by David Poyer
Dan reached for support as the trailer reeled around him. “What are you saying? Do they have … did they identify her?”
Rutter steadied him with a hand. “Angela asked. No ID on her. Real sorry to tell you this.”
“Well, maybe it isn’t—can we get a—a picture?”
The woman turned in her chair. She was older, crag-jawed, but her eyes were kind. “This here system is hard-wire routed. We don’t have the bandwidth for pictures. I’m real sorry.”
“Where is it?” he forced through numb lips. “Chadron, you said. Is that in Montana? I’ll go there. And see for myself.”
“You’ll want the sheriff’s department. And no, it’s in Nebraska. Good ways east of here.”
“That’s a hard day’s travel,” Hardin said. “More like two, on that bike.”
“And he can’t take Route 90,” the woman said. “It’s still too hot to cross. Full body dose, the levels they’re reporting, he’d be toast. Gonna have to jog south. Maybe through Yellowstone. Then pick it up again on the other side, around Sheridan, or take 25.”
“Get his bike filled up,” Rutter told Hardin. “Give him some water. And Derek, give him his pistol back. He might need it, out on those roads these days. Captain, I’m real sorry about all this. I wish we had better news for you.”
Dan might have answered, but he wasn’t focused on what was going on. He felt poleaxed, like one of the dead steers back in the feedlot.
He stumbled back out to the bike. Tried to concentrate, to listen, as Hardin gave him directions. The woman came out, carrying a road map. They fueled his bike, tucked MREs into his saddlebags, patted his back. From overtly hostile, they’d suddenly become almost like family. Even Derek bumped fists and wished him good luck.
Dan accepted it all in a dazed stupor, as if he were watching a golem controlled from elsewhere. The golem accepted things. Muttered thanks. Remembered directions. But didn’t seem to be all there. He climbed back on the Honda and hit the start button. But, the starter didn’t work anymore. He kicked it several times and at last it caught. The militiamen dragged the roadblock aside to let him take the turnoff.
When he looked back, in the little vibrating handlebar mirror, they were all looking after him, growing smaller and smaller, until they too were gone.
9
The Tian Shan Mountains, Western China
THE donkey had bitten Vlad twice, once on the thigh and once on the hand, when he’d thoughtlessly strayed his fingers too close to its mouth. The Hunza with him kept apologizing, but in his heart seemed to be relishing it.
The animal’s rider had high Slav cheekbones, but he wasn’t Slav. Nor Russian, despite his cover name. “Vladimir” was in his early thirties. His dark stubble was rimed with white frost from the altitude. His nose was straight and thin as a box cutter. He wore a long, heavy black wool greatcoat that could have been issued by the army of the tsars, but with high-tech hiking boots and gloves that in these mountains were barely warm enough. He spoke four languages and carried an SKS carbine slung over his back. His earflapped fur hat made him look like a mountain hunter. At least from a distance.
He didn’t look American. But he was. A Ranger before the war, now Andres Korzenowski was with the Special Operations Group, Special Activities Division. A paramilitary operations officer, specializing in raids, sabotage, ambushes, and the other brands of unconventional mischief the Allies had fomented behind enemy lines in Tibet, Iran, China, and Mongolia.
“There it is, their camp,” the Hunza said.
Andres shaded pale blue, deeply hooded eyes rimmed with broken blood vessels. “I don’t see it,” he said in Russian.
“It is designed not to be seen.”
“Of course.” Digging out a bulky pair of binoculars from inside his coat, he set them to electromagnetic and scanned the deep, rugged mountainside before them. Nothing. He toggled to IR and scanned again. Still nothing. “It is well hidden indeed. If it is here.”
“It is, sir. Somewhere. I do not know exactly the spot. Our guide will tell us.”
The donkey was twisting its head again, trying to get at his foot with those huge yellow teeth. Korzenowski pulled his boot back and with one heel kicked the beast in the ribs.
“Do not abuse my animal, sir,” the Hunza protested.
“I’ve paid you enough for it. The damn thing bites.”
“One that did not bite would not have the spirit to keep on.”
