Jason boiled some water he had collected from the snow, putting some silver packages in the pot and stirring with great expectations. He finally nodded that the packages of MERs were done. He handed the packages around with a spoon for each person.
Bernadette sniffed it before tasting. It smelled like a curried chicken, but her taste buds told her it really did have the consistency of paste. She gagged, taking a large drink of water to get it down.
Jason looked up from his package, “Oh, yeah, water is an essential to getting this stuff down. Without invoking your gag reflex.”
Bernadette held up the package, she tried reading the writing. “Who made this?”
“These are from the Israeli army. I get these as I’m assured they are okay for Arab’s and their halal, or Islamic purity laws for food,” Jason said, taking big spoonful and shoving it into his mouth.
Bernadette eyed Reza and Almas happily eating the meals. They seemed content with anything slightly warm and nourishing on this bleak mountainside.
The hut they were in wasn’t more than a few meters square in size. They finished their meals, put away the packages, and threw down some mats before wrapping themselves in reflective blankets to keep themselves warm.
“Shouldn’t we set a watch?” Bernadette asked.
Jason, who had gone outside to look for their Taliban friends, came back inside. “I set a trip wire both sides of the trail. It will sound a sensor I’ll be keeping by my head.”
“You think those two Taliban are still following us?”
“They may be trying. From what I saw of them, they were not great trackers. If they stumble upon this path, I’ll be impressed,” Jason said as he yawned and lay down beside Bernadette.
The four of them lay on the floor. Almas was beside Bernadette, Reza on his side and Jason on her other side. Reza was snoring in seconds. Almas wasn’t far behind.
Bernadette lay there on her back. She could feel the heat of Jason beside her. He was moving back and forth. He pulled a hip flask from his vest pocket. The smell of the grain alcohol seeped into the air.
“You want a nightcap?” Jason asked.
“No, not really, and not with that shit-kicker stuff you’re trying to pass as alcohol. You not afraid you’ll go blind?”
Jason took a pull on the flask. He had to take a moment to catch his breath from the potent liquor. “Oh, I’ve developed an tolerance to the stuff over the years.” He paused for a moment and rubbed his eyes. “My wife doesn’t like me drinking the stuff much…”
Bernadette looked at him. “You want to tell me about your wife?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Did she pass away or leave you?”
“What the…how did you figure that out…?” Jason said, his eyes going wide as he stared at her. He wasn’t more than thirty centimeters from her. His breath was hot.
Bernadette returned his stare. She didn’t blink. “You’ve told two different stories about your wife. I’m a detective, remember, which means I’m very high on bullshit detection. You drink as if you’re drowning something out and you’re still living in the most dangerous country in the world instead of going home. So, now, you want to give me the real story of your wife or do you keeping feeding me your bullshit stories?”
Jason turned away. He put his hand under his head, taking a long drink of his flask. He let out a long sigh. “Yeah, you’re a good detective. My wife died in a suicide bombing attack in her mosque. She was a hell of a good Muslim…so much better than me.”
“Is that why you don’t practice your religion anymore?”
“Pretty much. The bomber attacked the mosque because my wife was Shia, the bomber was Sunni. There you have it. A totally good reason to kill someone if I ever heard one,” Jason said, raising his flask to the air as if making a toast to the insanity that killed his wife.
Bernadette said, “There’s no good reason for murder. Never was and never will be. My Irish ancestors killed each other because of Catholic and Protestant. I have no way of reconciling that. But I know we move on.”
“You didn’t move on,” Jason said. “You could have stayed in Canada, let the government deal with finding Chris, but you didn’t. How are you different from me?”
“Because my guy isn’t dead, at least I don’t feel it. But you can be sure, if he is dead, I won’t spend my time hanging out here living with his ghost.”
“You think that’s what I’m doing?”
“Aren’t you?”
Jason turned his head. He put his flask back in his pocket and shut his eyes.
Bernadette felt like an asshole, maybe she shouldn’t have said anything, let him ramble on about his wife, and drink himself into a hole. But that wasn’t her. She was the saint of lost causes—her friends back home and in the force had told her that. She told herself she was also the saint of the supreme asshole as well. Wondering if there was a Catholic medallion for that, she went to sleep.
Dost trudged behind Din. Every twenty minutes or so, he wanted to catch up to him, tap him on the shoulder, and say in a non-judgmental way, “My dear brother, we are going the wrong way.”
Each time he got up the courage, he fell back, hunching his shoulders and keeping his head down as the large snowflakes got in his eyes. They’d made a right turn over three hours ago. Din’s idea was to go a similar path and follow their prey up the mountain. Dost knew something was wrong. They were not going up.
Din stopped ahead. He dropped his pack and looked at Dost as he came beside him. “How long?”
“How long, what my brother?”
“How long have we been going in the wrong direction?”
The hackles rose on the back of Dost’s neck; he knew he should have endured his brother’s wrath and told him sooner. Now it was worse. “I…I think for some time.” He looked thoughtfully behind them.
“Why did you not say anything?”
Dost shrugged. “We were making good progress?”
