DARKNET CORPORATION (4 page)

The two remaining Afghans slung their weapons over their shoulders moving
to the rear of the sedan and removed a suitcase wrapped in cellophane from the
boot of the sedan. They carried it bodily, holding the case by the corners into
the IRM office, followed by the westerner. Both vehicles were moved off and
parked out of sight, close by.

The two suitcase carriers were seen to return to the front doors of the
office but remained inside the vestibule, visible through the glass panels,
obviously taking up more guard positions.

Gorbat stopped taking pictures and spoke into the phone, “Suitcase
required two men to lift and appeared to be heavier than normal,” he opined.

About ten minutes later the westerner left in the same sedan, followed by
one of the two pickup trucks.

Gorbat mused through explanations for what he had witnessed, preparing
for the inevitable questions that Bill would pose to him seeking his opinion
and advice.

His conjecture and speculation were interrupted by the target, ‘
Bicep’
,
walking out of the office turning left and walking down the street. Gorbat jumped
down from the wicker chair while speaking into his phone recorder and saw “
Bicep
”
cross the street diagonally going
north west
. He went
out of the rear door and started walking parallel to Wood along the backstreet
intending to pick up his trail further down, emerging behind him on the main road.

He turned a corner and started walking briskly towards the main road
scanning the visible area of the road at the end of the alley for any sight of
Wood walking past. A movement out of the corner of his eye made him twist
around to see what it was. A knife was thrust all the way into his left kidney,
then sliced effortlessly across his pancreas; intestines and colon, twisting
and pulled back, slicing a lobe from his liver, opening up his stomach, exiting
his side just below the ribs, in two quick, violent, movements.

Dropping to his knees with shock and a realisation that he would be dead
momentarily he grasped his abdomen in an instinctive attempt to keep his
insides from spilling onto the floor, looking down at it in horror, repeating
Allahu
Akbar,
Allahu
Akbar,
Allahu
Akbar…

Wood stepped back to avoid the blood, then took a step diagonally forward
to position himself at
Gorbat’s
left flipping the
knife over with his thumb on top of the haft. The razor-sharp knife point
stabbed down on
Gorbat’s
presented neck, severing the
spinal column between the C5 and C6 vertebrae.
Gorbat’s
prayer stopped abruptly, chin snapping down onto his sternum and he fell slowly
forward like a falling tree, still holding his entrails in, hitting the ground
with the top of his head first, dead.

Wood wiped the knife on
Gorbat’s
buttocks,
first one side then turned it over and wiped the other and sheathed the weapon.
He rifled through the dead man’s pockets casting their contents down when they
were of no interest. When he found
Gorbat’s
wallet,
he took the cash, and looked intently at the driver’s license memorising it but
failing to recognise him or any of his details. There was no identity card or
indication whatever of any organisation he might belong to.

Placing the open wallet on the bottom hem of
Gorbat’s
shirt
and folding over material to cover both sides he rubbed
vigorously, erasing any fingerprints.

Wood
looked up and down the alley then retraced
Gorbat’s
steps back up the alley and back to the observation post. The back door was not
locked and Wood drew his handgun as he entered. Listening intently for anyone
present he crept up the stairs into the front room.

The
wicker chair on top of the table confirmed that this was a clandestine
observation post but Wood was perplexed at the absence of telescopes, cameras,
radios, recording devices, not even a laptop that could have illuminated the
watcher’s face. He decided it could not be an intelligence operation.
Maybe some kind of local thief intent on robbing IRM.
There
was simply no evidence of what it was. “Time to move,” he thought.

-|-

Less than an hour previously, Wood had been pacing around the second
floor of the IRM building scanning the street for anything untoward prior to
the courier arriving. There was nothing unusual.

Then he saw a slight glimmer in a building across the street. A face was
illuminated briefly. He looked again. Was it imagined or did he see it? He
lifted binoculars to his eye. He saw it again. Had he not been standing above
and directly opposite, he doubted he would have noticed it.

