Private Wars

by Greg Rucka

  At least now he had something to do, something he could do, instead of sitting and waiting and dining on his liver.

  There were Marines in the foyer, but Riess didn’t see any sign of the Regional Security Officer, for which he was grateful. Situations like this, the Department did its traditional two-directions-at-the-same-time dance. The RSO would try to lock down the Chancery as best he could, in case there were further bombings, anything that might be directed against the Mission or its staff. By the same token, staff on the premises would be expected to remain on post, where they could be safely looked after.

  Which would be fine, except that a poloff, or at least a good poloff—and all the bullshit with Tower and Carlisle notwithstanding, Riess still hoped that he was a good poloff, and very much wanted to remain as such—would be expected to actually get out and hit the ground and rustle up some hard facts, instead of relying on state-run radio to feed him its canned version of events. Facts that could be fed back to both the Ambassador and the Ops Center, that would allow both to formulate the State Department response to what had happened. If things went very well, whatever intelligence gathered would be useful enough to offset the requisite ire of the RSO, who was sure to be pissed off beyond belief that the poloff had left the Chancery in the first place.

  No sign of the RSO, just the Marines, and Riess blew past them, heading out, raising a hand and saying, “Be right back.” One moved, perhaps to stop him, but without the commitment required to do so, and then Riess was outside, smacked in the face by the cold. He ran to his car, a used Toyota he’d bought shortly after he’d been allowed to move into his home, got it started and to the gates. The guards had switched to flak jackets and helmets, and they stopped him, obviously worked up. One of the Marines kept an eye on the road while the other leaned down to speak to him in the car.

  “Can’t let you leave, sir,” the Marine told him. Like all the others, he was young. “RSO wants all personnel to stay on the grounds.”

  “I need to take a look at the sight,” Riess said. “The Ambassador needs to know what’s going on.”

  Which was true enough. And Riess figured that if this twenty-two-year-old on the gate wanted to interpret his words to mean that Riess was acting on direct orders from the Ambassador, so much the better. Certainly, Riess wasn’t going to say anything to clarify the point.

  The Marine hesitated, looking away, at the road for a moment. A Tashkent police car blew past, blue lights flashing, siren crying.

  “It’s a short turnaround,” Riess told the Marine. “I’ll be back in no time.”

  The Marine grunted, stepped back, waving him through, and Riess hit the gas, turning out onto the street.

  He switched onto Uzbekiston as soon as he could, following the emergency lights in the distance, until he hit the roadblock, where the police stopped him. There were two cars, four officers, and one of them stepped forward as he approached, waving him to the side of the road. Riess pulled over and lowered the window. The officer was a stocky, middle-aged Uzbek who looked like he’d much rather be home and in bed.

  “Please step out of the car,” the officer said.

  Riess nodded and shrugged at the same time, stopped the engine, and climbed out.

  “Identification.”

  “I’m with the U.S. Embassy.” Riess pulled out his wallet. “What happened?”

  The officer took the ID, then motioned to another policemen, telling him to check the car. Riess didn’t protest. The first officer used a flashlight, examined his identification, then shone it on Riess’ face. Apparently satisfied, he lowered the light, switching it off and handing the ID back.

  “Bombing,” the officer said.

  “Yeah?” Riess watched as the second policeman examined his car, popping the trunk. “Another one, huh?”

  “IMU, probably,” the first officer told him, sighing.

  “Bastards,” Riess said angrily.

  The officer caught hold of the emotion, tying it to his own frustration. “They went after the President’s son, that’s how it looks. They’ve got us out all over the city looking for the bomber. All over the damn city.”

  “They didn’t blow themselves up when they did it?”

  “We’re looking for a couple of cars, so I don’t know. Maybe there was more than one. Maybe it wasn’t a suicide bombing. Who knows?”

  “So they’ve got you out here in the cold, just in case.”

  “Someone got away, one of the fuckers, they’re saying. They . . .”

  The officer fell silent as a radio in one of the police cars squawked, and he turned his head, listening. The report was from someone on the scene, requesting an ambulance to remove the bodies. There was an answering call, a query, asking how many. Six. Maybe seven, replied the voice, dispassionately.

