Brad Thor Read online

  He boarded his Kam Air flight for Kabul in Dubai, and as he passed the cockpit, he picked up the unmistakable odor of “Russian aftershave.” The former Soviet pilots who made the hop from the UAE to Afghanistan were notorious for their drinking problems. Harvath hoped the man’s drinking wouldn’t impair his ability to fly the plane.

  He spent an extra couple hundred bucks for first class, which meant that his armrests were held together with blue duct tape instead of gray and that five out of a possible twenty screws bolted his seat to the floor instead of the three the poor folks back in coach had.

  Harvath wisely declined the in-flight meal and instead snacked on food he had bought in the duty-free shop before leaving Dubai.

  He had spent a good amount of the flight over to the UAE sleeping. He wanted to get adjusted to the nine-and-a-half-hour time difference between Afghanistan and D.C. as quickly as possible. Even though Stephanie Gallo’s jet was extremely comfortable, his body still felt tired and stiff.

  Had he had the time, he would have preferred a couple of days in Dubai to allow his body to unkink and his internal clock to reset. Going into a place like Afghanistan jetlagged and off his game was a good way to get killed.

  Harvath stared out the window and tried to relax his mind as some of the most godforsaken territory on the planet slipped beneath the belly of the aging Kam Air 737.

  When they finally came over the jagged mountain peaks just outside Kabul, the sky was a bright blue and Harvath saw that snow remained on many of the mountaintops. It must have still been cold at night, as a thin haze hung over the city from the diesel stoves known as bukharis that Afghans used to heat their homes.

  As the plane made its steep descent and came in on approach, they flew over Kabul’s notorious Policharki prison, where Mustafa Khan was being kept. From above, it looked like a giant wagon wheel surrounded by four very high walls.

  Harvath compared the prison and the area around it to the satellite imagery he had seen before leaving the United States. As he did, his thoughts were interrupted by a slight concern. Though the plane was quickly descending, Harvath had never felt the landing gear lowered.

  Within seconds, the plane reached one thousand feet and there was a blaring siren from the cockpit as the gear horn announced the pilots’ potentially fatal error.

  Harvath gripped his duct-taped armrests as the pilots transferred power to the aircraft’s large engines and tried to abort the landing.

  The Kam Air plane barely missed the rooftops of houses near the end of the runway as it climbed back up, dropped its gear, and came back in for a second attempt.

  Safely on the ground, Harvath peeked inside the cockpit at the Russian pilot on his way off the plane. The man was so covered in sweat he looked as if he’d been thrown in a shower fully clothed. So much for a quiet arrival, thought Harvath. The landing-gear incident was not a good omen.

  Stepping onto the tarmac, Harvath took a deep breath. He’d been on airplanes and inside stale terminal buildings for over twenty-four hours, and though it wasn’t the freshest air in the world, it was still better than the recycled stuff he’d been forced to endure.

  Kabul International Airport was exactly how he remembered it—bland, boring, and indistinguishable from any number of Third-World airports he had passed through over his career. The two-story terminal was constructed of concrete covered with opaque, white plaster and blue trim. Though the temperature was somewhere in the forties, airport employees shuffled slowly across the tarmac as if it were three times that. Antennas bristled from every rooftop and a smattering of old planes, many of them Russian, sat off to one side waiting for someone to haul them to the scrap heap.

  Adjacent to the commercial portion of the airport was the international military airfield. It was ringed with razor wire and armed checkpoints. Sleek new jets and helicopters stood in marked contrast to the aircraft Harvath had just disembarked from, and it seemed a fitting metaphor for what side of the fence he was now on in his professional life.

  Making his way across the tarmac, he entered the terminal building and waited for his suitcases. Once he had them, he proceeded to customs, where the Afghan inspectors were even less interested in him than the Emiratis had been. Muslim nations were not exactly known for being bastions of activity and intellectual curiosity. Nevertheless, had he run into a problem in either country, he carried an envelope of currency in his breast pocket that would have smoothed everything over. Baksheesh—the Arabic equivalent for bribe—was the universal lubricant that drove the engine of commerce everywhere, but especially in the Islamic world. Having operated all over it, he had watched Baksheesh work miracles.

