Veiled Freedom Page 3

  The fixer evidently referred to the Afghan in suit and tie who plucked Steve’s passport from his hand, tucking a local currency note inside before moving to the front of the line. On the nearest wall, a sign advised passengers to report any requests for bribes to airport security. Not that Steve suffered any qualms of conscience at following on the fixer’s heels. In his book, a bribe involved paying someone to break the law. Tipping local bureaucracy to speed up what they should be doing anyway was a survival tactic in every Third World country he’d known.

  At least fast-track was no exaggeration. The line had barely inched forward when they left the security area, entry stamp in hand. The scene was repeated at customs, where Steve’s two action packers and duffel bag were waved through without a glance. A grin tugged at Steve’s mouth as he took in a bright head still far back in the first line. The woman from the plane looked frustrated, one small boot tapping impatiently, and only too conscious of the stares her wardrobe choices were attracting.

  Dismissing the hapless blonde from thought, Steve followed Cougar across a parking area to a black armored Suburban. The Afghan driver already had the engine running. Though an unnecessary swarm of porters had accompanied the baggage trolley, Steve counted out a bill into each outstretched hand. “Tashakor.”

  Steve’s thank-you engendered beard-splitting grins as the porters scattered.

  Pulling his head from inside the Suburban, Cougar raised bushy red eyebrows. “So you speak Dari. I’d understood this was your first contract in Afghanistan.”

  “It is.” Steve sliced into one of the action packers. The tactical vest he strapped on was not the screaming obvious black of a private security detail, where you wanted unfriendlies to know you were on alert, but a discreet utility vest style. “But I was in Kabul during liberation. And after. Picked up a fair amount of Dari and Pashto along the way. I assumed you knew that’s why I pulled this contract.”

  “Sure, your bio says Special Forces. So you were Task Force Dagger, first boots on the ground, all that. That must have been a trip.” Cougar studied his taller companion’s clipped dark hair and deep tan. “Your coloring, I’ll bet you pass as a native if you grow a beard. Gotta be useful in these parts. When did you make the jump to the private sector?”

  “I was in Afghanistan about eighteen months. Got tired of being shot at and switched to a Blackwater private security detail. Then ArmorGroup embassy detail. Back to PSDs. Most recently Basra in southern Iraq. That was Condor Security, and when this came up, they gave me a call.”

  Steve could have added, “And you?” But his contact info had included a bio. Craig “Cougar” Laube had done an Army stint a lifetime ago, then put in twenty years with NYPD, more of them behind a desk than on the street. A second career as a security guard hadn’t proved lucrative enough to support an ex-wife and three kids because he’d jumped at the post–9/11 boom in the private security industry.

  Strapping on his own tactical vest, Cougar retrieved M4s and Glock 19 pistols for both from the back of the Suburban before handing Steve a manila envelope. So the guy had his priorities right.

  The SUV’s air-conditioned interior was a far more comfortable ride into Kabul than the dust and jolting of an Army convoy. As the Afghan driver eased past a mounted Soviet MiG fighter jet that marked the airport entrance, Steve rifled through the manila envelope. Mini Bradt Kabul guide. Dari-English phrase book. List of embassy-cleared restaurants and lodging. An invite to an open house Thursday evening at the UN guesthouse. It was a welcome packet! Underneath were some blueprints and a city map.

  “The diagrams are your two primary security zones.” Cougar carried his M4 unslung, looking out the double-paned windows as he spoke. “How much did they fill you in?”

  Steve stuffed the material back into its envelope, retaining the blueprints and a personnel data printout. “Just that CS picked up a private security detail for some Afghan cabinet minister, and they want me to pull together a team ASAP. So who is this guy, and what’s the big rush?”

  “Our principal’s the new minister of interior. He figures he’s got a bull’s-eye painted on his back. Which isn’t such a stretch when you consider what happened to his predecessor.”

  “You’re talking the sugar factory bombing.” Steve straightened up with sudden alertness. Bombings had become a dime a dozen lately in Afghanistan, but that incident had been significant enough to make international news. Reopening a sugar factory in the northeastern province of Baghlan was the crown jewel in an alternative development program intended to soften the impact of the U.S. counternarcotics campaign against Afghanistan’s proliferation of opium poppy. A number of dignitaries had been on hand when a bomb went off inside the factory. With more than fifty killed and hundreds wounded, it had been the largest single-incident civilian death toll since liberation.

