Renegade (2013) (24 page)

“The paper is to prove that we are still alive.”

Several computer operators in the room worked frenziedly at their stations. Another CIA agent walked through the cyber team.

“C’mon, guys. Get me that signal. It’s not originating at the Kandahar station. It’s coming from somewhere else. Find it.”

One of the technicians, a young woman whose fingers flew across the keyboard, read screen after screen of numbers faster than Heath could follow. “It’s coming from outside the city. Up in the Safed Koh mountains.”

The agent crewing the cyber effort wheeled on her, sliding into place to peer over her shoulder. “That’s a lot of open area, Agent. Narrow that.”

“I’m working on it.”

Grid after grid flashed onto the computer screen, flipping into place and magnifying the mountainous terrain. Heath felt himself tensing up as he watched the search even though he didn’t know what was taking place. He knew that men’s lives hung in the balance. If the CIA could narrow the search enough, Charlie Company could get fire teams into the area and put boots on the ground. They’d have a chance to bring those hostages home safely.

“I have been told that negotiations will begin soon.” Sebastian rolled the paper up and held it in a fist. “I am hopeful that we will all get out of this alive.”

The broadcast suddenly ended and the screen went black.

“No!” The female CIA operative leaned more closely over her keyboard, and her fingers almost became a blur as she typed. As impressive as her speed was, though, the images on the screen stopped cycling and sat over the same area.

Judging from what he could see, Heath knew the area was too large to be a viable target for a search and rescue operation. They’d been stymied.

“Did we get the location?” Benton walked from the front of the room to the computer stations.

“No.” The computer tech shook her head. “We didn’t. I’m sorry. I’ve narrowed the parameters, but not enough.”

Anger tightened Benton’s face, but he remained professional. “We’ll get it next time. Yaqub isn’t going to stop talking now that he knows he has our attention.” He turned and walked back to stand beside the screen. “I know you Marines are still working the streets, still gathering intel, and I know that some of your comrades were killed in today’s sweeps.”

Heath hadn’t lost any of his troops. He’d been fortunate.

“I want you to know that your sacrifices are appreciated. More
than that, they’re needed. This isn’t just about those three hostages. This is about Zalmai Yaqub. We need to run him to ground and put him down . . . one way or another.”

Towers spoke softly at Heath’s side, putting into words what every Marine in that room was thinking. “Give us a target and we’ll get it done.”

Heath knew that they would . . . if they could. So far Zalmai Yaqub had remained one step ahead of them. And they still didn’t know what the man’s true game plan was.

“WHERE’S YOUR MIND?”

Puzzled, Pike swung his gaze from the booth where a crowd of Afghan National Police sat and looked across the table at Julie Meadows. They were seated at a local restaurant the Marines frequented when they were outside the zone.

The corpsman was easy on the eyes. He could tell she’d gone to some effort to make herself look presentable in the uniform, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. But Julie had pulled it off.

“What?” he asked.

She smiled at him and didn’t seem angry. Always a good sign. “Exactly. You’re somewhere else, Pike. Not here, not right now.”

Pike didn’t know why he’d agreed to another dinner. He didn’t need the company. In fact, most of the time he preferred his own company. “I didn’t know I wasn’t paying attention.”

“If I wasn’t as confident as I am in myself, that could hurt.”

“I’m not very good at this.”

“What? Eating dinner?”

“Eating dinner
with
someone.”

“You eat dinner with Marines all the time.”

“They don’t expect you to hold a conversation.”

“I didn’t know a conversation was going to be a problem.” Julie’s tone remained light, but Pike knew he was on dangerous ground.

“It’s not you. It’s me.”

She sat back from him a little, and he felt the distance between them widen.

“When I’m out in the field, I stay switched on. I always notice stuff.”

“Except for dinner partners.”

Pike ignored that and pointed his chin at the Afghan National Police gathering. “Over there.”

Julie sipped her water and casually glanced at the other table. Her eyes glinted and her mouth hardened. “Captain Zarif and his cronies.”

“Cronies?”

“You have another word?”

Pike was thinking they were more like a gang, not policemen, not anything as genteel as cronies. “I do, but I try not to use it around women.”

“Well, I feel relieved. At least you noticed that part, even if you weren’t keeping track of the conversation.”

“Yeah, it’s been tough to concentrate when I’m looking straight at the guy who killed the Russian prisoner I took into custody.” Pike focused on the other table. “So you’ve heard of Zarif. What do you know about him? And his . . .
cronies
?”

“Just rumors. None of ’em flattering. But sounds like the brass have their hands tied.”

“So they leave him in play?”

