Greetings gave way to orders. Messages were dispatched via encrypted radio and relayed as far south as Lashkar Gah to trigger desired activities on the planned escape route, along the bottom of the gorge and over the desert leading to the Indian Ocean.
His strategy during this war had never been to defeat American technology but rather to deceive it—to deceive it by capitalizing on the enemy’s arrogant dependence on it.
Making them predictable, he thought, as he accepted a cup of hot tea from the young daughter of one of his men, her head covered in a traditional hijab, her face nearly shielded by a niqab. The dark veil allowed a view of just an inch of light-olive skin and a pair of mesmerizing brown eyes, which were averted from his stare.
“Thank you, child,” he said, sipping his tea while standing next to a crate that his men had dragged to the edge of a clearing overlooking Quai Kotal, which eventually led to the desert.
Distant explosions speckled the northern range like lightning flashes, brief moments of twilight seen through jagged ridges, followed by rumbling thunder as his forces continued distracting the enemy, setting the stage for his ultimate act of destruction.
Which will be felt around the world.
136
Religious Beliefs
SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
Zahra remained in the rear of the cabin with her leg up while Mani did a preflight check and Dr. Khan finished his work on the device, replacing the damaged components and installing the battery pack.
They worked in near darkness, save for the flashlight she kept pointed at the bomb while the scientist accomplished his work—quite a bit faster than she had anticipated, given the complexity of the task.
And that’s a good thing, she decided, given their time constraint.
They had exited the cave just in time to avoid the inevitable and quite predictable NATO strike, before splitting forces per her plan, using the hidden transmitter to turn the tables and trick the enemy, drawing them in the opposite direction from the bomb.
It had taken Prince Mani, Zahra, Dr. Khan, and a contingent of ten men almost two hours to make it down the countless switchbacks to the dry riverbed. Bin Laden and Akhtar had kept all attention away from them, making their short but arduous journey rather uneventful, considering NATO forces had been on their heels. Still, the hike had been quite difficult for Zahra, with her wounded leg. She had worked through the pain, refusing to accept Mani’s help for most of the way to avoid appearing weak in the eyes of men who would just as soon stone her for refusing to wear a hijab.
Screw them, she thought, and the religion they use as an excuse to subdue and maim women.
Fortunately, those men now waited outside, protecting the plane in case the enemy decided to look this way. And that had allowed Zahra her first rest since she had jumped off this very plane, four days ago.
She stared at the diminutive bald-headed man with round glasses and a long, skinny nose that he kept shoved into the guts of the weapon. She had to give the little guy credit for being both feisty and efficient, standing up to Akhtar and the rest of his—
The device came alive with a series of beeps.
She leaned forward. “Is that thing on?”
Dr. Khan looked up from his work, regarding her over the rim of his glasses. “That would be the point of me being here, yes?”
Mani walked in from the cockpit wearing a set of night vision goggles and pointing at his watch. He looked a bit like an alien with those goggles, but they were necessary. Darkness was their friend.
“We need to get going. Dawn is just over an hour away.”
“Good. Because my work here is done,” Dr. Khan replied, before spending a few minutes showing them how to activate the device. “I have rigged this timer to the trigger mechanism,” he added, pointing to a small digital timer attached to the battery pack. “You can set it in thirty-minute increments, up to six hours, so you have time to get away.”
“That would be useful,” Mani said.
“I thought so,” Dr. Khan replied. “You two don’t come across as…”
“Jihadists?”
“Then be sure to be at least seven kilometers from the blast,” he replied, showing them how to operate the device, before turning it off to preserve the battery and securing it in the compartment behind the seats for its upcoming flight.
And with that, the scientist excused himself and stepped outside, where he joined the contingent of men who would head back up the gorge.
Mani pulled up the stepladder and closed the door before heading to the cockpit. He was followed by Zahra, who also donned a pair of night vision goggles. Turning them on, she stared at the short greenish runway of river rocks leading straight into a section of the pass too narrow for the Cessna’s wings.
As Mani strapped into his seat and put on a Bose headset, he looked over at her and smiled, apparently reading her face. “I got in, Zahra, and the wings are still attached, yes?”
“Looks that way.”
“And they will remain attached on the way out. Trust me,” he said.
Having already completed the prestart checklist, Mani turned the starter. The turboprop kicked in right away, whirling the propeller into a clear disk. He completed the engine start procedure but kept the navigation lights and beacon off.
Zahra stared at engine gauges coming to life, getting the strange feeling that she just might be in for the ride of her life.
137
The Plane
SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
“Are you hearing what I’m hearing?” Wright asked, huddled between Larson and Stark at the edge of an outcrop, with a clear line of sight into the void.
The colonel looked down from their vantage point. He could certainly hear the unmistakable sound of a turboprop revving up, echoing inside deep canyon walls. Unfortunately, his night vision optics could not see a damn thing beyond the first few hundred feet of the gorge.
