The Mingrelian (9 page)

“… not the ambassador, the deputy chief of mission, yes, that’s the second-in-command.” The secretary, speaking in Georgian, worked through the secretaries and administrative assistants at the president's office.

Dabney returned to her office and closed the door to wait.

Chapter 17: A Change of Plans

hat’s the Russian president’s aircraft,” Boyd observed as his C-130 lumbered in on final. The big white Ilyushin II was parked on a ramp at the end of the terminal, surrounded by security vehicles.

“Good thing we got in now, they’ll probably shut down for an hour when he gets ready to leave,” Boyd said.

“Maybe longer,” Bud Weidman said, leaning over to look out the side window.

They landed and taxied to a ramp at the other end of the terminal, shut down the aircraft, locked it up and walked through the crew door to the terminal and their waiting rental van. The embassy would deliver the diplomatic mail and any passengers in the morning.

“Captain Chailland?” a voice behind him asked, causing Boyd to turn. A man he’d never seen before was hurrying to catch up. He was middle-age, well dressed in a business suit and wide-brim fedora. He had dark hair and looked anxious. The rest of the aircrew walked on.

“Please, a moment,” the man said.

“Yes?” Boyd slowed, and the man came alongside.

“I am the man you know as the Mingrelian,” he whispered. “You bought two rugs from my father’s shop. You met my daughter, Ekateriana Dadiani.”

The man was breathless, sweating.

Boyd stopped. The other crew members, now 20 paces farther along stopped, and Bud Weidman looked back. Boyd motioned with his hand for them to go on.

“We must move,” the man said, turning to follow the others. “We are on television.” He nodded to video monitors in the terminal. “Something terrible is about to happen. We must do something.”

“What?”

“Look,” he pointed to a monitor, which showed the Russian president, flanked by Georgian dignitaries, making a speech. “The television just announced his route back here to the airport. He’s going down Gorgasali, that’s the road of assassination.”

“Assassination?”

“The Chechens are going to assassinate the Russian president.”

“How do you know that?” Boyd asked. He was suspicious, yet, this agitated man knew his name, the code name he’d been instructed not even to mutter in his sleep, and the name of that fascinating woman he’d met on Erekle II Street.

“I’ve just come back from Tehran,” he said as he ushered Boyd into a small lounge with lockers along the wall. “My contact there, the man who gives me the information I give to you, has told me.”

Sweat was popping out all over the man’s face, his eyes, strikingly similar to Ekaterina’s deep, dark eyes, were wide with fright. “I am risking everything. Help me!”

“OK.”

“I called your embassy. Nothing happened. I just called the police, and they wanted to know who I was. I cannot tell them. Nothing happened.”

“It’s probably a hoax.”

“It may be, but we have to do something.”

“What?”

“Stop the motorcade before it gets to Gorgasali.”

“You pull in front of the Russian president’s motorcade, you’re gonna to get shot,” Boyd cautioned.

“There’s an intersection by the Metechi Monastary. They will have to slow down. If we can get there first, we can signal them. Come, I have a car.”

“Why do you need me?”

“They will arrest me. You can tell them you got the information from American sources and commandeered my car at the airport.”

They rushed through the terminal doors and walked quickly to the parking garage across the street. Lado unlocked the driver side door of an old, blue, four-door, battered and rusted Lada. He leaned across to open Boyd’s door.

“My daughter’s car,” Lado said. “She needed my Mercedes to take my grandson and his friends to the opera.”

Belching smoke and revving like a sewing machine on steroids, the old Lada lurched out of the parking garage, Lado jamming through the gears impatiently. He raced up the entrance ramp to George W. Bush Street, the controlled access highway into town. Lado filled Boyd in on his arrangement with the Iranians and Eskander Khorasani and the scant details he knew of the possible assassination.

“Weird,” Boyd said, shaking his head, but he reminded himself that weird situations were his stock and trade. If this panned out the way it seemed to be going, it would be quite the adventure. That old feeling was coming back.

