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Ella Mamedov went through the customs gates and crossed over the Georgia-Azerbaijani border with little trouble. Unlike Henry Carr, her good looks helped assure that she had little trouble checking the records to find that Tafar crossed the border yesterday afternoon at nearly the same time.
She continued on through the town of Balakan looking for some sign that Tafar was there or passed through recently. She stopped occasionally and questioned some of the locals before moving on to the next town on her way to Ismailly.
When she got to Zaqatala, she stopped at a service station and asked the clerk if he recalled seeing anyone that met Tafar’s description. Getting no information from the clerk, Ella walked back to her car when she saw a jeep being pulled by a tow truck.
‘Can it be?’ She asked herself as she stood there staring as the tow truck drove down the street.
She got in her rental car and proceeded to follow the tow truck that led her to a junkyard on the outskirts of town. The truck pulled into the yard and proceeded to an impound area that had a chain link fence enclosure.
Ella followed the tow truck into the yard and stayed back while the driver opened the impound gate and backed the truck inside. When the driver stopped the truck to offload the jeep, Ella got out of her car and said, “Excuse me, that jeep looks familiar to me, could I check the registration?”
“No, this vehicle is under police investigation, no one is allowed to go anywhere near it,” the burly mechanic said after he removed the cigar from his mouth.
“But the jeep may belong to my military unit, I must report it to my superiors,” Ella said.
“Go downtown and talk to the police,” the man said as he turned around to lower the rear deck on the back of the tow truck.”
Seeing that she wasn’t getting anywhere, Ella climbed up on the tow truck to check the jeep herself, and a chill went down her spine when she saw a bullet hole in the tire. She walked around to the front of the jeep and saw fluid dripping from the bullet holes in the radiator. Relieved that she did not see any blood yet, she reached into the glove box and found what she was hoping she wouldn’t, Tafar’s cell phone and extra pistol. Even if he didn’t have the cell phone, she thought that he could have still contacted her, and her concern was quickly turned into dreaded worry.
“Hey you, get down from there,” the mechanic yelled up at her.
Ella stood there in deep thought and did not hear the man, but she quickly came back to reality when he reached up and grabbed her by the ankle.
With her free foot, Ella stomped on the man’s wrist with the metal-cleated heel of her boot and the man let out an anguishing yell and buckled over holding his arm. She jumped down from the truck and kicked the man as hard as she could in the shoulder sending him reeling to the ground.
She pulled out her pistol and walked over to the man who was now trying to crawl away from her using his good arm. She pushed him down on his stomach with her foot on his back.
She bent down next to the man with her gun pointed at the side of his head.
“Where’s the man who was driving this jeep?”
When he doesn’t answer quickly enough, she jammed the barrel of the pistol into the man’s ear.
“Please don’t hurt me, you have to go to the police, I can’t tell you, I’ll lose my job.”
Ella fired a shot next to the man’s head.
“I don’t have time for this, tell me where the man is or you will lose more than your job.”
“Alright, don’t shoot, he’s at the morgue, he was shot at least four times, the police found the tracks of one man on a motorcycle who was probably the killer.”
The words hit Ella like a cold knife to her heart and she suddenly felt sick to her stomach as she just knelt there by the man and stared into nowhere. She always worried whenever Tafar went into the field, but he would always return, standing in the doorway with his wide smile.
With her eyes filled with tears, she couldn’t think of anything else to do but to lash out. Tafar taught Ella that a good way to vent your anger was to empty your gun into something, and the poor tow truck driver was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She emptied her pistol into his head and kept firing even as the gun went empty until she realized that it wasn’t helping.
She dried her eyes on her sleeve and walked back to her rental car and for the briefest of seconds, felt some remorse for killing the innocent man.
As she sped out of the junkyard, she thought to her self, ‘It had to be the CIA, who else could have taken out Tafar? If they were on to him, they must also be on to Abdula and maybe even Tariq Amin’. Ella’s entire world had just fallen apart. She and Tafar had always promised that they would either die together or at the least, avenge each other’s deaths. In spite of the uniforms, weapons, and their complete martial life style, it was true love that kept them together and kept their dream for a better, more normal life, alive. She will avenge Tafar’s death, but first she’d better alert Tariq Amin to the situation. She dialed a number on the cell phone and cursed to herself when she realizes that there wasn’t much cell phone coverage in this mountainous section of Azerbaijan. She sped out of Zaqatala to the western road in the direction of Ismailly.
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