Disavowed

by C. G. Cooper

  “Who do you think helped you along the way? Latif Saladin waiting in Gereshk. The nomads with their Russian tanks at the check point. The helicopter pilot. And now Kadar Saladin, our gracious host. I knew Mr. Isnard would come after you even after I told him not to. Marines don’t leave a fellow Marine behind, am I right?”

  “But how could you have known that we’d make it out? There were too many variables. The guards at the check point. The Hind attack…”

  “Despite what Mr. Isnard thinks of me, I have every confidence in his abilities. If there was any person that could do it, it was him, and you, of course.”

  While Andy understood what Coles was saying, he still couldn’t get past the man’s academic recital, like people were mere chess pieces on a paper map. And there he was, Marine Major Andrews, the pawn of the CIA.

  “And what was it all for?” asked Andy, suddenly weary of the games, tired of the intrigue. At least when you went to war as a Marine you knew who the bad guys were.

  “The first target was Anthony Farrago.”

  “But he works for you.”

  Coles nodded. “True. But how better to root out a traitor than to bring him close, give him the tools to build his delusional world? The second target, who you somehow stumbled upon, is the President of Afghanistan. We believe our ally has anything but retirement on his mind, and certainly not our best interests. The operation to catch him has been in place since before I came to the CIA. Because of your capture and subsequent escape, we’ve been able to gather substantial information on both men. But there’s still work to do.”

  “Like what?”

  For the first time Coles’s lips pursed. A sliver of worry. “We’re running out of time. Farrago is obviously not telling me everything. I have no doubt that he and the president are working up to something. The questions are what, how and when.”

  “Wait, you don’t even know what they’re going to do?” asked Andy.

  The slow and measured shake of Coles head told Andy everything. The master spook had hit a brick wall. He’d let the wolf out of its cage and now didn’t know how to catch it in the act of stealing the farmer’s sheep.

  “And now you need us,” guessed Andy.

  Coles nodded.

  Andy looked over at Isnard, then back at Cal. His former platoon sergeant nodded.

  Andy turned back to his boss. “Okay, Mr. Coles. Tell us what you had in mind.”

  Chapter 30

  Kabul, Afghanistan

  5:55pm AFT, August 25th

  Another wood shaving dropped to the ground. The rough pile of flecks scattered over his bare feet, on the floor, under the bed.

  Oak. His favorite. Not birch. Not pine. No. Pick the strongest. The hardest. The most unflinching.

  Anthony Farrago’s mind focused on the task. Whittling away in careful strokes, precise cuts. It was a habit he’d picked up as a child, under his father’s tutelage.

  Tutelage. That’s what it was. Not loving mentorship. Not fatherly instruction. Tutelage. He was the pupil, his father the master craftsman.

  His razor sharp knife dug into the hard wood, sending the tiniest speck fluttering to the floor. A shape forming, slowly but surely. No idea what it was. Better to let your mind wander, the figure carving itself, his hands merely the instruments doing the mindless labor.

  Habit. Every mission, a new piece of wood, no bigger than the size of his hand. Easier to travel with. The same every time. From the same oak. Memories in that oak. Hidden, but always there. A mirror buried deep, stubborn, built by years of shifting earth and passing rain.

  He used to climb that oak as a kid. Not like other children his age, swinging from a tire or dangling from the planks of a rickety treehouse. No. That oak was a test. A monument. His challenge.

  “You get up that thing and I’ll consider letting you be my son,” his father had said. Tony was only ten at the time. He’d looked up at that huge oak, not a handhold under twenty feet.

  “How do I do it?”

  “You figure it out.”

  He’d sat out there the rest of the day, looking up at the giant oak. A century of life staring down at him, taunting him, leering like a dirty old man with crooked arthritic arms.

  The next day his training began. His two older brothers were already well ahead of him, trained by the man who’d once trained the best that America had. The men Tony had read about in his comic books, the only childish indulgence his father allowed. Spies and communism. Assassins and heroes. Not Marvel Comic heroes with superpowers. These were stories about real men. Smart. Cunning. Deadly.

  Luis Farrago was fifty-five when his youngest son was born. His second wife, Tony’s mother, died that night. Excessive bleeding. Nothing the doctor could do.

  So Luis raised his three sons alone. He was sixty-five when he began Tony’s training.

  Sitting under the oak that first day, Tony stared up at his father as the elder Farrago’s eyes looked off to the east, to the sun rising red on the horizon.

  “I’ve never told you about what I did before you were born, have I?”

  “No, sir.”

  Luis grunted, closing his eyes. “I’m going to tell you now.”

  He would hear the same story every year. Every time his father watched him grip that wide oak, arms and legs straining to pull himself up. Even the year his oldest brother Nick died in a training accident. Tony was twelve at the time.

  Luis Farrago was one of the few CIA operatives in the late 1940s that didn’t have a college education. During its time as the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), the CIA recruited the best and brightest. To men like Col. Wild Bill Donavan, the founder of the OSS, and his good friend, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the best and brightest were obvious. Go to Yale, Harvard, and Dartmouth and find upstanding, mostly wealthy, red-blooded Americans looking to serve their country.

