by Fritz Galt
“Where’s your chute?” Ferrar yelled.
He looked upward into the young man’s face and was met by a mischievous grin.
Ferrar looked down. They were mere seconds away from slamming full force into a dry, rocky creek bed.
Then he heard a sudden whoosh of air, like the unfurling of a flying jib on a sailboat. The marine had already pulled his ripcord.
Ferrar clung to the marine with both hands and wrapped his legs around the muscular body. A second later, the high-altitude, low-opening parachute caught the breeze and both men came to a sudden, swinging halt.
Their combined weight didn’t drag the huge black HALO parachute down too rapidly, and they floated the remaining forty yards to the barren ground.
Ferrar twisted and released his grasp a second before impact. He landed hard on both feet, and rolled over on his right shoulder in a cloud of dust. His helmet fell off, and he was left sitting on his butt. His jump school instructor would have called his PLF Parachute Landing Fall a disgrace.
The marine touched ground beside him and staggered forward, trying to reel in the wind-blown chute. He finally regained his balance, only to be met in the back of the neck by the handle of Ferrar’s pistol.
Ferrar bent quickly over the slumped figure.
“Thanks, pal,” he said. “I’ll borrow these now.”
He stripped away the marine’s assault rifle and slung it over the back of his combat fatigues. Then he hefted the ammunition belt onto his other shoulder. Lastly, he removed the young marine’s K-bar, his serrated and sharp-pointed knife, and slid it into his own empty sheath.
“I’ll be going now,” he said, and headed nimbly down the dry riverbed toward the distant Pakistani border.
An hour later, Paul Stevens and Joe Capella arrived by chopper at Tora Bora from Kandahar. Colonel Paxton, his marine counterpart, was already standing before what was left of the cave complex.
Stevens stepped off the troop insertion helicopter onto a demolished ledge near the cave’s former entrance. “You’ve left nothing standing,” he observed.
“I didn’t intend to,” Colonel Paxton confirmed with a wink.
Stevens looked at the forbidding mountains around him. “Any indication of where Ferrar might have fled?”
“None whatsoever,” Paxton said. “We’re using the infrared scopes, but it’s just a lot of rocks and boulders down in the ravine. Or he could be climbing up to one of these passes.” He pointed to a snowy mantle high above them.
“I doubt it,” Stevens said. “He isn’t equipped to survive long in the snow.”
“He could be hunkered down in some uncharted cave.”
“That doesn’t sound like Ferrar.”
“Or he could be making his way down that river bed.”
“Where’s it lead?”
“The ravine broadens into a valley. At that point, he could take one of several routes. But basically, there’s Pakistan down that way.”
“Well, are we setting up roadblocks?”
“There are no roads.”
“How about manning the chokepoints?”
“I’m afraid we don’t have enough troops to mount a manhunt in this kind of terrain.”
“We’ve got to stop Ferrar. He may be the key to al-Qaeda’s whereabouts. He might be the one who activates their cells. He might know where they intend to strike next.”
“Then I’ll alert the Pakistani border patrol,” Paxton said. “But they’ve proven to be fairly noncommittal, if not openly hostile, thus far.”
“Do what you can. Now, do you have any sign of Tray Bolton?”
The marine commander scratched his head. “We aren’t exactly sure what’s in that cave. And I’m not excited about inserting troops in there, especially after what just happened.”
“You heard what happened,” Stevens said, looking to his assistant for confirmation. “Bolton didn’t say anything about al-Qaeda resistance. It was Ferrar who trapped the men in a chamber and opened fire on them.”
His assistant, Joe Capella, nodded.
“Just the same,” the commander said, looking dubiously at the cave. “These are extensive underground complexes and I, for one, don’t care to risk it just yet.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Stevens said. “I’ll do it myself.” And he began to mount the hill of rubble that covered the entrance.
Stone by stone, he dug a small, man-size hole and lowered himself into the cave.
“You coming with me or not?”
Paxton stayed put, but Capella scrambled up the hill.
He lowered himself halfway down the hole, then let out a low whistle. “Kinda dark in here. Don’t we have some sort of cave spelunking corps in the Army?”
“Turn on your flashlight,” Stevens hollered from inside the cave. “The military will sit on its ass for weeks before they mount an operation inside here. We’ve got to take the initiative.”
“What if we bump into someone?” Capella said, jumping down beside him.
“That’s exactly what I’m hoping for. We’re after the CIA’s Holy Grail. These are the men who leveled the World Trade Center. Of course it’ll take some balls, so let’s get a move on.”
They switched on flashlights and directed the beams of light around the cave.
Step by step, they moved to the next room. Then the next.
The first bodies they came across were those of the team they had just sent in two hours before. Pug Wilson, Al Moxley and Colt Sealock lay twisted in anguish, their bodies still warm, their blood sticky and creeping along the cave floor.
Capella turned pale. “Ferrar did all this?”
“It makes you sick, doesn’t it?”
Beside Colt lay another body, that of an Arab fighter with the handle of a U.S. Army-issue combat knife sticking out of his abdomen.
