Fatal Conceit (6 page)

Relying more on stealth, Lucy's team wasn't much better armed. Ned carried an M24, bolt-action sniper's rifle, just in case they found Al-Sistani and there was no way to capture him, but the other men carried Russian-made AK-47s so that wearing native clothing, they might pass as locals without close inspection. But they had to travel light and sought to avoid confrontations.

Although she was sure that Ned kept some of his reservations to himself so as not to frighten her, he did tell her that the ex-military men on both security teams weren't happy about their position from a tactical standpoint. The compound was enclosed by a thick, eight-foot-high stone wall with only one iron gate leading in or out; however, it was surrounded on three sides by thickly wooded hills from which an enemy could move close and then fire down into the complex. While sufficient, perhaps, to deter ill-equipped and poorly led brigands, the compound had clearly not been built to turn back a determined assault.

“Who are these separatist guys anyway?” Ned complained.

“Well, they'd describe themselves to you as patriots, like George Washington,” she said. “After the Soviet Union fell apart, the separatists declared Chechnya an independent republic. But the Russians—who don't want to lose Chechen oil refineries and pipelines—weren't having it. The Russians claim Chechnya is a state in their Russian federation and doesn't have the right to secede and they've fought two wars over it. The Chechens actually won the first one in 1996, though the Russians essentially destroyed the country's infrastructure and economy, and even after the peace treaty was signed they stationed two brigades here. Then in 1999, the Russians attacked again, using the pretext that it was necessary to stop Chechen terrorism and organized crime. There was a series of bombings in Moscow that killed about three hundred civilians; the Russian government blamed separatists, but there's pretty good evidence the bombs were planted by the Russian Secret Police to justify the military campaign. This time they were able to gain control over most of the territory and cities, and set up a pro-Moscow regime. They were brutal on the civilian population and most of the best-known separatist leaders were killed, including a former president of the republic. But the separatists keep waging a guerilla war that the Russians haven't been able to break.”

Never one for politics, Ned accepted the explanation and went
off to scout the area around the compound with other members of the security team. As she waited, Lucy tried to get to know the two Chechens in the compound. One was her guide and the other was a small, thin man, Bula Umarov, who Zakayev said was one of Daudov's advisers. He'd been sent ahead to begin the discussions with Huff's “trade mission,” which Lucy suspected was more than it seemed.

Zakayev introduced Lucy to Umarov when they found him sitting alone in an interior courtyard of the main house, and she'd taken an almost immediate dislike to him. He had a pockmarked face and feral, shifty eyes—“like a Harlem rat,” she later told Ned—and wouldn't look directly at her. That in itself wasn't unusual in a Muslim country where men were often uncomfortable around Western women, and he was polite enough. But something about him made her skin crawl, and she'd noted a quirk about his way of speaking that troubled her as well.

Lucy not only spoke flawless Chechen, she also had an ear for local dialects and couldn't quite place his. “What part of Chechnya are you from?” she asked after speaking to him for a few minutes.

Something had flashed briefly in those rodent eyes. Alarm or fear, she wasn't sure, but something that put him on alert before he smiled slightly and nodded. “I am from Mozdok, on the northwest side of the country,” he said.

“Ah, I see,” Lucy replied. “I'd like to visit there sometime to expand my knowledge of Chechen regional differences; there is an ever so slight variation in how you speak that I've not heard before.”

Umarov had just stared at her for a moment, during which time Lucy noticed how Zakayev turned her head ever so slightly to study his face.
She doesn't trust, or like, him either
, Lucy thought.

“Perhaps, I can explain that,” the man said. “I was raised in an orphanage with children who mostly spoke Russian. Maybe I picked something up from them, though no one has ever remarked on it before.”

“Yes, that could explain it,” Lucy said. “It is very slight. I doubt anyone else would notice, but languages are sort of my thing.”

Saying that he needed to get back to his talks with Huff, Umarov had quickly excused himself and then avoided Lucy for the rest of the evening and the next day. However, several times she'd caught him looking at her, though he'd quickly averted his eyes.

