Awkwardly, Boris clambered back out of the tunnel.
“Are you spying on us, Russian dogs?” Ghairat strode forward with more confidence.
Lourds cleared his throat. “No.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“We are archeologists.”
One of the men snorted derisively. “More of the dirt diggers. I say we kill them now and be done with it.” He spoke in the Turkmen language, which Lourds knew well enough to understand.
“Young fool.” Another man cuffed the speaker on the head. “If we kill them, the other dirt diggers will start looking for who killed them.”
“If we don’t kill them, they will tell others they have seen us. They will come into the cave and find the opium we have stored here.”
The leader, Ghairat, turned to the young man. “Close your mouth.”
The young man bowed his head in obedience.
“It is a simple solution.” Ghairat grinned. “We will kill them here, then stuff them in that convenient hole in the wall they found.” He raised his rifle.
Lourds grunted at Boris under his breath, “The tunnel. Now!”
Boris didn’t hesitate. He threw himself into the tunnel like a mouse returning to its home ahead of the cat. Lourds dropped as well, expecting to feel a bullet between his shoulder blades at any second.
Ghairat opened fire, but the bullets slapped against the wall Lourds had stood in front of, then tracked down. For a moment, the camel hump-shaped stalagmites offered protection from the bullets, but Lourds knew that was fleeting at best. The men were already jockeying for new firing positions.
One of the ricochets caught a man and knocked him down.
“Brothers! Help me! I am shot!”
Ghairat stopped firing and screamed in frustration. “Get them!”
Lourds dropped behind Boris and hurled himself through the small passageway. Another thing the men hadn’t thought of was that the small arms fire would carry out of the caves and alert the camp. He didn’t know if they were using drugs or were truly just dim-witted, but hanging around to find out wasn’t an option at the moment.
Even a fool’s bullets could kill him. And he was certain the men wouldn’t be without the long, curved herdmen’s knives so many carried out in the wilderness.
***
Heart pounding, Dmitry stood in the passageway leading to the cave where he’d followed the men. He hadn’t known the men had reached Glukov and Lourds until he heard one of them speaking to the pair. Then there had been exchanges in a language that Dmitry couldn’t understand, but none of it sounded good.
Quietly, he stole up to the cave entrance. He took a fresh grip on his pistol. During his time with the SVR, he had killed sixteen men. Most of those had been shot while trying to kill him or his partners. He had mortally wounded his first man when he was twenty-three.
One of the men inside the cave cried out in pain. Since it was in the language that he didn’t understand, Dmitry was certain that neither Glukov nor Lourds had been shot.
However, that didn’t mean they weren’t about to be.
Dmitry drew in his breath and let it out, then he flicked on his flashlight in his left hand, placed it under his pistol in his right, and swiveled so he faced the opening in profile.
The flashlight beam caught the black-garbed men flatfooted. One of them lay on the floor, and two others administered to him. They looked at the opening, holding up hands against the brightness of the light, and tried to see.
One of the men in front raised his rifle to fire.
Dmitry focused on that man first, firing three bullets into the man’s body and noting with professional satisfaction the way the target staggered back. Then he fired several shots into the knot of men trying to boil into action.
He went through the door at a steady run, committing himself to his action. Targeting the men who were still moving, Dmitry kept walking toward them and shot them in the head, one after the other.
Heart still beating rapidly, Dmitry kept the pistol at the ready in both hands. He still had twelve rounds of the eighteen in the magazine in his weapon. Looking around, he saw that no one else was in the cave.
“Put the weapon down! Do it now!”
Even with his ears ringing from the thunderous noise trapped inside the cave, Dmitry recognized the threatening timbre of a professional soldier’s voice. Quietly, he bent and placed the pistol on the ground.