by Ron Lealos
As I got closer to Chinar’s home, the lack of noise behind any of the closed doors made my surroundings feel like a city of the dead. Last night’s cooking fires gave the scent of burning charcoal and wood. The holes made by the frequent mortar rounds couldn’t be called windows, nor the pockmarks from bullets called decoration. Most of the shops had roll-down steel doors, secured tight to the ground with large, antique padlocks. Glass was non-existent when bomb concussions, AK rounds, and earthquakes made them impossible to keep unshattered. I could see the door to Number 16 across the road. Nothing moved.
Ten minutes later, I opened the old lock with just a few twists of a CIA burglar tool, and I was inside another courtyard, hoping there were no dogs. They were the biggest job hazard. And I hated killing them, preferring the old trick of hamburger laced with fast-acting barbiturates. Sometimes that took too long, and I had to use the .22 Hush Puppy.
No dogs. No guards. Just the rhythm of sleep.
I stayed against the wall and made my way to a door at the far end.
One of the reasons I had been given Frank Morgan’s name was that I lived up to his level of stealth. After Morgan, no one came through training with his ability to creep into a room and leave without being seen or heard—until me. Tonight, I would have to use all my skills if I wanted to sort out the men, women, and children surely sleeping inside and trade Irish insults with Finnen again.
The door opened with just the slightest squeak. No moonlight. Complete darkness. I let my eyes adjust for a few seconds, listening to the sounds of the hundred-year-old mud house. I was in the entry room, lined with couches, rugs on the floor. Doors led off in two directions, and I could see through to what had to be the kitchen. I picked the door to the left. And got lucky.
On a floor mat covered with pillows, a man softly snored. He was on his back. Alone. Not surprising. If his wife was in the house, she would be with the children, not allowed to disturb the master after providing whatever service he demanded.
Lessons. A model Frank Morgan established was to get the target’s attention first. Let him know the seriousness of the nightmare he was in. Hush Puppy out and silencer screwed tight, I crept across the room to make sure this man matched the picture Dunne had shown me back at Tora Bora. It was him. Fifties and fat. Beard and a scar across his forehead. A mole on the left side of his hooked nose sprouted hairs just like in the photo.
Careful to avoid an artery, I shot him in the knee, covering his mouth with my hand and pressing his head firmly into the pillow. I held the tip of the pistol against the wound, knowing from the cell-phone recordings he spoke English. He would want to talk, if only to try and save his life. Any twist of the barrel, and Chinar would be reminded this wasn’t a dream.
“Who’s your American Army contact?” I said. “Names. Now.”
Chinar was protected. His contacts went to the highest level of both the Afghan government and military. The Company was unwilling to just bring him in and use a water board. Too many would know. That’s why I was here. And he knew it. Usually, the Company turned a blind eye to the drug lords. They had their uses. But trading dope through US forces was beyond even CIA morality.
I lifted my hand just enough so he could talk. His eyes were wide, and I could hear him mumbling prayers. He wasn’t squirming, just staring, unwilling to say anything yet. Without moving the Hush Puppy, I shot him again. A muffled phuuup, and his leg jumped. I clamped tight, waiting for his breathing to slow and his eyes to open.
“Names,” I said. “Or I move on to the other leg.”
Panic now. His eyelids were about to disappear into his forehead.
“Washington,” he said.
For a split second, I was confused. It couldn’t be this evil went all the way back to the Potomac.
“Lieutenant Washington,” he said.
I took some of the force off the barrel, just to let him know I had a heart.
“Who else?” I asked.
“I only talk to Washington,” he said.
“You’re lying. Who else?”
“Only Washington. I never met anyone else.”
“What does he look like?”
“A tor sodar.” Black pig.
“Stationed at Tora Bora?”
“Yes.”
“He gives you money. You give him heroin?”
“Yes. And no. He picks up the heroin later.”
“Where does he get the dope?”
Nothing. He would give up any infidel if it could possibly keep him alive, but he was scared shitless of the Taliban. There had to be guards around somewhere, and we both knew I didn’t have much more time.
