The Towers (36 page)

“Yes, sir. Go right ahead.”

“We're not here to argue. Okay? Commander Lenson thinks it's worth following up. Your guys aren't convinced. So, here's what I suggest we do. Everyone go back to your terminals. If this place was ever a meet site, there's going to be some mention of it. Somewhere. Or it'll be in the document exploitation. Maybe under another name. We just need to drill down until we find it. Okay?”

The colonel pointed to a young analyst. “Mike, get the CTC in on it. I know we had a team in there two years ago. All right, everybody. Get out there and dig. We'll reconvene right after the morning brief.”

Dan pushed back his chair. But as he headed for the exit, Belote took his arm. “Boss wants you.”

“Before you leave. A little private conversation?” Tony Provanzano drawled.

*   *   *

THE
OGAs had a separate berthing tent. Only the green wash of a dangling chemlight penetrated the darkness. “Sit on the bunk,” Provanzano said. “Okay, first, what's this I hear about you pushing for privileged access to the JIF?”

Dan was astonished. Then realized, when you tried to short-circuit any bureaucratic process, especially when it had the letters
A, R, M,
and
Y
in it, the wires heated up fast, and sparks started to fly . “I was over this afternoon. Sat in on an interrogation. There was a report filed that—”

“I know what was filed, and that's the reason it's filed, so it gets confirmed and evaluated and cross-checked. What we don't need are Navy commanders playing interrogator. Then jumping to conclusions and putting their suspicions out as fact.”

Dan was about to protest, then thought, to hell with it. As his eyes adapted to the darkness he made out the OGA agent half-reclining on the far end of the bunk. “Just trying to do my job.”

“Your job's to run CIRCE for us. And to give us a window into it.” A sniff; Dan caught again the sharp scent of eucalyptus and camphor.

“That's not my understanding of what the Working Group's been set up for.”

“Then your understanding's wrong. Intelligence is a team sport, sport.”

There wasn't much Dan could say to that, so he didn't say anything. Engines shrieked outside; tires squealed as another load of ammunition or fuel or human bodies touched down. He started to get up. “That all?”

“No. Sit down.” Provanzano sniffed. “You're really seeing eighty percent?”

“I'm not saying he's absolutely going to be there. But right now, that's what the probabilities say.”

“The fog of war.”

“That, and these are cunning people. They've probably got several stories running, just to keep us scampering up and down these valleys.”

“No, he's going to be there,” Provanzano said.

Dan started to argue, then stopped. He was agreeing? “You have other sources.”

“I agree, no intel picture's foolproof. But with the SIGINT, CIRCE, and your info from the JIF, it's the closest thing to a firm location we have.”

Dan coughed into a fist. “So, what are we going to do about it? Set up a cordon, block the trails out, and put a Hatchet team down on him?”

A pause. Such a long one, Dan finally added, “I don't think I know where you're going here, Tony.”

“Well, it's like this. OBL is what we call a locus. He attracts radicals. So? Let him do what he does best. Use him to vacuum up the malcontents and senior Taliban and other anti-US elements. Let them come to him, then take them out.”

Dan couldn't believe what he was hearing. “You mean we
shouldn't
take him down?”

Provanzano gestured like Brando's Don Corleone. “Don't get excited! I'm just thinking out loud. We don't have to be as straight-line as the military. Sometimes the most direct path is not the one that gets you where you want to go. So we ask, is OBL actually the enemy's center of gravity here? Or is it the tribal militia leaders who ally with him? Of course we take him down eventually. But at the right time. Should we wait until we have more forces in-country? Cheese all the rats into one box, then pour concrete over 'em? The way we see it, this war's just getting started.”

Osama bin Laden had been a CIA creation anyway, Dan remembered. He cleared his throat. “I'm not getting a good feeling, Tony. Is the Working Group going to take our localization up the chain? Because if you're not, I am.”

A chuckle from the dark. “Just what I expected. Which is why you're getting passed over, right? Never going to pin on those captain's eagles.”

He sat motionless in the dark, feeling cold.

The agent's voice went on, confiding, reassuring. A hand pressed Dan's knee. He looked down at it in the dark, oppressed by a nameless fear. “Don't worry. We don't work that way. What'd I just tell them in there? What're they doing, right now?”