Stevens sucked in his breath. “This might have been Bolton’s last stand as he tried to defend his men.”
“But where is Bolton?” Capella asked, heading for the next chamber.
They wandered in widening circles for another ten minutes. At various spots, the cave ceiling seemed weak, and occasionally they encountered fresh damage caused by the bombing. In some cases, entire tunnels had caved in.
No matter where they looked, however, there was no sign of Bolton.
“The only thing I can imagine,” Stevens said, “is that after Bolton was shot by Ferrar, he got buried by one of our bunker buster bombs.”
Capella didn’t answer. Instead, he was shining his flashlight downward at something unusual. It was a circle of papers spread out on the floor.
Stevens could imagine a group of al-Qaeda planners crouching on the ground flat-footed, looking over the pages.
“Proof of al-Qaeda?” he asked.
Capella frowned as he kneeled for a better look at the documents. “More than that, I’m afraid.”
He pointed to a set of pages.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Capella said, scanning the diagrams, “these are instructions on how to set off a nuclear device.”
Stevens squatted beside him and looked at the diagrams under his assistant’s trembling flashlight.
“My God, let me look at that.”
For several minutes, they dug through the treasure trove of documents. They found maps of the United States, names and telephone numbers of various cell leaders, and instructions on how to detonate several types of nuclear bombs.
At the top of each page was a date. At first Stevens ignored the date and continued reading. Slowly something about the date drew his attention. His eyes shifted to the top of the page in his hands.
“It’s dated December 11,” he said.
His assistant’s eyes met his.
“Today is the third of December,” Capella said.
Stevens calculated quickly. “We’re talking about a major nuclear strike a week from tomorrow.”
Capella sat down hard. “There’s no way to stop it.”
Stevens sucked in his breath. �
��The date coincides with the three-month anniversary of September 11.”
“That’s not good, sir.”
“But where will they get the bomb?”
A beam began to creak above them.
“Pick up the evidence,” Stevens said, quickly gathering up all the documents around him. “Let’s scout out the adjacent rooms for Bolton, then get out of here.”
Evening was falling gently along the C&O Canal in Georgetown.
On the jogging path, CIA Director Lester Friedman was putting his tall frame through its paces with a strenuous run.
With each stride, the pressure of official duties seemed to dissipate from his shoulders. Yes, there was life beyond the thorny quagmire of high-stakes Washington politics.
Two bodyguards from the Office of Security jogged ahead of him and two behind. Twenty-four-hour protection had become a fact of life. But it didn’t destroy his enjoyment of the sunlight glinting off the still water, the fresh breeze of early winter, or the crackle of leaves underfoot.
Suddenly, a bodyguard ahead of him pulled to a stop and pressed a hand tight against an earpiece.
With a pale expression, he signaled for Lester to stop.
Lester drew up, but jogged in place, his form-fitting Lycra suit tight against his muscles.
“It’s an operations officer in the field in Afghanistan,” the bodyguard said, removing his earpiece and handing him the secure mobile phone.
Lester stood still for a moment and took the call. “Yeah, what is it?”
“This is Case Officer Paul Stevens here in Kandahar. We’ve got a problem. What do you want to hear first, the bad news, the bad news, or the bad news?”
“Whatever.” He didn’t have time for comedians.
“I’ll start with the easy stuff. First piece of news is we’ve got a double agent in our ranks. He’s just ambushed and murdered five of our special operators. Cornered them and shot them in cold blood while they were combing through the Tora Bora cave.”
“Where’s he now?”
“On the loose. Presumably on foot heading for Pakistan.”
“Have my office alert Pakistani border patrols,” he said, his voice only slightly out of breath. He was used to bad news, and dead officers were among the best of the bad news he could handle. He could even handle a wacko turning on his own men. It took something like the bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon to reach the worst end of the scale.
A young woman jogged ahead of him down the path. “I’m in a hurry. Next piece of news?”
“It’s about some evidence we found in the cave, sir,” came the distant, delayed voice. “There’s another al-Qaeda plot afoot.”
“Just as we anticipated. Any hard facts.” The anti-terrorism campaign could speculate forever, but it lived and breathed on specifics.
“This one involves nuclear bombs, sir. On American soil.”
“That’s good news.”
“Sir?”
Lester couldn’t believe his good fortune. He would definitely offer this man a promotion. “Do you know where it will happen?”
“No, sir.”
That was not good news. “Do you know when?” he asked hopefully.
“December 11.”
“Jesus Christ.”
His initial euphoria was shot to hell. Eight days wasn’t enough time to track down a nuclear bomb when he had no idea where the terrorists would strike.
“You get through to my aide, Charles White, and tell him about the attack. We have no time to lose.” The young woman had disappeared in the distance. “I’ll turn around and head back to the office.”
“I don’t think I’d do that just yet,” Stevens warned.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got worse news than that.”
“I do have worse than that, sir. It appears that one of the casualties at Tora Bora was your son.”
The phone suddenly felt like lead in his hand.
“‘Casualties’?”
“More like missing in action.”
Lester felt himself slowly swiveling toward the canal that sparkled in his face.
