Close to a hundred and thirty nautical miles from where they’d crossed the Russian coast, Van Horn banked the small seaplane into a gentle left turn, curving off the generally northwest course they’d been following for the past couple of hours. Flynn felt a tight smile crease his face and just as quickly disappear. “Generally northwest” was an inadequate way to describe what had, in reality, been another twisting, winding, hop-scotching flight over and between ridges and hills, down into valleys, and just above the treetops of dense, moonlit forests. Along the way, he’d only caught occasional glimpses of the lights of small villages or isolated cabins. Russia’s Far East was, by and large, very thinly populated.

  They were approaching the mile-wide Amur River. Most of the region’s people and industries clustered along its banks. So far, they’d successfully evaded Russia’s air surveillance and air defense radars. But the Amur Valley was the place where they were most in danger of being spotted visually. Any truck driver or river barge captain observing two unidentified aircraft, one of them an unmanned drone, winging low across the water here—especially this late at night—would almost certainly report his sighting to the authorities. And that could trigger a dangerous cascade of responses by Russia’s air defense network, ranging up to scrambling a Beriev A-50 AWACS airborne radar plane and its accompanying fighters. Being hunted from the sky would be fatal. Terrain masking and low-altitude flight were ineffective tactics against airborne radars capable of sorting out moving targets from the rest of the ground clutter.

  Van Horn took them low behind a range of wooded hills that ran roughly parallel to the Amur at this point. She contacted the Predator. “You still with me, Kingfisher?”

  “On you like glue, Seabird,” McCulloch assured her. There was nonetheless a note of strain in the other pilot’s voice. Even with the IR beacon attached to the SeaMax M-22’s tail as a guide, the task of remotely flying her Predator so low through this rough, hilly country was daunting. Her flight control inputs to the UAV were relayed through a satellite link, so there was always a short delay—usually much less than a second—before the Predator responded to her commands. That kind of delay didn’t sound like much, but it meant the drone would fly more than a hundred feet between the time she commanded a maneuver and the time it finally responded. A lag like that wasn’t critical when flying straight and level at high altitude. But jinking through tight terrain, it meant McCulloch needed to constantly think ahead of her next sudden turn or change of altitude—anticipating, instead of simply reacting. Doing that was possible for a sufficiently trained and skilled pilot, but it was also inherently exhausting.

  Van Horn pulled back gently on her stick, slightly pitching the plane’s nose up to begin her slow climb. Flynn looked out the right side of the bubble canopy. They’d been zooming near the base of the hills they were using as cover against visual and radar detection. “And . . . here we go,” she murmured, raising M-22’s nose again, only a couple of degrees. They ascended another fifty feet, climbing just high enough to pop above the top of the hill.

  Immediately, the whole panorama of the Amur River Valley opened out before Flynn’s eyes. He scanned the ground swiftly but methodically—first looking for signs of movement on the nearby roads and the closest stretch of the river, and then systematically widening his search sector by sector, all the way to the far edges of his vision. “We’re clear,” he reported after a moment. “I don’t see any moving vehicles on the highway or the local roads. And there’s no river traffic anywhere in sight.”

  Van Horn nodded. It was exactly as they’d hoped. It was already well past midnight, local time, and they were far enough away from the larger riverside cities and towns to significantly reduce the odds of encountering any insomniac long-haulers or barge crews. But low odds weren’t the same thing as a guarantee, so scouting first before committing had been the right move. “We’re good, Kingfisher,” she relayed to McCulloch, hunched over her terminal and flight controls hundreds of miles away. “Executing my turn . . . now.”

  She rolled the SeaMax into a tight turn back to the northwest, leveled out, and dropped its nose to plunge down the other side of the hill, practically shaving the tops of the trees carpeting its far slope. When the ground flattened out, she took them right down onto the deck and flew straight toward the wide black ribbon of the Amur.

  As always, flying so close to the ground intensified the impression of speed for Flynn. He knew they were only traveling at around eighty knots—not that much faster than you could drive a car on some Texas backcountry roads—but this low, it still felt more like they were hitting Mach Three. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, their little seaplane flashed across a two-lane highway and zoomed out over the water.

