The Power of Three

by J C Ryan

  He’d lost track of his old buddy for close to eight years. He hoped it wouldn’t be another eight before their paths crossed again.

  BY NOON, A bit irritated, Rex knew he wouldn’t get the recall order today. It was midnight, twelve hours behind Kabul time, in Arizona. He swallowed his disappointment and told Frank he was out of there for the rest of the day. He was going to make his rounds in the market, see what else he could learn. But he didn’t have much hope that anything new would happen until the harvest was well under way and the new labs began to produce their poison again.

  It incensed him to think that he’d have to start all over again, but the greater concern was that his time was running out. Sooner or later, someone would put it together, he’d be discovered, and his head would be literally on the chopping block. The only thing he could do now, until he was recalled, was to make such a nuisance of himself that Brandt had no choice but to pull him out.

  2

  Kabul, Afghanistan June 2014

  REX HAD SUSPECTED for a while that his mission was merely window-dressing. The more he learned about how the networks thrived, the more he was convinced he was right. The Holy Grail, or perhaps it was the grayly hole, whatever it was, the answer to ending the Afghan drug trade was seated in America. That’s where he had to be. Meanwhile, he’d spent a year in Afghanistan, chasing mirages. Not all of it was wasted though. He now possessed an intimate knowledge of the industry, from producer to consumer and everyone in between. And it was those who were in between who he wanted to focus on now. They were the enablers, they had to go. No doubt he’d given a few small farmers a bellyache, but it had been a drop in the proverbial bucket. Destroying small labs didn’t disrupt the major leagues for even a day.

  The waste of time and resources frustrated him to no end, but even worse was the fact that it was prolonging the war and wasting even more time, resources, and the lives of young American soldiers who don’t even know they’re being used as pawns in a game of political chess.

  He’d had enough. He was a logical man – black and white – squares and circles. The drug trade was the heart of the problem. Destroy it and the war ends. No one else wanted to do it, so he was going to do it. The destruction of the massive warehouse night before last was just the beginning. No longer concerned about protecting his cover or conserving his sources, he plotted a new assault. Beginning today, he’d be more proactive, less cautious about asking questions.

  He’d take out stockpiles of last year’s product and labs for new product whenever and wherever he found them. And he’d have the full support of Frank Millard and the resources available to him. Frank had been a friend back in boot camp. Until Rex began this mission, they hadn’t seen each other for eight years, but the friendship remained.

  His other buddy, Trevor – ex-Australian SAS and dog handler – along with Trevor’s Dutch shepherd, would be his allies, since CRC was under the CIA’s thumb, and the CIA was a dysfunctional bureaucracy, not worthy of his concern.

  Before he approached Frank with his plan, he needed to identify a few targets. This afternoon’s work would net at least one or two, or so he hoped.

  He dressed in his cover attire, the loose serwal trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, slit on both sides below the waist. If he’d been pressed for an opinion, he’d have had to admit that these man-jammies, as he liked to call them, were marginally cooler than his Western civilian clothing, usually khaki cargo shorts and a Polo-style shirt. It was definitely cooler than the fatigues he wore when posing as a member of the US military. The loosely-woven, white fabric of the traditional Middle Eastern garb both reflected the sun and let in any breezes that occasionally rose, even in summer.

  Rex also valued the concealing nature of the clothing, because his body revealed more about him than he wished known while he was passing for an Afghani man. Instead of the lean but soft muscles of the indolent poor he hung out with, his were corded and well-defined, betraying a strenuous workout regimen one would not expect to find with a lowly peasant on the streets of Kabul. The loose-fitting clothes, of course, also helped to conceal handguns and knives, or whatever lethal surprises he might be carrying. Not that he needed any weapons at all. Expert in martial arts, especially Krav Maga, which he’d practiced since before adulthood, his skills were all he needed most of the time.

