by Gordon Kent
“Headed back to his detachment on the Jefferson,” his assistant cut in smoothly. He was pointing at a blue folder on the CNO’s desk. Craik was already moving back to his det, doing something that only people with the blue folder knew about.
“We could just cut him short and bring him here while Pilchard gets his staff together.” This from the DCNO.
The CNO looked out his window and thought about an intel officer’s commanding an aviation detachment. It might have been hell for the man. Or it might be the command of his life. Intel officers were odd fish, in the CNO’s experience, and many were totally unsuited to command a lifeboat on a millpond, but Craik struck him differently. He turned to his assistant.
“Ask Craik if he really wants to be an intel officer.”
“Sir?”
“Something about him—we gave him temporary unrestricted line status for this job. Ask him if he wants to keep it, or take his flight training and be an NFO. And don’t cut him short unless he asks for it. Pilchard won’t get Fifth for four months. Ask him.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Tajikistan.
Once the drive started in earnest, it seemed to go on forever. The road was flat, although mountains were clear in the distance to the north, and just visible to the south before the sun went down. Alan couldn’t stop rubbernecking.
“Welcome to Central Asia, bud. The new scene of operations for all the big players.”
“Harry, sometimes you give me the creeps.”
Harry just smiled. “I calls ’em like I sees ’em.”
Alan continued to look around him until the light failed, and he began to notice other features besides the windswept landscape and the distant mountains.
“That car back there has sure been behind us a long time.”
“Give that student a cigar,” said Harry, and Dave smiled.
“He or his buddy the blue Volvo have been with us since the airport,” said Dave.
Alan shook his head.
“I’ve been talking too much.”
“Don’t sweat it, Alan. You caught on. This is our business. Dave’s just hoping that they sent somebody into the market to check up on us, aren’t you, Dave?”
“I left a little suggestion with our friends in the arms business that anyone asking after us was from the local police.” Dave chuckled. “I don’t think we’ll see the blue Volvo again this trip.”
“How much longer is this trip, friends?”
“Another couple of hours.” Harry leaned back over the seat. “Need to pee? I do.”
“That’s a big roger, Harry.”
Dave had the Land Cruiser over to the shoulder in a minute. The distant headlights pulled off, too.
“If they want us, this is perfect for them,” said Dave, looking into the now-silent dark. “Dark and cold. No witnesses.” Alan saw that Djalik had an Ingram M-10 cocked and locked on his lap.
Alan looked back and forth between Dave and Harry. Harry was pissing in the gravel ditch by the road, a big pistol in one hand, while the other helped with the business of the stop. Dave was slumped down in the driver’s seat. Behind them, the other car’s lights went off.
“Is this serious?” Alan asked, incredulous. “We’re about to get hit by a drive-by on a highway in Tajikistan?”
He pushed the long clip into his Polish pistol, where it went home with a very satisfying click. He worked the slide. The gun was beautifully made, with a deep black-blue on the receiver that bespoke quality and sparkled even in the dark.
“Probably not,” said Dave. “But this here is the Wild West of the world, right now, and it would be foolish not to be ready. Those guys were waiting for us. We don’t know if they’re following us because of something we did, or you for something you did. Maybe they want the car. Maybe they just want to whack a foreigner. Maybe they have the wrong guys. Doesn’t matter, at this point.”
Alan got out and pulled down his zipper. His shoulder blades protested as he turned his back to the road. It just didn’t seem possible that they were this close to combat and they were relieving themselves.
“I take it we don’t want them to know we’re on to them?”
“Exactly.” Harry was done, was blowing on his hands. Alan was still trying to force back what had been a tidal wave a moment before, when they were stopping to relieve themselves and not to be shot at.
Djalik came out last, when Alan had finally convinced nature to take its course.
“Don’t look back,” said Harry.
Nothing happened.
In a minute, they were rolling again.
And a minute later, the headlights were there again.
Forty minutes later, Djalik’s local cell phone rang. He fought with it for several minutes and finally gave up.
“We’re leaving the coverage area. It’s tough to build infrastructure here.”
“Yeah?” Alan was mildly interested in why there were any cell phones here.
“Yeah. We got the security contract for the Pakistani firm building the towers.”
“Who was it?” asked Harry.
“Sorry, Harry. I don’t really know. I got to figure it was Georgi back in the market. So he’s probably had problems with our friends in the blue Volvo. But it could have been a telemarketer.”
The phone rang again and Dave slowed the Land Cruiser while he listened. He looked at the faceplate of the phone briefly, saw that he had a signal, and stopped. Alan watched the headlights behind them stop, too.
Dave listened grimly for a moment and then said, “I see. Do what you have to, Georgi.” He hung up. “They shot one of Georgi’s guys,” he said. “Not a great loss to society, but Georgi thinks they’re hard guys.”
Harry looked at Alan.
“Who knows you were coming here?”
“You and Mike and me.”
