August 15, 2021
The Arg presidential palace, Kabul, Afghanistan
Ahmad Khan heard the scurrying of footsteps, a scrum of people storming down the hallway outside of his office. Opening the door, he was startled to see the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, walking rapidly past with his wife and a clutch of top advisors. Incongruously, the president was wearing plastic sandals and a thin coat.
Ahmad exited the office and scurried to catch up to the group, wondering what was happening. As the president’s national security advisor, he had reason to be concerned. Jalalabad had been taken by the Taliban last night, and Mazar-e Sharif—once the bastion of anti-Taliban resistance—had fallen without a fight the day before. Kabul was surrounded, and even as Ghani’s top advisors continued to proclaim all was well, Khan knew the barbarians were at the gate.
Others in the city apparently did as well, as the sky above the Arg—the nineteenth-century presidential palace that had been home to the rulers of Afghanistan for generations—radiated a constant thumping of rotor blades from helicopters of all nations, flying about like someone had smacked a beehive with a stick.
Khan caught up to the entourage and snagged the sleeve of the man at the rear, saying, “What’s going on? The president has a meeting in thirty minutes about the security of the main avenues of approach into Kabul.”
The man turned, recognized him, and gave Khan a small shake of his head. Another man said, “He’ll be there. Something’s just come up. We’re going to meet the Americans. They’re leaving their embassy and relocating to the airport.”
Matching the group’s pace, Khan said, “Shouldn’t I be there as well?” He nodded toward the older advisor who’d given the small shake, saying, “I mean, along with the foreign minister?”
The foreign minister said, “Not necessary. We’re just coordinating. You need to prepare for the security meeting. We’ll be back in plenty of time.”
Khan stopped and they sped away, exiting into the palace gardens. He saw two Mi-17 helicopters land, and the entire group split up, boarding the aircraft. Within seconds, they were gone, the leaves and branches of the garden whipped about as if a small hurricane had come and gone.
He went back to his office, thinking, Why is the president not dressed more formally? And why would Ghani’s wife attend a meeting with the Americans?
He opened the door to his office and found a man sitting in a chair in front of his desk. A small girl who appeared to be a tween was playing on the floor in front of his feet. It took a split second, but then he recognized the man. A friend Khan had known since childhood, and someone who had proven fearless over twenty years of war.
Only now, for the first time in Khan’s life, he saw fear in the man’s eyes.
Khan said, “Jahn, what are you doing here? And who’s the child?”
Khan knew Jahn’s wife had died from cancer a few years ago, and his son was now in the fight himself, a second-generation war.
Jahn said, “My son was killed in Jalalabad last night. This is my sister’s child. She asked me to take her to America. She fears for her future.”
Taken aback, Khan said, “Jahn, I’m so sorry.” They’d both lost friends in the war, but Khan had never lost a relative. He said, “We’ll turn this around. His loss won’t be in vain. President Ghani has a plan. I’m working on it now.”
Jahn stood up, and Khan saw the pressure mounting behind his eyes. He said, “Ghani is gone. He’s not coming back. This is done. And my sister asked me to take her daughter to America. This is not going to be a place for her in two days.”
Incredulous, Khan said, “I just saw him. He’s going to talk to the Americans. He’ll be here in thirty minutes for the security discussion.”
Jahn looked him in the eye and said, “Ghani is fleeing. The Taliban are inside the city. We have hours, not days. We need to leave, and you have the ability to do so.”
“What are you talking about?”
Jahn closed in on him and said, “I know what’s happening, even if you government sops don’t want to believe it. They’re here. They’ll be in control by nightfall.”
Khan understood like few others the abilities of Jahn and was taken aback by the statement. Ghani’s aide had just told him he was returning for a security briefing. How would Jahn know more than the president of Afghanistan?
But he knew how. Jahn had been at the forefront of the war since the twin towers had fallen in America. They’d been unlikely friends all their lives, Khan a little plump, short guy with no athletic skills, and Jahn the raw-boned, towering kid who excelled at everything. Khan never understood what Jahn saw in him, but they’d bonded, with Jahn beating back the bullies in the school and Khan helping him with his homework.
