Page 51 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

When he had received the warning from Banfield about an American agent attempting to infiltrate his arms network in Kabul, the Vendor’s first instinct was to turn him over to the medieval savages for torture and information extraction. But the Afghani methods for suchprocedures were far too crude. Their insensitivities to suffering—particularly American suffering—meant they couldn’t be trusted not to kill him before they extracted useful information about his identity and other necessary details.

But clearly the decision to hand the American over to his contact in Bangui for a chemical interrogation was a mistake. That mistake cost him a valuable shipment and an even more valuable aircraft.

Banfield’s scant information about the American was enough to convince the Vendor to capture him. But now he understood this was clearly no ordinary undercover agent. The man was skilled enough in his black arts to fool Yaqoob, his deeply suspicious Taliban operative, and to penetrate into the most sensitive part of his Afghan operation. All previous American attempts had been easily discovered and defeated.

He wanted to know who this man was, who sent him and, more importantly, what he may have actually discovered. But there were so many moving parts to his master plan that he didn’t dare engage with this particular distraction. No doubt his ego had been wounded by this enterprising fellow, but this was no time to indulge in schoolboy emotions.

No, what he really needed to do now was kill the man before he could pass along his information. The question was, what did he actually know?

The Vendor studied the rest of the digital images up until the moment the man leaped from the plane with his cleverly improvised parachute harness. Seconds later, the aircraft exploded, destroying all onboard cameras, rendering the collated image on his monitor into a blizzard of digital snow.

The Vendor rewound the tape and played it again, searching for clues. He saw several things that piqued his curiosity.

“Keiko, show me where the plane self-destructed.”

Another monitor winked into life and a Google-styled map appeared. A flashing red dot indicated the approximate location of the crash over the Gulf of Oman beyond the border of Pakistan.

“Keiko, plot a probable landing location of a man, say, ninety toninety-five kilos in weight parachuting from the plane’s last known location. Include prevailing wind and weather information, along with last known aircraft speed and altitude in your calculations.”

“Calculating.”

Moments later, a small light blue circle appeared on the water far from shore. Keiko added, “Probable landing location is within this zero-point-three-square-kilometer zone.”

The Vendor estimated it would take the agent hours to swim to land from that location—assuming he could make the journey at all.

“Do we have any air or sea assets near that zone?” The Vendor possessed an eidetic memory and he was certain there were none, but he had learned long ago that humility was a far more reliable asset than perfect recall.

“None.”

The Vendor noticed the American had made a phone call to someone. That would only be possible with a satellite phone—there were no cell towers in the Gulf of Oman. The phone appeared to be a commercially available device.

“Keiko, search the video and identify the brand of device the intruder used to make the satellite call.”

The Vendor watched Keiko rewind the video and then scrub it forward at blinding speed until the video froze on a single frame showing the American holding the satellite phone.

Keiko put an image box around the man’s hand, which held the phone a few inches from his face. Keiko enlarged the box image by a factor of six hundred percent, which pixelated it, smudging it out of all recognition.

“Keiko, upscale the image.”

“Already in process.” Even as she spoke, the smudged image filled in until a crystal clear picture appeared. The satellite phone could be easily seen in Juan’s hand. The Vendor read the brand before Keiko even spoke.

“I believe that is a Thuraya X5-Touch phone,” Keiko said.

“Is that the same UAE company that provides mobile-satellite service to the region?”

“Yes. One and the same.”

Keiko pulled up the Thuraya website and began reading from it.

“ ‘The Thuraya X5-Touch is the world’s first Android-based satellite and GSM phone offering unparalleled flexibility—’ ”

“Keiko, stop reading. How many satellites does Thuraya operate?”

“Thuraya operates two geosynchronous satellites.”

“Do we have access to both?”

“We compromised both in prelaunch construction via one of our network associates.”