Morgan stepped inside the entrance to the Dingo Club. During the taxi ride to town, he had unlocked and opened his sea bag, and now had a Sig P230 automatic pistol in his waistband under his coat, an extra magazine of 60-grain bullets for it in his coat pocket, and a smaller automatic, a Kahr K9, in his belt at the small of his back. Standing just inside the club door, the big sea bag slung over one shoulder, he scoped out the noisy, raucous, smoky scene before him. Like a cautious falcon in unknown woods, his eyes flicked along the packed bar, the booths lining the walls, the tables in between, looking for familiar, especially unfriendly, faces among the patrons, bartenders, waiters, and pimps for the China girls who were working the room. Even after he spotted Donahue, the man he was looking for, his light-blue eyes kept moving, shifting, searching, until he had satisfied himself that he had no enemies there — at least none on the surface. Only then did he make his way to a back table where Donahue sat with three other men.
“Hello, Donny,” he said when he got to the table. Donahue looked up.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “If it ain’t the calm half of the infamous Tenny twins. I wondered when you’d get here.”
“You can stop wondering now,” Morgan said.
The man at the table stood up. Michaleen Donahue was a great bull of an Irishman, sixty-six years old, thick-necked, massive-chested, muscular-armed, wearing a skin-tight camo shirt over which was strapped a Roto shoulder holster and magazine rig holding a Glock 17 automatic on one side and a double magazine pack on the other. He grabbed Morgan in a grand bear hug. “How are you, boyo?”
“Good, Donny. You?”
“Never better, lad. Come on, I’ve an office where we can talk. ’Scuse me, mates,” he said to the other men at the table, and led Morgan into a nearby hallway to an office where he closed the door behind them. It was a sparsely furnished little room, with a metal utility desk, metal chairs, and several metal ammo boxes on the floor being used for files.
“Sit, boyo, sit,” Donahue said, dropping his bulk into a swivel chair behind the desk and retrieving a bottle of Gilbey’s and a pair of metal canteen cups from a bottom drawer. He poured two doubles.
“Cheers,” they said in unison, and took their first swallows.
The swivel chair creaked as if in pain as Donahue leaned back. “I’m afraid you’ve made a trip for nothing, lad. What you’re here for is a lost cause.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Donny I’ve known all these years,” Morgan said.
The Irishman shrugged. “As a man gets older, he gets wiser. Wiser about everything: women, drinking, killing. He tends to realize there are some things he simply can’t do anymore.”
“Aren’t you the one who always said life was doing what couldn’t be done, and the rest was just waiting around?”
“Like I said, I’m older now.”
“Well, maybe I’m wasting my time with you, then,” Morgan said. “Maybe I should look for someone with more grit.”
Anger flashed briefly in the big Irishman’s eyes, but he quickly suppressed it and leaned forward, folding his thick fingers on the desktop. “Look, Morgan, I know there’s a fine edge to you right now, with your twin brother Virgil being held in the Pul-e-Charki prison. But he’s been charged with the torture and killing of three Afghan citizens while attempting to get information from them as to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden — all so he could collect the twenty-five million bucks bounty on the son of a bitch. Virgil’s going to be tried before an Afghan judge named Mehmet Allawi, who is as anti-Western as they come. He has stated openly that Western influence since the fall of the Taliban is ruining his holy land, and he’s the leader of a party that wants all non-Muslims thrown out of the country. Your brother is the first Westerner to be charged with a capital crime since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Allawi intends to use him to make a statement against the U.S., the U.N., and all other foreigners who are here. Virgil is going to be found guilty and hanged. And that, my boy, is that.”
“I intend to break him out,” Morgan said simply.
“Break him out?” Donahue grimaced in disbelief. “Out of Pul-e-Charki? You’re dreaming, lad. It’s not possible. There’s no way to spring a man from there.”
“I don’t plan to just spring a man. I plan to liberate the whole damned prison, Donny.”
Donahue grunted. “That would take a small army.”
“I want to raise a small army. A strike force of trained mercenaries.”
“You’re crazy. It would cost a million dollars.”
“I’ve got a million dollars,” Morgan said. Reaching down, he patted the sea bag on the floor next to him. “Right here.”
“You serious?”
“Dead serious.” Morgan leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I know about that prison. I know men who’ve been in it. I’ve heard stories. It’s a filthy cesspool. Whips, chains, rats, vermin, slop for food — it’s a nightmare. They’ve even got torture chambers—”
“Your brother Virgil is in there for torturing people,” Donahue reminded him.
“The three men Virgil tortured—”
“Two men,” Donahue corrected. “One woman.”
That gave Morgan pause for thought. But only momentarily. “Makes no difference,” he said. “They were all al-Qaida. No telling how many innocent people they’d killed. Whatever the case, I want to blast open Pul-e-Charki prison.” He locked eyes with Donahue. “You with me or not?”
Donahue took a long sip of gin, then pursed his lips for a moment. Finally he said, “Tell you what. You and me’ll go out and have us a good look at Pul-e-Charki in the morning. Then you can tell me how you’d plan to go about doing it. After I hear your plan, I’ll decide. Good enough?”
“Good enough,” Morgan agreed.
They toasted again and finished their gin. Then Donahue asked, “Got a place to bunk yet?”
“No.”
“Down the street to the right. The Mustafa Hotel. Use my name. Tell the desk clerk to give you an upstairs room in the back, away from the street noise. I’ll come by for you about ten in the morning.”
With his sea bag again slung, Morgan left the Dingo Club and turned right down the busy street, his senses alert to everything around him. He knew before she got there that a young woman was hurrying up beside him.
“Excuse me. May I speak with you for a moment, please?”
“Not tonight, honey,” Morgan said, thinking she was street girl. “I’m dead tired, just in from a long flight.”
“I know,” she said. “I followed you from the airport.”
Morgan stopped, his right hand instinctively going to the automatic in his belt. “You followed me from the airport?”
“Yes. In my car. I wanted to talk to you.”
Looking more closely, Morgan now saw that she was definitely not a street girl. She was, he guessed, Afghan; modern Afghan: smallish, attractive, wearing a stylish pantsuit, carrying a large purse over one shoulder. He decided to play dumb.