“Ryan? Anything?” he asked his Delta sniper, who had taken a position farther north, along with Monica and the other nimbler operators, who had beaten them to the edge by almost ten minutes.
“Negative, sir. Too dark. Just the sound. But how could it be coming from down there? It’s looks too narrow for any plane.”
Stark frowned, remembering the tight pass on the way up. The walls were not only less than fifty feet apart but also misshapen, with protuberances and trees growing at angles from niches and shelves. Plus, the path twisted like a damn snake, making those turns impossible in a plane.
But the sound intensified, meaning it was headed this—
“Six Six Zulu, Red One One. Do you have eyes on that ravine?”
Stark sighed in frustration. His MP5A1 was pointed into the abyss, but without a target.
“Too dark, Red One One,” Stark replied. “But we can hear a plane revving up down there. What’s your ETA?
“Three minutes.”
138
Hand Grenade
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
With so many battles in play across so many square miles of mountain, it actually didn’t surprise Harwich that it took almost ninety minutes for the message from Six Six Zulu to make it up the NATO chain of command. But when it did, it felt like a hand grenade tossed right in the middle of Lévesque’s long conference table.
Denial took hold first, as the realization that they had been played sank in. It was followed by anger, starting with the general’s fist crashing on the table.
Standing, the NATO chief looked around the room. He looked as tired as Harwich felt, with dark circles around bloodshot eyes and a two-day orange stubble taking over his freckles.
“Can someone please tell me how it can be that, with the hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment and trained personnel at our disposal, our breakthroughs are coming via a Pakistani spy?”
He asked this of no one in particular while pointing at the infrared images on the screen behind him. But he did glance over at Ma
ryam, who stood between Harwich and Corporal Darcy, and added, “No offense intended, Miss Gadai, eh?”
“Aye. None taken,” she replied.
“So, how soon before we get a flight of jets over there?” he asked.
“They’re taking off right now, sir,” said one of his aides, a Lieutenant Garrison, also Canadian, looking at his tablet computer. “ETA twenty minutes.”
Colonel Duggan, sitting to Lévesque’s right, shook his head and said, “General, this thing will be over in twenty seconds. Captain Wright has just reported engine noises in the area that he believes belong to a turboprop plane, probably the bastards flying the bomb out of there.”
“What about planes already in the air … over the battle zone?” Lévesque asked.
“RTB to refuel sir,” Garrison said. “They’ve been out all night providing air cover for our troops and are flying on fumes.”
Visibly frustrated, Lévesque just sank in his chair.
“General?” Harwich said.
Lévesque lifted his gaze at the CIA man. “Yes, Mr. Harwich?”
“There’s a Warthog two minutes out, sir.”
He leaned forward. “Who?”
“Captain Laura Vaccaro.”
“The one we rescued yesterday?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought she was in sick bay, eh?”
Harwich looked at Garrison, sighed, and said, “Long story.”
“How did she get there so fast?”
“She had a head start.”
“But … we just got the report.”
Harwich looked again at Garrison, who said, “Ah … she went rogue, sir.”
“Rogue? What do you mean, rogue?”
“She came over to alert you,” Maryam decided to interject. “After I showed her those images. But your blokes outside wouldn’t let her through.”
Garrison shifted uncomfortably. “Miss Gadai is right, sir, and I just learned that as well. The captain did come by—over an hour ago—but the MPs turned her away.”
“Why?”
“Because they were following orders.”
“Whose orders?”
“Ah … yours, sir.”
“Fuck me,” Lévesque mumbled, before turning to Harwich. “So … a Warthog, eh?”
“Yes, General.”
“Well? Let’s get her on the horn!”
139
Short Field
QUAI KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
Part of the trick to a successful short-field takeoff was to let the plane rev up while stepping on the brakes. Zahra had seen Mani do it many times before, but always while operating on dirt or grassy field. Never on river rocks, which resulted in slight forward movement as the tundra tires slid over the stones under the power of the Pratt & Whitney PT6A-140 turboprop.
“Looks like the goggles give us about five hundred feet of visibility,” he said, applying twenty degrees of flaps for added lift during the takeoff run, before releasing the brakes. “Here we go.”
The Caravan lurched forward, gathering speed.
The plane trembled for about fifteen seconds, until Mani applied just enough rear pressure on the yoke to transfer some of the weight from the tires to the wings. Another twenty seconds and he tugged harder, and the Cessna leaped into the surrounding darkness.
Mani left the flaps in place while cutting back power, since they would not be climbing much this night. They entered a slow flight, which the airspeed indicator marked at ninety knots, or half the Cessna’s cruising speed, but it was required to negotiate the tight turns ahead.
Before that, however, they needed to clear a very narrow section of the canyon, which he had apparently managed on the way in.
Even with the night vision goggles it was difficult to see that far ahead, but they could not risk turning on the halogen landing lights. This had to be stealth all the way, lest they wish to paint an X on their backs.
