Allies

by Wolf Riedel

  Her eyes blazed the moment she saw him. Mark was never sure what color they were; all he ever got was the impression of something dark, almost black. Her eyes were supplemented by a tight lipped scowl. There was no invitation here for a casual hug or peck on the cheek so Mark turned to the the only service he could offer—as designated bag carrier.

  “Is your bag off the plane yet, Mabel?” he asked.

  “Of course it is. I’ve been waiting here forever,” was the terse reply.

  Mark took in at a glance that the baggage carousel was still turning, still loaded with bags and still surrounded by a mob of people.

  “Where’s yours?” he asked.

  She looked at him like she was looking at the village idiot and nodded her head at the carousel.

  “It’s still going around since no one was here to take it off for me,” she complained through partially clenched teeth.

  Mark sighed and then moved toward the carousel.

  “Point yours out for me,” he said before she could get away and leave him to his own devices to figure out which was hers.

  Groaning as if under an immense burden that Mark had just imposed on her, Mabel reluctantly returned to the carousel elbowing her way through her fellow travelers. She waited, Mark beside her.

  “That one,” she said pointing at a black Samsonite bag which Mark scooped up deftly and deposited on the floor.

  “Any others?” he asked.

  “I said that there was just the one,” she replied once again with the distinct air of one having to deal with the aforementioned village idiot.

  Actually you didn’t although I did assume that, he thought but rather than entering into a senseless debate about whether it was just polite to ask about other bags, he grabbed the one bag that was there and led the way out to the car. Mixed feelings ran through him: delight that he was flying out to New Orleans the next day; shame and regret that he was leaving Kristin behind.

  CHAPTER 31

  W Spruce St., Tampa, Florida

  Tuesday 13 Mar 07 1900 hrs EDT

  Sandy’s father had not come home the night before. There had been no explanation and there was no indication, one way or the other, as to whether or not he’d show up tonight. Temporary unexplained absences of two or three days were not unusual for him.

  The break had been useful. Tuffy and Sandy had a long discussion that night about just how they would manage things afterwards. It was clear to him that this had not been a spur of the moment decision on her part. She’d been thinking about this thing—not the girl part, just the killing of her dad—for some time now. There had been very little discussion about the killing. That part she was prepared to leave as a job for Tuffy to figure out. There was, however, considerable discussion about how they would do life in general; how would they explain the man’s absence to friends and neighbors, how would they arrange to keep his benefits going, what would they do if anyone came to investigate, how would they be able to sell the house if they needed to, and, of course, what would they do with the girl.

  Tuffy knew right form the start that the part of the plan about the girl was flaky at best. Keeping her under wraps itself seemed like a virtual impossibility to him but Sandy assured him that she had read about several abduction cases of young girls and there had always been a way that the child could be kept hidden from the world until she eventually came to accept the next phase of her life as just being a member of the new family. She said she would research it further on the internet and come up with a more solid plan in a day or two.

  Tuffy wasn’t satisfied. The girl would always be a loose end and he didn’t like loose ends. While Sandy might be able to break the girl down with time, he wasn’t so sure that he’d be able to deceive Meraz or Hernandez for long. If they ever found out it would be the end, the excruciating end, of their new little family. He’d argued until he was blue in the face but Sandy was adamant; there would be no killing of the girl.

  This morning, Sandy had left for her classes and had left Tuffy to plan the kidnapping of the girl and to plan the death and disposal of Sandy’s father.

  He started by sitting at the table with some of Sandy’s three-ring binder sheets to make notes on. As he began to work through the mechanics of kidnapping the girl from the whorehouse where she was being kept he had an epiphany; maybe there was really no need to kidnap the girl in the first place. All he had to do was to show up at the house and announce that he’d been sent by Meraz to pick her up. If anyone asked why, he would tell them quite truthfully that it was none of their business and further if they questioned his actions then he would simply tell them to check with Meraz.

  The simplicity of it astounded him. The only complication was that someone in the gang would then know that he’d been the last person with the girl but that in itself wasn’t a big problem if there was no body and if the girl was never found. He could always deny it or spin some story of having taken her to another house and let them try to figure out who was lying. In any event he should wear a disguise so that any casual observer to the meeting would have trouble identifying him. He should also get a disposable car from the garage.

  That revelation had left him the bulk of the day to solve the issue of Sandy’s father.

  It should be done at night. The house did not have a garage and disposing of the body would require moving it out of the house and into the car port. There would be a risk of discovery by a wayward late-night neighbor. Sandy would have to be a lookout.

  It should be without blood. There were many non-suspicious reasons for Tuffy’s and the father’s fingerprints and DNA to be in the house but even a minor amount of blood, if found, would be difficult to explain. Clean up would be much easier without blood, therefore strangulation would be the best answer. Maybe with a failsafe backup plan in case the old guy was able to fight Tuffy off. Maybe a new my leetle friend to help subdue him before the strangulation.

  A plastic drop sheet to wrap the body in. More duct tape and zip ties. Gloves. A new shovel. Maybe I should get a charge account at Lowe’s and Home Depot? he chuckled to himself. Never. It would always be cash.

