The Power of Three

by J C Ryan

  Despite his growing impatience, he quelled his emotions and applied pure logic. The best time to approach was after they’d gone to sleep. The remoteness and isolation of this place would mean they felt safe. If no one else arrived before the lights in the house – apparently candlelight – went out, then he and Digger would go in by stealth rather than force.

  Under the cover of darkness, they could get closer, maybe close enough to hear something. Rex kept Digger close to him as he crept forward. He didn’t dare speak any commands above a whisper this near the house, and he didn’t know if Trevor’s mic had been damaged in the blast, so he wanted the dog where he could whisper a command. Digger seemed to understand, and he alternated between snuffling at the ground and lifting his nose for scent as he moved a few yards out and then returned or waited for Rex to catch up.

  When Digger was almost in what would have been a yard, had there been one, Rex whispered, “Stop. Hide.” He watched as Digger sunk out of sight. If he hadn’t seen where the dog went, he wouldn’t have been able to pick the spot out. Darkness was now their friend. Rex took full advantage of it as he crawled to where Digger remained hidden and praised the dog. “Good boy.”

  Digger nosed his hand, wagged his tail, and sighed. Once again, he wondered at what it meant to the dog. A human’s sigh sometimes meant disappointment, but hadn’t Trevor once told him that when a dog sighed, it meant contentment? How could Digger be content in this situation? Rex had no idea. For Rex, the adrenaline was pumping, he was tensed up, ready for action. Contented? Definitely not.

  In another hour, the light from the house suddenly went out. Rex assumed the candles or lamps had been put out. The people inside must not be night owls, or maybe they expected to see action later. Perhaps a morphine delivery? Tense with the knowledge that his time to make his move could be running out, Rex still waited an hour for sleep to take his targets, before he slipped into the house with his four-legged sidekick, or leader, depending from whose viewpoint one looked at the situation.

  He made the gesture that meant ‘take down and guard’, then pointed to the first of the tangos, asleep in a bed alongside one wall of the one-room house. At the same instant, he pulled his KA-BAR and dropped on the neck of the other with his other arm. He stuck the knife a fraction of a centimeter into his guy’s neck and shouted in Arabic, “Be still, or you’re dead.”

  His man’s eyes had popped open as soon as he felt the prick of the knifepoint. They opened even wider when his companion began shouting about a demon on top of him, and the demon in question started snarling.

  Within minutes, Rex had trussed both into chairs with their own ropes, which he found conveniently hanging neatly coiled on hooks beside the front door. He hadn’t noticed them as they came in a back window, but now he had the candles lit again and could see the entire interior of the mean little farmhouse. The ropes were a bonus. Now he could interrogate, and Digger could threaten both men at once, so that when he suspected one wasn’t telling the truth, the other would be intimidated into refuting the lie.

  The first question he asked was about who might drop in on them that night. To his relief, no one was expected. It gave him plenty of time to extract all the information he could before he snuffed out these killers as easily as he’d snuff out the candles if he didn’t want to set fire to the house. Of course, he fully intended to, so it was just a thought that flitted through his mind while he fired questions at them.

  Rex didn’t even bother to ask them if they were the ones who helped set up the explosions at the house the night before. Digger following their trail to this house was enough evidence. They were guilty as charged. Only the sentencing and execution thereof remained.

  So, rather than waste time on giving them opportunity to lie, he told them they were the explosive experts, that this demon had their buddy for dinner. But that it was last night, and he was hungry again.

  He also told them that he already knew the man who gave the order to blow up the house was Usama, the Lion. So, first of all he wanted to know where to find this chicken shit, Usama. Then, he also wanted to know whose heroin lab was it that they were running at the side of the house.

  Between the tears and terrified babbling, Rex got the answers he was looking for, but it wasn’t easy. The men were too afraid of their leader to easily give up the information.

