Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Ascendancy (18 page)

Camilla said nothing; her heart beat fast, filling with a terrible despair. She thought again of her sister dancing at the finish line while she lay hurt in the grass. And now she thought of her father, with his elitist attitudes, his lip curled in the perpetual sneer only she could see. How he had looked down on her and her mother all her life, before finally turning his back and walking away with an heiress, a countess with residences in Rome and the south of France, the full package so far as he was concerned.

“I was a bad, bad girl,” Hunter was saying now. “Anselm likes bad girls, because he can control them. I learned to ride horses in Mongolia. I was sent there by a private security firm hired by the Pentagon, after I had washed out of the Marines for standing up to a sergeant who tried to rape me.”

Camilla shook her head. “That doesn’t sound anything like bad.”

“Wait,” Hunter promised. “What was I doing in Mongolia? I was part of a small cadre sent to the Bayan Olgii area in the extreme west. We were supposed to be listening in on Muslim extremist groups infesting East Kazakhstan. Which we did. But I soon discovered that the real reason we had been sent there was to intercept a known drug pipeline between Russia and China, run by a Chechen by the name of Ivan Borz. Borz was just getting his feet wet in arms dealing, but he had made his fortune in drugs.

“Stupid as I was, I thought our mission was the intervention and destruction of the pipeline. Come to find out that, no, what our bosses wanted us to do was to take a piece of the pipeline. We were to contact Borz and convince him that from that moment on he needed us to protect the integrity of his pipeline.”

“And?”

“He paid. It was easier, I suppose, than killing us and attracting more attention to what had been a perfect route.”

“So your bosses extorted him.”

“That’s not all they did.”

The rain was momentarily heavier, and Hunter retreated farther into the densest part of the stand of trees, where the horses could not follow. Camilla followed, suddenly eager to hear more.

“After the Mongolia success, they sent me to Iraq. That was my reward.” There was real malice in Hunter’s eyes, frightening in its intensity. “I wasn’t there to protect any of the army brass. I wasn’t there to provide threat assessment, though that was my official brief. I was there with three of my Mongolia cadre for another intercept mission. Only this time it was against our own government. The money being flown into Iraq, Cam, you wouldn’t believe it. A skid of money, shrink-wrapped, straight from the U.S. Mint. Millions, uncountable millions. We stole this skid—the whole thing—and found ways to expatriate it back to our bosses in D.C.”

“How did you come to the attention of Howard Anselm? He found out about the mission and used it against you, yes?”

Hunter’s laugh was harsh, as unpleasant as the malice still in her eyes. “If only. No, Anselm was a partner in the private security firm I worked for. He was the one providing them with the inside product that made them all fortunes.”

Camilla backed up against a tree. She felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Sickened, she turned away for a moment.

“These people,” Hunter said, “are monsters. They were born and bred to capitalism and the free market system, which to them means grab whatever you can and a good fuck you to everyone else.”

Camilla could feel her close, pressed against her side, her lips whispering into her ear.

“The worst part is, these people pretend to be the moralists, the great patriots keeping our country safe, ensuring the security of not only the country but the world. What a joke! But it’s a cruel joke, an abomination, the corruption of the power they have been given by the free market system.”

Firmly but gently, she turned Camilla to face her. “I want you to help me, Cam. I want you to help me work against these monsters. I want you to help me bring them down.”

“Me?”

“Yes,” Hunter said, the intensity in her voice infectious. “You’re in a unique position to make a statement—a statement that all the world will see and understand.”

C
haos in the aftermath
of the twin explosions, and a ringing, deafening silence.

All around Bourne a fiery rubble, a heat so intense that his lips and the backs of his hands were already blistered. Beside him, Ivan Borz lay unconscious, not dead or dying. A whirling missile of corrugated steel, part of the blown-apart wall, had cracked the desk in two. But Bourne’s instincts hadn’t failed him: The desk had provided the best—the only—cover. It had protected them, but now the metal was heating to an unbearable level, and he knew he had to get them out of there as quickly as he could. No one was coming into what was left of the building. A bad sign: No immediate help could be counted on.

