Zero Hour

He went to take a look, found several packages in plain sight beside hefty oversupplies of shampoo and shaving cream.

“See them?” Annie said.

“Yeah, thanks.” Nimec reached for a pack and tore open the cellophane. “Could’ve sworn I had my blades under the sink, though…”

“Once upon a time, Pete. Under it, over it, on it. But I’ve been putting them all in the closet for months.”

“That long?”

“Since I came along to impose order on your existence.”

Nimec thought a moment.

“Guess we have been over this before,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” Annie said. “What’s next?”

“My dress shirts.”

“None in your drawer?”

“Not a single one.”

“Then Chloe didn’t get around to putting away the laundry on Friday,” she said.

“The advantages of our hiring on a housekeeper.”

“Come on, Pete. She’s only part-time.”

“Still, I used to know where—”

“The washroom,” Annie said. “That wicker basket on the floor next to the machines.”

“You sure?”

“Guaranteed. She always stacks them there after picking them up from the dry cleaner,” Annie said. “Sorts it with the laundry when she’s done so she can put everything away at once.”

“Hold it, let me see.”

Nimec held the phone away from his mouth, sent Chris on a hurried bee through the condo. A couple of minutes later he reappeared in the doorway, his younger sister scrambling up behind him. Each of them had a folded, banded white shirt held out flat with both hands like a pizza box.

“Pete…?”

“We’re good here, Annie.”

“Good that you’re good,” she said. “Traffic’s starting to move.”

“And we’d better do the same at our end. Call you at the apartment tonight?”

“Make it late if you’re going to,” Annie said. “I’m in for a long day in Building Five.”

Nimec quietly scratched under his ear.

“I love you, Pete. Hugs and kisses to the brats.”

“Back at you.”

Nimec flipped the phone shut, dropped it into the pocket of his robe, and ordered the kids out of the room while he shaved.

Rushing to finish, he nicked his face badly in several spots.

* * *

The trio of battered old coal trucks and their fully laden open-bed trailers had thundered through the Pakistani night under a three-quarter moon, journeying almost a hundred-fifty kilometers northwest from the rail yard in Islamabad toward Chikar, an inkblot-small village with limited overland access amounting to a few lightly traveled ribbons of blacktop that dipped and wove between jagged, snowy mountain peaks.

As he crested a steep rise under a projecting spur of hillside, the lead vehicle’s driver puzzled at what his headlights revealed straight ahead.

He glanced at the man dozing beside him, then reached across to shake his elbow. “Khalid, snap to it.”

Khalid stirred, his head still nodding against his chest.

“What’s the problem?” he said fuzzily.

The driver shot him an annoyed look.

“See for yourself,” he said.

Khalid jerked himself erect in his seat. Perhaps fifty or sixty meters up ahead on his right, he could see a string of electric warning flashers along the roadside, where snowbanks were piled high against the slope. They led toward a portable wooden barricade, casting bright red reflections off the inches-thick sheets of recently fallen cover on the blacktop and overhanging rock ledges. A pair of soldiers wearing combat helmets, hooded dun coats, and winter boots stood in front of the barricade, assault weapons slung over their shoulders. Angled crosswise behind it were three jeeps. They idled with their lights on, exhaust wisping from their tailpipes. There were more soldiers inside the vehicles, shadowy outlines in the silver moonlight.

“Maader chud,” Khalid swore. His eyes had popped wide open. “Do you think they’re regular infantry?”

“Look carefully. Those rifles should give you an answer.”

Khalid stared out his windshield at the soldiers and muttered another curse. The submachine guns were the H&K G3s issued to border-patrol units.

“Rangers,” he said.

“So it seems.”

They rolled on in silence a moment

“This could be something routine. A spot check,” Khalid said, sounding none too confident. “In any event, Yousaf, we have the proper documents.”

The driver inwardly dismissed his weak reassurances. Chikar was twenty-five klicks from the restricted zone encompassing the western boundaries of Kashmir’s Muzaffarabad and Poonch districts, with their military outposts and heavily guarded refugee camps. It was, furthermore, twice that distance from the Line of Control. In the relative quiet that had held across the frontier over the past six months, Yousaf ’s team had made runs to the area many times without encountering rangers this far from their forward posts.

The coal trucks rumbled toward the barrier, their tires pressing wide tread imprints into the snow. Yousaf saw the two standing guards move into the middle of the road and wave phosphorescent wands over their heads to bring the procession to a halt.

He tapped his hydraulic brakes and the truck slowed with a hiss.

Khalid lurched in its passenger seat. He, too, had grown increasingly sure of imminent trouble. And wasn’t it a fair expectation in these times of bottom-dollar loyalties? His country’s president was nothing more than a bharway, a pimp, his regular army a stable of debased whores — now on their knees for the Americans, now raising their bottoms to let the Indians have a poke at them. For Khalid and his confederates it had been the ultimate shame when even the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate began turning itself out for the greenback. Praise be to God, there were yet a few who refused to cheapen themselves.

“Make certain the others are ready,” Yousaf ordered now, tilting his head back toward the trucks at his rear. “Use only the beep code.”

Khalid looked at him across the cab.

“You think those men can break our encryption?” he said.

Yousaf shrugged, his hands on the wheel.

“Who knows what brought them here,” he said. “If they’re going to pick up anything, let it be meaningless noise.”

Khalid grunted. Again, he saw the wariness on Yousaf’s features. And again he understood what was at its root. It wasn’t only the army they had to worry about — their Hindu bedmates across the LoC were especially skilled at radio intercepts.

He took his cell phone from inside his coat, switched on its walkie-talkie channel, and used the tone pad to transmit a short series of beeps. A moment later he heard a response sequence in the earpiece and slipped the radio back into his pocket.

Yousaf brought the truck to a full stop as one of the soldiers approached his door, glanced at the painted company name on its exterior, and then motioned for him to roll down his window. He lowered it halfway with his right hand, noticing that the second guard had walked around the front grille toward the passenger side.

“It’s a hideous night to be out, my brother,” Yousaf said, leaning his head out of the cab. “Has there been