by Tal Bauer
In his will, he left his mamá half his bank account, and gave instructions to donate the rest to the Washington DC LGBT Center, along with his car. Maybe it would be best if he did die. The LGBT center would be better off with two thousand dollars. Surely the world would be better off without him. Surely.
He’d been too wired to sleep, so he’d pulled on his sneakers and running shorts, grabbed a hoodie, and headed out. He lived in Falls Church, Virginia, a postage-stamp suburb south of DC. His apartment was between the Whole Foods and the Circuit City. Just after four in the morning, the town was silent, smothered in darkness and sleep, but DC shone like a beacon on the hill beyond the Potomac River. He could see the Washington Monument, see the lights from the Lincoln Memorial. The dome of the Capitol, just barely, or at least the glow.
He’d also seen the floodlights from the search and recovery operation at the Pentagon. He’d tasted the smoke, still lingering in the air, the atomization of the beating heart of American military force. Never before had there been an attack on the US homeland.
He’d run faster, trying to outrun his thoughts. Feet pounding on concrete just starting to turn dewy with the first blush of autumn. Slap, slap, slap. He’d thought he heard the sound of construction trucks, of heavy machinery moving at the Pentagon. They’d be moving rubble, clearing debris. Searching for remains. Every time a body was found, work came to a standstill, every person present standing and removing their hard hats, placing their hands over their hearts, and watching as the fallen was escorted to an ambulance to be carried to the morgue.
Slap, slap, slap. Faster, harder. He couldn’t outrun the images, the scenes playing over and over in his mind. The attacks, planes disappearing into fireballs, screams, shouts of horror. American flags were draped from every streetlight, every traffic pole, banners that seemed to drip crimson-red blood all over the pavement before him. You did this. You let this happen.
Ashes and dust hung in the air, choking his mouth, his nose. He hadn’t been able to breathe, suddenly, the air too thick, too cloying. He’d stopped, doubled over, gasping. His fingers had clawed at his throat, at his face, trying to clear the ash, the dust, rip away the ghosts that tried to strangle him. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Every breath he’d taken inhaled more of the dead. You did this. You let us die.
He’d puked in the parking lot of Walgreens and collapsed in the flower bed on the corner. He’d squashed yellow daisies and pink ground cover, but hadn’t cared. When the sprinklers had turned on half an hour later, he’d finally gotten up and stumbled back to his apartment.
So, at eleven in the morning, he was in exactly no mood for George’s bullshit. He stared George down, willing him to look him in the eye. Be a man, George. Say this to my face.
“Kris…” George cleared his throat. Put his hands on his hips. Stared at the wall beyond Kris’s ear. “You know there have been some… concerns about you on this team.”
Kris ran his tongue over his teeth, sucking his lips together. His jaw ached, his teeth gritted. Holding back. His coffee cup trembled, his hand, his arm shaking.
“There are concerns about how the Afghans will react to…” George waved his hand over Kris, a sweeping motion that reduced everything that he was down to one adjective: gay.
“So—” George cleared his throat. Finally looked Kris in the eye. “I need you to keep your head down once we’re in theater. Do your job. Don’t—” He seemed to stumble, fumbling for the right word. “Don’t advertise.” He sighed, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Look, Kris, it’s a matter of safety.” He spread his hands, and a helpless look crossed his face. “We need to get this done. We can’t be also worrying about how the Afghans are reacting to you. We can’t be worrying about whether you’re in danger, or if they’re planning on taking you out. So, please. Tone it down?”
Kris’s voice was cutting, ice sharpened to razors. “What exactly would you like me to tone down?”
“That. That attitude. Right there. You don’t have to fight everything all the time. We’re just trying to help you.”
“I don’t need your help, George. I am just as qualified as every other member of this team. What I need is a little more confidence in my abilities, which have absolutely nothing to do with my sexuality.”
“You’re not as experienced. Everyone has been in the field before except you. You’re coming because of your specialized knowledge of the country and your language abilities. And because you haven’t been in the field before, in a hostile environment, everyone else is going to have to watch out for you. Watch your back. Pick up your slack.”
“There won’t be any slack for you to pick up. Not from me.” Kris’s blood burned. His molars scraped over each other, his jaw twitching.
“We still have to watch out for you. Because...” George waved his hand again, up and down Kris’s body. As if he couldn’t say the word. “Just… don’t make it obvious what you are.”
“Is there something I’ve done in the past week that screams what I ‘obviously’ am?”
George stared at him. He stayed quiet.
Kris broke first, pulling out a sealed envelope from inside his jacket. He held it out.
“You quitting? This your resignation?”
“It’s my will. The only way I’m off the team is if you get rid of me. So either bench me and deal with Clint Williams or take this and let me get back to work. I have to call Dushanbe station today and check in with my contact in the Shura Nazar. Negotiations have been tense this week. General Khan is supposed to tell us today if we’re allowed into their territory in northern Afghanistan.” He shook the envelope. “So, are you going to take this?”
George snatched it out of Kris’s hand. “Let me know as soon as you hear from your contact in Dushanbe.”