Then 9/11 had happened. After living under Taliban rule, the Americans had shattered the Taliban, and Khan had gone into the government after a stint at Oxford. Jahn had gone to war.
At six feet, he was tall for an Afghan, and he radiated energy. He’d started out in the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams funded by the CIA, chasing Al Qaida into Pakistan, and then had gravitated to the Commando Kandaks, fighting all the way. Eventually, because of his skill, he’d returned to the CIA and become a deep-cover operative, penetrating Taliban operations. He was, to say the least, a most wanted man. And one who had the pulse of what was happening much more than anyone else in the country.
Khan, remembering what he’d just seen, said, “Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s done. Kabul has fallen, but they just don’t know it yet. We need to leave, and you have the means to do it. Call a helicopter. Get us out of the country.”
“You and the child?”
“Yes. I promised my sister. She won’t become some Taliban wife wearing a burka.”
Still not wanting to believe, Khan said, “But the Americans have the visa system. We can use that. We’re not talking about this going to pieces in hours. I can’t just call someone to fly us away.”
Jahn stood up, and Khan saw the fear again. He said, “Ghani is gone. You saw the helicopters. This is done. The Americans mean well, but this is going to pieces much faster than they’re aware. We need to go. Now.”
Khan stuttered, walked in a tight circle, then said, “How can we just fly out? Where will be go? Even if I can get a helicopter?”
“Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The window is closing. We cannot go to the airport. It’s absolute chaos. We need to fly from here. If you wait much longer, all the helicopter pilots will have gone without passengers, fleeing the death. They know what’s coming.”
Khan remained still. Jahn said, “Ahmad, please. If not for yourself, do it for the child. This country is gone, and she will endure a life of pain. They also know my name. They want me worse than they want the country. I have killed many, many of them. They’ll skin me alive when they find me. They know you as well. They might just put you in jail.”
Khan said, “I need to go home. To pack. To get my things. I can’t just fly out. I have nothing.”
Jahn said, “You will have nothing but your life. If you go home, we will lose the window. And be stuck here.”
Khan said, “The Americans . . .”
“They are no help. They can’t even get their own people out.”
Khan nodded, and went to his phone. He dialed, then began speaking, eventually shouting into the handset. He hung up, turned to Jahn, and said, “A helicopter is on the way. What will we do when we land in Tajikistan?”
“We’ll figure that out when we get there. The first step is just getting out.”
Khan nodded, thinking. He turned a circle and Jahn said, “What?”
“The Bactrian Treasure. It’s here, in the palace.”
“What? You want to steal it?”
“Yes. I do. We need something when we land.”
“It’s huge. How are we going to get that out of here, under the noses of the guards protecting it?”
“I’ll say I’ve been ordered to move it for its own protection. Take it to a hiding place, just like the last president did with the Soviets.”
“They eviscerated him and hung his ass from a streetlight.”
“That’s my point. If he’d have taken the gold instead of burying it under the central bank, he might have been able to escape his fate.”
The Bactrian Treasure was a trove of over twenty thousand gold artifacts from all over the world. Roman coins, Serbian jewel-encrusted daggers, gold belts from India, it was a horde that delineated the history of the famed Silk Road during the time of Alexander the Great. Found by a Soviet archeologist in 1978 in six royal tombs in northern Afghanistan, the persons buried there remained a mystery, but the treasure was most definitely real. During the time of the Soviet occupation, it had been housed in the Arg. When the Soviets left, and the Taliban came knocking much like they would decades later, the final communist president had ordered the horde hidden in a secret vault under the central bank, with only five persons knowing of its existence.
There it had remained, hidden, during the entire rule of the first Taliban regime. The leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, had tried mightily to find it, to no avail. It had become a sticking point of embarrassment, with many, many men killed trying to recover it.
The conventional wisdom was that the Soviet troops had taken it on their way out the door fleeing Afghanistan, and it was forgotten. In 2003, after the Taliban had fallen, a retired museum worker revealed the truth: it was buried in a secret vault under the central bank. Now it was displayed in the Arg, just as it had been before.
Jahn said, “Even if they give you access to the treasure, it’s too big for you to move. It’s not fitting into a single suitcase.”