  His black hair, dark brown eyes, and skin browned by years in sunny environments, the native dress and demeanor, all helped him to blend in. The only other features he needed to pass for native were to adopt the posture and gait of the locals, which looked more like a saunter than a purposeful stride. And of course, the flawless accent and fluent command of Arabic. In the latter, he was fortunate to have a savant-like quirk that allowed him to achieve fluency quickly and speak with the accent of either his tutor or the people he surrounded himself with daily.

  He’d begun to learn Arabic while in college, preparing himself for a career in the Foreign Service. By the time he’d been given this assignment, he could pass as a native speaker. A year into the assignment, he had the accent and idiom of the chronically unemployed who frequented the market looking for work down cold.

  His regular ‘beat’ was a coffee shop, actually more of an open-air stall than a shop, on the fringes of the busiest blocks in the market district. For the past year, he’d been coming here, making friends, keeping his ears open, and professing to look for work. On occasion, he’d taken odd jobs, but none were long term, and that suited him fine. He had to be free to follow up on leads.

  Previously, he’d avoided referring to the opium trade when putting out feelers for work. Now, with a new purpose, he grew bolder. His companions gossiped. There was no other word for it. Previously, references to opium were oblique, and he’d had to read between the lines. Today, he spoke frankly, claiming to need more money and inquiring whether his friends knew of anyone needing a worker with the skills to extract morphine from raw opium.

  They looked at him with new respect. It was a better résumé than any of them could present. Perhaps it would benefit them to know someone of his stature. One admitted he might have a contact. Abdul – as Rex was known to them – should come by the coffee shop later in the evening, about ten o’clock, to meet someone who knew someone who might know of a job for him.

  Rex had eight hours to wait, so he continued to the next knot of gossip-mongers with the same request, and when that proved fruitless, on to the next. He earned three afghani, less than four US cents, not even enough for his next cup of coffee, helping to load a truck in the late afternoon. By early evening, the streets were beginning to empty.

  Though curfews had been imposed off and on over the years since 2002, when the 24-year prohibition of being on the streets after midnight was lifted, the locals had learned that it wasn’t safe after dark in any case. A few hardy souls frequented restaurants and other gathering places, most notably ex-pats who unaccountably lived in Kabul despite the war or civilians who were employed because of the war – reporters, for example.

  Rex, however, didn’t break character. Those civilians weren’t his priority. They’d chosen to be here.

  In the hours between seven and ten p.m., he picked up enough leads to keep him busy for the rest of the night.

  3

  The Phoenix Compound, Kabul, Afghanistan June 2014

  DIGGER USUALLY SLEPT when his alpha, Trevor, did. If he’d had his way, he’d have slept a lot more than he did. But even when he was asleep, part of his brain was on alert for danger to Trevor or the pack. He opened his eyes and pitched his ears using all his senses to assess if it was a threat approaching or not, more than five seconds before any human would have heard the light tap on Trevor’s door.

  It was full dark, but he could sense Trevor stirring. Digger got up and padded to the door, putting his nose to the opening near the floor. Rex was outside. Digger growled softly and waited by the door until Trevor got up and opened it.

  “Ready for some action?” Rex asked.

 
Digger smelled the adrenaline and recognized the excitement in Rex’s manner. Humans used a lot of noises that had no meaning in between their words. He went to the shelf where his harness and other gear were stored, picked up the mess of straps in his mouth, and took them to Trevor.

  “Good boy,” Trevor said. He was pulling on his clothes, so Digger sat, haunches down and front legs straight, waiting for his turn.

  Rex shook his head, “Now how the hell did he know to do that?”

  “I told you he understands what we’re saying.”

  While Trevor sorted out the straps and put Digger’s harness on him, fixing the camera to it securely, Rex talked some more. Digger understood only some of the words, but even Trevor would have been surprised at how many. Digger knew the names of objects, even those that didn’t figure in his commands. He understood that ‘Rex’ meant his alpha’s friend, who was afraid of him. He understood that ‘Trevor’ meant both alpha and leader, and he knew the human words for those canine concepts. He understood numbers to a certain point, though ‘dozen’, ‘hundred’, and more just meant ‘many’ to him.

