by JC Ryan
“Okay, so Digger’s a genius, and I’m an idiot for not recognizing it sooner.”
Digger couldn’t have agreed more.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, August 2, 2013
REX HAD DECIDED on a target as close to Kabul as he could find for the first of his ultra-clandestine strikes on the minor refineries he’d identified. It wasn’t authorized by the CIA or CRC either, so he’d taken the small risk of purchasing the plastic explosives he’d use if his first choice failed. Frank didn’t ask what it was for, which meant Rex didn’t have to lie about that. But he knew Trevor didn’t want Frank to know he was accompanying Rex on a personal mission, so he said nothing.
Rex returned to the compound on Thursday evening, too late for dinner, but he found Trevor and Digger playing in the yard as usual. Trevor had explained that Digger didn’t work for treats, but instead was rewarded with play, either with the Frisbee or the Kong – the choice was Digger’s – for his efforts. In fact, most military dogs, as far as Trevor knew, were trained in the same way, whether in specialties like American war dogs or in general, like Digger had been. Dogs, he’d explained to a skeptical Rex, lived to please their human companions. Nothing was more rewarding to them than praise, and play was the best form of praise for a dog.
Now that Rex had recognized Digger’s version of a grin, he realized he’d seen it before, every time he’d observed Trevor playing with him. He’d also seen it when he tossed Digger the Kong after he’d climbed that tree. It made him feel a little better about the dog’s personality, but it was still an uneasy truce between them. He didn’t know if they’d ever be friends. It didn’t stop him from exploiting the dog’s talents, though.
His plan for the lab involved sending Digger in for remote scouting with his night-vision equipped camera. If the coast was clear, Rex would slip into the lab and perform a little chemistry with the ammonia supplies the hajis used to extract morphine from raw opium. While he was doing that, Trevor and Digger would serve as lookouts. They’d be long gone when the explosion occurred, and anyone who investigated would attribute it to a careless accident with the ammonia.
If there was a person in the lab, however, Digger would show himself, dodging in and out of shadows to spook the Muj into thinking a demon was after him. Once he ran off, Rex would slip in, place the C4, and get out quickly before he came back. It was a less-than-perfect plan, because investigation would reveal sabotage. But rather than waste the trip, he’d do it if he had to.
Finding Trevor and Digger playing, Rex sat and watched for a while, until Trevor had had enough and sat down next to him. Digger of course followed and took up his usual after-play position next to Trevor, on the other side from Rex, with his head propped on Trevor’s leg. Trevor absently ran his hand through Digger’s longish overcoat to scratch his wooly undercoat. He was due for a vigorous weekly brushing. For a special treat, he stuffed a few pieces of dried lamb inside the Kong and tossed it to Digger. That ought to keep him entertained for a while.
“How does Digger alert to drugs?” Rex asked. He couldn’t have the dog barking and bringing extra guards.
“I thought you knew where they were,” Trevor objected.
“I do. I just want to know how he’ll react. I want him to pay attention to the guards and anyone in the shed working with the stuff, not the drugs. And he can’t bark.”
“He only barks when he wants to enter the convo, mate. When he smells drugs, he goes to the ground and looks in their direction.”
“Can you tell him to ignore the drugs? Just alert to people?”
“Of course. What, do you think he’s stupid?”
Digger proved he wasn’t stupid by walking up to Rex right then and giving a short, low growl. Rex’s heart skipped a beat, and then the adrenaline kicked in. “Okay, he’s not stupid,” he said between clenched teeth.
“Don’t tell me, tell him. He’s the one you offended.”
“Oh, for craps’ sake. Digger, you aren’t stupid.”
Digger sat down and gave him another of those tongue-lolling grins. Rex was beginning to appreciate the personality, but he couldn’t admit it. And he most definitely didn’t appreciate the threats. He doubted he was ever going to be friends with this mutt, but he wisely kept that opinion to himself.
“So, I want him to sneak around the lab area and let us know where any people are. We need to take them out of the equation before I blow the lab.”