  Nevertheless, Rex was impressed again at Digger’s ability to make men piss on command or on growl, and even more so at the sheer volume of fluid these men apparently had on tap. They must have been drinking gallons of the ubiquitous tea or coffee, but by the smell, Rex soon concluded they’d been drinking some kind of illegal alcoholic beverage. Probably a concoction they brewed onsite, maybe in their lab. If he’d known that, he could have entered the place sooner. Nor should he have been surprised. The use and manufacture of opium-derived product was also illegal. But in Afghanistan the term ‘illegal’ had a different meaning than in western countries. Although, with his experience over the past few years, dealing with corrupt people all over the world and seeing what they could get away with, Rex had come to think that the west was just as corrupt as any other place. They were just more sophisticated about it.

  Gradually, fear, exhaustion, and Rex’s persistence broke the hajis’ resistance. By midnight, he reckoned he had everything they knew, and he knew he had the most important thing. The address of that low life, Usama, as well as the names and addresses of his associates. When there was nothing more to be learned, he cut the ropes with his knife.

  “Get up. We’re going to have a health inspection of your lab. People inject this shit into their veins and I need to ensure that your facility complies with all the necessary sanitary regulations.”

  One man had just enough defiance in him to try to deny there was a lab, but a vicious growl from Digger made him stop in the middle of his sentence. He hung his head and walked docilely out of the house, his companion following. Rex let them get inside before he shot them each in the back of the head with a double-tap from Trevor’s pistol. It was his tribute to his fallen friend, revenge taken with his own weapon.

  Rex still had some tasks to perform, and then they had a long walk ahead of them. “No rest for the weary, eh, Digger?”

  At the question, Digger looked up at him and tilted his head. Rex laughed, freely this time, not bothering to conceal the noise. “It’s a rhetorical question, buddy. Ready for some chow?”

  At that, Digger’s smile broke out for the first time in hours. That was another word in Diggers English vocabulary which Rex also knew. He was ready for chow, all right. Rex was, too. He led the way back to the farmhouse and ransacked it for what he’d need next.

  Fortunately, he found a change of clothes – the man-jammies the locals preferred – that weren’t too odorous. If he’d had to use the ones his recent victims had worn, it would have been very unpleasant. He didn’t worry much that the clothes were ill-fitting, just a little too short. The loose fit ensured that short or not, the man-jammies were pretty much one size fits all. He stuffed them into his backpack for later use. His black camouflage would be fine for the rest of the night.

  Digger had been nosing about the room, looking for the promised food, Rex assumed. He’d found a joint of what Rex could only assume was goat, but it was hanging too high for him to reach. He was sitting directly beneath it, his nose lifted, and his eyes fixed on it lest it disappear before he got any. Rex took note of it, figured he’d cook it up with some rice if he could find any, and that would do for dinner.

  Inside a rickety piece of furniture that passed for a cupboard, he found the sack of rice, and on top of it he found a jug of water. In another chest, he found the pot to cook it in. The bukhari, a drum-shaped stove made of thin metal, was already full of wood, Rex supposed for the convenience of a quick breakfast in the chilly morning. He found an incongruous box of strike-on-box matches in the chest with the pot. It was short work to start the fire in the stove and set the pot of water to boil for the rice whi
le he pawed through the rest of the supplies for anything useful.

  Rex also found a Turkish coffee pot and coffee. He couldn’t believe his luck. He had been telling himself for more than twenty-four hours, “I’m ready to kill for a mug of coffee.” He just had.

  While he got the coffee pot going on the fire, he scrounged around more and for his trouble he was rewarded with the discovery of a wheel of goat cheese, some flatbread, and a large quantity of dried meat known as lahndi. He’d eaten the latter in the winter in various dishes, but he was a little surprised there was any left this late in the year. He offered a piece to Digger, who wolfed it down without caring that it might have been a little past its prime. Digger looked up at Rex and silently begged for more, which Rex was happy to be able to provide. After the second treat, he said, “Why don’t you wait for the goat, buddy? It will be even better.”