  Digger didn’t get the opportunity to meet many others of his kind, so he identified more with the humans in his life than the dogs he met in passing. He couldn’t have expressed it, but his world consisted of ‘pack’ and ‘not pack’. Of the people and animals that were not pack, there were those who were simply not pack and harmless, and there were enemies. The words for enemies were ‘target’, ‘tango’, ‘haji’ and a few others, and many times he could smell and sense evil without the alpha having to name them.

  Some of the other words were confusing. ‘Bastard’, for example, sometimes meant enemy, and sometimes not, if Trevor called a pack member that. Digger tended to ignore that one, unless a command was part of what he heard. Like ‘get that bastard’.

  Digger’s eyes moved back and forth, his gaze intent on Trevor when he was speaking, and Rex when he spoke. Digger waited. He would get his commands when it was time.

  Rex eyed Digger nervously while he was talking. Sometimes it seemed like the dog understood everything he was saying. Trevor always told him Digger was smart. Claimed he had a vocabulary of a thousand or so words. Freakin’ crazy. But he’d seen the dog in action, and he couldn’t argue with his effectiveness.

  Digger was a Dutch shepherd, a big bruiser – sixty-six pounds, over two feet tall when on all fours, and black with shaggy hair and a variety of facial expressions that looked for all the world like human ones. Rex knew for a fact that the dog smiled. No other explanation for it. He was certain Digger knew he felt fear, not just dislike, in his presence. He’d once seen a cat do the same thing to his little sister, who feared cats as much as he feared dogs, though as far as he knew she didn’t have as good a reason. The cat walked up in front of his sister, Quinn, fixed its eyes on hers, sat down and just stared until Quinn had burst into tears and run from the room.

  He wasn’t about to burst into tears, but he was almost sure the damn dog was getting some kicks out of teasing him that way by sitting there staring at him, mouth open, tongue lolled out, and his teeth showing. Rex didn’t like it when Digger did that to him, but he loved it when the dog helped that way with an interrogation. The hajis thought the dog was a demon. They called him ‘djinn’ or ‘Alshaytan’, and he scared the truth out of them every time.

  Digger also had his ‘interested’ look. It was what he was exhibiting right now, as if he could understand the mission briefing. Hell, for all I know, he can. But Trevor always gave Digger his commands in bite-sized pieces, just when it was time for him to perform. So probably, he couldn’t understand everything. Maybe he was just picking out words he knew, like ‘drugs’. Rex knew the dog knew that one, because he’d been told to search for them often enough. And he always found them.

  Tonight’s work would be both easier and more intense than anything they’d done in the past. Before now, they raided labs or storehouses away from the city, and they did just one every couple of weeks. Rex had been careful to put some time and distance between the source of his intel and his raids.

  As of this afternoon, though, he’d decided to change his tactics. To wreak enough destruction in a short enough time to attract some attention, they’d have to strike tonight, and because it was already midnight, it would have to be nearby. Rex had learned of two minor storehouses on the fringes of town, but his most juicy target was the truck he’d helped load earlier.

  It was full of heroin, disguised in woven reed chests that had objets d’art, aka Afghani junk, wrapped in cloth and layered on top. It wouldn’t fool a straight-up customs inspection, but like everyone else around here, the customs officials were corrupt. The heroin was bound for Germany and points west via the Golden Crescent route through Turkey. If Rex had his way, somebody in Germany was going to be very disappointed in the customer service provided by the shipping company.

  The plan was to hit the storehouses first. They’d be the most lightly guarded, and the explosions would attract only local attention. The truck, however, was near the center of the city. That would attract not only the city police force, but that of the Afghan military as well as the various US interests. The real economic impact wouldn’t be as much as they’d caused with the destruction of the large warehouse in the mountains the night before. But the arrogance of the action would create repercussions, he had no doubt.

