by Eric Meyer
* * *
Eighteen months before - Kabul, Afghanistan
After five operations in as many weeks, we were worn down. Our boss, a retired US Marine Colonel named Mason, had briefed us to take down a local Al Qaeda commander, who was as notorious for his heroin operation as he was for his terrorist activities. The Colonel stood before us, hard and direct, all guts and glory, and with a pugnacious look on his face.
"I want this fucker taken down. We've been after him for months, and he's managed to ambush several of my platoons and caused a lot of my boys to go home in body bags. Find him, and hunt him down, anywhere you can. And kill him."
"Where does he operate out of?" I asked him.
"Kandahar. Fucking cesspit. I'd nuke the place if they'd let me."
I smiled. He was no Democrat. The Colonel was one of those guys who had Ronald Reagan down as a trendy liberal. He handed me the current intelligence packet on one Mir Khan. A former schoolteacher, he’d worked in a high school in the center of Kandahar. It was strange he'd swapped careers, from educator to drug trader and murderer. It made me wonder what kind of stuff was on the curriculum at his school.
We usually traveled as aid workers, working for a variety of fictitious organizations. We could have used the cover of a genuine outfit, but I had an idea that Save the Children Fund may object if people came to think their aid workers carried something other than food and water to the great unwashed of Afghanistan. This time, we masqueraded as representatives of a major US importer of illegal drugs, looking for new sources. I hoped it would get us nearer to Mir Khan quicker than offering to supply blankets and baby milk.
It was the first time I met Isra Farhi. The Colonel called her in. The sight of such a glamorous girl in the garbage tip that is Kabul bemused us. He grinned at us.
"Bit of a looker, eh?"
We all nodded. "Things are looking up around here. That's a nice looking girl," Manuel said.
Isra simpered. Mason shook his head, enjoying himself. "You can't judge a book by looking at the cover, Mr. Salazar. Underneath that glamour, Isra has a secret."
"I don't give a shit," he replied, his Hispanic passion already aroused.
"You will, when I tell you Isra is a boy."
Brad chuckled, but Manuel's jaw dropped open. For a few seconds, he was frozen in shock.
"You mean that?"
"Sure. He's about the only cross-dresser in Afghanistan. At least the only one who’s managed to stay alive; most women wouldn't dare doll themselves up like that, let alone a guy. He's going to guide you through some of the nasty places in Kandahar. He grew up there and only moved to Kabul a couple of years ago, so he knows his way around. He'll pose as a working girl who you picked up somewhere along the way."
It took Manuel the rest of the day to get over his shock and chagrin. He managed it eventually, and Isra proved himself a valuable source of local knowledge that saved our fireteam a great deal of grief. We arrived in Kandahar in our battered Land Rover SUV and checked into a fleapit hotel. For three days, we went around third-rate bars, talking to villainous looking taxi drivers and scouring ten-dollar brothels, spreading around the message of hard cash. American dollars. For some reason, the Muslims who professed to despise America didn't feel the same way about our greenbacks. On the evening of the third day, I was in a bar with Manuel, while Niall and Isra went to visit an undercover erotic show. The barman called us over to a quiet corner.
"I have spoken to a man who knows where Mir Khan will be. I have it written down. He will be there at one o’clock. That is all I know. Where’s my money?"
I handed him a hundred dollars in tens, and he passed me a dirty piece of paper with a time and location written on it. Tonight, an hour past midnight, and the location was a square in a particularly squalid and rough area of Kandahar. That was saying something in a city that was almost entirely squalid and rough.
"Tell him we'll be there."
He looked alarmed. "What do you mean, ‘we’? He’s expecting to see one man. If he sees more, he’ll call it off."
Niall and I exchanged glances. I turned back to the barkeep and nodded my agreement. “That’s no problem. Tell him I'll meet him there, and I'll come on my own."
