by D S Kane
She’d believed the feds had been funding terrorists and then sending her to steal the money back. Now, here was the proof. It gave a new depth and dimension to the term “recycling.”
She feared there would be reprisals from the agency if they ever found out she knew. She felt disgusted with her government. How could they even consider doing something so heinous?
She’d need to hold this evidence as protection. But it would have to be done in some way that guaranteed the agency couldn’t kill her and bury her body with the threat her evidence posed.
She’d developed the skills to program a “time-bomb” to send all the intel files she had accumulated to every news service on earth, including Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language news network. And now she used those skills. The data would automatically be decrypted and sent if she didn’t key a numeric password every four days. And that password would be changed by the program using the date in a mathematical formula commonly used in financial calculations. Not foolproof, but good enough and easy for her to remember. She placed the program and the encrypted data in a hidden directory within her web server in Chechnya.
The idea of her government supporting terrorism was so difficult to envision, she wondered if she would someday conveniently forget to key the password and thereby trigger dissemination of the data.
Her West Wing hack gave her the endpoints for all the Houmaz bank accounts. What had they used the money for? She hacked into every major bank in the Muslim world, searching for the private bank accounts Tariq and Pesi Houmaz had sent the funds on to. Their primary bank was the Bank of Trade, and it had inferior security making it easy. The password for the bank’s Security Administrator was set to “Mohammad.”
Cassie found Tariq Houmaz made routine payments for amounts in the range of about $25,000 each to three bank accounts every month. She tracked the cash through SWIFT’s bank-to-bank EFT network to its endpoints. Tribal leaders, men in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, owned the destination bank accounts. She did a bit more research and discovered he had his camp situated in the Spin Ghar mountains, near the village of Upper Pachir.
Working with this intel left her feeling filthy, as if she’d immersed herself in sewage.
From her agency briefings, she recognized a few of the names owning the bank accounts as leftover Taliban gangsters. The power of these hoodlums depended on the size and proficiency of the armed gangs they ruled. Cassie guessed the cash Houmaz paid to the tribal lords was protection money.
Now I’ll steal and use their money. Removing the funds might remove the gangsters’ support. Cassie moved the money—all of it—from the accounts of the tribal leaders back to the Houmaz bank accounts and left a clumsy trail of evidence back. I wonder how long it will take for the tribal lords to discover the Houmaz brothers took back everything?
Next she moved everything from all the Houmaz bank accounts to one of the agency’s bank accounts, leaving a trail of SWIFT instructions pointing to the terminal in the agency’s basement. The total amount was well in excess of a billion dollars.
Then, using the typical system administrator’s ID and password, she moved most of the funds from that account to an unrelated numbered bank account she’d established with the password “Kahuna” for later distribution to her mercenaries, and then she prepared to hack SWIFT and deleted all the transaction trails.
She kept wondering what would happen if she failed in the crucial step of covering her tracks. Since SWIFT settles in net at the end of every day and not real-time, transaction by transaction, she had less than three hours remaining in the day during issuance of the funds transfers to wipe clean every instruction.
She reached deep into the bowels of the originating bank computers, erasing the transaction detail trailers and modifying the sender data to reflect other accounts within the bank’s account records.
She penetrated the bank funds transfer repair stations, found “one-off” corrections that could be modified to correspond with the transaction modifications she’d already made, creating a complete backtrail for each falsified transaction.
The easy part was erasing all traces of her ever having entered the bank computers from their network server records.
If she failed, it wouldn’t be long before they traced it back to her and her plan would unravel. Each hack took about ten minutes and there were fourteen of them.
She found herself drifting occasionally, wondering what Lee’s and her lives would be like if she survived the battles soon coming. Tomorrow might be the last day she ever spent with him. What if she survived? And then she shook her head to clear it, forcing herself back into the work at hand. After all, she still wasn’t sure he wasn’t the mole.