  “Sure, I saw the minister of interior on the list of VIP casualties. And weren’t there Americans involved too? But that was more than two weeks ago.”

  “It’s taken this long to get all the ducks in a row. There weren’t any American casualties, but a helicopter load that included embassy and DEA reps had just touched down for the ribbon cutting when the bomb went off, one reason the incident got so much international press. In fact, the chopper belongs to the current minister. If he hadn’t forgotten his briefcase in the chopper and just happened to turn back, there’d be two dead ministers instead of one.

  “What makes this more interesting is that the late MOI had just been in office a couple of months himself, appointed when his predecessor was removed for gross corruption and incompetence. Only after plenty of pressure from the West, I might add. The MOI’s by far the most powerful cabinet seat, just short of the president himself. It oversees the Afghan National Police, counternarcotics, the country’s internal security, and provincial administration. Which includes appointing the governors and regional law enforcement officials.”

  Steve let out a low whistle. “So what’s left for the president?”

  “There’s a reason they call our friend in the Presidential Palace the mayor of Kabul. Not that anyone really runs the provinces except the provinces themselves. A lot of people point to the MOI for Afghanistan’s current security failings. Not that there isn’t plenty of blame to go around, but the Afghan National Police are a joke, and too many provincial officials are former warlords up to their own ears in drug trafficking. Our late MOI had made it his mission to clean house and rein in the regional warlords.”

  That drew Steve’s sharp glance from the data sheets. “You don’t think—”

  “The sugar factory bombing could be payback—or just the local opium cartels trying to stamp out competition. But the new MOI’s taking it personally. He asked for a personal security detail as soon as he nailed the promotion. No local bodyguards, either. They might be infiltrated. Western. And since Khalid’s a former muj commander—”

  “Khalid!” Steve interrupted. “Khalid Sayef?”

  “That’s right.” Cougar looked at Steve. “Hey, come to think of it, Khalid was part of the coalition that took Kabul. Any chance you ran across him?”

  “Yes,” Steve responded. “Though when I left Afghanistan, Khalid was up to his neck in local politics, nothing like this.”

  “Sure, as a matter of fact, Khalid’s still governor of his home territory up in Baghlan. But like most of the muj commanders, he picked up a cabinet seat when the new government was signed in. Minister of commerce, originally. But he’s played his cards right, and when the minister of counternarcotics threw in the towel a couple years back, Khalid was in the right place and time to take over there. In fact, since counternarcotics is also the biggest department within the MOI itself, most locals figured Khalid would move up to minister of interior when his predecessor got the boot. But with the West screaming for a housecleaning, they brought in a complete outsider.”

  Cougar’s shoulders hunched under his tactical vest. “Well, Khalid’s got the job now, and it’s our responsibilit
y to keep the guy alive. The contract’s a level one, three-month renewable personal security detail. We should have on hand most equipment you’ll need. Ditto, transport. Scrambling a team wasn’t as easy on such short notice. But the bunch that flew in this morning are pretty decent. Their bios are in that packet. All Special Ops, all with security detail experience. Navy SEAL. Ranger. Delta. SAS.”

  Steve’s attention shifted from data sheets to the windshield as the militarized airport zone gave way outside to bustling streets. Kabul had changed since he’d last passed this way—and it hadn’t. Steve wasn’t sure which was worse.

  The biggest change was congestion. Vehicle traffic must have multiplied ten times over without a corresponding expansion of the street system. If there were traffic lanes or even sidewalks, no one was taking them seriously. Toyota Corollas, wood-framed trucks, motorcycles, and mule carts oozed through swarming pedestrians and street vendors. Late-model SUVs, mostly white, bore acronyms on doors and roofs. Agency vehicles of the numerous Western government and aid organizations now making Kabul their home.

  “The two security zones are Khalid’s personal residence and the Ministry of Interior,” Cougar continued. “The residence’s already in a high-security district, but the MOI building’s smack downtown.”

