Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1)

by Olan Thorensen

  Zach had taken only a quick look at detailed maps of the mission area and read the operation proposal before telling the air force lieutenant colonel giving the mission briefing that whoever’s idea it was must be an incompetent idiot.

  “Why don’t you let the smart people who know what they’re doing do the thinking?” the officer said with a smirk. “The operation doesn’t need your approval. This is going to happen. Either you lead it, or we’ll bring in someone else.”

  Zach had been tempted to tell the jerk where to stick the mission, but he wasn’t sure what the other four members of his team would do if he opted out. Willie Larson and Logan Porter would probably have followed his lead, but he didn’t know about Jimmy Akers, even though they’d worked together the last year. As for Jesus Morales, he’d joined the team a month previous, and though he was working out, if faced with following Zach or obeying orders he might follow the money.

  In the end, Zach had led them into terrain more appropriate for a nightmare or, in this case, a lesson in where not to attempt unobtrusive insertion and surveillance.

  “Holy shit,” murmured Willie at 7:03 a.m. when the helicopter dropped them on a ridgeline at eight thousand feet. Bare, steep, rocky slopes surrounded them, leading to higher peaks.

  Porter spit to his left. “This place is even shittier than the photos looked.”

  Zach wished he could disagree, but they needed to stay alert and not be distracted by grumblings, however justified.

  “Focus,” he told the others. “Let’s do this and get our asses the hell out of here. The Taliban camp is supposed to be seven miles in that direction.” He pointed to a gap in two peaks topping fifteen thousand feet. He didn’t need to explain they wouldn’t be taking the easy route. If hostiles were to be found, they’d more likely be along paths through passes. If possible, they would move along the slopes at ten to twelve thousand feet, using footpaths only if no other option. Seven miles on a map translated into twelve hard miles of altitude changes.

  He also didn’t need to tell them their arrival had been seen by everyone within twenty miles, a fact obvious to anyone having field experience and who had seen and heard a helicopter in mountainous terrain. A consideration somehow missed by the geniuses planning the mission.

  For the next seven hours, they trudged up, down, and parallel on mountain slopes. Twice they crossed paths used by humans, and half the time the paths might have been used by humans but were likely created by animals.

  “Probably an ibex trail,” Porter said quietly as they followed one such trail. “Seen ’em in zoos and read they’re from this part of Asia.”

  “Yeah,” said Zach, “those or I understand there’s a local version of Rocky Mountain sheep.”

  “Marco Polo sheep, they’re called,” offered Willie, “and don’t ask me why they got named after that Italian guy.” They spoke only loud enough to be heard within a few yards—sounds could carry almost forever in such terrain.

  Fifty-five minutes later, they were overlooking a quarter-mile-long shelf where the maps indicated a Taliban base.

  “Well,” said Zach, his voice dripping with acid, “can’t say nothing’s alive down there. Maybe that group of ibex are Taliban with really great camouflage.”

  “If they are, they must be real terrors if the five of them are going to attack Kabul,” said Willie.

  Zach turned to Morales, spun the man around, and reached into a pack for their radio’s handset. He told the other men, “I’m getting us out of this fiasco. A copter can land on the shelf.”

  “Are you sure you’re at the right coordinates?” asked Lieutenant Colonel Asshole.

  “I think I can read a fucking map!” shouted Zach, momentarily forgetting about sound traveling. He took two deep breaths. “We’re right above the shelf where the camp is supposed to be. The rock formations and shadows during the day might make it look like a camp.”

  He didn’t believe what he’d said, but he didn’t want to argue, so offered a sop for the intelligence and planning screw-up.

  “It’s got to be there,” said the colonel. “Maybe there are multiple shelves. I want you to move a couple thousand feet higher to the northeast. There’s a promontory that should overlook the entire slope you’re on. You should see the camp from there.”

  Zach looked in stupefaction at what his hand held before bringing it back near his face. “We ain’t going to climb all over this God-forsaken country looking on the off chance this entire idea wasn’t a fuckup of some idiots. Not with night coming on. If there are any Taliban in these mountains, they know exactly where we are, and it’s only a matter of time before they gather enough men to come at us. We’re out of here.”

  Several pithier exchanges ended with a threat of dire consequences once the team returned to base. Then another voice came over the radio.

  “Can’t land on the shelf. Winds are too strong on that side of the mountain and aren’t expected to fall off for at least twenty-four hours, maybe longer. You’ll need to get around to where the southern shoulder of the mountain is more protected.”

  Zach pulled out his map, cursed, and got back on the radio.

  “Have you ACTUALLY looked at the terrain? There’s a fucking canyon on that route. It cuts up the side of the mountain with sheer rock faces almost to the summit. We’d still have to spend the night out here, and it’d still take us at least a day to climb down and back up, and that’s if we don’t kill ourselves trying.”

  “Give me a minute,” said the voice.

  Zach turned to the others. “I think they’re trying to come up with a better idea, but looking at the map, our only options seem to be going around the other shoulder or descending most of the way to the valley we saw a few hours ago.”

