Termination Orders
Leo J. Maloney
CHAPTER 1
Three sharp raps at the door yanked young Zalmay Siddiqi from uneasy dreams, and the adrenaline hit him like a kick in the face. He froze with the primitive instinct of a rabbit cornered by a fox, hoping against hope that whatever predator had come knocking would go away of its own volition. He listened. The knocks came in a familiar pattern of three shorts and three longs: Cougar’s signal. As his blazing panic subsided, he realized that he had been holding his breath. He exhaled, but the smoldering dread remained. Even friendly knocks were unwelcome in the middle of the night.
He rolled nimbly out of bed and pulled the lanyard on the light fixture above him, spilling the bulb’s dim yellow glow onto the sparsely furnished room: a lone mattress on the floor, a plastic chair draped with his clothes, his few possessions huddled in a corner where cracked plaster walls exposed the concrete underneath.
Tugging on a plain Afghan khameez tunic and salwar trousers made of rough cloth, he hurried out of the bedroom to the hallway door. The knocks were still coming intermittently in their steady pattern. Zalmay gingerly turned the lock, and no sooner was the dead bolt released than the door was flung open, nearly knocking Zalmay back into the wall. A tall, wiry American, a man he knew as Cougar, rushed into the apartment, also wearing Afghan garb and carrying a black duffel bag. His movements were jerky, his voice breathless.
“Grab your things. You’ve got thirty seconds.”
Zalmay’s thoughts were forming a protest at Cougar’s abruptness, but the urgency in the American’s speech stayed his tongue. With a sudden clarity, he asked only, “Am I coming back?”
“No,” Cougar responded, and he looked over his shoulder. “Pack only what you can’t live without.”
Cougar stood at the door, his head cocked like that of a prey animal listening for stalking predators. Zalmay threw his single other outfit and his prayer mat into a canvas knapsack. From under his mattress, he took out a slim roll of cash tied with a rubber band. He reached in again, pulled out a creased old photograph, and hid it, along with the money, in the folds of his shirt. Then he turned to face Cougar, doing his best to look brave.
“I have been expecting this,” he said. “I am ready.”
Fear and anxiety had marked Zalmay’s life since he’d met the American and agreed to help him. Zalmay was well aware of the consequences of being caught. The thought usually kept him awake and tossing on his mattress at night. And on this particular night, his nightmare had finally come calling. He could only feel glad that it was his friend and not an enemy assassin at his door.
“Good,” said Cougar, “Now let’s . . .” Cougar trailed off and turned his head as if listening for something. Then Zalmay heard it, too, and it stopped him cold. It was the rumbling motor of an approaching car, which came to a halt down below the open window. Zalmay walked to the window to see who it was. Looking down, he saw a black sedan with two men climbing out of it, Americans in Western suits, each with a submachine gun in his hand.
“No, get away from there!” said Cougar.
Too late—one of the men below looked up, called to the other, and pointed right at Zalmay. Both black-suited men dashed for the door of the building. Zalmay’s apartment was on the corner, all the way down the hall; the men would have no trouble at all finding them.
“Come on!” said Cougar, motioning for him to go out the door. Zalmay dashed out and was halfway down the hall, past a row of silent, closed doors on his right, when he noticed that Cougar had stayed behind to shut the door to the apartment. He waited, nervously, as Cougar caught up, and they hurried to the stairs. From there, he could already hear the footsteps of the two men scrambling up, closing the distance with each footfall. Zalmay’s apartment was only three floors up, so it wouldn’t take them long to get there. And there was no other way out.
Cougar drew his weapon from its shoulder holster. “Upstairs,” he whispered. “Quietly.” He took the lead, and they tiptoed up a flight of stairs, keeping their footsteps as light as possible. Cougar crouched behind the bend of the fourth-floor corridor, and Zalmay ducked behind him, breathing heavily, his mind blank with panic, the way a rabbit must feel when confronting a tiger. The American kept his Glock pointed toward the stairwell as the sound of the men’s shoes on the steps grew louder and louder, and then they heard the footsteps receding down the hallway toward Zalmay’s apartment.
“Zalmay,” whispered Cougar, pulling a set of keys from his pocket, holding them tightly in his palm so they would not jangle. “Take these. I’m going to hold them off. While they’re searching your apartment, you run down as fast as you can and start the car. If I’m not the first one down, you take off without me, understand?”