Intercept (53 page)

As it happened, Sheikh Abdullah Bazir had been very smart in master-minding the tickets. When he found out the ETA of the
Odessa
, he dovetailed it with the Iceland Express nonstop flight FI503 to Amsterdam out of Keflavik International, departing at 3:30 p.m. He booked them first-class, and counted on Ibrahim to get them there a few minutes before 3 p.m. That way, he knew, there would be no waiting around.

Ibrahim and Yousaf disembarked their private local flight and walked into the airport. They made one stop at the Bank of Iceland desk and picked up a package of cash they knew would be there, subject to identification with their forged passports.

They both then walked to the Icelandic Express desk, where they were treated with immense courtesy and handed their boarding passes.

“You can go straight to the departure gate,” said the pale blonde check-in girl. “The flight will leave on time.”

The CIA agent never had a chance. FI503 roared into the cold empty skies at 3:35 p.m. and set a southeastern course, straight across the Norwegian Sea, twelve hundred miles to the Netherlands.

When they arrived in Amsterdam, Ibrahim and Yousaf went straight to the transfer desk, where their tickets were waiting—first class on KLM’s 12:30 a.m. flight to Dubai, arriving at 5:35 in the morning. There was a two-hour wait in the desert kingdom before the connecting 9 a.m. flight to Lahore.

They used this time to find some breakfast, especially Yousaf who had eaten nothing for about week and had lost about fourteen pounds.

Fed, watered, but thoroughly exhausted, they arrived in Lahore at 11:10 a.m.(local), having lost four hours across the time-zones. Awaiting them was Kaiser Rashid, with a small private passenger jet, provided by Shakir Khan, mainly because Lahore is situated way southeast on the Indian border, 240 miles from Peshawar.

Mack’s journey had been relatively simpler. He’d been provided with yet another military flight, this time from RAF Lyneham to the U.S. Air Force Base at Landstuhl, up near Germany’s western border with France, about fifty-five miles southwest of Frankfurt.

From there he’d been flown nonstop in a huge military Boeing, the C-141, directly to the massive sprawl of the five-thousand-acre U.S. base in Bagram, Afghanistan, a place where thousands of troops were stationed in lines and lines of bee-huts, with the one long runway running right down the side of the whole complex.

This had been home to Mack Bedford twice before, and, as the Boeing made its long approach, he could see there were already white peaks on the towering Hindu Kush mountains. Below them he could see almost sheer escarpments, which looked impossible to climb, but he and his SEALs had fought their way up them and across them, in search of the sullen, silent warriors, who were trying to reinstate the Taliban.

To Mack it seemed his personality changed as soon as he saw this place. It had been a war zone for so long, it had an effect on even the most hardened SEAL commanders. It was a place where no one dared to drop their guard, and there was only one reason to come here: combat.

This wasn’t training. This was real. Sometime in the not-too-distant future he, Mackenzie Bedford, was going to face armed tribesmen, mountain men who would not be fussy whether they slit his throat or shot him dead.

He could see squadrons of parked aircraft, and Chinook helicopters, and he could see the main executive block, where INTEL, Planning, and Surveillance had private areas. He would, he knew, be given private quarters in there, like some visiting general, instead of a veteran combat commander with a thousand friends on base.

But Mack knew the rules. He was to remain out of sight. The fewer people who knew he was there, the better his masters would like it. But unlike everyone else, he was moving in on a pure hunch: that Ibrahim Sharif and
Yousaf Mohammed would return home, the way Pashtuns always did, answering the ancient summons of their tribal ancestors, obeying the call of their own souls, to walk once more in those verdant green mountain passes, and to rejoin two-thousand-year-old Pashtun communities in far-lost villages, where their friends and loved ones still lived.

There was so much of the American Indian in these people. They were all expert trackers and livestock men, supremely skilled with any kind of weapon, and capable of moving through those mountains in almost complete silence.