  Porter shook his head. “If we stay high, it’ll take rest of the day, and we can’t be sure there’ll be an extraction point. Going down, at least we know a copter can get in, though the chances of running into unfriendlies goes up.”

  Willie and Akers nodded. Morales’s eyes were wide. He licked his lips but didn’t say anything.

  Zach got back on the radio. “We’re descending into the valley to our southwest.” He gave coordinates. “We’ll be there in two hours. There’ll still be enough light. I expect the extraction to be on station as we arrive.”

  “The scree slope?” asked Willie.

  “Yeah. The one we saw a while back. Looks like it descends a good part of the way down, ending just above the tree line. Everyone, lace your boots tight, drop the rations, and take only one canteen of water. When we reach the scree, we’ll jump out onto it. It should be deep enough to cushion us as we land and should let us slide. The slope angle means we won’t slide far, then we’ll keep doing it. If you sprain something, just suck it up. Break something and we’ll toboggan you down. I recommend not breaking anything. The valley is the one place in this area not considered pacified, but we’ll be in and out, in case there are Taliban there.”

  Ninety and innumerable bruises later, they slowed when the scree slope ended in jumbled boulders. Trouble arose within three hundred yards after they came to the first scattered, stunted trees.

  “Shit,” mumbled Porter as he picked up a piece of bread crust. “This can’t be more than a day old.”

  Zach got on the radio. Two minutes later, he turned to the others. “Extraction is forty minutes away. We can’t go back up, so stay alert. We’ve another mile to where they plan on picking us up. Supposedly, no one lives here, but you know how that goes.”

  The shooting started eleven minutes later.

  ***

  This was the point where Zach usually awoke from the dream, as if his brain, even when asleep, attempted to protect him from what came later. There were memories he would just as soon forget.

  The clock hadn’t advanced far from his last look. He needed to divert his attention from the image of Morales’s face when he’d died, Zach holding his hand.

  He knew from experience the futility of attempting
to sleep again so soon after a dream as vivid as this one. So he rose, clad only in shorts, to look for something to eat while he watched TV for an hour or more. He would get a few more hours’ sleep. Word had come the previous afternoon that the Homeland Security section head wanted to see him sometime the next morning—he assumed pertaining to something he’d done to cause displeasure. Not that he gave a shit.

  Later that morning, a clerk told Zach to report to the section chief, William Thompson, a complete asshole. It did not escape Zach’s attention that he had had too many associations with men to whom he had given such labels, though he didn’t casually award the title to just anyone. They had to clearly deserve it. Thompson fulfilled the requirements in abundance, although in fairness to Thompson, Zach had to agree that at least a high minority, if not slight majority, of the officials in Homeland Security fell in the same category.

  He had been temporarily dutied to Homeland Security the last four months. The senior staff at CIA Overseas Operations appreciated Zach’s value but needed to hide him for six months to a year. Zach had told a powerful political appointee that he and any number of other experienced CIA hands had more brains in their balls than this particular person had in his whole head. This took place during a briefing where the administration had come up with another idiotic plan for settling some long-term ethnic problems in Central Asia—an area of which they had no knowledge or background to justify making such plans. A single incident would have been bad enough; unfortunately, this was at least the third or fourth time that Zach had conflicted with this particular asshole, who then agitated to separate Zach from the CIA.

  Zach’s previous agency section chief, and a friend when not pissed off at him, arranged to move him from the CIA headquarters out of Washington entirely for an “important” liaison position with a Homeland Security office in Goddard, Virginia—only a few minutes’ drive from Zach’s apartment and on the other side of Washington from CIA sites, the idea being to hide Zach out of sight and hopefully out of mind until the political appointee went on to a new brilliant idea and forgot his existence. Unfortunately, Zach found himself working with a group of Homeland Security staffers who would’ve thought that the CIA political appointee’s ideas were totally plausible.

  Zach managed to keep his mouth shut for almost two months before the first time he pointed out the complete idiocy of a set of proposed Homeland Security measures at ports. It wasn’t that he didn’t think more security was needed at U.S. ports. In fact, he thought there should be a significant increase in precautions because any group around the world could slip a herd of elephants through the U.S. port security without anyone noticing. What he objected to were implementation procedures with minimal impact on security and that seemingly had the purpose only to increase paperwork and thereby prove the importance of the Department of Homeland Security. Zach’s repeatedly pointing out flaws in new procedures had finally led to a blowup with Thompson about a week ago. Thompson had yelled at him and told him just to get out of his sight. This Zach obligingly did, spending most of the rest of the week pointing out to lower-level Homeland Security staff all the problems with the procedures they were supposed to be implementing. Then came the call to report to Thompson’s office—and here he was.

  Zach entered the room without knocking, deliberately under the assumption it would piss off the man.

  What the hell, he thought.

  Thompson looked up from his desk, grimaced as he saw who had interrupted him, and then frowned at Zach’s entry without a proper knock.

