Wiley held up the roll. “This, young man, should be in every first aid kit.”
Jake controlled his laughter. Wiley seemed prepared for everything.
“I built these aircraft tough.” Wiley explained. “Designed them for rough terrain. Built to take abuse. They’re strong but not indestructible. Fortunately Mr. Kaplan was probably only going about forty miles per hour when he had his first impact with the ground. And since he didn’t hit anything stationary, the damage was minimal.”
Wiley pointed toward the cliff. “Now let’s line them up and ready them for takeoff.” Wiley said. “Then we’ll grab our gear and go retrieve Ms Hunt.”
Jake and Wiley pulled the aircraft in line for their eventual takeoff, Kaplan’s glider first followed by Wiley’s. Wiley reached into the cockpit of his glider and flipped a switch, a retractable motor and propeller popped up from the tail of the aircraft.
“If we had motors,” Jake said. “Why the hell did we have to use those crazy jet bottles and then have to worry about making it to this town?”
“These retractable engines are electric and totally silent.” Wiley explained. “Battery power for these aircraft is the one area I had to scrimp on. Batteries are heavy and I couldn’t afford to put on any more weight by using longer lasting batteries.”
“But if we weren’t going to make this landing spot, we would have used them, right?” Jake asked.
Wiley said nothing.
“Right?”
“No, Jake.” Wiley said. “The use of these before takeoff from here was never an option. We either made it on the JATO bottles or we didn’t. Their use is mission critical and only to be used strictly for takeoff and enroute to our rendezvous point.”
“So you would have let us crash land…at night, in this God forsaken part of the world?”
“If we couldn’t make this spot, then yes Jake, I would have force landed away from our destination.”
Jake followed Wiley to Kaplan’s glider. Again, Wiley reached into the cockpit and flipped a switch. The retractable motor and propeller popped loose but failed to extend.
“Not good.” Wiley said.
“What is it?” Jake asked. “Why didn’t the motor come up?”
“Apparently Mr. Kaplan’s landing has jammed the mechanism.” Wiley grabbed his tool bag. “We’ll have to pry it loose. If we can’t get this to retract, it will critically reduce the aircraft’s gliding distance.”
“Then what?” Jake asked.
“Then we won’t make our rendezvous point.” Wiley said. “We’ll have to land before our destination and hoof it out. But that isn’t our biggest obstacle.”
“How could it get any worse?”
“We might lose our cover of darkness.”
CHAPTER 30
J
AKE CHECKED HIS watch for the fourth time in ten minutes, 3:59 a.m. local time. Wiley had been working on the retractable electric motor mechanism for twenty minutes. They were getting further and further behind schedule. According to Wiley’s initial timeframe, they should be entering Hajjah Palace at this very moment, but the old man refused to split the team up and send him ahead to start setting up the RTI.
Kaplan had been helping Wiley with the glider, offering an apology every few minutes. Jake could see Wiley’s frustration. The man was used to success. His missions ran smooth because of his keen insight and attention to detail. Wiley worked at a feverish pace wiping the sweat from his forehead. Jake noticed even the plunging temperatures of the cold night air wasn’t enough to calm Wiley’s exterior. For the first time, he noticed Wiley’s cool demeanor starting to deteriorate.
“There.” Wiley said. “It’s the best I can do.”
“The best you can do?” Kaplan asked. “Does that mean it’s fixed?”
“It’ll have to do. The motor is up and locked into position and functioning. You’ll have power for takeoff and climb out. The arm won’t fully retract so there will be a drag issue to contend with later. The mechanism will travel about halfway provided you don’t drain the battery. So try not to run it dry before we get to altitude.” Wiley patted the tail of the glider. “You wrecked it. You fly it out.”
“I’ll make it work, sir.” Kaplan tried to sound confident.
“You two gear up. Grab the equipment bags. Baraka and I will get a head start,” Wiley said. “We’re running out of time so we need to hustle.”
Jake stared at the fading lights of the Palace as a blanket of fog settled onto the mountaintop, they could use the reduced visibility to their advantage, he thought. Three men wearing backpacks followed Baraka through the unlit streets of the mountaintop village of Hajjah. Stealth was important, as was silence. They were lucky that Kaplan’s glider mishap didn’t disturb any of the village’s residents. Looking up, the Palace entrance was only six hundred feet from the landing site. Almost three hundred feet of that was vertical which meant climbing several tiers of switchback roads. A much longer hike.
