plastic melted into puddles, metal fused to metal. Seared beyond anything he could have imagined. This interested him. At this high elevation, there wasn't enough oxygen to support a fire of such intensity for long, certainly not long enough to do this kind of damage. The fire must have come from another source-a flamethrower.
Bourne saw Hiram Cevik's face in his mind's eye. Fadi was behind the ambush. The advanced weaponry, the precise coordination of the attacks, the high level of tactics that had caused two of CI's crack field teams to be killed: All evidence pointed to it.
But another question gnawed at him. Why had Fadi allowed himself to be captured by CI? Several answers presented themselves. The most likely one was that he was sending CI a message: You think you have me in your sights, but you don't know who you're dealing with. To some extent, Bourne knew that Fadi was correct: They knew next to nothing about him. But it was exactly this act of bravado that might provide Bourne with the opening he needed. Bourne's success had come from being able to get inside his adversaries' heads. Experience had taught him that it was impossible to do this with someone who remained in the shadows. Now, however, Fadi had emerged into the light of Bourne's vision. He'd shown his face. For the first time, Bourne had a template-rough and imprecise as it might be-from which to begin his pursuit.
Bourne returned his full attention to the interior of the Chinook. He counted four skeletons. This was nothing short of a revelation. Two people were missing from the dead. Could they be alive? Was Martin one of them?
The CI's Skorpion units were run military-style. All the men wore dog tags that identified them as being attached to an Army Ranger unit that didn't exist. As quickly as he could, he collected the four dog tags. He rubbed off the snow, ash, and soot to read their names, which he'd memorized from the packet of intel he'd gotten from Typhon. Martin wasn't here! The pilot-Jaime Cowell-was also unaccounted for.
Moving to the final resting place of Skorpion Two, he discovered the five skeletons of the Skorpion complement. Judging by the number of limb bones strewn about, it was safe to say none of them was in operational condition when the Chinook crashed. They'd been sitting ducks. Bourne hunted around, gathering up their dog tags.
All at once there came the hint of movement in the shadows of the interior, then the brief glitter of eyes before a head turned away. Bourne reached into the recessed space beneath the instrument panel. He felt a sharp pain in his hand, then a blur rushed him, knocking him backward.
Regaining his feet, he followed the figure out of the shell of the Chinook and took off after it, all the while waving at Davis to hold his fire. He glimpsed the bloody semicircle of tooth marks on the back of his hand just as the figure slipped over the low stone wall on the northeast side of site.
Bourne flung himself into the air, came down feet-first on the top of the wall, and, orienting himself, leapt off it onto the back of the figure.
They both went down, rolling, but Bourne kept a firm grip on the hair, yanking it back to see the face. He was confronted with a boy of no more than eleven.
"Who are you?" Bourne said in the local Amharic dialect. "What are you doing here?"
The boy spat into his face, clawed him, trying to get away. Holding his crossed wrists behind his back, Bourne sat him down in the lee of the wall, out of the howling wind. The boy was thin as a spike, the bones prominent in his cheeks, shoulders, and hips.
"When was the last time you ate?"
No response. At least the boy didn't spit at him again, but possibly that was because he was as dry inside as the snow crunching beneath their feet. With his free hand, Bourne unhooked a canteen, opened it with his teeth.
"I want to let you go. I've no wish to hurt you. Would you like some water?" The boy opened his mouth wide like a chick in the nest.
"Then you must promise to answer my questions. Is that fair?"
The boy looked at him for a moment with his black eyes, then nodded. Bourne let go of his wrists, and he reached out for the canteen, tipped it, drank the water in great,