by Victor Milán
"Jesus Christ," she said to the screen. "What's next, a papier-mache replica of the Statue of goddam Liberty?"
The voice that answered sounded wide awake, though she would have sworn the man she was calling was seldom in bed later than ten. "Ward? Sondra Mohn—oh, I see. You're watching it too, of course.
"That man you were telling me about, the one who used to be with Central Intelligence—" she took a deep breath, "I think we are going to have a use for him."
"—that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these Ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abol—"
Justin Serafin snapped his fingers and drew his forefinger across his throat. "Cut! Cut, goddam it! That's enough." The technician hit a button, breaking the connection that fed the news conference to America's TV and radio networks.
Serafin sighed and smoothed back his hair. "That was close. We can't have shit like that going out over the air."
"Sir! Do you think it's wise to expose yourself like that?"
Wearily, the general shook his head and waved a hand at his aide. It wasn't wise, but he didn't care if a Tadzhik sniper picked him off through the ostensibly bulletproof glass of Dushanbe airfield's control tower.
It would greatly simplify matters if one did.
Who would have thought a mere mob could overrun a Soviet Air Force base? Yet they had.
Although perhaps mere mob was incorrect, though the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Tadzhiks that had overwhelmed his perimeter defenses in minutes surely seemed to qualify. The two MiGs still burning on the runway, caught at the moment of landing by a rocket barrage, attested to that. So did the smoke and flames billowing out of the hemicylindrical shelters that housed most of the rest of the Frontal Aviation regiment's planes. Sappers had done that, teams of infiltrators with demolition charges.
Mobs didn't have rockets or demo charges. Nor did they have automatic weapons, including the latest-model bullpup Advanced Kalashnikovs. Not even weapons looted yesterday from the ammo train from Ashkhabad, which the leader and sole survivor of the attack flight scrambled from the base had falsely claimed to have destroyed before the bandits got to it, could account for the variety and concentration of weapons the defenders were facing.
He sighed raggedly and faced his aide. "Broadcast a cease-fire to all units. Order a white flag run up the pole. Use a bed sheet if you can find nothing else."
The aide turned pale and opened his mouth soundlessly. Perhaps he was shocked by the notion of surrender. Or maybe he just feared for his elderly parents back in Minsk. The use of hostages was a Russian tradition Western inroads had done little to weaken.
"Do not be afraid," the general said. "I am the commander. I alone am responsible."
The general's life, of course, was forfeit. And what of that? He had no fear of hostage-taking himself; his wife and two college-age daughters had all been struck down in Kiev during the pandemic outbreak of the intensely infectious retrovirus called white two years ago. Died even as the American C-17 carrying the genetically engineered cure was touching down on the runway.
His command was all the family he had now. He would secure their welfare as best he could. Whatever the cost.
"But what will they do to us?" a traffic controller asked, voice breaking in fear.
"This Timur has promised decent treatment of prisoners." The general shrugged. "And surely our comrades in the League will not force us to wait long for rescue."
He folded the crumpled paper on his lap. The floodlights died.
"Slovo nye vorobey," a Budushcheye crewman said, "viletit nye poymayesh'." A word is not a sparrow; if it takes flight, you can't catch it.
The studio erupted in celebration, people clinging to each other, weeping, shouting the name of God, kissing one another on the cheek and tossing skullcaps in the air. The foreign correspondents huddled on the sidelines, shouting into microphones to beat the din.
Timur smiled sadly. A small, neat man appeared beside him. He wore a League uniform from which all insignia and medals had been stripped except the gold crossed-cannon collar flashes of the artillery.
"'This, too, shall pass,'" he murmured in Timur's ear.
"You are erudite, Ali, my friend." Timur smiled sadly. "Let them enjoy while they can. The time of trial begins now. As the Japanese admiral Yamamoto realized after Pearl Harbor, all we have done as yet is awaken a sleeping giant. Whether we can do more remains to be seen.
"And may God have mercy on us all."
