It also had a hidden compartment that contained diverse weapons to meet all their requirements, a technological arsenal that would make the team completely independent for several days with no need for supplies.
Kamaal was driving and Mark, sitting next to him, was looking out at the landscape. The Helmand region is crossed by the river of the same name, and the land was harsh and barren but interspersed with lush green fields, that for the most part cultivated opium poppies, a crop which was easier to grow than traditional food, even in poorly irrigated fields.
There were in fact still very few wheat fields despite the fight against drug trafficking, and the price of wheat had increased during the last two years due to the food crisis in developing countries.
According to the satellite survey, there were three plantations they needed to inspect, all of them near Lashkar Gah on the road to Kandahar.
They were to sleep in the house of Kamaal’s brother, who was also a CIA operative, but who also grew opium, and associated with the Taliban who protected him.
Mark did not like the situation at all. They could both be double agents, and they could be leading him into a situation that might involve the two principal governments in a domino effect, upsetting the precarious political-military balance of the Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan region. All he could do was stay vigilant, intercept and interpret any alarm signals, and carry out his task.
They parked the jeep about half a mile from the edge of the first plantation.
There were people working in the field harvesting the latex and the capsules of the poppies, and storing the crop inside a kind of low shed the color of the surrounding earth.
BAT FK2 Bantam, their technical expert, went into the shed and placed the micro-cameras and bugs that would send information for five hours and then self-destruct, leaving no identifiable residue behind.
Mark was in charge of data collection, and Kamaal translated the conversations he thought might provide useful information; he was familiar with the area and the people of the place, and would easily detect any abnormal situation.
They lurked about until evening and, at the end of the day, the regional Taliban chief arrived with two trucks.
He negotiated the various loads, placed the goods aboard the trucks, paid cash and quickly got on the road to Kandahar.
“I think that was the Taliban’s usual procedure,” said Kamaal, who was tired after hours of being concealed. “They buy from farmers then take away the raw product to deliver part to the laboratory for processing and part to sell to the highest bidder at the auction in Kandahar. Let's look at the recordings and listen to them carefully, but they were all locals and I don’t think there was anything strange here. Let's go to your brother’s. We can briefly analyze the data and then send it to the two agencies; that's our procedure.”
“I agree with you. I don't smell Bouda here,” replied Mark, while BAT FK23 Bantam was obliterating the traces of their passage.
18
Nadir looked like Kamaal, they both had the same burnt out look from the horrors of the war and they looked older than their years.
Nadir greeted the three men briefly and immediately closed the door behind them, leading them through a hidden passage into an underground area.
They were now in the warehouse of the opium produced by his plantation, the unofficial part; the opium that he would not sell cheaply to the Taliban, but would instead sell directly to Western buyers.
“You will sleep here. There are three folding beds, a table with four chairs and a bathroom. I personally will serve you meals. You cannot come up to my home if I don't explicitly invite you. It’s not safe; the Taliban are at home here.”
‘Cute as a punch in the nose,’ thought Mark after Kamaal had translated his brother's completely incomprehensible local dialect into Arabic.
He roughly calculated the amount of opium lying on the shelves. “A couple of million dollars after being turned into heroin. Damn, that's cute! He cheats the Taliban, too,” he reflected, pretending not to notice.
At 11:00 pm, after having written the report for the two agencies indicating that the crop was not part of the mission and having sent all the data collected during the afternoon, they went to sleep on the folding beds with their clothes on, and turned out the light.
In the dark, Mark thought about how hot and sensual Jane was, and he once again imagined the scene against the wall of his room in Buenos Aires. Then he turned on his stomach; he had to sleep and not be kept awake by a raised flagpole till dawn.
19
At six o’clock in the morning, Nadir arrived with coffee, goat milk, cheese and bread.
He woke them and told them that he had seen some activity during the night in the field to the south of the one they had watched yesterday and, in his opinion, it was better to work on this lead. It might help shorten the investigation time.
He had another motive to speed up events: the sooner he could get rid of his unwanted guests the better off he would be.
“Hey Nadir, I wonder if you wouldn’t take a kickback from them too. And Lisunov Li-2 and I are going to be dead as doornails and eaten by wild dogs before nightfall,” said BAT FK23 Bantam sarcastically. He really could not stand him.
“Perhaps, gentlemen 007, you will discover that for yourselves. Wouldn’t that be exciting? Maybe I will find you here tonight, who knows?” Nadir replied in kind, showing no hesitation in demonstrating his aversion to the Arabs.
After an hour and a half, the three agents had set up an observation station near the opium plantation that Nadir had indicated.
“Damn, what a lot of traffic!” BAT FK23 Bantam said while he was preparing the equipment.
“Yeah, they all seem very agitated. All the fields look alike, the warehouse is made of the same material and practically invisible from above, but here, unlike the others, I can see guards along the perimeter,” Mark said, while handing the binoculars to Kamaal.
Suddenly, they heard BAT FK23 Bantam’s strangled voice, “Shit! Shit! Damn, a scorpion stung me, God, the pain! How could I not see it?!!”
