Don't Pity Me

By Carl A. Flecker Jr.

“Al-Qaida,” he said. “Is good for you to know who killed you.”
“American,” I said. “Good for you to know who’s going to take your head off.”
“Tuco,” I whispered into the headset, and in that moment, the man’s head came apart in a mist of blood, bone, and brain matter, as a watermelon smashed to the ground.

Crete Sloan lives alone on an island in the Bahamian Atlantic. Bimini is to the west, the Berry Islands to the east. He is a mercenary who fights wars for the good guys. Private wars, not government wars. Someone steals your million-dollar Ferrari LaFerrari. The local cops can’t locate it. Interpol can’t find it. Sloan brings it back—for half its value. A slice of human debris kills your wife in a carjacking gone sour. You want justice. Sloan gets it for you.
Sloan is pulled into action when his friend Deke McCain is captured by al-Qaida warriors and held for ransom in Kabul, Afghanistan. McCain is the founder and CEO of the Pittsburgh Pump & Valve, a major manufacturing operation located in Pittsburgh, PA. Sloan travels to Kabul to negotiate with the al-Qaida captors for McCain’s release. The ransom is pocket change for McCain’s company, and the company is willing to pay. But in Kabul, Sloan is beaten, humiliated, and run out of town.
Bad move by the al-Qaida warriors.
Forced back to Pittsburgh empty-handed, Sloan recruits a team of mercenaries, the boys from the old neighborhood, to go up against all of al-Qaida in an effort to free McCain. When the al-Qaida warriors gain an upper hand, Sloan risks his own life to save his friend’s.
Or die trying.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl A. Flecker Jr.
• Release date: Jan 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9780963559104

Carl A. Flecker Jr.

In addition to writing, I am a dentist with a private practice in my native city of Pittsburgh, PA. I live in a suburb of Pittsburgh. For many years, I have spent innumerable hours with real men and women and now spend equally with imaginary characters. Both are a joy.

Book preview

1

It occurs to me that much of the unhappiness we humans endure is of our own making. If so, we can unmake it, tone it down, or prevent it. I deal with that in my own way. I live a Spartan life on an uncharted, sparsely populated island in the Bahamian Atlantic. Bimini lies west, the Berry Islands to the east. I live alone in a tropical beach house, away from the insatiable thirst for social interaction, social connectedness, and texting. Away from the suffocation of to-do lists and never-ending meaningless tasks. Nevertheless, I reproach myself on occasion because the problem we all face is the task of reconciling the need to be free and to be left alone with the demands of social cooperation. There can be no freedom without some rules, some structure, some social interaction. Utopia exists, after all, in our dreams and never in the community.

So at any rate, I live a simple life and choose the work I want to do, which is why I had come to Kabul, Afghanistan, from my quiet island in the Atlantic to sit across the desk from a woman of Indian descent, a woman of rare beauty.

They are a rogue spin-off of al-Qaida, she said. They kidnapped McCain as he left the offices of the Everson Motor Company and brought him to a house in the hills north of here. It is not new, this kidnapping. These terrorists roam around India looking for important people to seize. They negotiate for money, sometimes for the release of al-Qaida prisoners. I assume you’ve seen the ransom note.

Her office was a small, one-room mud-brick building across the street from the Serena Hotel. She sat in a straight-back wooden chair behind an old, beat-up wooden desk. I sat across from her in a matching chair. There was no artwork on the walls, no photographs of friends nor family, no personal touches that might indicate who she was.

I was wearing white sneakers, jeans, and a T-shirt, which hung loose over the Sig Sauer nine on my hip.

Outside, the June temperature was in the high eighties, the humidity low, the air comfortable even without air conditioning. There were no windows in the small building. A dingy metal lamp on the desk shed what light there was and emphasized the dreariness of the room.

They want four million American dollars and the release of the detainees at Gitmo, I said. They represent the National Organization of Fundamental Islam. NOFI.

She nodded.

She wore a chocolate brown Western-style suit over a plain white blouse. A colorful wide shawl draped the back of her head, came forward over the ears, and fell in two long tails, one down the front of the suit, the other flipped around the neck and down the back. Her soft, lustrous black hair framed a walnut-colored face of unusual elegance. She looked to be sixteen, but I guessed her at close to thirty. She had introduced herself as Amrita Sahir, working for the Everson Motor Company in Chennai, India. Which is where I met her yesterday. She had approached me in the courtyard of Everson as I was leaving a meeting with the president of the local division. Said she had overheard my conversation with the president, said she could help me, said to meet her in Kabul. Kabul? Afghanistan? Having no other clues and nothing to go on, I dumped a lot of trust into her and took an uneventful sixteen-hundred-mile, four-hour flight from Chennai to Kabul.

