Ghost Target

by Nicholas Irving

  They left her room and reentered the elevator. She held a fob against the reader on the panel of floor numbers and pressed “PH.”

  After a rapid climb, the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and two guards said, “Good evening, Miss Moreau.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Good evening, Jacques, Henri. You gentlemen may take the rest of the evening off.”

  The two men departed and Nina led Basayev by the hand to the balcony, which provided a spectacular view of the Côte d’Azur and town of Saint-Maxime across the Mediterranean Sea. On a small table was a bottle of Goût de Diamants, which Basayev knew was most likely the most expensive champagne in the world.

  “Ma mère était une Chapuy d’Oger,” she said. Her French accent was smooth and buttery. “Ne crois pas que je vais acheter ces bouteilles. J’en obtiens deux par an.”

  My mother was a Chapuy from Oger. Don’t think I buy these. I get two bottles a year.

  “At a million euros a bottle, that’s a good trust fund,” Basayev said.

  “Please,” she said, switching to English. “I drink the champagne, but make my own money.”

  Basayev nodded in admiration. “I’ve learned that nothing in life is free, especially unearned money.”

  He removed the bottle from her hands, popped the cork, and poured the fizzing champagne into the two glasses.

  “You are correct, sir. And before we drink. Your name?”

  “Khasan Basayev.” He raised his glass.

  “Nina Moreau.”

  “And your occupation, Miss Moreau?” he asked.

  “I think you know, but I fight … for what is right,” she said. “And you?”

  “I fight,” he said, paused, and then finished, “to live.”

  “Battre pour vivre,” she toasted. Fight to live.

  They clinked glasses, looking each other in the eyes, and took long sips from the crystal stemware.

  She placed her glass on the table. He looked above her head at the sea, heard the waves crashing into the shore, and felt his heart, for once, open like a flower sensing spring.

  “I think we are in the same business,” she whispered, as if sensing his reluctance.

  “Are we?” he asked. “If so, perhaps we could combine our talents for the biggest payday of all.”

  From that night, he and Nina had become both lovers and business partners. To get to Savannah, she said, required them to first go through Afghanistan. She had intelligence on a sex-slave operation that her French DGSE handlers required her to investigate.

  His entry to Afghanistan had been as a businessman wearing the very same suit he had worn last night in the elevator with Harwood. Over the course of his first month in country he had established his bona fides as a banker and wealth manager, which was a growth industry in the prosperous upper crust of Kabul. In preparation for one business meeting he had flown in Nina as his business associate. Nina had proven to be resourceful in her ability not only to travel, but to disguise herself. While her features were dark, she sometimes chose to wear the burqa, which had proven useful in smuggling certain supplies. This versatility allowed her to appear at one moment a businesswoman and the next a submissive Afghan woman following the directives of her husband.

  After riding from Kabul to Kandahar, Basayev proposed in the middle of the barren landscape that would be their home for the next few days. Nina smiled and said, “Yes.” A local Taliban imam married them in the town of Panjwai on the Arghandab River, known for its pomegranates and grapes. They were wed in the arboretum surrounded by a Taliban warlord’s vineyards, where he produced grapes and raisins for export along with the occasional bootleg case of wine, strictly against the law. The warlord, Nazim Ghul, was Basayev’s main employer, as well. At the wedding, Nina was dressed in customary Afghan tribal regalia while Basayev wore a different suit. They honeymooned in the mountains near Tarin Kowt, him finding a happiness he never believed possible and believing that she was content, as well. There they sighted six of the eleven species of hawks found in Afghanistan. The lesser and common kestrel, the rare Amur falcon, the merlin, the peregrine, and the prize of them all, the gyrfalcon.

  “En général, les oiseaux nous aident à rêver. Cependant, les faucons permettent à nos rêves de s’envoler,” Nina whispered in his ear one dewy morning in the middle of the valley. A hawk soared above them like a black cross gliding in circles.

  Birds in general help us dream. Falcons make our dreams take flight.

