Ghost

by John Ringo

  "We'd planned on that, lad," Hardesty said, handing him a card with his cell phone number on it. "No idea at all where we're going next?"

  "Hopefully I'll find out here," Mike replied.

  Chapter Three

  The Hotel Krcelic was similar to other pensiones Mike had stayed in. Pensiones were somewhere between a "regular" hotel and a bed and breakfast. Most resembled ancient inns and many of them dated from the Middle Ages. This one was in an old limestone-block building with vaguely baroque architecture that probably dated to the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The interior was heavy wood and dark, but the second-story room, one of only six in the whole "hotel," was well lit by a southern window. The bed was heavy wood with two eiderdown mattresses; in cold weather the upper mattress acted as a quilt and sleeping in one was like being wrapped in silken warmth. Mike looked at the bed longingly—he was on about forty hours of straight ops at this point—then hooked up the Geiger counter with the receiver run down his left arm and went down to the bar.

  He'd just ordered a Johnny Walker Black, bourbon being unavailable, when a man sat down next to him.

  "Mr. Duncan," the man said, holding out his hand, "I am pleased to finally meet you. Janus Dukhovic." The man was just above six feet tall, heavy-set, with close-spaced eyes and a thin face that stood out oddly from his heavy girth. He had black hair and black eyes that were cold and hard.

  "Mr. Dukhovic," Mike said, shaking his hand and waving at the bartender. "Would you care for a taste to cut the dust?"

  "Of course," Dukhovic said. "I'm always willing to drink for free."

  When the drinks arrived, they moved to one of the booths and toasted.

  "To IFOR," Dukhovic said dryly.

  "To peace between nations," Mike replied just as dryly, taking a sip of the scotch. "What were you told?"

  "That you want to look at the slave trade," Dukhovic said, shrugging and pulling out a Marlboro. As he lit it he continued. "I have toured many people around the slave trade. Most of them, I think, enjoy the sight," he added, smiling brutally and blowing out smoke. "I had two congressmen once that were so excited I think they nearly came in their pants."

  "I'm sure," Mike said coldly. "I'm less interested in the girls than in how they are transported. I understand that the vehicle of choice is a nine-passenger Mercedes van, usually white, usually with tinted windows."

  "This is true," Dukhovic said, puffing on the cigarette nervously and reevaluating the man across from him.

  "I need to find as many of those vans as possible," Mike continued. "And walk near them. Ones that are carrying girls are lowest on the list. The girls are usually traded at Eagle Market, right? But they don't stay there overnight, true?"

  "True," Dukhovic said, blowing out a smoke ring. "There are various houses in the town that their protectors keep."

  "Where are the majority of the vans going to be?"

  "During the day at the parking lot at Eagle Market," Dukhovic said, shrugging. "They tend to be clustered in the southwest quadrant."

  Mike looked at his watch and frowned.

  "We're going to be at this for a while," Mike said. "Maybe the rest of the day and well into the night. Are you up to that?"

  "Of course," Dukhovic said, putting out his cigarette. "When do you want to start?"

  "Now," Mike replied, downing his drink.

  * * *

  "There are dozens of protectors in the town," Dukhovic said as they drove through Herzjac in his ancient Peugeot, the springs complaining at the rough ride. Much of the town was paved with asphalt, but it was sketchily patched and sometimes seemed to have more potholes than pavement. "And dozens of houses. And all of the dealing does not occur in Eagle Market. Some of the finest girls never go there, but are traded at the houses."

  "Van," Mike said, gesturing with his chin down an alleyway.

  "You wish to stop?" Dukhovic said, looking for a parking place. The street was lined with cars, however.

  "Just drop me off and circle around to the other block," Mike replied. "I'll walk down the alley and meet you there. Be aware that I'm, we're, probably going to be walking as much as driving."