His escort had guided him over the mountains. Unfortunately they’d been delayed by a rockslide. Then, again and again, by drone warnings on the device he carried in his greatcoat pocket. Each time it sounded a discordant whine they had to take shelter, finding nooks amid the rocks and drawing the crackly plastic IR/EM blanket over themselves. They’d lost another whole day when Andres’s animal had decided to chew through his tether and make tracks. Only hunger, in these high, deserted, treeless wastes, had finally brought it reluctantly back to them.
But the end result had been that they’d missed the original rendezvous, a shepherd’s hut far to the east. The man he was meeting seemed reluctant to reschedule, though. It had taken several calls on the satellite phone before he’d reluctantly set a new meeting point.
And now they were here. But no one was around to meet them.
Suddenly the Hunza, several yards ahead, extended a hand. Gestured downward, as if patting the air. Andres reined in his mount, carefully keeping fingers and feet clear, and shaded his gaze ahead.
Where figures rose from nothingness, emerging like ghosts from graves from tumbled rock and gravel and patches of snow, to assemble themselves into ragged but fit-looking fighters. Men in shalwar kameez and sheepskin coats, pakul hats and black scarves wound around bearded faces. Their rifles were pointed at the new arrivals.
The Hunza lifted his hands to the sky. But Andres kicked his mount forward, passing him. The rifles’ muzzles tracked him. Conscious of the 9mm tucked inside the greatcoat, but knowing neither it nor the SKS would help much facing a dozen AKs, he spread his hands pacifically. “Selamlar. Ben beklediginiz Amerikaliyim,” he said, forcing confidence into his tone. I am the American you are waiting for. Turkish, not Uighur, but both being Turkic languages, they should get the gist. “Hanginiz benim rehberim?” Which one of you is here to meet me?
A bulkily built mujahid with a heavy beard lifted a hand warily. He had what Andres recognized as a Battelle antidrone rifle slung across his back. “I am Jusuf,” he said in Han Chinese.
“I do not speak the language of the Han oppressors. I am called Vladimir. We can speak Russian if you like.”
They compromised on his Turkish, which made the other mujs furrow their brows and rub their mouths, but seemed to get the main points across. Jusuf narrowed his eyes at the Hunza. He gestured at him. “We must shoot this one. We are not taking him to our camp.”
“He guided me here. Do not kill him, I beg. I trust him.”
“We don’t. So. He must stay here and wait for your return.”
This didn’t seem to be a good place to argue, and he didn’t need the guy until it was time to go back. Shrugging, he explained this to the Hunza, who looked relieved. Andres counted out two gold pieces, Krugerrands, surreptitiously into his palm. “I know it is not in our agreement, and you will have to camp here. Perhaps this will help pay for feed.” The guy ducked his head, gaze locked on the shining metal. There, that wasn’t so hard.
Andres turned to the stocky Uighur. “You will take me to Chief Oberg?”
The other hesitated. He held out a hand; mimed a handgun with thumb and forefinger.
Andres handed over the carbine. Another mimed trigger-pulling, pointing this time at his chest. He slid the Glock out of the shoulder holster and handed it over too.
The muj reached to the small of his back, and Andres tensed. But what he brought out was not a gun, but a wadded black cloth. Jusuf shook it out into a hood and held it out.
“You got to be kidding,” Andres said in English. Then
, in Turkish. But the guy kept holding it out, insisting, and the men holding the rifles stirred, murmuring among themselves.
Unwillingly, he pulled the heavy cloth over his head. It stank of mutton grease. Raw, dyed black wool. He couldn’t see a fucking thing. His breath came hot, and he fought claustrophobia and gritted his teeth to steady himself.
Jusuf said, “Now I will take you to the Lingxiu.”
* * *
WHEN they pulled the hood off him at last, after a long stumbling walk during which he was led by the hand, they stood at the bottom of a deep defile.
Jusuf carefully scanned the sky before motioning him forward. The opening was narrow and he had to duck under the shelving rock.
