DARKNET CORPORATION (7 page)

“Ah! Yes!” replied Mickey, almost as triumphant.

It was an old-fashioned Whimble brace. Before the advent of electric
drills this was what passed as a drill. Ledge also had a long metal piece in
the other hand, which was a drill bit or auger. It had two small blades facing
forward and curved in at the tips. Ledge fitted the metal rod into the brace
and gave it a couple of turns to demonstrate it. “You can slice through
mudbrick with this like a hot knife through butter.”

He went back to the SORV and came back with the endoscopic pin-hole
camera on the end of a long snaking flexible coil.

Bill thrust his chin forward, nodding, pleased.

They developed a plan, with Mickey in a lookout position at the building
across the front road and Ledge in the same position he had observed the sentry
at the back. Bill would approach down the line of bushes at the back boundary
and drill holes into the mudbrick on each side looking for signs of Abu
Ukasha
.

Bill realised that he might have to get almost right around the compound
and be there for some time to drill several holes in order to cover all the
spaces Abu
Ukasha
could be in, but that was what may
be required.

The chance of being observed by the sentry on top of the wall meant he
would have to keep close to the wall at all times and only move when the
lookouts could choreograph his timing to when the sentry was unsighted.

They decided that they would also need the cover of whatever gloom the
late part of the day could give them. They needed enough light to spot their
prey, but as much cover of darkness as they could get. It was a delicate
balance.

They calculated when to start out to gain maximum advantage of the
setting Sun on site and cooked up a meal while they waited, discussing arms and
equipment they might need. The NZ SAS men would use night visions and
Kalashnikovs they could carry into the town without looking out of place. They
checked the batteries on the radios and talked through tactics, fall back
positions and contingency plans for every event they could anticipate. As
professionals, these topics and the process of detailed planning of an
operation were standard practice, and life preserving.

Chapter Seven

They set out, timed to get into position around sunset, while hopefully
most people were conducting
Maghrib
prayers. They
walked a hundred yards apart, all wearing the same turban-covered radio
arrangement; communicating only when necessary. Being seen talking to
themselves
would attract the wrong kind of attention.

Mickey found the niche in the wall in the building opposite the compound
that Ledge had described to him and was thankful that Ledge had an eye for a
good ‘
posi
’. Shrubbery around it gave cover, although
he would be hard pressed to come up with an excuse for being there. The niche
offered an ideal view of half the target compound opposite; down the side wall
and the front double gates. If there were any comings or going in or out of the
compound he would see it.

“Mike, in position.
Over,” he called. They had decided
they would use alphabetic initials as call signs.

It took Ledge and Bill longer to walk up the hill and around the back of
the compound. When they arrived they checked in, “Lima and Bravo, in position,
Over.”

“Mike, this is Bravo, any action? Over”

“Nothing moving.
Sentry must be on the other side. Out,” he called
back.

Bill could see the whole of the top of the wall from this angle and
appreciated the plan they had worked out. Now that he had eyes on the target
compound and had walked in through the town without incident he was starting to
be slightly less terrified about what they were doing.

He waited to see the sentry circle around the wall one more time and as
the Sun slipped down a
muezzin
cried out the
azan,
calling for
prayers. “Now is the time to move,” he thought.

Crouching down and holding on to his equipment, Bill dodged between the
line
of bushes until reaching the wall of the compound.
Rubbing his hands on the walls he wiped them onto his shoulders took off the
turban and tried to camouflage the top of it as best he could with whatever
dust he could wipe off the walls. If the sentry looked over the wall he wanted
to look as indistinct as he could. He did not think it was very effective, but
he was prepared to use whatever he could to improve his chances of remaining
undetected.

He looked along and picked a spot to drill his first hole. He fitted the
drill rod into the brace, stepped back from the wall to get the drill horizontal
and started turning. Sure enough, the drill was very efficient and cut into the
mudbrick wall in no time.

Bill stopped as soon as he felt the pressure give on the drill, knowing
it would have breached the wall on the inside. He held his breath and waited
for any commotion to start if it had been spotted or worse, poked into someone.
As the moments passed and he breathed again, he marked the drill rod with his
thumbnail to show the depth required to breach the wall and drew it out slowly.
He picked up the endoscopic coil, using the control unit to unwind it so that
it was reasonably straight and threaded it carefully into the hole.

