“See you guys soon,” said Bradstreet, remaining at the back of the truck.
Bradstreet gestured to Dewey with his hand, and Dewey knelt down.
“If they do get pulled over, it’s
Lord of the Flies
time,” said Bradstreet. “These guys won’t protect you, so be smart. Stay alert. Kill what you need to.”
Dewey nodded. He and Iverheart were led down the long, open tractor-trailer. Stacks of large burlap bags stood on both sides of the trailer and had a strong, musty smell. At the front of the dark trailer, Mainiq reached his hand up toward the corner of the trailer and pushed a bolt. Then he reached to what appeared to be the flat, dirty front wall of the trailer. He pulled and a thin door opened up.
“Here,” said Mainiq. He handed Dewey a flashlight. “There are bottles of water. Also, if you need to go to the bathroom, there’s a pail.”
Dewey flipped the flashlight on and aimed it into the dark compartment. The space behind the false wall occupied the entire front of the trailer. Dewey stepped in; it was no more than two feet wide, and smelled of urine partially hidden by some sort of cleaning solvent, as if somebody had tried to clean it. There were two chairs, one on each end; folding lawn chairs. He saw the bottles of water and the tin pail.
Dewey climbed into the space, followed by Iverheart.
“We’ll be in Peshawar in three hours,” said Mainiq. “After Peshawar, we’re safe. We’ll pull over and you can come sit up front. We’ll try to be quick. We have been searched many times, I have to tell you. But they’ve never found this yet.”
PESHAWAR
Sometime later, after hours of bone-rattling bumps in the road which seemed like they would go on forever, the truck stopped. Dewey heard the back of the trailer open. At the side of the door, a bolt was moved and the trapdoor opened. The ugly face of Mainiq appeared in the dim opening.
“We’re through Peshawar,” the Talibani said in barely understandable English.
They’d made it down the Khyber Pass without incident. It was getting dark outside as Dewey and Iverheart climbed down from the back of the truck. They had pulled over on the side of a remote, single-lane dirt road. Low brown hills without much vegetation spread out on both sides of the deserted road. There wasn’t a house, another car, a soul in sight.
They climbed inside the cab. Dewey and Iverheart sat in the middle, between the driver and Mainiq.
“Two hours to Rawalpindi,” said Mainiq.
Dewey didn’t trust people generally, but when it came to Mainiq, he got a particularly bad feeling. But Dewey did trust Bradstreet. Still, he kept his right hand on the butt of the .45 holstered beneath his shoulder.
The truck began to move down the road and they drove for several miles, through a sparsely populated area south of Peshawar. Music played on the radio; some sort of Pakistani folk music with high-pitched guitar.
At some point, a set of headlights appeared in the side mirror. The driver shifted and said something to Mainiq in Urdu.
Dewey glanced at Mainiq.
“What’s going on?” asked Dewey.
Mainiq said nothing, instead studying the side mirror as the vehicle approached from behind.
“Mainiq,” said Dewey, louder this time. “What the fuck is going on?”
“No worries,” said Mainiq in barely understandable English. Then, to the driver, Mainiq said something that Dewey couldn’t understand.
The truck lurched forward as the driver abruptly floored the gas pedal. Dewey glanced at the speedometer; the orange hand moved as the truck went from sixty to sixty-five to seventy kilometers per hour—only about forty-five miles per hour.
Too slow,
Dewey thought.
The lights, coming from behind, drew closer. Dewey craned his neck forward and looked in the driver’s side mirror. He saw a black pickup truck coming on quickly.
Dewey pulled the weapon from his shoulder holster.
“No, no, it’s okay,” said Mainiq, holding his hand up to Dewey. “They’re just passing.”
“Do you know them?” demanded Dewey.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Who the fuck are they?”
“They’re passing. They’re just driving by.”
Dewey glanced at Iverheart, then nodded. Iverheart withdrew his weapon, a SIG Sauer P226 9mm pistol, and aimed it at the driver. In the same moment, Dewey trained his Colt on Mainiq.
“Nothing personal,” Dewey said to Mainiq. “See what they want, then let’s get the fuck out of here.”
The black pickup raced alongside the truck. It swept by them, swerved in front of the truck, and slowed down, blocking the road just fifty feet ahead.
