you.”
Middleton looked at the president, at the hundred-yard line from Marine One, about to come into view of the assembled press, the only group here who seemed to be enjoying what was going on around them.
“My men,” Archer said, “all fifty of them are pointing their cameras at your president now. Behind their lenses, copper discs.”
They’d be concave, up to an inch thick. Shaped charges, designed to penetrate armored vehicles, like in Iraq and Afghanistan. Middleton knew all about them, he’d seen what they could do. It will be like fifty sabot tank rounds going off: nothing would be left. Nothing. Shaped charges kill with kinetic energy, such incredible force that converted to heat, blasting and melting through anything and everything. Game over.
Chernayev lifted his sleeve, revealing above his watch a thin copper bracelet, slightly different than the one Middleton had seen on Balan’s wrist. “This bracelet? Nothing more than off-cuts from the process, made into intricate gifts, worn with pride by those involved.”
“Chernayev, think about it,” Middleton said. “This will start a war…”
He shook his head, resolute. Took the remote detonator from Archer. Thumb over the button.
“This region will need many peacekeepers-I have a proposal with the UN right now for a hundred thousand of my BlueWatch contractors to move in to fill the security void. Where else would they come from? The U.S.? I don’t think so.”
A hundred thousand-that was a big army in any nation’s book. Middleton couldn’t imagine that the Russian had that many boots to field. But he had the money.
Then he understood. “China,” Middleton said. “This is ultimately all about China, right?” His stalling tactic was tinged with genuine interest. China’s secret political leadership, the Te-Wu, must have been behind the schooling of the three men. “This is so that China can move in on Kashmir?”
“They already run part of it and there’s no doubt they need the living space. And water. The giant panda is dying of thirst.”
China was doing the same thing here as they were with the Tibet situation in trying to choose the next Dalai Lama: back in the mid-’90s they took in the child, Gyaincain Norbu. Now a young man, he’s believed by China to be the next incarnation of the Panchen Lama, a position second only to the Dalai Lama in the hierarchy of Tibetan Buddhism. He will help to choose the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and given he’s been brought up to obey the Chinese Communist Party, it will undoubtedly lead to the creation of a pro-Beijing power in Tibet. Call it insurance.
Devras Sikari, Archer’s father, was part of their insurance for gaining Kashmir and maybe even more following what was set to transpire here.
“And these guys you’ve got out there, these bombers? And Umer? Sanam?” Middleton asked.
“They all had a purpose, as do you.”
Chernayev’s men from BlueWatch were hovering around. Middleton had no chance of stopping him from pressing the detonator-he’d not make it more than two paces and it was a dozen away at least.
Archer gasped, reeling from the gunshot wound, and called out in a rasp, “My father wanted your investigation cleared up. And he was right. For that, and for the future, we can’t have anyone in our way. We didn’t care if you came here dead or alive, so long as you were here for the crescendo.”
“What?”
“The death of the president, who’s nearing the kill zone now.”
They looked across-Marine One was coming in to land, POTUS was in his protective bubble of Secret Service men, sixty seconds out.
Archer said, “Why not discredit the Volunteers while we achieve our objective?”
Middleton understood-he himself would get the blame.
Chernayev said, “Right now, the FBI is searching your house in Fairfax County. They’re finding all kinds of IED-making material there. Including the lathe that made the concave copper discs, of which these are a by- product.”
The copper bracelet on Chernayev’s wrist glinted in the sunlight.
“Why the intricate carvings? A ruse, to get us here? To make us believe in something that this place was not?”
“It’s more like a hobby of mine,” Chernayev said. He walked over to Middleton and passed him a small Russian nesting doll that fit in the palm of his hand. It was solid, the innermost doll.
It was painted in shades of white and grey, smooth to the touch from the clear lacquer.
Marine One landed, the massive rotors of the Sea King creating a new wave of CS smoke that remained in the vicinity. The president’s men hit the crest of the LZ, hundreds of camera flashes going off and illuminating the smoke. The press corps were shouting questions but the protective bubble didn’t stop moving.
The doll’s face was blank.
“It’s whoever you want it to be,” Chernayev said, standing taller, thumb on the switch. “It’s your worst fears painted on there.”
Middleton had heard of this exact type of doll, had even seen pictures in the ICC’s files from the Russian- Afghan war investigators. They’d turned up at several sites of war crimes. A KGB OSNAZ kill team had been giving them out to high-value targets as a marker for death. The locals and even the regular Russian army started spreading rumors that it was a group of mythical female snipers, the White Tights. Unstoppable. Unscrupulous. They’d garrotte you in your sleep, they’d shoot you from two kilometers away, they’d take out your whole family with IEDs that would make modern-day Iraq’s look like they belonged in the stone age. ICC files had a different name for this assassin-and they were convinced it was just one lone man assigned to OSNAZ’s Alpha Group. They called him “The Doll Maker.”
“I know who you are,” Middleton said.
“Pity. We could have talked about that some more. Out of time.”
Out of the corner of Middleton’s eye he saw a figure running through the crowd, coming at them. Whatever, whoever, it was too late. Chernayev’s hand was lifting the remote detonator.
“Arkady, why do it this way?” Middleton said to him, his voice deflated at the inevitable. Whatever name this man was known by-the Doll Maker, the Scorpion-one thing was constant: his art was death and he was about to paint his masterpiece.
“Sorry Harold. It’s complicated.”
17
The president was thirty yards away from the LZ, dust, leaves, branches fleeing from the turbulent wake of the helicopter. The rotors were dispersing the tear gas too.
The commander-in-chief was sprinting like a running back surrounded by a phalanx of teammates toward the goal line: the safety of the chopper.
The fake reporters, their weapons up, moved closer.
Chernayev was poised with the detonator. In thirty seconds he’d fire it.
“Get ready,” gasped Archer, his face gone white. He had struggled onto a hill and had a good view of the landing zone. He was dying, but he’d see this through to the end.
Middleton strayed toward the Russian, but two BlueWatch guards painted him with their complicated black machine guns. He stopped.
“Twenty seconds.”