He reactively reached for his handgun, then immediately though better of
it. Gunshots might attract too much attention. Just as he came to this
conclusion the first of the courier convoy vehicles arrived. Too late, Wood
knew he had to deal with the courier now and hope that a SWAT team wasn’t about
to descend upon them. He could tidy up later.

-|-

After the sickening ‘tidy up’ Wood rushed back to the IRM Office and
unlocked the room in which he had just checked the money count with the
courier. He started transferring the bundles of cash stacked up on the table
from the counting, into the sports bags he had brought for the purpose, leaving
the empty suitcase lying spread-eagled on the floor like a carcase.

When he had filled all four bags to the brim and zipped them closed, he
relocked the room and went out the front again backing up his vehicle to the
doors. He gestured to one of the guards to return with him to the locked room
and Wood and the guard grabbed two bags each and carried them out and loaded
them into the rear of the four-wheel-drive.

Shouting for the armed guards on the pickup truck who were squatting at
the side alley to the building smoking and talking, Wood mounted up and led the
convoy of two vehicles down
Shash
Darak
Road on their way out of Kabul.

Chapter Five

Bill decided he had done as much as he could in catching up with the
intercept intelligence and research on IRM and that it was time to spell Gorbat
back at the observation post. He called, but Gorbat did not pickup.

Slightly surprised Bill made his way back towards the IRM office and
parked in a different position to the one he had used previously, but still out
of sight and some way down the street from the observation post.

Working his way around the backstreet he noticed
Gorbat’s
beaten up vehicle still where it was from their earlier arrival. “He’s not gone
out chasing ‘
Bone
’ then,” thought Bill.

At the next opening that led down to the main road he saw a body lying in
the shadows. He immediately knew it was a body rather than a person from the
impossible angle that the head was folded under the body. Then he recognised
the black sleeveless jacket and rushed over. It was Gorbat.

Even though Bill had experience of turning over many dead bodies in the
past, the shock of finding his friend and the hideous lacerations, and the
stench combined to make him wretch. “My God, what a mess!” thought Bill, as he
desperately looked left and right for any threat from a lurking perpetrator.

He was surveying the method of assassination and the brutality of it when
he noticed the shiny hard corner of something sticking out of the slimy mess of
blood, intestines and shit. It was
Gorbat’s
phone. He
was still clutching it in death. Bill clasped the corner with thumb and
forefinger and had to pull quite forcefully to dislodge it with a gurgling
sound as the vacuum was refilled with liquids. He looked at it then decided
that wiping it on
Gorbat’s
clothes was an ignominy he
was not prepared to give him in death and he looked around for something to
clean it with.

Mind racing he judged it too risky to return to the observation post and
retreated back the way he had come to his car, walking autonomously, still numb
with shock. He climbed into his car and took off at a much faster rate than he
would normally and after a while pulled off the main road into a side street
some three kilometres away from the IRM office.

Wiping the phone again with tissues from inside the car he turned it on
and looked at the images. Scanning though the photographs there was nothing
illuminating until a blurry shot of a pickup with armed Afghans pulling up at
the IRM office. A long sequence followed showing the arrival of the suitcase,
guards, and then Wood coming out of the office. That was the last shot, less
than an hour previously.

Then he listened to
Gorbat’s
voice notes. His
voice was familiar and a cruel reminder that he was suddenly and forever, gone.
Bill’s throat
spasmed
and he had to swallow
consciously.
Gorbat’s
comment on the weight of the
suitcase requiring two men to lift it out of the boot was something that Bill
had not registered as odd when looking at the images. He was at least turning
his attention to something objective rather than the horror he had just
witnessed. Then his final voice note, “Target leaving on foot, going west,
crossing street, following.”

It seemed pretty likely that Wood had drawn Gorbat out of the O-P and
killed him, but how had he been discovered? Had their cover been blown by
someone on the inside, or was it simply some careless indiscretion? Bill picked
up his own phone and called Jenkins.

“Jenkins? We may have been blown,” Bill blurted out quickly. “My watcher
at IRM has been murdered, sliced up.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Jenkins said, “Shit! I’ll send a
clean-up team.” He assumed that the body needed to be removed and the murder
kept quiet to keep the operation secure.

