Chapter One
The Phoenix Compound, Kabul, Afghanistan May 2014
REX DALTON TOOK evasive measures, street craft, to make sure no one was following him before he stepped out of the shadows and presented himself at the gates of the Phoenix Unlimited compound just before shift change for the gate guards at 4:00 a.m. He was well-known to the guard, but he gave the password anyway. It was SOP – standard operating procedure – and he appreciated that the private military contractor outfit was diligent with their security.
Rex was in the employment of CRC, Crisis Response Consultancy. One of those nondescript names that simultaneously said nothing and everything about the activities of the organization. You had to be one of them to know what crises they were consulted about and how they responded to it.
They were not the kind of consultants one would find in the board rooms of corporate America, advising companies how to cut costs and increase their profit margins. In a word, CRC was Black Ops.
Those who were not in the know about CRC’s business would probably refer to Rex as a consultant. Those who had an inkling of what was going on would have thought of him as a field agent or an operative. His enemies and some others would have the word assassin in mind when his name came up. And to a certain degree, all those job titles would be correct, but what Rex really was, was a chameleon.
He’d been in Afghanistan for almost twelve months as of that morning, and out of pure exasperation, he’d gone off the reservation regarding his original mission brief and parameters. Months of collecting intel with no sign that what he reported had any effect on the people he sent this information to. No one was interested in ending the Afghanistan war. The solution was there, right in front of them, the elephant in the room. It was the opium production that fueled the terrorists. Irritated and infuriated by the yellow belly nincompoops in Washington, he’d taken matters into his own hands.
For months, he’d been raiding and destroying refining labs run by farmers and small-time opium buyers. When the growing season ended, and he could find no more of those, he’d redoubled his efforts to find the bigger labs and bigger buyers, regional drug lords, and his major target – the ruling drug lords and their distribution networks. Finding those distribution networks had been part of his original mission briefing. He found them, and he’d sent weekly reports on his progress.
He even gave them plans on how to destroy the drug trade. No response.
Finally, he requested permission to do something himself. Permission denied.
That’s when he’d decided enough was enough. He concluded that this mission wasn’t really meant to do anything, it was probably just to placate someone in DC or elsewhere asking uncomfortable questions, so they could say we’re working on it. To change the situation and stop the bad guys and their drugs in their tracks, it was up to him to make it happen.
CRC didn’t know of his extracurricular activities yet, but Rex expected that to change fairly soon. Two nights before he’d destroyed a major stockpile of heroin waiting to be shipped to South East Asia.
The raid would have hurt the owner of the drugs financially, but in the overall scheme of things, at a ratio of eight tons of opium to yield one ton of heroin, the fifty tons destroyed in the explosion presented only seven percent of the 2013 crop. An offensive fourteen times the size he had launched was needed to wipe it all out.
The attack on the storage facility carried two messages; one, for the drug lord to find another business venture or face the consequences, two, for the dithering CIA to do what he did, blow up all the warehouses. His reports contained the precise GPS coordinates and photos of enough targets so that with a few drone-strikes and precision bombs, they could destroy more than ninety-eight percent of the stockpile in an hour. However, based on the unresponsiveness to his reports he didn’t expect any of that to happen.
So, then I’ll have to approach the problem from the other side.
That is why he expected that word of his excursion would trickle back through a grapevine he knew had roots in America and the US government. He would be called home and reprimanded, then reassigned, hopefully not shown the door. The latter would be a disaster for him because he had not completed his life’s mission yet. He didn’t really know what would happen, and he reckoned a lot would depend on whose carpet he’d crapped on when he blew that place up. The one in the US who made the biggest noise about this would be where he would start his investigation.
He hoped and believed that his CO, John Brandt, aka the Old Man, wasn’t part of it. If the Old Man wasn’t part of it though, then he was being deceived, and that didn’t sit well with Rex, either.
Either way, until he got the call, he had some research to do, and the internet access in the hovel he rented under his Afghani cover didn’t work for what he needed. In fact, it didn’t work at all, being non-existent. What would a poor Afghani need with the internet, and how could he even afford it?
To do what he needed, he had to wait for cover of darkness and sneak into the Phoenix compound or be marked as a spy by either the Afghani government, or by the Taliban, who controlled much of Afghanistan’s business, despite having been deposed from the government eight years before. Spies didn’t fare well under either circumstance.
