Nighthawk (NUMA Files 14)

He led them to a cradle where two cameras were supported and attached to the power station via cables.

“I picked up this one,” he said, grabbing it. “Turned it on and waited. As it powered up, I happened to see a flicker of light in the sky. Once I realized it wasn’t a star, I brought the camera up and filmed it.”

He held the camera up to his face, showing them how he’d done it and pretending to track the fiery target across the sky. “It went from north to south,” he said, tracing the arc with his fingers. “It vanished behind those peaks.”

“Did you hear anything?” Emma asked.

“Like what? An explosion?”

“Anything at all,” Emma said. “Explosion, popping, the sound of jet engines.”

“Nothing,” Urco said. “You can hear the audio on the recording. Just me huffing and puffing.”

Kurt studied the sky, black and punctured with stars. A slight glow from the new moon gave them just enough light to see the outline of the mountains. “Let’s do it.”

She placed her laptop computer on a nearby table and began tapping away. “Can you set up the tripod for me?”

Kurt unfolded the legs of the aluminum tripod. “Where exactly were you standing?” he asked Urco.

“Right about here,” Urco said, moving several feet to his right.

Kurt extended the legs of the tripod, attached the camera to the central mount and raised it up until it was resting at the same level as Urco’s eyes. That done, he connected an HDMI cable from Emma’s computer to the camera and switched it on. “All yours.”

Emma nodded and continued to tap away at the keyboard. Kurt slid behind her and watched as she replayed the original video, pausing it several times. When it finished, she ran it all the way through once again.

“We need an exact distance from here to the peak.” She handed Kurt a laser range finder.

Kurt turned it on and pointed it at the jagged ridge until he got a reading. “Seven hundred and forty-two feet.”

She typed it in and two outlines appeared on the screen, one displaying the peaks as they appeared through the NU

MA camera and the second displaying the peaks from the video Urco had taken.

At Emma’s command, the camera moved left and right and then back to the left. She tapped the up arrow and the camera tilted just a bit. The computer took it from there and fine-tuned the image until the two outlines merged exactly. “That’s it.”

At the touch of a button, Emma received the heading of what they assumed to be the Nighthawk.

“What about speed and altitude?” Kurt asked.

“For that, we’ll need to match this with the new descent profile your friend Hiram is working up.”

Emma tried to initiate a satellite linkup, but it failed.

“It’s the mountains,” Urco said. “You’ll have to go up top.”

“You mean, on those ropes?”

“It’s the only way to get a signal,” Urco explained. “How do you feel about a night ascent?”

She sighed. “Worse than I did about a daytime’s.”

Hidden in the dark among the same type of scrub trees that had scratched their exposed skin, Daiyu watched Kurt through a spotting scope. He was talking with the woman and the bearded man. She focused on his lips, trying to make out what he was saying.

“What are they doing?” Jian asked.

“They’re calculating something,” she said. “They’re using the video we were told about to get a bearing on the Nighthawk.”

“We should be doing that,” Jian suggested.