“I’ll take his night-vision camera with us. We’ll be able to see what he sees. I can command him with the coms unit in his ear. We’ve got this, mate.”
“Okay, good. This first one is a tiny operation. Call it a test run. If it goes well, we’ll do more.”
“Always up for a bit of fun. We’ll be ready.”
Rex explained the plan, and Trevor approved it. It would be simple for Digger, and they wouldn’t require a rehearsal. The two men agreed on where they’d meet outside the compound so that no one would know they were together. Unless something went horribly wrong. Rex would bring the driver and pick up Trevor and Digger on the outskirts of the market, which would be nearly deserted because of the Holy Day.
The next day, the rendezvous went off without a hitch. They made good time to Kandahar, arriving in time to have dinner in the city. Their destination, about thirty miles south east toward Pakistan, would take another several hours on dangerous roads. They’d spend the night in Kandahar, then continue the next day. They’d hide out until dark, and then execute the plan, finally meeting the driver at their agreed-upon spot for the return trip at dawn on Sunday.
From the point where the driver dropped them off and their secret destination, they had a five-mile hike to the place where Rex had found the lab. It was about two miles through a wadi from the poppy farm where he’d observed workers walking into the wadi with bundles of opium on donkeys.
It had taken him several trips to locate the lab concealed among the boulders above the wadi. From what he could see, the workers must have unloaded the donkeys one bundle at a time and taken different routes from the bottom. The trails, such as they were, were so faint he’d missed them at first. He supposed the winds would scour footprints from routes not often used, which was why he thought they must take different ones. But he had eventually found it, and now he was going to relieve those workers of the need to make the arduous trip again.
It was near midnight when Rex and his companions set out for their target location where they would hide and observe during the day. They’d been hidden among rocks when they observed a single man pass them on the trail below at dusk and head in the direction of the shed that held the lab. Rex assumed more would be coming, but if they did, they took a different trail. He knew better than to assume the shed was unguarded, though. It was best to wait for nightfall and then some, to lull the guards into believing that once again they’d have a peaceful night.
Rex and Trevor ignored the blistering heat. Though the temperatures were only in the mid-eighties, they wore two layers of clothing. Loose but form-fitting black clothing made of the latest in breathable fabric underneath camo fatigues would enhance their stealth both day and night. But even though the black clothing breathed, the fatigues retained the infrared heat from their bodies. No breath of wind helped cool them, either. Digger lay on his side in the meager shade of a boulder. They could neither camouflage him nor relieve the effects of the sun beating down on his black double coat. They could only endure, which all three did without complaint. This was nothing new to any of them.
When it was dark enough, Rex stood and picked his way through the rocks to the trail. Trevor whispered a barely-audible command, “Seek.” He pointed in the direction they’d seen the man pass hours ago. Digger set out confidently and led them along what to him must have looked and smelled like a well-traveled route, though neither of the men could see it in the dark.
Rex had marked a boulder with a small dot of luminescent marker last time he’d surveilled
the area, so he’d know when he was about to break from the cover of the rocks. On Trevor’s iPad, where he was following Digger’s night vision camera view, it shone like a floodlamp. “What’s that?”
“Stop him!” Rex replied.
“Halt! Down.” Trevor whispered urgently in the mic.
Digger stopped and dropped to his belly.
“Good boy!” Trevor told him. “What now?” he asked Rex.
“The shed’s just up the trail around that boulder, but there’s no cover beyond there. Can you have him look for guards?”
“Yeah.” Again, he whispered into his shoulder-mounted mic. “Digger, crawl. Scout.” He explained to Rex that Digger would understand the commands to mean stay low and look for people.
Trevor was patiently explaining to Rex what Digger was doing as he’d lowered himself to his belly and was sniffing along the trail. As the men watched, he veered from the trail and began circling the shed, which they could dimly see in the corners of the iPad at times.
Rex saw nothing when Digger stopped and dropped all the way to the ground.
“He’s got someone,” Trevor whispered.
