Matthew Palmer - Enemy of the Good

“I’ll do what I can not to disappoint you on that score. But I’m not leaving. I’m going to help Val with the video equipment. If Shakirov knows that he’s being filmed, it may encourage him to pull his punches, even a little.”

“I can’t stay with you, Kate. Nogoev can handle the Scythians. But I need to be with the people. This is about them.”

“I know. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Their kiss was tender and sweet and Ruslan hoped that it would not be their last.

The APCs drove forward down the path that the Special Police had cleared for them. Soldiers in green and gray urban camouflage ran alongside the vehicles. Ruslan and Nogoev watched from the observation platform. Nogoev spoke into the radio he used to communicate with his squad leaders.

“They’re coming. Hold your fire. Patience.”

“How many of them are there?” Ruslan asked.

“The Fifth-fourth is only about two hundred men total. I’d say there’s about a hundred here tonight.”

The lead APC had a steel ram welded to the nose and it crashed into the side of the van at what looked to Ruslan like at least fifty kilometers an hour. The speed concentrated too much force at the point of impact, and rather than push the gate aside, the ram punched through the wall of the van and got stuck. The APC was a sitting duck.

“Not yet,” Nogoev said into the radio. “Wait. Let them in.”

The six oversize wheels of the APC spun on the concrete and Ruslan could smell the burning rubber. Gradually, the vehicle got traction and it bulled the overloaded van forward into the compound. A second APC and scores of soldiers on foot followed. A third vehicle maneuvered to get through the gate.

“Execute. Now. Now. Now.” Nogoev did not shout the order. It was delivered with an icy calm. But the reaction was almost instantaneous.

The base of the Manas statue exploded. Shards of brick and marble went flying in every direction. The Scythians and the other Boldu supporters knew to take cover, but Ruslan saw at least four soldiers go down as the stone shrapnel whipped through the compound. The statue itself teetered for a moment and then fell forward, with the giant bronze Manas on his horse leading one last charge.

The bomb maker that Murzaev had found had only one hand. This was not especially encouraging, but he insisted that he had lost the hand in the gears of a conveyer belt and not to the explosive charges he handled for a nickel-mining operation in Kazakhstan. His partner in the operation was a civil engineer, and the two had bickered about the size and placement of the charges, with the engineer relying on math and the miner on gut instinct. They had finally reached an agreement, and whatever compromise they had settled on proved now to be just right.

The statue landed on the front end of the third APC, crushing the armor like it was tissue paper and blocking the gate.

Approximately half of the Fifty-fourth were inside the compound and half were still outside the walls. They had succeeded in dividing Shakirov’s force. Now to destroy it.

Ruslan looked around quickly to see if he could find Kate. But it was growing dark and the compound was chaos. The Scythians had lit fires to confuse the soldiers’ night-vision equipment.

“Squad Three,” Nogoev said into the radio. “Your target is the lead APC. Squad Two. Take the second vehicle.”

Two Scythians leapt from the walls onto the top of the first APC. One Scythian trained his weapon on the command hatch while the second leaned over the side and tossed stun grenades in through the firing slits.

Other Scythians lobbed Molotov cocktails at the second APC, which was soon covered in flames. The heat and smoke would drive the soldiers out of the vehicle, or they could choose to die in there.

“Do you have this?” Ruslan asked Nogoev.

“I do. Go.”

“Don’t slaughter them, Daniar. Give them a chance to surrender.”

“They’ll have a chance,” Nogoev promised vaguely. It would have to do.

Ruslan looked outside the walls and saw what he had been both expecting and hoping for. The police were gone. They had melted away and there was no one to control the crowds. Kayrat uluu had made good on his promise. Ruslan felt a wave of relief. The odds had shifted decidedly in their favor.

Ruslan jumped down from the walls and pushed his way through the crowd to the tent where his grandfather was looking after the horses. He mounted his stallion.

“Grandfather. Find Kate for me, please. Look after her.”

Tashtanbek nodded.

Ruslan rode through the crowd, urging them forward. A swarm of ordinary Kyrgyz—women from the village, pensioners from Bishkek, university students, laborers—followed him. Without the police lines to hold them back, they swarmed the soldiers and the remaining APCs, crowding around them and pulling their weapons out of their hands.

The soldiers did not know how to respond. This was not covered by their orders. They had come here to shoot armed traitors, not people who reminded them of their grandparents or their mothers and sisters. The APCs were blocked, unable to move. The drivers refused to run over the demonstrators, who were clearly civilians. The Fifty-fourth was now, for all intents and purposes, out of the fight.

From horseback, Ruslan had a commanding view of the square. To the east, he could see the gates of the Presidential Palace. They were unguarded. The Special Police who had been posted at the entrance to the palace were gone, pulled off by Kayrat uluu along with the others. The gates were not only unguarded, they were open. Now was the moment.

Ruslan pulled back on the reins and the stallion reared and whinnied his eagerness to run.

“Come!” he shouted to the crowd. “Follow me! We end this tonight.”

He turned his horse’s head and galloped for the gates, trusting that the crowd would follow.

They did.

President for Life Nurlan Eraliev picked up the gun. It was a 9 mm, polished silver with an ivory grip. A gift from Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. A man to be admired, Eraliev thought. A man who understood power. A man who though twenty years his elder would outlive him.

Looking out the window of his study, Eraliev could see them. The masses swarming through the suddenly unguarded gates of his palace, trampling through the gardens like wild horses. They would be inside soon enough. The opportunity to loot might slow them down. But they would find him eventually. There were fifteen bullets in the gun and a spare magazine in the desk drawer. The math was pretty easy to do, and the conclusion was inescapable.

He would not need all thirty bullets.

He would only need one.

He wondered how it would end for Mugabe. Would he die in bed surrounded by family and those who had pretended most successfully to be his friends? Would a firing squad offer him a quick and painless death after a hurried trial with a preordained outcome? Or would he be torn apart by a mob?

Someday, he hoped, they would understand. That everything he had done he had done for love of country. He was a patriot. The father of the Kyrgyz people. A benevolent ruler who knew what was best for his children. Someday, they would understand.

He put the gun in his mouth. The silver metallic taste of the gun was overwhelmed by the coppery taste of fear. He calmed his mind.

It would be better this way.

Someday, they would understand.

He pulled the trigger.

It was a madness unlike anything Kate had ever experienced. Soldiers ran through the compound individually and in groups with no clear sense of purpose or mission. Kate admired Val’s poise as she recorded the chaos on her camcorder. She zoomed in on two young Scythians who had jumped onto the roof of one of the APCs.