by Wolf Riedel
It was not the primary house of its owner, a drug warlord who resided in an absolutely splendid house in Kandahar City but who had this property from which he could run his operations within the district. He was a warlord that Norowz did not trust because the alliance between him and the Quetta Shura was based entirely on convenience; a convenience that kept the drugs and money and weapons flowing. Nonetheless he was a man that the Pakistani ISI did trust—maybe for the same reasons that Norowz despised the man—and in whose house tonight he was to meet once again with the Pakistanis’ handler Lieutenant Colonel Emal Khan Noorzai.
It had been two weeks since Emal had urged Norowz at Dadullah’s behest to have his lashkar move west to Helmand to join the fight against the British. Two weeks since he angrily retorted that the fight wasn’t in distant Helmand in support of the drug lords there but right here in Panjwayi in support of the people here. Two weeks during which he had broken his own vision and had instead gone much further to the east to fight in support of a family member in Zabul.
Norowz reckoned that it was time to pay the piper as Tofan had told him many times since receiving this summons. It had been lost on neither of them that rather than coming to visit him at Norowz’s base in Qalandar, as he used to, Emal was more and more arranging for his staff visits to take place in the facilities of other leaders who were obviously more trusted by the Pakistani. What Norowz hadn’t decided yet was whether this was because Emal felt safer there or whether Emal thought that it would be easier to eliminate Norowz there when the time came. In the end it didn’t matter much. Insha’Allah. One way or the other: Insha’Allah.
The compound was opulent; the walls newly patched, the gates newly replaced with fresh wood and steel plate. Two guards stood sentry, their weapons well hidden within the folds of their clothes so as not to attract negative attention of the surveillance drones that frequently overflew the district. The bigger of the two stepped forward.
“As salaam alaikum,” he said.
“Wa alaikum salaam,” Tofan replied for both of them. “Is he here?”
“He is, brother.” The guard lowered his head with some hesitation. “We need to search you.”
Tofan stood speechless. Norowz was the first to reply.
“I forgive you the insult, brother” he said. “I know it does not come from you. But I will not permit this indignity.” Norowz turned around and stepped away. “Come, Tofan!”
Behind him the guard stood in confusion and shame.
“Commander! Commander Norowz,” he called. “Please wait, brother.”
Norowz and Tofan turned to watch as the two guards conferred in a heated exchange. He noted, however, neither had the courage to call inside for instructions. With a flourish the matter was settled and one guard went to open the door while the other, with a barely perceptible bow, gestured for Norowz to enter the compound.
“Forgive me, brother,” he whispered as Norowz stepped past him.
The interior of the compound was as neat as the outside. Two vehicles, a sedan and an SUV were parked in the main yard under a lean-to. There was no sign of the usual jumble of farm equipment, animals, manure piles or garbage that were so typical of the district. Three buildings in a U layout formed three quarters of the compound. Small outward facing windows on their second storeys and loopholes in the remaining walls gave testimony to the fact that it was a defensive position. The building across the way was by far the larger and the obvious main residence. Two more sentries attested to the fact that the meeting would take place here.
The interior was also more upscale; tiles covered the floor rather than hard pressed earth. Chairs and tables sat on the floor rather than carpets and pillows. The place had clearly been more westernized or, perhaps, more reflective of modern urban Pakistan.
Emal Noorzai sat alone at a dining room table off to one side of the main entranceway. He pointed Norowz toward a chair that sat on the opposite side of the table. There was no chair for Tofan and so he remained standing quietly just inside the archway entrance to the doorless room.
Norowz took the offered chair.
“As salaam alaikum,” said Emal.
Norowz merely nodded. The insult at the gate still stung and he knew God wouldn’t care one way or the other for not making the traditional reply.
If Emal was upset by the slight, he did not show it.
“How did your adventure in Zabul go?” he asked. “How many casualties?”
Norowz noted that Emal had declined to go into the usual lengthy banter nor even the offer of chai that preceded any discussions of import. It was yet another sign of the strain that had developed between the two men. Strangely enough, however, it was Norowz’s experience that the banter was usually longer and more enjoyable when two enemies came to meet and negotiate; courtesies were important when the business was deadly. Apparently Emal had forgotten that.
“The mission went very well,” Norowz replied. “Seventeen of the enemy were killed and since when do you care about our casualties? But since you have asked, I lost two fighters martyred and three wounded, now recovering in hospitals in Kandahar. My allies lost two martyred and two wounded.”
“You could afford to do this but not go to Helmand?”
Norowz stood up in exasperation.
“Don’t you understand at all?” He stalked around the room. “We suffered a major defeat last year because we concentrated to fight. They beat us in a conventional battle. On the other hand, we have been winning here recently by scattering and making small attacks. We would do even better if we were not so indiscriminate in our bombings.
“We are fighting a war of attrition here with the Canadians which they will eventually lose if, I say again, if we stay the course. What you want now is to do another concentrated campaign in Helmand where we are already suffering inordinate casualties. The big advantage we have here right now is that the Canadians do not have enough soldiers, they do not have helicopters, the police is worse than useful and the Afghan army is still weak. The Canadians are tied to their armored cars and to their feet which gives us great advantage in the fields of Panjwayi. We have to keep that up.”
