Flashback

Boy on a horse? Nick looked from display to display. The ride had been so uneventful, except for this truly weird conversation, that he’d forgotten all about where he was and what was going on outside the sealed vehicle.

“Roger, Boxcar Two,” replied Sato on comm. “I’ve been watching him for some time now, Willy. Over.”

Nick finally found the screen showing the boy on a horse. The mini-drone sending the images seemed to be only forty or fifty feet above the kid. The boy seemed to be about Val’s age—thirteen or fourteen at the most.

No, Nick corrected himself, Val’s older. He just turned sixteen a few weeks ago. And I forgot to call him to wish him happy birthday.

This boy was spanic, shirtless, shoeless, and wearing only dirty, raggedy shorts that looked to have been cut down from a man’s pair of chinos, and he was mounted on a nag so old and swaybacked that the boy’s bare toes almost touched the dusty earth. The boy and old horse were scrawny enough that ribs showed through scabbed brown flesh on both of them.

“I don’t see a phone,” said Bill from his position in the top gun bubble turret of the other vehicle.

“Me either,” said Joe from their own gun bubble.

“Boxcar Two, Boxcar One,” broke in Toby from where he rode shotgun in the front of the second Oshkosh M-ATV. “It could be in his pocket, voice activated. The kid could be sending coordinates to artillery right now.”

“Roger that, Toby,” Sato said calmly. “Has anyone heard anything?”

Nick realized that the drone was sending audio as well as the video feed, but when he managed to match frequencies with it, all he could hear was the wind through the dry grass around the kid and the occasional lazy swish of the swaybacked horse’s tail.

“Negative that, Boxcar One,” replied four voices.

“Boxcar One and Two,” continued Sato. “Has anyone seen his lips moving?”

Again, four negatives came back over comm. Nick felt like an idiot. A left-out idiot.

“Boxcar One, I have the fifty-caliber mounted,” said Bill from the bubble of the second truck. “He’s about a hundred and thirty meters east of us. I can reach him easily.” Easiry. They were obviously all speaking in English for Nick Bottom’s benefit.

“Roger that, Boxcar Two,” said Sato. “Please keep tracking him until we are out of sight about a kilometer ahead. Joe, do you have him?”

“Yes, Sato-san.”

“Allow Bill to keep his eye on the child and the horse. You keep pivoting and report anything else.”

“Roger that, Sato-san.”

“Boxcar Two… Bill?”

“Hai, Boxcar One?”

“I am watching the monitor but driving, so please be sure to tell me the second the boy moves… especially if he turns his horse around. Please tell me which way his horse’s head is pointing. Watch the drone monitor when we pass out of visual.”

“Hai, j-shi,” came Bill’s fast, sharp response.

Tell me which way his horse’s head is pointing? thought Nick.

When they’d passed over the little rise and started descending into a broad valley toward a bridge over a dry riverbed, Nick asked, “What was all the questioning and talk about my feelings and Japan and China all about? I don’t believe it was random.”

“It is about Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev and your meeting with him tomorrow morning, Bottom-san.”

“Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev? And what do you mean my meeting with the guy? You’ll be there, too, won’t you?”

“Negative, Bottom-san. Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev contacted us, Mr. Nakamura himself, to arrange this meeting, and Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev stipulated that it must be just with you. No one else.”

Nick tried to shake his head. “I don’t get it. And even if he does want to talk just with me, what’s that have to do with all the talk of countries coming part, Japan, China, the whole nine yards?”

“You must understand what Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev is,” said Sato over their private comm link. “What he represents.”

“He is a drugrunner,” said Nick. “What he represents is a giant shitload of money.”

“Yes, Bottom-san, but there is much more. Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev’s parents also went through this loss of a nation’s culture and integrity when the Soviet Union imploded.”

“Well, boo-hoo for them,” said Nick. “Besides, isn’t Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev Chechen? He and his parents should have been cheering when the old USS of R went belly up.”

“His father was Chechen, Bottom-san. Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev’s mother was Russian and he was raised in Moscow…”

“I still don’t see…” They were approaching the bridge. Ahead of them, I-25 cut a long shallow ramp through the opposing valley wall. The somewhat greener, somewhat grassier bottomlands here were interrupted by ancient cottonwood trees, both standing and fallen.

“Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev represents not only Russia’s waning interest in the parts of the United States currently occupied by the forces and colonists of Nuevo Mexico, Bottom-san, but also the Global Caliphate’s very active interest.”