crouching in the road, by the Jeep, fumbling to reload his rifle, and she put a burst in his chest. He flopped back, gagging, as the M-16 went dry, and she dropped the rifle as the man fell silent.
The gray-bearded guard lay on his side near her feet, face half-missing from shrapnel, Kalashnikov still in his bloodied hand. She took the AK, began walking through the bodies, checking for life.
“All clear?” Lankford called from above.
“Clear,” Chace shouted back.
She heard him begin to descend toward her, rattling more rocks down the mountainside.
Kostum stared at her from where he was slumped against the wheel, holding his right hand in his left, and she saw that one of them, Tozim or Andrei, had put a bullet through it. As she dropped to her haunches beside him, the General smiled at her weakly, saying something in Pashto through bloodied lips, and she nodded, then looked past him.
Andrei Hamrayev was dead, eyes wide and mouth opened, saliva visible at the corner of his mouth, mixed with his blood. But her eyes were on the bloody smear on the ground, tracking the path of a wounded man as he tried to crawl away.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Kostum softly, then stood, adjusting her grip on the Kalashnikov.
Tozim had made it halfway to the ruins of the lead car, dragging himself along, and from the amount of blood he was losing, Chace figured he didn’t have much time. He was sobbing in pain, trying to keep the noise to himself, and she saw a pistol in his right hand, and she almost laughed. It was a Sarsilmaz, maybe the same one they’d recovered from her over six months earlier.
She watched him crawling, and his progress steadily degraded, less and less ground covered with what seemed greater and greater effort. Finally she set the Kalashnikov silently on the ground at her feet, then moved to him. She kicked him hard in the face with her boot, snapping him onto his side, then brought the same foot down on his gun hand, stomping. Tozim cried out, lost the grip on the gun.
She picked the pistol up, still looking down at him. There were tears of pain in his eyes. There was recognition on his face.
Chace thought of all the things she wanted to say, as she checked the pistol, and she was almost positive it was the same Sarsilmaz, and it was loaded and ready, so she pointed it at his right foot. She decided there were no words to say.
She pulled the trigger.
Tozim screamed.
She pointed it at his left foot and fired again.
He screamed again.
She tucked the pistol into the back of her pants, leaned down, and searched him. She found his wallet, a pack of American cigarettes, and a plastic lighter. She took all of them, shoving them into her coat pockets. Tozim was babbling at her, a torrent of Uzbek, and when she began dragging him, he tried to break her grip with his bloodied hands. There was almost no strength to his efforts, and when he did finally succeed in grabbing Chace’s wrist, she punched him in the face before she resumed pulling him.
“You don’t ever touch me again,” she told him.
She was aware of Lankford watching her, crouched beside Kostum, trying to tend his wounds, as she manhandled Tozim to the side of the trail. The slope was severe here and she looked back down at Tozim Stepanov, and she knew he was begging her not to do it, not because she understood his words, but because she heard the garbled desperation in them.
It was another sound from her nightmares, and she would have relented then, she would have spared him then, if only, in her dreams, it hadn’t been her doing the begging.
“Try to land on your feet,” Chace told him, then pitched him over the edge.
They reached Mazar-i-Sharif seven hours later, and three hours and fifty-four minutes after that, Chace was on a NATO-staffed helicopter bound for Termez.
CHAPTER 41
Uzbekistan—Tashkent—438–2 Raktaboshi,
Residence of Charles Riess
27 August, 0917 Hours (GMT+5:00)
Riess answered the door in his T-shirt and boxer shorts, the day’s first cup of coffee in his hand. He’d have been better dressed if he’d been expecting a caller, but it was Sunday morning, there was no need for him at the Embassy, and he’d been up late the night before, watching the better part of a television series he’d ordered off of Netflix, concerning cowboys with extraordinarily foul mouths. He’d dreamed of saloons and the Wild West, and perhaps because it was still so fresh in his mind, the first words out of his mouth when he saw Tracy Carlisle at his door were “Cock-sucking motherfucker.”
“Delighted to see you, too,” she replied, and then Tracy Carlisle, whose name wasn’t really Tracy Carlisle, smiled at him like they were old friends. She smiled like she was happy to see him. “May I come in?”
Riess thought about that for a moment, wondering what in hell he’d tell Tower when he was no doubt asked about this, then sighed. He moved back and waved her in, then looked out over his tiny yard to the street, seeing nothing that alarmed him. He almost laughed.
“Coffee’s fresh,” he told her as he moved past, heading back to the kitchen. “I get it from a friend in San Francisco. The beans, I mean, not the coffee.”
“Coffee would be delightful,” Tracy Carlisle said, following him.
“You take cream? Sugar?” Riess opened the cabinet, pulled out a mug.
“Black, like my heart.”
“Uh-huh.”
He set the mug down, filled it from the pot, handing it over. She was looking at him with what he interpreted as vague amusement, and as he stood there, she ran her eyes the length of him, down, then up, then smiled again.
“I just woke up,” Riess explained.
“So I see.”
Riess returned the look, and had to admit he liked what he was looking at. She wore jeans and a black T- shirt, a loose linen jacket, tan. He could smell the hint of soap, saw that her hair appeared to still be damp. Fresh from the shower, he assumed, and straight to his doorstep, but God only knew why. Then he saw what looked like dried blood on the toes of her boots, and had to wonder if the shower had been about more than just hygiene.
“You probably shouldn’t be here,” he told her.
