It was only then that they discovered the trailer was empty.
“How’d you do that, Nick?” Sandra Paris asked as they headed north with the ostrich in a horse trailer.
“When I went down to feed Oscar just after we got back to the motel, I saw the night manager, Sid Rawson, going off duty. I gave him a thousand dollars to rent a duplicate trailer. I knew one or both of those guys would show up. That’s why I poked you to help get them up to the room and away from the trailer, so Sid could make the switch. I bought a new padlock for him to put on the duplicate trailer, and gave you the key to that lock, keeping the original key in my pocket. I promised him another thousand when we met him just now and reclaimed the bird.”
“What now?”
Nick shrugged. “You should be able to find a veterinarian who can remove those capsules from Oscar’s stomach without doing fatal harm. Then you drive to Silicon Valley and shop them around to the highest bidder. Maybe you can even get Oscar back to Bainbridge Acres.”
“Come with me, Nick,” she urged. “We’ll have a fine old time together.”
“I can’t do it,” he told her, a bit sadly. “I helped you this far as a favor, because you called on me. But my job is done now. You can pay me for expenses, but that’s all. Drop me at the San Jose airport and I’ll be on my way home.”
“Gloria’s waiting.”
“Yes, that too. I hope she’ll always be waiting.”
When she dropped him at the airport she said, “I guess this is goodbye, then.”
“If you ever get kicked by another ostrich, give me a call. You’ve got my number.”
Blues in the Kabul Night
by Clark Howard
© 2007 by Clark Howard
A professional writer for more than 30 years, and a contributor to this magazine for almost as long, five-time EQMM Readers Award-winner Clark Howard is most often associated with the crime genre. He has, however, written more than 200 short stories in other genres. And it isn’t only fiction that he excels at. His true-crime books have brought him equal acclaim. This time out he writes of soldiers. It’s a world he knows well.
The old four-engine Constellation cargo plane dropped down out of the darkening Afghanistan sky shortly after flying over the border from Pakistan, and received landing instructions from the tower at Kotubkhel Airport outside Kabul. Morgan Tenny, hunched in a jump seat behind Benny Cone, the pilot, looked down on the squalid outskirts of the Afghan city as the runway lights came into sight.
“You sure I’m not going to have any problem at the airport?” Tenny asked.
“Trust me,” said Benny Cone. “I been sneaking people in and out of this country for three years and haven’t lost a client yet.”
“What’s your secret?” Tenny asked.
“Hershey bars,” Cone replied.
“Hershey bars?”
“Yeah, with almonds. Afghanis are nuts about almonds. Excuse the pun.”
The old plane’s landing gear bumped hard against the blacktop runway, rose, bumped again, harder, then settled roughly into a jerky, lurching landing and decreased speed as it rolled toward the cargo terminal. When it came to a stop, Morgan Tenny followed Benny Cone through a narrow aisle between large, cable-secured wooden crates, to a high, wide cargo door which Cone unbolted and slid open on ball-bearing runners. Four forklift off-loaders were already driving toward the plane. Opening a hatch next to the cargo door, Cone unfolded an aluminum ladder that reached to the ground. Swinging a carry-on over one shoulder, he climbed down.
“Hand me your duffel,” he said.
Tenny lowered an ancient sea bag on which could barely be distinguished four stenciled letters: USMC.
“Ain’t seen one of these in a long time,” Cone said. The closure of the bag folded in quarters over a steel hasp through which a combination padlock was fastened. “Heavy, too,” the pilot observed. “Whatcha carrying?”
“The usual things,” Morgan Tenny said as he climbed down. “Guns, ammunition, laundered currency.”
“Everything a tourist in Kabul needs,” Cone said with a smile. He nodded toward the terminal. “Follow me. Keep your mouth shut and do what I say. You ever been to Kabul before?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s a real shit hole. It’s like no place you’ve ever seen, man.”
