In addition to the other stealth components, this CIA Quiet Loach also appeared to be covered with a rubberized, radar-absorbing skin. Even so, the pilots were flying NOE — nap of the earth — winding their way through valleys, mere feet above the ground. They followed rivers when they could, grassland or gravel, and rose just above the trees when they had to, always maintaining their speed. Several times, Chavez felt freezing spray from groundwater sting his skin or thought he might drag his boots on a treetop — but the pilots kept him just out of reach. He tried to turn and check on his friends, to see how Lisanne was holding up, but bitter, hurricane-force winds forced him to keep his head down, buried in the parka. Caught up in the urgency of an immediate departure, he’d made the rookie mistake of forgetting to pull the zipper up as far as it would go before takeoff. Buffeted by the wind, the metal button on his collar began to slap him repeatedly in the ear — taking him back to the first time he’d flown on one of these birds, a loose strap on his ruck slapping him silly in the wind. He thought of his son and what that kid had in store for him — and for some reason, it made him feel very old.
As the crow flies, the Little Bird’s point of departure at Kanas Lake was just over thirty miles from the Mongolian border. The pilots cheated northeast to stay below radar. It took them a mile out of the way through a pass that got them over the first line of snowcapped Altay peaks. At this point, the Mongolian border was only ten miles away. Instead of continuing east, the pilots took the little chopper south into a long valley, adding almost twenty miles to their trip, but avoiding a suspected radar site at the triple frontier where the borders of China, Russia, and Mongolia came together.
Twenty-five minutes after liftoff, the copilot reached down to where Chavez sat on the platform less than a foot away, and gave him a thumbs-up, signaling that they were out of Chinese airspace. Chavez breathed a sigh of relief, slumping against his harness. The mountains quickly gave way to steppe and the ground beneath was generally treeless and rolling. It was still bitter cold outside the chopper, but the clouds had cleared once they’d passed through the mountains, revealing why, once the sun came up, Mongolia would live up to its nickname of Land of the Eternal Blue Sky. Ten minutes after that, the MH-6 turned on its landing lights. Three large trucks were parked facing one another on a deserted gravel road with their headlights forming a makeshift landing zone. They looked like they might be Deuce and a Halfs, but Chavez’s eyes teared so badly from the wind that he could hardly see.
Landing was anticlimactic, since they weren’t quite as worried about someone trying to kill them.
A Mongolian military officer and two young men Chavez assumed were with CIA air ops helped everyone off the chopper except Lisanne and Adara. Two docs from the Mongolian military climbed in with the women. She was still in and out of consciousness, but alive — for now. The docs looked incredibly grim and pounded on the pilot’s seat to get him to go.
One of the hazards of covert missions was that they often had to remain covert during rescue or medical emergencies. The circle of people who even saw the stealth helicopter was already too large and Yao was stretching the limits directing it to fly Lisanne toward the city of Khovd, a hundred and fifty miles to the east. A military ambulance was already on the road to intercept ten miles out of the city, where the two doctors would transfer the patient. A Hawker Air Ambulance would take her the remaining seven hundred miles from Khovd to Ulaanbaatar. It was a testament to how remote they truly were that absent a return to China, the nearest trauma hospital of consequence was nine hundred miles from where they now stood. Even with a cursory glance at her wounds, the surgeons were astounded that Lisanne had not already bled to death. If she did live, the odds were against her keeping the injured arm. Jack and Adara both wanted to go with her, but there was barely enough room for one with their medical equipment. Adara’s training won out, and she remained on the chopper, cradling Lisanne’s torso on her lap.
Jack, relieved of his duties with Lisanne, returned reluctantly but quickly to mission mode and helped Medina board the truck. Covered with canvas and heated with propane, the back was set up like a small war room with a folding table, chairs, and two lanterns.
“Mongolia,” Chavez said to Yao, shaking his head as they stood by the lowered tailgate, waiting for Medina and Jack to climb aboard. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the departing MH-6 Cayuse, as it was swallowed up in the night. “I thought all the Quiet Ones were destroyed or dismantled after Vietnam.”
He’d wanted to ask earlier, but there had been no time.
