Black Hawk Day Rewind: An action packed spy thriller (Mark Savannah Espionage Series Book 1) (5 page)

17

Kamaal Sadeh was reading the newspaper in the lobby of the hotel at 7:30 in the morning.

He was wearing a typical Afghan kurta over a pair of khaki pants, a pair of combat boots and a beige pakol on his head.

He did not know Mark’s face, but he knew that Mark knew his, so now and then he looked around to see if he could spot his partner in adventure.

“Good morning, Kamaal!”

Mark greeted him as he approached with a cup of hot coffee in his hand, the coffee that Kamaal expected to see as a password and also counted on to fully wake up.

After he drank the coffee, they went to the parking lot of the hotel together. BAT FK23 Bantam was sitting in the car with a sleepy face worthy of an adolescent who had stayed awake on the beach to watch the sunrise.

“Hey, Lisunov Li-2,” said the American agent with a scowl. “Is your per diem so small that you couldn’t even buy a cup of coffee for me? Do you think it's fair that only Kamaal gets to enjoy this privilege that we can forget about completely for the next few days?”

“Listen Bat, next time you can get that tired old ass of yours up and come and get your own. You're not exactly a beautiful, ready and willing girl, are you? And anyway, Arabs are not my type,” Mark replied in the same angry tone. “You could have at least thrown out the papers in the car. What a pigsty! If the bullets or the mines don’t kill us, the pathogens that live here will do it!”

“Shut up and get in!” Kamaal said laughingly in Arabic, the language that they would speak till the end of their mission.

The off-road was not an ordinary vehicle: even if it appeared dirty and non-descript, it was fully armored and equipped with extremely sophisticated detection and data transmission equipment.

It also had a hidden compartment that contained diverse weapons to meet all their requirements, a technological arsenal that would make the team completely independent for several days with no need for supplies.

Kamaal was driving and Mark, sitting next to him, was looking out at the landscape. The Helmand region is crossed by the river of the same name, and the land was harsh and barren but interspersed with lush green fields, that for the most part cultivated opium poppies, a crop which was easier to grow than traditional food, even in poorly irrigated fields.

There were in fact still very few wheat fields despite the fight against drug trafficking, and the price of wheat had increased during the last two years due to the food crisis in developing countries.

According to the satellite survey, there were three plantations they needed to inspect, all of them near Lashkar Gah on the road to Kandahar.

They were to sleep in the house of Kamaal’s brother, who was also a CIA operative, but who also grew opium, and associated with the Taliban who protected him.

Mark did not like the situation at all. They could both be double agents, and they could be leading him into a situation that might involve the two principal governments in a domino effect, upsetting the precarious political-military balance of the Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan region. All he could do was stay vigilant, intercept and interpret any alarm signals, and carry out his task.

They parked the jeep about half a mile from the edge of the first plantation.

There were people working in the field harvesting the latex and the capsules of the poppies, and storing the crop inside a kind of low shed the color of the surrounding earth.

BAT FK2 Bantam, their technical expert, went into the shed and placed the micro-cameras and bugs that would send information for five hours and then self-destruct, leaving no identifiable residue behind.

Mark was in charge of data collection, and Kamaal translated the conversations he thought might provide useful information; he was familiar with the area and the people of the place, and would easily detect any abnormal situation.

They lurked about until evening and, at the end of the day, the regional Taliban chief arrived with two trucks.

He negotiated the various loads, placed the goods aboard the trucks, paid cash and quickly got on the road to Kandahar.

“I think that was the Taliban’s usual procedure,” said Kamaal, who was tired after hours of being concealed. “They buy from farmers then take away the raw product to deliver part to the laboratory for processing and part to sell to the highest bidder at the auction in Kandahar. Let's look at the recordings and listen to them carefully, but they were all locals and I don’t think there was anything strange here. Let's go to your brother’s. We can briefly analyze the data and then send it to the two agencies; that's our procedure.”

“I agree with you. I don't smell Bouda here,” replied Mark, while BAT FK23 Bantam was obliterating the traces of their passage.

18

Nadir looked like Kamaal, they both had the same burnt out look from the horrors of the war and they looked older than their years.

Nadir greeted the three men briefly and immediately closed the door behind them, leading them through a hidden passage into an underground area.

They were now in the warehouse of the opium produced by his plantation, the unofficial part; the opium that he would not sell cheaply to the Taliban, but would instead sell directly to Western buyers.

“You will sleep here. There are three folding beds, a table with four chairs and a bathroom. I personally will serve you meals. You cannot come up to my home if I don't explicitly invite you. It’s not safe; the Taliban are at home here.”

‘Cute as a punch in the nose,’ thought Mark after Kamaal had translated his brother's completely incomprehensible local dialect into Arabic.

He roughly calculated the amount of opium lying on the shelves. “A couple of million dollars after being turned into heroin. Damn, that's cute! He cheats the Taliban, too,” he reflected, pretending not to notice.

At 11:00 pm, after having written the report for the two agencies indicating that the crop was not part of the mission and having sent all the data collected during the afternoon, they went to sleep on the folding beds with their clothes on, and turned out the light.

In the dark, Mark thought about how hot and sensual Jane was, and he once again imagined the scene against the wall of his room in Buenos Aires. Then he turned on his stomach; he had to sleep and not be kept awake by a raised flagpole till dawn.

19

At six o’clock in the morning, Nadir arrived with coffee, goat milk, cheese and bread.

He woke them and told them that he had seen some activity during the night in the field to the south of the one they had watched yesterday and, in his opinion, it was better to work on this lead. It might help shorten the investigation time.

He had another motive to speed up events: the sooner he could get rid of his unwanted guests the better off he would be.