Din raised his hand to hit Dost, and then dropped it by his side. “We need to get back to where we left them.” He looked up the sky. The clouds hung low in the valley, hiding the moon. They needed to get out of this valley before they were trapped in snow. “Come, we must hurry.”
Dost trudged after Din. Next time, he would endure the beating to correct his brother. His brother would beat him, when he was more rested and assured his blows had some energy.
Mohammad Mirwais had summoned his fighters the moment he got the call from Din and Dost. He had an idea where his prized Almas and the infidels were heading. It could only be one place. He’d heard through the other tribal leaders that someone was holding a foreigner hostage in Azau. He didn’t care for Ramin Rasul, but he’d kill him if he got in his way.
He had six Toyota pickup trucks with five heavily armed fighters in each. He received the call from Din at 0700 hours the day before outside Kajaki. He wasted no time in getting his force of thirty on the road. They traveled south to Laskkar Gar, skirted the military base, and avoided all the checkpoints in Delaram by using the countryside. The Toyota trucks took the rough terrain in stride.
They went north, then shot back towards Farah using another little used road to avoid the aircraft and artillery. Mirwais did not want his men mistaken for Taliban and taken out by Blackhawk Helicopters. They even flew an Afghan flag.
On the outskirts of Farah, they took a sharp right, crossing the river, leaving the sound of shells exploding and gunfire behind them. Mirwais did not doubt that Farah would fall to Afghan troops.
They drove in a tight convoy driving as fast as the rutted roads would allow. After two hours, the lead vehicle stopped to investigate an abandoned Camry. Mirwais got out and looked the vehicle over.
Right then, he would have liked to shoot three of his fighters who had let this car pass them a week ago. But he needed all his men, maybe he would kill them later. He stood looking up at the mountain, eyeing the goat trail they would take to get to the next valley and
to Azau. He could chase after them now, but it was risky. Too many choke points for ambush, he was better off heading to Azau.
He yelled at his fighters to get back in the trucks and continue. The engines fired up, the trucks took off.
Din and Dost looked on from some five hundred meters away. “Who do you think that was?” Din asked.
“I have no idea,” Dost replied, “but the old man seemed angry. I hope we never meet up with him.”
They moved from their hiding place and headed up the mountain.
35
Bernadette woke from a troubled sleep. Her dreams were of Chris with a knife to his throat. All those newscasts of prisoners of the Taliban pleading for their lives, dressed in red, kneeling on the ground as a man stood over them with a large knife had flooded her dreams. It gave her chills.
Jason was already up and outside. Reza was making tea using the small camp stove they’d brought along. Almas was looking over a battered Koran.
Bernadette got up, stretched, and walked outside. The valley below had been bathed in a blanket of white. It no longer looked like the surface of the moon; it looked soft, as if it wouldn’t harm you. There was no danger there, just snow.
She found a rock to pee behind, washed her hands in the snow, and joined Jason looking over the valley.
“Do you know which way we’re heading?” she asked, already knowing the answer but wanting to break the ice after last night’s conversation.
Jason didn’t look at her. He stared down the valley. “Almas told me this morning we need to walk down into that valley and up that other mountain. Our village is on the other side.”
“Oh, okay then. I guess I best get moving,” Bernadette said. She glanced at her watch, noting it was 0700 hours. “I thought we’d be starting early.”
Jason looked at her. “You were kind of moaning in your sleep last night. Looked like you had an attack of bad dreams. I thought I’d let you sleep in a bit. We’ll make the other side of that mountain in six or seven hours of steady marching.”
Bernadette turned to go back in the hut, then stopped. “What about those two that were following us? Any sign?”
“Yeah,” Jason laughed. “They sprung the trip wire last night. I went out to look. Two of the saddest Taliban I’ve ever seen were following us. They went to sleep some eight hundred meters up the trail. I took the liberty of relieving them of some weight.” He held up two AK-47 machine gun magazines.
“And they didn’t hear you?”
“Nope, fast asleep, all cuddled together with their weapons five meters from them. That’s pretty dumb for Taliban.”
Bernadette went back into the hut to drink some tea that Reza offered her and munched on a protein bar. In minutes she was ready, shouldering her pack and joining the others as they moved down the mountain.
As she walked down, she realized she’d woken everyone in the hut with her dreams but had no idea what she’d said or how mournful she sounded. She kept her head down and tread carefully as they descended.
They reached the valley floor in an hour. The valley was flat with snow-covered rocks, much easier than the mountain slopes. The only hazard was stepping the wrong way on a slippery rock and turning an ankle.
The sun had broken through the clouds making the snow a dazzling white. Bernadette put on her sunglasses and looked up at the sky. Would they be mistaken for Taliban and strafed by a NATO jet or helicopter?
The thought of the Taliban following them had her stop and turn around. She saw nothing behind them. But she knew they were.
Din and Dost stared at the receding figures. Dost was against following in the valley, with no cover and in broad daylight. And there was the unmentioned fact that someone had stolen the ammunition from the weapons in the night.
Din finally listened to his younger brother. They waited by a rock while Din texted to Mohammad Mirwais. He included his longitude and latitude from his phone app. He smiled as he received a “well done.”