When she was finished, she felt satisfied but wasted, and dragged her body off to bed. It was just after the close of SWIFT, and Cassie was asleep in seconds.
Lee let her sleep late into the morning. At noon, he pulled the blanket from her with care. She shifted a bit but kept snoring. “Cassie, are you okay?”
She stirred and stretched her arms. “Yeah. I dreamed we were old and married, and we had a teen-aged daughter and a black cat I’d rescued as a stray. We called the cat ‘Gizmo.’ Strange, though, I recognized our daughter’s face but couldn’t place her even though I know her. Very confusing.” She shook the sleep from her eyes. “Why’d you wake me?”
“From your behavior, I guess you’re finished arming the trap.” He reached over to the nightstand and retrieved a bottle of 2011 Chandon Méthode Champenoise and two glasses. “Congratulations.”
She yawned. He reached for the coffee pot on the countertop and filled a cup for her.
She seized the cup, took a sip. Then she pulled him back. “Thanks for the champagne and the coffee. And I didn’t just arm the trap. I sprang it. Clock’s running as of 5 a.m. tomorrow.”
Time to fight.
Avram Shimmel reviewed the reports on his desk, ticking off things accomplished on a Gantt chart depicting the timeline for events in the coming battle and the delivery logistics to support it. He flipped pages and cross-tied items to ensure all the loose ends remaining in his battle plan were being handled. A two-location battle, each site a quarter of the world from the other, with forces outnumbering us many times.
His expression was dour. So many endless details. The troops were all in place but only part of the matériel had arrived. He began writing questions in the margins of the supply logistics report. What is due to arrive? When and where? What arrived damaged and is now in need of repair or replacement? He needed at least one more of him to ensure his mercenaries were battle-ready.
He picked up the cell phone-equipped GNU radio and pressed in a number. “Major McTavish, this is General Shimmel. On your status report, it shows all matériel received at the depot outside Riyadh. Is this everything we ordered?” He listened to Alister McTavish utter one word—“yes”—and then asked, “And exactly what is the status of our Major LeFleur’s east Afghanistan delivery?” A few seconds later, he asked, “Have military matériel testers been deployed to both depots?” Then, after receiving another “yes,” Shimmel asked, “What is the current status of the matériel and when do you expect testing to be complete?”
This time McTavish spoke at length. Shimmel’s expression changed, his bushy eyebrows raised in alarm. He asked, “How many will need new parts? How long will repairs take?” He listened a few seconds and then said, “Too long. Figure out some way to get all in a state of tested readiness within two days for both sites. No, you can’t have more time. I’m giving you all the time I can! Just do it. Yes, and get your men prepared to deploy in three days. We’re going to attack then. That is, if you’re ready. Shimmel out.”
Lee barely had time to give Cassie a goodbye kiss and wish her luck before she boarded. The fleet of Learjets took off, one after another, from the private air terminal at San Jose’s Mineta International Airport.
On the ride back to the Highlands Inn, both Shimmel and Ainsley were silent.
The sun was setting into the Pacific as the two men sat at the table in Cassie and Lee’s room. Shimmel read from his notes, reading glasses low on his nose. “We now have thirty men with tested matériel in the air-conditioned supply depot on the outskirts of Riyadh. Major McTavish commands in the city. We have seventy men in the foothills thirty miles southeast of Jalalabad, sitting in four air-conditioned supply transports outside the village of Upper Pachir. Major LeFleur commands in the hills. Major Giondella will coordinate communications between the city and hills. He’ll operate from Tel Aviv assisted by Michael Drapoff who can hack into Mossad after we initiate the blackout to keep the two Houmaz brothers from realizing they’re both under attack. Drapoff’s contacts within Mossad make him the point man of this operation.”
Shimmel faced Lee. “Everything will be ready for us to commence our attack in Upper Pachir less than one hour after you give the word.” General Shimmel’s eyes bored into Ainsley’s.