We made our preparations through the rest of the evening. Wearing ballistic vests wasn't an option, not when you’re working undercover. You had to do your best to duck the bullets when they started to fly. It sometimes worked. Everything else was the familiar routine, memorized from a score of previous operations. We had a hand drawn street map on the table, and we used it to mark down fields of fire and infil and exfil. Isra sat sulking on a chair in the corner; annoyed his evening had been ruined when I called Niall to give him the news.
I carried a Sig Sauer Mosquito fitted with a suppressor for operations like this. I would be face-to-face with Khan, and the Sig carried ten .22 rounds, lethal at short range. It was an ideal assassin’s gun, and this night I’d be the assassin. I kept my .45 Ruger in the pocket of my coat, as we didn’t expect to make it back to the hotel. Niall carried a long rifle, a Remington bolt-action firing Remington Ultra Magnum .300 shells. Reliable and hard-hitting, he always carried it stashed somewhere when we went into the field. Brad and Manuel sported identical M-16s, as well as a range of sidearms and edged weapons. We had the tools to do the job, and so far, we’d never failed.
Niall found a position on the roof of an empty building to cover the square. To our amusement, Isra insisted on joining him. ‘To polish his barrel’, Salazar suggested in a surly tone of voice. He was still miffed from when he failed to spot Isra for what he was. Brad and Manuel hid behind an abandoned rusting car with most of its parts missing. I tucked the Sig under my shirt, and at 01:00 exactly, parked at the side of the square and walked into the center. I waited less than five minutes, and then a vehicle approached from the other side. A big Mercedes SUV, shiny black, with smoked windows to conceal the occupants. The kind of thing the drug dealers drive around in to show they've made the big time. The Mercedes halted a few yards away, the doors flew open, and four Afghans jumped out carrying assault rifles, AK-47s. They didn't speak, just covered me and waited. A few minutes later, another Mercedes SUV, identical to the first one, rolled into the square. The passenger door opened, and an Afghan climbed out. He was a huge, muscle-bound ape, with an obvious bulge under his coat. So this was a bodyguard, yet another essential status symbol for today’s corporate drug runner. And then Mir Khan stepped out.
I was surprised. He didn't wear Afghan clothing. Instead, he displayed a lightweight suit that could have come from Brooks Brothers. He stood staring at me for a few moments, and then opened his mouth to speak. He didn’t get any further, as the square erupted. Hundreds of men stepped out of the shadows, chanting a low, angry rumble like the idling engine of a Mac truck. It was an ambush sure enough, but why? And who was ambushing whom? Khan rapped out orders, and his men bunched around him and began moving him toward his SUV. I was stuck there, watching the crowd heading toward me. They’d materialized as if by magic, and if ever there was a time to use the word surreal, this was it; the kind of ‘what the fuck’ moment when you’d sooner be anywhere else than here.
They drew nearer, and there must have been three hundred of them now. In front of them, I could see a couple of religious men, Imams or Mullahs. I was relieved it was Mir Khan and his henchmen they were going after, and I prepared to slip away. We found out after it was a purely religious demonstration. The crowd was incensed with the problems Mir Khan had brought to their town. It was already a shithole, but there are shitholes and shitholes. But since he’d arrived, it had become one of the worse shitholes. It may have been another reason. They didn’t hand over enough bribe money, which was likely too. I couldn’t give a damn. I wanted out of there. Either they’d kill him and do the job for us, or we’d have another go at him later.
But then Khan’s men opened fire. The stupid bastards cocked their assault rifles and opened up. The weapons roared as they sent a
hurricane of bullets into the crowd.
The first to go down were the Muslim clerics in the front row. The crowd bayed for blood and lunged forward, stepping over the bodies of their fallen. Within seconds, they’d surrounded Khan and his men, and they moved in for the kill. It was like watching a pack of dog squabbling over a fallen stag. They screamed, cursed, and shouted for revenge. I didn’t understand Pashtu, but it wasn’t needed. They were speaking a universal language, of death, at least in the Muslim world where they weren’t too fussy. I edged back toward our vehicle, and that’s when they saw me.