A week has gone by, I said. They haven’t executed him.

They’re young, said Amrita. They want the money.

Young and stupid, I said. The U.S. doesn’t ransom hostages.

Your President Bush amended that policy, she said. The U.S. will think about it now, may even negotiate, but as you might imagine, these things can take several months.

"Several months?"

She shook her head.

Probably not in this case. The captors think this will be an exception. They propose to post photographs of McCain all over the Internet. They are thinking when the American people see pictures of a tortured McCain with a knife at his throat they will force the government to capitulate.

Capitulate? I said. America? Not likely!

"Let us be frank, Mr. Sloan. America is weak. For two decades, half the people, literally half, have had no confidence in their president, their commander-in-chief. Clinton, Bush, Obama. Your so-called free press criticizes your every military action. Your politicians defile your own soldiers, call them terrorists, killers of the innocent. You have no common will, no spirit for what war, real war is all about. Al-Qaida and the Taliban have the will to win. It is their life. You could not cut this man’s head off, much less video the act and distribute it for the whole world to see. These warriors can do that because they are consumed with winning the battle."

Uncivilized, I said.

Call it whatever you like. One way or another you, America, will need to deal with it, and I don’t see your country stepping up to the plate. America can’t comprehend, tolerate, nor condone the excessive use of force. These men can. The world press might not like it, but al-Qaida has no press within their own ranks to defile them. They are cohesive. They know you Americans have lost the spirit for dealing with difficult decisions. Victory favors those who have the will to win. They know America has no will for such things.

She had caught me off guard, and I was at a loss for a reply, although my gut told me there must be one. A rational response. I sat there and looked at her without responding.

Amrita Sahir was wide-shouldered for a woman and appeared to be physically fit. She pulled the headscarf and let it slide down her neck. Her fingers where short, delicate. No rings, no watch on her wrist. No unsightly veins on the back of her hand. Hair short and naturally waved. No makeup, her skin smooth and unblemished. The effect was alluring, as if she were a mythical goddess with no faults. She had said she was a consultant for Everson Motors. She understood terrorism. Her job was to monitor the political landscape, including demonstrations, terror groups, and possible threats to Everson. As she spoke, she sometimes seemed absorbed in something altogether different. Something far off.

What is your role in this? she said.

I’m going to get him back. I said it with complete confidence. Like there was no other consideration, no other option, nothing more to it.

Really? she said. Very cavalier. How will you go about doing that?

Don’t know yet, which is why I’m counting on you to get me close to him.

You? Alone? These are terrorists. Cold-blooded killers. They hate like you’ve never seen hate. To them, life is cheap. They would murder you on a whim.

There would need to be a lot of them, I said. But look, that’s not your problem, it’s mine. At this point all I want to do is talk.

Talk?

Talk to the captors, I said. Forget the detainees at Gitmo, I can’t do anything about that. But McCain’s company is prepared to pay the ransom. You say the terrorists want money. They can have money. But I need to see what we’re buying, and I need to talk to the head man face to face.

McCain’s company can do this? she said.

The Pittsburgh Pump & Valve. Built from scratch. Now he employs seventeen thousand people at seventy manufacturing sites the world over. Sales, four billion. McCain’s net worth: just north of three billion. The company manufactures precision valves and industrial pumps.

I knew Chennai is a hotbed of automotive production, hosting, in addition to Everson, Hyundai, BMW, Renault, Mitsubishi, Daimler, and Nissan.

What were you doing at Everson Motors? she said.

First stop in an effort to get McCain back.

Are you qualified to be this army of one? she said.

Yes, I said and left it at that.

I wasn’t going to tell her I had been a hood in the Pittsburgh mob through high school and several years after, boxed the Golden Gloves for a couple years, became a cop, couldn’t take the discipline of the police force, quit and tried it on my own as a private eye. Then a friend of mine found a small uncharted island in the Bahamas and conned me into moving down there from Pittsburgh. Now I work in a tropical climate and take odd jobs from clients all over the world. People like McCain are kidnapped; I get them back. Artwork is stolen; I get it back for half its value. A young girl is raped and murdered; her father wants justice. I get it for him.

And why would you be concerned about Mr. McCain? she said.

Known him since first grade, I said. You don’t leave your buddies out there helpless in the hands of an enemy.

Of course not, she said in a mocking tone. Damon and Pythias, the test of true friendship.

I nodded. I knew nothing about Damon and Pythias, not a clue. A nod seemed the thing to do.