Sweat broke out on his brow, and he began to shake. He mumbled prayers again, and I feared he would soon go into shock.
I moved the pistol to his other knee and covered his mouth. I shot him, letting the bounce of his body settle before I asked again.
“Where? And who does he get the dope from?”
This time, I didn’t keep the pistol on the wound. I pushed the tip into his balls. He gasped.
“Sheik Wahidi,” he said.
“Is he in Jalalabad?”
“No. In the mountains.”
“Taliban?”
“Yes.”
A noise outside the door, and Chinar began to struggle and grunt. With my hand over his mouth, I shot him between the eyes and left him to find his seventy-two houris in heaven. And the twenty-six young boys the Muslims seemed to not mention.
I was behind the door as it slowly opened. A bearded, turban-less man stepped through and looked at Chinar. He must have sensed something was wrong and started to walk toward Chinar’s now lifeless body. Softly closing the door with my foot, I shot him at the base of the skull, the barrel pointed up so the bullet would go into his brain. As he slumped, I held him around the waist and eased his body to the floor. Within seconds, I was in the street and on my way back to the tunnel and Finnen.
A small tent in the magic kingdom. Flaps down, guards outside, U2 playing for distortion. The Army had some of the same bugging equipment and parabolics as the Company, like the Orbitar One, that could pick up voices inside a house from a hundred yards. No one got close enough to plant a listening device with the heavily armed sentries walking the beat in Spookville. The Army knuckle draggers who patrolled the base weren’t welcome. Nor were their commanders. This was the Company, and dangers like bugs were always taken seriously, even with the chances of our being overheard about the same as the possibility of rain this month.
Though I’d closed the contract on Chinar, there was the question of how to use the intel he’d given up, especially with the Army connection. Dunne, the station master, sat across from me, squeezing a rubber ball.
“Dead check?” Dunne asked.
The morning sun was blasting the canvas of the tent, and it was already warm enough inside to bake a few sheets of naan. I was stripped down to one of those drab, green military t-shirts and drinking a cold Dasani water, courtesy of Coca Cola and Haliburton.
“Didn’t bring back Chinar’s meat tag,” I said. “But he stopped fingering his prayer beads.”
Dunne was no perfumed prince. One of the few rumors about him had it he was too hot to stay in Iraq any longer. The insurgents didn’t believe his cover as a benevolent USAID engineer since he rarely left the base, and there were too many unfortunate accidents on his watch.
The Outfit didn’t have all the grooming rules of the Army. Both Dunne and I were getting to look more like mujahedeen every day, beards covering our chins. Dunne scratched his, and I wondered why he bothered with the stubble since he was a desk jockey.
“Collateral?” he asked.
“A guard,” I said. “It was painless. He didn’t see me. Nobody else.”
“Intel?” Dunne asked.
No Irish homilies. No preaching. No soul sharing. Dunne was a professional, and there wasn’t time or a desire to get to know me. Just a job. He watched something on the computer screen and waited.
“Lieutenant Washington,” Dunne said. He typed something into the laptop in front of him and leaned back.
Nothing much in the tent but computers, a boom box, a small refrigerator, and a few cots for the night crew. On the support post, someone had taped a picture of a smiling woman holding two blond-haired boys. A bulldog sat at attention next to them, his tongue hanging out the side of his face. I didn’t think it was Dunne’s family, since it was hard to imagine how he could have spawned children. There wouldn’t be time, and it wasn’t in his job description. Styrofoam coffee cups were scattered around the room, and it smelled like everything else around here: dry, hot sand, old rocks, and sweat.
None of this was shocking. Since warfare had first begun, there had always been someone greedy enough to trade with the enemy. The Romans of Hannibal’s day used to tie legionnaires caught doing business with their rivals between elephants and play tug-of-war. The question nagging at me like the sand grinding in my crotch was the method of transport used to extract large quantities of heroin out of this rock pile. Someone was getting protection from higher up the command chain than the Lieutenant level.
