Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

In the courtyard there’d be chaos, craziness, insane hubbub. It would take a few minutes for things to calm down, for someone to issue orders to Zarzi’s well-armed militia, for the pathetic Afghan police or the hopelessly incompetent Dutch peacekeepers to be called. Ray would use that time to dump the rifle, and slip out of the hotel and off into the crowds.

Ray took another sip of tea.

It was as good a plan as could be imagined.

But it didn’t deal with the problem.

The problem was: there was a mole somewhere who’d given him up to the contractors.

He was blown. He was hunted.

Now what does a nice Catholic boy do about that? He hadn’t figured it out yet, but he knew one thing. He’d have to slit some more throats.

QALAT OUTSKIRTS

ZABUL PROVINCE

SOUTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN

1700 HOURS

The city shimmered before them in the afternoon sun. It almost looked like Oz or Mecca or the Baghdad of the many tales, white and dignified, sprawled across the plain under the mountains, except for the fact that it was utterly crappy. It had a skyline that consisted of a few decrepit buildings of the sort that were old fashioned in 1972 when they’d been built, and the rest low-rent ramshackle construction improvisations, none more than a couple of stories high, thrown together more or less on the fly, wherever. Mick and his pals wandered farther, heading downtown.

What lay farther along was, to the Western mind, somewhat baffling: a maze of dusty, crowded streets lit up by a riot of color and confusion, Arabic signs amid universal symbols like small Coke bottle signs, a brand of Japanese gasoline, pictures of kabobs, the ubiquitous BankAmericard and MasterCard symbols, Indian teas. Other identifiables amid the clutter consisted of but were not limited to carts, shops, tents selling mostly woven things gaudy with color, pots, guns guaranteed to fire at least fifty times before exploding, kabobs, rice balls, custard, more pots, whatever. The vehicles seemed from 1927, many of them with an odd number of wheels, many painted extravagantly. You could not move in the place without raising a shroud of dust, for less than 2 percent of the roads were paved.

Mick had ditched the ball cap-a long-billed SureFire giveaway for big-time customers in the trade-for his own turban, and by this time, he’d become expert in draping it so his features were obscured. The sunglasses and beard helped, but what helped most was that Qalat was still tribal, meaning really lawless, and there were enough Westerners about of dubious pedigree that the addition of a few more didn’t set off signals. He didn’t have to pretend to be native, just psycho, not a stretch for him. Plus, he was escorted by two heavily armed Tals, whose glares and do-not-approach hand signals were enough to keep him safe from all but the most insane militia. And there was Mick’s size, impressive, and his body language, which said fuck-not-or-die, and his own AK-47, the Barrett being stashed in the foothills, to be picked up if time and circumstance permitted. Then too he had Tony Z and Crackers the Clown, also festooned with AKs, robes, grenades, daggers, and dust, and those two serious pilgrims amplified the fuck-not-or-die message.

Mick’s ears were still red. Such a reaming he’d gotten. Mr. MacGyver had not been a happy camper, wherever he was, whomever he worked for. Mick winced at the conversation, held at 0730 that morning.

“Make me happy,” the control had said in answering and when Mick merely swallowed, accepting that which was about to be bestowed, his voice box seemed disconnected from his brain. Mr. MacGyver had said, “You bastard. You moron. You idiot. You had his location, the cover of darkness, the advantage in numbers, firepower, ruthlessness, aggression, and experience, and yet he defeated you. Bogier, you were highly recommended but you are a total loss. Where is he?”

This was the part Mick dreaded.

“Qalat. I guess.”

“You guess? You guess?”

Mick laid it out, the trick with the GPS transmitter, the throat-cutting of Mahoud, the night lost in slow approach and final assault, and the fact that if the marine was six or seven hours ahead of them, he was already there or damn near.

“Who knew he was that good? He was really good.”

“So not only did you fail, but he also ditched the GPS, which means we won’t be able to track him on any screen? Is that right?”

“I guess so.”

“You’ve got it. That’s you we’re tracking, that’s what you’re saying.”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so. You guess so. You were paid to do a job and he has outfought you at every turn. Who is he, Superman?”

Mick wanted to say, Hey, asshole, you were the one who told me the GPS was him, so it was you he outfoxed, not me. What was I supposed to do, assault the position or set up perimeter security with six guys? Yet he also knew it was his refusal to close when he had the chance and instead wasted another hour and a half jerking off while his team positioned itself that had really cost them badly. No way they could catch up now.

“What do you want us to do?”

“Ever hear of a lovely Japanese thing called seppuku? Gut splitting. Just open your guts with a very sharp blade and die quietly, all right?”

Mick waited as MacGyver’s rage crested.

“All right,” the control finally said, “you’ve left us with a very big problem. I will have to make some arrangements from this end. You go into Qalat and find a place near the compound. I may need you to move quickly if I can get done what I need to do. You call in at 0700 hours tomorrow your time, and we’ll see where we are.”

“Got it,” said Mick. “Out and-”

But he was talking to dead air.

PLATOON C, 5TH ROYAL Dutch Marines

ROYAL DUTCH MARINE OUTPOST

QALAT

ZABUL PROVINCE

SOUTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN

2300 HOURS

Ray popped the lock, slid in. These royal marines must be aching for a bad suicide bombing because their post security was so porous anyone could get in or out. It probably represented their absolute hatred of this job and this country. Imagine: you join the Royal Dutch Marines well aware that you’re not going into combat anytime soon, and that you’re basically signing up for a lifetime sinecure with cool guns; but you end up in an outpost in a slum city on the edge of the wildest area in Pakistan, surrounded by men who want to kill you. And your job, really, isn’t to win any war, it’s to represent some politician’s alliance with an American ideal that has nothing to do with the Netherlands. Wouldn’t you be depressed? And if you’re depressed, you quickly turn fatalistic and lazy, and the next thing you know, you’re getting by on luck alone. Maybe you’ll get blown up, maybe you won’t, now pass the hooch, please, and a little of that fine Afghan keefe that will help the time fly faster.

So while the Dutchmen explored their morose natures inside their sandbagged building, he’d slipped under the barbed wire and gotten into the Humvee, one of several parked outside. The guard posts weren’t even manned by Dutchies, but by Afghan army troopers and they were at low readiness, so Ray had no trouble getting by.

He cracked the plastic dashboard, peeled the broken shielding off to reveal the ignition wiring, probed it with his knife blade, and in a bit it had stirred to life; he let it idle, peeped up to make sure no one in the guard post had noticed and that no drunken, high Dutchie was coming to check. He was momentarily secure.

He looked to the radio, saw that it was the standard mounted high-frequency AN/MRC-138, a higher-powered version of the PRC-104, the universal talk box of the war on terror. Ray knew it well, having been a radioman sometime in an ancient Marine Corps past, and turned it on, watching it pop and crackle to life as a small red light reached peak intensity, signifying full power, then went to the frequency knob, turned it slowly, and finally acquired 15.016 MHZ, the battalion operating freak. With no mountains in between, it ought to be a loud-and-clear chat.