“Zarif is connected. Having him arrested would be an embarrassment to the Afghan National Police and the US military. I’ve also heard he can be counted on to monitor tango activity, that he has connections to more sources than a lot of his fellow policemen do.”

“I’m starting to wonder if it’s because he’s doing business with them.”

“It’s a case of the devil you know,” Julie said. “Looks like Zarif knows just how far to push things, and the Afghan National Police and the US military let him take it to the limit.”

Pike sipped his tea. “Could be that someone should take a closer look at Zarif.”

“You?”

Pike looked at her. “Could be.”

“Because he murdered the Russian?”

“That caught my attention. Zarif didn’t kill the Russian just to put points on the board. He was covering up something. Or taking advantage of the situation somehow.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. But I suspect that not all of the ordnance the Russian munitions dealers brought into the city has been found. I think that’s what Zarif is hiding.”

“You could tell someone.”

Pike shook his head. “If people are already looking the other way for this guy, he’s going to have to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar to change the status quo.”

Zarif glanced at his cell phone on the table, then picked it up, excused himself, and stepped away from the table to talk.

Pike watched the Afghan National Police captain. “He’s talking in Russian.”

Julie’s eyes narrowed. “You can hear him?”

“I can read his lips. You get raised in foster homes, it’s a skill you pick up. Like learning to read body language.”

“You were raised in foster care?”

Too late, Pike realized that he’d revealed more about himself than he’d intended to. He’d carefully kept the conversation loose, talking
more about what was going on in Kandahar or the mechanic work he did with Monty in the garage back in Tulsa. “Yeah. It’s something I don’t talk about a lot.”

Thankfully, Julie left that alone.

After a moment, Zarif returned to his table, talked to the men there, then departed with a few of them in tow.

Pike looked at Julie. “I’m sorry, but I gotta go. To me, that conversation looked like business, and I need to find out what Zarif’s up to. If there are still munitions floating around out there, we need to nail those down.”

Julie nodded. “I understand.”

Zarif disappeared through the door.

Pike stood and grabbed his rifle and helmet. “Can I get a rain check on dinner? Next time I’ll be better company, I promise.”

Julie smiled. “I’d like that.” She rested a hand on his forearm. “Be careful, Pike.”

“Always.” Pike gave her a wink and walked through the tables, only a short distance behind Zarif.

“You should stay out of this. What’s done is done, and you getting riled up over what happened ain’t gonna do no good. You listening to me, Pike? No, you ain’t. I can tell. You got that mad on. It’s gonna get you killed one of these days.”

As Pike moved through the shadows, he didn’t know if the voice was Petey’s or his own common sense. He’d told Petey that same thing whenever Petey had gotten bent over something they couldn’t do anything about. On occasion, he’d given himself the same advice. And sometimes Petey had thrown the warning in Pike’s face just to get his attention.

However, even after all the bad things Pike had seen during his
biker days and during tours in the sandbox, Captain Zarif’s cold-blooded execution of the Russian cut Pike bone deep. Pike objected to being made a fool of on general principle, and he didn’t like the idea of a helpless man getting killed like an animal. But the thing that bothered Pike most of all was not knowing what was going on around him when it concerned Zarif. The Afghan National Police captain was privy to too many Marine operations inside Kandahar.

Not knowing things could get a man killed. Not knowing his best friend was working a piece of drug business and betraying the people he was dealing with could get that man killed. Not knowing what was going on in the sandbox could get a Marine and his whole squad killed.

That wasn’t going to happen on Pike’s watch. So he was going to figure out what angle the police captain was working. At the same time, Pike resented the fact that he felt so responsible for everybody. This wasn’t his thing.

Only he couldn’t stay out of it.

With his M4A1 slung over his left shoulder and his M9 riding at his hip, Pike followed Zarif and three of his hardcases through the shadowed streets.

The strident ring of a cell phone reverberated over the street, sounding out of place. Zarif reached into a pocket and withdrew the instrument. The glow of the phone played over his cheek and beard as he pulled it to his ear.

Zarif halted and looked along the street. With catlike reflexes, Pike stepped into the shadowed recess of a nearby shop door. The business was closed, as were the others along the block. He slid his M9 free and kept the pistol out of sight behind his leg.

Speaking quickly, Zarif replied in Russian.

While Pike and Petey had been in California, they’d done some business with the Russian Mafia in Los Angeles, and Pike had picked
up some of the language just by observing. In the foster homes, he’d learned that a kid who couldn’t pick up on the words between words and the nonverbal communication of caretakers sometimes stepped into a threshing machine. He understood enough of the exchange to know that whoever was on the phone with Zarif wanted a meeting. The guy also wanted his
property
back.

