At 6:45PM, as the sun began to drop behind the mountains, they exited the embassy through a rear service door. Two identical Toyota Forerunners waited there, engines rumbling. The Forerunners sat one in front of the other and had pulled up a couple minutes earlier, so they surely had the GKNB’s full attention now. A marine in civilian clothing sat behind the wheel in each vehicle.
The Forerunners were behemoths and parked so that they blocked any view of the open service door. The GKNB officers sitting in the car across the street were unable to see exactly who was emerging from the embassy. They couldn’t even get complete descriptions and could barely get an accurate head count. To add further confusion, Avery and the others were dressed similarly, in windbreakers and black baseball caps.
Avery and Gerald slipped into the first Forerunner. Avery carried his backpack and duffel bag and took the spot behind the driver’s seat. Gerald carried the briefcase containing the components of their jack-in-the-box. Darren took Avery’s gear into the second Forerunner, and they were soon on their way.
The GKNB car slipped into traffic behind them, following them three blocks north to Shohtemur Street. There, the Forerunners split ways, the first going west, and the second east.
The driver of the GKNB car was forced to react immediately. He impulsively made the left-turn, going after the first Forerunner and swearing out loud as he did so. The GKNB officer riding shotgun struck a fist against the dash, and then called in the situation and requested a second vehicle to find the first Forerunner heading west.
Avery’s marine driver announced that the tail was still with them. At least if the GKNB had gone east after the second Forerunner, it would have been a simple matter of slowing down, so Avery could simply step out of the SUV with his gear. The guys in the second Forerunner would have to be alert now and identify their new tail before they dropped off Avery’s gear.
Avery assembled the pieces for the jack-in-the-box. He affixed the coat hanger to the end of the plunger and taped the balloon to the top of the hanger. Then he taped pieces of cardboard around the coat hanger, to give the upper body a bit of mass. He slid out of his jacket, fit it over the hanger, and zipped it up. He took off his cap and gently fit it on top of the balloon.
Gerald gave it a once-over and nodded his approval. He was too tense and anxious, having never done anything like this before outside of training. He didn’t want to be picked up by the GKNB. Avery told him to relax, breathe, and remember what he needed to do, and Gerald straightened his back and composed himself.
Four minutes later, the marine up front alerted Avery that they were very soon coming to the turn. Avery acknowledged the marine, even though he’d been keeping track of where they were going the whole time and was already aware of this. The GKNB vehicle was five car lengths back, with a taxi and a trailer-truck between them.
The left-turn onto Karamov Street would provide them several seconds completely out of sight of the GKNB chase car, while the Forerunner made the turn and before the GKNB car reached the intersection. That’s where Avery would make the slip.
Avery leaned up against his door, unlocked it, and gripped his left hand around the latch. He leaned forward to look over the driver’s shoulder, his eyes fixated on the road ahead, looking out for what was around and potential obstacles. Gerald was getting into position as well, to shut the door and move the JIB into position as Avery exited the vehicle.
The marine decreased speed, rolled through the intersection, and steered the Forerunner through the left-hand turn.
Avery scanned the street ahead and looked for an area to land, a spot clear of street signs, holes, curbs, and parked vehicles. The ground was all pavement or concrete, so there was nothing softer like grass or soil to aim for, but there were plenty of trees up ahead — planetrees with long and thin stumps were everywhere in Dushanbe — that would make good cover.
The Forerunner was doing twenty-five miles per hour. That meant Avery’s body would travel approximately two-hundred feet at the same speed when he left the vehicle before hitting the ground. It was going to hurt. There was no way getting around that. He came prepared. He wore two layered t-shirts beneath a heavy sweatshirt and had on kneepads underneath thick utility pants.
He sat on the edge of his seat and leaned his weight against the door and angled his body forward, so that when he left the Forerunner, he’d roll away from the vehicle and the direction of traffic.
The marine decelerated as much as he could without interfering with the flow of traffic and drawing attention, maybe twenty miles per hour. A complete stop would be ideal or just a slow roll or pulling over to the side, and then quickly stepping out of the car, but that wasn’t feasible with KGB-lite wanna-bes less than a hundred feet behind and seconds away from turning and having eyes on the Forerunner.
Avery locked eyes on his intended landing spot and waited until the Forerunner was a five-second count away. Then he yanked the latch and pushed the door open, keeping one hand on it so that the thing wouldn’t swing back and smack him as he jumped. He lifted his ass off the seat, lowered his head, and crossed his arms across his chest, hugging his duffel bag tight against his body, with his knuckles pressed into his shoulders. He sprung off his feet and out of the Forerunner, facing in the direction in which the SUV travelled.
He struck the pavement hard, letting out an involuntarily grunt, and rolled, directing his body away from the oncoming trailer truck, off the street, and toward the line of trees. He kept his arms tucked around him, chin down and neck tight so that he didn’t bash his head against the concrete. He rolled through the pain of the impact and didn’t stop moving until he reached the copse of tall planetrees.
Looking over the tree trunk, he saw the taillights of the Forerunner, and the door was already pulled shut.
Avery sat up on his haunches and leaned his back against the tree. He turned his head left and soon saw the taillights of the trailer truck, followed seconds later by another pair of lights, belonging to a mid-size sedan and thought that was the GKNB car. Traffic continued down the street. He waited and didn’t observe any of the same vehicles coming back around or making a second pass.
As the effect of the adrenaline diminished and his sensory input returned to real-time, Avery became aware of blunt pain in his lift side and the ache in his right shoulder and the stinging sensation of the little cuts and scrapes in his knuckles and the backs of his hands, and he felt suddenly exhausted.
He hopped onto his feet, brushed off his pants and sweatshirt, and started walking. Two blocks later, he hailed the first cab he saw. He gave the driver directions to the rendezvous point where he was to be picked up by one of Poacher’s crew. Along the way, he switched cabs twice, taking a few walks in between, satisfied that he wasn’t being followed.
He hoped the drop with his kit went as smoothly.
Following Avery’s instructions, Darren’s Forerunner would drive around the city for thirty minutes or so before returning to the embassy. At that point, as he and Gerald exited the vehicles, the GKNB would do a head count and realize they’d been given the slip.
On Shestopalov Street, Avery spotted the ugly beige Lada with one gray fender and a plastic bag taped over the missing left rear window. The car blended right in with the other vehicles in the city.
Avery greeted the former navy SEAL sitting behind the wheel and slipped into the passenger seat
The ex-chief petty officer was Matt Monroe, who went by the unfortunate call sign of Flounder. Operators didn’t choose their own handles. Their teammates picked them, and there was often a story behind it. Avery knew better than to ask Flounder the origin of his handle. He supposed that he’d lucked out with Carnivore.