  The officer sighed a second time, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and putting one into his mouth. “Fuckers.”

  “May I?” Riess asked. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t even like to smoke, but it was a universal way to make friends. If it hadn’t been a suicide bombing, then it was something else, and for the first time, Riess had hope. After Tower’s visit, he’d figured the show was over for Carlisle. But now, now he had to think that maybe she’d actually pulled this off, that somehow she’d gotten Ruslan and Stepan away from the house, was driving them to safety even now.

  Whatever she’d picked up at the arms bazaar, it must have been pretty damn big.

  “You’re with the Embassy?” the officer asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Out late.”

  “I heard about the blast on the radio, wanted to take a look. See if it was like last time, in the market. You know, I have to make sure no Americans were hurt.”

  “No, no Americans. Not unless they were staying at the house.”

  “My boss will be relieved,” Riess said, then looked up, hearing the rotors closing in overhead. He could make out the helo’s belly lights, and from that knew it wasn’t military.

  He flicked the remainder of his cigarette away, thanking the officer. “I should get back to the Embassy.”

  The officer nodded, bored again.

  The helicopter worried Riess. If they were using ambulances to remove the bodies, then the only reason for the helo was pursuit. It meant they had a line on Carlisle, where she was taking Ruslan and Stepan. Either that or they were desperate, and using every means they had at their disposal in their search.

  He returned to the Embassy hoping it was the latter.

  CHAPTER 27

  Uzbekistan—Dzhizak Province—

  Syr Darya River, 77 km SSW Tashkent

  21 February, 0458 Hours (GMT+5:00)

  Chace took the Audi off the road as soon as she could, on the northern edge of the bridge spanning the Syr Darya along the M39, turning southeast to follow the water. The Audi bumped and slid on the ground, spitting out chunks of earth and pebbles from beneath the tires. The Range Rover, for all its problems, had been built for off-road use. The Audi obviously hadn’t been, and now Chace was forced to slow in an attempt to keep from catching the car on the rocks and ruts that peppered the path down to the bank of the river. The darkness made the terrain look different, and Chace knew she was close to the LS, but was uncertain as to just how close.

  With a free hand, Chace popped open the armrest, pulling the GPS from where she’d stored it, handing it to Ruslan without looking at him. “Turn that on, take a reading.”

  Ruslan fumbled with the device, then read out longitude and latitude, degrees, minutes, seconds. The information confirmed what she knew, and Chace barely nodded, her focus on keeping the Audi moving in the right direction. She appreciated the fact that he didn’t try to hand the GPS unit back to her.

  From the backseat, Stepan said, “Ota?”

  Ruslan turned, answering in Uzbek, and Chace saw the boy sitting up on the backseat, bleary and confused and looking more than a little frightened. He babbled something in response, and Ruslan spoke again,
soothingly but it wasn’t enough, and in the reflected glow of the one working headlight, Chace saw the boy’s eyes growing wet as he started to sob.

  “We’re close now,” she said. “We’re almost there.”

  She saw Ruslan nod, speaking again to his son, and she assumed he was repeating her words, but she had no way of knowing. The headlights caught the water, reflected it, and she downshifted, urging the car forward, feeling the Audi beginning to lose itself in the softer earth fed by the river. Then she saw the bend, a dry wash of shore cut by the water sometime long ago, spreading out in a crescent of river sand. She downshifted a last time, turning the car slowly about in the wash until they faced the way they had come, killing the headlamp as the Audi came to a stop. She left the engine running, put the car into neutral, and hit the trunk release.

  “Stay put,” Chace said.

  She climbed out of the Audi, went around to the trunk. She’d switched from the hush puppy to the Sarsilmaz when they’d changed cars, keeping the pistol at her back, but now she moved it around so it rested at her waist in the front. The Kalashnikov, hush puppy, and grenades were all in the trunk, but she took only the automatic rifle, throwing the strap over her shoulder. She shut the trunk.