The lifeline I was given certainly included finding out more. Dunne would trace Washington in seconds, and I would be dispatched to gather intel. No more missions to hadjiville to grease suspects for now. Concentrate on good, old American criminals and local mullahs. And I had a suspicion Thorsten was a member of the gang.
The muscles flexed in Dunne’s arms, and he looked up.
“Washington’s MOS is Squad Leader of Special Forces Insertion Team Alpha,” Dunne said. “Does a lot of the wet work for the weenies. Kinda reads like your bio, Morgan.”
It was scary when Dunne smiled. His teeth were too white. And big. Made him look like a wolf with a good orthodontist.
“He’s stationed at Gardez,” Dunne said. “But he’s a utility man. Gets around, by the looks of his file.”
Of course, Dunne would be reading the most secure information the Army had on record. The Company, in its newfound cooperative spirit, would still be peeking, just to make sure they had all the latest updates.
A fucking sand fly landed on my arm. I swatted it. These monsters were responsible for leishmaniasis—a.k.a. the Kabul Krud. In Iraq, it was the Baghdad Boil. Ugly, weeping skin sores on the face caused by the bite of this tiny parasite. Fatal if untreated. The bugs lived on garbage and blood. Plenty of both in these parts.
“Anything there on a Delta named Thorsten?” I asked.
Dunne typed a few letters and waited.
“Why?” he asked.
A speck of blood on my arm. I rubbed it in.
“Just coincidence,” I said. “Had a slight disagreement with Thorsten the other day. He mentioned a chat with him and a few buddies for something hush-hush. They needed a little help. Didn’t tell me anything else. Wondering if maybe Washington could be one of his friends and why Thorsten could need a hand from the Company. Can you see if they might have been partnered?”
If Dunne was interested in the “disagreement,” he didn’t show it. Washington wouldn’t be working solo. Too many logistical problems trading money and guns for heroin.
“They went through training together,” Dunne said. “Both Deltas. They certainly know each other. You think Thorsten could be mixed up in this?” Dunne asked the question with his typical on-task look, as if he already knew the answer.
“Not as any kind of brain,” I said. “Not enough cells remaining. Plenty of muscle.”
“What do you think’s going on?” Dunne asked.
The sand-fly bite was itching. I scratched, taking my time to answer.
“Just a guess,” I said. “Rumor command’s been saying for a while that new gear is getting to the tribal leaders and the Taliban. Drugs and money don’t ever seem to be far behind. Opium’s the only currency the mujahedeen have. If it’s not Washington, it’s somebody else. Thorsten’s a possible. From what little I know about him, he’s capable. I don’t know anything about Sheik Wahidi, but I’ll bet that laptop does.” I nodded toward the computer in front of Dunne.
Some of the Afghans had blue eyes as clear and bottomless as a Himalayan lake. Like Dunne’s. Made it seem even more likely that he was about to start howling at the moon. He tapped keys and waited.
“We know him.” Dunne said, a minute later. “But he’s been a friendly. Nothing here links him to the Taliban except he’s a tribal leader in Afghanistan. That’d be the way it needed to get done. Low-profile American supporter while he’s their quartermaster.”
“What are you gonna do?” I asked.
“I think we should talk to Washington,” Dunne said. “Of course, this is on a ‘need to know’ with the Army, and there’s not a need or even a want to know from them. Even Langley will want it that way, especially if we can get to Wahidi. Anything we might do will have to be kept close.”
“I’m still wondering about the drug part,” I said. “How would a grunt get all that dope out of here? And where would it go? Can’t just board a Northwest flight to LaGuardia.”
The statistics on the poppy economy of Afghanistan were well known. When the Taliban took over the country in 1998, Afghan farmers were responsible for 41 percent of the world’s heroin. The poppy crop was almost completely eliminated by the Taliban, but with the entrance of the United States and the Allies, poppy production in Afghanistan was greater now than ever. Today, some estimates put it at supply of 93 percent of the world’s smack. Opium trade was thought to be close to 60 percent of the gross national product of Afghanistan.
