“How could they be on to us?” Farrah waved his hand dismissively.
“Because you got your pretty little face on TV at that accident.” He framed his own face with his fingers in a square like the outline of a television screen. “And that pregnant trooper remembered every detail about you and the cousins. You have exposed yourself, Your Highness.”
“How much do they know?” Farrah's expression became thoughtful, concerned.
“Enough to get the hounds sniffing,” Kharzai said. “And I just happen to know at least a couple of the hounds involved — they are very good sniffers.”
“What do you mean, you know these hounds,” Farrah queried.
“A couple of Marines I worked with when the CIA thought I was on their side,” Kharzai said.
Farrah let out a sharp sigh. “How did you find all this out?”
“Because prego lady and a hot-looking redhead dropped off the two retired commandos who traipsed through the woods and followed you into the port. As the women waited in the train yard for their heroes to return, those goons the cousins hired to watch your ass got bored and decided they were going to show the girls a good time. Only those girls both had guns and the commandos returned during the standoff and kicked their collective buttockses.”
“Two men beat eight?” Farrah said disbelievingly.
“You get what you pay for,” Kharzai said. “So, yes. Two highly trained professional killers beat the living daylights out of half a dozen high-school dropout, drooling-idiot street thugs and sent them running for their barely sentient lives.”
“And you watched all of it without stepping in.” Farrah sounded displeased.
“Of course,” Kharzai replied. “I know better than to blow my cover by stepping into the light when someone else can take care of things for me.”
“Except they didn’t take care of things.”
“If you're referring to our little band of jerkoffs, no,” Kharzai said. “Now thanks to the Hansel and Gretel hiring agency bringing in the least-evolved thugs they could find, the G-Men are coming your way.”
“Do you think we have enough time to complete the mission?” Farrah was now truly concerned. He'd never been caught before, never even been cornered. He had no intention of failing now.
“The big guy is supposed to arrive in a couple of days,” Kharzai said. “As long as we keep the pace and don’t do anything else stupid, we should be fine.”
“Iron Giant left me an email with an updated agenda,” said Farrah. “We should still be on target. But perhaps we should find another residence.”
“Iron Giant,” Kharzai said with a mocking tone. “Why do they always have to use such masculine code names? The man is selling out his country to the enemy for money. That tells me the bastard is a greedy little coward. His codename should be more like Prissy Prick, or Tepid Turd.” His voice dropped to purely derisive. “Iron Giant…pffft.”
“A man that high in the government is most likely to see himself with powerful imagery,” Farrah said. “And besides, we don’t know if he is a he at all. He may be a she.”
“Okay, I will go with a female name then. Hmmm, feline perhaps.” Kharzai put his fingers to his black-bearded chin in contemplation. “Parsimonius Pussy.”
Farrah shook his head. “Whoever they are, we are getting what we want. And that is all that matters.”
Chapter 14
“Okay, this city has entirely too many underground tunnels for its size,” Tonia said. “I feel like we've gone through fifty miles of labyrinth.”
“Yeah, why couldn't they have golf carts or those Segway things or something down here?” Tomer wiped sweat from his forhead,flicking it from his hand, the droplets splashing against the wall. “Maybe we should get one requisitioned. You think these halls are wide enough? What are they, about eight feet wide, maybe?”
He made a gesture of measuring the width of the tunnel with outstretched arms.
“You two need to get in better shape,” Warner said. “In Afghanistan, my company marched thirty miles in one day in hundred-degree heat and then had to fight a battle with the Taliban before we could get any rest.” Sweat ran in rivulets from his forehead falling in heavy drops from his chin and the tip of his nose.
“You look like you're about to die from this heat down here too, Superman,” Tonia said. “I'm with Tony — a golf cart sounds nice about now. And a nice cold glass of iced tea.”
“Yeah, a Long Island Iced Tea,” Tomer said.
“Oh, yeah,” Tonia replied with a wink and nudge of Tomer’s arm. “You think like me, Agent Tomer.”
“Great minds, ya know.” he replied, cheeks blushing at her physical contact.
Warner rolled his eyes. Since they gotten into the tunnels, Tonia and Tomer had been complaining and joking around with each other non-stop. Over the course of the past few hours, their behavior had shifted from borderline flirtatious to full eye-contact and playful touching. It weirded Warner out. What either of them saw in each other, he had no idea, but they were getting along just fine — which, according to one of the FBI agents he had met earlier that morning, was not expected. Tomer, he was told, rubbed everyone the wrong way. Within minutes of meeting him, Warner understood what the other agent had meant. He was almost instantly irritated by the man, and knew this was going to be a seriously long day with him in the tunnels.
Tomer carried himself with the kind of air one usually finds among stereotypical bowling-alley types, the kind who wore their league shirt like it was formal attire, had a toothpick sticking out of their mouth, and whose faces were stuck in an eternal “I’m smarter than you” smirk most of the time. He came into the FBI office, hair slicked back and held in place by too much gel and wearing a suit that was probably from the expensive end of the rack at JC Penney. It would have looked better than it did if it fit him properly. Another downgrade in Warner’s eyes was Tomer’s shiny blue polyester shirt, puffed up as it lay over a thick bush of chest hair. A bright red tie stood in stark contrast to the shirt. Not exactly standard G-Man attire. He looked more like a sleazy strip-club manager. To complete the effect, he wore a big gold ring with a square of black onyx inlaid with a single diamond on the pinky of one hand and a Masonic ring on the ring finger of the other. Black knuckle hairs jutted from beneath the rings.
What really caught Warner's attention, in a weird sort of way, was Tomer's perfectly manicured fingernails. They were smooth and symmetrical, even shiny. Warner imagined Tomer sitting in a salon waiting patiently while an effeminate Asian man buffed and polished his nails. He simultaneously snickered and cringed at the image.
Tonia seemed to have a different opinion of Agent Tomer. She apparently saw something in the man that no one else did, because she jibed and cajoled with him as if they had been best buddies for years. Tonia with her Baltimore/DC inner-city black female personality and Tomer with his white trash bowling-alley/mafia wannabe persona. It had a weird kind of poetic romanticism to it. Very weird poetry indeed.
Warner had never figured out the male/female relationship thing. It was not logical how some people came together, how they became attracted to one another, and even “fell in love.” He had no clue how it all worked, and never expected it to work for him.
Regardless of the comical love affair of his cohorts, he tried to stay focused on the work. They were searching for possible ways a terrorist could put a weapon of mass destruction or tool of assassination into the underground labyrinth of tunnels and pipelines that was the foundation of the city of Anchorage. That task was turning into a lot of work.