The Leveling

He teetered for a moment, and swallowed a scream as he dug out a new handful of dirt from the wall.

A small hole eventually became a two-foot-long tunnel. At three feet he hit something that felt depressingly solid. He held his breath, preparing himself for the disappointment of encountering a concrete footing wall that he guessed extended below the basement slab. With the few good fingers that he had left, he brushed the dirt off the wall and felt for cracks in it.

He found lots of them.

The footing for the slab, he realized, had been made of crushed stone—which is why water had been able to run right through it. When he pulled on the rock directly in front of him, it moved. With the first rock gone, the next three were easy to dislodge. Soon he had a hole big enough to squeeze through.

He flipped onto his back and redoubled his efforts, digging up now that he was past the foundation. How many feet was it to the surface, he wondered. Six? Eight?

The darkness and the dank air pressed in on him. His huge frame wasn’t doing him any favors. Most SEALs were just normal size—and more agile, which meant they could squeeze into tight places without much trouble. He’d been an anomaly. A clump of dirt fell into his mouth and he began to choke, suddenly overwhelmed by claustrophobia.

He coughed up the dirt and squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lip. Every fiber in his body was screaming out for him to back out of his little tunnel, run up the steps, heave open the trapdoor, and run like hell in the hopes of seeing the open sky, even it was for just a second before they shot him.

Manage your emotions. They underestimated you. They underestimated what it was possible for you to do.

He listened to himself breathe for a moment. Then he felt the dirt in his mouth and forced himself to think of what it tasted like.

It tastes like dirt, you moron. Calm down. Keep digging.

Decker closed his eyes and mouth, drove his wounded hand into the dirt above his head, and was confused when his arm kept going up. He wondered whether he’d stumbled upon some underground chamber.

Then he opened his eyes and saw light. Sunlight, filtering through wooden deck boards. He blinked as his eyes struggled to focus.





30


Ashgabat, Turkmenistan



STANDING IN THE center of downtown Ashgabat, the 230-foot Arch of Neutrality had been built in the shape of a gigantic three-pronged Turkmen cooking trivet, from which a pot might be hung. At the peak of the arch was a gigantic gold-plated statue of the dead dictator Turkmenbashi, which rotated throughout the day so that it always faced the sun. Mark peered at it from the backseat of Thompson’s black government-issued Ford sedan.

The arch was a couple of hundred feet away. Thompson had pulled over closer to it than Mark had wanted him to.

Beyond the arch, a vast empty parade ground sprawled before a blindingly white, gold-domed government palace. Scores of other buildings surrounded the palace, all of them white-marble confections that had sprung up in the years after the Soviet Union had collapsed, built with money from natural gas sales. Most were largely empty inside.

Turkmenbashi’s idea had been build it and they will come, but so far no one had. The whole place had an apocalyptic, neutron-bomb feeling to it.

There were a few soldiers lingering nearby, though. Two of them, wearing oversized peaked caps and dressed in green ceremonial uniforms adorned with an excess of gold trim, stood stiffly at attention in little glass-walled guard shelters near the arch. A cheerful bed of marigolds lay between the guard shelters. Another soldier directed light street traffic, and a group of six air force guys, dressed in comically bright blue-and-white camouflage, strolled by the World Trade Complex.

The World Trade Complex, despite its name, was really just an uninspired mall with a few tired shops inside, one of which was an Internet café known as the Matrix.

As Thompson unbuckled his seat belt, Mark said, “I think you should wait with the car.”

“In sight at all times until you get on the plane. Those are my orders.”

“Listen, William. It’s not safe.”

Thompson stared at Mark for a long moment. They were seated in the front seat, close enough to each other so that Mark could see the deep wrinkles and liver spots on Thompson’s forehead. Gray hairs sprouted out of Thompson’s ears.

Thompson cleared his throat. “I thought you were just picking up your bags.”

“The people who tried to kill me in Baku may be close.”

“You tell me this now?”

“I lied to you earlier. I can’t go back to Washington. Not yet.”

Thompson gripped the steering wheel with both hands and looked out the windshield. “Don’t do this to me, Sava.”

Thompson had a deep voice. For the first time, Mark detected a hard edge to it.

“You ever run into a guy named John Decker? Big guy, former SEAL. Did protection work.”