Globusz^® Publishing 

Henry passed the Azerbaijani border town of Balakan and continued on to Zaqatala that was the next town on the western road. He took a few minutes in each town that he passed through to scan the main streets for a military jeep. As he continued out of Zaqatala, he pulled into a service station to fill the motorcycles gas tank and was pleasantly surprised when he spotted a jeep pulling out of the same service station.

He waved a few dollar bills in front of the attendant imploring him to hurry up. As the attendant was pumping the gas, Henry ran into the station and bought a can of soda and some chocolate bars and put them in his backpack that he had strapped across the back section of the motorcycles seat. Within a few minutes Henry was speeding down the western road where he had the motorcycle moving at eighty miles per hour weaving around slow-moving cars and dodging the oncoming traffic in the opposite lane. Before long, the jeep was slowly coming into view.

With maybe an hour of daylight left, and not wanting to drag this out much longer than necessary, Henry pulled up close behind the jeep to get the driver’s attention. When the driver finally saw him in the mirror, Henry pointed for him to pull over to the right side of the road. The driver ignored him and continued on his way.

Expecting that this might happen, Henry increased the speed of the motorcycle and pulled in the passing side lane on the drivers’ side of the jeep, and hoped that there wouldn’t be any oncoming traffic for a minute or two. As he got alongside the jeep, he looked over at the driver, who fit the description of Tafar Rasulon they got from the sailors in Batumi. Henry beeped the motorcycle horn to get his attention. When the driver finally looked over, Henry motioned for him to pull over. When the jeep driver ignored him, Henry beeped the horn again and this time, he pointed to his holstered pistol that he had strapped to the handlebars of the motorcycle.

Watching for both the oncoming traffic and the jeep driver at the same time, Henry reacted quickly by braking when the driver of the jeep swerved the vehicle abruptly to try to force Henry off the road. After the near miss, Henry decided to settle a few car lengths back behind the jeep to calm his nerves, catch his breath, and ponder his next move.

Tafar Rasulon or not, the maniac in that jeep tried to run him off the road, and a couple of bullets will make sure he never does that to anyone else again. Henry unsnapped the holding strap on the gun holster and decided to wait for a long flat stretch to take the driver out, when suddenly, the jeep quickly turned left down a side road. Henry easily maneuvered the turn and continued to give chase.

Moments before, Tafar Rasulon was traveling out the western road trying to relax his mind and think things over. His first priority was to help Tariq Amin get the cesium canisters to the launch point in Baku. Tariq was after all, his main employer, and Tafar had no desire to jeopardize his full time job and the perks that went with it. But finding and selling the Coat of Christ was an equally high priority that was on Tafar’s mind. Could they really sell if for the small fortune that his uncle and his ancestors dreamed of doing? It would not be long before he would find out. Tafar would help Amin in Baku and tell him that he had to return to pick up Ella in Tbilisi and maybe spend some time with his uncle.

Tafar looked in the rearview mirror and saw nothing but maybe a car with its dim lights a mile or more behind him. To his surprise, a few seconds later, the same lights were now only a few feet in back of the jeep as Henry Carr pulled up directly behind him on the motorcycle.

At first Tafar thought that it was probably some impatient punk just fooling around, so he waved the motorcycle to go around him. He was surprised when the motorcycle driver pointed for him to pull over. In as much as he wouldn’t mind teaching a local thief a lesson or two, Tafar ignored the biker and continued on.

He next saw the biker pull up to the driver’s side of the jeep, beep the horn, and again gesture for him to pull over to the side of the road. Again Tafar chose to ignore him. The biker beeped his horn again and pointed to a holstered gun on the handlebars of the motorcycle. Having lost his patience at this point, Tafar swerved the jeep wide to the left hoping to run the biker off the road and hopefully to his death. Tafar checked the mirror and saw that the biker must have braked in time to elude him. In the mirror, he saw the biker reaching for the gun on the handlebars. Thinking quickly for a way out of this jam, Tafar saw a left turn up ahead, and at the last split second, he swerved the jeep into the turn and narrowly missed rolling it over.

This road was in much worse condition than the main road, so Henry decided to sit back and tail the jeep for a while. They passed a couple of tourist buses no doubt filled with exhausted tourists, heading the other way. Henry hoped that if and when the chase culminated in a shootout, there wouldn’t be any innocent bystanders around.

