Immediately, the engine came to life.
Chace spared a moment for relief, then picked up the hush puppy and moved around to the driver’s side. Like the Range Rover, this was another left-hand drive. Through the side window, she could see the dashboard now dimly illuminated. Better, the alarm light had gone off.
She shrugged out of her coat and wrapped it around her left arm, then, with her right, fired one round from the hush puppy into the driver’s window, angling the shot so the bullet would bury itself in the passenger seat. The window spider-webbed, and Chace punched with her left, and then it vanished, falling into minute chunks of safety glass. She tossed the hush puppy through the now-open window, onto the passenger’s seat, reached inside, and unlocked the door, then opened it. Using her covered left arm, she swept the glass fragments from the seat until she was certain she wouldn’t lacerate herself further, then tossed the coat onto the passenger seat as well, covering the pistol.
To the sound of the engine rumbling through the garage, she sprinted to the gate at the bottom of the ramp, and once more took hold of the bars. Again, she leaned in, pushing, and this time, the clatter of the wheels in their tracks seemed quieter, lost below the sound of the Audi. She shoved the doors apart enough to allow the car through, then ran back to the vehicle. She climbed behind the wheel, put the car in reverse, and pulled out carefully. As soon as she put the car in gear, the remaining headlamp came on, splashing xenon light that turned the garage bright as day.
Chace put the Audi into gear and gave it gas, turning hard at the gate, and narrowly avoiding clipping it with the side mirrors. She floored it on the ramp, turned again, and shot off, down Sulaymonova.
According to the digital clock on the dashboard, it was seven minutes past midnight.
Four minutes, Chace mused. Not bad.
She slowed to the legal limit after a mile, taking random turns and checking to see if she’d collected any admirers. Once assured that she hadn’t, she turned in the direction of Forobiy, to where she’d parked the Range Rover. The air coming through the window was sharp, cutting through her clothes, and it cut through the adrenaline as well, but it didn’t diminish her pleasure.
With the Audi, she could drive right up to the house without raising suspicion. Behind its tinted windshield, the guards would never know it wasn’t Zahidov at the wheel until it was too late, provided they didn’t see her through the missing driver’s window.
That was the plan, at least as it stood now, and as Chace drove to where she’d parked the Range Rover, she played it out again in her mind. She pictured her moves, the sequence of events, envisioning what she had to do, envisioning what to do if things went wrong.
The fear was still with her, but not as strong, familiar and manageable once more. It gave her comfort.
The Range Rover was where she’d left it, unmolested off the side of the road, parked by the walls of the Chagatai Cemetery. “Chagatai,” best as Chace could understand, meant “Jewish,” and she imagined that the cemetery had suffered under the Soviet regime, though it seemed to have been recently repaired and restored. At half past twelve at night, Chace was confident it was one of the quieter places in all of Tashkent.
She swung the Audi off the road, killing the one working headlamp, then backing up so that the trunk of the car faced the back of the Range Rover. She left the car in neutral, set the brake, then took the satellite phone from an inside pocket and switched it on, unfolding the antenna. She punched in her PIN, waited for six seconds that felt more like six minutes before the phone beeped reassuringly, indicating that it was working, and had a signal.
Chace brought up the text message she’d prepared earlier, STAND TO—CONFIRM? and sent it to Porter’s pager. She set the phone on the dashboard to await a reply, then began searching the interior of the Audi. In the glove box she found the manuals for the car, as well as a Glock 26, and a white plastic pill bottle. She checked the pistol, found it loaded, and dropped it on her coat, still covering the hush puppy. The bottle was labeled “Magna Rx” in English, and it took a second for her to realize what it was, squinting in the darkness, trying to read the label. Then she saw the words “yohimbe” and “male potency,” and was trying to keep from laughing aloud when the satellite phone chimed.
READY.
Chace brought up the second message she’d prepared, with the GPS coordinates she’d picked out for the rendezvous, almost eighty kilometers to the southwest of Tashkent. She checked her watch, added the words PICKUP 0500 to her previously prepared text, and sent the message.
Finished, she folded down the antenna and tucked the phone back into her pocket, this time leaving it on. She switched the dome light on and checked the manuals, not caring for the illumination, but not having any other choice. She had to be able to read. She found the fuse diagram, opened the door, and then, half inside the car, half out, removed the panel to the fuse box. Checking the manual again, she pulled the fuse for the ignition, and the engine promptly died.
She pocketed the fuse in her trousers, put on her coat, stowed the hush puppy and Glock in each of her side pockets, then hit the trunk release. She moved to the Range Rover, lifted the rear hatch, and uncovered the weapons she’d purchased at the bazaar—a box of Chinese hand grenades, a Kalashnikov, the Sarsilmaz pistol, four clips, and two additional boxes of ammunition, one in 9 mm for the pistols, the other in 7.62 X 39, for the AK. She picked up the Kalashnikov, turned back to the Audi, and lifted the trunk, then stopped short as she was about to lay the automatic rifle inside, because she’d then seen what Ahtam Zahidov carried in his trunk, and it stopped her cold.
“Fuck me,” Chace said aloud, and then bent, to give it a closer look.
It was a rectangular box, perhaps half a meter wide and thick, and long enough that it had been laid in the trunk at an angle. The markings on the box had been scuffed, as if deliberately obliterated, the paint scarred enough in places to reveal the metal shining beneath.
Chace set the Kalashnikov gently against the rear bumper, and then, with both hands, tried lifting the box. It was heavy, perhaps thirty, maybe thirty-five kilos, and it took some muscling to get the edge of it past the lip of the trunk, propped up enough for her to remove the top.
It was a missile.
If her memory of such things was to be trusted, it was a British missile, made by Thales Air Defense under contract to the MOD. A man-portable air-defense system, called Starstreak.
“Fuck me running,” Chace murmured, and then she stepped back until she could sit on the open tailgate of the Rover.
She stared up at the clear sky, and the stars above, and for almost a minute didn’t move.
Time to change the plan, Chace thought.
And then she smiled in a way she hadn’t in over two years, and if anyone had been watching, they would have become very afraid indeed.
CHAPTER 21
Uzbekistan—Tashkent—182 Sulaymonova,
Penthouse of Sevara Malikov-Ganiev
21 February, 0327 Hours (GMT+ 5:00)
They liked to sleep touching, and when the telephone jarred them both from their dreams, it was Sevara pulling away that truly woke him, and not the sound at all. She rolled toward the nightstand, and Zahidov sat up in the bed, groping for his glasses, and by the time he had them on she was answering, her voice husky with sleep.