Chapter 4
September 19, 2001
“Hop in.” Jim popped the trunk as he slid his sedan into park at Kris’s curb. “I can help you with that.” He unbuckled his seat belt and got one foot out of the driver’s door.
“I’m fine.” Kris hefted his ruck. He’d done the best he could getting everything packed. He’d whittled out as much as he could, too. But how did someone pack for a warzone when he had no idea how long he’d be gone? One sweater or two? How cold was Afghanistan cold? Was the jar of peanut butter really necessary? After six weeks of MREs, would he murder someone for a spoonful of Nutella?
He dropped his ruck in the trunk next to Jim’s. His was smaller, leaner. Less full. They both had sleeping bags strapped to the top and thin sleeping mats on the bottom, but Jim had obviously stuffed his pack almost to bursting. Kris wanted to run back up to his apartment and grab everything he’d dumped. Clearly, he hadn’t packed enough. But if he stuffed it fuller, he wouldn’t be able to lift it. And then what would George say?
Kris slammed the trunk and came around to the passenger side. Jim stared. “Ready?”
“Are you?”
Jim handed him a cup of coffee, then held his own out for a toast. “Here’s to the last cup of Starbucks.”
The rest of the drive to Langley was silent. Fog shrouded the city, heavy with dew in the early-morning hours. Jim’s headlights got lost in the gloom. Kris watched the yellow beams fall apart in the gray haze. It looked like smoke, like he was in the center of a firestorm. His heart sped up, beats pounding. He smelled fire, tasted ash. Heard the screams again. Was this what so many people had seen that morning, their last vision of the world? Dust and ash, forever? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
He leaned back, resting the side of his head on the window, and counted the minutes until they arrived.
Jim badged into the front gate and drove out to the long-term parking structure. He poured a bottle of fuel stabilizer into his tank. “Hope this car is still here when I get back. God knows how long we’ll be gone.”
They grabbed their rucks, Kris’s shoulders screaming, his back aching. He forced his expression neutral, hiding the pain, the way it felt like his spine was compressin
g down to a single inch. He didn’t speak as they made their way across three parking lots of people just starting to arrive. The newcomers didn’t seem to care about two men hiking toward headquarters, looking like they were going off to war. Then again, it was the CIA. Weird things happened every day. And everyone knew the CIA was on the move, mobilizing to respond to the attacks.
The rest of the team was waiting with their gear and the crates that had lined the hallways and conference room for days.
In minutes, the truck rumbling across the parking lot would ferry the gear and crates, and the bulk of the team, to Dover Air Force Base, where they’d fly out to Germany that afternoon. Kris and George were taking a later flight from Dulles, rendezvousing with everyone before transferring to Tashkent to meet the Special Forces team.
Reality was starting to set in. The team joked loudly, trying to bleed out the adrenaline, fill up the quiet spaces that hung over their heads.
Maybe they’d never return. Maybe they’d never set foot in Langley again. Kris caught Ryan eyeballing him, his dark eyes watching from beneath the brim of his ball cap.
“Let’s load up!” Ryan slapped the side of the truck when it braked. Hot exhaust fumes poured over the team. They moved fast, hauling the heavy crates into the back. Their gear followed. Kris loaded his ruck, grunting to heft it the final foot. Ryan grabbed it from him with one hand and swung it the rest of the way.
When everything was loaded, Ryan, Phillip, Derek, and Jim hopped aboard.
“We’ll see you in Germany.” George shook Ryan’s hand. “Safe travels.”
The truck rumbled away. Kris tried to swallow.
An hour later, he and George countersigned for a release of $5 million. The money was packaged in twenty-dollar and hundred-dollar bills, all used. There were bundles of $10,000, and bundles of those to make $100,000. Everything was loaded into two black duffels. The CIA accountant glared at them both. “You both will be the signatories for this cash. Keep track of every expenditure. Get receipts.”
Kris snorted. George smiled. He took one of the duffels and gave the second to Kris. They’d never be able to get receipts from the Shura Nazar. The concept didn’t even exist in Afghanistan.
Their last stop before leaving was to see Clint Williams.
Even though Kris was the least experienced, he was indispensable to the mission. His connections with the Shura Nazar, his language abilities, his familiarity with the culture, the way he’d become the Afghanistan expert in the CIA—if there was anyone else, literally anyone else who could go instead of him, Kris knew George would take them instead. But Kris was the man who had what George, and the CIA, needed for this mission. Which, despite Ryan’s Special Forces experience and the team’s experience in the field and in hostile situations, made Kris almost the most valuable man.
He could feel George’s resentment, burning like a heat wave crossing the desert, as they sat in Williams’s office.
“Gentleman,” Williams said. He folded his hands. “The president has asked me to give you your final orders. You already know you are to convince the Shura Nazar to work with the CIA and the United States military and to accept US forces into the Panjshir Valley. We will be utilizing their territory as a base of operations for our war against the Taliban and against Bin Laden. They need to be on our side.”
Kris shifted. George leaned forward, nodding.
