by JC Ryan
Rex didn’t reply. He got up, went outside, and dragged in the body of the man whose throat was a bloody, mangled mess. He dropped the corpse next to the three dead guests.
“This guard of yours thought he could stab the dog with a knife. Only one word from me will make him rip out your throat just like this man’s.
“I’ll get the information from your computers if not from you. So, you choose. Tell me what I want to know and get a nice clean bullet through the heart. Or stay stubborn, and the last breath you take will be swallowed by the dog before it gets to your lungs. Which will it be?”
Usama stared at the ruined throat of his guard and stared again at Digger. At that moment, his demeanor changed. Rex could see the change. Maybe it was because Usama also believed in an afterlife and virgins awaiting him in paradise but knew that if killed by a dog he had no hope whatsoever to enter that erotic realm. Within a few seconds Usama the Lion’s name would have been more appropriate had it been ‘Kitten’.
He slumped and told Rex the first truly useful thing he’d heard all night.
“My contact in America is Winston Reginald Hathaway.”
Rex had heard the name. The man was a New York socialite as far as he knew. Hearing the name in connection with a major drug operation was jarring, but he didn’t yet know the whole story. However, there was not much that would shock or surprise him about how low some people would go for wealth and prestige.
Slowly, over the course of three more hours, he put it together with Usama’s reluctant cooperation. After only a few names had been mentioned, Rex knew he’d need to write it all down or record it. The sheer size of the conspiracy was astounding, reaching from the highest levels of government to low-level military NCOs both in Afghanistan and at home.
“You have this recorded on your computer, yes?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Show me.” Rex grabbed Usama’s chair from behind, tilted it to its back legs, and dragged him to his office. The man showed no emotion when they passed the body of the servant Rex had dispatched earlier. When they reached the office, Rex saw it was more like a base of international operations. Several monitors were attached to each of three computers, two desktop models and a laptop. He positioned Usama within reach of one and cut the zipties off his hands with his KA-BAR.
“Watch where you place your hands. One twitch that makes me believe you’re about to destroy the evidence, and I feed you to the dog.”
Usama nodded and logged on to the desktop with the keyboard in front of him. He explained the two stationary computers weren’t linked. One contained falsified business records for the benefit of the government. Not that the government ever bothered him, as he was their most important partner in some dealings that extracted more taxes from his competitors and underlings in return for his information. On that hard drive, nothing of value to Rex would be found, he explained.
Rex didn’t believe him. He would check it all out later.
The desktop he was accessing contained the real records, and it was periodically backed up to the laptop, which contained not only Usama’s real business records, but also dozens of names with contact information.
“Run a manual backup right now,” Rex ordered. He’d have to translate everything, but that he could do at his leisure. He’d take the hard drives from all the computers in addition to the laptop.
When the backup was in progress, he nudged Usama in the back of the neck with his pistol. “The logins and passwords.”
“All in a small journal. In the drawer, there,” Usama said, pointing with his chin at an antique-looking side table.
Rex pulled Usama’s chair out of reach of the computers and left Digger guarding him, while he went to search the drawer. He found a little book, about six by four inches, bound with supple leather and containing about twenty lined pages, filled with website addresses printed in neat Latin letters, with Arabic passwords. When the backup was finished, Rex randomly selected a few of the entries and tried them on the laptop. The results satisfied him that the journal was legitimately a record of all Usama’s login information to hundreds of sites, including Dark Web and Deep Web locations.
“I have done all you asked. You now know everything I know. You will be honorable and kill me quickly,” Usama said. His voice was surprisingly firm.
Rex said. “Not time yet. Who set up the ambush on my team? Was it your people acting alone?”
“Of course not,” Usama said, growing insolent again. “We did not know who you were. We required the help of Hathaway. I understand he put pressure on a senator, who passed it on to the CIA.”
Rex’s shock and disgust was complete. The CIA? They knew it was a setup? “Who in the CIA?”
