On the other hand, had he been a few years older than he really was, or not in such good physical condition, then all the running and diving and exposure to the elements would have felt much more expensive to him. Unsustainable. Disheartening. And those emotions would have led to his making decisions every bit as fatal, in the end, as those of the hypothetical seventeen-year-old.
So, as loath as he was to be self-congratulatory, he saw evidence to support the conclusion that he was at precisely the right age and level of physical conditioning to be undertaking this mission.
Which, viewed superficially, seemed like a favorable judgment. But with a bit more consideration—and, as he hid beneath the tree and listened to the jihadists beating the bushes, he did have a few minutes to think about it—it was really somewhat troubling, since it implied that all the operations he had participated in during his career before today had been undertaken by a foolish boy, in over his head and surviving by dumb luck. Whereas any operations he might carry out in the future would be ill-advised excursions by a man who was over the hill, past his prime.
He really needed to get out of this line of work.
But he’d been saying that ever since Afghanistan, and look where it had gotten him.
After a while, he heard Jones calling out to the others, telling them to give up the search. The need to press on outweighed the desire to take vengeance on the man who was stalking them. Sokolov waited until he could no longer hear the jihadists moving around, then emerged from his cover very carefully, beginning with a quick bob of the head followed by an immediate retreat. When several such ventures failed to draw fire, he began to feel some confidence that they had not left anyone behind to kill him when he emerged from cover, and he moved more freely. But he had the uncomfortable sense that they were now way ahead of him, and he began to consider how he could make up for lost time. Jones and his crew had made the decision to move through the forest, which was slower than going across the high country above the tree line, and so an obvious way that Sokolov might make up for lost time would be to go back into the mining camp and then continue to move through the scrubland just outside the limit of the trees.
This involved some slogging, since the ground here at the base of the slope was saturated with runoff. After several minutes of slow progress, he was reminded of his foolishness by a sound from high above: scraping and banging rocks. He went into the best cover he could find, which was a clump of bushes that seemed to thrive in the boggy soil, and then looked up in time to see a minor avalanche petering out on the talus slope, perhaps a thousand meters above him: just a few rocks that had been dislodged by someone or something and tumbled for a short distance before coming to rest. This gave him an idea of where he should look, so he swung his rifle up and peered through its scope, starting at the place where the rocks had stopped moving and then tilting up until he could see the faint horizontal scar of the trail. With a bit of panning sideways, he was confronted with the arresting sight of a man, sitting on the ground, and aiming a rifle right back at him! His first reaction was to flinch and get deeper into cover, which caused him to lose the sight picture. Even as he was doing so, however, his mind was processing what he had glimpsed and noting a few peculiarities.
Chief of these was that the rifle’s bolt handle had been jutting perpendicularly out from the side of the weapon, which meant that it was not in condition to fire.
And—unless his memory was playing tricks—the man had been holding the weapon oddly. His right hand was not where it ought to have been—not in a position to pull the trigger.
Slightly emboldened by these recollections, he reacquired the sight picture and verified it all. This time, as soon as he had the other man in his sights, the guy pulled his head away from his scope, revealing a European-looking face. Not that this proved anything. But there was something in the set of that face that did not say “paleface jihadist.”
This guy, whoever he was, was on Sokolov’s side. He had seen Sokolov from above, probably tracked him through his telescopic sight, and identified him as a friendly. He had triggered the little avalanche as a way of getting Sokolov’s attention. And he now wanted to communicate.
He grinned and looked off to the side. A moment later his face was joined by that of a young Asian female.
Very familiar-looking.
Sokolov had been trained for more than two decades to remain absolutely silent in battlefield situations, but he could not prevent an expression of surprise from escaping from his lips when he recognized this person as Qian Yuxia.
