few yards away to regather his thoughts. A lot had happened today and he wanted to clear his head.
His earpiece crackled.
‘Scarecrow, it’s me, Fairfax. You there?’
‘Yeah, I’m here.’
‘Listen. I got a couple of things for you. A few facts on those USAMRMC guys on your list, and some big stuff on that Black Knight guy, most of it from the FBI and ISS Most Wanted lists. You got a moment?’
‘Yeah,’ Schofield said.
‘Jesus, Scarecrow, this Knight guy is bad news . . .’
In his office deep beneath the Pentagon, Dave Fairfax sat bathed in the glow of his computer screen. In the eastern United States, it was just hitting 4 a.m., October 26, and the office was quiet.
On Fairfax’s screen were two photos of Aloysius Knight: the first was a portrait shot of a clean-shaven young man in US Army dress uniform, smiling. The second was a blurred long-distance shot of Aloysius Knight holding a shotgun in each hand and running hard.
‘All right,’ Fairfax said, reading. ‘His real name is Knight, Aloysius K. Knight, 33 years old, 6 feet 1 inch tall, 185 pounds. Eyes: brown. Hair: black. Distinguishing features: known to wear amber-tinted anti-flash glasses because of an eye abnormality known as acute retinal dystrophy. It means that his retinas are too sensitive to handle natural light, hence the need for tinted glasses.’
As Fairfax’s voice came through his earpiece, Schofield gazed over at Knight, standing over by the Sukhoi with the others, with his two holstered shotguns, his yellow glasses, his all-black fighting uniform.
Fairfax went on: ‘Former member of Delta Team 7 which is regarded as the best within Delta, an elite within an elite. Reached the rank of captain, but found guilty of treason against the United States in absentia in 1998 after he betrayed a mission he was leading in Sudan. Intelligence sources say that Knight was paid $2 million by a local Al-Qaeda cell to inform them of an impending US assault on their arms depot. Thirteen Delta operatives died as a result of the forewarning Knight gave.
‘He disappeared after that, but was rediscovered eighteen months later living in Brasilia. A team of six Navy SEAL commandos was sent in to liquidate him. Knight killed them all, then mailed their heads back to the SEAL training facility at Coronado Naval Base in San Diego.
‘Now known to be working as a freelance international bounty hunter. Get this. Apparently, insurance companies keep track of these things for kidnap scenarios: he’s rated by Carringtons of London as the second-best bounty hunter in the world.’
‘Only second? Who’s the best?’
‘That Demon Larkham guy I told you about before. Wait a second, I’m not finished with Knight yet. ISS believes that in 2000, Knight tracked down and killed twelve Islamic terrorists who’d kidnapped the daughter of Russia’s Deputy President, cut off four of her fingers, and demanded a ransom of US$100 million. Knight traced them to a terrorist training camp in the Iranian desert, went there, razed the whole frigging camp to the ground, grabbed the girl—minus the fingers—and returned her to Moscow without the media getting a whiff of it. In return, it says here, the Russian government gave him . . . wait for it . . . a test-damaged Sukhoi S-37 jet fighter, plus refuelling privileges at any Russian base in the world. Apparently, the plane is known in bounty hunting circles as the Black Raven.’
‘Black Raven, huh,’ Schofield turned to look at the black Sukhoi S-37 standing nearby . . . and saw that Aloysius Knight was walking towards him.
‘I tell you, Scarecrow,’ Fairfax said, ‘this is not the kind of guy you want hunting you.’
‘Too late,’ Schofield said. ‘He’s standing right in front of me.’
Schofield and Knight rejoined the others underneath the Black Raven.
Book II and Mother came up to Schofield.
‘You all right?’ Mother asked softly. ‘Book told me what happened in Siberia. Excuse my French, Scarecrow, but what the fuck is happening here?’
‘It’s been a tough morning,’ Schofield said, ‘and a lot of people have died. Any idea what happened to Gant?’
‘The last time I saw her was when those cocksuckers with the green laser sights came rocking in and I was knocked onto that conveyor belt—’
‘She was taken,’ a voice said from behind Mother.
It was Aloysius Knight.
‘Taken by a bounty hunter named Demon Larkham and his men from IG-88.’
‘How do you know that?’ Book II asked.
‘Rufus,’ Knight nodded to his partner, the mountainously tall pilot.
With his great bushy beard, Rufus had a wide smiling face and earnest eyes. He hunched slightly, as if trying to diminish his seven-foot height. When he spoke, he spoke quickly and matter-of-factly, report-style.
‘After I lowered Aloysius down the air vent,’ he said, ‘I went to hover over by the back entrance. I dropped a MicroDot aerosol charge onto the turnaround outside the exit tunnel—just like you told me to, Boss. Then I took up a hovering pattern about a mile away—again just like you told me to.
‘About five minutes before you all came charging out, a great big Chinook helicopter flanked by a couple of Lynx attack choppers landed on that turnaround. Then two LSVs and a Driftrunner came speeding out of the mine tunnel and shot straight up the ramp of the Chinook and into its belly. Then the Chinook lifted off and headed out over the hills, back toward Afghanistan.’
