by Jack Murphy
Chuckling, he was unable to help himself.
O'Brien was so much more interesting than the swivel chair generals they propped up in front of Congress from time to time. They dazzled the powerless bureaucrats with dialect and baffled them with bullshit, so that meanwhile, the real work could be done.
Having his consultancy firm do a thorough background check on Mr. O'Brien, they found that real work he had done. After an unremarkable military career, other than a bad conduct discharge, he had been picked up by one of the hundreds of fronts Kammler and his close associates used as needed. He ran with several death squads in areas troublesome for the IMF and World Bank before being picked up by a talent scout for wet work. Assassinations and bombings from what he understood, but it wasn't like they kept records.
Yes, if the pawn survived, O'Brien would be given an offer he couldn't refuse. A place in a highly structured system. Even after the collapse, some level of enforcement would be necessary.
Otherwise, he would have to be disposed of, along with many others who would know where the money was and where the bodies were buried. If he did a good enough job, Kammler decided he would put his name in the hat to replace their current operations manager, Chad Morrison, who seemed to be rapidly outliving his usefulness.
As the gunfire died down on screen, he leaned back in the leather seat.
According to murky details his intelligence experts uncovered in far corners of the globe, this O'Brien character quickly rose through the figurative ranks of corporate hit men, having contained several situations for a recent sitting President whose sloppy lifestyle threatened his administration. Thus was the cost of doing business, Kammler knew. Only the heavily compromised could be permitted into the Oval Office, so that leverage was there when he needed it.
That was one way to get the job done.
One of the others was to act as a proxy for extended international negotiations for the President, who himself was acting on policy decisions arrived at, not by Congress or his own Cabinet, but by the round table groups and foundations that Kammler Associates ran in the first place. In the true architecture of power, presidents were just middlemen who read teleprompters for those who made the real decisions.
For a moment Kammler felt weightless as the Gulfstream began to drop altitude.
The talking points for this negotiation were exceedingly simple. Force the heads of state into a corner, use treaties and threaten economic sanctions to make them prove a negative to the world. An impossible imposition, of course, but that was the point. When they failed, and they would, Kammler would use the media outlets to intensify the level of rhetoric against the Muslim nation. Scare the milk cows of the Western world into war.
It had worked over and over again, he himself only using the mechanisms of deception and control to send Americans to war since Vietnam, but there were many before him. It began not long after the American Revolution but did not start in earnest until the Kennedy assassination.
Later, when the wheels touched down on the tarmac, Kammler turned off the television set, the firefight dying down. There would be more to come before O'Brien would be able to pull his people out, but he had other priorities.
Besides, it was just a sidebar to the main event.
Thirteen
Deckard came awake with a start as the lights were flipped on.
Recognizing the voices that had entered his office, he remembered to breathe.
“Hey, wake up,” Frank said.
Sitting up on his cot, Deckard squinted, the light hurting his eyes. With a sinking feeling, the memories of the last seventy-two hours washed over him.
“We have flights to catch in a few hours,” Adam announced. “If we are going to make it to the airport in Astana in time, we have to do this now.”
“No problem,” Deckard replied, swinging his legs over the side of the cot. He'd been awake for nearly three days by the time he finally got the chance to lie down. After a marathon like that, five hours of sleep left him feeling like he had awakened from a coma.
Looking down, he realized he was still wearing his fatigue pants and dirty socks. He didn't even remember coming back into his office. Landing in Astana, he had men who needed to be transported to the hospital. Bodies that needed to be brought to a morgue until they could be claimed by family members, if they had them.
“Since we got back, we've been reviewing data we recovered on the objective,” Adam told him. “From talking to MIK's brother, I confirmed that they were running a smuggling route into Tajikistan where the poppies would then be distributed to Russia and Europe. The refining into opium could happen anywhere along the way from Uzbekistan to Kosovo.”
“Pretty much what we thought,” Deckard said, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Yeah, but we uncovered more from several of the hard drives,” Frank replied. “You'll never guess who was paving the way for them.”
“You mean making sure the shipments made it past coalition checkpoints?”
“You got it. Human Terrain Teams.”
“The social scientists that work for the Department of Defense? Aren't they anthropologists and shit like that?”
“On paper, yeah,” Adam cut in. “They map the 'human terrain', basically studying social networks. They build tribal link charts to help coalition forces understand the local people they are interacting with.”
“Sounds benign at best and just another money pit of a defense contract at worst.”
“But get this,” Frank interrupted again. “We made some phone calls; the defense contractor who fields the HTT teams is Global Systems Inc. founded by Carl Weiss. He kicked the bucket a few years ago, so now his son Neil runs the business.”
“HTT isn't a huge step for them,” Adam continued. “This company is sort of an umbrella that has sent teams all over the world mapping different ethnic groups under various pretenses, usually under the banner of one Non-Governmental Organization or another.”
“To what end?”