Weapons disappeared all the time. There were too many of them around here to give an absolute accounting. The GAO projected the military had no idea where nearly 10 percent of all the munitions were at any given time. Even worse in a war zone. And that amount could arm several battalions of Taliban. A stroll through a bazaar in Afghanistan gave the opportunity to buy almost any of the arms used by US forces. These weren’t just scavenged off bodies but a mainstay of Afghan trade just below opium.
There was too much money to be made to be surprised that there were Americans in-country willing to supply half the formula, money, guns, and explosives. The other half, filling the world demand for escape through a needle, was the Taliban contribution.
Metals mined in the mountains of Afghanistan and sold in Mesopotamia created the first trade route more than five thousand years ago. It was called the Tin Road and followed some of the same trails still used to transport opium and heroin through Iran and into Turkey, home of the world’s largest heroin refineries. Until now. The Afghans had decided to keep that part of the profit and boil the poppies themselves. Only the product had changed.
None of this was classified information. I knew it as part of the classes back at Langley that explored the geo-political and historical roots of terrorism. For thousands of years, border guards made their living letting contraband pass. Nowadays, an Afghan guard who might make twenty thousand Afghanis’ salary per month could get a hundred thousand Afghanis by turning his head as a truckload of heroin passed by.
Simple economics. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that something bigger than just this equation was in play.
Dunne was giving me a lot of time to mull it over. He was probably not fixated on the Tin Road or the impact of the poppy crop on rural Afghan agriculture. He was operations, and plotting was what curled his lips into a rare smile. He grinned, and it was creepy.
“You’re going to Gardez,” he said. “The weenies across the street will send you out alone with Washington. According to his file, he’s done plenty
of these ops, so he shouldn’t suspect anything. I won’t tell them what it’s about.” He leaned forward and opened a file next to the laptop. “We’ll have to give you a different name. If Thorsten’s involved, Washington might already know yours.”
Two itches. The bite on my arm and the sand in my crotch. The rash never seemed to go away. I scratched like Roger Clemens.
“Donovan,” I said. “I love being named after our father.”
The founder of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, Wild Bill Donovan had led the World War II espionage and sabotage campaign across Europe, inventing some of the dirty tricks used today. Many in Langley still worshipped at his altar, even though he died in 1959.
“Okay, Donovan,” Dunne said. “I’ll have you on the flight schedule for the morning. Be ready at 0600. You’ll be riding a Bird.”
Dawn. The white-backed vultures were out for breakfast. Against the crystal blue background, a lone Imperial eagle dove between them, winning the first snack of the day from the camp dump. The bird’s reddish-brown back contrasted with the white of the other scavengers, and his wing span rivaled the vultures’. But the eagle was a lot quicker to the garbage feast. On the base, the usual busyness as soldiers, photographers, reporters, and spooks processed the morning’s coffee. A jeep raced past, probably carrying doughnuts for the command tent. The smell of scrambled eggs mixed with the nose-coating stench of diesel. Across the valley, snow-capped twenty-thousand-foot-plus mountains dominated the horizon over the razor wire. I waited while the pilot did his preflight check, circling the chopper and thumping in places to show he knew exactly if the bird was airworthy. A “thumbs up” and we boarded.
The operation Dunne outlined earlier was to rendezvous with Washington outside the Camp Lightning compound and take him to a safe house in Gardez city under the guise of a joint assassination of an al-Qaeda cell leader. Finnen would be waiting for us. The Irishman was getting a little R & R from his assignment in the suburbs of Jalalabad. Washington would be “debriefed” without water boards or hoods. The method would be one refined by Kim Philby: convince Washington he had been betrayed and we had a use for him. Kind of true, even if truth in these situations was as hard to give as receive. I’d play bad guy and Finnen the jolly good guy. Still undecided was whether Washington would live. His future was dependent on the level of cooperation and how the Company could use him. After he left Afghanistan, all bets were off.