Altered State
And the rest, as someone said, was history.
An odd footnote to Carlisle’s dossier described his fat donations to various far-right religious groups and his membership on the board of Hallelujah Ministries, which sponsored revival meetings and kept a small staff of attorneys on retainer to defend ministers “falsely accused” of various crimes, including embezzlement and child molestation. At a private Hallelujah gathering in 2002, Carlisle had described the 9/11 raids as “proof that the Second Coming will occur in our lifetime.”
How all of that squared with drug smuggling was anyone’s guess.
Carlisle’s second in command was Dale Ingram, a twenty-five-year FBI veteran who had ended his run as chief of the Bureau’s Counterterrorism Division. September 11 had caught Ingram and his G-men by surprise, despite warnings from several FBI field offices that Arab nationals with suspected ties to al Qaeda were training at U.S. flight schools. Whistleblowers produced memos bearing Ingram’s signature, dismissing the warnings as “red herrings,” whereupon he was invited to retire two years ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, he had become acquainted with Carlisle through contacts still unknown, and Ingram found retirement from the Bureau very lucrative indeed.
If smuggling heroin into the States bothered the former G-man, he had learned to conceal any qualms. In fact, judging from the photos Brognola and Stony Man had supplied, Ingram seemed to be laughing all the way to the bank.
Bolan scanned the reports of Vanguard mercenaries seen on Afghan opium plantations and convoying heroin shipments. The CD included numerous photos and several video clips—one of Carlisle and Ingram together at a Kabul hotel, meeting a native identified as Basir Ahmad-Shah.
Ahmad-Shah’s CD-ROM dossier identified him as one of Afghanistan’s four largest heroin kingpins. Within his territory, he enjoyed a vertical monopoly, from poppy fields through processing and export from the country. He had agents scattered all over the world, but Ahmad-Shah himself had never left Afghanistan, as far as anyone could say. Imprisoned briefly by the Taliban in 2001, he’d been released and lauded as a “prisoner of conscience” after coalition troops drove his persecutors from Kabul and environs. His number two was a cut-throat named Jamal Woraz, identified by the DEA as Ahmad-Shah’s strong right hand and primary enforcer.
That left the file on Bolan’s DEA contact, one Deirdre Falk. Bolan had worked with female Feds before and found them more than capable, but he was still a bit surprised to find a woman stationed in Afghanistan, where brutal violence was a daily fact of life and male officials of the Islamic Republic were predisposed to treat females with a measure of disdain.
The good news was that she’d been handling it for nearly three years now, and showed no signs of cracking up. She’d built some solid cases, although only one of them had gone to trial so far, sending a second-string drug smuggler off to prison for three years. The big boys were protected, and Falk had to know it.
Which perhaps explained why she was willing to collaborate with Stony Man—or the organization “Matt Cooper” said he represented.
There was no reason to suppose she’d ever heard of Stony Man Farm or the covert work it performed. If she had , then the Farm’s security needed a major tune-up. The flip side of that coin might be shock, when she realized that Bolan hadn’t come from Washington to help her put the Vanguard gang on trial.
Officially, the U.S. government did not engage in down-and-dirty vigilante tactics. Since the 1960s, when the CIA’s clumsy attempts to kill Fidel Castro had backfired with disastrous, embarrassing results, no federal agency was authorized to carry out “executive actions”—otherwise known as assassinations.
Scratch that.
No agency was publicly authorized to do so.
Stony Man had been created expressly to do that which was forbidden. A former President, beset by enemies on every side, domestic and foreign, had realized that every nation had to defend itself, by fair means or foul. When the system broke down, when the law failed, clear and present dangers had to be neutralized by other means.
Deniability was critical.
If Bolan or some other Stony Man agent—the troops of Able Team and Phoenix Force—were killed on a mission at home or abroad, they did not officially exist.
If worse came to worst, if one of them was caught alive and cracked under torture or chemical interrogation, providing verifiable details of Stony Man’s operations, the buck stopped with Hal Brognola at Justice. He’d been prepared from the start to fall on his sword, confess to launching and running the program on his own initiative, financing it covertly, without the knowledge or approval of superiors.