“I’ve seen a lot of places, Benny,” said Morgan Tenny. “Zaire, Saigon, Nairobi, Angola—”
“Yeah, well, you ain’t seen noplace like Kabul. It is a real shit hole. The whole place.”
“I thought the U.N. was cleaning it up after the Taliban got bounced?”
“The U.N. is a joke, brother. Wait and see.”
The two men entered the Customs and Immigration section of the shabby cargo terminal and found a heavyset, droopy-eyed Afghan man browsing through a U.K. edition of Playboy.
“Moazzah, my friend!” Cone greeted him jovially. “How are you?”
“Passports and visas,” the man named Moazzah said, without looking up from the magazine.
“Moazzah, look what I have for your lovely wife,” Cone announced, pulling a carton of two dozen Hershey bars, with almonds, from his carry-on.
Moazzah looked up and took the carton. “Very nice, thank you.” He held out a hand. “Passports and visas.”
“And,” Cone further declared, “look what I have for your beautiful mistress!” He produced half a dozen packages of black pantyhose, held together by a thick rubber band.
“Such generosity I do not deserve,” the Afghan official said. His free hand was still out. “Passports and visas.”
“Moazzah,” Cone pleaded pitifully, “you know I am a stateless person without papers. All I want is a permit to unload. I won’t even be leaving the terminal.”
“And your friend?” Moazzah inquired.
“A tourist, that’s all. He missed his commercial flight from Karachi and out of the goodness of my heart I gave him a ride. But his passport is still at the Arabian Air desk back there. Be kind, Moazzah. He just wants to spend a few nights with the China girls at the Escalades.”
“I see,” said Moazzah. The Escalades was the most notorious of Kabul’s brothels. It was currently being run by a White Russian woman who called herself Madam Kiev, who had the best body in the brothel but never sold it, and had two former sumo wrestlers at her side at all times to keep the peace in her busy establishment. Moazzah knew the place well. He eyed Morgan Tenny for a long, solemn moment. “Pray tell, what do you have in your duffel?” he asked.
Morgan shrugged. “The usual things: guns, ammunition, laundered currency.”
For a split second Moazzah frowned, then laughed out loud and pointed a finger at Morgan. “Your friend,” he said to Benny Cone, “is a very funny fellow.”
“Yeah, a million laughs,” Cone agreed, smiling nervously. He handed Moazzah a British fifty-pound note.
“Take him to the taxi queue,” the Afghan official said. “But you remain in the terminal.”
“Blessings on your house,” Cone said as Moazzah put the candy and pantyhose into a deep desk drawer and locked it.
The pilot led Morgan outside where several rattle-trap taxis waited. “You’ll find Donahue at the Dingo Club,” he told Morgan. “He’s partners in the joint with an Aussie ex-pat. Tell him I said cheers.”
Morgan nodded. “Thanks for the help.”
“Thank you,” said Benny, “for the stack of hundreds. Good luck.”
I’ll need it, Morgan thought, getting into a taxi.
The Dingo Club was on Chicken Street, one of Kabul’s main potholed thoroughfares. Night had fallen now and multicolored neon lit up the sidewalks and the milling people entering and exiting shops selling handicrafts, carpets, pastries, hijacked Western food, pirated DVDs, and, farther along, bars, clubs, brothels, massage parlors, fast-food joints, tattoo kiosks, and the like, all of it reminding Morgan of the last week before Saigon fell. Slim and slung Asian girls wearing purple and orange makeup plied their trade to passing mercenaries, war-zone hangers-on in combat fatigues, along with contract laborers in denims, U.N. workers in dress shirts with rolled-up sleeves and neckties stuck in trouser pockets, and a few young U.S. Marines on liberty. All of them were armed: automatic rifles held casually, shoulder holsters holding Walther PPKs, revolvers tucked under bullet-filled cartridge belts. It was a totally dangerous street, but no one seemed to be bothered by it.