“Okay. Even I trust that group.” Harry smiled, a flash of white in the front. “Get some sleep, Al.” His voice took on a throaty growl. “It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Alan drifted in and out for hours as they continued to speed down an empty two-lane road. In another hour they made a turn that woke him up, and they left the asphalt for a gravel road that swiftly became dirt, and their pace slowed. The headlights were still there, and Alan was surprised every time he came awake that he had been sleeping in the midst of such an obvious emergency, but it was one of those slow emergencies that he had so frequently experienced in the cockpit of an S-3. It wouldn’t resolve itself immediately, and no amount of worry could fix the problem.
Harry snored.
When Alan next woke, Dave and Harry were talking quietly in the front. He woke slowly and didn’t get the gist of their quiet conversation, except that Dave was now really worried about the car behind them. Alan sat up, undid his seat belt, and leaned into the front seat. It felt as if he were back in an S-3, going up to talk to the pilot.
“What’s the problem?”
Dave spoke quietly. “That car behind us is the problem, Al. They aren’t even pretending to be stealthy. They just stay right on us, same distance, on and on. We’re getting close to our target and I’d rather not take them right in.”
“I say we stop here and go after them.”
Harry seemed to be considering the possibility.
“No. We can’t afford to be wrong. Just drive up to the old well.”
“You’re the boss.”
Dave made another turn, this time on a tiny track just wide enough for their truck. They were at the base of a high hill, or perhaps a mountain. Its looming bulk couldn’t be made out clearly in the night.
“Is this where Chen is?” Alan asked. He was full of adrenaline, ready to go and do—something.
“And will be for some time to come,” Harry said with deliberate ambiguity.
The car stopped, and Dave killed the engine.
Dave was out of the car immediately. He did something with a flashlight for a moment and then got down in the scrub next to the driver’s-side w
heel. Harry pulled on tight gloves and then got out, and Alan did the same.
“Follow me, Al,” Harry said, and he was off, moving low. Alan copied him, the machine pistol in his good hand, and his maimed hand out for balance. He could just see the gleam from Harry’s leather jacket. Everything else was dark. The lights that had been behind them for hours were gone, as was the engine noise. Alan could smell wood smoke.
“Friends of mine use this place,” said Harry.
“Smugglers?”
“Like that. I want the bozos behind us to think we’re clueless. Just go inside.”
Alan went through the door slowly, his senses hyperalert. He scanned the interior of a small wooden shack. There were coals still warm in the woodstove, but no other signs of life. Harry went immediately to a window and tried to see outside without disturbing the shade.
“Build up the fire, Al. It’s cold and it won’t get warmer.”
“Where’s Dave?”
“Scouting. Dave can take care of himself.”
Alan took split wood from a stack next to the tiny stove and built a log cabin on the coals. Then he blew on them until the kindling caught. It reminded him of childhood camping trips.
“Anything?” he whispered to Harry.
“Nothing,” said Harry.”
“Is this where we find Chen?”
“Yeah. At first light, we’ll dig him up. He died on the way here and we buried him in the yard.”
“That’ll be nice.”
They were silenced by the sound of a single shot.
Alan was already out the door, because Djalik was alone in the dark, and Alan owed Djalik.
He saw the muzzle flash off to his right. Alan was almost frozen by the knowledge that his own movement might draw fire from Djalik himself, but he had to assume that Djalik knew where they were. He ran toward the last firing, crouched low. He felt that Harry was behind him, but he didn’t dare tear his attention from the patch of darkness where the muzzle flash had been.
Crack-crack. That was Djalik, shooting double-tap with a small pistol. Alan had heard him shoot this way in Africa; he knew the exact timing of the sound. It was like a signature. Djalik was well off to his right.
More shooting from the darkness in front of him. Someone firing at Djalik’s flash, or even at the sound. Not anyone really dangerous, then. Alan stopped, checked over his unfamiliar gun in the dark until he found the safety, and pushed it off with his good hand. He listened for Harry and didn’t jump when Harry’s bulk came up behind him.
Harry touched his shoulder and pointed at the area where the nearest shooter was. Alan nodded, and then, afraid his nod might be invisible, touched Harry’s hand once, twice. Yes. Harry patted his back softly and vanished into the dark. Alan got down and began to crawl as fast as he could.
There was another burst of fire. He couldn’t really see it from the ground, although it did still provide a glow. Shooting in this mixture of grass and gorse would be tricky. Every blade of grass would deflect small-caliber stuff. Alan knew he was making noise, but experience had taught him that against most opponents, speed counted more than perfect stealth, and so far he hadn’t had the ill luck to meet the other kind. He kept moving, crawling and rolling along the ground, and twice having to pick himself up and roll over obstructions.
Crack-crack from the right. Then the boom of Harry’s shotgun off to the left. His man whirled, closer than Alan had expected, clearly worried that he was surrounded. He continued to move his head. Alan took a deep breath and tried to find a way to take the man without killing him, but Harry would be moving this way and there wasn’t time. The man rose in a stance and aimed off toward Djalik.
Alan rolled to a crouch and fired the little machine pistol. It had no recoil and surprisingly little barrel rise. Alan had got close because the gun was unfamiliar and he didn’t want to miss, but the first bullet hit the man just below the throat and the next two rose right across his forehead. He bounced when he hit the ground and flopped a moment, a sickening sound.
Dead.
The steppe around them was silent.
