Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,25
a far better-than-average rock climber, she’d concluded that there was no chance of her target escaping that way and focused on keeping her pace quick enough to catch him before the terrain opened up. What she hadn’t known at the time—and didn’t learn until the terrorist was long gone—was that there was a narrow arch near the top of the canyon’s northern wall that went all the way through.
She looked up at the dark cliff band and took advantage of a powerful gust to push on, confident that any rocks she kicked loose would be written off as having been dislodged by the wind.
Randi slowed when things went still again, feeling the cold starting to freeze the sweat trapped between her back and the light pack she was wearing. Her eye picked out a movement twenty meters above and she started for it, worrying less about speed than staying completely silent.
She considered her options as she closed in but, as usual, none was good. Her best bet was the same as it always was—to turn around and get the hell out of there. Discounting that, it was a choice between trying to make contact while she still had room to maneuver, but also a terrific opportunity to fall to her death, and catching the Afghan in the arch where the confined space would neutralize what little advantage she still had.
Option one seemed marginally better. In fact, if she was clever, it might even work.
“Wait,” she said in Pashto, muffling the word slightly with her hand.
While she could communicate perfectly well in the language, she hadn’t been successful at fully eradicating her accent. Better to communicate in one-word sentences if possible.
The movement visible in front of her stopped abruptly. “Who is that?”
“Adeela,” Randi said, picking a woman’s name common in the region.
There was a long pause before the man spoke again. “Adeela? How did you escape? Come. Hurry.”
Randi slid the sniper rifle down in its sling on her pack. The butt hit her in the back of the legs as she climbed, but the long barrel wouldn’t be silhouetted over her head.
Ahead, the man slipped behind a low pile of rocks that had been created to obscure the entrance to the arch and provide a defensive position if it became necessary.
She approached slowly, eyes widening as she tried to penetrate the gloom and pick out the man she was pursuing. There was no way, though. The area behind the wall was so dark, it looked like a gateway to a dead universe.
Heart pounding uncomfortably in her chest, she let her assault rifle hang from its strap and pulled a silenced pistol from the holster on her hip. Stepping behind the wall was like going blind and she tried futilely to pick up a hint of the man she knew was only a meter or so away.
“Adeela,” he said quietly. “Are you—”
His eyes were obviously better adjusted and he lunged, but the motion was what Randi needed to pinpoint him. Before he could get hold of her, she had a silencer pressed up under his chin.
“Be calm,” she said in Pashto. “I’m not with those men and I had nothing to do with what happened to your village.”
“Then who are you?”
“Randi Russell.”
She felt him nod through the motion of the gun barrel. “The woman from the CIA.”
“That’s right. Farhad Wahidi’s friend,” she said, naming the elder she’d had occasional dealings with.
He let out a bitter laugh that sounded alarmingly loud in the silence. “He did not call you a friend.”
“Okay,” she said, searching for the correct words to get her thought across. “Occasional convenient acquaintances. Who are you?”
“Zahid. What do you want?”
“I want to know what happened in Sarabat.”
“Why should I tell you?”
It was a good question. Her eyes had adapted enough to see his rough outline and she took a step back, lowering the pistol as an act of good faith. “Why shouldn’t you?”
He stood there for what seemed like a long time before speaking again. “The men below were with the ones who attacked my village. They killed not only the men but the women and children.”
He was in no position to climb onto that particular piece of moral high ground, but she decided that now probably wasn’t the time to point this out. “So?”
“I have no weapon. It’s why I ran. So I could live to find them. To find them and kill them. Now God has delivered you to me.”