He hurried into the jungle, but there was no sign of Yaya.
Then came an improbable sound.
“Walker, this is SPG. Get away from the trees. Come in, Walker. Walker, go to the motorcycle.”
It was Jen’s voice. He ran back to the wreck and pulled out Yaya’s contraption. It had been taped together and wrapped in a piece of the orange safety vest, the Velcro used to hold the entire thing in place.
He stared at it for a second like a pig looking at a wristwatch, then depressed the button on the side. “Jen, this is Jack. You there?”
“Jack!” Her voice broke.
“Jen, are you here? Can you see me?” He stared into the sky.
“We can see you. Listen, you have to get the motorcycle working. More of those creatures are coming.”
Walker glanced at the wreck.
“Jack, I’m dead serious. Hurry!”
59
He’d picked up a limp sometime after the wreck, two hours ago, and now Jen told him he was less than thirty clicks from Kadwan. Somehow, he’d righted the motorcycle and managed to get it started. The wheel on the sidecar was blown and both wheels of the cycle were bent, but it ran, albeit like a circus-clown funnycycle. Still, it moved faster than he could have.
So while he’d wobble-wheeled down the center of the deserted road, wary of a qilin appearing around every corner, he listened to Jen as she provided what information she could. Much of it was old news, but other parts were incredible.
“We’ve been tracking Hoover for the last few hours,” she’d said. “She’s within ten kilometers of your location.”
Walker had inadvertently slowed down when he’d heard that. “But how?”
“We have no visuals, but Hoover has an RFID broadcasting on ultrahigh frequency.”
“She’s following them?”
“Must be. By her direction of travel, she’s heading straight towards Kadwan. Holmes must have activated her homing beacon when he was captured. We believe he and the others might be still alive.”
“They are,” Walker said, then briefly told them about the information he’d received from Eddie.
Then Billings came on the line. Walker felt his posture tighten as she took command of the mission from ten thousand miles away. She explained how they’d seen the attack on the warehouse and the ambush. Then they’d lost coverage for a time. It took getting the vice president involved, but now they had another satellite to use for a short three-hour window. Not that it was doing much good. They were totally blind to the events transpiring in Kadwan. Inexplicably the advanced optics on the NRO satellite were incapable of penetrating the cloud cover. All she could verify was Holmes’s location, currently in the middle of a cricket field.
As he rode, they devised a way for him to intersect Hoover. The dog was moving at a steady clip, but traveling east of Walker’s position through the jungle. By their estimation, Hoover should reach Kadwan within an hour. If he was able to continue traveling by motorcycle, even at its reduced rate because of the crash, Walker would be there half an hour before the dog, which was plenty of time for them to engage.
But ten minutes after that calculation, the motorcycle stopped for good. Not only was it out of gas, but the rear tire had lost its air. Walker was now on foot.
He hung the improvised radio around his neck. He had his Stoner and a single AK with three magazines. The Stoner and the AK both used 7.62mm, although the diameter of the AK’s rounds was slightly smaller, so he tossed the AK and settled on the better rifle. Although the ammunition wasn’t what he was used to, what he’d lose in cyclic rate of fire he’d gain in accuracy and distance. If the qilin were any indication of what he’d expect, then it didn’t matter how many times he hit it if those shots weren’t on target. With the Stoner across his back and the 9mm in his thigh holster, his hands were free and he began jogging right away.
He kept to the center of the road. He considered sloughing through the jungle, but the going would be slow and any attempt at speed would mean that he’d be heard well in advance. He kept his eyes and ears open for everything, lowered his head, and pretended he was back on the Coronado. For as bad as his legs had felt during his all-expense-paid vacation at the BUD/S resort, the stress and danger were nothing compared with this mission. On the island he’d been concerned with making it through each day. Here he was concerned about making it, period.
The image of Yaya’s expression of surprise as he was hauled into the trees bore through his attempt at concentration. He felt his cheeks burn, but ignored it as best he could. He made seven kilometers before he was forced to rest. He kept walking, but he couldn’t run until his breathing found a rhythm.
“You okay?” Jen asked over the radio.
“Sure.” Cramps in his stomach and legs were already tightening.
“You’ve stopped running.”
“Glad … glad you noticed.”
There was a pause. “I have an update. You ready?”
“Sure.” His breathing was coming around.
“In five hours Kadwan will be removed from the map.”
“What?” He stopped, hands on his knees, and stared at the ground. “What does that mean?”
“The strange cloud above the city is spreading. People are finally starting to pay attention and they’re getting worried. Nothing we have in orbit can penetrate it, which means we don’t have a clue what’s going on beneath. So, a squadron of Tornado jets are en route. After in-flight refueling, they’re scheduled to deliver bombs on target at 0800 hours local time.”
“So it’s 0300 now?”
“Check.”
“And how far do I have to go?”
“About ten kilometers.”
It was doable.
“Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“If for any reason you can’t make it, don’t get in the kill radius.”
“What’s the kill radius?”
“They’re dropping GBU-38 JDAMs. Do you know what that is?”
Joint Directed Attack Munitions. Five hundred pound bombs. “How many?”
“Four bombs per plane.”
Which meant forty-eight bombs—twenty-four thousand pounds of explosive on target.
“That gives you a standoff of five kilometers,” she said, her voice breathless. “Do you hear me, Jack? Do you hear me? Don’t go if you can’t make it.”
“I have to, Jen. I have to.” There was no way he could not try and save his friends. For too long he’d been fighting for the dead. Now he was fighting for the living and it had never felt more right. Wasn’t it she who’d told him that?
It took a few moments for her to answer. When she did, she said simply, “I know.”
“Going to go silent for a while,” he said. “Save batteries. I’ll contact you when I’m close.”
Then he turned off the set. The silence was at once welcome and foreboding. He began to run faster. He narrowed his vision. He thought about everyone he’d lost, from Yaya to Fratty, to Holmes, Laws, and Ruiz, to his father, his brother, and that little boy who’d done nothing to anyone except be taken by a demon sent by someone keen on getting back at his father. Walker thought of all of them and created a fuel by which he could run.
He began to whisper cadence, using his breathing to propel the air one syllable at a time.