The man with Yuxia now began gesturing with his hands. It was impossible to communicate well in this manner. Russians and Americans—he guessed that this fellow was American—used different systems of hand signs. But the gestures were eloquent enough. The man was envisioning a sort of pincer movement. He and Yuxia would proceed along the high road, Sokolov would likewise continue doing what he was doing, and they would converge on the jihadists at the target, which Sokolov assumed to be Jake Forthrast’s cabin.
All of which was obvious enough. And even had it not been obvious, it was more or less mandatory; neither of them had much choice as to where they would go and what they would do next. That wasn’t the point.
The point was that they should try to avoid killing each other by accident during the fight that was going to begin in a few minutes. And Sokolov thought it was an excellent point.
“THIS WAY!” ZULA called, for Csongor and Marlon were preceding Jake up the driveway, headed for the cabin. Zula could see through the scope of the rifle that the jihadists had parked a couple of vehicles athwart the driveway’s entrance, up where it joined the road. They had posted a few men behind those vehicles and in the surrounding woods, apparently to fire at any neighbors or inquisitive police who might try to come after them. The main group, numbering perhaps five, were running toward the gate, using the half-wrecked SUV as cover. When they got there, they’d be able to shoot down the driveway and pick off anyone standing out in the open.
Olivia had seen the same thing. “Get behind cover!” she was calling. “Come toward me!”
The men were all slow to hear and respond. They had a lot on their minds. Olivia switched into Mandarin and called something out in a high sharp tone that made Marlon’s head swivel around and look right at her. He seemed to come to his senses then and grabbed Csongor’s sleeve and hauled him toward the sound of Olivia’s voice. Csongor was too big and had too much momentum to be diverted by this alone, but he could be steered, and within a few moments he and Marlon were both storming through the belt of woods and undergrowth that ran along the edge of the driveway. They burst out into the semicleared space where Zula and Olivia were. A few seconds later, Jake followed in their wake. Zula collected most of these impressions through her ears, since her gaze was still fixed through the scope at the gate. She had pumped a new round into the rifle. The magazine had only held four to begin with. Muzzle flashes lit up the view through her scope, and several rounds zipped through the foliage over her head.
“I’m covering the gate,” Jake announced. “You should pull back, Zula.”
Zula turned to see Jake kneeling behind the bole of a large tree, aiming his rifle through what she could only assume was a gap in the brush. He fired a round, studied the result, fired two more. Then he glanced up at her and used his eyes and his chin to indicate the direction he thought she should go.
“Over here, Zula!” Olivia called. Zula bent low and scurried into a gap between a goat pen and a net-enclosed structure where Jake and Elizabeth cultivated raspberries. A few seconds later, she had emerged into an open space behind the shed where the goats took shelter from the mountain weather. Olivia, Marlon, and Csongor were there.
It was awkward to say the least. Csongor took a quick step toward her, then faltered.
Why did he falter?
Because she was carrying a rifle?
Because her face was a horror show?
Because he wasn’t sure whe
ther she fancied him?
She searched his face for clues and got no answers, other than a powerful, unfamiliar, and situationally inappropriate feeling of pleasure that he was alive and here.
Two bangs sounded from up the hill. Then a third. Then a whole lot of other bangs in return.
“Uncle John,” Zula explained, in the silence that followed. “I left him with the Glock.”
Olivia said, “So, at the risk of stating the obvious, they’re coming to shake hands with that lot.” She tossed her head in the direction of the driveway, which was all of a sudden sounding like a free-fire zone. Zula peered around the edge of the shed and saw Jake retreating toward them.
“What is going on?” asked the voice of Elizabeth, coming out of the walkie-talkie. “Someone fill me in.”
Zula raised the device toward her face and was about to say something when Jake came in range of her, lashed out with his left hand, and ripped it out of her grasp. “Lock it down, baby,” he said. “Don’t wait for us.”
“Where are you?”
“Tell me you are in lockdown, and I’ll answer your question,” Jake responded testily.
A few moments’ radio silence followed. Jake turned to look at the others. “We’re cut off,” he said. “There’s no way we can get to the cabin before these guys do.”