Watching the display now he pushed until he could see light then paused
to take in whatever view it afforded.

He was looking at the courtyard; a more perfect realisation of Dante’s
Inferno he could not imagine. Straight in front of him were three large
soot-blackened vats sitting in fires. Men with rags tied across their faces to
cover their mouth and nose were either stirring them with what looked like
rowboat paddles, or were stoking the fires or rushing back and forth carrying
plastic containers or sacks.

Bill tweaked the paddles on the camera panel and the end of the coil
twisted to the left. The back of the courtyard was under a large canopy with a
complex of tables laden with glassware interconnected with tubes. No doubt,
this was the heroin lab.

Bill paid attention to all the people he could see as he panned back
around past the vats to the central building. Here there was a jumble of
discarded metal tins, plastic containers and other rubbish on one side and a
set of stairs giving access to the second storey. A table on the other side had
stacks of plastic wrapped parcels, with new parcels being weighed on large
weighing scales and sealed with a heat sealer.

The quantities must be massive Bill thought as he watched as the parcels
were put into tubs. The tubs had a handle on each side, taking two people to
lift and carry them away.

All the men he could see were clearly workers. Some appeared to be more
senior than others, but they were clearly the hired labour. At the tables on
the right there were a knot of people paying attention to what was happening.
Then in walked a familiar figure,
Bone
.

“Eyes on
Bicep
,” Bill reported. “Now just show
yourself
,
Abu
Ukasha
and we can get the hell out of here,” he
thought. He watched as a conversation ensued between
Bone
and the knot
of people, then two men each with a wheeled trolley, appeared from the building
and they started loading tubs onto the trolleys and disappeared back into the
building with them.
Bone
disappeared back into the building.

Bill pulled the camera out of the hole and started down the wall towards
the central building.

Now that the drill was assembled and the camera coil unfurled, moving
with his equipment was awkward and a bit of pantomime. He was trying to be
careful not to bump anything that might make a noise.

He came alongside where he thought he was the middle of the central
building and picked a spot for his next drill hole. The wall at this point
seemed different. It looked as if it predated the wall further back and he
could make out the outline of individual bricks. He drilled between bricks and
discovered they crumbled quickly. The corner of the brick he had just drilled
against collapsed leaving a fist-sized hole.

It was too dark to see much with his naked eye. Inserting the camera he
had to wait until the contrast and focus automatically righted itself. He could
see that inside was a storeroom with stacks of glass carboys; sacks of
something, cylindrical and square tins, what looked like oildrums and plastic
containers of several sizes and colours.

As he was taking this in, Ledge reported, “The sentry has begun peering
over the edge of the wall on his walk. It seems to be part of the routine. He’s
looking down all the way around. You need to get out of there Bravo. He’ll be
there soon.”

“How long have I got, Lima? Over” Bill requested.

“Lima, he’s close to the bottom corner opposite you now.
So, maybe only 60 seconds.
Over,” Ledge advised.

Bill looked back up the way he had come. It was a good fifty to sixty
metres to get back to where he started. He would have to start running now.

Given the struggle he had with the equipment he knew he couldn’t do it in
time and would have to leave the equipment behind. But if the sentry spotted
the equipment they would be undone too. Taking out a large knife he sliced into
the spot where he had drilled the hole and pulled it across to clear the mortar
between the brick and pulled it hard. Sure enough it slipped outward and fell
onto his toes, leaving a large gap. He grabbed the brick below it and wrestled
it back and forth until it too moved and he was able to pull it free. He stood
up and used his boot heel to push in three or four more bricks with as many
kicks.

Ledge, in a somewhat controlled voice said, “Sentry approaching the north
eastern corner, still looking over the wall. You’ve got about fifteen seconds
before he comes round the bottom corner.”

Ledge knew that the plan was for him to shoot the sentry if he spotted
Bill. While the shot would create an alarm, a sentry shouting and pointing at
Bill would be a more difficult position from which to escape. The confusion
following the shooting of the sentry might still allow them to sneak away
undetected whereas being located and pointed
out,
probably would not, at least for Bill.

Bill remained focused on pushing in
mudbricks
and he finally thought he had created enough of a hole that he would be able to
wriggle through. He pushed his equipment into the storeroom as he caught sight
of the sentry out of the corner of his eye coming around the bottom corner of
the compound and went in headfirst pulling himself in holding onto the edges of
heavy boxes for purchase.

