Pashtun

by Ron Lealos

  No matter how much I craved to talk and get to know more about her, I understood she was in a completely alien universe, even if she was now Company talent. While she tried to listen to the banter, she was also inspecting the cabin. It was likely the plushest room she’d ever been in or seen outside television.

  To me, it was a replica of the one we’d flown from Frankfurt. Only the color scheme had changed. This Gulfstream was darker and had more wood wainscoting. The passenger cabin was bigger, and so was the bar, to Finnen’s delight. The seats were fractionally softer and were heated. As we cruised over the mountains, I asked Khkulay if I could get her a blanket. She shook her head no and tried to look out the window. Dawn was just breaking over the Himalayas, and the hills were spectacular in the orange glow.

  Finnen and Washington had changed topics from macho threats to the blues. Dunne was asleep.

  “If you don’t think Van Morrison can out sing, out play, and out write any of those boys from the Delta, you haven’t listened,” Finnen said.

  “I admit, for a white boy born in Belfast,” Washington said, “he sure learned well. But where’d he get his style? Blind Willie Johnson? Howlin’ Wolf? You name ’em, and Van stole somethin’ from each of ’em.”

  “Now, now, Washington,” Finnen said. “Don’t be blasphemin’ my God Van. I’ll have to break this bottle of Jameson’s over your thick skull. The waste of good whiskey would truly take me to the depths of despair.”

  Khkulay had a puzzled look on her face.

  “I truly don’t understand those two,” she said. “They switch from one thing to the next and are always threatening to kill each other.”

  “Male bonding,” I said. “Maybe, in your country, the men share a hookah and reminisce about throwing out the Russians. With American men, there’s always a need to posture.”

  “Posture? What does that mean?”

  Finnen turned toward us, his third glass nearly dry.

  “I heard that, Morgan,” Finnen said. “I’m choosin’ to ignore it because there’re more important things to talk about than doubts of your masculinity. Who’s the better blues man? Robert Johnson or Van Morrison?”

  Words unspoken. None of the four men in the cabin would directly admit how sharing the immediate threat of death forged remarkably strong ties and feelings. It also meant we broadcast on the same wavelength. Another old cliché: the best friend you’ll ever have is the one next to you in the foxhole. Soldiers talked about it all the time. And mourned the loss. The haunting scenes of horror weren’t the only ones that brought tremors at the Vietnam Memorial. It was the memory of comrades who walked the same bush patrols and manned the firebases together. Washington and Finnen had gone through the fire beside each other. No insult would ever let them lose sight of the journey.

  Not bothering to answer Finnen’s question, I watched Khkulay shift in her chair, placing her hands in her lap.

  “Don’t mean nuthin’,” I said. “If the American culture allowed them to hug, they would. They were born to the belief the toughest and meanest win. Then trained to be killers. Any sign of weakness is considered dangerous. Love is a mine field they’re not prepared to cross, and they’re not equipped to show it to each other.”

  “There’s a song runnin’ through my head,” Finnen said. “Can’t get it out.”

  “What might that be?” Washington asked, taking the cue.

  “Something like this,” Finnen said, humming to get the right note so he could begin. “From my man Van. It’s all about ‘warm love.’”

  “Stop,” I said.

  He stopped, winding down by humming a few more bars.

  “Couldn’t help it,” Finnen said. “I can feel the love flowin’ through the plane, and I just get carried away.”

  “Barry White for me,” Washington said. He cleared his throat and started the words to “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love.” His voice was much better than Finnen’s, a deep bass almost matching White’s. This time I let the whole first verse finish before I told him to halt.

  “I think you three like to tease more than anything,” Khkulay said. “I don’t understand most of it, but that seems to be what you’re doing. Do you ever get serious?”

  Silence. I knew what was going through all our heads. To us, serious was the same as dead. Better to go there only when necessary.

  Finnen stood and walked to the bar. Washington watched Kashmir pass out the window. Khkulay quietly scanned our faces, probably sensing she had thrown a grenade into the nest.

  I leaned toward her and touched her arm.