Rex’s objective on this early morning was to troll the Deep Web for any indication that his raid on the warehouse in Laghman Province lit up any secretive communications threads he could follow back to the US. It wasn’t exactly part of his mission to do that, either. No one had admitted to him that there were ties between the corrupt Afghani government, the terrorist organizations who benefited from the financial proceeds of the drug trade, and someone in America, but it stood to reason. And that discovery was one of the reasons for his current state of mind.
We’re fighting the wrong people. The real bad guys are back home.
What other reason could there have been for the long-standing opium trade not being eradicated? It had been going on for years, and it fueled the war in a never ending, evil cycle of violence and destruction. While condemning it and punishing anyone who used the stuff with horrific consequences, up to and including public beheadings, the Taliban had nevertheless participated in it by extracting bribes and heavy taxes on the product. The money they got in this manner went to the purchase of weapons to kill more Americans.
The official government also extracted their pound of flesh in the form of taxes. They didn’t have many other ‘cows’ they could milk. So for them, the drug trade had to continue. Meanwhile the drugs that made it out of the country to America and Europe were making some crooked business people very rich and killing tens of thousands of young people every year. The real war was happening in America and Europe, but no one would admit it. It was so much more dramatic and glorious to be killed or wounded in a war with terrorists with guns and bombs than being killed by their drugs.
While the ‘war on drugs’ was receiving media attention at home, there were only sporadic reports, some even called it unfounded rumors, of American troops patrolling and protecting the poppy fields – yet Rex had observed it every day he was in the field. Even his urgent reports fell on deaf ears, or so it seemed. The reason had to be that there was corruption at home as well, and he was determined to root it out. He had a good understanding now of what was meant by ‘domestic enemies’ mentioned in that part of the soldier’s oath which talked about all enemies foreign and domestic.
He also understood that to do so, he was going to have to operate on his own. The mission parameters had been clear: observe, report, and nothing else.
Rex was a good soldier, and his superiors noticed that early in his military career. Before joining CRC, he’d gone through Marine boot camp. On the day of his graduation, he’d been virtually kidnapped by the Army and shoved unceremoniously into Delta Force candidacy and training. He didn’t care – it was a faster route to his goal in joining the military in the first place. He wanted to kill terrorists, the more the better. That was his life's mission.
That mission was rooted in the horrifying deaths of his family in a terror bombing in Barcelona in 2004. He’d spent a year wallowing in his sorrow and hate, and then, in a flash of insight, discovered his mission in life. He abandoned all plans he had to join the Foreign Service and instead joined the Marines immediately, leaving behind the woman who would have been his wife and mother of their children by now if his parents, and younger siblings, a brother and a sister, hadn’t been killed that day. He and his girlfriend had been spared that day only because they’d left the station for a coffee shop a couple of blocks away.
As he walked across the compound on this early June morning, his thoughts bounced from one place to another, reflecting on how he’d gotten here and what he’d done so far. But as soon as he got to the building that held the Phoenix operations offices, his focus grew sharper. He’d given it a full twenty-four hours. Unless he was badly mistaken, there’d be chatter on the Deep Web.
If there was, he’d trace the routes the chatter took. With luck, it would lead him back to the person or group that held the ultimate power over the opium trade, at least in this part of the world. Maybe South American production was related, maybe not. That wasn’t his concern. He was here to shut down the Afghani opium trade, and he was getting damn tired of whoever wasn’t holding up their end of the bargain. That ended, as soon as he had the people who held the strings in his sights.
***
IN THE RESIDENCE, the former home of a ‘businessman’ – i.e. drug lord that Frank Millard, Phoenix’s CEO, had converted to apartments for his team, Trevor Madigan had another hour to sleep before starting his day. Trevor was former Australian SAS, and inseparable from his war dog, Digger. Like all Frank’s other employees, Trevor had served honorably in his Special Operations career.
Digger was one of the most intelligent dogs Trevor ever worked with. He’d not only excelled in every aspect of his training, but he constantly surprised Trevor by teaching himself useful new skills, like climbing trees. As far as Trevor was concerned, Digger was a better ‘human’ than many of the real humans he’d met.
Trevor and Digger had played a covert part in Rex’s escapades until recently, when Frank had admitted to Rex that he knew and approved of what they were doing. Night before last, they’d been involved in Rex’s spectacular demolition of a major heroin lab and warehouse. Fifty tons of heroin rendered to dust particles and dispersed into the mountain air where a few goat herders and their goats might have gotten a short kick out of it.
Today, Trevor knew that Rex expected to be called home. If he was, then there’d be a company-wide goodbye feast before someone took Rex to his secret extraction point. Trevor wanted to get some training and reward time in with Digger beforehand so he could volunteer to drive Rex to the rendezvous. He’d miss his mate, that he would. And damn it if he could keep his eyes closed. At four-thirty, he gave up and got up.
