by Dalton Fury
Jamal spoke again. “Don’t let Mister Racer get out of your car, Mister Bob. It is very dangerous here.”
Bob spoke in English before pressing the Talk button. “No shit.” Then he transmitted in Pashto, “Don’t worry.”
Kopelman turned down the alleyway as instructed by the young man who had lived and worked in this very village for several years. It was no surprise that Jamal knew how to weave through the back alleys to avoid roadblocks.
But Jamal’s comfort level around Taliban was greater than Kolt’s. Almost immediately Bob had to stop his vehicle to allow three armed men in black turbans to cross from one doorway to another. They stopped in the alley, looked at Kopelman’s car and then at the men inside it. Kolt stared back at them, wondered how this was going to play out. He avoided any sudden movements, but his hands gripped the weapon between his knees.
The three did not leave the alleyway in front of the idling car. Bob acknowledged the men with a gracious bowed head, and they turned to Raynor. Stared at him. Five seconds passed, and Raynor just stared back.
The men did not leave the alley.
Kolt’s Kalashnikov sat between his knees, its muzzle resting on the floorboard, and his hand tightened around the grip. As the three men glowered at him, Raynor used his trigger finger to snap the safety down one position, getting his rifle ready to go full auto.
Bob heard the click of the metal lever. Softly he said, “Easy, son. Just give them a nod, not quite a bow. Let ’em know you are no threat. They just want you to recognize them as superior.”
Kolt did as instructed. He hated taking his eyes off of the three men even for the half second necessary to lean forward.
The three men soon turned away, moved into the open doorway in front of them.
Bob put the car back into gear, headed slowly forward through the narrow alley.
“Watch your eye contact, boy!” Bob was pissed. “I know you’ve worked covert ops. You know better than that.”
Raynor wanted to argue. He did not handle reprimands well. But he knew the older man was absolutely right. “Yeah. Sorry. Just a little on edge after the past few days. That felt like a situation that was about to go loud.”
“Most of the time, whether or not it goes loud is up to you. You don’t keep your eyes low and your body language looking like you’re ready to kiss some tail, and you won’t last the day out here in the middle of these assholes.”
“Understood. I’ll ratchet down the testosterone.”
Driving through the alley got serious again seconds later, when a donkey overly laden with loose unloaded rifles was led out into the passage behind one of the larger factories. The donkey’s owner made no effort to move the animal out of the way so that the little four-door could pass. After a half minute of waiting and another fifteen seconds of honking, Kopelman climbed out from behind the wheel, went over, and began talking to the man.
Raynor was impressed. He sat there stone-faced in the car, did all he could to avoid bringing any attention to himself. Meanwhile his “partner” integrated himself into the street scene without a second’s hesitation. Kolt knew he stood out more by trying to stay back, in the shadows, than he would in a crowd. The Pashtuns’ penchant for communication between one another made his hiding of his language skills more obvious here than if he were trying to go undercover in some Western nation where he did not speak the language. He knew he could go months or even years in Switzerland without talking to passersby on the street. But here, in the middle of “Pashtunistan” as Bob had called it, a quiet man keeping to himself was almost as out of the ordinary as an American spy.
He’d never felt so utterly out of his element.
THIRTY-FOUR
They linked up with Jamal’s truck back on the main road and continued to the east through the thick village. The arcade was predominantly on their left: hundreds of stalls where weapons were made and sold ran up and wrapped around the undulating features of the brown hill. On their right were some more shops and factories, but a warehouse district ran up these tiny hilly streets. Jamal took a right turn at an intersection full of motorized rickshaws and Toyota Hiluxes and tiny two- and four-door cars, and the Americans followed. They went up one incline, followed a narrow road with twists and turns like a boiled noodle, and eventually made their way onto another fairly straight east–west thoroughfare.
Another five minutes’ driving time brought Bob to the waypoint he’d programmed on his GPS. He spoke into his walkie-talkie in Pashto. “Jamal. This is it.”