  Digger apparently agreed, as he resumed his watch of the hanging joint until Rex had stowed his finds in his backpack and was ready to cut some of the goat meat and put it into the boiling water with the rice and a bit of onion he found, also. When it was done, the stew tasted like the best thing he’d ever eaten. Not surprising, since it had been about thirty-six hours since his last meal, unless he counted the energy bar he’d shared with Digger.

  Digger apparently approved of Rex’s culinary skills, as well. He got close enough to the pot on the wood burning stove to yelp at the heat but was polite enough to wait for Rex to provide a second helping on the plate he was eating from. Rex found a small tin container and tipped the rest of the stew into it for later.

  Their hunger satisfied, Rex took the pack of cigarettes on one of the shelves. With those and the matches, he would set the house and the lab both on fire in a way that would give them plenty of time to get far from the area before the fire started. Neither building would appear to be in danger before Rex and Digger were well away.

  He did it by propping up a lit cigarette at an angle, using whatever he could find to hold it there. He tied three matches close to the filter end to each of a number of cigarettes with pieces of string. He placed several of these around the house surrounding each of them with pieces of paper which would catch fire once the cigarettes had burned off enough to light up the matches. He stoked the wood burning stove and left the candles burning for good measure. The ammonium nitrate in the heroin lab would take care of it and render the bodies inside to ashes when the resulting fires triggered the inevitable explosion in the lab.

  Inside the house, it wouldn’t be quite as spectacular, but there were plenty of flammable fuels, including bedding, paper, the wood furniture, and clothing, to gut the place. The stone walls would remain standing, but the roof would be destroyed. When he was done, Rex was satisfied that this wouldn’t soon harbor other terrorists or drug traffickers or chemists.

  He went around, lit all the cigarettes, hefted his backpack, and said to Digger, “Come on buddy. Let’s go get us a Taliban drug lord whose head is begging to be separated from his body.”

  21

  Koh-e Shir Darwaza, Kabul, Afghanistan June 24, 3:30 a.m.

  REX AND DIGGER had made good time away from the farmhouse when a muffled explosion confirmed the destruction of the lab. Rex felt some relief when he glanced over his shoulder and saw the flames rising from the buildings. He reckoned they were at least two miles away and dropping rapidly in altitude. However, they had about another twenty miles to go to reach the address he’d extracted from the two bombers whose body parts would very soon be charcoal. It was only another hour before sunrise, and then once again they’d be vulnerable to discovery. In an hour, even at the more rapid pace he was setting now that he didn’t need Digger’s nose to lead, they couldn’t cover much more than six or eight miles before full daylight.

  To make the most of the time, he stopped when he heard the explosion and said, “Rest.” He figured five minutes, no more, and during that time he dug the scavenged Afghan clothing out of his backpack and put it on over his night-camo fatigues. When daylight found them, at least he would be disguised at any distance, maybe even invisible if they were once again low on deforested hills. Digger was another matter, but he wouldn’t have appreciated being dressed in man-jammies, even if they would have fit him.

  Rex had calculated they could cover the twenty miles in no more than five hours, which gave him until around 8:30 a.m. at the outside to get within striking distance of Usama’s compound and find a place to conceal themselves during the day. Hopefully, it would be close enough for observation of the compound so that he could get more detailed information of the place than that provided by his latest captives.

  When the five minutes was up, Rex stood, and Digger took up his position about fifty yards ahead.

  The past forty-eight hours had taught him how important it was that Digger was out ahead of him. It kept him safe and had already saved him from walking into an AK-47 bullet and out of sight of a Taliban patrol.

  Rex still wasn’t sure how Digger did it, but he recalled a conversation he and Trevor had a while ago when he noticed that it seemed as if the dog could sense what their intentions were and figure out which way they were going. Trevor told him that dogs could read minds, but when Rex didn’t want to fall for that one, Trevor had explained that dogs look at our eyes and can see which way we’re heading. He told Rex to observe Digger and see how many times the dog threw a quick glance over his shoulder while out in front of them. Rex did that, and was amazed now that he was aware of it, to see just how frequently Digger was looking back at Trevor and adjusting his own course if necessary. It still didn’t explain what the dog saw in Trevor’s eyes. Was it the direction his eyes were looking, or was there some deeper mystery?