  City limits too now crawled much farther up the mountain flanks. Construction was still largely mud brick, but the glitter of Kabul’s new business skyline thrust itself like misplaced jewels above a haze of dust and smog. The Mashal Business Center, all futuristic blue glass and chrome. The five-star Serena Hotel rising like a sultan’s palace on a busy intersection. The Safi Landmark shopping mall where, according to the welcome packet, any number of trendy restaurants offered foreign cuisine and forbidden alcohol.

  Who in this dirt pile has disposable income to support this kind of infrastructure?

  Cougar pointed at another new glass-and-brick department store. “Kabul isn’t the hardship post you all rolled into. Anything you want, some Afghan will have started an import outlet. The expat social scene’s pretty decent too. Mostly in what we call the green zone—Wazir Akbar Khan, Shahr-e Nau, and Sherpur districts—where security’s tight enough you don’t have to worry about locals crashing the party. Or some mullah screaming over Jack Daniels or bikinis. Stay here awhile with all those burqas, and you won’t believe how good any woman in a bikini starts to look.”

  Steve grunted. Astonishingly, the burqas hadn’t changed. He spotted numerous headscarves, many of them expatriates by their features, as well as the more enveloping black chador. But the burqa remained the female norm, flitting like silent white or pale blue ghosts through an overwhelmingly male pedestrian mob, the face panels thrown triumphantly back when he’d last been in these streets now firmly in place.

  The commercial district wasn’t the only construction boom. Steve counted the third rounded dome and tall minaret the SUV had passed in the space of five minutes. This one was a massive complex, gleaming with sparkling new mosaic tile. Behind it rose a series of five-story buildings Steve had assumed to be a housing development until he saw that the mosque’s perimeter wall enclosed them.

  Cougar caught his stare. “Really something, isn’t it? That’s a new Shiite madrassa built by Iran. Bigger than the university. New mosques have been going up all over Kabul, mostly donations from other Muslim governments.”

  “Useful outlay of aid funds,” Steve commented sardonically.

  Cougar shrugged. “We build malls; they build mosques.”

  For all the city’s new infrastructure, the acute poverty Steve remembered seemed little diminished either. They’d passed miles of hovels clinging to hillsides like human-size termite cells. How did people live without running water, sewage, or electricity? As for that apartment complex mujahedeen rockets had ripped open, Steve could swear it hadn’t been touched in all these years. Then he spotted plywood and plastic tacked down across a concrete cubicle, a burqa hauling a bucket up a shattered staircase. People were living in that ruin!

  Beggars remained everywhere. Men missing limbs squatted on sidewalks or negotiated traffic on wheelchairs crafted from bicycle tires. Women in burqas exposed a cupped palm at intersections, small, ragged children at their skirts. Nor in the glut of automatic weapons and armed vehicles did Steve see any indication of a country at rest from war. It wasn’t just the ISAF convoys with their armored Humvees and turret guns. A dozen different uniforms belonging to the Afghan police, army, or hired security firms roamed sidewalks, stood guard at intersections and outside buildings, and crouched behind sandbags on the tops of walls.

  And I thought we’d freed this place.

  Just what did those war victims in their wheelchairs and burqas scrabbling for a daily food ration, the shopkeepers and street vendors with their watchful eyes think of the new Afghanistan he’d helped create? or of the Westerners flooding their city with new cars and shining towers and shopping malls and restaurants few Afghans could ever afford to enter? for that matter, of those equally ostentatious new domes and minarets that did nothing to put food on their tables?

  Steve felt a sudden weariness that was not from jet lag. Why did I come back here?

  Because it’s safer than Iraq, and the money’s even better. I was tired of being shot at, remember? After all, who was Steve to sneer when his own latest contract would net him five times what he’d ever earned as a proud member of his nation’s Special Operations Command?

  A city of dirt and mud.

  Such was Amy Mallory’s first disenchanted impression as the Ariana Airlines flight banked above a wide, dust-brown mountain valley. A dirty haze blurred a maze of lines and rectangles that crawled up barren flanks of encircling foothills. As the plane dropped, the maze resolved itself into endless mud-brick compound walls and flat-roofed houses the same dun hue as unpaved streets. Only in the basin’s center could be glimpsed brick and glass and concrete of modern construction.

