started to crawl over to where Orazov was lying holding his arm. “What are you doing?” the stranger asked in Russian.
“I must kill this man, to avenge my mission leader.”
“You are barely conscious, and he is like an injured animal,” the armored stranger said. “Better leave him alone.”
“I am honor-bound to avenge my leader’s death.”
“We have more important things to do.”
“I cannot think about saving my own life while my leader lies murdered in a shallow grave in the desert, betrayed by that man, whom he trusted,” Turabi said. “This I cannot stand.”
“The fate of a nation may be in your hands, Turabi,” the stranger said. “Why not go after him later? Or I will have him taken into custody, and you can deal with him later.”
“That is not the law,” Turabi replied. He was still crawling toward Orazov. The Turkmen soldier was now on his feet, muttering something. Orazov had slipped his broken arm inside his shirt to support it. Within seconds he had found the knife and held it before him, ready to defend himself or attack if presented the opportunity. He was warily eyeing the big stranger, wondering if he was going to intervene in their fight, but because the stranger was no longer even looking at him, Orazov decided he was going to let the Afghan and the Turkman fight it out.
“Nike, this is Taurus, I still show you at the objective point,” Colonel Hal Briggs radioed a few moments later via their secure satellite commlink. “What’s the holdup?”
“We have a slight cultural dilemma to address here first, sir,” Sergeant Major Chris Wohl replied.
“At the moment I don’t care about cultural dilemmas — I want our target exfiled out of there
“Yes, sir.” Wohl went over to Turabi, picked him up by his load-bearing harness, and said, “Sorry, sir, but you have to come with me, right now.”
Orazov incorrectly interpreted Wohl’s action as coming to his rescue. He shouted happily and charged, the knife raised high. Turabi tried to kick free, but he couldn’t break Wohl’s microhydraulically assisted grip.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Wohl muttered. “Some bozos just don’t know when to quit.”
As he held Turabi aloft with his right hand, he grabbed the knife away from Orazov’s right hand, then butted the Turkman with his left forearm. Dazed, Orazov dropped to the ground. Wohl dropped Turabi, who fell onto his knees, still weak from the fuel-air explosive attack — and then he dropped the knife right in front of Turabi.
“Finish him off, sir,” Wohl said in electronically translated Russian. “And I’ll have you know, sir, that if you let him kill you, my ass will be in a sling.”
For a moment it looked as if Turabi would just kill the guy, and they could be off. But the Turkmen traitor fought like a bull, and he knew that Turabi was still weak. Turabi pounced on Orazov and was just a few inches from plunging the blade into the traitor’s chest, but Orazov was able to grab his wrist and hold the blade away.
“You can’t kill me, Turabi,” Orazov said, laughing. He glanced at the armored stranger and smiled when he realized he wasn’t going to make a move to help either side. “Die like a man in front of that outsider. Roll over on your back and drop the knife. I’ll make it quick — just like I did Zarazi.”
That was not the correct thing to say to a man bent on revenge. Turabi’s eyes blazed, he let out a loud, animal-like howl, and then head-butted Orazov on his nose. Orazov’s vision exploded into a field of stars — but then went instantly dark as Turabi thrust the knife into the Turkman’s chest.
“Forgive me, Allah,” Turabi said, reciting the prayer of absolution, “but allow me to be the instrument of vengeance for the faithful.” He twisted the knife with his last remaining gram of strength, felt a fount of warm blood wash over his hand, then held the knife in Orazov’s chest until the flow of blood ceased.
“Nike, what in hell is going on over there?” Briggs radioed. He could peek into Wohl’s electronic visor via the satellite datalink built into the Tin Man battle armor and see what Wohl was seeing, and at the moment all he could see was Turabi lying on the bloody corpse. “Is that the target lying on that DB? What’s he doing?”
“He’s resolved that cultural dilemma I mentioned a moment ago, sir,” Wohl replied. He grabbed Turabi by his LBE harness again as if he were a rag doll, then took the knife away from him. “We’re on the move now, sir,” he added, just before he jet-jumped away.
“So the American aircraft disappeared off radar and has not been detected since?” Kurban Gurizev, the president of Turkmenistan, asked after reading the conclusions of the report from the air force general standing before him. Unlike most of the Turkmen around him, Gurizev was short, his eyes were blue, he had skin tanned from the harsh sun instead of being olive-complexioned. Although born in Turkmenistan and a resident there most of his life, he spoke in slow, choppy Turkmen, with a definite and clear Russian accent. “What in hell happened?”
“There was a great deal of electronic jamming and false-target propagation just prior to losing radar contact,” the general elaborated. “Both Ashkhabad Control and Baku Control were affected. We were not able to ascertain if the aircraft hit the Caspian Sea or if—”
“My God, we are all dead men…
“Sir, the Russians had numerous air patrols all around the country. It was obviously one of their fighters that brought the American down,” the general said. “All aircraft were warned repeatedly of the danger of flying into the area. The Americans ignored those warnings; the crew unexpectedly and illegally broke off normal air-to-ground communications and most likely began responding to false commands, and it made unusual and provocative maneuvers in violation of air-traffic-control orders. They were in the wrong.”
“And it was attacked by a Russian MiG-29 when it—”
“We do not know that for certain, sir,” the general said. “The
“The Americans are going to bury us,” Gurizev cried. “We might as well start digging our graves right away.”
The telephone in the office rang. An aide picked it up, listened, then hit the “hold” button. “Mr. President, it’s Thomas Thorn, the president of the United States. He wishes to speak with you.”
The short, beefy president of Turkmenistan pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket, dabbed his forehead and lips, took a nervous gulp of water, then picked up the telephone. “This is President Kurban Gurizev speaking,” he said in broken English. “To whom am I speaking, please?”
“This is President Thomas Thorn calling from the White House, Mr. President,” came the reply. “This is an emergency, sir. I must speak with you immediately.”
“I assure you, I have been notified of this unfortunate accident, and all of my country’s resources will be immediately mobilized to determine what has happened.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Thorn said. “But I can tell you precisely what happened.”
“You can?” Gurizev asked, perplexed.
“We already know that our diplomatic mission was attacked by a Russian MiG-29,” President Thorn said, as calmly as if he were talking about a nice glass of wine. “We know this because as we speak we have air-defense and reconnaissance aircraft flying over Turkmenistan, and one of our planes detected the attack on our diplomatic aircraft and destroyed the MiG-29.”
Gurizev didn’t understand everything Thorn said — but he did understand “MiG-29,” and his blood ran cold. My God, he thought, just minutes after the attack, and the Americans knew about the MiG…?
“President Gurizev, are you still there? Do you need another translation?”
“Yes… yes, I am here, Mr. Thorn… er, Mr. President,” Gurizev stammered. “Ah… we have no information whatsoever that there was any attack.”
“I see,” Thorn said. “Nonetheless, we have incontrovertible proof that such an attack took place, and we shall soon release this data to the world. You may want to ask your military advisers if the MiG ever made it back to its base. I can tell you, sir, it did not. It was destroyed.”
