Дэвид Балдаччи - King and Maxwell

“And Sean. Earlier today. They knew we were friends.”

“So that means they’re still working the case,” he said thoughtfully.

“The Army might not like that, Tyler.”

“I don’t give a crap what the Army doesn’t like. This is my dad we’re talking about. If he’s not dead, I want to know where he is. I want him to come back home. I’m not letting this drop.”

“I guess if it were my mom, I wouldn’t let it go either.”

“You can’t tell anybody about this.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

He stared at her intently and then turned the truck around and drove her back home.

When Tyler got back to his house, his stepmother wasn’t there and her car was gone. He went up to his bedroom and studied his cell phone. He started to make a call on it but then stopped. What if they had his phone under surveillance?

He ran back downstairs, climbed into the truck, and drove off again.

There was a payphone, one of the last in the area, at a 7-Eleven about two miles from his house. He dropped in the coins and dialed the number.

Michelle answered on the second ring.

Tyler said, “I want to hire you again.”

“You sure?” said Michelle.

“Very sure,” replied Tyler.

“Good, because we were never really off the case.”

SAM WINGO HAD FINALLY DOZED OFF on the bus on which he was a passenger, but he was nearly lifted out of his seat when the vehicle struck a particularly large pothole. He looked out the window into the gathering dawn. The terrain was bleak and would grow bleaker still. He might as well have been on the moon.

He turned to the person sitting next to him. She was an old woman dressed in traditional Muslim garb. A crate of vegetables was in her lap. She was softly snoring. She was obviously more used to the rough roads than he was.

Years ago he had traveled from Turkey into Iran for some clandestine work with a team of soldiers. They had made their crossing at the foot of Mount Ararat where Noah, according to the Scriptures, had completed his voyage on the Ark. The trip from Istanbul to Tehran could normally be made overland in three days. But Wingo’s team had not been able to avail itself of ordinary modes of transportation, nor could the men make the border crossing at a legitimate site because they would have been arrested on the spot. Thus a three-day journey had taken a week.

Six hours after the team had arrived at its destination in Iran, three terrorists who had escaped American justice were dead. Wingo and his team had gotten out of the country a lot faster than they had taken to get in. The exit plan had been carefully constructed and still they had barely made it, with Iranian security forces right on their heels.

His journey now wasn’t carefully constructed. He was flying by the seat of his pants. His odds of success, he knew, were abysmal. And yet he didn’t care. He was going to make this work because he was going to get back to his son.

From Kabul to Peshawar in Pakistan normally took about ten hours’ driving, with a border crossing in between. Buses were slower and relatively cheap. Taxis were faster but they cost more. Wingo didn’t really care about money; the difference of a few euros was not important. The problem was getting across the border. And while he had originally been given papers that would have allowed him to do that, he couldn’t use them now. He couldn’t trust anyone, not even, it seemed, his own government.

While the road between Kabul and Jalalabad was not the best, major portions of it had been resurfaced recently. However, the route was considered one of the most dangerous in the world because of the numerous traffic accidents, many of them fatal. And the driver of Wingo’s bus seemed determined to add to that count. He drove with barely concealed ferocity, both cursing and swerving with regularity and pushing the bus forward with bursts of stomach-lurching acceleration, followed by abrupt braking that threw passengers around like pinballs. Sometimes it seemed like the creaky bus would simply flip over.

Wingo gazed around for at least the twentieth time at his fellow passengers, who didn’t seem to care about the maniacal driver. They appeared to be typical Afghans or Pakistanis making their way back and forth across the two countries. Wingo was the only Westerner on board, which alone made him stand out. He had tried to lessen this some by darkening his face and covering himself with a hoodie and glasses. And he had grown a full beard since being deployed.

The largest city in between Kabul and the Pakistani border was Jalalabad, which was the second-largest city in eastern Afghanistan and also the capital of the Nangarhar province. Despite being considered one of the most beautiful of all Afghan cities, with its prime location at the confluence of the Kabul and Kunar Rivers, it was not considered safe for Westerners because the political climate was too unstable. This was so despite the presence of the largest American base in Afghanistan, Forward Operating Base Fenty adjacent to the Jalalabad Airport.

Wingo knew that the mujahideen had taken the city in the early 1990s after expelling the Soviets. Commencing at that point and continuing until the present virtually every Afghan man had at least one automatic weapon, many of them Russian-made AK-47s. The Taliban had taken control of the city after the expulsion of the Soviets before being defeated by the United States and driven from power in retaliation for 9/11. Wingo also knew the Taliban was desperate to take over Afghanistan once more. And Jalalabad’s proximity to the Pakistani border made it a prime goal for the insurgents’ efforts to reclaim the country; hence the current instability.

The road ended at the border. Travelers crossed over on foot and then were picked up by buses or taxis for their onward journey – unless it was lunchtime, when the border was closed. Yet there was another complication involved for Wingo. This part of Pakistan was not controlled by the government.

This was Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly the North West Frontier Territory, and the area was under the rigid rule of local tribes. Foreign travelers had to obtain permission to pass through here, which followed the legendary Khyber Pass between the two countries. The trip would be made by taxi, and in the taxi with you there would be a solider. The permission was free. The taxi ride and accompanying soldier were not. All in all, the price was astonishingly cheap by Western standards. But then again, what was your life worth?

Wingo could not cross at the border. He had no permission and no papers he could use, and he was in no position to ask for permission, free or not. Thus he was getting off at Jalalabad. He was the only one who did. The bus would continue on and reach the border before it closed at lunchtime. His crossing, if it came, would be at night.

He had a contact in the city, though, and he intended to exploit that contact to the fullest. Because of the heavy American presence here he had to be careful. There would be watchful eyes everywhere, both Americans and locals. And right now neither side was his ally. He was fluent in Pashto, which was the primary language spoken in the country. He was also conversant in Dari, the second most popular language here. But he could not speak either one in a native dialect; virtually no American could. He would simply keep his mouth closed for the most part.

He had arranged to meet his contact later in a room in a hotel that was as far from the airport as he could manage. He got to the hotel early so he could see if anything was amiss. He had to trust his contact to a certain degree, but he trusted no one fully.

It was early in the morning, but the temperature was already nearing sixty. In the heat of the day it would soar into the eighties this time of year. Still, Wingo had endured far worse; a thermometer even close to triple digits was not a particular hardship.