  “Ils soulèvent nos âmes à chaque fois qu’ils s’envolent, parce que nous aussi, nous pensons que nous sommes dans les airs avec eux,” he replied.

  They lift our souls every time they fly, because we believe that we, too, are up there with them.

  “Oui,” she said softly. Her voice was like velvet. And her words were inspirational to an earthbound infantryman like him. He had never thought about it before, but ever since she had made that observation, his spirit soared just a bit each time he saw a bird, especially a falcon, in flight.

  They left the Arghandab River valley and moved by camel to Sangin, where he would begin his mission as part of Ghul’s opium protection force in the Helmand River valley. There had never been a question of whether Nina would come; he always knew she would and frankly he wanted her there with him. She was, after all, a trained French DGSE agent who could shoot a rifle nearly as well as he could. Her legend was as a nurse, whose duties she could perform also. As he departed for the mission three months ago in the foothills of the mountains of northern Helmand Province, she had stayed in Sangin in a small hut Guhl had provided them.

  “Come back to me, Khasan,” she had said. “Come to me.” She had given him a small medallion of an Amur falcon. “For you,” she said. “The Amur is only here temporarily. It migrates from China to Africa every year, passing through Afghanistan on each trip. That’s what I’m asking you to do. Be like the Amur. We are only here temporarily, passing through. When you are done, we will leave and grow our family.”

  “I will,” Basayev said. “I promise. Be here when I return and we will do as you say, Nina.”

  Nina had used her sniper rifle to cover his movement out of the village. He had driven his pickup truck, loaded with his rifle and rucksack, determined to kill Vick Harwood, the man they called the Reaper. The dossier his employer had given Basayev detailed Harwood’s personal life, his operating style, and his crimes against humanity. The information indicated that Harwood had killed over two dozen high-level enemy commanders, which Basayev couldn’t care less about. But what interested him was that during Harwood’s two and a half months on the ground, nearly twenty women had gone missing, suspected kidnappings, each on a day that Harwood had killed a Taliban commander. The link analysis conducted by the Taliban intelligence officer who built the dossier indicated that each of the women was in some way connected to Harwood’s kills, that in fact Harwood was operating off a kill sheet to eliminate the tribal elders and family patriarchs so that these women—young women, from fifteen to twenty-five—were made vulnerable and ripe for kidnap teams.

  That—and the money—was enough to motivate Basayev to quickly kill Harwood and return to Nina. But as he waited in his lair to kill the Reaper, he had received an alert on his secure satellite phone from one of Ghul’s lieutenants that the three pickup trucks were steaming toward Sangin. He had watched helplessly as the kidnap unfolded before him in the valley below—less than a mile away, but an eternity in the Afghan terrain. He had known that he was being watched by Harwood and that if he left his position he stood no chance of rescuing Nina even if he was able to reach the village before the kidnap team retreated. He had been trapped.

  Nina had been kidnapped on his watch. He had wondered if he would ever see her again.

  Then the Instagram photo tag had come a week ago. In the image an Amur falcon was soaring high above the Savannah skyline, free. Free as a bird, as the saying went. The picture had a sign with a name and he knew that the game was afoot. The large payday was wit
hin reach. He only needed to leave a package behind and had done so. Until yesterday, he had no idea whether it had been retrieved.

  Basayev snapped out of his reverie when he felt the tear sliding along his face. Nina. He thumbed the Amur falcon on the silver chain. His sorrow quickly gave way to anticipation.

  He walked over to his laptop, checked the tracking device he had slipped into Harwood’s rucksack in the elevator as the man had exited the yawning doors. Punching the trackpad, he saw the map pop up and scan west, stopping in the middle of Georgia, showing a blue dot speeding along Interstate 76. Apparently, the Reaper had hitched a ride. He was proving to be a resourceful infantryman.

  But still, the Chechen believed his skills to be superior to the Reaper’s. Case in point, he could have kidnapped him last night, but did not want to give up his cover just yet. Knowing that police would be descending on Savannah quickly, Basayev wanted to give Harwood running rope. The chase was important.