McCain and I had been kids together, shot hoops in the asphalt yard next to the elementary school, learned about girls together, played on the high school football team. I worked for him for a short while, then went off to a belated tour of college and the cops. Our friendship remained strong, sentimental maybe, because we’d known each other so long. Amrita may or may not have understood all the years of friendship. More than friendship. Love? No, too mushy. But close. She may or may not have understood the brand of justice I might wield, or the code that some men live by. But that didn’t matter. It was none of Amrita Sahir’s affair.

You’ll help? I said.

I knew she’d help. It first became obvious when she had cornered me in the courtyard of the Everson Motors building.

I’ve done homework, she said. The leader of this group is a man named Agha Wakil. He is bright, high IQ, well educated, comes from a wealthy family. He does this because he is committed to the religion of Islam, fundamental, as it has been from the beginning. They say he had a hand in the planning of the World Trade Center operation. He is the most likely one to have planned McCain’s kidnapping. His followers are holding your friend in a house in the hills north of here, a highly secret location. I trust you will not reveal the source of your knowledge of this place. My life would be worthless should they discover it was I who revealed the location.

I wondered how she would know the location of the captor house and why she would give it to me at the risk of her life. I let it go. The answer would play out over time.

She continued. These terrorists detest you and your country. They see you Americans as morally bankrupt, poisoned by wealth; homes, cars, toys, but hollow to the core. No spirit. No substance. Perpetually tense. Depressed. They fight for the things you Westerners deplore. They fight for primitive government, primitive ideas of decency, primitive lifestyles, women’s faces covered. They are indifferent to material wealth. They will fight the jihad until they win or until they die doing so. They have no problem going to Allah.

Warriors too willing to die probably will, I said, They bring it on themselves. In that regard, they’re vulnerable.

Maybe so, she said. Nevertheless, I will have a young operative here in the morning. Ten o’clock. He will take you to the captor house. His name is Azra. He speaks both Dari and Pashto. Pashto is the official language of Afghanistan, but only about thirty-five percent of the population speaks it. In all, there are about forty different languages here in roughly two hundred dialects. Azra will get you through it.

Ten o’clock, I said.

She rose to indicate the end of the meeting.

One more thing, she said. Prepare yourself. You will be appalled at what you see.

Appalled? I said.

This Agha Wakil, his personal courage is without question. He is a savage. Why? I don’t know, but you must be careful.

"I’m not easily appalled by anything."

You will see.

2

At ten o’clock the following morning, Azra pulled up to the front of the hotel in an old, beat-up Toyota Corolla. I knew it was Azra because he stepped out of the car and, with one foot still on the rocker panel, gazed over the top as if looking for a stranger.

It is hard for me to tell the age of men in full beard, but I figured him for young. Maybe mid twenties. His hair was full and black and matched the beard. Amrita had told me he came from wealth, didn’t need money, but liked the adventure of living on the edge. His eyes were deep blue, almost black, serious and focused as if the whole of his being were devoted to picking me out of the crowd of hotel guests. He was tall and slim, wore the typical shalwar kameez, a long cotton shirt over loose baggy trousers, and gave the impression of athletic agility.

I waved and walked toward the car.

Sloan, he said as I reached the passenger door. "You didn’t need to wave. You broadcast yourself as American.

I was wearing jeans, T-shirt, and running shoes. The gun was back on my hip.

Azra climbed in behind the wheel, and I took the shotgun seat. He pulled away from the front of the hotel.

You are going to the house just to talk? he said. It is what I have been told.

Just to talk, I said.

I will drive you there, but only so far. The road will end, and we will need to walk the remainder of the way up the ravine to the house.

You were educated in America, I said. You speak English well.

No, he said. I have taken many courses here in Kabul. I am making good money now, especially doing this work as I am doing for you. Clandestine, we say. Huh? Someday I will go to school in America. Maybe Princeton or Dartmouth.

He had a second thought. He laughed. Or maybe Miami, where the women wear bikinis.

We rode for a while in silence, leaving the luxury of the city behind. Kabul is the capital city of Afghanistan, the largest, roughly three million people. It sits seven thousand feet above sea level on a broad plain ringed by mountains.

At first, the sight of guns is unsettling, but they are so widespread that eventually you lose sight of them as one would lose sight of a Picasso hanging in the foyer of his home, having passed it a thousand times. Coming out of the city, the road is macadam but soon becomes rocks and dust and rutted. In some areas, it’s shell-scarred from the endless activity of wars in this country, a reminder to the rest of us that not all is right in the world. Evil and violence come and go. In the meantime, folks in other countries around the globe rise every day, head off to work, raise their children, and rain affection on loved ones. The scars in the landscape there in Kabul present evidence that evil exists. Sometimes evil appears to have the upper hand. Sometimes we are called upon to deal with it.

