Chapter 14

14

Juan Cabrillo, still playing the role of ex-Wagner sergeant Stepan Saponov, limped his way over to the waiting MD-530 scout attack helicopter a hundred yards beyond the village. He climbed into the cramped passenger compartment while Yaqoob slid into the copilot’s seat. The Afghan air force pilot, one of Yaqoob’s nephews, throttled up the single Rolls-Royce turboshaft engine and they lifted off in a swirl of dust.

Fifteen minutes later, the chopper set down near a rugged plateau. Yaqoob led Juan into a nearby subterranean cave complex guarded by two heavy machine-gun emplacements providing crossfire against anyone approaching without permission.

Yaqoob gestured at the vast expanse of the cave. Stacks of crates and pallets of steel ammo boxes extended far into the darkest recesses. They approached the nearest pallet. Everything was stenciled in English.

“There, you see? Grenades, mortars, ammunition of various calibers—over five million rounds in this cave alone. Everything you need and more. Satisfied?”

“Somewhat.”

“Then follow me.”

As Juan shadowed him out of the cave he ground his right heel into the dirt, hardly missing a step as he limped behind the tall Pashtun toward the waiting helicopter.

---

★Another short hop on the American helo whisked them over to the outskirts of Ghazni, a former Soviet garrison from decades earlier.

They passed through a collection of abandoned mud huts, where sharp-eyed, well-armed uniformed guards kept vigil, hidden away from the prying eyes in the sky. They marched into one hut with an underground passageway and entered a vast subterranean concrete bunker built by the Russians. Acres of crated rifles, machine guns, pistols, and even sniper rifles were carefully organized.

Yaqoob marched over to one crate and popped the latches. He handed the rifle over to Cabrillo. He shouldered the weapon as Yaqoob spoke.

“M16A4. Never fired. Perfect working condition. I can deliver one thousand of these from this one storage facility alone. There are several more such facilities at my disposal.”

“Very good.”

“Convinced yet? Do we have a deal?”

“Ammo, guns. All good. But it’s the Humvees I really want to see.”

Yaqoob gestured with his big head. “Let’s go.”

Juan limped up the steps back to the ground floor of the abandoned hut. Yaqoob didn’t see him grind his right heel into the dirt just outside the doorway as they exited the building on their way to the idling helicopter.

---

★“The Chinese built that for us,” Yaqoob whispered in his headphone, pointing at a giant hospital in the middle of Kabul. “It even has a pediatric oncology ward. The Chinese have done many good things for my people.”

Just wait until they call in their chits, Juan wanted to say. Afghanistan had massive lithium deposits, one of the most strategically significant minerals on the planet. The Chinese government would gobble them up and everything else of value thanks to goodwill projects like this one.

Cabrillo was surprised when the pilot nosed the helicopter down toward the hospital and even more so when he set the skids gently into the center of the circle-H on the rooftop helipad.

Juan followed Yaqoob to an elevator that whisked them down to the lowest level of the underground garage directly beneath the hospital. An armed guard opened a heavy steel door and the Pashtun led Cabrillo into the storage facility. There were dozens of crates of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, including AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and Hydra 70 rockets.

“Hiding these beneath a hospital is brilliant,” Juan said. In fact, he was sickened by the callousness of the act.

“Everything you asked for and more—right here. If you like, I can take you to a doctor for that scar. It looks nasty. Maybe he can fix it up.”

“No need.” Juan dragged a hand over it. “My mother likes it.”

Yaqoob laughed and clapped Cabrillo on the shoulder.

“Funny man. Anything else you need to see?”

“What I really need are those Humvees you promised.”

“No problem. Let’s go.”

---

★The final stop on their whirlwind tour took them to Bagram Airfield, the scene of the humiliating American evacuation from the country.

The giant facility had originally been a Soviet air base, but the U.S. government took it over, enlarging and improving it over the decades. The longest runways could accommodate the world’s largest cargo aircraft including the American C-5M Super Galaxy capable of carrying a quarter-million pounds of cargo nearly five thousand miles.

But with the U.S. Air Force and its vast fleet of aircraft now gone, the Kabul government had provided incentives for commercial aviation to use the facility. Military trainers from China were among the first to arrive.

The MD-530 pilot cleared with the tower and landed Yaqoob’s helicopter a safe distance from the main runway, near one of the largest hangars in the facility. Yaqoob and Juan exited just as a gas truck approached the helicopter for a refill.

