The Leveling

His face felt as though it had been doused with acid. He struggled to stand but wobbled on his feet. The blue sky and white snow swirled around him like a kaleidoscope.

Still hidden from the road below, he began to walk slowly uphill again, resting after each step but making steady progress toward a pass between two low hills. When he was halfway to the top, the green metal roof of a house emerged, and then windows with decorative Persian arches. A mountain refuge. He hoped that no one was home, and that he could break in and hide there.

The sun was hot on his neck. He finished the sugared almonds and drank another can of Coke. But when he went to put the empty can back in his coat pocket, he realized that the other empties were gone. They must have fallen out, he realized, left like a bread-crumb trail for his pursuers to follow. And he’d left the vodka bottle on the patch of snow.

He was losing his mind. His feet no longer hurt because he couldn’t even feel them.

Decker looked behind him. And wondered whether the black figure he saw below was a mirage. He looked up to the sky, half expecting to see a dragon from Middle Earth.

When he glanced behind him again, the black figure was still there, climbing fast up the hill.

Decker eyed the house. It was no more than a few hundred feet away, but up a long steep slope. If he could get there and get inside, he might have a chance. There might be a gun, or a car.

He climbed, going faster now, no longer resting between steps, driven by a hidden store of adrenaline. He kept his eyes focused on the ground and began to count his steps…one, two…

A voice called out for him to stop, but he ignored it. When he glanced behind him, it looked as though the black figure hadn’t gained much ground.

A few steps later he fell, but he instantly lifted himself up from the dirt and continued his march. Hundred ten, hundred eleven…He concentrated on the ground immediately in front of him, taking care with each quick step and only occasionally glancing up at the house to gauge his progress.

His eyes registered a flattening of the ground, followed by the black macadam of a road that had been cut into the side of the mountain, a road that had been hidden from below.

Decker looked up.

Two men, both carrying AK-47s, sprang up from a drainage ditch and rushed at him from opposite sides.

One guy below to flush him out, the other two to capture, Decker realized.

He spun around, took a step back toward the hill, stuck his hand in his coat pocket, and fingered one of the blades from the pruning shears.

The first guard hit him in the gut with a football tackle. As they tumbled to the ground as one, Decker whipped out the blade and stabbed the man’s carotid artery.

The second guard lit into Decker with the butt of his gun, swinging it like an ax. Decker absorbed a few blows to his head and thighs and a glancing blow to a knee. He pulled out the second blade from the pruning shears, stabbed the guy’s Achilles tendon, and was about to try for the femoral artery when a volley of twenty or so bullets flew over him, inches from his head. A hit to his ankle connected, breaking bone. Two men grabbed his arms, pinning them to the asphalt. Another kicked him repeatedly in the balls and guts.

A few seconds later, a sweaty nervous man with ugly cauliflower ears that poked out from beneath his black turban stood over Decker. “You’ll pay for this,” he said.





40


Ashgabat, Turkmenistan



MARK AND DARIA abandoned the stolen Volga in a vast dirt parking lot crammed almost as far as the eye could see with old trucks and cars and hordes of Turkmen.

The Tolkuchka Bazaar was only a few miles from the sterile white buildings of downtown Ashgabat, but it might as well have been a different country; it was as if all the messiness of human life had been swept up from the streets of the capital and deposited in a stinking heap on the edge of the Kara-Kum Desert.

There were carpets, giant crates of fruit, boxes of hard candy, clothes, spices, stacks of Barf laundry detergent, electronics from China, dromedary camels…It smelled of lamb roasting on ancient iron grills and human sweat and mud. Squat old women with gold teeth and bright, tightly tied headscarves sat on little crates and called out for people to inspect their wares.

Daria bought an embroidered traditional Turkmen robe and several imitation-silk headscarves. Mark bought shoes, shirts, and pants, all locally made, hair dye, and a new wallet, which he filled with Daria’s counterfeit manats. Then he used Daria’s phone to call Holtz.

“Sava, I’m sorry. Thompson pulled a fucking bait and switch—”

“Main entrance to the Tolkuchka Bazaar. Be here at noon.”

“It’s almost noon now.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the air—”