Read Online The Rendition by Albert Ashforth - Free Book Online

which I only found after a three-hour search. On that occasion, I reasoned that drowning was preferable to five years in an East German slammer, both of which I figured for total career killers. Fortunately, I encountered a Danish trawler before meeting up with a Communist patrol boat.
    Another time Buck and I were bringing out a Russian general, a guy who’d given us more information about Warsaw Pact battle plans than even we wanted to know, but who was close to a nervous breakdown and who’d outlived his value as a source. It was a Sunday night in the dead of winter, and we were supposed to rendezvous with a Black Hawk helicopter on a farm northeast of Berlin. First, we got lost. Then someonecaught wise to the helicopter parked on the field and alerted the
Volkspolizei
, who normally weren’t the world’s most efficient police force but who, this time, arrived in short order. As things turned out, I was bringing up the rear and, after taking a header, was a hundred yards behind Buck and the general as they scrambled onto the chopper.
    I didn’t know how far the Vopos were behind me, but the shots and the barking dogs sounded awfully close.
    As I zigzagged back and forth across the field, I expected to see the chopper go sailing off into the sky. But that’s not what happened. I later learned why they waited. With his weapon trained on the impatient pilots, Buck was shouting over the engine noise, shaking his head and pointing out to the field where I was stumbling and dodging with a platoon of East German soldiers in hot pursuit. Somehow I made it, with lots of hands hauling me up into the chopper with nothing to spare. With the three of us sprawled on the deck of the Black Hawk and holding on for dear life, we made it out of East German air space by flying under the radar at a speed upward of 140 knots.
    Buck and I still laugh when we recall that wild chopper ride, careening around and over smokestacks, communications towers and apartment buildings, and the deathly pale expression on the face of the Russian general. “Welcome to life in the West, Yuri!”
    We got the “Gold Dust Twins” moniker because we worked so well together and chalked up a few successes along the way.
    Looking around at one point, I paused and said, “There are times when I pinch myself just to make sure I’m not imagining things. That I’m still here to take this all in.”
    Buck didn’t answer but he knew what I meant.
    After leaving the cemetery, we rode out on I-95 in the direction of Alexandria, and Buck suggested a restaurant he knew not far from Fort Belvoir, a place with dark paneled walls, subdued lighting, and what appeared to be a largely government and military clientele, men and women who kept their voices low and hardly ever smiled. Just observing these people was enough to remind me of how happy I was not to be a part of their world anymore.
    It wasn’t until after we’d knocked off a couple of steaks and were on our third or fourth beer that we began to kick around what happened in Kosovo. From talking with Angel and Larry, Buck knew the story up until the time Nadaj and his gang grabbed me.
    I gave him the rest of the story.
    â€œWho’s this Vickie?” Buck asked when I’d finished.
    â€œWe should be able to find out,” I said. “She said she had a green card.”
    Buck nodded. “Anything else?”
    â€œI did my best to listen in, but they were talking Albanian all the time, so I couldn’t pick up that much.” I paused, trying to recall the events of those two days, most of which I’d repressed, or tried to. “One thing: Nadaj got very excited about Afghanistan. They kept asking if I knew what happened in Afghanistan.”
    Buck looked thoughtful. “So we can assume something happened in Afghanistan that has a lot of people very jumpy, including people on the National Security Council and in the DOD. Something else