  The sound of pounding on the door, as if with the butt of a hand, boomed in the hotel room. Basayev walked over, peeked through the hole, then opened the door, and Samuelson brushed past him.

  “I g-got his stuff just in time,” Samuelson said, holding Harwood’s duffel bag and shaving kit. “And I didn’t kill him, like you asked. Even though he left me for dead.”

  Samuelson spit out the words “left me for dead” as if they were foul-tasting food.

  “Good work, Abrek. Yes, we will kill him, for you, but not yet. He needs to lead us to Nina.”

  That was the indoctrination narrative. Harwood had to stay alive until they found Nina. Every day for the last three months Basayev had been planning and prepping the mission while brainwashing Samuelson that Harwood had intentionally left him for dead. During physical training and shooting drills in Kandahar, he had also taught Samuelson breathing exercises to minimize the distracting stutter.

  “He’s just west of a town called Statesboro. He found a ride,” Basayev said. “Probably headed to Atlanta.”

  Samuelson looked at him and nodded.

  “To link up with J-Jackie?” Samuelson asked.

  “That’s what I’m hoping. She is key to the entire operation,” Basayev replied.

  He placed a hand on Samuelson’s shoulder, thinking he didn’t want to kill the young man yet, but that day would come. The months of indoctrination had created a faux bond between Samuelson and Basayev.

  “You did well,” Basayev said.

  Samuelson smiled, a distant look in his eyes.

  “We will save Nina,” Samuelson said.

  “Yes, Abrek. The Reaper kidnapped her.”

  Basayev walked out of the hotel room with his own duffel bag and suitcase. Samuelson followed, carrying a small gym bag. Basayev had found a used car lot, purchased a Hummer H2 with cash, the king of all languages, and parked it two blocks away from the hotel. They walked through the misty streets, fog rolling off the river like dry ice at a rock concert. He cranked the Hummer, pushed the button placing it into gear, snapped his smartphone with tracking device into its cradle, and sped out of the parking lot toward Statesboro.

  “Rifle loaded?” Basayev asked.

  “Always,” Samuelson replied.

  CHAPTER 13

  Harwood had managed to find two rides. First a short ride with a trucker, who seemed oblivious to everything except texting with his girlfriend for a solid fifty miles. They drove through some thunderstorms and at the first chance Harwood ditched that ride. He hid for a few hours in the woods behind a McDonald’s until he found a second ride on the back of a maintenance trailer driven by a group of Hispanic men who spoke little English. He wedged himself in between two riding lawnmowers and lay down, his head next to the rear wheels of the tractors. Despite the bouncing and the rattle of rakes, chain saws, and hedge trimmers, Harwood managed to fall asleep. For how long, he didn’t know, but based on the location of the sun, it was maybe an hour, two at the most.

  He awoke when the vehicle slowed to a stop and he heard the rapid-fire talking of the Hispanic men. The sign for a popular gas station loomed above him. One of the men was filling up the gas tank while another went inside the convenience store. It was about time to snare his own wheels so that he could take charge of his own situation. Stop the spiral.

  He slid from between the two tractors and bounced onto the pavement. Dark shades of gray preceded nightfall as he jogged away from the filling station. Harwood hooked a left into a neighborhood filled with small 1950s-era brick homes that had devolved into either slum, crack, or vacant housing. Most likely a combination of all three. Yards were overgrown with grass three feet high. Rusty chain-link fences framed every lot. Some homes were shuttered and boarded up, as if in expectation of a hurricane. Lights flickered beyond the windows of a few homes. Mostly, though, the houses appeared as if they were uninhabited. Five houses in on the left side of the road was a house with boarded windows, no lights, no car in the oil-stained driveway, and absolutely no sign of life. He jogged up to the carport, found a dark recess, and was motionless, breathing hard, pulling in oxygen, refreshing his system. It was all about the basics. Physical conditioning had always been important to Harwood and he had been pushing himself through rehab. Physical rehab had never been the issue; that would come. It was the psychological piece that confounded him.

