The Greatest Game

by J A Heaton

  “More than anything, I want to take her away from here, too,” Daniel said. “But, it’s not so easy.”

  “My niece is away,” the old man said. “She cares for me, but she will return soon. I fear Qaqramon will make her tell if she knows somebody else has visited me. Every time he comes, I want to kill him.”

  “How often do you see him?” Daniel asked.

  “Not very, but he is from the next village.”

  “The village you had a feud with, the one with the Soviet landmines up on the mountain ridge?” Daniel asked.

  “That’s the one. Of course, this doesn’t help our feud at all.” Bobo managed a chuckle.

  Daniel spotted a slight grin on the old man’s face. “What is it?” Daniel asked.

  “Nobody knows this except me,” Bobo said, “but there really aren’t any landmines between our villages. That was something my father made up to keep us separated.” He gave another tiny chuckle.

  “I can go directly over this mountain ridge to Qaqramon’s village?” Daniel asked.

  The old man nodded. Daniel knew this would reduce the journey’s time, but more importantly, it would allow Daniel to surprise Qaqramon. He pondered the possibilities.

  “Are you going there now?” the old man asked.

  Daniel considered it, but he quickly realized the obstacles. He didn’t know if Qaqramon or the nuke was there, and he wasn’t armed.

  But I do have a weapon, Daniel remembered.

  Daniel took the small black box out of his bag, the Roach Bait, as Rex had called it, and gave it to Bobo.

  “If Qaqramon comes again,” Daniel explained, “place it in his bag or car. After it is activated, US airplanes will drop bombs on this box, destroying it and Qaqramon. Use it carefully.”

  As Daniel said farewell, he wondered if he would regret giving the Roach Bait to Bobo. He seemed too pure and wise to handle a technological device of death. But, if used correctly, it could end the man who had terrorized his village and family. Daniel figured he owed that possibility to Bobo. Daniel also wished he could know how Bobo had lost his sight, but he sensed there wasn’t time for the story, and that it would be too painful for Bobo to recount.

  Daniel took one last look back to the village and remembered Bobo’s request: to take Nigora away with him.

  Within a few hours, Daniel arrived at the extraction point in the mountains without further encounters. He took cover among some boulders and waited for his ride to the airbase at Mazar-i-Sharif. When he had nearly dozed to sleep, the rumbling sound of a helicopter approached. Once it was descending, and Daniel was certain he was returning to base safely, he pulled Aziz’s radio from his bag and turned it on.

  “Aziz is dead,” Daniel announced over the radio. He boarded the helicopter.

  Moments later, Qaqramon responded as the helicopter lifted away from the ground.

  “And you will also be dead soon, American.” He said the last word with disdain. “I swear it.”

  “You’re next,” Daniel replied, and he turned off the radio.

  15

  Both General Jones and Rex were waiting by the helicopter’s landing pad when Daniel returned to the airbase at Mazar-i-Sharif. The general appeared as unflappable as ever, but Rex had his trademark grin on his face.

  “Good to see you on your feet again,” Daniel said over the helicopter’s roar.

  Rex gave him a slap on the back.

  “Good job out there,” Jones said as they turned to walk towards the base tents.

  Daniel pulled the remaining hundred-dollar bills from his inside pocket and handed them to General Jones. “I managed to save some of it,” Daniel joked.

  “Come in handy?” Jones asked.

  “Very,” Daniel said.

  “Get some chow and a shower,” General Jones said. “We have a briefing with Officer Carter in about an hour in the communications tent. Anything to report beyond what you observed at the warlords’ meeting? Good job on that, by the way.”

  “Yeah, there is something to report,” Daniel said. “I ran into Aziz, our old prisoner. He’s dead now.”

  “We’ll make a soldier out of you yet, doc!” Rex said, slapping Daniel on the back.

  “That explains one thing,” Jones said. “The Taliban is offering bounties for dead Americans over the radio waves. That’s normal. But there’s a huge bounty on an American who speaks Uzbek. You should feel flattered.”

