by Eric Meyer
“Wait.”
The dog was huge, a black, muscular, coiled spring of canine meanness, waiting behind the door. Greg waited in the kitchen, and it all depended on who came through that doorway. A voice cried out, “Who’s there?”
Faria!
He was in luck. The Sergeant would be right behind her, pushing her through the doorway to act as a shield. The door opened wider, and the skirts of Faria’s dress billowed through the gap, and then his wife was there. She saw him at once, with his finger on his lips as a warning. Her eyes blinked an understanding, and she kept coming. The cop followed, and as he came adjacent with Greg, he moved.
Leapt on him and slammed the barrel of the Makarov down hard on his head. He slackened his grip on Faria’s neck, and she twisted away. At the same time, Greg gave a single word of command to Archer.
“Go.”
The huge dog left in a blur of speed, leaping through the door and bounding across the room in two steps to reach the children he adored. The children his master had ordered him to protect. His second bound carried him to the shocked policeman holding the gun. As he’d been trained to do, he made his tactical decision in a fraction of a second. The man with the gun was the bigger threat, and so he’d deal with him first. Massive jaws clamped down on the cop’s gun hand, and the Smith & Wesson SD clattered to the floor.
Archer used his power and weight to knock the man to the floor. He beat at the dog’s head, trying to force him off, but the two girls jumped on him, and held an arm apiece. The cop on the couch was reaching for a gun in a buttoned-down holster at his side, his eyes wide with panic. He was too slow. The third child in the room was Ahmed, a seventeen-year-old boy who’d shown himself on many occasions to be more than ready to fight when required. He’d also shown himself capable of killing a man when the occasion demanded.
Still kneeling, he rolled toward the gun, scooped it up in one hand, and pointed it at the head of the cop, who still hadn’t managed to unsnap the cover on his holster. He froze, and then raised his hands. The cop on the floor, who Archer was still mauling, had decided discretion was the better part of valor. He lay still in the hope the savage beast would go easier on him. But the two girls didn’t let go off his arms. Greg entered the room, pushing the Sergeant cop before him, his pistol rammed into his neck.
Faria was behind him, and she’d taken the Sergeant’s pistol and held it level with his belly. He read her eyes, and knew she was close to pulling the trigger. First, he attended to the dog.
“Archer, hold.”
The dog kept hold of the man’s arm, but stopped mauling. The other cop was still frozen under the barrel of the gun Ahmed held at him. Greg was thinking furiously. Shooting three men in cold blood was not part of his make-up, despite the advice of his friend Stoner. Yet letting them go would leave the problem unresolved. They’d come back again, and keep coming back. Faria came up with a temporary solution, enough to make them think twice.
“Kaawa, Rahima, get them to remove their pants and boots.”
Greg stared at her. “You what?”
“I want them to humiliate them. I intend to video the whole thing with my phone. If they cause any more trouble, I’ll threaten to make the video go public. Put it on YouTube, and everyone will see how a pair of little girls took down three big strapping cops. The potential for humiliation will make them reconsider before they come back.”
He grinned. It was as good an idea as any, and at least he didn’t have to contemplate killing anyone. Not yet. He nodded to the girls to go ahead, and with huge smiles they gave the order to the cops, while Faria filmed everything on her smartphone. They objected; the size of the Afghan male’s pride is big, but they did as ordered. He sent them outside to return to their cruiser with their legs and feet bare. They walked away, silent and incandescent with anger, and he spoke quietly to Ahmed.
“You know where I keep the rifle?”
“Of course, in the root store.”
“Get it for me. They may have a scattergun or even an assault rifle in the cruiser. If they try anything, it’ll give me an excuse to put a bullet in them.”
The boy grinned, raced into the kitchen, and ran down the staircase to the basement store. He came back with the weapon Greg Blum had trained himself to shoot almost to marksman standard. The Dragunov was a semi-automatic sniper rifle, chambered to fire a 7.62mm round, and developed in the Soviet Union. The magazine was already in place, and he knew it carried a full load. He opened a tiny window overlooking the front of the house, and watched the men stumbling half-naked toward the cruiser. Sure enough, instead of climbing into the vehicle, they opened the trunk. He didn’t need second sight to know what was about to happen, and he sighted on a spot between the feet of one man and fired.
