They splashed through the streets past drab Soviet-era buildings, mud-walled compounds, and stores fronted by pushcarts and wheelbarrows filled with cheap merchandise from Pakistan.

Afghan men squatted in groups alongside the road or shuffled slowly through the cold air that still clung to the six-thousand-foot-high city, their hands clasped behind their backs in the Afghan fashion while women in cornflower-blue burkas filled ratty shopping bags with their marketing or carried large plastic jugs of water.  Children ran everywhere.

The late-morning traffic was thick and was accompanied by a cacophony of car horns.  The only person who wasn't honking was Baba G, who was busy answering Harvath's questions.

"You're absolutely sure?" asked Harvath one more time.

Baba G nodded as he downshifted and maneuvered his Land Cruiser around one of Kabul's many traffic circles.  At the top of the circle were two trucks filled with Afghan National Army soldiers, all of them armed with heavy weapons, as well as 7.62mm machine guns mounted to the roll bars of their vehicles.

Harvath didn't know what he liked less, the close proximity of so many cars - any number of which could be carrying al-Qaeda or Taliban militants - or the fact that Mustafa Khan was no longer being kept at Policharki Prison.  "Why'd they move him?"

Gallagher smiled and rubbed his left thumb and forefinger together.  "For the same reason we thought we'd be able to get him out."

"Baksheesh."

"Welcome to Afghanistan."

Harvath was familiar with the ancient adage that "you can't buy an Afghan, you can only rent one," and Policharki wasn't immune from this long-standing Afghan tradition of trading money for favors.  In fact, Policharki was infamous for being able to hold anyone but a rich man.  Bribe the right guard, the right family of a guard, or the right elders of the village the guard was from and anyone could be sprung from Policharki.

Harvath hadn't expected freeing Khan to be a walk in the park.  He and Gallagher had assumed that the al-Qaeda operative would have been kept away from the general population and that it was going to take big money not only to get the two of them inside, but also to get back out again with Khan in their custody.

What had bothered Harvath from the start, though, was that if he was thinking this way, then al-Qaeda had to be as well.  They would be willing to spend a lot of money to get him back, and this must have been exactly what the Afghan government was worried about.  They had come to the conclusion that Policharki couldn't hold him, so they had moved him.  The question was, where?

"So how do we find him?" asked Harvath.

"I've got some feelers out," said Gallagher as they passed another heavily armed Afghan National Army checkpoint.

Harvath watched the picture recede in his side-view mirror.  "I don't remember seeing so many soldiers the last time I was here."

"The government is trying to exert more control over Kabul.  Attacks and suicide bombings have been going through the roof.  Everybody's all keyed up."