Harder Ground

by Joseph Heywood

  “Let’s do it now,” she said. “Everything at the IC has to look gold standard authentic. She in a burka?”

  Romano nodded.

  “I need a ruck with a carton of smokes, an ashtray and a pint of Jack Daniels. Clean room. No cameras, no mikes, no witnesses, I want her alone, just her and me. And a plate of fresh fruit.”

  “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass,” Romano said. “Get some! Your bird is on the roof. Elevator up. Jap-made and man is that fucker smooth.” The colonel had an inexplicable interest in elevators, could ramble for hours on their history, models, you name it, he knew it.

  “Call-up duration?” she asked from the doorway.

  “Long as it takes to do what you gotta do. You’re all one when done is done. This a big league deal. Meta?”

  “Could be ginormous, Joe.”

  “I loathe that word. Get your ass up to and off my roof, Major.”

  •••

  It was a bumpy two-hour ride and she slept poorly, awakening as the chopper let down on another roof and as she got out, she saw mountains all around them, but not close. Armed guards waved her at a door and opened it for her. Inside the door a soldier handed her a ruck. “Fruit coming as soon as you get in your room, Major.”

  She nodded and went down the narrow, poured concrete stairs, which opened onto a floor. A soldier said, “Major Toucan?” and she nodded and he said, “This way,” and she followed him to a narrow, surgically sterile all-white room. It was sparse. One bed, a prayer rug, a table and chair, a metal water jug. A black figure rose from the bed, came to her, said, “Allah akbar. You took your time. Are we green?”

  “Negative. You’ll be escorted to another room.”

  “Salam alaikum.”

  “Ensha allah.”

  The soldier took her to a new room, all white but much larger, one table, two chairs, no windows.

  As soon as her escort left, Sima Firoozi said, “Now?”

  “Green light.”

  The woman ripped her way out of her heavy dress, shed down to panties and bra. “I would so love to burn all that stuff,” Firoozi complained. The woman was thin, blonde, forty, brown-eyed with tawny apricot skin. Born in Teheran, raised in the US, West Point grad, now a major and destined to move up, but this was her third year undercover in Ira Pakigan, Toucan’s term for Iran-Pakistan and Afghanistan. Firoozi had cojones the size of truck hubs, more lives than a dozen cats, perfect in Pashto, Dari, and a dozen regional dialects.

  “How’d you get goatsuckered?” Toucan asked.

  “Planned it, rather, created conditions for it. I had six bozos looking for martyr fame in the jihad, low-level soldiers, my personal security escort and my being a woman they didn’t exactly take the mission seriously. Along the way I talked to a little bird who talked to a bigger bird, and like that, result: goatsuckers blowing doors and charging the room.”

  “Risky plan.”

  “If I didn’t take this chance, I would be dead in place, which is why I’m here and not there. They bring you all the way from the States?”

  “Just flew in today. The ultimate hurry-up, quick-fast track.” She noticed Firoozi’s hand shaking.

  Knock on the door: Toucan opened it, a soldier brought in a basket of fresh fruit, put it on the table, about-faced, and departed.

  “Your hand,” Toucan said, opening her rug, ripping open the cigarette carton. She tossed a pack to Firoozi, who tore it open.

  Toucan handed her a lighter.

  Firoozi lit up and inhaled deeply. “Goat is great. The locals smoke dry goat dung.”

  “No they don’t.”

  Firoozi smiled. “It tastes like it.” She inhaled again. “Beautiful. Exquisite.”

  Firoozi’s cover was that of a teacher of girls and women. The Taliban forbade any schooling for girls, and at the same time maintained secret madrasas solely for girls. They were taught the Qur’an and science. Only a few people understood the purpose of these schools. It had been Firoozi who learned about them and sought to penetrate one of the operations.

  “Your hand is still shaking.”

  “You should see my soul. We broke the bank, Meta, grabbed the brass ring, bull by the horns, tiger’s tail, all that good stuff.”

