1 Forty-eight hundred pounds. That was roughly how much the cargo in the crate weighed. It was off-loaded from the tractor-trailer by forklift and placed in the back of the smaller box truck. The rear door was closed and secured with two different locks, one a key, the other a combo. Each lock was rated to be tamper-proof. The reality was, given time, any lock could be beaten and any door broken through. The man climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck, closed the door, locked it, started the engine, revved the motor, cranked the AC, and adjusted his seat. He had a long way to drive and not much time to get there. And it was hot as hell. Maybe hotter. Waves of visible heat shimmered, distorting the landscape. He didn’t focus on that, because he might just start puking. He would have preferred an armed escort. Perhaps an Abrams tank for good measure, but that was not in the budget or the mission plan. The ground was rocky and, in the distance, mountainous. The roads had more potholes than asphalt. He had guns and plenty of ammo. But he was only one man with only one trigger finger. He no longer wore the uniform. He had taken it off for the last time about an hour ago. He fingered his “new” clothes. They were worn and not overly clean. He pulled out his map and spread it out on the front seat as the tractor-trailer pulled away. He was now alone in the middle of nowhere in a country that was still largely entrenched in the ninth century. As he stared out the windshield at the imposing terrain, he briefly thought about how he had ended up here. Back then it had seemed brave, even heroic. Right now he felt like the world’s biggest idiot for accepting a mission that held such a low chance of survival. The reality was he was here. He was alone. He had a job to do and he had better get to it. And if he died, well, his mortal worries were over and he would have at least one person to mourn him. In addition to the map, he had GPS. However, it was spotty out here, as though the satellites above didn’t know there was actually a country down here that required folks getting from point A to point B. Hence the old-fashioned paper version on the front seat. He put the truck in drive and thought about what was in the crate. It was more than two tons of very special cargo. Without it he was certainly a dead man. Even with it, he might be a dead man, but his odds were far better by having it. As he passed over the rough road, he calculated he had twenty hours’ hard driving ahead of him. There were no highways here. The pace would be plodding and bumpy. And there might even be folks shooting at him. There also would be people waiting for him at the end. The cargo would be transferred, and he would be transferred along with it. Communications had been made. Promises given. Alliances formed. Now it was just up to him to talk a good game and the others to keep their word. That had all sounded good in the endless meetings with people in shirts and ties and with their smartphones jangling nonstop. Out here alone with nothing around him except the bleakest landscape one could imagine, it all sounded delusional. But he was still a soldier so he soldiered on. He worked his way toward the mountains in the distance. He carried not one piece of personal information on him. Yet he did have papers that should allow him safe passage through the area. Should, not would. If he was stopped, he would have to talk his way out of it if the papers were deemed insufficient. If they asked to see what was in the truck, he had to refuse. If they insisted, he had a little metal box with a black matte finish. It had a switch on the side and one red button on top. When he engaged the switch and pushed down the button, everything would still be okay. If his finger came off the button while the device was still engaged, he and everything else within twenty square meters would disappear. He drove for twelve straight hours and saw not a single living person. He glimpsed a camel and a donkey wandering around. He saw a dead snake. He observed a rotted human body, its carcass being reduced to bone by vultures. He was surprised there was only one dead body. Normally there would have been a lot more. This country had seen its share of slaughter. Every so often another country tried to invade it. They quickly won the war and then lost everything else and went home with their tanks tucked between their legs. During the dozen hours, he saw the sun set and then rise again. He was heading east so he was driving right into it. He lowered the visor on the truck and kept going. He played CD after CD of rock music, blasting the truck cab. He listened to Meat Loaf ’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” twenty times in a row, as loud as his ears could stand. He smiled every time the baseball announcer’s voice came on. It was a little bit of home out here. Despite Meat Loaf screaming at him, his eyelids still drooped and he kept jolting back awake after his truck had strayed across the road. Luckily there was no other traffic. There weren’t many people who would want to live around here. Foreboding would be one way to describe it. Insanely dangerous would be another, more accurate one. Thirteen hours into the trip he grew so tired that he decided to pull off the road to take a quick nap. He had made good progress and had a little time to spare. But as he was about to stop he looked down the road and saw what was coming. His weariness vanished. His nap would have to wait. The open-bed truck was speeding directly at him. The truck was driving squarely in the center of the road, blocking passage in either direction. Two men sat in front, three stood in the bed, all holding subguns. They were the Welcome Wagon, Afghan-style. He pulled partially off the road, rolled down the window, let the heat waves push in, and waited. He turned off the CD player, and Meat Loaf ’s baritone vanished. These men would not appreciate the rocker’s prodigious pipes or lustful lyrics. The smaller truck stopped beside his. While two of the turbaned men with subguns pointed their weapons at him, the man in the truck’s passenger seat climbed out and walked to the cab door of the other vehicle. He also wore a turban; the bands of sweat soaked into the material spoke of the prolonged intensity of the heat. The driver looked at the man as he approached. He reached for the sheaf of papers on the front seat. They sat next to his fully loaded Glock with one round already in the chamber. He hoped he didn’t have to use it, because a pistol against a subgun would only have one outcome—his death. “Papers?” the man said in Pashto. He handed them through. They were appropriately signed and distinctively sealed by each of the tribal chieftains who controlled these stretches of land. He was counting on it that they would be honored. He was encouraged by the fact that in this part of the world, not abiding by a chieftain’s orders often resulted in the death of those who disobeyed. And death here was nearly always brutal and almost never immediate. They liked for you to feel yourself die, as they said around here. The turbaned man was drenched in sweat, his eyes red and his clothes as dirty as his face. He read through the papers, blinking rapidly when he saw the august signatories. He looked up at the driver and appraised him keenly, then he handed back the papers. The man’s gaze went to the back of the truck, his look a curious one. The driver’s hand closed around the small black box and he pressed the switch on the side, engaging it. The man spoke again in Pashto. The driver shook his head and said that opening the truck was not possible. It was locked and he did not have a key or the combo required. The man pointed to his gun and said that that was his key. The driver’s finger pressed down on the red button. If they shot him, his finger would release and this “idiot switch” feature would detonate the explosives and kill them all. He said in Pashto, “The tribal leaders were clear. The cargo could not be revealed until its final destination. Very clear,” he added for emphasis. “If you have a problem, you need to take it up with them.” The man considered this and slid his hand down to his holstered sidearm. The driver tried to keep his breathing normal and his limbs from twitching, but being seconds from getting blown into oblivion did certain physiological things to the body that he could not control. Five tense seconds passed during which it was not clear if the turban would stand down or not. The man finally withdrew, climbed back into the truck, and said something to the driver. Moments later the truck sped off, kicking up a cloud of dust behind its rear wheels. The driver disengaged the detonator and waited until they were nearly out of sight before putting the truck back in gear. He drove off slowly at first, and then punched the gas. His weariness was gone. He didn’t need the music anymore. He lowered the AC because he suddenly felt rather cold. He followed his directions, keeping to the exact route. It did not pay to stray out here. He scanned the horizon for any other pickup trucks with armed men coming his way, but saw none. He hoped that word had been communicated along the route that the cargo truck was to be given safe passage. Nearly eight hours later he arrived at his final destination. The dusk was starting to gather and the wind was picking up. The sky was streaked with clouds, and the rain looked to be a few minutes from bucketing down. When he arrived here, he had expected one precise thing to happen. It didn’t.