Allies

by Wolf Riedel

  Norowz took the list. It took only a few seconds to review it. He’d speak later with Tofan in private about how reliable this support would be.

  “I agree,” he said and looked at his watch. “We have only a few hours of daylight left today.” The dawn came at six but so did dusk at this time of year. It was already well past midday. “I think we’ll need to do a further reconnaisance tomorrow. We should have time for that, however, as we need our people to rest and get organized once they arrive. That would mean we could attack as early as Saturday but we should be no later than Monday.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Fairfield Inn & Suites Kenner, New Orleans Airport, Louisiana

  Thursday 15 Mar 07 0702 hrs CDT

  Mark put aside the bagel which he had just been smearing with a dollop of cream cheese and waved toward Sal and Sage as they entered the breakfast buffet room and headed his way.

  “Anything good?” asked Sal as he surveyed the buffet set out at one side of the room.

  “They’ve got biscuits and gravy,” Mark said with a grin knowing of Sal’s disgust for the peppery sludge that was the hallmark of the complimentary breakfast line at southern business class hotels. “Other than that there’s an egg and ham breakfast sandwich, dry oatmeal and a wide variety of fruit. Oh, yeah; yogurt for you, Sage.”

  The hotel had been a reasonable one arranged by Marjorie at Benning when she had booked the flights. For once she hadn’t cheaped out and picked one with the lowest mid-level price range from amongst the plethora of similar hotels clustered around I-10s Exit 223 cloverleaf. The complimentary breakfast meant that they wouldn’t be able to claim a meal if it was at all reasonable for them to make it during the hotel’s set meal hours. The previous evening they’d managed to book the flights for the next leg of their journey themselves what with Marjorie having already left for the day. While the timings were tight, they’d make it considering the hotel was just two miles north of the airport’s terminal. Supper the night before had been a late trip to a nearby Olive Garden.

  Mark watched Sal set down a tray with coffee, three glasses of the machine dispensed orange juice, two breakfast sandwiches and a banana while Sage brought a coffee and, as predicted, a blueberry yogurt.

  “It’s a bloody miracle that you don’t die from malnutrition,” Sal said to Sage.

  “It’s a fucking miracle you don’t weigh three hundred pounds,” she replied.

  “Great metabolism and adventurous living,” he said thumping his chest with both hands.

  “That why your hair all fell out?” she asked.

  “That’s a low blow,” Sal said somewhat chastened for having started this. While his baldness came primarily from shaving his head, the shaving was a result of needing to cover up the fact that his hair had been thinning for some time. It was either let the baldness show, do a Trump-style combover or shave what remained. He’d opted for the latter as the lesser of three evils.

  “Anything from CENTCOM on our sailor or a Huachuca connection?” asked Mark putting the degenerating banter to an end. During their salad and bread sticks phase of supper the night before, Mark had tasked Sal with contacting CENTCOM in order to determine where and with whom PO2 Fletcher had served in Afghanistan. They knew he had been assigned to the PRT in Zabul but that told them very little. They needed more contacts to follow up with. In addition Mark wanted Sal to run down which personnel within CENTCOM or its subordinate combatant commands had served at Fort Huachuca. That would provide more possible paths to a connection with a Mexican cartel.

  “I got through last night but don’t have an answer yet. All I got were some overnight duty staff. They’re usually the busy ones considering the time zones,” Sal replied. “Just to double up on this”, he continued, “I also got Sykes on it at Benning. I figure that they can reach some databases that CENTCOM can’t.”

  Mark nodded and turned to Sage.

  “Anything further from your buddies Snyder and Benoit?” he asked.

  “They didn’t start out being my buddies,” she commented. “I was quite surprised actually when they opened up to us.”

  “They probably see you and Tampa PD as a blossoming intel source,” said Sal through a full mouth of ham and egg sandwich.

  “Probably right,” she said. “Anyway. Snyder said he’d be back to me before we take off to let us know what to expect when we land in Brownsville. I tell you: this whole thing sounds hinky to me.”

