Murphy called the Afghan commander on his hand radio. Moments later, the commander appeared with a couple of police who spoke to the women and herded them into a room that had already been secured. The dog, a German shepherd, strained at his leash, pulling his handler toward a door off the main room. The dog sniffed loudly along the bottom of the door. His tail wagged with excitement.
Murphy kicked the door in, leveraging all the strength in his six-foot-three frame. He followed the leveled barrel of his shotgun into the room and found it unoccupied. The dog plunged ahead, dashing toward a pile of cloth bags. A quick swipe from Murphy’s knife showed that the bags contained heroin. Other bags held hundreds of pounds of hashish.
Another door led from the room to an opium lab, where he found evidence that IEDs were assembled in the same space, linking the kingpin to the Taliban.
A voice crackled over the radio. The Marines had spotted someone trying to escape from the compound and were chasing after him. Murphy told his teammate and the Afghan commander to help the Marines, that he’d stay with the detained caretaker.
When he was alone with the old man, he spoke to him in Pashto.
“Who are they chasing, Abe?” he said.
The man, who had been hunched over, straightened to his full height and a crooked grin came to his lips. “I ordered my caretaker to escape, knowing he would run into your Marines.”
“Pretty smart, Abe. What isn’t smart is the fact that you’ve been lying to me about your operation.”
“I wouldn’t cheat you. I’ve been sending your cut of every shipment.”
“You’ve been shaving the payments,” Murphy said. “That’s not holding up your end of the agreement.”
“Maybe, but I’m not the only one who has failed to keep his word. You were supposed to warn me of the raid.”
“And you were supposed to keep your operation out of politics. No support for the insurgents.”
“I have to pay them a little to keep the operation going. Not much.”
“Not talking about the baksheesh. You’re making IEDs, and that makes you Taliban, instead of a plain old drug lord.”
The grin vanished. “I was forced—”
“Not buying it,” Murphy said in English. “I saw your boom-boom lab. You’re one of the bad guys. Those Marines out chasing your man have been hit hard by your little surprise packages.”
“No one in Afghanistan has clean hands. Not even you. If I’m arrested, I will have to tell them about our arrangement all these years.”
“That’s why I’m not going to arrest you. I’m going to let you go.”
“You won’t regret this,” Abe said, a sly look in his eyes.
Murphy waited until Abe was heading for the shadows before he squeezed the trigger of his shotgun. The pellet blast caught the fleeing man dead center in the back. His arms flew in the air and he pitched forward onto the ground face first.
“I know I won’t,” Murphy said.
He went off to rejoin the rest of the strike force and encountered them escorting the terrified caretaker back to the compound. He explained to Chavez and the narc commander that the detainee had tried to get away, but in the dim light, he had misjudged his warning shot.
No one really cared as long as no citizens were killed. They had neutralized a drug and weapons factory and captured a potential informant, all with no casualties. The strike force was in a good mood on the trek back to the patrol base.
A CH-47 helicopter came in and gave the DEA men and the Afghan narcs and their prisoner a ride back to Kabul. A couple of hours after the operation, Murphy was in his apartment showering, washing the desert dust out of his short, straw-colored hair. He wrapped a towel around himself, poured a glass half full of Makers’ Mark whiskey and contemplated the day’s events.
The whole operation and his exchange with Abe had been nothing more than a charade to set up the drug lord’s elimination.
Murphy didn’t care how cozy Abe had been with the Taliban as long as he’d proved a source of revenue. But Abe had been skimming off the take, and Murphy couldn’t let word get around that he could be cheated with impunity. Only thing now was that Abe’s loss would cut off a supply of cash.
No matter. The payment for the job would help his bottom line. And he would easily cultivate another source: Afghanistan produced 90 percent of the world’s opium and exported more heroin than Colombia exported cocaine.
He downed the contents of the glass and turned his attention to the second part of his assignment.
He started up his computer and gazed with hard blue eyes at the photograph of Matt Hawkins on the monitor. The photo had come from the Woods Hole Oceanographic website. The old Hawk had aged pretty well, whereas Murphy’s broad face was weathered and crevassed from the effects of hard living. Even without the booze and women, and the blasting sunlight, the dangerous life of a DEA agent had etched premature age lines around his mouth and eyes. He experienced a rush of resentment. Hell, while he’d been chasing down drug traffickers and insurgents as many as two to three times a week, the Hawk had been leading the small town life. Not that he would ever underestimate Hawkins.
He actually liked Hawkins. He was a ballsy, competent and resourceful bastard. But the same admirable qualities made him dangerous. And now Hawkins was headed back to Afghanistan. It was a no-brainer what he would do when he got there. He would try to find out what happened years before. The trail would have led to Abe, then to Murphy, and eventually to those Swiss bank accounts.
Murphy didn’t need anyone to tell him Hawkins could simply not be allowed to get that far. He would have to stop him again, although this time he would make sure Hawkins was put away for good.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hawkins stood in the doorway of his darkened study and felt the cool night breeze from the shattered window against his cheeks. The salty air mingled with another, more disturbing smell. He flipped the wall switch and light from the recessed ceiling lamps flooded the room. At his feet was a dark pool of drying blood that had soaked through to the wooden floor. The rug itself was missing.
His hard gaze assessed the damage. The bullet-riddled desk might be patched with a ton of wood putty, but the walking beer cooler that had distracted the twin gunmen had gone to robot heaven. The little figure lay on its back, its bulbous aluminum skin perforated with more holes than a colander.
He walked over to inspect his collection. Shards of glass from the display cabinets crackled under his boots. Dings and dents marred the shiny brass helmets. The main damage was to the book collection on the opposite wall. The cardboard covers and pages littered the floor like confetti.
The soft chime of a wall clock that had miraculously escaped damage told Hawkins he had no time to waste. He picked up the remains of the beer cooler and stored them in a closet. Then he got out a broom and dust pan, scooped glass and paper into a trash barrel, splashed bleach on the blood spot and mopped it up. He hauled the trash down to the basement and wrestled sheets of plywood from his lumber supply up to the study. He nailed the plywood over the window frame, using quick taps to minimize the sound of nocturnal hammering.
It looked like crap, but it would have to do. He’d get Snowy to replace the window glass. He went into the bathroom and washed out the cuts in his hand. As he dabbed the lacerations with antiseptic, he happened to glance in the mirror. No wonder the vet had seemed nervous. He looked like one of those crazed Norse warriors known as berserkers. His hair and beard were competing to see which most resembled a bramble bush.
Hawkins grabbed a pair of scissors and chopped away at his beard until he could finish it off with a straight razor. The prominent chin that emerged was whiter than the rest of his face, but a few days under the Afghan sun would change that.