“Exactly.”
“When do we leave?” asked David.
“First thing tomorrow,” replied Vega, “so I suggest you get packing.”
CHAPTER 15
The next morning, Alton found himself peering at the topside of clouds from 35,000 feet. In the gaps between cumulus masses, bright sunlight reflected off the deep-blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean far below.
“Can I sit in the window seat for a while?” asked Mastana.
Alton chuckled. “Sure. It’s yours ‘til we land.”
He switched seats and settled into the middle position of the three-seat grouping. The roar of the engines and warmth of Mallory’s arm soon lulled him into a state of contemplation. Alton reflected on his return to Afghanistan, the country in which he had seen dozens of soldiers and civilians die; the country in which he had sustained the permanent injury to his leg, leaving his limb with sensations ranging from mild discomfort to lancing pain, depending on the exertion he demanded from it. But despite all the physical and mental trauma, he wouldn’t change his time in that war-torn land, for it was also the country in which he and Mallory had met. No prize set before him or discomfort removed would compensate for the loss of the one he treasured above all.
“You okay?” asked Mallory.
How did she always seem to sense Alton’s emotional state before he realized it himself? “Yeah. Why?”
“You looked kind of faraway just now.”
“Just thinking about going back to Kabul,” he said. “Never thought I’d be there again. And I bet Mastana didn’t, either.”
Four years earlier, Alton had first befriended Mastana after pulling her from the rubble of a marketplace bomb blast. Now here she sat, ready to serve on a mission team back in her homeland.
“No, I did not think I’d go back,” said Mastana.
Alton hadn’t realized she’d been listening.
“But I thank you for giving me this chance,” she added.
“Your mom isn’t thanking me,” said Alton. “She’s still not thrilled about this.”
Mastana’s countenance grew serious. “You and Mallory saved my life. Now I have the chance to help you figure out if someone killed Mallory’s father. Maybe I will help save other people from a bad person. This is why I want to become an investigator like you—to protect the good people from the evil ones.”
Alton nodded. “After all you went through in Afghanistan, isn’t it hard going back?”
Mastana cast down her eyes. “Yes, it is hard. But so are many good things we do for the benefit of those we love.”
“Indeed,” said Alton. “You know, I predict you’ll make quite an investigator.”
No one spoke again. Before long, Alton fell back into the silence of his memories.
After two layovers and nearly twenty hours of travel, the Blackwells and Mastana arrived at Kabul International Airport. They passed through passport control without incident and headed towards the airport’s car rental counter.
Alton rented a Grand Cherokee, then led his companions through the airport’s “ground transportation” exit. He encountered a mid-afternoon breeze carrying an odd mixture of aromas—asphalt, smog, spices, sweat, and an assortment of other odors. The aromatic cocktail elicited a torrent of memories, forcing Alton to concentrate on the here and now. At least the weather had decided to cooperate. Moderate temperatures provided more comfort than blasts of Gazib’s scorching desert heat had delivered during Alton’s Army deployment years earlier.
An hour later, the Blackwell ‘family’ had checked into the Sabala Hotel in the heart of Kabul and now occupied a spacious, top-floor suite. Alton strolled over to the window and gazed out at a cluster of concrete and brick office buildings. A range of foothills appeared in the distance beyond the slow-moving Kabul River, a waterway now reduced to a trickle as summer swells caused by melting snows in the distant Hindu Kush Mountain Range had ceased. A perpetual haze, a product of midday heat and pollution, hung over the city.
Alton turned away from the window and accessed the encrypted itinerary on his cellphone. “Gilbert should already be in town. I see his flight arrived on time. Silva and David won’t get here for a few more hours. Once they do, I’ll invite all of them here so we can teleconference in with Vega.”
“Sounds good,” said Mallory. “Then the real fun begins.”
CHAPTER 16
Late that evening, the entire strike team huddled around the table in the Blackwells’ hotel suite. Alton adjusted his laptop’s remote camera so everyone would be included in the frame. Pending appeared in large letters on the computer’s activated communications program.
“Why are we waiting so long to connect?” asked Gilbert.
“The call has an extra layer of encryption,” said Alton, “and a secondary program scrambles the signal to look like white noise. That way anyone listening for the presence of secure communications won’t realize we’re having a conversation at all. To do all that, we have to synchronize with Vega’s computer first. Otherwise, he’ll just see white noise, too.” He examined a panel of status lights on his laptop’s encryption program. “It shouldn’t be long now.”
Alton walked over and placed a small electronic device about the size and shape of a soda can in the far corner of the room. He pushed a button on the device’s black exterior, and a green light began to blink every few seconds. He walked to a second and third corner and placed identical devices.
“What are those?” asked Silva.
Alton waited to answer until he had activated the fourth unit. “They’re called screamers. They send high-impulse acoustic waves outwards from our location. The waves keep anyone from using a parabolic microphone to listen in on our conversations.”
“How would anyone know to listen in?” said Gilbert.
“How did they know to kill Max Creighton? We need to take every precaution to stay under the radar.”
A long, low tone sounded from Alton’s computer, and the pending status changed to ready.
