Out of Range: A Novel

by Hank Steinberg

  She panned back and forth anxiously, catching a view of one hard-faced killer, then another. But no Charlie.

  Charlie ducked down to conceal himself, still clutching the gun in his right hand, the phone cradled in his left.

  “Where am I going, Jules?”

  “I don’t know. I lost you. I can’t see you.”

  In the roar of the crowd, Charlie could barely hear her. “I’m twenty yards south of the statue!” he yelled. “I can see the middle of the base right in front of me!”

  Suddenly the shouting began to die down.

  Charlie peeked up to see Byko standing on the pedestal, holding up his arms, hands extended, as motionless as the statue looming over him. When the crowd finally went silent, Byko slowly lowered his hands. The last time they were here, he had spoken through a crude megaphone. But today, his people had set up a high-quality sound-reinforcement system and his voice blasted through speakers.

  “Six years ago, we came together here, in this Square, as a signal of our solidarity. To say to our government that we would no longer stand for its oppression and tyranny . . .”

  Angry voices shouted agreement throughout the crowd.

  Byko calmed them again. “The government responded that day the same way it always does. And since that day, we have been cowards. Living in a state of retreat and denial. But today, all of that will change. For good.”

  The crowd roared. Charlie knew they were responding to the easy aphorisms and vague optimism. If they only knew what Byko really had planned . . .

  “Today we will finally strike back,” Byko continued. “Not with candles or banners, but with force. Today, we will strike back at the West. For this is where our true enemies lie.”

  Charlie pressed the phone to his mouth. “We’re running out of time, Jules. I need a path.”

  “There’s a sort of passageway in the barricade. In the back, behind Byko. Nobody’s guarding it now. It comes from the rear of the statue. You might be able to work your way around to there.”

  “All right,” Charlie said, as determined as he’d ever been about anything. “You’re going to get me there.”

  His leg throbbing in agony, Salim limped up to the second floor of the municipal building and rapidly located a perfect sniper location—a small nook just the right size for one man to stand in, more or less invisible from the rest of the lobby. A quick blow with his fist knocked out one pane of glass. He would be visible from the ground, but he didn’t care about that. If he was spotted after it was over, so be it. He racked a round into the chamber, braced the rifle carefully on the ledge, then sighted on his target.

  It was the traitor. And he was standing on Babur’s monument.

  Our true enemies,” Byko roared, “are those in governments which support and prop up this murderous regime. Our true enemies are in every country which buys our cotton and our oil, our uranium and our gold, knowing that the people who work to produce it toil in abject poverty.”

  Byko had been speaking for about five minutes and the crowd was still with him. But he sensed their enthusiasm had dimmed a little since he began. They wanted to hear him talk about the regime, about his plans for taking it down and replacing it with something better. He had to convince them that they were missing the point.

  “We have lost control of our country. Somewhere out there—in London, in New York, in Washington, D.C.—are little men in little rooms, pushing the buttons, moving the chess pieces of the world around. They consider us their pawns. Pieces which can be sacrificed to satisfy the thirsts and hungers of their kings and queens. And all the while, they themselves are hiding. Refusing to admit what they do, refusing to say what they believe. They obfuscate everything and expect us to swallow it or look the other way. But all of that is about to change. Because I am here, standing before you, before the world, to proudly say, ‘Here is what I believe!’ ”

  Salim was no billionaire, no worldly sophisticate with an international education, but he knew who was to blame for his brother’s death. It wasn’t Americans, it wasn’t Englishmen . . . It was the men who had dragged his brother away, beaten him, cut him, broken him—they were Uzbeks. If you wanted to fix this country, it would do no good to point the finger of blame at foreigners.

  The enemy was here.

  Salim had been just a kid when his brother had lain there under a white sheet in the courtyard of their home. But he could still remember the sight of him when his mother had pulled the sheet away. A thing like that, you didn’t forget. Salim was a quiet boy, and most people didn’t realize how much he had thought about what needed to happen in his country. But Salim had thought about it. Someday this would be a country where young men weren’t dragged off and murdered just because they didn’t like the government.