  He tensed. They were completely exposed out here on this broad, flat river, with higher ground rising on each side of the valley. All it would take was for one Russian to be looking out onto the Amur at the wrong time from the wrong place, and they’d be completely hosed. Suddenly he knew how a cockroach skittering across a kitchen floor must feel when the light suddenly snapped on.

  Forty seconds later, they reached the other side of the river and came back over the land. Even steeper and higher ridges and forested heights rose ahead of them. Van Horn banked slightly north, aiming for a narrow gap in this jagged chain of hills. Flynn felt his stomach clench in anticipation of yet another breakneck roller-coaster ride. Which was worse, he wondered? A wild run through rough country? Or that horrible feeling of total vulnerability he’d just experienced?

  If he was being honest, he’d have to admit that neither of those was his real problem. On a daring raid into Cuba the year before, his Quartet Directorate team had flown some highly experimental, turbo-jet-powered hoverbikes. During the mission, he’d discovered that he enjoyed high-speed, low-altitude flying—at least if he was at the controls. But those hoverbikes didn’t have anywhere close to the range and payload needed for tonight’s mission, and he couldn’t fly the SeaMax safely to their planned destination.

  His problem, Flynn knew, was not being in charge of his own fate. And that sucked. Both emotionally and intellectually, he was more than willing to trust Laura Van Horn with his life. She was the best pilot and had the steadiest nerves of anyone he’d ever met. Unfortunately, knowing that didn’t help much in combating his conflicting emotions. At his core, he craved responsibility and control and hated dependence. He always wanted to hold the reins. And for better or worse, Flynn realized, this aspect of his personality wasn’t ever likely to change. Then again, he recognized, neither was the reality that he couldn’t fly this aircraft. And Van Horn could. It was a zero-sum equation with only one correct answer.

  So, for the time being, he’d have to toughen up, endure the ride, and do his best not to jostle her elbow. Flynn tightened his grip on the edge of his seat. And just in time, because she suddenly moved the stick hard over and worked her feet on the rudder pedals—rolling them into another sharp turn to follow the natural trace of the valley. As if Van Horn could read his racing thoughts, he noticed one side of her mouth curl into a tiny half-smile. “Hang tight, Nick,” she said kindly. “Another ninety minutes or so should see us through the worst of this.”

  “I’m fine. It’s all good,” he replied, a bit too enthusiastically.

  Her smile widened. “You know, you’re a really bad liar sometimes.”

  There was no right response to that assertion, so he opted for a dignified silence . . . which lasted only until she abruptly threw the M-22 into another tight bank to avoid a sharp-edged spur of rock that suddenly loomed up around the next bend. “Oh, shit,” he said tightly as the world seemed to spin around their canopy.

  Van Horn’s grin grew even wider, which hardly seemed either possible or fair. But, in the end, he had to admit that she was as good as her word. About an hour and a half later and roughly a hundred nautical miles beyond the Amur, they broke past the high country and flew out across a wide plain. Small streams curlicued in intricate, ever-winding patterns through grassland and small groves of scrub trees and brush.

  A large, roughly kidney-shaped, lake appeared ahead of them. A quick glance at the GPS-linked map on their right multifunction display confirmed it was Lake Chukchagir, deep in the heart of Russia’s Oldjikan State Nature Preserve. “Kingfisher, I have our landing zone in sight,” Van Horn radioed.

  “Copy that, Seabird,” McCulloch replied. “What’s your fuel state?”

  Van Horn checked a small indicator on her left-hand display. “We’ll be flying on fumes in about fifteen minutes.” She glanced at Flynn. “Good thing we’ll be landing in ten, right?”

  He nodded. Although the SeaMax M-22 was rated for a range of around five hundred and fifty nautical miles without reserves, terrain-following flight burned significantly more gas. When planning this mission, they’d known they would be pushing right up against the edge of the plane’s fuel capacity, with almost no margin left over for errors in navigation and absolutely none for any attempt to abort and return to the Nikkō Maru.

