Sherrie’s laughter broke through the static and he smiled. He loved her laugh. He loved everything about her. He loved…
He lifted the mask and grabbed his phone, bringing up the alarm. He flicked his thumb, shaving 30 minutes from its previous setting, then lay back down, looking forward to that half-hour as he drifted off to sleep.
20 |
Outside Kunduz, Afghanistan
Kane climbed out of the small charter with his carry-on, then waited for Jafar and Mo to join him on the dirt tarmac as the propellers of the charter plane came to a rest. A pre-arranged SUV, much like the one they had left behind at their rendezvous point, sat waiting for them.
The pilot, an Aussie named Ben Ledger, stepped out and Kane shook the man’s hand. “Thanks for getting us here in one piece.”
“No worries, mate. Life has enough dramas. You don’t need to add worrying about your plane falling out of the sky to it.”
Kane laughed and slapped the man on the shoulder. “We’ll see you in eight hours.”
“Copy that, mate.”
Kane tossed his bag in the back seat then climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the door, noting its weight, confirming the vehicle was reinforced. He started the engine then pulled away, and within minutes the airport, if it could be called that, was lost in the distance. When they were out of sight of any prying eyes that might have been watching the area, he lifted up the center console and slid aside a secret panel, a Glock revealed along with several spare mags. He left them in place for the moment, then checked ahead to make sure the road was straight.
“Take the wheel,” he said to Mo.
Mo’s eyes flared slightly but he had learned not to question anything Kane said, and grabbed the wheel as Kane turned his attention to his phone. It had taken two hours to reach the rendezvous with the plane, then another half-dozen to get them where they were now, several stops made along the way to pick up and drop off other passengers. Yes, he could have the military transporting him, but he was still using his cover, and he didn’t want some look-out spotting him climbing out of a military chopper and radioing ahead to their destination, warning them he wasn’t actually a civilian.
He raced through the updates in his secure messenger. The team back in Langley had taken advantage of his travel time, switching shifts to get some rest. He preferred to have Leroux and his team on the job, but no matter how good someone was, they could be rendered useless if exhausted. Nothing so far had shown up with the recovered bills that raised any red flags, and they had nothing yet on the sketch of the money man Jafar had spent the two-hour drive putting together with the artist before boarding the plane. It was a good likeness, but unfortunately, a face with a heavy beard wrapped in a keffiyeh didn’t leave much room for many distinguishing details. They would have to rely on Jafar identifying the man should they find him.
The only signs of progress were that they might have found a match to the telephone number. The analysis continued, but they had found one used in two of the three instances in question, and were working on the third. Langley analysts were still attempting to piece together frames and footage from the drone, hoping to assemble a full face they might put through the databases for a match. If they could confirm the identity of just one of the suspected foreign hostiles, it could break the investigation wide open.
He fired off a message to Langley informing them they were safely on the ground, heading toward their destination, and that he was off comms. If they needed him, they would signal him through his watch and he would put the gear in place.
He handed his phone over to Mo. “Finish getting those serial numbers in. I still think that could be key.”
“You got it.” Mo fished the wad of bills from his inside pocket and returned to the tedious task.
Their next destination was a three-hour drive through what should be safe territory, or as safe as you could expect in Afghanistan. And at their destination was a man with a bunch of expensive new toys, including a shiny broken-down British automobile.
A man in desperate need of insurance.
21 |
Operations Center 2, CIA Headquarters Langley, Virginia
Leroux entered the operations center with a spring in his step and a smile he couldn’t hide no matter how hard he tried. Sacrificing thirty minutes of sleep was the best damn decision he had made all week. God, he loved that woman. “Good morning, everyone!” he said with a wave. A mix of greetings were returned, and Tong flashed a smile at him.
“Good morning.”
And he could swear she sounded slightly hurt. He was fully aware she was attracted to him, but he had hoped that she had moved on from those feelings he couldn’t possibly return. His delirious happiness had to be hard on her. He had always assumed it was easier for women to get a boyfriend. All they had to do was ask. After all, when he was single and lonely, holed up in his apartment, if anyone had come up to him and asked him out, he’d have leaped at the opportunity.
Though maybe his loneliness had nothing to do with lack of opportunity, and everything to do with the fact he had been painfully shy, insecure, and awkward. The only reason he was with a woman like Sherrie, someone so vivacious and outgoing, so confident in her sexuality, her abilities, her intelligence, was because the job had forced them together. If it weren’t for her, he’d be as alone as Tong was.
From casual conversation, he was aware her typical Friday night was spent alone, at home, as forlorn as he once was. Perhaps it wasn’t easier for women. It required courage to ask someone out, whether you were a man or a woman. He felt for her, and wished there were something he could do, though what that might be, he had no idea.
Date the two of them.
He suppressed a chuckle. In today’s society, it wouldn’t actually be out of the question.
“You couldn’t handle both of us.”
Sherrie’s words from last night echoed in his head. She was right. He had a hard enough time keeping up with one woman, let alone two.