It was a cave. The entrance, overhung by the rock, must have been invisible from a hundred feet away, and no doubt from any prying eyes roving that high clear sky. One of thousands in these ancient, raddled mountains, here at the very roof of Asia. They stretched west and became the Karakoram, the fabled Black Mountains; the jeweled Pamirs; then the Hindu Kush, even farther west, in Iran. And the Himalayas, loftiest and most remote of all, to the south.
He’d seen a lot of the area in the past three years, winter, spring, fall, and summer, on foot and on skis. Fomenting, supplying, and financing unrest and rebellion in the most distant and isolated areas left on earth.
Now he girded himself for what promised to be a difficult conversation, with a man already a legend nearly on the scale of T. E. Lawrence and Orde Wingate.
As he straightened warily, a vast cavern gaped below him, twisting down into the earth like a bowel. Water dripped somewhere, echoing in the dim. The steeply slanted floor was studded with rocks that seemed to have been roughly rearranged into a slippery staircase. As he descended, choosing where to step next with intent care, the light receded above him. To either side poles had been wedged into the descent. The air grew colder as he went down. At first he thought the poles might be burned-out torches, set to light the way, though they weren’t burning now.
But then, letting himself downward, braking his controlled slide with difficulty and coming very close to wrenching an ankle, he made out what was perched at the top of the stick. He grunted in surprise, and nearly slipped and fell before he regained his footing.
The darkened, twisted clump jammed atop the stick was a human head.
He stared into desiccated sardonic eyeballs for a full second before jerking his gaze back to the treacherous, lichen-spotted, already-sliding scree under his feet. Water dripped from overhead, cold, limestone-dank.
More sticks dotted the zigzagging path down, each topped with its macabre decoration. Some still wore caps.
Breathing deeply, mastering his fear as the air grew ever colder, the gloom ever darker, he concentrated on placing each boot on a surface that would not tilt or slip away beneath him. But found all too few that looked like anything solid enough to trust.
* * *
THE man he’d come to see hoisted himself with evident effort from beside a low table as Andres neared. A stocky woman in black from head to toe helped him up. The titanium brace the Agency had sent in on an earlier visit lay to the side, on a priceless-looking antique Bukhara carpet. As did a satellite phone. A Chinese-issue rifle stood propped against the cave wall. Torches flared and smoked, providing a fitful, inadequate illumination. The stink of kerosene fought with the wet-limestone cave-smell, along with what seemed to be a musky perfume.
SEAL Master Chief Teddy Harlett Oberg had not aged well. His skin was darker, seamed by sun and altitude. His hair and beard were much longer than Andres remembered. And a black eyepatch covered one side of his upper face. Well, it had been almost a year since they’d last met. Before Operation Jedburgh, when the American advisor had led his rebels against the Chinese missile base in the mountains far to the east.
That hadn’t ended well at all.
“Teddy, good to see you,” Andres said.
“Sizga salaam. Come in, come in,” Oberg said, a bit hesitantly, as if he hadn’t spoken English in a long time. He was swathed in heavy-looking sheepskins with a tatty gray blanket over his shoulders, and unlike the others, he was bareheaded. He spoke rapidly to the woman, in what Andres assumed was Han Chinese, and waved her away. Then limped forward and gripped his hand. The big guy, Jusuf, stayed on his feet, taking up a stand behind Oberg, one hand on his hip.
“Teddy, shit, your eye. What happened?”
Oberg shrugged and slapped his shoulder. “Hey, I got a spare. So, they tell me your guide was Hunza. But you know the Pakistanis bought them off. Turned them against us.”
“Now that China’s crumbling, they like us better. Enough to take our gold anyway.”
“An offer they couldn’t refuse?”
“More or less.”
“And you rode in on a donkey?”
“Donkey, my ass. That thing’s half alligator. Bit me twice on the way up.”
They chuckled together. Oberg waved him to a place on the carpet. “Am I still calling you Vladimir?”
“Why not call me Andy. Now that the war’s over.”
“Andy, sure. Good.”
Oberg called an order back into the cave, and they settled in for tea. The way every negotiation started in this part of the world. Yeah, they were both Yankees, but it still greased things along to spend a little time getting reacquainted.
Especially considering what he was going to ask.