  Salim had dreams for his country. And Byko was getting in the way of those dreams, confusing things, distracting the people with foolish tales about who their real enemies were.

  The target swam in the bull’s-eye of Salim’s rifle scope and he settled the crosshairs on the man’s chest. Salim took up the slack in the trigger with his index finger as gently as you might stroke the lips of a beautiful girl and gently squeezed the trigger.

  But instead of the customary boom and kickback all he heard was a click.

  The rifle had jammed.

  Charlie crouched as low as he could and moved toward the rear of the statue, ducking in and out of the crowd so he could see.

  One of the bodyguards was less than ten feet to his left and Charlie could glimpse his AK-47 through the throngs of people. The guard seemed to know that Charlie was close but couldn’t quite find him.

  “Keep going!” Julie said. “You’re thirty yards out. You’re almost there.”

  To Charlie’s left, he saw the crowd part like the Red Sea. The bodyguard was waving his rifle at them. He was heading in the wrong direction but it would only be a few seconds before Charlie was revealed.

  Charlie pushed to his right.

  “Not that way! Go—” Julie’s voice momentarily dissolved into a crackle of static. Charlie looked at the phone. The charge was down to 2 percent and he was losing his signal.

  “I’ve got one of them coming up behind me!” he shouted.

  Julie’s voice cut through the static of the dying phone. “Another one’s coming up right in front of you! Go back, go back, go back!”

  Charlie bulled through the middle, heading straight for the statue.

  Some of the men in the crowd pushed back at him and Charlie had no choice but to wield his gun. “Out of my way!”

  Byko paused, hearing screams behind him. He wheeled, but couldn’t see what was happening. Perhaps his men were apprehending Charlie Davis. He turned back to the crowd. They were clearly sensing that he had reached some important turning point in his speech.

  “Today, we are reclaiming something. Today, in this small place, we are going to do something that affects the so-called great nations, the so-called powerful. But what makes them great? What makes them powerful? It is only because we are afraid to see through the smoke screen of their power, and challenge them where they live.”

  He pointed down at Gulbadeen, the young man standing there with his spiky hair and his foolish Homer Simpson T-shirt. Byko might have been angry that the computer technician had so little sense of occasion. But it could be argued that he was the perfect symbol for what Byko was arguing—that this silly doughy boy could unleash a firestorm that might eventually consume the world.

  “When this young man presses a button on his screen, word will go out to people like you—all over the world. Within minutes, great actions will be put into place and we will finally have our say!”

  Byko nodded to the young man and thrust his fist toward the sky.

  As Charlie saw Byko punch the air, he lifted his gun, pointing it toward Homer Simpson, trying to get within range. He had Homer in his crosshairs, about to shoot, when a young woman in front of him shifted ever so slightly, bobbing her head into his l
ine of fire.

  “Down!” Charlie shouted.

  Everyone in front of him ducked for cover, but as Charlie went to line up his shot again, the young computer tech stabbed the tablet with his finger.

  “It is done!” he heard Byko proclaim.

  The crowd seemed stunned, unsure how to react.

  Charlie wheeled around, looking for Byko’s guards, still brandishing his gun to make sure no one jumped him. He put the phone back to his ear. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “We were too late.”

  “I know,” Julie told him. “Get out of there, Charlie!”

  Charlie retreated as quickly as he could, but Byko’s thundering continued from the platform. “No longer will our gold form the bars of our prisons. No longer will our oil power the tanks that roll over our broken bodies. No longer will our cotton form the ropes that bind our hands . . .”

  Charlie saw Byko extend his arms into the air as though they were handcuffed, as though he was the prisoner.

  “Because our enemies are not here. In our own country. Our enemies are in New York and London, Copenhagen and Vienna, Sydney and Tokyo—in every country that buys T-shirts made from the cotton picked by a generation of child slaves. Today, these enemies will pay the price for their hypocrisy. Today, they will pay for it with their blood. If money is all they care about, let them choke on it!”

