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Collins changed his expression as well, the jovial smile vanishing.

“I’m glad you find humor in another man’s pain,” Leland added.

Collins nodded. Seemed to hesitate for a second and then said, “Yeah…well, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Enjoy the rest of your meal, Captain. Ladies, let’s go catch the movie.” Collins and the two women got up and left.

Leland silently watched them leave, his insides slowly turning over, his gut twisting tighter and tighter. What did he mean by that? Did Collins know what happened, and if so, how many others knew? Leland felt his face flush with anger. Military bases were as filled with gossip as an American high school. The thought of others whispering about this behind his back made him want to vomit. They were all so undisciplined. Leland thought of something that had been given to him back at the academy. It was a guide that he went back to from time to time, to help remind him of who he was and what it all meant.

He left the tray on the table and headed straight back to his room. It was located near the bottom of his footlocker and after a few minutes he found it safely tucked away in the pages of his King James Bible. Leland looked down at the Little Blue Book and read the words aloud. “United States Air Force Core Values. Integrity first. Service before self. Excellence in all we do.” The words still had heft after all these years. If anything, they meant more to him today than when he’d first read them as a cadet more than ten years ago. Why couldn’t General Garrison understand their importance? Leland continued to scan the pamphlet that had been given to him back at the academy. He found the quote he was looking for on the second page.

It read:

In 1965 I was crippled and was all alone (in a North Vietnamese prison). I realized that they had all the power. I couldn’t see how I was ever going to get out with my honor and self-respect. The one thing I came to realize was that if you don’t lose your integrity you can’t be had and you can’t be hurt. Compromises multiply and build up when you’re working against a skilled extortionist or manipulator. You can’t be had if you don’t take the first shortcut, of “meet them halfway,” as they say, or look for that tacit deal, or make that first compromise.

—Admiral James B. Stockdale

Leland ran his fingers over the words and recited them again, this time with tears in his eyes. When he was done he told himself that he would not take the first shortcut. He would not meet them halfway. He would not make that first compromise. He would stand up to them. He would show them what it was like to live life with integrity and honor.

He closed the booklet, placed it back in his Bible, and began reviewing his options. If he did not handle this properly, he could easily ruin his career. If done the right way, though, this could catapult him to great heights. But where to go first? He was isolated on this base, thousands of miles from those who were most sympathetic to his cause. Whom could he call? Whom could he turn to? There was the Office of Special Investigations, of course, but that presented a whole other set of problems. A great many people would think of him as a rat, and the old boys’ club that still ran the air force would likely never trust him again. His name would forever be attached to the scandal that was sure to follow. He needed someone else to blow the whistle. To sound the alarm and show him as the true victim in this travesty of justice.

Leland paced nervously from one end of his small room to the other. He went through a mental list of all the commanding officers he’d had and none of them fit the bill. Who would be willing to lock horns with the CIA? Leland asked himself. He suddenly stopped, thought back to earlier in the week, and said, “Of course.”

Leland raced over to the tiny desk he shared with a fellow officer. He moved a stack of magazines and a pile of opened envelopes and letters and pens and junk and then finally, there it was. A beautiful embossed card with a gold eagle smack in the center. Leland snatched the card off the desk and held it up as if it were a winning lottery ticket. He ran a finger over the embossed name and wondered if the person would remember him. After a brief moment Leland decided he would. This was his way out. He would call Washington and sound the alarm and then that arrogant imbecile would have to answer for what he’d done.

Leland grabbed one of his prepaid phone cards that had been sent in a care package and then tried to think of the safest place to make the call from. It was mid-morning in Washington. Probably the best time to call. Leland started for the door. For the first time in days a smile spread across his face. As he raced down the hallway he thought of Rapp and said to himself, “We’ll see how smug you are after I’m done with you. You’re going to wish you’d never laid a hand on me.”

