Warriors (9781101621189) by Tom Young

just roll those guys up right now?” Parson asked.
    â€œI’m not sure we have enough to make an arrest,” Cunningham. “They could claim they had no idea about the smuggling. We might not have the authority to arrest, either.”
    â€œHow’s that?”
    Cunningham explained how Kyrgyz officials had the final say. If an American airman got caught trafficking drugs, the USAF security police or OSI could arrest him, no problem. But it got sticky with third-country nationals. What was America’s status of forces agreement with Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan? Who had jurisdiction? You could clap the cuffs on somebody at the wrong time, blow the whole operation, and watch the suspects walk.
    â€œI’m not even sure this is our case anymore,” Cunningham added.
    â€œWhy’s that?”
    â€œOSI’s mission is to deal with threats to the Air Force and the U.S. government,” Cunningham said. “Anything else is off my radar.” Cunningham’s brogue twisted “radar” into “rador.” He explained that sticking to the main mission fit right in with what his elders had taught him as he grew up on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. You defended your island, and you protected your town and your family. But the world beyond the breakers could tend to itself.
    As he spoke, the OSI agent kept eyeing the man by the Antonov.
    â€œYour boss feels differently, though,” Cunningham added.
    â€œWhy’s he so interested?”
    â€œI don’t know, exactly. But when he learned this thing had a Belgrade connection, his ears perked up.”
    The man in civvies hovered over the ground crew like a supervisor. Parson could think of no legitimate reason for a civilian to keep such close watch on Afghan military cargo. The guy pulled out his cell phone, dialed a number, and spoke for several minutes. Parson strained to listen amid the noise of aircraft coming and going. Sometimes the man’s words got drowned out, and Parson could hear nothing. What little he did hear sounded like Russian at first. He understood none of it. But then he heard one word that he recognized:
porucnik
.
    Many years ago, in a very different world with very different threats, he’d attended intel briefings on the Serbian military. Among other things, he’d learned the ranks. In Serbo-Croatian, a
porucnik
was a lieutenant. He told Cunningham what he’d heard.
    â€œOh, boy,” Cunningham said. “If this is Serbian military running drugs—or maybe some gang of ex-military types—that’s damned dangerous.”
    Cell Phone Guy finally ended his call. The man looked European, and Parson guessed Serbo-Croatian was his native language. He certainly wasn’t an Afghan.
    Near the end of the day, the Afghans closed the doors to their hangar. Parson called the KC-135 crew to tell them they could move their jet. He felt he was climbing down from a deer stand, having bagged important information. When Parson and Cunningham left the flight line, Cunningham headed in the direction of Webster’s office. The OSI agent disappeared for the rest of the afternoon.
    Parson found Gold in the coffee shop, and he quietly told her about the out-of-place civilian he and Cunningham had seen. Gold sipped an espresso, and she’d clearly made friends with the resident cat. The Green Beans mascot lay in her lap, purred as she stroked its back. On the wall behind Gold’s chair, Parson noticed the coffee shop’s main decor feature: propaganda posters from the Soviet era. One showed a cosmonaut staring into the future, chiseled face shielded by a helmet visor. Red star on the side of the helmet. Another depicted a Young Pioneer wearing the red neck scarf of the Soviet youth group. In one hand the boy held a Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle. In the other he displayed a paper target with five holes punched in and around the bull’s-eye. If I had grown up here, Parson