  Suddenly it dawned on Charlie. New York and London, Copenhagen and Vienna, Sydney and Tokyo . . . Chicago and Minneapolis!

  It was the dramatic inevitability that told the story. Today, this Square, the anniversary, Byko on that statue. The money and the greed. That was what Byko meant to punish.

  I know what the targets are!” Julie heard Charlie say into the phone.

  She gripped the camera tightly, could see Byko’s men converging toward him.

  “Charlie! Look out! They’re coming. From every angle!”

  She heard him click off and he disappeared from view.

  “Charlie! Charlie!”

  She whipped the viewfinder left and right. They were coming for him. And they were close.

  “Charlie!” she screamed. “Charlie!”

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Hopkins sat outside the farmhouse as the SAS men packed their gear in preparation for evac. They were still holding Byko’s double and the guards who had come along with him. But it was pointless. Byko had outfoxed them.

  Hopkins blew out a long breath. Unless Charlie Davis was able to somehow get to Byko, the mayhem and destruction was coming and there was nothing anybody could do about it. He grabbed his phone for what must have been the hundredth time in the last half hour, checking to see if he’d somehow missed a call from the American.

  Much to his surprise, the phone vibrated and chirped in his hand.

  It was Charlie Davis.

  Hopkins hit the answer button and spoke into the phone. “Please tell me something good.”

  “He’s hitting the commodities markets!”

  “I don’t see—”

  “Why Hanover and not Berlin? Why—” Davis’s voice cut out for a moment “Vienna and not Paris? Why Minneapolis and not D.C. or L.A.? Every single one of the target cities has a commodities market. A big building with thousands of people in it that also has great symbolic value.”

  As Charlie shouted into the phone, Byko’s thugs were pushing inexorably closer to him. He couldn’t see them all, but he could feel their presence, the anxious people in the crowd making way for the armed men.

  “What?” Hopkins said. “I can’t hear—”

  “Commodities! He’s hitting the commodities markets. Trust me. Just trust me. He wants to hit us in the pocketbook. And the symbolism. He’s—”

  Sensing he was getting no response, Charlie checked his screen to see if he was still connected. But the phone had gone entirely dead.

  Had Hopkins heard him? Had he believed him?

  Charlie dropped the useless phone, clasped the Makarov, and pressed forward, trying to find a seam in the crowd.

  On the pedestal Byko refused to stop. “Tomorrow the news will say that we are terrorists, lunatics, fanatics. What they will not say is what really happens in this country.”

  Byko held out his hands toward the crowd, beseeching them to understand his vision. “How we live!” he shouted. “What we suffer! This they will never say . . . but we will know.”

  Salim tried once again to rack the bolt on the old Mosin Nagant. It had always been a little sticky, but not like this. Now it wouldn’t even rotate.

  Of all the times for his rifle to jam.

  Salim could hear the cadence in Byko’s voice, the rhythms in his speech, and could tell that the man was winding down, that he had precious few moments left.

  He had to get the bolt free, but if he simply jammed it onto the paved ledge, he would most certainly distort the viewfinder. At this distance, Salim couldn’t afford to be anything but precise. So he pulled off his shoe and hammered the bolt with the heel. At first, it didn’t seem to have any effect. But on the fourth strike, he felt some movement. On the seventh, the bolt began to rotate. On the ninth, it came free.

  He yanked back the bolt and ejected the jammed round. It fell to the floor next to Salim’s injured foot as he looked into the breach of the gun. The next round looked okay and he slammed the bolt home.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Charlie pushed himself through a soft spot in the crowd. But then he saw guns in front of him, AK-47s held aloft in both directions, the guns forcing the terrified crowd to fall back.

  When he wheeled around and saw two more, he was cut off. Surrounded.