  “Khkulay,” I said. “All of us work for the United States Central Intelligence Agency. It’s where I hope your job will be. Washington is a new recruit, but Finnen, Dunne, and I have been in the field for the Agency for what feels like forever. I can’t tell you exactly what we do, but you’ve heard much of it. Now, you’re an agent too.”

  She smiled and reached to touch my arm.

  “Every American in my country is a spy,” Khkulay said. “The Taliban tell us that every day. Do you think I’m getting cold feet, as you say in America?”

  Finnen was back to his chair, his glass refilled.

  “Jaysus, Morgan,” Finnen said. “Now we have to kill her.”

  Khkulay’s eyes popped open wide, and she studied Finnen as he laughed.

  “Sorry, mum,” he said. “Just tryin’ to get serious. Didn’t mean it.”

  I put my hand on Khkulay’s armrest.

  “We have many hours left before we reach the States,” I said. “Why don’t you get some rest? When you wake up, you can ask me anything you want to know about your new country.”

  “Do you think I will ever lead a normal life?” Khkulay asked.

  “Of course,” I said. I leaned forward and whispered. “But stay away from the Finnen’s of the world. They’re poison.”

  She nodded and laid her head back, closing her eyes. I did the same. Finnen and Washington resumed their grousing, but more quietly, while the young girl continued to sleep and dream like Dunne.

  I had spent more than a year in Afghanistan. This trip back to the States wasn’t just about leaving with Khkulay; it was time to go home before I completely morphed into someone I didn’t know. Although still a patriot, the more I experienced here, the less I was a believer in the potential success of Operation Enduring Freedom. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been a normal soldier taking orders and doing mostly the same boring thing every day, spiced with a few moments of terror. Employment with the Company meant fresh adventures all the time. Deadly ones, always with the potential for betrayal. I wasn’t the beat cop who never fired his gun. Mine was in use most days. Even if I had resolved not to assassinate any more innocents or dogs, there was the continual risk of collateral damage. We had saved the girl from Dostum and rescued Khkulay. The heroin, oil, and Taliban matrix was well beyond my comprehension. The global answers eluded me. What I did know was that some extremely bad guys had been terminally sanctioned by my hands. Many more than the guiltless. The several thousand dollars waiting for me at Kansas National Bank had nothing to do with anything except a few nights out in nice restaurants. Or a trip to Disney World. I wasn’t a bounty hunter. I was a paid CIA assassin and, one way or the other, I had to live with it, putting all the brain chatter to sleep. Trust was not something remaining in my genetic code. It had been purged by years of Company propaganda. Now, I no longer even trusted my minders. Too much treachery seeped from the halls of Langley and spread its stench around the globe. I hoped things would change when we touched down in The World. And I could simply breathe.

  Washington was the first to notice, Finnen and me realizing the change a heartbeat later. Just a subtle shift in the plane’s course. A long lazy turn that meant we were now flying toward the sun, opposite of where it had been when I closed my eyes. Khkulay softly snored, a contented smile curving her lips, apparently comfortable being anywhere on the planet other than Kabul. Her contentment was far from the dread swiftly invadi
ng my skull. Dunne hadn’t budged. The battle camaraderie between Finnen, Washington, and me had given us a group consciousness and singularity that now translated into alarm bells that tolled as one.

  “What the fook is happenin’, pogues?” Finnen asked, concerned enough to set his glass of single malt on the armrest.

  “Seems like we’re going back east,” Washington said. “Reminds me of that Insane Clown Posse ditty.” He lacked only the chunka, chunka of a Snoop Dog tune, as he rhymed the words. Washington grinned, his huge set of long white teeth reflecting the light from the windows, and nodded around the cabin. “There are five of us. The pilots gotta be in on the gig, whatever it is.”

  “Jaysus,” Finnen said, “is everything in your noggin a rap song? It seems we’re bein’ highjacked, and you quote fookin’ clowns.” He shook his head and picked up the tumbler, draining what was left in one slug.

  Surprisingly, Dunne continued to snooze. After a few seconds of watching his chest heave in and out much too quickly for REM sleep, I began to understand. There was no way we were traveling to the USA. The destination was unclear, most likely highly classified, but it was probable Dunne knew something. His brief was to be a shape-shifter, and I could only guess at his motives, knowing full well “Deceit” should have been the “D” of his middle name. Years of my believing he truly cared, freshly supported by his latest actions, now proved the old Company axiom true—“Don’t trust anyone, especially another agent.”