Lee rubbed his eyes. “What’s Cassie’s status?”
Shimmel read from one of the pages in his hand. “She’s with Major LeFleur in Upper Pachir. I tried to change her mind on this but she stated it’s personal and she refuses to stand down. The remaining four former Mossad agents are with her, yielding total manpower of seventy-five at the caves. However, she insists on keeping one jet ready for her and the Mossad personnel to carry them from Jalalabad to Riyadh as soon as the Muslim extremists in the caves have been rendered.”
Lee shuddered. He knew if she lived through the Afghanistan battle, she’d fly off to fight again in Riyadh without any rest. In the mirrored closet he saw his face reflecting the worry he felt. He wondered how effective she’d be, and how he’d function with his thoughts focused on work but his heart consumed with the dangers she faced.
His job was to work with Major Giondella and Michael Drapoff to jam communications on satellite phones, cell phones, and landlines between Riyadh and Afghanistan. With all remaining telecommunications dead, the GNU radio would be the only form of communications—voice and data—working in Riyadh or in Nangarhar Province. Drapoff and Major Giondella had developed a manual procedure to close down landlines using electromagnetic devices—EMP technology developed by Mossad—deployed by Majors LeFleur and McTavish from their locations.
Lee knew everyone and everything was good to go, but he worried something might not work. He muttered an old saying: “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
“Thanks for the update, Avram. Give me some time alone. Okay?” He left the hotel room and walked aimlessly around the grounds for over an hour, fearing the worst. When he returned to the hotel room serving as command central for their missions, he found General Shimmel writing notes with a felt marker on a chalkboard:
Mission Upper Pachir Caves
Approach caves
Neutralize guards
Mine cave exits
Enter caves and execute all hostiles
Collect weapons
Meet with tribal leaders and determine if there are other Muslim extremist locales
If additional Muslim extremists are found, determine if they have additional plans, per Cassie’s description of the phone conversation Ainsley retrieved between Pesi Houmaz and Abdul Hassain, her assassin in Riyadh
Execute all Muslim extremists in all their locales, especially Tariq Houmaz
Mission Riyadh
Approach compound
Neutralize guards
Enter compound and interrogate Pesi Houmaz. Do the brothers have other plans
Execute Pesi Houmaz.
Exit compound and return to California
Shimmel looked up and faced Lee. “Are you ready? If you are, we can start the attack in Afghanistan. Now.”
Lee looked at the chalkboard. So many things could go wrong.
He nodded. “Yes.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
September 2, 8:12 a.m.
4 miles due west of the village of Upper Pachir, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan
Cassie read the intel supplied by the mole. It was endless—hundreds of pages. She paced the area around the bivouac and scanned the barren mountainous horizon. The mercenaries were camped in the high country of the Spin Ghar mountains. Ragged foothills surrounded them, pocked with caves. Many of the caves had interconnecting tunnels. Although the area froze in winter, it boiled hot this summer day.
According to the intel, the cooler caves just a few miles away offered the terrorists their only respite. They’d used the area for years and abandoned camps littered the area around the mountains. They avoided spending daylight hours outside the caves, and when the sun went down, they performed night exercises.
The caves had been formed eons ago when prehistoric sliding limestone foundations settled into hardpan, leaving gaps or caves.
Tora Bora was a few miles down the road but the bombs dropped by the United States some years back—during the First Taliban War—had closed most of those caves.
Many of the remaining caves were large enough for the Houmaz mujahidin to live within. Some of the large caverns were used as depots for arms and ammunition.
Cassie faced Major Jacques LeFleur, a mercenary for most of his life. His large, muscled arms were obsidian in the sunlight. LeFleur walked to the truck, an aggressive expression on his face. From North Africa, his black skin worked better than camouflage for night missions. When he passed where she stood, he didn’t bother acknowledging her.