PART II
Red Sands
In war; numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power:
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War; IX, 45
Chapter TWELVE
The two Americans wore identical mustaches, cammie head rags, olive drab T-shirts with the sleeves torn out, and paratrooper pants. They locked fingers and butted heads and chanted, "War on drugs, war on drugs."
Standing with arms folded and his back to the hot concrete wall of the vocational high school, Fast Eddie shook his head. Assholes.
So this was the mighty Karakoram Brigade, at least as much of it as had assembled to date. If we're getting FedPol rejects, we are in one world of hurt.
The Big K had the spastic colon big time over the "Gentleman Adventurer On-line" recruiting ad, even though it had been their ticket for infiltrating Eddie into the rebel army. In that marvelous simple-minded yet paranoid way of theirs, they were mortally convinced that all of Turkestan was going in short order to be crawling with mail-order Rambos, CIA trained and lusting for Russian blood. And all, needless to say, with Big Knives in their teeth.
Well, here they were, herded together in a chain-link-fenced schoolyard with sweat pouring down them and white dust starting to cake on their faces: a couple of TV-movie heroes who probably fucked each other in the shower. Couch potatoes in camouflage sacks. Five guys with wild dark hair who spoke no English except to say, "We American Green Beret !" in some unidentifiable accent. A smattering of Desert Storm retreads with regulation flattops and retired-NCO potguts. An enormous black adolescent with a neck wider than his head who looked like he'd been recruited as a lineman for Tashkent University and was wondering how he'd wound up here. Tower snipers, goofballs, boozers, losers, Cold War nostalgia buffs, and a couple—three at most—dudes who looked as if they knew their shit and had gotten bored with civilian life, and for some reason hadn't felt like upping in American's current War on Everything.
And one KGB spy and former New York State High School All-Star second baseman, standing to the side wishing he were anywhere else. Oh, yeah.
Somebody wandered his way, with his face all full of that dopey American good-old-boy buddy glow. Eddie gave him a flat hate stare until he faltered and went away. He was not here to pick up any new best friends. The less interaction he had with real live Americans, the less stress was going to be put on the secret ID the GRU spiders had spun him, within the Americans' computers.
He should have felt good about the turn-out, of course. This was the enemy. The problem was, he was supposed to go into action with these clowns. And Karponin's Operation Sukhovey was rumored to be getting ready to roll at any moment. Getting wasted by that butthole Al Capone did not form part of his game plan.
He had to admit old Scarface was cute, very cute. Sukhovey was the hardass southwest wind that blew out of the Red Sands into the Steppes. The official translation League spin control was promulgating was "Desert Wind." Any similarity to Desert Storm was purely intentional.
Vendors wandered through the crowd crying their wares in Uzbek, Russian, and a weird sort of advertising English they'd picked up from TV: "Grab for the gusto. Grapes? Here grapes. Cigarettes, new, improved, menthol and regular."
Eddie bought a handful of almonds and a big red bunch of grapes. Tashkent didn't do much for him so far, but he did love the grapes. The city was renowned for them; everyone kept telling him so.
He spat his gum into the wrapper, rolled it up, and stuck
it in his pocket. Not leaving sign behind had long since been programmed into him, and some of these dildos looked seriously unmoored enough to tee off on you if your damned gum stuck to the soles of their iron-toed Mad Max boots.
There was an interesting stratification in the people buying cigarettes, he noticed. They were either among the few volunteers older than he was, or the even fewer in their early twenties, who'd come to adolescence after cigarettes' declining popularity was rescued by the U.S. outlawing them.
He moved away from the mob, steering around a couple of green turd-apples dropped on the weed-cracked asphalt by a little dun ass who'd inexplicably wandered into the compound and was being fed grapes by the black kid jock. He wanted to crawl out of his skin from the need to be doing something, but he put the nervous tension down hard, pushed it away. At this stage there was no action to take. He put his back against a wall and slid down to a sitting position to wait for whatever was going to happen.
