The Towers

by David Poyer

  “Take a knee,” Dollhard said. The men shifted, heads up, blinking off lack of sleep. Teddy stood behind his platoon, arms folded. Beside him stood the assistant OIC, Verstegen. His battle dress uniform was already rumpled, starting to smell. “All present? Chief?” Teddy raised a hand, nodded to confirm the muster. “Everybody ready to double your racks?”

  “Hoo-yah!”

  “Afghanistan,” Dollhard said, putting the first PowerPoint slide on the bulkhead-turned-screen. Five sets of black arrows showed various forces’ movement to contact. Rebel yells echoed. Suddenly everyone was noisy, pumped up. Sailors clumping past in turtlenecks and denims and heavy black flight-deck boots glanced at them.

  “We’re doing something that’s never been done before. Instead of a conventional force-heavy operation, Infinite Justice will be a spec-ops show. They gave it to us. They expect us to deliver.”

  “Hooyah,” shouted several men again. The others followed, half a beat behind.

  The OIC grinned. “As such, we’ll be linking up with and lending support to indigenous forces that have been opposing the Taliban for years. Now, with our help, they will prevail.”

  Slide two. Hard to see in the overhead glare, so Teddy tapped a petty officer’s shoulder and sent him to get them dimmed. “Areas currently held by the Northern Alliance, as of October fifteenth,” Dollhard said. They were unimpressive; an oval dead centering the country; a dent from the northwest; another patch of crosshatch to the northeast. Most of the slide was pure green, apparently meaning enemy. “Next slide.” It came up as the lights dimmed.

  “Overall concept of operations. Following up on the suppression of air defenses, Special Forces ODAs comprising Task Force Dagger were inserted in the north on nineteen and twenty October. They linked up with a warlord called Fahim Khan to assist his Northern Alliance forces in an attack toward Mazar-e Sharif, the regional capital and key city in the north.

  “A second team linked up in the Daria-el-Souf with ethnic militia led by General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum commands the Uzbeks, the largest faction of the Northern Alliance. He’s slippery. Fought for the Soviets, when they were the occupying power. But right now he’s on our side.

  “The intent in the north is to assist local forces to take Mazar-e Sharif, the Dariá-el-Souf valley, the old Soviet airfield at Bagram, north of Kabul, then Kabul itself. Other operations may take place at the Shahi Kot”—a laser-scarlet dot speared and wandered—“and closer to the Pakistani border.

  “The southern portion of the country has de facto been assigned to us. The Navy and Marine Corps.”

  Another hooyah, muttered this time. The men shifted, focusing in.

  “Kandahar. Second-largest city in Afghanistan. Population, half a million. Regional capital. Founded by Alexander the Great. Elevation, one thousand meters, thirty-three hundred feet above sea level. Bounded on the west by the Arghandab River. Surrounded by fruit orchards, cotton fields, and sheep-grazing lands. Kandahar Airport has two runways capable of taking C-130s and C-17s. The city links by road to Farah and Herat to the west, to the northeast Ghazni and Kabul, to the north Tarin Kowt, to the south Quetta, in Pakistan.”

  Dollhard took a breath. “Kandahar’s the Taliban’s home turf, where the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were planned. Mullah Omar made it the capital of the Islamic Emirate five years ago, and there are strong indicators both OBL and Omar are still there. Forces loyal to them will naturally concentrate either in Kandahar or the mountainous regions to the east of the city. So, who do they give the toughest job to?”

  “To us,” the men roared.

  “Correct. We started hitting targets in the city with cruise missiles fired from the Gulf. Initial targets were the airport, command and control, and air defense. Navy air will begin flying strikes tonight. Bomb damage assessment’s available on the intel side, and I strongly recommend you leaders check that against your maps before insertion.

  “Here’s what we have on our plate to start. Echo Platoon’s assigned to a mixed SBS/SEAL task unit to be known as Task Force Cutlass. Our taskings are still under discussion, but may include one or more reconnaissance insertions before establishment of a Marine forward operating base. Right now we’re on four-hour standby. I recommend you find your racks, get a shower, and get your heads down, because we could launch anytime.” Dollhard glanced at his watch. “All right, everybody, let’s—”

  “Attention on deck!”

