Authors: Steven Pressfield
I motion: ready. Junk sets the hooligan’s claw against the jamb. He braces to spring the lock. Suddenly the door opens from inside.
A man in a Russian fur hat stands there.
I pile into him like a linebacker, jamming the muzzle of my Winchester beneath his jaw and body-slamming him to the deck. Coombs, Junk, and el-Masri burst in behind me. I hear women screaming. A table overturns. Guards have been playing poker.
There’s no firefight. In ten seconds Chris, Coombs, and Junk have stripped every man of his weapon and spread-eagled them facedown on the floor. I throw my guy into the pile.
A stream of profanity pours from one captive beneath the table. Chris kicks the man in the head.
“That’s him!” shouts el-Masri.
Razz.
Coombs and Chris drag him out. Junk is flex-cuffing the others. The guards are shouting something in Russian that either means “Fuck you!” or “Don’t shoot!” Probably both.
Razz unloads a broadside of abuse at Chris and Coombs. He tries to thrust himself between them and the security men, who are all civilians in European garb. He trips and crashes.
“They’re with me!”
Now we see the women. Four blondes and a brunette, all impossibly gorgeous. “Russian hookers,” says Coombs, who is already jabbering with them in Russian. I can’t believe how good-looking they are. They’re in furs and silks. One wears a Cossack cap; another sports a top hat.
Razz is on his feet now. He has figured out I’m the boss and is cursing me furiously in Tajik or some other alien tongue. I cross straight to him and punch him in the face. He drops like a sack of shit. Techno-rock continues to blare. Coombs is interrogating the Russians. Who else is outside? I send Junk with the Emirates guys to form a hasty perimeter. I want to be out of here in seconds, not minutes.
El-Masri hauls Razz to his feet. I have been curious to see how the Takfiri youth will act toward the Egyptian secret policeman who saved his life in prison. Razz gives him zero props. Instead he demands money—the million bucks that he knows we’ve got for Amaz, plus the five million Coombs is authorized to deliver on top of that. El-Masri cuffs him hard. The Egyptian has reverted to his
secret-police role. He seizes Razz by the hair. “What are you on, you fucking shitworm?” He backhands Razz across the mouth.
“I will eat your heart,” says Razz.
“Answer me!”
Now they’re both bawling in Dari. I hear el-Masri call Razz a bitch. Razz spits in his face. I grab him. “We’re outa here—now!”
Razz won’t go.
“Friends!” he shouts. “We are friends!”
Razz hauls two of the prostitutes forward.
“These are for you,” he says. He swears he has brought these beauties here specially, just for us. “Take a look. You ain’t seen nothing like this never.” He tears the top off one six-foot blonde, revealing the most spectacular pair of headlamps any of us has ever seen. “And these jugs is real!” says Razz, grabbing my hand and giving me a test squeeze. “Not plastic like your bitches in Hollywood.”
He shows off the other babes’ legs and asses.
“I am not going nowhere,” Razz declares, “till every one of you has fucked every one of these. You think I’m kidding? You! Team leader!” He grabs my arm. “Go first. Show us how Americans fuck!”
Col. Amaz creeps forward toward the women. His eyes are the size of pie plates.
“What are you afraid of—HIV?” Razz confronts our team. “These girls go to university! Here is snatch that can quote Dostoyevsky!” He accuses us of having no balls. “Are you queer? What is wrong with you? Prove you are not pussies like the Russians say you are!”
I order Chris to flex-cuff Razz. We go now!
“If you Americans got no sack,” Razz says, “let this Tajik show you.” He claps Col. Amaz on the back. “His dick is standing tall. He knows world-class poon when he sees it!”
Razz turns to Coombs, as if to clap his back too. Instead his hand slaps the Brit’s shoulder holster, jerks hard, and pulls free. Razz’s
right arm straightens, into Amaz’s face. I see muzzle flash and hear the walloping bang of a Czech Nagy 9 mm.
Amaz’s body hits the deck before I can even turn.
The girls shriek in terror. The room rings from the gunshot. El-Masri seizes Razz; I wrench the pistol from his grasp. Everyone but Razz is too stunned to speak.
“Now,” he says. “Give me my money.”
It’s almost dawn as our Kodiaks weave at high speed along Rudaki Prospect, the only civilized sector in the capital, Dushanbe. Crowds flood from side streets. Masses are streaming in aboard buses, mini-vans, farm tractors. Q drives; Razz navigates, up front.
We have given him Amaz’s million; the rucksack lies on the floorboard beneath his feet.
