by JC Ryan
Digger also had his ‘interested’ look. It was what he was exhibiting right now, as if he could understand the mission briefing. Hell, for all I know, he can. But Trevor always gave Digger his commands in bite-sized pieces, just when it was time for him to perform. So probably, he couldn’t understand everything. Maybe he was just picking out words he knew, like ‘drugs’. Rex knew the dog knew that one, because he’d been told to search for them often enough. And he always found them.
Tonight’s work would be both easier and more intense than anything they’d done in the past. Before now, they raided labs or storehouses away from the city, and they did just one every couple of weeks. Rex had been careful to put some time and distance between the source of his intel and his raids.
As of this afternoon, though, he’d decided to change his tactics. To wreak enough destruction in a short enough time to attract some attention, they’d have to strike tonight, and because it was already midnight, it would have to be nearby. Rex had learned of two minor storehouses on the fringes of town, but his most juicy target was the truck he’d helped load earlier.
It was full of heroin, disguised in woven reed chests that had objets d’art, aka Afghani junk, wrapped in cloth and layered on top. It wouldn’t fool a straight-up customs inspection, but like everyone else around here, the customs officials were corrupt. The heroin was bound for Germany and points west via the Golden Crescent route through Turkey. If Rex had his way, somebody in Germany was going to be very disappointed in the customer service provided by the shipping company.
The plan was to hit the storehouses first. They’d be the most lightly guarded, and the explosions would attract only local attention. The truck, however, was near the center of the city. That would attract not only the city police force, but that of the Afghan military as well as the various US interests. The real economic impact wouldn’t be as much as they’d caused with the destruction of the large warehouse in the mountains the night before. But the arrogance of the action would create repercussions, he had no doubt.
The storehouses were a piece of cake. The team of Rex, Trevor, and Digger had developed a standard procedure that worked every time. Just like the night before, Digger stealthily pinpointed the guards with his night-vision camera, Rex or Trevor took out each one, usually with a silent swipe of a KA-BAR across the jugular, and then Digger scouted the lab or storehouse for anyone inside. Depending on what he found, they killed or disabled the people, rigged the C4, and bugged out before the timed explosions did their work.
The operations were flawless. The only unusual aspect was that by Rex’s normal attack time of 3:00 a.m., they’d done two, and by three-thirty, they were poised for a third.
The truck presented a different scenario, so as sirens sounded in the distance, Rex and Trevor waited on a rooftop half a block away from the compound where the truck was being guarded, while Digger took point. Rex hadn’t heard enough to know why the truck hadn’t set out on its journey as soon as it was loaded, only that it wouldn’t move until morning. It was the only reason he’d been confident in leaving it for last.
The surroundings were different for one thing. They were used to operating in rural areas, where electricity was nonexistent. Here, there were yellow pools of light, creating deeper shadows, to be sure, but also making it difficult to navigate efficiently. Digger, of course, instinctively avoided the light when he was on the job. He could approach the truck without being seen or heard more easily than Rex and Trevor could, as good as they were, they were amateurs against Digger’s abilities to move stealthily.
Nevertheless, if anyone caught sight of him, it could be game over. The fear the hajis exhibited around the djinn-dog would cause them to shout out, and they would have lost the element of surprise. Trevor sent Digger to scout for the guards with the complex whispered command, “Scout, crawl, hide, hold.” He made a gesture Rex hadn’t seen before with his hand, and Digger immediately crouched and began making his way through the shadows with his belly low to the ground.
This wasn’t the time to ask about the hand gesture, but Rex wondered what it meant for a moment. He forgot the curiosity as Digger crept within a yard of a guard, backed around the corner of the nearest building, and grew still, all the while staying in his crawl profile.
At a nod from Rex, Trevor went the other direction. After a minute, his crouched and running form came into view in the iPad, approaching from behind where Digger was hiding. When Trevor emerged around the corner, he had but one long step to reach the guard, slit his throat, and shrink back into the shadows. One down.
Rex joined Trevor, and they repeated the exercise, circling back behind the buildings surrounding the compound and taking out five guards before Digger indicated there were no more. Next came rigging the truck with C4. Rex had intended to have it happen within half an hour of their exit from the area. Trevor argued it might be better to rig it to explode when it was started.
Rex weighed the options. Would innocents be endangered if they did it Trevor’s way? He took a moment for the first time to examine the buildings surrounding the compound. Over Trevor’s protests, he slipped away and scouted around the outside of the perimeter the buildings represented. A few merchants might be inconvenienced, he decided, but if the truck left on time, only property would be destroyed. Along with the driver and whatever employees of the drug lord who owned the truck might be around. Those weren’t innocents in his book.
He returned to the truck and nodded to Trevor. “Your way,” he said.
They finished their work and sneaked through the streets to the Phoenix compound. ‘Abdul’ didn’t want to be anywhere the local police could find him when that truck exploded. And he wanted to have transport at hand when the Old Man heard there was a price on his head and recalled him.