It was a fairy tale that might be hard to swallow, but the Washington publicity machine would sell it anyway. The corporate media—so far from “leftist liberal” that Bolan had to laugh each time he heard the talking heads on Fox News rant and rave—would ultimately join ranks with the state to cover any tracks that led beyond Brognola’s office to respected politicians higher up the food chain.
The trick, on Bolan’s part, was not to get captured or killed. So far, he’d managed fairly well.
And this time?
As he started to erase Brognola’s CD-ROM, he knew that he would have to wait and see.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kabul, Afghanistan
They ditched Falk’s bullet-punctured Ford near the Park-e-Timor Shahi, on the River Rudkhane-ye-Kabul, and found another waiting two blocks over, thanks to one of Falk’s associates who asked no questions when she’d called him on the telephone.
“The other one will be reported stolen,” she told Bolan as they drove across the city to a safe house in the Shash Darak district.
“You’ve done this kind of thing before?” he asked.
“We’re living on the edge, here, Mr. Cooper. No one really wants us in Afghanistan. We get that message from the beat cops, right on up the ladder to the president.”
“Which one?” Bolan inquired.
She smiled at that and told him, “Take your pick. Ours has to talk about the ‘evil scourge of heroin’ to get elected, but I swear, sometimes it feels like it’s all talk.” She frowned, then added, “Hey, forget I said that, will you? I still need this job, and I don’t even know who sent you.”
“Someone who agrees with you and wants to make a difference.”
“Well, anyway, we gave someone a wake-up call,” she said.
“They knew where we were meeting,” Bolan countered. “How do you suppose that happened?”
“Damned if I know. I could swear I wasn’t followed, and I’d guess Edris will say the same.”
“Indeed,” Barialy said from the backseat. “I was very careful, following all necessary steps of tradecraft.”
Tradecraft?
The last time Bolan could remember hearing that was in a movie from the late eighties.
He let it slide and asked Falk, “Do your people sweep their cars?”
“We do,” she said. “But that’s not saying someone couldn’t slip a homer past us. It would mean access to the secure motor pool, but with Vanguard, anything’s possible.”
“And will this car have been checked?” he asked.
“You put it that way, I can’t swear to anything,” Falk answered.
“Then we need a rental office, stat.”
“Jesus. Okay, I know a couple places we can go. I’ve got a credit card, and—”
“This one is on me,” Bolan said. “If you’re under a sophisticated shadow, using plastic is like sending up a flare.”
“Shit!” she said. “Do you always shake things up this way?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he replied.
Falk found an auto rental agency and Barialy went inside with Bolan, translating his bid for a midsize four-door sedan. They left with a Toyota Avalon, rented by Bolan in his alternate identity as Brandon Stone. The Visa Platinum he used was paid in full and had a $20,000 credit line.
“No tail on this one,” Bolan said as he slid in behind the steering wheel. “About that safe house, now…”
“You’re thinking that it might not be so safe,” Falk said.
“It crossed my mind.”
“All right. It’s not the only place we have in Kabul, but if one of them is compromised, we can’t trust any. Can we?”
“No.”
“This sucks.”
“Welcome to my world,” Bolan said.
“Hey, mine was bad enough, thanks very much.”
“The good news is, you have them worried,” Bolan told her.
“Great. They want me dead now and they almost pulled it off, first try.”
“It wasn’t even close,” Bolan replied.
“Were you and I at the same party?” Falk inquired. “They shot the hell out of my car.”
“And we all walked away,” Bolan reminded her. “Their side sent twelve men out to do a job and lost eleven. I’d say we’re ahead.”
“Except that now we’re fugitives,” she said.
“That’s only if police are looking for you,” Bolan said. “We’re going underground. There is a difference.”
“Care to explain it, Mr. Cooper?”
“Call me Matt, if you feel like it,” Bolan said. “As for the difference, a fugitive is always running, hiding, constantly on the defensive. When you’re underground, you have a chance to be proactive. Bring the war home to your enemies.”
“When you say war—”
“I mean exactly that,” Bolan replied. “The men who staked you out today were there to kill us. They don’t know me, but they thought a public hit was worth the risk to keep you from revealing what you know to an outsider.”
“Maybe it was just supposed to be a snatch, before you started shooting,” she replied without conviction.