As he pulled his knees up, he stopped and listened. If there was a shot,
or an alarm, he would have to exit out the hole and try running off.

Ledge calmly reported, “Sentry continuing on around the wall. He’s
looking.” Then after what seemed an endless pause he said, “He hasn’t seen you.
Phew!”

Bill breathed out and paused to compose himself. He looked around at tins
of acetone; sacks of charcoal, and plastic containers. He looked at the labels;
acetic anhydride on one and hydrochloric acid on another. “Shit!” he thought,
“this storeroom is more dangerous than being outside!”

He pushed two boxes over to conceal the hole leaving enough room behind
them, away from the wall, for him to get behind and exit if he needed to.
Moving over to the door and peering out through the cracks he noticed that this
was one of several rooms on either side of an
accessway
between the front courtyard and the back courtyard, with the upstairs rooms
forming a ceiling.

The trolley pullers were still moving tubs of finished plastic parcels
through to the front area. He used the camera poking the coil under the door to
get a view of the front area. There were two massive metal things with fins all
around them, like radiators sitting on wooden pallets. They looked
incongruously high-tech in their primitive setting. Obviously highly engineered
and expensive looking devices, they were out-of-place. As he panned around he
saw that the top of one was lying at the side of the thing and plastic-wrapped
parcels were being packed carefully into it.

There were several figures witnessing this operation, including
Bone
,
but there was no sign of anyone that looked like the Afghani warlord, Abdul
aziz
bin
Sayyid
, a.k.a. Abu
Ukasha
, or
Monarch
. “Could he be in one of the other
rooms?” thought Bill. He picked his way through the stores to the left wall and
used the drill and the camera to look into the room and found an empty living
area.

He moved to the other end of the storeroom and repeated the exercise. The
room to the right of the storeroom was not empty. This time there were several
Pashtun men lounging on cushions, drinking tea and
smoking.
In fact it was difficult to see through the haze, but again Bill was satisfied
that Abu
Ukasha
was not amongst them.

Bill looked up at the ceiling and tried to work out if he could use the
drill to see into the rooms upstairs. He moved to the back of the storeroom,
close to the wall and away from the floor timbers holding up the room above and
started to turn the Whimble brace. It made a scratching sound and was much
slower than drilling through the mudbrick. He stopped thinking that the sound
would very possibly be heard upstairs. Then he noticed a knothole a metre away
from where he was drilling, very close to the outside wall. It would be big
enough for the camera. Pushing the camera into the knot hole, he saw that the
full length of the building looked like a dormitory. Several figures were lying
on mattresses around the room, some talking; some already sleeping.

This left only the rooms across the passageway. Bill could not see any
easy way to gain access to them from here and decided he could only do so by
repeating the hole drilling exercise from outside, on the other side of the
compound. He would have to go back outside and traverse around the compound
wall, about 100 metres of skulking and avoiding the sentry.

Before leaving, he decided to see what else he could gather from what was
taking place in the front courtyard. This time he moved to the far end of the storeroom
nearest to the courtyard and pushed the camera coil through a ventilation hole
at shoulder height. He had a better view than from under the door and could see
three vehicles in the courtyard; the four-wheel-drive used by
Bone
; the
closed in van they had seen at the previous compound and a flatbed truck
similar to the one they had seen before, that would presumably be used to move
the massive metal things.

As he was musing on his view, the door to the storeroom suddenly flew
open and two men walked in focused on retrieving supplies. They did not look in
Bill’s direction and he dropped down as slowly as he could to conceal himself
behind an oildrum. As he got to about eye-level with the top of the drum
Mickey gave an update “Group of several men exiting compound.
All going right into town.
Negative
Monarch
.
Negative
Monarch
.”

The sound in Bill’s ear was so loud he could not believe the two men
would not hear it. He watched them carefully for a reaction to the sound. The
two men were talking as they moved around looking for whatever it was they were
after and didn’t show any signs of hearing Mickey. Bill sweated that whatever
they were looking for might be near the oildrum he was hiding behind. Then he
noticed that he was holding the camera unit and the coil
was
still snaked up and out of the ventilation hole. If they saw it, it would give
him away.