“Hey Nadir, I wonder if you wouldn’t take a kickback from them too. And Lisunov Li-2 and I are going to be dead as doornails and eaten by wild dogs before nightfall,” said BAT FK23 Bantam sarcastically. He really could not stand him.

“Perhaps, gentlemen 007, you will discover that for yourselves. Wouldn’t that be exciting? Maybe I will find you here tonight, who knows?” Nadir replied in kind, showing no hesitation in demonstrating his aversion to the Arabs.

After an hour and a half, the three agents had set up an observation station near the opium plantation that Nadir had indicated.

“Damn, what a lot of traffic!” BAT FK23 Bantam said while he was preparing the equipment.

“Yeah, they all seem very agitated. All the fields look alike, the warehouse is made of the same material and practically invisible from above, but here, unlike the others, I can see guards along the perimeter,” Mark said, while handing the binoculars to Kamaal.

Suddenly, they heard BAT FK23 Bantam’s strangled voice, “Shit! Shit! Damn, a scorpion stung me, God, the pain! How could I not see it?!!”

Mark spun around and saw a scorpion moving out from beneath his leg, luckily it was a small one compared to others that lived in the area, and the injected poison would not endanger his life.

“Fuck! I am allergic to scorpions! I’m starting to feel tingling sensations…and sick. Hey, Li-2! You're a doctor!”

Mark ran to the jeep and returned immediately with antihistamines, adrenaline and cortisone. He injected his colleague with the cortisone and antihistamines without wasting time. Meanwhile, Kamaal followed the situation on the plantation with the binoculars.

“What do we do?” Kamaal asked, worried.

“Let's see how Bat reacts, right now we can’t move him without being discovered but I’ll wait to give him the adrenaline. And forget about a special rescue operation; that would burn the mission. Hey Bat, how are you feeling now?”

“I’m breathing better thanks, the bite hurts like hell, but I don’t feel tingling now and I’m not choking. My breathing is almost normal. What a mess!”

“Do you think you can go on? Or should we stop the operation for today and leave when you're able to move, greenhorn?” Mark asked, smiling at him and then continued, “I have to go and place the micro-cams and bugs.”

“I’m clear-headed, I can make it; the antihistamine is taking effect. I can take your place, Kamaal has nothing to fear.”

“I have to wait for a good moment. There are guards everywhere. It’s impossible to enter without being seen right now,” Mark said.

The right moment arrived at about two in the afternoon, when suddenly the guards all stopped to eat something. They gathered together on the right side of the warehouse, leaving the left side unexpectedly uncovered.

Mark entered the warehouse on his stomach. First of all, he took in the space around him and how it had been arranged.

After this was done, he began quickly distributing the bugs and, as he was placing one of these, he saw some VHS tapes in a broken cardboard box leaning against a corner of the room.

He picked them up: they were three old tapes labeled as three movies from the 1990s: Ghost, Nikita and Terminator 2.

Instinctively Mark grabbed them and hid them under his jacket, his demon had suddenly reminded him how his father had died, and that he was in the country right now where someone from the CIA, who profited from drug trafficking, had betrayed and killed him. He had to find a trail, alone and without leaving clues, parallel to the mission. Perhaps, those tapes contained more than just the movies on the labels.

“Li-2 move, they are returning to work!” Kamaal warned.

Mark placed the last micro-cam and crawled out from where he had entered the warehouse and rejoined his partners.

“There’s no trace of the Taliban so far,” BAT FK23 Bantam said. “It seems very promising.”

“They keep saying that they’re behind schedule, and must send the load to Peshawar as soon as possible, the Master cannot wait. Master? Of what? Who is he?” Kamaal asked.

At some point an armored military vehicle arrived with two people on board and stopped outside the warehouse. Two men got out gesticulating dramatically.

“Have a look at this,” BAT F.K.23 Bantam said. “Take the binoculars Li-2 and have a look at the guy with the black boots. His name is Abbas Faisal, but it’s certainly an alias. He is the head of the beta section of ISI...a Pakistani operative and an expert in guerrilla warfare who seems to have connections with al-Qa'ida. What is he doing here in the Taliban region? Does he buy opium for his own use?”

“I see him. If he is here it means that we’re on the right track. As you know, Bouda is a former ISI agent. Kamaal, what are they saying to those in charge of the plantation?”

“That the Master is beside himself because the others, given the delay of operations, did not make the advance payment. They say that the load must be ready for tomorrow morning, and it must cross the border at 6:30 am and arrive at the laboratory.

“Others will come and pick up the raw goods directly, because they don’t trust their organization. The Master will not be there, but a trusted collaborator will be there to negotiate with the two of them,” Kamaal said.

“I think tonight we're not going back to your brother’s warehouse,” BAT FK23 Bantam said. He had now fully recovered from the scorpion sting.

“When night falls, we’ll send the report and the data to the agencies saying that we will follow the convoy to Peshawar, we have to cross the border with them in order not to lose track of them.

Kamaal, you have to contact logistics and change vehicles. Bring new documents along with you as well. We'll stay here and wait for you, and keep an eye on any changes in the situation.”

Li-2 amicably shook Kamaal’s hand as soon as he got up to go back to the jeep and leave.

The Afghan Pashtuns returned at night with supplies, a new vehicle, a load of wheat, and new documents that would allow the three of them to enter Pakistan as traders.

At 9:00 pm local time, they sent a report to the two agencies and ate some chicken kebab wraps while drinking beer. Each one took guard duty for an hour while the other two rested.

On the plantation they did not notice any movements after late evening, but more guards had joined the others and had been placed along the perimeter. Three empty trucks had arrived ready to be loaded.