“What kind of helo?”
“A Mil Mi-2 that’s about ten years older than you or I and goes through as much oil as gas,” Booker said with a sardonic smile. “That is one thing I do miss about being on Uncle Sam’s dime. We had Blackhawks that were maintained by boys who ate and breathed all that techno shit.”
Mercer was familiar with the Mi-2, a Soviet-era workhorse found in many of their former client states but now maintained without the patronage of the Soviet/Russian Mil bureau. He’d flown on some in Africa, where they had used flattened paint cans to patch the bodywork, and duct tape and baling wire to hold other parts in place.
“I never said you weren’t brave,” Mercer said.
Book grinned again and repacked his cheek with chewing tobacco.
Gen-D Systems rented a warehouse not too far from the recently renovated Ghazi Stadium, where the Taliban once held public stonings and beheadings. It was now home to several football clubs.
Hamid sounded the Toyota’s horn midway down the block from their destination, alerting the guards that they were coming. This part of the city was relatively safe, but these men took no chances with security. As they neared the razor-wire-topped gate, an Afghan employee inside drew it back on its rollers to let the truck slip through and then just as quickly rammed it home again so that a steel locking bar fell into place. Hamid needed to slam on the brakes in order to avoid hitting other vehicles parked in Gen-D’s tight lot, or any of the shipping containers that seemed to make up half the structures in the city. Here they were storage. Elsewhere they were homes.
The warehouse was battered by weather, and some bricks looked as crumbly as dust, while there were huge stains on the cracked asphalt lot and several of the cars dotting it had been picked clean for spares. In all it reminded Mercer of an East L.A. chop shop, only when he got out of the truck the music he heard from a boom box atop an oil drum wasn’t Latin pop but some Indian synth music that sounded like cats fighting in a burlap bag.
“Home sweet home,” Sykes said, unfolding his considerable frame from the Toyota.
“Has a nice postapocalyptic vibe,” Mercer said. “I like it.”
“I am not wasting my per diem on a room at the Intercontinental. I’ll show you where you’re crashing, and then we’ll see to that bottle of Maker’s Mark.”
The living quarters, though spartan, were adequate, and they had installed a shower with a high-pressure head and enough hot water to soak out twenty-two hours of stale airline air and cramped muscles. Because of the short notice, there had only been coach seats available on the long leg from London to New Delhi.
Mercer met Sykes and three other Americans in the operations room, which also doubled as their lounge. There were mismatched sofas facing a flat-screen TV hooked to a satellite dish on the roof, and a Sony PS-4 console on the cement floor. The walls were covered with travel posters, mostly bikinied women on sugar sand beaches, but also some maps of the country as well as detailed ones of the city of Kabul and the surrounding suburbs. Light came from yellow construction lamps aimed at the ceiling.
The warehouse had once belonged to a spice merchant, and even years later the air still carried the tinge of Eastern flavors — saffron, cinnamon, and of course the aroma of raw opium, which had been the man’s real business.
The bottle of Maker’s Mark was on a sideboard the men used for their bar, among other bottles of spirits he’d never heard of — but in a country where only foreigners could buy alcohol, Chinese vodka and Japanese gin worked just fine. Mercer squeezed two limes into a glass and poured in the vodka. There was no ice.
“Grab one of those liter bottles of water,” Book ordered and waved his bourbon glass in the direction of the flats of water stacked next to the bar. “We’re at nearly six thousand feet and we’ll be even higher tomorrow. I don’t need you puking from the altitude.”
He was sitting on a recliner covered in colorful dyed cotton tapestries since its original upholstery had long since been worn away. “And, Mercer, I hope you don’t take offense — operational security requires that you not know the other guys’ real names. But these are the men going south with us tomorrow. Do you remember the code name I gave you when we jumped into that monastery in Tibet?”
“Snow White,” Mercer said dejectedly, hating the moniker of a newbie but knowing he’d never earn a real operator’s nickname.
“Snow it is”—Sykes laughed—“and these three are Grump, Sleep, and Sneeze. And of course, I am your host, Doc.”
“You’re also an unimaginative prick,” Mercer said. He shook the men’s hands. They all had the calm eyes and easy demeanor of elite soldiers, men who had been pushed so far beyond the limits of endurance that they no longer needed to show how tough they were. If you didn’t immediately recognize it, you weren’t worth their time. Mercer knew he would never have the time to gain their respect, but Sykes must have told them a little of his and Mercer’s exploits because they looked at Mercer with slightly more regard than they would have offered a regular civilian.
“First off, I want to say thanks. I know it’s more money in your pockets, but Book said you all volunteered for this mission without really knowing the risks. And neither do I. With any luck it’ll be nothing more than a quiet day in the countryside with us back home in time for supper. On the other hand we could be heading into an area crawling with insurgents or drug smugglers. The satellite pictures I’ve seen only show an area of canyons and valleys that are so steep the bottoms are in shadow for all but an hour a day.” He looked to Sykes. “Have you gotten any intel on the region?”
“We’ve asked around,” Booker replied. “It’s pretty remote even by Afghan standards, but it is close enough to the Pak border that there could be smugglers — and those bastards have a hell of a lot more fight in them than the Taliban because they’re better paid. That said, no one has anything solid going on down there. I even reached out to my contact in the Company. She said everything appears quiet. The Tali’s spring offensive is still a few weeks away, and it’s still a little early to catch them moving supplies into position.”
“So what’s the plan?” Mercer asked.
“Nothing’s changed since yesterday. We’ll chopper in to as close as we can, then hoof it the rest of the way. You do whatever you need to do while we cover your sorry ass, and then it’s hot feet back to the LZ and we bug out. The only pucker factor is Ahmad, that’s our pilot, is going to need to dust off and refuel in Khost, so that leaves us on our own for the better part of three hours.”
“And what about you?” the operator nicknamed Sleep asked Mercer. He was African American like Booker but spoke with a deep southern accent. “What are you doing here exactly? Book says you’re a geologist.”
Mercer nodded. “A few days ago a friend of mine was killed over a mineral sample that was discovered in our target area. I have no idea how long ago or what the sample was. I don’t even know if there’s any left there, so I guess we can consider this a fact-finding mission.”
“If my read of history is right,” Grump said, spitting some tobacco juice into a soda can, “the Vietnam War started with fact-finding missions.”
“Don’t worry,” Book told his men. “To the best of my knowledge Mercer has never actually started a war. Right?”
Before Mercer could reply, the earth jolted under them enough to rattle the bottles on the bar and send peppery dust raining from the building’s exposed rafters. The men looked around and then down at the ground. Concerned but not alarmed.