  “I guess, until I can speak dog, I won’t know,” he mumbled to himself.

  ONCE THEY WERE on one of the numerous crisscrossing paths Rex assumed were goat paths, Digger followed it until Rex corrected the course, using his compass and knowledge of the valley below to guide them.

  Sometimes, as the darkness started making way for the dawn-light, Digger ranged up to a mile ahead, but he always came back to fetch Rex, who sometimes took advantage of the situation to rest for a few minutes. From Digger’s behavior, Rex concluded that although there was no scent for him to follow there was no doubt Digger knew the hunt wasn’t over.

  Progress got easier as dawn approached, but by the time the sun rose, he knew he’d have to slow down and let Digger scout further ahead for obstacles in the form of people, whether unfriendly or not. They were beginning to encounter more signs of occupants on the lower reaches of the mountainside, and those occupants would soon be up and about their business. Rex could have passed without much notice, but Digger couldn’t.

  Rex was contemplating the problem while swinging purposefully along the path, when it suddenly became more urgent. Ahead, he could see a dilapidated little house with smoke rising from the chimney. Digger was about fifty yards ahead of him and would soon be within sight if anyone came out of the house. Just as he was about to command the dog to hide, Digger lowered himself to a crouch, crawled off the path and into a field of poppies that spread out uphill and on the opposite side of the path from the farmhouse.

  That is one smart dog, was the first thought that went through Rex’s mind when he saw Digger making himself scarce. He almost stopped in his tracks to consider the significance of what just happened. Digger clearly knew about the house and the occupants up ahead, probably was aware of them long before I saw it. Digger must have assessed them by smell or some sixth sense or some kind of dog magic and must have been happy that they are not the enemy. Otherwise he would have stopped me from going there. Then, to crown it all, the damn dog must somehow be aware that I can’t be seen in his company.

  Rex shook his head in disbelief. Maybe I can trust him to know what needs to happen. Maybe.

  As Rex passed the house, a woman came out the door, saw him, and hurried back inside. A moment later a man came out and called out a gree
ting. Rex answered pleasantly, wished the man good fortune, and continued on his way. The man gave no vibe of alarm. Rex stayed on the path until he’d passed the poppy field completely, at which point Digger emerged and resumed the lead. This was going to work out after all, so long as Digger could find cover when he needed it.

  When Rex decided they’d gone as far as they could without risking discovery, they were within a mile of the compound where Usama lived, according to the bombers. He began searching for an abandoned building of any kind, recognizing that observation of Usama’s headquarters was going to have to wait until darkness returned. When he found it, the presence of a well was a great bonus, as he and Digger had finished the two bottles of water Rex had carried with him and had found no other sources of water since leaving the farmhouse. For a country blessed with streams and rivers flowing out of those mountains, the drug lord had certainly selected an out of the way and inhospitable spot for that particular heroin lab, which had been reduced to cinder.

  Rex directed Digger to scout the compound and was entertained once more to witness the dog’s tree-climbing skill. It had the added advantage of hiding the dog from any casual observance.

  A few minutes later, Digger appeared at the front gate, his mouth open in a wide grin as if to say, “Coast is clear. Welcome, honored guest! Come on in.” Rex tested the gate and found it unlocked, opened it, walked in and shut it again.

  The next bit of good news was that the house still had a few pieces of furniture, including a bed, which must have been too ramshackle to its previous owners to take with them when they left. Rex had slept on everything from the finest linens to rocks and desert sand to the crotch of a cypress tree on one memorable occasion, but the past few days’ and nights’ exertions had left him bone-weary. Even the thin mattress and Digger’s insistence on sharing it – he’d already claimed it - would be like the lap of luxury today. One man’s shack is another man’s castle.