And just like that, Byko hung up.
“You know,” he said to Charlie, “for all we know, her NGO work was a cover. Maybe she’s been a professional spy all along. Even back in the day, was she using you to plant those stories about the regime?”
“You’re out of your mind,” Charlie snapped.
“You do realize that MI6 recruits over half of their agents from Oxford and Cambridge. I’m beginning to think that’s why she left me when university came to an end. Because she was heading off for her training. Of course, she ended up in Uzbekistan anyway when it was time to spy on me.”
“So she was spying on you and using me at the same time? That’s your theory?”
“She was sent here to investigate the potential for an uprising and possibly to help foment one. I suspect the Brits were just trying to put pressure on Karimov for more strategic concessions by stirring up the people. Then when it went too far, when we were ten thousand strong that day in Andijan and it looked like we might really create some instability, even topple the regime, they panicked and tipped off Karimov.”
Charlie looked at Byko incredulously.
“Haven’t you ever wondered how Karimov managed to mobilize his southern regiments to the square that day? I happen to know that it was MI6 who alerted the regime. Just as I know that it was the CIA who kidnapped and tortured my sister for eight days at Jaslyk. Not only is Julie a user and a liar, but she’s working for the wrong side. Has been all along. She helped kill my wife and son,” Byko said. “And she might as well have been the one who shot you in the back.”
“You’re wrong,” Charlie said, refusing to accept this. “If she was ever working for MI6, she was merely an asset like she said—recruited in the last few weeks because she knew you. They played her, Alisher. Isn’t that the more plausible scenario? That they told her she would be helping you and she bought it?”
“Come on, Charlie,” Byko said. “Does that sound like her? If she is who she led us to believe she was, would she ever have been so naive as to accept something like that? Coming from MI6?”
Byko shrugged and pulled out a .45. “Well, my friend, it should hardly matter now to you. Seeing as I have to kill you.”
“Alisher . . .”
“I spared you in Los Angeles. But now that you’ve come here, I really have no choice in the matter.”
Charlie held up his hands. “Alisher, listen to me.” Charlie was stalling, tap dancing, grasping at straws. “I know you’re a man of conviction. Of inherent decency. And you know that I have no love for the Western intelligence agencies. If you’re working against them, chances are that you’re doing something good. If it’s toppling this regime, you know you’d have no stronger advocate for that than me. I respect your . . .” Charlie didn’t want to overdo it. But instinctively he felt sure that there was no underestimating the man’s vanity. “I respect your purity, Alisher. Your rigor. I’m even a little in awe, I guess. It must take enormous will to do whatever it is you’re doing.” He paused, forcing himself to maintain a sincere expression as he delivered this absurd flattery. “But if you still feel a scrap of friendship for me—or any feeling for Julie for that matter—give me a chance to say good-bye to her. Give us a chance to speak whatever needs to be spoken. Let us go to our graves knowing that there’s nothing left unsaid between us.”
“You need to know who she really is,” Byko added.
“I do,” Charlie agreed. “Give me that before I die.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Charlie was sitting in the back of a Cadillac Escalade, hands secured tightly behind him with plastic flex cuffs. Two of Byko’s paramilitary goons accompanied him, one driving, the other seated in the back, a tricked-out AK-47 pointed at Charlie’s chest.
The SUV was tearing down a road leading toward a small range of hills to the north. Presumably it was all part of the same former Soviet military complex where the bathhouse was located. Infested with massive potholes and gaps in the tarmac, there was no indication that the paving had been improved in at least twenty-five years. But this didn’t stop the driver from keeping up a steady pace of close to 90 miles per hour.
“How far?” Charlie asked the man sitting next to him.
But the mercenary or guard or whatever he was stared at Charlie in stony silence.
Left to his own thoughts, Charlie reflected on his strange send-off by Byko. The man had shaken his hand gravely and said, “Well, I’m genuinely sorry it worked out like this, Charlie. I do hope you will be able to find some consolation in the fact that your sacrifice will be part of a greater movement, one that will propel us toward a better world.”
A better world? The overthrow of Uzbekistan would almost certainly be good for the people of this country, but it was grandiose, to say the least, to think that anyone outside this region would ever feel the impact of it. It made Charlie wonder—was there something else Byko had planned? Something less obvious than a coup? He was clearly angry with the West. Was it possible Byko’s plan was something on a grander scale?
As the car whipped around a hairpin turn, Charlie pushed all of these thoughts aside and tried to focus on coming up with a way to escape. He knew that wherever Julie was being held, it would be indoors, heavily guarded, probably fortified. Quinn would be there. And Quinn was not a guy who’d be bamboozled or outmaneuvered.
No, if he was going to get away, he had to do it now. Before they reached Quinn.
Charlie surveyed the interior of the Caddy with clinical interest.
The cabin was utilitarian. No weapons, no communication devices, nothing that would be of use. He studied the man next to him. Typical mercenary chic. Olive drab cargo pants, military boots, baseball cap, wraparound Oakley knockoffs, nylon rigger’s belt, Glock in a thigh holster and of course the ever-present load-bearing bulletproof vest that soldiers call a “plate carrier.” The plate carrier’s desert tan skin was covered with myriad pockets containing spare mags, med kit, flashlight, and a large fixed-blade knife in a Kydex sheath.
