Retribution (28 page)

“Then the HAHO?”

Furlong nodded.

A HAHO was high-altitude, high-opening jump. A HAHO's greatest risk was the jumper being seen. But it also had benefits: The jumper could use the ram air wing of the parachute to act like a glider and carry him quietly for miles. If the winds were played right, the team could jump many miles away from their landing zone. The high opening also allowed the
pop-pop
sound of the deploying parachute to occur well above and far away from the enemy's hearing. The drop at night, in cloud cover, gave them the protection of not being seen, but it exposed them to the crosscurrents of high winds for a much longer time.

“It's our best shot,” said Furlong, “particularly with the FireFly.”

“That's what you use to get the gear in?”

Marine special ops had used something like a FireFly. A parachute with a box of supplies, radios, some LFP40 sling packs, and most important, extra ammo, would fly by itself, remotely guided in by the lead parachutists. The sling packs were the portable solar panels that would provide them the juice to power their radios. The FireFly lightened the load that the jumpers would have to carry and, ideally, it would land in the right place.

“Yeah. And I'll lead you in. All you have to do is follow the red bouncing ball.”

By way of explanation, Furlong picked up one of the helmets.

“Heads-up display. Something else from DARPA. A computer integrated with GPS, the winds, everything.”

“How do you make sure the altimeter's right?”

“We'll drop a reader that will relay the true barometric readings and its altitude back to my headset.”

“Damn, Skip, you might have a future in this business.”

Furlong smiled. “Skip, eh?”

“In the Marines that's what we call our captains. It's a compliment.” Moncrief grinned. “And you can call me Gunny Ndee.”

“Ndee? What's that, some nom de guerre?”

“Exactly.”

“All right. We go on pure oxygen in fifteen minutes. We'll breathe it until the jump, when we switch onto our own tanks.”

“Good, got it. I have to go up to the top deck and see if I can make a call or two. I want to check in with Scott about my other man.”

 

 

The C-17's communications deck was outfitted for special operations. A telephone call could be made to anywhere in the world. Moncrief's first call, to Scott, went unanswered. It rang, and rang, and then switched over to a voice mail with no special message.

Moncrief looked at his own cell phone for the second number.

It only rang once.

“Hello?” Moncrief was making one final call to his source.

“Is that you, Gunny? I thought you'd be calling sooner.” The voice sounded as if he was alone.

“You know why I'm calling?”

“Yes. Is this a secure line?”

Moncrief looked down at the communications-deck airman he was standing over.

“Is this secure?” he whispered to the young airman.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, we're secure on my end.”

The voice paused.

“Call me back at 023 336 718 3446. Do I need to repeat it?”

“No, got it.” Moncrief wrote the numbers down on the airman's pad across a form that looked like a communications logbook. He could see the airman's frown. The kid's writing was near perfect, with times and dates and numbers in each separate box.

He should be an airman,
Moncrief thought, as he looked at the perfect handwriting.

“Don't worry. This is important. Get me that number on a secure net,” Moncrief barked at the communications airman.

The airman was good at his job. The Globemaster was specially outfitted with a separate communications desk. Through his headset, the gunny heard the phone ring, and again, it only rang once. The voice didn't waste any time on the small talk.

“I don't know what you've been told, but your man is still alive.”

Moncrief felt relief and confusion at the same time. Paris was always right. Even on the secure net, he knew better than to get into the details. “Ludwig, what do I need to do?”

“Don't listen to Zaslani. He is full of bullshit and is just playing an angle to help out the Saudis.”

Gunny Moncrief didn't even know who Zaslani was or what he was talking about; however, it was an easy assumption that Zaslani was Mossad and was probably in London.

“I'll ask again: What do I need to do?”

“Nothing, just your mission. Parker's success will do the rest.”

Shit, who
else
knows?

CHAPTER 54

 

P
arker had made a point of getting a window seat on this final flight. It was dark, but the cloud cover had an opening just below the aircraft. His seat was intentionally on the pilot's side of the jumbo jet, which would have allowed him to look to the north. It was a small gamble, as the final leg in to Peshawar didn't necessarily have to be directly out of the west. On this night, it was. Parker was lucky.

He could see the mountain range extend to the north and the thick clouds north of Peshawar. The snowcapped mountains were mystifying in their enormity. They grew larger and higher as he looked to the north. Eventually, their tops disappeared into the clouds. Even at the altitude the airplane was traveling, Parker could tell that the mountain peaks went well above them.

Their gamble had always been that Yousef's encampment was to the north of Peshawar. It was a rational, logical assumption. In the past, what little they knew of the man had him being somewhere north of Peshawar and under the protection of a local Taliban chief called Zulfiqar.

Parker knew that Moncrief and Furlong's team would need to be on the ground, in position, well before Sadik Zabara was to meet Yousef. In his mind, he computed the time forward from when they should have left England.

Parker imagined the military cargo aircraft, radioing in to Afghanistan that it was having an engine problem. The Pakistani Air Force would be listening in and the engine's failure would account for why the American's C-17 was much lower, dangerously lower, to the twenty-thousand-foot peaks. It would also allow the Globemaster to swing out, across the border to the east, before it turned back into Afghanistan to land at Jalalabad Airfield.

Parker's experience as a pilot put him in that pilot's seat. The updrafts and downdrafts would shake every bolt, rivet, and weld. The pilot would be slammed into his seat and then pulled up into the straps. It would be one wild roller-coaster ride.

Parker looked down, however, at the ground below.

The only lights on the ground came from a twisting convoy of cars and trucks. Unlike the United States or Great Britain or much of the world, this world was stark, empty, seemingly lifeless and dark.

He looked down for a certain twisting path of lights.