  As his heart rate steadied, a sense of control began to feed his logic train. Break into this apparently abandoned house and wait for darkness. Steal a car and get to Atlanta. The Google report had mentioned a Barnes & Noble in Buckhead where Jackie was supposed to have appeared. He could find that, maybe find her manager at a nearby hotel, and work from there.

  Harwood slid deeper into the carport, found that the storm door was hanging by one hinge. He used his Leatherman to remove the remaining hinge and set the door aside, leaning it against the brick exterior. The wooden door was chipped and peeling paint where he pressed his shoulder into it. He slid the Leatherman’s knife blade between the latch and the jamb and fractionally opened the door. He leaned back against the brick wall and used his hand and wrist to flip the door backward, opening it to a ratty kitchen floor. Leading with his Beretta pistol, he entered the barren kitchen and moved swiftly to the dining and living room area, which was also empty. The house smelled of urine, fried food, and mold. Someone had used the house recently. There was no furniture. The windows were boarded with plywood, but dull gray twilight seeped around the poorly aligned edges, allowing him to visually inspect the premises.

  Taking long strides down the narrow hallway, he cleared the one bathroom, which had dry brown water stains on the floor and cracked plaster falling from the ceiling. Visions of dead bodies in the tub danced in his mind, but he shuttered them with newfound purpose. Flashes of clearing a house in Kandahar or Baghdad or some nameless village in Syria popped like lightning strikes, leaving behind the photonegative image, but he shunted those, too, and forged ahead.

  Keeping his back to the door, he slid into the hall, thinking he heard a noise coming from the back bedroom. The hallway was like a spine, bathroom and bedroom on the right-hand side and one bedroom on the left-hand side. Harwood slid along the wall to the nearest door, spun into it, and found some old gray blankets scattered on the floor along with some water bottles. The closet doors were missing and there was a rumpled sleeping bag running the length of the closet.

  He had happened into a transient homeless shelter. Moving to the interior wall, he trained his listening skills on the far room. Deep breaths. And whispering.

  Two people. Or one person talking to himself? But he could make out two distinct octaves. A conversation going back and forth.

  Moving into the hallway, Harwood lifted his pistol and spun through the last door on the left. Two children and an elderly man sat huddled in the corner. They were on a blanket, water bottles scattered around them. He kept his pistol trained away as he visually inspected them. No weapons, just the unmistakable detritus of squalor. The children were maybe twelve years o
ld, malnourished. The elderly man looked over eighty, bright white hair contrasting with his dark skin and wizened face. He held the two children with long thin arms as if protecting them under his wings.

  “We ain’t got nothing to give you, son,” the man said. “’Cept maybe a bottle of water.”

  Harwood glanced at the closet, which had two doors closed tight. He looked back at the man and said, “Anyone in the closet?”

  After a pause, the man said, “Now you come in here with a handgun scaring my grandchildren and start asking me questions?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Harwood said as he instinctively moved against the far wall that was opposite the hallway. “You don’t look like the lying type, so just tell me what’s on the other side of that door, please.”

  He was looking at two solid panel doors that were in much better repair than anything else he had seen in the house. New hinges on both sides at all four points: top right, bottom right, top left, and bottom left. The door fit flush at every angle and joint. Harwood remembered the long hallway and the two rooms on the right and just the one on the left. Could this set of doors lead to another room?

  He caught the children staring at the doors when he glanced quickly in their direction. The looks on their faces were practically screaming “Please don’t look in there!” Harwood had no interest in any of this now other than his personal safety. He was in the house, which he originally saw as a sanctuary, but which now contained a possible threat.

  “From one brother to another,” the grandfather said. “Please don’t go in there. You look like you might be law enforcement. And you’re right, I don’t lie, particularly in front of my grandchildren. So, whatever your purpose here is, we have no quarrel with you, nor you with us. I kindly ask you to leave us alone.”

  Before Harwood could respond, the doors opened. He lifted his pistol in pure combat mode, crouching into a shooter’s stance. A young man stepped toward him, maybe close to his age, wearing a Falcons jersey, cargo pants, and high-top white sneakers.