Dragging Borz out from under what was left of the desk, Bourne knelt to pick him up in a fireman’s lift. As he did so, his gaze fell upon a fragment of one of the Singapore blueprints Borz was working on when Faraj had brought him in. He swept it up, folded it, put it in the pocket of his soot-smeared trousers. Then he settled Borz across his shoulder, stood, and searched through the flames for the quickest route out.

The quickest turned out to be among the most difficult. It was filled with flames and burning hot metal fragments. Nevertheless, it was the way to go. There was no telling when a secondary explosion, triggered by ammo or other war materiel in the adjoining buildings, might go off. He knew they would not be able to survive that.

His shoes started to smolder as he crossed the red-hot shards of metal. The intense heat blistered the soles of his feet. He kept going, around a fall of razor-sharp glass shards, twisted metal, frizzled wires, and small fires burning brightly like feral eyes in the dark. The crack and pop of stressed metal was all around them. On his shoulder, Borz began to stir.

Bourne, leaping a fall of soft glass, almost lost his balance. He staggered, repositioned the Chechen on his shoulder, and pressed on. He could see plumes of black smoke rising into the sky now; they were almost there. Then as he rushed through a last wall of flames his robe caught fire.

Laying Borz down, he threw himself onto the ground, rolling in the blackened dirt, smothering the flames. He returned to the Chechen, whose eyes were fluttering open. Borz’s bodyguards came at a run, knelt on either side of their fallen leader.

“He’s just shaken up,” Bourne said. “He’ll be fine.”

“Go get the medic,” one of the men shouted, and the other hurried off.

Standing, Bourne took in the devastation. The C-17 was a twisted wreck, shorn in two. The landing strip was blown apart. Clods of earth lay everywhere, as if a gigantic hand had scooped out the packed dirt, tossing it every which way. The tail section of the C-17 lay in the smoking crater more or less in the center of the strip. But it was in the area surrounding the strip that the true nature of the disaster was revealed. Overhung by titanic billows of black smoke, swirled now with the winds off the mountains, the scene was one of blood and ash. The cries of the wounded rose and fell with the oily smoke.

Borz’s Chechens, along with the remnants of Faraj’s people, were recovering bodies, laying them out side by side. Bourne rose, moved toward the workforce. He counted a hundred bodies, some without limbs or with great holes carved out of their torsos. Moving closer, he recognized Eisa, his face black, his eyes frozen in amazement.

Bourne’s gaze moved from face to face, counting as he did. His heart sank. So far as he could determine, every one of the American recruits was dead. And now the Chechens were brandishing mobile phones, taking photos of the overall scene before crouching to snap photos of the individual faces. Though their expressions were grim, they hardly seemed traumatized.

One of Faraj’s men Bourne hadn’t seen before was crouched over Eisa’s corpse. When he felt Bourne beside him he looked up. He was very young. There were tears on his cheeks

“
Allahu Akbar
,” he intoned. Allah is great. “Are you hurt?”

“
Alhamdulillah wa shukru lillah
,” Bourne returned. Praise and thanks to Allah. “No.” He crouched down beside him. “I met Eisa in Damascus. Did you know him?”

“We never met, and yet we were friends.” He glanced at Bourne. “I am Aashir Al Kindi.” He was a tall, dark young man of no more than twenty. His questing eyes were deep-set on either side of his hawk’s nose. The corners of his lips were perpetually curved up, giving him a friendly, gently mocking air.

“Yusuf Al Khatib,” Bourne said.

“You’re the sniper Faraj picked up at the last moment in Damascus, yes? There’s been a lot of chatter about you.” He had returned his gaze to Eisa.

“Good chatter, I trust.”

“I hear you can take off a lark’s beak at a thousand yards.”

“News travels fast.” Part of Bourne’s mind was still on the dead Americans, especially Eisa. “Perhaps we can bury our friend together.”

Aashir was silent a moment, then he nodded. Together they took the body to the side. Aashir scrounged up a couple of shovels and they began to work.