  “It’s the best chance for seeing if we can find the far end of the guns pipeline and that might get us a better understanding of the Tampa end,” said Mark.

  “Looks to me like it’s the only chance we have right now,” Sal contributed.

  They’d made the trip to the airport on time and had already checked in at Concourse C for United 1202’s 0915 departure for the hour-long flight to Houston. There they would have about an hour layover before taking a regional jet to the border town of Brownsville where they would pick up a rental car and make their way over to the I-69E for the short hop down to the border crossing to Matamoros. The alternative would have been to fly from New Orleans to Mexico City and then up to the Matamoros General Servando Canales International Airport but the trip would have taken eight hours instead of three. In the end they’d decided to take a car across the border although it had taken some time to find a company that allowed that on the condition that a fairly large fee for Mexican Automobile Liability Insurance was paid for at the rental counter.

  Mark looked around. Concourse C was a bit bigger than the concourse that they had arrived at and it looked prettier. An arched vaulted ceiling gave it more height and let in more light. That said, the gates were nondescript; no artwork, no color, nothing special not found at hundreds of airports across the country. Mark wondered why city railroad stations from a century before were architectural masterpieces while most of their modern airport equivalents were simply functional and artistically bland.

  In the lounge seats across from him, Sal and Sage were in animated discussions on their respective cell phones, scribbling in their notebooks as they talked. Sage was the first to sign off. Mark raised his eyebrows.

  “That was Snyder. He’s got us hooked up with an inspector from the Mexican Federal Police in Matamoros. I talked to him and gave him our arrival time. The inspector will meet us at the Mexican border post at the southern end of the Veterans’ International Bridge. He’ll escort us through.”

  “Side arms?” Mark asked.

  “They won’t be a problem,” she said. “He’ll have temporary import permits ready for us.”

  Mark looked dubious. “I think we should have a back up plan if they don’t have a permit. Last thing I want is to be found in Mexico without proper authorization.”

  “In that case I think we can do a turnaround before entering Mexico and go back to leave them in a lock box with US Border Patrol,” she said. “Maybe we can arrange to get something on loan from the Mexicans.”

  “Okay,” said Mark. “I’ll leave you to work on that and quite frankly if you can arrange a loan then I’d just as soon leave them at our border and go across without them.”

  Sage nodded just as Sal finished his last call.

  “We’ve got six guys working at CENTCOM, five at SOCOM and three at SOCCENT that had been stationed at Huachuca within the last three years,” Sal said pointing down at his notepad. “There’s even more that would have been on courses there as well but they don’t have the stats on that yet.”

  “Anyone that jumps out?” asked Mark.

  “Nope. Sykes will have his guys do some more digging but I think we’ll need to look at them in detail and maybe get someone to go to Huachuca to talk to contacts there. We got anyone close to there?” Sal asked.

  “Pretty sure there’s a CID office right on the base that reports to the 11th CID at Fort Hood,” said Mark.

  “I’ll check it out and give whoever’s out there a heads up.”

  “Anything on our sailor boy?”

  �
�Nothing yet but I should have a call back by noon with some names of folks that were at the PRT that we can talk to. The PRT’s set up right at FOB LAGMAN.”

  Mark felt fidgety. The case was moving but too slowly for his liking. Too many moving parts spread all over the place. If even one of them was a red herring it could make the whole case fragment. Sometimes he envied locals like Sage. A fixed territory with a relatively fixed clientele of bad guys. Much easier to keep up with intelligence and to track down witnesses. Mark and Sal on the other hand had to deal with a fairly transient cast of characters frequently spread out all over hell and beyond. On the other hand the Army did have the chain of command one could use to brow beat reluctant witnesses into line.

  He looked at his watch and then at the gate attendant behind the counter. A second one had just shown up so boarding should start in a minute or two.