The bullet chewed up the dirt inches from his foot, and he jumped aside. The man peering inside the trunk looked up, sized up the situation, and closed the lid. He didn’t move to get inside the car. Instead, he stared back at the house. The power of his gaze was chilling. Filled with all the menace a rogue cop could summon, using the power of his badge to reinforce the threat of his brutality. He shouted a challenge.
“Blum!”
He didn’t reply but waited, the Dragunov aimed straight ahead.
“I’ve changed my mind. You don’t have three days. I’ll be back tomorrow for what's mine. You have twenty-four hours to make up your mind. Either you give me the girl, or if you try to stop me, your life in this place is over.” His voice rose to a shrill scream, “Twenty-four hours, you hear me? Then you’re done. All of you, finished.”
He clambered inside the car, and Greg smiled again as it left the farm and disappeared along the track that led to Mehtar Lam. Faria ran out onto the stoop and flung her arms around him. “Greg, I thought they were going to kill us.”
He put his arm around her slim waist. “You should have kept Archer with you.”
She grimaced. “I know, but when I saw it was that piece of scum who lusted after Kaawa, I locked Archer in the basement. Just in case he caused trouble, you know how protective he is of the children.”
“Sure, but next time, keep him with you. Causing trouble is what he does best.”
“When will it be over, Greg?”
“I don’t know.”
She stared into the distance, as if to see the cop car coming back. “What about Stoner, will he help us?”
“I told him to get here in three days. I thought it’d be enough. He’ll be here then.”
Her eyes showed her fear. “Greg, I heard that man. We don’t have three days. We have until tomorrow.”
“I’ll go see him first thing in the morning. Don’t worry, I’ll bring him back.”
Greg spent the remainder of the day with his family. Soothing their fears, and in the case of Ahmed, persuading him not to pick up a gun and go after Hosseini, the cop who’d threatened his mother. As the end of the day approached, he took him out for a stroll with Archer. He threw an old tennis ball for him to play fetch, and the dog chased it over the stubbled field. He put his arm around his son’s shoulder, and tried to explain why he needed to hold back.
“You have to listen to me, Ahmed. If you go after them, they’ll kill you. How do you think your sisters would feel, and your mother, if they lost you?”
He gave it serious consideration before he replied. “Father, isn’t that a risk you and Mr. Stoner take every time you go out to kill a bad man? Like this Sergeant Hosseini, who is a very bad man.”
The logic was inescapable, just a pity the kid knew a lot about killing at such a tender age. “What you say is true, but we’re older and more experienced. When you’re a man, there are some things you have to do.”
“Next year I’ll be eighteen, and that makes me a man.”
He sighed. “I know, and you’re planning to train as a doctor, not a gunman. Stick with the plan, and leave the other stuff to me and Stoner.”
He nodded his agreement, but Greg knew inside he was boiling, and his Af
ghan blood cried out for justice. Sooner or later, Ahmed would pick up a gun and seek to sate his craving for revenge. He had to deal with the cops before he went seeking revenge, and he knew of a single way to make that happen. Stoner.
* * *
He came to, and his head felt like someone was pounding at it with a steam hammer. He automatically reached for a bottle. It wasn’t there. He’d left it on the nightstand, he was certain of that. His last drink before he attempted to fall into a troubled sleep. The kind he’d suffered as long as he could remember. It was then he sensed someone else in the room, and he flicked on the light. Saw the dark shape and made a grab for the gun he always kept at the side of the bed. A man was sitting in the easy chair in the corner of his bedroom, holding the half empty bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand, and Stoner’s gun in the other. He wore a wide, beaming smile on his face.
“Ivan, what the fuck are you doing here?”
