Without Fear

by Col. David Hunt

  “So you were hoping that they would lead you to whatever it was that the professor was meant to work on?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But I crashed your little party.”

  “Forcing our hand.”

  “But they got away all the same.”

  Maryam dropped her gaze to the map. “Aye … they bloody did.”

  “And this … Zameer … Any chance he can get us new intel on their whereabouts?”

  Shrinking in her chair, Maryam said, “He has gone silent. Has not replied to our bloody messages since the shooting.”

  Gorman looked at the clock on the wall, and then at his Rolex. “And that was three hours ago.”

  “Fancy your watch,” she said, stretching a finger toward it.

  “Ah, thanks,” he said, staring at it again while wondering if she was trying to work him. Before he could help himself, he added, “It was a … gift.”

  She tilted her head. “Very special gift.”

  “Yeah. Very special person, too,” he mumbled, before realizing he was about to cross some line. “I take it that is not normal,” he added quickly.

  “What isn’t?”

  “Zameer going silent.”

  “Bloody right that’s not normal.”

  So that meant this Zameer character was either burned—and killed—or, worse, like everything else in this damn country, he was playing it both ways, just as the government of Pakistan played it both ways with the United States and al Qaeda.

  “You realize, Maryam, that the assholes who kidnapped the professor are led by the asshole my country has been after—the same asshole that your country is harboring?”

  Gorman knew she could neither confirm nor deny that. The Agency had long suspected the government of Pakistan of sheltering Osama bin Laden. But apparently that same government wasn’t crazy about the master terrorist being associated with anything that smelled nuclear.

  “And now you need my help,” he added.

  “Aye.”

  Gorman sat back and stared at her. She represented the ISI, the enemy of the CIA. Heck, as of late, more resources were spent combating the ISI than Putin’s GRU. But their agencies now faced a larger and common enemy: nuclear terrorism. If there was even the smallest chance of preventing al Qaeda from going nuclear through a little off-the-books interagency cooperation …

  “All right, Maryam,” he finally said. “What do you have in mind?”

  18

  No Honor Among Thieves

  LANDI KOTAL. NORTHWESTERN PAKISTAN.

  Pasha Baqer drove for his life.

  And for his mission.

  The journey from Islamabad to Peshawar had been uneventful, even a bit boring, and the Pashtun warrior had welcomed the boredom after nearly failing in his operation before it had even started, at the home of Dr. Ali Khan.

  But his men had reacted well, creating a defensive perimeter, sacrificing themselves to fend off the SSG contingent long enough for him, Dr. Khan, and two of his men to get away in one of the vans. Osama bin Laden, always anticipating trouble—and always full of surprises—had a fresh team waiting just outside the capital city. Qadeer, one of bin Laden’s cousins and personal bodyguard, had been among the men ordered to assist him in this most critical of missions.

  Pasha had embraced his older relative before dumping the van and transferring to three Goats for the treacherous haul across the Khyber Pass.

  Downshifting into second gear, Pasha tapped the brakes on the lead Goat before turning left at the intersection of two unnamed streets somewhere in the middle of the unpaved guts of this war-torn town. He was being directed by the man in the passenger seat, Adnan Zubaydah, a cartel lieutenant who was guiding the convoy through the Khyber Pass under orders from bin Laden.

  Qadeer, aboard the last Goat and in charge of protecting the rear of the caravan, had spotted the enemy five minutes ago while they were driving from Peshawar on the N-5, also known as Grand Trunk Road. A black Land Cruiser had emerged from a bend in the road near the outskirts of town and was gradually gaining on the slower Goats.

  Sliding into the turn, Pasha shifted up to third and floored it, the 4 × 4’s fat tires spinning, kicking up dust and dirt as he accelerated down a side street that ran parallel to the N-5. Adnan held a radio to his lips, conveying the evasion plan to the other two Goats, who also negotiated the tight turn at speed, falling in line behind him, keeping the caravan tight. In the rear seat, two of his men flanked Dr. Khan, their tall and muscular frames contrasting sharply with the scientist’s diminutive stature. But what the professor lacked in size he more than made up for in lung capacity and attitude.