Usama shrugged. “I don’t know. I only deal with Hathaway. Who in the CIA would’ve given the orders to your commander?”
The ambitious Director or one of his sycophant deputies. Rex had wondered, and now he knew. The corruption was at all levels of the government, and it had cost the lives of innocent men. He and Trevor, okay, they had been working without specific orders. But Frank, his old friend, and the other five – they’d known nothing of any of it until Frank figured it out. They weren’t involved, and they didn’t deserve what had happened to them. For that matter, neither did Trevor. It was obvious the perversion had spread so far and so deep into the US government it was almost traumatizing. How many more innocent lives had been lost and would still be lost because of those malevolent bunch of self-serving bureaucrats in DC?
Usama broke into his thoughts. He tried to justify his actions. “You must understand. Our livelihoods were threatened. You were destroying our businesses. We had to do something to stop you.”
That comment almost pushed Rex to shoot the man right there and then. However, he had one more matter to clarify. “You’re saying that the only aim of that explosion was to kill me?”
“Yes, you. Or rather, the man we were told goes by the names of El Gato or Alshaytan. The Ghost. I take it you are he?”
Rex didn’t answer, but noted that Usama’s pronunciation of his Spanish nickname, El Gato, the cat, was flawless. Was Usama also in cahoots with the Colombian drug trade? He would not be surprised, and he didn’t need to ask now. It would be in the laptop’s records or found within the murky waters of the Deep Web. The more important question, which he didn’t ask, was how did Usama come to know his pseudonyms? Had Brandt told one of Usama’s co-conspirators? Had Brandt told Usama himself?
No, he couldn’t believe that. Not without further evidence. Until he got that evidence, the Old Man would get the benefit of innocence until proven guilty.
Rex comprehended he couldn’t go back to the US, not under his real identity, and maybe not under any identity for a long, long time.
To stay alive, he must remain dead.
Sick at heart and no longer having the will to harden himself to the carnage, he granted Usama’s last wish and put a bullet through his heart. To satisfy his own anger, he added two more between the man’s eyes. It was only a symbolic gesture. The man was dead before he raised the pistol for the second shot.
***
REX AND DIGGER were now alone in Usama's compound, and it was past midnight. He still wanted to conduct a thorough search of the compound, feed himself and Digger, as well as supplying himself with whatever he would need to escape the country. He had no time to waste.
There was also the risk that someone would come to the compound, find the carnage and raise an alarm. By his calculations, he had four hours or so to search the place, collect what he needed for the trip, and eat.
The first order of business was to search the rest of the furniture in the office. When Rex had done that and located two more laptops, he knocked on walls, pressed knobs, and ran his hands under the desk and the lower shelves of the bookshelves for electric switches and levers. His thorough search was rewarded with a panel opening by a spring-operated latch. Behind the panel was a safe, and the safe’s combination was reco
rded in the journal.
Inside, he found several stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills in US currency. He counted twenty of the bundles, which, if they had come directly from banks, would have one hundred bills in each. Two-hundred thousand dollars in old, used, apparently unmarked bills would come in very handy. He had no way of knowing for certain if they were counterfeit without a jeweler’s loupe and a strong light, but in his experience, counterfeit bills didn’t come in bundles of used currency. He reckoned they were legitimate, or at least passable as legitimate.
The safe also contained a bag of cut diamonds, about four pounds’ worth, if he was estimating correctly. A quick calculation, about two-thousand-two-hundred and sixty-seven carats to a pound, yielded another estimate – maybe nine-thousand carats. If they weren’t fake, and weren’t blood diamonds, maybe worth another one-hundred and fifty to two-hundred-thousand US dollars, maybe much more, depending on the quality.
If they were blood diamonds, he had a moral dilemma as well as four pounds’ worth of virtually useless baubles. They would have been mined under inhumane conditions and sold to support insurgency. The legitimate diamond trade had turned its back on them, and therefore they’d be difficult, if not impossible, to sell. Not only that, but he’d have to deal with some unsavory characters to sell them at all, and he had enough of bad people.