Alan lay still and shook with delayed reaction. The man had been too close and lay less than ten feet away, and Alan could smell him, the blood and the wounds.
Time passed. His shaking stopped.
Then more time.
Alan began to get cold. Could they both be dead? Harry and Djalik? Was he too late? Were there still men on the hillside?
Alan raised his head a little to look over the top of the gorse. The dark hadn’t changed, and he saw nothing.
He waited.
He raised his head again and saw a flash of red light off to the right. He took a deep breath, his adrenaline charging through his arteries again, and kept his head up.
The light went on and off again. Alan thought it was Djalik’s flashlight. Djalik was signaling to someone. Alan waited another moment and then decided that Djalik could be signaling only him. He moved up cautiously, trying to breathe through his mouth and listen at the same time. Djalik was giving one quick flash and then moving the light slowly off to the left. Alan stopped behind a rock and considered. The long movement always went to the same place. Djalik either meant there was another bad guy there, or that he wanted Alan there. Alan had to assume that Djalik wanted him to move there, and he crawled around the rock in front of him.
Bang-bang-bang. A short burst from an assault rifle, followed by a yell in a language that sounded like Russian. Alan thought that the man was losing his nerve, but, now that he had given his position away, Alan could see why Djalik wanted Alan well off to the left. Alan scrambled along a shingle of gravel and over a low rock. The man fired again, this time in his direction, uncomfortably close. Gravel pounded away at Alan’s shins, where bullets kicked it up. Alan shot back on instinct, and, suddenly, Harry’s shotgun roared. Then silence.
“Dave?” Alan called as softly as he could.
“Roger!” Dave called confidently, and rose slowly to his feet. “Didn’t really know what happened over here.”
Harry was with them in an instant.
“Let’s get you a tissue sample and get the flock out of here,” said Harry.
Alan looked back to where his first target was dead in the grass. He felt ill, almost morally ill. It had been too easy, now that it was over. The man hadn’t needed to die. He just hadn’t been able to think of a way to take him.
“They all dead?” he asked. He didn’t like the way his voice sounded.
“Yep,” Dave said. “There were three of them to start, and then the driver came out of the car, and you and Harry put him down. I was trying to take him alive, but whatever. I’ll check the bodies, Harry. You and Al do what you came for. Like you said, let’s get gone.” He looked at Alan. Whatever he saw, he must have liked, because he punched Alan’s shoulder and headed off into the dark.
After the terrors of the fight, the wait, and the reaction, the mere process of opening a grave and taking a piece of the contents had less horror than Alan had expected. The corpse was dry, mostly, and the smell merely sweet and cloying. There were things living in the corpse, but nothing glistened wetly or hissed. He took a button from the jacket. He closed a plastic bag around the fingers of the corpse’s right hand and cut one off with his clasp knife. It was quite easy, the sinew separating immediately, already rotted through. Alan dropped the bag into another bag. Then he got some of the short, black hairs from the skull, with a little tissue clinging to them, as well. Then came the worst part. He took a deep breath, reached his gloved hand into the body cavity and found a vertebra high on the back, and pulled. Something moved across his wrist and he flinched. His gorge rose. He steadied himself and pulled. The vertebra came free with a soft, yielding feeling that was far more horrible than the sight of the corpse had been. He got the vertebra into a different bag, put all of his evidence into a third bag, rolled it all up inside his rain slicker, and put the whole thing in his pack. He’d buy another slicker at REI, he promised h
imself, and threw up on the tall grass beside the grave.
He and Harry and Dave weren’t quite as loud going home. But twelve hours after the graveside, when they finally touched down in Bahrain, they were back to rapid conversation, changing topics as fast as they found them. If Alan was troubled, he had pushed it far down. If Harry still had questions, he didn’t ask them. And Dave seemed happy, as if he’d made peace with something.
Harry used the brief stop to talk about the events of the day before, which all of them had avoided on the trip back.
“Those guys weren’t locals,” Harry said. Alan just kept packing, used to Harry’s mercurial changes of subject.
“No?”
“No, bud. They were Russian, I think. Probably hired guns.”
“Any idea who hired them?”
“No. Do you, Alan?”
They looked at each other, but the look was not adversarial.
“No idea.”
“I just want you to note, on behalf of the U.S. Navy, that I have once again helped Mike Dukas, and once again been shot at,” said Harry, with the old smile.
“Roger that,” said Alan, fervently. They embraced.
“I expect I’ll see you soon. After all, you’ll be on the Jefferson, and I’ll be in Africa.”
It was dark humor, given the past. It sat with Alan on the plane, Harry’s parting shot and the dead face with the three holes in it. Sometimes the adrenaline wasn’t enough even for a junkie.
28
Nairobi.
A day room at a hotel at Brussels airport had done little for Dukas’s jet lag, and the dozen hours it took to fly on to Nairobi would all but kill him, he thought. He had the window seat, but with nothing of course to look at until morning. Triffler dozed beside him. Triffler had slippers, eyeshades, and earplugs; he didn’t eat airline food and had brought his own; and he washed his hands every time he touched a non-American surface. Triffler, Dukas thought with grim satisfaction, was going to hate Africa.