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He let the body come closer and then said, “Flash.”

The man dropped to the ground, rotating his weapon toward the noise, but did not fire. He said, “Thunder.”

Knuckles stood up and said, “That was the most fucked-up parachute insertion I’ve ever been on. Did you see our spot? We’re miles away.”

Brett came up to him and said, “I’m going to kick Pike’s ass for this. How do you let us jump out of a plane with no drop zone, and no way to get out after the mission?”

Knuckles chuckled and said, “He’ll get us out. If there’s anything Pike believes in, it’s his family. And that’s us.”

Brett said, “So what now?”

Knuckles looked at his GPS and said, “Looks like seven klicks that way, but we’re closing in on dawn. We need to get there before first light.”

Brett looked at the terrain around them and said, “That’s going to be hard to do.”

Chapter 67

The rising sun began cresting the mountains to the east, the long shadows finally disappearing from the Syrian desert plain. Raphael struggled with the nose of the first drone while Leonardo lifted the tail section into the back of the pickup truck.

They’d positioned the launch platform in the bed of the truck before the sun hit them, then had taken a break, eating breakfast. In the small building adjacent to the drone storage area, Raphael had pulled the hood off Tariq’s head, saying, “Time to eat.”

Tariq was understandably scared, but he ate what Raphael cooked on a hot plate, scarfing down the food. He said, “What are you going to do?”

“The same thing Hezbollah wanted. Afterward, I’m going to need you to guide us out of the valley and back into Lebanon.”

“When will that be?”

Raphael looked at his watch and said, “About three hours from now.”

“What are you going to do? What crazy thing do you have planned?”

Leonardo said, “Not your concern.”

Raphael wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “Put the hood back on.”

Tariq did so, and Raphael cinched his ankles and wrists with zip ties, saying, “We have to go to work; if you try to escape, you’ll die. Understand?”

Tariq had nodded, the hood jerking up and down.

Raphael had backed the truck up to the drone shed, then he and Leonardo had manhandled one of the drones onto the rack in the bed. Once it was settled in place, Raphael said, “Put in the grid to the building here. All we want to see is if they work.”

“We’ll be wasting one of the drones.”

“We have four. Two will be plenty, and if we don’t know they work, we can’t be sure they’ll accomplish the mission.”

Leonardo jogged to the front door of the building they’d slept in, retrieved a grid from his GPS, then scrambled back into the bed, loading the grid reference into the computer of the drone, including a single waypoint to the east. If the machine worked, it would fly to the waypoint, then turn around and fly home.

Leonardo said, “It’s loaded. Should I start the motor now?”

The Samad 3 drone had a push-piston engine, with the propeller located at the back of the tail, and Leonardo wasn’t sure when to engage it. Raphael said, “Let me get the truck going, then fire it up.”

Leonardo nodded and sat in the back, scrunched by the rack next to the tail, the wings extending out over the bed of the pickup, the nose above the cab. Raphael got behind the wheel, started the truck up, and drove out of the compound. He leaned out the window and said, “I’m going to get it to thirty miles an hour. Start the engine as soon as I gain some speed. I’ll stick my hand out when to release.”

Leonardo nodded and said, “What if this doesn’t work?”

“We load another one until we figure it out. It can’t be that hard. Those savages in Yemen are blowing up Saudi Arabian oil refineries with these things.”

He pulled his head back inside the cab and bounced along the rock-strewn terrain, then entered the rutted road. He glanced back at Leonardo, got a thumbs-up, and goosed the engine. Leonardo pressed the ignition for the drone and the two-foot wooden propeller beganspinning, barely clearing the bed of the pickup in the rack and threatening to chop off Leonardo’s arm. The vehicle gained speed, the air beginning to rush over the wings, providing lift for the aircraft in the back of the truck.