The heat radiated up from the tarmac as Juan limped along. The high-pitched whine of jet turbines rang in his ears and his nostrils filled with the stench of jet exhaust from a large Air Astana commercial airliner that had just landed. Its tail bore the national flag of Kazakhstan.

The two men approached what appeared to be a fortified hangar. The large doors were closed, but the Pashtun directed Juan toward a small exterior door on the side. An armed guard opened it and in they went.

It clearly wasn’t a hangar. It was some kind of storage facility, as large as a football field.

“More vehicles than a Los Angeles CarMax,” Yaqoob said.

He was probably right, Juan thought. There must have been at least nine hundred Humvees parked with military precision inside the thick cement walls.

“There are three more such storage facilities scattered around the country. For you? Five hundred Humvees, no problem. A thousand. We also have pickups, passenger cars, ambulances, even an ice cream truck. Whatever you need.”

Juan shook his head in disbelief. “You are a man of your word, Commander.”

He needed to drop another GPS homing beacon from his boot heel outside the entrance to be read by satellites later or, better still, by Tomahawk cruise missiles. He’d planted beacons at each of the facilities they’d visited so far—but skipped the hospital. He wasn’t willing to gamble the lives of sick children against the fatigue of an overworked targeting analyst who might inadvertently screw up.

Juan was racking his brain trying to figure out how to get Yaqoob to show him all of the other warehouses and storage depots the Taliban had scattered around the country, but he didn’t dare make the killer suspicious. The targets he had already identified would have to be good enough for now.

“Are you ready to deal, then?” Yaqoob asked hopefully. Juan saw the dollar signs spinning in his black eyes like reels in a Vegas slot machine.

“Like you said before, if the price is right. What do you propose?”

“For this priceless American equipment?”

“Name it.”

The Pashtun did.

Juan haggled with him over the exorbitant price. If he didn’t, the Afghani would become suspicious. They both knew his quoted fee was outrageous. A few moments later, Juan got the number down by nearly half. It was still an enormous sum of money.

“You drive a hard bargain, Ivan. But I want to do further business with you, so I will accept your poor offer.”

“There is still one issue. How do you plan on transporting all of this?”

“What is the destination?”

“The Central African Republic. Air transport is required.”

“It will all be arranged.”

“The deliveries must be on time. They must be guaranteed.”

“We have the means.”

“ ‘We’? No offense, friend, but unless the Americans left behind a couple of C-5 Galaxies, there’s no way you can transport all of this equipment.”

The Taliban frowned. “The deliveries will be made. You have my word.”

“How? The Americans monitor everything flying in and out of here.”

“We have a source.”

“What source? Who?”

“That is our secret.”

“How can I trust this ‘source’ of yours? What if he is working for the CIA? I must know his name or the deal is off.”

The threat of the loss of so much money nearly snatched away the Pashtun’s breath. His eyebrows furrowed as he weighed his options.

“I tell you the truth, I don’t know his name. I have never met the man. But he has never failed us. Not once.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“He accepts our payments. He makes our deliveries.”

“You pay him?”

“No. Someone higher up in my clan does the transfer.” The Taliban darkened, growing more suspicious. He leaned over and lowered his voice.

“The man is a genius, or perhaps even a devil. But I trust him—more than I trust you, Ivan.”

Who is this “devil”?

Overholt was right. Discovering how this gear was being transported without detection was more important than locating the weapons themselves. Juan needed to find this character.

Cabrillo knew he had one last chance to set the hook—or lose the biggest fish of all.

“My superiors will not accept this. You said it yourself. Without trust we cannot do business. If you can’t trust me with the name, you don’t have trust in me. I will find another source of weapons for my unit.”

Cabrillo turned on his heel, but the Pashtun’s frying pan–sized hand seized him by the bicep.

“He calls himself the ‘Vendor.’ ”

“Is he European? Chinese? Mafia?”

“I don’t know what he is. Like I said, I never met him. Never spoke to him. All text.”

“How did you find him?”

The giant Pashtun shook his head. “He found us.”

The “Vendor” isn’t much to go on, Juan told himself. At least it was a start. But he needed more.

“So this Vendor. He has the same problem transporting all of this equipment. How does he avoid American detection?”

Yaqoob flashed his big white teeth.

“I will show you.”

---

★Yaqoob commandeered an open-cab baggage cart and drove Juan over to a large hangar complex several hundred yards away. The wide doors were open. The baggage cart tires squealed on the slick hangar floor when he hit the brakes.

