Air Battle Force (56 page)

Turabi was about three-quarters of the way back under the sand when he heard the first dog bark. Shit, he thought, maybe that Turkmen pigfucker Orazov wasn't so stupid after all—he'd remembered to bring guard dogs with him. Turabi fairly dove into the sand, but it was too late. Seconds later two scrawny whelps jumped into the trench. One clamped his jaws onto Turabi's left hand, and the other took a bite on the back of his neck and right ear before grabbing his right sleeve. Soon men were leaping into the partially sand-filled trench, and Turabi was dragged over to Orazov's vehicle and thrown onto the blackened desert floor.

“Well, well, the colonel is still alive,” Orazov said, jumping down from his armored vehicle. “What a pleasant surprise. We should search all the trenches for survivors.”

Turabi was held suspended by his arms between two Turkmen soldiers. Several surviving Taliban soldiers from his detail saw Turabi and rushed over to him but were pushed aside by more Turkmen soldiers. “Brilliant idea, Orazov,” Turabi muttered.

“Is that any way to talk to your rescuer?” Orazov asked.

At a nod from him, one of the Turkmen soldiers punched Turabi in the side of his head. The Taliban soldiers surrounding them shouted a warning and tried to rush to Turabi's aid but were again roughly shoved back. Orazov didn't seem to notice—he was too intent on seeing Turabi suffer some more.

He stepped closer to Turabi and pulled his head up by his hair. “You'll wish you had died in that fuel-air blast, Turabi, I guarantee it.”

Turabi tried to spit in his face, but he no longer had any moisture in his mouth at all. “What has happened to Zarazi?” he asked.

“The same that will happen to you, Turabi: I'll put a bullet through your stupid head, watch your brains splatter on the wall behind you, and then I'll wrap you up in a carpet and have you buried in the desert,” Orazov said.

“You'll die for that,” Turabi croaked through dry, cracked lips. “I'll slice out your heart myself.”

“You didn't believe in the old man's holy mission any more than I did, Turabi. You're just too blinded by that idiotic clan-loyalty nonsense to realize it,” Orazov said. “Forget about your ridiculous blood oaths and feudal allegiances, Turabi. Spend your last moments on earth thinking about this entire useless mission of yours in Turkmenistan and how badly you wasted the last few weeks of your life, waging a war with an idiot like Zarazi who thought he was fighting for the greater glory of God. Spend the next moments looking at the faces of your loyal men—because they'll join you in hell in a few minutes, too.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of a giant trench dug in the desert, where men and vehicles were dumping the remains of dozens of horribly burned and mangled men. “Good-bye, Colonel. Give my regards to General Zarazi—in hell.”

Unable to stand and only half conscious, Turabi was dragged off toward the mass grave. He heard shouting and then gunshots behind him, followed by laughter, some shouted words in Turkmen, some screams, more gunshots, and more laughter. His men were being slaughtered trying to save him. He especially heard Orazov's screeching, high-pitched laugh, more like a young girl's than a man's. “You will have plenty of company in hell, Colonel,” Orazov shouted with glee. “Your men seem more than willing to sacrifice themselves trying to save you!”

Turabi shut his eyes to try to erase Orazov's bizarre little shrieking laugh out of his head, but it was impossible. If anything, the sound started to grow louder and louder, until Turabi thought his head would explode from the pressure.

And then, suddenly, the entire world around him
did
explode.

Orazov's armored vehicle disappeared in a burst of fire and smoke not twenty meters away. Turabi and his captors were tossed off their feet by the blast. An earthmover on the other side of the mass grave exploded seconds later, followed by a light tank parked about a hundred meters away.

It was then that Turabi recognized that screeching sound, what he'd thought was Orazov's laughter—it was the same sound he remembered hearing what seemed like eons ago, when their little band of Taliban fighters was attacked by American unmanned drones. But it couldn't be. The Americans were not involved in this. Could it be the Russians . . . ?

Turabi's captors ran off to find cover, leaving him by himself. Still dazed and hurt, he needed all his strength to drag himself by his elbows and knees toward the mound of sand surrounding the grave. It was the only cover he could—

“No!”
he heard a voice shout behind him. “You will not get away so easily!” And suddenly Aman Orazov was sitting on Turabi's back, his hands under his chin, pulling backward and trying to break his neck, or his back, or both. “I promised I would finish you off, and I will!”

“Bastard!”
Turabi shouted. Using the last of his strength, he bucked Orazov off his back. Struggling to his hands and knees, with pieces of burned metal and hot debris digging into his skin, Turabi withdrew his knife from its sheath.

But Orazov was on top of him again in an instant, and he quickly and easily took the knife away from Turabi. Exhausted, Turabi was powerless to stop Orazov from rolling him over on his back.

“This is the better way to die, I think—hand-to-hand, face-to-face, by your own blade.” Orazov raised the knife. . . .

But it did not come down. Turabi looked up—and saw a figure in a dark gray outfit, a bug-eyed helmet, and what appeared to be small tubes running along his arms, legs, and torso. He held Orazov's upraised arm in his hand, and no matter how hard Orazov struggled, the stranger held his arm with ease.

With a shock Turabi realized he
recognized
the stranger. It was the same one he had encountered south of Kiyzl-arvat when he went out to investigate the drone crash.

“Prasteetye,”
the stranger said in Russian in an eerie, electronically synthesized voice.
“Ya eeshchyoo Jalaluddin Turabi.”

“Shto eta znachyeet?”
Orazov shouted. “Who in hell are you?”

With Orazov distracted, Turabi was able to respond, “I am Turabi. Good to see you again, sir.”

The stranger nodded, then flipped his wrist. Orazov screamed and flew back as if hit by a bull charging at full force, his right arm twisted unnaturally. Turabi unsteadily crawled across the scorched sand, picked up a rock, and 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
now,
” Briggs said. “We're on a tight timetable. Move out.”

“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.”

“No!”
Turabi screamed. “Put me down!”

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.

A short time later

“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 . . .
dead men!
” Gurizev breathed. “The Americans are going to come in and crush us! Who in hell did this?”

“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
facts
as we know them, sir, were that a Russian fighter patrol was in the area but never made any move toward the American aircraft; that the American aircraft broke off contact with air-traffic control for no reason and began making violent, unexplainable maneuvers; and that contact was lost with the plane. That's
all
we know.”

“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.”