Private Wars

Knock it off, Tara, she told herself, and took a closer look at the gate. It ran on a track, splitting in the center, presumably parting to the left and right to allow access. Squinting into the darkened garage, she could see the chain running from the gate to the pulley wheels, then to the motor, mounted on the concrete wall roughly fifteen feet to the right.

She pushed the gate, to see if she could get it to part, even slightly. The metal rattled when she touched it, but didn’t budge.

Chace stepped back, glancing around her once more. The gate was a problem, but the ramp was a benefit, as it hid her from the street. If anyone came along, they’d be nearly on top of her before they saw she was even there. She checked her watch.

Three minutes past midnight.

She reached into the outer pocket of her coat. The suppressor made the gun too long to wear inside her trousers with any degree of comfort, and Chace had balanced the ease of accessing the hush puppy quickly with the necessity of being able to move in the same way. If her luck went so bad as to require the use of the weapon quickly, then the use of the weapon alone wouldn’t be enough to solve the problem.

The hush puppy in her hand, Chace turned against the gate, raised the pistol, and fired at the chain. The weapon kicked, its recoil made stronger with the slide lock engaged, but the actual shot barely made a sound. The Mk 22 Mod 0 had been modified for use by SEAL Teams during Vietnam, to quietly and quickly remove sentries during covert operations. In particular, it had been used to silence guard dogs, hence the nickname.

The first shot missed in the gloom, and Chace manually disengaged the lock, pocketing the spent cartridge, then racked a second round and tried again. This time, the chain sparked, then clanked loose from the pulley, tumbling to the garage floor with an appalling racket, and Chace fought the immediate instinct to run and hide. Instead, gun in hand, she leaned into the gate once more, and this time it slid back on its wheels, just enough to let her through. She twisted through the gap, turning again and sliding the gate closed once more. Each time the door ran on its wheels, it chattered and squeaked, and she winced at the noise, but kept going.

Dropping back into the shadows of the garage, Chace ducked down between the Audi and the Mustang, and again cleared the spent cartridge from the hush puppy. She listened, not moving, until all she was hearing was her own breathing, and then the sound of a car passing by on the road beyond the ramp. Nothing more.

Her eyes finally adjusted to the gloom, and Chace turned on her haunches, checking the Audi’s tags to be certain it was the same A4, then peering through the passenger window at the interior. The car was a manual, to her relief; an automatic would have posed a whole new host of problems. Zahidov had parked the car nose in to the wall, and a small red light blinked regularly on the dashboard, indicating that the alarm was set.

That didn’t bother her. The alarm was designed to prevent break-ins to the vehicle, arming automatically when the doors were locked. Unlocking the car with the key would disarm the antitheft system. By the same token, starting the car would do the same.

The trick was in starting the car, and thus disarming the alarm, without actually ever entering the passenger compartment.

Hush puppy in hand, Chace made her way to the front of Zahidov’s Audi, then crouched down once more. She set the gun down by her right foot, then drew the knife from its sheath at the back of her belt. Like the pistol, she’d purchased the knife at the bazaar. Unlike the pistol, the knife was of local manufacture. She’d found it among the Soviet Army bayonets and cheap knockoffs of combat knives that only seemed to ever be used in the movies. This one had a six-inch single-edge blade that ended in an elegantly curved point, with a bone handle, sturdy in the hand, well balanced, and ultimately far more silent than the hush puppy.

Positioning herself at the driver’s-side headlight, Chace slid the flat of the blade along the top of the socket, working the knife in until she felt she had enough purchase to try exerting some leverage. She bore down on the blade, met resistance, pushed harder, and the headlight broke loose of its housing with a resounding crack that seemed to fill the garage and reverberate off the concrete all around.

Chace caught the light in her left hand before it could fall, then sliced the wires running to the lamp. She set the light and the knife on the floor, beside the pistol, then took hold of the wires, touching them to her tongue. A ripple of electricity ran through her mouth.

Thank God for that, she thought, dropping the wires and letting them dangle from the now-empty headlight socket. The current meant that the Audi kept a reserve charge even after the key was removed from the ignition. It meant she was still in business.

Resting one hand against the hood of the car for support, Chace reached into the socket, to the small hole that now gaped, Lear-like, opening into the engine compartment. She pressed her fingers together, tucking her thumb beneath, into her palm, and pushed. Metal scraped her fingers, then her hand, and she felt a sharp pain around her wrist as she shoved farther, finally through the hole. She grit her teeth, twisting, working by feel past the front of the engine block to the rough surface of the firewall. The position was putting a strain on her lower back, and the crouch was starting to make her legs ache.

She almost missed it, working blind as she was, her fingers brushing over the wire once, then twice, before she knew it for what it was, secure in its bracket, grounded in the firewall. Using her index finger, she pried it loose enough to actually manage a grip on it, then yanked. Metal tore at her forearm, and Chace hissed in pain as her hand came free. In the weak light from the ramp, she could see wetness glistening, where she’d stripped skin from her forearm.

But she had the wire she wanted, and she thought that was a fair trade.

Using the knife, she stripped roughly two inches of casing off the wire, then did the same with the leads that had once gone to the headlight. She sheathed the knife, then took the two pieces of wire and twisted them together.

Immediately, the engine came to life.

Chace spared a moment for relief, then picked up the hush puppy and moved around to the driver’s side. Like the Range Rover, this was another left-hand drive. Through the side window, she could see the dashboard now dimly illuminated. Better, the alarm light had gone off.

She shrugged out of her coat and wrapped it around her left arm, then, with her right, fired one round from the hush puppy into the driver’s window, angling the shot so the bullet would bury itself in the passenger seat. The window spider-webbed, and Chace punched with her left, and then it vanished, falling into minute chunks of safety glass. She tossed the hush puppy through the now-open window, onto the passenger’s seat, reached inside, and unlocked the door, then opened it. Using her covered left arm, she swept the glass fragments from the seat until she was certain she wouldn’t lacerate herself further, then tossed the coat onto the passenger seat as well, covering the pistol.

To the sound of the engine rumbling through the garage, she sprinted to the gate at the bottom of the ramp, and once more took hold of the bars. Again, she leaned in, pushing, and this time, the clatter of the wheels in their tracks seemed quieter, lost below the sound of the Audi. She shoved the doors apart enough to allow the car through, then ran back to the vehicle. She climbed behind the wheel, put the car in reverse, and pulled out carefully. As soon as she put the car in gear, the remaining headlamp came on, splashing xenon light that turned the garage bright as day.

Chace put the Audi into gear and gave it gas, turning hard at the gate, and narrowly avoiding clipping it with the side mirrors. She floored it on the ramp, turned again, and shot off, down Sulaymonova.

According to the digital clock on the dashboard, it was seven minutes past midnight.

Four minutes, Chace mused. Not bad.

She slowed to the legal limit after a mile, taking random turns and checking to see if she’d collected any admirers. Once assured that she hadn’t, she turned in the direction of Forobiy, to where she’d parked the Range Rover. The air coming through the window was sharp, cutting through her clothes, and it cut through the adrenaline as well, but it didn’t diminish her pleasure.

With the Audi, she could drive right up to the house without raising suspicion. Behind its tinted windshield, the guards would never know it wasn’t Zahidov at the wheel until it was too late, provided they didn’t see her through the missing driver’s window.

That was the plan, at least as it stood now, and as Chace drove to where she’d parked the Range Rover, she