“It’s okay,” said Mainiq calmly, holding his hands up, ignoring the gun aimed at him. “It’s okay. Let me talk. They’re punks. It’s nothing.”
The driver braked and slowed the truck down. It came to a halt just behind the pickup.
In the flatbed of the pickup, two men sat, dressed in similar tribal garb as Mainiq and the driver. Both held Kalashnikovs, which they trained on the cab.
Mainiq opened the door, but Dewey grabbed his arm before he could climb down.
“If you fuck with us,” said Dewey, “the first bullet’s got your name on it.”
Mainiq nodded, still calm. “It’s okay. I would not betray Mr. Bradstreet. I will take care of it.”
Dewey and Iverheart watched from the cab as Mainiq walked in front of the semi and approached the black Toyota pickup. The passenger door on the pickup opened and a short, thin man, older, with a gray and black beard, climbed out.
Dewey moved to the window. He glanced at Iverheart, who still had his gun on the driver. “Keep your weapon on him.”
Dewey held his weapon aimed straight ahead, just out of sight of the people in the road.
Mainiq marched to the short, wiry man and began to speak loudly to him in Urdu. The man yelled back and soon they were arguing. Mainiq leaned forward, into the older Pakistani’s face, and yelled at him. They looked as if they would come to blows.
“What are they saying?” asked Dewey, looking at the driver. “
What are they saying?
”
“Argue,” said the driver in broken English.
“Yeah, no shit Sherlock.
About what?
”
“Don’t know, man.”
Mainiq was stabbing his right index finger into the air just in front of the man’s face as he yelled.
Iverheart looked at Dewey.
“This is gonna get ugly,” Iverheart said.
“On my lead,” said Dewey.
One of the gunmen on the flatbed fired his rifle. The crack of gunfire was shocking and loud. The bullet hit Mainiq in the chest. He was propelled backward by the force of the Kalashnikov, his tan shirt splattered in blood. Mainiq tumbled backward onto the dirt apron next to the road, dead.
“
No!
” screamed the driver, next to Iverheart.
The older one who’d been arguing with Mainiq, started screaming at the man who’d just shot Mainiq.
Dewey had no idea what had just happened. And he didn’t want to know. But he did know this was spiraling in the wrong direction.
He raised his Colt, moved it outside the window, and fired a round. The bullet hit the gunman in the chest, throwing him backward and down onto the bed of the pickup. He fired again. This bullet struck the other gunman in the side of his head. He was kicked sideways, falling next to his dead colleague in a wash of blood.
The older man stood for a moment in shock, staring into the back of the pickup. He looked up at Dewey, then reached for a weapon at his waist. Dewey pulled the trigger again. The bullet tore into the man’s chest, knocking him backward and to the ground.
The pickup driver stepped on the gas, flooring it to get away.
To Iverheart’s left, the driver started screaming.
Dewey pumped the trigger as fast as his finger would flex. The rear glass of the pickup shattered and a slug caught the driver in the back of the head. The pickup slowed down and, as the dead driver slumped over the wheel, turned left and wandered off the road, stopping a few feet off the pavement.
The driver was screaming uncontrollably now.
“You want me to…?” asked Iverheart looking at Dewey.
“No. Just kick him out.”
Iverheart reached over and opened the door.
“Out,” he said.
The driver climbed down and began running toward the hills. Iverheart shut the door, then moved behind the wheel.
“So much for a bloodless coup,” he said.
BENAZIR BHUTTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
RAWALPINDI
Millar stepped off the PIA jet and walked through the crowded terminal at Benazir Bhutto International Airport. At the immigration security checkpoint, he presented his passport.
Millar looked younger even than his twenty-four years. He had medium-length black hair and a good-looking face. He didn’t stand out. He was handsome but not head-turning handsome. He blended in, especially here, where he was from, Pakistan.
Millar had a French passport with the name Jean Milan on it, supplied by CIA London station. Had the security desk at Benazir Bhutto been wired into Interpol or any other multinational, real-time security database, the name Jean Milan and the passport would have checked out. Milan, according to his passport, was French; according to his visa papers, a reporter for
Le Monde
.
