by Luke Bencie
I take a mental photograph of this character and make a particular effort to get a good look at his shoes. It’s an old trick I learned from a buddy of mine who used to work with the KGB. He told me that he would pay attention to people’s shoes whenever he thought he was under surveillance. The idea is that surveillance team members may change their clothing or put on a disguise, but they rarely change out their shoes during an operation. This guy is wearing polished black wingtips with laces. Not exactly the most comfortable option for conducting foot surveillance. Maybe I’m getting paranoid in my old age.
I make my way to the empty dining area, where a short, heavyset old woman—also with a mustache—greets me with a toothless smile and deeply creased face. Perhaps she is the old man’s wife. She gestures me to sit anywhere I want. Perhaps Mr. Wingtips and I are the only guests right now.
There is no buffet set up in the dining area. The old woman approaches my table with a cup of coffee and a piece of bread with a packet of butter on the side. This must be the continental breakfast. No matter, I’m not really hungry, anyway. I slug down the coffee in less than a minute then signal the woman for a refill by holding up the empty mug. As I do this, I notice Mr. Wingtips entering the dining area. He takes a seat at the opposite corner of the room with his back to the wall. He wants to see everything. He opens his ever-present newspaper and his face disappears behind the headlines. I suspect he might be assigned to keep tabs on me. This wouldn’t be the first time that I had a minder in a foreign country.
After my second cup of coffee, I decide I will test Mr. Wingtips. I quickly run up to my room and grab my coat. I return to the lobby only to see Mr. Wingtips sitting back in his chair by the fireplace. He must be waiting for me. I quickly make my way out the front of the hotel and take a right down the desolate street. When I come to the first corner, I turn as if I am going to make a left across the intersection. With my shoulders now perpendicular to the front of the hotel, I can easily see Mr. Wingtips walk out the front door while speaking into his cell phone. My suspicions have been confirmed. I am not alone in Ashgabat at the moment.
I walk one more block before I see a street sweeper in a lime-green jumpsuit reach into his pocket and pull out a cell phone. In this country, street sweepers only make a few dollars per day, so it’s doubtful he could afford a cell phone. I must be walking through the middle of what’s known as a surveillance zone. In this technique, essentially, each city block is covered visually by an operative conducting static surveillance in a fixed location. The target—in this case, me—walks through the zone and the team observes my movements. I’m positive that Mr. Wingtips is back in my room rummaging through my Brioni bag.
Screw that asshole! I make my first available left turn and then start heading back toward the hotel. If I walk briskly enough, I might catch him in the act before his men can signal my return. Within sixty seconds I am back in the lobby. I pick up the pace and take the stairs two at a time until I reach my room with my key at the ready. I unlock the door and see that my suitcase has been turned over on my bed.
“Dammit!” I say out loud.
The bastard got in and out before I could catch him.
Nothing is missing. I didn’t bring a laptop on this trip, and my cell phone is in my pocket. There were no electronics for him to exploit.
The phone in my room, a heavy old model like something in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, suddenly rings loudly.
“Hello?” I say with a hint of irritability in my voice.
“Ah, Noah, my good friend, you made it!” says a cheery Yuri on the other end of the phone.
“How did you know I was here, Yuri?” I ask with clear anger in my tone.
“Oh, Mr. Noah, I know everything that goes in Ashgabat. It is a small town and people talk.”
“Apparently so. How about the guy who was just in my room? What did he tell you?”
“A man in your room? I know nothing about this. I sent you the girls last night but apparently you rejected them. Do you prefer men? I’ll note it for next time,” he laughs.
I’m no longer able to contain myself. “Listen, motherfucker, I’m done playing games! I know what you’re up to. Now, we’re going to quickly conclude our business and then go our separate ways. Do you understand?”
“Be careful what you say, Mr. Noah. You are not in Europe anymore. Many people have gone missing in this part of the world for lesser comments. I am your only friend right now. Play by my rules or you might not make it back to the airport.”
