Uzbekistan—Surkhan Darya Province—
Termez, “Friendship Bridge”
29 August, 0753 Hours (GMT+5:00)
Chace had left Tashkent just after midnight, arriving in Termez on a flight run by a charter service contracted to the British Embassy. The Lada had been waiting for her at the airfield, and Chace didn’t want to know who Fincher had bribed to get it for her, and she made a mental note to thank him when she had the chance. He may have stunk as a Minder, but she was rapidly gaining new respect for the man as an HOS.
She’d spent the night in the car, which wasn’t to say she’d slept in it. Rather, she’d driven out to a vantage point overlooking the bridge and parked there for almost an hour, watching the floodlights on the Uzbek side as they ran along the length of the fence and shone off the water, trying to understand the terrain. She’d emerged from the car a few times to smoke the cigarettes she’d taken from Tozim’s body, to stretch her legs, to try to calm her mind. Neither the nicotine nor the movement had done the trick.
Before dawn, she’d started the Lada up again, easing it back into Termez proper, such as there was a Termez proper, and then made her way west, out of town, watching the odometer and counting out five kilometers. She’d passed the airfield the Germans were using, then turned back again, toward the Amu Darya, until the fence had once again become visible in her headlights, then reversed the direction. She’d passed plenty of places where a man could hide with a MANPAD, and it didn’t give her much comfort that she’d seen no signs of the same.
The sun had been rising by then, at which point she abandoned the hunt. She had no guarantee that Zahidov was going to make a play to begin with, and searching for him in the dark had been just shy of foolish. Had she found him, there would have been a very good chance that he’d have seen her coming first. And if he did have the MANPAD, she suspected that both herself and the Lada would have ended in a fireworks of light and flames.
For the best, then, that she lie low for the time being.
She’d driven down to the river, parking in time to watch the remainder of the sunrise. The warmth had reached her through the car’s windows, and despite herself, she’d dozed off, thinking of home and Tamsin and wondering for how much longer she could expect Val to come when called. If it was hard on Tamsin for Chace to go away, it was, in its fashion, harder for Val. Val knew just enough to be aware that, like Tom, Chace might not return.
She’d started awake with a panic then, afraid she’d blown the pickup. By her watch, she’d slept for all of two minutes. She’d gotten out of the vehicle again, smoked more of Tozim’s cigarettes, and by then it was time to get moving. She’d climbed back behind the wheel, turned the nose of the car east, and found a dirt track used by the border guards that took her back to the bridge.
She saw the van, parked on the slope, before she stopped the Lada. Her watch read exactly nine minutes to eight, and when she looked south, across the river, she could see the Afghan checkpoint. She shut off the engine, leaving the keys in the ignition, then pulled out the radio set, fitting the earpiece into place before switching the unit on and slipping it into her pocket. She climbed out of the car, and had to fight to keep herself from gagging. The air was rank from the river, fouled with a mix of chemical runoff and human waste, an odor that invaded the sinuses and clung to the back of her throat. The heat augmented it, and Chace hoped the stench wouldn’t be quite so strong from the bridge, but expected that it would be worse.
There was a crackle in her ear, and then a man’s voice, gravelly and American.
She keyed her radio, watching the activity of the guards on the Uzbek side of the bridge, walking their patrol along the concrete roadblocks. “Go ahead.”
“You have a location on Kaa?”
There was a hiss in her ear as the CIA man, Tower, paused while keeping the line open.
Chace moved around to the hood of the car, only marginally relieved by the news. She glanced again to the van parked off the main road leading to the bridge, saw the flash of a lens. She wondered who was in the vehicle with Tower, handling the camera. Perhaps it was Riess, and she liked that idea. Riess had been a part of it the last time; it seemed right to her that he participate again now.
“Should I say cheese?” she asked. “Where’s Bagheera?”
Lankford’s voice broke in, choppier than Tower’s had been.
She turned her attention back to the bridge, following it across the river to the Afghan side, over a kilometer away. She could see movement at the checkpoint, vehicles, but without optics had no hope of making out Lankford and Kostum’s position.
“Understood,” Chace said.
Chace heard the cars coming along the main road first, the helicopter second, coming from the center of Termez. The helo looked like another Sikorsky, or perhaps it was the same Sikorsky that had pursued her when she’d run in the Audi, she couldn’t be certain. She watched as two Uzbek Army Jeeps led a black Mercedes-Benz, a third Jeep following, off the main road at the summit of the slope, where the helicopter was lovingly settling to the earth, blowing clouds of dust as it came in to land. For a second time, she wished she had optics, could confirm that the boy was in the helo.
The Sikorsky’s rotors slowed, then stopped, and she saw activity around the Benz, figures moving, passengers shifting from the helo to the car. She imagined, rather than heard, the sound of the vehicle doors slamming, the engines starting, and then the convoy was moving again, the two Jeeps again taking the lead back to the road, the Benz close behind. The line of cars started down the road, past the parked van, toward the foot of the bridge.
Trying to ignore the stench from the river, Chace began walking toward the checkpoint.
CHAPTER 47
Uzbekistan—Surkhan Darya Province—
Termez, “Friendship Bridge”
29 August, 0754 Hours (GMT+5:00)
The windows on the Benz were tinted, and Riess couldn’t see who rode inside as the minor motorcade passed them, making its way down to the bridge. He’d switched to the camera, and as soon as the last Jeep passed, put the lens back on Tara-not-Tracy, now walking slowly along the access road to the foot of the bridge. She was wearing the same clothes he’d last seen her in, right down—he suspected—to the blood- spattered boots, but with the addition of sunglasses.