  Things had came together easily and by noon he had been on the road to find a dump site for the body.

  Sandy had come home at six-thirty and there had still not been any sign of her father. They had sat together sharing a supper of spaghetti and wieners in ketchup with a few Millers and compared notes. Sandy too had been busy planning and Tuffy was left feeling a bit more comfortable about the girl part of the plan. He was far from at ease.

  At seven Tuffy’s phone rang.

  The call had been a summons from Meraz to meet him at the W Grace house. Tuffy had walked over. Although the sun was setting, the temperature was still hanging in at a comfortable eighty-two degrees with the wind easterly and humid; it had hit a hundred percent during the day and was only now starting to drop back a bit. His white cotton shirt had been sticking to him long before he reached the N MacDill/I-275 underpass.

  By the time that he had reached the house, he was soaked. To his regret there would be no time to sit on the step and cool down. Three SUV’s were already parked in the driveway. There was nothing for it but to go in.

  He was met at the door by the house’s present tenant, the boss of the posse that ran the operations in central Tampa. Big and muscular, wearing a wife beater and do-rag that gave emphasis to the gang tats on his brown skin. In his mind, Tuffy had dubbed him Beefcake. Tuffy had known him for years and was firmly convinced he wouldn’t last. He had good control over his lieutenants but simply hadn’t abandoned the loose and simple life of the street gang. Tuffy doubted that Beefcake would ever fully buy into the corporate structure that Hernandez and Meraz were developing. He was too stupid to realize that his days were numbered and Tuffy wondered if it would eventually be his job to take Beefcake out.

  “They’re in the back yard,” said Beefcake and turned on his heel to get back to watching the TV playing in the front room.

 
; Tuffy made his way to the kitchen and from there through the screen door on the side of the house. A crumbling concrete walkway led to the tiny yard behind the house. The yard was heavily screened by trees and bushes on its west side and the neighbor’s shed on the east. The lawn was no more than twenty feet deep and backed directly against the windowless back wall of a commercial structure on the next street over.

  Tuffy nodded to Hernandez’s driver, who stood under the trees providing security, and walked over to where Hernandez and Meraz sat at a small patio table in the center of the yard. He shook hands, first with Hernandez, then with Meraz, exchanged pleasantries and sat down in the chair indicated to him by the former.

  Tuffy bit back the concern he had about the fact that it had only been twenty-four hours since their last meeting. He adopted a straight flat expression which he hoped exuded professionalism and confidence.

  “Any luck with the computers, Antonio?” asked Hernandez.

  “Actually yes, Jefe,” he replied. “Quite a bit in fact.”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a USB thumb drive that Sandy had burned off for him.

  “Either Adolfo or his woman kept very good records of the operation. There are spread sheets on here that will detail everything for you right up to date to last Friday.”

  He offered the disk to Hernandez who motioned to him that he should give it to Meraz. Tuffy passed the drive over.

  “It also provided a lead on the girl. I’ve looked into it and I’m pretty sure that I’ve found her. Right now I’m planning how to take her and then how to take care of her.” He paused a moment and then said. “I originally thought I should simply go there and tell the pimp there that I’m taking her—after all he works for you—but I rethought it and now I think I should try to abduct her secretly. The less people—even ours—that know of my, and thereby your, involvement the better. I was thinking of doing more investigation tonight and, if the opportunity is there, then to take her tonight or tomorrow.”

  Meraz tilted his head toward Hernandez who nodded.

  “Good,” said Meraz. “That’s settled.”

  Hernandez picked up the conversation.

  “The reason we asked you to come here is that we have a new task for you,” Hernandez said. He looked Tuffy in the eyes. “How much did Adolfo tell you about the man you hit in Ocala?”

  Tuffy returned the stare.

  “Almost nothing,” he said. “He said that the target was a soldier; that the bosses had ordered the hit. There was very little planning that included me. I was pretty much blind the whole way except for the fact that I was to be the main shooter. I guess he was testing me.”

  Hernandez nodded. “Yeah. That was Adolfo, for sure. I don’t think that the issue was that there was very little planning that he discussed with you. The issue was that Adolfo did very little planning, period.”

  Tuffy held his gaze steady but felt a twinge of discomfort. It was obvious that more was being expected of him. His rational side was telling him that his usual cocky self-confidence would need to be held in check if he didn’t want to be in the same boat as Adolfo.

  “Okay then,” said Hernandez. “Here’s what you need to know.”

  He was back at the fourplex watching the nighttime traffic of johns coming and going; nearly midnight and still going strong. His brief stint with the old man had taught him that there was a rhythm to the traffic at a whorehouse: the after work crowd was long gone home to their families; the late bar crowd was now in full swing and would probably go strong until around two in the morning. Things would slow down after that but never really quit.

  Tonight wouldn’t be the night regardless of what he had indicated to Hernandez. It wouldn’t be too soon if all that was in the cards was taking and killing the girl. But it was entirely too early if he was going to go through with Sandy’s plan which was still a muddle in his mind. One part of her plan, however, was clear; killing her dad was a precondition to taking the girl.

