Chapter Twenty-Nine

Muezzins from half a dozen mosques called the faithful to prayers shortly after the sun came up. Kandahar woke like any city of hundreds of thousands, sharia law notwithstanding. Jarvis could hear street cleaners, vendors setting up food, and some small arms fire in the distance. Tepid water from the shower cleared his head and erased any remaining jet lag. He put on the same clothes from the day before, adding clean underwear and socks. His shirt was loose, both for comfort and to hide anything he might want to tuck into his waistband or strap to his chest. Breakfast waited for him on a tray outside the door and he ate the figs, deep black coffee, and yogurt while standing at the window watching traffic begin to build. The hotel was in the equivalent of a Green Zone, similar to the semi-protected area in Baghdad where the military, their families, and trusted locals lived. But in Kandahar, it was more of a faded, foam green zone – little real protection from anyone with a true intent to cause damage.

 

Before prayers were over in the large mosque visible from his window, Jarvis was passing through the empty lobby and into the back seat of Saleem’s cab. It smelled moderately cleaner than during the previous day’s ride from the airport, the way yesterday’s shirt, though unlaundered, used the airing from the night before to take a stab at being fresh. Saleem turned and greeted him with a warm clasp on the shoulder.

 

“Today you are my passenger, not my friend?”

 

Jarvis pointed at the bustle of the street just beyond the driveway of the hotel, where several military vehicles – not US – idled. “Better for you that I look like a tourist taking a ride.”

 

Saleem scowled but did not insist Jarvis change seats. He put the car in gear and rammed the car into traffic. He reached for something on the seat next to him and handed back to his passenger a heavy, sweet smelling cloth bundle. Jarvis took it and breathed deeply.

 

“Yes, Jar-vees, Melitha cooked for you this morning and you must eat every bite so I may tell her that is the real reason you returned to Kandahar.”

 

Jarvis was halfway through the warm bread and meat filling before Saleem had finished talking. Saleem looked at him in the rear-view mirror. “I will not have to lie to her.”

 

Jarvis choked on a mouthful of food as he laughed. The last time Saleem’s wife had thought he lied she held a butcher’s knife over his testicles, one hand on the blade and the other holding the penis out of the way. Fortunately, Saleem had been able to convince her of his veracity. He had told Jarvis the story with a mix of humor, fear, and respect, which fueled his love for his wife. Jarvis stayed with them several times, and Melitha’s warmth, intellect, sincerity and strength made what otherwise would have been an ugly face into a portrait of an angel. Proof that beauty was far deeper than skin.

 

He gave Saleem the address provided by the Colonel and that put a halt to any lightness in the air. “That is not a neighborhood I would like to take you to.” His voice had hardened, and Jarvis read it as a cover for fear; for both of them. It wasn’t a no, just a warning. They drove in relative quiet – outside the taxi was a cacophony of city life, in the car they prepared for whatever lay ahead. Saleem had no illusions that the day would be anything near normal. He broke the silence after a few minutes and his voice was gentle and firm as he spoke to Jarvis.

 

“What you are doing, it must be done?”

 

Jarvis looked out the window and tried to count the number of men carrying weapons. He lost track at 20. “Yes.”

 

A few minutes later they reached an intersection where all traffic was stopped. A disinterested uniformed man in his late 50s more or less directed traffic through the intersection, but not according to any rhythm or rules Jarvis could discern. To the right was a series of shops and restaurants. To the left a building that looked as though it had been bombed, condemned, and abandoned, except a steady stream of people moved in and out. It was a secondary government building, not important enough to protect with military. It probably gave out permits for scooters or building stone walls. Jarvis tapped Saleem on the shoulder. They both knew the area.

 

“I’ll get out here. Circle once. That should give me at least an hour.” It was sadly funny that he was probably right. Saleem turned and didn’t need to say how careful he wanted Jarvis to be.

 

