The Devil's Ransom, page 2
But he wasn’t. He was the commander of the Badr 313 Battalion. Named after the Battle of Badr, where the prophet Muhammed led 313 men to victory in the first century, the battalion was the elite of the Taliban. At the forefront of the fighting, using both special operations tactics and suicide missions, it was not an exaggeration to say that the battalion was the reason the Taliban were sitting in the Arg. And if imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, the men of the battalion were outfitted and clothed just like the Western Special Forces they had fought for more than twenty long years.
Removing his helmet and Peltor headset, Shakor said, “The airport is held by the Americans. They’re trying to get everyone out. We can’t penetrate without a fight. Do you want to do that? I can take the airfield right now, but I can’t in three hours.”
“Why?
“They’re flooding in the 82nd Airborne and Marines. I can’t fight them. Well, I can, but if I do, I’ll lose. Those men are not something to trifle with.”
Sirajuddin scoffed and said, “You can’t take them out? We’ve taken out their entire military machine.”
Shakor said, “We have, but never in a straight-up fight. We now have the tiger by the tail. You want me to attack them, and I will lose. And you will, too. The Americans are dumb. They have no idea of our culture or society, but if you push them, they will win in a fight. Right now they’re scared. They’re worried. Let them leave.”
Sirajuddin waved his hand and said, “That’s not my concern. My job is internal security, and we’ve lost two things I want you to get back.”
He explained the stealing of the Bactrian Treasure and then showed him the picture of Jahn, saying, “This man has killed many, many of your soldiers. He flew out with the national security advisor, who took the treasure.”
He placed another picture on the desk, saying, “And this is Ahmad Khan, the national security advisor. I want the treasure back, and I want Jahn. You can kill Ahmad Khan to get the treasure back, but Jahn returns here.”
Shakor nodded and said, “Where is he?”
“Best guess is Dushanbe. They took a helicopter. We don’t have that capability, but we do own all the border crossings by road. You need to leave immediately. Split up into two teams. One is for Jahn, the other is for the treasure. I’m sure by the time you get there it’ll be gone. You’ll have to hunt it.”
Shakor said, “I’m needed here. This place could devolve into a maelstrom of looting in the next thirty-six hours. My men are the only ones who can stop that.”
“This is more important. Pick ten of your best men. Only English speakers who have worked or gone to school in the West. No farmers you’ve trained. You lead them. You go after the treasure, another team goes after Jahn. I want him back, alive. Don’t kill him.”
“That’s an impossible challenge. How am I going to find the treasure or the man a day after it was flown out?”
“They took a helicopter. I’m sure that made a stir in Dushanbe. I’ll contact our men there and give you a lead. Jahn will try to hide, but Ahmad will be touting his credentials. It’ll be just as big a stir as Ghani flying into Uzbekistan.”
“But that asshole is already on a flight to the UAE. If the treasure leads there, you want me to follow to another Muslim country? I can create a team of men who can work in the West, but I can’t do the same if it leads to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the UAE. We won’t survive.”
Sirajuddin turned back to his desk, looked at a map, and said, “He’s not going there with the treasure. He has the same problem you do. He’s going to sell it, and it won’t be to a Muslim. It’ll be to someone in Europe.”
Shakor nodded, grabbing his helmet. “The one good thing is the entire city is chaos. I can form the teams and leave in the next two hours because of the complete breakdown in security. I can be across the border by tomorrow morning, but I’ll need your contacts in Dushanbe, and I’ll need some support once I’m there.”
Sirajuddin said, “That will not be a problem. You still have your satellite phone?”
“Yes, but I’m not using that. It’s a magnet for American bombs.”
“Not in Dushanbe. Call me once you cross the border. I’ll give you the contact information.”
Shakor nodded again, then picked up the pictures, saying, “I don’t know about this treasure, but I’ll definitely find Jahn. For a little payback.”
Chapter 3
I rolled over in my sleeping bag and bumped into Jennifer, now contorted like a circus act within her mummy bag. I raised up on an elbow, seeing her splayed like she’d been thrown out of the back of a pickup truck, her head leaning over the opening of the bag, her hair draped all over the place. I was amazed. How could someone sleep like that? She routinely took over any bed we shared, but now she was trying to take over a sleeping bag she was the sole owner of. It was like she wanted to spread out and deprive me of the bed, but she couldn’t, because she was in a mummy bag.
I grinned, checked my watch, then felt the tightness in my back from what I was using as a mattress. You can’t sleep on the ground for any length of time before it takes a toll. In this case, we’d been living like animals for close to two weeks, but unlike the past, I didn’t have to worry about someone shooting at me, so at least I could take off my boots before going to bed. Even so, sleeping on the ground was miserable. Sometimes, like today, it was a good miserable, but miserable, nonetheless.
I studied her for a moment, content. I didn’t want to wake her, because the sun was just cresting the horizon, and even though it was August, it was a little crisp here in Tajikistan. And I knew that if I did, I’d be back to helping her dig up pottery shards, her like her life depended on it, and me just wanting to quit and have a beer.
No, I’d let her sleep until she woke up on her own. I lay back down and then saw the zipper of our tent begin moving. I groaned, because I knew who it was.