“What’s the difference?” he asked. “You think they planned to warn you off or question you, then let you go?”
Instead of answering, Falk asked, “So, then, what’s your plan?”
“I told you—take it to the enemy. Rattle their cages. Disrupt operations. Blow their house down.”
Falk was staring at him now. “You mean, just go around and shoot them, like some kind of hit man?”
“I imagine there’ll be more to it than that,” Bolan replied. “But understand, before you take another step that I’m not here to serve warrants. You’ve already tried that route, and you can keep on trying if you like. Just tell me where to drop you off.”
She spent another moment staring at him, then replied, “Screw that. I’m in.”
“And you?” Bolan met Barialy’s dark gaze in the rearview mirror.
“With misgivings,” the Afghan said, “it appears that my best prospects for survival rest with you.”
“Okay, then,” Bolan said. “The first thing that we need to do is see about my gear.”
Vanguard International Branch Office, Kabul
“L ET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. You ran away?”
Clay Carlisle’s voice carried no hint of animosity, despite the seething anger that he felt inside, the acid churning in his stomach.
“I withdrew,” Red Scanlon said, “and broke off contact with the enemy in order to report, so you would know what’s happened, sir.”
“I’d know when the police called me to view your body at the morgue,” Carlisle replied.
“That wouldn’t help you, sir. A corpse can’t give you any information.”
“Right, then. Enlighten me, by all means. Share the information that entitles you to leave your men behind.”
“My men were dead before I left. I saw them drop.”
“Dead, but identifiable,” Carlisle replied. “You’ve put me in an awkward spot with Eddie Franks. I have to disavow him now, and still pay off his family to keep their damned mouths shut.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“I’m waiting,” Carlisle said.
Scanlon swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, then pressed on. “I saw who Falk was meeting, sir. In fact, he set the whole thing off.”
“Explain.”
“Two of our men stepped up to brace him, and he shot them both, then popped two others in the car before they could defend themselves.”
“He’s no procrastinator, then.”
“Some kind of pro, no question,” Scanlon said. “He took a couple AKs from the first two that he dropped. Without that extra firepower, we would’ve had him, sir.”
“I wonder.” Carlisle studied Scanlon’s face and said, “I understand that one of those this man of mystery gunned down in Shahr-e-Khone is still alive. Not talking, I presume?”
“He can’t talk, sir. Shot in the face. I’m taking care of it.”
“And this bitch from the DEA. We’ve found her car?”
“Abandoned, sir. The GPS tracker was still in place, but by the time I called up reinforcements—”
“She and her playmates had disappeared.”
“Yes, sir. They got another Fed mobile then dropped that one after a couple miles. They’re getting wise.”
“I’d say they were already wise enough to run rings around you,” Carlisle observed. “The question now is, whether you’re entitled to a second chance, or if I ought to cut my losses. Starting with your throat.”
Carlisle had no fear of the younger man seated across from him, with nothing but a teakwood desk between them. Scanlon was unarmed, defeated, a spent force. He also had to have known that any move against his boss would bring an armed security detachment charging into Carlisle’s office through the door immediately to his left.
“I saw the shooter, sir. I can identify him, and you know I’m motivated.”
“Motivation’s good,” Carlisle replied. “But he’s already kicked your ass. You lost eleven men and barely got away alive. That kind of failure is expensive and embarrassing.”
“Yes, sir,” Scanlon replied through clenched teeth. “Let me make it up to you.”
Carlisle considered it, then said, “Call me a sentimental fool. I’ll give you one chance to clean up your mess, but use it well. And do it quickly. If you fail a second time, you would be well advised to die trying.”
“Yes, sir!”
Scanlon rose from his chair, snapped to attention and saluted before leaving Carlisle’s office. Carlisle watched him go and wondered if he’d made a critical mistake by letting Scanlon live.
No sweat.
That kind of error, if it was an error, could be easily corrected any time he had the urge. A simple order, and Scanlon would never see it coming.
More important at the moment was the task of covering his tracks and Vanguard’s on the mess that Scanlon had created.
Carlisle would explain that he’d fired Eddie Franks for insubordination and produce back-dated paperwork to prove it, if push came to shove. As for the local talent, Eddie could have found them anywhere. There were no Vanguard payroll records for them, certainly no canceled checks or any other kind of paper trail.