Schofield said, ‘How do you know Gant was with them?’
‘I got photos,’ Rufus said simply. ‘Aloysius told me that if anything unusual happened while he was inside the mine, I was to take photos of it, so I did.’
Schofield assessed Rufus as the big man spoke. For a guy who could manoeuvre a hover-capable Russian fighter with incredible skill—something which required an almost innate knowledge of physics and aerodynamics—his speech seemed oddly formal and direct, as if he took comfort in military formality.
Schofield had seen men like Rufus before: often the most gifted pilots (and soldiers) had great difficulty in social situations. They were so focused on their area of expertise that they often had trouble expressing themselves, or missed conversational nuances like irony and sarcasm. You just had to be patient with them. You also had to make sure their fellow troops were equally patient. Direct but not stupid, there was more to this Rufus than met the eye.
Knight pulled a handheld monitor from the cockpit of the Sukhoi, showed it to Schofield.
On the monitor
was a series of digital photos showing three speeding vehicles blasting out of the mine’s rear entrance, out onto the turnaround and up the ramp of a waiting Chinook helicopter.
Knight flicked a switch, blowing up several of the photos, zooming in on the lead Light Strike Vehicle.
Knight said, ‘See the three white boxes on the passenger seat. Medical transport cases. Three cases: three heads.’
He clicked to another photo, which showed a blurry zoomed-in image of the Driftrunner racing along behind the two LSVs.
‘Check out the rear tray on the truck,’ Knight said. ‘Notice that all of Larkham’s guys are dressed in black. One person, however . . . that one . . . the one without the helmet . . . is wearing sand-coloured Marine fatigues.’
And Schofield saw her.
Although the figure was blurred and out-of-focus, he recognised her shape, the fall of her short blonde hair.
It was Gant.
Slumped unconscious in the rear tray of the Driftrunner.
Schofield’s blood ran cold.
The greatest bounty hunter in the world had Gant.
More than anything else, Schofield wanted to go after her—
‘No. That’s exactly what the Demon wants you to do, Captain,’ Knight said, reading his thoughts. ‘Don’t rush into anything. We know where she is. And Larkham won’t kill her. He needs her alive if he’s going to use her to flush you out.’
‘How can you be sure of that?’
‘Because that’s how I’d do it,’ Knight said evenly.
Schofield paused, holding Knight’s gaze. It was almost like looking in a mirror—Schofield with his silver anti-flash glasses masking his scars, Knight with his yellow-lensed wraparounds covering his defective eyes.
A tattoo on Knight’s forearm caught Schofield’s eye. It showed an angry bald eagle and the words:
SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN.
Schofield had seen that image before: on posters that had come out soon after September 11. On them, the American eagle said, ‘Hey terrorists, sleep with one eye open.’
Underneath Knight’s eagle tattoo was another one which simply read: BRANDEIS. Schofield didn’t know what that one meant.
He locked eyes with Knight.
‘I’ve heard about you, Mr Knight,’ he said. ‘Your loyalty isn’t exactly something to brag about. You sold out your unit in the Sudan. Why should I think you won’t sell me out, too?’
‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,’ Knight said, ‘or what you read in US Government files.’
‘Then you’re not going to kill me?’
‘Captain, if I was going to kill you, you’d already have a bullet in your brain. No. My job is to keep you alive.’
‘Keep me alive?’
Knight said, ‘Captain, understand. I am not doing this because I like you or because I think that you are in any way special. I am being paid to do this, and paid well. The bounty on your head is 18.6 million dollars. Rest assured, I am being paid considerably more than that to make sure that you don’t get killed.’
‘Okay, then,’ Schofield said. ‘So who’s paying you to keep me alive?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘I won’t say.’ Knight’s eyes didn’t waver.
‘But your employer—’
‘—is not a subject for discussion,’ Knight said.
Schofield chose another tack.
‘All right, then, so why is this all happening? What do you know about this bounty hunt?’
Knight shrugged, looked away.
Rufus answered for him. Released from straight reportage, his tone was simple, honest. ‘Bounty hunts happen for all kinds of reasons, Captain Schofield. Catch and kill a spy who goes AWOL with a secret in his head. Catch and retrieve a kidnapper who’s been paid his ransom—mark my words, hell hath no fury like a rich guy who wants payback. Some of those rich assholes prefer to pay us two million dollars so they can catch some kidnapper who took them for one. It ain’t often, though, that you get a list worth ten million dollars in total, let alone almost twenty million dollars per head.’
‘So what do you know about this hunt then?’ Schofield asked.
‘The ultimate sponsor is unknown,’ Rufus said, ‘as is the reason for staging it, but the assessor—a banker from AGM-Suisse named Delacroix—is experienced at this sort of thing. We’ve run into him before. And so long as the assessor is legitimate, most bounty hunters don’t care about the reason for a hunt.’
Rufus turned to Knight.
Knight just cocked his head. ‘Big hunt. Fifteen targets. All have to be dead by 12 noon today, New York time. 18.6 meg per head. That’s 280 million dollars in total. Whatever the reason for staging this hunt is, it’s worth paying over a quarter of a billion dollars for.’
