There was a mechanical grinding from outside, the bellowing of engines, the sound of gravel crunching beneath tires. Dagmar wondered if one of the gunmen had gone back for the car.
And then there was more shouting, very desperate sounding, and a lot of shots. A vehicle roared, and Dagmar heard wheels skidding on gravel as it came to a stop right outside the door.
There were huge booms at close range, the sound of a much larger weapon, but no bullets came into the yurt. Then there was a clanking noise, and suddenly Ismet’s voice.
“Dagmar! Are you in there? You and Slash come out-fast!”
Dagmar rose to her knees, her head spinning. Uruisamoglu looked at her blankly. She waved at him.
“Come on!” she said.
He crawled across the carpets, dragging his crutches behind him. Dagmar jumped up, ran back to his position, and grabbed his laptop. She ran to the door of the yurt and opened it.
The vehicle outside had eight huge wheels and a duck-billed ramming prow. There were hatches and periscopes and slits for viewing. Hot exhaust smoked from the engines and fouled the air. It was the armored vehicle they’d seen down in the village.
A hatch had opened between the second and the third wheels. Ismet was inside, gesturing.
“Hurry!”
Bullets cracked through the air. Dagmar dived for the hatch, clambered into the interior. It smelled of dust and stale motor oil.
Ismet leaned out, grabbed Uruisamoglu by the shoulders of his sheepskin jacket, and hauled him bodily into the vehicle. The metal crutches clanged on the metal floor. Ismet slammed the hatch shut and yelled something to the driver in the forward compartment. The engine roar increased and the vehicle lurched into reverse.
There were pinging sounds on the metal walls of the vehicle. Dagmar saw little dimples appearing on the inside of the armor. Someone was shooting at them.
Ismet reached for the shotgun on a metal bench seat, thrust it through one of the ports, and fired. The sound in the small metal compartment was enormous.
The big vehicle lurched off. Dagmar and Uruisamoglu clutched at the metal seats in an attempt to stabilize themselves. Dagmar eventually hauled herself into one of the seats, and she looked out through one of the view slits just as one of Ismet’s shots caught a gunman in the shoulder, spinning him around.
Then the vehicle dropped nose-first onto the narrow road leading to the Kyzyl Kum, and Ismet lost his footing and crashed to the floor on top of Uruisamoglu.
Ismet scrambled into one of the metal seats and then pulled Uruisamoglu into another. The vehicle swayed and crashed. The engine sound was deafening. The passenger compartment smelled of auto exhaust and cordite.
“This is Shemazar!” Ismet pointed to the driver. “He owns this APC.”
Shemazar-a man in late middle age, thin and lined-turned and waved a hand.
“Hi, lady!” he said.
Hi, lady, Dagmar thought. This guy must have apprenticed as a New York cabbie.
The APC jounced to the floor of the desert. Ismet shouted instructions. Shemazar waved, shifted into a lower gear, and deliberately drove the APC over the assassins’ sedan, leaving it a wreck at the foot of the bluff.
Dagmar looked through one of the slits and saw the man in the light-colored suit. He made no attempt to run away but stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the catastrophe with a disgusted look on his face. Though she doubted he could see her, Dagmar waved at him through the port.
Good-bye, Kronsteen, she thought. Just think of it as revolution creep. And then the armored car rolled on.
In a few minutes, they were in the oasis. The Niva waited at Shemazar’s house, much the same except for some bullet holes in the hatchback.
“I led them off as far as I could,” Ismet said. “Their car was faster, but I had four-wheel drive, so whenever they started to catch me I moved into the open desert, and they couldn’t move so fast there. But eventually they realized they weren’t going to get me, so they went back to the yurt. I went cross-country to the village, because I thought I might be able to rent this vehicle.” He patted the armored side. “We’re out another five hundred pounds. Sorry I didn’t return your call, but I was in the middle of negotiations.”
“You keep saving me,” Dagmar said.
He gave her a deadpan look.
“Well,” he said, “you keep running into trouble.”
In the village they transferred to the Niva. Shemazar cackled and insisted on hugging Dagmar multiple times and kissing her on both cheeks. His lips were excessively moist. Under the circumstances, Dagmar felt, she could scarcely object.
“What about the killers?” Dagmar asked as they pulled away. “What if they catch us again?”
“Not likely,” Ismet judged. “We just smashed their car. They’re on foot with a wounded man. Nobody in the village is going to give them a car, because the crazy old guy in the armored car isn’t going to let them. So I’d say they’re walking to Zarafshan.”
Unless, Dagmar thought, they could hook up with Ulugbek and his camels.
Lamprey’s Appendage Sucks on Ale
Ismet got behind the wheel of the Niva and they left the oasis behind. Dagmar called Helmuth and tried to catch up with events in Turkey.
“Turkey’s got Internet again,” Helmuth said. “Everything we’re hearing says that it’s true that the commander of the Second Army got deposed-by his own officers. They’ve declared for the revolution and they’re ready to march on Ankara.”
“The Second Army is in the Kurdish provinces,” Ismet said. “The general would have been one of Bozbeyli’s most loyal subordinates-he was the one who had to keep an eye on the heroin trade. So it’s significant that his own people put him under arrest.”
As they jounced toward Zarafshan on the highway, as the silver high-tension towers marched past like a long row of saluting soldiers, they heard of the cascade of events that spelled the collapse of Bozbeyli’s regime. Other generals-the ones Lincoln had complained were sitting on the fence-began to eye their own subordinates with distrust and to consider that perhaps their choices had been limited to declaring for the rebels or being deposed by their own men.
The First Army commander in Istanbul declared for the rebels, and the Third Army on the Iraq border seemed in chaos, with some units declaring one way and some the other. Only the forces on Cyprus stayed loyal, and they were unable to move to the mainland.
By the time Zarafshan was in sight, it was over. Bozbeyli and the others in his administration had abdicated and flown to Azerbaijan.
“And not only that,” Dagmar said. “It turns out I own the Internet. It all belongs to me.”
Ismet looked at her. Uruisamoglu pointedly did not.
“It’s true,” she said. “Though maybe I’ll give it back.” She cleared her throat. “Maybe. Wouldn’t want to leave it in the wrong hands.”
She reached for her handheld.
“I’m going to call Attila,” she said. “He should know that his triumphant entry into Istanbul is imminent.”
“He should be happy about that,” Ismet said.
“I don’t know. It means he can’t hog the headlines any longer.”
“Tell him to have the jet ready.”
“Yes,” Dagmar said. “Only this time, we don’t file a flight plan.”
Before she could call her phone gave a chirp, and she found that she had a pair of text messages. She called up the first.
Briana love you forever Chatsworth.
A pleasant warmth kindled in the vicinity of her heart. Manipulative old bastard, she thought with affection.
“Lv U2,” she replied.
Dagmar turned to the second message and saw it was much longer. Richard must have typed it on a keyboard, because it had none of the slang and abbreviations you’d expect in a message thumbed onto a phone pad.
“I have been having problems with my printer,” the employee told Dagmar. “Even though the printer was cabled properly to the computer and the driver was installed, and even though the printer responded when it was sent a file, the printer refused to print a document.