The Leveling (9 page)

“That’s classified information.”

“Then you should be more careful with it.”

“Up yours, Mark. You know, I don’t think you have a base pass. I think maybe it’s time for you to leave.”

Mark made eye contact with Holtz. “Bet the Kazakhs would be interested to know what you’re up to. Of course, if they ever found out, you could kiss the idea of ever setting foot in Kazakhstan again good-bye.”

Holtz crossed his arms in a way that made his biceps bulge and assumed an expression that Mark interpreted as an attempt to appear intimidating.

“Don’t go there, brother. I don’t respond well to bribes. Remember, we’re on the same team.”

“It’s actually called blackmail. And if I don’t get help with Decker, I guarantee you I’ll be on the phone selling this info to the Kazakhs within the hour. Whether you respond well or not.”

Holtz pointed a long finger at Mark. “I’m warning you. Don’t. Go. There. I will find a way to fuck you over, and that is a promise.”

Mark stood and began walking to the door. “You’re embarrassing yourself, Bruce. I’m outta here.”

Holtz caught up with Mark outside.

“Hold on, buddy. Jesus, don’t be such a dickhead. I had a contract with the State Department. That’s why I was in Turkmenistan. I hired your guy Decker to protect State diplomats and stand around and look tough.”

“A contract to do what?”

Sounding ruffled, Holtz said, “Help State get some leverage with the Turkmen before the ChiComs sign deals that’ll guarantee they, and they alone, get to spend the next hundred years sucking every last drop of gas and oil out of the region.”

That bit of news didn’t surprise Mark.

The Americans, Russians, and Chinese—or to Holtz, ChiComs, short for Chinese communists—had long been waging diplomatic
and intelligence wars on multiple fronts as they fought over Central Asia’s resources. It was the New Great Game, and it had kept Mark employed for years.

As for the specific case of Turkmenistan, that country happened to be sitting on top of huge natural gas reserves. A lot of that gas currently went north through aging Russian pipelines, and the Turkmen had recently inked a deal to send some of it to the Arabian Sea via Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the Chinese were pressing hard to get the Turkmen to send the bulk of their natural gas east, to China.

At the same time, Mark knew that the Chinese had signed a secret deal to build a huge oil pipeline from Iran to China, which would cross through both Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. That’s what the eruption of violence in Baku eight months ago had been about. State would be doing everything they could to get the Turkmen to deny or delay extending transit rights.

“How’d it go?” Mark asked.

“Shitty. Negotiations broke down two days ago and we got kicked out of the country. Decker never showed up for the plane home. I’ve asked the Turkmen to try to figure out where the hell he is, but so far I haven’t gotten a response. Needless to say, this is a bit of a clusterfuck for me.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. That’s what I know.”

“Where was Decker staying in Turkmenistan?”

“President Hotel, big place in Ashgabat. I will say this—not long after I hired him, he gave me the name of this half-Iranian ex-CIA girl who speaks Turkmen and half a dozen other languages. Daria Buckingham. You know her?”

“You could say that.”

“Yeah, she worked in Azerbaijan for a while, so I figured.”

“I was under the impression she’d gone back to the States.”

What the hell was Daria doing working for Holtz?

“Guess she came back. Anyway, there’s only a handful of people out there who can translate Turkmen so I hired her, and for the next two weeks Decker was like a tick on her ass. It was embarrassing. He really had a thing for her, always following her around, which I don’t get because if you ask me, she’s a first-class bitch. But if you want to find out about Decker, you might start by talking to her. Don’t fucking look at me like that, I’m just telling you what I know.”

“What did Daria say when
you
talked to her?”

“I haven’t.”

“You’re really leaving no stone unturned here, aren’t you? Mounting a real manhunt.”

“I had to fire her a couple weeks ago, long before we got kicked out of the country. I’m the last person she’d talk to.”

“Fire her for what?”

“It’s confidential.”

“Where is she now?”

“Almaty, I think. I heard she was trying to run private intelligence ops against the ChiComs.”

Almaty was only 150 or so miles northwest of where they were now, in Kazakhstan. Mark figured he could be there in a few hours.

“Try the InterContinental,” said Holtz. “I heard she’s working there as a concierge, probably just to gain access to the ChiComs who hang out there, but who knows, maybe she’s just hard up for money.”

D
ECKER WOKE UP
to someone punching his solar plexus. When he tried to fight back, he found that he couldn’t because his arms had been immobilized.

Someone yanked him up to a sitting position and then onto a metal chair. He wondered how long he had been unconscious. Minutes? Days? His head was still throbbing, and his left leg was excruciatingly stiff and swollen.

“I wanted you to see this.”

Metal bit into his wrists. Old-style handcuffs, he determined. He turned toward the voice, but someone shone a bright light in his eyes. He blinked and squinted.

Absorb the pain, don’t fight it.

“Turn down the light for our guest, please.”