Unfortunately, Yuri is 100 percent correct. He knows he’s got me over a barrel. Even if I tried to make a run for it to the airport right now, his henchmen would probably intercept me and drive me straight out to the desert, where I would be buried alive and have the vultures peck out my eyes. I am indeed forced to play by his rules.
“You win, Yuri. Tell me where to meet you,” I say, without trying to sound deflated.
“Good, Mr. Noah. I am glad you see it my way. I will send a car to pick you up in thirty minutes. It will take you to my location where the plane is waiting to fly us to Afghanistan.”
With that, the phone line goes dead. I am starting to wonder how much time I have left in this life.
THE DESERT
Location: Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan
Time: 1400 hours
I am riding in the back of an old and nondescript van, looking out the dusty windows at the vast, blackish sand of the Karakum Desert, which covers 70 percent of the country. Karakum translates literally to “black sand” in Turkic. It gives me an idea of what the astronauts, who drove their buggy across the surface of the moon, must have felt like.
Three hours ago, I had paid my bill in cash to the old man at the front desk—the same man who probably informed Yuri of my whereabouts—and waited out front of the hotel for my ride. As Yuri promised, a vehicle arrived promptly to take me to wherever I’m supposed to be going. The driver and the other man sitting in the passenger seat look more like fishermen than the Russian henchmen I normally would have expected. They don’t speak English, so the three of us sit quietly during the drive.
This is one of the most desolate places on the planet. The desert, which stretches for miles all around me, is so bleak and uninhabitable that I almost expect to see a band of post-apocalyptic bikers appear, straight out of a Mad Max movie. I know that if the two thugs sitting in front of me want to kill me, all they need do is push me out of the vehicle and let the desert swallow me alive.
While I continue to entertain that cheery thought, the van begins to slow. I get a queasy feeling. We pull to the side of the empty, two-lane road. No words are exchanged; we just wait for something to happen. Then I begin to hear a faint buzzing noise in the distance. It grows louder. The man in the passenger seat gets out of the van and walks onto the pavement. I watch him and then the plane, which is descending out of a yellowish sky.
I decide to get out of the van as well. My handlers pay me no mind—for one thing, where could I go? I watch the plane, still about a kilometer away. It appears to be a dual-propeller aircraft, perhaps a DC-3, which means it could be over sixty years old. Loud and clunky, the Douglas Cargo models have been reliable workhorses over the decades. The aircraft lines up for its final approach. It’s going to land on the road. Its engines roar as the pilot reverses propeller pitch and begins braking.
As the plane draws closer, its backdraft kicks up sand everywhere. I shield my eyes with my forearm, while the man standing beside me feels the urge to take the blast head on. He sticks out his chest and holds his head high as the plane taxis to a stop a few meters in front of him. He smiles as if this were the best part of his day.
The aircraft’s propellers eventually rotate to a stop. This bird is even older than I thought. It looks like a rusted tin can and reminds me of the planes in all those Indiana Jones movies.
A side door folds inward, and an attendant lowers a small set of stairs to the ground. Then Yuri pops his head out through the opening. Ho
w convenient. The man himself has chosen to grace us with his presence. He is wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses and a leather bomber jacket, as if he were the pilot rather than just the owner. The actual pilot, an older Russian man, looks so worn out he could have just woken up after an all-night bender. He follows Yuri, who descends the steps and walks across the dusty road toward me.
“Ah, Mr. Noah, you made it!” He’s grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I respond dryly.
“Shall we head for Afghanistan? I know you are probably eager to babysit this delivery so you can report back to the sheik.”
“You worry about your job, and I’ll worry about mine.” I try to sound as though I still have some leverage in my current situation.
“Very well then.” With that, Yuri turns to his side and extends his arm, as if to say, “after you.”