Jarvis opened his door, narrowly missing a bicyclist who was ignoring the traffic cop along with most everybody else on the road, and stepped onto the hot, black pavement. He walked quickly toward the quasi-government building. Mostly men passed him on the sidewalk, some ignoring him, others glaring. But in Afghanistan a hard look was not always a challenge and Jarvis had learned to distinguish danger from curiosity. Just past the building whose doors were in perpetual motion a small alleyway opened to the left. He’d memorized the address but there were few markings. Instinct was more valuable than a map. The alley was wide enough for three people to walk abreast or a man to escort an ox without hitting either wall. Jarvis sidestepped the men and squeezed past the ox. There were openings and doorways on either side, some tightly bolted and others opening and closing in random patterns as people entered and emerged. The stone walk underfoot had as much loose rock as it had flat cement. A boy no older than 9 ran by kicking a soccer ball. It seemed out of place as Jarvis ventured further down the alley, which began to undulate and create blind turns. No more than 150 feet from the taxi he’d just left and it was a different world. A door on his left had a number 26, and he counted each of the next 7 so as to estimate where #33 was. The door was blackened with age and rusted with neglect. He raised a fist to knock when the boy with the soccer ball raced past again and kicked as if it were the winning goal a perfect shot at the center of the door across the alley from where Jarvis stood. Jarvis recognized too late the boy was a lookout and the goal a signal. Before he could turn and assess the threat, there were two rifles pointing at him, one from either side. He’d seen the men, separately, a few moments earlier and neither had been armed. The door behind him, with the dirty mark from the soccer ball, opened. A man close to twice Jarvis’ size emerged blinking in the sunlight that streamed into the narrow alley. He barked a few words and both men pressed their rifles into Jarvis, one in his neck the other in a kidney.

 

Jarvis knew enough Farsi to order in a restaurant and curse out a bad driver. He picked his words carefully. It came out more or less translatable as “Your whore mother fucked a pig to make you.” He felt the rifles press harder against both parts of his body and sensed trigger fingers tightening.

 

The giant in the doorway barked again, and it sounded somewhere between a laugh and an order to rip Jarvis’ organs from his body. Instead of lead-tipped bullets tearing into his back and skull, he felt the relief of gun barrels being pulled away. Andre the Giant’s twin bent down and grabbed Jarvis by the scruff of the neck as though he were a doll. Jarvis didn’t fight. The man leaned close to Jarvis’ face and a cloud of garlic and untreatable gingivitis drifted toward him. In a whisper that was louder than a small airplane, the man said in passable English, “I eat you and shit out bones.”

 

Jarvis wasn’t sure whether it was a threat or historical account of the last person who’d crossed him. The monster half pulled, half carried Jarvis over the doorstep and into an instantly dark room where the air was stagnant and he could feel more than see heavy drapes covering the walls and the windows. The door shut behind him and he blinked to adjust as quickly as possible, in case there were threats other than the thyroid case who was finally letting Jarvis stand fully on his own two feet. The room settled into view as the rods and cones in his eyes deciphered the reduced light into familiar shapes and angles. It was small and mainly empty, except for a tiny, wizened figure on a stool straight ahead. He held a Kalashnikov rifle almost as long as he was tall. The air was warm and stale but the man did not sweat. The small door he guarded would require the giant looming over Jarvis to turn sideways to get through, and even then it was no guarantee. An arm pushed Jarvis toward the door and the diminutive guard’s gun shifted just enough that pulling the trigger would eliminate any chance Jarvis could have children. Jarvis wasn’t even sure the guard could see, but had probably killed enough Americans – and Russians before that and Iranians before that – that instinct was enough.

 

Jarvis stepped forward and turned the iron handle, which was surprisingly cool. The door opened inward and brightness spilled out, cutting through the murk in the outer room. Jarvis stepped into a space that was twice the length of the one he left, though narrow and empty. Empty except for a row of counters or shelving along each side. A long overhead incandescent light ran along the ceiling. The floor was cement but covered in a gray mat. Each of the two long shelves held dozens of plastic bags containing about a grapefruit-size lump of what looked like gray mud or clay. They were neatly tied at the neck with a red twist. Jarvis recognized the color and consistency of poppy extract mixed with wax and coloring, a common way for Afghan drug middle-men to transport their product. A sharp jab in his back proved the giant was, indeed, able to squeeze through the door. Jarvis moved along the center of the room toward an opening at the other end where even brighter light poured through. Behind him the wooden door shut and he heard a lock.

 

Jarvis moved quickly but cautiously toward the opening, glad to avoid another prodding by the enormous guard whose name appeared to have been Almak, a word used by the gun-toting watchmen outside and which Jarvis had thought meant “ostrich” and therefore wasn’t sure why they had used it. Jarvis couldn’t help but silently mouth the words “Big Bird” as he stepped through the entryway.

 

He knew what to expect and was neither disappointed nor surprised. To his right was a plastic sheet hanging from the low ceiling, blocking the entrance to a large but cramped room. It was cramped because there were two picnic-table sized surfaces surrounded by stools. The floor was covered in plastic along with the table. The walls were bright white and smooth and recently painted. A dozen men and women dressed for the streets of Kandahar also wore elbow-length rubber gloves and hospital masks. They used metal cups to take scoops of powder from a large pile in the middle of the table where they sat and then a handful of soft, white wax from a pile next to them and kneaded them together. It was quite an operation and if Jarvis’ mental calculator was working properly, probably generated a few hundred thousand dollars worth of product a week.