Mack had prided himself in his capacity to remain absolutely motionless, in any position, during his time earning Honor Man in SEAL Sniper School. But to these people his soft, wary tread probably sounded like an express train coming through. He and his men were quiet, but not as quiet as the native mountain men. And if he wanted to carry on breathing, that was an important fact to bear in mind.

The Boeing touched down at Bagram eight hours after leaving Landstuhl. A Navy staff car met him at the bottom of the aircraft steps, and he was driven immediately to the block where he would be housed. There he was greeted by the base commanding officer, whom he knew on equal terms from his previous life as a SEAL, and taken to his new quarters.

“Mack,” said the CO, “you can dine with me and my staff any time you wish. But if you want to be alone, that’s fine too. I have not been briefed on your mission, but I do know it’s highly classified. I have, however, been told that you are to be given every possible assistance in weaponry, combat clothing, INTEL, comms, and transportation. You can count on all of that.”

Mack shook his hand. “Thanks, Eric,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

“By the way,” said the CO, grinning, “I have of course guessed why you are here. And I understand you have done a fantastic job so far on whatever mission it is. But I’m still not sure why you think you’re on the right track up here in these godforsaken mountains.”

“Just counting on a couple of little sonsabitch murderers coming home to Mommy,” replied Mack, inelegantly.

 

IBRAHIM AND YOUSAF
bought a two-day-old copy of
USA Today
on the airport at Lahore, and there, on page seven, they found a short news item under the headline:

Ibrahim found something immensely satisfying in that news item. He had pitted his wits twice against the Great Satan. The first time he had lost, but the second time he had won. There was something exhilarating about that, and he happily regaled Kaiser Rashid with the story of their adventure all the way up to Peshawar in the government private jet.

Kaiser himself was deeply impressed by the care and efficiency with which Ibrahim had prepared the mission. And he did not believe the leak, which had obviously alerted the Americans to the forthcoming attack, was anything to do with the operational team that Ibrahim had led.

Shakir Khan’s assistant was another al-Qaeda disciple being groomed for the highest rank. His first-class law degree from King’s College, London, set him apart from most other members of this fanatical underground brotherhood. Kaiser’s intellect made him invaluable to Khan. But the fire of the revolutionary zealot burned within him, and Kaiser’s instincts were trusted by men in the highest places.

Right now his instincts were telling him someone had hacked into their carefully planned communications; twice, so far as he could tell. Once between Peshawar and Sheikh Abdullah in Bradford, England. And again between Pakistan and New York.

His reasons were cold and legal: three of our men on Ilkley Moor died because someone knew they were coming, and someone knew why they were there. The New York intercept was the same. Someone knew about
Mountainside Farm, otherwise they could not possibly have blown our bus before we could blow the school. We never communicated directly with Connecticut, only New York.

What concerned Kaiser was the possibility of a straight leak, a spy, or a mole. “It’s one thing to be intercepted by a national military surveillance,” he told Ibrahim. “That’s just bad luck. But it’s another to have a spy operating among us. That’s far too dangerous.”

He had nothing but admiration for Ibrahim, his intelligence, his courage, and his daring, and deep down Kaiser felt that somehow the organization had let Ibrahim down. He was sympathetic when both of these al-Qaeda field operators told him that they wanted to go home to their families, up in the mountains. They’d both been away for many years. And such had been the intensity of the training in the camps up in the Swat Valley, there had been no time to go home, not even for a day.

Al-Qaeda was determined to recover from the Canaan setback and move fast on another mission that would rival 9/11 in U.S. devastation. In Kaiser’s view, the experience of Ibrahim and Yousaf was priceless, and he would insist they were a part of it.

However, if they were not allowed home, their hearts may not be in it. It was critical to any future mission that Ibrahim and Yousaf be contented warriors. They needed to be taken home for a couple of weeks’ recuperation.

Kaiser reasoned they had both been through hell, and Allah had smiled upon them both by bringing them safely home against near-impossible odds. Re-uniting them with their families was, in Kaiser’s opinion, the will of Allah.

