Christopher Reich - Rules of Betrayal

“Sure, there have been unrecorded incidents,” said Grant. “We just called out one of our squadron chiefs for allowing a few of his planes to overfly the States with nukes aboard. But have we lost a nuke since the seventies? No sir, we have not. You have my word.”

“Scout’s honor?”

Grant gave the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. “Cross my heart. Now it’s your turn, Frank. Spill.”

Connor helped himself to a glass of water sitting on the table. He was obliged to give Grant something, but he didn’t want to tip his hand. “Got wind of something turning up on the black market,” he began cautiously. “Just a rumor, mind you, but one of my operators thought enough of the source that he passed it on.”

“Go on.”

“There may be an American cruise missile for sale.”

“What kind? Tomahawk? ALCM?”

“A big one. An air-launched cruise missile. Swept-back fins. Whole package.”

“You said it was a rumor. Has your operator seen this thing?”

“There’s a photo making the rounds. Who knows if it’s real?”

Grant appeared unfazed by the disclosure. “If it is real, then the missile will be carrying a conventional warhead. I wouldn’t worry.”

“So it’s not the other thing?”

“A nuke? Are you kidding me?” Grant laughed as if this were the most far-fetched notion he’d heard in years and Connor was a damned fool for even considering it. “No way we’d lose a nuclear-tipped cruise without all hell breaking loose.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Connor. “Apparently it’s an old one. Maybe twenty years or so. Still, word is that the broker is claiming it’s a nuke.”

Grant began to tap his foot. “He’s bullshitting. There is no way on God’s green earth that anyone could get ahold of a nuclear-tipped ALCM.”

“Glad to know it, Joe.”

“Where did you say this thing’s for sale?”

“Pakistan,” said Connor. “Right on the Afghan border. Apparently someone stumbled across it high in the mountains. We’re talking very remote. It had been buried for years.”

At the mention of the word Pakistan, Grant froze. His foot stopped tapping, and the animated face turned waxen. “Now hold on, Frank. Your story’s changing awful fast. Are you telling me that someone actually has this thing? I mean, physically possesses it?”

Connor took his time answering, observing the steady blanching of Grant’s ageless features. “Not that I know of,” he said finally. “Like I said, there’s a photo, that’s all.”

“Just a photo?”

“Yeah.”

Grant regained his color. “Sounds like quite some story.”

“That’s why I’m here. You were a B-52 pilot. You used to fly around with those things in your payload every day. It’s impossible, right? We couldn’t lose a nuclear-tipped cruise missile and just forget about it?”

Grant sat forward, his jaw raised to defend his impugned integrity. “This is the United States of America you’re talking about, Frank. Not one of them ’stans or banana republics or African dictatorships where you boys conduct your dirty business. We do things the right way.”

“Good to know.” Connor put down the water glass, stood, and walked to the door. “You’ve taken a lot off my mind. I’ll be able to sleep better tonight.”

“Hey, Frank,” called Joe Grant, his smile back in place. “You still in contact with this operator?”

“Sure thing. Why?”

“Tell him not to believe everything he hears.”

The Toyota pickup rocked to a halt on the muddy track.

Sultan Haq clutched the dashboard, grimacing as pain racked his body. “Dammit,” he said, staring out the windscreen at the dense foliage pressing in on all sides. “I was here two days ago. Where has it gone?”

Haq threw open the door and stepped outside, fighting back the tangle of branches that threatened to envelop the truck. He sniffed the air, and his eyes watered with the scent of ammonia and wood smoke. He was close. He stepped to the front of the truck and gazed ahead. The track continued for a brief stretch, then curved to the right and was swallowed by forest. According to the route marker on his handheld GPS, he was in the right place. Yet no matter how hard he looked, he could see no sign of the security fence or the long wooden building or the corrugated tin roof and chimneys that carried away the toxic smoke.

Haq forced his way to the driver’s window and punched the horn three times. Not ten meters away, a swatch of foliage rustled and, as if by magic, disappeared. Two men clutching Kalashnikovs waved him forward. Haq saw the fence and the guard dogs, and behind them the abandoned lumber mill housing a refinery to convert raw opium into morphine paste. He signaled for the truck to advance, and followed it into the clearing.

Immediately the fence was secured. The foliage slipped back into place. The refinery was once again hidden from the outside world.

A haggard old man wrapped in black robes stood on the sagging landing, smoking an opium pipe. “How much?” he asked, his mouth a toothless, black hole.

“Five hundred,” said Haq, meaning five hundred kilos of raw opium.

“Bring it in.”

Sultan Haq ordered his men to unload the truck and leaned against the body as they carried bag after bag of raw opium into the building. Normally he would help, but his injuries prevented it. Bandages on his neck, shoulder, and forearms covered third-degree burns left by the American bombs.

A week had passed since his father’s murder at Tora Bora, seven tortured days during which he’d endured the blistering of his seared flesh. Seven days during which he’d mourned his beloved father, who had been his closest friend and most trusted counsel. Seven days during which he’d thought of nothing but the American healer, Ransom, and his treachery, and how he might one day meet him again and kill him. He knew that such sweet revenge would not be granted him. No matter. He would make do with punishing those who had sent Ransom. America would pay dearly.

Haq climbed three steps and entered the building. The first room was for intake and storage. Transparent plastic bags filled with raw opium crowded every wall, rising past the rafters. The process of refining the raw opium into morphine base began in the next room over. Haq looked on as men emptied bag after bag of the resinous, tar-like opium into great rusted oil barrels filled with boiling water and lime. The raw opium quickly dissolved into a clear brown liquid. Shreds of poppy plants, dirt, and residue sank to the bottom. The morphine alkaloid in the opium reacted with the lime slake to form a white rind of morphine paste on the surface. The boiling water was filtered and the morphine paste separated and taken to the next room, where it was placed in another barrel and reheated with concentrated ammonia.

As the paste solidified, it settled to the bottom of the barrel, becoming large brown chunks of morphine base. The rule was that ten kilos of raw opium made up one kilo of morphine base. The morphine base was taken into a separate room and wrapped into brick-sized blocks. It was now ready for sale and shipment to heroin laboratories.

The economics of the opium business were impossible to dispute, mused Haq as he walked through the dark, humid, foul-smelling rooms. One hectare of land under poppy cultivation yielded twenty kilos of raw opium. The market price for one kilo ran between $250 and $300. A farmer cultivating a single hectare could earn nearly $6,000 for his crop, a princely sum in a country where the average annual income barely reached $800. Haq and his clan controlled over 2,000 hectares of land suitable for poppy cultivation. This year’s harvest had brought in over 40,000 kilos of raw opium and would end up yielding nearly 4,000 kilos of morphine paste.