“There.” The Pashtun pointed from the seat of the vehicle.

An Airbus A320 passenger airliner bearing the blue and white paint scheme and logo of Somali Airlines stood in the center of the building.

“A plane,” Juan said with a shrug. “So what?”

“Watch!”

Suddenly doors opened up in the belly of the airliner just as a driverless flatbed vehicle slid under the fuselage. Moments later, a block of passenger seats lowered onto the flatbed and it sped off to a far corner. Another took its place and repeated the process. Within minutes at least three hundred seats had been removed and stacked along a far wall.

Mesmerized by the vision of the automated flatbeds, Juan’s attention turned to the fuselage itself as it turned from the Somali Airlines blue and white scheme to all white. A new green, white, and red Tajik Air logo appeared on the tail.

“Electrically charged paint that can change color. Have you even seen such a miracle?” Yaqoob asked.

Juan bit his tongue. Well, yeah, on the Oregon.

“So this ‘Vendor’ has a fleet of airplanes that can automatically change their color schemes and logos. I take it he also changes IFF signals?” Juan knew well enough that “identification, friend or foe” transponders identified aircraft primarily for air traffic control. But he also knew they were easy enough to spoof.

“What do I know of this ‘IFF’? The planes come with passengers, the planes go with cargo, the planes come back again with more passengers, or sometimes not. No problems.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Six months. Twelve, fourteen trips so far. All good.”

Juan motioned toward the aircraft. The two fuselage bay doors had converted themselves into a large loading ramp that stretched from the aircraft to the hangar floor.

“Where is this one going to?”

“That is none of your affair. Operational security.”

“Can you at least confirm you are capable of long-distance delivery?”

“Would you want me telling strangers about your cargo and destination?”

“Obviously not.”

“Then you understand my position.” Yaqoob pointed at the aircraft. “Just take a look at that airplane. Do you think it is just a…Wait, how do the Americans say it? Oh, yes. A ‘puddle jumper’?”

“Understood.”

Juan pondered his options. On the far side of the hangar he watched two uniformed Taliban stacking long crates on a pallet. The pallet was already loaded onto the forks of a driverless forklift.

Another Taliban jihadi was wrapping a fully stacked pallet with a roll of heavy clear plastic for load stability. A dozen more stacked and wrapped pallets lined the far wall, but Juan couldn’t make out what they carried.

Juan needed more information about the Vendor and his operations, but clearly Yaqoob didn’t know any more. He wasn’t handling the financial transactions, so there wasn’t any chance to steal bank transfer information from him. Right now, Juan’s only play seemed to be getting on that plane and planting one of his homing beacons on board. Then the Oregon could track the plane to its next destination and perhaps there he could find out more about this Vendor character, his operation’s networks, and maybe even more about his clients—buyers and sellers.

“I want to see inside the plane,” Juan said. He barked it like an order. No point in giving the big man a chance to refuse his request.

Yaqoob unfolded his long legs out of the cramped little trolley and strode toward the plane.

Juan knew there was always a moment in an undercover operation where the agent knew he was on the verge of scoring big. That moment was usually more dangerous than most because it was the easiest way for an agent to accidentally tip his hand. The trick was to keep a cool head and not get too excited and give away the game. Cabrillo had done this long enough to know that he was just moments away from success. All he had to do was take a few deep breaths, look around the aircraft, drop off the homing beacon, and then get the heck out of Dodge.

Juan watched as a speeding automated forklift heading for the back wall skidded to a halt just feet from Yaqoob, its collision sensors signaling a crash warning to its automatic brakes before it could hit the Pashtun.

Yaqoob hardly noticed. Just as he was about to step onto the ramp of the newly transformed cargo aircraft, his phone buzzed in his camouflaged pocket and he stopped. He pulled the phone out and pressed it against his massive head, and answered it by barking his name.

His voice lowered and he turned his broad back to Cabrillo, his words becoming more heated the longer he spoke. Suddenly he quieted, and listened. Cabrillo couldn’t make out the words on the other end or even the language. Finally, Yaqoob sighed. He turned around toward Juan, his face a welter of conflicting emotions.

“It’s for you, Stepan.” He tossed the phone to Juan in a high little arc.

Caught off guard, Juan reached up with both hands and snagged the phone out of the air—taking his eyes off Yaqoob just long enough for the big Afghani to throw a spine-shattering haymaker, cracking the side of Juan’s skull with his anvil-sized fist, and knocking him out cold.