  After filling out an entry card and passing through passport control, Harvath stepped into the bustling main terminal area. Though his demeanor never would have suggested it, he was completely switched on. Afghanistan was incredibly dangerous, especially for foreigners—both military and nonmilitary. And not having had the time to grow a beard or to take other steps to blunt his Western appearance, he looked every bit the outsider.

  His eyes scanned the terminal as he made his way toward the front doors. Outside, people waiting to get in stood in line to have their belongings searched and to undergo a pat-down. Watching the absence of skill exhibited by the male and female Afghan National Police officers conducting the physical searches, Harvath guessed it would only be a matter of time before a suicide bomber got inside and detonated near the ticket counter or some other densely packed spot within the airport. As he pushed through the doors, he was glad to leave the building behind.

  The muddy parking lot was a mass of people dodging dingy mini-buses, soiled SUVs, and derelict sedans. Off to the right, on the edge of the parking lot, was a pair of heavily armored Suburbans surrounded by a group of equally well-armed and-armored men whose appearance screamed “private security contractor.” The locals referred to the American contractors as “the Gunmen of Kabul” and the Afghan president had been working hard to get as many of the companies closed down as possible.

  He claimed that many of the contracting companies were corrupt and had been using their guns and power to commit murders, smuggle drugs, deal drugs, rob banks, and conduct extortion.

  While a handful of contractors had most likely gone rogue and deserved the contempt of both the government and their peers, the majority were honorable, professional outfits that believed in their mission in Afghanistan. They also believed that the Afghan president was on a bogus witch hunt and charged contracting firms exorbitant licensing fees. There were also rumors that the firms being hounded the hardest were those who neglected to pay off the right government bureaucrats in return for administrative protection. The net effect was that the smaller contractors had to get very creative in order to make ends meet, especially with license fees now north of seventy thousand dollars.

  On the other side of the lot, leaning against a dented Toyota Land Cruiser, reading a paperback, was one such contractor.

  Greg Gallagher, or Baba G, as the Afghans had nicknamed him, which meant Grandfather G, was a fifty-year-old Force Reconnaissance Marine. He and Harvath had been assigned to the same Amphibious Ready Group in the Persian Gulf early in Harvath’s career as a SEAL. They had been good friends ever since.

  Gallagher had come to Afghanistan four years ago after taking early retirement from the Corps. Most assumed he had come in search of adventure and easy money, and very few people knew the real reason he was there.

  Force Recon Marines were similar to SEALs in that they conducted deep reconnaissance operations, carried out strikes and other small-scale offensive actions in hostile or politically sensitive environments, captured and destroyed enemy targets, and engaged in the sophisticated world of direct action. In short, they were the special operations forces of the U.S. Marine Corps and Greg Gallagher was one of their best operators. At least he had been until he shot a young child whose father had charged a roadblock in Iraq.

  It was a textbook example of how when eve
rything can go wrong it does. Gallagher and his men were augmenting a checkpoint during a time of heightened violence in Iraq. There was intelligence stating that four different vehicle-borne explosive devices, or VBEDs, were going to attempt to infiltrate downtown Karbala, which was sixty miles southwest of Baghdad and considered by Shia Islam as the second-holiest city after Mecca.

  One of Karbala’s most popular attractions was the tomb of the prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Husayn ibn Ali. Known as the Masjid Al-Husayn, the tomb was believed to be one of the gates to paradise and was a popular Shia pilgrimage location. According to U.S. military intelligence, it was also the bombers’ primary target.

  The vehicle that Gallagher had fired upon was a white Chevy Caprice. It had swung out from behind the line of cars waiting to be inspected and rushed the checkpoint despite repeated commands to halt. Not even warning shots had deterred its driver. Based upon his rules of engagement, and fearing for the safety of his Marines and the civilians clustered near the checkpoint, Gallagher engaged the vehicle and painted a racing stripe up the center of the hood and right through the windshield of the car.