CHAPTER 29

TRIPLE FRONTIER

IT was fast approaching noon. The sun high in the sky. The valley turning into a soupy mix of heat and humidity. Karim waved away a large bug that almost flew up his nose and then mopped his brow with a drab olive bandana. He looked over at the white and blue plane. It was a Basler BT-67. Basically an old DC-3 that had been refurbished with two Pratt & Whitney turboprop engines and a new skeleton and avionics. It sat a mere fifty feet from the ramshackle warehouse, its two propellers glistening in the sun.

The tractor had been retrieved from the edge of the jungle, and the bucket had been removed and replaced with a set of forks. The two pallets of cocaine were then eased out of the warehouse and positioned as close to the plane as possible. Four of Karim’s men formed a line, passing the bricks of cocaine to each other and into the cargo hold. They’d been working steadily for an hour. One pallet was loaded and they were about halfway through the second one. Unlike the me

n they had just killed, these men worked without complaint and were far more efficient at their task.

Karim glanced at his watch and thought about the pickets he’d placed on the two main trails. It had been nearly thirty minutes since they’d last checked in. He thumbed his radio and asked for a situation report. They both reported back that the trails were quiet. Karim felt his chest tighten and his pulse quicken. He was caught in a no-man’s-land between two conflicting thoughts. The first was that he simply wanted to get out of this horrible place, and the second was that he hated to fly. New engines or not, this plane looked to be of a very old design. His friend Hakim had told him that it was indeed an old design. Nearly a hundred thousand of them had been made in the 1930s and then during World War II, but that was a good thing. The fact that they were still being refurbished and flown after all these years was a testament to the plane’s simple and robust design.

Karim looked nervously over his shoulder at the plane and wondered if his childhood friend knew what he was doing. Not in terms of flying. He was more than capable of that. Hakim had been flying since he was sixteen. Helicopters, planes, jets, gliders—pretty much anything he could get his hands on, and besides, he’d got the thing here and landed it with only one tiny bounce. Karim’s more immediate concern was how they were loading the plane. He didn’t know much about such things but it seemed there would have to be a science to it. The two men had met at the age of seven. They lived only a few short blocks away from each other and attended the same school. Karim knew that his old friend had many talents, but academic proficiency was not one of them. Hakim had never been a good student, and the thought that he was now trying to load more than a thousand pounds of cargo onto a plane made him extremely nervous.

Karim marched over to the plane and told his men to take a quick five-minute break. All four of them were dripping with sweat and could use a drink of water.

Hakim poked his head out the door, flashing his smile with a slight gap between his top two front teeth. “Karim, you are a genius.”

Karim glanced nervously over his shoulder at his men.

Hakim saw the concern and moaned, “When are you going to get over it?”

“Maybe never.”

Lowering his voice so the others wouldn’t hear, he said, “Then you are a fool.”

If any other man had spoken to him this way he would have considered killing him, but it was his old friend so he let it pass. As a devout Muslim he abhorred drugs, but his options were limited.

“I love you like a brother, but you are so naive to the ways of the world.”

Karim was proud of the fact that he was naive to such ways. They were ways that led one to stray from the path. Three years earlier he had convinced Hakim to come fight in the holy war and the two had made the journey to Pakistan together. Only a year out of graduate school, Karim had seen little of the world. Drugs were nonexistent in Makkah, the town where they had grown up. After college his parents had tried desperately to find him a wife with the hope that it would prevent him from running off and fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq. In his mind Iraq was never a consideration. The Muslim world was a better place without Saddam Hussein, and he did not want to give his life fighting for Baath party thugs so they could once again turn on their Saudi neighbors and repress their fellow Muslims.

So it was off to Pakistan to join the fight with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Karim had prepared himself for all of the mental and physical challenges, but he could never have guessed the role that the heroin trade played in the struggle. Opium was everywhere. It was cultivated and collected and sold and distributed. Many of the foreign fighters were addicted to it. For them it was the best way to cope with the hardship of the mountains and fighting an unseen enemy who could strike at you from over the horizon any time, day or night. For the Taliban it was their lifeblood.

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