In the Crosshairs

11

The Pamir Mountains around the crossroads town of Girdiwal were pocked with caves, some little more than a few rocks leaning together and others deep and wide. Earthquakes rearranged them from time to time, but, as the Taliban had discovered, they were solid structures that were hidden from the prying eyes of Western satellites. Even if the space birds could somehow see inside, their nations apparently had no interest in doing anything. Anything or anyone could be in those deep holes. The Prince owned a few.

Mohammed Azad, the opium broker, had purchased the crop of gum from Farida Mashaal, packed it with other such harvests until he had a full caravan of plodding, sure-footed mules, and sent it up the scant trails that laced the gray-brown mountains for processing.

A chemical stench permeated the destination, which was the entrance to one of the largest caverns. Despite expensive air purifiers and ventilation, it was still a cave. Workers inside kept their masks on tight, wore white bio-suits and goggles beneath the artificial light. They worked only short shifts in the stifling and dangerous odor of calcium hydroxide, acetic anhydride, ammonium chloride, ether, and other volatile chemicals. No matter that many of them couldn’t read, lived in homes without electricity or running water — they cooked and stirred and strained and distilled and performed a miracle every day.

The raw opium paste became morphine, then it was stepped up to low-grade heroin, and, finally, to brown heroin that was ninety percent pure. The final processing stamped it into bricks that each weighed one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds. The product was ready for sale and consumption, and began its trek to the markets of Europe, Russia, China, and America, once again aboard the backs of the mule train, one treacherous step at a time.

The winded donkeys would finally plod into a receiving chute to be unloaded, and the heroin was prepared for onward shipment in secure warehouses at the end of a small dirt airstrip. Donkeys were good, but they couldn’t fly, and the Prince had long ago arranged the construction of the critical supply port. Unlike the superlab in the cave, the airstrip wasn’t a secret but nonaligned ground where various interests could be accommodated. Everybody used it for their own purposes. Planes brought in chemicals and took out dope. They flew in weaponry and took out dope. Special operators, intelligence agents of various nationalities, back-channel diplomats came in, and the planes flew out dope. They brought in cash, and brought out even more drugs. On all fronts, quality increased and prices fell and global dependency grew.

The unblinking statue of Thomas Jefferson didn’t preside this time when CIA Director of Intelligence Martin Atkins met Kyle Swanson and Luke Gibson in the middle of the night. The lights burned bright in the headquarters building, and security had been heightened after the pair of agents had been tapped on the shoulder by a new person in the game, someone known only as the Prince. By this time, they wouldn’t even have trusted Mr. Jefferson.

“Are we suspecting the Saudis now, or one of the royal houses in the Middle East? They have more princes over there than camels.” Swanson leaned back against a table with his arms crossed.

Atkins had signaled his own frustration by rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt. “God only knows, Kyle. We’re playing the hand we’ve been dealt — Nicky Marks — and now the game has expanded. Luke, you need some aspirin or something?”

Gibson shook his head. “I’m good. Why would this Prince character do something as stupid as sending a street punk to frighten me? What the fuck is he playing at? Nicky was my recruit, true, and we partnered up a few times, but I took good care of him. Why is this crap washing up on my doorstep?”

Gibson had begun the meeting by describing how he had been running his miles out on the Mall after dark when a skinny kid stepped from between the parked cars only about twenty feet away. The guy was a punk, with a baseball cap turned to one side, a wool hoodie in April, and too large jeans that showed six inches of undershorts. He popped a shot at Gibson, missing by a good distance and pinging a tan Nissan sedan instead. Since Gibson already had momentum, he covered the gap between them before the shooter could adjust his aim. The boy took off in an attempt at escape, but his baggy pants made running impossible. Gibson tackled him three steps later. “Just a piece of junk .25-cal six-shooter. I leaned him against a tire and applied a little enhanced interrogation encouragement until he said some white dude with red hair paid him a hundred bucks to scare me, but not to kill me. He was also to tell me that the Prince was watching. I took the gun, broke his trigger finger, and told him to get lost in a hurry. No police report.”

Swanson opened a bottle of water; thought it over. “Basically the same thing that happened to me. Neither was a serious attack.”

“Then it was an intentional wake-up call for all of us,” Atkins interjected. “Why this man would openly reveal his existence to us is beyond comprehension.”

“Maybe he wants us to chase him rather than going after Marks.” Gibson had a sudden desire for a cigarette. “We would be running in circles.”

Atkins went over to the window. The world outside looked normal, but there in his office things seemed upside down. He stretched. “I want you guys out of the country ASAP. We’ll lay on an escort to take you directly out to Andrews, and hook you up with whatever big bird the Air Force has heading across the Atlantic; I’ll have somebody meet you on the other end to forward you on to Afghanistan. I’ll get the ball rolling to unmask this Prince. You guys still go and find Marks. Unlock this thing before it blows up in our faces.”

The Prince was enjoying himself as his plan unfolded. It was all so easy, with more little events yet to come. Let them hunt all they wanted. He was always a lap or two ahead, and was tying the mighty Central Intelligence Agency into knots.

Tomorrow morning, his latest coup, Congresswoman Veronica Keenan of Nebraska, would arrive at her desk in the Longworth House Office Building and breeze into the day’s ritual of being among the power élite. A priority envelope would be delivered to her. Prince figured that she might have bolstered her courage since meeting with him, and he didn’t want her drifting off task, so he had sent a reminder via a set of photographs. The instruction was: CHECK REGISTRATION & AREA — PRINCE

There was a small airplane sitting on a dirt runway. Three men and one woman, all in casual work clothes, were clustered around the tail, examining something that dangled downward. The set of letters and numbers N988QQ were in barely visible faint black paint that was hard to see against the gray stripe on the tail of the aircraft.

