Coup d’État

by Ben Coes

The lights, coming from behind, drew closer. Dewey craned his neck forward and looked in the driver’s side mirror. He saw a black pickup truck coming on quickly.

  Dewey pulled the weapon from his shoulder holster.

  “No, no, it’s okay,” said Mainiq, holding his hand up to Dewey. “They’re just passing.”

  “Do you know them?” demanded Dewey.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Who the fuck are they?”

  “They’re passing. They’re just driving by.”

  Dewey glanced at Iverheart, then nodded. Iverheart withdrew his weapon, a SIG Sauer P226 9mm pistol, and aimed it at the driver. In the same moment, Dewey trained his Colt on Mainiq.

  “Nothing personal,” Dewey said to Mainiq. “See what they want, then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  The black pickup raced alongside the truck. It swept by them, swerved in front of the truck, and slowed down, blocking the road just fifty feet ahead.

  “It’s okay,” said Mainiq calmly, holding his hands up, ignoring the gun aimed at him. “It’s okay. Let me talk. They’re punks. It’s nothing.”

  The driver braked and slowed the truck down. It came to a halt just behind the pickup.

  In the flatbed of the pickup, two men sat, dressed in similar tribal garb as Mainiq and the driver. Both held Kalashnikovs, which they trained on the cab.

  Mainiq opened the door, but Dewey grabbed his arm before he could climb down.

  “If you fuck with us,” said Dewey, “the first bullet’s got your name on it.”

  Mainiq nodded, still calm. “It’s okay. I would not betray Mr. Bradstreet. I will take care of it.”

  Dewey and Iverheart watched from the cab as Mainiq walked in front of the semi and approached the black Toyota pickup. The passenger door on the pickup opened and a short, thin man, older, with a gray and black beard, climbed out.

  Dewey moved to the window. He glanced at Iverheart, who still had his gun on the driver. “Keep your weapon on him.”

  Dewey held his weapon aimed straight ahead, just out of sight of the people in the road.

  Mainiq marched to the short, wiry man and began to speak loudly to him in Urdu. The man yelled back and soon they were arguing. Mainiq leaned forward, into the older Pakistani’s face, and yelled at him. They looked as if they would come to blows.

  “What are they saying?” asked Dewey, looking at the driver. “What are they saying?”

  “Argue,” said the driver in broken English.

  “Yeah, no shit Sherlock. About what?”

  “Don’t know, man.”

  Mainiq was stabbing his right index finger into the air just in front of the man’s face as he yelled.

  Iverheart looked at Dewey.

  “This is gonna get ugly,” Iverheart said.

  “On my lead,” said Dewey.

  One of the gunmen on the flatbed fired his rifle. The crack of gunfire was shocking and loud. The bullet hit Mainiq in the chest. He was propelled backward by the force of the Kalashnikov, his tan shirt splattered in blood. Mainiq tumbled backward onto the dirt apron next to the road, dead.

  “No!” screamed the driver, next to Iverheart.

  The older one who’d been arguing with Mainiq, started screaming at the man who’d just shot Mainiq.

  Dewey had no idea what had just happened. And he didn’t want to know. But he did know this was spiraling in the wrong direction.

  He raised his Colt, moved it outside the window, and fired a round. The bullet hit the gunman in the chest, throwing him backward and down onto the bed of the pickup. He fired again. This bullet struck the other gunman in the side of his head. He was kicked sideways, falling next to his dead colleague in a wash of blood.

  The older man stood for a moment in shock, staring into the back of the pickup. He looked up at Dewey, then reached for a weapon at his waist. Dewey pulled the trigger again. The bullet tore into the man’s chest, knocking him backward and to the ground.

  The pickup driver stepped on the gas, flooring it to get away.

  To Iverheart’s left, the driver started screaming.

  Dewey pumped the trigger as fast as his finger would flex. The rear glass of the pickup shattered and a slug caught the driver in the back of the head. The pickup slowed down and, as the dead driver slumped over the wheel, turned left and wandered off the road, stopping a few feet off the pavement.