The plan has changed half a dozen times since our party started down from the mountains. First, emerging from the compound, Team Bravo comes face-to-face with at least a hundred Islamist militiamen, Razz’s mountain guard, streaming down from the hillsides, where apparently they have been under cover for days. At Razz’s order they empty the prison building, marching the prostitutes and the security men into the dark. God help all of them. The militiamen drag Amaz’s body outside the gate and leave it for the wolves.
Us? We are aces in the insurgents’ eyes. We have come for their prince and will soon install him on the national throne. When I ask Razz about Amaz’s men waiting below at the roadblock, he mimes a pistol shot, execution style.
“They have left this earth an hour ago. Your men are safe.”
Razz tells me his father has been executed too. Team Alpha has taken care of that.
“I rule now,” Razz says.
This new reality is confirmed by hot wire from Pete Petrocelli, which comes as our Kodiaks speed into Dushanbe. Pete tells me that militant
lashkars—
tribal armies—are converging on the capital. I tell him I can see them; they’re on the road with us—Pajeros and Hi-Luxes and BMPs.
Pete tells us to pull up GlobeNet on our handhelds. An armored regiment of the 201st Motorized Rifle Division (which had been Russian but is now Tajik) has revolted, says al-Alam and al-Jazeera, seizing a key distribution junction on the TUC pipeline. The commander is calling on his brother officers to take their units out in Islamic revolt. Razz is their Osama bin Laden. They have oil and power; the world belongs to them.
I’m watching this on Chutes’s laptop. “Are you sure these are our guys?”
Pete laughs. “I’m bringing in Trump/CNN right now to interview ’em.” He asks me have I got the kid, meaning Razz.
“In the seat in front of me.”
“Tell him the TV station’s blown. He’s gotta do the palace.”
Petrocelli and I trade ninety seconds of coded instructions, by the end of which I have a new timeline and GPS coordinates for extraction and a new mission.
Pete clicks off. I turn to Coombs, Q, Chris, and el-Masri.
“Remember Mussolini on the balcony?”
They don’t get it.
“According to Pete, there’s a hundred thousand crazed Tajiks massing right now in front of the presidential palace.” I indicate Razz in the passenger seat. “Our boy’s gonna address ’em.”
Eight in the morning and the palace has been looted to bare bones. The hundred thousand mad Tajiks have turned into three hundred
thousand. At least five hundred pack the royal edifice; a bodyguard of bandits clamors around Razz, ecstatically swearing fealty. El-Masri is jabbering with them in Tajik. The outlaws pound Team Bravo’s backs and thrust bottles of anise liquor into our fists. They will erect statues of us. We have brought them their prophet.
Razz climbs out of his Adidas tracksuit, which he has decided is not presidential enough. One thug donates his pettu and shalwar kameez; another chips in boots and a Doctor Zhivago wolfskin hat. Someone hands Razz an AK. Razz tugs me aside. Grimly: “You know what you must do?”
“Do your thing first.”
We squander the next hour, struggling to satisfy the aesthetic caprices of the camera crews from Trump/CNN, SkyNet, and Fox/BBC. They don’t like Razz’s beard. They don’t like the balconies. The sun isn’t right on the first one, sound is lousy for the second, there’s no angle for the cameras on the third.
Petrocelli is back on the wire to me, demanding that we get on-air ASAP. The time difference to London and the States is critical. “This has to go live, Gent.”
“What am I, Pete, a TV producer?”
“Gent, get the dude on the air!”
I tell him I’m a warrior, not Captain Kangaroo. I turn to Razz, who has been slugging Stoli Cristal from the bottle for the past forty minutes. “You’re on, Mr. President.”
Razz spits a mouthful onto the floor. “You don’t set the timetable, asshole,” he tells me. “I do.”
“Please,” I say. “Pretty please.”
The virus of acquiring real power has only infected Razz for the past four hours; already he has become Tito, Saddam Hussein, and OBL. His royal guard of mountain mujahideen has been augmented by an armed-to-the-teeth posse of city gangsters, tribal man-killers, and narco hoodlums.
I turn to Chutes, who’s got the INMARSAT radio. “How close is the bird?”
“Here in twenty.”
I tell Chutes to have the chopper that will extract us set down directly behind the palace, on the paved plaza. And keep its rotors cranking.
A TV producer waves Razz forward, onto the balcony. The heir steps up to a battery of mikes. An ovation ascends.
“He’s the fucking pope,” says Q.
El-Masri and I move back out of the cameras’ sight line. The office and its balcony belong to the Ministry of Agriculture. Pillagers have looted everything, down to the curtains, even the poles.