Unfortunately, those who deal in terror like it the other way around. Henry was getting bounced around quite a bit on the motorcycle seat as he tried to maintain a reasonable speed to keep up with the jeep. Soon the winding road started heading upward into the mountains, and within minutes they came out into a scenic valley nestled between two mountains. As they sped through the small valley, they passed an old abandoned church and then came up to an old fortress. Soon it became obvious to both Tafar and Henry, that they were approaching a dead end. Henry slowed down to keep the jeep further in front of him when all of a sudden Tafar pulled the jeep sharply into a dirt parking lot and spun the jeep around to face Henry. Tafar stood up in the roofless jeep with his handgun ready and started firing at Henry. When he saw Tafar spin the jeep around, Henry quickly laid the motorcycle down on its side and he slid on the dirt and rolled off the side of the road to get some cover. As bullets were hitting the dirt around the berm of the road where he was hiding, Henry returned fire and put two bullets into the radiator of the jeep and two into the left front tire to make sure that Tafar could not escape from the area. With steam billowing from the jeep’s radiator, Tafar used it for cover and he jumped out of the jeep and ran toward the fortress. Henry chased after him and watched as Tafar kicked in a wooden side door of the fortress and ran into the building closing the door behind him. Henry quietly walked up to the door and took cover behind its stone archway. He pulled a thin four-foot flexible, fiber optic camera probe from a small kit that he had in his coat pocket and slid it under the door. On his hand-held monitor he focused the camera in the probe and scanned inside the building. With the sun nearly set behind the tall hills, hardly anything was visible. Henry pushed a button marked infrared on the handheld monitor and rescanned the room and saw the heated outline of Tafar Rasulon standing behind the opposite arch inside the door, ready to ambush him. Henry pulled out a small disk from his kit and flipped on a small switch before he slid the disk under the door and quickly moved away to brace himself for the impending explosion from inside the door. After the quick blast, Henry busts the door in with a solid leg kick exposing the smoke filled entry chamber. He took a running race and dove into the room with his pistol firing four shots in the area where he saw Tafar on the scope. Not hearing any noise, Henry decided to lie low on the floor while the smoke cleared the room through the open door. As the smoke finally started clearing, Henry remained on the floor with his pistol at the ready as he waited, watched, and listened for any movement. He soon saw Tafar sitting sprawled against the wall dazed and bleeding from his arm and leg. Henry wasn’t sure whether it was the explosive or the bullets that caused the wounds, but he was grateful just the same.

Henry stood up carefully and started walking slowly over to the wounded man.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, with a quick jerk of his uninjured arm, Tafar, who had his large knife hidden by his side, flung it at Henry. Henry reacted quickly as he instinctively swayed his body to one side as he could almost hear the twirling steel blade cut through his coat and shirt. He hoped it was his imagination when he thought he felt the cold steel hit his side as the sharp serrated steel blade cut everything it came in contact with before it fell harmlessly to the floor. It took less than a split second for Henry to realize from the sharp burning pain in his side that the knife definitely hit him. He reacted quickly by putting a bullet into each of Tafar’s throwing shoulders rendering him powerless.

Henry held his side that was wet with blood and stung with pain like he was cut by a razor blade as he again started walking closer to Tafar who he could see was now bleeding from three of his four limbs.

“Tafar Rasulon?”

Tafar just stared up at Henry with his eyes half closed and never felt so helpless in his life. Usually he was the one who stared down at his many victims and he had absolutely no intention of speaking to the man who will probably kill him.

“Why do you people insist on doing things the hard way,” Henry said as he stepped on Tafar’s leg wound.

Tafar screamed in agony for him to stop.

Henry removed his foot from Tafar’s leg wound and said, “Are you Tafar Rasulon?”

Tafar nodded his head affirmatively as he fought through the pain and tried to retain some dignity in what may be his final hour.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who you work for and where I could find them?”

“I can’t,” Rasulon mumbled and shook his head.

“I could let you live if you tell me, otherwise all your doing is wasting my time.”

Tafar lied there feeling the blood flow from the bullet holes in his body and thought for a moment about letting the American help him. The idea of turning in his own people was foreign to him, the idea of losing one of his limbs and not being able to throw his knife again was something that Tafar also had trouble considering.

“Will you tell me who you work for?” Henry asked a second time knowing that Tafar had to be thinking about it. Even the most violent living things try to cling to life as they feel it slipping away.

Tafar shook his head negatively. His body was screaming for him to seek help, but his mind told him that the American would put him out of his misery a lot quicker.

“If you help me, I’ll get you to a hospital, and give you some cash to get you out of this country.”

Rasulon painfully shook his head again, closed his eyes, and said to himself, ‘Forgive me Ella.’

“I understand, you’d much rather see a lot of innocent people die, wouldn’t you?” Henry said knowing that this man does not deserve to leave this life feeling good about him self.