  The driver was screaming uncontrollably now.

  “You want me to…?” asked Iverheart looking at Dewey.

  “No. Just kick him out.”

  Iverheart reached over and opened the door.

  “Out,” he said.

  The driver climbed down and began running toward the hills. Iverheart shut the door, then moved behind the wheel.

  “So much for a bloodless coup,” he said.

  41

  BENAZIR BHUTTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  RAWALPINDI

  Millar stepped off the PIA jet and walked through the crowded terminal at Benazir Bhutto International Airport. At the immigration security checkpoint, he presented his passport.

  Millar looked younger even than his twenty-four years. He had medium-length black hair and a good-looking face. He didn’t stand out. He was handsome but not head-turning handsome. He blended in, especially here, where he was from, Pakistan.

  Millar had a French passport with the name Jean Milan on it, supplied by CIA London station. Had the security desk at Benazir Bhutto been wired into Interpol or any other multinational, real-time security database, the name Jean Milan and the passport would have checked out. Milan, according to his passport, was French; according to his visa papers, a reporter for Le Monde.

  However, the lack of an advanced security database forced the better security people at Benazir Bhutto to rely more on instinct. As Millar’s passport was stamped, Parakesh, the customs officer overseeing airport security, did a double take. There was something about Millar that made the customs agent look twice, then a third time, at him. Perhaps it was the way Millar carried himself; he walked in the unmistakable manner of an athlete—or a soldier. Maybe it was the trained manner in which he ignored Parakesh’s inquisitive look. To a junior customs agent, Millar wouldn’t have set off alarm bells. But Parakesh was a veteran who came to customs from ISI. Benazir Bhutto represented his final promotion after a career of risky work in more challenging environs, including ten years in Peshawar. Overseeing security at the airport for Pakistani customs was supposed to be an easy job, a coveted nine-to-five gig at the highest pay level within government. But that didn’t mean Parakesh’s instincts had disappeared.

  As Parakesh reached for the small microphone clipped to his lapel to call for one of his deputies, Millar realized he’d been marked.

  Fuck, he thought to himself.

  He walked through the terminal and saw a restroom sign down the terminal hallway in the direction of baggage claim.

  Millar walked to the crowded baggage claim area, despite the fact that he hadn’t checked any baggage. There were hundreds of people packed densely into the windowless area near the carousels. He stood behind an old man in a black beret. He looked back at the terminal. Within thirty seconds, he saw the gray-haired customs agent who’d stared at him at the security checkpoint. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the agent surveyed the crowd, found him, paused a second too long, then continued looking around. He then made eye contact with another agent; this one young, tall, uniformed in dark green.

  Millar was trained in evasion. Losing the two Pakistani customs agents would’ve been easy. But Bradstreet’s instructions were clear: “If they mark you at the airport, it’s imperative that you get back on the first flight out of Pakistan, or cut off the problem at the airport. Do not infect the operation.”

  Millar waited a few more minutes in the baggage claim area, then walked to the restroom. He went to the last stall and set down his bag. Flipping a small steel hinge on the bottom of the case, he opened up a hidden compartment, remove
d a switchblade, and tucked it in his right hand.

  He heard the door to the restroom open. He put his shoe on the toilet and flushed it, then opened the door. Standing next to the sinks was the younger agent. He stared at Millar as he moved to the sinks. They were alone. Millar set his bag down next to the sink and turned on the faucet.

  “Papers,” the officer said.

  Millar reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his passport. He offered the passport to the officer.

  “Here,” said Millar.

  As the agent reached for the passport, Millar grabbed his wrist and swung it violently behind his back, then moved his left hand over the agent’s mouth to muffle the scream that came a second later as he snapped the arm at the elbow. Still covering the agent’s mouth with his left hand, Millar pressed the release button on the switchblade in his right hand. He jabbed the blade against the officer’s neck, pressing the sharp steel into the trachea but not breaking skin. When he knew the officer would not scream any longer, he released his left hand and took the walkie-talkie from the officer’s belt.

  “Calm now,” said Millar in Urdu, holding the walkie-talkie next to his mouth. “Tell him to come.”