 

Apparently that room was not his destination. No one looked up from their work when Big Bird smacked Jarvis on the shoulder to direct him to the left, where a staircase led down. The floor and walls were not as clean, so whatever was happening downstairs didn’t require laboratory-like conditions. He could hear voices and movement. They went down the stairs and his minder had to bend over to avoid smacking the bridge of his nose as they passed under the lip of the floor overhead. The door at the bottom was unguarded and swung inward. It was heavy metal and the hinges were well-oiled and opened silently. Jarvis could see half a dozen locks and a bolt. It would take a rocket propelled grenade to open if the door were shut from the inside. He quickly saw why. The room filled the entire area under the house. They entered in the middle of the room. Straight ahead were crates lined on either side of the wide expanse and when he briefly twisted his head around, he could see a similar number of boxes and more crates in the equally-sized space behind him. The lighting was from bulbs hanging off the ceiling and no one had laid down any plastic or carpets. It smelled like the desert with a faint hint of old air conditioner. Directly in front was a scarred wooden table and three men sat. They glanced up briefly. The one counting money – American dollars – looked back at the stacks of bills in front of him. The man across the table from him kept cleaning a sparkling new AK-47, which competed for space on the large table with half a dozen handguns of various sizes. The man third man at the head of the table calmly smoked a cigar and kept his gaze on Jarvis.

 

Jarvis stole a quick glance to either side and was impressed with the polyglotism of the labels on the crates. Arms from around the world. The cigar guy wasn’t pleased at his curiosity.

 

“You have pre-paid card, yes?” His voice was higher and lighter than Jarvis would have guessed if he’d been asked to do so. Western-style clothes, light wool pants and white shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a jacket over the back of his chair. The other two men holding guns were in native street garb.

 

Jarvis nodded at what he assumed was a joke. “Yeah, I hear you don’t take cash.” The man counting US currency didn’t look up.

 

Cigar guy’s beard was more like five-day stubble, a clean-shave compared to the long, straggly matts on the faces of the other two. Big bird was completely clean shaven, but Jarvis suspected it was genetics and not a razor. He didn’t want to get distracted by looking around to check.

 

“You want gun. Two maybe. And lots of bullets. Yes.” Not a question.

 

Jarvis had been thinking a tank would be useful, but might lose him the element of surprise on his mission. “Yes. I like the one you’ve got there.”

 

The man put the cigar back in his mouth and smoke curled up on either side. “This one is mine. It has initials. You want to see?” He pointed it directly at Jarvis’ face. Jarvis smiled.

 

“Yeah, it looks good on you. You have any that aren’t personalized?”

 

Cigar guy waved the gun to Jarvis’ left. “I got plenty. You have credit for one of these, maybe a little pistol, and as much bullets as you can carry.”

 

The generosity convinced Jarvis the Colonel had probably paid for five times that much equipment, but that was the price of contraband.

 

“Amal!” Cigar guy shouted in the direction of where he was pointing the gun, behind Jarvis. There was some bumping around and shuffling from the other side of the staircase. He had to look around his enormous guard to see the man emerge. Amal was holding a small crate with Russian writing. He had a large pistol tucked into a belt holding up loose fitting pants and a rifle was slung over his shoulder. He looked like he had been living in a terrorist camp for the last year. Turns out he had been. Jarvis recognized Amal as one of the men from eight years earlier who had been holding Brin’s head while the machete was poised over it. Amal had been young then and he was still young now, but the beard was darker, fuller, and in his eyes was the reflection of many deaths. They also flashed recognition an instant after Jarvis had placed him in the snapshot in his own mind.

 

