Fallout

2

The warlords and their troops had been instructed to assemble in full battle gear shortly before dusk in the camp, a narrow mountain canyon surrounded by craggy, snowcapped peaks. Straddling the border as it did, the camp had for the last two years been the main headquarters for the resistance fighters. The puppet government in Bishkek had neither the resources nor the stomach to venture into the mountains and had resigned itself to trying to block the various passes the resistance fighters used to sneak into the lowlands and wreak their havoc.

The war had been going on for six years, most of which had seen these men and their thousands of followers living like animals in the rugged mountain ranges that bisected the northern third of the country, just south of the capital, Bishkek. In the post-9/11 domino effect, Kyrgyzstan had been declared by the West to be a hotbed of Muslim extremist terrorism in Central Asia, and with the acquiescence of its neighbors to the south, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, a U.S.-led coalition, using precision air strikes and special operations troops, had toppled the Muslim government and put into power the more moderate minority factions.

The ousted government and its army, having seen the handwriting on the wall, had for months before the invasion been covertly evacuating supplies and equipment from the capital into the mountains to the south. Led by Bolot Omurbai, the country’s radical president for the last three years as well as the commander of the newly named Kyrgyz Republic Liberation Army, or KRLA, they had abandoned the capital just hours before the laser-guided bombs had begun to fall. Omurbai, already revered by the Kyrgyz as the father of modern Kyrgyzstan, quickly became a godlike figure as he commanded and fought beside his KRLA partisans, harassing the U.S.-sponsored government forces and chipping away at whatever small gains they were able to make outside the major cities.

A year into the war, Washington decided it was time to behead the snake. A bounty was put on Omurbai’s head. From lowly privates in the new government army to musket-wielding peasants who had suffered under Omurbai, the populace took to the countryside, acting as beaters for specially tasked American special forces teams who, after three months of hunting, found Omurbai hiding in a cave along the Kazak border. Omurbai was turned over to government forces.

The Bishkek government made short work of Omurbai, trying and finding him guilty forty-one days after his capture. The sentence, death by firing squad, was carried out the next day, filmed live before dozens of television cameras from every corner of the globe. Bolot Omurbai, the Joseph Stalin of Kyrgyzstan, was then unceremoniously stuffed into an unmarked wooden casket and buried in a secret location without so much as a stone cairn to mark his grave.

For three weeks after Omurbai’s execution, Bishkek and the surrounding countryside was quiet, free from the ambushes, mortar attacks, and small-arms skirmishes that had daily plagued Kyrgyzstan for the past fifteen months.

And then, as if on a cue from a starter’s pistol, on the first day of spring, the KRLA returned in force with a coordinated attack that drove the majority of the government forces back into the plains surrounding Bishkek, where the army regrouped, dug in, and repelled the attack, forcing the partisans once again into the mountains.

For the next five years the war raged on, sometimes tipping in favor of the resistance, other times in favor of the government, until a balance of sorts was found — the “Seesaw War,” it was dubbed by the media. The U.S. government and its coalition partners, already bogged down in Afghanistan and the Middle East, were able to offer only a minimum of resources and cash to the Kyrgyz government, while the resistance, now commanded by Omurbai’s former field commanders, received a steady stream of cash, and old but still-effective Soviet bloc weapons from Indonesia and Iran.

Tonight, however, was not about strategy, the warlords had been told about news — good news that would turn the tide against their enemies. What would be revealed here would both shock and elate them.

As the sun dropped behind the western peaks and the meadow was shrouded in darkness, the three hundred assembled fighters gathered themselves before the platform, a natural tier in the canyon wall. Generator-powered klieg lights glowed to life on either side of the platform, illuminating the six members of the war council sitting cross-legged in a semicircle. Standing before them was Samet, Omurbai’s oldest friend and ally and the de facto leader of the KRLA.

“Welcome, brothers, and thank you for coming. Many of you have traveled far to get here and undertaken great risk. Rest assured, your time and effort will be rewarded.

“As you know, we fight as much for a memory as we do our country and for Allah. He who was taken from us was the flame in the night that drew us together, that bonded and hardened us.”

A cheer rose from the assembled soldiers. AK-47s and RPGs were raised, and pistols fired into the air.

Samet waited for the tumult to subside, then continued. “Since his loss, we’ve fought on in his name and for Allah’s will. I’m sure you will agree the years have been grueling. Even the strongest among us have been beset by doubts and fatigue. Well, no more, brothers. Tonight, we are reborn.”

As if on cue, from the eastern reaches of the canyon there came the thumping of helicopter rotors. The fighters, having learned as their Afghan brothers had learned during the Soviet occupation to fear this, began shouting and pushing, hoping to find either cover or firing positions for RPGs.

“Calm yourselves, brothers, there is nothing to fear,” Samet called over the PA speaker. “This is expected. Stand fast.”

The crowd slowly calmed and went quiet as all eyes turned eastward. For a full minute the beat of the rotors increased until a pair of flashing wingtip navigation lights emerged from the darkness of the neighboring canyon. The helicopter — an old Soviet Mi-8 HIP complete with 12.7mm nose cannon and 80mm rocket outrider pods — roared overhead, passing thirty feet over the crowd before wheeling right and stopping in a hover over the clearing beside the motor pool. In a blast of rotor wash the HIP touched down on its tripod wheels. After a few seconds, the engine turned off, and the rotors spooled down, first to a dull whine and then to complete silence. For nearly a full minute, nothing moved. The crowd stood in rapt silence, watching the helicopter for signs of movement. Some of the men, their martial instincts so finely tuned, shifted nervously, weapons clutched tightly across chests. The HIP’s navigation strobes, still active, flashed blue and white against the canyon walls.

Finally the door slid open, revealing a rectangle of darkness. From above the speaker’s platform, a scaffold-mounted spotlight glowed to life and bathed the side of the helicopter in a circle of stark white light. Still nothing moved.

And then a lone figure emerged from the darkness of the helicopter’s doorway. Clearly a man, the figure stood well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and squat, powerful legs. A hood covered his head.

Murmured voices rose from the crowd.

The man raised his hands to shoulder height, palms out, and the crowd settled.

The man reached up and drew back the hood.

The crowd gave a collective gasp. The face they saw was familiar: strong chin, hawkish nose, thick, black mustache…

“Greetings, brothers. I have returned, and in that I offer you your country back,” said Bolot Omurbai. “I ask you: Who will fight at my side?”