The truck in front of them slowed. “Okay … On the left here?”
“No. This long brown fence on the right.”
Jamal stopped the vehicle in a wide cul-de-sac on the opposite side of the street from the entry gate. Kopelman stopped along the sidewalk twenty yards behind him.
“Mister Bob?”
“Yes, Jamal?”
“This … this warehouse. It is the one here on the left?”
“What did I just tell you?” This Bob said in frustration, and in English, but he switched to the native language before transmitting. “On the right. The big building. Do you copy?”
No response from Jamal.
Bob looked at Racer. Then spoke into the walkie-talkie: “Is there some problem, my friend?”
A hesitant answer from the man in the yellow truck in front of them. “Well … no. I thought maybe there was a mistake.”
“What’s wrong?”
A pause. And then, “My uncle … he owns this building.”
Bob Kopelman’s big head lowered and rested on the top of the steering wheel. “Shit.” He said it to Racer. “Shit!” He yelled it this time, banging the steering wheel with a force that startled his passenger. He turned to Kolt. “Pashtunwali. If his family is involved in this, then he will not turn on them.”
As if Jamal could hear Bob’s worries, his voice came through the speaker of the device in Bob’s hand. “My uncle … he only cares for money. He is not involved with politics. He has no interest in jihad. He is not a terrorist.”
“Okay, son,” Kopelman responded. Raynor could tell the big man did not believe Jamal for a second, even if Jamal himself was convinced his uncle was not part of the plot. “What do you want to do, Jamal? Do you want to leave?”
“No. It is okay. Perhaps my uncle rented space to the German. My uncle may be there, or one of his workers. I can go in now and speak with them. We will have tea. I can tell him I need a job, ask him if he can hire me to work.”
Bob shook his head, looked to Racer. “I don’t like it. Either he’ll get himself into trouble, or he’ll turn on us.”
Kolt looked at Bob and snapped. “Funny how when just my ass was on the line you assured me this guy was up for the Secret Agent of the Year Award!”
“He was solid. But if his uncle is working for the German, and the German is working with AQ … Jamal is tainted by the strength of family ties.”
They talked it over for a moment, but ultimately, they didn’t see that they had any other option. Bob considered approaching the warehouse himself, under the guise of a World Benefactors logistics coordinator looking for additional warehouse space to rent, but that seemed like a transparent lie. Aid groups did not work in Darra Adam Khel, the warehouse owner would know that his building would be firebombed as soon as he started working with a Western aid agency, and he’d think the logistics coordinator was either childishly naive or, and perhaps more likely, a spy.
Bob leaned into his walkie-talkie. Paused for a long time. “Okay, Jamal. Go into the warehouse. Do not take any unnecessary chances, but if you see anything interesting, use the phone I gave you to take some pictures. They could be very important.”
“You will wait for me in the place you are right now?”
“Of course.”
Racer immediately protested. “If you think he’s going to turn on us, why are we going to just sit and wait right where he knows we are?”
Bob replied, “We aren’t. We’ll keep mov
ing, but I’m not going to tell him that.”
They watched through the dirty windshield, across the dusty and congested street, as Jamal stepped out of his yellow truck and approached the front gate of the building. He spoke with a guard, there was a greeting of familiarity, and soon Jamal Metziel passed through a door by the gate and disappeared from view.
Immediately Bob Kopelman started the engine of the Opel sedan and headed up the street, passed the truck, and turned into an alleyway. A group of corrugated-metal-walled buildings ran along the shadowed alley, and Bob backed his car into a recess between two of them. It was just deep enough to hide the car in the shadows and to give a slim view of the truck and the front door and gate of the warehouse from the right side of the front windshield.
“Be right back,” Bob said, and he left Raynor alone in the car.
“What the hell?” Raynor said to himself. He did not like sitting here alone, and he hated not knowing what his “partner” was doing. It was ten full minutes before Kopelman returned, opened the car door, and plopped heavily back into the seat. Kolt felt the Opel sink with the strain of the man’s heavy body.
