Retribution (23 page)

CHAPTER 42

 

“W
ait here.” Yousef pointed to a side road behind the mud hut on the single-lane road that passed through the small village of Durba Khel. The road cut north, around a small jut of rocks, to another village called Nahakki. At a fork in the road on the north side of Durba Khel, the right road went toward Nahakki and the left road crossed into a small valley, short of the mountain range, and beyond the mountain range, the Afghan border.

To the south, the road headed to Warsak, and farther south, Peshawar.

They had stopped using cell phones. They were well into the Predator killing zone now, and one misspoken word would result in a strike. Short, quick meetings at times and places picked at random were the only safe routes. Despite the CIA's repeated efforts, no one had ever broken into the network. No one had ever become admitted to the inner sanctuary of the leadership that hadn't been back-checked and back-checked and known thoroughly. Many had tried, but at any hint of betrayal, the problem was easily solved.

“Here?” Umarov pointed to the side road that cut through the two mud-brick shacks.

“Yes.” Yousef liked the fact that Umarov said very little. They could travel for hours in the Toyota truck without a word being said.

“
Soecu!
” Umarov screamed as the little truck swerved to avoid the collision with the Nissan Diesel that cut across their path on the main road, using a curse word he often said in Serbia. A cloud of dust swirled around the two trucks.

Yousef cursed at the freight truck that passed by, nearly missing the smaller one by inches. The Nissan's horn blared as the driver stuck out his arm and hand from the cab. Called a “jingle truck,” it was covered with brightly painted pictures of horns and yaks and the shapes of naked women, and it had racks of bells and ornate rings welded above the cab's windows. Rows of chains were welded to the front bumper. The truck was one of thousands upon thousands that had been customized by its owners to serve as a proclamation of the driver's identity. They were even considered the driver's bride, many said.

“They always own the road,” Umarov muttered.

“They think they do.” Both Yousef and Umarov's AK-47s were knocked down to the floorboard up against Umarov's leg and the gearshift. Yousef picked them up one at a time, rubbing the dust off the assault rifles. Everything was covered with a layer of dust, but the Kalashnikov always functioned. It could be buried in a mud hole for months and still fire. The rifle was made in a knockoff shop in Quetta for less than thirty bucks, but it always fired without fail. He pulled the slide to his rifle to make sure that the weapon had a shell in its chamber.

Another jingle truck passed, this one green and yellow with fringe along the windows. It was much larger than the last, a Mercedes tractor trailer, with more chains. It was covered with bright murals of lakes and mountains and green fields. And the chains, rattling with the movement of the truck, made a sound like hundreds of small bells. The constant ringing was intended to keep evil away.

“Ha!” Yousef let out a loud roar of a laugh. The first truck had missed them by inches. The second truck, with its much larger proportions, would have crushed their small pickup truck. It had been overloaded with cinder blocks stacked well above the cab. Yousef watched it recede down the road, swaying with the weight of the cement whenever the driver steered even slightly from the center of the road.

An absurd but chilling thought struck him.

The thought caused Yousef to reach into his pocket to check on the cell phones. He had two, one in each pocket of his coat. The one on the left didn't concern him. It was a disposable one that he used, only now if needed, to talk to others in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It would be destroyed and replaced every two weeks. The other, in his right pocket, had never been used. A piece of electrical tape was wrapped around the flip phone so that neither he nor anyone else would casually open it. He made sure it was charged every night. There was only one number in the phone's memory, a long-distance call to Frankfurt. More than enough money was kept in the telephone's account for the one simple call. No other calls would be made from it so as to ensure that it would never be traced. From Frankfurt, one cell would be activated, which would call two. Two would call four. One ring was all that was necessary. And then the phones would be destroyed.

“There he is.” Another truck, this one a Mazda, beaten up and with no chains for evil spirits, pulled off the road. It had come up from the south. It stopped just short of their Toyota.

“
As sala'amu alaikum!
” Yousef stood taller than the little man and reached over to give him a bear hug.

“
Walaikum as sala'am
.” Zulfiqar never smiled, a fact Yousef had quickly gotten used to.

“I have what you have asked for.” Yousef took a plastic bag from Umarov, who had reached behind the driver's seat. It was full to its limit.

Zulfiqar opened the bag. Wads of hundred-dollar bills were stuffed inside. The United States currency remained the unofficial currency of terror.

“You will find over a hundred thousand.”

Zulfiqar looked around as if worried that another clan or gang would appear. People died for far less than this plastic bag.