On the other hand, Lucy had enjoyed having some quiet time to talk to Zakayev, a beautiful young woman whose facial features were a fine mix of the many different ethnicities that at one time or another called Chechnya home. Russians. Mongols. Turks. Cossacks. She had a slight Asian tilt to her sea-green eyes, widely spaced in a round, bronzed Slavic face, and long silky black hair that most of the time she covered with a scarf. When they'd been traveling from place to place there hadn't been much of an opportunity to get to know her, but the two young women hit it off now that there was time to relax.

Zakayev described herself as a Chechen patriot and vehemently contended that the Russians were the terrorists, not the separatists, “Though we have been guilty of allowing extremists into the movement that cost us world opinion with their acts. That is why Lom is so adamant about cleansing our ranks of those who fight for their own ends, not our country.” She described seeing Russian tanks roll through, and sometimes right over the top of villages, and watching as Chechen men “and sometimes women” were lined up and shot “as a warning” to others.

“Our women are raped, and our men are executed or rounded up and sent away never to be heard from again. Meanwhile, the Russian government is in league with crime syndicates to rob us of our wealth,” she said angrily. “Yet the West does nothing except go along with the Russians, who call us the terrorists when we try to carry the fight to their cities and their populations as they have done to us. But we are not so different from you Americans when you fought for independence against a larger, more powerful army that tried to put down your desire for freedom with brutality. Back then it was the British who broke down your doors without justification,
arrested your men, abused your women, burned your crops, razed your towns, and hung your patriots in an attempt to terrorize you into submission.”

Zakayev burned with the zeal of a partisan. But she was also a young woman, only a few years older than Lucy, and she had many questions about what life was like for an Amercian woman. “Someday I would like to see America,” she told Lucy after dinner Saturday night. “But Chechnya is my home and we will build a democracy here that will show you Americans a thing or two about freedom when you have to fight for it.”

They all waited up Saturday night for Daudov, but he didn't appear. Zakayev had apologized profusely. “I was assured he would be here,” she said. “I never would have sworn such a thing to Allah if I had not believed it. To be honest, I am worried. I am going to the town to see if I can get word.”

Lucy heard the concern and fear in the young woman's voice and wondered if it was a product of hero worship or something more . . . womanly. “We can't wait any longer,” she told the young woman. “Perhaps he had other, more pressing matters. If you're not back by morning, we'll have to leave.” Zakayev nodded and left the compound, after which Lucy went to bed.

The best part about being in the compound was that she and Ned got to share a room, and a bed. They'd fallen asleep in each other's arms, as was their habit, but only slept a few hours before he suddenly sat up in bed, waking her.

“What's the matter?” she asked sleepily. But he didn't get a chance to answer before what sounded like a fierce gun battle erupted outside.

Ned jumped from the bed, pulled on his pants, and strapped a sidearm to his waist. He then flung open the carrying case for his rifle and quickly assembled the parts, not bothering with the scope. “Stay here,” he ordered, and started to run from the room. He stopped and turned to look at her. “I love you, Lucy. No matter what, I'll be back for you.” Then he was gone.

Soon she heard the regular, paced booming of Ned's gun—louder and deeper than the other rifles. He seemed to be on the roof of the building but moving from position to position. Meanwhile, bursts of automatic fire and explosions filled in the blanks around his shooting.

The battle raged for nearly two hours. Then there was a knock on the door of her room and Jason, a former Navy SEAL on her team, hurried in. He was wounded in the side of his chest, she could see the blood soaking into his shirt, but he seemed not to take any notice as he yelled to her. “Come on, Lucy, I'm getting you out of here!”

Jason turned and led the way through the building and across the courtyard to the main house at the back of the compound where she knew Huff was staying. Shots fired from the wall behind her indicated that the attackers had not yet breached the perimeter. She could also hear Ned and another defender shooting from the roof of the building she'd just left, and at least two more were on the roof of the building she now entered. Her escort walked her quickly down to a room at the end of the hallway and knocked on the heavy wooden door, which was opened by one of Huff's security men.

