“What is that? A dune?”
Bishop wasn’t sure what King was talking about, but with the car hurtling forward at nearly 120 miles per hour, weaving back and forth to pass slower cars and avoid being hit by oncoming traffic, he didn’t really have time to study the display more carefully. He considered taking the glasses off to have an unrestricted view, but that would mean taking one of his hands off the steering wheel, and that didn’t seem like such a good idea.
“It’s a berm, formed of material dredged from the canal,” Deep Blue explained.
“The perfect place to plant that bomb if he wants to collapse the canal.”
“He’s heading for it,” Queen said. “I’m going after him now. I can use his dust cloud for cover.”
“No. Wait for us. That’s an order.”
Bishop was too focused on the drive now to even question King’s abrupt and uncharacteristically authoritarian shift. On the map display, the little red dots moved away from the Queen and Rook icons, and stopped at the base of a low hill that was too perfectly straight to be anything but manmade. Abruptly, it split into five separate dots — the terrorists now tracking as individual signatures — all of whom began moving up the side of the hill on foot. Their motion barely registered now, and in the time it took for them to crest the hill, Bishop reached the spot where Queen and Rook had pulled off the road just ahead of them.
Rook had the hood of the rental car open and was pretending to tinker with the engine but was in reality covertly watching Hadir’s progress. Queen was rooting around in the car’s trunk, as if searching for tools, but the tools in this instance were a case of Uzi submachine guns. In addition to the noise and flash suppressors, each gun was equipped with a holographic sight that was wirelessly synched to the user’s q-phone and glasses. When active, targeting crosshairs would show exactly where the bullet would go, so the weapon could be fired from almost any position, even around a blind corner. The system also automatically adjusted for the ballistic trajectory of the bullet over distances, which was particularly useful for long-ranged weapons like Knight’s Intervention, but not so much for the Uzi, which had an effective range of 200 yards.
Bishop and King retrieved their own Uzis from the trunk of their car, and hustled to rendezvous with Queen and Rook. The latter glanced back. “Honey, the auto club guys are here.”
Queen left the trunk open and came up to join them. Rook took one of the Uzis from her and wrinkled his nose in irritation. “A pea shooter to save the world from nuclear fire,” he said, with all the gravity of a Shakespearian soliloquy. “Blue, why is it you can give us all these fancy gizmos, but can’t come up with a way to sneak the girls past the TSA?”
‘The girls’ were a pair of Desert Eagle Mark XIX Magnum semi-automatic pistols, Rook’s pride and joy. When the mission called for a covert insertion, such as a Zodiac launched from a submarine or a HALO jump, the pistols were always holstered at his hips. Lately however, the team was increasingly more reliant on commercial airlines to get them wherever they needed to go. So when it came to weapons, they were all forced to make do with whatever Deep Blue could procure for them on the local black market.
The Israeli designed sub-guns wouldn’t have been Bishop’s first choice for the mission either. He liked something a little bigger, like the venerable Browning M-2 .50 caliber machine gun on a portable tripod, but Uzis were easy to acquire in this part of the world. They were anonymous enough that, in the event that something went horribly wrong and they were captured or killed, there would be nothing to directly tie them to the US military. Although, given their current status, that was far less of a concern than it had once been. The Chess Team had almost completely cut its ties to the military, and Bishop wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing or not. Autonomy had come at a price: no logistical support and no safety net. Despite the vast resources that Deep Blue had placed at their disposal, if they wanted to go somewhere, they had to get there on their own, and if things went FUBAR — military lingo for ‘fucked up beyond all recognition’—well, then they were out of luck.
“What’s the plan?” Queen asked.
Bishop squinted toward the rise. The map disappeared, and instead he saw a close-up view of the hillside. All of the red dots were still visible, but the terrorists to which they belonged were eclipsed from view. “No lookout,” he murmured.
“We’ll go in on foot,” King said. “Rook, take the right flank. Bishop, go left. Establish visual contact and positive real-time targeting. We’ll designate priority targets once in position, and then on my signal, we will take them out.”
Queen cleared her throat. “Ah, forgetting someone?”
King shook his head. “Queen, you’ll be the reserve element.”
“Excuse me?”
Bishop winced a little at the acid in her tone, but he was even more surprised by King’s decision. It was one thing to leave Knight behind because they were in a hurry, but leaving Queen in the rear with the gear made absolutely no sense.
King, however, just nodded in her direction. “Cover our approach. If anyone pops their head up, take them out. Once we secure the bomb, bring your car up to the base of the berm, so we can get it out of here ASAP. Okay, let’s do this.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but simply made an overhand gesture — the hand signal for ‘move out’—and broke into a trot, leaving the rest to stare at each other in disbelief. Queen finally broke the awkward silence. “Better get moving.”
Bishop turned away immediately and set off after King, veering to the left as he had been directed. He kept his gaze fixed on the slope ahead. King had already reached the base of the rise and was starting up the steep slope, following the distinctive trail left by the terrorists. Bishop wondered whether King would wait for Rook and him to catch up, or if perhaps it had been King’s plan all along to leave them behind and take the objective single-handedly. It bothered Bishop that he couldn’t easily dismiss that speculation.
He was halfway to his goal when he heard the helicopter.
For a moment, the sound of turbines and rotors didn’t quite reach his conscious mind. Helicopters weren’t uncommon around cities, and particularly since he’d been in the military, he found that he often tuned them out. It wasn’t until he heard Queen comment that he actually started paying attention.
“Helo incoming.”
Bishop swung his head around and quickly found the approaching aircraft. Queen had already tagged it, and Deep Blue had supplied ancillary data to identify it as a Bell Industries 206 JetRanger. By itself, that meant very little — with over seven thousand produced in its nearly fifty-year production run, not including numerous military and civilian variants, the JetRanger was arguably the most commonly used helicopter in the world. Bishop himself was certified to fly one. Far more revealing was the fact that it was painted a flat desert beige, with nothing at all to indicate who owned or operated the craft, not even identifying numbers on its tail rotor boom.
The helicopter was still a mile out, coming out of the south, but there seemed little question that it was heading their way.
“I don’t like this,” Queen said. “Bringing the car up now.”
“Negative. Stay put.”
“Sorry, King. Did not read your last. Queen out!”
A grim smile touched Bishop’s lips. It was a small act of defiance, but one that had been sorely missing. King might have been acting squirrelly, but Queen was her old self. Nevertheless, the situation remained unchanged. Hadir still had the bomb, and they had no idea whether the crew of the helicopter was friend or foe.