“Don't worry, brother.” Yousef put his hand on Zulfiqar's shoulder. As he did so, another strange thought came to Yousef 's mind. His older brother was so similar to Zulfiqar in both looks and mannerisms. Both held their right hand back, using it in true Muslim mannerisms rarely, only to eat their meals in the barehanded fashion. Both men were seemingly taller, but now seemed almost childlike in that they were so much shorter. And both had a broken tooth in their smiles. Yousef 's brother's tooth had been repaired years ago with the money that his brother had inherited from their father. Zulfiqar's tooth, however, remained broken, but it reminded Yousef as to how his older brother's tooth was cracked. A rock thrown, out of frustration and hate, after a ferocious beating, which only led to another beating. Both the brother and Zulfiqar had one other characteristic in common. Both were hateful men, fully capable of tormenting the weaker or smaller or less resistant. Yousef would use Zulfiqar as needed, but he reminded himself always to remain aware.

“I will have the men ready in two days.” Zulfiqar took a small step back from Yousef as he spoke. He would never remain too close to another for long. The Predators always put a thought in the backs of the minds of those in western tribal provinces.

“Excellent.”

“And you do have the man?”

Yousef knew exactly what Zulfiqar was talking about.

“Yes.”

“And the plans, you have the plans to Kamra?”

“I do.” He turned to Umarov again. “Give them to me.”

Umarov gave him a look. Yousef knew what he meant. The release of plans too early always risked the deadliest threat to an operation: a leak.

“Get them.”

Umarov reached into the truck again. He pulled out a manila envelope and handed it directly to Zulfiqar.

“Midnight in two days. The man in Kamra will be ready when I call. Not sooner, not later.”

“Brother, we will be ready.”

“I will be in the
plar
.” The cave was a protected site.

“Yes.” Zulfiqar put his hand up to his mouth. He had the habit of rubbing his lips when he was hesitating to say something.

“What is it, brother?”

“This man, is it wise?”

Yousef didn't think anything was a secret in the mountains of the northwest frontier province, but he had made the point of only a very few knowing about the planned visit of the journalist from London.

“It is important, brother, that we earn more bags like this one.” Yousef poked the bag of money with his finger. “The journalist will help us do that. A movement must have a face. It must have an identity.”

“I understand.”

Yousef knew that Zulfiqar was lying. A man like Zulfiqar could not see beyond the limits of his tribe. He could never have envisioned a plan like Yousef's, never could have raised the funds or created the cells that were needed to implement such a plan.

“I do need your help with security. I may need the TTP to be available in the next few days.”

“We will have a company of men within easy reach.”

“Brother, the next two days. We will be like clouds dropping much rain.” Yousef 's quote of Muhammad from the Koran was more than just a metaphor.

“Yes.” Still no smile, but Zulfiqar had a spark in his eyes that Yousef recognized. The old man had become a believer in him.

The meeting ended, the vehicles leaving in two different directions, with Yousef 's heading up the valley, to the west.

“Stop here.” Again, Yousef pointed to the side of the road, just short of the riverbed, at the mouth to the valley. “You know what you need to do with the other one.”

“Yes.”

The second bag of money was going to Peshawar. It was stuffed with another hundred thousand dollars. It was to be handed to just one person, a woman. She was the badly ill mother of a young man and a much younger daughter. Both the woman and her daughter had developed chills some months ago. They continued to lose weight. The daughter was only a child of twelve, already painfully thin. The mother and her daughter were infected with tubercle bacillus. It was as Yousef had promised that both the mother and daughter would have the money to move to London and receive the treatment needed. The bag also had identification cards and passports that would allow the two ill people to be treated as if they had lived their entire lives in the East End. With some luck, Yousef promised, the two would survive. In return for this gift, the woman's son, a technician at Kamra, needed only to do one favor.

“I will walk the remainder of the way.”

“Here!” Umarov threw a water bag across the cab. Dehydration remained a constant threat, particularly at this altitude. The valley's floor was well over ten thousand feet.

“Brother!” Yousef drank from the bag. It would be well below freezing soon. He wore an army coat layered over his
salwar kameez
, a pajama-like, thick cotton outfit.

“Keep it.”

Yousef slung the water bag over his shoulder, then the rifle.

The cave lay several miles up in the mountains. “I will see you in a day after you pick up our new friend.”

Yousef turned and headed to the northwest. He reveled in this opportunity to be alone. He would follow the riverbed for several miles and then cut up into the mountain ridge. As far as the eye could see, the landscape offered an endless stretch of frigid boulder-strewn rubble. In the cloudless sky, the white-capped peaks of the Himalayas could be seen well to the north. He followed the potholed, twisting, pencil-thin road toward the mountain range.

He also knew that he would be at his safest while he walked alone. The Americans would never take notice of a man walking alone toward the Afghan border region. The tribe of the valley knew who he was and that he must be protected. The man with two cell phones would be an easy target walking alone. A single bullet would prevent the birth of Yousef 's new nation. He smiled. No one would notice. And no one would stop him.