  When the vehicle skidded to a stop just before the checkpoint, everyone braced for impact. Within seconds, the driver leaped from his vehicle and pulled his bloody child from the backseat. He sat down on the road cradling his little boy and wailing in Arabic. When he had ascertained that the car posed no threat, Gallagher—an accomplished medic—personally attended to the boy while the team’s interpreter translated for the father.

  The boy was very sick and the father had been trying to get him to the hospital. He had no idea there was a checkpoint, and when he had seen the long line of vehicles, he feared his son wouldn’t survive the wait, so he had decided to risk coming up the shoulder to ask the Americans if he and his son could be granted permission to pass.

  Gallagher called in a helicopter for transport, but it arrived too late. The little Iraqi boy bled out in his father’s arms.

  Though the father was clearly to blame, Gallagher didn’t see it that way. He had pulled the trigger and his bullets had killed that little boy. It made no difference to him that the investigation had absolved him of any wrongdoing and that the vehicle could very well have been carrying an explosive device instead of a sick child.

  Tactically, he had done the right thing, but Gallagher couldn’t get beyond the fact that he had killed a little boy. Finally, he had left the Corps.

  At six-foot-four and 225 pounds, Baba G was a big bear of a man and still looked every inch the Marine. He had an intense pair of dark eyes, a full head of gray hair kept at an acceptable length, and a short, wispy beard that, no matter how hard he tried, refused to come in fuller.

  He was wearing jeans and hiking boots, along with a denim shirt and a black Duluth Trading Company carpenter’s jacket.

  As Harvath neared the truck, Gallagher tossed his book onto the front seat and smiled. “Mister. Mister,” he shouted, mimicking the swarm of Afghan cabbies that had been dogging Harvath since he had come out of the terminal. “You need ride?”

  “No thanks,” replied Harvath as he drew alongside Baba G’s Land Cruiser and dropped his bags. “I was told to wait here for a big, handsome Marine. You haven’t seen one, have you?”

  Gallagher looked over both shoulders. “There was one here a few minutes ago, but he heard some squid was in town and ran home to lock up his goats.”

  “Those Marines,” chuckled Harvath, “always so protective of their women.”

  Gallagher pretended to go for his gun, but then stopped and extended his hand. Harvath grasped it and Baba G pulled him in for a hug. “It’s good to see you, brother.”

  “You too,” replied Harvath.

  Breaking off the hug, Gallagher bent and grabbed Harvath’s suitcases. “You’re just in time for rush hour,” he said as he opened the back of his truck and tossed the bags inside. “Depending on how fast the donkey carts are moving, it could take us at least fifteen minutes to get to the compound.”

  “I hate Friday traffic in Kabul.”

  “You and me both,” Gallagher replied with a smile as he pointed Harvath around to the passenger side of the Land Cruiser.

  Climbing inside, Harvath looked down at the book the Marine had been reading. “Jackie Collins?” he asked as Gallagher climbed into the driver’s seat and shut his door.

  “The infidel section of the Kabul library is somewhat limited, my friend,” Baba G replied, as he slid the gearshift, which was surrounded by expired air fresheners, into first. “But we do what we can. TIA, right?”

  TIA was an acronym that stood for This Is Afghanistan. It was a catchall phrase that unburdened them of the need for long, drawn-out explanations of things. Both men had come to appreciate that Afghanistan was a country and culture unique unto itself. Here, certain things happened certain ways for certain reasons. To try to explain or understand them in a Western frame of mind was a waste of time. Hence, TIA.

  Before letting out the clutch, Gallagher reached behind his seat and withdrew a small, insulated cooler bag. “A little something to help you adjust,” he said as he handed it to Harvath. “Courtesy of the local Welcome Wagon.”

  Harvath unzipped the lid and saw that it contained a cold six-pack of sugar-free Red Bull and a 9mm Glock 19. “I feel at home already,” he said as he removed the pistol, checked to make sure a round was chambered, and then tucked it into his waistband before popping the tab on a Red Bull.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” replied Gallagher. “There’ve been a couple of developments since we last spoke and I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to report.”