“I’ll get them to move it for me. There are special cases built for travel, used when it went on its world tour. It’ll fit into three, but I’ll take only one with the best pieces. We can leverage it when we land. We’ll need some ability to get money. I have a man I know. A Russian. He’ll be willing to give us cash for the treasure.”
“A Russian? They support the damn Taliban, and make no mistake, when this comes up missing, they’re going to hunt it down.”
“This isn’t like that. He’s a computer guy. Made a fortune doing networking in Russia.”
Jahn squinted his eyes and said, “What kind of ‘networking’?”
“I don’t know, and really don’t care. He loves collecting things. He was here for a conference last year and asked me to contact him if I came across anything unique. You know, outside of my job.”
Jahn grimaced and said, “Yeah, I get it. ‘Outside of your job.’ Like every other bureaucrat in this damn palace. It’s why we’re about to lose the country to a bunch of savages. You fucks couldn’t keep your hands out of the pig trough.”
Khan recoiled and said, “I have never taken a bribe or other graft. I have the means to secure our future. That’s all. Those savages will melt the gold down into bars if we leave it.”
Jahn stood, took the hand of the girl, and said, “Whatever lets you sleep at night. Just get me to Tajikistan. I want no part of the treasure. That’s all you.”
Sirajuddin Haqqani studied a single sheet of paper, the double row of names and offenses against the Taliban printed out, some with convenient biometric data left behind by the Americans. Now the “interior minister” of the new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, he meant to cleanse the country of those who were apostates to Taliban rule. Officially, the Taliban had offered amnesty to any who had opposed their onslaught. Unofficially, it was Haqqani’s job to bring select people to justice. The rank and file of the armed forces and police would be given amnesty, but some would feel his wrath, if he could find them in time.
Currently, the Taliban leadership were taking pictures in the president’s office, vacated hours before, proving they were in charge, but the Americans were evacuating traitors at an incredible rate. If he wanted to catch the men on the list, it had to be swift.
And there was one name that he wanted more than any other. Jahn Azimi.
That single man had done more damage to the Haqqani network than any American platoon of commandos. In fact, he’d led the commandos to his doorstep time and time again, killing his men with impunity. Whether a drone strike or an outright assault, Jahn Azimi was at the heart of death. And Sirajuddin was determined to make him pay. It wasn’t personal. It was Afghanistan.
Two men burst into the room, dragging another man in uniform on his knees. The first said, “Jahn was on a helicopter! He took the Bactrian Treasure! This man helped him.”
Sirajuddin stood up and said, “What are you talking about?”
The first man cuffed the guard in the head, knocking him to the ground. The second said, “Jahn was here, hours ago. He left with the national security advisor. Both of them took the Bactrian Treasure. This pig actually loaded it onto the helicopter.”
The guard began blubbering, saying, “He told me he was protecting it. He told me it was sanctioned. I did what they said. I wasn’t trying to harm anything.”
Sirajuddin circled his newfound desk and said, “You saw the treasure leaving?”
Fearful for his life, the guard said, “Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by helping. I just did my job.”
Sirajuddin said, “Stand up.”
He did. Sirajuddin said, “We gave amnesty to all who fought against us. You have nothing to fear.”
The man nodded, not believing the words, but hoping.
Sirajuddin pulled a picture from the stack on his desk and said, “Did you see this man today?”
The guard nodded, saying, “He was with the national security advisor. Ahmad Khan. They had us load the Bactrian Treasure into a helicopter. And then they left.”
While he knew the Taliban hierarchy would care a great deal about the treasure, Sirajuddin did not. He said, “This man was the one? He was there?”
“Yes, sir. He was there. He flew away.”
“Where? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. I think Tajikistan. Dushanbe. But I don’t know for sure.”
One of the men cursed him, then smacked him in the head again, slamming him to the floor.
Sirajuddin held his hand up and said, “Stop. He is not the enemy.”
The guard looked at him with dread, saying, “I was just doing my job.”
Sirajuddin said, “I know. And now you’ll continue your job. You are free to go.”
The man looked at the two others, waiting on the axe to fall. When it didn’t, he scurried out of the room, running as if he were escaping a fire.