  Mike slid out of the Peugeot and through a couple of cars to the street. There were shops lining the street, some of them starting to close, and a few pedestrians. He strolled to the alleyway, then turned down it, looking around in interest. Most of the buildings in Herzjac were built of limestone block like the pensione, with a scattering of Soviet-era concrete. As they had driven, he had seen still visible signs of the fighting in the area, mostly bullet pockmarks, but also some homes that had clearly suffered from artillery shelling. There were a large number of tree stumps, a clear sign of a town that had been under siege.

  The alleyway was cobbled, with many of the cobbles missing, and stunk of garbage and shit. There was debris scattered through it, mostly newspapers and garbage.

  The van was parked by a side door to a three-story building on the far street. The door was metal and well set into the frame, not that he particularly cared. He was more interested in whether he could be observed as he walked past the van and casually raised his hand towards it, lifting it further to scratch his head. Nothing. He needed to get a radiation source to test it.

  He kept walking to the far block and looked around for the Peugeot. Dukhovic had passed his position and was pulled in to a free parking place, so he strolled over to the car and got in.

  "What I just did is what I'm here for," Mike said. "You're the expert, tell me the best way to do it."

  "Over in Serb town is where most of the houses are," Dukhovic replied, thinking. "I'd suggest we get dinner, wait for the girls to start coming back to the houses and then walk around. It might take most of the night, maybe part of tomorrow, but we can cover all the vans that way."

  "Security issues?" Mike asked as Dukhovic pulled out into traffic.

  "There are some robbers in the area," the Croat said, lighting a cigarette as he drove. "And if it becomes obvious the protectors may get upset."

  "Can you cover us on it?" Mike asked, looking around as they drove. The girls in this town were just as awesome as in the rest of Eastern Europe. Maybe it was something in the water?

  "No," Dukhovic said shortly, blowing smoke out the window. "When the market was first set up, the routes had every nation plying their trade. Bulgarians were prominent, but they didn't dominate or anything. But about five years back, the Chechens started getting into it in a big way and there was . . . call it a slave war. Lots of killing. Not as bad as the real wars, but very bad and very bad for the trade. Anyway, now most of the protectors are fucking Chechens. I got out when I saw it coming, but a bunch of my friends who stayed in the business are dead from the damned Chechens."

  "Same thing happened in the U.S., twice," Mike said. "The cocaine trade in the southeastern U.S. used to be mainly internal. They received their shipments and distributed, but the guys who ran the internal distribution were mostly American background. Heavy Mafia influence, but even that wasn't dominant. Then, well, there was this thing called the Mariel Boatlift in the 1970s, under that bastard idjit Carter. Castro agreed to let people who were 'longing for freedom' come to the United States. What he really did was empty out his prisons. Not even the political prisons, just the prisons with all his real criminals in them. Burglars, murderers, rapists, armed robbers. So south Florida got about ten thousand criminals dropped on it, really brutal ones. They quickly took over the drug trade. Anyone who got in their way they just eliminated without making any fuss about it at all.

  "Then in the 1980s, when the crack wave hit, the Columbians came in, heavy. They had soldiers who were trained in their civil war and it was even more brutal than when the Marielitos took over. Lots of use of automatic weapons, which had been fairly unusual up to that time. They're still in control. So I know what you mean."

  They had dinner in a small restaurant, eating a sort of stew that wasn't too bad. There was dark bread with it that was particularly go
od, as was the red wine. Mike wasn't sure what the meat in the stew was but he'd learned not to ask too many questions about foreign food. Fortunately, Europe wasn't into dog and cat the way the Orient was.

  After finishing off the bottle of wine and a pastry something like baklava, they got back in the car and headed for "Serb town," Dukhovic chain-smoking the whole way.

  Mike could tell right away that this was one of the older parts of the town. The streets were narrow as hell and the alleys were overhung by the buildings. Some of them were simple enough to date back to the late medieval period. There were some Soviet architecture buildings as well; the cheap concrete the Soviets used was famous for being cracked and worn by time.

  They found an open parking place, got out and started walking.

