Ghost Target

by Nicholas Irving

  “Everything is fine. Operations are continuing. We are on secure phones and I’m in some random diner,” Griffin said. “Noisy as hell in here.”

  “Anything else?” Markham asked.

  “Two cops were shot by the same rifle that killed Dillman and General Sampson at Fort Bragg. Four dead. One rifle. My sources tell me they’re tracing it to an Army Ranger.”

  “Keep bird-dogging that. Sampson and Dillman were our guys. The cops?”

  “Ours, too,” Griffin said. “No way for anyone to know that. They were our customs guys. What they were doing at five in the morning in a random parking lot near Hunter, I don’t know,” Griffin said.

  “Do we have more customs guys?” Markham asked, looking to the future.

  “I can find some, I’m sure, for the right price. These guys were perfect. I don’t know how any of this could be connected, though. No one knows about any of this,” Griffin said.

  “Assume someone knows. Assume our killer is after all of us and take appropriate measures.”

  “That’s what you used to say to me when we were in Afghanistan,” Griffin said. Griffin had deployed as a high-level civilian working directly for Markham when the general commanded the air component of the joint task force. Because the coalition was rebuilding the runways and air force accommodations, Markham had deployed Griffin to lead the construction and contracting effort. Griffin’s role had grown over time to include handling the dark side of Markham’s business dealings. To keep Griffin under his thumb, Markham had made the competent bureaucrat wealthy.

  “And that’s what I’m saying to you now. What about the coffins?”

  “The only ones we’ve got are for spare parts stuffed in the back of our hangar from the last two flights. We don’t have the personnel to empty all of them right now. Was next on my to-do list, but these shootings are bothersome.”

  “Take the personnel ones to a junkyard, have them crushed and sanitized. The ones with ‘parts,’ as you call them, get the parts on the street and then do the same to those.”

  “Roger that,” Griffin said.

  Markham pressed the button on his earpiece and heard an audible beep, indicating that the call had been terminated. He sat in a soft chair that afforded him a view of Lookout Mountain to the east. Beyond that was Interstate 70 and the White River National Forest, some of the best elk and mule deer hunting grounds in the world. He had just ordered Griffin to destroy any evidence of the personnel shipment containers, known as transfer cases, used by the military for repatriation of human remains. Dead bodies.

  Annually Markham brought his top five investors, all part of the CLEVER network, to the mountains or the beach, or both. His palatial mountain compound was rustic, with bronze eaves and faux-wood exteriors. The well-crafted home, though, was state-of-the-art in every aspect. The security fence provided two miles of cameras and sensors that Markham’s on-site muscle monitored twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week from a bunkered outbuilding with firing ports, monitors, slew-to-cue technology, thermal imaging, and infrared sights. Forty-million-candlepower searchlights and spotlights were set back from the fence, which was lined all the way around with a warning track where the security team could look for any intruding footprints and easily drive the interior.

  Markham had the security personnel place a bank of monitors in his control room off his study, where he sat now. Leather sofas sat in a U shape fronting a tall open wood-burning fireplace big enough to handle tree trunks.

  He sat in the leather sofa facing the fireplace and pressed the speed dial button on his MLQM secure smartphone, routing the call through his earpiece.

  “Roger,” a male voice said crisp and clear.

  “We need something official shadowing our government friends,” Markham said. “You know I don’t like not knowing what’s going on.”

  “Roger that. Just returned from the sandbox, but I’m in the AO. I’ll report back. Moving now,” the man said. The area of operations for now was Savannah, Georgia.

  Markham had hired former CIA Ground Branch operative Ramsey Xanadu, who had been discharged from service for misconduct. Xanadu, though, was good at what Markham wanted him to do. He had proven that time and again in Afghanistan and Iraq as he executed Markham’s missions. Markham invested millions in MLQM and received in exchange the opportunity to insert his own teams … and his own agenda.

  “And, Xanadu?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “If this is who I think it is, this person is not someone we need back. I’m having to deal with this now because it wasn’t cleaned up earlier. Clear?”