This part of town looked almost depressingly like the outskirts of any other city in the world. There was a strip mall a few hundred meters away across a field of scrubby savage weeds, a high-rise apartment box stuck off of the middle of nowhere—a taste of place here, since the block was made of that Soviet Wonder Concrete that started to crumble before it dried—a factoiy in the background adding to the khaki haze that overhung the city. The only discordant note was the pair of shaggy Bactrian camels grazing on the embankment of the overpass on the superhighway that led southwest to Samarkand, under the sleepy eye of an adolescent in white shorts.
Traffic seemed about right for a city this size, not inner-city congested this far out, but brisk with the nearing midday rush where everybody was hurrying to get back from wherever they'd been in time for the two-hour downtime Eddie couldn't help thinking of as siesta. If all was chaos in the rebel-held region, as ITAR-TASS claimed, you couldn't prove it by Eddie. It was chaotic, certainly; but that was normaI chaos.
He let his eyes fall shut. The best cure for his tendency to go hyper was to give into the natural soldier tropism for sleep in any time and place. The baking heat of midday made drowsiness as easy as sweating....
"At the turn of the century," the driver said over his shoulder, "Tashkent was the only truly large city of Central Asia. It is today still the very largest. This does refute those who claim Samarkand is our first city." He wore a blue skullcap and a happy Chamber of Commerce smile.
Jacqui Gendron sat turned around in the backseat with a knee, watching the line of cars, trucks, and vans that trailed behind, past the ruins of the League KGB headquarters, which had been shattered by a mysterious blast within hours of Timur's liberation from its cells. Every vehicle was packed with press. Timur was reputed to be personally accessible to the Turkestanis, and his aides would indefati-gably answer reporters' questions at any hour, but he tended to shy from direct contact with the media.
"At least we're in front this time," she said, with a smile of sour satisfaction. She had been trying to get an interview with the rebel chieftain for three days. It was an almost unprecedented delay for her.
"Keep close to him," she directed the driver as she turned to face forward. "If you lose him this time, I shall strangle you."
"Jacqui," her cameraman said in alarm. "We're almost in the trunk of that limo already."
She smoothed back her orange hair and mopped her forehead with a towel Tewfik sullenly handed her. The car had no air-conditioning, of course.
"Oh, pay no mind to him, Hassan," she said. "Tank battles and terrorists are nothing to him, but get him in traffic and he loses control of his bladder."
The videocam man hunched himself down behind his shifting polychromatic oil-film sunglasses and pouted. The driver gave Jacqui a wounded glance.
"I have asked you please to call me Eric," he said. "That is the name I wish to go by."
"It says 'Hassan' on your work permit."
"It doesn't matter. We don't use work permits anymore; we are free."
"No work permits?" You mean, you can get a job or leave it anytime you want?"
The driver nodded proudly.
"What a way to run a country—look, they're moving! Don't dare lose him!"
The young Uzbek stomped on the gas. The shoe-box Moskvich wheezed asthmatically and lurched forward a beat late. Not even the strings Jacqui was able to pull—in Tashkent or anywhere—had enabled her to get a better rental car.
"Now here we are passing the beautiful Alisher Navaaiy Opera House—" Eric/Hassan said with relentless good cheer.
Jacqui pounded on the back of his seat and yelled in his ear, "Bugger the Opera House! Catch him, you fool, he's getting away!"
The driver leaned well forward, either to urge the car on or escape the noise. The engine whined protest as the subcompact picked up speed.
Almost at once Hassan rammed down the brakes. Tewfik the cameraman yipped as he slid into the back of the passenger seat. Jacqui was able to catch herself in time.
"And now we must stop for the light," the driver said in tones of wounded righteousness.
"What kind of world leader is this, who must stop for traffic lights?" Jacqui asked.
"Ours."
The light changed. The three vehicles of Timur's cavalcade pulled away. Hassan was goading the Moskvich in pursuit when the street filled up with little girls in school uniforms, sky-blue ribbons in their hair and sky-blue Free Tbrkestan Sags in their chubby hands. In front, behind— everywhere, jamming them tight.