Mani banked the wings almost thirty degrees while applying opposite rudder, presenting a narrower wingspan while adding power to offset the loss in lift.
“Easy now,” he whispered, as dark green walls rushed by. They were cruising at just a hundred feet over the bottom of the canyon, working the delicate balance between power and drag to hold airspeed and altitude. This required constant minute adjustments of all control surfaces and power settings while he slowly nursed the airplane through the narrow pass—even more so as the ravine turned, compounding the problem.
“So this is what I missed,” she mumbled, gripping the sides of her seat as he increased the angle of bank to forty-five degrees, adding more power and rear pressure on the yoke, which he achieved by working the elevator trim.
“Almost done,” he whispered, covering another five hundred feet before the canyon widened to almost a hundred feet, allowing him to level out the wings. But as he did so, muzzle flashes erupted high above them.
140
Firing Blindly
QUAI KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
“Don’t let up! It’s got to be down there!” Stark shouted, emptying an entire magazine into the darkness below as the engine noise peaked.
Wright followed suit with his UMP45, blindly unleashing volleys of .45 ACP slugs into the void while Larson opened up the Browning, vomiting rounds at a ridiculous rate.
Their combined muzzle flashes splashed the walls with stroboscopic light, but they still could not see that far into the gorge, even with the goggles, which forced them to fire indiscriminately into the greenish darkness from where the sound had originated.
“Red One One, Six Six Zulu. SitRep.”
“I’m here, boys, and I see your muzzle flashes. Hitting anything?”
“Who the hell knows?” shouted Wright, swapping magazines. “Goggles are useless that deep in the ravine!”
“Roger that. Got word from KAF that reinforcements are on the way. Circling overhead now to get a better view.”
Stark raised his gaze. Although he could hear the jet engines, he could not see the Warthog. Vaccaro had kept her exterior lights off to be on the safe side.
Dropping a spent magazine on the frozen ground and inserting a fresh one, he pulled the cocking lever with his non-firing hand fully to the rear and then released it, chambering a round, before unleashing another thirty rounds into the void. He could only hope that a handful of the dozens of rounds being released each second by their combined force would actually hit something other than the frigid landscape.
141
Fighter Jock
QUAI KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
She screamed, but not at the barrage of rounds raining on them, or even at the few that managed to punch a hole or two in the fuselage.
Zahra shouted obscenities in both Pashto and English when Mani banked the plane almost sixty degrees while applying opposing rudder, forcing it to the side of the canyon where the gunfire originated—so damn close she could almost touch the black granite wall.
The maneuver not only presented a much narrower target to the enemy but also made it harder for rounds to find him, given the angle at which they were being fired. One of the peculiar features of Quai Kotal was its granite walls, which angled inward instead of outward as was the case with most canyons. This made the bottom of the gorge wider than the top, which worked to their advantage as the Caravan hugged the eastern wall.
She watched in relief as the mixed-caliber volleys from above tore into the center of the ravine, kicking up clouds of dust but missing them by over a dozen feet as Mani continued flying at sixty degrees of bank.
And in another minute, as the canyon turned, they left the threat behind.
Leveling the wings once more, he pushed more power, increasing airspeed to 120 knots, while Zahra scanned the instrument panel, looking for any indication of a problem.
“Doesn’t look like they hit anything vital,” she observed, before inspecting the underside of the wings near the fuselage, where t
he fuel tanks were located. “No fuel leaks, either.”
“Good. We barely have enough to reach our refueling stop south of the border.”
She glanced at the GPS, which showed them as a dot in the middle of the twisting canyon traversing the Sulaimans. They had another thirty miles of this before they would cross the desert in the opposite direction they had come just four nights ago and then fly straight to Karachi to change planes again. Then it was straight to Paris, France, aboard the Citation X.
Just another Saudi couple headed for a weekend of excess.
Zahra stared at the shades of green beyond the Plexiglas windshield as the realization of what they were about to do suddenly became very, very real.
The City of Lights was scheduled to die in forty-eight hours.
By fire.
142
Lonesome Dove
QUAI KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
It took almost ten minutes before Vaccaro spotted them, and only for a moment, while flying a couple hundred feet over the twisting pass.
The forward-looking infrared camera under the belly of the Warthog interfaced with her helmet, painting in her clear visor thermal images of the darkness below. Something very hot was moving very fast near the bottom of the canyon.
The problem was finding it again, and keeping it in her sights long enough to lock on one of her two AIM-9X Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles. But the ravine was too narrow and winding for a clear shot.
“Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. SitRep.”
Vaccaro frowned under her mask. Wright had convinced her to turn her other comm radio back on, tuned to KAF’s frequency, and now the same controller who had requested her to RTB wanted a situation report.
“A little busy, guys,” she replied.
“Red One One, this is Major General Thomas Lévesque of the Canadian Armed Forces and commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.”
Well, she thought, turning the Warthog back over the narrow pass, looking for the runaway plane, that’s certainly a proper fucking introduction.
Without Fear Page 48