  CHAPTER 36

  FOB LAGMAN, Zabul, Afghanistan

  Friday 16 Mar 07 1910 hrs AFT

  The trip from Kandahar Airfield to the town of Qalat covered some one hundred and fifty kilometers of the Kandahar-Ghazni leg of the A1 Highway. Beyond Ghazni, the A1 continued on north to Kabul. By Afghan standards the road was in excellent shape having been the beneficiary of substantial American and Japanese aid. The trip from Kandahar to Kabul had been reduced from eighteen hours to six; to Qalat was a comfortable afternoon’s drive through a desolate, shallow valley of sand and grit and low rolling hills. The morning had been taken up in a few more useless interviews at KAF.

  Kurt rode in the right rear seat of Paulson’s GMV. The vehicles uparmored doors had been removed in favor of giving the vehicles’ occupants the unobstructed ability to return fire with their small arms in the event of an ambush. Kurt’s right leg rested on the door frame’s sill, his M4 carbine covering to the right in support of Paulson who rode in the right front seat with an M248 Squad Automatic Weapon. A gunner manning the large .50 caliber M2 machine gun in the roof weapons ring, stood on a platform next to Kurt.

  There were two major threats on the highway: improvised explosive devices and ambushes using automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades. Aggressive patrolling by the Romanians had reduced but not eliminated these attacks. Paulson’s assessment was that ambushes in built up areas were more likely than anything on the open road, thus the open doors and the ability to quickly dismount and return fire. Paulson had three vehicles and eight of his men in addition to Kurt and his two. ODA 952’s commander, its warrant and its assistant operations sergeant had remained behind in Kandahar to complete the details of their incoming handover and some mission planning. Paulson, as the team’s operations sergeant and most senior non-commissioned officer generally controlled the team in the field anyway and thus was the natural choice to lead this detail.

  Paralleling the highway a few hundred meters to its south—on Kurt’s side of the vehicle—ran the Tarnak River. Its banks were covered by the homes of numerous small compounds and holdings which were hanging on despite the drought that had struck the region for the last few years. The last few kilometers saw a larger separation between the highway and the river. Here the space was filled by larger and slightly less destitute farmsteads because in this area the underground streams and wells—the karezes—were still working to water the fields and orchards.

  They entered Qalat as twilight was descending. The town itself was a conglomeration of several hundred semi-urban compounds mostly, but not exclusively, on the south side of the highway. To the north of the highway, on a low ridge sat an old mud-walled fort which gave Qalat its name for qalat was simply the Arabic word for a fortified place. Legends attributed its construction to Alexander the Great some twenty-three hundred years before; now it housed elements of the 2nd Brigade of the ANA’s 205th Corps. A brigade in name but essentially just manned by elements of the brigade’s 1st Kandak—a light infantry battalion—and its 4th Kandak—a mostly under equipped battalion that was eventually intended to provide a company of artillery, a company of engineers and a company of armored reconnaisance. To mark the old fort’s new modern role, a massive, incongruous steel girder tower laden with telecommunication dishes and aerials rose into the sky above it. A small American camp, FOB APACHE was co-joined to the ANA base and housed the Embedded Training Team—ETT—from the Oregon National Guard’s 41st Brigade Combat Team which supported the Afghan soldiers there.

  Beyond the fortress and almost two kilometers beyond the town’s center, a road branched off to the north and climbed a gentle slope toward FOB LAGMAN, a low HESCO walled encampment. As they neared the entrance, the silhouettes of a column of four-wheeled armored cars each sporting a blue, yellow, and red flag emerged through the gates.

  “Romanians?” Paulson said with just enough of an inflection to make it more a question than a statement.

  “Yup,” replied Kurt. “With ABC-79Ms.”

  “I hear tell those things are amphibious,” called down the gunner on his intercom.

  “Yup,” said Kurt again.

  The columns passed in a cloud of dust and headlights that left just enough visibility to avoid a collision. Each man had pulled up his respective shemaghs to keep from swallowing too much dirt; exchanging silent nods and the odd casual wave.

  “Showtime,” Kurt muttered to himself.