After some reflection, he shrugged. It would be impossible to determine right there and then if they were blood diamonds or not. But he was headed in the right direction to find out. Once he’d escaped Afghanistan and crossed Pakistan, he’d be in the heart of a thriving legitimate diamond-cutting trade in India. He’d be able to find someone there who could tell him. If they were blood diamonds, he would dump them somewhere. If not, he had another source of money.
This couldn’t represent all of Usama’s wealth. This would only be what he kept on hand for immediate needs. Rex believed he’d find information on the laptop about bank accounts, probably Swiss numbered accounts, and more in other tax havens around the world.
He’d learn about them soon enough.
Searching the rest of the house, he found a larger backpack, non-military, into which he put the hard drives from all but the original laptop, which went in intact. A weapons room yielded ammunition to replenish what he’d used. He transferred the money and diamonds to the backpack containing the computer equipment, and reloaded both pistols, then put boxes of spare ammunition in various places, including his ammo belt and several pockets of his own backpack.
When he was satisfied he’d found everything he could use except food, he went back to the study, dragged Usama’s chair with his body in it back to the dining hall, where he’d seen an antique scimitar on the wall. He reached up and tested the blade with his thumb. He felt hardly a sting, but a trickle of blood told him what he wanted to know. The blade was as sharp as Damascus steel. He took it down. Heavy, too. It would make a nice souvenir, for those so inclined, but it would just be a burden to him. However, it could serve a purpose here and now. Poetic justice, one might say, and throw investigators off his track, making this look like tribal warfare.
Digger looked on impassively as Rex swiftly parted each man’s head from his body in four mighty swings.
Rex felt washed-out, mentally and physically, when he dropped the scimitar next to the last of them and turned to Digger. “Want some chow, boy?” he asked in a detached voice.
Rex’s silent partner looked toward the food congealing on the table and let his tongue loll out. Rex shook his head. The unappealing mess on the table was probably contaminated with the blood of the dead men during his interrogation and from what had been slung from the blade when he beheaded them. This was no kind of place to eat anything.
“Let’s check the kitchen.” Rex led the way, prompting Digger to come when he didn’t immediately follow. Hearing the dog’s nails click on the wood floors, he continued without looking back.
In the kitchen, the stove still held a little heat, and Rex sampled the dishes that would have been served to Usama and his guests if he hadn’t turned up at their party. He offered those with large chunks of meat to Digger in apology for feeding him human food all those hours ago. When the dog turned up his nose and turned his head away at the last thing Rex offered him, Rex knew Digger had enough, so he sat down at the kitchen table and ate his fill.
In the pantry, he found non-perishable food, tins of tuna and sardines, lamb jerky and more, along with bread, fruit, and more goat cheese, the latter in the cooler. These went into empty plastic containers he found in the pantry.
The last task was to get a change of clothes and take a well-earned and urgent bath. When he peeled off the battle fatigues he’d been wearing for the past two days, they were crusty with the blood of his victims. Reluctantly, he wrapped them in a towel to take with him to get rid of later. He’d take a supply of the ubiquitous man-jammies to wear until he was in a place where he could buy other, preferably Western, clothes.
Rex spent an almost luxurious twenty minutes in the shower, washing and scrubbing and doing it all over again until he felt refreshed and relaxed from the hot water massaging his body.
When he got out of the shower, he offered Digger a shower, but the dog declined by getting up and walking back to the front of the house. One more command he’d have to learn, how to make the dog take a bath when he told him to. He let Digger win this one.
By the time it was all done, it was an hour before sunup. Rex had to leave before the sun came up and be far away when anyone discovered what had happened there.