‘You say that we all have to be dead by 12 noon, New York time?’ Schofield said. This was the first he’d heard of the time limit placed on the hunt. He looked at his watch.
It was 2:05 p.m. here in Afghanistan. That made it 4:05 a.m. in New York. Eight hours till crunch time.
He fell silent, thinking.
Then abruptly he looked up.
‘Mr Knight, now that you’ve found me, what are your instructions from here?’
Knight nodded slowly, impressed that Schofield had asked this question.
‘My instructions are very clear on this point,’ he said. ‘From now on, I am to keep you alive.’
‘But you haven’t been told to keep me imprisoned, have you?’
‘No . . .’ Knight said. ‘I have not. My instructions are to allow you complete freedom of action—to go wherever you please—but under my protection.’
And with that a piece of the puzzle fell into place in Schofield’s mind.
Whoever was paying Knight to protect him not only wanted Schofield kept alive, that person also wanted Schofield to be active, to do whatever this bounty hunt was designed to stop him doing.
He turned to Knight. ‘You said you knew where Gant is. How?’
‘The MicroDot aerosol charge that Rufus dropped onto the turnaround area before the Demon’s boys got there,’ Knight said.
Schofield had heard about MicroDot technology. Apparently, it was the Next Big Thing in nanotechnology.
MicroDots were microscopic silicon chips, each about the size of a pinhead but with enormous computing power. While many believed that MicroDots would be the basis for a new series of liquid-based supercomputers—imagine a liquid ooze filled with supercomputing particles—at the moment they were mainly used by prestige car manufacturers as tracking devices: you sprayed the bottom of your Ferrari with MircoDot-loaded paint, then the Dots, and your car, could be traced anywhere in the world, and no car thief, however persistent, could wash them all off.
The MicroDot charge that Rufus had detonated on the turnaround area had released an aerosol cloud of about a billion MicroDots over the area.
‘The Demon, his men, his vehicles and your girl are all covered in MicroDots,’ Knight said. He pulled a jerry-rigged Palm Pilot from his belt. It bristled with home-made attachments and antennas, and looked a little chunkier than a regular PDA, as if it were waterproof.
On its screen was a map of the world and superimposed on that map, over Central Asia, was a set of moving red dots.
Demon Larkham’s team.
‘We can trace them to any point in the world on this,’ Knight said.
Schofield started thinking, tried to order his thoughts, to weigh up his options so he could arrange a plan of action.
Then at last he said, ‘The first thing we have to do is find out why all this is happening.’
He pulled out the bounty list, analysed it for the hundredth time.
Mother and Book II read it over his shoulder.
‘The Mossad,’ Mother said softly, seeing one entry:
11. ROSENTHAL, Benjamin Y. ISR Mossad
‘What about it?’ Schofield said.
‘That Zawahiri guy s
aid something about the Israeli Mossad down in the mine, before he lost his head. He was crazy, shouting about how he’d survived Soviet experiments in some gulag, and then the US cruise-missile attacks in ’98, and then about how the Mossad knew he was invincible, since they’d tried to kill him a dozen times.’
‘The Mossad . . .’ Schofield mused.
He keyed his sat-comm. ‘David Fairfax, you still there?’
‘So long as there’s coffee around, I’m still here,’ came the reply.
‘Mr Fairfax, look up Hassan Mohammad Zawahiri and Benjamin Y. Rosenthal. Any cross-matches?’
‘Just a second,’ Fairfax’s voice said. ‘Hey, got something already. A match from some US–Israeli intelligence swap. Major Benjamin Yitzak Rosenthal is Hassan Zawahiri’s “katsa”, or case officer, the guy who monitors him. Rosenthal is based in Haifa, but it seems that only yesterday he was recalled to Mossad’s London headquarters.’
‘London?’ Schofield said.
A plan was beginning to form in Schofield’s mind.
And all of a sudden he started to feel alive.
He’d been on the back foot all morning, reacting—now he was getting proactive.
‘Book, Mother,’ he said, ‘how would you like to pay Major Rosenthal a visit in London? See if he can shed some light on this situation.’
‘Be happy to,’ Mother said.
‘Sure,’ Book II said.
Aloysius Knight watched this exchange casually, uninterested.
‘Oh, hey, Scarecrow,’ Fairfax’s voice said, ‘I was going to mention this before but I didn’t get a chance. You remember that US Army Medical Research and Matériel Command paper I mentioned earlier, the “NATO MNRR Study”. Well, that thing is out of my reach from here. It was deprioritised two months ago and deleted from the USAMRMC’s files. An archive copy exists in some warehouse in Arizona, but otherwise all other copies have been shredded or deleted.
‘But I did find something on the two guys who wrote it, those two fellas on your list who worked for Medical Research Command: Nicholson and Oliphant. Nicholson retired a couple of years ago and is now living at some retirement village in Florida. But Oliphant quit USAMRMC only last year. He’s now chief physician in the ER at St John’s Hospital, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon.’