  Van Horn banked into a gentle right turn, bringing them around low over the lake. She made a pass, closely studying the surface through her night vision goggles. Flynn did the same on his side of the cockpit. “Looks doable,” she commented. “No rocks. No obvious shallows or sand bars.”

  “Same here,” he reported.

  She circled back the way they’d come and lined up again on the lake, flying parallel to its wooded southern shore. She nosed over slightly, lowered the aircraft’s wing flaps to generate more lift, and simultaneously reduced her throttle setting. Behind them, the Predator broke away and began slowly orbiting over the lake at two hundred feet.

  Shedding airspeed, the M-22 seaplane glided down out of the sky. A few feet off the water, Van Horn pulled the stick back a scooch to bring its nose mostly level. Then she cut her throttle a little more. They settled smoothly onto the surface with only a minor jolt. Small plumes of foam and spray splashed out from under the aircraft’s streamlined hull and wing floats, dwindling as its speed through the water fell off. Decisively, she pulled her throttle all the way back and cut the engine. The propeller slowed and stopped turning, leaving them coasting across the lake, gradually losing way. A retractable water rudder allowed her to steer until the aircraft finally drifted to a complete stop—and ended up rocking gently about fifty yards offshore.

  Flynn raised the bubble canopy. They sat together silently—watching and listening intently for even the slightest indication that their landing had drawn any unwanted attention. But nothing stirred in the darkness beyond the water’s edge. The only sound nearby by was the droning noise of the Predator’s turboprop engine as it circled low overhead.

  “Shall we?” Flynn said at last, gesturing toward the shore.

  Van Horn nodded. She used their low-powered radio one last time. “Kingfisher, this is Seabird. We’re ready to go ashore. The winds here are extremely light, with only occasional gusts from the north-northeast at less than three knots. You can make your drop whenever you’re ready.”

  “Roger that, Seabird,” McCulloch responded. Overhead, the Predator under her command broke out of its slow orbit and climbed away to the north until it reached an altitude of five hundred feet. Then it circled around to fly back toward the lake’s southern shore. “Dropping now.”

  The cargo container slung under the UAV’s long, thin fuselage broke free and plummeted toward the ground. Its parachute snapped open a second later, billowing wide to slow the container’s plunge dramatically. Sliding downwind, it thudded into soft ground about a hundred yards from the water’s edge. The parachute’s canopy fluttered briefly in the ground breeze and then collapsed.

  “Good drop, Kingfisher,” Van Horn said. “Thanks for your help. And good luck on the way out.”

  “You too, Seabird,” McCulloch answered. “Safe travels. Kingfisher out.” Her mission accomplished, she turned the Predator drone to the southeast and flew away, shedding altitude as she went. Assisted by a computer-generated map created during their inbound flight, McCulloch was confident she could safely retrace their low-altitude, radar-evading route. And her UAV should have just enough fuel remaining to make it back out over the Tartar Strait before self-destructing.

  As soon as the drone disappeared from view, Flynn and Van Horn got busy. It took them a couple of minutes to drag a compact raft out of the cockpit’s narrow cargo space behind their seats and inflate it using a CO² cartridge. Then Flynn held the raft steady while Van Horn climbed aboard with their two small travel cases. She repaid the favor, using one of the wing struts to hold them in place, while he swung himself over the side of the cockpit.

  Before they left, Flynn leaned back in and carefully activated the timers on a pair of small charges fixed to the SeaMax’s cockpit floor. Their lights blinked green. Not wasting any more time, he dropped lightly back into the little raft and pushed away from the floating seaplane.

  With a mischievous grin, Van Horn handed him a pair of collapsible plastic oars belonging to the inflatable. “You were a Boy Scout, right? You must know how to use these things.”

  “And you don’t?”

  She shrugged, still smiling. “Knowing how is not the same thing as doing. Besides, I see this as a fair division of labor. I got us here,” she indicated the lake. “So you get us there,” she said, pointing toward the shoreline.

  “Fair enough,” Flynn agreed with a quiet laugh. He took the oars and swiftly rowed them ashore where they grounded on a gravel and sand beach. Not far inland, reeds and tall grasses swayed in the light breeze. They scrambled into the shallows and then pulled the raft up and out of the water.

