State of Emergency

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Riley Cooper inhaled slowly, ignoring the metallic odor of violent death. He lay on his chest, watching, flat against a long wooden table four feet off the stone floor of the kill house. Once a fortified rest stop for man and beast on the ancient Silk Road, the dilapidated caravanserai was now a patched stone structure of cell-like rooms. Sagging sheep pens ran along the west side, forlorn and empty in the purple darkness. A toothed wind, heavy with the smell of wool, swept through the open window from the northern desert. S-shaped metal carcass hooks clanged like blood-rusted wind chimes above his head.

Cooper pressed an eye to the night-vision monocular and wished it was attached to a rifle. Coming into Uzbekistan unofficially was dangerous enough for a man in his position. Possession of a sniper rifle could cause an international incident. Still, he wasn’t the type to be completely unprepared. Just after he’d arrived, he had haggled with a small-time gun dealer in Tashkent for a Russian GSh-18 nine-millimeter pistol. The handgun, along with eighteen armor-piercing rounds, had cost him his five-thousand-dollar Rolex Submariner. He loved the watch, but such things were often the coin of the realm and the price was well worth the comfort the pistol brought resting on his hip under the navy-blue hooded sweatshirt.

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