  “Marjek, sit down,” he grumbled, closing a folder on his desk and glaring. Zach plopped himself into the chair and stared at Thompson with a quizzical expression—also something he figured would be irritating. Hey, what was the worst that could happen? He had been gone from the CIA for four months, so maybe asshole number one had forgotten about him and moved on. Maybe they would take him back just to get him out of the country. In a worst case, he would only have to listen to this jerkoff chew him out before sending him back to do nothing important.

  “Marjek, I can see why they posted you over to us from the CIA. They just wanted to be rid of you. You must have something big on someone high up. That’s the only reason I can see for any organization keeping a dickhead like you around.”

  Zach didn’t say anything. Why should he? It wasn’t going change anybody’s mind in this office.

  Thompson took a moderate breath, leaned back in his chair, and a smile bordering on a smirk appeared. “I’m happy to tell you that I have a request from somewhere—where I have no idea—for your temporary duty to a new assignment. Why anyone would have any use for you is a mystery I don’t need to solve. I’m pleased to say that you’ll be gone from this office, and we can return to the entire staff functioning efficiently.”

  Yeah, right, Zach thought. Meaning shuffling needless paperwork and convincing everyone how important you are to national security.

  Thompson continued. “I have here an order for you to report tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. to a specific site at the Pentagon.” He pulled out a single sheet from a folder and pushed it across the desktop to Zach. “You have the rest of your morning to clean out your desk and turn in your security card. See Personnel on the second floor to complete the sign-out papers. That’s all.” With that, Thompson turned to his computer screen and then pretended to be doing something.

  I wonder what he’s working on, thought Zach. Maybe saving the U.S. from eighty-five-year-old grandmother hijackers, Albanian chess players, or, even worst of all, stealth Malaysian mangoes.

  Zach picked up the sheet of paper, glanced at it, stood up, and said to Thompson, “I would say that it’s been an honor to work with you these last few months and I further appreciate the important role that Homeland Security has in ensuring the safety of this great nation. However, I usually try to avoid vomiting in public.” With that, he turned and walked out. He left the door open because it was his last opportunity to irritate Thompson.

  The next day, he got to the Pentagon at 12:30 p.m. He’d been there before and was prepared for the sheer size of the five-sided building. Thus, he wasn’t sure how long it would take to get to the designated room where, according to the slip of paper, he was supposed to meet with a General Lionel Sinclair. Zach believed in as much preparation as possible, so because he had no idea what this meeting was about, the previous night he’d used his personal laptop to research Sinclair, an officer who had retired four years earlier as a brigadier general.

  From what Zach could find out, Sinclair had served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and had been the commanding officer of unspecified and still classified operations in Yemen and Africa.

  Zach remembered that Frank Williamson, another CIA field officer, had been somehow involved in the Yemen operation. He and Frank had worked together, and he thought they had a reasonable degree of respect for each other. He called Langley and, after the usual haggling, got transferred through to Frank. They engaged in some introductory pleasantries, and Zach moved on to the purpose of his call.

  “So . . . Frank . . . I called to see if you can give me any skinny on a General Lionel Sinclair.”

  “Sinclair? How did you connect with him?”

  “Nothing I want to share right now,” said Zach. “I just need an outside view of the man. You know . . . what’s his reputation?”

  “Well . . . I worked with Sinclair for almost a year at his headquarters near Kandahar in Afghanistan. His unit was regularly coming under fire, and we were trying to ferret out which of half-a-dozen factions was involved. Sinclair was highly thought of as a field and special operations commander. Apparently, almost everyone who served under him was supposed to have a similar opinion. He was generally considered in that rare group of officers whom subordinates regret leaving when command changes or they’re transferred. He was a colonel at the time and about to bump up to brigadier, but people thought he’d never make major general. He’d ticked off too many political generals and admirals
of higher rank by telling them what they didn’t want to hear. That’s about all I know about him. Word is he’s a straight shooter.”

  “Okay, Frank, thanks for the input.”

  Zach decided he might already be starting to like Sinclair.

  Zach found the appointed room with ten minutes to spare. The door was indistinguishable from a thousand other doors in the Pentagon, except for the number. He knocked, and when there was no immediate response, he opened the door and entered a small room with a minimum of furniture and an open door at the other end. A voice called out.

  “If that’s you, Marjek, come on in. If it’s anybody else, you’ve got the wrong office.”

  Zach walked into the other room, this one with a typical government metal desk and chair, along with a facing folding chair.

  These people really need to do something about the interior decorating.

  Sitting at the desk was an officer wearing the everyday “army greens” service uniform. Zach assumed the man was Lionel Sinclair, but he was wearing the two stars of a major general. Zach had not found any reference to Sinclair being reactivated or promoted. This raised red flags. Knowing what he did of the military, Zach figured it could be one of two things. Either Sinclair was good buddies with some higher-ranking officers who had somehow gotten him promoted post-retirement, or . . . what? He didn’t like mysteries involving generals.