Black Site (14 page)

Kopelman was four inches taller and easily sixty pounds heavier than Kolt. The big man looked him over slowly and carefully, and made a short proclamation.

“You smell like a goat. Excellent.”

Kolt relaxed. He could work with this guy. They shook hands.

Kopelman plopped down across from Raynor, next to Pam Archer, and he declined the coffee he was offered, instead asking for green tea with milk. He was a man just in from the field. Kolt could tell by his choice of beverage.

Grauer spoke up. “Okay, let’s get down to the mission itself. Lights, please.” Someone flipped off the overhead, and a screen lowered on the wall behind Grauer. The athletic fifty-eight-year-old stood and stepped to the side, and flipped on the laser pointer in his hand.

Great,
Kolt thought with bitter sarcasm.
Just what we need to save T.J. A damn PowerPoint presentation. Some things never change.
He kept his opinions to himself and picked up a pen.

A satellite map of Pakistan appeared on the screen. Almost immediately it zoomed in on the western side of the country, to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas near the border.

Grauer said, “Target location Gopher.”

Kolt Raynor knew the general area well, and he’d been dumped into many places code-named Gopher.

The map image zoomed again, and the center focused on the Khyber Agency, smack in the middle of the FATA. It was striking to see how close he already was to his target—Raynor could see Jalalabad, where he now sat, in the northwest portion of the screen.

“Khyber,” Pete Grauer said with his customary brevity.

The satellite image zoomed one last time, to an area near the center of Khyber, and a pair of mountain ranges that looked like arthritic spines, between which a narrow river wove through lower green hills.

“The Tirah Valley. Full of Pakistani Taliban, Afghani Taliban, AQ, and local militia who pinch-hit for the Pakistani Taliban. This mountainous region, just south of the valley, is rugged, it is secluded, and it is absolutely off-limits to foreigners.”

Now the screen changed again; a village built along a hillside. This image was not from a satellite—it was clearly taken from a drone. Kolt assumed the young woman sitting across the conference table from him had piloted the eye in the sky that captured this picture.

“Shataparai village, deep in a valley, twenty-six klicks southwest of Peshawar. This is your target.”

It was beautiful. The hillside was verdant and the terra-cotta-colored block village buildings looked like toy houses. An idyllic blue-green river ran at the base of the dwellings with a narrow stone bridge spanning it.

At the top of the hillside, abutting the village but looming above it, was a large walled compound. Functional and cold, it marred the splendor of the hillside.

A new image appeared, the compound in much more detail, again photographed from a Predator. There were easily a dozen buildings inside the high stone walls. Between them were groves of trees, open spaces, and a road or driveway that ran from the front gate to the main building.

“The home of Zar. He’s an Afridi, one of the many Pashtun tribes. He has his own militia but he’s nominally aligned with the Pakistani Taliban.”

“Nominally aligned?” Kolt asked.

Grauer said, “He’s allied with the Taliban at the moment, but there are so many factions in play, it’s complicated. We don’t have a picture of him, he’s a bit of a mystery, but this
is
Zar’s compound.” Grauer used his laser pointer to indicate features. The pointer circled the largest building in the compound, two stories high and the size of a basketball court. “We know this is his main residence.” Then he indicated an open fenced-in area near the rear wall. “Obviously this is a corral, so we can assume this running next to it is a stone barn. We think the long structure running along the south wall is a hurja, a guesthouse. It’s likely this is where his sentries are billeted. It only stands to reason. Several sentries man the walls and patrol the grounds. See the shadows of the armed men here, here, and here?”

Raynor nodded. He caught his right leg bouncing up and down. He was ready. He wanted to go,
now.
To get eyes on the men so Webber and his men could come in and get them.

He kept quiet still, but inside he was screaming.
This is where the guys are! Let’s stop all this PowerPoint bullshit and move our asses!

But Grauer continued calmly. “These smaller buildings here at the northwest corner of the compound? Anyone’s guess. An armory? Dry stores? A prison?”

Kopelman spoke up. “My contact goes into the compound twice a week. He is only allowed on this road up through the main entrance and up to the main building. He reports sentries patrolling, but he has not seen any static guarding of any of these outbuildings, at least from what he can see on the outside.”