  The river burbled past on her left, the water sixty feet away at its closest point. To her right, the ground rose sharply, turning into a low cliff, describing the outer edge of the crescent. Chace looked up, saw thin strips of cloud whipping past, obscuring the stars. The wind had risen, both in strength and in altitude.

  From inside the car, she heard Stepan sobbing, watched through the rear window as Ruslan contorted himself in the front seat, lifting the boy onto his lap. The crying subsided.

  Chace checked her watch and saw it was oh-five-hundred, exactly.

  Almost immediately, she heard the first echo of the rotors, the helicopter’s rumble bouncing off the Syr Darya. She took the Kalashnikov off her shoulder, racked the bolt, holding the automatic rifle in both hands. The copter’s sound was growing louder, but that was all there was—no visual, no telltale lights. She wondered if Porter was flying with NVG, if that had been one of the incidentals her seventy thousand pounds had bought him.

  Then she saw the bird, almost skimming the river as it came around the bend, spray flying from the wash of the rotor blades, a big, old, ugly Russian Mi-8 helicopter, and she knew it was Porter. He’d picked a workhorse, one common enough in this part of the world to be easily acquired and maintained, one that would raise no suspicion. She let her grip on the Kalashnikov go to one hand and stepped out from behind the car, to make certain he could see her.

  The helicopter altered course, slowing and descending, and now the sand was flying, too, and Chace brought her forearm up to protect her vision, moving to the passenger’s side of the Audi. She opened Ruslan’s door, and he peered up at her, Stepan wrapped in his arms, the bloodstained flak jacket still around him.

  “Our ride’s here,” Chace shouted. She adjusted the strap on the Kalashnikov, letting the weapon lie against her back, then held out her hands. “Here.”

  Ruslan nodded, bent his mouth to Stepan’s ear, then lifted the little boy to her. Stepan turned his head to her, eyes wide with suspicion and fear, his mouth closed. Chace took him in her arms.

  “It’s all right,” she told him in Russian, and stepped back to give Ruslan room to exit. The Mi-8 was louder than ever, the sand it was throwing up stinging her skin. She put a hand on Stepan’s head, pressing his cheek to her shoulder to shield him from the spray, adjusting the flak jacket around him more for protection from the cold and sand than anything else.

  Then she heard an echo, what she thought was an echo, the sound of the bird reverberating off the cliff to her right, but the pitch was wrong, too high, and she knew it wasn’t an echo. She raised her head from Stepan to the Mi-8, seeing Ruslan emerging from the Audi in her peripheral vision at the same moment, and caught a glimpse of Porter behind the stick in the cockpit just before the helicopter exploded.

  Fire and metal blew through the air, the remnants of the helicopter pitching nose forward, flipping into the earth, and the rotors snapped free, and Chace felt herself knocked off her feet. The world cracked, and she felt pain race along her spine, and she knew she’d landed on her back, on the Kalashnikov. She was dimly aware that she still had Stepan in her arms, and that amazed her.

  She opened her eyes and couldn’t see anything but the after-image of the blast. The sound of the second helicopter cut through the ringing in her ears. She forced herself to roll, still gripping the boy, managed to get to her knees. Her vision cleared to pinpoints of dancing white, and she stumbled, turning, disoriented.

  Light flared over the ground, blasting daylight into an oblong that skimmed the wreckage of the Mi-8, running over the sand toward her. Chace could barely see the helicopter beyond the flare of its searchlight, hovering twenty-five feet off the ground, and she thought it was a Sikorsky, a civilian model, and she knew that was where the missile had come from, the second Starstreak in the same night, this one used to kill not only Porter, but their chances of escape, too.

  Starstreak, Chace thought. Another fucking Starstreak, and Jesus, but how many of them do these sons of bitches have?

  She was already running for the Audi, clutching Stepan to her with her left hand, using her right to draw the Sarsilmaz from her waist.

  “Ruslan!” she screamed. “In the car! In the fucking car!”

  She fired as she ran, squeezing off rounds, trying to hit the light, or above the light, and not having any hope of success. The Sikorsky bobbled, turning, and Chace had reached the driver’s door, had shoved the boy back into the car, and was yanking the Kalashnikov’s strap from her shoulder, when she saw what the searchlight saw, and for a fraction, she froze.