  “Are you kidding me?” the scientist shouted. “I thought you guys actually controlled this region!”

  Pasha ignored him, just as he had since the nearly failed kidnapping attempt. Dr. Khan had not really minded being abducted to assist the Taliban, but he had been livid when his family was placed in the line of fire by the rebel group’s miscalculation.

  “Is this why I was taken? So I can get killed? You guys are a joke! A joke! Do you hear me? I demand to speak to the sheikh! Where is the sheikh?”

  “Somebody shut him up!” Pasha shouted, barely keeping control of the Goat as it dashed past one- and two-story dwellings with mud and stone facades charred and pockmarked from decades of fighting.

  He worked the gears, accelerating up the unpaved street. People, dogs, goats, and vendors scrambled out of his way. Pasha ignored the chaotic scene ahead of him. Left hand on the wheel, right hand alternating between the horn and the gear lever, feet working the pedals, he was stressing the military utility vehicle to its limit.

  Adnan, a harsh man roughly Akaa’s age, his face heavily lined and leathery under a stained Peshawari turban, divided his attention between the road ahead and the team behind them while chatting on the radio. His motion was abrupt but focused, in control, conveying the experience of having done this before.

  Risking a glance at the rearview mirror, Pasha looked past the wide-eyed glare of Dr. Khan with one of Pasha’s men’s hands wrapped over his mouth, spotting the pair of green off-road vehicles within the cloud of dust behind him. He also caught a glimpse of the darker and taller Land Cruiser as it finally emerged from the turn roughly a block behind them.

  They were getting close.

  But according to Adnan it would not matter.

  “Take this left!” the gruff cartel chief shouted, his deep voice booming over the roaring engine as they reached the next intersection.

  Pasha tapped the brakes again before cutting left and easing into second gear, ignoring the perspiration rolling down his forehead. The Goat protested the sudden shift in direction, its chassis vibrating, the wheel trembling under his grip, but its low center of gravity kept the tires biting the gravel the moment he released the clutch.

  Debris sprayed onto a pair of street vendors, veiling them in a cloud of the fine clay soil that layered the terrain in this region, as he pointed the nose of the Goat straight down another nameless street.

  Accelerating, the 4 × 4 jolting over the harsher surface of this side street, Pasha tightened his grasp on the wheel to keep from bouncing on his seat while Adnan grabbed the dashboard for stability. Chickens cackled out of the way, wings flapping amid dust and the screams of running pedestrians.

  And once again Pasha ignored it all, focusing on the picture beyond the grimy windshield as the houses ended in another two blocks, the narrow street suddenly opening to a makeshift soccer field.

  He drove right onto the field while Adnan continued working the radio.

  Another glance at the rearview mirror. The second Goat also made it to the field, tagging along behind him. But the last 4 × 4 had stopped, its green chassis sliding sideways, blocking the end of the street. Dust and debris shrouded it as Qadeer leaped out, Kalashnikov aimed at the incoming Toyota SUV.

  Multiple reports resonated behind them as Pasha reached the end of the soccer field and steered
onto a trail that wound down the side of a long hill, toward Grand Trunk Road.

  The steep grade, combined with a coarse terrain meant for foot traffic, made Pasha wonder whether the sacrifice made by Qadeer, one of Akaa’s most trusted warriors and a blood relative, had been necessary. Their military version of the Russian 4 × 4s had over a foot of clearance, easily managing the rocky and jagged track winding down the incline. No way that Land Cruiser and its lower ground clearance could handle the narrow switchbacks.

  Still, the racket echoing down from the town, now a mix of AK-47s and other small arms, told him Qadeer was holding the line, forcing the enemy in the chase SUV to pause and engage him, buying Pasha the required time to get away.

  Akaa’s cousin was doing his job so Pasha could do his.

  And if Allah wills it, perhaps Qadeer will survive this, he thought, easing into first gear to face the grade of nearly thirty-five degrees, according to the inclinometer on the dash. Pasha wound his way deliberately down the southern face of the hill, going over boulders and fallen vegetation.

  The Goat lived up to its nickname, negotiating fissures and outcrops for the thousand feet of hillside from the edge of the soccer field to the shoulder of Grand Trunk Road.