  “Putting that million dollar down payment to use,” Daniel observed. “I also learned where Qaqramon’s home village is. It’s a good bet we should focus there next.”

  After filling his stomach and taking a shower, Daniel met General Jones and Rex in the communications tent for their debriefing with Officer Carter. Rex paced around, gingerly moving his injured arm. Daniel could tell he was itching to get back into action.

  The communications link connected, and Jenny in her glasses and a coffee mug was first to appear.

  “So good to see you,” Jenny said. “I was so worried for you.”

  “Everything’s fine,” Daniel said sheepishly.

  “I guess an egghead like you doesn’t crack as easily as I thought,” Officer Carter said after appearing on the screen next to Jenny.

  “Have you analyzed the recording from the meeting at the spring?” Daniel asked Jenny.

  “Not completely,” Jenny replied. “There’s about every imaginable language spoken by a Muslim population on that recording. That meeting included many and diverse leaders amongst radical Muslims. Some of whom we didn’t even know were in Afghanistan.”

  “The CIA is going to be very interested in these unexpected forces arrayed against our interests in Central Asia and the Middle East,” Officer Carter said. “Now we know that Iran is involved. Nobody expected that. We’re not looking at a bunch of wild-eyed radicals trying to figure out how to make a dirty bomb. Instead, we face the possibility of a nation-state putting this nuke to its most lethal use.”

  “Iran could make good on their promise to wipe Israel off the map,” Rex said. “Or, imagine something like 9/11 but with atomic fuel instead of jet fuel.”

  “However,” Officer Carter said, “knowledge of Iranian involvement changes little. Our military has a light footprint in Afghanistan, and the Iran-Afghanistan border is enormous. There is no way we could effectively patrol it, even with full cooperation from the Northern Alliance. We can increase the security at Bagram Airbase, but they’re always on constant alert, under some sort of attack. Basically, we need to get Qaqramon and the nuke itself.”

  “Or it could be the end of Western civilization,” Rex said dryly.

  “Is that what the analysts think the Iranians will do with the nuke?” Daniel asked. “They would try to sneak across the border into Iran?”

  “If they try to move the nuke south and into Pakistan,” Officer Carter explained, “then they’re moving straight into our heaviest concentration of forces. We don’t think they want to go that way. Besides, if they move the nuke to another country, like Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, how are the Iranians going to get it from there to Iran? I don’t think they will make it so complicated. There is another option.”

  “What’s that?” Daniel and Rex asked in unison.

  “This Iranian guy,” Officer Carter began, “he never spoke at the spring, and there was obviously no visual of him.”

  “So, we don’t know exactly who the Iranian is,” Rex observed.

  “But there is a man who is officially an Iranian diplomat in Afghanistan,” Officer Carter continued, “and we’ve been watching him for years. He’s a known person to the CIA, in our database. The big problem is that he has diplomatic immunity. He has a legitimate job with the Iranian diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, and we don’t even know if he’s the man we want. He goes by Reza.” A picture of the Iranian appeared on the screen. Other than a slightly larger than average nose, there wasn’t anything distinctive about his appearance.

  “Forget diplomatic immunity,” Rex said.
“We’re going to have to kill the bastard anyway. We can’t risk this guy being our man and letting him get away with the nuke. We could easily get him caught in the crossfire. This is a war zone, after all, not a Disneyland ride.”

  Officer Carter ignored Rex’s comment and continued. “Killing diplomatic personnel is, of course, a major breach of international relations. Besides, nobody would believe that Iran was working with the Taliban. The Taliban killed several of their diplomats in 1998. It would be a major international incident, and at this point, the administration does not want to stir up the hornet’s nest in yet another Muslim country. Doing so would give Iran reason to go on the offensive elsewhere in the world.”

  “Nothing else Iran could try would be as bad as them acquiring a nuke” Rex argued.

  “The orders are clear from the top,” Officer Carter said. They all knew what that meant. “We can’t assassinate the Iranian. We only have the authorization to kill him if he is interacting with known Taliban, or if he possesses the nuke while in Afghanistan.”