Jake glanced at his watch as they approached the Palace.
Another twenty minutes gone.
He was winded and breathing heavy. He could hear Kaplan doing the same. Wiley and the woman didn’t seem fazed by the uphill trek or the thin atmosphere.
By the time they reached the stone wall surrounding the Palace, the fog had reduced the visibility to less than fifty feet. Glancing down from the hilltop, the landing site and the gliders were no longer visible.
“Jake, grab the RTI bag and let’s set it up.” Wiley whispered.
“On it.” Jake replied.
“RTI?” Kaplan said to Jake. “What the hell’s he talking about?”
“Radio tomographic imaging. After I set up the nodes…” Jake held up four small knobby balls. “…Radio transceivers, we’ll be able to see, identify and track everything in the Palace.”
“That’s impossible.” Kaplan said.
“You Army boys don’t know much.” Jake said. “I used the system at Wiley’s lab in Belgium. It works. And it’s cool.”
“Is there anything the old man can’t do?” Kaplan asked.
Jake smiled. “I don’t think so.”
“I can’t bring someone back to life after they’ve been shot for talking too loud.” Wiley interrupted. “Your voices carry. Now shut up and get to work. Jake, go place the nodes around the palace. Quietly.”
Wiley turned to Kaplan. “Stay here. I’ll show you how this works as the nodes come online.”
† † †
Kaplan watched as Wiley fired up the mini-computer monitor and activated a program icon he’d never seen before. The dark screen showed a small bar graph and the words
“SEARCHING FOR NODES.”
“Now pay attention.” Wiley said. “As Jake positions each node, the bar graph will give us signal strength.”
Kaplan watched as four bars relayed signal strength to Wiley’s computer terminal. Then the words
“BUILDING CARTOGRAPHY”
appeared.
“What’s it doing now?” Kaplan asked.
“It sends radio waves throughout the Palace and gathers data. This takes about two minutes then it will build a 3D image of the interior of the Palace.” Wiley pointed to another small icon in the upper right hand corner of the monitor. “After it builds the architectural database, I’ll tell it to image life forms. Then we’ll locate and tag everyone in the Palace. If anything moves that isn’t a life form then the computer will adjust and annotate.”
“How does something that’s not alive move?” Kaplan said.
“Think about it, Gregg.” Wiley said. “Anything inanimate that isn’t moving when the database is built will show up as fixed…a permanent part of the structure, like a desk or a box. But say some one moves the box. The computer will compensate and tag it by changing the box’s color denoting it as movable.”
“And you invented all this?” Kaplan asked.
“No.” Wiley said. “Just substantially improved it.”
Baraka stepped over and pointed to the monitor. “Is Hajjah Palace. I have been there before.”
“That’s good.” Wiley said. “Because when we locate Ms Hunt, you’ll have to lead them to her.”
Wiley clicked the
“LIFE FORM”
icon. The words
“THERMAL SCAN IN PROGRESS”
popped up in the center of the screen.
Kaplan studied the monitor.
“THERMAL SCAN COMPLETE.”
“IMAGING LIFE FORMS.”
Kaplan watched as the computer populated the 3D image with depictions of every living body in the Palace. “Now what?”
“Now comes the hard part.” Wiley said. “We have to figure out which one of these is Ms Hunt, tag her as friendly and then tag the rest as unfriendly.”
Jake returned with the empty RTI bag. “I see you’ve already imaged.”
“Looking at this,” Wiley said. “We have six life forms. The two outside we know are sentries. Which leaves three unfriendly and one friendly inside. So who is who?”
“I help.” Baraka pointed to the ground floor on the monitor. “No place here for hostage. All open space. Like museum. Two on bottom are guards. They have guns.”
“Then I’ll tag these as unfriendly as well as the sentries out front.” Wiley clicked and each life form turned red and was designated with a number. “Which means one of these two is Ms Hunt.”