If tonight’s mission doesn’t earn me that recall, then nothing will.
Chapter Four
Near the city center, Kabul, Afghanistan June 21, 2014, 8:00 a.m.
THE CITY WAS just beginning to hum with its usual activity when the truck exploded, sending people under the nearest shelter for cover. Screams of terror and shouts of instructions from men to their wives and children began soon after, and sirens added to the chaos within minutes.
A cloud of dust hung in the still air, pinpointing the location of the explosion. Strangely, no buildings had been harmed, and there were only three casualties – the driver of the truck, and two people whom witnesses said were standing nearby. It took half an hour to collect the largest body parts and confirm the statements. Further cleanup would take longer. The only property destroyed was the truck and its load – several hundred pounds of heroin.
Gossip ripped through the city. Could this be a new assault on drugs by the Taliban or another jihadist group? Was it a war of rivalry among the drug lords? Buyers of opium who sold to the drug lords’ operations decided to take a holiday until they knew what would happen next.
One thing was certain, it wasn’t safe to work for the drug lords right now. Thousands of men suddenly became too ill to report for work. A few turned up dead before the others miraculously recovered.
The drug lords knew it wasn’t the Taliban, al Qaeda, or ISIS. They’d paid each of those organizations a small fortune to be left alone, and even fanatics knew better than to assault the goose that laid the golden egg.
By 8:30 a.m., a meeting among a handful of the middlemen was underway. “It must be the US,” one boldly declared. Shouting ensued. One man stood up and declared he’d never trusted the foreign devils. Others, especially one who was well on his way to buying his way into the circle of the major drug lords stated firmly that was nonsense.
“We have a protector in the US,” he said.
The others quieted. “Tell us what you mean,” a third said finally.
“I don’t know his name. I know someone who does, however. If this has been the doing of the US, he will know.”
“Who in the US would do such a thing?” someone demanded. “Just
yesterday I had soldiers guarding my fields.”
“Who can know what these people think or why they do things? They send disciplined soldiers to ‘protect’ us and ‘help us to democracy’, and then they cry foul when someone hurts the soldiers. What are soldiers for, except to die in war? They talk as if they are the Chosen People, and yet they are the biggest consumers of our products.”
Several of the others stated similar sentiments until the richest among them spoke once more. “This gets us nowhere. We must demand that they stop this activity. I will speak to my contact and ask him to relay the message.”
In fact, it took a while to locate his contact, because one of the smaller storehouses Rex and Trevor had hit the night before belonged to the contact. But the self-appointed spokesman didn’t know that yet. Within half an hour though, he’d learned what happened, and he knew that it was more serious than he’d thought at first. Someone, in the US he presumed, had ordered an all-out assault on their stockpiles, and if something wasn’t done soon they’d all be out of business. In the past thirty hours, a major warehouse in the mountains had been destroyed, followed by two smaller ones and the truck just last night. He redoubled his efforts to talk to his contact.
The man in question was busy making sure his remaining inventory, now depleted by over half, would be secure, no matter what these madmen, whoever they were, did next. It never crossed his mind that all of this damage could be the work of one man.
***
IN THE MARKET DISTRICT, the man who’d told ‘Abdul’ about the job loading a truck wondered if he’d gotten his friend killed. The driver of the truck was known, and even now his family could be heard crying and screaming throughout the neighborhood in which he’d lived. Investigators were working to determine which parts belonged to which body as soon as possible, so his family could bury him within the twenty-four hours according to sharia. It wasn’t likely that would happen, though. DNA comparison took time.
The other two men who, according to witnesses, were standing near the truck when it blew up, were unknown. The owners of the truck had no missing employees, and the owners of the load it carried could not be found.
‘Abdul’s’ friend had an even more secret fear. He feared that if Abdul wasn’t one of the victims, perhaps he had loaded something else along with the heroin. He recalled how curious Abdul had always been, how determined he was to work in the heroin trade. The friend kept these thoughts to himself, because if it was true, then he’d been an accessory. He was too keen to keep his head and body connected to each other than to admit he could have pinned a target on that truck.
To avoid answering uncomfortable questions from others who might have overheard him talking to Abdul, he quietly left the market and returned home, where he instructed his wife to pack for a surprise trip to visit her parents in Andkhoy, as far from Kabul as he could take them. The trip would take several days, and when he returned after leaving his family in a safe place, perhaps things would have settled down.
***
WHEN THE SPOKESMAN for the group of minor drug lords in Kabul located his principal, whose name was Karif, his first words were of sympathy for the man’s losses. He was not surprised to find his own concerns about who had executed the attacks were echoed. Humbly, he suggested what he’d been sent to suggest.
“Is it not time to ask for help among our customers in the US?” he asked carefully. This was not the time to reveal the extent of his knowledge, or that he knew there was only one major customer in the US.
“It is not for you to run my business for me,” Karif snapped. “I will make contact if and when it becomes a concern.” His thought was to minimize panic by hiding the depth of the sword cut he’d been dealt in the past couple of days. “You may return to your own business.”
