Nighthawk

28

The mountain road to La Jalca had been blocked. The bridge was gone; its twisted metal frame now lay at the bottom of the canyon while the road itself was covered with a swath of gravel, boulders and rock ten feet deep — remnants of the avalanche unleashed by the errant Chinese missile.

The man who’d fired that missile was gone as well, but Daiyu and Jian had escaped by driving back into the shelter of the tunnel and staying put until the rumbling ceased. They sat in darkness until the choking dust began to settle and a small gap of light appeared near the top of the tunnel.

“We should go back,” Jian suggested. “We have a helicopter waiting in Cajamarca. We should make contact with command, secure reinforcements and fly to the ruins. Take them from the sky.”

Daiyu shook her head. “We go forward,” she insisted. “Not back. If we keep up a good pace, we can reach La Jalca by midnight. Take them in their sleep.”

“We’re at a disadvantage now,” he argued. “The kill team is gone. The Americans know we’re following them.”

“If anything, they think we’re dead,” she replied. “That gives us the advantage. And remember, our mission is to prevent the Americans from finding the Nighthawk at all costs. Driving all the way back to Cajamarca, reaching out to General Zhang and waiting for more support, will take far too long. We must go forward. You start clearing a way through and I’ll gather the weapons and supplies.”

Jian stared at her for a moment and then did as ordered. He stepped from the car, climbed onto the rubble pile and began digging with his bare hands. The loose gravel was easy to move and the small boulders and rocks were no match for his great strength. He tossed them aside with ease and before long he’d dug enough of a channel for them to squirm through.

He emerged into the fresh air, covered from head to toe in dust. Daiyu came out behind him, handed him a backpack and pulled on one of her own. As she scanned the slope for a safe route to take, Jian picked his way to the edge of the cliff, looking for the other car.

“Don’t bother,” she called out. “They’re gone.”

He knew that. He looked anyway. It was a long drop. There was no sign of the car at the bottom, just a sloping pile of rock that had buried it.

As Jian stared into the abyss, Daiyu looked upward. A trick of the inner ear, caused by tilting the head backward, exaggerated the grade of the hill. Even knowing that, she was impressed that the Americans had managed to climb it without flipping their vehicle or rolling back down the hill. She’d underestimated them, something she would not do again.

She turned to Jian. “Ready?”

He nodded.

She pointed to a trail on the right. “This way looks to have better traction. Follow me.”

The climb was more perilous on foot than in a vehicle. Thorny bushes and high-mountain cacti clawed at them mercilessly. Loose rocks shifted with each step, threatening to turn their ankles and send them sliding back toward the road below, while the air at nearly ten thousand feet was thin enough to leave them light-headed. By the time they reached the roadway above, they were scratched, bleeding and breathing hard.

Daiyu stood with her hands on her hips. Though the temperature was cool, she was sweating in the sun.

“Rest here for a minute,” she said, taking a drink of the water and handing the bottle to Jian. “I’m going to scout ahead.”

While Jian drank, Daiyu walked along the road. It continued upward and curved to the left. Beyond that, it flattened out. They were near the top. The plateau lay ahead of them.

As she waited for Jian to catch up, she caught the sound of an engine in the distance. Squinting against the glare of the afternoon sun, she spied a small box truck coming toward them. It was old and worn, a workhorse that showed the wear and tear of too many runs in the mountains. Dented in places, it listed to one side, trailing oil smoke from its exhaust pipe. Still, it would be far better than walking the rest of the way.

She waved it down.

With her long hair set in a ponytail and a backpack over her shoulders, she looked like any other hiker on a trail.

The truck stopped beside her and the passenger window rolled down. A man with rough black hair and a dark face looked out at her. He had small, dark eyes. A similar man was at the wheel. Both were more native than European.

“Are you all right?” the passenger asked in Spanish.

“I need some help,” she replied, also in Spanish. “The bridge is out. It collapsed. There must have been an earthquake because there was a rockslide as well.”

The men looked over the dashboard. Down the slope, they saw the rubble covering the road and the empty span where the bridge should have been. What they didn’t see was Daiyu pulling a Chinese-made pistol from her jacket.

She fired three shots before either of them reacted. All three hit the passenger.

She yanked the door open and pulled him out. He landed dead at her feet as the driver threw his hands up.

“Get out,” she ordered.

He fumbled for the door handle and unlatched it, falling from the truck in his haste. It wasn’t fast enough. Daiyu shot him, a single bullet to the head that killed him instantly.

By the time Jian reached her, she’d dragged both dead men to the edge of the bank and shoved them over. They tumbled a short distance and then slid limply down the slope until catching on separate bushes halfway to the bottom.

“You didn’t have to kill them,” Jian said. “They could have been useful. They might have had information.”

She put the pistol away. “Bringing them along would be a distraction. And by leaving them here, we’d risk the chance of someone spotting them and setting them free.”

She climbed behind the wheel as Jian took the passenger’s seat. After a precarious three-point turn, she got the truck moving back toward La Jalca.

The poor truck never topped twenty miles an hour going uphill, but once they were out on the flat top of the plateau, it picked up speed until they were traveling close to forty.

Daiyu checked the time. Instead of reaching La Jalca at midnight, they’d be there by dusk. They might just catch the Americans after all.