However, the lack of an advanced security database forced the better security people at Benazir Bhutto to rely more on instinct. As Millar’s passport was stamped, Parakesh, the customs officer overseeing airport security, did a double take. There was something about Millar that made the customs agent look twice, then a third time, at him. Perhaps it was the way Millar carried himself; he walked in the unmistakable manner of an athlete—or a soldier. Maybe it was the trained manner in which he ignored Parakesh’s inquisitive look. To a junior customs agent, Millar wouldn’t have set off alarm bells. But Parakesh was a veteran who came to customs from ISI. Benazir Bhutto represented his final promotion after a career of risky work in more challenging environs, including ten years in Peshawar. Overseeing security at the airport for Pakistani customs was supposed to be an easy job, a coveted nine-to-five gig at the highest pay level within government. But that didn’t mean Parakesh’s instincts had disappeared.
As Parakesh reached for the small microphone clipped to his lapel to call for one of his deputies, Millar realized he’d been marked.
Fuck,
he thought to himself.
He walked through the terminal and saw a restroom sign down the terminal hallway in the direction of baggage claim.
Millar walked to the crowded baggage claim area, despite the fact that he hadn’t checked any baggage. There were hundreds of people packed densely into the windowless area near the carousels. He stood behind an old man in a black beret. He looked back at the terminal. Within thirty seconds, he saw the gray-haired customs agent who’d stared at him at the security checkpoint. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the agent surveyed the crowd, found him, paused a second too long, then continued looking around. He then made eye contact with another agent; this one young, tall, uniformed in dark green.
Millar was trained in evasion. Losing the two Pakistani customs agents would’ve been easy. But Bradstreet’s instructions were clear:
“If they mark you at the airport, it’s imperative that you get back on the first flight out of Pakistan, or cut off the problem at the airport. Do not infect the operation.”
Millar waited a few more minutes in the baggage claim area, then walked to the restroom. He went to the last stall and set down his bag. Flipping a small steel hinge on the bottom of the case, he opened up a hidden compartment, removed a switchblade, and tucked it in his right hand.
He heard the door to the restroom open. He put his shoe on the toilet and flushed it, then opened the door. Standing next to the sinks was the younger agent. He stared at Millar as he moved to the sinks. They were alone. Millar set his bag down next to the sink and turned on the faucet.
“Papers,” the officer said.
Millar reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his passport. He offered the passport to the officer.
“Here,” said Millar.
As the agent reached for the passport, Millar grabbed his wrist and swung it violently behind his back, then moved his left hand over the agent’s mouth to muffle the scream that came a second later as he snapped the arm at the elbow. Still covering the agent’s mouth with his left hand, Millar pressed the release button on the switchblade in his right hand. He jabbed the blade against the officer’s neck, pressing the sharp steel into the trachea but not breaking skin. When he knew the officer would not scream any longer, he released his left hand and took the walkie-talkie from the officer’s belt.
“Calm now,” said Millar in Urdu, holding the walkie-talkie next to his mouth. “Tell him to come.”
The agent struggled to speak, tears of pain from his broken arm ran down his cheeks. “Tell who to—”
Millar yanked back on the switchblade, cutting the officer’s neck a half-inch. He winced in pain as blood spewed forth from his neck.
“You know who,” said Millar quietly. “If you want to live, tell him to come. Calm now.”
Millar pressed the walkie-talkie button.
“Parakesh,” the officer said. “In the restroom.”
Millar dropped the walkie-talkie, then ripped the blade across the officer’s neck, severing the trachea. He dragged him to the last stall and threw his body inside. Millar moved back to the door and stood behind it. There was a long streak of blood across the light blue linoleum, but there was nothing he could do about that. The door opened. In stepped Parakesh. He glanced about the restroom, saw the blood on the ground, then desperately reached for his weapon. He caught sight of Millar in the corner, in the same moment Millar lunged at him, plunging the blood-soaked switchblade into his chest, through the heart, killing him. Millar dragged the corpse to the last stall and threw it on top of the other agent, who was rapidly bleeding out. Blood flooded the restroom floor. Millar stepped to the sink, grabbed his bag, and left the restroom. Within two minutes, he was out of the terminal and sitting in the back of a rust-covered taxicab.