by JC Ryan
Five minutes later, he radioed the police station and immediately after that an informant he used on occasion, to report a mass murder.
While the police were dropping whatever it is they were doing or not doing at the time and rushing to get in their vehicles and to the scene, the informant, an employee of one of the slain drug lords, sent word through his network, which included not only his close co-workers, but employees of the other major drug lords. For an hour, telephone lines sang with rumor and questions. Who was safe? Who was missing? Before the morning turned to noon, the informant knew he was now at the top of his boss’s… make that his former boss’s… totem pole.
His counterparts in the organizations of the other three dead drug lords met with him to assess the situation. They’d all checked on their downlines in their respective organizations and discovered three of Usama’s men missing. Two of whom were thought to be the lumps of carbonized flesh that had been discovered that morning in a farmhouse near an outlying heroin lab up in the mountains about twenty miles away from Usama’s compound. They didn’t know whether it was related to their bosses’ untimely deaths or not, but the coincidence was suspicious. There was no body to account for the third missing man, so he could still turn up alive.
Now they had to decide whether to seek other employment or take over their respective organizations themselves. The upside of the latter was unimaginable wealth. The downside was unambiguously demonstrated by the condition of their former bosses’ bodies. According to the policeman who’d discovered them, the demon or demons who’d murdered them had trussed them like chickens on the way to slaughter, shot them, cut them, and in a final display of disrespect, beheaded their lifeless bodies.
Who would do such a thing? Were those monsters still in the country? Would they be next if they stepped into their masters’ shoes? What was the right move? Should they run for their lives, or report what they knew to the authorities?
The policeman who’d informed them of the disaster was waiting for their decision.
After much debate and several more hours, during which the fire destroyed more evidence, they decided better the devil they knew than the devil they didn’t. The authorities wanted the drug trade to continue, ergo, let them deal with the crime, and the survivors could get on with business. So, that was what they did - they left it to the government and went looking for new jobs.
From there, the news worked its way through official channels and gossip channels, to the highest levels of Afghan government and thence to embassy officials throughout the city. The American ambassador reported to his immediate supervisor, the Secretary of State. He informed the President.
Before it reached the President’s ears, it also went through lower-level channels of informants on Hathaway’s payroll, until it finally reached Hathaway’s ears. Though the disaster had taken place early on the morning of the same day Hathaway heard of it, the eight and a half-hour time difference between Kabul and New York meant the perpetrator had nearly a full day’s head start on his escape before the news reached him. Hathaway looked at his watch.
Hathaway spent half an hour in a temper tantrum that destroyed one carefully-decorated room in his penthouse. Then he called the Senator.
“Our bird has flown,” he said.
“What? What’s that?” the Senator stammered.
“Oh, for hell’s sake,” Hathaway sputtered. His elaborate verbal misdirection always confused the Senator. “The supplier, and I guess a few of his suppliers, have become the dearly departed.”
It took several more minutes to give the Senator enough broad hints to get his half-demented brain to understand what Hathaway was saying. Hathaway made a mental note that he was going to have to cultivate another wholly-owned Senator soon. This one literally had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Finally, he got the message across. They made arrangements to meet in Philadelphia the next day to decide what precautions they should take in case this headache decided to grow wings and visit them in person. Meanwhile, the Senator was to inform his puppet, the Director of the CIA.
Ten minutes after Hathaway had ended his call to his pet Senator, and the Senator had taken a stiff snort of cocaine, he was on the phone to the DCIA.
Carson felt the blood drain from his face as he listened to the news. What the hell had happened? He’d been informed by the station chief two days ago that the Afghan police had found eight bodies in the house where he’d arranged the ambush.
Brandt had confirmed that was the number of the team sent on the mission. So, who was now murdering the same drug lords who were supposed to have been at that false flag meeting? Or was it unrelated? Maybe a war among the Afghan drug lords? Could it be just a coincidence after all?
Carson fervently hoped this was one. He examined the scenarios mentally.
One. How likely was it that one or more of Brandt’s team could have survived? But then the mission team must have been more than eight. Would Brandt have lied about it? Or would his man in Kabul have lied about it? If one or more had survived, by some unlikely chance, how many would it take to go on a rampage and cause all this death and destruction? Fifteen dead, maybe eighteen. One man? Not at all likely. Impossible, in fact. No one was capable of doing all this on his own. Rambo, Chuck Norris, or some improbable fictional character from Hollywood’s imagination might have done such a thing, but they operated in movie theaters, not in Afghanistan.
What else? The second scenario, the one he hoped was the real one, was the one with which he'd tried to placate the Senator. A new faction of drug lords vying for the top position, probably. Tribal warfare had been a way of life in Afghanistan for millennia. It had to be that.
However, somehow, he didn’t believe his own reasoning. He had an uneasy feeling that he knew who the CRC man in Afghanistan was. He’d read the CRC reports more diligently since he’d had that conversation with Brandt about his best man – the Ghost. CRC’s success ratio was near perfect, ninety-nine-point-nine percent. The other tenth of a percent was the few agents they’d lost. They’d never had the failure of an entire mission.
