Brad Thor Collectors' Edition #3

by Brad Thor

  Harvath laughed, peeled two hundred bucks from a wad of bills in his pocket, and handed it to him. Though Afghanistan was an Islamic country, there was still alcohol to be found. Getting this much of it, especially on such short notice, was a considerable feat. Fontaine had done well.

  Still plagued by jet lag and not having had much sleep, Harvath appreciated the gesture and helped himself to a can of the energy drink.

  “Tough night?” asked Fontaine as he watched Harvath pop another one-thousand-milligram Motrin in his mouth and wash it down with a swig of Red Bull.

  “Just an underground party,” said Harvath as he slid a couple of cans into his pockets and closed the door. “You didn’t miss much.”

  “Where’s Baba G?”

  “Santa’s in his workshop,” said Harvath, pointing toward the structure, “checking off items on my Christmas list.”

  Fontaine smiled, and after covering up the booze with the blanket, closed the tailgate. Following Harvath toward the building, he said, “I’ve got first dibs on the Hello Kitty rifle. The Taliban hate Hello Kitty.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Only a fool or a heavily armored military column went anywhere in rural Afghanistan uninvited. To enter the village of Asadoulah Badar, the young man Dr. Atash had treated for a broken jaw, Harvath, Gallagher, and Fontaine would have to be invited.

  The best way, especially for Westerners, to secure such an invitation was to offer the village shura something they needed. Based on Gallagher’s relationship with his tenants in Butkhak, he came up with what he thought was the perfect offer.

  In exchange for half the booze in the back of Fontaine’s SUV, Clean Water International’s project leader agreed to allow the trio to pose as a scouting team. They were given a brief overview of CWI’s mission and how they conducted project assessments. More important, the project leader contacted a resourceful “fixer” and interpreter they used in Khogyani who was adept at getting the most difficult jobs done, as long as the money was right. They asked him to reach out to the village shura to see if they would consent to being considered for a clean water project.

  After agreeing to a price, the interpreter explained that he would call back in a few hours once he had been to the village and had met with its elders. Harvath gave the CWI leader an alias as well as his Afghan cell number for the interpreter to call back on.

  They loaded the cargo area of Gallagher’s Land Cruiser with all of the weapons except for their pistols, threw a blanket over them, then loaded the alcohol on top and covered that with another blanket. If they were stopped along the Kabul to Jalalabad Road, they could plead to the lesser offense, give up the booze, and keep going. That was simply the price of doing business in Afghanistan. Once they got off the main road and headed for Khogyani, though, they weren’t likely to run into many official checkpoints. At that point, they were going to make sure they had the bulk of their firepower very close at hand.

  CWI’s Afghan houseboy cooked them lunch, and then, after changing into their baggy salwar kameez, or “man-jammies,” as Harvath liked to call them, the trio hit the road.

  Gallagher drove while Fontaine rode shotgun and Harvath sat in back and tried to catch up on his sleep. The narrow, two-lane highway took them through snow-capped mountain passes and tunnels carved by hand out of solid rock. Garishly decorated, hand-painted Pakistani trucks, known as jingas, often found themselves stuck inside the tunnels or losing significant portions of their cargo, which were stacked Beverly Hillbillies–style, higher than common sense would ever allow.

  They were halfway to Jalalabad when Baba G told Harvath to wake up. “All hands on deck,” he said.

  Harvath’s hand moved to the butt of his Glock before his eyes were even fully focused. “What’s up?”

  “We’re coming up on Surobi,” replied Fontaine.

  “What’s in Surobi?”

  “Nothing good,” responded Gallagher.

  “It’s known to have a very heavy Taliban presence,” said Fontaine. “Lots of the hits on convoys have supposedly been orchestrated out of this village. They also run bullshit checkpoints at night, shaking down anyone dumb enough to be out driving this way.”