“I can’t see anyone.”
“He’s out there, even though we can’t see him. Dogs don’t have better vision than us but they use the combination of smell, sight, and sound, and if he says there’s someone you better believe him. How do you want to handle it?”
Rex thought for a second. Digger had cleared the next few yards of the trail, so it seemed safe to simply walk quietly to the dog’s location and see if he could spot the man. Even though it was a moonless night, and the starlight faint enough that he could barely see his hand in front of his face, he felt as exposed as if he’d been standing under a floodlight. But if he couldn’t trust his team, then this would be a wasted trip. “I’ll take him out,” he said.
Walking carefully and with uneven steps to disguise any faint noise he made, Rex covered the few yards to where Digger was, on alert on his belly. When he got there, Digger didn’t growl as he usually did when Rex was too close to him. He kept a focused stare on something ahead of them. Rex kept moving with exquisite care. He was six feet in front of Digger when he spotted the guard a mere four feet away. The man had an AK47 cradled carelessly in his arms, the curved clip hanging obscenely below his waist. Any noise would no doubt cause him to spray rounds in every direction.
Slowly and carefully Rex squatted. The man was in semi-profile, looking in the other direction, but his head was beginning to turn Rex’s way. There was no time for finesse. Rex sprang from his position like an attacking leopard, landing so close to his quarry that the man stumbled backward. Delivering a chop to the guard’s right elbow, Rex rendered his trigger hand useless, while simultaneously, with his left hand, smothering the guard’s cry of alarm.
Eight or more yards behind him, Trevor heard the muffled cry and knew it could have traveled to the ears of other guards, as well. “Digger, scout, hide.” He was asking his buddy to find another guard and then stay safe. Digger was their eyes and ears. If he was hurt, they’d be screwed.
Leaving Rex to take care of the guard he’d engaged, Trevor followed Digger. The next time he looked at his iPad, he was staring into the wide-with-terror eyes of another guard, whom Digger had found and secured by standing on his chest. Trevor was going to have to talk to him about what ‘hide’ meant. The dog, not the guard. He arrived a few seconds later and put the guard out of his misery. The guard moaned just one word before Trevor cut his throat. Alshaytan.
Trevor had seen it before – the terror his buddy struck into the superstitious hajis. They called him Alshaytan, Satan, whether because he was black, or struck swiftly and silently, or maybe it was both. Trevor wasn’t sure, but the dread paralyzed and silenced them, and that was all to his and Digger’s advantage.
“Seek. Hide,” he urged the dog. His only rebuke for the disregard of the same order a minute ago, the emphasis on ‘hide’.
Rex found Trevor a minute later.
“Yours?” Trevor asked.
“Meeting the seventy-two virgins right about now, I would say,” Rex replied. His white teeth flashed in the starlight, a startling contrast to the black greasepaint he’d smeared over the camouflage tans and olives they’d worn earlier in the day. “Any more?” He looked around for Digger.
Trevor shook his head. “Don’t think so. Digger’s guarding the door to the shack. Must be someone in there.”
“Let’s introduce ourselves,” Rex said.
From the time Digger had alerted to the first guard, fewer than five minutes had passed. With no alarm raised, they assumed the two guards were the only people around, besides the lab rat inside. He’d pose no problem. He was probably stirring his sinister stew, and if he had a weapon, he wouldn’t have time to retrieve it before they were on him.
Rex and Trevor approached the shed silently. At the last minute, Rex gave Trevor a hand signal that he understood to mean stay back. Trevor whispered the recall command to Digger, who rose silently and padded back to his side.
Five seconds later, Rex exploded through the door of the shed. Trevor couldn’t see what was going on, but he could imagine it. Rex would have overwhelmed the man with his speed, disabled or killed him, and would now be calmly rigging the explosive. The original plan had gone sideways with the first guard’s cry. Now there was no time for subtlety. Rex would plant the C4 and get out. They’d trigger it from a way down the trail, then boogie out of there before anyone came to investigate.