  “Crystal, sir.”

  “Roger, out,” Markham said.

  He took a sip of his coffee and pressed a different speed dial button on his phone. This time a female voice answered.

  “Yes, sir?” she said.

  “Be ready in thirty minutes. It’s that time of the morning,” Markham said. The wealth manager liked to start his mornings with pre-stress relief, as he called it. Why wait until the stress builds? That was his motto. Bust a nut first thing, maybe follow it with a short nap, and then go cap a few unsuspecting deer. This was what retirement life was all about: enough money to buy a yacht and a Gulfstream jet and an endless train of fresh, exotic women to accompany him.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  “How are my guests being treated?”

  “They all seem very … happy,” she said. As he listened to the voice, he conjured the image of the eighteen-year-old Afghan beauty. She was the oldest of the lot, in some cases by several years, so he had given her management responsibilities. She had eyes the color of copper pennies, toned legs and breasts, and full lips. Markham had to admit that he had been surprised by what was hiding behind those burqas. The Afghan and Arabic women cleaned up well.

  He finished his coffee as he popped a blue pill. Letting it course through his system for thirty minutes, he wondered who could be hunting his people and whether the hunter ultimately would come after him? Probably, but that was of little concern to Markham. He had a private jet, private runway, private cars, private yacht, private concubines, and private security.

  He even had a compound on Tybee Island, near Savannah, similar to this one.

  No issues. He could pretty much go wherever he needed and do whatever he wanted.

  He stood, feeling renewed vigor, and walked into the basement where Mehrangez awaited him. Mehrangez’s mother had named her daughter after the Afghan vocalist who had managed to escape the shackles of her native culture. Lucky for him, his Mehrangez had not escaped.

  As he approached her, she was sitting on the bed wearing fishnet stockings, stilettos, no top, and her long brown hair mussed just enough with pouty lips painted red. He stood before her and she undid his belt buckle. While her task might not have been her first choice for a career, Markham thought, her path was certainly better than what he did with the discards.

  As her brown doe eyes looked up at him, he thought about the first time he had seen her on the airplane. It was nighttime in Afghanistan and she had been wearing an orange jumpsuit and a burlap hood.

  Just like all the others.

  * * *

  Xanadu clicked off the call. He was standing in the MLQM warehouse that had a back gate connecting to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah. A high school dropout from Santa Cruz, California, Xanadu had been involved in an escalating series of criminal enterprises that had landed him in front of a judge who said, “Either join the army or I’m sending you to San Quentin.”

  The army had been good for Xanadu, given him structure and showed him mostly how to operate around the system, not within it. He had been a member of Seventh Special Forces Group in Afghanistan, and then the CIA recruited him because he had special skill sets. He was fluent in Pashto and Dari, the two primary languages spoken in Afghanistan.

  Some sketchy expense-report submissions and reports of domestic abuse resulted in his dismissal from Ground Branch. MLQM was eager to
hire him, paying a handsome two hundred thousand dollars a year—mostly tax-free—for operating between Afghanistan and Savannah.

  When Markham learned that Xanadu was working with MLQM, the general developed a relationship with the former special forces soldier. As trust grew between the two men, Xanadu proposed to Markham how to increase MLQM’s bottom line in the face of severe cutbacks in the military contracting world. Markham had listened and said nothing, which Xanadu had taken as a green light. He understood that Markham might have been suspicious that Xanadu was recording the conversation, which he was. Regardless, the first delivery included opium, weapons, and two women that he had kidnapped as part of a raid he was conducting in Helmand Province with his three-man team.

  They had entered the building on a tip that it contained a week’s worth of poppy-resin harvest. Xanadu’s team had shot two guards in the head using their night vision–goggle advantage, and then Xanadu had checked the team’s fire as they cleared the last two rooms, one of which had two fifteen-year-old Afghan girls in it. The moral dilemma he faced was whether he should kill them or let them live. Killing them seemed … excessive. Letting them live seemed … stupid. So he kidnapped them, which turned into a new business line.