Sirajuddin let him go, then said, “Get me Shakor. Right now.”
Four minutes later a man entered. Unlike the others in the room, Shakor was dressed like a Western soldier, with a camouflage uniform that included body armor and an M4 rifle with optics instead of a beat-up AK-47. If one didn’t know better, he could have been one of the elite Afghan Commandos trained by the United States Special Forces.
But he wasn’t. He was the commander of the Badr 313 Battalion. Named after the Battle of Badr, where the prophet Muhammed led 313 men to victory in the first century, the battalion was the elite of the Taliban. At the forefront of the fighting, using both special operations tactics and suicide missions, it was not an exaggeration to say that the battalion was the reason the Taliban were sitting in the Arg. And if imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, the men of the battalion were outfitted and clothed just like the Western Special Forces they had fought for more than twenty long years.
Removing his helmet and Peltor headset, Shakor said, “The airport is held by the Americans. They’re trying to get everyone out. We can’t penetrate without a fight. Do you want to do that? I can take the airfield right now, but I can’t in three hours.”
“Why?
“They’re flooding in the 82nd Airborne and Marines. I can’t fight them. Well, I can, but if I do, I’ll lose. Those men are not something to trifle with.”
Sirajuddin scoffed and said, “You can’t take them out? We’ve taken out their entire military machine.”
Shakor said, “We have, but never in a straight-up fight. We now have the tiger by the tail. You want me to attack them, and I will lose. And you will, too. The Americans are dumb. They have no idea of our culture or society, but if you push them, they will win in a fight. Right now they’re scared. They’re worried. Let them leave.”
Sirajuddin waved his hand and said, “That’s not my concern. My job is internal security, and we’ve lost two things I want you to get back.”
He explained the stealing of the Bactrian Treasure and then showed him the picture of Jahn, saying, “This man has killed many, many of your soldiers. He flew out with the national security advisor, who took the treasure.”
He placed another picture on the desk, saying, “And this is Ahmad Khan, the national security advisor. I want the treasure back, and I want Jahn. You can kill Ahmad Khan to get the treasure back, but Jahn returns here.”
Shakor nodded and said, “Where is he?”
“Best guess is Dushanbe. They took a helicopter. We don’t have that capability, but we do own all the border crossings by road. You need to leave immediately. Split up into two teams. One is for Jahn, the other is for the treasure. I’m sure by the time you get there it’ll be gone. You’ll have to hunt it.”
Shakor said, “I’m needed here. This place could devolve into a maelstrom of looting in the next thirty-six hours. My men are the only ones who can stop that.”
“This is more important. Pick ten of your best men. Only English speakers who have worked or gone to school in the West. No farmers you’ve trained. You lead them. You go after the treasure, another team goes after Jahn. I want him back, alive. Don’t kill him.”
“That’s an impossible challenge. How am I going to find the treasure or the man a day after it was flown out?”
“They took a helicopter. I’m sure that made a stir in Dushanbe. I’ll contact our men there and give you a lead. Jahn will try to hide, but Ahmad will be touting his credentials. It’ll be just as big a stir as Ghani flying into Uzbekistan.”
“But that asshole is already on a flight to the UAE. If the treasure leads there, you want me to follow to another Muslim country? I can create a team of men who can work in the West, but I can’t do the same if it leads to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the UAE. We won’t survive.”
Sirajuddin turned back to his desk, looked at a map, and said, “He’s not going there with the treasure. He has the same problem you do. He’s going to sell it, and it won’t be to a Muslim. It’ll be to someone in Europe.”
Shakor nodded, grabbing his helmet. “The one good thing is the entire city is chaos. I can form the teams and leave in the next two hours because of the complete breakdown in security. I can be across the border by tomorrow morning, but I’ll need your contacts in Dushanbe, and I’ll need some support once I’m there.”
Sirajuddin said, “That will not be a problem. You still have your satellite phone?”
“Yes, but I’m not using that. It’s a magnet for American bombs.”
“Not in Dushanbe. Call me once you cross the border. I’ll give you the contact information.”
Shakor nodded again, then picked up the pictures, saying, “I don’t know about this treasure, but I’ll definitely find Jahn. For a little payback.”
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