Abducted: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller (16 page)

Chapter 32

Saturday Afternoon and Evening

It was three thirty when
Wilson and I got home. I took Wilson for a walk and then went to the gym to
lift weights and work out on the heavy bag. I thought about Monica the whole
time. I thought about her knitting baby blankets and donating them to unwed
mothers. I thought about the first time she and I went shooting together. Of
course, we competed against each other. She matched me shot for shot until the
very last three shots. Then, she hit two that I didn’t. She’s one of the best
shots I’ve ever encountered. I also remembered the first time we sparred
together. She’d had plenty of training and was very good.
Strong
and fast.
She’d gotten in a couple of good shots. When I was cage
fighting, I didn’t actually get hit very much. But Monica was able to land some
shots. She was good. She could shoot. She could fight. And she liked to knit
baby blankets. The thought made me smile. I’d find her. I had to find her.

I got back home at five
thirty, showered, and thought about what to eat for dinner. I decided to go to
Suzanne's Country Deli on Ventura Boulevard for a couple of pastrami
sandwiches. I got coleslaw to go with the sandwiches.

When I got home with the
sandwiches, Wilson was very interested. I gave him one of the sandwiches and I
ate the other one and the coleslaw. Tasty.

I tried to read Plato's
Charmides
, his
discussion on the meaning of self-control. But memories of the
Cornford
missions in Afghanistan kept intruding. Finally, I
gave in and focused on the memories.

The first mission where I was
involved with
Cornford
came later in my deployment.
I'd already had over a hundred confirmed kills. The mission had to do with a
poppy farmer/heroin producer who sold his heroin to distributors in the US to
finance the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Cornford
and I
traveled in a Humvee to a remote mountainous region overlooking a wide, flat,
peaceful valley where hundreds of acres of poppies grew. Below the shooting
location
Cornford
had selected was a compound where
the poppies were processed into heroin. He had
me set up and
sight in
on the front entrance. The shot would be just under a thousand
yards.
Cornford
showed me a photo of the target and
we began our wait. He had a scope similar to the one on my rifle. We waited and
watched for nearly five hours before two vehicles came toward the compound from
the far end of the valley. They stopped in front of the compound. Two men got
out of the lead vehicle, a Kelly green Range Rover, and two got out of the
second vehicle, a silver Mercedes G-Class.

“Older guy getting out of the
Mercedes,”
Cornford
had said.

I sighted in. “Got him,” I
said.

“Take the shot,”
Cornford
said.

I took the shot. The target's
head snapped back and he collapsed to the ground.

“Confirmed hit,”
Cornford
said, still looking through his scope. “Good shot.
Let's go.”

In less than a minute we were
back in the Humvee, headed out of the hills and away from the peaceful little valley.

The second mission where
Cornford
was involved was kill number one hundred eighteen.
Once again,
Cornford
and I went off by
ourselves
, two days out this time, to a remote village in a
mountainous region that reminded me of the high desert out beyond Barstow,
California. Again, we were in the hills above the village, set up for a shot.
This one was a little over a thousand yards.
Cornford
showed me a photo of my target, a handsome young man in his twenties, a Taliban
operative.
Cornford
watched in his scope as I watched
in mine. That time we waited for almost six hours.

After the long wait, we saw
the dust in the distance, vehicles coming across the desert. There were four of
them. Two were old pickups with fifty caliber guns mounted on top of the cabs.
A gunner stood in the bed of the pickup ready to shoot. One of the pickups led
the little caravan, one brought up the rear. The second car was an old Toyota
Land Cruiser. The third vehicle was new Chevy Tahoe. The caravan pulled into
the village and stopped in the front of one of the homes. As the men climbed
out of the vehicles, men from the village came to greet them. The women and
children who had been out and about earlier had disappeared indoors.

The target emerged from the
Tahoe, stretched, and stood for a moment, surveying the hills around the
village. He was tall and wore western style clothes. He was clean-shaven and
looked more like a grad student than a Taliban operative. From the way he was
being greeted, he was clearly an honored visitor.

Cornford
asked, “You got him?”

“Got him.”

“Take the shot.”

I fired and the young man's
head blew apart, his body collapsing into the dirt.

“Confirmed kill,”
Cornford
said. “Good shot.”

We were out of there in less
than a minute and I did not think of the mission again until yesterday.

The third mission that
involved
Cornford
was four months later. We traveled
for three days to the most remote spot we'd visited thus far, a camp hidden
high in the mountains.

Again,
Cornford
showed me a photo of the target. The camp was a beehive of activity: physical
conditioning, weapons training,
strategy
sessions.
Older men were in conference, younger men were digging, building, moving
equipment.

A small dust cloud in the
distance told us vehicles were approaching. There were two. The lead vehicle
was an
old
Russian army transport vehicle, probably
abandoned by the Russians when they left. The second vehicle was a beat up
Toyota 4-Runner.