“Done,” Elizabeth confirmed.
“The safe room is sealed,” Jake announced, then pressed the transmit button on the walkie-talkie again. “Okay. We’re behind the goat shed. I’ll try to update you from time to time. Can the boys hear me?”
“Yes, they’re right here gathered around me.”
“Be brave and pray,” Jake said. “I love you all, and I hope I’ll see you soon. But until you see my face in the security camera, don’t unlock those doors no matter what happens.”
ONCE HE WAS certain that no one could see him, John sat down and began to descend the slope on his ass. His artificial legs were very nice—Richard bought him a new pair every few Christmases and spared no expense—but they were worse than useless when going downhill. Even when he was moving in ass-walking mode, all they did was get hung up on undergrowth anyway, so he paused for a minute to take them off and rub his sore-as-hell stumps. He reached around behind his back and stuffed them into the open top of his knapsack, then resumed inchworming down the mountain. Progress was slow, but—considering the switchbacks—actually not a hell of a lot slower than walking upright. In normal circumstances, he’d have been chagrined by the loss of personal dignity, but he was alone, and since his head was no more than a couple of feet off the ground, no one could see him in any case.
It was probably this detail that saved his life, since the advance scout moving ahead of Jones’s main group was doing a commendable job of passing through the forest quietly, and John—whose hearing was not the best—didn’t become aware of him until he was only twenty feet away.
John, of course, had been using his hands for locomotion. The Glock that Zula had given him was in his jacket pocket.
The scout would have blown by too quickly for John to take any action, if not for the fact that some shots sounded from below, and caused the scout’s stride to falter, and drew his attention. Standing with his back to John, he looked down toward Jake’s cabin and raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth. He was a close-cropped blond man with a scar on the back of his head. John had the Glock out by this point. The shot was so ideal that he got a little ahead of himself, raising the weapon in both hands and thereby disturbing his perch on the slope. He felt his ass starting to break free and managed to squeeze off one round before he became discombobulated and slid down a yard or so to a new and more stable resting place.
The scout had turned around to see him and probably would have killed him had his hand not been occupied by the walkie-talkie. As it was, all he could do was shout some sort of warning into it before John fired two more rounds into his midsection and brought him down. His body spiraled around the trunk of a tree and skidded down the slope for a few yards. Abandoning all pretense of quiet movement, John skidded down after him, using his ass as a sled, and probably breaking his tailbone on a rock about halfway down. This sent such a jolt through his body that it spun him into an ungainly, sprawling roll down the hill as things spewed out of his pockets and backpack in a sort of avalanche-cum-yard-sale. But he got to the jihadist and stripped him of his weapon before any of the others could get there to investigate. This was a very nice piece, a Heckler & Koch submachine gun, fully automatic. John was not familiar with it. Without his reading glasses he couldn’t make sense of the little words stamped into its metal around the controls. But with a bit of groping around and experimentation he was able to figure out how to charge it and how to take off the safety.
An anxious voice blurted from the jihadist’s walkie-talkie. But at the same time John heard the same voice saying the same thing from a few yards away.
The approaching man heard it all too, and now began to use the walkie-talkie as a way to home in on his friend’s location, keying the mike every couple of seconds and listening for the answering crackle of static. John, somewhat desperately, grabbed the device and flung it away from him as if it were a live grenade. But the oncoming jihadist did not seemed to be fooled; apparently he head heard John’s clothes rustling with the sudden movement. He did not stop. John aimed toward the sound and pulled the trigger. A short burst of rounds chortled from the weapon. Poorly aimed and unlikely to hit anything; but John, unfamiliar as he was with this gun, had not been a hundred percent certain that it was in a condition to fire when the trigger was pulled, and he needed to get past that.
