Chace dropped the phone in her lap, checking the odometer and doing the math. They’d covered seventy-three of the seventy-seven kilometers to the landing zone. It would be tight, but they’d make it.
“No,” she told him. “Everything’s fine.”
From his expression, Chace saw that Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov didn’t believe a word she was saying.
CHAPTER 25
Uzbekistan—Tashkent—14 Uzbekiston
21 February, 0440 Hours (GMT+5:00)
It was a goddamn mess, it was nothing but a goddamn mess, and as Ahtam Zahidov kicked at the broken pieces of the house, knocking burnt wood and blasted tile with his shoe, he swore aloud like a child having a tantrum. He cursed Ruslan Malikov and he cursed Aaron Tower and, most of all, he cursed a woman he had never seen before, a woman he’d never known existed until an hour ago, some bitch called Carlisle who had come to Uzbekistan to make his life miserable, who had come to Tashkent to hurt the woman he loved.
Because that’s what this was, as far as Zahidov was concerned. This was an attempt to hurt Sevara, and never in a million years would he stand for that.
“Motherfucking cunt spy,” he spat, then kicked again, this time knocking enough rubble clear to reveal the burnt body of yet another guard. From his size, it looked like Ummat, but there was so much damage, Zahidov couldn’t be sure. He doubted they’d even find the rest of them; like the house, they’d probably been blown to bits.
This made eight bodies, six of them left on the street, as if declaring their worthlessness as sentries. And they had been worthless, Zahidov thought, all of them shot dead dead dead, and only one of them with his fucking pistol even in his hand. Which meant all of the other cocksuckers had been caught entirely unaware. They weren’t sentries, they were fucking jokes, and he had hoped to find at least one of them with his pants around his ankles and his prick in his hand, because that, that would have explained how this had happened. Six dead outside, two dead inside, and no sign of that cowardly shit Ruslan or his whimpering little abortion of a son.
They’d found cars, for all the good that had done them, but even that was sour because they hadn’t managed to find his fucking Audi. No, they’d found a Range Rover that looked like it had been maybe brought into service around the time Khrushchev was getting into a pissing match with Kennedy, and they’d found the missing Volga, parked on the other side of town, outside of the Jewish cemetery, its interior splattered with Kozim’s blood and brains and nothing else. And nothing in the Range Rover, either. Zahidov had hoped it was the spy’s when he heard about the blood in the Volga, but he knew it wasn’t. No, just fucking Kozim the dead and useless, and he had gotten off lucky, in a way, because Zahidov would have done him himself if he’d lived through this.
He glared at the phone in his hand, willing it to ring, and like everything else this night, it defied him, staying silent. All he wanted in the world at this moment was a lead, something, anything on where they were headed in his car—and he was positive they were in his car now. Police and NSS throughout the country had been given the description of his Audi, ordered to find the vehicle and detain the occupants in whatever manner was required.
The border guards had been notified at the crossing into Kyrgyzstan, less than twenty kilometers north of Tashkent; Zahidov had taken care of that as soon as Tower had told him what had happened. But Zahidov knew the spy wouldn’t go north—that portion of the border was too closely guarded, too well watched, and if she was traveling with the brat along with Ruslan, they wouldn’t go on foot, they would stick to the roads.
So maybe they’d try for Kyrgyzstan via the northeast route, but that would take them into the Chatkal Mountains. The roads that way were bad, and it would take a lot of time, and time was everything now, both to him and to the spy. By the same logic, he doubted she’d taken them toward Tajikistan. There were only two real roads that would lead south to the country, and again, one of them would wind through the Chatkal. The other would be a trip of almost one hundred and fifty kilometers, too far. Turkmenistan was easily eight hundred kilometers by road, would take even longer. Considering escape through Afghanistan was absurd.
The cunt spy wasn’t going to take them out on the ground. No, she would fly them. Which meant either a plane or a helicopter. If a plane, they’d need a runway, and he’d already alerted the airports in Tashkent, Dzhizak, and Samarkand, and had heard nothing. No private liftoffs, no private landings, but Zahidov ordered men to those locations all the same, just to be certain. A helo would be harder to find, would be able to set down just about anywhere, though he was reasonably sure the landing zone was south of Tashkent, not to the north. There were too many sets of eyes to the north, too easy to be spotted.
If the pilot knew what he was doing, he’d come in low, to avoid radar, and if the helicopter was the right one for the job—and at this point, Zahidov was positive that it would be, because this fucking bitch spy knew what she was doing—it would have range enough to enter the country and then get out again, setting down just long enough to take on passengers. Coming in from Kazakhstan more than likely, then.
The police were on the roads now, scouring the countryside and setting up security checkpoints, but Zahidov didn’t hold out much hope for it. If she tried for Dzhizak or Zaamin or Chichak, they’d nail the bitch entering the city limits. But for precisely that reason, she wasn’t going to go city. She was going countryside, for a helo pickup.
He looked at his phone again, still resolute in its refusal to ring, then spun about on his heel, to the six men waiting on the street. They stood by the cars, engines idling, two of the Toyota Land Cruisers that the NSS preferred for their ability to go off-road. Six of his best plucked from the NSS, standing with their M-16s. Zahidov had even ordered Tozim to pull the two remaining Starstreaks from storage, loading one each into the back of the cars. All these men needed was a direction, a way to go, and he couldn’t give them one.
He shouted at Tozim. “Where’s the fucking Sikorsky? Where the fuck is it?”
“It’s coming, Ahtam! It’s coming, it should be here any second. We had to get a pilot out of bed, it’s taking—”
Zahidov spun away, waving his free hand to shut Tozim up. He needed to think, he needed to think like this spy. The helicopter, that was the key to it, that was the trick. He’d been hoping Tower would call, tell him where the LZ was for the bitch’s pickup, but it wasn’t coming, there was no call, and that meant that all of the U.S. forces on the ground and all of their radar and all of their technology and all of their talent couldn’t find the bird. Coming in low, coming in from Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan.
Coming along the river, Zahidov suddenly realized. Following the Syr Darya in its valley, to stay low.
This bitch, this spy, she would meet her helicopter along the river, somewhere south of Tashkent, that had to be it.
He tucked the phone in his pocket, closed the distance to Tozim, put a hand on his shoulder. Tozim was younger by perhaps two years, tall and strong and faithful and loyal enough that he’d been one of the men he’d chosen to help with Dina Malikov.
“Take three men and head south along the Samarkand highway,” Zahidov told him. “Fast as you can. Keep your radio at hand.”
Tozim nodded, the excitement visible on his face. “You’ve got them? You know where they’re going?”