The Leveling

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.