Arabian Deception Read online

“The terms of the loan allow us to call the loan under certain circumstances, such as when the repayment is in jeopardy or if the loan-to-asset ratio exceeds the call level. Pat, the repayment is in jeopardy, and with the market in free fall, the value of your property has been cut in half, which means the loan-to-asset ratios exceed the call level.”

  “The only reason the repayment is in jeopardy is because you swept the two point one million in cash I had in my checking account and applied it to the balance of the loan.”

  “That still leaves an outstanding balance at over four million. We had to get the loan-to-asset ratio down as far and as fast as possible.”

  “You froze my credit line, you stole all of my cash, you’ve made it impossible for me to complete the houses that I have under contract, ones that I’ve already sold and now cannot complete and get paid for. How am I supposed to pay you back?”

  “I can’t answer that. Those sales contracts you have are conditional on the buyers finding mortgages, which I doubt will happen, so don’t plan on getting paid if you finish those houses. All I know is that no more credit can be extended to you or to any other builder.”

  “I don’t sell homes to people with subprime mortgages. I don’t have anything to do with the idiotic situation the masters of the universe in New York City have gotten themselves into. I’m not asking for a bailout like every damn billionaire banker is right now, including your bank. I just want to be allowed to keep my cash and be given the time to repay my loan according to the original terms. That two million is more than eighteen months of payments, for crying out loud. This whole problem will blow over in eighteen months. Give me my money back,” Pat said.

  “Sorry, Pat, I can’t help you. It’s not in my hands.”

  “I’m not asking you to help me. I’m asking you to stop screwing me.”

  The good news was, that wasn’t all Pat’s cash. He had money stashed away in a personal account in another bank, and he had a solid stream of rental income from a number of apartments and properties that were already paid off. The problem was that his rental income was barely enough to cover the loan payment, and the remaining cash was only enough to support salaries and his family for another four months. With two in college, two in private high school and a relatively upscale lifestyle, Pat’s costs were more than twice Stan and Jessica’s salary.

  Pat spent the next two months trying to keep things going. He hired a lawyer to fight the bank. Despite the fact that he was still making monthly payments of fifty-seven thousand dollars, because the loan was in default, he was getting zinged with a penalty each month of forty-two thousand. Stan chipped away at finishing the houses on the subdivision, as progress was a condition of the loan. Progress was difficult to make without the cash to buy materials and hire subcontractors. In December, Pat went to his CPA, who told Pat that his tax bill for the year was going to be over ninety thousand, a number that Pat had never factored into the equation on how long he could keep things afloat. Everything he had built over the past four years was crashing in all around him.

  Pat’s lawyer, Jack Sullivan, fast-tracked our case against the bank into binding arbitration. Jack invited Pat to the reading of the decision made by the retired judge who was serving as the arbitrator. They met at a law office on Fayetteville Street, next to the county courthouse in downtown Raleigh. The two opposing counsels had tables facing the judge. Pat sat next to Jack. He didn’t recognize anyone at the other table. He had pestered Jack the previous night with a dozen phone calls, going over every possible outcome scenario. They had nothing left to say to each other. He just put his hand on Pat’s shoulder and said. “Let right prevail.” It was February and even though the room was cool, the shirt under Pat’s suit was soaked.

  Pat had been up all night going over different courses of action based on the judge’s decision. If he reversed the bank’s actions, returning his two million and removing the penalties from the default, Pat was golden. If he held that the bank’s action was permissible, Pat was bankrupt, and the bank was going to foreclose on every asset he had including his family’s home.

  Pat went directly home following the edict to speak with his wife. The kids were at school and Pat thought it would be a good time to talk. The past four years had been the best years of their marriage. As he pulled up into the driveway, he was dreading the discussion. The ride from the lawyer’s office in Raleigh was twenty-five minutes. he’d used the time to make two phone calls: the first to Rachel, his wife, to explain the arbitrators’ decision; the second to his old Ranger regiment commander to accept a job in Afghanistan.