The spokesman bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement of the rebuke. As he walked away, he calculated whether he was ahead or behind in his goal of joining the major stakeholders. On the one hand, his own wealth had become more valuable by the diminishment of his principal’s. On the other, he’d allowed the man to chastise him for offering an obvious suggestion. He concluded the two factors probably balanced each other out.
To solidify his growing standing among his peers, he contacted each to report that his contact had matters firmly in hand.
***
THE OWNER OF the large warehouse, one of the smaller ones, and the truck was one and the same man, that very man to whom the spokesman had offered an impertinent suggestion. He was torn between rage and despair. All he’d worked for, not only wealth but respect, was threatened by this turn of events. Certainly, he had more wealth than most of his countrymen could dream of or count, even now. However, he was not as rich as some of the others, especially not now, when the wealth represented by the losses he’d sustained was subtracted from his holdings.
More important was the respect. In a country where no one was safe from the tides of misfortune, if he let it be known how badly he’d been hit, the others would be on him like a pack of wild dogs on an injured fellow. His first impulse was to plan how to conceal his losses. Only then would he seek help from his customer. That would also require finesse. A certain balance of power was involved.
His customer could not be allowed to know how great the losses were. Otherwise, he’d turn to another region, Colombia perhaps, to purchase product. If that happened, he, the drug lord, would also be in hot water with his compatriots, because their sales would suffer along with his.
It was all too much to bear thinking about. As soon as the supplier had left, the drug lord decided to relieve some of his tension. He returned home and visited his anger upon one of his lesser wives.
When he’d left, she began plotting his murder, along with one of the other wives and a couple of concubines. They all bore scars, both physical and emotional, from his temper. This was the last straw.
***
REX, OF COURSE, knew none of this. If he had, he’d have known his plan to create enough mischief to force his recall had worked even better than he thought. Having missed two nights’ sleep in a row, he was dreaming peacefully, however. He and Trevor had made it back to the compound just after 5:00 a.m. The guard had let them in, and then notified Frank they were back. Before they got a chance to turn in, Frank had insisted on debriefing them. So, Rex had been asleep for about two hours when the truck exploding woke him just enough to check the clock and smile.
Mission accomplished.
He closed his eyes again and went back to sleep because of the adage of every soldier there ever was. Sleep while you can – you don’t know when the next chance will come. He left a wake-up call for noon, though, so he wouldn’t miss chow.
Trevor and Digger were also asleep, and for the same reason. When the explosion woke Trevor, he half-heartedly asked Digger if he wanted to go outside. Digger opened one eye and turned his ear toward Trevor, but he didn’t get up. Trevor took that to mean no and gratefully rolled over to go back to sleep.
Chapter Five
Outside Kabul, Afghanistan, June 21, 10:00 a.m.
KARIF DIDN’T HAVE the chance to go back to his plan after relieving his frustrations at home. Before he’d set foot out the door, he was summoned by a messenger to attend a meeting with the other major players. With dread, he obeyed the summons, expecting to be called to account for his misfortune.
In that, he was mistaken, because the owner of the second storehouse to be destroyed in the early morning hours had called the meeting. He happened to be the de facto leader of the group, the richest, most experienced, and most ruthless in their industry and therefore also the most influential. His name was Usama, meaning the Lion. The namesake of the martyred founder and leader of al Qaeda took his name seriously, as if it made him as important as bin Laden. He was the only one who did, the others did bow to his authority, even as they were secretly annoyed by his over-inflated ego.
Compared to Karif, Usama had lost very little. However, the insult was infuriating. Wh
o would dare target his product? He’d heard rumors that the rank and file of farmers, buyers, and minor producers from who he and his four associates purchased their product were targeting each other, and that more than a few farmers and minor labs had sustained losses over the past eight months. It had been of little interest to him, so long as there was plenty of raw material to fuel his own business.
However, this attack on his storehouse was a slap in the face; it was humiliating. He’d summoned the others to talk about taking control of the situation. He insisted that they must all control their suppliers, so they’d stop fighting among themselves. Karif was surprised by this interpretation. It didn’t match his assessment at all.
Karif allowed the others to talk and argue, without saying much himself. His brain was busy weighing the consequences if he spoke his mind. Apparently, Usama had not learned that the truck from this morning’s attack was his. And as far as he could tell, no one yet knew of the destruction of his biggest warehouse. If he mentioned his belief that the Americans were behind it, how would Usama and the others react?
He was so absorbed in the pros and cons of speaking out that he missed it when Usama asked him directly what he thought. He only came to the realization he’d been addressed when the low buzz of conversation stopped, and he looked up to find everyone else’s gazes fixed on him.
“What?” he asked.
“We are waiting to hear your wisdom,” Usama said sarcastically. “Everyone else has agreed with me that we must stop this infighting among the farmers. It is of no benefit to anyone.”
Caught off guard, Karif blurted, “But, it is not the farmers and buyers. Surely it is the Americans, is it not?”