“No. Just get the local police on to it; they will contact his family to
arrange a funeral as soon as possible, according to Sharia. Otherwise, if any
westerners are seen or we make a fuss anyone watching will know he was working
for the Company.”

“OK,” Jenkins accepted. “Where’s
Bicep
now?”

Bill opened the top of the tracker control unit and said “Hold on, I’ll
check.” After the system established first the blue dot and then the red for
Wood, Bill said, “He’s on the A1 going east, about 10 kilometres away.”

“Keep with him Captain, but don’t get too close” Jenkins said, using his,
no longer relevant, military rank. “I’ll see if I can get
backup
to you as soon as I can.” Then after a short
pause Jenkins said, “Oh! By the way, we picked up an online session
Bicep
made at the Wi-Fi location 15 minutes ago. But it was encrypted as soon as it
was established. Not secure Wi-Fi protocol or SSL; we would unpick that right
away, but some other stronger encryption.”

“How long will it take to decrypt?” Bill asked.

“Don’t know. It could take a week or more, but we have several
supercomputers tasked to it. It’ll come up on the
Bicep
directory and be
alerted once it’s in the clear,” Jenkins advised.

Bill turned around and drove the few blocks down
Shash
Darak
then South on
Sulh
Road until it became the A1 route and followed it out of Kabul.

Bill was still a little numb from the death of his offsider and friend,
but was alert enough to stop for petrol before leaving Kabul. Not knowing where
they were headed or how far they might travel following Wood.

He was starting to think ahead again and focus. The tracker gave him
confidence that he would not lose Wood and he did not need to have continuous
eyes on his target. Indeed getting close enough to see him meant that Wood
would also be able to see Bill and that might be a mistake.

Arriving at a junction with the road from the North at the
Sarobi
Dam, Bill was startled to see a vehicle stopped at
the junction flash its lights three times at him. Bill slowed down, cautiously
pulling his Glock as he coasted to a stop on the side of the road a good thirty
metres from the other vehicle.

Two men got out and walked towards him. They wore loose fitting pants and
knee-length shirts, each with a dark wreath of turban, the loose ends hanging
down the front of the chest of one and wrapped around the neck of the other.
Bill tried to remember how many rounds were still in his 15 shot magazine.

Both men had their hands empty and walked casually up to the vehicle. One
opened the front passenger door; the other went to the back passenger door.
Bill was ready.

“
G’day
bro,” said the one at the front
passenger door. “Qu-
ora
, Bill,” said the other.

“For fuck’s sake!
You buggers nearly died there,” said Bill,
recognising Corporal Dakota Flynn and Lance Corporal Michael Pomare both NZ SAS
soldiers that Bill had known for many years but hardly recognised in their
local ‘costumes’.

“You wouldn’t shoot a brother would you,” said Dakota, laughing broadly.
He was known as ‘Ledge’, short for “Legend”, from another obscure American
comment. “We’re your close protection detail, Bro,” chimed in Michael, always
known as ‘Mickey’. “Didn’t you get a call about meeting up with us?”

“Mobile reception around here is crap,” Bill replied.

“Don’t you have a sat’ phone?” asked Ledge.

“No.” Just as he said it his mobile vibrated in his pocket. Reading the
text message, “RV friends
jnc
A1 @
Sarobi
, J,” Bill sighed and said sarcastically, “Just in
time to save your lives then.” Bill noticed that Jenkins had become almost
human, or at least somewhat more familiar and casual, at least by txt.

Ledge was a large, broad man, gruff and grizzly; bearded and dark
skinned. A full-blooded Maori, of the Tuhoe people of the Ureweras.
A fearless warrior of warriors.
Mickey was
Ngāpuhi
, from Northland.
Laid back with a ready sense of humour, he was
more slight
and lighter skinned than Ledge. His demeanor belied his steel.

The three men talked briefly about other NZ SAS men still deployed in
Afghanistan and Bill discovered Mickey and Ledge had only a couple of months
left before leaving this part of the world, probably for good, having been here
for years.

The bonhomie subsided quite quickly since the SAS men could sense that
Bill was a little sombre and quiet and not in a mood for the boisterous
camaraderie of a reunion.

