accepted the strong tea with both hands and offered a smile to the woman. Afghan females in general were vessels of a fiery temper-extremely volatile if left unchecked. In Farooq’s experience, green-eyed Pashtun women were the worst.
“I am in need of a place to set up the computer,” Farooq said at length, taking the time to finish his foul- smelling tea before getting down to business.
The headman smiled, tipping his cup to lips covered by a sparse mustache. It was the color of the chalky rocks outside his rough home. The air in the confined room was full of smoke and the sour odor of human confinement.
“Ah,” he sighed in a nasal, high-pitched voice. “You have a computer, but you would need a satellite phone to connect to the Internet.”
“I was told you could help with that,” Farooq said, impatiently pursing his thin lips.
“You know the Americans often monitor signals sent up on satellite phones?” For an illiterate drug smuggler, the headman had an excellent knowledge of the ways of the world. Though he lived in a stone hut, decades of fighting Russians and Americans alike had taught him to keep up with technology.
“I am aware of this,” Farooq said. “I plan to send no messages that will bring American Predators to bomb your homes. I will be looking at nothing of interest to them.”
The headman sat motionless, like one of the stones that made up his house.
“You can help me, then?” Farooq finally said, breaking the silence.
“Indeed,” the headman said. In the corner, his green-eyed wife muttered something under her breath. He ignored her. “Our valley is perfectly suited to speak with the night sky.”
He waved a weathered hand at his wife, motioning her out of the corner where she lurked in the shadows. “Here, pour our friend another cup of tea and then fetch me the phone.”
Farooq accepted the second cup, peering into the greasy sheen under the glow of the smoking oil lamp. Taking a sip out of polite necessity, he set the cup to one side and unzipped his computer case. He’d been trying for a week to connect to the Internet, one of the many things he’d taken for granted back in the Kingdom. It was important he find out about this man Jericho.
The old woman produced a black phone, roughly the size of a brick, rolled in a greasy woolen rag. The headman took it and the two men went outside, into the gathering dusk. Pinpricks of light began to appear as stars filled the darkening sky. Farooq opened his case and booted up his computer while the old man cranked a rusted Chinese generator next to the front door of his hut. Next, he turned on the satellite phone and waited for a signal. Surprisingly, he got five bars almost instantly.
The old man took a dented square tin from his pocket and held it toward Farooq. It was naswar, Afghan snuff-a potent mixture of pulverized tobacco, lime, and indigo. Farooq raised his hand, feeling a little sick at the thought of putting such a mixture in his mouth. He bowed his head to politely decline. Grunting, the old man opened the tin and tucked a pinch of the dark powder inside his bottom lip behind rotten teeth.
The computer finally connected with a familiar ping. Farooq settled in as comfortably as he could on a flat boulder with the computer in his lap and began to type. Reflections from the screen flashed across his face as he searched every database he could think of. He only needed to find out who this Jericho was. After that, he could go to him and exact a proper revenge for Zafir’s death-for ruining everything. Farooq still had money. Not as much as he would have liked, but there would be enough for his purposes, stashed in a safe deposit box in Pakistan along with an Uzbek passport no one knew about but him.
Farooq knew little about the man he hunted. Iraqi insurgents had placed a price on his head early in the conflict. According to his informants, they dubbed him the Ifrit — what the Americans would call a genie-because of his ability to appear out of nowhere and inflict so much harm on them. His given name was Jericho and he was thought to be a member of the U.S. Air Force.
Farooq searched every military website he found but none of them were useful-until he happened on a link to an Air Force Academy alumni page. He clicked through dozens of years of graduation lists, checking seven different cadets named Jericho before he found one who had graduated with high athletic honors with a degree in foreign languages-Chinese and Arabic.
His name was Jericho Quinn.
Farooq’s fingers trembled with bottled rage as he continued to type. He followed link after link and came up with nothing. He had a name, he even had the state where the infidel grew up-Alaska-but he could find nothing more than a few swimming scores from secondary school. There seemed to be nothing about the man once he’d left the university.
Clicking through the pages, Farooq suddenly stopped. A smile spread slowly across the bones of his narrow face as he read an article from an Alaska newspaper dated just weeks before.
Madeline Quinn, daughter of Kimberly and Jericho Quinn, won a prestigious seat in the Anchorage Junior Youth Symphony…
Jericho Quinn had a little girl and now Farooq knew where to find her.