He spoke like he always did. The Russian accent that was as fake as a Chinese-made Rolex watch. A slim, smooth-looking man, wearing his regular tailored M1 leather flight jacket over a lumberjack patterned shirt and pressed khaki slacks. The clothes looked and were American, the accent part of his cover. The eyes like always were a vivid blue. Cold as a winter stream, so cold they could have belonged to a KGB executioner, or a CIA executioner. Same thing.
The smile faded, and he looked serious. “That’s no way to greet an old friend, is it? I thought I’d pay you a social call, what else would it be?”
He sighed and longed for the bottle Ivan was holding. “The answer is no, I don’t care what you want. I’m busy right now, helping Greg with a little problem. Give me the bottle and the gun, and get out before I toss you out on your ear.”
His voice had risen to a hoarse, angry shout that hurt his aching head even more. Two men stepped into his bedroom, and the guns they carried pointed in his direction. Two of Ivan’s shooters, Gorgy Bukharin, a Russian, and Akram Latif, an Afghan. He nodded a greeting, and they returned it, their expressions watchful. He’d shed blood with both men on occasion, but he was under no illusions. They were Ivan’s men, bought and paid for. They owed allegiance to him and no other. If he gave the word, he guessed they’d shoot him dead without a second thought.
Ivan waved his hand for them to stand down, and they left the room. He turned his attention back to Stoner.
“How’s it going, buddy? Late night? You look like shit.”
“Something like that. Whatever it is you want the answer is still no, so save your breath.”
He may as well have kept quiet. “What’s this thing you’ve got going with Greg, is it a job? A contract of some sort?”
“It’s personal, nothing that would interest you.”
“Everything interests me,” he grinned.
“Anyway, here’s the thing. I do need you to do something for me, a little contract.” He held up a hand as Stoner began to open his mouth, “No, listen. This isn’t some Mickey Mouse job to repay a favor. This is a real contract, and it pays good money. Big bucks, and I mean big.”
“I told you, Ivan, no. I don’t care if it pays all the gold in Fort Knox, the answer is still the same.”
“You don’t know what it is yet.”
He felt the exasperation overwhelming him. “I gave you my answer, and I don’t care what it is.”
Ivan nodded, and his smile remained intact. “My principal is offering a half a million dollars.”
“The CIA still has a nice, fat budget, then?”
He chuckled “There you go, getting the wrong idea about me.”
“You’ve left CIA? Who do you work for now, NSA, Military Intelligence, or what?”
“Funnee. Thing is, we all need friends who can lend a hand when you need it. Ma Kelly’s doesn’t look like it’s doing too well.”
“Trade’s a bit quiet right now, that’s all. It’ll pick up.”
He shook his head. “No, it won’t pick up. Not without my help. You’re in trouble.”
He thought about the brothel, part-owned by Ma Kelly, the blousy bleach-blonde who ran the place like a well-oiled machine. As well as Ma, the girls who worked in the establishment relied on the above-average wages they earned to support their families. If something was threatening the brothel, he needed to know about it. He sighed.
“Okay, spell it out. Why do I need your help?”
“You know they opened a couple of new brothels in Jalalabad.”
“I know, the Crazy Horse and the Inn of Temptation. That’s the one on the other side of the street. I can see it from my apartment window. They’re both amateur hour. Pay their whores starvation wages, and they rip off the customers. They won’t last.”
“If they’re the only game in town, they will.”
Stoner chuckled and stopped when it hurt his head again. “That would make a difference, sure, but we’re here, and we’re better.”
“Until they put you out of business.” He spoke quietly, and something about it made it sound more ominous.
It began to dawn on him that something was up. Something that accounted for the fall in trade, and the loss of profits they’d experienced lately. Ivan had got wind of some plan to put Ma Kelly’s out of business. Now he wanted to trade that information for something he wanted. And if Stoner refused, he’d keep it to himself, so if Ma Kelly’s went out of business, it would be his fault.
“Okay, spit it out. What is threatening to put us out of business?"
“First, there’s this little thing I want you to take care of for me, like you did last time, at Tora Bora. Man, that was some fight you came through. Do you still remember it, or are you too hungover?”