Norowz paced the room slapping one hand into the palm of the other as if emphasizing facts in a lecture to an imbecile.
“We need to develop better bases; in Nakhonay and in Belanday, just as an example, to push outward and ring the district better. We can then place bigger and better explosives ambushes to degrade them as they patrol outward. But most important, we need to work harder at developing our government structure here and in Zhari. We need to control the population better while we still have that opportunity. Those are things that we can’t do in Helmand. We can only do it here.”
“Then why did you go to Zabul?” demanded Noorzai with a sneer.
“A matter of family honor and necessity which apparently is beyond the understanding of a Pakistani.”
“Khan was an ally damn it!” yelled Noorzai as he rose to his feet.
“He was a pig!” Norowz yelled back equally loudly. “A pederast and a drug trafficker and a murderer of Panjpai Noorzai. You remember who the Noorzai are don’t you?”
Emal sat back down, not deflated but in control.
“It was unnecessary. You should have talked to me first.”
Norowz waved his hand dismissively.
“It was a short, low cost, low risk operation and as a side effect it harmed the American position on the border. That benefited both of us.”
“So you are not going to Helmand?”
“I am not going to Helmand. Let the drug dealers do their own dirty work there.”
“Dadullah won’t like that.”
“What do I care,” said Norowz getting up. “As far as I know he is far too busy kidnapping Italian journalists that had been promised safe passage.”
Norowz made his way to the door where Tofan stood waiting.
“Maʿ al-salāmah,” Norowz called over his shoulder.
“Fī amān All�
�h,” called out Noorzai’s voice from behind them.
Norowz waved his hand over his head without turning back.
“Do you thing that there is a hidden meaning behind him wishing you to be in God’s protection?” whispered Tofan.
“Who knows?” said Norowz. “All I know is that the sooner that Dadullah is dead, the better off we will all be.”
CHAPTER 54
Bright-Fire Gun Club., Hillsborough County, Fl
Wednesday 21 Mar 07 1320 hrs EDT
In the end nothing had been resolved the night before. Amber was still with them; still crying behind her locked door. To say nothing had been resolved wasn’t totally correct; they had resolved to leave the Amber question alone until such time as the Cabello one was dealt with. Despite the tension, the night had been a good one with a shared intimacy that had been missing since the arguments about the girl had started. But Tuffy still wasn’t a hundred percent confident that things would work themselves out. He had sufficient insight to know that he still didn’t understand Sandy as well as he’d like to. For the time being, however, it seemed that she had accepted that their life together was more important than anything else; even the girl. In a few days he’d know for sure.
Early this morning he’d decided to go in a new direction with the Cabello thing and look into how solid his skills as a long range shooter were. Up to now they had been nonexistent. He’d never owned a rifle, nor shot one. Handguns, yes; long guns, no.
He’d spent little time considering his options; get one from the raza or purchase a new one. Time was an issue. Not that there was a waiting period to buy a new rifle, but there were background checks required if you went with a federally registered dealer. No such checks were necessary if you went through a gun show with a private dealer. Being that it was the middle of the week, and that he didn’t have a good enough fake ID to pass the background check, Tuffy had to contend himself with calling Meraz to see what could be arranged. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, he’d thought as he picked up the scoped, bolt-action rifle that was provided to him. The left side of the chamber was inscribed: Remington Model 700. The barrel markings—.308 WIN—indicated it was chambered for a .308 caliber Winchester cartridge. The scope was a three to nine power Bushnell Banner. There was no ammunition nor were there instructions and when Tuffy asked for information about the rifle, all that he received was a shrug.
He’d stopped in at a Starbucks with his laptop to get educated. It had taken him the balance of the morning to find out that he actually had a bit of a diamond in the rough. The rifle was in fact the model on which the army’s M24 sniper rifle was based. The same internet session also taught him the fundamentals of shooting rifles. He’d cleared his computer’s search history with the intent to do a wipe of the drive to clear any and all records of the searches and headed for the I-4 East to practice what he’d learned. A brief stop at a Walmart along the way allowed him to pick up three twenty-round packs of Remington manufactured .308 WIN cartridges. He’d had a choice of several loads and had settled on the heavier 180 grain soft tip bullet type.
He’d picked a good time to come because the range was virtually empty—only three other shooters—which meant that the range safety officer was fairly flexible on how long sessions ran. With the time on the range that he had rented he had also rented a spotting scope which allowed him to put up multiple targets for zeroing and practicing.
Tuffy had been cleared to shoot and carefully sighted in on the target set up a hundred yards away from him. His first objective was to see if he could tell if there was a significant difference between how the rifle performed with a cold barrel compared to a warm one. The question was important to Tuffy as he expected that the one and only time when he would be using the rifle for real would be with a cold barrel while his zeroing and practice would be with a warm one. He’d only have one real chance to do that today so he planned to take four shots all at the same aiming point without adjusting the aim or his technique whatsoever between rounds. A small notebook and pencil was on the table beside him where he could mark his shots and record his observations.
