Fisher searched his room but found nothing of interest, so he turned his attention to Pak's smart phone--a Palm Treo 700--on the nightstand. The keypad was password-locked. He called Grimsdottir. "I've got a Treo that needs a crack and dump," he said.
"Connect me."
Fisher did so. As if by magic, the Treo powered up and began a rapid-fire scroll through its programs and folders. After twenty seconds of this, the screen went dark again.
"Got it," said Grimsdottir. "I'll take a look at it and get back to you."
"Roger. I'm heading to the server room, then I'm out."
HEfound it on the top floor of the southern tower--the one he'd seen Bakiyev emerge from earlier--slipped inside, and then tapped into each server in turn and waited for the OPSAT to download the data. He was about to leave when he heard the door to Bakiyev's room open, then slam shut.
"I know that, yes, I know," Bakiyev was saying into what Fisher guessed was a phone, "but it wasn't scheduled until morning. I understand . . . yes, I'll get it ready. How long? Okay, I'll have the pad lights on. Ten minutes."
Footsteps pounded down the spiral staircase. Another door slammed, then silence.
Someone was coming for Stewart, Fisher assumed. Pad lights . . .The roof.
Fisher climbed the spiral staircase all the way to the top, where it ended at a roof hatch. It was unlocked. He pushed through it and into the archer's gallery, a domed enclosure with a chest-high, square-serrated stone wall. He looked down. Forty feet below lay the roof of the fort, itself encircled by a crenellated wall. In the center of the roof was a white-painted circle overlaid with an X. Fisher zoomed in on it and could see lights embedded in the roof.
He scanned the north tower, looking for movement, but saw nothing. Instead, he spied a roof door set into the base of the tower.
Damn. Second floor. Go, go, go.
He climbed back through the hatch, picked his way down the spiral staircase to the second floor and, following his internal compass, located the right room. It, too, was unlocked. He slipped inside and looked around. On the far wall, hidden behind a floor-to-ceiling armoire, he found the door. He stepped inside the armoire, flipped the door's dead bolt, and opened it enough for the flexicam. Nothing was moving. He checked his watch: Five minutes to go.
The opposite tower door opened. Tolkun Bakiyev strode out, trotted to the center of the roof, and raised a pair of binoculars. He scanned the sky to the northwest for ten seconds, then started back to the door. Chin-Hwa Pak poked his head out. Bakiyev waved him back inside, then followed.
Four minutes later, Fisher heard the barely perceptible thumping of helicopter rotors. He switched to NV and zoomed in to the northwest just in time to see a pair of navigation strobes appear out of the darkness, followed seconds later by the white nose cone and Plexiglas windshield of a Sikorsky S-76. Fisher flipped up his goggles.
The landing pad lights glowed to life, outlining the circle and cross. Forty seconds later, the S-76 swept in over the roof, barely clearing the wall, and touched down.
Sticking to the shadows along the wall, Fisher ran, crouched over, until the Sikorsky lay between him and the north tower door. He drew the SC-20 from its back holster and dropped to his belly. Beneath the S-76's cabin and through the landing skids Fisher saw two pair of legs emerge from the tower door and start jogging toward the helicopter. Through the cabin's tinted windows he saw the lights come on as the opposite door slid open to receive the passengers.
Fisher changed the SC-20's fire selector to Sticky Cam, then pulled one off his belt. The standard color for a Sticky Cam was black; Fisher pulled off the outer laminate to expose the white coating. Better match for the Sikorsky's paint scheme. He toggled the Sticky Cam's switch to GPS ENABLED, then loaded it. He tucked the rifle's stock to his cheek and peered through the scope, panning and zooming until he'd found his target.
Wait . . .The thump of the Sticky Cam would likely go unnoticed over the Sikorsky's engines, but Fisher didn't want to take a chance. Pak and Stewart reached the helicopter and took turns climbing in.
Wait . . .
Through the cabin window he saw an arm reach for the cabin's latch. The door started sliding shut. Now.
Fisher fired. The Sticky Cam flew true and popped onto the S-76's tail boom just as the cabin door thumped shut. He waited, breath held, half expecting one of the crew to climb out, but nothing happened. Ten seconds passed, then twenty. Thirty. Then the engines increased in pitch, and the S-76 lifted off the pad, rose up twenty feet, wheeled, and disappeared over the north tower. The landing pad lights went dark.
Fisher let out his breath and checked the OPSAT:
STICKY CAM > GPS ENABLED > ONLINE >TRACKING
Fisher smiled grimly to himself. You can run, but you can't hide.
23
THIRD ECHELON SITUATION ROOM
LESSthan a day after the first mortar round landed in Bishkek, the moderate government collapsed from within. With most of its armored vehicles destroyed along with what few strike aircraft it could field, the government forces had taken a crippling blow, and the battle for Bishkek quickly turned into a house-to-house fight as the insurgent army poured down from the mountains surrounding the capital and drove into the city proper under a steady stream of mortar fire that sometimes simply blanketed an area, wiping it clean of soldiers and vehicles alike, while other times taking out single targets, but always doing so with frightening speed and precision.
By the time the government forces recovered from the initial assault and managed to regroup, half the city was already lost, under insurgent control as thousands of Bishkek residents took to the streets and marched on government buildings and the presidential residence.
The Kyrgyz government's pleas for intervention from its neighbors fell on deaf ears, as did an official request to the U.S. State Department for immediate relief. What few forces the U.S. Army had on ready-alert were bogged down in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountain range, where the resurrected Taliban had begun to push south toward Kabul.
And so, twenty hours after it began, the Kyrgyz president appeared, pale and haggard, before the podium in his private office and announced his resignation.
The world's news networks had immediately picked up the BBC feed of the Battle for Bishkek and the president's surrender and began playing it on a near constant loop, along with commentary from an alphabet soup of experts, both military and civilian alike.
The monitors behind the situation room's conference table, set to mute, were tuned to CNN, MSNBC, and BBC World.
"Well, that was quick and tidy," Lambert said.
"Like they were being led by a resurrected God," Fisher murmured, taking a sip of coffee.
An hour after ex-filtrating Ingonish, he had met the Osprey at an airstrip in Grand River, and four hours after that he arrived back at Fort Meade, having caught a shower and an hour's nap.