“Where did you go?”
“I asked the shopkeeper around the corner if I could park here for a little while while I wait for my friend to do some shopping in the arcade.”
“That took ten minutes?”
Bob shrugged. “We had tea.”
Kolt was still impressed. “You can pull off a local accent, just like that?”
“No, they’d see through that. If they ask I just tell them I’m a Nuristani, born in France to immigrants, who’s lived in Kabul for fifteen years. It’s both convoluted and plausible, and it does the trick.”
“You can pray like a Muslim?”
Bob looked at him. “Of course. I went native, remember?”
Bob and Kolt got out of the car, and when no one was looking, Bob made several adjustments to Raynor’s clothing, making him appear more authentic by changing the angle of his hat and the drape of the patoo over his chest and shoulders, even by scratching dust into the skin around Raynor’s eyes. “Stay close to me. Don’t talk, don’t make eye contact, and don’t ask anybody directions to McDonald’s, ’cause there isn’t one.” Then the two of them began walking at a steady pace through the streets, even though they had nowhere to go. This movement would give them the look of purpose here in this bustling market town.
Every twenty seconds or so gunfire crackled in the streets around them, causing Kolt to tense up. The shooting was just the gun makers and gun salesmen, handing loaded weapons to prospective buyers, who simply walked a few feet from the tiny wooden stalls, pointed the rifles or pistols into the sky or at one of the sandy hilltops ringing the valley, and squeezed off a couple, or a couple dozen, rounds. It occurred to Raynor that although strolling around here, surrounded on all sides by men who would love nothing more than to kill an American, could not in any fashion be construed as “safe,” long-range reconnaissance of the warehouse from a hilltop outside of town would arguably be even more dangerous, as that’s where many of these bullets were striking.
The gunfire crackled continually, but long and sporadically enough for Kolt to know that there was no real threat to the sound, and he began to relax.
An hour passed with the men walking up and down any street that gave them a sight line to Jamal’s yellow truck. Occasionally they would pass Bob’s Opel to check on it, but otherwise they were just strolling through the crowds, doing their best to blend in. Kolt noticed how incredibly comfortable Kopelman seemed around the Pashtuns. He had no problem making eye contact with men and bowing to them in a friendly manner as they passed; he even stopped to look at some chickens for sale hanging from the back of a donkey in small wooden cages.
Raynor, on the other hand, kept his head on a swivel. He watched people pass—all men, most of them armed, and practically all of them threatening in appearance. He thought he’d been in the belly of the beast in Zar’s compound, but here, surrounded by Taliban fighters, seemed almost surreal to him.
On one trip back to check on Bob’s little car, they discovered that a motorized rickshaw towing a wagon had parked right in front of their vehicle. The driver had effectively boxed them into the shadowed recess of the wall and was now nowhere in sight.
Kopelman ordered Raynor to wait for him inside the car while he went looking for the driver. Kolt watched him disappear up the alley through the dirty windshield. He hoped like hell Bob’s Pashto and his mannerisms, clothing, and actions would continue to pass muster. Raynor knew his own situation was even more dire than before because he had no one who could do the talking if some tribesman came tapping on the glass of the car. What could he do? Pretend to be asleep and hope the man went away?
Play dead?
These were the only options that came to mind. He shook his head and asked himself how he’d gotten into this lousy predicament.
Twenty minutes later Kopelman returned. Apparently his language and cultural skills had passed muster, because he carried several items he’d obviously purchased at the market. Once inside the car he sighed. “Couldn’t find the driver of the rickshaw, which means we might have to walk out of here.” He fished through a canvas bag. “So, if worse comes to worst, I bought you this.”
He handed Kolt a powder blue garment made of thin silk.
“What the hell is—”
“It’s a burka. You might have to wear it before the day is done, so I hope you like the color.”
Raynor told himself there was no way he’d be donning a damned burka. Still, he tucked it inside his baggy trousers.
