Then he looked up to see Jahandar staring at him through a gap between dangling roots, no more than ten feet away. Jahandar was just in the act of bringing his revolver up to bear on Richard.
Richard, who had been so much at gravity’s mercy an instant ago, now found it too weak and slow to bring the shotgun’s barrel down as fast as he would like. Rather than wait here to get shot, he twitched his body sideways, flinging himself down onto his back and then his side, rolling away. A younger man on better terrain might have rolled all the way over and come back up firing, but Richard bogged down in rocks and tree roots about halfway through this maneuver and found himself in the worst possible situation of having to get up on hands and knees with his ass pointed squarely in Jahandar’s direction and the shotgun down in the mud. How could anything go so badly wrong? It was just like John’s Vietnam stories, the ones he told when he was drunk and weeping. A pistol was banging, banging, banging. Richard wasn’t dead yet. His mind had registered something odd about that banging, but he hadn’t had time to think about it yet. An eternity later he fell heavily onto his ass, finally facing toward the enemy, finally with the shotgun up where he wanted it. He expected to see Jahandar still aiming the revolver his way, fire spurting from the barrel and all but scorching Richard’s nylon parka, but the jihadist had turned to look downhill and had crouched down so that only the curve of his back was showing.
The banging hadn’t come from Jahandar’s pistol. It must be Seamus, firing from farther way.
Richard, taking advantage of the slope, rolled up onto his feet, got a clear view of Jahandar’s center of mass, aimed the shotgun, and fired. He then collapsed facefirst into the root-ball as his ankle gave way beneath his weight. A broken-off root jabbed him in the eye. His hand came up involuntarily, and the shotgun tumbled into his lap. He heard himself letting out a brief scream.
In the silence that followed, a gentle footfall, very nearby. He looked up with his one operant eye and saw nothing but the forest moving alongside him. The shotgun slid out of his lap as if moving under its own power.
Qian Yuxia jerked the forearm back. Sharply. A spent shell flew out and bounced off Richard’s head. She rammed it home, then raised it to her shoulder. Someone said, in a gurgling voice, “Allahu akbar,” but the final syllable was buried in the shotgun’s muzzle blast.
“Nice,” pronounced a voice. The voice of Seamus. “But don’t stand so fucking close to him next time. I almost nailed you.”
“Dream on,” said Qian Yuxia.
SOKOLOV WATCHED THE departure of Olivia and Zula with a vast sense of relief: an emotion that he would, of course, never be able to share, or even hint at, with those two estimable females. By this point he had seen enough of them to know that they were cooler under pressure, and better to be with in a tight spot, than 999 out of 1,000 women. But their presence obliged him to divert a significant fraction of his attention into being considerate of their needs, responding to their inquiries, and keeping them alive. In most other circumstances it would have been no trouble at all, and more than repaid by the pleasure of their company. But this business now was going to be formidable trouble, and he needed to think of it to the exclusion of all else.
The environment was, on the whole, markedly Afghanistan-like. The jihadists would feel at home here, would instinctively know how to move, where to seek cover, how to react. Sokolov, of course, had done his time in Afghanistan. But that was long ago, and most of his work since then had been of a decidedly urban character. Advantage Jones.
There were more of them. Sokolov was alone, at least until such time as Zula and Olivia could get back to the compound where the fanatics—those American Taliban—lived with all their guns and their stockpiles of ammunition and materiel. Even then, it was not clear to what extent those people could form themselves up into an effective force on short notice. It was clear that Zula’s relatives were well armed and that they had the marksmanship part of the curriculum well covered. But military recruits spent only a small portion of their time actually shooting at targets; other forms of training were ultimately more important. Even supposing that they did come out from their bunkers with their assault rifles and their expensive knives, they might be more hazard than help to Sokolov. He had no way of communicating with them. They were as likely to identify him as foe than as friend. Soon he might have not just one but two groups of well-armed mountain men trying to kill him. Advantage Jones.
Sokolov was operating completely alone, which, while it technically placed him at a numerical disadvantage, conferred another sort of benefit in that he did not have to coordinate his actions with anyone else. No communication meant no foul-ups. The tiniest bit of cover could be used to advantage. Advantage Sokolov, provided he kept his distance and avoided getting surrounded.
So that—not getting surrounded—was what the Americans called the Name of the Game. Zula’s startling emergence from the wilderness had obliged him to give away his position. Had it not been for that, he’d have waited for all the jihadists to expose themselves on the slope below and then spent the morning picking them off.
According to Olivia—who had obtained the information from Zula—the size of Jones’s contingent had been nine this morning. One of them had somehow been killed hours ago. During the action just concluded, Sokolov and Zula had each accounted for one. That left six unaccounted for. It was possible that Sokolov’s suppressing fire had hit someone down in the trees, but he doubted it.