Checkmate

52

His option would add an hour to his time on the ground, but there was no helping it. Going through the village would be suicide.

He back-crawled away from the ridge, then turned and slid butt-first down the loose rock until he reached the bottom. He called up his map screen on the OPSAT and spent five minutes scrolling and zooming until he found what he was looking for.

He started jogging.

His path took him on a wide arc around Sarani, starting with the notch in the canyon wall he’d seen on his way in. The cleft was no wider than ten feet and the walls five times that high. After a few hundred yards the notch forked, one branch heading east, the other west. Fisher chose the eastern one, and followed it until it was bisected by a dry creek bed, which he followed north for another mile until the walls widened into a dry gulch. The rock walls were smoother here, water-worn by millennia of seasonal rivers. Fisher stopped to catch his breath and check the OPSAT. He was dead west of Sarani.

Now to see if he’d paid attention in high school geography class.

During the rainy season, this gulch would be coursing with runoff from the Köpetdag’s higher elevations, and the RADSAT’s pictures of the area had revealed the rims of the plateau’s above were crenellated from thousands of years of overspill. In the monsoon season, overspill meant waterfalls; in the dry season, natural stairways.

It took fifteen minutes to find what he was looking for: a deep, vertical fissure in the rock with a gentle grade and plenty of handholds. He started climbing.

Five feet from the top, he froze. He closed his eyes and listened. The wind had shifted, whistling down the fissure and bringing with it the scent of burning tobacco. He adjusted his feet so he was braced in the fissure, then drew the SC-20 and thumbed the selector to ASE. He gauged the wind and then fired.

He holstered the SC-20, then changed screens on the OPSAT and adjusted the ASE to infrared. The plateau showed as a cool blue oval. To Fisher’s left, over the edge of the plateau, he could see tiny blooms of dull orange; these would be the dying fires of cookstoves in the houses in Sarani.

Fifty hundred yards to his front were two prone figures cast in yellow, red, and green. They were hidden behind rocks along the northern and western edges. Snipers, one for each canyon leading into Sarani.

Tricky, gentlemen, Fisher thought. But not tricky enough.

The ASE was drifting away, gliding over Sarani and down the canyon. He let it go a half mile, then transmitted the self-destruct signal.

He climbed the last few feet to the top, then eased himself over the edge and crawled a few feet to a nearby boulder. He braced the SC-20 against it and peered through the scope. Since he now knew where to look and what to look for, each sniper stood out clearly in the green of the NV. Fisher wasn’t worried about the distance, but the wind over the plateau was moving at a good clip.

He zoomed in until the scope’s crosshairs were centered on the back of first man’s head, then adjusted his aim eighteen inches to the right. He fired. In a blossom of dark mist, the bullet struck the man behind the right ear. Fisher zoomed out, refocused on the next man, zoomed back in and adjusted for windage, then fired.

With the wind — and therefore sound — at his back, Fisher took his time crossing the plateau, using his OPSAT to adjust his position until he was directly above his target. He stopped a few feet from the edge, then crawled the rest of the way and peered down.

Gotta love GPS, he thought.

He was looking down into the rear courtyard of Abelzeda’s home.

The courtyard was done in rough-hewn brick and hemmed in by a six-foot-tall mud wall. At the base of the bluff, in the corner of the courtyard, was a pomegranate tree. To Fisher’s right, sitting on a bench in the side walkway, was the AK-47-armed man he’d seen earlier. Now the man had the rifle laying across his lap and appeared to be polishing it with a rag.

Fisher backed away and creeped to his right until he was over the pomegranate tree, then shimmied back to the edge. He pulled a chemlite from his waist pouch and tossed it over. It landed behind the tree. The impact activated the phosphorescence. The glow immediately caught the attention of the man, who stood up and started walking toward it. He came around the tree and stooped to pick up the chemlite. Fisher shot him in the back of the head.

Fisher inserted a rock screw into a crack, clipped his rope into the D ring, then rappelled down the face. Ten feet from the bottom, as he drew even with the house’s roofline, he slowly leaned backward until he was upside down.