  Silence hung in the communications tent for a few seconds.

  “It sounds to me like we need to get Qaqramon,” Rex concluded. “Screw Reza, or whatever his name is.”

  “Besides,” General Jones added, “we may need Reza to lead us to the nuke. If we kill Reza, Qaqramon will keep his million and find another buyer. Or, he might decide to try putting the nuke to use.”

  Rex pursed his lips, preferring a more violently direct tactic with Reza, but he remained silent.

  “Personally, my biggest fear is that once Reza has the nuke,” Officer Carter explained, “he would put it in a diplomatic pouch and simply fly it to Iran with himself. There would be nothing we could do about it. The radioactive material in the nuke, which is what the Iranians really want, though dense, will be relatively small. It could easily be carried by hand. The easiest way for the Iranians to get the nuke into Iran is to have a diplomat carry it in a diplomatic pouch. International law clearly states that he would be untouchable. They send several diplomatic pouches per week between Afghanistan and Iran, so we can’t concoct some bogus reason to intercept all of them. So, it’s clear. We need to get Qaqramon and the nuke by the time of the exchange. There can’t be much time remaining. Otherwise, Reza will waltz out of here with the nuke to Iran.”

  “We’ll find the location the sale is going to take place,” Rex said somberly, “and we’ll make sure there’s no exchange.”

  “But I do have some good news,” Officer Carter said. “Now that the recording gives solid evidence of the threat, you’ve been tasked six more Special Forces men. It’s not an army, but we don’t have tons of forces in the country. Our forces are stretched thin elsewhere. Many of them think they are close to getting Osama bin Laden himself. The team of six will be directly under Rex’s command. General Jones is to offer whatever support is possible through the airbase. Daniel, you will be the intelligence officer paired with Rex. Congratulations, Doctor Knox, you now have the most lethal force in the world at your fingertips. Use it strategically, and make sure the nuke doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Otherwise…” But she knew she didn’t have to say it.

  Everybody was about to sign off when Jenny said, “I just need to talk with Daniel for a few seconds. It’s about the linguistics and translation.”

  They all agreed. Officer Carter signed off, and Rex said to Daniel, “We’ll come up with a plan once you’re done in here.” Rex and General Jones left the communications tent, leaving Daniel and Jenny on the line.

  “You need me to check your program’s translation of the meeting I had with Nigora?” Daniel asked. “Don’t feel bad if your program isn’t perfect. I think it’s the best one out there, and it’s only getting better.”

  “It’s not really about translation,” Jenny confessed.

  Before Daniel could ask, Jenny continued, “As I was going over the translation with Nigora, I noticed something. Nigora referred to the bombing at the bazaar as a car bomb.”

  “It was a car bomb,” Rex said.

  “We know it was a car bomb,” Jenny said. “But how did she know it was a car bomb?”

  “I probably told her,” Daniel said.

  “I checked the whole translation,” Jenny replied. “You called it a bomb, a blast, but you never specifically said it was a car bomb. And yet, she referred to it as a car bomb.”

  “It could’ve been a justified assumption on her part,” Daniel said. “Maybe she’d heard about it on the street.”

  “Maybe,” Jenny said. “But I don’t know. I know Nigora is in a very tough spot, and I couldn’t imagine, but I don’t trust her. You promised me you had moved on from her. You were over her.”

  “I can’t imagine her doing anything that could hurt me,” Daniel responded. “She has suffered so much because of the Taliban.”

  “Be careful,” Jenny warned one last time.

  “Peters in D.C. only gave us eight days to get the nuke,” Daniel said to Rex. Daniel placed the best topographical map of the area on the table in front of him and Rex. “We’ve got one day remaining.” He marked the spring, and then from memory explained how to move from the spring to his host village without being detected.

  “Sneaky,” Rex said.

  “Yeah,” Daniel agreed. “It looks obvious on a map, but when you are there on foot, you couldn’t find that route except by accident.”