We proceed up the steps and back into the plane. The interior looks even more beat up than the exterior. There are no seats, just wooden benches with some cargo nets along both sides. Dozens of crates of varying sizes are strapped down near the tail—obviously the weapons we’ll be delivering to the Taliban, or some other ragtag group of tribal fighters. They’re a combination of AK-47s, land mines, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) with launchers, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The crates are why I am here. They, this relic of an aircraft, and these Russian thugs are how I am going to earn my commission.
I settle into a spot on one of the benches and strap myself in a seatbelt. I doubt it would be of much help should we go down. We’re basically sitting among large amounts of explosive material. If we crashed, we’d no doubt go up in a huge ball of flame anyway.
Yuri sits across from me and lights a cigarette.
“Is that really a good idea around all these materials?” I ask.
“You worry too much,” he says dismissively.
At that moment, the pilot reenters through the exterior door. I hope he was out inspecting the plane for damage after the landing. More likely, he was pissing. In his right hand he carries a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and in his left is a roll of silver duct tape. I can’t decide which item is more disturbing. Our ride is a sixty-year-old piece of flying scrap metal, held together with duct tape, and guided by a pilot who is probably an alcoholic. We are about to fly over the Hindukush Mountains, which harbor some of the harshest wind conditions on Earth, while sitting on a ton of ammunition and explosives. I look at Yuri, the Russian arms dealer, sitting across from me enjoying his nicotine, and I have to laugh. If I get through this, it will make one helluva story.
The engines roar and the propellers begin to spin. The plane jerks forward as the pilot releases the parking brake. After a surprisingly long takeoff run down the desert road, the plane’s wheels leave the ground. As it ascends bumpily into the sky, I see the van with its two occupants slowly disappear below us. Taking in the vastness of the Karakum at this altitude, I realize I had been traveling at the end of the Earth.
The plane banks hard as we change direction. Next stop, the Federally Administered Tribal Area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Better known as the FATA—one of the last no-man’s lands left on the planet—I calculate my odds of surviving this caper as one chance in four.
WARLORDS
III
THE FATA
Location: Somewhere over the Federal Administered Tribal Areas of Afghanistan (FATA)
Time: 1700 hours
As the old cargo aircraft sputters through the thin air above the Hindukush, the view below is mesmerizing. The terrain is an endless series of jagged rock formations, with some peaks exceeding four miles in elevation, and each gorge and crevasse appears more ominous than the next. For centuries, this precarious land has stubbornly resisted the advances of civilization. Many proud peoples have tried to annex and remold the country known as the place where empires go to die, which is evident by the war-torn and scarred mountainside. Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the British Empire, the Soviets, and the United States all invaded Afghanistan, only to eventually retreat either in defeat or frustration. Afghanistan remains a black hole, refusing to be forced into joining modern civilization.
If Afghanistan is an untamable country, then the FATA is the equivalent to its roughest neighborhood, into which the police, military, or anyone with common sense would never want to venture. This place is like the land that time forgot. It is inhabited by thousands of illiterate, tribal people living in the same conservative Islamic fashion as the Prophet Mohammad did nearly a millennium and a half ago.
The formal boundaries of Afghanistan itself, as is the case with so many nations, resulted from political decisions by the major powers of the day. In the mid-19th century, an agreement between the British Empire and Russia established the northern border. And in the late 1800s, the Durand Line marked the southern border and a treaty between British India and Afghan Amir. Uninvited to the negotiations, were many leaders of the Pashtun tribes inhabiting the border areas, and the FATA encompassed tribal villages that sat directly on either side of the invisible lines. As time progressed, it turned out that no one could enforce jurisdiction in this remote region. It became its own lawless country within a failed state. More recently, the FATA has become a radical Islamist haven where Western ideology is not tolerated, and only groups such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban are allowed passage.
Weapons are the ultimate currency in this post-apocalyptic wasteland. Guns equal power despite the ironic fact that these weapons are products of the modern world. That is where I—and Yuri and the sheik—come in. Again, I am strictly an observer assigned to verify the transaction that is soon to unfold on the ground below, much like an impartial, third-party lawyer.