“You see,” Din said, showing the cell phone message from Mirwais. “He is pleased with our progress. We will meet him soon and be well rewarded.”
Dost turned back to watch their quarry walking across the valley. Most of the schemes of Din’s were never any good. He didn’t expect much of this one.
Mirwais was stuck. His trucks had reached a raging river with a bridge that some idiot Taliban had blown up. He yelled at the trucks to split up and look for a place to cross. He was close. He could feel it. He should never have let those people leave his village alive. When he caught up to them, he would let his men torture them them to death. And the woman would receive his special attention.
36
Lackey was not happy. The Taliban suspect she’d interrogated hadn’t given up much information. She had obtained one piece of interesting intel. The foreigner, Chris Christakos, was now of importance to the Taliban. Two weeks ago they seemed uninterested, claiming the theft of the robe was a hoax staged by the tribal leaders to gain power. Now they wanted to find the robe, and Chris. She’d sent the information to Langley, and now they wanted her to act.
She was in a room with three of her other CIA agents waiting for a call from CIA headquarters in Langley. This meant that they’d made a decision based on her report.
The speakerphone rang in the center of the table, and Lackey gave her usual, “Good morning, Director,” greeting and waited for the director to give her a sense of where they would be heading.
“Agent Lackey,” Director Harmon began. He was in his late sixties, a tall man with a full head of silver hair and a stare from bushy eyebrows that could wilt the heart of the toughest opponent. He’d spent time in South Korea interrogating captured North Koreans. He was said to have the best ‘interrogation’ stats in the agency.
“I wonder why you haven’t picked up this Christakos and Lund for the theft of this robe the country is upset over,” Harmon said.
“We’ve put numerous assets out there to find them. So far we have nothing,” Lackey said. She looked around the room; they all knew her words weren’t true. The other agents did not meet her gaze.
“I want you to increase your efforts, Lackey. Put every available resource you have on it. The State Department is not happy with the diplomatic fallout of this. The Iranians are massing on the western border. With the tribes going at each other over this, this makes the situation worse than when we first walked into that damned country.”
“Yes, sir, we will find them and bring them in for questioning,” Lackey said.
“No, I want you to do more than that. Turn him over to the Afghan authorities as soon as you find them. This is an Afghan problem. We have enough on our hands. The moment we distance ourselves from this, the better off we are,” Harmon said
“Yes, Director,” Lackey said. There was no use in questioning the logic. The Canadian would be the scapegoat to diffuse this situation. The decision had been made.
Lackey took the elevator down to the basement. She walked into a large room, dimly lit with banks of computer screens that monitored all communications in the country. There she found the chief supervisor, Rodney Kowalski, a balding and overweight man in his mid-thirties. He lived and breathed the information in this room, working too many hours and suffering for it in a way that only someone addicted to data could understand.
Rodney nodded at Lackey. “What can my room of wizards find for you today?”
“I need every bit of traffic on these people,” Lackey said. She handed him a written list that included the names of Bernadette Callahan, Jason Radic, Reza and the boy, Almas.
Rodney’s bloodshot eyes looked up and down the list. “Sure, I can find them the moment I ping their phones. Anything else?”
Lackey was about to give her okay, and then she stopped. “You know, this Jason Radic was in deep with all the NATO forces here. I want you to check everything from our side as well. Anywhere he goes, any cell tower he pings off of and anyone in NATO he bumps into. I also want an alert anytime yo
u here the name Chris Christakos mentioned.
“Whoa, you want me to spy on all our friendly forces as well? Tall order,” Rodney said, pushing back the few hairs he had on his head.
“This is top level priority, Rodney. I know it’s going to task your resources, but this is direct from Langley, all our jobs are on the line. You read me?”
“Sure, boss, just trying to get it clear on how deep I got to go and how we have to cover our tracks,” Rodney countered. He hated getting on her bad side. She could make life brutal for him, worse than this dungeon of screens in the dark.
“Hey, sorry to come down so hard, but we’ve got the big guys in Langley on our asses,” Lackey said, putting a hand on Rodney’s shoulder. He was a good guy who did a great job but asked too many questions.
Rodney turned back to his people. He would give the order to put out a troll of every bit of traffic that had the names or was related to the names of these suspects. He would also pull up any cell numbers they had in the country. Every conversation, every text, every email they’d ever made would be examined.
Minutes from now, he would know exactly where these people were and their movements. God how he loved his work.
Lackey walked back upstairs. If Bernadette Callahan was as good a detective as she claimed to be, then she had to be on Chris’ trail. Tracking her would lead to Chris, and hopefully end the mess the country was in—for now.
37
Progress up the mountain was slow. The sun had melted the snow on the rocks into icy obstacles. They stumbled and fell. Their six-hour journey was pushing into ten. Jason tried not to look at his watch. The sun overhead was telling him what he feared. They’d be cresting the mountain in the dark.
Pushing their speed wouldn’t help. Safety and getting to the village without sprained ankles or broken legs was his greatest concern. At the midpoint, he halted the group and they found shelter behind the biggest rock on the mountain and pulled out some MREs.
Caught In The Crossfire: A Bernadette Callahan Mystery Page 18