“Okay, let’s dial in,” said Alton. “Everyone gather ‘round.”
The video image flickered to life. Vega sat in his office with the window shades pulled down, blocking out the early-afternoon sun. The image distorted just a bit as his remote device worked to keep the ever-changing signals matched up with Alton’s.
Vega’s eyes darted across his monitor. “I see everyone made it. Any problems so far?”
They all shook their heads.
“The passports worked like a charm,” said Alton. “We’re all checked into different hotels as planned.”
“Excellent.”
“Agent Vega,” said Alton, “have you been able to learn more about Pasha Tech?”
“Yes,” he replied, shifting in his seat. “There’s good news and bad news. What would you all like to hear first?”
“How about the bad news?” said Mallory. “Let’s get it over with.”
“Okay. We weren’t able to track down any sort of electronic gateway to Pasha Tech. We couldn’t even find a gateway to Sakhi Enterprises, its holding company. Sakhi has a website, of course, but that’s it. Beyond that, it’s as if the company doesn’t exist on the internet.”
“How strange,” said Mallory. “It’s hard to believe a company could operate profitably these days using such an antiquated approach.”
“Maybe secrecy is more important than profitability,” said Alton. “Without remotely accessed servers, there’s no opportunity for someone like me to hack in.”
“That was my assumption, too,” added Vega. “They’ve maintained security by going old-school. If they have any computers, they’re not connected to the outside world at all.”
“Wait,” said Alton, holding up his hand. “Someone’s coming.”
The sounds of conversation grew louder in the hallway outside their door. Mastana gripped David’s hand, and the room fell into utter silence. The team members released their collective breaths when the sounds receded down the hall.<
br />
“Okay, so how about the good news?” said Alton.
“We’ve located the physical site of the company,” replied Vega, adjusting a setting on his encryption program after the audio signal began to distort into a strange, metallic timbre.
“Really?” said Gilbert.
“You look surprised,” said Alton.
“Yeah, I am. I’d never heard of the company, so I half-expected it to not even exist. I thought maybe it was some kind of ruse the Afghanis were creating to lead us off track.”
“It’s real, all right,” said Vega with restored audio quality. “And that means the nature of your mission has changed.”
“How so?” asked Silva.
“I had hoped Mr. Blackwell could use his decryption talents to hack into the company’s servers. We probably could have learned everything we needed to know remotely. Now we know that’s not possible. If we’re going to learn anything about Pasha Tech, you’ll have to infiltrate the company itself.”
Alton nodded. “Makes sense. Where’s it located?”
“Ghorak,” replied Vega.
Alton scratched his head. “I served in Afghanistan for years, but I have to admit, I’ve never heard of it.”
“Me, neither,” added Mallory.
“I doubt many Afghanis have,” said Vega. “It’s northwest of Kandahar, eighty-four miles as the crow flies…or as the SUV bounces. There are only dirt roads connecting most of the distance between the two cities.”
Alton nodded. “Close enough to Kandahar to be supplied but isolated enough to be secure. If I were going to build a secret facility, that’s the kind of place I’d choose. Can you bring up a satellite image of the city?”
“Stand by,” said Vega. He typed for half a minute. The screen of Alton’s computer switched over to an overhead image. A lone, dusty road bisected a small community of single-story homes constructed of baked brick and concrete.
“That’s more like a village than a city,” said David. “Some high-tech company is operating there?”
“Our intel says the company is located on a secure site a few miles due south of Ghorak,” said Vega. He scrolled the sat image down until a complex of two- and three-story buildings came into view. The site appeared to have a fence around its perimeter, but the image was too blurry to make out fine details.
“Can you send me that image and the one of Ghorak?” asked Alton. “We’ll also need topographical maps. And do you have any architectural plans of the site itself?”
“Geez, Blackwell, I’m not a magician,” said Vega with a chuckle. “I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, we have a different sort of dilemma.”
“What’s that?” asked Alton.
“We need to equip your team to infiltrate Pasha Tech. I could put you in touch with the names of our suppliers, but that’ll increase the odds of our adversaries finding out about your operation. The last thing we want is for you all to walk into a trap.”
“You know,” said Alton, “I think I know someone who can help with that. Someone off the radar…at least as far as official channels are concerned.”
“He’s an arms dealer,” inferred Vega.
“Yep. I’ve worked with him before.”
Mastana turned inquisitive eyes to Alton, who nodded in response. The arms dealer had indeed supplied the weapons used in the operation to free her.
“While you’re working to find maps of Pasha Tech’s site,” continued Alton, “why don’t we pay my contact a visit?”
Vega looked doubtful. “Do you trust this guy?”
“Not completely, but I’d rather take my chances with him than reach out to a standard military supplier. That’d be like advertising to the city—and probably Pasha Tech—that we’re here. An arms dealer, on the other hand, wouldn’t want to have a reputation of revealing his buyers’ identities. He’d run the risk of scaring away potential customers.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ll need money…a lot more money,” said Alton. “His stuff doesn’t come cheap. And he only takes precious metals.”
