Fisher was already strapping on his parafoil pack.
A thousand feet above and four miles from Ashgabat, Fisher jumped out the Gulfstream’s side door. He waited for two beats, then pulled the toggle, heard the whoosh-whump of the parafoil deploying, and was jerked upward.
Ailar Marjani’s retirement was without financial worry, Grimsdottir had reported. The former Turkmen spymaster had built an arabesque mansion eight miles from Ashgabat in the foothills of the Köpetdag.
Fisher followed the flashing waypoint marker on his OPSAT, and touched down in the rolling, grassy hills that lay between the city and the mountains. Even in the darkness, Fisher was struck by the landscape; had he not known better, he might have mistaken it for the western Dakotas or eastern Montana. The night was warm, hovering around seventy degrees, the sky clear and cloudless. A slight breeze swished the grass around his knees.
He donned his gear, took a bearing on the OPSAT, and started jogging.
After a mile, he topped a hill and stopped. He lay down on his belly and pulled out his binoculars.
Even from a mile away, Marjani’s home was impossible to miss, a sprawling structure of whitewashed rectangles and arches stacked atop one another and nestled at the base of an escarpment. Every window in Marjani’s home blazed with light. Fisher scanned each one but saw no one. Clusters of palms rose from various points on the grounds, each one lit from beneath by an spotlight. Fisher counted two fountains that he could see, each a glistening plume of water.
He kept moving, using the troughs of the hills to make his way to within a quarter mile. He crawled up a hillock and through the grass. At this range, he could see a lone guard standing to the left of the arched driveway entrance. Through the entrance he could see a courtyard of hedges, and at the center, a glowing kidney-shaped pool. The guard wasn’t so much standing as he was vertically reclined against the arch, his AK-47 propped against the wall a few feet away. Fisher wasn’t even sure the man was awake.
He maneuvered to the left, crawling through the grass until he was at an angle, fifty yards from the arch. He pulled the SC-20 from its back holster, zoomed in on the guard, then panned through the arch, looking for more guards. There were none. Same on the infrared side. He refocused on the guard and laid the recticle over the man’s chest.
He squeezed the trigger. The guard spasmed once, then slumped back against the wall and slid down into a pile. Fisher shifted his aim, shot out the ground spotlight, then shifted again and waited for another guard to come investigate the outage. Five minutes passed. No one came.
He holstered the SC-20, then crawled ahead until the entrance arch blocked the mansion’s upper windows, then got up and sprinted the remaining distance. He snatched up the AK-47, tossed it into the high grass, then grabbed the man’s collar and dragged him through the arch. He turned left and stopped behind a shrub.
He heard the crunch of gravel to his right. He turned. A man walked down the driveway and stopped at the arch. An AK was slung over his shoulder. The man looked left, then right, then called, “Ashiq?”
Damnit.
48
Fisher took off his headpiece, laid it aside, then lowered himself onto his haunches, leaned against the wall, and dropped his chin to his chest. He drew his pistol and held it out of sight against his thigh.
“Ashiq?” the man called again.
Fisher let out a pained groan. In the corner of his eye, he saw the man turn. Fisher feebly raised his arm and let it fall.
“Ashiq!”
The man rushed across the driveway. As he drew even with shrubs, Fisher raised the pistol and shot him in the forehead. The man made an umph, then sprawled face-first in the dirt beside Fisher. Fisher grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him deeper into the shadows and laid him next to the first guard.
Two down.
He took his time with the rest of the grounds, using the shadows and the landscaping to pick his way around the inner wall, eyes and ears alert for more guards as he periodically scanned the windows for signs of movment.
He found only one other guard, strolling along a topiary-lined gravel path on the east side of the house. Fisher waited for him to pass, then stepped out, clamped a hand over his mouth, and plunged the Sykes into the hollow beside his collarbone. The man stiffened, jerked once, went limp. Fisher dragged him out of sight.
He made his way to the rear of the house and to the glassed-in patio overlooking a second swimming pool. Unlike the floors above, the patio was dark. Save for the gurgling of the pool’s aerators and the distant hum of the air conditioners, all was quiet.
The patio door was made of flimsy aluminum, with a push-button latch that took him fifteen seconds to pick. He slipped inside. A wave of cool air washed over him. He took a moment to breath it in, let it cool his face.
Marjani clearly had a fondness for the color white and shades of white. The walls, leather couches, and carpet were cream, with a few Turkmen art and sculpture pieces scattered around the room. On the far side, a stairway led upward.
Crouched over, he took the steps one at time, until he could see through the black wrought-iron balustrade. Predictably, the room was done mostly in white, with a rough-hewn tile floor inlaid with robin’s-egg-blue mosaics. There was a seating area beneath the windows, through which he could see the driveway arch.
Fisher climbed the rest of steps, then searched the level, finding a gourmet kitchen in stainless steel, a formal dining room, and a bookcase-lined den. He moved to the second floor: a home gym, three guest bedrooms, and a bathroom with a steam shower, sauna, and whirlpool tub.
He was halfway up the steps to the third floor when he heard voices. He froze. It was a television.
“Welcome back to American Idol. Our next contestant is performing—” Then static, followed by, “But Ricky—” Then more static, and then the theme to Gilligan’s Island.
Fisher smiled ruefully. Marjani was putting his golden years to good use.
He found the former Turkmen minister in a small room overlooking the rear pool. The man was sprawled in a white leather recliner, a bag of potato chips in his lap, the remote aimed at the TV. Fisher backed through the arch, searched the remainder of the floor, then returned. On the TV screen, Gilligan and a chimp were playing catch with a coconut.
Fisher flipped off the lights, dropped his NV goggles into place, and stepped behind Marjani’s chair just as the man was sitting up. Fisher laid the Sykes across Marjani’s neck and said, “Not a sound. Your guards are dead. If you don’t want to the join them, you’ll do as I say.”
Grimsdottir’s brief had said Marjani had a fair grasp of English, and his rapid nodding confirmed it. “Who are you, what do you want?”
The two classic questions, Fisher thought. Over the years he’d found that noncombatants usually said, “Please don’t kill me,” when someone put a knife to their throat. With bad guys, it was always a variation of what Marjani had just asked, with a slight edge of indignation to their voice.
Fisher whispered in his ear, “To answer your first question, none of your business. To answer your second question, I want to kill you, but I’m going to give you a chance to talk me out of it.”
He dragged Marjani down the hall, flipping off lights as he went, until they were in the master bedroom. He grabbed a pillow off the bed, then marched Marjani into the bathroom and shoved him into the whirlpool tub. He shut the door and sat down on the toilet next to the tub. Marjani was a fat man with slicked-back black hair and a lopsided mustache. He reminded Fisher of a stock villain in a Western.