I was within seconds of being shredded by the mob, who assumed I was part of Mir Khan’s outfit. Two men were quicker than the others, and their hands stretched out to grab me. Each of them went down. Niall could fire, load, and fire again almost as quick as if he was using a semi-auto. The crowd roared even louder and started forward. The only thing that kept them from me was the gunfire from Brad and Manuel. They created a firebreak, a lethal area filled with flying lead that killed every man who stepped inside of it.
I made the Land Rover, started up, and drove a short distance away to wait for the others. But as I left, the crowd parted, and I could see Mir Khan and his men laying on the cobbles of the cobbled square; they weren’t men any more. The enraged crowd had used knives, and no one uses a knife like an Afghan. They were bloodied pieces of raw meat.
I drove away fast, trying to stop myself from vomiting. The journey back to Kabul was conducted in silence. They’d all seen what I’d seen. Horrific. Man at his most elemental, like savage beasts. Kandahar.
* * *
The present day – Rockport, Maine.
"Wasamatter?" he slurred. "You scared to fight me?"
He was almost correct. I was too scared. Too scared to kill him. And that was the problem, the reason I'd bought this little place close to the beach in Rockport, Maine. A place I could hide in, and spend my nights soaking up so much booze I became a fire risk. Dave, the bar owner, caught my eye. He knew some of my story, enough to know when to call a halt. Besides, he didn’t want to have to explain to the cops why his clientele were brawling inside his bar. Rockport, Maine isn’t that kind of place. Fishermen, tourists, the occasional politician on vacation with their secretary, thirty years their junior. But there were no redneck bar fighters in Rockport. As well as that, the bar was a nice place, decorated with marine artifacts, fishing nets, a diver’s brass helmet, a ship’s wheel, that kind of thing. They also served a decent lobster. I nodded to Dave. He was a good guy, a former petty officer in the Coasties.
"It's okay. I was about to call it a night."
My unwanted companion jumped on it straight away.
"You're a lowdown, fucking coward," he snarled. "What are you, some kind of a pansy bitch?"
I pasted on a cheerful smile. "I guess you're right. Maybe another time."
I paid my tab and waved good night to Dave, who looked relieved to see me leave. I started along the narrow street that led to my home, an old fisherman’s cottage. In reality, it was a timber shack, only a hundred yards from the rocky beach. On the other side were plenty of trees, enough to make my shack invisible to anyone who passed any more than a couple of hundred yards away. That’s the way I liked it. I walked down the concrete path but didn’t put the key in the front door. Instead, I headed for the beach. It was a regular nighttime routine, to walk the lonely, rock-strewn shore, with just the howl of the chill wind to keep me company. I could hear the sound of the sea, boiling and foaming as it smashed down onto the rocks in a crescendo of noise that shut out conscious thought. Almost. That's the way I liked it, too.
Except when the waves stacked up high and rolled inshore, they were like zombies rising from the dead. A seaborne army of the dead; those men I'd killed returning to march through my dreams. I couldn't block out the memories, no matter how much booze I had in my system. I'd come to realize that nothing would erase the horror from my brain. Apart for the last resort, to wade out into the freezing water and start to swim, and keep swimming until the strength had left my exhausted body, the numbness took over, and I sank into dark oblivion. Maybe the guy in the bar got it right. I was too much of a coward, too scared to face reality. Whatever the reason, I thought about doing it every night. Just after the memory of that final slaughter hit me with the force of a hurricane.
* * *
Nine months before, Herat, Afghanistan
We were hunting the local Al Qaeda commander in Herat, a guy by the name of Ghani Khan. It was enough he commanded a battalion-strength Taliban unit, to send him on his final journey to paradise. But Ghani Khan had distinguished himself more than most. His hobby was beheading captured ISAF soldiers, usually Americans, and displaying their heads on a spike in the main square. He was a hard man to find. His modus operandi was to slink into town during the night, carry out his butchery, and slink away before dawn. They'd been trying to run down his hiding place for three years, and so they finally handed the problem to us, the Hunter Killers. We went in undercover, posing as relief workers. The four of us drove in a Toyota Land Cruiser SUV, decked out with the name of a fake charity, Emergency Help. We didn't carry anything heavier than sidearms, in case the Afghan cops stopped us. A trunk full of automatic weapons and grenades would have cost a couple of thousand bucks to pay off the officer.