  A Gulfstream in the air wasn’t the place for a shootout. If I was quiet and the .22 bullet from my Hush Puppy lodged in Dunne’s brain, we might not decompress. A hollow-point slug would undoubtedly expand throughout his brain cavity, bouncing around like a Mexican jumping bean and ruining any chance for his further intellectual growth. It would also likely stay confined in his lying skull, saving us from an airless freefall. I stood swiftly and had the barrel of the pistol on Dunne’s earhole before he could open his eyes.

  “Only the truth will set you free,” I hissed, pressing the Hush Puppy hard into Dunne’s ear flap.

  Once I’d heard that Viet Cong prisoners often smiled before a grunt lit up the VC’s gas-soaked pajamas with a Zippo. The myth was that this portrayed relief over escaping the drudgery and terror of days living underground in rat-, spider-, and snake-infested tunnels that stank of human misery. Awake now, Dunne’s smirk must have come from seeing his game was nearly up too. No more lies. No more sending innocents out to die. Peace and eternal rest. I wasn’t going to make it a pain-free release. I shoved and twisted the tip of the barrel harder into his lobe, forcing his head against the back of the seat rest.

  “Not gonna make it easy for you to join all the others you’ve had murdered,” I said. “At least not with two working legs. I’ll start with your knees.” I twisted the pistol more firmly, pushing it nearly inside his head. “Where are we going?”

  Finnen had taken out his Ka-Bar and was rubbing it on his thigh, a behavior I’d seen countless times when he was bored, anxious, or ready to slice someone from ear to jaw.

  “Give this bloke the honor of carvin’ him,” Finnen said, pointing the knife at his own chest.

  “Somebody do it real soon like,” Washington said, sitting back and relaxing. “Haven’t heard a man scream in, oh, a couple hours.”

  “Games up, eh, boys?” Dunne said. “I told them you wouldn’t go down easy. But you know the cretins back at Langley won’t listen. Especially when it means no more promotions.” He tried to move his head away from the Hush Puppy that was nearly embedded in his auditory lobe. I didn’t let that happen.

  “Answer the question now,” I said. “None of us cares about the silly intrigues your kind plays at. Unless it concerns our futures.”

  Dunne only grinned wider.

  Never big on patience, even with a bottle of Jameson’s circulating in his bloodstream, Finnen bent forward and cut a straight line across Dunne’s knee, the blood immediately soaking through his trousers. That brought a quick end to Dunne’s arrogance. He tried to reach down and stanch the flow.

  “Let it bleed,” I said, forcing him against the seat. “You won’t die from that wound. The next one, maybe.”

  “Loved that one,” Finnen said. “The Beatles?”

  “That was ‘Let It Be,’ bleedin’ eedjit,” Washington said, in perfect Belfastese.

  Khkulay was watching, not even blinking her dark eyes. I didn’t know how long she’d been awake, but she was no stranger to violence. She knew it was dangerous to make any movement or even to hint she objected. The Taliban wrath easily turned to girls just for being there. She’d witnessed their cruelty many times. We weren’t part of that stone-age tribe. Still, a knife to the knee might convince her we were descended from Azrael, the Islamic Angel of Death. Maybe one of my endearing smiles would break the mood.

  “We’re trying to get information,” I said, grinning. “And we don’t have much time. He’s working for men more immoral than the Taliban. The Great Satan, the American government.” It wouldn’t have surprised me if Khkulay had begun to scream a “Death to the Yankees” slogan. She didn’t, continuing to stare at Dunne’s seeping wound.

  “Sorry, lass,” Finnen said, “You can close those eyes. We’ve got to loosen his tongue.” He nodded at Dunne and put the knife on the spook’s other knee.

  The scent of lavender and expensive leather that had floated through the jet was now replaced by the copper smell of blood and the sour aroma of fear. Dunne wasn’t as tough as he required his field operatives to be, and he was sweating through his fatigue shirt, the glistening beads covering his forehead.

