“It feels like he’s baiting us,” Mike hissed.
Marcus nodded. They heard the sound of the Persian crashing through twisted tangles of willow, alder, devil's club, and ferns. In the distance, Ship Creek roared in a deep valley, echoing the power of millions of gallons of fast moving water pounding against the hard rock walls of the mountainous terrain. They followed the trail for a couple hundred yards, then Marcus stopped in his tracks. Mike dropped to one knee, weapon raised, then crouch-walked to the right, covering Marcus’s flank, getting a different angle on the target.
Kharzai stood thirty yards ahead in a wide meadow of waist-high wild flowers, facing them, a wide expanse behind him, the darkness of the spruce forest beyond that. He showed no weapons, just stood among the white cow parsnip, yellow trollius, purple geranium, red columbine, and pink wild roses, waiting. Marcus closed to within twenty yards. At that distance, he saw the dog standing next to Kharzai, tail wagging, looking up at him, the dog’s expression seemingly in expectation of something fun. The dog caught the sound or scent of the intruders and turned, letting out a warning bark.
“Close enough, Mojo,” Kharzai said. “I might have a bomb.”
Marcus hesitated. Kharzai’s hands were out of sight, hidden within the flowery burst of color around him.
“Stop there and you'll live,” Kharzai said. “Any closer, and … no guarantees.”
He looked toward Mike who was stalking up from the bushes on his right. “You too, preacher man. Don’t need your death on my conscience too — that’d probably lose me some serious score upstairs. Of course, that may be a moot point now.”
He had an odd look on his face. Marcus remembered him as being unrealistically happy all the time. Now he looked tired, worn out, like he was dying inside — maybe had already died.
“Whose side are you on, Kharzai?” Marcus asked.
“Mine,” he replied, his voice tinged with dark emotion. “I'm done with the whole USA vs. the world thing. We're no better than anyone else, and I'm not playing anymore.”
“Look, we know you helped us set up Farrah,” Mike said. “It was you who booby-trapped those mortars, wasn't it? I heard them explode, no mistaking what it was.”
“You won't be in trouble,” Marcus said. “Just turn yourself in.”
“You don't get it, do you, Mojo,” Kharzai said, raising his voice. “I really am finished. Done. Desisted, valmiiden, gotowy, gesz, färdigt, fini, kaput. Tell the boys at the Company that they need to forget me, forever.”
“Why?” Mike asked.
“Why?” Kharzai said, exasperation crackling around the word. He looked down at Deano, whose mouth opened with an innocently loving pant at the eye contact. “Why, he says.” He grabbed handfuls of his hair in frustration, “Why? Because they killed my wife! That's why!”
He turned toward the ravine behind him. Hands on his hips, he took a deep breath, like an Olympic diver about to take a plunge. He abruptly swiveled back around, gesticulating with his arms.
“They could have waited ten more minutes. It would not have made a difference for the target. I told them to wait, but no — they sent in the drone while my wife was in the line of fire and they blew my beautiful young Leila to pieces in front of my eyes!” His voice cracked at the last words. He wiped clumsily at tears and continued, “That's why I am done.” He pounded the air with each individual syllable.
Neither man had anything to say. Both Marcus and Mike suddenly pictured themselves in the same situation. They pictured their own wives in jeopardy because of their jobs, their life choices. Marcus felt a pang of guilt for leaving his pregnant wife on the sidewalk to chase this man who had lost his own beloved.
“She was the only good thing in my life,” Kharzai continued, his voice breaking against waves of emotion. “The only person who loved me for real, and neither feared me nor wanted to use me. She was the only thing that kept me sane, and they took her from me. They're lucky I did not let Farrah and his goons go through with everything.” He paused, his voice dropping just above a whisper. “I came close, though, I'll tell you that little tidbit of truth. It was tempting. I almost lost control there at the end.”
Kharzai half turned to the ravine, looking across to the endless expanse of wilderness beyond. He glanced down to Ship Creek, a fifteen-hundred-foot drop to the boulder-strewn water, a sparse handful of gnarly spruce trees twisted out of the rock, grasping the air. Ten feet below the top, a single narrow ledge jutted less than two feet from the wall — beyond that, only the barely sloping rock face to slow the descent. He turned back to Marcus, his face now calm.
“I didn't want to kill any innocent people. I…I just wanted to let them know that I can get as close as I want to whatever they think is important. Just to let them know not to come after me.”
Kharzai glanced quickly down into the ravine, then faced them again, glancing from Marcus to Mike and back again.
“Let them know that they need to leave me alone. Don't search for my body — don’t try to give me a decent burial. Just let me die and be gone.” He twisted his neck from side to side, popping kinks out of it as if limbering up for the dive. “But if they come to find me, I will haunt them — everyone I can remember from the CIA, from the military, from the White House. My ghost will hunt them down and live in their nightmares, and in time I will kill them all.”
Before either of them could say anything in response, Kharzai turned and stepped off the cliff, instantly disappearing over the edge. Deano let out a desperately sad yelp, shocked by his adopted master's leap to certain death. Mike and Marcus ran toward the edge of the cliff, Deano barking at them angrily then turning and whining as if begging them to help. They hesitated, then warily scooted past the dog, turned and peered over the precipice.
Both men reached the edge of the cliff and looked over in time to see Kharzai’s body slam against a large, sharp-edged boulder among the fast-moving rapids, the head twisted at a wild angle, neck obviously broken. A brief cloud of red colored the white water that swirled around the rocks, quickly dissipating as the torrent swept away the mangled body.
The animal peered over the edge, sniffed the air, and let out a whine then sat on his haunches staring down into the chasm.
Chapter 32
As they stepped onto the road where they left the truck, Mike’s cellphone rang. He answered.
“Honey, tell Marcus to get back to town.” Hilde’s voice was shaking. “Lonnie’s in the hospital.”
“Is she okay?”
The worried sound of Mike’s voice shocked Marcus. His heart dropped in his chest with the knowledge that they were talking about his wife.
“Okay? Of course,” Hilde said, “but she's in labor. The baby’s coming. If he hurries, he might get there to see it come out.”
Lonnie gripped the plastic sides of on the hospital bed, her face glistening with great drops of sweat. Wave after wave of pain unlike anything she’d ever imagined ripped through her, like she was being split open from the center. The nurse coached her to push, then breath, then push again. The delivery room door flew open and Marcus stepped in, breathless, still tying the blue hospital gown around his body. Lonnie tried to speak, but her breath caught and her eyes bulged as the splitting sensation crashed over her body again. Marcus reached for her hand but she couldn’t see him, blinded by the force of the pain.