Page 55 of The Fourth Option
“Yeah. Taliban must know to drive around it. This was set up recently as I don’t see any tracks veering off the road yet.”
“Maybe there’s a route to bypass that starts back the way we came, and we just missed it.”
“Could be. Let’s get Naji and Zahra back in the Hilux. We’re getting close.”
The two-vehicle convoy continued on, slower this time, the four-wheel-drive vehicles eating up the miles to the border.
“You have the papers handy?” Walker asked Naji.
Naji patted a worn leather satchel and smiled faintly. “Right here.”
The road ahead shimmered with heat.
Three klicks later, Walker squinted at the horizon and keyed his radio.
“Checkpoint up ahead. Panel van.”
“Baksheesh?” Walker asked his passenger. Gift?
“Most likely,” Naji said. “They know there will be a surge of traffic to the border with the Americans leaving. They’re going to want to capitalize on it. Opportunists.”
Let’s hope so, Walker thought.
“What do you think?” he asked Staub over the radio.
“I think it’s time to pay up.”
Walker keyed his mic twice in response, then reached into the center console and pulled out a white pillowcase and a thousand dollars in U.S. hundred-dollar bills.
As they approached, two men carrying AK-type rifles stepped out of the van. They were dressed in black.
Walker rolled down his window, slowed the vehicle, and held out the white pillowcase.
“Just be calm,” Walker said as he brought the Hilux to a stop about ten yards from the checkpoint. “Give me your papers.”
He stuffed the money into the pillowcase and stepped out, one hand raised with the white pillowcase, which doubled as a truce flag, the otherholding the Agency-forged Taliban travel papers at shoulder level. The fighters watched him advance.
Walker only knew a few phrases of Pashto, which he hoped would be beneficial in this situation. He was counting on the cash and documents to speak for him. He was also counting on human nature. If the travel documents were real and these bandits killed people traveling under Taliban protection, they and their families were as good as dead. Better to accept a “gift” and err on the side of caution.
“We’re leaving the country. Per the agreement,” Walker said in barely passable Pashto. He said it in a way that assumed everyone knew about the agreement, playing on the intellectual vanity of human nature.
The lead fighter, a hawk-faced man with a black beard, nodded slightly.
“Exit papers,” he said.
Walker handed over the forged documents.
“You are a soldier,” Hawk-face replied, in heavily accented English.
“Just a security guard. We are only assisting in the withdrawal from your country.”
The fighter barked something in Pashto that Walker couldn’t follow but he understood the hand signal to meanpay up.
Walker handed the pillowcase to the lead man.
The bandit pulled the money out and seemed to weigh it in his hands. Then he handed it to his partner.
“Go with God,” the man said, throwing the pillowcase back at the American. “And never come back.”
