Giving these spoiled young hoods the outright ass-kicking they deserved would blow Vaziri’s cover. Instead, she reached across and pinched the youth’s hand between her thumb and forefinger, twisting his palm upwards and exerting pressure until she could feel bone and tendon give way.
“Damn!” yelled the teen, snatching away his hand and jumping back. “What you do, bitch?”
“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” She strove to keep her countenance one of fright and innocence.
“You break my hand.”
“Oh, surely not. Go put it in ice water. That’s what my daddy always said.”
The short one stared at her with wide eyes. He mumbled something in Vietnamese to his companion. The tall one gave a short nod and glared at Vaziri. “You better not let me catch you here again.”
“Why? Are you worried I might hurt your other hand?”
The thug glared once more, reached across his chest to tuck his injured hand into his armpit, and turned on his heel. The pair cut across the street and disappeared in moments. They had no idea how lucky they had been to encounter Vaziri in the middle of a covert op, where a display of martial arts would have compromised her chances of mission success.
Vaziri continued on her route. Another ten minutes of strolling brought Mai’s house into view. She walked on the opposite side of the street, studying the mansion. The design of the white, stucco structure lent a distinctly Spanish impression. Another fence constructed of vertical iron bars, these green, stretched around the entire perimeter of the house. A motorized gate provided the only access point through the twelve-foot barrier—the only designated access, that is.
An explosion of barking caused Vaziri to catch her breath. A pair of pit bulls pressed against the bars of the fence, sending up a cacophony of growls. Vaziri slowed her pace and studied the canines. Their eyes held no malice, and the stump of their tails wiggled in greeting. It seemed barking at passersby was a favorite pastime. Nonetheless, they would have to be taken out for the mission to move forward.
Fortunately, Vaziri had planned for this unsurprising contingency. She slipped a package labeled Arnold’s Canine Delights from her purse. She removed two of the nuggets, all of which she had treated that afternoon. Crossing the street, she moved along the sidewalk in front of Mai’s house and tossed the tainted food through the gate’s iron bars. The pits swallowed the snacks without chewing and looked up in anticipation of more. Vaziri continued down the street, knowing that in a few minutes, the animals would no longer pose a problem. She decided to travel up the road and return in fifteen minutes.
Upon returning to the house, Vaziri spotted the dogs sprawled among the plants in the garden. She smiled at the memory the scene evoked. Back at the dojo, the studio’s aging owner had kept an assortment of mongrels. Like her, they had had nowhere else to go and had spent much of their day dozing in the back rooms. One particular dog, a Sheltie mix named Janaan, had been her only real friend growing up. To this day, a canine could produce a smile on her lips that no human could elicit.
Mai’s dogs had been doing what they did best: guarding the family as faithful companions. Why punish them for their loyalty? For that reason, Vaziri had impregnated the dog treats merely with a mild sedative that would wear off in a few hours. She eyed the sleeping forms again. Even if she hadn’t liked dogs, the sight of them laid out dead would have been sure to raise suspicions in the morning. These dogs would wake long before the family would.
Thankful she had kept the nylon rope, Vaziri waited for all traffic sounds to die down, then scaled the fence at the property’s darkest corner. She examined the yard for motion sensors but saw none. Taking a breath, she glided up the sloped driveway, weaving a trail through the shadows, away from the illumination cast by a half-dozen floodlights attached to the house’s gutters.
She reached Mai’s charcoal 750Li BMW and crouched behind the driver’s side door. A moment of digging through her purse produced the silver cylinder of the perfume bottle. Swiveling the tip to draw from the secondary container, she sprayed a fine mist onto the door handle. After waiting thirty seconds, she applied a second coat for good measure.
Teng’s intel had been first rate. According to him, Mai usually drove the BMW himself but occasionally relied on a chauffeur. To be safe, Vaziri applied coats of the specialized neurotoxin to both rear passenger doors. She then applied the remaining liquid to the handle of the front passenger seat.