CHAPTER 43

 

“T
he pond is over there.”

James Scott could barely hear what the crew chief was saying over the roar of the Pave Hawk helicopter's turbine engine, but he could tell from the chief's motion, pointing out the open door, what was being said.

“There's the village and the pond is just there.” The chief was yelling the words. Scott leaned forward in the canvas seat. The harness tugged at his waist as he looked out over the snow-covered landscape. Property lines were marked in odd-shaped rectangles and squares of tree lines that surrounded the village. The air should have been chilling, but the jet engine warmed the blast coming through the open door. The helicopter tilted hard to the right, pulling Scott back into the seat, as he looked down directly to the ground below.

A blue pickup truck with a snow shovel on the front end was directly below the helicopter, pushing snow along streaks in front of a thick, rectangular bunker that was a part of a network of buildings. Each of the buildings were linked by a black-striped taxiway in a chain. The helicopter tilted again, sharply to the right, pushing Scott's shoulder into the tubular frame of the seat.

“I've read about the pond,” Scott yelled back to the airman. “It's the reason the Roman Legion was here.”

Lakenheath's Pond existed thousands of years before the first Roman soldier set foot on the island, but the freshwater supported the establishment of the first garrison. Scott saw in his mind the encampment of the Legion in the clearing next to the pond, a perfect quadrangle, holding more than twenty thousand Romans. In the center of the encampment was the praetorian's, or general's, tent, the lines of the streets and tenting perfectly straight, like the geometry of the Coliseum. The small tent city was surrounded by a rampart, more than a dozen feet high, followed by a ditch twelve feet wide and twelve feet deep. The Roman measurements were exact. They had built the perfect killing machine.

But it was here in the center, the praetorian's tent, that Caesar stayed during his visit to the frontier.

Julius Caesar had been a success because he became an emperor after being a great field general. The empire lasted a thousand years not because of emperors like Nero and Claudius, but because of the Legion. The Legion, under command of men like Agricola, refused defeat. An engine of warfare, the machine took forty years to march through this island, but eventually it crushed the tribes of Britain as it did with all of its enemies.

Almost every day, Scott found that some lesson from Gibbon's
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
came to mind, often in a relevant way. He'd studied Gibbon at Eton and Oxford
.

Scott glanced down at his Submariner Rolex. He twisted it the several hours to mark the time in western Pakistan.

The Pave Hawk helicopter's skids settled to the ground as Scott uncoupled his belt and stepped out on the tarmac.

“Thank you!”

The crew chief saluted his passenger.

Scott turned to see the concrete bunker with a pair of F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jets sitting inside. RAF Lakenheath's row of hangars paralleled both sides of the runway.

The modern engine of warfare.
Scott looked across the airfield to see the U.S. Air Force's front line of strike fighters.

Lakenheath was the home of the Americans' 48th Operations Group. On the other end of the row of hangars, one stood out. A massive, high-winged cargo aircraft stood parked in front of the last hangar on the far end of the runway. The T-tail stood well above the roof of the nearby hangar. Clouds of hot mist floated up from the ramp, which was extended below the towering tail of the aircraft. Scott noticed the shapes of several figures near the nose of the aircraft. Armed guards with M-16 rifles surrounded the C-17.

“Will it take off in this?” Scott pointed to the sky through the windshield as he spoke to the driver of the Air Force truck waiting to pick him up. The snowstorm had shifted into a driving, blinding wall of white.

“Sir, those guys roll in zero visibility. They had us drive the runway in the last fog bank. I could barely keep this on the asphalt.” The driver was talkative. “As soon as we called in that we were clear of the strip, all you could hear was the spin of their engines. You never even saw it.” The airman first class stared directly ahead as she drove across the airfield. Her knuckles were a blanched white as she squeezed the steering wheel.

Scott needed a C-17 crew like that.

“Are we going directly to the WOC?”

“Yes, sir.”

The operation center controlled everything on the field.

The pickup truck's driver had the heater on high. The snowflakes hit the warm glass and turned instantly into drops of water. Despite the approach of midday, the temperature seemed to be dropping quickly. The new snow stuck to the already plowed taxiways. The driver drove the truck like an ambulance, flying across the airfield with a red flashing light on her cab's roof, stopping only briefly as she crossed the main runway.

The truck stopped in front of a low, one-story block structure with a dark metal roof that was covered largely in white with drifts of snow. The building was missing any windows. A sign directly in front said WING OPERATIONS CENTER.

Scott ran into the building. He didn't even bother to take the time to thank the driver.