  There were a few people walking the streets; from their hurried walk Mike guessed that they were on the way home and just hoping to get there before being mugged. The muggers and drug dealers were in evidence, standing on street corners or in the shadows of the alleys. But Mike and Dukhovic were clearly not their sort of target. Mike was on full orange alert as he walked, and his attitude was easy enough to read. It was a sort of crackling tension that said: "This may be your turf. But I'm a big dog and just passing through so don't get busy." Even the junkies they saw gave them a wide berth.

  Besides the drug dealers, junkies, losers and thugs, there were lots and lots of white vans. They seemed to be everywhere, parked on the streets, parked in the alleys, sitting in lots by apartment buildings. Many of them had license plates from other countries: Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Ukraine. Mike got tired of trying to keep up, but he also didn't want to double up, so he wrote down a bit of the tag number of each as they passed.

  They stayed at it all night, covering just about every street in Serb town, watching the street people gradually fade away into the night.

  "I am getting quite tired," Dukhovic said towards dawn.

  "I've been up for about fifty-six hours," Mike replied. "If I can keep going, so can you. Have we covered the whole area?"

  "There is a section of small warehouses," Dukhovic said, yawning and pointing. "That way, about two kilometers. Usually not many protectors over there, but they sometimes use the houses along the river."

  "Well, I'm willing to ride," Mike said, looking around. "The car's about three blocks that way, right?"

  "Yes," Dukhovic replied, heading towards the car. "What is it you are looking for? I see that you are waving a device at the vans."

  "The Chechens stole some radioactive isotopes from the Russians," Mike lied. "Not enough to make much of a radiological bomb, but we think they're planning something like it. The device is a radiation detector."

  "Don't they have those sorts of things on helicopters?" Dukhovic asked, confused and tired.

  "Yeah," Mike said. "But nobody thinks they're coming here except me. I guess the detectors are all being used in Russia."

  They got in the car and drove around the section of warehouses, looking for white vans. These buildings were almost all Soviet-style architecture, running close to the river, which had a small port. Finally, Mike spotted a van on a side street and waved Dukhovic to stop.

  He got out and walked down the street, casually, as he had at least a hundred times that night. As he waved his arm at the van, though, his ear was practically blasted by a screech from the Geiger counter. He could vaguely see into the van as he passed, and it had had the seats removed. It also had a Russian license plate. Pay dirt.

  He continued walking to the far end, though, just another night person on the way home. Or, as it may be, going down to the river. The warehouses petered out short of the road that paralleled the river and there were more of the "older" buildings along there, these showing particular abuse from the war. He waved Dukhovic into a parking place and got in.

  "What time do they start to move the girls?" Mike said, looking around. There were a few cars starting to move on the streets as the day people went to their jobs.

  "A little after eight," Dukhovic said. "That van doesn't make sense where it is, though. These houses might hold girls; there's a brothel down the street," he added, pointing. "But all there are up that street are warehouses."

  "Well, it's radioactive as hell," Mike replied, thinking. "If I don't come back, call Northcote and tell him to send in IFOR."

  He got out and walked back up the street, examining the warehouse without really looking at it. There was a small personnel door and a much larger roll-up door. The personnel door was metal and probably locked.

  However, SEALs had access to some pretty obscure schools and one of them had covered "discreet entry." He didn't see any signs of life in the warehouse, no lights, no sound, so he slipped up to the door and slid out a set of picklocks.

  It had been years since he'd really practiced with picklocks and it took him forever to get the door open. But finally the lock clicked over. He put the picklocks away and drew his sidearm, carefully screwing on the suppressor. That done, he slid it into the back of his pants and stepped through the door.

  The room had a large crane system rolled over by the back wall, a large forge on the far left-hand side, several large metal tables, a drill press and an office on the right, near the door he had entered. There were five men in the room, cleaning up. Two of them were wearing heavy rubber gloves and appeared to be picking up bits of metal off the floor while two others were sweeping up the floor. The fifth turned and regarded him balefully for a moment, shifting so as to be behind one of the metal tables. There was a strong smell in the air that he couldn't quite place, but it reminded him of shooting rooms. Melted lead, that was it. It made him feel quite at home.