  The call came from the hatchway. A middle-aged officer in flight-deck coveralls and a khaki combination cap stepped over the knee-knocker. Silver eagles glittered at his collar. Teddy came to attention as his men jumped to their feet.

  “Carry on,” the captain said. Teddy assumed he was the carrier’s skipper, but he could’ve been the air boss. He didn’t say, but maybe it didn’t matter.

  “Just a brief welcome to the Battle Cat. USS Kitty Hawk. Your quarters may be cramped, but we’ll have hot food and showers whenever you want them. Right now, you folks are our main battery.

  “We have Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Army aboard. Total, over a thousand spec-ops folks. The dust hasn’t settled on the Trade Center and the Pentagon. We’re going to bring some of what they visited on us back to the Taliban and to Osama bin Laden. Before we’re done, they’ll regret they ever took on the United States of America.”

  This time when he finished, no one cheered, no one spoke. Only a grim silence rested on their thoughtfully bent heads.

  11

  Sana’a, Yemen

  SHE sat in the SUV, sweating. The engine was off, and that meant air-conditioning too. It wasn’t that hot outside, under an arch of stars. But she’d always perspired on a raid; in Bahrain, in Ashaara, even back in the States. General Gamish had promised a roll-up of the leaders. Maybe the mother cache of Saggers, like the one that had almost gotten her and had killed so many innocent Yemenis. Including Hiyat’s eldest. Her friend hadn’t called back, though Aisha had paid careful attention to her cell and tried to reach her several times. No answer; leaving her to wonder what had gone wrong.

  A double rap; Colonel Al-Safani’s elongated visage at her window. She pressed the unlock button. He wasn’t in his usual thobe and keffiyeh and jambiya but in full Russian-style battle dress, even a helmet in place of the red-and-white-checked shemagh he wore in the office. His flak jacket was hung with perfectly spherical green grenades, like unripe pomegranates. Instead of the holstered Makarov, a brightly polished AK that looked as if it belonged to the Yemeni equivalent of the guards at Arlington Cemetery was slung over his chest. “We’re ready to go in,” he muttered.

  Doanelson had already gotten out, was pissing against a wall; he shook off, zipped, and turned. Caraño had been on the guest list, but hadn’t seemed interested. Behind her Benefiel jerked out of a doze. She put a hand on her junior agent’s wrist; then a finger against her lips.

  They got out on a cobbled street so steep she had to grab the car door to stop herself from sliding. Half the sky was eclipsed by one of the cliffs that walled the city. The lights from the apartment building towering behind them illuminated ropes, truss work, some sort of structure leading up the cliff. She had no idea what it was for.

  “Which building?” she muttered. Al-Safani pointed. She looked aside in the dimness and made out men standing in rough lines to either side of the door. The back of the building faced the cliff. She whispered, “Back door?”

  “Already blocked.”

  “Neighbors? Did you warn them?”

  “No. It’s best to go in cold. As little notice as possible.” The PSO officer spoke in a low voice to a shorter man who came up, and Aisha caught the superior-to-subordinate tone. She glanced up at the windows, some lit, others dark, and edged away, loosening the SIG in its holster.

  “This way,” the colonel murmured.

  Doanelson, doubly bulky in Kevlar, followed. Aisha too was wearing the ballistic vest, but in the night, in her dark abaya, she didn’t see how anyone could see
to target her. Unless they had infrared scopes, which, considering the money behind their organization, was possible. “We didn’t get much of a briefing,” the FBI agent said to the colonel. “What’s the plan? Assaulting force? Backup? What do you expect inside?”

  Al-Safani kept glancing away. His explanation sounded hasty and somehow misleading. The ten-member team of the PSO’s Rapid Reaction Force would infiltrate up the stairs as quickly as possible and once in position assault into the apartment. Three snipers overlooked the back, which, like most Yemeni buildings, didn’t have fire escapes—how could mud brick catch fire?—but did have wooden back porches or verandas where families took the air after dark. From there, it was possible suspects could drop with ropes from the third floor, where the intelligence said they were located. If they did, the snipers would take them out.