We bumped past children who played barefoot along the roadside, and we passed bombed-out mud-brick buildings. We rode for some time like that. Not a great distance because the pace was slow. I’m told that in the villages, women with their faces covered fight for food. They fight against the dirt. They fight for electricity, for the right to be educated. In this way, they labor for their community, but they don’t think beyond it, beyond their local community. They don’t think of the country as a whole. Although the rest of the world thinks of Afghanistan as a cohesive place, it is actually a collection of communities that don’t often feel connected to each other. They can’t. Perhaps we Americans can help. Maybe not.

Eventually, Azra turned off this road and drove slowly up a ravine on a dirt trail roughly twice as wide as the car. The ravine was long and bordered by purple rocks. It came to a rounded point at the top, gouged into the mountain by glaciers of an ice age in the distant past.

Some find this dusty topography disarmingly beautiful. I don’t know. Different from the rolling green hills of Western Pennsylvania that I had called home, back where McCain and I had grown up together on the streets of Pittsburgh. McCain was big and tough, six three, two-twenty, and never took well to losing, which is why the Pump & Valve today is a winner.

I was thinking about this as we drove up the trail from the base of the ravine. Ahead of us, where the trail became a narrow footpath, three old Corollas were parked facing down the ravine. One was blue, the two others red. One of the red cars was bleached by the sun so that the color was more gray than red. Azra turned our Corolla around and parked it facing down the ravine like the others.

Up there, he said, looking up the slope, that is the house.

House?

"In America you might say hut."

A small mud-brick hut sat on an escarpment just shy of the crest of the ridge. They had built it out from barren rock so that the front door would give a view of the ravine below and anyone coming up, but there were no front windows. There would be no back windows because the hut was against the rock, which immediately told me it would be vulnerable from the rear. A veranda spanned the front of the building. There were men on it, most likely watching us as we began the climb.

There were no sounds except for our breathing. We were both physically fit but climbed the steep slope with effort. I could feel the nine against my hip. At the top, I turned to survey the land behind us. The ravine was shaped like a horseshoe, a little more V-shaped than U-shaped, but looking down toward the open end, the ravine—we’d call it a gully or hollow in America—ran deep. The main road crossed the open end of the horseshoe and sent up the short trail where we had parked the Corolla.

Several men on the veranda stood as we approached. They wore the Taliban uniform, the shalwar kameez, but at the waist was a leather belt from which hung a long dagger, which I guessed to be the Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife I had been told about. Each had an AK-47 assault rifle slung over the shoulder.

Al-Qaida warriors, said Azra.

I nodded.

The air smelled of dirt and animals. There was no wind. There were no sounds. The terrain was such that it sloped down from the hut, leaving the surface of the veranda four feet or so off the floor of the ravine.

We’ve come to see Wakil, I said.

The men just looked at each other. One came forward to the edge of the veranda. He was tall, maybe six four, went maybe two-forty. He unslung the AK-47 and leaned on it in a squat to get close to us. We looked up at him.

He looked at Azra.

Who wants to see Agha Wakil? he said. His English was broken but easily understood. His face was bearded, he wore a turban on his head, and his smile was missing two teeth.

I do, I said.

He shifted on his toes and pivoted slightly to look at me.

"It is you who want to see Wakil," he said.

I nodded.

So? he said.

So what? I said.

So? he said. So what? So who are you? What is your name?

Sloan, Crete Sloan.

And so, Sloan, why do you wish to see the Wakil?

McCain.

McCain? What is this McCain?

Look, I said. Cut the shit and get Wakil. I know you have McCain inside there.

His forehead lined and his brows furrowed.

Cut the shit? he said. What this means?

Azra said something to him in Dari, the native language.

Ah, said the Big One. He stood and chuckled. It wasn’t a laugh, more of a heh, heh, heh. Cut the shit, he said. I like this. Cut the shit.

He crossed the veranda and went through the door into the hut.

A moment later, a man came out through the door. He was older than Big One, maybe mid thirties, and only slightly shorter. He wore a camouflage military uniform and combat boots, a dagger strapped to his hip and an AK-47 over his shoulder. What appeared to be a Beretta .45 was holstered on his left hip. That would make him left-handed. Probably.

He stood erect in an attempt to affect the presence of a professional soldier. His hair and eyebrows were heavy and black, so that, when blended with a full black beard, they left only small patches of facial skin, which was walnut-colored and dusky. His nose was flat, the nostrils flared. The eyes were dark and drilled me as if he were trying to eliminate me with just a stare. He came across the veranda and stood tall above us.

Wakil? I said.

3

Agha Wakil looked down first at Azra, then me.

Sameer tells me you want to see me.

Sameer, I said, looking at Big One. I