KBL by John Weisman Read Free Book Online Page B

want. Get her full-time care, if that’s what it takes.”
    Ty looked at his boss with pursed lips. “Goddammit, Rich.” He stood up. “I’m going down to the cafeteria for some coffee.”
    Rich’s expression remained neutral. “Sure, go on, think it over. But bring me back a cup, okay? Black, no sugar.”
     
    Of course he’d volunteered. At heart, Ty was still a Soldier who believed in the old-fashioned values of Duty, Honor, Country. Even so, he’d wrung extra funds out of Rich Erwin so that Patty would be covered 24/7 while he was gone. And on the upside, the TDY would give him a chance to catch up with his old Delta compadre, call-sign Loner, who was running AWG’s D Squadron these days. Loner was a lanky, dark-haired chief warrant officer who lived in Maryland about a forty-five-minute drive from Meade. He was the best pistol shot Ty had ever worked with. And one of the hardest workers.
    Ty would travel in the same way as on his first TDY to Pakistan: on an official—as opposed to a diplomatic—passport and under the alias of Tim White. His cover was technical security consultant to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and the American Consulate in Lahore.
    Loner and two other D Squadron shooters, Kent and Gary, would also come in on burgundy (official) passports as contract security personnel detailed to work as drivers for the State Department’s regional security officer in Islamabad. The RSO would then detail them to the Lahore consulate.
    On paper, Ty would report to the RSOs in Lahore and Peshawar to do security surveys; in essence, he would be the advance man for diplomatic forays. Which he would indeed do, to maintain what is called in the intelligence business “cover for status.” Ty needed cover for status because both consulates, as well as the embassy in Islamabad, were chockablock with personnel the State Department called FSNs: Foreign Service nationals. FSNs were required because, to be blunt, not very many American diplomats are fluent in the language of the country to which they are assigned. Currently, for example, the entire State Department had only six diplomats who spoke fluent Pashto, and none of them worked in Lahore. It was therefore FSNs, not FSOs (U.S. Foreign Service officers) who actually carried out most of America’s diplomacy at the consulate. The Americans were limited to dealing with those Pakistanis who spoke English.
    Moreover, CIA was convinced that many of the FSNs who worked as consular staff, visa examiners, drivers, exterior security guards, translators, clerks, maintenance crew, cooks, and secretaries either reported to, or were officers of, ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service.
    It was a simple fact of life that every American consulate and embassy was riddled with intelligence operatives from the host country. Which is why Ty and his colleagues had to maintain their covers for status and actually do the work their visas said they were supposed to be doing.
    Hostile surveillance and infiltrators were the reasons there were always areas within embassies and consulates that were secure, and where no FSNs were allowed. The regional security officer’s office suite was one of those secure areas. The consulate’s SCIF was inside the RSO’s suite. If the facility was large enough, CIA preferred to have its own SCIF. But in Lahore, even though the consulate was located in Pakistan’s second largest city, it shared quarters.
    The regional security officer was a fortysomething smart-talking redhead Second Amendment devotee known around the consulate as Mr. Wade. His radio call sign was Mountaineer, because Mr. Wade had gone to West Virginia University and his blue and gold WVU sweatshirt hung on a coat hook in the office. He wore it as a good luck talisman during football season, and so he was wearing it now, because the 9–4 Mountaineers were scheduled to play in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando in five days. Wade had done tours in Baghdad, Kabul, and Beirut. It hadn’t