  But as World War II raged on, recruitment shifted to other highly qualified organizations, namely the military. That’s where the CIA found Luis Farrago.

  Fast forward four years and Luis was one of the men responsible for predicting North Korea’s attack on its kin to the south. He spent the Korean War parachuting behind enemy lines, most times with only a pistol and a radio.

  The years passed and Luis Farrago climbed the rungs of the Agency’s growing bureaucracy. Like a grizzled sergeant, he wanted to be in the field. It wasn’t always possible, but for the most part he spent almost forty years on the streets. Korea. Italy. Russia.

  He was a go-to guy. You needed something done, someone turned, call Luis Farrago. It was after one particularly savage interrogation that the elder Farrago was “persuaded” to take a new position as a trainer at The Farm, the CIA’s training facility for new recruits. Not that he had a choice. It was either that or he could pack his bags and walk off into the sunset.

  It wasn’t bad duty. He got to work over those whiny college kids, show them what life and the real world were really like. He often stalked his students during their time off, pouncing on them with a knife or a pistol in their homes or in a mall. He could do no wrong. It lasted two years. Then Carter was elected.

  Luis Farrago’s fists always clenched when mentioning the former president.

  “He came in with his pansy ideas of what America should be. Weak. Changed everything.”

  Investigations cropped up overnight. No CIA division escaped scrutiny. Farrago’s time came when three recruits complained in the right investigator’s ear.

  “You can’t mess with these kids in their off hours,” the skinny investigator had said, tapping the yellow note pad with vigor.

  “How the hell am I supposed to get them ready for the Russians? You think they’re not out there? They are and these kids need to know that. They need to know how to watch their backs dammit!”

  He’d refused to change his tactics and the CIA was forced to relieve him of his duties, insisting on retirement.

  “Come on, Luis,” his boss had said. They’d known each other for t
hirty years. Had shed blood together. Killed together. But now his friend sat behind a desk telling him to take it like a good soldier.

  “I’ll walk, Karl. I’ll pack my things and retire to my little farm. But mark my words, the Agency is going to see me again.”

  They’d watched him for years. His parting comments no doubt triggered some warning within the bowels of the CIA’s info dump. But he was the teacher. He never stepped out of line, never lifted a finger in anger.

  But in private he raised his sons. Not raised, trained. Methodically. Relentlessly.

  He always insisted they do a stint in the military.

  “Serving in the ranks will give you perspective. It’ll keep you humble when they let you in at Langley.”

  It would happen exactly as Luis Farrago planned. After his first son’s death, his second son, Michael, enlisted in the Army, completing his college degree by correspondence. Five years later he ran through The Farm, coming out the other end a spook. Unfortunately, Michael disappeared a year later during an operation in Southeast Asia.

  Tony filled in, took up the slack. He was the last one left, his father’s legacy dwindling.

  Much to Tony’s surprise, everything seemed so easy after his father’s training. Miles and miles of forced marches and endurance runs. Round after round downrange with every caliber of weapon Luis could get his hands on. Days and nights prowling the streets, shadowing targets, breaking into homes and sneaking out without the sleeping owners noticing his passing.

  The day Tony graduated from The Farm, he took his father’s invitation to come home. By then, Luis was hobbled by bad knees and lung cancer, rarely leaving his fifty acre spread.

  He was waiting under the old oak, his eyes appraising Tony as he approached.

  “Are you ready to finish what you started?” his father asked.

  Tony nodded, stripping off his sport coat and tie. He’d worn boots instead of dress shoes. It had been six years since he’d last tried. He was going to do it.

  Tony walked up to the tree and looked up into its bare branches. It looked smaller than he remembered, but was still that hulking man, laughing down at him.

  As he reached out to grab the trunk, his father smacked the back of his head.

  Tony whipped around. “What?!” he dared to ask. He’d never once raised his voice at his father.

  “Haven’t I taught you anything? What are you doing?”

  “I’m climbing the tree.”

  Luis Farrago shook his head. “Why?”

  “You said I had to climb the tree. No tools.”

  Again the shake of his father’s weathered head. For the first time Tony realized his father was going to die, and soon. His once taut muscles now sagged. His piercing eyes were more red than white.

  “As of today, there are no rules. You do what I trained you to do, use every weapon at your disposal to kill your enemy. There are no rules.”

  Tony nodded. He walked around the house and returned with a chain saw. His father cackled as his son tore into the oak, inch by inch, foot by foot, until it finally came crashing down. A wicked leering man no more. Dead.

  He looked to his father when he was finished. Luis Farrago said, “Now you are my son.”

  Anthony Farrago looked down at the piece of oak in his hand. The same as every time before. The once nondescript hunk of wood had transformed without him knowing. He held the carved piece up to the light. A smile spread as he took in his latest creation, a snarling wolf’s head.

  He felt the precise etching, the perfectly grooved lines, marveling at what he’d unearthed. One last look and he stood up, walked over to the wood fire stove and its blue and yellow flames, and tossed the wolf’s head in.

  It was time to get to work.