  * * *

  Nadhim Medein looked up in surprise and annoyance as a Westerner walked in the door. Nadhim was from Yemen and had been a member of one terrorist group or another since he was a teenager. He had first joined the Popular Front for the Revolutionary Jihad in Yemen then traveled to the Tribal Areas in Pakistan where he attended jihadi madrassas. Eventually he was picked to aid the Taliban in their jihad for control of Afghanistan. He had been in the Taliban in Afghanistan on September 11, 2001, when the Great Martyrs had brought down the Towers of the Great Satan and had danced in joy with all the other Taliban at the news. He loved, still, to watch the video of the towers falling.

  But he had also experienced, firsthand, the vengeance of the Great Satan and eventually fled Afghanistan to continue the jihad where it might bear less bitter fruit. He had fought in Fallujah with Al Islam and had been in Syria when this mission was formed. All he knew about the mission was that a bomb had been constructed in this building and he was to clean up so that IFOR would have no evidence of what had been done there. It was not the fiercest job in the world, but one that had to be done quickly and surely. Nadhim Medein was a soldier of the jihad who was known to be quick and sure. So he had been asked to participate and, after ensuring that it was a mission that would be useful to the work of Allah, he had agreed.

  And he was sure he had locked the front door, but the man just opened it up and walked in. He was unarmed, apparently an American from the dress and walk. Nadhim was sure they had been discovered, but he tried to dissemble.

  * * *

  "How did you get in here?" the fifth man said as the others stopped what they were doing.

  "Is Mr. Budak here?" Mike asked, ignoring the question.

  "There is no one called Budak here," the man said, reaching down. "How did you get in here?"

  "The door was open," Mike said, stepping forward to place himself by one of the tables. "I'm looking for Dzore Budak. He said he would be here."

  "Well, he's not," the man said, his hands out of sight behind the table. "You need to go."

  "What are you doing?" Mike answered, looking puzzled. "This is the warehouse of Dzore Budak, isn't it?"

  "Get out," the man said, lifting up an AK as the others began diving behind tables and the large forge.

  Rifles are hard to lif
t quickly but pistols are very quick indeed, and before the AK could come up all the way the silenced pistol had targeted the man's chest. Mike put a round into either side of the chest and dropped behind the table, turning it over with a massive heave as the others pulled out rifles from their hiding places.

  * * *

  Asfaw Rabah watched in shock as Nadhim was cut down by the American, then reached under the worktable and pulled out his AK. He could not believe that Nadhim had been killed so easily. Nadhim was a legend in the Jihad and his stories of fighting the Dar Al Harb throughout the world had passed the slow times on this mission. It made Asfaw incredibly angry that so great a man had died in such an ignominious way.

  Asfaw was from Saudi Arabia, the only son in a family of five. His parents were not particularly devout, to his way of thinking, and did not support his choice to join the jihad. But when he was fifteen he had gone with some friends to hear the words of the Mullah Yahya Mahad, one of the many Wahabbist preachers who made their living bringing the Word of God to the Dar Al Islam along the road to Mecca. At the time the forces of the Great Shaitan were still infesting the Holy Lands, their main base within a few hundred miles of the Holy City. Until that time, Asfaw had never thought what a sin against Allah it was to have the Crusader forces so close to the Holy City. The mullah, though, had thought long and hard upon it and he pointed out how very angry Allah must be.

  From that day forward, Asfaw had pledged himself to rid the Holy Lands of the Crusader forces, wherever that might be. He had been picked up by the Saudi police in a demonstration against the Crusaders and, while his family had managed to get him out of prison, he had been forced to leave his home country. He had added to his pledge the vow to eventually throw down the corrupt House of Saud who had allowed the Crusaders into the Holy Lands and had joined the Jihadi Al Islam with that purpose in mind. With the fall of the kaliphate in Afghanistan he had been forced to go to Syria, and it was there he met Nadhim and been recruited for this mission.