  CHAPTER 10

  They splashed through the streets past drab Soviet-era buildings, mud-walled compounds, and stores fronted by pushcarts and wheelbarrows filled with cheap merchandise from Pakistan.

  Afghan men squatted in groups alongside the road or shuffled slowly through the cold air that still clung to the six-thousand-foot-high city, their hands clasped behind their backs in the Afghan fashion while women in cornflower-blue burkas filled ratty shopping bags with their marketing or carried large plastic jugs of water. Children ran everywhere.

  The late-morning traffic was thick and was accompanied by a cacophony of car horns. The only person who wasn’t honking was Baba G, who was busy answering Harvath’s questions.

  “You’re absolutely sure?” asked Harvath one more time.

  Baba G nodded as he downshifted and maneuvered his Land Cruiser around one of Kabul’s many traffic circles. At the top of the circle were two trucks filled with Afghan National Army soldiers, all of them armed with heavy weapons, as well as 7.62mm machine guns mounted to the roll bars of their vehicles.

  Harvath didn’t know what he liked less, the close proximity of so many cars—any number of which could be carrying al-Qaeda or Taliban militants—or the fact that Mustafa Khan was no longer being kept at Policharki Prison. “Why’d they move him?”

  Gallagher smiled and rubbed his left thumb and forefinger together. “For the same reason we thought we’d be able to get him out.”

  “Baksheesh.”

  “Welcome to Afghanistan.”

  Harvath was familiar with the ancient adage that “you can’t buy an Afghan, you can only rent one,” and Policharki wasn’t immune from this long-standing Afghan tradition of trading money for favors. In fact, Policharki was infamous for being able to hold anyone but a rich man. Bribe the right guard, the right family of a guard, or the right elders of the village the guard was from and anyone could be sprung from Policharki.

  Harvath hadn’t expected freeing Khan to be a walk in the park. He and Gallagher had assumed that the al-Qaeda operative would have been kept away from the general population and that it was going to take big money not only to get the two of them inside, but also to get back out again with Khan in their custody.

  What had bothered Harvath from the start, though, was that if he was thinking this way, then al-Qaeda had to be as well. The
y would be willing to spend a lot of money to get him back, and this must have been exactly what the Afghan government was worried about. They had come to the conclusion that Policharki couldn’t hold him, so they had moved him. The question was, where?

  “So how do we find him?” asked Harvath.

  “I’ve got some feelers out,” said Gallagher as they passed another heavily armed Afghan National Army checkpoint.

  Harvath watched the picture recede in his side-view mirror. “I don’t remember seeing so many soldiers the last time I was here.”

  “The government is trying to exert more control over Kabul. Attacks and suicide bombings have been going through the roof. Everybody’s all keyed up.”

  Harvath was aware of the fact that the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated, but seeing how severely Kabul, which once had a modicum of security, had been affected didn’t do much for his mood. “Tell me about the feelers you’ve got out.”

  “The Afghans are big-time gossips. Nobody talks more than they do. I’ve got a guy in the Afghan National Police who has a couple of cousins in Afghan intelligence. I’ve fed him some information in the past. Nothing stellar, pretty low-hanging fruit, but it made him look good at work and so we’ve got a happy relationship. We’re meeting him this afternoon. Insha’Allah, he’ll have something worthwhile for us.”

  Harvath laughed at Baba G’s use of the popular Muslim phrase for Allah willing. “You haven’t gone native on me, have you?”

  “When in Rome,” answered Gallagher, applying his turn signal as they approached a narrow, dead-end street. Three-quarters of the way down on the left-hand side was Baba G’s Kabul compound. His company owned, or more appropriately “managed,” another in Jalalabad, which was where Gallagher was normally based.

  As in all the other compounds in Afghanistan, there were no windows facing the street. The main entrance consisted of a pair of thick, nine-foot-high steel doors, painted green, with a normal-sized door cut into the steel to make it easier for people to come and go.