The rear double doors were open. Through them Fisher saw what looked like a dining nook and next to it, a kitchen. Down a hallway, he could see the shadow of flickering flames dancing on a wall.

He righted himself, dropped the last few feet, then unclipped and sidestepped behind the pomegranate. He waited for a full minute, watching and listening. Nothing.

He moved to the rear doors.

From the side walkway, the gate creaked open, then clanged shut. Footfalls crunched on gravel. Fisher drew his pistol, stepped to the wall, pressed himself against it. A second later, the tip of an AK-47 appeared on the walkway, followed by a man.

“Samad?” the man whispered. “Samad—”

Fisher shot him in the side of the head, then rushed forward to catch the falling body. As he did so, the man’s left foot slid out from under him, kicking a shower of gravel against the wall. Fisher lowered him the rest of the way to the ground, holstered the pistol, and drew the SC-20. He stepped back to the doors, peeked through.

A figure darted across the nook and down the hall.

Fisher stepped through the doors, cleared the nook and kitchen, started down the hall. There were doorways to his left and right, both dark. He checked them: empty bedrooms. From the end of the hall came the sound of steel banging on stone and and image flashed through Fisher’s mind: a steel lid banging open against the stone floor. He heard fluttering papers and the whoosh of flame.

Fisher rushed down the hall. At the end, he peeked right, saw nothing. Left, a small living room with a tattered Oriental rug, floor cushions, and an open-hearth fireplace. A man was crouched before it, tossing papers into the flames.

“Stop right there!” Fisher called.

The man froze. He turned. His profile was lit by the flames. It was Abelzada.

He studied Fisher for a moment, then narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t do it!” Fisher warned.

Even as the words left his mouth, Abelzada’s hand was moving. From beside his foot, he snatched up an object, started swinging it around. The gun glinted in the fire-light. Abelzada yelled something, a cry for help.

He needed Abelzada alive, had to have him alive. But crouched as he was, there was no guarantee of a wounding shot and there was no time to change the SC-20’s setting. Fisher fired a round into the hearth beside Abelzada’s head. The man didn’t flinch, kept moving, bringing the gun around…

Fisher adjusted his aim and fired.

Abelzada rocked back on his heels, then crumpled over into the fetal position. His gun clattered to the stone floor. Fisher rushed forward and checked him. Dead. The bullet had missed Abelzada’s bicep by a half inch and entered under his armpit. It was a heart shot.

Fisher looked around, thinking, thinking… The box at Abelzada’s feet was still mostly full of papers He spotted a leather satchel lying on a nearby chair. He snatched it up, stuffed the papers inside.

In the distance, he heard alarmed voices shouting in Farsi.

He keyed his subdermal. “Pike, this is Sickle, over.”

“Go ahead, Sickle.”

“Pike, I am Skyfall; I say again, Skyfall.” Translation: now operating in Escape and Evasion mode. “Home on my beacon, LZ is hot.”

“Roger, hold tight, Sickle. We are en route.”

“Message from Sarani, Uncle.”

Zhao looked up. “Yes.”

“There was an attack. Gunfire in the village.”

“How big a force?”

“Small. They estimate less than a dozen soldiers.”

“Not the Iranians, then. Abelzada?”

“Dead. He was in the process of burning material when he was shot. But if he talked—”

“He didn’t,” Zhao said, then went silent. He folded his hands on his desk and closed his eyes for a few moments. The board had changed; a piece had fallen. Zhao imagined the breach suddenly opening in his line, saw his opponent, now confident, moving ahead. Would Abelzada’s involvement be enough to unravel the strategy? he wondered. No, the Iranian government had no credibility with the rest of world. Any denial would ring hollow.

“What about Abelzada’s team?” Zhao asked.

“In place and ready.”

“Then it doesn’t matter. He’s served his purpose. In fact, this is a lucky coincidence. Do you know why?”

Xun thought for a moment. “Abelzada’s a zealot. He might have been tempted to speak out — to claim credit.”

Zhao smiled at his nephew. “Very good. I’m impressed.”

Xun smiled back. “Synchronicity, yes?”

“Perfect synchronicity.” One more move left.