Kopelman looked at Raynor. “Understand this, son. Just because my guy doesn’t see them on the outside, that doesn’t mean there are not a half-dozen SOBs with AKs inside the walls of any one of these stone or concrete buildings.”

“Understood,” Raynor replied, not taking his eyes from the large screen. Then he focused on the southern wall of the compound, and on what lay just outside it. It was another building, square, with a large open courtyard. “Is this part of Zar’s place?”

“Negative,” said Grauer. “Our analysts have been calling that the Playground. It’s interesting: in a land where girls don’t go to school at all, and boys are taught in a madrasa, this location stands out as a complete anomaly in the region. All day long it is full of children. We think the kids might be serving as some sort of cynical way to prevent Hellfire attacks on the compound. See how the Playground is just on the other side of the wall from the hurja? The hurja is where Taliban or AQ stay when they are visiting the compound.”

“So the kids are also human shields, just like T.J. and his men?”

“These bastards love their human shields,” Kopelman muttered behind his mug of hot tea.

Pam Archer chimed in. “We don’t know where the kids go at night. There is enough space inside the building to bed down, so no Langley drone would ever be cleared to fire missiles at this location.”

Killing terrorists would mean killing children. Raynor sighed. It had been like this for a decade.

The image on the screen changed again, the entire village came into view, and Grauer’s laser pointer ran east away from Zar’s compound at the top of one hill, across the small stone huts and dirt roads and mud-walled buildings of the village, across the tiny river, and then up a terraced and cultivated hill on the other side.

“We see this as the optimal vantage point for you to lay up. You’ll be about twenty meters higher than the compound’s walls, four hundred meters away on the far side of the river. With the optics you’ll be taking in, you should have no problem getting eyes on everything that moves in the compound. Looks like good cover here just above where the poppy fields end. We need you to go here, tuck yourself in tight, and watch the compound until you see something interesting. Film it with the cameras you’ll bring in, send it to us, and wait for Kopelman’s man to come pick you up to get you out of there.”

“If the Predator hasn’t been able to find the men, what makes you think I will see them from four hundred meters?”

Pam spoke up. “You will be there twenty-four hours a day for three days. I sneak over to overfly the village only on rare occasions, but the Agency, the Air Force, the Pakistani government, and likely even the Afghani government will get word if I spend twenty-four hours doing lazy eights on the Pakistani side of the border. I will be overhead for your insertion and your exfiltration, and probably once more each day. I’ll do what I can, but the majority of the time you will be on your own monitoring Zar’s fortress.”

Kolt nodded. He’d momentarily forgotten that this mission was supposed to be carried out even below the radar of friendly forces.

Grauer said, “We are looking for signs of American prisoners. In order to take this information to the next stage—meaning a Delta hit on the compound—that means nothing less than you getting a visual on any one of the six missing men. We need you to do what the drones can’t.”

Kolt wasn’t totally satisfied with this plan. “If you can get me this close to the vill, then why don’t I try and infiltrate the vill, and if I can, the compound itself?”

Grauer spun in his chair, away from the screen and toward Kolt. “Negative, Racer. You aren’t going into the village. That would be too risky. And you aren’t going into the compound, because that would be suicide. You are going to the other side of the valley, four hundred meters away, and you’ll have the gear you need to get a nice, close-up view of the compound.”

Raynor nodded, then swiveled his chair to face Kopelman. “This source. The guy that’s going to get me into the area. What can you tell me about him?”

“Jamal? He’s reliable. He lives in a camp near Peshawar, but he delivers potable water and other goods to Zar’s compound every three or four days. He will pick you up near your infiltration and get you all the way to within a few hundred yards of your layup position.”

Pam Archer spoke up. “There are two checkpoints along the track that you and Jamal will have to pass before arriving at Shataparai. These are Zar’s militia. On-again, off-again Taliban, as everyone keeps saying. There are also other Taliban forces in the area that move around, travel on the same road. There could be rolling checkpoints anywhere and at any time. The vehicle you’ll be traveling in will be searched multiple times with you inside it.”

Kopelman said, “Jamal will get Racer through the checkpoints undetected.”

“How?” Pam asked. It was an odd question from the drone pilot. It had nothing to do with her mission responsibilities.