  Out on the lake, a sudden, muffled thummp-thummp signaled the detonation of their scuttling charges. With the bottom of its hull blown wide open, the SeaMax M-22 settled rapidly and sank out of sight in a white bubbling froth of foam. Flynn and Van Horn watched it go. Although Lake Chukchagir was only twenty feet deep at that point, its waters were murky, and the bottom was both muddy and choked with weeds. Their now-wrecked aircraft should lie safely hidden in its shallow depths for several years and maybe even longer.

  When the lake’s surface grew still again, Van Horn sighed. “Scratch one more perfectly good airplane. I hope I don’t end up making a habit of this.”

  “I think it only counts as a loss if you wreck it while flying,” Flynn said consolingly.

  “What was that then?”

  “Necessary expenditure of mission items in a previously approved manner,” he said with a straight face.

  Van Horn stared at him. “Did you just make that up on your own?”

  Flynn shook his head. “I had a couple of buddies in ROTC who wound up in logistics. They taught me some of the lingo.”

  “Be careful, Nick,” she warned. “That’s some serious dark side of the Force shit right there. And once you go too far down that path, you can never return to the light side.”

  “Which is―” he prompted.

  Van Horn shrugged. “Flying, shooting missiles, blowing things up, killing bad guys. You know, the good stuff.”

  “Point taken,” Flynn said. He motioned toward the nearby clump of reeds and tall grasses where the Predator’s parachuted container had come down. “Speaking of which, we should get moving. We’ve got a train to catch, remember?”

  She nodded. Together, carrying the small inflatable raft, they sloshed across the soft, almost swampy ground.

  The cargo container was about eight feet long, four feet wide, and four feet high. It was canted slightly, with one end partially dug into the mud. It took them only a short time to reel in the parachute and bundle it up into a compact mass of fabric. Scraping away the mud took only a bit longer.

  Flynn knelt and undid the straps holding the container shut. Van Horn helped him push it open. Under a layer of mesh netting, more straps secured a Russian-made Tula TMZ 5.951 off-road motorcycle in place. He nodded approvingly. Long out of production, Tula bikes were favorites among Russian hunters and outdoor enthusiasts—primarily due to their ruggedness and reliability. It was precisely the kind of machine they needed to traverse this wilderness area, and best of all, it wouldn’t attract any unwelcome attention.

  Working as a team, he and Van Horn unstrapped the motorcycle and then muscled the heavy machine up and out onto the ground. The now-deflated raft, oars, and bundled-up parachute took its place. More work camouflaged the airdropped cargo container itself with cut grasses and reeds. When they were done, Flynn eyed their handiwork critically. Sinking the case in the lake would have been better, but it was too heavy to drag all the way out into deep enough water, especially across muddy ground. Plus, hauling it through the reeds would undoubtedly have left traces that would be visible from the air. So, while this wasn’t a perfect job of concealment, it was their best option right now. After all, this was a nature preserve, off-limits to almost everybody, except a few Russian biologists and a handful of forest rangers. The odds of anyone stumbling across the container anytime soon should be somewhere between slim and none. He glanced around at the empty, silent landscape surrounding them and shrugged. As it was, he’d put his money on none.

  Quickly now, they washed off in the lake and changed their clothes. Then Flynn strapped their bags to the motorcycle’s rear, swung his leg over, and hit the ignition. Its single cylinder, 12.5 horsepower engine coughed to life. Van Horn hopped on behind him.

  Slowly, using his night vision gear to help find a path through the dark woods lining the lake, Flynn drove south, picking his way around trees and thickets of brush with care. According to the maps and satellite photos they’d studied, they were about two miles from an old logging track that would eventually lead into the region’s sparse road network.

  komsomolsk-on-amur railway station

  the next night

  Carrying their small bags, Flynn and Van Horn strolled arm-in-arm through the open doors of the bright pink-and-white stucco railway station and onto the platform. A long passenger train of silver and red cars stood there, obviously ready to depart.