Private Wars (33 page)

Then Lankford sprang up from behind his cover and laid down another three shots from the Browning, and another of the gunmen flailed and fell. Chace ducked low, scurrying behind the wreckage of the last car in the line. She brought the M-16 up, butt into her shoulder, and she fired. Tozim was turning and trying for cover but Andrei wasn’t as fast, and the burst caught both of them, cutting across the big man’s thighs and then tearing into the older man’s belly. Both went down.

Chace advanced around the side of the wreck, M-16 still to her shoulder, and she saw the last gunman crouching in the road, by the Jeep, fumbling to reload his rifle, and she put a burst in his chest. He flopped back, gagging, as the M-16 went dry, and she dropped the rifle as the man fell silent.

The gray-bearded guard lay on his side near her feet, face half-missing from shrapnel, Kalashnikov still in his bloodied hand. She took the AK, began walking through the bodies, checking for life.

“All clear?” Lankford called from above.

“Clear,” Chace shouted back.

She heard him begin to descend toward her, rattling more rocks down the mountainside.

Kostum stared at her from where he was slumped against the wheel, holding his right hand in his left, and she saw that one of them, Tozim or Andrei, had put a bullet through it. As she dropped to her haunches beside him, the General smiled at her weakly, saying something in Pashto through bloodied lips, and she nodded, then looked past him.

Andrei Hamrayev was dead, eyes wide and mouth opened, saliva visible at the corner of his mouth, mixed with his blood. But her eyes were on the bloody smear on the ground, tracking the path of a wounded man as he tried to crawl away.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Kostum softly, then stood, adjusting her grip on the Kalashnikov.

Tozim had made it halfway to the ruins of the lead car, dragging himself along, and from the amount of blood he was losing, Chace figured he didn’t have much time. He was sobbing in pain, trying to keep the noise to himself, and she saw a pistol in his right hand, and she almost laughed. It was a Sarsilmaz, maybe the same one they’d recovered from her over six months earlier.

She watched him crawling, and his progress steadily degraded, less and less ground covered with what seemed greater and greater effort. Finally she set the Kalashnikov silently on the ground at her feet, then moved to him. She kicked him hard in the face with her boot, snapping him onto his side, then brought the same foot down on his gun hand, stomping. Tozim cried out, lost the grip on the gun.

She picked the pistol up, still looking down at him. There were tears of pain in his eyes. There was recognition on his face.

Chace thought of all the things she wanted to say, as she checked the pistol, and she was almost positive it was the same Sarsilmaz, and it was loaded and ready, so she pointed it at his right foot. She decided there were no words to say.

She pulled the trigger.

Tozim screamed.

She pointed it at his left foot and fired again.

He screamed again.

She tucked the pistol into the back of her pants, leaned down, and searched him. She found his wallet, a pack of American cigarettes, and a plastic lighter. She took all of them, shoving them into her coat pockets. Tozim was babbling at her, a torrent of Uzbek, and when she began dragging him, he tried to break her grip with his bloodied hands. There was almost no strength to his efforts, and when he did finally succeed in grabbing Chace’s wrist, she punched him in the face before she resumed pulling him.

“You don’t ever touch me again,” she told him.

She was aware of Lankford watching her, crouched beside Kostum, trying to tend his wounds, as she manhandled Tozim to the side of the trail. The slope was severe here and she looked back down at Tozim Stepanov, and she knew he was begging her not to do it, not because she understood his words, but because she heard the garbled desperation in them.

It was another sound from her nightmares, and she would have relented then, she would have spared him then, if only, in her dreams, it hadn’t been her doing the begging.

“Try to land on your feet,” Chace told him, then pitched him over the edge.

They
reached Mazar-i-Sharif seven hours later, and three hours and fifty-four minutes after that, Chace was on a NATO-staffed helicopter bound for Termez.

CHAPTER 41

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—438–2 Raktaboshi,
Residence of Charles Riess

27 August, 0917 Hours (GMT+5:00)

Riess answered the door in his T-shirt and
boxer shorts, the day’s first cup of coffee in his hand. He’d have been better dressed if he’d been expecting a caller, but it was Sunday morning, there was no need for him at the Embassy, and he’d been up late the night before, watching the better part of a television series he’d ordered off of Netflix, concerning cowboys with extraordinarily foul mouths. He’d dreamed of saloons and the Wild West, and perhaps because it was still so fresh in his mind, the first words out of his mouth when he saw Tracy Carlisle at his door were “Cock-sucking motherfucker.”

“Delighted to see you, too,” she replied, and then Tracy Carlisle, whose name wasn’t really Tracy Carlisle, smiled at him like they were old friends. She smiled like she was happy to see him. “May I come in?”

Riess thought about that for a moment, wondering what in hell he’d tell Tower when he was no doubt asked about this, then sighed. He moved back and waved her in, then looked out over his tiny yard to the street, seeing nothing that alarmed him. He almost laughed.

As if I’d know what I’m looking for,
he thought.

“Coffee’s fresh,” he told her as he moved past, heading back to the kitchen. “I get it from a friend in San Francisco. The beans, I mean, not the coffee.”

