Seventeen minutes after midnight, Avery heard aircraft engines coming in overhead. He saw external lights blinking in the dark sky, and the engines soon grew louder as the aircraft lost altitude on its final approach.
The jet’s wheels struck the surface of the runway, screeched, bounced, and carried the giant aircraft forward out of the darkness and under the glow of the high floodlights, the four turboprop engines mounted beneath the wings screaming.
As it travelled down the runway and continued past the hangar, Avery identified the plane as a Russian-made Antonov transporter, weighing over two hundred thousand pounds empty and capable of carrying over twice its weight in cargo. Maybe two hundred feet long, he estimated, with a slightly longer wingspan. He couldn’t pinpoint the model, but that didn’t matter. He knew Mockingbird already had.
There was no carrier or national markings on the plane, only a small identification number, RA8564G, in black letters near the tail-end of the fuselage. Avery produced an old, bent notepad from a pouch on his vest, scribbled down the identifier, and replaced the notepad in his vest. He wasn’t an aviation expert, but he knew enough to recognize that the “RA” prefix signified that the aircraft was privately owned and registered inside the Russian Federation.
The pilot reduced speed, steered the Antonov left onto the tarmac in front of the hangar, and powered down the engines.
A couple figures stepped out from the open hangar and approached the Antonov. Their voices carried across the dead air toward Avery. He trained his scope on them. Two wore civilian clothing and didn’t appear to be armed. One was short and stocky, the other tall with wide shoulders and a shaved head, but their backs were to Avery. He also spotted a couple soldiers lingering about, keeping their distance.
The Antonov’s aft cargo ramp dropped slowly open on its pylons. Six men stepped out onto the tarmac. The Russian with the shaved head approached the group and spoke with someone who Avery presumed to be the man in charge of the flight.
Avery removed the miniature camera from the padded pocket in his vest. Developed by CIA’s Directorate Science & Technology, the no-flash digital camera fit inside the palm of his hand and could take quality, long-distance pictures or close range pictures of documents.
Avery recognized one of the Russians from when the man finally turned around. It was Oleg Ramzin, CK/SCINIPH. Avery snapped shots of him and his friends in case Langley could identify anyone else. They all looked alike to Avery, with their round faces, square jaws, shaved heads or buzz cuts, wearing out of fashion leather jackets, jeans, and boots, and generally looking ready to kick someone’s ass.
Another ten minutes passed with no activity. The Antonov remained sitting untouched on the tarmac, and the Russians looked as bored and impatient as the CIA soldiers felt.
At 12:45AM, Reaper reported that four trucks had just made the turn off the highway and were approaching the airfield. Five minutes later, Avery heard the vehicles coming from the south. His eyes followed a pair of headlights cutting through the cloak of darkness around the road leading from the highway to the airfield.
Under the bright floodlights, Avery recognized the new arrivals as Kamaz Ural-4320 6x6 trucks, four of them, powered by V-8 diesel engines and capable of carrying up to thirteen thousand pound cargos, or up to twenty-seven soldiers, for long distance hauls across nearly any terrain. Canvas tarps covered the cargo platforms of the trucks, which parked on the apron near the Antonov’s open ramp.
The cab doors on the trucks swung open, and the drivers and passengers climbed down. There were nine of them and a few had rifles slung at their sides or holstered pistols. They were darker skinned and smaller than the Russians, and each was thickly bearded, clearly of Central Asian descent. They wore loose fitting white or brown kameez tunics and shalwar pants. Some had scarves covering much of their faces, leaving only their eyes and noses visible, and others were draped in shawls or wore bandoliers filled with ammunition. But it was their matching black turbans that gave them away.
Avery knew what black turbans meant. These guys were Taliban.
The presence of Mullah Adeib Arzad confirmed this. There was no mistaking the distinctive crooked scar running down the left side of his face, over the limp eye that was all whited out following an untreated trachoma infection.
Mullah Arzad was one of the most wanted high value targets in Afghanistan. Any CIA or JSOC operator who’d done time in the Afghan-Pakistan would recognize him on sight. The mad mullah gained certain notoriety when a video appeared on the Internet in which he slit the throat of a twelve year old Afghan girl who committed the crime of being raped, shaming her family and village in the eyes of the Taliban.
Avery’s blood simmered. He reserved a special hatred for the Taliban. They were a dirty, cowardly, duplicitous, and savage gang who dealt in drugs, blew up schoolhouses full of children, decapitated women, and used the mentally impaired as unwitting suicide bombers. Their power came from fear and intimidation. And it didn’t matter how many you wasted, there were always more crawling out of the mountains and caves.
Mullah Arzad yelled out some angry, rapid fire Pashtan, and the Taliban started unloading heavy burlap sacks from the trucks’ beds. Ramzin and his friend with the shaved head watched them, and then the latter stopped one of the Afghans as he passed. The Russian produced a knife from his pocket and opened the blade. He slit one of the sacks in the Afghan’s arms, parted the tear with his fingers, and peered inside. He nodded his approval and the Afghans continued loading the Antonov.
Heroin, Avery thought, had to be.
Heroin, now produced in the Taliban’s own refineries and labs in Helmand Province and Kandahar, was the only thing the Taliban had of any value to bargain with. The Taliban generated up to half a billion dollars a year from drugs, making them one of the world’s top five richest terrorist groups. Many Taliban commanders became personally rich by skimming the profits and owned high-rise luxury condos in Dubai.
On the black market, one pound of heroin alone was worth thirty AK-47 rifles. Each of the four Kamaz Ural-4320s could carry a load of about twelve tons. One ton of heroin went for at least $15 million. Avery was looking at possibly $180 million worth of the shit. The street value would be over ten times that.
This was a massive transaction, and the important question in Avery’s mind was what were the Taliban getting in return?
While tanker trunks refueled the Antonov, the Russians used a forklift to transfer huge wooden crates from the Antonov’s cargo bay and onto the beds of the Ural trucks. The Taliban, apparently equally mistrustful of the Russians, watched them closely and selected random crates to open and examine.
From where he lay, it was impossible for Avery to tell what was inside the crates, but there was no mistaking what the long, rectangular, gray, metal cases now being loaded onto one of the Ural trucks contained. The US Army packaged and stored shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles in almost identical transit cases.
As the transfer of cargo continued, the Russian with the shaved head spoke some more with Mullah Arzad through translator. The Taliban commander nodded his head, and the Russian’s entourage started across the tarmac with Mullah Arzad and his lieutenants. Two nearby talibs noticed this and followed, not wanting to leave their commander alone with the Russians. The group walked to the airfield’s operations building, on the opposite side of the hangar, while those left behind continued emptying the Antonov and loading the trucks.