“I don’t like the Russians,” Lado said, careening through the scant traffic. “They killed my son-in-law. He was a captain in the Georgian Army, and they killed him at Gali, when they
took Abkhazia from us. He died defending our country, 20 miles from where he was born. But, if the Russian president dies here, many more will die.”

They swept by the rental van with the rest of the air crew heading to the hotel. Boyd started to wave but decided against it. He could see the Sheraton Metechi Palace Hotel ahead, where he had a room reserved for the night. He hoped he’d wind up sleeping there. Lado swerved onto an exit ramp, and they crossed the main railroad line and entered Moscow Avenue, then turned into a warehouse district and burst out onto the Left Embarkment along the Kura River and crossed the Aragveli Bridge.

“There they are,” Lado said as they accelerated up the divided Gorgasali Street. Black-clad figures lurked in the median.

Adrenaline kicked in; the fight was on. Boyd went into high alert. There were four in the median and, as the Lada raced toward town, he saw a dozen or more through the trees on the other side.

“You have a gun?”

“No.”

“A flare or something, to attract attention?”

“A disabled-vehicle placard in the trunk,” Lado said.

The street was blocked ahead at the point where the divided highway merged back into two-way traffic. The presidential motorcade was racing into the divided section they had just passed, moments from encountering the ambush.

“Turn around!” Boyd shouted.

Lado made a 360-degree turn, tires squealing, and blue smoke clouded Boyd’s vision just as the armored Mercedes limo flashed past. Lado jammed the gears and double-clutched the transmission and the mad sewing machine turned itself inside out as they turned back into traffic, tires spinning. As they
accelerated, oncoming traffic pulled to the side of the road or swerved around them, horns blaring, but they fell behind the presidential motorcade, which was going all-out now.

An explosion stopped the lead vehicle, which partially blocked the roadway. Another blast blew the windshield out of the president’s limo as it surged past the first vehicle, spinning down the roadway. The blue Lada drew abreast of the now-flaming kill zone as the third and fourth vehicles were hit and struck the first. Bullets were already flying.

“Keep going,” Boyd said, seeing a slim chance of presidential survival in the Mercedes spinning away down the street. He could see more black-clad figures coming down the hill in a tactical advance, firing from cover, then advancing. These were not amateurs.

The Mercedes skidded to a halt just at the end of the divided section of the road, under a statue of some long-ago hero. The left front tire, grill, fender and hood were blown away, and flames flickered from the engine, which had been blown into the front seat, crushing the driver. A passenger in the front seat had been blown out the side door, and his lifeless body lay in the street 20 yards up the road.

The blue Lada screeched to a halt, and Boyd and Lado got out and rushed to the Mercedes. A bullet hit the back window; another snapped overhead. Boyd looked up the street to see two commandos approaching, weapons at the ready. The back door opened a crack and a small man with close cropped hair peered over it, an automatic pistol pointed at Boyd.

“Captain Boyd Chailland, United States Air Force, sir, I am unarmed,” Boyd said, hands raised.

A bullet hit the door protecting the Russian president. Instead of ducking meekly back inside, he stood up, carefully
aimed at the approaching commandos and fired one shot. The commandos ducked for cover.

“Let’s go,” the president said.

Lado got into the driver’s seat, Boyd shotgun, the Russian president in back. The whole time Lado was speaking fast in Russian. The blue Lada reversed out into the intersection, engine in a high scream as Lado double-clutched through second into third, and sailed back over the Aragveli Bridge.

“He wants to go to the U.S. Embassy,” Lado said.

“OK.”

“That’s on the other side of town.”

“Why doesn’t he want to go to the airport?”

“He thinks this is an internal Russian coup,” Lado said. “He doesn’t trust his own people.”

“Does he have another gun?”

“No,” the Russian president said.

Then Boyd remembered the cellphone.

While the C-130 crew was getting their briefing in Washington about the embassy run, Boyd had had another session with Maj. Gen. Ferguson.