“Coffee would be delightful,” Tracy Carlisle said, following him.

“You take cream? Sugar?” Riess opened the cabinet, pulled out a mug.

“Black, like my heart.”

“Uh-huh.”

He set the mug down, filled it from the pot, handing it over. She was looking at him with what he interpreted as vague amusement, and as he stood there, she ran her eyes the length of him, down, then up, then smiled again.

“I just woke up,” Riess explained.

“So I see.”

Riess returned the look, and had to admit he liked what he was looking at. She wore jeans and a black T-shirt, a loose linen jacket, tan. He could smell the hint of soap, saw that her hair appeared to still be damp. Fresh from the shower, he assumed, and straight to his doorstep, but God only knew why. Then he saw what looked like dried blood on the toes of her boots, and had to wonder if the shower had been about more than just hygiene.

“You probably shouldn’t be here,” he told her.

“I need a favor.”

“I don’t do those kinds of favors anymore.”

“This one won’t cost you anything. You might even like it.”

Riess laughed tersely. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

“It’s a favor for Ruslan, Charles.”

“Ruslan’s in Afghanistan.”

“At the moment, yes. He wants his son back. I’m here to fetch him.”

“Oh, God,” Riess said, his mind filling with visions of the Dormon Residence, where the President lived, erupting in flames, collapsing from a missile strike. “The way you fetched them the first time?”

Carlisle laughed. “You really think I’m a monster, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what to think of you,” Riess answered honestly. “You show up on my doorstep with bloodstains on your boots, telling me that you need a favor but it’s okay because it’s semiofficial, and it’s about Ruslan, and it’s about Stepan, and the last time I saw you, you were headed for the shower and I was headed out the door. So, no, Tracy, I don’t know what to think of you.”

“My name’s Tara,” Tracy Carlisle said.

“What’s this favor?”

Tara-not-Tracy tasted the coffee he’d poured for her, and he saw her expression brighten in pleasant surprise. She took a second gulp before saying, “Late yesterday afternoon, the U.K. Ambassador met with President Sevara Malikov to discuss the possibility of returning Stepan Malikov to his father’s care. The Ambassador carried a message from Stepan’s father, the details of which are largely unimportant, but the gist was this: Ruslan gets Stepan back, Sevara never has to worry about her brother again. Ruslan will stay far away from her and Uzbekistan, and that will be that.

“President Malikov, after some deliberation, agreed. The exchange is set for the day after tomorrow, early Tuesday morning, to take place at the border crossing in Termez. Sevara will make the visit ostensibly to examine the security at the border and to meet with the United Nations staff for the relief effort. Ruslan will await on the Afghan side of the bridge, and Sevara will deliver Stepan on the Uzbek side. A third party will escort the boy across the bridge to his father.”

“Sevara’s agreed to this?”

“So I’ve been told. You seem surprised.”

Riess shrugged. Nothing about Uzbekistan surprised him anymore. “So far I’m not hearing anything about a favor.”

“I’m coming to that.” Tara-not-Tracy finished her coffee, then placed the mug on the counter. She reached into an outside pocket of her coat, removing two wallets, both leather, one black, the other tan. She set them beside her empty mug. Riess noted that the tan one was spattered with dried blood, too.

“I took these off two men in Afghanistan,” she told him. “They were reluctant to part with them.”

Riess hesitated, then picked up the black wallet, flipping it open. An ID card stared back at him, printed in Uzbek, and declaring the bearer an officer of the NSS. The officer in question’s name was Tozim Stepanov. He glanced up from the wallet to her, and she inclined her head, indicating that he should examine the second one as well. He did so, reading the ID of a second NSS officer named Andrei Hamrayev.

“You got these off two men in Afghanistan?”

“About eighty klicks south of Mazar-i-Sharif, in fact.”

“What were two NSS officers doing eighty klicks south of Mazar-i-Sharif?”

“I believe they were leading a hit squad in an attempt to kill Ruslan Malikov. The hit squad consisted of four Uzbek Army soldiers in addition to these two.”

“You have proof of this?”

From the another pocket, Tara-not-Tracy removed a zip-top plastic bag. She jiggled the bag before handing it over, causing the metal contents inside to ring lightly. Riess took the bag.

Four sets of dog tags.

“The question is, of course, whether or not President Malikov authorized this hit squad or not,” she told him. “Given that this was an armed incursion by one sovereign nation upon another, I find that doubtful, especially considering Uzbekistan’s cozy relationship with your government, not to mention your government’s relationship with Afghanistan. I find it very doubtful indeed.”

“She didn’t,” Riess said. “Not in a million years, not just to kill her brother.”

“Then someone else must have initiated the action. And considering the nature of the IDs in those wallets, I think we both know who that someone would be.”

“I should bring this to the attention of my Ambassador.”

“I’m certainly not about to tell you how to do your job,” she said cheerfully. “But if you were to ask me, I’d say that was a fine and proper course of action.”

Riess considered her again, her smile, her manner. “You’re setting up Zahidov?”

“Am I?”