  In the truck, he had two transfer cases, military coffins, that he was using to disguise the opium shipment home. He put the drugs in one case and the women—it was a tight fit—in the other case. First, he had bound and gagged them. When he got back to Kandahar and the MLQM private compound, he quickly loaded the two transfer cases on the MLQM 737-900ER that flew the weekly route to Savannah and back. Having led the mission, he personally escorted the two transfer cases back to Hunter Army Airfield, where he had them moved to the MLQM private compound just beyond the gate. The customs officials rarely inspected the transfer cases, given the sensitivity of combat deaths, the American flags draped on top, and the human remains that were supposed to be contained inside.

  Xanadu took full advantage of that. Once in a private warehouse by himself with the two transfer cases, he stored the opium-filled case with about twenty other empty cases at the back of the fifty-thousand-square-foot dry-storage area. The cases were on a palletized rack system, stacked vertically.

  He opened the case with the women, hoping they had survived the shipment time with no food or water. They had. He led them to the locker room and had them shower in front of him. He liked what he saw. Dark hair; smooth, young bodies; and big almond eyes. He became aroused. They were embarrassed and resisted, of course, but Xanadu hatched his plan right there.

  He raped both girls, one right after the other, at gunpoint on the locker room benches. He kept one tied up while he forced himself on the other and then reversed the situation. One he had to “dust off,” meaning she was a virgin. The other had been penetrated previously.

  He bound and gagged them afterward and called Markham, explained his plan, and Markham said nothing.

  Which meant the general gave a green light to the plan. While planning his second opium-house raid he discreetly researched the human intelligence where there might also be attractive young women or girls. Each raid was a near-instant replay of the other until the fifth time out, when he actually got into hand-to-hand combat with a woman, who turned out to be French and married, at that.

  Still, she was a looker, and to Xanadu, a keeper. He kept the rare French beauty to himself in a container yard at Kandahar for two months and three weeks, not unlike the undocumented detainees—the ghost prisoners—they had snatched early in the wars. He would come back from a mission, send the transfer cases to Hunter Army Airfield, rape the French woman, make sure she was fed and watered, and then go on his missions. Not bad duty.

  That was exactly three months ago and he’d operated on the principal of five to seven a month, which had seemed to work out so far. He hadn’t run across any other non-Afghan women, though, which was fine by him. The French woman was … perfect. The entire enterprise had paid off in many ways, but General Markham had been the genius behind the big-time payoff. Had taken it to another level.

  Now, just off the phone with the general, he looked at that stack of containers inside the warehouse just outside the gate of Hunter Army Airfield. He had one special case to open. A week ago, he had moved his French woman to the United States. Planned to keep her. She’d been in storage for a week, bringing her total time in captivity to three months.

  He walked to the rack storing system, fired up the forklift, elevated it to the seventh level, plucked the transfer case, and lowered it to the ground. He returned the forklift to its proper position in the warehouse and came back to the transfer case.

  As he ran a rough-hewn hand over the metallic casket lid, he visualized her beautiful raven hair and green eyes. Slender body with legs all the way up to her neck. He had given her a box of combat rations and water bottles as he had left for another run to Afghanistan last week. There wasn’t much room to move around in those coffins, but she would be hungry and thirsty enough to figure it out. She seemed like a survivor.

  Using his key, he unlocked the hasps and opened the container.

  It was empty.

  Save for a note that read, Find me.

  Which was laid neatly atop a metal briefcase covered in mud and dirt.

  Xanadu wasn’t an expert in improvised explosive devices, but he did know enough to believe that this could be one. He checked it for IED-related triggers or sensors and didn’t see anything immediately, other than two wires connected to a battery, which was obviously a sign that whatever was inside required power. It occurred to him to simply disconnect the wires from the battery, but he knew about anti-handling devices. They were hidden and tricky and he wanted nothing to do with being at ground zero of a stupid IED.