  Vague rumors suggested a woman ran the madrasas for girls. They’d heard this for years. “The Head Mistress?”

  Firoozi leered. “Herself. I was in Helmond Province, teaching.”

  The whole idea was for the operative to attract attention, meet people, serve as bait for big Taliban or Al Qaeda fish, though the latter’s big shot had mostly run for the hills, literally. “You on the Head Mistress’s BFF list now?”

  The undercover sighed. “She was ‘impressed’ by my zeal and my knowledge of The Book. She recruited me to create a program where I was. Last year she came back and pulled me out, made me part of her personal security team.”

  “You’ve been travelling with the Head Mistress?”

  “It’s awful duty. She covers a lot of ground, moves all the time, on foot or by mule, never in a vehicle. She’s afraid of IEDs, can you believe it?”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Not important where she is. What’s important is where she’s coming, which is Kabul.” Firoozi paused and snorted. “God that sounds like the title to a second-rate Broadway musical, Coming to Kabul!”

  “Headed to Kabul for what?”

  “Kaboom in Kabul is what for,” Firoozi said. “To coincide with US troop withdrawals, destabilize the government’s authority, affect public opinion.”

  “Against us?”

  “No, against Afghans only. Karzai’s people can’t find a hole in a doughnut. They won’t get a sniff of the Head Mistress until she’s long gone.”

  “Can we steer the Afghans?”

  “You can’t steer incompetence and what secret stays thus in this country? Neither the ANP nor the ANSF can be trusted with anything. Largely shit national unit doesn’t erase tribal and clan underpinnings.”

  “Does the Head Mistress know what happened to you?”

  “There’s no way to know what she knows. You know how information moves in this country. What I hoped she’d see was that I was snatched in a routine raid.”

  “Your escorts are all dead.”

  “That may be a better scenario. One woman with five escorts. It would make sense to grab the woman if you killed all the escorts, just to find out why she was there. I’m hoping that’s how it gets read.”

  Toucan needed to think. Speck Ops ran missions every night and rarely announced results, the only exception being high value targets.

  Firoozi took a deep drag on a cigarette. “I can’t go back, Meta. I’m done with that undercover shit. It’s not in me to pull it off anymore.”

  “Have you got tactical details on what’s coming?”

  “No, somebody needs to replace me.”

  Meta Toucan stared at her colleague and friend. “No way I could pull this off.”

  “Don’t play the girl and undersell yourself,” Firoozi said. “You can do this. You have to.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “But I do and I’ll draw the map. I have the key to the Head Mistress.”

  “You do?”

  “Damn right I do.”

  “I can’t even pretend to be a teacher of Islam.”

  “That’s not your mission.”

  The women looked at each other.

  “You want the key?” Firoozi asked.

  “She have an organization?”

  “No and that’s her strength and her weakness, just her and three security escorts, all women. Low footprint. Sometimes they also have Taliban escorts, but usually they go and do all on their own. This country makes most women invisible and they don’t really need elaborate extra security. Les
s is more.”

  “Why any security at all?”

  “That’s a great question,” Firoozi said. “You ever hear of a MacGuffin?”

  “Golden Arches offering?”

  “A plot device for movie writers. You point everything at finding the MacGuffin to the exclusion of all other things.”

  “That’s supposed to be the key?”

  “The key is, there is no MacGuffin.”

  “The Head Mistress is the MacGuffin, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Three-card Monte, find the red queen. My BFF security girl is the Head Mistress, but she pretends to be just one of the girls. The others are decoys, one of them wrapped in a suicide vest with my girl carrying the trigger.”

  “That makes for a tough get,” Toucan said. “They make you wear the vest?”

  “They all take turns.”

  “That sucks, makes her ungettable.”