“At the least, President Malikov demands Zahidov’s resignation. At the most, he disappears and the body is never found.”

Something flickered behind her eyes, almost like a shadow moving from one darkness to another.

“That would be a pity,” Tara-not-Tracy said. “That would be a great pity indeed.”

Ambassador
Norton was reluctant to meet with Riess on such short notice, but the mention of an Uzbek incursion into Afghanistan dispelled that reluctance quickly. They met in the Ambassador’s office at the Embassy, and while it certainly wasn’t the first time that Riess had been inside it since Norton took over for Garret, he was again surprised by how little things had seemed to change. Only the photographs on the glory wall and the desk, and even those were remarkably similar to the ones that Garret had hung.

Aaron Tower attended the meeting as well, which surprised Riess initially, but in retrospect he thought it really shouldn’t have. Tara-not-Tracy was SIS, he knew that, and this time the Brit was here on official business. COS Tashkent would have been notified, if not via London, possibly via Langley. It helped Riess in making his case, because Tower was able to provide some missing details—namely, about the Uzbek soldiers, where they’d been stationed, and how Zahidov most likely arranged things.

“And we’re positive that President Malikov didn’t authorize the action?” Ambassador Norton asked when Riess and Tower had each finished their respective reports. He gazed at them over the top of his glasses.

“As positive as we can be,” Tower answered. “It flies in the face of everything President Malikov’s done since winning the election, Mitch, especially the steps she’s taking to improve relations with the Afghanis. Add to that the fact that she’s been working extremely hard to stay on our good side, easing up on the religious restrictions and press issues, even reining in the NSS.”

“She still has a long way to go,” the Ambassador pointed out mildly. “But I take your point. It’d be a hell of a risk for her, sending troops into Afghanistan, at least like this.”

“I think we’re safe in assuming that it was done without her knowledge or permission.”

“Then I’ll put a call into her office at once, see if she isn’t available to discuss this potential diplomatic incident.” The Ambassador sat back in his chair, removing his glasses. He folded them closed, but held them in his hand. “Mr. Riess.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re aware the British have brokered a deal between President Malikov and her brother?”

“I am, sir.”

“Have you been to Termez before?”

“Three times, yes, sir, though not in the last eight months or so.”

“You’re about to make it four times. I want the handoff audited. Anything goes wrong, I’d like to have an American eyewitness to what transpired. Get yourself to Termez by tomorrow night. The exchange, as my colleague at the British Embassy has informed me, is set for eight o’clock Tuesday morning. I want you there.”

“How close should I get?”

“Close enough that if anything goes sour, you’ll be able to give me an accurate report, son.” The Ambassador seemed vaguely annoyed. “You know both Ruslan and the boy, or so I understand.”

Riess glanced to Tower, who shot him a grin in return. “I’ll recognize them, yes, sir,” he replied.

“That’s all I need. I’ll make sure McColl knows where you’re going and why; you won’t have to worry about him.” The Ambassador swept the hand holding his glasses across his desk, indicating the wallets and dog tags. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention so promptly.”

Riess took that as his cue to exit, said, “Thank you for your time, sir,” and started out of the office.

“Mr. Riess,” the Ambassador called after him. “One more thing.”

“Sir?”

“No cloaks and daggers for you.” It seemed to Riess that the Ambassador was rather pointedly not looking at Tower. “I’ve got enough people with those running around this country already.”

“I understand, sir.”

Tower hefted himself from his chair, saying, “I’ll walk Charles out, if you don’t mind, Mitch.”

The Ambassador grunted assent, already reaching for the phone. Tower settled a hand on Riess’ upper arm, guiding him the rest of the way out of the office and through the secretarial bunker, into the hallway. They cleared the security doors, and Tower dropped the hand, walking alongside Riess silently until they reached the entry hall.

“Didn’t get a second roll in the hay?” Tower asked him.

“I don’t think she was that interested.”

Tower stopped, tucking his hands into his pockets. The CIA Chief of Station was looking toward the exit, brow creasing, apparently in memory.

“No, I don’t imagine that she was,” he said after a second, then moved his look back to Riess. “Mind if I ride down to Termez with you?”

“You need to audit the handover as well?”

“Something like that.”

“But not quite like that.”

Tower grinned by way of answer, then said, “DPM of the Interior Zahidov’s going to have a very bad day tomorrow, I think.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

“If you knew half of what I know, Chuck, you’d be drinking a toast.”

“You think she’ll do it? Have him killed?”

“President Malikov? He was useful to her before she won the election, but he’s a major liability now. Her problem is, he knows too much. All of her dirty laundry. What do
you
think?”

Charles Riess remembered the videotapes Dina Malikov had passed to him of the NSS interrogations, of the men and women, young and old, beaten and brutalized to coerce confessions. He remembered Dina Malikov, the photographs of her naked body, the burns, the shattered bones, the blood. He remembered the story, that Zahidov had sent for Ruslan so he could identify his wife’s body, a request that might have been interpreted as Zahidov warning Ruslan, but was in truth nothing more than pure sadism.

“I think it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” he said.