She knew he hadn’t seen any action in the French army that spawned him. Her reports indicated he wasn’t known for his intelligence, but he was a persistent man, driven by emotion. She believed he relied on his instincts to make tactical and operational-level decisions. He seemed to have little regard for strategy or mission—those were the province of top brass. He wanted to fight, not think.
She followed and watched him looking through his binoculars at the horizon, scanning for the tribal warlords that controlled the area around Upper Pachir. “Major, what is our current status?”
LeFleur stared at the checklist. His accent was a thick French and difficult for her to understand. “More than 10 percent of the equipment doesn’t work and parts for repairs won’t be available in time for this operation.” He pointed to a list of missing, damaged, and malfunctioning equipment. “One of the armored vehicles has a defective engine. Two of the bazookas arrived with incompatible ammunition. A sniper rifle is missing its scope. And one entire carton of hand grenades is missing from the delivery. But the General arranged for more than a 25 percent oversupply of all matériel. We’re ready to roll as soon as we get word from him that Drapoff has severed communications between Riyadh and Nangarhar.”
As the sun rose higher, LeFleur walked to the canvas chair in his campaign tent and reviewed reports his ops coordinator had printed for him. He matched these reports with the map of Nangarhar to which they applied. LeFleur’s perimeter guards had found no trace of the feudal lords, and this made him uneasy. He muttered, “I suspect they are out there watching.”
He didn’t believe Cassie’s claim that if he and his troops didn’t attack the caves, the warlords might attack by themselves. He’d heard her say the warlords believed Houmaz had raided their bank accounts but how could she know something like that? And even if she was correct, there were over seven hundred armed men in the caves.
He and seventy mercenaries along with Cassie and her four Mossad bodyguards were camped in the floor of the valley, hidden by a series of hills and valleys from the terrorist camp and their caves. Though his force had an overwhelming advantage in technology, the ten-to-one body-count odds against him were a formidable numerical consideration.
Then there was the woman herself. Arrogant and insufferable. Women had no place on a battlefield. Yet here she was, along with her four Jewish spies, all wearing mercenary uniforms, battle helmets, and backpacks filled with technology toys. Whatever did they think they were going to do, besides get themselves
killed? At least he’d managed to keep the female mercenaries out of his command. He faced her. “This place is going to be a battlefield. Dangerous for a woman. You can come along, but stay out of our way.”
Cassie didn’t bother replying. She walked to her tent, holding her cell equipped with GNU radio. She wore an earbud. She called Shimmel, and he told her that the operation would begin soon. The conversation turned to the mole’s intel. “I know you haven’t any faith in him but just tell me, Avram, if the satellite photographs show heat sources from locals within ten miles of the caves.”
Shimmel was the control for all three operations and had decided to remain in the Carmel Highlands, halfway around the world. He couldn’t be in Tel Aviv, Nangarhar, and Riyadh all at the same time. “I’m examining the photos on a 48-inch TV. No, no one is visible. But they might be wearing heat-absorbing camouflage. Or the photos might have been altered by someone at the agency to mislead us.”
She said, “Okay, then. Tell Drapoff in Tel Aviv to begin jamming communications. Leave the private channel open for our GNU radios. Contact me as soon as he starts and we’ll commence our attack when you reply. Cassie out.” Flanked by four of her bodyguards, she stood staring at the Land Rover as if the answer to all her hopes and dreams was within. The voice in her head remained quiet.
Shimmel terminated the call and frowned. He faced Lee. “I pray her lack of combat experience doesn’t lead to her death and the deaths of many others, all good men and women. She’s very headstrong.”
Lee sat next to him, his face a wall of worry.
Shimmel placed his next call to Major Giondella. Drapoff and the major had worked with the Mossad, using a new technology developed at Ness Ziona. The tech used a tightly focused continuous EMP beam to temporarily jam all telecommunications. It worked for about fifteen hours before failing. He’d prayed that the newer, better version in development would be available, but not yet. Would fifteen hours be long enough?