He was sitting at a bench with a sandbag on it to support the rifle thereby greatly increasing the steadiness with which it was held. He sighted in, took several steadying breaths and squeezed the trigger slowly taking up the trigger slack. With the sights firmly fixed on the target he stopped breathing in the middle of an exhale and gently squeezed the trigger further until suddenly the rifle went off catching him by surprise. His research had taught him that’s the way it should be. The kick jarred both his shoulder and his cheek-bone with a sharp blow that was significantly harder than he had anticipated. It had reminded him of a day in the schoolyard when he’d ducked a fist too slowly and had his bells rung. This kick, however, wasn’t even close to the beating he’d received when he’d been jumped-in to the raza.
Tuffy worked the bolt ejecting the cartridge but not loading a fresh round. He bent to the spotting scope and marked the hit—three inches right and two up.
He repeated the process three more times. Each shot was as jarring and painful as the first had been. The result as to the question of the warm barrel was inconclusive. While it was clear that the rifle was shooting right and high, the last three rounds were clustered around the first one by about an inch or so. The first round had therefore indicated the center point of the group that he had just shot.
The sight was easy to adjust; the instructions were printed on the sight’s adjustment dials under their covers. For elevation, each counterclockwise click of the dial would raise the bullet by one quarter of an inch at one hundred yards. Tuffy turned the sight eight clicks clockwise. For windage, each clockwise click would move the bullet one quarter of an inch to the left. Tuffy turned the dial twelve clicks counterclockwise.
He had allocated one twenty-round box of cartridges for the purpose of zeroing the rifle, a second box for testing how fast he could reload and reengage a target and the final box for the the actual job. In the end, he felt comfortable that the rifle was sighted in after the third four-round group. He used the remaining eight rounds just to see how tight a group he could maintain when sighting slowly and accurately. The answer was one inch. That was good. The articles he had seen suggested that if he could maintain a group of one inch at one hundred yards then he should be able to hit within three inches of his aim point at three hundred; good enough for a human head or torso shot. To do better he’d need a more accurate rifle and ammunition but then again, where would he get a clear field of fire longer than three hundred yards in Tampa anyway? Besides this was going to be a throwaway rifle. No way would he use the same weapon for more than one hit.
The second box of cartridges taught him that he could easily reload and reengage in three seconds but the grouping grew to two inches. He’d have to keep that in mind because there wasn’t time to practice shooting under different wind or other conditions. He felt sure that he would need two shots; one to sight in and the second to make sure of the kill.
Tuffy cleaned up his brass and targets and returned the spotting scope for his deposit. He made a note that he’d have to stop in at another Walmart on his way home to pick up a cleaning kit for the rifle. With luck he’d be home by three.
Sage sat in her 2003 Crown Vic Police Interceptor in a parking lot across from West Tampa Elementary. Its street appearance package with white exterior made it resemble any of the multitude of white full-size cars that cruised the streets throughout Florida. It was what was under the hood that distinguished it from its civilian cousins. Even if a Crown Vic was not suitable for undercover work this one did decent service as an unobtrusive plain clothes transport.
She and Whitlock had missed lunch again. So had Platt and his partner who had joined them in her car and were presently compensating for that with a sugar rush by way of a box of Krispy Kreme.
Sage held a clipboard with the list of known associates that Platt had produced. Throughout the day she had ticked names off
one by one as they’d found that they led to dead ends.
“How’d you do at Jefferson?” she asked Platt. She and Whitlock had covered the area’s middle schools while Platt had gone over to its closest high school.
“Found him,” he said. “He was at Jefferson last year but didn’t come back this semester. How about you?”
“We did find a record for him with an address at Madison Middle but a quick check of the city registry and phone records showed that ownership of the property changed just after he left there. That’s a dead end. Is your’s still active?”
“We think so. We drove past it on the way over here just for a look-see but there wasn’t anything obvious one way or the other. Small bungalow, no garage, no vehicles in the driveway. My guess is that everyone is at school or at work right now. We’re going to go back for a better look right after this.”
Sage hesitated understanding where Platt was going with this.
“Ben. Do you have enough to put together a search warrant and a tap?” she asked.
“Pretty sure,” Whitlock replied. “What with what we have from Sandoval and this we should be good to go. I’ve had weaker ones than this make it.”
Sage nodded as Platt handed her a slip of paper. It contained the name of the secretary at Jefferson who had provided the address as well as the address itself. It wasn’t far from their present location. She noted that the newer address was only two blocks from the older one that they had discovered. She handed the slip to Whitlock.
“Okay,” she said. “You head back downtown and I’ll stay with Ollie and keep on this. Let me know the second you’ve got the paper through and again when the tap is up and running. See if you can get anyone else to monitor the tap. I’d like you back with us if it’s at all possible.” Whitlock had come in his own car expressly for the purpose of being able to split up the investigation if necessary. Platt and his partner on the other hand both came in one car.