Moving high speed into Afghanistan, coming on full throttle with demands to the Shura Nazar would be just about the worst way they could possibly approach building an alliance. In a culture built on reputation, on saving face, the US would be perceived as an invader and an interloper. They had to have a softer touch. They had to become allies. Friends. They couldn’t go off like a misfired firework, or the entire mission would blow up in their faces.
“There’s one more thing you gentlemen need to take care of. The president has ordered your team to do anything and everything you can to find Osama Bin Laden, and his senior leadership, and to kill them.”
Silence. Kris froze. Beside him, he saw George go still, his spine stiffening. Kill orders, in the history of the CIA, were rare. Far rarer than the public believed. Rare enough that Kris knew it was George’s first. His first, too.
“Bin Laden can’t be captured. He can’t be tried here in the US. He sure as hell can’t be tried in some Sharia court in a Muslim country. Any al-Qaeda leader would turn into a symbol, a rallying point for every terrorist who hates America. No, the president wants Bin Laden dead. And I want to ship Bin Laden’s head to the president in a box of dry ice. I told him you could deliver.”
George blinked. Kris’s gaze slid sideways. What now, fearless leader?
“Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.” Williams stood, buttoning his suit jacket. He shook George’s hand, then Kris’s. “You men have your work cut out for you. You’d better get going.”
George and Kris shared a long look as they walked out, hauling duffels filled with $5 million in cash and heading to the farthest spot on the planet.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
September 21, 2001
Tashkent was every third-world nightmare Kris had ever had, rolled into one depressing, festering city.
Abandoned Soviet factories lingered like scars on the cityscape. Desperately poor Uzbeks huddled on street corners, their faces lined with weariness and the ravages of decade-old Soviet occupation, war, and endless struggle. Heroin traffickers from Afghanistan flooded the streets with the cheapest grade of their drugs, and high Uzbeks lay in a stupor in ditches and on the side of the road. The rest of the heroin was refined and sent on to Russia.
Everyone was armed. Everyone carried Russian-made AK-47s over their shoulder, and RPGs and machine guns rested on the back of nearly every rusted-out pickup. From the airport, Kris, George and the team sped through the capital to the US Embassy in a blacked-out SUV.
The embassy’s political officer met them, ushering them into empty quarters the Marines had vacated for their arrival.
The political officer and ambassador fed them, spreading out American-style burgers and french fries on a long table in the conference room. There, they got their up-to-the-moment briefing.
“We got word that the Shura Nazar officially invited your team into their territory this morning. We received a cable from Dushanbe station. The Shura Nazar diplomat there gave our embassy coordinates for your entry.”
George smiled. “Fantastic.” He turned to Kris and nodded.
Kris tried to smile back, but it was tight, his lips pressed to his teeth, almost painfully so. Guess that was the only recognition he was going to get for making the connections with the Shura Nazar and guiding Dushanbe station through their negotiations with a completely foreign and unknown potential ally.
What else was new?
Iranian forces were already on the ground. Their Ministry of Intelligence had sent operatives and officers into Afghanistan following September 11 and were already embedded with Shura Nazar units in the south and the west. “Iran, and the Shia government there, hate the Taliban. The Taliban murdered eleven Iranian diplomats when they seized the Iranian Embassy.”
George scowled. “We really don’t want anything to do with the Iranians.”
“They’re staying well away from the locations where your team is planning on inserting. But they sent this through the French Embassy this morning.” The political officer spread out an Iranian-made map of Afghanistan with detailed notes of al-Qaeda and Taliban positions labeled throughout the southern region of the country.
“We’ll have to check this out. Get eyes on. We can’t launch without confirmation that these are actual Taliban and al-Qaeda locations.”
“The Iranians told the French to tell us to ‘keep it’. We wanted you to see it first.”
“Forward it to CENTCOM. See if they can get satellite coverage over the targets. Get them on deck for when the bombing starts.”
“The
Uzbeks have reported that the Taliban MiG fighters are grounded. You don’t have to worry about air-to-air intercept. Just surface-to-air.”
“MiGs? Who was flying MiGs for the Taliban? They don’t have that military capacity.” Ryan frowned, his brow furrowing hard.
Kris leaned forward. “Russian mercenaries were flying for the Taliban for a hundred thousand dollars a day. The Taliban could buy that with their drug-and-oil money. But Moscow has told all mercenaries to get out, and get out now.”
“Thought Moscow said they couldn’t control their mercenaries? Hasn’t that been their line for years?” The ambassador’s eyes twinkled.
“Moscow says whatever they need to say, whenever they need to say it.”
The ambassador snorted. “And your Special Forces team arrived yesterday. They’re bunking at the airport. With the way the weather changes, they want to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”
Flying over the Hindu Kush and into Afghanistan was fraught with danger under the best conditions. The mountains pushed most helicopters to their upper limits. The helos shuddered in the thin air, fighting physics and wanting to drop out of the sky. Fog and snow sometimes blinded out the passages, leaving the pilots flying in total whiteout conditions.
“Smart. What’s the weather like?”
“Looks like there’s a break in the cloud cover tomorrow. If all holds, you’ll fly out then.”