Vaziri switched the perfume bottle back to its non-lethal setting and stuffed it into her purse. Careful once again to stay in the shadows, she slipped down the driveway and scaled the fence on the property’s far corner.
The assassin turned onto the street and headed in the direction of her point of entry into the neighborhood. She fired off a text to Teng and smiled in satisfaction. No matter what door handle Mai gripped in the morning, he would be a dead man by the afternoon.
CHAPTER 21
The NSA team drove four SUVs due south down the Kabul–Kandahar Highway, making good time on three hundred miles of flat, paved road leading to Afghanistan’s second-largest city. Early-morning rays of sun cast the vehicles’ long shadows into the surrounding desert. To maintain their cover, each vehicle maintained a distance of ten miles from the others.
The monotony of the desert terrain produced a mesmerizing effect. In the bright light and sweltering terrain, Alton felt his concentration beginning to wane.
“Sweetie, do you remember the fireplace in Mom’s house?” asked Mallory.
Alton smiled to himself. His wife knew how drawing him into conversation kept him alert. “Sure—the white marble one near the staircase. Why?”
“You know how we’ve talked about moving from the condo into a house one day? I was just thinking…when we do get our own place, I’d love for it to have a fireplace like that. Something we can curl up next to in the winter.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice.” The picture of domestic bliss seemed a world away from their current, dangerous quest. “I bet Buster would like that, too.”
The passage of an Afghani police car going the opposite direction snapped Alton back to the reality of the mission. He called David on a secure connection. “How you doing back there, buddy?”
David, who brought up the rear, snorted into his mouthpiece. “Hot and thirsty, Al.” Back in their service days, he had unilaterally assigned Alton this nickname, and no protests on Alton’s part had persuaded his friend to drop it.
“Other than that, smooth sailing,” continued David. “How’s Mastana?”
Alton peered into his rear-view mirror, tipping his head up to view the backseat. The teen gazed at the barren landscape with a pensive look. Did she, like Alton, feel uneasy, having returned once again in this troubled land?
“She’s fine,” replied Alton. “Probably ready for another break, like the rest of us.”
After six hours on the road, Alton reached the southern outskirts of Kandahar. The highway carried him too far to the south but represented a quicker alternative to the traffic snarl of the inner city’s bustling streets.
Mallory, who rode shotgun, checked the roadmap she had downloaded onto her phone. “Our turnoff is coming in about half a mile,” she warned. A minute later, she spoke again. “See that bazaar on the left? Turn right on the road just before it, where the Kabul-Kandahar highway splits off from the A1.”
Alton took the corner while Mallory called the other vehicles to relay the instructions. The Blackwells traveled northwest along the road, skirting closer to the dusty metropolis’s southern sprawl.
“In another quarter mile, we’re gonna turn right again,” said Mallory. “There…that next one.”
Alton hung a right and soon passed to the west of downtown Kandahar, a spread of uniformly brown two- and three-story buildings punctuated by the occasional high-rise.
After another twenty minutes of driving, Alton veered left onto a road of crumbling asphalt, heading northwest on a direct route to Ghorak and Pasha Tech.
While still on the outskirts of Kandahar, Alton pulled into a tiny, roadside food stand with soda on ice and free-roaming chickens—Afghanistan’s version of a convenience store.
Alton wiped the sweat from his brow. “Let’s make it quick so the others don’t catch up. You all hit whatever they use for a bathroom, and I’ll buy us some drinks.”
He purchased three cans of Coke and sauntered back towards the Cherokee. After placing the sodas in the vehicle’s cup holders, Alton took his place in the driver’s seat. He glanced back at the food stand just in time to see the store’s owner, a toothless man wearing a stained turban, grab Mastana’s arm and lean in to whisper something to her.