The zipper split, and I saw Amena staring at me, her hazel eyes focusing first on my face, then on Jennifer’s contorted body. She was our adopted daughter, and Jennifer had decided to bring her on this dig, which I thought was a mistake—not the least of which because she routinely woke us up at the crack of dawn. These artifacts had waited centuries to be found, and yet she seemed to think another hour was a tragedy.
Or she just knew I hated it.
Olive skin, black hair, and eyes with a color that were piercing, at fourteen years old she was turning into quite the beauty, but she still had a little bit of a rebellious streak in her from her time in Syria. Which is to say, she could hold her own with anyone she faced, no matter the age. Including me.
She said, “What on earth is Jennifer doing? Were you guys . . .”
I sat up and hissed, “No! Stop that. She’s sleeping. She’s in her own bag.”
“It looks like you two were wrestling.”
Jennifer stirred, rubbed her eyes, and said, “What’s up?”
I said, “Nothing. The little devil is here to wake us up.”
Amena said, “Only two more days left. We need to get to work.”
We were at a place called Ajina Tepa, about a hundred kilometers from Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. Known as the Devil’s Hill in Tajik, it was an eighth-century Buddhist monastery and temple that had been on the UNESCO world heritage tentative list since 1999, and was the biggest archeological site in the entire country.
Our company, Grolier Recovery Services, had asked permission to camp out and explore it for a couple of weeks, and the country of Tajikistan had obliged—mainly because they thought we could get them a leg up on the UNESCO decision, but since the designation had been sitting dormant for more than two decades, I seriously doubted it.
That, and because our company really had nothing to do with archeology or UNESCO, but that was a secret I wasn’t going to tell anyone in Tajikistan.
GRS was what we called a front company. Ostensibly, we facilitated archeological work around the world, helping real archeologists on their way in areas that were not that conducive to the work. Meaning, we could assist them both with the government in question and the bad man outside the gates. Jennifer had a degree in anthropology, and I had a degree in killing people, which worked out for our little company.
We spent our off days helping universities and other organizations with government permits, doing security assessments, and generally greasing the skids, and it was a good living, but while Jennifer loved these excursions, I thought of them as work. I wanted to hunt, but I understood the reason for this trip. We needed to make sure our cover was solid if anyone came looking.
In the end, using that façade, our real purpose was hunting terrorists in both nonpermissive and permissive environments, cloaking our actions with the company’s name. It was ingenious, if I do say so myself, because there were very few places on earth that didn’t have some sort of archeological site we could leverage.
Jennifer was my partner in the company, and she truly loved this end of the work. She had developed into a little bit of a killer herself over the years for the other side of our job, even if she wouldn’t admit it. She didn’t like looking in the mirror and seeing what came back, but she was a killer. At her core, she wanted to explore, digging up pottery shards and pieces of skulls, because that’s what made her whole. But I’d seen her on the other end of a barrel, and she was a predator just like I was. I, on the other hand, could fully admit that digging up bones in the middle of nowhere was about as much fun as sticking a fork in my eye.
This excursion was really nothing more than a vacation designed to increase the believability of the company. Called a “cover development” trip, it was paid by the U.S. taxpayer, and solely designed to show that Grolier really did do archeological work. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at this work we did in Tajikistan!
We had to execute about two cover development trips for every one where we put somebody’s head on a spike just to make sure we could bullshit our way around anyone investigating us—be that a friendly government or a hostile sub-state group—and this was one such trip, only this time Jennifer had brought Amena with us.
For the life of me, I don’t know why. We’d brought her on our honeymoon a couple of months ago, and that had turned into an absolute shit show.
Jennifer sat up, her blond hair looking like she’d plugged her finger into a socket, and smiled, saying, “Well, at least two of us enjoy the work.”
Amena fully unzipped the tent and scampered inside, saying, “There’s room in here for me. Can I stay with you guys at least one night?”
I let her flop on top of me and said, “You have a tent. Why cram three people into one?”
She said, “Nick snores. I mean bad.”
I laughed, knowing she was just making excuses. I had three other team members with me on the “dig,” all there simply to solidify their “employment” with the company. We needed to have ironclad backstopping when we did clandestine work on the off chance we were compromised, so I could “prove” they were who they said they were.
Given that, it meant three tents total for the excursion, which left one tent with only a single person. Nicholas Seacrest—callsign Veep—had been chosen as the outlier, 1) because he was the junior team member, but 2) because his girlfriend was actually Amena’s nanny when we were away.
Given that the sun had barely crested the horizon, I was regretting she wasn’t watching Amena right now.
Jennifer tousled her hair and said, “Yeah, maybe you can stay for one night.”
Amena looked at me to see if I agreed, and I smiled. I literally couldn’t tell her no. In truth, Jennifer was the disciplinarian of this relationship, but Amena and I had a little bit of a personal connection that went beyond adoption. Meaning when we’d first met, I’d slaughtered several men to keep her alive. Those actions hadn’t been pretty, but the end result had been. She was now my daughter, not by birth, but by a shared experience.
