Donna Andrews - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007

“What about the other prisoners in Block One?” Lee wanted to know. “And in the other blocks?”

Morgan shrugged. “They’ll be pretty much on their own. If they can get to the main gate, a lot of them can pile onto the half-track and the Hummers when they retreat.”

“And the guards?”

“Most of them at the main gate and around Blocks One and Two will probably be killed in the initial assault.”

Lee looked down at the table. “A lot of those men are just ordinary family men, working men, most of them not political at all.”

“They chose to work there,” Morgan said evenly. “They knew the risks involved.” He paused, then continued in a softer tone. “Look, Lee, everyone makes their own choices in life. Everyone pays their own prices for those choices. That’s just life.”

“Or in this case, death,” she amended.

They finished supper and went outside to sit on the building’s back steps and drink the rest of the wine.

“I try very hard to understand you Westerners,” she said. “All of you who are here in my country: Americans, British, Irish, Australians, the mixed Europeans. I try to understand the little regard you all seem to have for human life if something stands in the way of what you want.”

“I’ve been trying to understand your people, too,” Morgan said, “since I saw your own father stare so hatefully at you, and you told me how you’d been ostracized by him from your family. I don’t understand that. My brother Virgil and I are twins; we were together in the womb, born together. We grew up together as dirt-poor Catholics in a steel-mill town in a place called Pennsylvania. Our father was a drunk; our mother washed other men’s dirty, stinking mill clothes to feed us. We got made fun of as free students in a hard-knock Catholic school because of the shabby hand-me-down uniforms we wore. We never got invited to join school teams or clubs, or come to school parties. But we got away from all that. When we were old enough, we joined the Marine Corps. We went through boot camp together, then weapons school, where they taught us to use rifles, pistols, machine guns, flamethrowers, hand-held rocket launchers. Finally we went to sniper school together and learned to kill. We lived by the sniper motto: One shot, one kill. When we left the Corps, we both had confirmed body counts in the high twenties. The day we were discharged, we were recruited for a mercenary team to fight in Zaire. We’ve been fighting, and killing, ever since.”

Morgan fell silent then. The two of them sat there in the shadows, the wine warming them, listening to mixed night sounds of Kabul. Someone, somewhere not too far away, was playing one of the new Western stations on the radio, and the mournful voice of a mournful woman was singing “Blues in the Night.” They listened until the song ended, then Morgan spoke again.

“I know what my brother is accused of doing, and I don’t condone what he’s done. But he’s my brother. I can’t disown him like your father has disowned you. It’s not in me to do that.”

In the darkness, Lee reached out and took his hand.

Later, she moved close to him and he put an arm around her shoulders.

Within a week, Michaleen Donahue was almost ready to move.

“The CV-6 Russian half-track,” he reported to Morgan, “is hidden under a camo tarp about five miles from the prison. The Hummers are concealed nearby; we got lucky and stole one of them from the Marines down near Ghazni, so we saved a nice piece of change there. The launchers and rockets are stowed in a house on the outskirts. The K-2 explosives are stashed in another house not far away. All weapons and ammo, including the flamethrower, are at a third location convenient to the other two. And I’ve got personnel all over the bloody city, paid and waiting to be summoned.”

“What kind of men have we got?” Morgan asked.

“Good men, the lot of them. Three have relatives in the prison that they’re going to try and spring. Those are Afghanis, of course. Then,” he began to count on his fingers, “I’ve got two of me own Irish lads from Belfast; two Aussies who’ve worked together as a team for twelve years; a couple of real killers from Tajikistan who deserted the Russian army; a Pakistani, and two Turks.”

“Turks, good.” Morgan nodded. “I’ll fight with Turks any day.”

“I feel the same way,” Donahue agreed. “We’ll put them on the Hummers with ourselves.”

“Right. Inside help?”

“Two guards have been bribed. They’ll see to it that the Block One prisoners will be let into the courtyard for exercise ten minutes after our mechanized force breaks cover and heads for the prison. All the men will be armed before daybreak and rendevous at two separate locations to be picked up by the Hummers. The K-2 will have been placed on each side of the main gate during the night; I’ll carry one igniter switch and one of my Irish lads will have the other one in the second Hummer. Launcher gunners and their rockets will be in slit trenches fifty yards away on each side; they’ll take out the gun turrets. The flamethrower man will be on the half-track.” Donahue lighted a fat Cuban cigar. “All’s left is for us to set a time.”

“You said we had money left?”

“Sure. What we saved by stealing one of the Hummers. What d’you need?”

“I’m thinking some kind of diversion on the side of town farthest from the prison, to distract the civilian law and the local army garrison.”

“Good idea. Let’s see what we can find here...” Donahue unrolled on his desk a map of the city and began tracing it with one tobacco-stained finger. “Over here we have a sugar-beet plant and a few food-processing and canning factories. There’s a rather large woolen mill here. At this point here, farther out, there’s an industrial district with some metalworking shops, a lumber mill, a number of woodworking businesses—”

“How big’s the lumber mill?”

“It’s quite a good size.”

“Let’s set it on fire.”

Donahue frowned. “All the wood’s pretty dry this time of year. The place’ll go up like a tinderbox. Could spread and burn down a couple square miles of the city. Including a lot of homes.”

“Too bad,” Morgan said. “I don’t owe these people anything. Let’s set it on fire.”

Donahue shrugged. “All right. It’s your call.”

Morgan could tell that the idea didn’t sit well with Donahue. But it wasn’t Donahue’s brother in Pul-e-Charki. “Can you get somebody to do it?” he asked.

“Sure,” the big Irishman said quietly. “I know a couple of Iranian thugs who’ll do anything for a laugh.”

“Okay. Set that up and then we’ll decide on a time.”

As Morgan started to leave, Donahue said, “Incidentally...”

Morgan stopped. “What?”

“One of my lads saw you in a restaurant with that radio woman, Liban Adnan.”

“Yeah. She’s been after me to do an interview on mercenaries. I’m just stringing her along.”

“Well, you might want to be extra careful with her. She’s a police informant.”

That night, walking arm in arm back to Lee’s apartment after a late dinner, Morgan was trying to decide how to kill her.

Breaking her neck was probably the best way; it was quick, quiet. And with the difference in their size and weight, it would be easy enough.

But he hated like hell to do it.

During the past week they had been developing — something; Morgan wasn’t quite sure what. Ever since they had sat in the shadows on the back steps of her building and he had told her about himself and Virgil, and she had ended up with her head on his shoulder, they had both begun feeling — something.

It had started with casual touching, quick, spontaneous hugs, brief kisses on the cheeks, then the lips, lightly at first, barely, then longer, more serious, urgent.