  The agent struggled to speak, tears of pain from his broken arm ran down his cheeks. “Tell who to—”

  Millar yanked back on the switchblade, cutting the officer’s neck a half-inch. He winced in pain as blood spewed forth from his neck.

  “You know who,” said Millar quietly. “If you want to live, tell him to come. Calm now.”

  Millar pressed the walkie-talkie button.

  “Parakesh,” the officer said. “In the restroom.”

  Millar dropped the walkie-talkie, then ripped the blade across the officer’s neck, severing the trachea. He dragged him to the last stall and threw his body inside. Millar moved back to the door and stood behind it. There was a long streak of blood across the light blue linoleum, but there was nothing he could do about that. The door opened. In stepped Parakesh. He glanced about the restroom, saw the blood on the ground, then desperately reached for his weapon. He caught sight of Millar in the corner, in the same moment Millar lunged at him, plunging the blood-soaked switchblade into his chest, through the heart, killing him. Millar dragged the corpse to the last stall and threw it on top of the other agent, who was rapidly bleeding out. Blood flooded the restroom floor. Millar stepped to the sink, grabbed his bag, and left the restroom. Within two minutes, he was out of the terminal and sitting in the back of a rust-covered taxicab.

  “Where to?” asked the driver.

  “Saddar,” Millar said in Urdu as he wiped blood from his hands onto his pants. “Al-Magreb.”

  42

  SADDAR DISTRICT

  RAWALPINDI

  Less than thirty miles from the Line of Control, the darkness of evening was punctured by small gas-fired lanterns at every street corner, dangling over crowds upon crowds of Pakistanis.

  As midnight approached, Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s fourth-largest city, teemed with noise and tension. War with India raged less than a hundred miles away, at the mountain-ringed canyon near Kargil, India-controlled Kashmir Territory.

  They stood about in the humid night air. Pakistani men, shoulder to shoulder, smoking cigarettes, drinking espresso, tea, and chai. Arguing. Next to cafés overflowing with yet more people, as decrepit automobiles and jammed buses blared horns and raced recklessly through uneven streets.

  The entire city, the entire country, was on a knife’s edge. The anger of the city’s devout Muslims fueled a sense of uneasiness that seemed palpable and menacing.

  Dewey moved through the dark, crowded streets. Taller than most, he nevertheless attracted little if any attention. He walked quickly through the crowded, grimy streets of the Saddar District, the lower-class neighborhood in east Rawalpindi, mostly slums and working class. His eyes surveyed with trained wariness in front of him as he moved.

  Dewey had learned long ago that it wasn’t just what you looked like that attracted attention. It was how you carried yourself. How you moved. Tonight, he moved with stealth quietness, cloaked in the unkempt clothing and general dishevelment of a drifter, a freelance journalist, a tourist from the West, a mountaineer on his way to climb K2, a lost soul who somehow ended up here in Rawalpindi. There were many of them floating around.

  Saddar was a dangerous place, among the poorest neighborhoods in all of Rawalpindi. But with that danger, that lawlessness, came anonymity and to a certain extent freedom for this lone traveler.

  Dewey moved past crowds upon crowds of men for whom the war with India unleashed years of pent-up anger. Sweat drenched Dewey’s shirt as he moved. It poured unabated down his face, down his thick chest, it was everywhere.

  He and Iverheart had arrived an hour before, then split up so as not to attract attention.

  Dewey’s Colt was holstered beneath his left armpit, a black suppressor screwed into the end of the weapon. It bulged slightly at his spleen. At Dewey’s right calf, his Gerber combat knife lay sheathed.

  Dewey assiduously avoided eye contact. Tension was high now, and with tension came suspicion and paranoia.

  Dewey occasionally felt the dark eyes upon him as he walked down uneven streets of stone and decaying mortar. Past crowds of men, past restless throngs of student radicals, out smoking, talking to one another about the war with India.

  Just look away, he implored them silently. I am just passing through. Look away … look away.