Mark spun around and saw a scorpion moving out from beneath his leg, luckily it was a small one compared to others that lived in the area, and the injected poison would not endanger his life.
“Fuck! I am allergic to scorpions! I’m starting to feel tingling sensations…and sick. Hey, Li-2! You're a doctor!”
Mark ran to the jeep and returned immediately with antihistamines, adrenaline and cortisone. He injected his colleague with the cortisone and antihistamines without wasting time. Meanwhile, Kamaal followed the situation on the plantation with the binoculars.
“What do we do?” Kamaal asked, worried.
“Let's see how Bat reacts, right now we can’t move him without being discovered but I’ll wait to give him the adrenaline. And forget about a special rescue operation; that would burn the mission. Hey Bat, how are you feeling now?”
“I’m breathing better thanks, the bite hurts like hell, but I don’t feel tingling now and I’m not choking. My breathing is almost normal. What a mess!”
“Do you think you can go on? Or should we stop the operation for today and leave when you're able to move, greenhorn?” Mark asked, smiling at him and then continued, “I have to go and place the micro-cams and bugs.”
“I’m clear-headed, I can make it; the antihistamine is taking effect. I can take your place, Kamaal has nothing to fear.”
“I have to wait for a good moment. There are guards everywhere. It’s impossible to enter without being seen right now,” Mark said.
The right moment arrived at about two in the afternoon, when suddenly the guards all stopped to eat something. They gathered together on the right side of the warehouse, leaving the left side unexpectedly uncovered.
Mark entered the warehouse on his stomach. First of all, he took in the space around him and how it had been arranged.
After this was done, he began quickly distributing the bugs and, as he was p
lacing one of these, he saw some VHS tapes in a broken cardboard box leaning against a corner of the room.
He picked them up: they were three old tapes labeled as three movies from the 1990s: Ghost, Nikita and Terminator 2.
Instinctively Mark grabbed them and hid them under his jacket, his demon had suddenly reminded him how his father had died, and that he was in the country right now where someone from the CIA, who profited from drug trafficking, had betrayed and killed him. He had to find a trail, alone and without leaving clues, parallel to the mission. Perhaps, those tapes contained more than just the movies on the labels.
“Li-2 move, they are returning to work!” Kamaal warned.
Mark placed the last micro-cam and crawled out from where he had entered the warehouse and rejoined his partners.
“There’s no trace of the Taliban so far,” BAT FK23 Bantam said. “It seems very promising.”
“They keep saying that they’re behind schedule, and must send the load to Peshawar as soon as possible, the Master cannot wait. Master? Of what? Who is he?” Kamaal asked.
At some point an armored military vehicle arrived with two people on board and stopped outside the warehouse. Two men got out gesticulating dramatically.
“Have a look at this,” BAT F.K.23 Bantam said. “Take the binoculars Li-2 and have a look at the guy with the black boots. His name is Abbas Faisal, but it’s certainly an alias. He is the head of the beta section of ISI...a Pakistani operative and an expert in guerrilla warfare who seems to have connections with al-Qa'ida. What is he doing here in the Taliban region? Does he buy opium for his own use?”
“I see him. If he is here it means that we’re on the right track. As you know, Bouda is a former ISI agent. Kamaal, what are they saying to those in charge of the plantation?”
“That the Master is beside himself because the others, given the delay of operations, did not make the advance payment. They say that the load must be ready for tomorrow morning, and it must cross the border at 6:30 am and arrive at the laboratory.
“Others will come and pick up the raw goods directly, because they don’t trust their organization. The Master will not be there, but a trusted collaborator will be there to negotiate with the two of them,” Kamaal said.
“I think tonight we're not going back to your brother’s warehouse,” BAT FK23 Bantam said. He had now fully recovered from the scorpion sting.
“When night falls, we’ll send the report and the data to the agencies saying that we will follow the convoy to Peshawar, we have to cross the border with them in order not to lose track of them.
Kamaal, you have to contact logistics and change vehicles. Bring new documents along with you as well. We'll stay here and wait for you, and keep an eye on any changes in the situation.”
Li-2 amicably shook Kamaal’s hand as soon as he got up to go back to the jeep and leave.
The Afghan Pashtuns returned at night with supplies, a new vehicle, a load of wheat, and new documents that would allow the three of them to enter Pakistan as traders.
At 9:00 pm local time, they sent a report to the two agencies and ate some chicken kebab wraps while drinking beer. Each one took guard duty for an hour while the other two rested.
On the plantation they did not notice any movements after late evening, but more guards had joined the others and had been placed along the perimeter. Three empty trucks had arrived ready to be loaded.
20
Mark had hidden the three VHS tapes in the false bottom of his bag where he kept his weapons.
He was going to send the tapes to his friend Pavel in Sofia, Bulgaria. Pavel was a computer engineer who led a double life; he was a professor of Computer Science at the University of Sofia and also one of the most famous hackers in Eastern Europe, code-named "Digitrevenant69."
Pavel Doko was single and had no friends. He lived with a female robot that took care of the cleaning in a bunker he had built “ad hoc” in the basement of a building in the city center, where his experimental laboratory was located.