His word would be accepted where it mattered. That was where the bribes Carlisle had paid to various Afghan officials—and his contacts at the U.S. embassy in Kabul—served their purpose. He was an established man of substance, with connections all the way from Afghanistan’s Republican Palace to Pennsylvania Avenue, and adversaries who forgot that did so at their peril.
There was nothing for Carlisle to worry about.
Not just yet.
Shahr-e-Khone, Kabul
T HE RENTAL CAR with Bolan’s hardware stashed inside was lost to him. He knew it when he reached the parking lot where he had left it, in the Old City, and found police milling about like ants on spilled sugar. He waited long enough to see one of them exit with a heavy duffel bag he recognized, then put the Avalon in gear and drove away, not looking back.
“I guess you’re short on gear now,” Falk suggested.
“Not for long,” Bolan replied.
He couldn’t use the same dealer again, in case the cops had traced his hardware or were on their way to doing so, but Brognola and Stony Man had given him directions to four weapons merchants in Kabul, trusting Bolan to find alternatives if all of those went sour.
And as Hal had told him, there was never any hardware shortage in Afghanistan.
He skipped the second armorer on Brognola’s list, no clear reason other than gut instinct, and went on to number three. The dealer’s cover was a pawnshop in the Shar-e-Naw district, near the intersection of streets called Shararah and Shar Ali Khan. It meant driving back across town, to the northwest quarter, but the trip gave Bolan time to question Deirdre Falk in more detail.
He learned that she’d been tracking Vanguard’s operation for a year and change, collecting evidence that no one in authority would take time to review. Her boss in Kabul was a thirty-year man with the DEA who faced compulsory retirement in the fall, and he encouraged her to forge ahead, while warning Falk that he could not protect her, short of sending her back to the States.
So much for the omnipotence of Uncle Sam.
She still seemed ill at ease with Bolan’s plan of action, not that he’d provided any details, but he thought she’d keep her word and go along.
If not…well, she could pull the pin and split at any time, unless the heavies took her down.
He found the dealer’s shop and made a drive-by, trusting Falk and Barialy to help him spot anything odd, out of synch. They told him that the busy street looked normal, so he found a parking place and all three of them walked back to the shop.
Inside, a man who looked like Gandhi with a port wine birthmark on the left side of his face greeted them enthusiastically. He introduced himself as Izat Khan and listened carefully as Barialy translated for Bolan, spelling out his needs and specifying that the payment would be made in cash.
If dealing with a group of total strangers bothered Khan, he didn’t let it show. Smiling, he locked the front door to his shop, reversed a dangling sign—presumably changing Open to Closed—and led them through a screen of softly clacking plastic beads to reach a storeroom at the back.
Bolan saw no weapons in evidence, and had already braced himself to shoot his way out of a trap, when Khan opened a door in the west wall, revealing stairs that vanished into darkness. Finding a switch beside the door jamb, he illuminated bright fluorescent fixtures that revealed a spacious basement. The familiar scent of gun oil wafted up to Bolan’s nostrils from below.
Bolan let Khan go first, followed by Barialy, then himself, with Deirdre Falk watching their backs. He no longer suspected that police or Vanguard mercs had found the shop ahead of him, but there was still a chance that Khan might plan to double-cross these strangers who had showed up without warning on his doorstep.
In the dealer’s spotless basement, guns were mounted on the walls and racked in standing rows across the floor, with crates of ammunition, magazines, grenades, and other such accessories positioned like the specials in a supermarket. Bolan took his time, examining Khan’s wares, and told Falk she could pick out something for herself, to supplement the Glock.
At length, bearing in mind that he couldn’t predict what situations might still lay ahead of them, Bolan chose a range of weapons suitable for all occasions.
They already had the captured AKSU automatic rifles, but he took a third one, plus spare magazines, and stocked up on the 5.45 mm ammunition they devoured. With distance work in mind, he also chose a 7.62 mm Dragunov SVD sniping rifle, fitted with a Russian PSO-1 scope whose features included an elevation adjustment knob for bullet-drop compensation, an illuminated range-finder grid, a reticle that permitted target acquisition in low-light conditions, and an infrared charging screen that served as a passive detection system. He found spare 10-round magazines for the Dragunov, and picked up more 9 mm Parabellum ammo for his pistol. While he was at it, he added hand grenades for balance.