  Chapter 31

  Kandahar, Afghanistan

  8:11pm AFT, August 25th

  The pack of children played soccer under the flickering yellow lamplight, half of them bare chested to differentiate the teams. The taunts and shouts echoed off the walls of neighborhood compounds. There was the occasional yell from a neighbor demanding quiet.

  They’d been at it for a while, neither side conceding defeat. Time was never kept. It was a neighborhood rule. Make the other team bow out first. Sometimes the match lasted well into the night, the winners trudging home in exhausted satisfaction.

  It was the goalie who saw them first, men in black masks and matching uniforms. One, then five, then the streets teamed with the faceless men. The goalie didn’t say a word. They never had to. He just ran. That’s all it took for the rest of the kids to sprint away.

  The heavily armed force cut off any escape. Front. Back. Even in the neighboring properties they swarmed. Too many to count. The relentless convergence with one focal point.

  On cue, flash-bang grenades were tossed, exploding in the front and back courtyards. They moved closer, vaulting ten foot walls with ease.

  Next they tossed their grenades into the house, through every opening they could find, some having to break a window to do it.

  Explosions rocked the house, light and sound stunning any within. Before the dust settled, the men in black entered the building, clearing from room to room, searching with smooth swings left and right, up and down. The house was empty.

  One of the first men who’d entered removed his mask with a jerk. Anthony Farrago scowled as he kicked over the IV stand next to a mussed bed, a bag of yellow fluid sloshing to the floor.

  “You said they were here,” he said to the man standing to his left.

  “My informants confirmed that fact fifteen minutes ago,” answered the man, his voice laced with indignation.

  Farrago shook his head. “I don’t have time for this.”

  Before the the team leader could react, the American’s hand swept around in a backhanded swing. The concealed blade sliced through the man’s throat, blood gushing out like a breaking dam.

  One hand went to his throat, the other reached for Farrago. He never made it, falling forward, first to his knees, then to his chest.

  Farrago ignored the spasming body and pointed to the next man in line.

  “You’re in charge now. Find out where they went. You have twenty minutes.”

  Farrago stomped out of the room, a cell phone already at his ear. “Yes. They’re not here. No. I’ll take care of it.”

  He put the phone back in his pocket, hit the street, and disappeared into the shadows, a small entourage falling in behind him.

  +++

  Cal and his men watched the whole thing. Thanks to Neil, Kadar’s whole house was wired with nano-cameras. The simple devices transmitted up to half a mile. They weren’t close to that far away.

  They’d snuck out of a hidden tunnel covered by a perfectly crafted concrete slab underneath the dining room table. It had taken every ounce of MSgt’s Trent’s immense strength to even get the thing to budge with a crowbar.

  Ten minutes later they’d traversed the winding tunnel. Along the way their host explained how his ancestors had first used the elaborate tunnel system, spending immense time and energy on its construction. Even in the modern age, the miles of underground network came in quite useful. They were so well constructed that only the occasional upgrade was needed.

  A block away, The Jefferson Group watched as Anthony Farrago dispatched the man in the very room Andy had been in less than an hour before.

  “That’s one cold dude,” said MSgt Trent.

  “Yeah,” said Cal, watching as Farrago left the compound and slipped back into the night. “Who were the men with him?”

  “Most likely men of the National Directorate of Security,” answered Kadar.

  “That’s your intelligence agency?”

  “Not mine, but Afghanistan’s, yes.”

  “Who controls them? Is it a part of the military?”

  Kadar frowned. “I’m afraid not. There is only one man who controls the the Directorate. The President of Afghanistan.”

  +++

  The Pr
esident of Afghanistan listened as the man from the National Directorate of Security rattled off his report. He already knew the details, of course. Farrago had phoned, conveniently leaving out the part about filleting a loyal Afghan national.

  “Mr. President, this American cannot be allowed to act in such a manner.”

  The president stood up, slamming his palm on the top of his desk. The Directorate man flinched.

  “Was it not your team leader who failed?”

  The man hesitated, then said, “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “And was he not given the order to bring in these spies at all costs?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Then I believe that it was well within the right of the American, my trusted advisor, to remedy the situation.”

  The man swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “That will be all.”

  The man clicked his heels together in the old way, learned from the Soviets. He turned and let himself out.

  The president sat down at his desk and pressed the intercom button on his office phone.

  “Yes, Mr. President?” asked his male secretary.

  “I am not to be disturbed for the rest of the night.”

  “Understood, Mr. President.”

  The leader of Afghanistan reached into his pocket and retrieved a small tattered notebook. He flipped to a page halfway through, pointing to a phone number.

  He dialed the number on his secure phone and waited for it to pick up. It might be a long night, but what was a couple hours of work for a lifetime of wealth?

  Chapter 32

  Kabul, Afghanistan

  2:27am AFT, August 29th

  It took a day to sneak out of Kandahar and into the Afghan capital. Another two days for the Saladin network and Neil Patel to do what they did best. Spies dispatched. Networks hacked.

  Cal and Daniel mapped and re-mapped routes, picked apart contingencies and shored up individual responsibilities.