  “I have no other options, I have to take myself off the payroll and contract out,” Pat said.

  “No, you don’t. You need to stay right here and be a father and a husband,” Rachel said.

  “If I stay, there will be no here. There’s not enough cash coming in to cover the loan on the subdivision and our living expenses,” Pat explained.

  “You can lay off Stan and Jessica.”

  “We spend three times what the two of them make combined. Laying them off won’t make any difference,” Pat said.

  “We can tighten our belts.”

  “Two college tuitions at one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars; high school is another twenty-four thousand. Do you want to pull the kids out of school?”

  “You could figure this out if you tried. I’m not going back to that life, but you miss it. I know you do. If you go to Afghanistan, don’t come back,” she screamed.

  Pat hadn’t expected her to take the news well, but he’d never expected this. He left the house, got in his pickup and went to the office. When he arrived, both Stan and Jessica were hovering around the common area outside his office. Pat was looking for an escape. He was in no mood to talk to anyone, but he decided to put both of them out of their misery.

  “I can tell by your face it didn’t go well. Just tell me what you have in mind for a severance package,” Stan said.

  “There’s no need for a severance package. Neither of you are going anywhere. But, we’re going to have to take some drastic actions to keep this thing afloat,” Pat said as both moved in closer. “The loan is still active. It’s not called, and it’s not in default. The back penalties have all been removed. The two million is gone. It will remain against the balance.”

  Jessica was doing the math in her head. Pat could see it on her face as she realized that, with nothing coming in from home sales, there was only enough revenue to cover the loan and her and Stan’s salary.

  “What are you planning to do, Pat?” she said.

  “I’m going to take myself off the payroll for a while. I’m going to work a job in Afghanistan. While I’m gone, I need you guys to keep the rental income going, and I need you to make as much headway as you can on this place with whatever free cash we scrape up.”

  “When do you leave?” asked Stan.

  “Next week, unless my wife kills me first,” Pat said.

  “Is Rachel taking it bad?” asked Jessica.

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  Pat could see tears forming in Jessica’s eyes. Stan was quiet, which was even more rare. Pat left the little meeting and went into his office to sulk. He looked out the window from his desk. It was an overcast gray winter day, which very much fit his mood. It was a Solomon-like task trying to make the right decision that did least harm to the people he was responsible for.

  Jessica’s husband had been out of work for months. He was a car salesman, and the recession had devastated the industry. Her job was the only thing keeping them from being thrown out onto the street. Ever since his divorce, Stan lived paycheck to paycheck, and if he lost this job, his next stop was a homeless shelter, because there was nobody hiring in the building industry, which was all he knew.

  Pat needed both of them to work the daily tasks with the rental properties to keep the bank at bay. His kids’ future depended on their continuing in the same schools they were already attending, college and otherw
ise. Going to Afghanistan and working a contract was his only option. Why couldn’t Rachel understand that?

  Pat knew the answer to the question. His time in the military had been hard on his wife, and now that he was going back, it was too much for her to handle. Except for the scheduled deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, most of the time when he went out on a mission, he wasn’t able to tell his family where he was going and when he would be back. Sometimes, when things went bad, she would find out from watching the news. During the debacle in Mogadishu, she hadn’t find out Pat was there until a notification team had come to the house to tell her he was in a hospital in Germany, critically wounded. Even though he was taking a noncombatant job in Afghanistan, Pat did understand that he was reopening some old psychological wounds.

  Chapter 4

  Afghanistan

  The first time Pat came to Afghanistan was by parachute. It was a HAHO jump into Kandahar Province days prior to the 2001 invasion. The five times after that were in a C-17 that landed at Bagram Airbase. This time he was arriving on a Sophia Airlines commercial flight from Dubai. The no-frills 737 was full. The passengers were a mix of defense contractors and Afghans. The contractors were easy to pick out because they were all Europeans and Americans sporting the latest in tactical fashion. During his absence, military tactical gear had somehow become less about function and more about style. It even had logos. The Afghans were all testing the limits of carry-on with items they had purchased in Dubai, and they were in local dress, which consisted of dirty-looking loose-fitting cotton pants and matching shirts that come down to knee level. Since it was winter, most also wore heavy vests and turbans.