He and Digger could drive to Ghazni in a few hours. Rex had been to the city of about hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants in the central east part of the country on a few previous occasions. It was about ninety miles from Kabul. They’d find an out-of-the-way hotel there, rest a few hours, and then head for Pakistan. Anyone suspecting that the perpetrators of the carnage at Usama’s home were fleeing the country would probably assume they’d be heading straight for the Pakistan border to get to Islamabad, rather than making the much longer trip southwest.
He found the keys to an SUV hanging conveniently on the wall next to the door that led to the garage. He loaded his two backpacks and the containers with food into the SUV, told Digger to get in, and drove it outside. When he’d cleared the house by several yards, he told Digger to stay, and he went back into the house. He went into several rooms, setting each on fire as he went. There were enough hangings and other flammable materials to start a fire. He didn’t want the house to break out in flames too quickly, he needed time to get away. Therefore, he didn’t use any accelerant.
He went out the front door, got into the SUV, and drove through the nearest gate.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, 6:30 a.m., June 25
THE SMOKE FROM the slowly-smoldering fire in Usama’s home had joined the general haze over the city when the first visitor arrived in a dilapidated truck at the gate. The first alarm was that the gate was wide open and unguarded. The visitor, a deliveryman from an upscale market closer to the center of the city, nervously drove through the gateway. It was the first time in the two years he had been delivering to the rich man’s compound that he found the gates open and unguarded. He had announced himself at the speaker fifty feet from the gate but had received no reply.
He was on a schedule, but he also knew this customer was the most important customer his employer had and would take great care not to upset him or his employees. He decided to investigate. There was no one there when he arrived at the gateway, but the gate stood open, swung outward from the compound wall. After driving through, he took the drive around the side of the house to the back, to make his delivery at the kitchen entrance as he usually did.
The stone house gave little indication of the burned-out interior. By some twist of fate, the back door had survived along with most of the corridor that led to the kitchen and other parts of the house.
No one answered that door, e
ither. There was a strange smell in the air — like someone was barbecuing meat on an open fire. He cautiously pushed it open and was engulfed by smoke billowing from the passage in front of him. The strange barbecue smell was now pungent, nauseating. Like someone had roasted a goat or some animal without gutting it.
Sensing something was dreadfully wrong, he closed the door, backed away, got into his dilapidated truck as quickly as he could, and reversed away. The truck’s gearbox sounded like an electric meat grinder when he shifted from reverse to a forward drive and sped away.
The deliveryman was in a daze. He knew he had just discovered something horrible, and he had no idea what to do about it, except that he didn’t want anything to do with it. He didn’t even think to report it to his employer.
Maybe it’s best to complete the rest of my deliveries. Let someone else discover it.
A couple of hours after he’d sped away from the deserted compound, he allowed his subconscious to tell his conscious what the pungent smell was. He managed to bring his truck to a stop in time to get out of it and vomited into the street. He was still wiping his mouth when a policeman pulled up behind his truck, got out of his vehicle, approached him, and asked him what was wrong.
The deliveryman whispered his fears about Usama’s household to the policeman. He offered the policeman all of Usama’s gourmet provisions still in the truck just as long as he kept his name out of the investigation.
The policeman liked gourmet food as much as the next man, so instead of reporting the deliveryman’s suspicions to his superiors, he went to Usama’s compound himself. Verify first, then report. There, he called out his credentials. Hearing no answers or challenges, he strode boldly into the compound to investigate.
The policeman quickly discovered what the deliveryman had missed when he fled the scene. Several corpses in the classic pugilistic pose in partially-burned utilitarian rooms and hallways. An office room with the scorched furniture tossed about and an open safe. A security room with another corpse and ten exploded monitors. The opulent rooms in the front of the house almost completely destroyed, with their exotic hangings and rare woods now in ashes. And four headless bodies with plastic melted to bone, still ‘seated’ in chairs that had collapsed as they burned. Then a stroll around the house revealed six more bodies, thirteen in total. The bodies of the guards outside the compound would only be discovered much later and push the count to fifteen.