As Decker’s eyes adjusted, a form slowly took shape in front of him—it was a man, he realized, slumped in a wooden chair. A small man. Perhaps just a boy.

“Do you recognize your friend?”

It took Decker another moment to get a grip on his pain, to understand it and accept it and probe its limits. When he did, he was able to recognize the figure in front of him.

Alty.

Eighteen hours earlier…

Decker marveled for a moment at the absurdity of what he was witnessing.

Get the hell out of here, you jackass.

Alty, a twenty-one-year-old Turkmen bartender that Decker had been using as a guide, was headed his way.

Decker just hoped to God the security guards were looking elsewhere. He watched in horror as Alty risked a fifty-foot run across open grass. The moonlight made the kid an easy target.

He could guess at Alty’s game plan. Sneak up to the ayatollah’s mansion, find a lighted window, start snapping photos or short video clips, hoping to get lucky, maybe even hear something. All for the glory of Turkmenistan or some such nonsense. But Alty didn’t have the equipment to do any of that right, much less the training. That was Decker’s job. That was why Decker had approached the mansion in the shadows cast on the lawn by trees and hedges, why he’d staked out the place for hours before scaling the fence and establishing a surveillance post on the roof of the ayatollah’s mansion, why he’d camouflaged himself to blend in with the rust-colored tile roof. The night vision goggles he was wearing kind of sucked, but they were better than nothing. Alty was as good as blind in the dark.

He’d warned the kid to stay away. Getting just one of them inside the grounds had been risky enough.

Ten minutes passed and nothing bad happened. Decker remained perfectly still, his body aligned in the moon shadow of a tall chimney, rendering him nearly invisible. He couldn’t see where Alty had ended up once the kid got close to the building. He got to hoping that Alty had just snapped a few photos with his iPhone and then hightailed it back over the fence that encircled the estate. It was possible. Decker couldn’t see every potential exit route, even from the roof. He might have missed Alty’s departure.

But then a bark came from one of the well-lit outbuildings. Decker flipped up his night vision goggles, slowly raised his camera
to his right eye, focused the telephoto lens on the building, and watched as a guard released two German shepherds. He checked his watch—it was exactly midnight. Probably the time the dogs were let out every night.

He remembered the conversation he’d had with Alty a few hours earlier, when they were casing the estate. He’d specifically asked Alty about dogs.

“No dogs.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The mullahs think dogs are dirty.”

“I’m not talking about people’s pets, I’m talking about guard dogs.”

“Is against Islam.”

“But I saw dogs in Turkmenistan.”

“No dogs.”

But evidently there were.

And if Alty was still on the property, at ground level, he was screwed.

On the front lawn of the mansion, two dim swaths of light spilled out from ground-floor windows. Alty had run toward the light on the left. Decker flipped his night vision goggles back down, stuffed his equipment into his waterproof gear bag, strapped the bag tight to his back, and then crawled on all fours, spiderlike, silently down the gentle pitch of the roof. When he reached the section directly above where he suspected Alty was, he extended his head past the copper gutter and scanned the area below him.

Alty was wedged between a hedge and a Greek column that marked the edge of the raised portico in front of the mansion. His iPhone was held up to the window.

“Alty!” Decker called down in a loud whisper.

Alty’s head snapped around.

“Look up. It’s Deck!”

“Deck?”

“Get the hell out of here. There are dogs.”

“No dogs.”

“Yes, dogs! I saw them; they’re loose. Run!”

“You see dogs?”

“Two of them. Big ones. Run!”

Alty finally got it, because now he stood up, pocketed his iPhone, took a quick look at the lawn in front of him, and began to sprint toward the distant perimeter fence. But he’d only gone maybe twenty feet when the frantic barking started. A second later, one of the German shepherds rounded the corner at full speed.

When Alty saw the dog, he spun around and headed back toward the house.

That fucking idiot is going to try to climb one of the columns, Decker guessed. Which might save him temporarily from the dogs but will ensure that he’ll be captured.

Ditch him. You can make it out on your own.

Alty reached the column and tried to shimmy up it, but the dog was right there. It sank its teeth into Alty’s calf and didn’t let go. Decker eyed the perimeter fence.

I can be over that fence in less than thirty seconds, dogs or no dogs…

Alty screamed.

Shit.

Decker unsheathed his SOG SEAL Team knife, swung his body off the roof, dropped twenty feet, and landed directly on the back of the dog. A second later he slit the dog’s throat.

Alty was still frantic, trying to shimmy up the column. Decker grabbed his belt and yanked him to the ground. “Run for the fence!”

Alty tried to run, but his wounded leg kept giving out on him, so Decker half dragged him across the lawn. When the second dog tore up, crazed and barking wildly, Decker offered his left arm, which the German shepherd took in its jaws. With his right arm, Decker plunged his knife deep into the dog’s chest, twisting it as he heaved up. He threw the dog several feet up in the air and left it writhing on the ground.