“Sure, Zak. Do you have to preach a sermon about it every time you try and make a point?”
“Yeah, I do bro, because you are not getting the point. Yousseff will stop at nothing to kill us. Kumar specifically. You and me because we just plain piss him off. That means that DC will do the same. That means what are we going to do with Kumar? Have you figured that out?”
Richard bit his tongue. Zak had been darker, angrier, since his return from Afghanistan. He had been a brilliant agent, but the events that led to the unearthing of the terrorist plans for the stolen Semtex had also led to Zak’s cover being blown and a vicious incarceration in Inzar Ghar before Kumar had been imprisoned there. Hamani, in some sort of medical experiment, had removed several of Zak’s toes, and his left forearm, all without anesthetic. The replacement arm that the CIA had given him was a spectacular piece of technology, containing an experimental neuron/silicon interface and some intriguing weaponry in addition to the technology that had enabled Turbee to connect the TTIC supercomputers to the Inzar Ghar security system. It was all razzle-dazzle, but Zak was not the same. He had developed a reckless, sarcastic streak. He tempted death unnecessarily, a poor risk in a deadly game.
“I think I can answer some of the question for you, Zak,” said Kumar from the back seat.
“Holy cow,” said Richard. “He speaks.”
“Okay, Kumar,” said Zak. “We’re listening.”
“Yousseff will have learned of my departure within minutes of my leaving Inzar Ghar,” Kumar began. “I have known him for thirty years, and unlike most people like him, he has a small sliver of a conscience. He could kill 20,000 Americans because he calculated that it would help 20 million Afghans. Yousseff never had a problem with that kind of calculus. But he didn’t want to kill me because we had been friends, close friends for such a long time. Now that I am no longer under his control, he will not stop until I’m dead. He will make it impossible for the Americans not to do the same. We cannot cross any American border, and we cannot walk into any
American military base or embassy. We are fugitives.” “How safe are we in Pakistan?” Richard asked.
“You are not. Most of his heroin travels through Pakistan. He has had the city police forces in Rawalpindi, Karachi, and Hyderabad paid off for years. He has connections high up in the ISI and even in the Pakistan military. He views bribes as a form of tax—a necessity in doing business of any kind, especially running drugs.”
“You’d kind of expect that out of places like Pakistan,” said Zak.
“Zak,” Kumar replied, “it is no different in the USA, or in Europe or Russia. It’s also an easy way to get rid of spare cash, and he has hundreds of millions of dollars lying around.”
“Just lying around,” Zak repeated. “A lot of it at Inzar Ghar, by the way.”
“The reason that I say this,” Kumar continued, “is that within minutes of my escape from there he would also have let all of the security agencies in Pakistan know. He would have told them that I am a dangerous drug dealer, and probably has already circulated my picture. Probably yours, too. If you think the local police and military are not looking for us, you are naïve.”
They were silent for a few minutes. “You know, Zak,” said Richard, “we need to get to the harbor. We need to get to Karachi Dry Dock and Engineering.”
This company, often referred to as KDDE, was founded by Yousseff and Kumar thirty years earlier as a small dry dock and engineering company on Karachi Harbor. Yousseff and Kumar had used KDDE to build ever more sophisticated submarines that they used in their drug smuggling enterprise. KDDE had developed the technology and the miniature submarines that were used in the Colorado River attack.
“Why there?”
“Plenty of ships to get on. And it’s Kumar’s home turf. You know the people there, Kumar. You can get us onto a ship or one of those fancy minisubmarines, can’t you?”
Kumar nodded. “Possibly.” The conversation continued along this vein, and neither Richard nor Zak noticed that several late-model cars had hemmed them in.
“Goddamit, Zak, we’re boxed,” Richard yelled. They had been so engrossed in conversation that they hadn’t noticed there was an unmarked police cruiser in front of them, one directly behind, and one in the lane to their left. They were being forcibly slowed.
“Richard, the cop car beside us. Guy’s got an RPG launcher. Both rear windows are down. They wouldn’t be crazy enough to—”
“Zak they are . . . .” The fingers of the gunman were slowly beginning to squeeze the trigger of the launcher. “They’re going to lob an RPG in here!”
20
The commotion began with a sharp rap on the door. Dana answered it.
“Yo, Little Puppy.” It was the ever-annoying McGhee.
“Yeah, funny. What do you want, McGhee?”
“You live in a dump,” he said, looking around the small suite. “But it’s not about what I want. It’s about what you want.” “Huh?”
“You asked Judge Mordecai for documents between TTIC and the RCMP. Well, here they are.” He stepped back and hollered to his partner. “Danson, start bringing ’em down here.”
A few seconds later Danson showed up, almost falling, carrying three banker’s boxes of documents. “Where d’ya want them, Dana?” Bam-Bam delivered a throaty growl. Had Danson understood the faintest thing about dogs, he would have