  Pasha entered a bit of a rhythm, guiding the vehicle back and forth on snug hairpin turns, disregarding the firefight while occasionally glancing in the rearview mirror to confirm that the second Goat remained behind him.

  It took just a couple of minutes to reach the shoulder, and Pasha pulled off to the side to wait for the second 4 × 4, which joined him a moment later.

  They continued on the N-5, leaving the town behind, while Adnan communicated with his people on the Afghan border just four kilometers up the mountains.

  For the first time since spotting the surveillance, Pasha eased his hold on the wheel. The 4 × 4 accelerated up the winding road, flanked by steep walls of reddish-brown rock and clay rising up a gorge carved through the range millennia ago.

  His mind transitioned from survival mode to assessing his situation, the sound of gunfire giving way to the whistling wind channeling through the meandering canyon.

  Slowly settling down, his logical mind could not help but question how the hell the enemy had ambushed them twice in less than twelve hours, given all the precautions bin Laden had taken.

  His eyes on the snaking road, Pasha frowned. It simply made no sense.

  Unless …

  Several buzzards rode the thermals high above the chasm just before the next bend, sweeping overhead in wide, lazy circles. But as he steered the Goat across the final stretch of Pakistani soil, a different kind of vulture filled his senses, a much more repulsive creature than the circling carrion birds.

  A ghadar.

  A traitor.

  Filling with rage, Pasha swore on the souls of the warriors who had this day fallen to protect him that he would find this traitor and peel the skin off his face.

  But until he did, his mission would be in constant danger. Whoever it was that had interfered twice already would certainly try again.

  Let them, he thought. Let the bastards try to stop me!

  Whoever they are!

  Wherever they are!

  19

  The Tip of the Spear

  LANDI KOTAL. NORTHWESTERN PAKISTAN.

  “I’m using an RPG!” shouted Zameer over the noise of another volley of rounds hammering the titanium and Kevlar plates of the Land Cruiser.

  Mossad officer Aaron Peretz had just parked the 4 × 4 sideways for cover, and now he jumped behind the rear wheel while Zameer, his local asset, set down his UZI on the dirt road, by his boots. The short and skinny Pakistani, who reminded Aaron of a rug peddler, reached into the rear seat for the green and silver launcher. It was already loaded with a rocket-propelled fragmentation grenade.

  “No! He’s alone, and I need him alive!” replied the burly Israeli operative, his barrel chest pressed against the rear quarter panel as he knelt and aimed the UZI down the street. He briefly glanced at his informant, giving him an I mean it glare before returning his attention to the damn Russian 4 × 4 blocking the street.

  “But sahib,” Zameer countered, using the Urdu word for “boss,” since Mossad tradecraft rules did not allow an asset to know the name of a handler, “the others are getting away with the scientist!”

  “They already got away!” replied Aaron, releasing a 9mm burst, shattering the front windows of the Goat.

  Visibly frustrated, Zameer picked the UZI back up, aimed it at the threat, and shot off a volley of rounds, which went all over the place, striking the Russian vehicle as well as the mud walls of the houses flanking it. He also hit a passing rooster, which collapsed in a cloud of dust and flapping wings.

  Aaron sighed. His asset may have found a way to infiltrate the opium cartel and also gain the trust of the ISI, but he was a terrible shot.

  “Are you certain we just can’t take another street?” Aaron pressed. “Maybe go around him?”

  “Too narrow, sahib. This is the only one on this side of town, and the bastards know it,” Zameer replied.

  Aaron forced control. This should never have gotten this far. In fact, the kidnapping should have never taken place, given Zameer’s connections inside the ISI. But his informant had apparently not known which scientist would be taken, forcing the ISI to spread out its resources around Islamabad. And that, in turn, had forced the Mossad’s hand in the form of this last-minute damage control circus to prevent al Qaeda from taking the professor across the border into Taliban country.

  Aaron was the eyes and ears of the Mossad in the region, tasked with locating and terminating Osama bin Laden. And that meant recruiting and running assets such as Zameer while operating without an embassy, unlike the Americans, the Russians, and the British.