  Ruslan was sprawled in the dirt facedown, fifteen feet from the car, his arms splayed out in front of him, one of his legs bent back across the other. The searchlight struck him at an angle, pushing shadows off his motionless body. Chace thought she saw blood, but she couldn’t tell how much.

  “Ruslan! Ruslan, get up!”

  He didn’t move.

  “Get up! Damn you, get up!”

  The searchlight broke away from the body, the Sikorsky swiveling as it hovered, playing its ruthless light across the Audi’s hood. The beam struck Stepan inside, then Chace, and she saw the port-side door of the helicopter was open, and two men were crouched there, automatic rifles in their hands. She raised the Sarsilmaz in both hands and emptied the gun at them, flinging herself back into the car. One of the men pitched forward and fell.

  Chace rammed the car into gear, then stomped on the gas, and the car lurched forward. She floored it, feeling the tires desperate for traction, and beside her, Stepan was screaming, pressing himself to the passenger window. Bullets punched holes along the edge of the hood, and then the wheels caught, the Audi shooting forward. Chace saw the man who had fallen trying to get to his feet and out of the way, and she ran him down before he had the chance, feeling the car jump slightly at the impact. More bullets struck, now hitting the roof, and between her hands on the wheel, Chace saw the dashboard shatter, and wondered fleetingly how the round had missed her.

  “Ota!” Stepan wailed. “Ota, Ota!”

  She wrenched the wheel, fighting the Audi up the side of the bank, and the car popped onto harder ground. The searchlight flashed on them again, and she saw the orange blossoms of muzzle-flash in her mirrors, and the rear window exploded. The Audi hit the pavement, and Chace slid the car into a right, the rear wheels squealing as they bit into the asphalt.

  Stepan had slumped, gone silent, and Chace glanced over and for a horrifying second saw only the blood on the flak jacket. She forgot the stick for a moment, reaching for the boy with her right hand, yanking back the fabric, and saw nothing beneath, no fresh blood. Stepan’s face was streaked with tears, snot running from his nose over his lips.

  “Ota—”

  “I’m sorry,” Chace tol
d him, the ache in her chest sudden, making the words sound like a companion sob.

  She put her hand back to the stick, her focus back on the road, trying to think of an escape.

  The Sikorsky was fast, faster than the Audi, and she weaved on the road, trying to stay out of the searchlight. They weren’t shooting now, and they weren’t trying to get ahead of her, and she assumed that meant they liked where she was headed, and wanted her to keep going there. On radios, probably, she decided, maybe a roadblock, but the problem was that she didn’t have any other choice. She had to get back to Tashkent, Tashkent was the only option, and Chace cursed herself for not having planned a fallback exfil, no other way out of the country.

  She had to get to one of the embassies, either the American or the British, it didn’t matter. To hell with Crocker and his secret plans, to hell with keeping things quiet, they’d gotten very loud now, and she’d run out of options. She’d lost Ruslan, she’d blown the mission, but she was damned if she was going to lose the son, too. She’d fucked it up, but she wasn’t going to lose the son, too.

  Over her dead body would she lose Stepan.

  Then she saw the headlights, and she saw the silhouette of the man standing in front of them, and more, saw the silhouette of what he was raising onto his shoulder.

  “Oh, fucking hell,” Chace said.

  Yanking the handbrake, she twisted the wheel, stomping the pedal. The Audi slid, spinning left, and Chace shot out her hand to catch Stepan before the boy could be thrown about the interior of the car. The car screeched to a stop and the engine lurched, then died.

  Pulling Stepan after her, Chace shoved her door open and tumbled out of the car, onto the cracked highway. She wrapped her arms around the boy as she regained her feet, felt him clinging to her, whimpering. The searchlight found them both again, and she winced in its glare, half running, half stumbling for the side of the road, desperate to get away from the Audi. The Sikorsky was coming around on her left, trying to block her passage, descending, but keeping distance.