Bolan reckoned that he was done, then changed his mind and selected a 40 mm MGL grenade launcher, the South African spring-driven, double-action weapon that resembled an inflated 1920s Tommy gun. The launcher measured twenty-eight inches with its folding stock collapsed and weighed thirteen pounds empty. Its revolving 6-round cylinder could launch two rounds per second in rapid-fire, with an effective range of four hundred yards. To cover all eventualities, Bolan picked out a mix of HE, thermite, smoke and triple-aught buckshot rounds for the launcher.
Falk was prepared to settle for the second AKSU rifle, then decided Barialy might need it to supplement his vintage wheelgun, so she chose a mini-Uzi for herself, with a suppressor and a stack of 32-round magazines, plus more 9 mm Parabellum rounds.
Pleased with his payday, Khan furnished the duffel bags required to carry their new acquisitions at no extra charge. He counted Bolan’s money, smiling all the while, then led them back upstairs and showed them to a rear exit that let them walk most of the distance back to the Toyota Avalon along an alley hidden from the street.
When they had stowed the gear and Bolan had the car in motion, Falk said, “That was strange, you know?”
He smiled at her and said, “You ain’t seen nothing, yet.”
Vanguard International Branch Office, Kabul
“Y OU LET R ED HAVE a pass?” Dale Ingram asked.
“He’s on a leash,” Clay Carlisle said. “He isn’t going anywhere, except to clean up his own mess.”
“And then?”
“Then, nothing. If he does the job, he’ll have redeemed himself. If not, he pays the price.”
“Which doesn’t help us, either way,” Ingram replied.
“It settles his account,” Carlisle said.
“But we’re still out eleven men, three cars, the lost hardware.”
“The locals are a dime a dozen, Dale. Their paychecks stopped when they quit breathing, so they cost us nothing. Eddie Franks had no dependents, just a barfly brother in Kentucky. If we can’t find him, we scrub the life insurance payment. I regret the cars, of course, but we have others. Most important, we’ve preserved deniability.”
“Which helps us how, with the DEA problem?” Ingram asked.
“I’m on it,” Carlisle said. “I’ve got a call in to Russ Latimer at the embassy.”
“And you think he can yank the reins on this narc and her boss? He hasn’t done us any good, so far.”
“Let’s say that I’ve enhanced his motivation,” Carlisle said.
Ingram knew what that meant. The damned spook had his hand out for more money, promising the world and paying off in peanuts.
“We could deal with him, you know,” he told Carlisle.
“Don’t start on that again.”
“I’m serious,” Ingram said. “Why don’t we take advantage of the situation while we can? Civilian casualties are higher in Afghanistan than in Iraq these days. They headlined it on CNN. Who’d be surprised if insurgents took out the CIA’s head of station in Kabul or greased the DEA’s front man? I’m surprised they haven’t done it already.”
Carlisle stared him down and let the silence stretch between them, making Ingram nervous in the knowledge that he’d overstepped his bounds.
“You know we have a firm, long-term relationship with Langley,” he replied at last. “We get thirty percent of our gross from the jobs they can’t handle, everything from diplomatic coverage to wet work. I don’t plan to foul our nest with an impulsive and unnecessary action, nor do I plan waging war against the U.S.A. I hope we’re crystal clear on that.”
“I hear you,” Ingram answered.
“And to hear…”
“Is to obey,” Vanguard’s vice president replied, feeling the angry color rising in his cheeks.
Carlisle put on a smile. Ingram wished he could reach across the desk and slap it from his boss’s face, but that would be the next best thing to suicide.
“Dale, you’re a valued member of the team,” Carlisle pressed. “You know I cherish your connections to the FBI, but sometimes I think you inherited old Hoover’s pathological aversion to cooperating with the other agencies of government. Langley is not our enemy. We’re in this thing together, for the long haul. Terrorism and the heathen hordes of Islam will be crushed in our lifetime. And if we turn a profit on the deal, so much the better. No one loses but our enemies.”