Kilkenny replaced the computer-generated image of Yin with a terrain map of the region.
‘We’re up here in Mongolia,’ Kilkenny said, indicating a point in the eastern province of the landlocked nation, ‘and this zigzagging line is the route we’ll follow in and out of China. ChiCom air defenses are relatively thin in this part of the country, thanks largely to the fact that Mongolian military technology these days is just slightly better than it was during the reign of Genghis Khan. Our route is designed to take us through the weakest points in their radar coverage. I know the BATs are hard to spot, but no sense making it any easier for them. I’ll upload these waypoints into the nav systems as soon as we’re ready to go wheels up.’
The next image was a satellite photo of Chifeng Prison.
‘At the LZ,’ Kilkenny pointed to their landing zone in an uninhabited area northwest of the prison, ‘we’ll meet with our local support and split into two teams. Chow, Chun, Han, and Xaio are with Alpha; the rest of you are Bravo. Max will head up the Alpha team, which will dig in around the perimeter of the prison, scout the place for a few days so we can get the lay of the land, and set up our defenses in case we need to beat a fast retreat. I’ll be with Bravo handling prison insertion and extraction. We already have someone on the ground in Chifeng working with local contacts to procure uniforms, weapons, and vehicles. We’ll be working with her to collect these materials at our staging area. Two important points about our person in Chifeng. What we’re about to do won’t win us any popularity contests in Beijing, but Roxanne already has state’s-enemy status there, and the ChiComs want her, dead or alive. Second, she’s a personal friend of mine, and if you hit on her, you do so at your own risk.’
‘From you?’ Han asked.
‘From her. She’s good people, so let’s make sure she gets out of China in one piece.’
As they ate, Kilkenny ran through the finer details of his plan to liberate Yin Daoming and took questions from the team. The briefing lasted through their meal, and everyone switched to water after the first round of Baadog. No one was getting drunk tonight.
After their meal, the team assembled the BATs and suited up for flight.
‘We’re gonna look like a Chinese luge team,’ Han remarked as the men traded their civilian clothes for sleek, form-fitting SEALskin suits.
‘You’ll love these suits,’ Gates assured him. ‘We started using them about a year ago. Full mobility, decent body armor, and combat electronics. Best of all, they’re good for fighting off the cold.’
‘How good?’
‘I did a HALO jump over Antarctica wearing one of these,’ Kilkenny replied as he holstered a forty-five-caliber H&K pistol and sheathed a combat knife to his leg. ‘Double-digit subzero temps and I didn’t get a touch of frostbite.’
‘No shit?’ Han asked skeptically. As veteran of many high-altitude, low-opening parachute jumps, he had endured bitter cold in weather less extreme than over the pole.
‘No shit.’
‘Amazing. These are about half the weight of our standard flight suits.’
‘Hey, what happens to the horses while we’re gone?’ Chen asked as he patted the head of the gray mare he’d ridden out into the steppe.
‘I asked the family that leased us these yurts to look in on them, as we’ll be out in the field for days at a time following the wild herds,’ Kilkenny said. ‘They’ll be okay.’
The team broke into three groups, each with one of the Night Stalkers. Clad head-to-toe in dark gray, the soldiers donned helmets equipped with night vision and heads-up displays and climbed into the BATs. The seats were simple canvas hammocks bolted to the frame and fitted with five-point safety harnesses. Kilkenny appraised the aircraft as he buckled in — it was a significant improvement over the first generation. He followed the pipes that sprouted from the engine nacelle to their termini at tiny thrust-vectoring nozzles at various points on the fuselage. By rerouting engine thrust from the large opening at the rear of the nacelle, where it was used to power forward flight, to the nozzles, a BAT pilot could abruptly change direction during flight. The nozzles also allowed the aircraft to take off and land vertically. To the men of the 160th, the BAT was the special forces version of the Harrier.
Gates sat beside Kilkenny in the rear of BAT-2 and strapped in. Bob Shen was at the controls running through his preflight checklist. Terry Han and Ed Xaio were piloting BAT-1 and BAT-3.
‘We’ve got a full tank of gas, a half pack of cigarettes, it’s dark out, and we’re wearing sunglasses,’ Gates said, deadpanning Elwood Blues’s pre-chase checklist.
Eyes focused straight ahead, Kilkenny offered Joliet Jake Blues’s infamous response, ‘Hit it.’
‘RITEG is nominal,’ Shen said flatly. ‘Switching engine on.’
Starting with a low hum, the nacelle mounted to the spine above them quickly spun up, the sound increasing in both pitch and intensity. The horses grazing nearby trotted farther into the field. Sitting in an open-air fuselage, Kilkenny was quick to appreciate that the electric turbine emitted no exhaust. He was also thankful for the noise-canceling hardware built into his helmet that sampled the engine noise and produced an inverse sound to mask it.
The internally shielded RITEG generated almost no externally detectable heat, reducing the threat posed by missiles designed to home in on the hot glow of fuel-burning engines. The aircraft derived another defensive advantage from its unique shape and use of nonmetallic materials. The BAT was not as stealthy as an F-117A, but its radar cross-section was roughly the size of a golf ball, making the low-flying craft difficult to detect amid the electronic noise known as ground clutter.
When all three BATs had powered up, the Night Stalkers gave each other the thumbs-up sign and, one by one, lifted off. Third in the queue, Shen gripped the fly-by-wire controller mounted between the front seats and gave it a twist. The BAT leaped into the air as thrust-vector nozzles redirected the tiny engine’s output through the BAT’s space frame and outports under the fuselage.
Shen let the BAT hover for a moment until he was satisfied that everything functioned as it should, then he flew the aircraft forward and into position off the left wing of BAT-1.
‘Satellite uplink on,’ Kilkenny commanded, and an icon appeared on his heads-up display.
SATELLITE UPLINK ACTIVATED
‘Message encrypt, three words: Isengard or Bust’
CONFIRM: ISENGARD OR BUST
‘Message confirmed.’
SEND TO?
‘Bombadil,’ Kilkenny replied.
The three-word message shot into the heavens as a brief pulse of electromagnetic energy. Seconds later, after racing through a constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit, the message sped back to Earth where it was captured by a cluster of dish antennas inside the Leonine Walls of the Vatican.
‘Bombadil? Isengard?’ What was that all about?’ Gates asked, his voice clear through the speakers in Kilkenny’s helmet.
‘Just letting my buddy Grin know what we’re up to. He’s not a regular operator, so we decided to encrypt our messages with references to books, movies, and songs that we both would get. In The Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf was held prisoner by Saruman at Isengard.’
‘So for Gandalf, read Yin?’ Gates asked.
‘Yeah,’ Kilkenny replied. ‘Chifeng Prison is Isengard, and Grin is Bombadil.’
‘I saw the movies, but I don’t remember anyone named Bombadil.’
‘Not everything from the book made it onto the screen,’ Kilkenny explained.