  They were in the Kabul River Valley and would be following the water the rest of the way to Jalalabad. Gallagher slowed his vehicle as they entered the outskirts of Surobi, took off his seat belt, and made sure his door was unlocked. Fontaine and Harvath followed suit.

  With traditional Afghan clothing hiding their body armor, and driving a slightly beat-up, unarmored Toyota, the hope was that the men would not draw too much attention to themselves.

  As Gallagher and Fontaine spent a lot of their time bouncing back and forth between Kabul and Jalalabad, they both knew the Jalalabad Road quite well. “You want to stop for tea?” Gallagher asked Harvath as they rolled into the village itself. “There’s a nice little tea house here.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” said Harvath as he made eye contact with a man walking along the side of the road wearing a black turban, the symbol of the Taliban. The look the Afghan shot back was pure hate. Some people called it the evil eye, though Baba G liked to refer to it as the “death stare,” or the “hairy eyeball.” Whatever the case, the man obviously wasn’t fooled by Harvath’s local costume. He was an outsider and therefore didn’t belong.

  “I’ve actually got the tea thing down to a science,” continued Gallagher. “From the moment they first realize you’re in town, you’ve got twenty minutes, give or take, until they start pulling the trigger.”

  Harvath turned away from the window and met Baba G’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Why do they wait twenty minutes?”

  “The lookout who sees you has to call his handler. The handler then has to call the higher-ups. The higher-ups then have to decide how much they think you’re worth. Once they have a price they’re willing to pay, they call the handler, who then argues with the lookout over how much he’ll get paid for popping you. Of course the lookout thinks he’s getting ripped off because the handler is taking too much off the top, which he is, so they argue back and forth for a little while longer until the handler relents and agrees to pay a little bit more. That’s why I say it takes about twenty minutes, give or take.”

  “The day they go to a straight rate card,” Harvath said with a laugh, “you’re in big trouble.”

  “That would make too much sense. TIA.”

  “TIA,” repeated Harvath as he turned his eyes back to the window.

  Surobi, like most of Afghanistan, was nothing more than a collection of mud brick buildings. The only color at all came from the produce or mass-produced consumer goods being sold from drab roadside shops and stalls.

  Harvath spotted three more men, all of whom were wearing black turbans and had AK-47s slung over their shoulders. The fact that they not only carried weapons, but so openly and brazenly displayed their allegiance to the Taliban, said a lot about Surobi. If only all of the Taliban and the rest of world’s Islamic fundamentalists had the courage to so openly identify themselves. Instead, they hid behind women and children and used mentally challenged people to carry out suicide attacks. For all their talk about being brave warriors, they were the biggest cowards on the planet.

  If the world could see these assholes for the animals they really were, maybe there wouldn’t be such a hue and cry from the fools who wanted to afford them all of the protections due signers of the Geneva and Hague conventions. Forget the fact that idiots like the Taliban weren’t signers of either Geneva or Hague, refused to appear on the battlefield wearing even so much as an armband to identify themselves as honorable combatants, and wreaked untold misery upon civilian populations—the major group the conventions were designed to protect.

  Harvath just couldn’t understand the liberal mind-set. He was convinced that they believed deeply in what they said and what they did; his only problem was that it so often flew in the face of reality. They continually focused their rage on their protectors rather than their ene
my. They denigrated their country, believing it was the source of all evil in the world. The truth was, when it came to Islam, it had been violent since its inception. Its clearly stated goal was worldwide conquest. It was a mandate handed down in all of its religious texts. And while Harvath believed there were peaceful and moderate Muslims, he knew from studying the religion that there was no such thing as peaceful and moderate Islam.

  The entire religion was a mess and needed a complete gut-rehab. And though he had a good feeling his country’s new president would probably not agree with him, he also knew that until the politically correct crowd stopped making excuses for them and undercutting any motivation to reform their religion themselves, the majority of Muslims wouldn’t do anything. Their religion forbade them from even changing one word of the Qur’an. Islam had been Islam for fourteen hundred years and what it had been was violent. As far as Harvath was concerned, they could have the rest of the world, but they couldn’t have his country.