Digger opened one eye and then made his opinion known by yawning hugely, a squeak of protest escaping as he did. He had as keen a sense of time as anyone, and he knew this was sleep time, unless they were working. He had three times of day: sleep time, eat time, and work/play time. And he enjoyed them all equally. Like most dogs, Digger lived in the moment. Unlike many, he also had a fine sense of humor. After Trevor got up and got dressed, activities that Digger showed no interest in, he urged Digger to ‘rise and shine’. Digger pretended not to hear him, keeping both eyes closed and his tail still.
“Come on, Digger, up and at ‘em. Let’s work.”
Digger considered that. It was still sleep time, but he liked to work. Acting put-upon, he got to his feet and went to his bowls. Finding no food, he gave Trevor a reproachful look. As if to say, “What’s with this, no food in my bowl?”
“Oh, you want chow first? Then you should get up when I tell you to, instead of pretending you’re deaf.”
Digger opened his mouth, which pulled the corners up and let his tongue hang out. It was his version of a smile, and he’d learned it disarmed almost anyone, the local people outside the walls and Trevor’s friend Rex the exceptions. Digger didn’t care about the other people, but Rex’s attitude troubled him. Trevor said he was a friend, part of the pack even. Digger acted as if he wasn’t so sure. But Trevor was the alpha male of the pack, so Digger pretended to put up with Rex.
Trevor accepted Digger’s smiling apology and filled his bowl with kibble. Later, after work, there might be a treat in the toy. Digger never expected it but accepted with joy when it happened. He made short work of the kibble and went to the door to let Trevor know he was ready to work.
***
At 5:00 a.m., Frank’s internal alarm woke him. He hadn’t needed an artificial alarm since Marine boot camp, where he’d first met Rex Dalton. As he opened his eyes, he was instantly alert, and the first thought that came to mind was he was going to miss that SOB, Dalton. He’d played host to his buddy since Dalton turned up almost a year before.
As a private military contractor, he and his teams provided logistics and supplies support to several agencies, including the military and the CIA who had hired him to handle Dalton’s needs. He’d thought Dalton was working for Delta Force when he first arrived, but it didn’t add up. He knew better than to dig any deeper. It soon became evident that Dalton clearly had undergone spook training somewhere, so Frank concluded it was somehow one of, or linked to one of, the top-secret alphabet-soup agencies. And that was already more than he needed to know.
Dalton had only confided a little about it in him within the past week, when he’d finally let on he knew about Trevor Madigan’s exploits. A former SEAL himself, Frank didn’t let much moss grow on his brain, either. He was okay with it. Trevor had done everything else on his own time, except for the last raid, which was with Frank’s full blessing. And he’d given it knowing it might mean there could be reprisals if the involvement of his men became known.
He’d lost track of his old buddy for close to eight years. He hoped it wouldn’t be another eight before their paths crossed again.
***
BY NOON, A bit irritated, Rex knew he wouldn’t get the recall order today. It was midnight, twelve hours behind Kabul time, in Arizona. He swallowed his disappointment and told Frank he was out of there for the rest of the day. He was going to make his rounds in the market, see what else he could learn. But he didn’t have much hope that anything new would happen until the harvest was well under way and the new labs began to produce their poison again.
It incensed him to think that he’d have to start all over again, but the greater concern was that his time was running out. Sooner or later, someone would put it together, he’d be discovered, and his head would be literally on the chopping block. The only thing he could do now, until he was recalled, was to make such a nuisance of himself that Brandt had no choice but to pull him out.
Chapter two
Kabul, Afghanistan June 2014
REX HAD SUSPECTED for a while that his mission was merely window-dressing. The more he learned about how the networks thrived, the more he was convinced he was right. The Holy Grail, or perhaps it was the grayly hole, whatever it was, the answer to ending the Afghan drug trade was seated in America. That’s where he had to be. Meanwhile, he’d spent a year in Afghanistan, chasing mirages. Not all of it was wasted though. He now possessed an intimate knowledge of the industry, from producer to consumer and everyone in between. And it was those who were in between who he wanted to focus on now. They were the enablers, they had to go. No doubt he’d given a few small farmers a bellyache, but it had been a drop in the proverbial bucket. Destroying small labs didn’t disrupt the major leagues for even a day.
The waste of time and resources frustrated him to no end, but even worse was the fact that it was prolonging the war and wasting even more time, resources, and the lives of young American soldiers who don’t even know they’re being used as pawns in a game of political chess.