“Well that’s easy then.” Jake said. “One image is in a hallway here.” Jake pointed to an image on the second floor. “The other is inside a room. That has to be Isabella. They wouldn’t leave her in the hallway.”
Wiley tagged the other life forms, one red, and the other green. “Now when you enter the compound.” He pointed at Kaplan and then to Jake. “You go first and Jake, you go second. I have to tag you as well so I don’t turn you the wrong way. Baraka will already be in the compound distracting the sentries and I’ll have tagged her by the time you two enter.”
Jake checked his weapons. “Anything else?”
“You two keep this in mind,” Wiley said. “If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you, this mission will fail.”
CHAPTER 31
T
HE DRIVE SOUTHBOUND on Interstate 85 from Atlanta to Newnan didn’t take Ian Collins as long as he’d anticipated. Atlanta airport traffic was light and he’d made good time on the interstate, reaching Newnan ahead of schedule.
Collins took the Col. Joe M. Jackson Medal of Honor Highway exit and pulled into the drive-thru at Arby’s. After paying for his food, he drove east then turned south on Shenandoah Boulevard. A few minutes later Collins turned into the parking lot of the Heatherwood Baptist Church. The parking lot was empty so Collins pulled behind the church and backed his rental car into a corner spot near a tree line.
At this hour there was still a stream of traffic on Shenandoah Blvd. and Lower Fayetteville Road. Too many cars to make the quarter-mile walk to the mansion without running the risk of being noticed. He needed to make sure he wasn’t seen by anyone. No one could have any recollection of a pedestrian in the area late at night.
That
might raise suspicion and, for now, this needed to be considered an accident.
So he waited.
He sat in the dark car, ate his Arby’s sandwich, and waited.
Waited for the traffic to wane and for the elderly occupants of the mansion to settle in for the night. For them to start their nightly routine and drink the sleeping agent that would render them unconscious.
Then they would sleep.
Until they died.
† † †
Jake crouched behind a boulder and signaled to Kaplan that Baraka was approaching the two sentries. He motioned for Kaplan to move across the walkway for a better vantage point. A clear line of sight was needed to eliminate the two guards.
Before Jake and Kaplan advanced toward the Hajjah Palace, Wiley handed them each a tranquilizer pistol equipped with its own version of a sound suppressor. Wiley’s tranquilizer gun was virtually silent, even quieter than a silenced handgun. No one in the village would be alerted to their presence.
Baraka’s task was to distract the sentries and lure their attention away from the path leading to the Palace so Jake and Kaplan could take their shots and move to the next stage of the mission.
“All right men, get ready.” Wiley’s voice crackled in Jake’s headset. “Baraka is almost there.”
Jake didn’t know what distraction Baraka would use only that she said she could handle her assignment. From his vantage point, he could see both guards. One much shorter than the other, both dressed in uniform attire.
Jake watched the woman move toward the palace, stop, and pull something from the shrubs next to the walkway. A small bag. Without hesitation, she held the bag in front of her and continued toward the palace.
As she approached the entrance, one of the guards, the taller of the two, raised his hand signaling her to stop. The woman ignored him and kept walking toward the entrance. The short guard raised his rifle. Jake felt his stomach tighten. Then she spoke and the man lowered his rifle.
Jake signaled Kaplan and they both took careful aim at their designated targets.
As the woman approached the taller man, he slapped her with the back of his hand. She fell to her knees.
Wiley’s voice in the headset, “Now.”
Jake and Kaplan fired at the same time striking their targets in the neck with the darts. Jake watched both men grab their necks and fall to the rocky ground. The sedative worked fast rendering its victims unconscious.
“Well done.” Wiley’s voice again.
The darts could be removed after fifteen seconds but had to remain attached for at least that length of time. Wiley told Jake the dose he used guaranteed unconsciousness for at least six hours, depending, of course, on the size of the person. Jake and Kaplan’s only instruction was to make sure their shots were on target.
“You hit them and my formula will take care of the rest.”
Wiley had said.
As instructed, Jake followed Kaplan into the compound where he moved the unconscious men into sitting positions on either side of the oversized double doors of the palace. Jake pulled the darts from the men’s necks, placed a plastic cap over the needle and put them in his coat pocket.