driver’s window and scanning the opposite ravine. After sixty seconds of this the spotlight went dark. The lead UAZ’s transmission crunched and growled, then it began moving forward and beyond Driscoll’s line of sight.
“Who’s got eyes?” he radioed.
“Got him,” Barnes called. “Fifty meters away, continuing east.” Then: “Hundred meters ... They’re stopping.”
Driscoll eased himself up and hunch-walked out of the ravine, taking care to keep close to the canyon’s rock wall until he could see the halted UAZs. He dropped to his belly and peered through the NV. Each truck had taken up position at the northern and southern sides of the canyon. Their headlights and engines were off. Ambush position.
“Everybody stay put and stay quiet,” Driscoll ordered, then got the Chinook on the line. “Blade, Sickle.”
“Go ahead.”
“Our UAZs have taken up position at the eastern end of the canyon.”
“Roger, we see ’em. Be advised, Sickle, we are eight minutes to bingo.”
Eight minutes until the Chinook was at the do-or-die turnaround point. A delay beyond that and they wouldn’t have enough fuel to RTB, or return to base. For Rangers, working with thin margins was par for the course, but there were some things you fucked with at your peril, and your ride home was chief among them.
“Understood. Engage UAZs. Anything on wheels is yours.”
“Roger, engaging.”
The Chinook appeared over the top of the plateau, its nav lights flashing as it wheeled and started easing west down the canyon. Driscoll could see the door gunner swiveling the minigun about. Driscoll radioed, “Gomez, get your team moving up the ramp.”
“Roger, boss.”
“Eyes on the target,” the Chinook pilot called. “Engaging ...”
The Dillon M134 minigun opened up, casting the side of the Chinook in orange. The barrage lasted less than two seconds, then came another, and one more, then the pilot was back: “Targets destroyed.” With a firing rate of three thousand rounds per minute, in those five or so seconds it had poured two hundred fifty 7.62-millimeter bullets into the approaching UAZs. The Chinook reappeared, sideslipped over the LZ, and touched down. The ramp came down.
Gomez called, “Up on overwatch, Santa.”
“Roger, moving to you.”
Driscoll gave the order, and again in pairs the remainder of the team crossed the canyon floor, leapfrogging from cover to cover until Driscoll and Tait were across and headed up the ramp.
“Target!” Driscoll heard over his headset. Not one of his, he decided, but somebody aboard the Chinook. “On the tail, seven o’clock!” West across the plateau came the chatter of automatic weapons—AK-47s, quickly followed by the crack of returning M4 fire.
Driscoll and Tait reached the top of the ramp, dropped to their bellies, and crawled the last few feet. Fifty meters ahead, from inside a ravine and atop the ridgeline, muzzles were flashing. Driscoll counted at least three dozen. Down the canyon four pairs of headlights appeared in the dark. More UAZs.
Peterson’s voice: “RPG, RPG ...”
To their right, something bright streaked past. The ground beside the Chinook erupted.
“Move away, move away,” the pilot called, then did something Driscoll had never seen: Neat as you please, the pilot lifted off, stopped in a hover at six feet, then wheeled, bringing the door gunner to bear. “Heads down, heads down!” The Dillon opened up, arcing fire into the ravine and ridgeline.
“Runner!” Driscoll heard faintly in his ear. “Heading west!”
Sidelit by the Dillon’s tracers, their prisoner, still hand-cuffed, was staggering away from the Chinook and toward the draw. Tait muttered, “I got him, Santa.”
“Drop him.”
Tait’s M4 popped and their prisoner went down. The AK fire tapered off, then died. Driscoll called, “Blade, we got UAZs in the canyon. Two hundred meters and closing. Your three o’clock.”
“Roger,” the pilot replied, and brought the Chinook around. Again the minigun opened up. Ten seconds was all it took. The dust drifted away, revealing the four demolished UAZs.
“Head count,” Driscoll ordered. No response. “Head count!” he repeated. Collins replied. “Two KIA, Santa, and two wounded.”
“Motherfucker.”
The pilot called—calmly, Driscoll thought, Sickle, what say you fellas get aboard and we go home before our luck runs out?
9
IN ALL HIS YEARS living in Saint Petersburg, Yuriy Beketov had walked its darkened streets hundreds of times, but this time was different, and it didn’t take much contemplation to understand why. Wealth—or at least potential wealth—had a way of changing one’s perspective. And this kind of wealth was of a different sort. He wasn’t proud of the money in and of itself but rather the way in which he planned to apply it. What he was less certain about was