  But Aaron was also Kidon, a member of an elite group of expert operatives and assassins recruited from Israel Defense Forces, his country’s equivalent of the American Special Forces. Originally known as Caesarea, the mysterious assassination unit within the Mossad changed its name to Kidon in the mid-1970s. Meaning “tip of the spear,” it became one of the most guarded secrets in the Israeli intelligence community, reserved only for missions deemed critical to the survival of the Jewish nation.

  Like al Qaeda kidnapping a nuclear scientist.

  As such, Aaron was expected to improvise and to prevent this unfortunate situation from getting any worse by devising a way to tip the scales, to change the odds in his favor. If al Qaeda was indeed trying to get into the nuclear business, then bin Laden couldn’t be too far from the action. The Kidon viewed the kidnapped professor as just the means to achieving his ultimate goal: cutting off the head of the snake.

  Aaron exhaled, staring at the green 4 × 4 before scanning both sides of the narrow street, now completely devoid of people. The moment he saw what he sought, he turned to his informant and said, “Keep him engaged with the UZI!”

  “Wait, sahib … where are you going?” Zameer asked, as Aaron crawled to the front of the vehicle, crouching behind the tire, ready to spring into action.

  “To do my job!” he shouted, loading a new magazine into his submachine gun before pointing at the Russian Goat. “So do your job and cover me! And shoot straight and on my mark!”

  Zameer nodded, dropping the spent thirty-two-round magazine and inserting a fresh one while keeping his aim downrange, right eye glued to the reflex scope, ready to provide covering fire.

  “Now, Zameer!”

  The Pakistani agent fired a barrage of 9mm rounds across the two hundred feet separating the warring parties, peppering the side of the Russian vehicle, forcing the lone man behind it to temporarily seek cover.

  The Kidon raced away from the Toyota and shot across the street and into a narrow alley off to their right, hiding in the long corridor formed by two rows of houses. Although he was large, like a body builder, Aaron was also quite agile, with powerful thighs and calves that he used to propel his 270-pound bulk with
the speed and grace of a world-class soccer player.

  His tight black clothes blending him with the shadowy passageway, Aaron dashed down the width of the block to the next street, past piles of fetid garbage buzzing with flies. The refuse lined back patios strung with cords draped with swirling laundry.

  His movements were deliberate, his eyes flicking in every direction, checking his chosen path as well as his flanks. This was, after all, the very heart of the volatile Federally Administered Tribal Areas—a fancy name for the most dangerous armpit of the world. Any moment any one of the dozens of warring tribes, or even opium smugglers, could show up in pickup trucks loaded with armed men to get a piece of whatever it was they thought was going down here.

  The Kidon needed to wrap up his business here and get the hell out of Dodge before that happened.

  Right hand on the UZI’s pistol grip, shooting finger resting on the trigger casing, left hand under the barrel, he paused at the edge of a street too narrow for anything but foot traffic.

  He nodded to himself.

  Zameer, for all his shortcomings, was actually right. They could not have turned the Land Cruiser around and chosen another side street to follow the other Goats.

  Verifying that the street was clear, he turned left, ignoring the stares of men, women, children, a donkey, and even two damned goats—all scrambling out of his way as he reached the dusty soccer field.

  He stopped, risking a peek around the corner.

  Satisfied that he held the element of surprise, Aaron ran across the width of the block, stopping at the end and once more risking a glance beyond the corner.

  He stared at the one-on-one battle still raging, reminding him of a tennis match.

  Zameer’s staccato gunfire pounded the Goat while the al Qaeda man huddled behind the rear tire, waiting for reloading pauses from Zameer to return fire with his AK-47. Then it was his informant’s window to fire back as the lone al Qaeda man restocked. Muzzle flashes came alive from the Land Cruiser, tearing into the Russian 4 × 4, flattening tires, shattering windows, and hammering sheet metal. The bulletproof Land Cruiser, however, had stood up to the attack quite well—its run-flat tires were still inflated, the transparent armor grazed but intact. He could only hope that the Kevlar protecting the engine and other vital components was also holding up, because the Toyota was his only ticket out of this hellhole.