  After everything he’d been through, after all of this time . . . perhaps it was written. Perhaps it was his destiny to die in this Square. He gazed across the ancient space and spotted Julie standing on the roof of the truck, shouting into the phone.

  He wanted so badly to reach out to her, to touch her one last time. But he realized that he’d done what he came here to do. She was going to make it home. And maybe, just maybe, he’d managed to complete her mission.

  Byko’s men were closing in now, weapons at the ready, apparently unconcerned with opening fire right here in the middle of the crowd.

  This was it. Charlie’s final moment. Nothing to do now but wait for it . . .

  A single shot rang out, echoing from one side of Babur Square and back.

  For a moment, all Julie heard was silence.

  Had they gotten to Charlie? She could see Byko’s men, but they were looking around in confusion. None of them seemed to know the source of the shot.

  Instinctively, she swung the camera toward the focus of the crowd’s attention: Byko himself.

  His face was fixed in an expression of puzzlement. Then he moved his head as though trying to work a crick out of his neck. She thought Byko was craning to see where the gunfire had come from or perhaps who had been shot.

  But then the red spot blossomed on his chest. Blood. Blood forming an oblong splotch on the front of his white shirt. A moment later, Byko fell, clutching at his chest.

  And the screaming began.

  The crowd had to assume the shooter was one of Karimov’s. And where there was one, there would always be more.

  As the people started to stampede, Julie saw one of Byko’s bodyguards fall. Whether he was intentionally knocked down by someone who assumed he was one of Karimov’s internal security thugs, or whether he just lost his footing was impossible to know. Then somebody shouted something and another bodyguard succumbed to the fury of the crowd.

  But where was Charlie?

  Through the camera, Julie watched the tumult of the mob. People pushing and shouting, trying not to trample each other. It was chaos.

  “Hey!” she heard a man shout. “We going!”

  It was the driver of the truck.

  “No!” she said. “I need to stay here.”

  She looked back through the camera, searching for Charlie.

  And then, she thought she saw somet
hing. A glimpse of dirty blond hair.

  She racked focus on the camera, trying to hone in on the man stumbling in her direction. As he neared her, forcing his way through the crowd, she finally found his face. His eyes. It was Charlie.

  “Jules!”

  She lowered the camera and saw his broad smile as he arrived at the truck.

  “Jules, jump!” He extended his arms toward her. “Jump!”

  It was a long way. But she didn’t hesitate.

  For a moment she was weightless, airborne, the sound of the screaming and yelling filling her ears. Then, with a hard thump, her feet slammed into the ground and Charlie’s arms closed around her.

  “Hold on!” Charlie screamed at her.

  “I’m not letting go of you!” she yelled. And she knew that she would never let go of him again.

  A disconnected part of Alisher Byko’s brain told him that he was hit. He was hugging the base of the statue, blood streaming down the granite. But he couldn’t feel anything below his navel—nothing but a sort of shifting darkness, groping its way up his spine.

  As he rested against the stone, the surging crowd visible out of the corner of his eye, it occurred to him that maybe this was what he had been searching for all this time. Not just relief from his pain, not just a dimunition of the fury and horror that tugged at him every waking moment of every day—but this, this dark force he felt taking over his body . . .

  Extinction.

  He could see his son’s beautiful face, as clear as if he were here with Byko still—his silky soft skin, his angelic brown eyes. And Daniella was here, too. Cradling the boy, nursing him from her supple breast. Smiling at Alisher almost sheepishly.

  As he peered up at the aching gray sky, he realized that everything he had set in motion was merely the final futile gesture of an overmatched, defeated man. He would see Daniella soon, and his boy. His sister and his father. His mother and his cousins. All of the Bykos who had come before him.

  Around him, the people in the Square were shouting and running for their lives, though he was quite certain none of them were in danger. He felt sorry for them. And he began to see that he was no different from them—the nameless, faceless people in this Square. In fact, he was no different from the nameless, faceless victims of the attacks he had put in motion. Because, in fact, they all had faces, just like his little boy.