  The plane flew over Kabul International Airport and then corkscrewed rapidly down to the runway to avoid ground fire from outside the airport fence. The tight turn strained the old aircraft, but it held together as they bounced onto the runway and came to a jarring stop. Burned-out skeletons of helicopters and airplanes littered the areas adjacent to the runway as they taxied to a small dilapidated terminal.

  Pat spent a week in Camp Eggers, next to the ISAF headquarters in the protected zone that includes the US embassy, the UN Headquarters and the other major Western institutions. After his orientation was completed, he went out to his assignment in Camp Blackhorse in Pol-e-Charki, which was on the eastern border of Kabul Province, adjacent to the province of Laghman on the Kabul River and Jalalabad Road. He had his own B-hut to sleep in, which was a room that was about eight by eight feet in a mobile building. The shower was in a small trailer, a short walk across the compound.

  Camp Blackhorse was a tiny US camp that was next to a large Afghan National Army camp that housed an ANA Corps headquarters, a commando battalion and a basic training element. Blackhorse was home to two Special Forces A-Teams and a Marine Regional Combat Assistance Team (RCAT). Pat’s job was to support the RCAT. He was supposed to train and advise the 201st ANA on operations and intelligence. The RCAT commander, a Marine colonel, had the same role, but he was also in charge of over a hundred Marines embedded within the 201st ANA battalions who were scattered all across Eastern Afghanistan. The 201st was responsible for eleven of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces. Everything east of Kabul to the Pakistan border belonged to the 201st, which meant Colonel Chu had small teams of his guys in some of the most dangerous places on the planet. Because of his other responsibilities, offering unheeded advice to Afghan generals fell far down on the colonel’s priority list, which pretty much left the daily training and advising to Pat.

  Pat’s three charges were the Corps commander, Lieutenant General Wardak, his operations officer, Brigadier General Aqa, and his intelligence office, Colonel Khan. Pat was supposed to help them with the planning of future operations and the command and control of current combat operations. He also helped the ANA coordinate with the NATO forces in the 201st area of operation. The US had two Army Brigades under the leadership of the Eighty-Second Airborne commander operating in the same eleven provinces. There was also a brigade of the French Foreign Legion and handful of smaller NATO contingents. It wasn’t a very difficult job, because when it came to combat operations, the ANA avoided them at all costs. The commander and staff listened to Pat just fine when it came to planning. It was just that when it came to actually executing those plans for combat operations, something always came up. It was uncanny. General Wardak was a regular Patton during the planning stage, but every time he was ready to kick off another bold offensive to drive back the evil Taliban, those generals in the Ministry of Defense denied the mission. General Wardak then made a big show of expressing his frustration at those timid souls back in MOD and then disappeared for a day or two.

  After another rigorous day with the Afghans, Pat passed through security and entered tiny Camp Blackhorse. It took him a few weeks to establish a routine. First the gym, then a couple hours of Trident paperwork sent to him by Jessica via e-mail, and then the highlight of the day, the dining facility. The gym was fantastic. It was always crowded late in the day, because many of the Marines and Green Berets had the same routine as Pat did when they weren’t out on mission. The equipment was top-of-the-line. When you were fighting trillion-dollar wars, you didn’t skimp on treadmills and ellipticals. Pat’s workout, according to the thirty-something Special Forces ODA “operators,” was outdated. Those guys were all doing ropes, kettlebells and weird CrossFit routines, which was great, because it left the free weights available for Pat and the Marines.

