“Clear,” Avery said quietly.
He ejected the spent magazine from his rifle, pulled a new one from his vest, gently slapped it into place, and chambered a round. Then he examined his vest where he’d caught a bullet earlier. The fabric was torn, but the armor didn’t appear to be penetrated. He slid a hand under his vest and felt for holes and blood, but there were none.
One hundred and seventeen seconds had elapsed since Flounder blew the doors to the house.
“All right, let’s move quickly,” Avery said. “We don’t know how long we have before some local militia or whoever the fuck show up.”
They entered the next bedroom.
White sheets hung from the wall, with the flag of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan prominently displayed in the middle. A single wood chair sat in the middle of the room, in front of the flag. A video-recorder mounted on a tripod faced the chair and flag. Tiny blood stains speckled the floor. There was a wide roll of clear plastic sheeting. They always laid out plastic over the floor when they were going to cut through someone’s throat.
The video appeared on the Internet less than two days ago, so Cramer had been here recently. Avery swore out loud. Wherever Cramer was now, if he was still alive, once his captors heard word of the takedown here, they’d surely execute him.
“We have a live one,” Poacher announced.
Avery stormed across the house to the back.
Otabek Babayev lay on the floor, with his wrists and ankles flex-cuffed, and a piece of duct tape over his mouth, muffling his cries. He was shirtless, and there were blood-soaked bandages and gauze over his right shoulder.
The SAD operators were right behind Avery. He instructed Flounder to get in the van and be ready to leave in a hurry. He told Poacher to search the bodies and rooms for anything of potential intelligence value. They acknowledged and left Avery alone with the prisoner.
He ripped the tape off Babayev’s mouth in one fast, hard motion. “Where’s the American?”
The Uzbek stared contemptuously up at Avery. It was the same look of pride, hate, and defiance Avery saw on the face of Gurgakov’s prisoner.
There wasn’t time for this shit. Avery raised his rifle, barrel pointed up, and smashed the stock down against Babayev’s head, splitting skin, scraping bone, and drawing blood. Babayev bit into his lower lip and struggled to mute any scream or verbal reaction. He did not want to give the American the satisfaction of seeing him suffer and wither in pain.
Avery repeated the inquiry, which was again met with silence.
Avery took two steps back, shouldered the M4 and drilled Babayev straight through his left kneecap. That got a reaction out of him. Babayev twisted and turned on the floor, screamed and howled like a deranged animal. Blood poured rapidly out from the hole through the destroyed bone and cartilage. Then, just to show he was completely serious, Avery blasted apart Babayev’s other knee.
“Where is he, you son of a bitch?” Avery shouted. He battered Babayev once more with the rifle’s stock.
“He’s dead,” Babayev finally shouted in English. “He had a heart attack, during interrogation, but it is no big thing. He was to die soon anyway.”
Avery examined Babayev’s face closely and said, “I don’t believe you.” He shot the Uzbek through the foot and waited for him to stop screaming. “I know he was here. When did he leave?”
Silence.
Avery angled his rifle toward Babayev’s crotch and was about to tap the trigger again.
“No, don’t! Yesterday morning, they took him out of here.”
“Then what are you assholes still doing here?”
Babayev smiled. Blood streamed down his face from the gashes and scrapes in his forehead and his split lip. “We were waiting for you to come.”
“Where did they take him?”
No response.
Avery leaned in and shoved the tip of his suppressor against the hole in Babayev’s right knee. He forced the tip into the destroyed cartilage and twisted it around, sending waves of agonizing pain throughout Babayev’s body. The Uzbek squirmed and screamed.
Finally, after a couple excruciatingly long seconds, Avery stopped. He didn’t want Babayev to pass out. “Talk to me, fucker.”
“Ayni,” Babayev finally blurted out. He gasped for breath and writhed and squirmed on the floor. “They took him to Ayni, the airfield. A plane will be there for him. He leaves early Thursday morning.”
It was almost 4:00AM, Tuesday.
“Who’s taking him? Where?”
“I don’t know.” Speaking at barely a whisper, the Uzbek became harder to understand.
“Cramer, is he alive or dead?” Avery asked. “Who told you we were coming?”
Babayev stared up at his tormentor. He appeared calmer now, relaxed. His eyelids flickered as blood dripped into his eyes. Avery knew he wouldn’t get any more answers. Looking into Babayev’s eyes, unfocused and in a haze, Avery saw he was far gone now.
Poacher reappeared. “I couldn’t find anything of value, no computers, no USB drives, nothing, just a cell phone on one of the bodies. I took pictures and fingerprints of each of the crows. But there’s something you might want to see.”
Avery followed Poacher into the living room.
Poacher crouched over the body of the man Avery had smoked outside and shined a flashlight over the dead man’s face. This one stood out from the other tangos they’d just waxed. He was clearly not of Central Asian or Uzbek descent. He was Caucasian and sported Slavic features, at least from what could be ascertained from what remained of his face, and had a shaved head. Poacher pulled down the collar of the man’s shirt and shined the light on the left side of his neck, revealing a small tattoo of a spider with a bulbous body and short spindly legs.
“Look what he was packing.”
Poacher shined his light over a Russian-made SR-3 Veresk.
Avery picked up the submachine gun. He ejected the round from the breech and held it between his thumb and index finger. Clearly this wasn’t the guy who’d hit him earlier. The SR-3’s 9mm SP armor piercing round would have bore right through the armor plate in his vest and then through his intestine. It gave him a sick feeling, and he didn’t dwell on it further.
He looked over the rest of the dead terrorist’s kit, which included a Kirasa Model-6 armored vest with ceramic plates over the chest and back, the type of vest used by Russian tactical units.
“Let’s clear out,” said Avery.
“What about him?” Poach asked pointing in the direction of Babayev. They heard him moaning and mumbling incoherently to himself in his native tongue. He sounded delirious.
Without a word, Avery strode back across the hallway. He stood over Babayev, looking down at him and hating him for what he was and what he’d done. Fuck it. Avery shouldered the rifle and shot Babayev once through the face, permanently silencing and stilling him. Then he looked back to Poacher and said, “Let’s move.”
TWELVE
“So what are you thinking?” Poacher asked Avery as the latter walked out of the kitchen opening a bottle of orange Gatorade he’d taken from the fridge. Avery had so far excluded himself from the conversation and had barely said a word on the drive back from Yazgulam.