  Paulson’s small convoy came to a halt in front of a fairly new frame structure with an illuminated sign bearing the Romanian national flag and the title:

  The 812th Infantry Battalion

  “Carpathian Hawks”

  A small welcoming group awaited them at the door, two in American ACU with body armor and helmets and two in shorts and tee-shirts in a camouflage pattern of rusty-brown splotches and slashes on a yellowish-tan background. The Americans wore lieutenant colonel and captain rank badges respectively and undoubtedly were the commander of the PRT and the CO of BRAVO Company of the 1st Battalion of the 4th Infantry which came from Hohenfels, Germany. The two Romanians somewhat surprisingly bore rank badges on red shoulder boards on their tee-shirts which—based on Kurt’s quick study of Romanian ranks on the internet—consisted of the single gold bar and cross-stripe of a major for one of them and three silver cross-stripes of some level of senior NCO for the other. Kurt pegged them as the commanding officer and command sergeant major of the battalion.

  “Man,” O’Donnell whispered in Kurt’s ear. “That’s my kind of uniform. It’s not so bad now but I bet come July that will come real handy. Christ. We’re not even allowed to roll up our sleeves in this ACU shit.”

  Kurt stepped forward and decided to shake hands with the battalion commander first. In his book a major commanding a five-hundred-man infantry battalion deserved more recognition than a lieutenant colonel commanding a PRT. The fact that the light colonel was a USAF officer never entered into it; or so Kurt tried to tell himself.

  Introductions were made all around with Kurt quickly establishing a division of labor. He’d start with the Romanian’s commander while Shirazi would take their CSM who, like his boss, spoke pretty fine English. While they did that, O’Donnell would chat with the CO and the 1st Sergeant of Company B at their headquarters. The PRT’s commander would have to cool his heels in his own office until Kurt came around to see him once he’d finished with the Romanians.

  Kurt followed the Romanians into their headquarters which, like most of the mid-level facilities in Afghanistan, proved fairly spartan with bare wood framing and raw plywood walls surrounding open concept workspaces with tables, map boards, computer screens and various forms of communications scattered around the walls and floor space all grouped into functional cubicles or work areas. The major led Kurt to one of the few private offices and closed the door after ushering him inside and directing him to a folding metal chair in front of the metal pedestal desk.

  “So what can we do for Canada today?” he asked.

  Kurt smiled. “Not Canada so much as SOCCENT,” he said.

  The major waved-off the detail knowing full well where Kurt h
ad come from and why.

  “You want to know about Lesperance’s group down south,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders and opened his palms on his desk with a noncommittal What can I tell you? motion. “We don’t have much contact with them. Our responsibility is keeping the roads open. The Americans have the responsibility for the hinterland outposts and as far as PB POWDER is concerned it’s really under their special operations people’s control.”

  Kurt nodded and waited the Romanian out. The seconds ticked past but eventually he continued.

  “It’s always a bit difficult with the Americans, you know. You’re a Canadian. You share a continent with them so you’ll know this as well as anyone. It was the same for us with the Russians in the past. We slept with the bear for many years and knew full well what it was like to be the junior partner—if you could even call it a true partnership. Now that we’ve joined NATO and the European Union we still have to walk a careful line. We have to prove ourselves to our new allies and not make waves.”

  Kurt nodded.

  “Us too,” he said. “Most everyone in NATO has us marked down as peacekeepers. They forget we had almost seven hundred thousand men in arms in World War 1 with sixty thousand dead and a hundred and fifty thousand wounded. One point one million for War 2 with forty-five thousand dead and fifty-five thousand wounded. And then Korea. But today we have to prove we can fight.”

  Now it was the Romanian’s turn to nod. By 1945 Romania had even more men under arms than Canada and thus was Nazi Germany’s biggest ally in its fight against the Communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—bigger than all its other allies combined.

  “The American’s, their senior people, make all the right . . .,” he paused to gave it some thought. “. . . the right political noises but when you deal with their officers one on one, especially the more junior ones, there is a layer of arrogance and condescension that’s hard to miss.”