“Not sure yet, but we've uncovered a few clues. Turns out the Weiss family are a bunch of closet Nazis, going all the way back to their support for the Third Reich during the Second World War. Big supporters of the eugenics movement on both sides of the Atlantic.”
“You mean racial hygiene?”
“A little more high tech, but yeah.”
“This is bizarre. We started going after a warlord smuggling opium and found that they are connected to a US based firm that is mapping ethnic groups and had Nazi ties?”
“It gets better. Two HTT members in Afghanistan have died under suspicious circumstances in the last few months. Not corporate management types, but the scientists themselves. One was an anthropologist, and the other had a doctorate in political science. Officially, they are listed as dying from enemy action, but the family of one went to the press, calling bullshit. Some internet rumors surround the other death, but we can't be sure.”
“They were going to go public, so someone took them out.”
“Don't think it ends there. CEO Weiss, junior, and the late senior were and are members of the Council on Foreign Relations.”
“I told you about our trio of employers. They are all heavily invested in CFR. Major stakeholders to say the least.”
“Yeah, we're trying to figure out what that connection is, but it doesn't make sense.”
“Think of it like this,” Frank interjected. “We all know the Afghan Prime Minister is balls deep in the heroin trade. His brother is a warlord, doing most of the dirty work. The PM works for the US. I'm thinking our employers didn't like the competition they were getting from a rival CFR member.”
“So MIK was a convenient beta-test for Samruk. Two birds with one stone, exactly the type of thinking you'd expect from the owners of mega-corporations who live on the interest created by their interest.”
“We've also been tracking some atmospherics that may or may not be related,” Adam added.
“What have you got?”
“Strange shit. A lot of smart weapons being moved in and out of Diego García. Maybe nuclear, but my sources don't run that deep. There have also been transactions of unusually large amounts of gold bullion in the last few weeks. Mostly out of the US to China and India.”
“Sounds like the CFR goons getting on a war footing.”
“What have you gotten us into?” Adam asked. “I need to know you're not in over your head here.”
“We all are, but this is going to work.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because no one has ever done this before. “
“Christ,” Adam remarked, shaking his head.
“Anything else?” Deckard asked, standing up and stretching his arms.
“One other thing. Global Systems Inc. also fields a subsidiary called Information Technologies LLC out of Singapore. As near as we can tell, the entire company consists of three ex-CIA psychologists.”
“Some kind of PsyOps deal?”
“Mind fuckers,” Frank said, nodding.
“But we're not sure what they're up to yet,” Adam finished.
“Let me know when you find out who they are targeting.”
“Yeah, we need to get moving. We're heading-”
Deckard stopped him by holding up a hand.
“Don't want to know.”
Unable to fall back asleep, Deckard went out for a run just as the sun was creeping across the horizon. None of the Samruk troops were out and about, most still asleep. Deckard had ordered them to grab some chow and hit the rack. They'd spend the next few days refitting and resting before being put on pass for a long weekend.
As he ran down the dirt road, Deckard's thoughts drifted to the events that had transpired in Afghanistan. After taking the objective and being denied extraction, they spent the day fighting off wave after wave of Taliban fighters. The Kazakhs were strong and knew how to soldier, but by the end of it, he was beginning to see the signs of battle fatigue and shell shock setting in. Getting some downtime was important in the following days.
Once nightfall came, Deckard called the Joint Operations Center in Bagram with an Iridium phone and coordinated for the pickup. Securing the landing zone several kilometers away, they'd moved the dead and dying first before getting the rest of the company into the Chinooks.
Most of the injured would be coming back to work over the next couple of weeks as their wounds healed. Others would need an extended stay in the hospital. He had already assured them that they would have a job when they came back. If they couldn't soldier, they could be trained as mechanics or work staff jobs.
Turning onto a side road, he could see their compound in the distance, the morning sun reflecting off the corrugated steel warehouse.
Twelve were coming back for their funerals. He had never felt so responsible and never felt as guilty as he did now for already contemplating how to replace them. They would recruit locally first, vetted relatives of current members, but he also wanted to bring in some more special forces types from stateside to make up for the lack of training in the other new recruits.
When the boys woke up, they'd clean weapons and confirm that all equipment was accounted for. If there were any losses, like a machine gun turned into scrap metal by an exploding rocket, they would have to be replaced. On the plus side, they managed to smuggle fourteen RPG launchers out of country right under the noses of the military police at Bagram Airfield.
Feeling his muscles begin to loosen up, Deckard picked up the pace spending the remaining distance back to the compound thinking of comments for the after action review in the afternoon.
Minutes later he arrived at the compound and took his first shower since getting back from Afghanistan. It was bad enough that he could smell himself from across the room. Thinking about the AAR and the meetings he needed to have with the Sergeant Major and his Executive Officer, he knew he had a lot of work to catch up on.
He just hoped Adam and Frank would be able to work fast before their employers called his bluff.
