Luke did the math in his head. The Little Bird topped out at about 175 miles per hour, but would burn fuel like crazy at that speed.

“What’s it like up there?”

There was chatter behind Swann. Trudy Wellington was saying something. Suddenly she was on the radio.

“Luke, it’s Trudy.”

Luke smiled and shook his head. “Yes. I know that.”

“The Sinjar Mountains are steep and rugged, difficult to access. There’s a patchwork of interests there. Kurdish militias control much of the region, but some areas of the mountains are wild, and up for grabs. The most inaccessible parts are thought to be hiding spots for Sunni terrorists and militias. There are also minority groups living up that way, like the Yazidis, who try to stay out of all this.”

A new shriek of static interrupted her voice.

“In a nutshell, I’d say those mountains are cold, hard, and heavily armed.”

Luke looked at Ed Newsam. Ed shrugged.

“You know what to do,” Ed said.

Luke undid his straps and jumped up. He poked his head into the cockpit again.

“We need to go north,” he said. “Sinjar Mountains.”

“North?” Rachel said. She looked at the indicators in front of her. “Sorry, Stone. We don’t have that kind of flying time left. We have to go back to base to refuel. We can’t go to the Sinjar Mountains and expect to make it back. We’ll be just about out of fuel by the time we get there.”

Luke shook his head. “Guys, I’m sorry. We’ve got new orders. We have to go north. We’ll find fuel along the way. Or we won’t. If we have to, we’ll set this bird down and walk.”

Jacob was uncharacteristically concerned. “This is untamed country,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of friends out here.”

“I guess we’ll have to make new friends.”

Luke went back to his radio.

“Trudy, I need you to talk to Big Daddy and have him pull as many people as he can into this. This could be a breakthrough, but it’s going to take us about forty-five minutes to get up there. We’re going to have to ditch this chopper at some point. I’m sure Big Daddy could have a drone over those mountains twenty minutes from now. We could have a drop team jump in from a plane, if need be. If they start scrambling now, they can get there before us.”

“There’s a little bit of a problem here, Luke.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “There’s always a problem. Which problem is this?”