I heard a scuffling outside the tent, then my second-in-command poked his head in. I rolled my eyes and said, “Come on in, Knuckles. Let’s get everyone inside here.”
Knuckles looked every bit like some wandering Birkenstock-wearing backpacker, complete with shaggy black hair, a T-shirt espousing some ironic saying, and puka beads around his neck. If you looked closely, you’d see that shirt stretched over ropes of muscle, and if you reached his eyes, you’d see that he wasn’t being ironic. He was wanting you to test him for wearing it. And if you did, you’d be the worse for it.
Knuckles was a Navy SEAL, but I didn’t hold that against him, because he was one of the finest operators I had ever served with. He’d just picked the wrong service to start with, his wardrobe notwithstanding.
He chuckled and said, “No, that’s okay. Jennifer looks like she’s been in a dogfight. Not sure what you guys do in here at night.”
Amena laughed, and Knuckles grew serious. “Pike, the sat phone went off in the night. I think you should check it.”
I sat up, moving Amena to the side, and, while putting on my boots, said, “What’s up?”
He stepped back, letting me exit the tent, then said, “I don’t know, but it’s Taskforce. They called while we were asleep.”
Chapter 4
I stumbled out of the tent saying, “Why would the Taskforce call us here? They know we’re doing cover development.”
Knuckles said, “I have no idea, but we don’t get voice mails on that system, and all I saw was the number. It’s George Wolffe. Something’s gone bad.”
I nodded, saying, “What, though? We’re in Tajikistan. What could have gone so wrong that we need to be pulled in?”
He just shook his head.
We worked for a government organization called Project Prometheus, which was the classified code name for our unit. Since we couldn’t say the name out loud, we’d just taken to calling ourselves the Taskforce. Simple. A name that meant nothing. But really meant everything—especially if I was getting a call in Tajikistan on a cover development trip.
I picked up the sat phone, saw the last called number, and looked at Knuckles. He nodded, saying, “I think we’re going to get some high adventure here.”
I shook my head, not wanting to dial, but did so. The phone rang out to a voice mail for a cover organization called Blaisdell Consulting. Which was the headquarters for the Taskforce.
I left a message and hung up. “This had better not be some bullshit that the CIA or SOCOM couldn’t handle.”
Project Prometheus—the Taskforce—was a unique unit designed to solve unique problems. Issues that the traditional intelligence or military architecture couldn’t solve. We were only pulled into play when all other options were exhausted, and that was for a reason—namely, that we operated outside the bounds of the U.S. Constitution. We had free rein to stop a threat, but in so doing, we also had free rein to ignore any rights ensconced in the very thing we were protecting. It was something I took very, very seriously, as did the man I’d just called.
When the unit had been formed after 9/11, we’d all cheered about how we were going to take it to the enemy, but some had realized that what we’d created had the potential to go bad. I say “some,” but it was really my mentor, the first commander of the Taskforce, Colonel Kurt Hale. He’d been killed by a car bomb in my front yard and I’d proven the risks of the organization when I’d gone off the reservation to avenge him, slaughtering anyone who’d had anything to do with his death. That had caused some consternation within the chain of command, to say the least, but in my heart, I held his views.
Most of the time.
We weren’t hired guns. We were problem solvers who could shoot. Give me a problem you couldn’t solve, and I would do it. If I had to shoot to get it done, I would, but it had to be for the right reasons.
I saw Knuckles’ tent open and my third team member appear, Brett Thorpe. A short fireplug of muscle, he was out of place as an African American here in Tajikistan—but then again, so were we, I suppose. Didn’t really matter, because like everyone else, he was ostensibly an employee of GRS. It wasn’t like we were trying to pretend we were Tajiks. He was also a prior Force Recon Marine and currently a paramilitary officer with the Special Activities Center of the CIA, with a little bit of a wicked sense of humor. Which is to say, I wouldn’t do a mission without him.
He approached, looked at Knuckles, then at me, saying, “So what’s up?”
I said, “Left a message. No idea.”
Knuckles said, “What do you think this is about? We’re here in the middle of nowhere.”
I took a breath and said, “I don’t know, but it’s not going to be good. Wolffe would never interrupt this trip for something mundane.”
He chuckled and said, “Well, if it’s something bad here in the barren wildlands, all I’ve got is my ZEV Tech Glock. I only brought two magazines for someone trying to harm us here. I didn’t think about getting into a gunfight. You got more?”
I said, “Not here. I have the same. Two mags. Thank God I demanded the Rock Star bird come with a package.”
Surprised, Knuckles said, “You got permission for a loadout in the Rock Star bird for a signature reduction trip? How did you manage that?”
I smiled. “I’m very persuasive when I want to be.” I shook my head, stared at the phone, and said, “What the hell is going on?”
This was supposed to be a simple cover development mission, and I was now glad my insistence on the package for the Rock Star bird had been approved.
Then the phone rang.
I answered, saying, “This is Pike.”
I heard, “Stand by for Wolffe. We’ve been trying to get you for hours.”
Knuckles gave me a look and I said, “On hold. Wolffe is coming on the line.”
I waited, then heard, “Is this Pike?”
I said, “Yes, sir, this is Pike. What’s up?”