The stocky woman and another, thinner, perhaps younger one—he couldn’t tell much through the black cloth—brought brass trays laden with sweet thick chai and the date pastries called baklava in these remote mountains, though it wasn’t like the Greek variety. The older woman poured; the younger one hovered until Oberg selected a cake, apparently at random, and handed it to her. She lifted her black hijab to take a large bite, and Andres caught a glimpse of youthful, pouting lips.
Andres toasted his host gravely with the blazing hot brass cup. “To victory. At last.”
“Victory,” Oberg said, but somehow his version didn’t have the same savor. Maybe with a twist of lemon.
They sipped and Andres helped himself to a cake. Then another; there hadn’t been much to eat on the trail up. He noticed his host didn’t indulge.
“We’ll have lamb and rice later,” Oberg said, watching him. “I can move dinner up if you’re really hungry.”
“Whenever you had it planned for. Sort of a celebration?”
“No, just the regular meal. But I wanted you to get some face time with the rest of my leadership.”
“Guldulla. Nasrullah. And the Hajji.”
Oberg’s eyes flickered, though the fingers that held the tiny brass cup did not move. “Thought I mentioned that in the after-action report. Nasrullah turned traitor on us. Had to be shot. And Hajji Qurban bought it on the raid.” For some reason his hand wandered to his belt, where he wore an ornately hilted dagger.
“Oh yeah, you did report that. Too bad, he was a fighter.”
“He certainly was that.” Oberg smiled grimly, as if remembering something he both regretted and found pleasant. “And you already met Jusuf here.”
“Right.” The bearded young guy who’d carried the antidrone rifle. Who now, catching his name, bowed his head slightly and smiled.
They sipped again. As a muj brought another torch the shadow of one of the grisly-headed sticks tracked across the cavern wall. Shadows on a cavern wall, Andres mused. Undergraduate philosophy. Something from Plato …
Oberg caught his glance. “Guess you saw my garden gnomes, on the way down.”
“Yeah. They’re … intimidating.”
“I keep ’em in a chest, packed in salt, so we can move them along with the HQ element. That kind of thing helps when we bring in the tribal chiefs for a little talk. Especially if they recognize somebody they knew. Who cooperated with the Han. Or didn’t contribute his quota of young men to fight. We take them along when we visit a village, too. Post them in the square, once we shut the government cam
eras down and shoot the teachers and other officials.”
Andres cleared his throat, increasingly uneasy but trying not to show it. The dank smell, the cold, the flickering flame-light. The immobile, shadowed features of the man sitting opposite. It all made for an unsettling feeling. Something pale glowed behind him, against the blackened wall of the cavern. Not a source of light, but reflecting the light. He couldn’t quite make out what it was. “Uh, yeah, well … we need to talk about that kind of thing, Teddy. Seriously.”
“You want a status report? We have almost two thousand effectives now. Two thousand trained rifles, with good comms and a dependable intelligence network. Contacts in every village. Intel coming in from every Han office that employs a local.”
Oberg grinned in his beard and leaned to refill Andres’s teacup. “We’re ready to take this rebellion big-time, Andy. Last week we got our first squad-level desertion from one of the Internal Security divisions. Complete with all organic weapons and a ZTQ.”
This was a light tank optimized for mountain fighting. Andres nodded. “Impressive.”
“Oh, it’s just the start. Han rule’s crumbling out here. They’re evacuating their families. The people always feared them, sure. But now the word’s out they’re not invincible, the tide’s running our way fast. All we need is for you to double the level of support, and we can grab this whole province right out of Beijing’s hands.”
Andres said carefully, “Before we get to that, there are a couple of issues that concern us, Teddy.”
“Shoot. Oh, here’s Tok. You remember Tokarev? Given name, Guldulla?”
The lanky Uighur with the two-tone mustache. “Hello. Uh, selamlar. Yeah, I remember him. Your exec.” They exchanged a limp handshake.
“Actually we sort of share the leadership now. But yeah, effectively.” Oberg spoke rapidly to the Uighur, who nodded, gaze reflective on Andres. The lanky man folded himself down, drew an ornately engraved automatic from his belt, and placed it beside him on the carpet. Cocked.