“There is no cloth to wrap him in,” Aashir said. “No one to say the prayers.”

“I’ve buried many comrades,” Bourne said. “I know the prayers.”

Aashir paused in his digging. “Thank you, Yusuf.”

They returned to their work.

“Was Faraj hurt?” Bourne asked after a time.

“Left shoulder,” Aashir said. “It’s nothing compared to what happened to—” But he stopped, unable to go on.

They finished their work and Bourne said the prayers. Then they covered Eisa.

Returning to where Borz still lay, Bourne saw the medic was almost finished tending to him. He was running a series of simple eye tests to determine if Borz had sustained a concussion. But when Borz saw Bourne, he waved the medic away. His bodyguards helped him to sit up, and Bourne crouched down in front of him.

“Thank you,” he said in Russian, then, remembering, in Arabic. “I wouldn’t have made it out without you.”

“Your desk saved both our lives.” Bourne gestured with his head. “All the recruits are dead, the C-17 is destroyed. What happened?”

“American drone strike,” Borz said, wincing as he gestured for his men to raise him to his feet. “You buried one of the Americans.”

“He was a friend of Aashir’s.”

“Still, you took him out of the line. You shouldn’t have done that.” Then he shrugged. “Let’s get inside.”

They proceeded in a halting manner to the last building of the five, which had come through the attack unscathed. It looked like a combination of schoolroom and barracks, with wooden desks and chairs in the front half, steel-framed bunk beds in the rear.

The bodyguards drew out two chairs and Borz lowered himself into one. Bourne took the other. Borz was given water and a couple of pills by the harried-looking medic, who after administering a superficial check of Bourne’s faculties and reflexes scuttled back outside to do what he could for the wounded. Borz drank the water, threw the pills onto the floor, grinding them to dust beneath the heel of his combat boot.

When he spoke again his voice was steadier, more assured. “What happened is what was supposed to happen.”

Bourne shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Precise coordinates were leaked to the Americans, as well as a precise date and time. A drone strike, Yusuf, with me as the target. The one thing I didn’t count on was them sending in two drones. The bastards wanted to make sure they got me. They might have, too, if it hadn’t been for you.”

At once, Bourne understood why Borz had dismissed the possibility of Bourne being an American spy: They never would have sent one of their own into ground zero of a drone strike.

“You wanted this destruction?”

Borz smiled. “You’re a clever man, Yusuf. Provide your own answer.”

And then Bourne recalled the Chechens frantically taking photos of the dead recruits. They were going to disseminate those photos, proof that an American drone had killed a hundred young American boys. The fallout would be massive. The drone program, already under attack in the United States, would be dead, and the president’s stature would take a major hit.

“Dupe the Americans into killing their own young men. The plan was brilliant,” Bourne said, sickened by the utter barbarity of it. Eisa and those other kids never had a chance. They had been recruited as cannon fodder, as exhibit A in a PR stunt of Machiavellian cunning. Credit where credit is due, Bourne thought. He was up against two brilliant tacticians.

“It was,” Borz acknowledged, “and from every angle. Listen, as far as the Americans were concerned, they traveled a long distance because they believed absolutely in our cause. ‘To serve is to die,’ as the Iranians say. That’s what we promised them. They drank the sweet nectar of martyrdom.”

“You know Iranians?”

“Does anyone know them?” Borz shrugged. “I do business with them from time to time. But only sporadically. They’re—how to put it?—unreliable. They always have their own inscrutable agenda.”

He turned away. Clearly, he had more important things on his mind. “Unfortunately, we had to sacrifice the plane,” he said. “It was a necessity, but it will also present some difficulties for us. Namely, we’re going to have to leave here on foot, and to do that in complete safety we’re going to have to gain the permission of Khan Abdali, the local tribal leader.”

“That’s a problem?” Bourne said.

Borz laughed his weird laugh. “Problem would be an understatement. Abdali is a son of a bitch, one fucking nasty piece of work. He could easily turn us down out of spite. The predominant language here in the valley is a form of Pashto. I was hoping Faraj would bring someone who spoke Abdali’s godforsaken dialect, but—”

“Not to worry,” Bourne said. “As it happens, I speak Wazirwola.”