A path of truck lights turned and twisted in the dark through what must have been tortuous hairpin turns and perilous, high-altitude switchbacks.

The Khyber Pass.

Parker watched the traffic even though it was nearly three in the morning. The Americans' demand for goods caused the trucks to continue to roll through the night. The Khyber was the only route this far north.

It was Fontane who spoke of the slaughter of the British Army in 1842 when he wrote: “With thirteen thousand their trail began. Only one man returned from Afghanistan.” Parker remembered Butler's painting of the sole survivor, a Dr. Brydon, barely alive, drapped over his horse, as it wandered through the pass.

For several thousand years, the Khyber had been the only route in or out.

There may not have been another place on earth where more men had breathed their last breath.

Alexander the Great had traveled this path. And countless others through time immemorial, many of them coming to grief.

Now it was Parker's turn.

The wheels of the jumbo jet screeched once, and then the airplane floated for a second. As the weight of the aircraft settled down, the wheels screeched again.

“Oh, my friend, we are here.” Liaquat Anis awoke from his sleep in the tight seat next to him.

The aircraft suddenly shook again, violently, as it slowed down.

Parker glanced at his seatmate.

“Don't worry.” Liaquat smiled. “That's the railroad.”

“Railroad?” Parker spoke the word in broken Pashto. The conversation was now in the language of Peshawar, the city where they'd just landed. The words came easily to Parker's mind, but he feigned a struggle with the language so that Liaquat wouldn't find his Bosnian companion too fluent.

“Oh, you speak a little Pashto? Good, yes, very good.”

Parker smiled.

“Yes, the Khyber railroad track cuts across the airstrip. It may be the only place in the world where an airplane has to stop for a train.” Liaquat laughed. “I'm just kidding, my friend. The railroad stopped many years ago, but its track does cross the runway.”

“I understand.” Although he spoke and understood, Sadik would not being saying much. He didn't want to press the issue.

“Where are you staying?”

“The Rose Hotel. It's near the Khyber bazaar.”

“No. You will stay with me tonight. I am also near the market.”

“You are kind, but others are expecting me at the Rose Hotel.”

“No, my friend, they are not. They are expecting to see you at my house.”

Parker smiled an uncomfortable smile, imagining how the real Zabara would react to this preplanned manipulation. He shrugged and nodded. When Liaquat, satisfied, looked away, Parker reached into his pocket and felt the PDA and sealed packet of chewing gum.

He would send one last message. If anything happened, if he suddenly disappeared, if he left no other trace, it would at least give them a lead.

Contact made: seatmate
.

After that, it would be too dangerous to send more.

CHAPTER 55

 

T
he pillow was damp, cold, and musty, and smelled like it had been boxed up in the lightless, dark room for years. The room was a cave.

Enrico Hernandez's head was pounding. His eyelids seemed to be weighed down to the point that he had to concentrate just to open them. The blanket only came up to his shoulder blades, and the chill of the room above the wool was painful to his neck and upper shoulders.

“Oh, God.” He tried to move his hand up to his face. The handcuff cut into his wrist and wouldn't move. Hernandez's mouth was dry, but his head hurt more. He lifted his head away from the pillow, realizing that the dampness was from his drool. The drug suppressed everything except the pressure on his bladder.

“Help, help.” Enrico heard his voice. It seemed as if it was coming from someone else. “Help me.” It was barely stronger than a mumble.

Two men were talking in some other language. He could hear their voices coming through a thin wall.

“Help, please.
Por favor!
Help me.”

Again, Enrico lifted his head so his voice carried beyond the pillow. The voices in the other room stopped. Footsteps seemed to be crossing a wooden floor. And then the door opened.

“Oh, Jesus. The light!”

The bright light blinded him.

The man closed the door part of the way; however, the light still came through the partial opening like a searchlight. Enrico focused on the wall.

Enrico was struck by how the wall had no pictures, nothing hanging on it, and it was painted in a pale green.

He tried to focus his mind. It was a watered-down green.

It was that pale green that he remembered seeing in the Walmart aisle under Easter decorations. It reminded him of his daughter.

“My friend, are you okay?”

The man was young. His voice carried an accent. He was clearly Arab, with a well-trimmed moustache that extended just beyond the limits of his mouth. He had white teeth, one of them crooked, distorting his smile. The man's shirt seemed to have been doused in cologne. He was so close that the smell nauseated Hernandez.

“I'm thirsty.”

“Of course you are.”

Enrico's captor held a cold bottle of water to his lips.

Hernandez downed the water in one desperate gulp.

“Easy, my friend. There is more.”

He drained the bottle.

“Another, please.”

The man reached across the room. Hernandez heard the chatter of ice as the man pulled another bottle from a bucket of some sort.

“Here, try this.”

Hernandez drank half of it before coming up for air.

“Easy.”

“I need to use the head.”

“The head?”

Hernandez's brain felt like he had been hit with a sledgehammer between the eyes.

“The bathroom.”

“My friend, can you focus?”

The man used the term
friend
too often for his taste.

“Yeah,” he lied. It didn't matter. He needed to use the head or the bed was getting ready to get soaked.

“Listen to me, Mr. Hernandez.” The man pulled out two photographs from the pocket of the brown coat he was wearing. “You see these?”

Enrico focused in the dim light.

“Listen, you son of a bitch—”

“No, you listen! I'm going to uncuff you. The loo is through that door.” He pointed over his shoulder.

“Okay.” Hernandez would have to reach deep, but with some luck he would have his hand on the man's throat as soon as the key slid the lock open on the cuffs.

“Understand this, friend. You can no doubt kill me in a matter of seconds and be on the street in a bloody instant. But if you do, the two people in those photographs will never see tomorrow's sunrise.”