CHAPTER 31

LYING FLAT IN THE SAND ONCE AGAIN, KURT PEERED through the gathering dusk to a dry lake bed on the desert floor. A half mile from them sat the two odd-looking jets that had flown over them and a third aircraft of the same type, which they hadn’t seen approach. All three sat quietly up against the right side of what passed as the runway.

From a breast pocket he pulled the compact set of binoculars he’d liberated from Jinn’s dead guard at the bottom of the well. Brushing sand from the lenses, he lifted them to his eyes.

“You were right,” he said. “Not exactly JFK. More like Edwards Air Force Base out in California.”

“Dry lake bed for a runway,” Joe replied, “but what on earth are they doing down there?”

Kurt watched as Jinn’s men poured from holes in the ground like angry ants. They scurried around the three aircraft in a haphazard way. Nearby, a set of trucks idled with black diesel smoke drifting from their exhaust stacks. A trio of forklifts seemed to be staging huge loads of equipment, and a tanker truck was easing out of a tunnel in the rock wall, moving at a snail’s pace.

Joe’s concept of an ant farm seemed more accurate every minute.

“They must have ramps and tunnels everywhere,” Kurt said, watching as men appeared from out of nowhere and then disappeared just as quickly.

“Can you see what they’re bringing in?” Joe asked.

Kurt saw wide cargo doors at the tail ends of the aircraft opening up, but nothing was coming out.

“They’re not here to drop off,” Kurt said. “They’re picking up. Pilots are talking with some sort of loadmaster.”

“So this is moving day.”

“Or D-day,” Kurt said.

“Can you catch the tail numbers off the jets?” Joe asked. “That might help us down the road.”

With the sun down and the light fading fast, Kurt zoomed in on the closest aircraft and squinted.

“White tails,” he said. “No markings of any kind. But I’m pretty sure they’re Russian-built.”

“Can you make out the type?”

“They look modified to me. They have the six-wheeled main landing gear of an An-70, a large tail ramp like a C-130 or other military transport but the shape of something else, they almost look like …”

It hit Kurt all of a sudden. He’d seen the odd-shaped plane two summers ago, fighting fires in Portugal. “They’re modified Altairs,” he said. “Beriev Be-200s. They’re jet-powered flying boats. They land on the water, scoop up a thousand gallons of the stuff, fly off and dump it out over a blaze.”

Joe seemed all the more baffled by this news. “What would Jinn want with a firefighting plane that lands on water? There’s not a lot out here that can catch on fire, and there isn’t much water to scoop up and fight fires with if there was.”

As Kurt watched the tanker truck sidle up to the first of the jets, he thought he understood. “This is how they’re getting the microbots to the sea,” he said.

“In the water reservoirs,” Joe said.

Kurt nodded. “There’s a tanker truck hooked up to one of the jets right now, but unless someone put the fuel port in the wrong place it’s not Jet A or JP-4 they’re pumping.”

“So they’re not washing down from here or escaping,” Joe said. “What about the model of the dam?”

He handed the binoculars to Joe. “Take a look beside that line of trucks.”

Joe put the binoculars to his face. “I see yellow drums on pallets,” he said.

“Look familiar?”

Joe nodded. He scanned back toward the aircraft. “I don’t see any of those going onto the planes. Looks like they’re loading weapons and ammunition onto the closest one, and I think I see a couple of ribbed Zodiacs like the SEAL teams use set up in the staging area.”

“Sounds like our friends are headed somewhere a little wetter than here,” Kurt said. “Which really isn’t a bad idea.”

Joe handed the binoculars back to Kurt. “See if you can spot a water fountain down there somewhere.”

“Sorry, partner,” Kurt said. “I think we just escaped from the only water fountain in this vicinity. And it’s out of order.”

“Just like in the mall,” Joe said, trying to clear his throat of the dust and sand they’d breathed in. Kurt did his best not to think about the thirst he’d built up or the dry, caked feeling in the back of his own throat.

“I wonder,” Kurt said. “Maybe we’re trying to connect the wrong dots. Maybe the model dam they wrecked has nothing to do with the current diagram you spotted in the drafting room and what’s going on in the Indian Ocean.”

“Two targets?”

Kurt nodded. “Two modes of transportation. Two different ways of carrying those microbots. Maybe they have two distinct operations going here.”

“Have we underestimated our maniacal little friend?”

“We might have,” Kurt replied.

“What do you want to do?”

“My original idea was to catch a flight out of here,” Kurt said, “but now that we appear to have a choice in our mode of transport. What do you suggest, trucks or planes?”

“Trucks,” Joe said.

“Really?” Kurt said, surprised. “Planes are faster. And we both know something about flying.”

“Not those things.”

“They’re all the same,” Kurt insisted.

Joe pursed his lips. “Have you ever calculated how much trouble your endless optimism gets us in?” Joe asked. “They’re NOT all the same. And even if they were, where are you going to go once you have control of the plane? This is the Middle East. Planes crossing borders without permission don’t last long around here. The Saudis, the Israelis, the Seventh Fleet, any one of them might shoot us out of the sky before we could explain why we violated their no-fly zone.”

Kurt hated to admit it but Joe had a point.

“Besides,” Joe added, “those planes might end up in a worse place than this. But trucks have to stay on the beaten path and stick close to civilization. There are only so many roads and so many places a truck can go from here. I say we climb aboard.”

“In the back?” Kurt said. “With ten billion little eating machines?”

Joe took the binoculars from Kurt and trained them on the drums beside the line of covered flatbeds. “From the way Jinn’s men are keeping their distance I’m gonna guess they have some idea what’s in those drums. That plays in our favor. It’ll keep ’em away and reduce the chances of our being discovered and redeposited in that well.”

Kurt remained quiet.

“And,” Joe added, perhaps sensing victory was near, “if we are discovered in the trucks, we can jump and run. Kind of hard to do that from thirty thousand feet.”

Kurt could not remember a time when Joe had made such a forceful argument. “You’ve talked me into it.”

“Really?”

“When you’re right, you’re right,” he said, brushing some dust off his uniform and straightening it. “And in this case you are right on, my friend.”

Joe handed the binoculars back to Kurt, looking very pleased with himself. He tried to make his own uniform look more presentable.

“Shall we?”

Kurt tucked the binoculars into his breast pocket. “We shall.”

As darkness fell and the moonless night spread across the desert, the loading and servicing of the Russian-built jets continued. To provide some light a few temporary spotlights and the high beams of several parked Jeeps and Humvees were moved into place.

The strange setup made it easy for Kurt and Joe to sneak up on the staging area as the men in the lighted zone were all but blind to the darkness of the desert beyond.

Upon reaching the operations area, Kurt and Joe pulled up their kaffiyehs to cover their faces and heads. Aside from looking dirty and scruffy, their uniforms matched those of the men handling the loading.

“Grab something,” Joe whispered, picking up a small crate of equipment. “Everyone looks official if they’re carrying something and walking briskly.”

Kurt followed suit, and the two of them walked right into the main staging area without receiving a second glance. They began to get their bearings, trying not to look conspicuous.