edges of the borderless Kyzylkum Desert, a wild, hellish expanse of dehydrated moonscape stretching from Uzbekistan through Kazakhstan along the E40. As they traveled at night, it felt like they were moving through the belly of the sea, surrounded on all sides by the suffocating dark.
The convoy had fueled up at Beyneu and was making good time. They were on a tight schedule to arrive in just under forty-eight hours. Part of the payment bonus to his crew depended on arriving on time; earlier was better, but certainly not possible at this point. Late would prove difficult. Too late would prove fatal.
The endless miles, the constant thrumming of the big diesel engines, and the warmth of the cab lulled the former paratrooper into a waking dream of a Senegalese woman he once knew. The Chinese driver was similarly hypnotized, apparently. Neither man saw the spike strip draped across the narrow two-lane asphalt, but they sure as hell heard it when the big front tires first blew, followed by the next six. The driver stomped on the air brakes instinctively when the front tires erupted on the sharpened steel. The trailer fishtailed behind him as the entire rig skidded to a thundering halt.
Shouts from his men in the two other trucks crackled in his earpiece, asking what happened.
Before Cluzet could speak, a bar of bright lights flashed on a quarter-mile ahead.
Cluzet lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. Through the blinding glare of the lights he made out what appeared to be the outline of a “technical”—a small pickup truck with a machine gun mounted in the open bed. He assumed at least one man on the machine gun and one driving, and likely a third in the vehicle.
Another bar of lights lit up at Cluzet’s three o’clock a moment later, and then one at nine o’clock, both also a quarter-mile away. Cluzet swung his binoculars in both directions. Same setup.
Cluzet began to issue an order, but he was cut off by the German in the rear truck. “There’s one behind me.”
Surrounded.
All four technicals eased forward until they came to a stop some two hundred feet away.
“What do you want to do, jefe?” the Spaniard asked in Cluzet’s earpiece. Their trucks had braked to a halt, but with their tires intact.
The contract with the Ingush mercs he’d hired to escort them from Kashgar ended at the Uzbek border. They’d served him well in the mountains of Tajikistan, but out here on the desert flats he was all alone on the ground. He had two good men in the Spaniard and the German riding shotgun in the other trucks. Unfortunately, like him, they were armed only with nine-millimeter pistols. Three pistols against four machine guns plus whatever automatic weapons the opposition would be carrying and, most likely, an RPG or two made for bad odds.
Cluzet turned to his driver, trying to light his cigarette with a Zippo lighter trembling in his hand. Cluzet asked, “What do you want to do, boss?” in Mandarin, but the Chinese man was too scared to say anything.
“Yes, you’re right. We’re quite fucked.” He whispered into his mic, “Hold tight. Nobody get excited.”
A man exited the technical directly in front, his features draped in shadow beneath the glare of the truck lights. But in the outline of the lights, Cluzet saw the man pull a pistol out of his waistband and hold it at his side. The bandit’s easy gait told Cluzet he was an experienced if not arrogant man, his pride no doubt fueled by the success of previous hijackings.
Cluzet turned to the driver. “Me, or you?”
“You,” the driver managed to whisper between nervous puffs.
“Okay. Me.” Cluzet nodded dramatically, as if there were any question to begin with. He opened the passenger door and climbed down from the big rig.
Cluzet stepped into the lights of his own truck as he approached the lead hijacker, a smile plastered on his face and his open hands extended forward, more like a push-up than a surrender. He wanted to show the man he wasn’t armed or dangerous.
They met about halfway between vehicles. This close, the hijacker’s features were clearly visible. The empires that collided here over the centuries were etched in his round, dark face and almond-shaped eyes. His long hair and mustache were brown rather than black. A typical Eurasian of mixed Slavic and Mongol ancestry.
“What do you want?” Cluzet asked in passable Russian.
“What do you think, asshole?” the man answered in American-television English.