The vehicles came into the
middle of the camp and stopped. Four men got out. My target was one of them.
Several of the older men approached and welcomed them.

“Got him?”
Cornford
asked, peering through his scope.

“Got him.”

“Take the shot.”

I fired. The target went
down. Everyone else ducked for cover and by the time they decided where the
shot had come from and began returning fire in our general
direction,
we were in our vehicle and on our way out of the area.

Those were the missions that
had involved the CIA. Did one of those kills have something to do with Monica
being taken? Hopefully,
Cornford
would be able to
shed some light on the subject.

As my thoughts came back to
the present, I realized that Wilson had gotten up on the sofa and was asleep
next to me with his head resting on my leg. I looked at my watch. Ten thirty. I
gave Wilson a scratch behind the ear and he looked up at me with one of those
is it morning already?
looks
.

“Time for bed,” I said.

He jumped down and went to
his large pillow at the foot of my bed. I turned out the lights and was asleep
by the time my head hit the pillow.

Sleep had come quickly, but a
dream disturbed it. In my dream, I was in Afghanistan again. Monica was with
me. We were relaxing in a meadow, enjoying a picnic. I kissed her. But the kiss
was interrupted as we were transported to a site in the hills, the kind of
strategic site from where I would carry out my missions. I was looking through
my scope at the dead bodies of my targets—three of them. As I watched,
their spirits left their bodies, and with faces contorted with hate, flew to
our position, snatched up Monica and carried her away. I tried to fight them,
but my hands passed though their otherworldly forms. They, however, were able
to capture and fly away with Monica. She called out for help. None came. I was
powerless. I could only watch as they spirited her away. The dream seemed to be
caught in a loop, repeating over and over again.

Chapter 33

Sunday Evening

My flight arrived in Vegas at
seven. My meeting was at nine. I'd had a late lunch so I hadn’t yet had dinner.
I rented a car and pointed it in the general direction of the Strip. I found a
McDonald’s and tried to relax while enjoying a simple meal. I had just finished
eating when my dad called.

“
How are you, Son
?” the electronic voice asked.

“Physically, I'm doing okay.
Emotionally, I'm struggling to hold it together.”

I waited while he typed.

“
It must be very difficult
.
I'm
sure I can't even imagine
.”

“It's not like anything I've
ever experienced before.”

There was a brief pause and
then he began typing. Emotions were never easy for my father, or for me for
that matter. As I had gotten older, I realized that in some ways I was a lot
like him. At first, that realization was unsettling. But then I began to take
stock of my father’s life. He was a brilliant and accomplished man. Perhaps
being like him in some respects wasn’t such a bad thing.

“
Well
,” he had typed, “
I just
wanted you to know that I'm thinking about you. I have not called more often because
I knew you were trying to concentrate and I did not want to be a distraction.
But I am thinking about you all the time.
And Monica, too.
I like her
.”

Emotions began to surge and I
had to fight to maintain control.

“Thanks, Dad. I appreciate
that. I… I love Monica.” I don’t know why I felt I needed to tell him, but I
did.

“
I know
.”

“I'm gonna find her.”

“
I know that, too, Son. And that is what you must do. You do whatever
you have to do to find and save the woman you love
.”

Hearing my father say that to
me brought a new surge of emotion, but of a different kind: an anger at the one
who took her, a determination to find her and to punish the one did this.

“That's what I intend to do,
Dad. That's what I intend to do.”

The Red Square Bar was as
much a restaurant and lounge as it was a bar. It was beautifully designed and
decorated, reminiscent of a Russian bar from the early nineteen hundreds, the
kind of place a Russian aristocrat might have frequented before the communists
took over. As beautiful as it was, I was a little disappointed. I’d imagined
something more cloak and dagger, like something in a Dashiell Hammett or
Raymond Chandler novel. The actual bar was on the right side of the expensively
decorated room. I found an empty seat and sat down at five of nine and waited.
At nine,
Cornford
took the seat next to me. He looked
like a guy who might work in a hardware store on Main Street, USA. He was so
average looking that he could walk down a street and no one would notice or
remember him. Probably the look he was going for.

“Been a long time, Jake,” he
said. “Nice to see you again.”

“You look well,” I said.

“Can't complain.”

The bartender came down to
us.

“What'll you have?” he asked.

“Absolut.”

The bartender nodded and
looked at me. I was having Coke Zero. I nodded for another.

“Can I ask you a question?” I
said.

“That's why we're here, isn't
it?”

“Yeah, but this is a
different question.”

He shrugged. “Ask.”

“Why are we meeting at the
Red Square Bar in Las Vegas?”

He smiled. “My wife and I are
here on vacation. We're staying at this hotel. It was convenient.”

I didn't know if he was
yanking my chain or not. “Gambling?” I asked.