  Aisha glanced up at the cliff, its black mass poised over them as if to fall. Unless they had some way up, it would act as a perfect barrier; even if someone managed to exit the apartment, she couldn’t see how they could escape the others—“catchment” teams, Al-Safani called them—huddled with weapons ready behind cars at either end of the block. Her gaze met Doanelson’s. The FBI man raised his eyebrows; she nodded.

  “Sounds good,” Doanelson said. “Where you want us?”

  “Back here’s best. Out of the line of fire.” Al-Safani winked at Aisha. “The last thing we want is for our American guests to catch a stray bullet.”

  Benefiel didn’t seem to care for this. Her assistant asked if he could get closer. The colonel said jovially that he understood, young men wanted in on the action; to follow him. They vanished in the direction of the apartment entrance. Aisha checked her weapon again, adjusted her Kevlar, and settled in. From somewhere up the cliff came an unearthly chuckle. “What the hell was that,” Doanelson said uneasily.

  “Hyena?”

  “They have hyenas here?”

  “Didn’t you ever go to the zoo?”

  “What zoo?”

  “The Sana’a zoo,” she said patiently. They’d had leopards, baboons, a cute little caracal—a sort of bobcat. Small cages, but with what they had to work with, it had been neatly kept. She’d taken pictures of each animal and e-mailed them to Tashaara.

  The FBI man squatted in the dark. She fell silent too, remembering this preraid combination of boredom, sleeplessness, and jitters. Her first, in San Diego, on a broken-down cabin cruiser in the base marina reputed to be used by a dealer who targeted the local marines. How her pulse had pounded, crouching under the pier! The dealer, a retiree, hadn’t been there, but they’d found weapons and drugs, enough to pass a warrant to local law enforcement. The gate guards had arrested him a week later. So run-of-the-mill, yet, at the time, so exciting.

  Twelve years later, was the thrill still there? Enough to give up relationships, and time with her daughter?

  A stir ran through the shadowed forms. Then, on some unheard signal, they streamed in. The radio crackled with orders. Doanelson frowned, a sure indication he couldn’t follow the conversation.

  Several minutes later, flashes came from an upper window, the distinctive blue-white glares of the British flash-bangs the Yemenis used. Their explosions reached street level as distant cracks. She cupped her ears for return fire, but heard none. No other lights came on. No one came out onto his balcony.

  Al-Safani, on the radio: “Aisha? Scott? You can come up now. I believe we have the situation well in hand.”

  * * *

  BUT when they got up there, the colonel was nowhere in sight. She and Doanelson lingered in the haze-shrouded hallway. Her eyes and nasal membranes stung. Tear gas; she squatted to get below it. Someone was screaming inside. She noted that unlike in the United States, the other apartment doors stayed firmly sealed. She called ahead, “Isma’! Assault team? We’re coming in.”

  She stepped cautiously through the haze, flashlight and weapon extended. The acrid fumes mixed with the bitterer, just-as-choking gases from the flash-bangs. The screams sounded as if they were from children. Her fingers tightened on the pistol. In the States, you tried to get kids out of the way by some pretext before you went in. She couldn’t believe they’d used gas, either. Usually, in a raid, gas handicapped the entry team as much as or more than the people they were taking into custody. It also increased the chances of civilian casualties, due to the difficulty of identifying targets through vision-restricting masks.

  But this isn’t the States, Aisha, so stop expecting it to be. She followed her gun’s muzzle around a corner and found herself covering a woman. Three children huddled against her, eyes blown wide as they stared up. The PSO troops were pulling clothes out of closets, pushing trunks over to dump the contents, rifling suitcases. “Where are they?” she asked the woman, snapping it out in peremptory Arabic between coughs. Glass shattered as the troops flung windows open and leaned out to yell down to buddies in the street. Cool air flooded in, but the gas lingered, roiling, clinging to every surface, reluctant to depart.