***
We have been flying for hours and I feel the plane begin to descend. It cannot happen soon enough. My ears are buzzing and my head is throbbing from the smell of airplane fuel. There is a queasy sensation in the pit of my stomach. I have a very bad feeling about what awaits me.
Because of the vast mountain walls, which surround us on all sides like an enormous salad bowl, a straight-on approach for the plane to land is impossible. Therefore, the DC-3 is forced to spiral down in a corkscrew fashion. I scan the dusty orange-colored ground below and am not surprised to learn that a landing strip is nonexistent. This is going to be a hard landing along packed dirt. The plane tilts to one side and we begin to circle down. I feel the gravitational force getting stronger as we descend as if we had been flushed down a toilet. Now I know a little bit what fighter pilots must feel.
The plane slams down violently and my spine compresses like an accordion. I am thrust forward on my bench and the red straps of the seatbelt dig into my waist and shoulder blades. I look at Yuri sitting across from me and see that the landing has barely caused him to drop any ash from his still-lit cigarette. He must have made this type of landing dozens of times. Maybe this should be reassuring to me. Nevertheless, I begin to have a strange feeling about what lays directly on the other side of that thin oval door.
I hear the propellers slow but the dust that has been stirred up makes it impossible to see anything out my tiny window. The reflection of the hot sun off the metallic wings of the plane casts an explosion of white light, forcing me to squint my eyes. Suddenly, the dust begins to settle and I can see something other than rocks for the first time. It is a human figure. No, it is several human figures—dozens of them. I also see pack mules. I see guns. Lots and lots of guns. Russian-made Kalashnikovs to be precise, or AK-47s as they are more commonly known.
“We’re here, Comrade Yuri!” I hear the pilot yell back in our direction.
Yuri takes the cigarette from between his lips and drops it on the floor of the plane. Crushing it with his boot, he looks at me with his devilish smirk and says, “Are you ready to go to work, Mr. Noah?”
“Always,” I reply with a look of confidence. Only on the inside, my heart must be racing at 150 beats per minute.
> The pilot opens the squeaky door of the plane and drops the staircase to the rocky ground with a thud. He then steps back inside the cockpit, allowing Yuri and I to deplane first. Yuri exits and disappears quickly into the hot sun. I hesitate in the doorway.
Standing before us, encircling the airplane, must be fifty Taliban king warriors. They are all wearing dust-stained white man pajamas (essentially baggy pants with a long hanging shirt). They all have tiny knit caps and worn sandals. I cannot imagine how they traverse the mountains wearing those things, but they obviously do. Most of them are wearing what look like military vests, carrying a vast array of additional ammunition magazines for their rifles, along with a few dangling Russian-made hand grenades. Others have imposing knives tucked into their belts—I fear they might be used for beheadings. All of the men have long dark beards, which are frightfully imposing. Even more imposing are the rumors of the Taliban’s brutal rapes against men and women—even sheep!
Yuri shakes hands with one of the larger members of the group. He must be the leader. His beard is also noticeably dyed a reddish color with henna. This must signify his position as the warlord. Yuri speaks with him in what sounds like a perfect Pashtun, the native dialect of the FATA. The two men look very serious in their discussion. Suddenly, Yuri turns and points at me, still standing in the doorway. Both Yuri and the warlord break into big smiles. In an instant, I am jolted forward. The pilot has come up behind me and pushed me out the door. I land face first on the rocky ground below. My hands tear across shard stones and my palms begin to bleed. Yuri begins to laugh heartedly.
“What the fuck was that?” I demand to Yuri.
“That was me delivering you to the Taliban, along with all these weapons,” he replies.
“What?”
“You foolish, foolish man, Noah! Did you actually think that you were going to fly all the way to the FATA just to witness a business transaction with a warlord?”
