The Book of Truths by Bob Mayer

Author:Bob Mayer [Mayer, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Military, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9781477807293
Google: fr5emgEACAAJ
Amazon: 1480531375
Publisher: 47North
Published: 2013-07-29T12:00:00+00:00

Neeley was doing her best to ignore the family. The steady rumble of the C-130 turboprop engines was a sound she was more than familiar with, but the excited Pakistani voices still bitching were getting on her nerves. They’d been in the air for a day, stopping briefly at Rhein-Main in Germany and were now somewhere over the North Atlantic. The pill had run out hours ago and all Neeley wanted to do was sleep.

Some people were never satisfied that you’d saved their lives.

The woman was now at the forefront, waving her arms and shouting at the interpreter.

“Enough!” Neeley finally yelled.

“You speak Pashto?” the wife asked, stunned. Neeley ranked the question up there with asking whether she was breathing oxygen, since she’d just done it.

“It’s been over a decade we’ve been at war there,” Neeley said. “I could’ve learned Latin and Greek in that time.”

“Why did you not speak to us?” the wife asked.

“All you do is argue. I didn’t have time for it on the ground and I don’t want to listen to it now.”

The words were like water breaking on rock. Ignored. “Where are you taking us?” the wife demanded. “What will happen to us?”

Neeley sighed. She hated dealing with amateurs. “What exactly did you think would happen when you gave up bin Laden’s location?”

The man finally spoke up. “They said we were safe. That they had a, how do you call it, a cover story.”

“Yeah,” Neeley agreed. “They even made movies about it. Better than admitting a pissed-off garbageman gave up the world’s most wanted terrorist simply because the asshole was using proper tradecraft technique and burning all his trash and not paying the local to haul it off. He didn’t think that one through. Should have paid you off not to get his trash.”

“I have a noble profession—” the man began, but Neeley didn’t have the patience for it.

“What did you think you were going to do with twenty-five million in Abbottabad?”

“We have received only a very small portion of it,” the wife argued. “We have been waiting—”

“You bought the nice fridge,” Neeley said. “You didn’t think people would notice? Didn’t you ever see Goodfellas?”

The little girl spoke for the first time. “What is Goodfellas?”

Neeley didn’t have the time or inclination to fill the girl in on the Lufthansa heist and what happened after. She’d have a chance to see the movie in the States.

“But we had no refrigerator,” the wife argued. “It was just a small one. We have been waiting very, very patiently.”

“Your new place will have one, I’m sure,” Neeley said. They didn’t understand the fundamental truth that the only thing that had kept this family alive so far was the cover story and the dribbled-out payment. And the only thing that kept the CIA looking good was projecting that its hard work had located bin Laden’s compound, not this wreck of a man. The combination had forced the case officer handling the informant and his family to keep them in place, trying to gain as much time as possible.

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