There’s always a first for everything, he tried to pacify himself.
The fact was, any one of Brandt’s agents might have been capable of what the Senator had reported, but he knew one who was almost certainly capable of it. He’d dismissed Brandt’s stories about the Ghost as hyperbole before. What if they weren’t? Correction. I now know beyond a doubt that they weren’t. Shit… shit… shit…
Carson wasn’t a particularly intelligent man, but he had a rat’s sense of self-preservation. It wasn’t a great leap of intuition to believe that, even though it seemed impossible for one of Brandt’s men to have escaped and created all this havoc, there was still a possibility. And if that man happened to be the Ghost, the almost super-human operative that Brandt had described, then it wasn’t a great leap of intuition to believe he might be coming for the man he believed responsible for the explosion.
Wait, why am I even thinking like this? One man can’t do it. However…
Before he’d thought it all through, he was called to the White House to be briefed on the matter. The President was concerned that the attacks on the wealthy drug lords were an unauthorized CIA hit. If only he knew the truth, Carson thought, a cold trickle of sweat sliding down his lower back. But he hadn’t gotten to his current position by being a bad liar. Carson was a talker and a bullshitter par excellence, so good at it he was now the DCIA — on his way to take the seat of the man asking him the uncomfortable questions now.
“Absolutely not, Mr. President,” he said, with complete veracity. “I believe it is probably the beginning of a shift in the local power base.” He went on at length, using jargon to confuse the issue. After ten minutes, the President accepted his analysis, apologized for his earlier insinuation, and thanked Carson for his diligence. Carson was dismissed and went back to Langley thinking he’d dodged one bullet.
As soon as he reached his office, he called Joh
n Brandt. “We have a situation. How soon can you be here?” It was 11:00 a.m. in Virginia.
Brandt, in Arizona, had been up for two hours. He’d had a bad day yesterday and a bad night last night, so he was tired and not in the mood for taking orders from a piss-ant like Carson.
“Why don’t you come here for a change?” he snapped. Of course, he knew the reasons it wouldn’t happen and wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I want you here on the double,” Carson answered.
“Text me the address,” Brandt said, wearily. He and his CIA contacts never met at Langley, they were not allowed to be seen to have any official contact with each other. Their dealings happened in safe houses, secured hotel rooms, obscure restaurants, and the like. He’d go. He had no choice. Between flight time and ground time, once he landed at Ronald Reagan Washington National, the closest airport to Langley, it would be around 7:00 p.m. local time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ghazni, Afghanistan, June 24, 9:15 a.m.
AN UNFAMILIAR KIND of exhaustion had taken hold of Rex. It was not just the sleep loss; it was the result of a combination of many factors that made it feel as if there was a vast emptiness inside him. The nervous tension of the past few days, starting with the loss of his friends, the concussion, the trek into the mountains and back, the killings, were all things he had done and experienced before. What got to him this time was the cognizance that for the second time in his life he was alone again; no friends, no family, no country, and no one he could trust. This time he had no organization he could join. He was on his own, he and Digger. The crushing thoughts plus the almost three-hour drive combined to make him want to close his eyes. When, after what felt like eternity, he got to the outskirts of Ghazni, he was profoundly grateful to have reached his destination without nodding off and running off the road and down one of the ridges it followed.
He found a hotel and checked in without bothering to inform the desk clerk of his companion. The arrangement was strictly between him and the clerk, who accepted cash against hotel policy, as well as a bribe to not ask for ID or enter anything about his visit into the register. Another ten-dollar bill, showed to the clerk but not to be handed to him until Rex left, allowed him to pick a room on the ground floor with a window that had a parking place immediately in front of it. When he got to the room, he stuck his head out the window to see the best way to get Digger inside. He left the window open and went to move his SUV and retrieve his luggage.
Less than five minutes later, Digger had jumped through the open window. By the time Rex returned to the room, Digger had taken his half of the bed out of the middle.
“Now wait just a minute, mutt,” Rex protested. “You and I need to have a serious talk about your bedside manners. I understand I have to share the bed, but you need to pick one side or the other.”
Digger opened one lazy eye, thumped his tail, and closed his eye again. He was going to ignore Rex, that much was obvious, unless Rex moved him physically. Digger probably knew Rex wouldn’t do it. They were not that close yet.
Rex grinned. He knew what would get Digger off the bed. He opened the backpack with food in it and grabbed some of the lamb jerky, cut a piece of it with his KA-BAR, sat down in the chair and started eating it, avoiding all eye contact with the dog. After a while he slowly turned his gaze in Digger’s direction and waved a piece at him.
“Oh, you want some chow? I thought you were asleep.”
Digger jumped from the bed immediately.
Rex dropped the jerky, jumped out of the chair, and made a running leap at the bed. He was almost asleep when Digger returned, circled his side a couple of times, and settled in a curl, his back just inches from Rex’s stomach.