  “I don’t know—I don’t know who you’re talking about,” the woman mumbled through a fold of cloth held to her face.

  “You take her. I’m going on,” Doanelson said, behind her.

  Aisha said to the Yemeni woman, “Yes, you do. The men who live here. Where are they?”

  “No men here,” the woman said. “My husband only. He is a trucker. He is often away.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know … maybe Saudi. Yes, he must be in Saudi.” The woman clutched her weeping children. “Hush, the woman won’t let them hurt you. She will keep us safe.”

  A Saudi connection; and a trucker would have a great cover for smuggling. But as she went from room to room Aisha saw no weapons, no bomb-making materials, no radios or computers. In one small room a motionless bundle lay in a makeshift crib against the wall. She approached, pistol pointed, but it didn’t move. The girl seemed asleep.

  She went back to the woman. “Where are they? We’ll find them, you know. When did they leave?”

  The woman began wailing, pulling at her hair. “I told you! Only my husband! That is his picture, on the wall. My daughter is disabled … she can’t move … I told them come in, search, do whatever you have to do, but they started shooting, and then she couldn’t breathe.”

  Aisha felt cold. Daughter? Disabled? She went back into the other room, found a trooper pawing at the bundle of blanket. He pulled back the cover to reveal a motionless face, a gaping mouth, eyes that did not open. A wheelchair with a bedpan stood in the corner. Brownish foam stained the mouth. Aisha bent and put a gentle hand on the girl’s forehead. It was still warm, but the bubbles at the corners of her lips did not move at all.

  * * *

  SHE caught up to Al-Safani as he was climbing into the truck with his men. Lifted her hand, almost timidly; she didn’t want to appear to be ordering him around in front of his troops. He still looked displeased, but tossed his helmet in, turned back, dropped off the truck. Confronted her as it gunned its engine, the roar echoing from the tenements.

  “Where will the hot washup be?” she asked him. “I’d like to come. If I may.”

  She got a blank look. “The what?”

  “The … meeting, after the raid. To discuss what went wrong.”

  “Nothing went wrong,” Al-Safani said, regarding her as if she weren’t making sense. “A very successful operation. As your deputy chief of mission will report, I believe.”

  She wiped her nose; the gas seemed to be digging into her sinuses. “Maybe I didn’t understand. Wasn’t this a raid to nab—I mean, apprehend—I mean, catch some of the ALQ members you gained intelligence on from Al-Nasiri? Wasn’t that the mission?”

  “This was a successful raid.”

  “Well, I don’t see anyone who looked like ALQ. Just women, and kids. And what about the dead girl?”

  “Dead girl?”

  “The one in the back room, Colonel. The quadriplegic!”

  “That one was de
ad long before the raid. Her condition had nothing to do with us.”

  Get a grip, Aisha. You gain nothing by confrontation. She forced calm into her voice. “Was this a wrong-door raid, Colonel? We do those too. It happens.”

  “A what?” He wasn’t looking at her again. Not a good sign, with a Yemeni male.

  “When a raid hits the wrong address. The wrong apartment.”

  “No, this was the correct address.” Again, that feeling he knew something different from the version she was getting.

  “But there was a family there. Children. Couldn’t you have waited until they left?”

  “There are often children where we raid,” he said, frowning as if it were a stupid question. “How not? Even the Salafi evildoers have families. I tell you, this was the right address. It is simply unfortunate that the men we sought seem to have departed, just before we arrived.”

  Yes, she was tempted to say, how very unfortunate. Hurling his words back into his face. That would not be wise. Not wise at all.

  But, oh, how she wished she could do it.

  * * *

  THAT evening, back at her stolen office, sitting with fingers poised over the keyboard. Studying the screen.

  Results of the raid: Only women and children were encountered, and a handicapped female 16 years of age died, apparently from tear gas. This agent’s impressions were that none of those taken into custody (all female or below the age of 15) were ALQ, local Salafi, or even sympathizers or family members. The entire operation appeared to be aimed solely at paying lip service to US demands for action, while the actual subjects of interest are either carefully avoided or warned in enough time to depart and sanitize the premises.