State of Emergency

CHAPTER 52


A thirty-meter chunk of mountain lay in a lumpy tangled heap of roots, tree branches, and ferns across the narrow road. Bits of gravel still tumbled over an abrupt edge that disappeared into a low bank of soupy clouds that filled the valley below.

Crews of men wearing plastic raincoats and wielding shovels had cleared a flattened trail along the edge so they could walk back and forth. A chubby man with a cigarette dangling from his lips maneuvered an orange Kubota backhoe around the slide on metal tracks. It wasn’t much larger than a garden tractor and seemed even smaller alongside the gigantic heap of earth.

Rolling past the waiting trucks, buses, and the odd car, Quinn picked his line, aiming for the packed trail just feet from the edge. Quinn felt Aleksandra tense as they neared the mudslide. He assumed she was worried about going over the steep edge, but he was more concerned with one of the workers hitting him with a shovel as they rode past.

Focused on riding, he was vaguely aware of a car door slamming. Aleksandra half turned to look behind them.

“Go, go, go!” she shouted in his ear.

Road workers dove for cover as automatic gunfire cracked in the thin air, splattering the mud. Quinn leaned forward, downshifting and rolling on the throttle. The bike shimmied in the sloppy mud and he dragged the rear brake a hair to help stand it up.

The shooters were close, and judging from the way Aleksandra squeezed him with her thighs, she’d recognized them an instant before they’d opened fire. At this range, Quinn found himself grateful that they used submachine guns and not rifles or even pistols, which they would have been tempted to actually aim.

Quinn could hear the shouts of angry voices behind them. A car door slammed. A car engine revved and the sound of spinning tires on gravel preceded the grind of metal gears as bumpers and fenders crashed together.

Quinn squirted over the mudslide and picked his way through the loose debris on the other side before opening up the throttle again. Another volley of shots cracked past, echoing off the deep canyon walls and splatting into the mud. Aleksandra squirmed behind him.

“They are trying to follow,” she said, settling in low against his back.

“You recognize them?” Quinn yelled over the wind and hard patter of rain against his plastic jacket.

“Chechens,” she yelled back, tucked in so his body broke the chill of the oncoming wind. He could feel her shivering. “The driver is Salambek. Rustam Daudov’s man. A killer.”

“He doesn’t seem to like you very much,” Quinn yelled into the wind.

Only a handful of trucks waited downhill from the mudslide. Beyond them, Quinn and Aleksandra had the Road of Death all to themselves. Waterfalls careened through the dense foliage and down the high mountainside above them, rushing in newly formed ditches across the road to disappear into the cloudy abyss on the other side.

Quinn planted a foot in the soupy gravel to pivot the bike around a sharp turn and still keep it on two wheels.

“His sister, Dagmani, was a leader of the Black Widows,” Aleksandra shouted once the Yamaha was stabilized.

Quinn had heard of the female suicide squads in Chechnya, though thankfully he’d never faced one.

“I killed her,” Aleksandra said simply, confirming his suspicions.

The snaking road seemed to magically disappear off and on, playing now you see me, now you don’t, as banks of fog and cloud drifted down the mountains with the rain.

“Did they make it around?” The little Yamaha had the tendency to dart in whatever direction he looked so he depended on Aleksandra to be his eyes to the rear.

The back wheel shimmied as she turned, but to her credit, she caught herself with her thighs, careful not to upset his balance in the treacherous mud.

“I can’t tell,” she said, turning just a little farther to get a better look. Her legs tensed again. Her arms squeezed a little tighter.

“I hear them,” she said at length, her voice ripped away by the wind.

Quinn rolled on more throttle, counter steering around a series of deep ruts, then bouncing through a foaming waterfall that sprayed across the entire roadway like a huge bathroom shower. His face stung from the chilly, liquefied air. He’d ridden enough in cold wind to know it would be completely numb in a matter of minutes.

Somewhere ahead was a man they had to catch or risk losing track of a nuclear bomb. Behind was a car full of Chechen terrorists. They were likely after the same bomb, but at this moment were bent on killing Aleksandra—and in a car with the stability of four wheels versus his two, Quinn stood zero chance of outrunning them.

“How many are in the car?” he yelled.

“Three.”

Quinn took a series of slow, rhythmic breaths, slowing his heart rate. His eyes scanned the road ahead, noting the angle of drop, the thick tangle of trees and bushes that grew on the cliff side. Rain and the fine spray of dense fog whipped at his unprotected face, popping against his thin plastic raincoat like firecrackers. A cold chill ran down both legs. He fought to keep from shivering so badly he’d upset the bike. In CRO training, he’d endured long soaks with his classmates in ice-filled water in order to induce hypothermia. A lifelong Alaskan, used to the cold more than most, his teeth had chattered so badly he’d thought they might shatter. Though it had been horrific at the time, he’d gone through it, and the training had taught him what to expect—to recognize the promptings of his body before he reached a point of no return. Wind and wet would sap his body of critical warmth and leave him unable to ride, let alone fight.

A hundred meters ahead the narrow road made a sharp bend to the right, putting them out of sight for a period of a few seconds even if the fog happened to thin.

Popping his neck from side to side, he worked to relax his shoulders, drawing on the warmth of Aleksandra’s body where she pressed against him. His hands clutched the grips like frozen claws. He made rhythmic fists, trying to work the blood back into them.

“We have to stop around that corner,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“Are you crazy?” Her breath buzzed directly into his ear. “They will be on top of us almost at once.”

He rolled his palm to give the little Yamaha as much gas as he dared, causing it to give a throaty moan as it dug into the muddy slop.

“We’d better hurry then,” he said through chattering teeth, as much to himself as Kanatova.