The congresswoman would share it with her top aide, who would assign another aide to start burrowing into the open electronic files of the U.S. government, including the Federal Aviation Administration. If the assistant had a brain, she would also run a routine Google search and learn that the plane was a DHC Dash-8 multiprop with a checkered history. It had once been seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after being forced to land in Florida, when it ran out of gas on a run up from Colombia. It was carrying four tons of cocaine at the time, and the DEA tracked it back through Immigration and Customs Enforcement and back even further through two private front companies. Bottom-line owner was the CIA.

By lunchtime, Ms. Keenan would start putting two and two together again. Apparently, the plane had been rehabilitated. The aide would identify the place by simply reading a handwritten sign the photographer had placed on a rock in the foreground. She had never heard of Girdiwal, Afghanistan. Neither had her boss. A CIA airplane sitting on a remote airstrip in Afghanistan wasn’t really earthshaking news, but combined with the earlier tip from Mr. Prince and the plane’s bad history of running drugs, maybe there was something there. She would see.

According to the Prince’s timetable, the gentlelady from Nebraska would instruct her aide to set up a private meeting by that afternoon with the vice chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She wouldn’t go straight to the chairman, who was an important figure in the opposition party, without notifying her own team first.

With his puppet dancing, the Prince relaxed, thinking great thoughts. The illegal retail sale of heroin and cocaine was worth about $10 billion in today’s market, just in the United States. That figure was dwarfed by the worldwide trade, estimated to be as high as $750 billion annually. He didn’t want it all, just a share, because he wasn’t a greedy man financially. What he craved was recognition as the man with a chokehold on the trafficking. He was the best. With a turn of his wrist, the drug faucet could be closed and a world filled with addicts would explode into turmoil. To them, their drugs were more important than their lives, or the lives of others.

Beth Ledford, Janna Ecklund, and Lucky Sharif shrugged off the news when Kyle called from Andrews in Maryland to let them know that he wouldn’t be going back home that night. In fact, the schedule was wide open. He gave no details. “He’s out of here,” Janna said.

They were in Swanson’s town house in the exclusive Georgetown area of the nation’s capital, ready to work in the middle of the night, but uncertain of what to do to silently investigate Luke Gibson without raising suspicions. Logging into a law-enforcement database might trigger an alarm, since the CIA would be on the alert for any inquiries regarding one of its special operators. After all, the guy had twice been the target of presumed terrorists in recent days.

“Original sources,” said Lucky. “We want a hard trail so Kyle can be certain that his partner is as good as advertised.”

“Personally, I think dodging a grenade and a bullet are pretty good evidence that Luke Gibson is at risk, too.” Coastie kicked off her shoes and flexed her toes.

“We hope for the best and assume nothing,” Lucky said, nodding toward the shoes. “We do old-fashioned shoe leatherwork. Real cop stuff.”

Janna smiled at her husband. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Coastie looked over at her. “What has Kyle told you about Luke? Who are his mommy and daddy, what was his high-school mascot, anything personal at all?”

“No, he’s got a good reputation in the agency. That’s about it.”

“Facts: Luke Gibson was born. He was given a name. He went to school. Somewhere along the way, probably early on, he was recruited by the CIA. That is our framework.”

Lucky asked, “Where did he get his military training? Kyle mention that at all? Army or Marine? Obviously, he got good at the game, but where did he learn it?”

Coastie shook her head and Janna did the same, then said, “Wait, wait, wait. Kyle did mention that he once kidded Luke about his military bearing and Luke answered that it was an old habit left over from his misspent youth at VMI.”

Lucky clapped his hands. “That’s where we start, then. VMI is in Lexington, Virginia, which is only about two hundred miles from here. I can drive down there tomorrow and check it out.”

“Okay,” Coastie said in a slow voice. “Only can you tell me first what’s a VMI?”

The four Pratt & Whitney jet engines on the C-17 Globemaster III had settled into a harmonic moan once the aircraft reached its cruising altitude of 28,000 feet, heading east. The old U.S. Air Force transport workhorse was carrying a monster M1A2 Abrams main battle tank, pallets of miscellaneous gear, and two passengers: Luke Gibson and Kyle Swanson. A routine puddle jump for the biggest cargo plane in the world, and the seventy-ton tank in its belly was being ferried to the European stockpile that needed to be reinforced because Russian president Vladimir Pushkin was making noise again. The last U.S. tank units had officially left Germany years earlier, but a pre-positioned source of heavy armor was always kept tuned up and ready for battle, if necessary.

Both men had been given olive-drab USAF flight suits with no insignia and settled into an upper-deck compartment for the long flight to Ramstein as easily as commuters taking a train from Connecticut to Manhattan. Swanson uploaded a game on a laptop, while Gibson plugged in the buds of his iPhone and closed his eyes. Swanson soon shut down the computer and pushed it away, dimmed the overhead light, and also began to doze.

Only three crewmen were on board for the routine hop, and the loadmaster looked in on the passengers, saw they were fine, and shut the hatch. “Our spooks are already asleep,” he reported to the pilot.

“Wonder what they’re up to. We had to hold takeoff for half an hour to let them get aboard,” the co-pilot said.

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” answered the pilot. “Let’s put this bird on automatic and get us all to Germany.”

“They don’t look like James Bonds to me,” said the loadmaster.

“Staff Sergeant Baxter?”

“Sir?”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, sir. Awesome advice, sir.”