“I’ll be fine.” Chris raised his fist, and a moment later Wulf connected his in a familiar bump.
“I think you will.” He must have sounded authentic, because his friend’s shoulders relaxed.
“I better scrounge up that emergency leave paperwork.” His boss snorted. “Enjoy Rome, but don’t forget force protection. I hear Cruz has an unopened box in his footlocker.”
“Sir.” Since Special Forces never used their commander’s title privately, maybe saying it would shut Deavers up before he followed that thought too far for Wulf’s comfort. “Sir, it’s inappropriate—”
“Right, she’s an officer, you’re not. Still—” Chris broke into laughter, the normal kind that sounded like something a person would hear at the unit picnic at home station.
Good he could see the humor in the situation. With his future on the line, Wulf couldn’t. “Sir, I’ve been ordered to pack.” As he left his grinning commander, he tossed over his shoulder, “And Sir? Fuck off.”
Chapter Nine
Wulf replaced the porcelain cup in its saucer. Without the CIA agent across the table, the croissants and hot coffee would be ideal after two days transiting between Caddie and Karachi. Although he hated coordinating with the CIA even more than drawing a crapfest burrito from patrol rations, he was too damn blond to recon Karachi’s docks without drawing attention from Pakistan’s secret intelligence service. The U.S. consulate was the place to acquire a CIA beard.
J.T. Smith, pseudo public-affairs assistant, had the bleary eyes of a college student killing time between frat parties and a ruddy complexion that broadcast permanent discomfort in the tropical sun. He’d been in Pakistan three months but, according to taxi drivers who loitered down the block, hadn’t mastered the exchange rate between dollars and rupees. Because he overpaid for every ride or scrap of information, he’d become excessively popular among those seeking to simultaneously mislead American intelligence and make a buck. Sticking to J.T.’s rising star was perfect cover for playing dumb American.
“The rules of engagement don’t permit us to operate on this side of the border.” He stifled his urge to add, So we can’t claim expenses when we do. “We need your help to find out when we’ll have space to move a surveillance antenna.”
“An antenna? How’s that getting here?”
Look out the window. How do you think, super spook? “By ship. We have to know when the containers in the way move and we have space to land a stealth-technology CH-47.” In case Smith didn’t know his helicopters, Wulf whispered, “An invisible Chinook. Bigger than the sneaky bird we flew in the Abbottabad op against OBL.”
“Wow.” Smith’s eyebrows jumped so high on his forehead Wulf wondered for an instant if the guy was conning him back. “How many of those do you have in theater?”
“Classified. But I can say less than a baker’s dozen.” If Smith passed that canard to his superiors, he’d find out how hard they could mock a guy who believed what he heard from the army. Interagency feuds were bitter; intra-agency ones, brutal. “What’s the wharf situation?”
“Want to head over and see? I’m free this morning.” The agent grinned like a puppy.
“My captain hoped you’d show me around.” Deavers knows the CIA can’t resist meddling in Special Ops business. “Do you have a terp on call?” He’d no intention of letting Smith know he understood the lingua franca.
“My local interpreter’s the best.” Smith pulled out a cell phone.
“Keep this off the airwaves.” Wulf wrapped his hand around the number pad. “Ask him to show up, but don’t say why.”
The new American consulate occupied twenty acres next to the Port of Karachi, so it took less than a half hour for Wulf and his escort to leave security and be driven to a corrugated metal shack at the Western Wharf. Afghanistan was far from the sea for a man raised at an oar bench, and normally Wulf would revel in the briny wind off Baba Channel. Today all he wanted was intel.
Although it wasn’t yet ten-thirty, the wharf’s chief guard invited them to share a hookah. A clipboard hanging behind the Pakistani’s head noted vessels and destinations, and Wulf expected to know the shipping details by the end of the smoke break. With the right cabbie, he’d make his flight to Dubai and be in Rome for dinner. He was due for a break, if only because he had to endure this CIA kid’s chatter for another hour.
Sweat stuck Draycott’s stained salwar pants to the creases of his groin while he crouched near a stack of concrete blocks. Despite his racing heart, he forced himself to breathe with the wheezing rattle of a near-dead beggar. When he’d donned this stinking outfit, he’d anticipated nothing more exciting than counting rusty containers as they loaded onto the equally rusty Horizon Kaptan, not the arrival of a Special Forces sergeant from Camp Caddie. A month ago he’d noticed the Green Beret and put a name on the eerily familiar face: Wulf Wardsen. He should’ve trusted his intuition and probed deeper after that hair-trigger manager had screwed up and killed an aviation warrant officer, but instead he’d ignored his doubts and recertified the supply line. His mistake might roll up the network.
He knew who the Director would blame.
“This is an efficient facility for its age.” Wardsen and his companions lounged by the hookah, close enough for Draycott to hear the interpretation of the sergeant’s next question. “But surely the new wharf will better meet modern standards?”
“The Western Wharf exceeds world standards.” The guard defended his fiefdom. “We accommodate Panamax ships. What ports along the Indian Ocean do that, I ask you? Name one.”
“That rust bucket loading out is no Panamax. I doubt it can carry more than a hundred, hundred-fifty containers.”
As soon as the sergeant’s challenge was interpreted, the security officer burst into praise of the ship in question, the one that would load ten particular Black and Swan containers.
In contrast to the guard’s volubility, Draycott doubted his own powers of speech, because at this angle he could see the other side of Wardsen’s face. His temple had a star-shaped scar of pale skin. It was the same scar at the same spot where the man in the Mogadishu bar had lifted his fingers to mockingly salute a green CIA agent on his first day. That mark was branded as permanently in Draycott’s memory as it was on the skin of the man smoking the hookah and asking about shipping schedules.
This soldier was that man, not a son of, not a relative, and the knowledge froze Draycott as surely as if he’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen. It wasn’t the impossibility of a man not aging for forty years that chilled him, since he’d stolen a photo from CIA archives of arms deals during the Iran/Iraq war. He already knew the Director and his two partners hadn’t gained a wrinkle or lost a hair since the day in the eighties when they’d shaken Saddam Hussein’s hand in front of a secret camera. No, it wasn’t this soldier’s eternal youth as much as the logical next question: if the sergeant shared the Director’s extraordinary ability, had he been sent by the Director?
Had his position become redundant?
He saw two choices. He could update the Director and gamble that the intelligence protected him. If it didn’t, he’d have to run. His wife had mentioned retiring from Northern Virginia traffic to Florida, her Plan B. Everyone had a Plan B. He had C, D and X, one of which might hide him from the Director, but he couldn’t be sure Jane would accept a fugitive life. She’d never break contact with her daughter.