on you. Let’s get back to tomorrow, shall we? After you plant that GPS, I want you to surveil. You set up all around. You cover each entrance. There can’t be that many.”
“No, sir.”
“You make sure the marine has entered the building.”
“Suppose he’s there already?”
“We don’t think he’ll take the chance. That’s our best thinking. He’s suspicious now, but he doesn’t know anything. So why put himself there with that big rifle and wait? It’ll make more sense to him to slide in late, check into a room, and cut his exposure to the minimum. Plus he’s got to buy some rope tomorrow, because he doesn’t want to come off that roof by stairway or an elevator built in 1891. He’ll want to get down fast, and rappelling is the only way, and it’s clearly within his skill set.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re looking for a man with a rifle under his robes. You think he’s hit? So wouldn’t he be moving tentatively?”
“Yes, sir, and if a .50 grazed him, he’s purple from shoulder to ankle. He’ll be moving
very
tentatively. Would it be easier to tell the police an assassination attempt—”
“No. Because they will surround the hotel crudely and he will go away. Then he will return to his HQ and make a formal report on everything that has happened and questions we don’t want to be raised may well be raised. No, we want him in that hotel.”
“And we take him on the roof?”
“No. You make certain he’s in the hotel, then you call me with the definite, then, if I were you, I’d take cover.”
MANY PLEASURES HOTEL
QALAT
ZABUL PROVINCE
SOUTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN
1850 HOURS
Soon came the call to evening prayers. Soon the sun set. Soon tea would be drunk, food would be eaten, life in all its manifold pleasures would be experienced by the rich and all its manifold pains by the poor. The city would go silent.
In that falling dusk, the man known as the Beheader would leave his large house and walk to his jet black armored Humvee for a fuck with a woman without a voice. He would not make it. A bullet the size of a pencil tip would enter his body at well over 2,300 feet per second from a cartridge of the equivalent of an American .30-06 and would blow out several of his blood-bearing organs, most notably his heart. He would be dead before he fractured his expensive Dallas cosmetic-dentistry whitened and straightened teeth on the cobblestones.
Or something like that.
Ray looked up and down the street. No sign of any police or militia presence. An orange personnel carrier, bearing the emblem of the Royal Dutch Marines, had ground down the street once at around two, but since then all was normal, as lorries, bikes, scooters, to say nothing of hundreds of merchants and citizens and donkeys, even the occasional fleet of goats, filled the busy street that housed the hotel, directly across from the gated compound of Ibrahim Zarzi, warlord, politician, and best-dressed man of 1934.
His leg pain was muted somewhat by a morning of rest in a fleabag near the railway station, and a couple of kabobs for nourishment from a street-side vendor outside and half a bottle of aspirin from what passed as a “drugstore” in Afghanistan. He could have had keefe or bennies or dex or red who’s-your-mamas? or rolling chocolate death or whatever,but stayed with the regular stuff. He’d also had about a gallon of the sugary tea.
Now, amid the hundreds, virtually indiscernible from them, he hobbled down the street, face down, his bad leg aching, the rifle suspended by the strap around his shoulder and threaded down his pants leg. It might print if he wore it across his back, or someone in a crowd might jostle against him and feel the presence of steel. It dangled, the butt of its stock directly in the armpit, the long skeleton of wooden stock extending its length ridiculously, the receiver group against his hip, the fore end and barrel down the side of his leg. He’d taped the magazine under the wooden fore
“No, sir.”
“You make sure the marine has entered the building.”
“Suppose he’s there already?”
“We don’t think he’ll take the chance. That’s our best thinking. He’s suspicious now, but he doesn’t know anything. So why put himself there with that big rifle and wait? It’ll make more sense to him to slide in late, check into a room, and cut his exposure to the minimum. Plus he’s got to buy some rope tomorrow, because he doesn’t want to come off that roof by stairway or an elevator built in 1891. He’ll want to get down fast, and rappelling is the only way, and it’s clearly within his skill set.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re looking for a man with a rifle under his robes. You think he’s hit? So wouldn’t he be moving tentatively?”
“Yes, sir, and if a .50 grazed him, he’s purple from shoulder to ankle. He’ll be moving
very
tentatively. Would it be easier to tell the police an assassination attempt—”
“No. Because they will surround the hotel crudely and he will go away. Then he will return to his HQ and make a formal report on everything that has happened and questions we don’t want to be raised may well be raised. No, we want him in that hotel.”
“And we take him on the roof?”
“No. You make certain he’s in the hotel, then you call me with the definite, then, if I were you, I’d take cover.”
MANY PLEASURES HOTEL
QALAT
ZABUL PROVINCE
SOUTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN
1850 HOURS
Soon came the call to evening prayers. Soon the sun set. Soon tea would be drunk, food would be eaten, life in all its manifold pleasures would be experienced by the rich and all its manifold pains by the poor. The city would go silent.
In that falling dusk, the man known as the Beheader would leave his large house and walk to his jet black armored Humvee for a fuck with a woman without a voice. He would not make it. A bullet the size of a pencil tip would enter his body at well over 2,300 feet per second from a cartridge of the equivalent of an American .30-06 and would blow out several of his blood-bearing organs, most notably his heart. He would be dead before he fractured his expensive Dallas cosmetic-dentistry whitened and straightened teeth on the cobblestones.
Or something like that.
Ray looked up and down the street. No sign of any police or militia presence. An orange personnel carrier, bearing the emblem of the Royal Dutch Marines, had ground down the street once at around two, but since then all was normal, as lorries, bikes, scooters, to say nothing of hundreds of merchants and citizens and donkeys, even the occasional fleet of goats, filled the busy street that housed the hotel, directly across from the gated compound of Ibrahim Zarzi, warlord, politician, and best-dressed man of 1934.
His leg pain was muted somewhat by a morning of rest in a fleabag near the railway station, and a couple of kabobs for nourishment from a street-side vendor outside and half a bottle of aspirin from what passed as a “drugstore” in Afghanistan. He could have had keefe or bennies or dex or red who’s-your-mamas? or rolling chocolate death or whatever,but stayed with the regular stuff. He’d also had about a gallon of the sugary tea.
Now, amid the hundreds, virtually indiscernible from them, he hobbled down the street, face down, his bad leg aching, the rifle suspended by the strap around his shoulder and threaded down his pants leg. It might print if he wore it across his back, or someone in a crowd might jostle against him and feel the presence of steel. It dangled, the butt of its stock directly in the armpit, the long skeleton of wooden stock extending its length ridiculously, the receiver group against his hip, the fore end and barrel down the side of his leg. He’d taped the magazine under the wooden fore
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