The jihadist, perhaps ten yards away but completely obscured by ferns and scrubby little trees, reacted instantly by diving down the slope: a desperately dangerous move, but a logical one, if he’d had reasons to doubt the security of his position. For John now had no idea where the man was, and given the density of the undergrowth, that would continue being true until he gave away his position by moving.
Speaking of which, John’s position was nothing to write home about either, and anyway he had given it up by firing the weapon. Making a reasonable guess as to where his opponent had rolled and tumbled, he edged down the slope a little more, trying to move as quietly as possible, which meant slowly. He became aware as he was doing this that more than one person was moving through the woods around him.
He was sitting very still, trying to listen for their movements, when a boot slammed into the side of his Heckler & Koch and pinned it to the ground. Since John was holding on to it firmly, this shoved him down on his side. He turned his stiff neck and looked up to see a man’s face staring down at him from six feet above.
Or maybe a bit more than six feet. The man was tall. Black fellow. Not that John had any problem with blacks. He had always been happy to judge other men on their own unique qualities as individuals.
He looked kind of familiar. John had seen his picture recently.
Abdallah Jones was gripping a pistol in one hand and, in the other, one of John’s artificial legs, which had skidded down the slope in advance of him.
“Too pathetic for words,” Jones said.
“Fuck you and the goat you rode in on,” John returned.
Jones bent down, raised the leg above his head, and brought it down toward John’s face like a truncheon.
WHEN THE GUNFIRE started in earnest, Sokolov abandoned stealth and broke into a run. There was no point in sneaking around in the woods anymore. Jones had not left anyone behind to snipe at him. The jihadists were in full flight toward Jake’s compound now, shooting at anything that moved, just trying to make their way out to a road so that they could get clear of this area before the police locked it down. Or at least that was the vision that Sokolov constructed in his head. It occurred to him to wonder how Jones expected to escape. Was he planning to commandeer vehicles? Or did he have confederates scheduled to rendezvous with him? The latter seemed a much better plan, and thus far Jones had planned r
ather well. It was also the most pessimistic scenario from Sokolov’s point of view, since it meant that Jones would have reinforcements, presumably armed with all that the gun shops of the United States of America had to offer. They would probably make directly for the Forthrast compound, since that was the most-difficult-to-fuck-up instruction that Jones could possibly give them. Men in situations like this one were largely instinct-driven, and their instinct would be to gravitate toward something that looked like a shelter and that would serve as an obvious rallying point.
As he drew closer to the compound, he began to hear more small-arms fire. He rounded a hillside and found himself only a couple of hundred meters from the cabin. Had it not been for the trees he’d have been able to see it clearly. As it was, he could glimpse a corner of roof, a chimney top with a lightning rod projecting from it, the whirling anemometer of the little home weather station that Jake and his sons had mounted up there. Gunfire and shouting were coming from out in the driveway. And other sounds of battle from nearer—the hillside leading down from the high trail. But there did not seem to be anything emanating from the cabin itself, which made him think that he had arrived before either Jones’s hikers or the U.S.-based drivers had managed to occupy the place.
And so he decided that he would occupy it first. Its walls were solid logs, almost half a meter thick, sufficient to stop most of the rounds that the jihadists’ weapons were firing.
He plunged down the hill and across a short stretch of level ground until he reached the edge of the area that Jake had cleared. This was going to become a very dangerous place in a few seconds. It might already be. He dropped to his belly and crawled several meters to a spot where he could take shelter behind a recently felled tree, not yet cut up for firewood. Its trunk was too skinny to hide him or to stop bullets, but its innumerable small dead branches, spraying out in all directions, created a visual screen. He crawled down the length of it, getting a bit closer to the cabin, then raised his head cautiously and, when this failed to draw fire, spent a few moments looking into the cabin’s windows. He saw no smashed-out panes, no faces peeking round the edges of window frames—no signs, in other words, that it had yet been occupied. He could still make out two identifiable groups of gunmen moving around the property, converging generally on the cabin—but not there yet.
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