  Torture. Not a favorite sport. I had often been the perpetrator. And the witness. Too many times to keep my dreams peaceful. Never once did I believe it was unnecessary. We were fighting battles that meant failure equated to death—ours and others. No one I’d tormented was guiltless, usually deserving harsher treatment than I was willing to give. Finnen didn’t have quite the same boundaries, having grown up surrounded by The Troubles and its daily cruelties usually made available for the public view. He and his neighbors learned about torture, including hooding and forcing prisoners to stand against a wall in the “search position” for hours, soaked in ice water, until their muscles cramped into one never-ending spasm. And that was the least agonizing.

  On this Gulfstream, there wasn’t much of a political agenda among the unshackled passengers. We were battling terror, greed, fanaticism, and betrayal. Mostly, it was now about survival. Ours. The Company had passed the limit of allowable tricks and was threatening our existence. Wherever the plane was headed, it wasn’t going to be a vacation for us.

  Finnen sliced Dunne’s other knee.

  “Those were baby cuts, sleeveen,” Finnen said, obviously unaware of all the deceits Dunne had crafted. “Those tendons on the back will be next. A little nip, and you’ll not be walking upright agin’.”

  A gasp, and Dunne’s face wrinkled in a grimace.

  “Jaslyk,” he whispered.

  “Shit,” Washington said. “No escape from that hell. Besides, they’ve never seen a black man there except in cartoons.” He stretched out his oak-barrel legs. “Oh, I think they may have one darky in the Tashkent zoo.”

  We’d all heard the rumors. In our business, the destination of renditioned prisoners was top secret. Nonetheless, the myths buzzed through the camps like an electrical storm. Guantanamo was a paradise compared to the bleak evil of this site in a country ruled by a madman, Islam Karimov, a buffoon who forced all citizens to memorize books written by him describing his super-human talents. Jaslyk prison was located in Karakalpakstan, an area of northwestern Uzbekistan and often called The World’s Worst Place. Jaslyk was modified to address the growing terrorist threat to the Uzbeks in the late 1990s, mostly holding religious prisoners from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and carried the codename UY 64/71. Remnants of Russian experiments to use and contain chemical warfare weapons could still be seen around the facility. Entrance to
Jaslyk was by rail only, and no roads led to the camp through the empty steppe. The most notorious punishment there was boiling prisoners to death, usually after burning over 70 percent of their bodies. No one had been known to survive confinement at Jaslyk. We couldn’t let the jet land.

  It only took Dunne a few seconds to recover. Finnen hadn’t cut him deeply, or the blood would have been seeping into the carpet and Dunne gone into shock. Instead, Dunne tried his best to look unfazed.

  “One way or another,” Dunne said, “you boys are doomed. I don’t know about the girl, but witnesses aren’t too popular in the Firm. Make it easy on yourselves, and let us get to Jaslyk. They only want to ask a few simple questions.”

  “About oil, drugs, terrorism, and murder,” I said, “all orchestrated by the CIA? A laid-back interrogation? Just as surely as there really were WMDs in Iraq.”

  “Where you gonna go?” Dunne asked. “You know they’ll find you. No hidey hole will be safe.”

  “At least it won’t be Uzbekistan,” Washington said. He looked at me. “We have to make a plan and turn this plane in a new direction. Soon.”

  “Anybody got a big Band-Aid?” Dunne asked, somehow feeling he had the upper hand.

  Finnen slapped Dunne on the thigh and laughed.

  “Good one, you rotter,” Finnen said. “Don’t much care if you bleed out. Now shut your trap.”

  Outside the window, I could see we were again over the Hindu Kush, this time headed west rather than northeast and toward the shores of America. A few minutes earlier, we’d been above the vast Gobi Desert of Mongolia. In better times, we would be taking in the magic of jagged, seemingly endless peaks. What we saw now meant Dunne was probably telling the truth about our target destination. We had to figure out an alternate and then convince the pilots it was in their best interest to cooperate.

  “We have to be conscious of Chinese and Russian air space,” Finnen said. “Going south is about the only way to get around a new flight plan. And clearances we won’t have, even if the Queen said so.”