  Saddar’s streets reeked, a medley of stinging aromas, the smell of human sweat, meat cooking on open flame pits. Horns blared above a din of car and bus traffic. Voices were raised louder than they should’ve been. Street vendors competed for space with clusters of men, smoking feverishly, drinking espresso, arguing.

  “No, it couldn’t be true!” a man yelled.

  “It is,” said another, “and praise Allah for it!”

  Dewey knew what they were all talking about. Were the reports true? Had Pakistan really dropped a nuclear bomb on India?

  Yes, it’s true, Dewey thought as he moved silently past the heaving, angry throngs. You people are within a hairsbreadth of being incinerated and you don’t even know it.

  As he stepped by street vendors hawking meat and vegetables, past the occasional woman covered anonymously head to toe in burka, past young boys out way too late, yelling playfully at one another, past old men sitting at cafés, the words came into his head. The three syllables that sent crystalline fear up the spine of every illegitimate two-bit dictator in the world.

  Coup d’état.

  Dewey glanced at his watch: 9:55 P.M. The hour was at hand. They had little time now. Fourteen hours, five minutes. Then India would turn Rawalpindi and every other city and town in Pakistan into a glass parking lot.

  The temperature in Rawalpindi hovered at around one hundred degrees, unseasonably hot.

  Dewey walked with his head down, trying not to meet the eyes of passersby, finally spying a small yellow doorway from across the crowded street. He crossed the uneven, cracked pavement, maneuvering carefully between speeding cars and buses, approached the yellow tin frame, reached a hand out then pushed the door in. There was no sign on the small establishment.

  He entered the illegal pub with his eyes down, silent, trying not to be noticed by the people inside the pub. It was at the seedy outskirts of the Saddar. Unnoticed as he stepped inside, Dewey glanced quickly around the place. Dimly lit, half empty, anyone in there too drunk to notice another scraggly-looking Westerner.

  In the back corner, Dewey took a seat at an empty table. The stench was almost overwhelming, urine from the bathroom, which didn’t have a door on it, combined with old Murree beer and wine, spilled on the floors, never really cleaned up properly, no ventilation. It was 10:00 P.M. He was an hour early. He sat with his back to the wall. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out from his pocket, lit one, looked around. When the waiter came, he ordered whiskey.

  Iverheart walked in and stole a quick glance at
Dewey, then sat at a table near the left wall, across from the bar, and ordered a beer.

  It was 11:05 P.M. and still no sign from Millar. Another ten minutes passed, still nothing.

  Dewey ordered a beer; one whiskey was enough, even though he wanted another. He remained in the back of the pub. Iverheart caught his eye. They both knew what the other was thinking: Where is this fucking guy?

  Finally, at 11:45 P.M. a tall man walked in, drenched in sweat. He looked like one of the locals, but there was something different about him. His black hair was cropped close. His dark eyes roamed the bar, then met Dewey’s: it was Millar.

  Dewey put money down on the table and finished his beer. Standing, he walked through the bar. Iverheart and Millar fell in line behind him as he walked to the door.

  On the rough-hewn stone sidewalk outside the bar, the three Americans walked down the street toward an alleyway. They were dead silent, no words.

  In a block, a woman in a burka passed by. Her eyes stared out from the dark shroud for a moment too long.

  “Whisper,” she said in perfect English.

  Margaret. Dewey nodded.

  She turned, started walking, and fell in line at a distance. After a block and a half she turned into a side alley. The team followed her down the alley. Darkness made it hard to see her. They followed her down a meandering series of sidewalks, doors bolted, windows shuttered.

  In a doorway next to a dilapidated garage, they ducked inside behind Margaret, then shut the door quickly behind them. Inside a small, windowless room, Margaret flipped a light on. She pulled her hood back. She was black, pretty, her face covered in sweat, a small, roundish nose framed by a short, curly Afro. She was no more than twenty-five years old. She smiled at Dewey.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Margaret Jasper.” She had a faint southern accent.

  “Hi, Margaret,” said Dewey. “What’s the update?”

  “You’re running late,” she said. “We have a hard location on Karreff. So the plan is on, but you need to move.”