  Firoozi shrugged. “Irrelevant. We kill her, her shit ends there. All her little girl-bombers will boogie. From what I saw and managed to learn, the Head Mistress wants only mentally challenged kids, no older than nine. She tells them they’re helping their families, and leaves God and martyrdom out of it. The Head Mistress is smart. She knows you have to deal differently with women than with men. Unlike men, girls rarely kill for ideology.”

  “Is there a pipeline of bombers?”

  “She claims it, but the kids she wants are damn few and far between. If she disappears I think the threat disappears.”

  “What I hear you saying is that there’s no point in my replacing you if we can take out the Head Mistress in Kabul. How?”

  “The wonderful world of human incendiary devices. Light her own personal candle.”

  “Is she turnable?”

  “Negative. She’s a total whack job, Meta. End of story.”

  “Seems like she’d jack up security coming into Kabul.”

  “She thinks Kabul is clown camp and Karzai the head clown, a total tool and fool. She’s convinced she’s invisible and to those few who might recognize her, the vest deters.”

  “Is the Head Mistress vested?”

  “Are you kidding? She wants no part of meeting Allah. She’s interested only in killing infidels.”

  “And you know where she’ll enter the city.”

  “I did. I’m supposed to meet her.”

  “She won’t suspect something?”

  “She might, but like I said, escort dead, woman found, it makes sense they’d take me away and then release me after they figured I had nothing to do with the dead guys. I think I’m okay on this.”

  “Where’s she coming in?”

  “The riverbed, coming up from the southwest.”

  Toucan knew that the Kabul River this time of year was reduced to a series of meager, pestilential pools and puddles. The walled river in the city served as a dumping ground for garbage, trash, human waste, and bodies. “I’ll probably have to take this up the line. We’re saying we want to whack, not detain the Head Mistress.”

  “Unless you want to try to replace me.”

  “No way I can cut it. I’ll take this to Romano.”

  “You want an argument? Here it is. Where will it stop? The Head Mistress is hardcore. She gets off on killing.”

  Toucan cringed. Some Afghan men joked female suicide was the devil’s work, a form of getting off because most women couldn’t get enough earthly sex, which is why they had to be hidden to keep from inadvertently lighting male fires. “Joe needs to know,” Toucan said. “He’ll know how high to take it.”

  Firoozi yawned, and lit another cigarette.

  “What size are you these days?” Toucan asked. “I think you used to be a six.”

  “Still am, I think.”

  She watched her friend put on her burka again and left her in the room. She asked to see the IC Hugh’s duty officer, who turned out to be a captain. “I need a secure phone.”

  The captain took her to a room with a phone and she called Colonel Romano and reported the whole thing.

  “You ever do anything like this before?”

  “No sir.”

  “I can send a Spec Ops team. You guys ID, they hit.”

  “Less chance they’ll make just the two of us.”

  “Probably a better chance they’ll wax your fannies, too. Firoozi’s a psycho, three years undercover, in this fucking place? God almighty. You need a ride?”

  “Tonight, after dark, her and me, full uniform for her, size six.”

  “Boots?”

  “Her sizes should be somewhere in the system. Small also six, maybe seven.”

  “Done. I’m not taking this up the line until I talk to the both of you, understood?”

  “Yes sir, tonight.”

  Toucan explained to the other major what lay ahead.

  “The shit I had to do out there,” Firoozi said wistfully. “I’m done.”

  •••

  A hood for Firoozi on egress, in case anyone was watching. In Afghanistan it made sense to assume eyes and ears were everywhere and invisible, which they were. Mostly they didn’t need fancy electronics. Tribal societies were adept at reading behaviors in order to ascertain intent. This ability was impressive. And scary.

  Firoozi changed into BDUs on the chopper, said, “These feel so good!”

  “Boots when we get there,” Toucan said. “Or tomorrow.”

  Romano listened without interruption. Firoozi did most of the talking.

  “How did you get under my radar without me knowing you were there?” he asked when she was done.

  Toucan said, “NTK, sir.”