  Harvath was content to go door-to-door and eliminate as many trouble-making members of the “religion of peace” as was necessary. He didn’t need, nor did he expect, so much as a thank-you for it. He knew it was the right thing to do and he would continue to do it for as long as he was able to squeeze a throat or a trigger. It was what he was trained to do and it was an oath he had taken. That he was no longer in the direct employ of his nation did not mean that he felt any less responsible to see to its protection. There was nothing he held more sacred than his duty to his nation.

  Seeing a roadside vendor up ahead advertising Coca-Cola, Harvath told Gallagher to pull the truck over.

  “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “Of course. I want to be able to say I stopped for a drink in Surobi.”

  Baba G looked at Fontaine.

  “Fine by me,” replied the Canadian.

  Gallagher navigated the truck to the side of the road and came to a stop in front of the small shop. “I’ll wait here,” he said.

  “Chickenshit,” replied Harvath as he opened the door and hopped out.

  Walking into the tiny store, he found a toothless old man sitting behind a worn table that functioned as the shop’s makeshift counter, with a faded cookie tin that acted as its cash register. The old man smiled as Harvath entered. Covering his heart and bowing slightly, he wished Harvath peace. “Wa alaikum salaam,” Harvath replied.

  The old man’s smile remained as he waited to serve his customer.

  “Coca-Cola?” asked Harvath.

  Smiling more widely, the man removed one of the many plastic bags hung on the arm of his chair and shuffled across the dirt floor to a small cooler. “Dua?” the man asked holding up two fingers.

  Harvath couldn’t tell if he was the world’s greatest salesman, or if he was trying to figure out how many people Harvath was traveling with to maybe relay the information up the road to a waiting sniper. It was an inhospitable way to think, especially as the old man seemed very nice, but it was the kind of viewpoint that kept people like Harvath alive.

  Harvath held up four fingers and the old man beamed. He was making his day. As the man selected four Cokes and placed them in the bag, Harvath looked around the little shop. Not knowing when they might be eating again, he bought a can of nuts, some chocolate, and a tube of Pakistani Pringles.

  The old man followed Harvath, carefully placing each item in the bag. Harvath was about ready to pay when he noticed a small, dusty row of books along the floor in the corner. The man had one or two books in German, Swedish, French, Italian, Dutch, and English—something for almost every potential NGO worker who might have once stopped at his place of business before Surobi became so dangerous.

  Harvath looked through the titles in English. One in particular caught his eye. Picking it up, he smiled.

  Done with his shopping, he followed the old man to the counter and paid him.

  Handing the bag across the table to his customer, the old man said, “U.K.?”

  “No, U.S.A.”

  “Ah, America. America good.”

  Harvath nodded and replied, “Afghanistan good, too.”

  Glancing toward the door to make sure they were still alone, the old man’s toothless smile faded as he stated, “Taliban bad.”

  “Yes,” Harvath said as he picked up his bag. “Taliban very bad. But Afghanistan good.”

  The smile returned to the old man’s face and he watched his American customer leave the shop.

  Outside, Harvath climbed back into the waiting Land Cruiser, pulled out the tattered Jackie Collins novel, and tossed it into the front seat.

  “What took you so long?” asked Gallagher as he looked at the book. “I thought you were just buying a drink.”

  “I was making a new friend,” replied Harvath. “You’d like him. Same taste in literature. You two could start your own book club.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Baba G as he put the truck in gear and pulled out onto the road. “You just couldn’t pay me to sit around with a bunch of Taliban deconstructing Lady Boss.”

  “How about having a lady boss who pays you to deconstruct a bunch of Taliban who are just sitting around?” asked Harvath as he settled back into his seat.

  Gallagher laughed. “Throw in a cooler of cold beer at the end and that would be my kind of job. But by the same token, I learned a long time ago that you should be very careful what you wish for.”