  The storehouses were a piece of cake. The team of Rex, Trevor, and Digger had developed a standard procedure that worked every time. Just like the night before, Digger stealthily pinpointed the guards with his night-vision camera, Rex or Trevor took out each one, usually with a silent swipe of a KA-BAR across the jugular, and then Digger scouted the lab or storehouse for anyone inside. Depending on what he found, they killed or disabled the people, rigged the C4, and bugged out before the timed explosions did their work.

  The operations were flawless. The only unusual aspect was that by Rex’s normal attack time of 3:00 a.m., they’d done two, and by three-thirty, they were poised for a third.

  The truck presented a different scenario, so as sirens sounded in the distance, Rex and Trevor waited on a rooftop half a block away from the compound where the truck was being guarded, while Digger took point. Rex hadn’t heard enough to know why the truck hadn’t set out on its journey as soon as it was loaded, only that it wouldn’t move until morning. It was the only reason he’d been confident in leaving it for last.

  The surroundings were different for one thing. They were used to operating in rural areas, where electricity was nonexistent. Here, there were yellow pools of light, creating deeper shadows, to be sure, but also making it difficult to navigate efficiently. Digger, of course, instinctively avoided the light when he was on the job. He could approach the truck without being seen or heard more easily than Rex and Trevor could, as good as they were, they were amateurs against Digger’s abilities to move stealthily.

  Nevertheless, if anyone caught sight of him, it could be game over. The fear the hajis exhibited around the djinn-dog would cause them to shout out, and they would have lost the element of surprise. Trevor sent Digger to scout for the guards with the complex whispered command, “Scout, crawl, hide, hold.” He made a gesture Rex hadn’t seen before with his hand, and Digger immediately crouched and began making his way through the shadows with his belly low to the ground.

  This wasn’t the time to ask about the hand gesture, but Rex wondered what it meant for a moment. He forgot the curiosity as Digger crept within a yard of a guard, backed around the corner of the nearest building, and grew still, all the while staying in his crawl profile.

  At a nod from Rex, Trevor went the other direction. After a minute, his crouched and running form came into view in the iPad, approaching from behind where Digger was hiding. When Trevor emerged around the corner, he had but one long step to reach the guard, slit his throat, and shrink back into the shadows. One down.

  Rex joined Trevor, and they repeated the exercise, circling back
behind the buildings surrounding the compound and taking out five guards before Digger indicated there were no more. Next came rigging the truck with C4. Rex had intended to have it happen within half an hour of their exit from the area. Trevor argued it might be better to rig it to explode when it was started.

  Rex weighed the options. Would innocents be endangered if they did it Trevor’s way? He took a moment for the first time to examine the buildings surrounding the compound. Over Trevor’s protests, he slipped away and scouted around the outside of the perimeter the buildings represented. A few merchants might be inconvenienced, he decided, but if the truck left on time, only property would be destroyed. Along with the driver and whatever employees of the drug lord who owned the truck might be around. Those weren’t innocents in his book.

  He returned to the truck and nodded to Trevor. “Your way,” he said.

  They finished their work and sneaked through the streets to the Phoenix compound. ‘Abdul’ didn’t want to be anywhere the local police could find him when that truck exploded. And he wanted to have transport at hand when the Old Man heard there was a price on his head and recalled him.

  If tonight’s mission doesn’t earn me that recall, then nothing will.

  4

  Near the city center, Kabul, Afghanistan June 21, 2014, 8:00 a.m.

  THE CITY WAS just beginning to hum with its usual activity when the truck exploded, sending people under the nearest shelter for cover. Screams of terror and shouts of instructions from men to their wives and children began soon after, and sirens added to the chaos within minutes.

  A cloud of dust hung in the still air, pinpointing the location of the explosion. Strangely, no buildings had been harmed, and there were only three casualties – the driver of the truck, and two people whom witnesses said were standing nearby. It took half an hour to collect the largest body parts and confirm the statements. Further cleanup would take longer. The only property destroyed was the truck and its load – several hundred pounds of heroin.