  “I didn’t need to know this?” the colonel asked incredulously.

  “No sir, you didn’t. But we want you to make an announcement.”

  “What is it?”

  “Six ECs killed in a raid, a suspected high value female captured, but escaped three days ago, reward for information, the usual boilerplate.”

  “We’re not taking this upstairs,” Colonel Romano said. “Topside didn’t find the Head Mistress, didn’t even know for sure she existed. You found her, you take her out.”

  •••

  All night before the event she is remembering a meeting in Gaylord. Toucan alone on one side of the table, the field captain and the Wildlife Resource Protection Unit lieutenant on the other side, the questioning muted, unenthusiastic, and she read between the lines, the decision already made before she even walked into the room. She wasn’t in the running. It was her gift to be able to read people and it was a double-edged sword. Had she gotten the job, she would not be in Kabul again. They would have pressured her to resign from the Guard. Firoozi would be out there alone. Everything in life had a reason, even when we couldn’t see it.

  The mission plan was devoid of subtlety. Make contact, kill the Head Mistress and her entourage, don’t even think about prisoners. Kill the main target first, hope she wasn’t hooked to some sort of deadman’s switch detonator.

  The stench of the riverbed was at its highest. There were women in burkas all along the trickle of water, a kaleidoscope of blues and blacks and reds, all masked and invisible.

  Green plastic bin ahead of them. Firoozi said, “Three women, all black.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “One wears red shoes. Vanity dies hard. That’s her.” Firoozi touched her face screen and the three figures immediately rushed toward her, red shoe in the lead.

  The two soldiers pulled FN SCAR STD rifles with 13-inch barrels from slits in the folds of their dresses and opened up.

  They had practiced for days, now spent three rounds each on target one, two each on the other two, the whole thing rolling out in Slo-Mo and Toucan saw women behind the targets scrambling for cover. Three down, Major Meta Toucan took a C-4 charge with
a timing detonator set for one minute, dropped it on the body with red shoes.

  The two women ran hard, counting in their heads and suddenly dropped face down as the explosive went, and in igniting the vest on one of the women stimulated an even bigger bang. They doubled back. The hole was four feet deep, a dozen feet across. Nothing left but rag scraps floating.

  Four days later, both women left Kabul in a Medevac flight headed for Ramstein AB, near Kaiserslautern, Germany.

  •••

  “This work can be dangerous,” a lieutenant colonel told them. They were in a nondescript building at the air base. Had come in the night before, housed in the BOQ, fetched to a meeting this morning.

  Firoozi remained for more debriefings prior to reassignment.

  Toucan caught a flight back to the World.

  •••

  Gaylord again, another meeting in the regional office with the WRPU lieutenant and the captain. Toucan’s body was still somewhere between Kabul and the world, and she had been asked to attend a brief meeting at the airport in Washington D.C. on the way back. “That was a faster than normal deployment. Glad you’re back,” the captain said. “We wanted to talk about your application for the detective position.”

  The lieutenant took over. “Not everyone is built psychologically to work off the grid. It may look romantic from a distance, but not so much when you’re in the soup. The reality is unsettling to most people.”

  Were these fools for real? “Most people. Does that mean most men and women or most men, or just most women?”

  The lieutenant looked warily at her. “Men and women.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Beg your pardon?” the lieutenant said.

  “How many women have served as detectives in your unit? Ever?”

  “Uh.”

  “None,” she said. “Shame on you guys.”

  “There will be other openings,” the lieutenant said.

  “Not for me. I can read tea leaves better than most people.”

  “You shouldn’t assume.”

  “I’m not assuming or waiting. I’m retiring.”

  “To do what?”

  “The Feds have recruited me.”

  “What Feds?” the captain asked.

  (The offer made in D.C. had made her laugh out loud and she had accepted on the spot.) “Sorry sir, NTK, Need To Know. I’m not at liberty to say.”