Kopelman had also bought some fruit, and together they ate grapes and pomegranate as they stared out the front windshield, through the dust and the glare of the afternoon sun, and waited for Jamal to reappear.
Minutes later Jamal Metziel stepped through the front gate of the warehouse and returned alone to his truck. The Opel was still boxed in by the rickshaw and the cart, so Bob could not just follow him out of town. He and Kolt had discussed trying to unhook the cart on their own and rolling it out of the way, but Bob had decided that this act would likely draw attention. Not angry or curious men. No, just as bad, it would attract men who would gather to help. The last thing either of these Americans wanted to see was a gaggle of armed local goons forming to assist them with their work, and then inviting them to a tea stand for pleasant conversation afterward.
If you were in Pashtunistan and you were not a Pashtun, Pashtunwali could get you killed in so many ways.
“What do we do?” asked Raynor.
“Screw it,” Bob said. “Pete Grauer can buy me a new car. I’m not sitting here all night. Let’s go.” Kopelman grabbed a few items from around the car: his sat phone, his laptop, a backpack to stow them in.
Kolt asked, “What about the guns?”
Bob reached down and grabbed one AK, then nodded at the other. He pulled the canvas satchel with the extra mags and slung it over his neck.
“Yeah, we definitely take the guns. I find out that Jamal turned on me, I’m sure as shit gonna put a few rounds in his chest before I check out.”
Shit, thought Raynor. Bob had been so high on this contact a couple of days ago; now he was actually entertaining the possibility of killing him.
* * *
Jamal’s eyes widened when he saw the two men walking toward him in the street. Quickly he motioned them over to his truck. Both Americans climbed into the cab, and Jamal nervously looked up and down the street before climbing in himself. He drove east to a more secluded part of town. Several times Bob asked him what had happened and what he’d seen, but Jamal just muttered some little prayer over and over.
The kid was scared. Bob and Kolt both saw this, and they both worried silently that the kid might well be leading them into a trap.
After some more stern prodding from Bob, Jamal’s head cleared enough to explain. “My uncle and some of my cousins were there. We ate lunch together. Slowly they began
to talk about the people who are renting the warehouse space now.”
“And?”
“And they are foreigners. From Yemen and Turkey.”
“Not from Germany?”
“Yes, the man from Germany was with them.”
“What else did you learn?”
“They have their own security there. Ten men or so. But my uncle took me out into the warehouse anyway to show me what was there. While my uncle spoke to the guards … I was able to take some pictures that you need to see.”
“Pictures of what, Jamal?”
“I … I do not know what they mean.”
“Okay, just relax.” Bob looked in the rearview mirror, and Kolt checked the passenger-side mirror. Both men were scanning for anyone following them. Bob continued speaking to Jamal in Pashto. “Pull into this parking lot here, and we’ll take a look at what you found.”
They stopped, and Jamal pulled his mobile phone from his salwar kameez. He started to fiddle with it, but Bob just took it from his hands. Bob had given him the Motorola device because of its high-resolution video and digital still camera, and he’d perfunctorily shown the young Afghan how to use it, but the American intelligence operative knew how to work the thing in his sleep.
Bob downloaded the pictures onto his laptop in only a few seconds. When he double-clicked on the file, he blinked his eyes hard, twice. Over his right shoulder Raynor muttered in confusion, “Uh … are you sure that’s what you just downloaded?”
Bob was not sure. He looked at the file on his Toughbook. Finally he said, “I … yeah, that’s what Jamal gave me.… Oh my God.”
Both he and Raynor stared at the screen, at a digital photo of a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The markings, the paint job, were just like on all the Black Hawks crisscrossing the skies back over the border in Afghanistan.
Behind it in the warehouse was another helicopter, a nearly identical Black Hawk.
“Jamal? These two choppers? They are in the warehouse back there?”
“Yes, Mister Bob.”
Bob addressed Racer now, incredulity in his voice: “How did you dumb Army fucks manage to lose two helicopters?”