Razz begins speaking. El-Masri translates. Razz is talking about oil. The new find at Beautiful Mountain will be “a second Saudi Arabia.” Its wealth will restore Tajikistan to its ancient glory.
A bark of approval rises, then a low rolling cheer. Razz cranks up the emotion. He’s good. Like Hitler, his rhythm is mesmerizing.
“The motherland possesses wealth,” Razz declares, “on a scale beyond imagining. But we will not let it be stolen this time. Not by my father, may his soul find peace despite his crimes and greed, who would make deals with the Russians and steal for himself whatever was left over … not by the Russians themselves, who would make us their slaves if we let them … nor by the Chinese, whose lust for the property of others knows no limits and whose armies will be massing on our borders in a matter of days if not hours.”
Ecstatic applause ascends. I eye the Western cameramen. They’re zeroed on Razz like a school of piranha. History. They are recording it. They are making it.
Razz ratchets the rhetoric higher. Tajikistan’s riches, he swears, will not be plundered by native criminals either. He himself will stand guard over it, night and day, unsleeping, to ensure that each Tajik warrior, each family, each clan, each tribe gets its fair share.
“Neither, brothers, will the insatiable Americans thieve our bounty. I have manipulated the friendship of General James Salter and his mercenary armies to the purposes of our God, our nation, our freedom, and our glory. He will make us rich, but we will not bow to him. We thank you for your assistance, friends”—he gestures to me and Team Bravo—“and now begone!”
At this erupts the mightiest cheer yet. Razz’s muj and narco-underworld posse brandish their AKs and S7s at us, whooping and jigging.
Three hundred thousand Tajiks surge beneath the balcony. Razz calls down the blessings of heaven upon them and their countrymen. He dedicates himself, body and soul, to their service. The crowd goes orgiastic. With a flourish, Razz vacates the podium, sweeps back inside, pushes through the ecstatic embrace of his worshippers, and marches straight up to me.
“Now,” he says with blood in his eye, “finish it.”
I turn to Chris and Chutes, indicating el-Masri. They seize him. The Egyptian goggles in bewilderment. I level my shotgun at his solar plexus.
Razz is waving his bodyguards back.
El-Masri understands. “You motherfuckers,” he says.
Chris and Chutes react, as thunderstruck as he is.
“Orders,” I say.
“Salter,” says el-Masri.
Razz leads us down the stairs, into an office off a rear hall. He bolts the door, leaving his posse packing the corridor. “Do it now,” he commands me.
El-Masri shakes free of Chris and Chutes, with an expression that says,
You don’t need to hold me, I can face death on my own
. Coombs, Q, and Junk cover him reluctantly with their weapons. They know nothing either. It’s all me. I’m the only one who has received the orders.
“Prison,” says el-Masri to Razz. “That’s why.”
“I rule Central Asia now. No one may know the things you know of me.”
“You were a bitch then and you’re a bitch now.”
Razz backhands el-Masri across the mouth.
The Egyptian wallops him back.
Chris and Chutes seize el-Masri again. I raise the shotgun.
The Egyptian meets my eyes. “Once I called you sentimental, Gent. But I’m the guilty one. I believed you were my brother.”
I release the safety.
“Do him now!” shouts Razz, wiping blood.
I raise the muzzle and pull the trigger.
Point-blank the blast has no range to disperse. The pellets hit Razz’s chest in a tight group. Lungs, heart, and dorsal spine explode out of his back. His body blows rearward and crashes to the floor like a wad of dirty laundry. El-Masri and the others gape in befuddlement.
“Change of orders,” I say.
El-Masri’s knees are wobbling. He grabs my shoulder. “You scared the shit out of me, bro.”
Sixty seconds later Team Bravo is piling into the waiting War Hawk. The mass of Tajiks take half that time to grasp what has happened. That’s our head start.
In twenty minutes our chopper has set down at Kurkan, the abandoned strip where we originally landed. Ninety seconds more and we’re wheels-up aboard an L-100 piloted by Dimitri and Dimitri, climbing over the cotton country west of Dushanbe, bound for Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Tashkent, on our first leg back to Basra.
I can’t raise Petrocelli on satellite or AKOP. Someone’s jamming all transmissions. It takes an hour, till we’re clear of Tajik airspace, before I get through to Pete’s stateside counterpart, Tim Mattoon. Mattoon has monitored Razz’s speech and the hysteria in
the aftermath of his assassination live on FARS, Trump/CNN, and Interfax.