The sound of the rotors swelled as the aircraft came in. Within twenty seconds it was nearly above the house. Sam heard the whine of its turbines change pitch—like the sound of a train going by—as it screamed past, maybe thirty yards west of the farmhouse, and no more than fifty feet above the field. It was heading straight for the barn.

Sam dropped to a knee and braced his binoculars on the deck rail again. In the seconds he spent trying to sight in the barn, he imagined what he would see. Without a doubt, the men there would have heard the chopper coming. Maybe they were already scrambling for whatever guns they had, if they were stupid enough to bother with that. Or maybe they would just pile into the car and try to run for it. Maybe they would be so frantic to do that, they wouldn’t have time to grab Lauren out of the locked room and take her along. Just like that, every bad possibility would disappear.

It didn’t seem like too much to wish for.

Then Sam got the binoculars locked onto the barn.

“What the hell?” he whispered.

Beside him, he heard Dani draw in a breath—she had her own binoculars lined up on the target.

In the magnified field of view, Sam could see the barn door, and the silhouettes of the men in front of it.

Standing in front of it. Calmly. They were just watching the chopper come in. One of them leaned back against the edge of the doorframe and raised a cigarette to his mouth.

“Why aren’t they panicking?” Sam asked. “They should be losing their shit, if the military is—”

He cut himself off. He drew back from the binoculars and looked at the chopper, a quarter mile from the barn, already slowing, getting ready to hover and then land.

“It’s not air support,” Sam said. “It’s their ride out of here.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“No…” Dani said softly. “No, no, this is all wrong…” She sounded like she was speaking only to herself.

Sam turned to Pierce. “Where the hell is the Army? How can they be taking this long?”

For a second Pierce didn’t answer. He stared at the distant chopper, looking as baffled as Sam felt.

Then the man’s eyes hardened, and he turned and strode toward the open French door.

“Keep watching them,” Pierce said. “I’m going to get someone on the goddamned phone.”

He disappeared into the darkness of the house, and a moment later Sam heard a phone handset rattle out of its cradle.

“It’s landing,” Dani said.

Sam turned back to face the barn. Even without looking through the binoculars, he could see the chopper clearly. The light through the barn door lit it from below, silhouetting the aircraft against the cloud of dust its rotors had kicked up.