  He quickly shut the transfer case, ran outside of the warehouse, and puked onto the concrete apron of the runway, thinking, How the hell did she escape?

  CHAPTER 12

  Khasan Basayev, the Chechen, stared at the Savannah River through the window of his hotel room in Savannah, Georgia, wisps of fog appearing like lost souls escaping confinement. The excitement of the morning had given way to late afternoon. Thunderstorms had rolled through, pounding their way across the Savannah River until they were out at sea. Basayev had come face-to-face with the Reaper, who didn’t even recognize him. He had tracked his every move, stalked him like the prey that he was, and was tightening the circle of pressure around the Reaper like a boa constrictor, slow and steady.

  He needed the police chasing Harwood.

  Basayev’s muddy boots sat in the closet of the hotel room. He had worked hard through the night. The shoveling. Finding the right-size police uniform. Driving onto Hunter Army Airfield. And ultimately working his way into MLQM and finding the right transfer case. Just about anything was possible with a police uniform.

  He had not been surprised to find the device he had parachuted into America and planted years ago. The Russians had hesitated on activating the weapon, and then in 2014 their economy began to collapse, leaving his employers with no ability to pay. Basayev did not work for free. But now, with the geopolitical winds swirling, apparently, they had found the money.

  The police had arrived at the hotel based upon his “anonymous” call that he had seen “a sniper” in Forsyth Park. In fact, he had seen more than one, which excited him. This game would be fun for Basayev if it weren’t so deadly serious. While he was a true mercenary gun for hire, and had worked for many countries and organizations, he was also a human being. He had his own set of hopes and dreams forged in the aftermath of constant conflict in his home country.

  He wrote poetry with the same economy of force with which he could slit the throat of a target. He had fended for himself in the lawless days of Russian dominance in the years surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America. Those attacks were barely a blip on the screen for Chechen rebels such as himself. Basayev vaguely recalled that he was holed up in a remote hide position awaiting a column of Russian i
nfantry soldiers, who usually marched with their heads down, unaware of the threats that lurked two hundred yards away. With the Russians trudging to reinforce an embattled city, Basayev killed ten men including the commander of the unit. Sniper fire followed by a mortar attack was his trademark maneuver for breaking contact and evading capture or retaliation. It had worked in Chechnya and it worked in Afghanistan.

  His journal entries had turned from dark and humorous—Heads upon a spike? Shall I drive them into the ground or take a selfie and give them a “like”—to uplifting and hopeful—I’ve found my one true love, hear the voices from heaven, Nina is my white-winged dove—once he transferred to Afghanistan in 2017.

  Nina Moreau.

  As a giant merchant ship glided along the Savannah River, Basayev thought of Nina and their not-so-random meeting in Saint-Tropez, France.

  He had been gambling. She had been watching. Having just returned from a good payday working for the Turks killing infiltrating Kurds in the mountainous regions of Turkey, Basayev had been on rest-and-relaxation time. Not total R&R, though, because a cutout for the Russian government had contacted him asking to meet in Saint-Tropez.

  He was running the baccarat table and had piles of euros and stacks of chips in front of him. Nina had smiled from across the room and he instantly knew it wasn’t an “I like your money” smile. There was a deep soulfulness to her eyes that told him they were kindred spirits. Wanderers. Perhaps warriors. And that maybe she was his contact.

  With the reach of one of his long arms, he swept the cash and chips into a Louis Vuitton day-travel bag without breaking her gaze. He walked to the elevator of the hotel. She placed her drink on a linen-covered round high-top table and followed him. He was vaguely aware of the dome camera as she strode into the elevator. They didn’t speak a word on the ascent. Entering Basayev’s room, she took one look and said, “Drop the bag.”

  Basayev stared into her emerald eyes, studied the flowing raven locks, gauged her lithe frame, and came back to the eyes. He nodded and dropped the bag in the foyer of his luxury room. She clasped his hand and said, “Follow me.”