“More research.”

“Why?”

“To confirm the intelligence. Before we act?”

“Now you've got it. And if we get one more indicator, yeah, I'll take it up the chain. All the way. And we'll bust the Beard's bubble, for good.”

Dan hoisted himself from the bunk. Hesitated, looking at the man smiling at him. Then lifted the flap and went out into the foreglow of dawn.

 

17

Leaders' Recon

TEDDY
clung to the handholds as the six-wheeled Land Rover jolted and banged, raising a roil of powdery tan dust that pointed to them clear as an arrow for miles. The wind was icy cold, the clear sky darker than it ought to be. Far to the north contrails etched opal into that deep cobalt like scratches on a sapphire.

They were out on a leaders' recon, a hasty reconnaissance to get eyes on a village thirty miles to the east of Jaguar where the Alliance said there were a lot of Taliban, or anyway sympathizers. He suspected it was as much to let the locals get a look at them as to do a formal recon. The Aussies didn't drive on the roads, such as they were. Potholes and ruts, laid over some old-ass camel track; the going was only a little rougher completely off them. And you could hit a mine anywhere in Afghanistan; the Soviets had laid hundreds of thousands. He pulled his fleecy vest closer, grateful for the warmth. He'd ordered a dozen, on the Team credit card, and gotten them rushed in by the daily C-130 from Masirah.

He and Knobby Swager and Tatie were out with the SASRs. The bushies, as the marines called them. The Special Air Service Regiment had arrived a couple of days after the 15 MEU. They wore floppy bush hats, heavy beards, and strange, two-color camo patterns that Teddy thought made them look like toads. They were the most profane troops he'd ever served with, although at times it was difficult to tell exactly what they were saying. Still they seemed to be highly tactical, and almost every one he'd talked to claimed to be sniper-qualified. Two had even been in Desert Storm, though he and they had fought in different quarters of Iraq.

Echo was still out of Jaguar, still part of Task Force Cutlass. The weather was much colder than they'd expected. There'd been flurries of snow, though it didn't stick, evaporating in hours rather than melting. But although days had gone by, they hadn't seen action since Kandahar. The Special Forces were getting missions up north, but the SEALs were still just acclimating, training, at most doing these piddly patrols. The biggest thing that'd happened all week was when somebody had dropped an MRE heating tab into a plastic water bottle and popped it down the gas vent of the Porta Potti while Teddy was taking a crap. The explosion blew purple disinfectant all over him. The SEALs thought “smurfing” the chief a great prank. Every man denied knowing anything, but Teddy had his suspicions. The guilty party would pay.

“Let me see that,” one of the Aussies said, a big sergeant with a heavy jaw and raccoon-ringed eyes. Teddy hesitated, then handed over his SOPMOD M4. The guy looked it over critically, flicked a fingernail. “Same as ours. Colts.”

“How about your sidearm, there?”

“Browning. Fourteen rounds of nine-mil.”

Teddy nodded and returned his attention to the desert. The big, squared-off, desert-colored machine, open on top so there was no shade whatsoever, rolled as the ground dipped. Packs and comm gear and made-up tents were strapped all over it, as much, he figured, to protect them from RPGs as for stowage. They were much more heavily armed than the Marine Humvees, with a 7.62 on a flexible mount and a hulking forty-millimeter grenade launcher towering over what would have been a backseat had the vehicle had one. Instead a bench seat like one row of auditorium bleachers accommodated the gunner. Two more Rovers trailed them, antennas wobbling. The middle one carried the high-voltage VIPs, a marine colonel and two guys in civilian-style khakis and polo shirts and ball caps. One looked Italian, the other less categorizable; slicked-back black hair in a widow's peak, a beak of a nose; piercing blue eyes that examined Teddy for a fraction of a second, then moved on. His black cap had a logo of a snarling gray wolf. The interpreter—the “terp,” Aimal—rode with them too, woolly, round cap and anxious, sharp-chinned face bobbing behind them.