  Kabul.

  First impressions were not improved by grit whipping across face and eyes during an interminable march from plane to terminal. Or the hot, bumpy drive into the city. Dust as fine as talcum powder seeped around window- and doorframes, drifting through the mesh grille that covered Amy’s face to clog her throat and nostrils. She reached under shiny polyester to wipe at sweat trickling down her face, and her hand came away muddy.

  Swallowing dryly, Amy tried not to think of the bottled water she hadn’t bothered to pick up at the airport. Instead, she glanced into the reflective surface a coating of dust had made of the nearest window. It showed a blurred, pale blue outline as though Amy Mallory were no longer an individual—capable, independent, world traveler, international aid worker—but a shapeless, anonymous blob.

  A burqa. The women’s prison that to the twenty-first-century West had come to symbolize Afghanistan.

  So get a grip and stop whining. I’ve been dreaming and praying about coming to this place for years. Where’s my sense of adventure—and humor?

  The latter had withered badly under the driver’s glare in the rearview mirror. Drop Amy Mallory into any back corner of the planet, her long-suffering father often joked, and you could count on her emerging unscathed, chattering a new language, a fresh project under way, and a host of new friends in tow.

  If an exaggeration, Amy’s communication and people skills had proved useful. But neither her sunniest smile nor the Dari phrases she’d memorized on the long flight over had made any visible impression on the turbaned, bearded Afghan who’d picked her up at the airport. The flight had been at least half expatriate but overwhelmingly male, and Amy’s unease began as she’d witnessed one passenger after another whisked through immigration into recent-model SUVs.

  Several such groups screamed private security contractor. All male, all physically fit, in the safari-style clothing, heavy boots, and wraparound sunglasses that seemed to be the community’s international uniform. And though they appeared unarmed, the catlike aggression of their stride bristled invisible weapon
s. Amy had been going through the first checkpoint when one such pair walked by unchallenged, the tallest sliding a cool, gray gaze over Amy as they passed. Not as though noting a young and presentable female. More like assessing a threat level.

  Meanwhile Amy found herself in one endless line after another. When she finally emerged, it was to her current escort holding up a hand-lettered sign to a steady chant of her last name. The large, burly man in pajama-like tunic and baggy trousers had stared at her as though she were martian. Only when Amy held up her passport, matching her name to the sign, had he herded her to this ancient Russian army jeep.

  Then without a single word, he’d pulled out a bundle of shiny blue cloth. Shoving it at Amy, he’d stood there expressionless, unmoving, giving no indication of understanding her protests, until with exasperation Amy tugged the tight cap piece of the burqa over her head and allowed the voluminous material to drop around her. A strong odor of perspiration and sandalwood talc indicated regular use. The driver’s wife? Okay, so the handful of other expat women climbing into those SUVs had been farsighted enough to include long sleeves and a head shawl in their travel wardrobe. Still, if it weren’t for that sign with her name on it, she’d wonder if she were being kidnapped.

  Now she was being paranoid. But Amy didn’t allow tense muscles to relax as a dissonance of car horns, blaring radios, and vendor cries swirled around her. Through the burqa’s mesh grille, the accompanying shapes were such a dizzying kaleidoscope, she found it easier to keep her eyes shut. The worst was that neither mesh nor polyester allowed air to flow easily, so that between dust and dryness and recycled carbon dioxide, Amy found herself gasping for breath. She was growing desperate enough to yank the burqa away when the jeep slowed, then stopped. A moment later, the back passenger door opened. Groping for her shoulder bag, Amy scrambled out.

  Now that her world was still, Amy could make out a paved street, the construction concrete and brick instead of sun-dried mud. A high wall in front of Amy had once been peacock blue, faded now to the color of her burqa. A black, metal pedestrian gate and a wider vehicle gate farther down completed a match with the JPEG she’d received. Her surly escort had, after all, conveyed Amy safely to her destination, the Kabul headquarters of the NGO—nongovernmental organization—that had brought her here: New Hope Foundation.