And never mind the bedroom.
“Are you okay?”
He flinched then noticed Tong staring at him. “Huh?”
“Well, you’ve just been standing there with a weird smile on your face.”
Leroux’s cheeks flushed and he continued to his workstation. “Sorry, just something that happened last night.”
“What?”
She called your bluff.
He dropped his bag on top of his desk. “You had to be there.” He thought he needed to provide a little more. “We had company. Or rather, Sherrie had company.” He thought back at the jokes made at his expense, and he smiled again, shaking his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand women.”
Child spun in his chair. “Preach, brother. I’ve never been able to figure them out.”
“Maybe that’s because the last woman you—”
Leroux held up a hand, cutting off Mark Therrien from delivering what would no doubt be a zinger at Child’s expense. “Okay, before this descends into madness, did the night shift get us anything useful?”
Tong nodded. “We’ve got a face.”
Leroux sat in his chair. “One of the gunmen?”
“Yup.” She pointed at the displays dominating the front of the room, and an image was shown, half a dozen segments pieced together, enough for the facial recognition software to work with. The man sported a keffiyeh with a thick beard, dark complexion, and if it weren’t for a jagged scar on his left cheek, he could be the man from Jafar’s sketch. In other words, the man appeared as Afghan as any other.
He chewed his cheek for a moment. “And Jafar thinks these guys are foreigners?”
Tong shrugged. “From Kane’s report, it was only because he heard one of them say something in a language he didn’t understand.”
“Any hits yet?”
“Not yet, but they just started the database search at the end of their shift. Hopefully, we’ll get lucky.”
“Anything on those bills yet?”
/>
“Let me check.” Child tapped at his keyboard, then his eyes shot wide. “Now, this is interesting.” Everyone turned to face the young analyst, but he said nothing else as he continued to stare at his screen.
Therrien finally threw his hands in the air. “Well, you can’t leave us hanging like that!”
Child looked up. “Huh? Oh, sorry. We just got the last of the bills, and according to the Fed’s database, over eighty percent of them were first delivered to European banks.”
Tong frowned, Child’s report disappointing in its unimportance. “What’s so unusual about that? We know the Taliban and their ilk are spread throughout Europe and Asia, more so than they are here. If they’re going to get their hands on lump sums of American cash, then they’re more likely to get it at an ATM in Berlin than they are in New York.”
Leroux had to agree, though Child’s smug expression suggested he didn’t. “If you had let me finish, you might not be eating those words. You would have heard me say that all the bills in this particular stack of cash came from six different banks, all in the same batches.”
Leroux’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, it looks like somebody went to six different banks and withdrew roughly a thousand bucks.”
“So, what are you saying?” asked Tong.
“I’m saying, somebody went and took money from six different banks, and, based upon when these bills were issued, I’d say it all happened within the same week, three months ago.”
Leroux’s head bobbed. “So, it’s not just a mix of bills that they accumulated over time, robbing people, knocking over street vendors.”
“No. These were proper withdrawals, made from a bank or an ATM, all in Europe.”
“And then, four weeks later, we have our first attack that we think could be linked, and a couple of weeks later, we have our first attack where we spotted the cameraman.” Leroux pursed his lips. “Coincidence?”
Tong regarded him. “I didn’t think you believed in it.”
Leroux shook his head. “I don’t. I think we’re on to something here. This isn’t something pulled together by a ragtag group. This is a group with connections, well organized, and at least reasonably well funded.”
Child eyed him. “Six grand isn’t exactly well funded.”
Leroux turned to face him. “You’re forgetting that that was the seventh attack that we think is related. Over thirty of our people are dead. If the bounty was the same in all these attacks, that’s at least thirty grand. That’s a huge amount of money for a group that’s based in Afghanistan.”
Child grunted. “You must get paid a hell of a lot more than I do because that’s huge to me too.”
Leroux chuckled. “Yes, but put it in perspective. The typical American makes about fifty grand a year, and the average Afghan makes about a grand. That’s a fifty-fold difference. If whoever is behind this is paying a grand a head, remember that’s a grand to us based upon the lifestyle we’re accustomed to. For them, that’s equivalent to fifty thousand dollars a head. That’s life-altering. And when you’re talking five or six or more per incident, it’s an incredible sum of money, more than enough to take care of one man and his family for quite a while in a country like that.”
Tong’s head slowly bobbed. “Or enough to help an entire village.”
Leroux stabbed a finger at her. “Exactly. We’ve been wondering why they would participate, and that could be our answer. It’s simply too much money for them to pass up, especially in a country that doesn’t value life as we do, and certainly doesn’t value foreigners’ lives. I’m not saying they jumped at it without serious thought, but the offer of unprecedented cash and noninterference in a country where almost all the troops providing meaningful security are about to leave, they probably weighed their options and the money won out. I’m not going to judge them by our standards, but I am going to judge those behind this.”