The man was slight and fit, with the barest tinge of the sadist showing through his impassive expression. Charlie guessed he was probably former Uzbek military. But in subtle ways Charlie could see the marks of Western training—the way he held his gun, the pistol grip of the carbine high on his chest, wrist cocked, trigger finger resting lightly on the frame of the weapon. Uzbek soldiers didn’t carry that way. They brandished their guns heedlessly, as though they were fishing rods or planks of wood. Odds were strong that this man had been trained by Quinn.
As the car bucked and slammed over the broken pavement, the first thought that entered Charlie’s mind was bribery. Byko’s men had frisked him back at the house but hadn’t bothered with his money belt. But eight grand and change? Split between the two of them? That would never be enough.
Next, he considered running. If he told them he needed to take a whiz and they pulled over, he could try making a break for it through the fields. But with his hands tied behind him, he figured he’d make it about ten yards before Quinn’s guy blew him away.
So bribery and flight were out of the question. The only option left was to somehow fight his way out of this. Which meant he needed his hands free and he needed a weapon. He made a subtle attempt to slide his cuffed wrists under his butt in order to pull them in front of his body, but realized that he was neither long armed nor flexible enough to accomplish the task. What then? Throw himself on the mercenary and bite the guy to death?
It was hopeless.
He’d have his five or ten minutes with Julie and that would be that. Call it a life.
He tried to imagine what those minutes would be like, how much needed to be accomplished. Demanding from her the truth, working through the anger and guilt, doling out apologies and forgiveness, coming to a reckoning and hopefully some kind of peace. Having one final chance to pull back her hair, to touch her skin, to kiss her lips
.
On the face of it, the whole thing might be something out of a Shakespearean tragedy. Romantic and poignant and fraught. But Charlie knew that it would most likely end in pathetic fashion—them begging Quinn for more time only to find that he wasn’t feeling so generous; or in clumsy, brutal bloodshed, with Charlie forcing a confrontation he would inevitably lose, all the while knowing that he was leaving Julie behind to more torture and anguish and his children to a lifetime of loneliness and grief.
The children. Beautiful sweet Oliver. Mercurial luminescent Meagan.
Was this really it? Would he never see their faces again? Read them another bedtime story? Teach them baseball? Take them to the beach? Piggy-back them in the sand?
No. He would not allow his mind to go there any further. There had to be a way out of this. As long as he had breath, he could not give up. If he was going down, he was going down fighting. He assessed the situation again. The mercenary three feet to his right, gripping his bull-pup carbine, the hulk of a driver commandeering the Escalade faster than it had any right to be going on such a road.
The car hit an especially big pothole, shocks bottoming out as Charlie flew up, his head banging on the ceiling, his legs lifting up so far that his toes almost smacked into the driver’s headrest. As his body slammed back into the seat, a thought came to him . . .
The car. The car itself was a weapon. If he could somehow find a way to harness it.
A sense of calculating calm settled over Charlie’s entire body. He remembered the same feeling sometimes when he played football, when the entire field seemed made of crystal—every player, every formation, every blade of grass sharply formed in his mind. And when he fell into that state of clarity, he had always known exactly where he needed to cut or spin, where to shuck a block, where to hit a man with every ounce of his strength.
He slid over slightly so he could see out the front of the vehicle. The road was climbing into a small mountain range and began winding in and out of the hills. At the highest point, the road followed the ridgeline for at least a mile, then took a hard jog to the left as it passed onto a bridge leading across what was likely a wild mountain river.
In an instant, a plan came into his mind, fully formed. A bit of distraction, split-second timing, perfect execution—if he played it all right, he had a chance. Maybe one chance in a hundred, but still . . . a chance.
The car rolled slowly through a series of hairpin turns, then accelerated sharply as it reached the straightaway running along the ridge. Charlie could see the speedometer climbing: 50 miles an hour, 60, 70.
The bridge was getting closer and closer, but still the car rolled on at full speed.
Charlie’s heart pounded in his ears. He turned toward the mercenary and gave him a knowing grin.
The mercenary’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
Charlie leaned back in his seat. He had to sell it perfectly. Not too quick, not too strong. One beat, two, three—still with the expression of amusement on his face. Then he eased himself forward in his seat—just the tiniest bit—and sneaked a quick I-can’t-help-myself glance out the window on the other side of the mercenary.
With all his gear, the mercenary would have to swivel his entire body around in the seat to look out the window, to see what it was that Charlie thought was so damn interesting out in the cotton fields.
They were almost to the bridge. But would the man take the bait?
Just as the driver hit the brakes so he could make the turn onto the bridge, the merc turned. And in that crystalline moment, Charlie knew he had it. He bucked his hips upward and thrust his back against the seat, jumping so hard that his feet cleared the top of the driver’s seat back. He looped his right leg around the driver’s neck, hooking his left leg over his own right foot in a tight triangle of muscle. And squeezed with all his strength.