As Alton began to exit the SUV, Mastana shook herself loose. The owner grabbed her with both arms and leaned backwards to pull her behind the food display. Mastana swung both her arms between his and continued in an upward arc, breaking his grasp once again. For good measure, she sent the man sprawling with a roundhouse kick to his left ribs.
“Let’s get out of here!” said Alton, waving Mastana towards the SUV. “Wait, where’s Mallory?”
“I’m here,” shouted his wife, racing from behind the stand. “Let’s roll.”
The three piled into the vehicle. Alton roared the engine to life and sent a rooster tail of gravel sailing into the air as he motored out of the tiny parking lot and accelerated up the desert road.
The companions continued to take deep breaths as they buckled their seatbelts in silence.
“You okay?” asked Alton, using the rearview mirror to peer into the backseat. He noticed a white pickup truck pull out of the store’s parking lot.
“Yes,” replied Mastana. “I am good.”
“What the hell was that all about?”
“That man…he said he would like me to be his bride.”
“Kidnapping you doesn’t seem like such a good way to win your affections,” said Mallory.
“You know how the men are here,” said Mastana, “especially the older ones. They like the traditional ways.”
“The traditional ways that say they get to boss women around, right?” said Alton.
“Yes. I think he tried to take me because I am small.”
“I’m glad you’re safe.”
Alton checked the rearview mirror again. The white truck had gained a little ground. Was it driven by the lecherous shopkeeper or an innocent customer? Leaving Mastana behind while the rest of the team conducted tonight’s mission didn’t strike Alton as such a good idea anymore. His eyes flicked back to the teen. She had regained her composure.
“Nice moves back there, by the way,” he said. Checking once again for pursuers, he saw Mastana’s eyes crinkle as she smiled.
“I wondered if I would ever use my Silat training,” she replied. “Now I can say I have.”
“Nobody else on the team has had martial arts training,” observed Alton. “I’d better give them a heads up.” He used a secure channel to call Silva, who drove the second vehicle. “In a few minutes, you’ll see a snack stand on the right. It has a yellow awning with three red stars on it. Don’t stop there.”
“Why?”
“Their customer service is terrible.”
Alton repeated the call to the two other vehicles. It wasn’t likely the proprietor would tussle with the likes of Silva or the others, but why take a chance?
Before long, the asphalt road transformed to dirt, slowing down their progress and producing a great flume of dust behind them.
“Good thing we’re not trying to sneak up on the town itself,” said Alton. “They’d see us coming from miles away.”
After fifty minutes of driving, they neared their destination.
“How much further to Ghorak?” asked Alton.
Mallory glanced at her cellphone’s GPS. “About five miles.”
“I don’t want to go into the town itself. Let’s find a secluded spot to pull off and rendezvous with the others.” He scanned the desolate countryside. “See those foothills off to the left over there? We’ll go behind those.”
Alton slowed his SUV and angled off the road, trundling across the bumpy desert. Before long, he reached the backside of the first foothill and found it deserted.
“Okay, now to call the rest of the team and let them know where we are.”
Thirty minutes later, the team’s four SUVs sat side-by-side in the lonely desert, shielded by rolling hills from any observers on the road.
“What’s the plan, boss?” asked David.
“Next step is to reconnoiter the site,” said Alton. “We saw how much dust we kicked up driving here just now, so for sure we’ll need to wait for nightfall to do the recon.” Alton booted up his laptop and brought up the Pasha Tech site map. He then superimposed a topographical map to examine the terrain over which they would be traveling.
“The property’s only entrance road lies on its eastern side, at the three o’clock position. We ought to make our point of entry well away from there.” He studied the superimposed maps a moment longer. “My first thought was to swing around south of the site and go back up to a position due west. But the ground at the nine o’clock position is pretty flat. There’s nothing to hide us. Look here, though.” He pointed to a spot northwest of the site. “There are more foothills at the ten o’clock position. We can pull our vehicles around the other side and observe from behind the hills.”
“We’re taking two vehicles?” asked Silva. “Won’t that make twice as much noise?”
