Termination Orders(11)

“Your Dad has to go out of town.”

“Oh. Is this about that auction?”

“It’s just for a day or so, “said Morgan. “It’s happening in Virginia. I wasn’t planning on going, but an important client, the man who was just here—he wants me to be there to bid on a Duesenberg, and, well, long story short, I need to fly down today.”

“Are you going to be back for the game?” she asked, with affected nonchalance.

“Are you kidding? I’ll be back before you know it. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

“Yeah. I mean, no pressure, Dad,” she said, and he thought he saw the trace of a smile playing at the corners of her lips.





CHAPTER 5


“I hope that there is no one waiting for you tonight,” said Faqeer to Zalmay as he maneuvered the truck around another crater in the highway. The right front tire rolled off the edge of the road, and the entire truck groaned and teetered dangerously as the back wheel followed suit. Faqeer was obviously not new at this, so Zalmay did his best not to imagine the truck tipping over onto its side.

Zalmay had hitched a ride with Faqeer at the bazaar not far from where he last saw Cougar and the bullet-pocked jeep. Faqeer’s rig was what the Americans called a jingle truck, with beads and baubles hanging off the sides and with every surface painted with ornate designs. Faqeer, a Pashtun man in his late thirties with a trim black beard and a beret-style pakol, had been mostly silent at first, but he became more relaxed, even gregarious, after Zalmay answered his probing questions regarding his attitude toward the Americans.

Faqeer was as pro-American as they came—uncommon among the Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan to which the great majority of the Taliban belonged—but Faqeer had little to thank the Taliban for and much reason to be grateful to the Coalition forces. He had started his fruit business almost entirely thanks to their nation-building efforts and strategies to wean local farmers off growing poppies, from enlisting the support of fruit producers in the Kandahar province to the renovation of Highway 1, through which he brought all his produce to the capital.

He had a particularly soft spot for the military, even though their presence at checkpoints all along the road caused significant delays. Highway 1 was plagued by attacks, and the craters in the asphalt provided an all-too-clear reminder: Taliban militia prowled that span of the highway, ambushing all kinds of passing vehicles. The sight of troops was always a relief: a guarantee, if only partial, of safe passage.

Zalmay had heard about the dangers of this highway, yet even though he hadn’t been on it in years, the peril was obvious at a mere glance. It wasn’t only the blackened asphalt and mortar holes; looking out the window, he saw the bullet-ridden carcasses of cars and trucks on the edge of the road, now monuments to travelers who were not as fortunate as they had been—so far, at least.

If he had taken Cougar’s jeep, Zalmay could have made it to the capital by noon. The fact that they were in a truck capable of carrying a few tons of weapons and explosives meant that they were stopped at every checkpoint and had to wait behind a line of similar trucks for inspection, even though Faqeer’s truck was, at the moment, mostly empty—it being much too early for harvest season. What should have been a six-hour journey was taking all day, and it was now getting dangerously close to sundown.

Zalmay had days before he was to meet Cougar’s contact—he was not worried about that. But at any moment on the road he could be found by the enemy. Every time a soldier motioned for them to pull over, Zalmay wondered if they had his picture, if he had been flagged as a person of interest, to be detained and delivered to the enemy’s doorstep.

Even if he weren’t suspected, what would happen if a soldier were to find the small black memory card, which he had nervously pushed through a hole in the upholstery of his seat so that it wouldn’t be found when he was searched? He had some comfort in the knowledge that the soldiers weren’t looking for small things. They were more interested in finding Kalashnikovs, from the AK-47 to the AK-100 rifle, or a pallet of hand grenades, stacked like eggs, thirty to forty per carton; but what if one of them had a sudden hunch while searching the cab of the truck, and he casually probed the plushy orange foam for hidden objects?

“This is why they will lose, you know,” said Faqeer, as they passed the blackened shell of a bus, a memorial on the roadside.

“What?” said Zalmay, distracted by his anxious musings.

“The Taliban. This is why they will lose, in the end. They are destroyers, and this is all they know how to do anymore. Just to kill and to make our lives miserable. They are now the enemies of the people of Afghanistan. For this reason, their unjust regime will not return, and their insurgency will be defeated by the will of the people. Even if the Americans leave, we will be free of these vermin.”