  Pat left the shower trailer wrapped in a towel and walked across the gravel compound in his flip-flops to his tiny cell in the B-hut. He checked his cell phone and saw that he had a message. He didn’t get many phone calls. Once he left for the day, the Afghans forgot about him, and when the guys in the RCAT wanted to talk, they just knocked on Pat’s door. The camp was that small. It was a cheap Nokia phone with only a few contacts in it, and the call wasn’t from one of them. Pat didn’t recognize the number, so he ignored it. He sat at his small desk and went through his task list from Jessica. Approving small invoices for apartment maintenance and the like. When he got done, curiosity got the better of him, and he decided to find out who it was.

  “Hello, this is Pat returning your call.”

  “This is Mike Guthrie. How have you been keeping?” It took him a few seconds to process the information.

  “Good, how about you?”

  “I’m on my way to Camp Blackhorse. Can you meet me at around six?”

  “Sure, let’s meet at the DFAC.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you at six.”

  Pat hadn’t spoken to Mike Guthrie in eighteen years. He was the last person Pat ever expected a call from. The only reason Pat even checked his messages was in the hope that one day, his wife would call him back. The last time he had seen Mike was at tryouts in West Virginia in 1991.

  Up until that point, Mike and Pat had had parallel careers. They’d met while serving as platoon leaders in the Second Ranger Battalion at Fort Lewis, Washington. They had both done a stint in an operation called Blue-Light, which at the time was a classified JSOC mission in Honduras. They’d worked out of the same compound and ran small-unit combat patrols, mostly ambushes and recons against the Sandinistas along the Hondo border who were coming in from Nicaragua. It was the Cold War, and it had made sense at the time. They’d returned to the battalion just in time for Just Cause, and they’d both jumped into Rio Hato during the seizure of the Commendacia. They’d attended the Infantry Officers Advanced Course at Fort Benning together and then gone their separate ways; Mike had been assigned to Second Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas, and Pat had gone to First Armored Division in Germany. They’d both commanded mechanized infantry companies during Desert Storm. Pat had been surprised to see him at Delta Selection. Their class had consisted of fifteen officers and one hundred enlisted. It wasn’t a very social experience, so they never had a chance to really catch up. A lot of the attrition was through injuries, which was the reason Pat had heard Mike had washed out. Pat had be
en the lucky officer who’d made the cut, along with three enlisted guys, and after that he’d lost track of Mike.

  The DFAC was the social hub of Camp Blackhorse, and when the ODA teams and RCAT staff weren’t outside the wire on missions, it could get crowded. Like the gym, everything was top-notch. The food was better than anything Pat had ever had anywhere else in the military. It was Air Force quality. A lot had happened between 2004 and 2009 in terms of quality of life for the deployed, that was for sure.

  Pat recognized Mike when he walked into the cafeteria seating area. He was a little heavier, with some graying. He walked with a slight limp, but otherwise, he was still the same. Pat stood and walked over to meet him. They shook hands and went through the serving line together.

  “You picked a good night to come. It’s surf and turf Thursday.”

  “People talk about the Camp Blackhorse DFAC countrywide. I feel lucky to have gotten a reservation,” replied Mike.

  After they had finished their meals and after the crowd had cleared and they had some privacy, Mike got down to business.

  “I’ll bet you want to know why and maybe even how I looked you up,” he said.

  “Yes, that would be a good start,” Pat replied.

  Mike leaned forward. “I’m with the Agency. I work out of the embassy. Every advisor gets vetted before being hired, and I get a courtesy copy of the slate. When I saw your name on the list, I talked to a guy at ISAF. He talked to someone at your company and had you placed as the advisor to the 201st Corps commander.”

  “Why did you do that?” Pat asked.

  “General Wardak is a problem. I don’t know if he’s just corrupt, or if he’s Taliban, or if he’s both. I need a guy on the inside who can keep an eye on him. I think his actions are killing American soldiers, but until I can prove it, I can’t do anything about it.”

  “What is it exactly you want me to do?” Pat asked.

  “I want you to spy on Wardak and his operation and report to me regularly on what you find.”