As the moment slowed—the driver shouting and clawing at Charlie’s leg, the merc whirling back around and fumbling with the safety on his AK, the car braking with a juddering of antilock-brakes-assisted traction—he felt the driver lose his grip on the steering wheel.
The Cadillac swung right, fishtailed . . .
And then they were rolling, once, twice, three times . . .
Impact.
Chapter Thirty
There was no sound but the ticking of the radiator and something like static. The car was lying on its side, water visible halfway up the windshield, and Charlie realized they had catapulted over the side of the road and into the river. Through the side window—which was now directly above him—he could see they had fallen down a very steep and rocky ravine. And that staticky sound was actually the rush of the rapids.
But Charlie felt curiously stupefied, as if he’d had his bell rung. From his vantage point, he could see the driver lying sideways in an unmoving heap in the front seat, the air bag deflating in front of him. He seemed to be unconscious, though there was no blood or any indication that he’d been seriously wounded.
The mercenary, on the other hand, was done for. He lay on his side next to Charlie. His face was now strangely flattened, its features wiped away, like an orange that had been hit with a hammer. Blood was pouring out of the single gaping hole that had once been his nose and mouth, leaking onto the slick surface of the window in enormous quantities.
And then water began flowing into the vehicle. The SUV was wallowing deeper in the river, showing signs that it might be swept away at any moment. If Charlie didn’t get out soon, he would drown in here. But he was pinned to his seat by a heavy canvas bag that had bounced out of the rear of the vehicle, and with his hands behind him, he had a very hard time maneuvering.
From the front of the car, the driver grunted softly—an Uzbek curse—and shifted around in his seat, sloshing water around the cabin. As he began to make sense of what was happening around him, his eyes widened. “You!” he yelled. “What are you doing?”
Charlie pushed himself to his knees and clawed at the door handle, struggling to find the latch. He yanked but it felt limp and dead in his hand. The lock switch must have shorted out.
The driver pulled out his gun. He’d have a hard time turning around to get a good look at his prey, but that gave Charlie only a few seconds.
In desperation, Charlie slid around and inverted himself, his entire torso underwater, and kicked the window.
Nothing happened.
The frigid water was up to his shoulders now and he could feel it robbing his body of oxygen. He kicked again. Once, twice, three times. The water was at his chin. In moments, it would cover his face. He kicked again with all the force he could muster and finally the window gave way.
Before he could even register that he’d penetrated the window, a cascade of water twisted and flipped him inside the car. Gasping and spluttering, he sucked hungrily for air, struggling against the current, trying to find an exit through the broken window. But it was no use. He held his breath and stayed as still as possible, trying to conserve his energy until the rush died down.
When the water finally reached equilibrium, he found a small pocket of air. Pressing his head against the roof, he contorted his neck and managed to suck in a few gasps of oxygen, then pushed himself upward through the window.
As he did, Charlie heard the sound of two gunshots. The driver firing at him somewhat haphazardly. And too late.
Charlie foisted himself on top of the wrecked SUV and stood on the battered door, gazing at the roaring rapids beneath him. It would certainly be no picnic diving into that with his hands cuffed behind his back.
As he hesitated, he heard the driver bellowing inside the car, then saw the front door open. Charlie stomped on it and heard a rewarding yelp of pain. But he knew he couldn’t hold him off like this for very long. And as hairy as those rapids looked, if the big man got out while Charlie was still standing on the vehicle, it would be no contest.
The moment C
harlie hit the water, he lost all control, all sense of up and down, all sense of direction, the current grabbing him and sucking him beneath the surface of the river. As he spun helplessly, he saw light above him, appearing and disappearing with each rotation of his body.
He kicked and thrashed wildly, trying to get his legs in front of him. Light, dark, light, dark. But none of his feverish activity seemed to have any effect on his relationship to the river. And then suddenly his head broke the surface and air surged into his burning lungs.
That brief glimmer of hope was quickly shattered as he was sucked in again. Propelled by the furious current, his entire body battered and scraped by the jutting rocks, he struggled desperately for another surge of air, only to find himself slammed into something hard. The current flipped him up and he found himself lying atop a smooth black boulder, his lungs screaming. He sucked in another desperate breath, then was swept away again.
All of the muscles in his abdomen, his shoulders, his neck burned as he fought to hold his head above the surface. He didn’t know how long he could keep this up, but right now anything was better than being underwater in those rapids.
Floating on his back, his feet downriver ahead of his body, Charlie could see the ravine and the jagged rock walls rising steeply around him. As he passed under the bridge, he saw sunlight piercing through its joints and seams and thought he felt the current letting up.
As he emerged on the other side, he knew it for sure. The water was slowing.
The ravine was widening. And the ominous jagged boulders were replaced by a fringe of benign reeds.
Charlie managed to flip over and look back. The Cadillac was surprisingly far away. But where was the driver? Had he drowned?
Suddenly, Charlie noticed a sound like thunder.
He turned to see what it was. Not fifty yards in front of him, the placid surface of the water seemed to disappear, as though the river had been sawed in half. His brain couldn’t make sense of it at first. And then it hit him. That sound.
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