“Nope. We don't gamble. We
like the shows and the restaurants. I like the magic shows, mostly. My wife
wanted to see Cirque Du Soleil and the Blue Man Group.”

He must have seen something
in my face. He turned his hands palms up and said, “What, an operative can't
have a normal life?”

“You just never struck me as
a magic show kind of a guy,” I said.

“That's me. Mr. Mysterious.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So,”
Cornford
said, getting our meeting back on track, “a friend of mine who knows a friend
of yours says you think someone connected to one of our missions in Afghanistan
may be looking for payback.”

I explained about Monica
being taken and about our search thus far. I told him about the notes and about
the latest one that said,
Afghanistan
.

He sipped his vodka and said,
“Sounds like someone is using her as bait to pull you in.”

I nodded.

“And you want me to talk to
you about our three missions in Afghanistan.”

I nodded.

“How many kills you have by
the time you came home?”

“One hundred twenty-eight.”

“So why do you want to focus
in on our three?”

“Because our three were high
value CIA targets. And if those guys were important enough for the CIA to want
to eliminate them, then they were important enough to have powerful friends,
friends who would be in a position to take this kind of action at this time and
place.”

He took another sip of Vodka
and nodded, more to himself than to me.

“The first one was Abdullah
Zadran
. As you probably guessed, all those poppies were
made into high-grade heroin. He sold to American buyers. Used the money to
support the Taliban.”

“Who were the American
buyers?” I asked.

“We think the bulk of it went
to two organizations: Dominick Ferro's group, and Reggie Murphy's group.”

“Where are these two groups
located?”

“Ferro's in New York;
Murphy's in Boston. But they have
distributorships
all over the country.”

“That mission was almost
seven years ago,” I said. “You think they might still be so pissed off at me
for eliminating their source that they would take Monica in order to get to me?”

“It's theoretically possible ...
but it doesn't feel right. I suspect they had a new supplier within a couple of
weeks. Going after a marine for a CIA hit seven years ago doesn't feel right.
But then, you never know.”

I agreed with him. That one
just didn't feel right.

“What about the other two?” I
asked.

“The second one was Elias
Durrani
.”

“The young man,” I said.

“Yeah. Elias was the son of
Malik
Durrani
, a wealthy Afghan businessman who
immigrated to the US in 1977. He was wealthy when he came. Used his money to
make a lot more money. Wife's name is
Bahara
. Elias
was born here in 1978. When he graduated from college, his parents gave him
millions. Then he got radicalized.
Some local imam.
Parents didn't know it. He moved his money to offshore accounts in the Caymans and
went off to fight for the cause. Read a lot of books on war strategy. He was
smart and rich and was advising the Taliban, making our job a lot harder. So we
took him out. I'm sure you remember that part.”

“His father hated what his
son had done. Said he got what he deserved for betraying his country. The mother...
well she didn't agree with her husband.”

“How do you know this?”

“Rich Afghanis living in the
US, in a position to help the Taliban? Got to watch them. Pay attention to what
they're doing.”

“Listening?”

“Phone and email,” he said.

“Where do they live?”

“
Bel
Air. Husband's vey sick, though. Cancer. Hasn't got much time left.”

“When you say the wife didn't
agree with her husband, what do you mean, exactly?”

“She was angry. Hurt. Her son
had been killed in what she considered to be a war of unjust aggression.”

“She angry enough to try to
do something about it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “An angry
mother. Who knows what she's gonna do?” He got the bartender's attention and
pointed to his empty glass.

“She still angry?” I asked.

“Based on her phone conversations
and emails, doesn't appear to be. Mostly she's focused on her husband.”

I finished my first Coke and
took a sip of the second one. The bartender looked at me after he refilled
Cornford's
vodka. I shook my head. I sipped my Coke as I
thought. I wasn't sure about Mrs.
Durrani
.
A woman with a dying husband.
What were the odds she'd come
after me for a combat kill seven years ago? Of course, from her point of view, time
is irrelevant. Seven years ago or seven days ago, I killed her son. I was the
guy who pulled the trigger.

Cornford
sipped his vodka. He seemed to enjoy it
a great deal.

“If this is a revenge thing,”
I asked, “why target me? Why not go after you or the CIA in general?”

“Well, they can't find me.
I'm a ghost. And the CIA is an amorphous entity. Can't ever really get a handle
on it. But you, you're a tangible. You're the guy who pulled the trigger. And
you're just one guy. Easy to find, easy to get to.”

“How do they know I'm the guy
who pulled the trigger? Aren't mission details classified?”

“Sure. But if you have enough
money and enough contacts, any piece of information is available. You know
that.”

He was right. I did know
that.

“So,” I said, “someone paid
to find out who pulled the trigger and are now looking for payback.”

“Assuming the scenario is
correct,” he said.

“The notes I've been getting
seem to suggest it is,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “The notes.
That part bother
you?”