Death Wave Read Free

said. “For all of our sakes, I hope you are right.”
The Indians, Dean knew, were pursuing the investigation themselves, as were the Russians, but his orders were to keep Desk Three’s investigation carefully compartmentalized from those of both the Indian military and the Russian FSB, hence the lie. The FSB, the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federaciyi , or Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, was the modern successor to the old KGB, and was riddled with Russian mafiya influence, political infighting, and outright corruption. Desk Three believed that those unconventional weapons had been sold by members of the mafiya —one of Russia’s organized crime families—to an Islamist terror group, using a Tajik criminal named Zhernov as the go-between.
Desk Three wanted to find both the buyer and the consignment without tipping off either the Russians or the Indians and thoroughly muddying the metaphorical waters of the case.
Tajikistan was a former member of the Soviet Union, and the Russians were still very much a part of both government and day-today life here. Dushanbe wanted to maintain its independence from Moscow—yet as the poorest of the Soviet Union’s successor states, Tajikistan desperately needed Russia to support its economy. Something like half of the country’s labor force actually worked abroad, especially in Russia, sending money home to their families.
India wanted to maintain a strong defense against its enemy-neighbor Pakistan and to extend its power into Central Asia, both for reasons of security and to protect its investment in natural gas coming south from Siberia.
As for Russia … as always, Russia was the real problem, with factions that sought to restore the old empire of the Soviets, factions seeking to protect the Rodina from Islamic revolution or attack, and predatory factions that include organized crime, corrupt politicians, and freebooting military units—and it seems these days that those last three are one and the same.
Dean and Akulinin were threading their way through a minefield.
“Carry on, then,” Narayanan said.
“Sir!” Dean said, cracking off another salute. The Indian Air Force was closely modeled on the RAF, with the same ranks, conventions, attitudes, and crisp attention to protocol. Akulinin saluted as well, but in a more laid-back manner.
“The man definitely has a stick up his ass,” Akulinin said quietly, after Narayanan and his entourage were out of earshot.
“The man is afraid of sabotage,” Rubens told him, “either from Russians or from Pakistanis. If he sounds paranoid, he has a right to be.”
“Let’s see if the tower will show us that flight log,” Dean said.
Together, they walked across shimmering tarmac toward the control tower building.
    OBHINKINGOW CANYON
CENTRAL TAJIKISTAN
WEDNESDAY, 1535 HOURS LOCAL TIME
     
The ancient Daewoo Cielo took the next curve at almost ninety kilometers per hour, too fast for the narrow dirt road, sending up a dense cloud of white-ocher dust as it hugged the hillside to the left. Mountains thrust against the sky on all sides, the western fringes of the rugged, saw-toothed Pamir Mountains; to the east, at the bottom of the steep slope in the depths of the valley, flowed the waters of a deep and twisting river. The Tajiks called the river Vakhsh; the Russians used the ancient Persian name, Surkhob, the Red River.
Another curve in the dirt road, and the driver pulled hard on the wheel, bare rock blurring past the left side of the car. The drop-off on the right wasn’t vertical; the ground fell away with perhaps a forty-five-degree slope, the hillside punctuated here and there by scattered patches of scrub brush and stunted trees.
The drop was still easily steep enough to kill them all if the dark blue Cielo’s driver misjudged a turn and sent the vehicle tumbling down that hill.
The passenger leaned out of the window, staring not down into the valley but behind, through the billowing clouds