He put the barrel of his pistol against Tafar’s head, hoping that he’d reconsider. Henry counted to three before ending the wounded man’s pain.

He searched through Tafar’s pockets and took anything that might provide information about his employers. He also took the dead man’s knife for safekeeping, hoping that it would never be used to kill again. As he left the fortress and started walking back to the motorcycle, Henry went through Tafar’s wallet and saw the usual credit cards, cash, nothing out of the ordinary. He stuffed the credit cards in his pocket to have Langley do a trace on them before the owners could cancel them. He let the cash fly all over the grounds as he walked, hoping that some poor soul could do some good with it. The only thing left in the wallet was an old picture of a woman who Henry guessed was probably Tafar’s mother. On the back of the picture were some words written in a dialect that Henry could not interpret. The only words he was able to make out was ‘tenth pew’ and was not at all certain that they would hold the same meaning that he had in mind.

Believing that this information was meaningless, Henry looked at the woman on the picture and said, “Sorry ma’am, but your boy was really up to no good.”

Henry tossed the picture and wallet away and continued walking away from the fortress and back to the motorcycle. He stopped when he noticed a plaque on the front wall of the fortress and a statue noting that it served as a prison for the mutinous prisoners of the Battleship Potemkin. Henry vaguely remembered the story of the 1905 mutiny on the Black Sea that was a precursor for the Russian revolution twelve years later. He thought about the brave men that rose against their oppressive officers who were forcing them to eat spoiled meat while they themselves ate well.

Then he thought of Tafar Rasulon lying dead on the fortress floor with the clean uniform, polished boots, the jeep, and full wallet that assured that he wanted for nothing. Henry could only think of how spoiled and cowardly the fighters were today compared to a hundred years ago. All they wanted back then was to be fed and treated decently, and for this they would follow their leaders into battle and to an almost inevitable death. The terrorists today are content to hide and plot their vicious attacks, and are brave only when they have the upper hand. Usually they choose to battle as cowardly terror mongers.

Henry looked up at the statue of the Potemkin mutineer and saw the proud face of the poor sailor. Then he took one last look back at the fortress and thought how much more he admired and respected the brave mutineer than he did the terrorist lying dead inside the fortress.

He got back to his motorcycle, stood it upright to inspect it, and was thankful that Tafar didn’t run over it with his jeep or hit it with any bullets. He looked over at Tafar’s jeep and cursed himself for shooting holes in the radiator and tire. He thought that it would have been nice to discard the motorcycle in favor of the jeep.

‘No rest for the wicked,’ Henry thought to himself as he reached into his knapsack and pulled out some medicinal adhesive tape to disinfect and close the surface wound on his side. He was glad that there was not a lot of blood loss, and figured he could use every drop he has to keep him warm on the four-hour motorcycle trip to Baku where he has to meet with his men. After he patched himself up, he downed a couple of painkillers along with the chocolate and soda he bought at the service station earlier. He hopped on the motorcycle and headed back out to the western road. When he passed the old abandoned church on his way out, he thought about his own faith, and how, much like this old church, his spirituality had been abandoned too, and there was no use in looking back. In his line of work having a conscience is a liability. If he was distracted by any compassion for the wounded Tafar, he could be back in that fortress lying on the cold concrete floor with that big knife in his chest.

Henry continued past the church and gunned the throttle on the motorcycle when a sudden thought came to him. Church....pew. He brought the motorcycle to a near stop, made a U-turn, and headed back to the fortress. He drove around the parking lot until he spotted Tafar’s wallet that he tossed away. He was relieved when he saw that the wind didn’t blow the picture too far away from where the wallet was. He reached down from the motorcycle and picked up the picture and put it in his coat pocket. This time he slowly rode back out to the small abandoned church and stopped to look it over. Seeing that the front door was locked and chained closed, Henry pulled the motorcycle near one of the side windows that were fairly high. He stood up on the seat of the motorcycle and with his flashlight, looked inside one of the windows that were smashed by vandals. Inside the church, with the exception of a bare wooden cross that hung on the wall above where the altar once was, the place was completely stripped of all of its elements of worship. On the floor, Henry saw the nail marks where the pews once were, but he counted only eight rows of pews, and the writing on the back of the picture said ‘Tenth pew’. Henry reminded himself that it was obvious that Tafar had no intention of pulling in this road to begin with, so this church was probably unrelated to any reference on the back of the picture. He wondered if there was anything significant about the writing on the picture at all. But why would a cold-blooded mercenary be carrying it? He got back down on the bike, started it up again, and pulled away from the church and headed to his next assignment in the port city of Baku, Azerbaijan.