Only if both your parents are dead, you sleazy bastard, Flynn thought cynically. At least Bokharai had a reputation as an honest crook, one who would stay bought. That was what Four’s intelligence analysts claimed anyway. He sure hoped they were right, both for his own sake and for that of the others involved in this high-stakes operation he’d set in motion. Because if the Afghan decided to sell them out to his Iranian counterparts just across border, Flynn and his team were up shit’s creek. And without a paddle to be found anywhere within ten thousand miles.
Resolutely, he pushed his worries aside. There was no going back now. It was time to focus, not to fret over things outside his control.
Forcing himself to smile, Flynn parted from Masoud Bokharai with the flurry of insincere final courtesies common between men who trusted each other only as far as their shared interests would carry them. He walked the provincial official out to his car, a spotless black Mercedes sedan, and waved farewell as the other man drove away.
Then he turned to the interpreter and slipped him an envelope containing a substantial sum of cash, along with an airline ticket for the next flight to Kabul through Herat. “You have my thanks for your services, Ahmad,” he said in Spanish. “I’ve made a reservation for you tonight at the Tamadon Hotel. It’s the best available. Your flight leaves tomorrow morning, and I’ll have one of my men pick you up in time.”
The interpreter stuffed the envelope into his jacket with a nod of thanks. He raised an eyebrow in unabashed curiosity. “You will no longer need my assistance, Señor Duarte?”
“My immediate business is done here, so I’ll be leaving very soon,” Flynn explained. He shrugged. “The associates I’m leaving in charge speak enough English to get by.”
“Ah,” the interpreter said knowingly. “And, after all, this,” he tapped the bulge in his jacket where the envelope of cash rested, “is a form of universal language.”
“That, too,” Flynn agreed. He waited until the interpreter left and then walked back to the parked Il-76. Two of the men on sentry duty moved to join him at the foot of the aircraft’s lowered ramp.
“Any problems?” Tadeusz Kossak asked quietly.
“None.” Flynn said. “Our crooked Afghan friend seems to have bought our cover story hook, line, and sinker.” He grinned. “The implicit one about us running drugs and guns, I mean. Not the upfront solar power scam I pretended to sell him.”
The Polish sniper shook his head with a mock sorrowful expression on his face. “My faith in the evil effects of original sin remains intact.”
Shannon Cooke clapped his taller friend on the shoulder. “Cheer up, Tad,” the American ex-Special Forces operator said with a hint of laughter in his voice. “Sooner or later, we’re bound to run into an honest government official on one of these secret missions.”
“Yes,” Kossak agreed. “And that will be a very bad day for us,” he said mournfully. “Which proves my point, I think.”
Flynn choked back a laugh of his own. He nodded up at the jet cargo plane towering above them. “Speaking of bad days, how’s Laura doing?”
Cooke pushed his baseball cap up slightly to scratch his forehead. “Well, Nick, the last time I saw her, she told me she wanted to see you as soon as you were finished out here. Discretion being the better part of valor, if she said anything else, I was too busy backpedaling away to catch it.”
“That good, huh?” Flynn said with a wince.
Cooke nodded gravely.
Flynn sighed. “Okay, guys. If I’m not back out in time for supper, tell my mother I love her… and to please feed the dog.”
Nerving himself up, he walked up the ramp and into the Il-76’s wide aft section. A curtain had been rigged across the forward quarter of the cargo deck to stop overly curious observers from seeing what was going on in that part of the aircraft interior. Straightening, Flynn cautiously rapped a couple of times on the side of the fuselage. “Y’all decent in there?” he called.
“Oh, real funny, Flynn,” Laura Van Horn said crossly from behind the curtain. “Like I could be anything else while I’m stuck in this stupid gunny sack.” She yanked the curtain aside far enough to let him pass. Clad from head to foot in a shapeless black chador, she looked uncomfortable and mad enough to hit somebody — or maybe just shoot them. Since the presence of a Western-looking woman as part of a gang of supposed drug smugglers might arouse suspicion, she’d been forced to stay out of sight when possible, and to wear the traditional garb of most women in Zaranj.
She ran a skeptical eye over his own appearance. “So, were you trying project a suave, Antonio Banderas — type image, Nick?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. Then she shook her head dismissively. “I sure hope not. Because if that was your plan, I gotta say you missed it by about a mile.”
Flynn adopted a hurt tone. “A mile? Really? That much?”
“That much,” she confirmed with a short nod. Then she shrugged. “But I guess it doesn’t matter now, since I’m assuming this stunt you’ve got planned is a go after all.”
“Yes, it is. Just as soon as it gets dark.” He turned toward the other person with them behind the curtain. “Can you have your gear ready by then, Sara?”
Sara McCulloch, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force before she joined the Quartet Directorate, swiveled around in her chair. Unlike Van Horn, the petite redhead wore a flight suit. She’d be staying aboard the Il-76 for the entire duration of this mission — leaving it only virtually, through the cameras and other sensors fitted to the MQ-1 Predator she would be remote-piloting. Confidently, she waved a hand at her console, indicating the large display screen, keyboard, and pair of flight controllers. “No sweat, sir. Once the guys finish bolting my bird together, all we need to do is set up my satellite communications dish outside and connect. Everything else is good to go now.”
Van Horn breathed out. “Glad to hear it. Because the sooner I can get into the pilot’s seat of that BushCat myself, the happier I’ll be.”
“This flight’s going to be risky as hell,” Flynn warned. “Both out and back.”
“Tell me about it,” she said with a half smile. “I’m the one who wrote up the flight plan, remember?” She tugged at the tight neck of the chador. “But as far as I’m concerned, any amount of risk is worth it to ditch this damned thing.”
“That bad?” Flynn asked sympathetically.
She nodded. “You have no idea.” She shook her head. “If I’d been smarter, I’d have just cut my hair off and come in disguised as one of you guys.”
For a split-second, Flynn tried to imagine the curvy, attractive Laura Van Horn successfully passing herself off as a man. His imagination failed him. He grinned down at her. “That might have worked, I guess,” he conceded. “Assuming, of course, that everyone here in Zaranj was blind.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Flattery, Nick?” She leaned closer. “Well, who knows? It may get you somewhere. Someday.”
“But today is not that day?” he guessed.
“Nope,” she said simply. She winked at him. “We’re going to be kind of busy flying tonight, remember?”
“Plus, not crashing into mountains? Or being shot down?” Flynn suggested.
“Yeah, those, too,” Van Horn agreed evenly.
Fourteen