*   *   *

TWO
hours later the mountains seemed scarcely closer. The driver of the middle vehicle pulled up and waved them over. “Piss break,” he called, and their own driver herringboned the Rover off to the right of the line of march. Teddy eyed the rock-strewn ground. He didn't see any bumps or depressions. He stepped down gingerly and followed the Aussie five yards off, where they stood side by side and unbuttoned.

When he looked around, the terp was standing by himself a little ways off, turned away from the Americans. Teddy waited until he was done—Moslems were funny that way—and strolled over, still keeping an eye on the soil. He held out a pack of Winstons. “You smoke, buddy?”

The Afghan eyed him sideways. He was young, probably about eighteen, and handsome, with long, black hair cascading from under the round, embroidered hat down over his white shirt and the field jacket someone had given him. Despite the freezing cold his brown feet were bare in flip-flops, and he was unarmed. Teddy caught a whiff of him; cold as it was, his body odor was like sticking your head into a urinal that hadn't been cleaned in years. “Yes. Thank you,” he said.

“You the dude they call Animal?”

“Aimal. Some of them call me animal, yes.”

“Aimal, what made you sign up with us? You're with Karzai's boys, right?”

“Hamid Karzai is my leader.”

“You speak real good English, Aimal. Where'd you learn it?”

“From watching videos.”

Videos? “And you're helping us out because…?”

“I hate the Taliban as much as you. They attacked America, yes. But they forced their ways on us first.”

“What'd they do? You're from around here, right?”

“I'm from Kandahar. My father owned a video store.”

“That's cool. Okay, so you watched his videos.”

“That's yes. I watched the movies at the counter. But the Taliban firebombed our store. My sisters had to leave school. There is nothing good left here. No Internet. If I translate for you, maybe I can go to America.”

It sounded right, but in the field you trusted no one except your buddies; especially locals who showed up and wanted to be too friendly right away. “We'll be keeping an eye on you,” Teddy told him. “You translate exactly what they say to us, hear me? Do that, and we'll be cool. I might even be able to help you get to the US. To Hollywood.”

“Hollywood?” The one place, along with Disney World and New York, everyone had heard of. “You know Hollywood?”

“Grew up there, baby. Take care of us, and you'll be walking down Sunset Boulevard.” Teddy kneaded Aimal's shoulder, digging his fingers in so the kid's eyes went wide. “But you jack us up, Aimal, set us up for an ambush, or we catch you stealing, and I'll kill you myself. With pleasure.”

*   *   *

WHEN
they stopped next, it was at a hamlet in the foothills. The fifty-foot-wide expanse of dirt and sewage that passed for a main drag was full of people and carts and vans and tables set up in the open, some with tarps stretched overhead.

“Bazaar day,” the big Australian said. Teddy nodded, keeping outboard security with his weapon over his knee, a round in the chamber but the safety on. As they rolled in he eyeballed the crowd, taking recordings with his brain for the field intel report. The houses were mud brick. Grass grew out of their thatched tops, or maybe sod, and small bushes, like on a pioneer's hut back on the frontier. The stink hit in earnest as they slowed for a flock of muck-crusted, woolly sheep, tails and back legs smeared with shit. The kids were thin and too small, with black hair and dark eyes, most of them. But here and there pale jade eye too, and features that wouldn't have looked out of place back in California. When the Rovers braked, Teddy eased to the ground, scanning the field where the sheep were milling around, his carbine hanging muzzle down by its sling but still tactical, ready to swing up with one hand. From the stir of livestock a bearded man in
shalwar kameez
and sheepskin vest watched them, leaning on a staff. At second glance, Teddy saw why he leaned: He had only one leg.

Not speaking, the Aussies deployed out to surround the VIP vehicle. Teddy strolled a few yards away, sparing one glance at the mountains. Where the clouds moved, they were purple and nearly black, unimaginably huge, going up range after range in folds and peaks, like a whole continent tilted on its side and about to fall. He couldn't believe it wasn't already sliding, billions of tons of rock and ice coming down on them.

Her jerked his eyes away, to the kids. They'd stopped a few yards away, staring, then edging in. Cute from a distance, but as they got closer, he saw snotty noses, open sores, layers of dirt, scabby bare feet, rags stiff with dirt. They chattered and waved. When Aimal yelled, waving them away, they just pressed closer.