“Leave that to me. I’ll send an encoded message when it’s ready for pickup. Let’s plan on reconnecting at seventeen-hundred hours your time tomorrow. And Blackwell,” added Vega, “be careful with your arms dealer. We can’t let this mission fail before it’s scarcely begun.”
CHAPTER 17
Alton squinted into the morning sun. He examined the dusty road as acres of farmlands rolled by. Sprawling fields of red and purple poppies, the narcotic ingredient used in morphine and a plethora of street drugs, alternated with emerald groves of date and fig trees.
“Does this look like the right way?” he asked Mallory.
“I think so,” said his wife, “but it’s been six months since we visited the guy. These farmlands all start to look the same after a while.”
Alton would have to call the man back if he didn’t find the place soon—not a great way to build credibility with a major arms smuggler.
Thankfully, after another ten minutes of driving, a familiar barnyard rolled into view.
“There. That’s it,” said Alton. In the backseat behind him, Silva stirred. In the interests of safety, Gilbert and Mastana had remained behind in the hotel. David had also stayed to act as a combat-experienced protector in case any trouble broke out there.
Alton pulled into the farmyard. Not much had changed since his last visit. A series of dilapidated buildings framed a rectangular courtyard of dirt. The police would never suspect that underneath the ramshackle barn lay an arsenal sufficient to equip a small army.
Alton stepped out of his rental and looked around. Nothing moved but a few listless chickens.
“I wonder where Jahandar is,” he said. “He knows we’re coming.”
The farmhouse door opened, and the arms dealer emerged. He looked to have lost a little weight, but his remaining tonnage nonetheless left the impression of a short, stocky man. Shampoo in his household still appeared to be in short supply, as the man’s long hair looked as greasy as ever. The pair of lackeys flanking him suffered from the same toiletry deficit.
Alton took a step forward and extended his hand. “It’s good to see you again.”
In one fluid motion, Jahandar withdrew a knife from a hidden scabbard, pivoted behind Alton, and pressed the blade to his throat. “Anything to say before you die?”
The two flunkies unshouldered their rifles. One pointed his A4 rifle at Mallory, who stood a few feet away. The other trained his weapon on Silva, who hadn’t yet stepped out of the SUV.
Alton felt the tip of the arms dealer’s knife nick his throat. “What are you doing? I thought we had an understanding.”
“You had my friend killed!” hissed Jahandar.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nur Hanif! He was good man.”
Alton sighed and spoke in a soft voice. “Yes, he was a good man. And you’re right. Maybe I was responsible for his death. He died in a firefight trying to save me and my wife.”
“Alton,” said Mallory, taking a step forward before a rifle barrel halted her advance, “you can’t blame yourself for that. You told Hanif to stay back. He decided to engage anyway. That was his call, not yours.”
“Yes, that sounds like Hanif,” said Jahandar. “This is true? Last month, I heard you arranged to have him killed.”
“No, of course I didn’t have him killed,” said Alton. “Call Ara, his widow, if you don’t believe me. Hanif joined my group to help track down a kidnapped teenager. He died in a firefight during our search.”
Jahandar hesitated, then lowered the knife from Alton’s throat. He slid it back into a hidden scabbard.
“Just like that, we’re good?” asked Alton.
“I’m a good judge of people. I believe you.” He waved off his two subordinates, who slung their rifles back over their shoulders.
Silva exited the SUV and strode over to Alton. “You gonna let him treat you like that? You don’t have to sit here and—�
�
“Agent Silva,” cut in Alton in voice low enough for only Silva to hear, “our mission isn’t to maintain my dignity. It’s to penetrate Pasha Tech. To do that, we need the weapons and gear this man can provide. Getting into a shouting match won’t help. Besides, Jahandar had honorable intentions. If one of your friends were killed, wouldn’t you be angry?”
Silva started to speak, stopped, and sighed. “Yeah. I guess so.”
Alton turned back to Jahandar. “And now for the purchase. I didn’t want to discuss too many details over the phone.”
The arms dealer smiled with his eyes. “A wise decision.”
“My current mission is a little different than last time. We’ll be penetrating a research facility to recover documents. We’re just as likely to encounter company employees as armed guards, so I don’t need so much firepower. And it’ll be a covert operation. We’re trying to get in and out without anyone noticing.”
Jahandar nodded. “You need non-lethal weapons, ones that are quiet. And you need tactical gear for making a nighttime raid.”
“Exactly. Can we see what you have?”
“Come with me.”
“Agent Silva,” said Alton, turning. “Can you bring our SUV into the barn?
“Sure.”
Alton leaned in closer to his colleague. “Once you’ve done that, why don’t you stay and keep an eye on it?”
Silva nodded. The agent had enough experience to recognize the importance of ensuring no tracking devices or bombs were planted in the SUV during their absence.
Alton turned to Mallory. “Do you want to come with me this time?”
“Yeah, it’ll be quicker with two of us.”
Alton returned his gaze to Jahandar and held his arms straight out to his sides. “Do you need to search us for bugs or weapons?”
“Do you have any?”
“No bugs,” replied Alton, “but I have a Beretta in my rear waistband.”
Jahandar threw back his head and laughed. “You are honest. I like this.”
Tears of God (The Blackwell Files Book 7) Page 6