  “So, if this is your host village, and you think Qaqramon’s village is somewhere over here…” Rex said.

  “The problem is,” Daniel explained, “you have to go around this ridge to get to the village.”

  “And you’re totally exposed to anybody watching you,” Rex said, “or anybody who wants to shoot you.”

  “Exactly right,” Daniel agreed. “But I learned something on this last trip. Before my extraction, I went to my host village and talked with my host father. He told me how to get to Qaqramon’s village without going around that mountain ridge. The minefield that had prevented everybody from simply going over the ridge doesn’t exist. During the time of the Soviets, they came up with the story of the minefield to make it more difficult for people to go between the two feuding villages.”

  “But without that minefield,” Rex said, “getting to Qaqramon’s village is faster.”

  “And, if Qaqramon doesn’t know there’s not really a minefield,” Daniel said, “then he won’t be expecting us to attack from that direction.”

  “Whoa there, Doc,” Rex said. “What do you mean, ‘us’? You think you’re a cowboy now?”

  Daniel gave a blank look, not understanding what Rex meant.

  “You have handled yourself better than a nerd from the ivory tower,” Rex said, “but if a Special Forces team is going to Qaqramon’s village, there is only one reason for that. And that reason is to get the nuke and kill and destroy. If you’re there, you’re just going to get in the way. No offense.”

  “I have to go,” Daniel argued. “I’m the only one who can communicate with them.”

  “Violence is a universal language,” Rex said. “When we know that Qaqramon has the nuke in his village, you had better believe that I’m taking the Special Forces team in, we are recovering that nuke, and we will kill every last goddamn Taliban if necessary.”

  Daniel held Rex’s gaze, and he could see a fire rekindled in his eyes.

  “I won’t get in the way,” Daniel said.

  “We can patch you in via radio, if necessary,” Rex said. “But I can’t endanger my men on the mission. Enough have already died in this godforsaken pile of rocks. I won’t lose another man more than I must. If you go along, it will complicate matters. You would be a liability, not an asset. I’ve lost all the men I came over here with. I’m the only one left from my squad. I was going to be sent back, but I couldn’t stand going back alone. Why did I survive any of my men? Hell if I know. But my men all left in body bags. I don’t want any more than is necessary, so you’re staying here.”

  Daniel contin
ued to hold Rex’s gaze for several more minutes before speaking. “We’ll talk about it again when the time comes.”

  “Another time to talk about this is not going to come,” Rex said. “You’re not going into battle with me and putting my men’s lives at risk. You can do your job over the radio. I’m fit now. I have men under my command, and you need to let us do our job.”

  Daniel stood silently, unwilling to back down.

  The command tent was tense until Rex finally said, “Good job getting that new route to the target. Now that I can surprise Qaqramon, the mission is a lot easier. Let’s hope there really isn’t a minefield up there.”

  Daniel was relieved that Rex was calming down.

  “I think we need to keep tabs on Reza, the Iranian,” Daniel said. “How could we find him today in time for our next meeting with Nigora tomorrow morning? Could aerial reconnaissance locate him? The diplomat has to connect with more bodyguards and vehicles at some point, I imagine.”

  “And maybe we’ll bump into him and ask a few questions,” Rex suggested mischievously.

  Moments later, Daniel and Rex entered General Jones’ command tent to ask for aerial surveillance to find Reza.

  “You’re not gonna believe this,” General Jones said. “Yesterday, the Iranian diplomatic mission in Kabul requested safe passage for their diplomatic personnel scheduled to arrive in Mazar-i-Sharif from Kholm. They’ll be in the city within a few hours. I’m guessing they’re looking to buy a nuke.”

  “That’s got to be our guy,” Rex agreed. “Why are we just now hearing about this?”

  “Until less than twelve hours ago,” General Jones said, “there was no reason for us to care about a diplomatic courtesy call from anybody, even the Iranians. If they had shown up at our checkpoint without one, it would have aroused suspicion.”