The Mercenary by Jeffrey E Stern

Author:Jeffrey E Stern [E., Jeffrey Stern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2023-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

WINTER 2008

He made more friends. The higher-class kind, the made men or at least men on the make, who drew to him more easily now, and he knew why: in their eyes he was becoming more civilized. A sheen from the foreigners he mingled with rubbed off on him. He could feel himself starting to sparkle. He could see it in the people across the carpet, drinking tea or liquor with him. He began to spend time with the giant colonel from the NATO base just to drink and gossip, the one nicknamed by drivers at the old company “Buffer” for his thundering voice. Aimal’s nighttime drives with the USAID chief helped Colonel Buffer feel more comfortable around him too, and being with Colonel Buffer helped him attract others. New friends helped him make newer friends. He met another hustling Afghan, a little older, impressed with Aimal’s access to foreigners. Staying at a hotel Aimal drove by often because it was near his mother’s house, living there, really, because he was from out of town and determined to stay in Kabul as long as it took to get what he wanted. A new friend who said he was a candidate. He’d once been a fighter of medium rank and good repute from the Panjshir Valley, but Aimal didn’t hold that against him because this candidate was trying to do what Aimal was trying to do. Defying a script built into the condition of his birth, lowering a shoulder and forcing a route through to his own story. The candidate didn’t want to be a fighter anymore. He was trying to go straight and serve the people; he said he’d meet every power broker it took to get himself a position in government. He liked to drink too. The candidate was someone Aimal could see himself someday doing some kind of business with. Aimal was building the network he needed, and now it was time to activate the next part of his plan.

He needed more control. He needed his name in the minds of even more foreigners to make sure he heard about big opportunities first. He needed to skim more customers away from other companies, more reasons they’d prefer his service to others. He was already offering something extra, a driver doing concierge duty for the foreigners, and that was good, but it was not enough, and he had an idea for how to carve out an edge.

He’d picked up on how impatient foreigners tended to be. In the West, schedules must be shrunken, unrelenting; Americans didn’t know how to sit. If he could make rides quicker, he’d have a bigger advantage. He couldn’t drive any faster than he already did. Traffic was traffic, and he’d maxed out the shortcuts he’d picked up first as a vehicle agent and then by plying the city streets with other companies.

But everyone knew the slowest parts of driving in the city were the times when you weren’t moving at all: security checkpoints.

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