“Actually, sir, we believe that he was killed in action.”
The news hit him like a falling building. There was nothing to investigate. No further intelligence required. All his power as head of the world’s premier spy agency was useless.
“But you said that this was the work of a mole.”
“Yes, sir. An inside job. Inside the Agency, that is.”
An image came to mind of his wife at their Georgetown townhouse. “Security,” Lester said aloud.
He cupped a hand over the mouthpiece to call over a bodyguard.
“Increase security on Becky. One of our own operators has just killed Tray. It was an inside job.”
The bodyguard placed a call right away.
Lester lifted the phone once again, dreading to hear the voice of the man on the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Stevens said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
He was busy trying to regain control of his senses. He felt the numbness start to disappear. His heart began thumping wildly, his breathing escalating to a pant.
“Find out whoever did this,” he said between gasps. “And kill the son-of-a-bitch, whatever it takes.”
“Commander Paxton,” a sergeant-at-arms announced the arrival of the highest-ranking American officer in Afghanistan, Marine Colonel Richard Paxton, who commanded all troops on the ground.
Paul Stevens listened to the marine’s words boom through the hangar at Kandahar Airport.
A large group of officers scrambled up from their folding chairs. They were helicopter and fighter jet pilots, flight crewmembers and representatives from tank, light infantry, special forces and military intelligence divisions stationed in Afghanistan.
“Take your seats, men,” Marine Colonel Richard Paxton said as he passed through a side entrance.
Leaning over the podium, he addressed those assembled.
“After action reports?”
Stevens stood with his assistant, Joe Capella, at the back of the dusty room full of portable computers and hastily set up tables. The hangar had become the U.S. military’s latest forward deployment for operational command.
One by one, the pilots stood and gave their accounts of the attack on Tora Bora.
Stevens heard nothing that he hadn’t already known.
The bandaged marine’s account of Ferrar pulling him from the chopper and descending by parachute didn’t even strike him as particularly dramatic or out of the ordinary. After all, he knew Ferrar.
Finally, the meeting turned to Joe and his discovery.
Stevens walked in front of the room and held up a stack of papers.
“Gentlemen, what we have here is a ticking time bomb. I’ve been on the phone with Washington and alerted them of the threat. We’ve uncovered a bona fide plan for a nuclear attack on the United States of America. The date of attack is December 11, which is next week.”
The officers reacted with silence. It was the same reaction he had gotten from Director Friedman of the CIA.
Only now, he had to translate it into action.
He looked at Colonel Paxton and noticed a trace of red around his collar.
Stevens went on. “We have only one true lead on this case. The culprit is our own CIA man, George Ferrar. It appears that he’s part of this intricate plot against America. So, what I want to know is this: where is the son-of-a-bitch?”
Colonel Paxton cleared his throat. “It appears that he survived the cave detonations, the helicopter attack and the fall. I’d call him one lucky bastard.”
Stevens glared at him with a surge of anger and pride. “Ferrar doesn’t usually operate on luck. But he’ll really need it this time around. I want you to track him down. Check every hill and every mountain pass, even if it means combing every goddamned bazaar in Asia. We’ve got to obliterate this threat no matter what the cost.”
“Does tha
t mean we can shoot on sight?” Colonel Paxton queried.
“If need be, but ideally we would extract key information from him about the impending attack.”
“Intelligence has its work to do,” Paxton said with a detectable smirk. “And we’ve got our work to do.”
The roomful of officers turned back to its commander for operational guidance.
Stevens retreated to a quiet corner of the hangar, where his assistant, Joe Capella, whispered to him, “What are our chances, sir?”
“We’ve got a worst-case scenario on our hands. A double agent who knows who we are and how we operate.”
“Then we should know the same about him.”
“That’s the thing about George Ferrar,” Stevens said looking far off beyond the windows. “He has impersonated celebrities, broken out of foreign prisons with his bare hands, seduced the wives of several prime ministers and chauffeured a drug lord for half a year. He’s completely unpredictable.”
Chapter 4
The student residence cafeteria at the Université du Québec in Montreal had cleared out for the night, the doors closed and locked against a flurry of snow. Chairs sat upside down on the tables, and a cleaning crew of six young men began to swab the floor.
They muttered to each other in mingled bits of Canadian French, Pakistani Urdu, and Saudi-accented Arabic.
One man seemed to be their supervisor, as he occasionally lowered his mop handle, stood straight to survey the room and issued orders, moving them from floor duty to kitchen cleanup.
If it wasn’t a university, one could easily get the impression that the supervisor was a ringleader and the others were his five cohorts.
With the milk and ice cream machines emptied, trays from the salad bar taken back to the refrigerator, and aprons hung neatly along the tile walls of the kitchen, the troop headed downstairs without a word.
They left the shiny décor behind and entered a small, square room illuminated by a single light and decorated with blank concrete.
Reaching down in a corner, they grabbed their personal prayer rugs and unfurled them on the floor.
Kneeling southeast toward Mecca, they began a cycle of prayers, bowing repeatedly and lowering their foreheads to the floor.