He remembered it, had nightmares about it. Bad dreams that made him wake suddenly, soaked in sweat. They’d gone up against a warlord named Rumi Khan a vicious, Islamic psychopath with a horde of savage followers. A U.S. infantry unit, led by a Colonel Harold H. Brewer, ran into an ambush that cost them the lives of several men. In addition, the enemy captured Second Lieutenant Sara Carver. Ivan gave them the contract to get her back, and Stoner and Blum went after her. They eventually tracked her to Pakistan, where she’d been sold and forced into prostitution. During their flight from Pakistan, Ivan left them in the lurch when he decided his other business, that is, profits, demanded his attention more.
They made it out and got home safe, and Rumi Khan went to the place where he’d sent so many of his followers. Since then, Tora Bora was a name he preferred to forget, other than in his nightmares. Since then, he’d sworn to never again get involved with Ivan ‘The Terrible’ Vasilyevich.
“I remember it like it was yesterday. I’d prefer to forget, but it’s not easy. All I will say is I’m grateful for every day that goes past when I don’t hear that name. Enough is enough.”
“Uh, huh. I guess anyone would feel the same way.”
“Damn right. You weren’t there, so you wouldn’t know.”
“Right.”
They stopped speaking, each waiting for the other to give something away. He didn’t enjoy playing games with the devious, ruthless, backstabbing Ivan. His head still ached, he wanted a drink, and he’d liked to have more sleep. After a moment’s silence, he put the question Ivan had been waiting for him to ask.
“Tell me about these other brothels you say have ganged up on this place. What are they planning?”
He shook his head slowly. “I’d need to check that out. Why don’t we talk about this other business first?”
Ivan, you’re a liar. You know exactly what it’s all about.
He waved a hand for him to go ahead.
“It’s the insurgents again, this being Afghanistan. A new guy is whipping them up to create a heap of new trouble. His people say he has the ear of God, and they’re flocking to join him in the hundreds.”
“So what’s new? Afghanistan has had dozens of those people over the years. Sooner or later they all go the same way. Like Rumi Khan, a one-way ticket to Paradise.”
Ivan fr
owned as he considered his next words. “This guy is in a class all on his own. People are getting hooked on what he has to say, and his army of fanatics is sprouting up like weeds. They’ve started the odd attack on military targets without regard to the risks. So far, it’s just the occasional religious crank, but when he gets his people organized, the shit will hit the fan big time. His name’s Mohammed Tarzi, by the way. Ring any bells?”
“Tarzi? I’ve heard that name. I remember a local cop, Hosseini, said he’s the coming man around these parts.”
“The same. They call him Sheikh Tarzi. He claims to be the real deal, voices from God; you name it. Still lives almost like a recluse, and people say it’s proof he’s a real holy man. The truth is he’s a weirdo, a nutjob. Red eyes, like an albino, and a heart as black as night. He’s a ruthless, murdering sumbitch. We want him dead.”
Stoner recalled a lesson from history.
‘You have a man causing you a problem; kill the man, and the problem goes away.’ The philosophy of Josef Stalin, who numbers with the greatest mass murderers in history. Now it looks like CIA’s taking the lesson on board. Then again, is it anything new? The intelligence agency’s no stranger to targeted assassination. Ain’t democracy wonderful?
“Why me?”
A shrug. “Why not? It’s the kind of contract you carry out, isn’t it?”
“My contracts don’t involve fighting through thousands of fanatics to hit the target. The answer is still no, and I’ll take care of my own business problems. Thanks for the heads up, and close the door as you leave, Ivan. Don’t ring me. I’ll ring you.”
He chuckled. “When things get bad, you’ll call me. Don’t make it too long. Five days, any more and I get someone else.”
“Five years, and you still won’t hear from me.”
“Uh, huh. Five days. Don’t you want to know the location of the target before you say no?”
“Goodbye, Ivan. Say, before you go, have you seen anything of Wayne Evers, the guy we came back with from Tora Bora?”
He nodded. “Maybe.”