“Don’t even go to the embassy unless there’s some reason as part of the crew,” Ferguson had said. “But, carry this phone. It’s a throwaway cellphone with one number in it. If you get into trouble, call it. It’s the military attaché and chief of security. He knows who you are.”

A motorcycle emerged from traffic behind them and quickly caught up. A passenger on the back leaned around the driver and let loose with a spray from a small machine gun. A bullet went through the back window. Lado took evasive action. The shooter sat back and changed clips. The driver sped up, easily outpacing the old Lada and was right behind them.

The Russian president rolled down his window, leaned out and, aiming carefully, fired twice. The second shot hit the motorcycle driver in the chest, and the cycle crashed, tumbling in a heap.

Boyd pulled out the cellphone and called the number.

“Yes!” someone answered on the second ring.

“I’m Boyd Chailland,” Boyd said.

“Yes.”

“There’s been an assassination attempt. We have a high-value person wishing asylum.”

“Your contact?”

“The Mingrelian, and another of higher value. Turn on your television.”

“I’m watching it. Something’s coming over now.”

The television was reporting explosions and gunfire on Gorgasali Street.

“We’re coming in. They’re after us.”

“Where are you?”

“Old Town,” Lado said.

The blue Lada sped by the Presidential Palace and crossed the Baratashvili Bridge into Old Town.

“What are you driving?”

“A blue Lada.”

Chapter 18: The Embassy of the United States of America

ecure the embassy, send it out over the intercom,” Marine Corps Major Rick Shands said to the secretary in the administration section. “All embassy personnel take cover.”

He rushed down the hall.

“Corporal James, get a long gun, run out to the gate, open it, take charge of the contract guards, disperse any civilians, admit a blue Lada. Engage anything else.”

“Yes, sir!” James grabbed his hat and sprinted down the hall.

“Corporal Anthony, send the other Marine guards to their posts. Secure the perimeter. Then get the 50-cal and set it up on the balcony.”

“Yes, sir.” Anthony activated the PA system and spread the word, then rushed to unlock a nearby room with a key attached to his belt.

Shands ran down the hall to the ambassador’s office, where Dabney St. Clair sat in the ambassador’s absence. “Ma’am, we’ve got a high-value individual seeking asylum. They’re being pursued. There could be gunfire. We need to secure the embassy.”

“What? Wait, we don’t know anything about a high-value individual seeking asylum.”

“Yes, ma’am, our undercover agent just called. They’re coming in.”

“Wait, I’m the senior person here.”

“Yes, ma’am, please take cover,” Major Shands said and left the office.

The television erupted with video of explosions on Gorgasali and the sound of automatic weapons. A whole busload of journalists had been following the presidential motorcade and stopped just outside the kill zone. The battle raged in real time on national television.

“Major Shands, come back here!” Dabney shouted down an empty hall. Getting no response, she stormed back into her office, pausing briefly to watch the battle on her television.

“Get me Washington,” she said to her shocked secretary, still on hold at the Georgian president’s office. “Now!”

Furious at being surrounded by incompetence and insubordination, she slammed her office door again. It was clear, this was no drill. Something big was up, and she was in charge. A lifetime of preparation had led her here, to this moment, in this place. She had to make the most of it. She needed to show the resolve that calms subordinates and forges a team for action. She looked into the mirror and corrected an errant whisp of hair and then burst back into the outer office.

Chapter 19: A Good Russian Car

black Mercedes came up fast behind them as Lado took the first exit on the west side of the Kura River and roared into Old Town past the Georgian National Bank. A man leaned out of the rear window with a machine gun and sprayed bullets at the blue Lada. Lado evaded the first volley, but the second blew out the back windshield. Blood splattered the front windshield and Lado cried out and slumped over the steering wheel. Boyd grabbed the wheel and pushed Lado over to get his left leg into the driver’s side to keep the accelerator on the floor. Blood spurted out of a wound on the right side of Lado’s neck.