In the event, they arranged for our contact in Herat to supply us with everything we needed. Maybe it was underhand, but we weren't looking to play tiddlywinks with the Taliban. At least we didn't travel dressed in burqas, posing as a mobile laundry service. We met our contact in a flea ridden bar two streets away from the square. The place spilled around onto the sidewalk of a lane, too narrow to allow the passage of vehicles. In the center of the cobbled street there was a gully, the kind that would allow rainwater to run through it without spilling over into the stores either side. It wasn't just rainwater we saw trickling past, and the stench of sewage was unmistakable.
"You weren't followed?"
We regarded the man we’d come to meet with disbelief. He was Joseph Jeffs, the local CIA agent, here to give us the rundown on Ghani Khan. I learned the trade of clandestine operations in the Navy Seals, and Niall Quinn had been an Army Ranger. Brad Olsen was in the Seals at the same time as me, and Manuel Salazar was a graduate of Delta Force. It was a bit like asking us if we knew which end of a rifle the bullet came out of.
"No. Tell us what you know about Khan."
He looked around. He was a nervous kind of guy, rimless glasses and prematurely bald. He was about five eight and carrying a few pounds too many. He looked as if he'd be more at home behind a desk in Langley, Virginia instead of here in Herat, a place that could accurately be described as a stinking shithole.
"He's been sighted, here in the town. Current intelligence has him hold up in a building on the other side of town, about five hundred yards from here."
"Are you sure? You know why we're here."
I asked him with good reason. The quality of CIA intelligence in country was patchy at best. The last thing any of us wanted was to charge mob handed into some old folks home.
"This is Grade One intelligence. There's no doubt about its accuracy. When are you going to do it? We can't wait to be rid of the bastard. The whole town is on edge, waiting for the next beheading."
I looked at the others. Brad and Manuel were keen to kick the door in and waste the fucker, but I could see Niall Quinn felt the same as me. Where lives were at stake, you needed to be sure before you rushed in spraying bullets every which way. Niall was like that, a big man, descended from pure Irish stock. His parents left the trouble in Northern Ireland to find the good life in the New World. They were both devout Catholics, and they attempted to instill their faith into their son, who was born only hours after the ship reached New York. They failed. Niall Quinn had joined the Army Rangers and became a skilled and ruthless fighter early on, during his first tour of Iraq. His story was almost identical to mine. He'd opted to take the Government�
��s gold in return for signing on as a civilian contractor, with one difference. Niall carried the baggage of his religious upbringing. We'd even seen him making the sign of the cross over a man bleeding out after he'd just double-tapped him. That was Niall, the conscience of our unit.
"I reckon we should take a look," he said quietly. "They’re not always one hundred percent right."
I looked at Manuel and Brad. "What do you reckon?"
I needn't have asked. Manuel put on a thoughtful expression. He was good at that. Built like an oak, with long, drooping mustaches on his upper lip, he was the kind of guy you’d describe as ‘doleful’. Not a man to argue with over a parking space, or anything else, for that matter. A born warrior, he lived for the hunt, and the kill. Right now, he’d be calculating the enemy body count.
"If we wait, he could get clean away, and you know what that would mean. Plenty more of our boys losing their heads to a spike in the square."
"Damn right," Brad agreed. "It'd be crime to let him get away. We have to move fast."
Jeffs added his own voice, "The intel is cast iron; I'd stake my life on it."
He was eager, willing us to go in. I wondered about that. I should have listened to my intuition. At the time, all that crossed my mind was it wasn't his life that was on the line. We talked about it some more, and he passed over a packet of photographs that looked conclusive. Ghani Khan walking into the local mosque. Ghani Khan peering out through a second floor window. Ghani Khan in a blurry picture, taken at night using a low light lens, sneaking out the front door of the mosque.