They’d specifically chosen C4 because it was the favorite explosive of the Taliban and every other terrorist group in the Middle East. There were hundreds of tons of the stuff in their hands.
Not two minutes later, Rex appeared in the doorway, visible to Trevor only by his faint glow in Digger’s collar-mounted night vision camera. They were already at the boulder with the fluorescent dot. With no need now for stealth, Rex covered the distance in seconds.
“Let’s go.” Three figures made swift progress down the trail, the four-legged one in the lead. They found their previous hiding place and took cover. Only thirty seconds later, a muffled boom from half a mile away gave notice their mission was accomplished. Now they had only to make their way back to the rendezvous point with their driver.
But that was not without its dangers. They had to assume someone, maybe a lot of someones, would come to investigate. Would that happen while it was still dark? Probably. Which meant they had to be prepared to meet hostiles on their way out.
Once again, Trevor sent Digger scouting ahead, this time as much as fifty yards. They stayed within range of the coms unit, though. Even though Digger had proved adept at making command decisions on his own, Trevor wanted him within coms range, which was about two-hundred yards with the current equipment. He would never put his K-9 in the way of more harm than necessary.
***
REX WASN’T SURE how much English his driver understood, so he waited until he and Trevor were back in the compound to initiate the mission debriefing. They hadn’t encountered anyone on their trip back out to the main road. They’d waited a couple of hours, and when no one came, assumed that the late hour and the isolated location of the lab must have kept the noise from waking the farmer’s other hands or his own household. At three p.m., they continued their hike to the main road, leaving behind the camo fatigues and the backpacks that would have hindered them if they’d met anyone on the way.
It hadn’t gone exactly as planned, so they discussed what to do next time to make sure that didn’t happen again. Nothing Digger could do would prevent an outcry if they sent him in to take down guards first. Their best bet was to approach from behind and garrote the guard before they were seen. But that had been the plan already. It was sheer bad luck that the first guard began to turn at the wrong time. No way to plan for that, unless there was better cover next time.
The other thing they wanted to avoid was using that driver in more of these unauthorized raids. He might put
one and one together and come up with three. Meanwhile, Rex still had his authorized mission, and it was time to suss out the exportation routes, now that there’d been time for the bad guys to collect enough product to begin shipping for the season.
Chapter Thirty
Kabul, Afghanistan, early September 2013
A MONTH AFTER his and Trevor’s first raid on the first morphine lab, Rex had made more progress on his legitimate mission. He’d enlisted Frank and his team to make inquiries among their contacts about who was moving morphine, and how. The answers were more perplexing than the problem. The distribution network started in Afghanistan, certainly. But by the time he’d traced the morphine, now in the form of heroin, to its final destinations in Western Europe and the Americas, it was too complex to be the work of the relatively unsophisticated terror networks.
It was true they excelled at radicalizing locals in those areas. They had a grasp on smuggling in human assets, and those assets were adept at acquiring the means for their terrorist acts once in place. But for every act they completed, western security agencies foiled five or more. Their success rate, while worrisome for the citizens of countries where it happened, was small in terms of percentages. So, how was it that the success rate of heroin distribution was so much better and improving all the time?
The opioid addiction crisis was on the rise. The poison that started as a field full of pretty flowers in Afghanistan, was flowing unchecked through the bloodstreams of kids and young adults alike, destroying their lives before killing them in devastating squalor. That’s if they weren’t lucky enough to get a batch pure enough to kill them before they descended to that level.
For Rex, it was as the Romans said, res ipsa loquitur: the facts speak for themselves. If the Taliban and other terrorist groups weren’t sophisticated enough to set it up, then they must be getting help. More help than corrupt politicians turning their backs on the problem. Professional help, as in criminal syndicates – the tail end of the distribution network. Rex had long held the opinion that the Mob could not have continued to exist in the US if not for the collusion of highly-placed government officials. It was also common knowledge that if a high-volume distributor existed, it was because he was sanctioned by the Mob.