“Stay here,” Jason said before turning to the security man who let them in. “We need you outside.” The two men then left and Lucy bolted the door.

Turning around, she saw Huff standing behind a radio operator who was sitting at a desk with his communications equipment laid out in front of him. The radio operator kept typing messages into a keypad, but after a moment would shake his head as apparently there were no responses. Meanwhile, Huff kept urging him to try again and grew more agitated every time the shooting intensified. “Call the goddamn Russians,” he yelled at the man at one point.

The firefight outside waxed and waned. At times the shooting and explosions that rocked the house and caused debris to fall from the ceiling and walls seemed so intense that Lucy wondered
how the defenders could hold out. But then she'd be reassured by the low, powerful report of Ned's gun and continued firing from the roof above her. Occasionally, the shooting stopped, and she dared hope that the attackers had been beaten off and the door would soon open and Ned would be there with his lovely, homely face and “shucks, ma'am, weren't nothing” grin. But then the shooting would resume.

Finally, there was no more shooting from the roof above them, only the sound of Ned's gun and whoever was with him on the other building. Then there was a deafening explosion that rattled the walls and was followed by a silence so complete that her heart faltered and tears welled up in her eyes.
Oh, Ned
, she thought, though she had no other words for the fear that gripped her. The radio operator got up and grabbed his rifle. “I'll hold them off as long as I can,” he said, and stepped out of the room.

Huff collapsed into a corner and covered his face with his hands and began moaning. Suddenly, shooting erupted in the hallway. The screams of the wounded and angry shouts in Arabic told her that the radio operator had ambushed the leading attackers. But the reprieve didn't last long. There was an explosion outside the door, a torrent of shots, and then the sound of a half-dozen voices outside the door speaking in Arabic.

The attackers began pounding on the door. “Do you have a way of calling the U.S. embassy in Grozny?” she demanded of Huff.

“My cell phone,” he cried. “But it's not a secure line.”

“Who the hell cares now,” Lucy shouted. “Call and give it to me.”

As though moving in a dream, Huff pulled out his phone, punched in a number, and handed it to Lucy. “No one will answer at this hour,” he said.

Lucy whirled away from the diplomat and stood facing the door as it shivered with repeated blows. “This is codename Wallflower,” she said, speaking into the phone. “We are at the compound in Zandaq. We've been attacked and overrun. They're trying to get
in. I don't think it will be much longer. They are not Chechen; they're speaking Arabic, several native Saudi speakers, a Yemeni, not sure of the others, but I repeat, they are not Chechen . . .”

The pounding on the door grew louder. A crack appeared in the wood at the hinges. “I'm with David Huff.” The door burst inward. “They're here,” she said as a hooded man with a rifle leaped into the room. He saw her and struck her in the stomach with the butt of his gun, doubling her over and sending the phone flying to the ground where it came apart in pieces.

Other men raced into the room and soon Huff and Lucy were being herded from the room, stepping over the body of the radio operator, and out of the building where they were joined by Jason, who was now bleeding from several wounds, including a gash on his head. As they got to the front of the compound, Jason turned on their captors, striking one in the throat as he grabbed for the man's gun. But he was quickly clubbed to the ground before he could shoot and dragged along with the others.

As they stood in the half-light of several fires and what remained of the compound's electric lights around the walls, a man stepped in front of the captives. “Welcome to the future Islamic Republic of Chechnya,” he announced. He stopped talking and appeared to be listening.

Far above their heads, Lucy heard a loud humming as if a horde of angry bees was circling. While she had never seen or heard one before, she knew it was the sound of a drone.
Good,
she thought,
I hope they send a missile to take all of these assholes to hell.

However, the hooded man just laughed and looked in the direction of the sound. He raised his hand and pointed. “Ah, we are being watched,” he said as his finger continued to trace the flight of the drone. “I hope they've enjoyed the show so far, though apparently whoever is watching either can't, or won't, help you. But no matter.” He walked over in front of Huff and pointed a handgun at his head.