Rapp was surprised by the news. "What was wrong with him?"
"Don't know. Rick was pretty bummed out, though. Dog got sick, he took him to the vet and had to put him down. I think Rick said it was cancer or something like that."
One of Rapp's team members came down the stairs with a disturbed look on his face. The man had blond hair and blue eyes and was pushing fifty. "Not good," was all he had to say.
Rapp looked at Scott Coleman and said, "Please tell me you're talking about something other than the safe. Tell me the safe is untouched and all the cash, drives, and laptop are safely tucked inside."
Coleman shook his head. "All gone. Completely cleaned out."
Even though Rapp had expected it, he had held out some hope that he could give his boss a piece of good news. "Shit, I need to call Irene and let her know." Rapp reached for his phone, but stopped upon hearing a commotion at the front door.
Chapter 2
ABDUL Siraj Zahir admired himself in the mirror. At forty-eight he was an old man in his country. Even among the common people it was difficult to make it to manhood. In Zahir's line of work the challenge was much greater. He was a warrior, like his father and his father before him. His father and all three of his older brothers were dead. His father and the two oldest brothers had been killed by the Soviets and the third one had died at the hands of the Northern Alliance. Zahir had learned from their mistakes. Afghanistan was a brutal country where the only person you could really trust was someone from your own village. Beyond that, loyalties were an ever-shifting, complicated game.
Zahir had learned that to stay alive he had to be brutal and vigilant. He knew that some described him as sadistic and paranoid, and he wore that as a badge of honor - the more people who feared him the better. In Afghanistan, fear ruled. If you couldn't get men to fear you, you became a target. Zahir didn't want his life to end the way it had for his father and brothers, so he stoked the fear. It wasn't always easy, but had found that he was good at it.
Zahir pulled down on his gray uniform blouse, snapped his fingers, and then held out his arms. His aide rushed forward with Zahir's shiny black leather service belt. He buckled it around his boss's ample waist, made sure it was straight, and then stepped out of the way so Zahir could admire himself in the mirror. Zahir smiled at his reflection. His weapon was a still-unfired .40 caliber Smith & Wesson. The fact that Americans had given it to him for free made ownership all that much more delicious. He'd spent most of the last decade killing Americans, and now he was on their payroll.
Zahir noticed something wrong with his beard and moved closer to the mirror. His irritation was directed at a patch of gray that he had missed. He grabbed a bottle of black dye from his desk and inserted a small brush. After a few applications the gray was gone. Zahir smiled at his fine-looking beard and placed his hands on his hips. He looked good in his uniform. It was a little tight around the waist, but in Afghanistan his expanding middle section was a sign that he was a prosperous man.
Afghanistan was a unique place. It was like a petri dish for the survival of the fittest. Historically it had always been a harsh country; hot summers, cold winters, and rugged geography had shaped a breed of extremely tough people. For the last three decades a state of near-constant war had only heightened the selection process. Being physically strong was no longer enough. One had to be adept at reading the ever-shifting alliances that had shaped and reshaped the power structure of the isolated country. The Soviets had to be appeased and then the Americans and their Pakistani partners, who sponsored the crazed Wahhabi fighters from across the Persian Gulf, who in turn led to the Taliban and their enemies the Northern Alliance and a long civil war. Then the Americans and their coalition showed up and swept the Taliban from power in a matter of months.
Abdul Siraj Zahir had been able to look into the future on that day more than a decade ago