' Khuda ozing meni asragin!" Hassan exclaimed, hitting the brakes again, God help me. He leaned on the horn. The little girls gave him the raspberry and waved their flags defiantly.
lacqui put her forehead on the back of Hassan's seat and pounded the backseat with her fist. "Merde. Merde, merde, merde, merde, merde."
Behind them horns blew. Journalists yelled curses in English, French, Russian, a dozen other languages.
"Jacqui, tell him to drive on," Tewfik said.
Hassan spun in his seat, ready to give the Moroccan what for. "No, Tewfik," Jacqui said regretfully. "Not in this car. The schoolgirls would only turn it over and set fire to it." She leaned out the window to shoot the finger at the procession of angry journalists behind.
Commotion called him back to consciousness flavored with sweat, diesel, and that damned white dust. The male-bonded FedPol types were trying to feed beer to the donkey. You wouldn't think they would sell beer here in the heart of Rebel Ragheadistan, but Timur seemed to take his crazy free-market rap altogether seriously. The FedPols were beginning to lay some heavy hassle on the black kid, who didn't think beer would be good for his new friend, and their banter was taking a nasty edge. All the secret cops he'd known were mean drunks, on either side of the Atlantic.
Eddie stood up slowly. The black kid was huge, but way out of his depth, and the mustache boys knew it.
Eddie smiled and dusted off the seat of his pants. He liked bullies.
The taller and rangier of the pair was backing the black kid up, banging him with hard heel-of-the-hand shots to the sternum while the black kid shook his head and looked like he was about to cry.
"You don't want me giving beer to the fucking donkey?
'Well, make me stop. Aren't you man enough, homeboy?"
An arm grabbed his. "Try me."
There was this little blond fuck standing there grinning at him. He cocked an arm. "Listen, Short Shit, if—"
He had a long, straight Anglo-Saxon nose he was probably real proud of. Fast Eddie, broke it for him with a quick vertical punch.
As the man doubled over, spurting through his fingers, Eddie felt a hand grab his own shoulder. Right on schedule.
He let the chunkier FedPol's pull spin him, giving him impetus. This was great. A spinning back kick mustered as many foot-pounds as your body could deliver, but they were generally too slow for real-world use. But with the guy going back on his own heels from turning Eddie around...
The heel of Eddie's Asic caught the man ri
ght in the solar plexus, blasting the air out of him. He ran the FedPol backward till his heel hit a cement parking barrier and he went sprawling on the carefully tended lawn, scattering the audience.
Eddie turned and started toward the first FedPol, who was standing now with both hands pressed over his face, bleeding down his shirt. He began backing away as Eddie approached.
"What's the matter, Sparky?" Eddie asked. "You afraid of me? Shit, I'm half the size of the kid you were picking on. You should be able to handle me by yourself."
"Look out!" the black kid yelled.
He'd started a turn when the one he'd kicked hit him from behind.
Chapter THIRTEEN
Momentum carried them forward until they ran into the damned donkey, which kicked Eddie in the upper thigh. The FedPol hauled him to his feet in a full nelson and his pal slugged him in the stomach.
He missed the solar plexus. Eddie kicked him in the crotch.
The FedPol grimaced, took a step back. Slowly he straightened. He smiled.
"I should've known," Eddie said. "FedPol. No balls."
The smile vanished. The mustached man whipped something small and gleaming-hard in a glittering arabesque. Butterfly knife: of course a FedPol would carry something like that.
The man who had him from behind had the sense to bury his face in the angle of Eddie's shoulder and neck, so Eddie couldn't crack his nose with his skull, and was bent forward to prevent Eddie from going for his groin, knee, or instep with a heel. These two were smarter than they looked.
Oh, Aleksandr Pavlovich, you've gone and stepped in it again. His intuitive flash had been that this was an ideal opportunity to stand out, as a fighter and a tough son of a bitch. He relied a lot on his intuition, and it served him in good stead.
Usually.
From the corner of his eye he saw the black kid, eyes wide, visibly nerving himself to jump on the knife boy, who would promptly stab him in the gut....
The crowd melted way back. Eddie heard the sliding clatter of steel on steel. Guns being cocked.