During the day he had a room on the University Campus and he received people in his office in the department. His “official” life was thus apparently only academic and moved within the walls of the university.
Mark had met him at King's College during a conference in which Doko presented an app that he had developed in both Objective-C and Android versions. The app made it possible to use the new generation of smartphones for the optical analysis of cross section images of the layers of the sub-basal nerve fibers of the cornea.
Doko's app had been tested in several trials conducted in Florida, Ohio, Texas, Paris and London, where it had achieved excellent experimental results that had confirmed its use as an aid to clinicians in the early diagnosis of diabetic neuropathy.
Doko had already sold the rights to the app to a non-profit organization, keeping only some royalties that he used to finance the development of his experimental laboratory.
He and Mark got along with each other right from the beginning. They had long discussions about discovering new diabetic neuropathy diagnosis methods and they had begun to spend time together as good friends. Pavel had then opened the doors of his bunker to Mark, the only person who had ever crossed the threshold and had won the trust of the solitary and genial Pavel.
When Mark joined the British secret intelligence service, he told Pavel, who was not at all surprised. In fact, Mark told him about his entire life and about his father one long night spent together doing laboratory research, drinking too much beer and discussing neural systems.
Mark had to warn Pavel in advance of the shipment so that he could get organized. At the moment he could not send the material from either Afghanistan or Pakistan, but he needed to get an answer from his friend soon.
When his guard duty ended at midnight, he left the observation post by saying he needed to relieve himself and he hid behind a rock, a little more than three hundred yards from his colleagues.
He took out his smartphone, tuned it to a secure data line created by Pavel and sent a short message to his friend:
“Digitrevenant69, three VHS movies, urgent check on subtext data, be prepared, pending shipment, payment made for translation performed, warn you when outgoing MK.”
Pavel was in front of the computer when he received the message from Mark. He slept little and stuffed himself with ice cream, since his physical activity had been reduced to zero he had put on about twenty pounds, but he didn’t care. Unlike his friend, his impossible missions were on the World Wide Web and required an agile and ready brain, but not a body in perfect shape.
Pavel read Mark’s message. He did not know where Mark was, but he knew that Mark was involved in a very delicate operation in the Middle East.
“QSL, don’t burn your ass. Digitrevenant69,” answered Pavel in Q-code.
Mark went back to Kamaal and BAT FK23 Bantam and fell asleep for a couple of hours leaning against a rock.
21
Suddenly, at two in the morning, the warehouse of the plantation came to life again and the loading of the trucks started.
Mark, Kamaal and Bat were awake and watched everything that was going on. Inside the warehouse, the microcams and bugs had stopped working because their batteries were dead, but not before they had captured the necessary data.
“Let's get ready to leave the area within an hour,” BAT FK23 Bantam said. “There are several of them moving the load, it won’t take them long. I’m going to prepare the van for the transit to the Pakistan border; you stay here and follow the operations. You will find me behind the wheel of the van with the engine running.”
An hour later, the three trucks were ready for the journey to Peshawar.
Mark and Kamaal dismantled the equipment and erased all traces of their presence before joining Kamaal in the van.
Kamaal, who was driving, would also have to cross the border with Pakistan. Not only did he know the area and the roads by heart, but he was also the only one who spoke Pashto and could
speak with the officers without arousing suspicion.
The three trucks started their engines and slowly took the road to Kandahar, from there they would go on to Kabul and then to the Pakistan border and the frontier town of Peshawar.
“I’ll follow them at a distance of one hundred fifty feet; this is a busy road with convoys of all kinds, no one will be watching us. I’ll drive as far as Kandahar, then it will be your turn to take the wheel for a few hours Li-2, and Bat will drive us to Kabul, then I'll drive again until we get to the refinery in Pakistan. The whole trip is about 6oo miles so if there are no problems, we should arrive at the border tomorrow at 5:30,” said Kamaal, with a huge yawn that almost sucked up Bat who was sitting next to him.
“Did you get freeze-dried coffee?” asked BAT FK23 Bantam.
“Don't you have other things to think about Bat? We’re not in Kabul; you can't find coffee. Drink some of the black tea in the clear plastic bottle.”
“Did you make it?” said Bat with a grin, looking at the bottle that looked as if it had come straight out of a landfill.
“No, my grandmother did. She makes good tea, she even puts in extract of scorpion, it increases your virility...” replied Kamaal calmly.
Bat said no more. He didn’t know if Kamaal was joking or not…and furthermore, looking at the bottle, he felt a little nauseous, although the idea of improving his virility was intriguing.
Mark took a piece of cheese and opened a can of beer, “By the time we get there our balls and asses will be square. These shock absorbers are still the ones the Russians used before Gorbachev pulled them out!”
“If you prefer cheesecake ladies...I can leave you here; the Taliban are very fond of American food,” Kamaal said, pretending to pull the van over to the side of the road.
Black Hawk Day Rewind: An action packed spy thriller (Mark Savannah Espionage Series Book 1) Page 5