“Thirty thousand for so many lives? A thousand to kill someone? It’s ridiculous! It’s disgusting!” spat Child. “Who places so little value on a human life, especially on people that have been helping them for years?”
“A grand might mean nothing to us, but to them, it’s equivalent to fifty. And when you’ve known nothing but war, nothing but struggle, then perhaps it proves to be too big a temptation.”
“It obviously did,” muttered Child. “I don’t care how much anybody offered me, I wouldn’t kill any of you. Except maybe Mark.”
“Love you too, Randy,” shouted Therrien from the back, two birds on full display. Everyone chuckled, the tension reliever desperately needed.
Leroux smacked his hands together. “Let’s keep tracking this money, see if any other bills from the same batches have reentered the system in the past two months. We might be able to track the path it took to get into the country. And let’s see if we can put together some more faces from the footage we’ve got. Also, let’s start pulling satellite and drone footage from the region before and after the attacks. Jafar said he didn’t see how they left, but they had to have some mode of transport. We might get lucky and pick something up. We need to find out who the hell is behind this before there’s another ambush.”
22 |
En Route to Cheyabi, Afghanistan
Kane guided them toward the village, now less than an hour away. Jafar sat silently in the back seat, resigned to his fate, as Mo flipped through frame grabs taken from the drone footage showing their next target. He held up the tablet showing the British luxury SUV with its hood open.
“How much does one of these cost?”
Kane glanced at the image for a moment. “More than you and I make.”
Mo grunted. “Something tells me you make a lot more than I do.”
Kane chuckled. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. They give us big expense accounts for our covers, but my paycheck at the end of the day that I have to live off of in the real world is adequate, but nothing that would buy me a car like that.”
“So, you make less than six thousand a year?”
Kane’s eyebrows shot up. “Huh?”
“Well, if everyone’s getting a thousand dollars per American death, and six men died in this attack a couple of months ago, then doesn’t that mean the man received six thousand dollars?”
Kane eased his foot off the accelerator, not willing to use the cruise control on roads where you might have to react in an instant, and cursed at not having made the connection. He had been thinking of the payoffs in Western terms. He had been focusing on the fact there were payoffs made, not the amounts of those payments. Yes, a village receiving $6,000 in Afghanistan was significant in a country so poor, but an $80,000 automobile in the United States was still $80,000 in Afghanistan, and there weren’t any dealerships here. It would have been imported. Yes, that likely meant the disabled car was stolen, its previous owner, perhaps in the Carolinas, still mourning the loss. But there was no way $6,000 bought a stolen luxury British automobile and all the other extravagances evident in the photograph.
$60,000 perhaps, but not $6,000.
Maybe this guy negotiated a better deal than Jafar.
He glanced in the rearview mirror at Jafar, switching to Pashto. “Did you negotiate the amount?”
Jafar’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“A thousand per American soldier’s life. Did you negotiate that amount, or did he just tell you that’s what it was?”
“He just told me. He said he’d give me one thousand for each photo of a dead American I provided.”
Kane sighed heavily, shaking his head. “So little money for so many innocent lives.” He looked back once again at Jafar. “How big a difference does six thousand dollars make in the lives of your village to warrant murder?”
Jafar shook his head. “You don’t understand. That six thousand was for me, not the village.”
Kane took his foot off the gas. “But you gave it to the imam.”
“Yes, because I didn’t feel I des
erved it. It should be shared by the village.”
“But I thought you said the village elders approved this plan?”
“They did.”
“And they approved it, knowing that the six grand was being given to you, not the village?”
Jafar shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. The six thousand was meant for me, but I didn’t feel I deserved to keep it, so I gave it to the imam. The village was paid sixty-thousand.”
Kane hit the brakes, bringing them to a rapid halt on the side of the road. He put the vehicle in park and twisted in his seat, staring directly at Jafar. “You mean the payout wasn’t six thousand to the village? It was six to you, plus another sixty?”
Jafar nodded.
“Then why the hell didn’t you tell us that?”
Jafar averted his eyes. “You never asked. And if I told you, the village would lose its money and all of this would have been for nothing.”
Kane cursed, fishing his comms out of the center console. He shook his head at Mo as he fit the gear in place. “This changes everything. Funding like that isn’t local. It’s not grassroots. Something bigger is going on here.”
23 |
Operations Center 2, CIA Headquarters Langley, Virginia
Leroux flipped through the partial images of the other gunmen that had opened fire on the imam’s home, marking them as outsiders. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough to work with—a quarter of a face, a third. The computer could guess on some of them, though the number of false positives could prove overwhelming.
It would be guilt by association. They had one target with a full face pieced together. Identify him, and perhaps there might be known associates on file they could match up with the others. The likelihood was they wouldn’t find any of them in their files. He could be from Pakistan, Syria, or Brooklyn. There was no way to know, though if he were American or from some other Western ally, he might have traveled on a passport, so his photo would be in the system.
The Messenger - Special Agent Dylan Kane Series 11 (2021) Page 9