Amal came to a full halt. The guy with the cigar looked quizzically at the tableau and Jarvis waited a heartbeat. The crate slipped from Amal’s hands and he began to fumble for his pistol. Jarvis had only the time until his next heartbeat to decide. The guns on the table were five feet away and he wouldn’t have time to wrestle with anyone for them. His guard had a couple of pistols strapped to his body but he might as well be trying to pull a thorn from the paw of an angry lion. There was only one not-entirely-suicidal option. He turned and kicked the big guard in the groin and spun like a half-back around him to cover the few feet to get to Amal. He passed the staircase but going up would only lead to several bullets in his back. He reached Amal just as the gun was coming out of his belt. There was fury in Amal’s eyes and frustration that he couldn’t point the gun at Jarvis and empty a full clip into the American. Jarvis hit him under the chin with his shoulder as he grasped at the gun. Amal was stronger than his slight frame suggested and Jarvis used both hands to twist the barrel toward Amal’s torso. He drove Amal back to create space for the gun to turn away from him self. Jarvis could hear the huge guard with the sore testicles cursing and trying to catch his breath. Jarvis’ attention was on not getting shot by Amal but he could hear shouts from the men at the table and the sound of rifle clips being loaded. Jarvis drove harder with his legs, holding onto Amal’s arm and wrist. He could feel the man pounding on his head with his free arm and the rifle swinging from his shoulder wildly was hitting Jarvis in the hip. He gave one last hard twist and could hear Amal’s wrist snap and all resistance give way. Amal tripped going backwards and Jarvis had the gun in his hand and was able to regain his balance and stayed standing. Amal hit the ground and Jarvis was over him, gun pointed at his forehead. He looked down at the terrorist and then quickly up and back to where he’d been standing a moment ago. The enormous guard seemed no worse for wear after having caught his breath and was literally growling as he walked toward Jarvis. The two subordinates of the cigar guy were coming at him with rifles and were speaking so quickly he couldn’t understand any of the words. Cigar guy was still sitting, but holding his handgun now. Chaos was imminent. Jarvis pointed the gun at the large guard. It would probably take the entire clip to stop him. There was a sharp command from cigar guy that cut through the growing din and halted everyone in their tracks.

 

Cigar guy got up from the table and slowly walked toward Jarvis. Several of the men, including Jarvis, were breathing heavily. Everyone was quiet, only highlighting the tension. Jarvis calculated he could take out cigar guy, which would distract the others, then kill the two guards with guns in their hands. That left the giant, who would have enough time during the killing to get his hands on Jarvis. But if he started with the largest target, the others would shoot him dead. There was no cover and no good options. He decided he’d have to take his chances with Godzilla and shoot cigar guy first. Without looking, he fingered the safety to make sure it was off. It was. Before he could raise the gun, there was a scraping noise down and to his left. A movement caught his eye and as he turned away from the immediate threats in front of him, he saw Amal raising the rifle that had fallen off his shoulder. He pointed it at Jarvis. There was a single shot, loud and painful in the small space. Jarvis didn’t wince, trying to determine where the bullet had entered his body. But Amal’s face took on a shocked expression and he stiffened. The life drained almost immediately as a hole in his chest began to ooze blood. Jarvis whipped back around and began to raise his gun but cigar guy had already lowered his pistol. He blew smoke out of his nostrils.

 

“Fucking Taliban. Think they can come to me, do business, and ignore my rules. Scum.”

 

Not the reaction Jarvis was expecting, a sentiment apparently shared by the other three men in the room. Cigar guy’s volatility, though, seemed common. The other men lowered their guns and the tension dissipated.

 

“The small crate, it has what you came for. Take it and go.” He waved the gun he’d just used on the bleeding Talib on the ground. Then he hardened and loosely held it pointing in Jarvis’ direction. “But if you use anything against my men, I will see you again, yes?”

 

It seemed a rhetorical question so Jarvis stepped over the dead man and opened the loose top of the crate. He put one of the pistols in the band in the back of his pants and the other under the loose jacket he wore. The clips were conveniently packed into a belt, which he strapped beneath his shirt. Enough for a small assault, which was more or less what he had in mind. While arming himself, he kept an eye on everyone in the room who was still breathing. The three guards shifted uneasily once he had the guns in his hands but Cigar Guy seemed unconcerned.

 

Except for the look of murder in the giant guard’s eyes, Jarvis thought there was a pretty good chance he’d get out. He backed his way to the staircase, coming close enough to the largest guard that he could hear his breathing and smell the fury on his skin. It wasn’t from the pain in his groin, but from the frustration of not being able to rip Jarvis into small pieces.

 

“Thank you. I’ll find my way out.”

 

Cigar Guy laughed. “If you leave alone, you will have a knife in your eye before you cross the alley.” He pointed to the subordinate who’d been counting cash and gave a brief, sharp instruction. The man lowered his rifle, reluctantly, and walked toward Jarvis.

 

Without much in the way of options, Jarvis turned his back on the guns pointed in his direction and walked up the stairs. He passed the clean room and went through the small, secret opening guarded by the old elf who stiffened slightly until he saw the money-counting guard a step behind. A moment later Jarvis was back in the alley and everything looked perfectly normal, except he could pick out at least half a dozen men who would have been hacking him to pieces if he’d emerged alone. He headed back to the corner where Saleem would hopefully be waiting. Jarvis noticed for the first time in the last ten minutes that his heart was beating slightly faster than usual.