“Mr. Scott, your pass.” Another airman handed him the magnetic card. It wasn't as if Scott hadn't been here before. He walked down the hallway, past several airmen armed with short-barreled M4 rifles with their vest jackets. He scanned his pass and entered the vault marked
SCIF
. The Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility had walls nearly a foot thick, covered with copper mesh that foreclosed any eavesdropping from an outside source.

The room was no larger than an oversized cubicle crammed with computers and LCD screens covering the three walls remaining beyond the vault door entrance. A table in the center was covered with satellite photographs and pictures of bearded, turban-dressed men. Several men, also with beards, sat at the desk studying the pictures.

“Well, gentlemen, he has crossed the Rubicon.” Scott took off his coat, knocking the snowflakes from it. One of the bearded men, in a plaid shirt and blue jeans, stood up to take it.

“Do you have the pictures of the ridgeline?” asked Scott.

“Yes, sir.” The man, Captain Mark Furlong, hung the coat and handed a packet of satellite photos across the table. They were marked up with black tracings showing the major gradients and pitch of the land.

Scott pulled his chair up to the table. “The ridgeline goes from the northwest down to the southeast. The riverbed is on the south side, and intelligence tells us that the caves are in the mountains on the far side of the bed.”

“Any water in the riverbed?” A blue-eyed, black-bearded soldier asked the question from a chair that was leaned back against a filing cabinet. A wad of snuff tucked into his cheek made him look like a man with a bad toothache. He held a plastic cup, which he would occasionally spit into.

“Sergeant Frix.” Furlong mentioned the name as a way of introducing the shooter to Scott.

“It's dry and rocky. It looks like a gravel truck dumped a pile of crap into a ravine and called it a riverbed.”

Frix nodded his head.

Scott had a sense of the team's structure. Frix sat next to another lanky soldier with brownish-blond hair and a short brown beard. His name was Don Burgey, and he too had a cheek swollen with a pinch of snuff. Scott knew that those two, like the other team, Sergeants Vaatofu Fury and Nel Villegas, had spent years working together. In-country, they communicated with a look or, in the pitch-black darkness of a rocky outcrop of rocks, a squeeze of a shoulder or arm, a spotter and shooter, setting up kills in perfect sync.

Parker's requested man, Kevin Moncrief, also sat at the table. Though he didn't have a beard to match the other operators and he was at least a decade older than the most senior man, Furlong, the ex–gunnery sergeant, looked comfortable enough with the team, and they with him.

“We'll drop in on the northwest of this mountainous finger in the other valley.” Furlong pointed to the ridge that paralleled the dead riverbed. “And we'll move up to the front of this point. Several valleys should be visible from somewhere in here.” He continued to point as the others looked over his shoulder.

“Pull up the bird and let's see what activity there is.” Scott directed the briefing.

Sergeant Burgey turned to a keyboard, bringing an image up on the largest of the several LCD boards. As he focused in, the sprawl of Peshawar could be seen to the southeast. Soon Peshawar disappeared as the view shifted farther to the north. A river twisted across the screen, from upper left to lower right. A scattered row of clouds to the south gave the picture a sense of depth. Burgey continued to focus in and, as he did, a twisting dirt trail could be seen at the base of the mountain range. At several points, the dirt road turned toward the mountain and then suddenly stopped.

“There's one of the caves.”

“What's that?” Scott stood up, crossed over, and circled an object on the ground.

Burgey focused in, and with each click the image of a man, walking alone across the rocky desert, became obvious. He left a moving shadow that was much longer than his height. The sun was setting, distorting the proportions.

“Take it all the way in.”

The spy satellite had the sensitivity of a microscope. The form of a man changed to a clearer image that showed his outline, then his manner of dress, and then the beard on his face. Even though darkness was approaching on the desert plain as he moved quickly across the rocky landscape, his rifle was slung over one shadow.

“What do you think the chances are?” Scott smiled. If he wasn't who they hoped he would be, he certainly was a bad guy. He was heading in the wrong direction to be a good guy. Now, if he only stayed there.

“It can't be that easy,” said Frix.

“Let me call Langley.” Scott reached for the secure phone.

“This is Scott.”

The others watched the one-sided conversation.

“Yes, indeed.”

Scott looked up at the digital clock on the wall with the several time zones.

“Yes, departure is in six hours.”

The tension in the room was thick. They had all done this before, but there was always the risk of the random bullet, the pin-sized fragment of shrapnel, or the ricochet splinter of shell casing. But the team would not go in without one or the other.

“I hope not.”

No, the mission wasn't being canceled by weather or storm or sleet or rain.

Scott picked up the pen from the desk, grabbed a piece of paper, and wrote
weather
.

“Yes, got it.”

This time he wrote in big, bold, block letters:
TALIO
.

“Yes, Operation Talio.”

Langley had assigned the mission its official name.

Only Scott knew the word's meaning in Latin.

Retribution
.