He’d had enough. He was a logical man – black and white – squares and circles. The drug trade was the heart of the problem. Destroy it and the war ends. No one else wanted to do it, so he was going to do it. The destruction of the massive warehouse night before last was just the beginning. No longer concerned about protecting his cover or conserving his sources, he plotted a new assault. Beginning today, he’d be more proactive, less cautious about asking questions.
He’d take out stockpiles of last year’s product and labs for new product whenever and wherever he found them. And he’d have the full support of Frank Millard and the resources available to him. Frank had been a friend back in boot camp. Until Rex began this mission, they hadn’t seen each other for eight years, but the friendship remained.
His other buddy, Trevor – ex-Australian SAS and dog handler – along with Trevor’s Dutch shepherd, would be his allies, since CRC was under the CIA’s thumb, and the CIA was a dysfunctional bureaucracy, not worthy of his concern.
Before he approached Frank with his plan, he needed to identify a few targets. This afternoon’s work would net at least one or two, or so he hoped.
He dressed in his cover attire, the loose serwal trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, slit on both sides below the waist. If he’d been pressed for an opinion, he’d have had to admit that these man-jammies, as he liked to call them, were marginally cooler than his Western civilian clothing, usually khaki cargo shorts and a Polo-style shirt. It was definitely cooler than the fatigues he wore when posing as a member of the US military. The loosely-woven, white fabric of the traditional Middle Eastern garb both reflected the sun and let in any breezes that occasionally rose, even in summer.
Rex also valued the concealing nature of the clothing, because his body revealed more about him than he wished known while he was passing for an Afghani man. Instead of the lean but soft muscles of the indolent poor he hung out with, his were corded and well-defined, betraying a strenuous workout regimen one would not expect to find with a lowly peasant on the streets of Kabul. The loose-fitting clothes, of course, also helped to conceal handguns and knives, or whatever lethal surprises he might be carrying. Not that he needed any weapons at all. Expert in martial arts, especially Krav Maga, which he’d practiced since before adulthood, his skills were all he needed most of the time.
His black hair, dark brown eyes, and skin browned by years in sunny environments, the native dress and demeanor, all helped him to blend in. The only other features he needed to pass for native were to adopt the posture and gait of the locals, which looked more like a saunter than a purposeful stride. And of course, the flawless accent and fluent command of Arabic. In the latter, he was fortunate to have a savant-like quirk that allowed him to achieve fluency quickly and speak with the accent of either his tutor or the people he surrounded himself with daily.
He’d begun to learn Arabic while in college, preparing himself for a career in the Foreign Service. By the time he’d been given this assignment, he could pass as a native speaker. A year into the assignment, he had the accent and idiom of the chronically unemployed who frequented the market looking for work down cold.
His regular ‘beat’ was a coffee shop, actually more of an open-air stall than a shop, on the fringes of the busiest blocks in the market district. For the past year, he’d been coming here, making friends, keeping his ears open, and professing to look for work. On occasion, he’d taken odd jobs, but none were long term, and that suited him fine. He had to be free to follow up on leads.
Previously, he’d avoided referring to the opium trade when putting out feelers for work. Now, with a new purpose, he grew bolder. His companions gossiped. There was no other word for it. Previously, references to opium were oblique, and he’d had to read between the lines. Today, he spoke frankly, claiming to need more money and inquiring whether his friends knew of anyone needing a worker with the skills to extract morphine from raw opium.
They looked at him with new respect. It was a better résumé than any of them could present. Perhaps it would benefit them to know someone of his stature. One admitted he might have a contact. Abdul – as Rex was known to them – should come by the coffee shop later in the evening, about ten o’clock, to meet someone who knew someone who might know of a job for him.
Rex had eight hours to wait, so he continued to the next knot of gossip-mongers with the same request, and when that proved fruitless, on to the next. He earned three afghani, less than four US cents, not even enough for his next cup of coffee, helping to load a truck in the late afternoon. By early evening, the streets were beginning to empty.
Though curfews had been imposed off and on over the years since 2002, when the 24-year prohibition of being on the streets after midnight was lifted, the locals had learned that it wasn’t safe after dark in any case. A few hardy souls frequented restaurants and other gathering places, most notably ex-pats who unaccountably lived in Kabul despite the war or civilians who were employed because of the war – reporters, for example.
Rex, however, didn’t break character. Those civilians weren’t his priority. They’d chosen to be here.
In the hours between seven and ten p.m., he picked up enough leads to keep him busy for the rest of the night.
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