Air Battle Force

armed. Thus it was with the Republic of Turkmenistan.

Tabadkan was typical of almost all of the Turkmen border checkpoints — a small but heavily fortified Turkmen border-guard base with a few support buildings, a large tent barracks for enlisted men and a towable building for the officers, a supply yard with portable fuel and water tanks — and a detainment camp. The Republic of Turkmenistan routinely turned away anyone — refugees or rich folks, it didn’t matter — who did not have a visa and a letter of introduction or a travel itinerary drawn up by a Turkmen state travel bureau; but any people without proper identification papers or passports were placed in the detainment camp until their identities could be verified. The Afghan government usually sent officials to the border crossing to help in identifying its citizens and getting them released from Turkmen custody at least once a week, but in bad weather — or for a number of other reasons — it could sometimes take a month or more for anyone to come to this remote outpost.

So it was now — the detainment camp had almost a hundred detainees, substantially over its capacity. Women and children under age ten were in a separate sheltered area of the facility and were generally well treated; older boys and the men were in another section, exposed to the elements. Each man was given two carpets and a metal cup; four buckets of porridge made with mung beans and rice and four buckets of water had to serve about sixty men for the day. To keep warm, the men took turns around a single large peat brazier set in a lean-to made from hides — if a man was lucky, he might make a snack of a captured and roasted sand rat, jerboa, snake, or sand crocodile.

Zarazi examined all this with his binoculars from the relative safety of a sand dune about a kilometer east of the border crossing. The wind was howling now, at least forty kilometers an hour, blowing sand that stung like sandpaper rubbed across bare cheeks and foreheads. “Those bastards,” he spat. “They’ve got several dozen of our people caged up like animals.” He let his deputy commander, Jalaluddin Turabi, check through the binoculars. Sure enough, they looked like Taliban fighters, although from this range and with the winds kicking up, it was hard to be positive.

“No patrols out tonight,” Zarazi went on to Turabi, who was prone in the sand beside him, two scarves covering all but a tiny slit for his eyes. “We might actually pull this off, Jala.”

“We can just as easily go around this post, Wakil,” Turabi said worriedly. “We have enough supplies to last us another two or three days, long enough to make it to Yusof Mirzo’i or back to Andkhvoy. Once we get more weapons and ammo, we can come back for those men.”

“But they’ll be waiting for us to head back toward the city,” Zarazi said. “They won’t expect us to go across the border to Turkmenistan.”

“For good reason — there’s nothing but unmanned oil wells, scorpions, and sandstorms for a hundred kilometers,” Turabi retorted. “If we make it to the Kara Kum River, we may survive, but there’s nothing but Turkmen border guards until we reach Holach. What’s the plan, Wakil?”

“The plan is to stay alive long enough to strike back at the blue-helmets and the Americans who drove us from our homes,” Zarazi replied bitterly. “Revenge is the reason we must survive.”

“There’s no one to take out our revenge on in the Kara Kum wastelands, Wakil,” Turabi said. “Sure as hell not the Americans. They are nice and safe up in their supersonic stealth bombers, or sitting back at home flying their robot attack planes via satellite.”

“They are all cowards, and they must die like cowards,” Zarazi said. “I prayed to Allah while we were under attack, and I made a bargain with the Almighty — if He let me live, I would be His sword of vengeance. He answered my prayers, Jala. He is pointing the way, and the way is out there, in the desert — through this place, not around it.” He turned to his friend and fellow freedom fighter. “We will hoist the United Nations flags on our captured vehicles and turn on all the lights. We must act nice and friendly. Then we shall see what Allah has in store for us tonight.” Zarazi patted Turabi’s face. “Time to get rid of the beards, my friend.”

“Military vehicles approaching!” a sentry shouted. “Someone coming in!”

The commander in charge had just settled in for a catnap when the cry was relayed to him. Swearing, he got to his feet and joined his senior sergeant at the observation window facing the checkpoint. The sergeant was trying to see who it was through a pair of binoculars. “Well, Sergeant?”

