Zahidov turned at the sound of their approach, his expression empty in its confusion. The van came down and skidded to a stop, and Riess was thrown against his door, but he didn’t feel it, because his whole world had become one man, what that man held in his hands.
Zahidov was twisting about, back to face the bridge, and from the APCs, Uzbek soldiers were pouring forth, and there was gunfire, all of it together, and everything happening together. Zahidov flopped and flailed, hit by several bursts at once, his body trying to follow each bullet and instead able to follow none. He fell, and the weapon he’d held in his hands tumbled free.
“Motherfucker,” Tower said, reaching for his radio.
CHAPTER 51
No-Man’s-Land—Amu Darya River—
“Friendship Bridge”
29 August, 0803 Hours (GMT+5:00)
Chace had stopped not so much because the boy needed her to carry him, but because she needed the signal to be clear. It was a game of trust now, trust that everyone would do what they were supposed to, be where they were supposed to, when they were supposed to.
She could see Kostum and Lankford at the far end of the bridge, standing in Afghanistan, five hundred meters away. When she turned and looked back, she could see Sevara’s little motorcade, the President standing where they’d left her, watching their progress.
Then she heard the radio chatter in her ear, Tower’s voice speaking in Uzbek, and another’s, answering him in the same language. She saw the plume of dust spurt from where the van had been parked on the slope, and she knew it was on, and as a result, she knew several other things. The first was that Ahtam Zahidov was somewhere within five kilometers of their position, within the maximum range of the Starstreak. Second, that he planned on using the Starstreak to kill not just Stepan and Ruslan, but Lankford and herself as well.
And third, that she now needed to make certain Zahidov stayed so focused on what she was doing that he didn’t decide to fire early, that he wouldn’t see what was coming.
Stepan was looking up at her, confusion painting his small face, and he asked her a question in Uzbek, and she smiled at him, then crouched and hoisted him in her arms, positioning him on her left hip.
“How about a song?” she asked him. “Shall we sing a song?”
Stepan’s confusion remained, and Chace resumed walking along the bridge. Most of the songs she knew by heart, she realized, were entirely inappropriate for children, whether Stepan could understand them or not. Instead, she pointed with her free hand down toward the southern end of the bridge, and used the one Uzbek word that Stepan himself had taught her.
“That way,” she told the little boy. “Ota.”
The boy twisted in her arm, looking, and she felt him tense with excitement, and for a second, she was afraid she would lose her grip on him as he tried to lunge forward. Then, not seeing his father, he sagged and turned an accusing look at her. She couldn’t blame him. That Ruslan’s fear had been greater than his desire to see his son, to be present when the little boy came across the border, confused her. If it had been Chace waiting for Tamsin, she’d have stood naked with a bull’s-eye painted over her heart, just so her daughter would know she was waiting.
From the southern end of the bridge, Kostum shouted something in Uzbek at them, and Chace didn’t understand a word of it, but it got Stepan’s attention, and he squirmed in her arm. There was a crackle in her ear, and a second transmission in Uzbek, followed by another response, and now Tower sounded more agitated, more urgent. Chace tried to keep her progress as slow as before, buying time, but Afghanistan was coming closer. She thought about stopping again, but to do so a second time would be too risky—Zahidov would see it for what it was, a stalling tactic.
Look at me, she thought. Look at me, hate me, look at me. Just don’t hate me so much you lose your patience.
Stepan was speaking in her arms, apparently in response to Kostum’s words. Chace wondered just how much of what the little boy was saying was actually Uzbek versus toddler babble. Kostum was gesturing toward himself, then the vehicle, parked and waiting for them. Lankford now stood by the open driver’s door, the tension on his face, the anxiety. She shared it.
The trap hinged on denying Zahidov the optimum shot, on keeping Chace, Stepan, and Lankford apart for as long as possible. Once they were all together in Afghanistan, once they were at the vehicle, that would be when Zahidov loosed the Starstreak. They had to stay separated long enough for Tower and the Uzbeks to close in on Zahidov. But they couldn’t be obvious about it, because if Zahidov for an instant thought he was being set up, he’d take whatever shot he could.
And Chace knew whom that shot would be targeted at, and this time, she was sure there’d be no narrow escape for her and little Stepan Malikov.
She kept walking, measuring her pace, trying to guess at the time. How long had it been since she’d given the go signal? Thirty seconds? Forty? A minute? How fast would they be able to move overland, how far away was Zahidov?
The Afghan border guards were raising the gate now, she saw the two bars of white-and-red-painted metal lifting and separating, clearing the way. Chace felt her stomach contracting, knowing that her next few steps would take her and the boy into the kill zone, the blast radius of the Starstreak when it hit the Cherokee. Any instant now, Zahidov would fire.
Any instant now, he would kill them all.
Then Chace heard the echo of gunfire as it rolled down the hills out of Uzbekistan and across the water, the chorus of automatic rifles as they made certain that the man who had tortured her, who had murdered the mother of the child in her arms, could never hurt anyone ever again.
CHAPTER 52
Uzbekistan—Surkhan Darya Province—
Termez, “Friendship Bridge”
29 August, 0803 Hours (GMT+5:00)
Finally, the bitch had done what she was supposed to be doing all along. And carrying the little shit, that was even better—she’d be wearing his blood by the time he was through.
Zahidov felt his heart pounding in his ears, his pulse making his very palms vibrate. He adjusted his position slightly, pressing the sight more firmly to his eye, settling the crosshairs on little boy’s head as it rested on the blond bitch’s shoulder. If he did it right, he’d take them both together.
He heard engines, car engines, or engines larger than cars, and for a moment the sound confused him. They were far from the road, far enough that the sounds of the vehicles traveling it wouldn’t carry. He pulled his eye from the sight and half turned, trying to find the source of the noise, and then he saw the vehicles coming, two APCs and, of all things, a white van, a Daewoo, and they were roaring toward him, cresting the hill above where the helicopter waited.
And in that moment, Ahtam Zahidov knew he had been had.
Swearing, he twisted back around, to face the bridge and Afghanistan, trying to reacquire the bitch and the boy in his sights. But he’d shifted, he was looking at the water, not at the bridge, and it took him precious seconds to reacquire the target, and then he could see them, the two figures about to come off the bridge, the gate on the Afghan side being raised.