  For Tuffy the thing was still entirely too flaky. What with Sandy at school and with him out on other business, who would look after the girl? They had neighbors and things were already going to look strange with Sandy’s dad gone.

  The more he thought about it the more he hated the direction this whole thing was taking.

  He smashed his left hand down hard on the steering wheel.

  “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

  In frustration he shook his head as if to clear his mind of the problem and started to dig around the next mission that he’d been given.

  There were two new targets, both military. Tuffy’s job was to determine which was the stronger of the two, kill him and thus set things into motion so that the weaker link could be co-opted into turning their operation over to MQ-27 control. He hadn’t been told how Meraz had gotten the identity of the two targets but he’d been given their names and addresses.

  He had promised Hernandez that he would start his surveillance of the two new targets just as soon as he’d taken out the girl, no later than two days from now. In fact he had a different timeline in mind. In his mind he had allocated tonight for the final tour of the whorehouse and for finalizing the girl’s abduction. With luck Sandy’s father would be back by the time he got back to her home—strangely enough he had started to considering it his own home already—and that matter could be taken care of in time for him to scope out the two new targets in the morning. That would give them some time to get things organized for the girl. Somewhere in there he’d need to get a little sleep.

  His cell phone gave an incoming text buzz. Tuffy pulled the phone from his pocket and opened it. The faint blue light of the screen gave an eerie glow to the inside of the car.

  He’s back, it read.

  CHAPTER 32

  TF 31 TOC, Kandahar AF, Afghanistan

  Wednesday 14 Mar 07 1625 hrs AFT

  The day’s meetings had been mostly a bust; little was learned. It was therefore a pleasant surprise for Kurt to see what was waiting for him outside TF 31’s TOC—Tactical Operations Center. O’Donnell and Shirazi stood next to their assigned personal protection detail.

  “Look who we found,” said O’Donnell pointing at the command seat of the lead GMV. The Ground Mobility Vehicle was a more powerful, more rugged special forces version of the ubiquitous HMMWV. Its most obvious characteristic was the open bed in the back for increased equipment storage or extra personnel.

  “Master Sergeant Paulson! You still here?” Kurt asked.

  “No, Sir!” he replied. “We went home but we’re back again. The money was just too good.”

  Kurt laughed.

  “Last time we saw you you were with what, BRAVO Company of the 2nd of the 19th SFG, right?”

  “Right, Sir,” said Paulson impressed that Richter had remembered what unit he came from. As a reservist from Columbus, Ohio his ODA, ODA 952, had been attached to TF 73 in Kandahar and had been picked to provide a close protection detail for Phil and Kurt and their team the summer before.

  “His team had just hit the ground a few days ago,’ said O’Donnell. “when Max here heard we were in country and needed some close protection. He volunteered to shepherd us around again.”

  “Outstanding,” said Kurt recalling that Paulson’s wife was a pediatrician in Worthington while Paulson himself was an automobile mechanic. Paulson had joked that, like Billy Joel, he’d married himself an Uptown Girl.

  “How’s your wife these days. Still working in Worthington?” asked Kurt.

  “Yes Sir, for another five months anyway, then she’ll have to take some maternity leave.”

  “Really?” said Kurt again pleasantly surprised. “Congratulations.”

  “Yeah. Congratulations, Max” said O’Donnell and shook Paulson’s hand. “We can always use another good trooper.”

  “Thanks,” he said and then changed the subject. “We’re assigned to you as long as you’re here.”

  “Excellent,” said Kurt. “You know we
’re heading to the Governor’s Palace this evening?”

  “Yes, Sir and Colin told us we might be staying over the dinner hour so we’ve got some MREs along with us just in case we need them.”

  The trip from KAF to the Governor’s Palace on the western side of the city of Kandahar was fifteen miles by road. The first, twelve-mile leg had been a fast transit up the A75 amid a constant flow of brightly lit and colored jingle trucks moving back and forth between Spin Boldak on the Pakistani border and the numerous transshipping compounds on the eastern side of Kandahar. From there, the route had followed the A1 highway across Kandahar City. For the last three miles a dense concentration of compounds, shops and offices bordered the wide avenue with most being only one or two stories high although several higher, more modern structures could be found lining the road.

  Every road trip in Afghanistan entailed some risk. The threat of IEDs was growing by the day. From an almost unknown tactic a few years before, the current resurgence had turned heavily to using both unattended and command controlled expedient explosive devices against coalition vehicle traffic and foot patrols. Even here, on the main and most traveled street in the south, IEDs or snipers were a possibility. While Paulson had chosen a quick and direct route into the city, they would most certainly be taking an alternate route away from the Palace.

  Upon arrival, they’d been quickly passed into the secure area that surrounded the compound. The crisp white arches of the low complex set in the midst of green treed and grassed lawns stood in sharp contrast to the almost uniform ochre of the soil, roads and buildings that surrounded it.

  An officer from Dostum’s Special Police Unit 905 directed Kurt, O’Donnell and Shirazi up the steps into the main entrance hallway of the compound while directing Paulson and his team and vehicles to a waiting area in the nearby parking lot. Paulson radioed the party’s safe arrival back in to TF 31.