“Not if we stagger our movements,” said Alton. “That approach would create noise for a longer duration, but it’s a necessary risk. What happens if we have mechanical trouble or get a flat? We’ll be on blackout, of course, so it’d be near impossible to make repairs, even if we had the parts. We need the redundancy a second vehicle provides. But you make a good point about the noise. Like I said, we’ll stagger the approach, just like we did coming here. That’ll keep the noise down to one vehicle’s worth at any given moment.”
“Alton,” said David, “What about Mastana?”
“This is just an observation run. She’ll come with us.”
The teen smiled with relief.
“The sun won’t set for another couple of hours. Pick a buddy to put on your face paint, then get some rest and chow. We’ll move at eighteen-hundred hours.”
Two hours later, Alton watched the last streaks of daylight dissolve into inky blackness. With the absence of city lights, a brilliant swath of stars flooded the desert’s indigo sky. The night’s tranquility seemed at odds with the tension associated with a covert reconnaissance mission.
Alton walked around the circle of SUVs, making eye contact with each team member and nodding. The group gathered around their leader, who had his booted-up laptop resting on the hood of his Cherokee.
“It’s almost time,” he said. “Everyone suit up, including your radios and mikes. And clip the body cameras to the front of your web gear so we’ll have some good images.”
The team members slipped on body armor and web gear. David showed his adopted daughter and Gilbert the proper placement of each item. They each holstered a SIG Sauer on one hip and a Taser on the other. The snick of helmet chinstraps snapping tight punctuated the quiet preparations.
Alton made short work of his outfitting. He moved two pairs of bolt cutters and two shovels from David’s SUV into his own, then walked over to Gilbert and Mastana. “Be sure to put a few extra magazines for the SIG Sauer in the web-gear pouch.”
“I thought this mission wasn’t dangerous,” said Gilbert, trying to hide a case of nerves with nonchalance.
“Compared to a strike mission, it’s not,” said Alton, “but there’s always a chance of enemy contact. You want to be prepared, just in case.”
Gilbert nodded. He took a deep breath and released it slowly.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” said Alton. “If we do see anyone, more than likely it’ll be a company worker, not a soldier. We’d probably scare them mor
e than they’d scare us.”
“You are scared, Alton?” asked Mastana, regarding him with surprise.
“Sure. And that’s not a bad thing. A little bit of fear keeps you from barging into a dangerous situation and taking unnecessary risks. You just have to be careful the fear doesn’t get so strong that it freezes you up.”
Mastana nodded. She said nothing but regarded Alton with a thoughtful expression.
By now, everyone had completed their preparations. Even Mastana and the inexperienced Gilbert looked the part of elite soldiers ready to take action.
Alton walked to the front of the group. “Agent Gilbert will ride with me and my wife. Agent Silva, you’ll command the second SUV. The Dunlows will ride with you. Be careful driving. We’ll be walking a tightrope to get in position.”
“What do you mean?” asked Silva.
Alton swiveled the laptop in her direction so she could see the display. “Look at the topographical map. There are ravines here to the south—pretty steep ones, too. We’ll have to go far enough north to avoid the ravines but far enough south of Pasha Tech’s site to avoid being heard.”
“Got it,” she replied, nodding.
“Radio silence from now on unless absolutely necessary. Our channels are secure, but using the radio or cellphones at all could betray our presence. Silva, wait fifteen minutes after I leave, then move out. When I get there, I’ll text you my GPS coordinates so you’ll know exactly where I am.” He turned to face the entire group. “Any questions?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Okay. Let’s roll.”
CHAPTER 22
Alton drove while Mallory acted as navigator. She had transferred the two-map overlay from Alton’s laptop to an app on her cellphone. The app kept their position fixed in the middle of the screen while shifting the schematic and contour maps simultaneously to indicate their ever-changing position.
Tears of God (The Blackwell Files Book 7) Page 8
