Part 58 (2/2)

The men we were looking for were almost at that point.

It spilled out like this . . .

We were on an off-the-books search-and-rescue for an even deeper off-the-books infil team composed of four members of Rattlesnake Team.That team was one of four DMS groups on semipermanent loan to the CIA for operations here on the Big Sand. Rattlesnake Team was hunting a very special Taliban convoy that was reported to be using opium transport to cover a much nastier cargo. Some kind of new pathogen that either had been weaponized or was on the way to a lab to be weaponized.That was about as precise as the intel got, but it rang the right bells all the way up the chain of command.The CIA deals with WMDs, but when it comes to bioweapons, they pick up the phone and call us.

Here's where it got complicated in a freaky kind of way.

The CIA had gotten a tip about the caravan from a village headman named Aziz, who was a known Taliban sympathizer. And the tip was not the result of a bribe, threat, or any enhanced interrogation. Aziz went into Kabul, bought a disposable cell phone, and called a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who was in the CIA.

Yeah, chew on that for a moment.

Why'd Aziz make the call? Turns out that, despite digging the money the Taliban paid him to smooth some details relate, this guy's regular gig was facilitating archaeological digs all through this part of the country. He knows who to bribe to get permits, and he makes arrangements with the local bad guys not to shoot the university types who risk their a.s.ses to collect Sumerian potsherds or ancient dinosaur p.o.o.p. In the middle of a war. I know, right?

Understand, most Muslims, especially those with college educations, are fiercely protective of anything historical.They treasure and preserve culture, partly because most of them are civilized folks who don't have their heads up their a.s.ses, and also because Islam contributed a h.e.l.l of a lot to art, science, and math. After all, ”algebra” is an Anglicized version of the Arabic word ”al-jabr.”They invented it.

However, there's this small group of total fundamentalist d.i.c.kheads who think that Allah wants them to blow up anything that wasn't created for or by Muslims. They already destroyed some of the most profoundly beautiful Buddhist temples and statues.They want to destroy the Sphinx and the pyramids, too. The kind of stuff that would make Indiana Jones go totally postal.

Well, apparently some of the local Taliban have been messing with dig sites, shrines, and old ruins that predate Islam. People of one kind or another have been living in the region since the Middle Paleolithic era-call it fifty thousand years, give or take a long weekend. Islam's been around since the seventh century. These bozos wanted to erase any evidence that a civilized or enlightened culture existed before Muhammad founded the religion.

Aziz dimed the Taliban partly because, from the CIA intel reports, he was more of an opportunist than a villain, and partly because the destruction was cutting into his main source of income, which was greasing the archaeology network.

Or so we thought at the time. We found out more later, but I'll get to that.

So, Aziz contacted the CIA to tell them that the Taliban had royally screwed the pooch in two very distinct and related ways. First, they had taken control of a series of caves that were scheduled for excavation by a twenty-man team from the Inst.i.tut National de Recherches Archeologiques Preventives in France, thus preventing Aziz from exacting his inflated fees to provide on-site safety for the team. And, second, in their downtime between ferrying tons of opium through the region, they were amusing themselves by destroying one of the world's most pristine lilitu, a kind of female Semitic desert demon related to the Lilith legends of the ancient Jews. Part of the shrine's uniqueness was that it was in Afghanistan at all-the lilitu were Mesopotamian monsters, and Afghanistan was not part of that empire.

Point is, the desecration of the site-and the clear loss of income for Aziz-turned him into a CIA informant. He'd have rather seen this band of Taliban get whacked than lose the university trade. The next link in the chain was that the CIA determined that this was the same Taliban group running the caravans that were likely hiding the bioweapons.

Nothing in the Middle East is ever simple and straightforward. Not a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing.

So, my boss, Mr. Church, sent Rattlesnake Team in to take out one of the caravans and kick-start the process of reclaiming those caves. None of this was in the name of archaeology or the preservation of antiquities.

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