Fourteen
Adam brushed passed the bouncer and into Klub X-Rated.
Douk-Saga hip hop music from Cote D'Ivoire blasted over a boom box in the corner of the club while the lithe forms of African girls hid in the shadows of the club, dancing for foreign men in country on business from South America. Adam snorted.
The entire place stunk of cheap perfume and shame.
He appeared to move in slow motion as the strobe light blasted on and off as he approached one of the men huddled with a local girl. When the girl looked up at him with wide brown eyes, the mercenary motioned her away. Having spent more than a day or two in the shady establishment, she knew it was time to leave, quickly gathering her things and moving to the opposite side of the club.
“Hey,” the man said in accented English. “Get your own girl, I already paid for her.”
“You got a date with me tonight,” Adam said, pushing the man back down onto his seat.
“Shit,” the Colombian said with recognition. “You didn't tell me you were coming.”
“I'll be sure to call ahead next time.”
Eduardo was in the drug business, and at the moment business was good, Colombian Special Forces having eliminated his competition several months ago, taking credit for El Jefe himself in the process.
The small sub-Saharan nation of Guinea-Bissau had perhaps the lowest per capita income in the entire world and a government that was easily bought and sold.
Combined with the island archipelago off the coast, it was an ideal stop on the underground drug railroad leading to Europe. Eduardo was a facilitator, making sure that the air drops and midnight landings off the coast went off without a hitch.
“We need to talk,” Adam stated. It wasn't the first time they'd had words or exchanged information. A bag man was more like a freelance import/export agent than a loyal minion to a drug lord back in southwest Colombia.
“What do you have for me?” the cartel member said, smiling.
“A waiver. Help me out, and I won't have to put you out of business.”
“Bullshit-” the Colombian jumped to his feet. “You come here to threaten me? I own this country, what the fuck do you do?”
“Take a seat, Edward,” Adam ordered, glancing back at the bouncers. “This isn't a good time to be a drug lord, if you hadn't noticed.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I'm talking about Ramirez. I'm talking about Khalis. I'm talking about running product through Croatia instead of Greece and pocketing the difference.”
Eduardo’s eyes went wild, his face getting redder.
“I just want information.”
“What kind of information?” the bag man said, taking his seat, attempting to calm himself down.
“You know the term cui bono?”
“Get to the point.”
“Why was Ramirez killed?”
“Doing business with the wrong people.”
“There are not a lot of right people in your line of work.”
“Some are more wrong then others. Some believe that competition is a sin.”
The Colombian wore a lightweight tropical suit, with a gaudy florescent tie hanging loosely around his neck. The slicked back hair and sunglasses perched on his head even after sundown completed the image, carefully cultivated to let everyone know exactly who and what he represented. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he palmed a pack of cigarettes.
“What does that mean?”
“Ramirez was an idiot,” he said, shaking loose a cigarette from the pack. “There is a system, an order to things, but he was too stubborn too see that. He invested his money in real estate and businesses; the rest he kept hidden around the countryside. Millions of dollars. Billions. By the caseload. If you want to stay in this line of work, you have to be smart.”
Eduardo flicked his lighter and inhaled on the cigarette. “Smart like me.”
“What do you do different?”
“I ke
ep my money in banks. The right banks,” he replied, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
“You give the bankers a cut for laundering your cartel's money.”
“Of course, this is how it has always worked. Haven't you ever wondered why some cartels in Mexico get a free pass while others have the entire Mexican army deployed against them? Unlike in the US, the border is tightly controlled on the Mexican side to protect the corridors. It is much the same for us. If you know your place, you will be allowed to operate. This is the price of doing business.”
It was a long shot, but with the information Deckard had given him and what he had uncovered on his own, Adam intended to follow the money.
“What are the right banks?”
“The gringo kind,” Eduardo laughed.
Frank climbed down the fold-out stairs and moved to the side of the Learjet, standing watch as the heat mirage rippled up from the asphalt airstrip.
As his principal stepped off the aircraft and walked toward the small terminal, he followed one step behind while the two other members of the Personal Security Detachment covered both flanks, keeping a sharp lookout as they approached immigration.
“Welcome to Nauru,” the clerk manning the desk said smiling.
The American stepped forward, handing over all four passports to the customs official. It was a slow day for him as the plane from Brisbane to the island nation only flew twice a week. Being in the employ of United Bamboo and having access to one of their private jets certainly cut down on time spent waiting for flights to remote airfields.
As the three Taiwanese and one American stood sweating on the tarmac, the official quickly stamped the four passports before handing them back to Frank. He knew the deal. VIP's don't get dicked around with.
The protection detail moved in formation around Kao, heading toward the waiting Mazda van. Kao was a big name in United Bamboo, the largest of the Triads. Chen and Kenny were both made men in the organization that was as well known for counterfeiting and copyright infringement as drug trafficking and kidnapping.