The Leveling

One of the Chinese grabbed Thompson and started shouting commands as he pulled the CIA station chief over to the gray BMW.

Mark pivoted and tried to punch the Chinese behind him but his fist slipped off the man’s chin. Another shot was fired and one of the Turkmen soldiers fell. Mark felt a blow to the head. He didn’t pass out, but was dazed enough that he could do nothing to prevent being dragged over to the BMW.





33




DECKER COULD HEAR his captors frantically searching for him, but the ravine was a large area to cover, and Decker had been trained to be patient and use natural cover to his advantage.

When he’d slowly picked his way far enough through the junipers that he could see the twisting mountain road at the end of the driveway, he took out the pruning shears and tried to loosen the nut and bolt that held the blades together. His fingers trembled and were so weak that he gave up and used his teeth, chipping one of his rear molars in the process. When he finally got the blades separated, a stiff wire spring fell to the ground. He straightened the spring and used it to pick the lock on his handcuffs. He spread juniper needles over the discarded cuffs and stuck the two loose blades in his pocket.

By methodically threading his way through the trees, lying flat on the ground and covering himself with dead branches whenever one of the guards came near, he eventually half-crawled, half-limped to within a hundred yards of the mountain road. He took his time, remaining perfectly still for minutes on end and willing himself not to pass out. The longer they searched, he knew, the wider the search perimeter would need to become. Time was his friend if he could force his body to keep going.

Eventually, one of his captors sped off in a car.

Decker edged forward on his belly until he was within fifty feet of the road. The driveway intersected the road maybe a quarter mile below him. He tried to shake the dirt out of his hair and wipe his face clean, but all the cuts and bruises made it a painful process. There was no way he was going to look anything approaching normal anyway, so he gave up and started crawling up and away from the driveway, paralleling the road as he did so. He was able to advance maybe a quarter mile more, until the terrain became too steep and the road ducked into a small canyon. To continue forward would mean he’d have to come closer to the road, potentially exposing his position.

He lay there, perfectly still, for an hour—listening to the traffic pass. Early on, one car sped up the hill as if in pursuit of something, but after that, all appeared to be normal.

It was his extreme thirst that finally led him to inch closer to the road.

When he caught a glimpse of a white van slowly winding its way up a section of road below him, he checked for guards. None were visible, so he crawled the rest of the way to the pavement, stood next to a rock that concealed his bare feet, and stuck out his thumb. It was a wild, but calculated, risk. He was barely able to maintain consciousness, he couldn’t stay hidden in the trees forever, and on foot he would be too weak to put any real distance between himself and his captors.

He faced uphill, so that the driver of the van wouldn’t be able to see him, and tried to stand in a way that didn’t draw attention to his injured left leg. The van slowed down, but only so that the driver could honk his horn at Decker and curse him.

The sound of the horn cutting through the silence of a peaceful sunny day was jarring. His captors must have heard it as far back as the house.

Another car appeared. Decker stuck out his thumb again. This time the driver just slowed down and gave him a nasty look. A man in a car going down the hill took one look at Decker’s face and turned away.

But then a black sedan that was slowly laboring up the hill, its tailpipe smoking a bit as it burned oil, pulled over to the side of the road a few yards ahead of Decker. Two pairs of skis had been affixed to a roof rack. Decker dipped his head down, trying to hide his face as he approached the car. The rear door opened.

“Where do you go, my friend?”

The question was in English. They must have known, just from looking at him, that he was a foreigner. He collapsed in the backseat.

“Merci,” he said. His voice came out as a low croak. He kept his head down, eyes pointed to the floor of the car. He thought that if he could just get to the Caspian, he could steal a boat. Water was his ally. “The coast,” he said.

“We can take you part of the way, we go skiing at Dizin—look at me, please.”

Decker raised his head up a fraction of an inch and made eye contact with the driver.

“A’udhu billah!” I seek refuge with God.

“I was robbed. Drive. Please.”

The driver frowned deeply. As though he’d just realized that he may have picked up a complete psychopath.

When the car didn’t move, Decker said, “Drive! Please!”

The driver slowly pulled away. Through the rear windshield Decker saw one of his captors—a man with a short-cropped beard—running after them.





34


Ashgabat, Turkmenistan