  CHAPTER 36

  In Bagrami, on the outskirts of Jalalabad, Gallagher turned down the driveway of the largest walled compound Harvath had seen outside of Kabul. It sat in the middle of about eight acres and was surrounded by nothing but flat, rock-strewn, dusty ground. Tactically, it was a brilliant location. You could not only see trouble coming from any direction, you could also engage it and mow it down before it even got close to your front door.

  “The realtors around J-bad will talk your ear off all day long about location, location, location,” stated Baba G as they approached. “But for me, it’s all about the interlocking fields of fire.”

  The compound had been constructed by a local Afghan contractor at the behest of the United Nations. It was built to exacting U.N. standards and was composed of two buildings with seventeen en suite bedrooms, a full basement with workout facility and safe room/bomb shelter, a large communal dining room and kitchen, an expansive garden, swimming pool, and tiki bar.

  When the U.N. fled Bagrami on the heels of the overhyped Mohammed cartoon riots, Gallagher had heard about the property and drove down from Kabul to check it out. He and Hoyt had been wanting to expand their operations farther into eastern Afghanistan. NGOs were doing more work there and would need security. Gallagher also saw the compound as a great money-making opportunity and turned it into a guesthouse, complete with free WiFi access, and dubbed it the Shangri-La. Its garden tiki bar was the only international bar in the region and did a hell of a Thursday night business. In the summer months, Baba G sold memberships to the pool, where Westerners could swim and sun themselves without offending Afghan sensibilities. The man was always alert to opportunity.

  There was a guardhouse outside the main gates, and as Gallagher’s guards saw him driving up, they opened the large iron gates for him. He parked near the main building, and when Harvath stepped out of the vehicle, the first thing he noticed was how much warmer it was. The air was thick and humid. The sky was clear and azure blue.

  “Pretty nice, huh?” asked Baba G. “You’ve come down over four thousand feet in elevation.”

  “Very nice,” replied Harvath as he unwrapped the patoo from around his shoulders and took the pakol off his head. It was at least twenty degrees warmer.

  “It can get pretty cold at night, though,” added Gallagher as two members of the house staff appeared. He directed them to grab the liquor out of the back of the truck and take it inside along with Harvath’s bag.

  Fontaine already knew his way around the Shangri-La and told his colleagues that he’d see them shortly for lunch.

 
Baba G gave Harvath a quick tour of the property, then put him in the biggest room he had available and told him he’d see him in the dining room in fifteen minutes.

  Harvath drew back the drapes and opened the large French windows. The fresh air felt good.

  Setting up his laptop, he logged on to the Internet and checked the email account he had established for communicating with Stephanie Gallo. There was a message waiting. The subject line read POL, short for Proof of Life.

  Opening the email, Harvath read Gallo’s update:

  Wonderful news! All questions answered correctly! When will you get hold of the rug dealer?

  Harvath didn’t like stringing Stephanie Gallo along, but it was going to be necessary for a little while longer. He was way off the reservation, running an operation that she had not sanctioned. He dashed off a response telling her that they expected to move on the rug dealer in the next forty-eight hours. It was as far as he felt comfortable pushing things. If he couldn’t locate Julia Gallo in the next two days, he’d have no choice but to set up the exchange with her captors. Waiting any longer than that was just asking for them to get desperate. The last thing he wanted was for them to start slicing off body parts, one of the Taliban’s favorite attention-getters, and dropping them off in front of the American embassy in Kabul.

  Pulling out his Afghan phone, Harvath dialed Hoyt at the Shahr-e Naw safe house. “How’s our guest?” he asked when Hoyt answered.

  “Who? Hannibal Fucking Lecter?”

  Harvath sat up straighter in his chair. “What happened?”

  “After he soiled himself, Midland went in to try to clean him up and—”

  “Wait a second,” interrupted Harvath. “Why did Midland go in and not you?”

  “Because rock beats scissors, that’s why. Besides, I’m management and he’s labor.”