“Rampant consumerism,” Hunter said, rapid-fire. “That is capitalism’s end. That is where America is now.”

The rain had lessened to a drizzle. Above them, the sky was scrubbed clean, the last of the clouds shredded like gauze. They rode side by side, like companions in a Hollywood western. Six-shooters holstered on their hips were all that were missing.

“You have only to listen to the country’s economists, who to a man shout at the tops of their lungs that since the Great Recession the only path to renewed prosperity is for the American consumer to consume more and more. Always more.”

The sun, a red disk throwing off light but not heat, seemed to throb in the sky like a giant heart. A bluebird screamed a warning, headed for the safety of the trees, while high up a hawk circled lower. As if by mutual consent, the women slowed their mounts to a walk.

“Democracy is gone, corrupted beyond recognition.” Hunter glanced at Camilla. “In your heart you know it even if you won’t admit it. Since 9/11, we have been living in what amounts to a police state masquerading—not very successfully, I might add—as a pseudo-democracy. The Patriot Act is nothing more than a fascistic document that tramples all over citizens’ rights. I mean, what does America export except Coca-Cola and 3-D movies? Militarism. Imperialism, colonization in the name of planting the flag of America’s consumerism everywhere. The corruption and betrayal of the people spreads and spreads. It’s got to be stopped. There is no other choice for right-minded people like you and me.”

Hunter, reaching out, put a hand on Camilla’s forearm. At once, the horses halted, snorting.

“You were betrayed by both POTUS and Anselm,” Hunter said more softly. “You’re not alone.” Her eyes searched Camilla’s. “The choice is this: After being kicked in the head, you can either lie down and take it, or you can stand up and fight back.”

Camilla’s brows knit together. “I dunno, Hunter. Against such powerful men—”

“There is a way.” Hunter’s voice, though still low, became more urgent. “For decades now America has been entangled in unwinnable wars that have drained its finances and divided its increasingly radicalized political parties. Iraq is a hotbed of al-Qaeda activity. The government has turned Islamic. The war in Afghanistan has had the unintended effect of strengthening the Taliban’s hand and making the country, along with Iran and Syria, one of the biggest exporters of jihadists. In addition, most of Benghazi has become another al-Qaeda stronghold. France and Britain are either ineffective or have withdrawn from the world stage, leaving America without effective allies. Why does the country continue on this path? What it refers to as policing the world is in reality imposing its corrupt values on other countries. Everyone sees it, except the Americans themselves.

“What passes for culture these days? Wall-to-wall Kardashians, a naked Miley Cyrus making faces at us, Jay-Z ranting at us while he rakes in millions. Adults are reading books meant for preteens. Hollywood no longer makes movies, just franchises. As for television, it’s been reduced to trafficking in human humiliation in order to survive. And everyone rushing through the streets, furiously multitasking during the day, popping pills to sleep at night. America is in the late stages of decline. The game is up. The delusion is about to evaporate.” Her grip on Camilla tightened. “You can do nothing, remain a victim of these powerful men, or you can make a difference. The choice, Cam, is yours.”

“Islam can’t be your real name,” Soraya said.

He shrugged. “What does it matter? We are all the same.”

She lifted her head. “That’s what you’re taught? That you’re all interchangeable.”

“No one individual is more or less important than the next.”

“Does that include El Ghadan?” she said. “No. El Ghadan is your leader. He is as different from you as night from day.”

He was so close that Soraya actually felt his smile through the scarf wrapped around his face.

“Are you trying to undermine his authority? Please. In the future keep your opinions to yourself.”

While he had been talking, Soraya was studying him intensely.

“Now, come,” he said. “Sonya is finished. You must eat.”

His use of her daughter’s name sent chills down Soraya’s spine. This, too, was part of their system, engendering a false intimacy. She was all too familiar with Stockholm syndrome, which had been incorporated into Treadstone’s infamous anti-interrogation program, so harsh it finally had been shut down by the powers that be. She knew how to combat their system.