Four hours later, Rex’s internal clock woke him. He could have used another solid four hours of sleep. Truth be told, at that moment he felt like sleeping until he was so tired of it he would need to rest. The dreamless sleep he just had was much, much better than the dark clouds of depression engulfing him when he was awake. But he wasn't far enough from Kabul. By now, he assumed, authorities would be looking for the SUV he’d stolen. He needed to trade the license plates, and rough up the vehicle to make it look old and derelict. Kick a few dents in the sides, crack some of the windows, and add some mud and soil to the road dust already on the vehicle before he set out again for Kandahar.
It would have been nice to get some hot food, too, but he didn’t want to take the time or the risk. So, he made a meal from the supplies in the backpack, gave Digger more lamb jerky, and let him lick out of his cupped hand half of one of the four bottles of water he’d collected at Usama’s house. Then, he gathered his possessions out to the SUV, leaving the window open again and Digger in the room until he was ready. Once in the vehicle, he called, “Digger, come,” and was rewarded with the sight of the magnificent dog sailing out the window at his command.
“You mind me when you want to, don’t you boy?” he asked rhetorically.
Digger just smiled.
Moments later, they were on their way to the next stop, Kandahar. Rex looked forward to a good meal there, before they headed for the border another two hours away. He hoped to be in Pakistan by bedtime.
***
CROSSING THE BORDER from Afghanistan to Pakistan was not going to be like quickly jumping the neighbor’s fence to take a shortcut through their backyard to go and play with friends when they were kids. The two countries, although large parts of their population had the same heritage, didn’t have the most neighborly of relations. Afghanistan blamed Pakistan for most of its terrorist troubles, while Pakistan denied it and in turn accused Afghanistan of exporting its drugs through their country. Neither was wrong.
Driving an SUV, irrespective of the condition, was the mark of a wealthy Afghan. Rex expected he’d be stopped and his vehicle searched if he tried to enter Pakistan at any official border crossing. It had been more than thirteen hours since he’d left Usama’s home burning. By now, there could be whatever Afghanistan’s equivalent was of a BOLO, be on the lookout, and an APB, all-points bulletin, out for the vehicle. Probably they’d be looking for the original license number, and he’d taken pains to switch them in Ghazni, but a stop-and-search would also leave him scrambling for identity papers.
He had some, of course. In fact, he had quite a few different passports. He always had them when he traveled to other countries. There were a few problems though. None of them matched his current clothing or appearance, now sporting the appropriate facial hair for a Middle Eastern man of his age. But those were things easily rectified. The main issue was he didn’t have any of those papers with him. They were with all with his personal stuff in the Phoenix compound to which he dared not return. Furthermore, those ID’s were useless to him as they had been issued by CRC who monitored their use and would pick it up the moment he used any of them for any border crossing or any other official reason where it would be recorded.
During the long drive from Kabul, he’d had plenty of time to think about his situation. Any angle he approached it from led him to the point where he had to admit his situation was precarious, at best.
To remain alive, he had to remain dead, and dead people had no need for papers.
There was no way he could cross the border at any official crossing. Fortunately, the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak had spilled across the border itself and was only a handful of miles from the Pakistani town of Chaman, where he’d planned to spend the night. If he could find an appropriate vehicle to switch plates with as soon as he was in Pakistan, it would be a fairly easy task to find a gully or dry wash to lead him across the border.
He only had to look out for drug interdiction patrols on the Pakistani side. Rex found himself thinking about borders and what it said about relationships between countries. For instance, the one between America and Canada was the longest unprotected border in the world — testimony to the good relationships between the two countries. In sharp contrast to that there w
ere countries obviously not enjoying the same type of good relations, who had high walls, electric fences, and all kinds of electronic surveillance, including drones, between them. Those were testimony about less friendly relations.
Pakistan and Afghanistan were in the process of digging a trench between them. In some areas it was six feet deep, and in others it was eleven feet deep and fourteen wide. Rex wasn't sure how exactly to interpret what a trench said about their relationship but was sure at the very least it meant they didn’t like each other.
The US's southern border with Mexico? Well, that was a different matter altogether. One for debating - political debate that is. As far as Rex was concerned, the ramshackle condition of the southern border fences, or in many places the lack thereof, was probably testimony to the unwillingness of the parties to make up their minds if they wanted a protected border or not, or their mutual reluctance to do anything to improve it. The fences or the relations.
Since Rex had gathered the intel about the Afghan-Pakistan trench border months ago himself, he was certain he could trust it.
His most trusted asset for both issues, the lack of papers and finding a good place for crossing the border, however, was sitting in the passenger seat. This asset was excitedly holding his head out the half-open window. By the looks of it, it seemed as if Digger got a big kick out of the air rushing into his nose and open mouth while he was peering out the window as if he knew he’d be called upon to scout soon. As if he were already sniffing the air in preparation.