Zarif grinned and said that arrangements could be made. He gave an address not far away and said he would be there in twenty minutes.

Anger flowed through Pike as he got under way again. Pike wanted to know what Captain Zarif had, and he needed to find out before the Russians arrived. He kept the M9 in his hand.

On the next block, Zarif and his men stepped into a small hotel. Darkness filled the windows of the building, and shadows loitered at the entryway. Only a weak yellow light shone inside the office area.

Pike went through the door and ignored the small man reading a newspaper on the other side of the check-in counter. The clerk glanced up only for a second, then quickly looked away.

Treading on the outsides of the stairs to make less noise, Pike went up. He watched ahead of himself, but he listened behind. He didn’t want to get caught on the stairs.

Down the hallway on the third floor, Zarif and his men walked into a room on the right.

The building primarily housed small businesses. Signs on the doors on either side of the hallway were marked in Pashto and English. Evidently the last few years of Western military operations in the area had brought about English language concessions.

Intending to simply walk past the doorway, Pike was listening intently. But the door sank inward, and one of Zarif’s men popped out with a gun in his hand.

“Do not move, American.”

The man shoved the barrel of his pistol into Pike’s neck. Pike had
to resist the impulse to take the weapon away from him. No matter how much it was emphasized in training, too many guys didn’t understand the lesson about touching an enemy with your weapon. Doing so made the gun wielder especially vulnerable.

Pike froze and slowly lifted his hands. “Hey. I’m not looking for trouble.”

The man wrapped a fist in Pike’s collar and shoved him toward the room. Stumbling, Pike went through the door. Another man caught Pike by the lapels and swung him up against the wall.

The room was small but held four desks and accompanying chairs. Books and computers occupied the tops of the desks. City maps and Post-its covered a bulletin board on the rear wall, but the walls were otherwise barren, offering no clue as to what type of business took place there.

“Who are you?” The man holding Pike’s lapels stared into his eyes.

Behind this man, the first man checked the hallway, then retreated back into the room. He glanced at Zarif, who was sitting in an overstuffed chair beside the room’s only window. A breeze ruffled the thin, worn curtains.

“He is the only one in the hallway.” The first man lowered his pistol, but he didn’t put it away. “No one else is with him.”

Zarif glared at the man. “Go downstairs and watch. These Americans don’t travel alone.”

The man nodded and let himself out the door, closing it behind him.

A third ANP officer stood slightly to one side so that he had a clear field of fire with his pistol. Holding Pike with one hand, pinning him against the wall, the second man searched him quickly. He took the M9 and the M4A1, slinging them to the man behind him, who placed them on a desk.

Zarif stared at him more intently. “I know you.”

Pike said nothing.

“Of course I do. You are the American who found Evstafiev.”

Pike filed the name away and stared back at the Afghan National Police captain. His captor’s breath pushed against his face and stank.

“What are you doing here?”

Pike kept silent.

Zarif’s face turned to stone. He glanced at the expensive watch on his wrist. “We do not have much time. What you say in the next few minutes could save your life.”

Pike smiled. He didn’t believe a word the man said. He and Petey had dealt with too many guys like Zarif. They lashed out when they were threatened, and Pike’s presence there was a definite threat.

Pike spoke softly, shifting slightly to cause his captor to shift with him. The fact that the man wouldn’t kill him until Zarif ordered his death was something he intended to take advantage of. “You murdered Evstafiev. I want to know why.”

Zarif relaxed somewhat and rested his pistol on his thigh. “I did not murder him. I shot him before he could kill your squad mate.”

“Sure you did, and the only reason I figure you did it was because there was something in it for you.” Pike shifted again. This time the man holding him took a fresh grip on his shirt and pulled a combat knife from his belt. The man pressed the sharp edge against Pike’s throat. The knife slit the flesh just enough to sting.

“You do not know what you are talking about.”

Pike grinned. “Really? Then why are you meeting more Russians here tonight?”

A frown etched into Zarif’s face. He glanced at his watch again. “Kill him.”

Pike had already known the command was coming. He’d read it in the captain’s body language. Even as Zarif spoke, Pike reached up and caught his captor’s right wrist in his strong left hand and
kept the knife from biting any deeper. Jamming the heel of his right palm into the man’s chin, Pike hit him hard enough that the man’s teeth clipped off the end of his tongue. Blood dribbled down his chin as his eyes started to roll back into his head. Pike kept hold of him, using him as a shield while the man behind him jockeyed for a clear shot.