“
What’s the guts
, Bill,” asked Mickey after the
pleasantries were over.

Bill outlined the chase he was on with the ultimate objective of tracing
Abu
Ukasha
and the recent murder of his local
offsider. The SAS men were as surprised as Bill when told that the suspected
target, ‘
Bicep’,
was an ex special services guy gone bad. Neither of the
men knew Wood personally, but they were familiar with the SS and knew people
who would likely know Wood. Bill repeated the joke about him being known as ‘
Bone’,
which both men appreciated with a smile.

“We were on another op that was going nowhere when we got a call to
volunteer for a backup detail. When we heard it was you, we told them the job
was filled and nobody else should even think about volunteering.”

Bill pulled open the tracker unit and showed his new backup team the
target and his position, still following the A1 highway towards Jalalabad,
about fifteen to twenty kilometres in front of them.

“Ah!” said Ledge and he got out and walked back to their vehicle. When he
came back he had an identical tracker control unit in his hand. “What’s his
serial number?” he asked, once he had got seated and his unit operating.

“What do you mean serial number?” Bill was confused.

“Every transponder has a GPS serial that identifies it to the system, so
it can identify and communicate with it.” Ledge explained. He continued, “Do
you know how many GPS transponders there are around the country?”

“How do I find it,” Bill asked.

“Put your cursor over the red blip.”

Following Ledge’s instructions Bill saw a string of digits appear in red
alongside the red blip marked T-1. He read the sequence off to Ledge who
entered them into a popup window on his control unit. Shortly thereafter he
turned the screen around so that Bill could see that in addition to a blue blip
marked ‘C’ and a red blip marked T-1 at the same place, there was a second red
blip marked T-2, approximately 20 kilometres in front of them.

“OK. So you are able to track ‘
Bone
’ as well?” Bill confirmed.

Ledge agreed, “Sure. We were given the serial number of the transponder
in your control unit so we could find you and rendezvous with you, and now we
can also track ‘
Bone’
and
you from our control unit.”

They followed the same process and registered the SAS men’s control unit
as T-2 in Bill’s tracker, ‘Just in case they got separated’.

They agreed to
proceed
after ‘
Bone’
with
the SAS men following Bill at a further safe distance behind so that they would
not be obviously travelling as a group. Mickey brought a cigarette packet-sized
‘walkie-talkie’ from their SORV (or Severe
Off
Road
Vehicle) which he referred to as their ‘mobile armoury’.

“You can use the radio as is, just switch it on here,” he said, pointing
out the power switch. “Press this to talk,” he explained, indicating a ‘talk’
button. “If we need to go quiet, you pull this earpiece/mike from the side…” he
demonstrated disengaging a hook-shaped earpiece that fit snugly into a recess
in the side of the radio, connected by a stretchy spiral of cable. “This will
switch from speaker to earpiece. It has a range that is pretty much
line-of-sight, maybe a couple of kilometres or so,” he added.

After a couple of hours of driving, keeping in touch periodically by
radio, the tracker showed that
Bone
was approaching Jalalabad.

Ledge came on the radio and said, “We need to close up on
Bicep
in
case he stops to make contact with anyone up ahead.
Over.”

Bill replied, “Yeah, you two go ahead of me and get closer. Mickey can
navigate and be ready if he stops, to get eyes on.
Out.”

The SAS men overtook Bill and raced off ahead to get close to
Bone
.
Within a quarter hour Mickey’s voice came through the radio. “They are not
going into the city; they’ve turned off right on the outskirts. It’s a dead
end. It doesn’t go anywhere. We are halting here until you arrive. We will
flash you when you get close.
Over.”

Bill acknowledged.

Pulling in when he saw the flash, the two men got into Bill’s vehicle.

“This road they’ve gone down is a dead end. It ends before the mountains.
If you wanted to go across the border, you probably wouldn’t go over here.
There’s no need. You could walk across almost anywhere else, it’s so porous.
No. I think they are here for a meet. This could be it,” Ledge was steeled for
the challenge.

“How far down the road are they?” asked Bill.