Kopelman looked at her a moment, then turned his head slowly to Grauer and cocked it in surprise. Still, he addressed her concerns. “Jamal had been using his own tractor pulling a cart to get water and goods into Shataparai. A few weeks ago I outfitted him with a Toyota Hilux pickup. It’s common in the region, and damn near indestructible. This particular truck had been used by dope smugglers on the border with China. There was a stash compartment behind and below the backseat. Access is from an invisible hatch beneath the removable rear seats. It wasn’t quite large enough for a person, but I had a metalsmith in Lahore enlarge the compartment and the hatch. Racer
will
fit. His gear will go in another compartment hidden under the driver’s seat. The locals are used to seeing Jamal and the truck. At the roadblocks they’ll give it a once-over, but we don’t expect any problems at all.”

He finished, drummed his fingers on the table, and looked at the female UAV pilot. “Anything else?”

Pam met Kopelman’s gaze. Shook her head.

“So,” Grauer moved on. “We’ll be dropping you in about fourteen hours.”

“If this village is only twenty-six klicks from Peshawar, and you can get Bob into Peshawar, why don’t I just fly into Peshawar and infiltrate on the ground?”

“One thing the Pakistani army does well is maintain the checkpoints into the FATA. Foreigners aren’t normally allowed. Could we get you around that? Yeah, probably, but they will check the truck a lot harder in Pesh than the guys who already know Jamal will check it out in the FATA. We could get you phony documents to cross in, but we are at the very end of our weather window for the year. In a couple of weeks it will start getting really cold. Best we simply drop you out of an aircraft just this side of the border and have you HAHO into the area to meet up with your contact.”

“Works for me,” Kolt said, though he wasn’t crazy about jumping into the night over mountainous Taliban country. A HAHO, or high-altitude, high-opening jump, required a lot of precision. He’d done it many times, but there were so many variables and factors involved that he knew it wouldn’t be easy.

Grauer pushed an intercom button and summoned three men waiting outside the Bubble. In seconds the flight crew of the 727 that would fly Kolt to the border entered and went over details of the drop. Ten minutes later they left. They did not possess “need to know” for the rest of the operation.

Grauer turned back to Raynor to continue the briefing. “The U.S. military does have a presence in western Pakistan. Right now there are roughly two hundred SF men in the FATA. They work with the Pakistani military, training, compiling information about the needs of the people in the area.”

“What are our guys teaching them?”

“Pakistan’s army has been focused on India, not on a counterinsurgency. Our SF guys are showing them how to combat insurgents. We did it in Iraq, we’re doing it in Afghanistan, and now we’re helping them do it in Pakistan.”

“Dangerous work,” Raynor commented.

“And they’ve lost some good men doing it.”

“Are any of them around the Tirah Valley?”

“Negative. The U.S. has never had anyone anywhere near Shataparai. This village is really out in the boonies. The Taliban and local warlords allied with them are in control. They are fighting it out with the Paki army. Estimates say seven thousand dead a year in the fighting in the FATA, but that also includes Taliban bombings and other terrorism.”

Kolt said, “Back when I used to go over into Waziristan the Pak army had a unit called the Frontier Corps that came and went in the FATA. They any more effective now than back then?”

Grauer just shook his head. “Not really. They are good guys, staunchly anti-Taliban, really our best allies in the region, but they won’t be where you are going. The Frontier Corps operates on main roads, in some of the main cities. But when you get in the mountains, in the farms, out of the cities … it’s the Wild West.”

Raynor looked off into space. He’d been in Taliban country many times before.

Grauer noticed his man’s unease. “Be under no illusions, son. We will be sending you into a shit storm. But if you do your job and don’t take any unnecessary risks, we all feel good about your chances for success.”

Pam Archer looked down at the table, away from Raynor. Kolt had noticed her watching him intently throughout the meeting. She held a pen in her right hand and it tapped up and down on the table silently. He got the impression she was planning on speaking up on some topic important to her, but she held her tongue. She’d answered up a few times when some operational detail relevant to her mission was questioned or brought up, but never did her eyes leave Raynor until now. He had found it disconcerting to have this woman stare him down like this, but now, just after Grauer assured him that the mission was doable, she would not look his way, and this he found even more troubling.