As soon as their aircraft landed, all three men—Kaiser, Ibrahim, and Yousaf—attended a formal debriefing in the big house behind the
Andar Shehr
in Peshawar. Aside from Khan and Kaiser, there were three other al-Qaeda men in attendance, all of whom would accompany Ibrahim and Yousaf home.

There were the two brothers, Ahmed and Gholam Azzan, Pakistanis by birth, forward commanders and assault instructors in al-Qaeda. Ahmed was thity-eight years old, the senior by two years. He had served bin Laden faithfully through all the years of jihad, and intended to continue doing so, whether or not The Sheikh had died in the U.S. onslaught in Tora Bora.

The Azzans had both been born in the Swat Valley in the river town of Madyan, as had Shakir Khan himself. The third man in attendance was
Captain Musa Amin, a one-time commander of the most successful small Taliban army in the Hindu Kush. Two hundred strong, they had harassed and killed any U.S. military personnel with whom they came in striking range.

The Americans, however, had, in the end, very nearly wiped out this entire force in a lethal ambush, and Amin at the age of forty, had been forced to flee. Badly wounded, he had reached one of the al-Qaeda training camps and slowly risen back to his former prestigious position, chief instructor and forward commander.

There was no finer mountain warrior than Captain Musa Amin, no more skilled tracker, no better gunner. And he was desperately protective of his nephew, Ibrahim Sharif.

Shakir Khan took it upon himself to bring al-Qaeda’s new favorite sons home. Their objective was a tiny village called Kushram. It was situated below one of the high plateaux, around seven miles from the village of Sabray, which was built on similar lines, set into the steep mountain. Indeed, Sabray shared the same village elder, a hickory-tough old gentleman of seventy-eight summers, upon whose word rough Taliban terrorists trembled.

With only two ovens in the entire village, Kushram might not have been everyone’s ideal. But it was home to Ibrahim, and in a way, to Captain Amin, the brother of Ibrahim’s mom. It was also home to Yousaf, whose own parents had died, and who had no other roots except the immediate family of his oldest friend.

Shakir Khan listened very gravely to Kaiser Rashid’s suspicions about the leaks, and he declared he would launch a private investigation. However, he understood the most pressing issue was to get Ibrahim and Yousaf home, and he outlined his plans.

There would be five of them altogether, including the Azzan brothers and Captain Amin. They would travel by road from Peshawar, 140 miles up the winding, mountainous Highway 45 to Chitral airport. From there, Khan would organize a Pakistani Air Force helicopter to take the five men seventy-five miles into the Hindu Kush, landing them on the high plateau above the village of Kushram. From there they could walk the mile down to the houses.

The incredibly blurred line between official government troops and armed al-Qaeda loyalists was never more vividly illustrated. The sheer number of disloyal regular officers and men in Pakistan’s armed forces was bringing the nation to the brink of civil war.

The officers were devoutly loyal to the Taliban and to al-Qaeda, and they wanted the government overthrown and the Islamic extremists in power. And they were happy to organize brutal and murderous attacks on their own commanding officers and colleagues in order to achieve their aims.

When a man like Shakir Khan gave an order, it was carried out, because Khan was a known and celebrated Muslim extremist, and he knew to whom he should issue that order. Nonetheless, he still worked for the ruling government. Could there ever have been a more treacherous set of circumstances prevailing in any nation on earth? Especially in a country with a nuclear capability, as Pakistan had. The truth was, particularly up here on the North Western Frontier, no one knew whose side sections of the army were on.

However, it was all pretty good for the homecoming kings. They would leave at first light, and, of course, on such a journey in this part of the country, they would all need to be well armed. When the black government limousine arrived for the drive to Chitral, it would be loaded with five AK-47s and ammunition belts, plus a box of four hand grenades. The connecting Air Force helicopter, a Russian-built Mi-17 transporter, with its distinctive portside tail rotor, would bring them, in addition, four rocket-propelled grenades.