He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket, hit the fourth number on his speed dial, calling Ruslan’s home, waiting for one of the guards to answer. The call refused to connect, and Zahidov thought that maybe the garage was causing the interference, moved up farther along the ramp, swearing as he redialed. Again, there was no connection, nothing, just a radio silence.
Zahidov heard a car coming along the silent street, raised his head to see a Mercedes slowing as it approached. He switched the phone to his left hand, moved his right to his hip, ready to draw his pistol. The car came to a stop, its window hissing down, and Zahidov let his fingers close around the butt of his gun, then released his grip as he recognized the driver.
“Get in,” Aaron Tower said, speaking in Uzbek.
Zahidov covered his surprise with suspicion. “What are you doing here?”
“Ensuring an orderly transfer of power. Now get in the fucking car, Ahtam.”
“Why?”
“Because Ruslan’s being lifted,” Tower told him. “And if you don’t move fast, you’ll have a fucking coup on your hands.”
CHAPTER 22
Uzbekistan—Tashkent—14 Uzbekiston,
Malikov Family Residence
21 February, 0241 Hours (GMT+ 5:00)
Chace had the Range Rover in position by twenty of three, parked three-quarters of a kilometer from the house, with line of sight to the front doors. She’d shattered the rear lights on the car, to keep the brake and reverse lamps from giving her away, and kept the headlights off while she worked. When she was satisfied with her parking job, she twisted around in her seat until she could climb into the back, to where she’d stored the Starstreak—now unpacked—beneath the blanket. The Kalashnikov rested beside it, along with two more banana clips, all loaded.
It took her three seconds to attach the aiming unit to the tube that housed the actual missile, and then, crouched in the back of the vehicle, Chace hoisted the Starstreak onto her shoulder. She sighted the front of the house through the monocular, lining up the aiming mark. Everything on the Starstreak seemed to be functioning as it should, and again it looked like her line of sight was true.
Chace set the missile down again, re-covering it and the rifle with the blanket, then got out, checking her watch. Almost ten to three. She removed her coat, checking it a final time to make certain nothing remained in any of its pockets, and swapped it for the flak jacket. She checked the flak jacket as well, making certain everything was where she had put it. Hush puppy outside right, two spare magazines left breast pocket, two grenades left outside pocket, satellite phone right breast pocket. The Glock she wore tucked into the front of her pants, and the knife, again, rested in its sheath at the small of her back.
Assured everything was where she wanted it, where she needed it, she turned and made her way past the front of the car, heading away from the house. The night was silent and deeply cold, still enough that sound would carry. She hooked a right at the corner, leaving the block, following the route she’d mapped out during her surveillance, one that would bring her around the long way to the back of the house. She tried not to hurry, telling herself that, for the moment at least, time was on her side.
She’d picked the hour carefully. The guards both outside and inside the house rotated shifts, she’d learned that much from the surveillance. Which meant that those working these dead hours of night didn’t always work these dead hours of night, but found themselves on day shifts as well. That shot their circadian rhythms all to hell. While the rest of the world was deep in stage four sleep, beyond even REM, those poor six guards on post outside the house had to remain awake, when everything in their biology demanded otherwise. The same would be the case for however many guards were awake inside the house.
It would make the guards weak, put them off their game. They would be fighting off yawns, stretching, pacing, stamping their feet. They would break protocol, meet up for five minutes to share a cigarette and conversation, anything to keep awake.
They would be sloppy.
By her watch, it was eight minutes past three when she came in sight of the house. The wall surrounding the backyard was roughly two meters tall, concrete blocks joined with cement, and certainly scalable if one were so inclined, more effective for preserving privacy than security. There were no streetlights on this side, and the ones along the front were weak, and widely spaced. After almost half an hour of working in the darkness, Chace’s night vision was nearly at full.
Parked at roughly the midpoint of the wall was one of the watch cars, a newer-model Volga that seemed an almost luminescent light blue in the darkness. Chace ducked down, moving to her right along the line of shadows growing into the lane. Low, she made her way carefully forward, to the near corner of the wall. The cover was excellent, and put her perhaps eight meters from the back of the car. Exhaust trickled from the Volga’s tailpipe, gathering on the ground like some lazy wraith that lacked motivation or energy for actual haunting. The sound of the engine resonated softly off the concrete.
Chace didn’t move, watching and waiting. From inside the Volga, she thought she saw movement, and then the flare of a lighter, flame illuminating the driver’s face as he started a cigarette. He was sitting alone, and Chace found herself gnawing on her lower lip, needing to find the second guard, the one walking post. She’d hoped he’d be taking a rest in the car as well, but clearly that wasn’t the case. He was on his rounds, then, or taking a break elsewhere, perhaps inside the house. When she’d had the house under surveillance, she’d seen all of the exterior guards go inside at one point or another, presumably to use the bathroom. If the graveyard shift used coffee to stay awake, they were probably using the bathroom a lot.
Chace stole another glance at her watch, the barely luminous hands of her Rolex now reading eleven minutes past three, then eased the hush puppy out of her pocket, taking the safety off with her thumb and disengaging the slide lock. Though it would make the gun that much more silent, it allowed her only one shot at a time, and with two men waiting, that just wouldn’t do. The timing on this had to be right. As soon as she moved, as soon as she started taking the guards down, there’d be no stopping, no time or opportunity for a real pause until they were out of the city and on the way to the rendezvous with Porter. And even that was suspect, because Chace couldn’t guarantee that there wouldn’t be a pursuit once they left the city.
The run would start with her first shot.
When and where it would end, she didn’t know.
From up the lane came the sound of a man’s cough, barely bouncing off the wall and the street, and then she saw him, the walking guard, no more than twenty meters away at the most, emerging from the far corner. He’d been around the front, most likely inside, and Chace took reassurance from that. She was reading the terrain right.
The guard continued in her direction, stopping at the Volga for a moment to lean down and speak to the driver. He was tall enough that bending to the side window of the Volga took his upper body almost parallel to the ground. The pistol in her hand felt solid and even good, and Chace took a deep breath, filling herself with oxygen, then came around the corner, holding the gun flat against her right thigh, her right side to the wall. She started forward, unsteady, bumped into the wall with her shoulder, kept moving forward, almost staggering.