“Hard to tell through the sandstorm, sir,” the sergeant said. “It looks like a BTR towing a pickup truck — wait, sir, I see a flag now. A United Nations patrol. They look like they’re towing a captured Taliban truck.”

“Why didn’t they announce first?” the commander mused. “This looks pretty damned suspicious. Why in hell are they bringing it to us?”

“I see the commander up in the cupola. He’s wearing a blue helmet,” the sergeant said. As the trucks got closer to the spotlight along the checkpoint, he could make out more details. “Looks like they might have gotten into a firefight, sir. I see damage to their radio antenna. That could be why they didn’t radio ahead. There could be casualties in the back of the pickup truck. They might be lost in the sandstorm, too.”

“Incompetent imbeciles! All those blue-helmets think if they have their precious little GPS receivers, they’ll be fine. This is what happens when you rely on them too much and they crap out on you.”

“All their lights are on, sir. They’re certainly not trying to sneak in.” A moment later he said, “The commander and one other man are dismounting, sir. Looks like United Nations troops to me. Can’t tell his nationality.”

“Bring the T-72 up. I want the gun right in their nose,” the commander ordered. “I want to teach those blue- helmets a lesson. They just can’t drive up to a border post in an armored vehicle. Somebody might think they’re terrorists and blow their shit away for them.”

“But, sir…”

“I know, I know. We don’t have any ammo for the main gun,” the commander said. “They don’t have to know that.” No one at headquarters expected a tank battle out here in the middle of nowhere, especially with Northern Alliance progovernment forces in charge again in Afghanistan, so rations of critical ammunition supplies such as rounds for the main tank guns were reserved only for the army units in the cities and Caspian Sea ports, not the border outposts. They were lucky to have any ammo at all. “Get to it, Sergeant. I want to see the commander of that detachment right away. I’ll chew on him for a few minutes while you find some bunk space and rations for them.” As angry as the commander was for being roused late at night, no Turkmen would ever consider being inhospitable to anyone traveling across the desert. Even a professional military officer in the twenty-first-century Turkmen army was only a couple generations removed from his nomadic roots. Every real Turkman knew the etiquette and rules of survival in the desert, and the prime rule was that any unarmed man riding into an oasis, even an artificial one such as this border outpost, was to be made welcome.

“Wakil, they’re moving a tank up to the gate!” Turabi radioed. “We’ve been discovered!”

“Relax, Jala,” Zarazi said. “I’m not worried about the tank just yet. I’m worried about the barracks. If we start to see troops running out of those tents, we may be in for a fight.”

Troops soon did start emerging from the tents, but only a half dozen or so. Zarazi could soon see that they were rushing toward one of the supply buildings and emerging moments later with their arms full of carpets. He realized with amused surprise that they were preparing to bunk down the newcomers. “Steady. I think they want to make us feel welcome.”

Several minutes later the gates opened and a soldier walked out and greeted Zarazi. He spoke in Turkmen first, which Zarazi understood, but he thought it best to pretend he did not. “Zdrastvooy,” he said in Russian, raising his right hand. The soldier smiled and made a short bow — Turkmenistan had been heavily Russified over the years of Soviet occupation, and only recently was Russian replaced by Turkmen as the national language. Zarazi quickly searched for the soldier’s rank, saw he was a major in the border guards, and went on, “I am Colonel Petrovich of the Republic of Ukraine, representing the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Our column was ambushed by marauders outside of Andkhvoy, and we have several wounded. Can you help us?”

“Da. Ya paneemayoo,” the soldier replied. He removed a glove and extended a hand.

Zarazi shook it, then gave him a curt embrace and patted his shoulder.

“We picked up some transmissions of some sort of skirmish east of here, but we couldn’t make out what happened.” The soldier motioned to the Toyota pickup. “Were they Taliban?”

“Bzduns!” Zarazi said, turning to spit on the sand. “They hit us before we knew they were in the area. Luckily for us, we insisted on going on patrol armed. We suffered a few casualties before the cowards ran off.” Zarazi motioned to the detainment facility, where a number of the men inside had gotten up and moved toward the fence to get a look at what was going on. “Did you capture anyone in the past few hours?”