by David Poyer
Belote grinned. “You kidding? You saw why. We pay ’em. Just like the Brits used to.”
“That’s it? It’s that simple?”
“It’s how things work here. Always have. The highest bidder. They make a big deal out of what they call nanawatai. One reason OBL ended up here: Pashtuns protect their guests. Even enemies, if they ask the tribe for sanctuary. But it gets harder when your guests start trying to take over. Like these Arabs did. Then the Taliban outlawed planting opium poppies. They made themselves real popular with a lot of local landowners, with that one.”
Dan thought of asking what would happen if somebody else paid them more, but didn’t. Then of asking what happened when you stopped paying, but that was so obvious he didn’t bother. More and more of the links CIRCE was uncovering between bin Laden and ALQ subsidiaries in Yemen, Sudan, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other countries was financial. Wealthy donors. False-front charities. Al Qaeda had trickled cash down into the cracked soil of countries without hope or education, other than madrassas taught by obscurantist fanatics. When the only job a young man could get was carrying an AK for Allah, too many saw no reason to refuse.
Bin Laden had lived in the White Mountains for years. He was a Robin Hood, a William Tell, a Francis Marion of the mountains. He had money, charisma, and a message that resonated across all Islam. Yet the Pashtuns were ready to sell him out.
The old man was right. “A guest who stays too long is no longer a guest.”
Which meant, they had to get bin Laden soon. Or they too would no longer be guests, but invaders.
He spent the night on a cot in the basement with a kerosene heater that stank and smoked and was probably a bigger threat to his life than anyone in Gardez. But he still kept the M4 within arm’s reach.
* * *
BACK at Bagram the next day, the planes were circling. C-130s, C-17s, coming in one after the other in a line that receded to the horizon. More of the big transports than Dan had ever seen before, and the helo had to touch down far west of the strip to stay clear of the landing pattern. He kept his eyes peeled, watching for the lance of smoke that would indicate a man-portable missile or rocket-propelled grenade, but none came from the folds of desiccated earth or carefully diced-up fields. When the ship settled, he scrambled down and jogged toward the compound. About half a mile, and he covered it in good time, and since he hadn’t gotten to run for a while, it felt good. Lines of troops were trudging off toward blocks of tents that had sprung up while he’d been gone. Halfway there he remembered he still had the M4 Belote had loaned him, but its weight slung on his back felt good too and he thought, maybe I’ll just keep it. Until somebody asks for it back, anyway. He looked at his watch and picked up the pace. Almost time for the daily video-teleconference.
The JOC was buzzing like a hornets’ nest snapped with a towel. Every shift was up and on duty. Every terminal was two and three deep in off-watch operators and kibitzers. As he jogged toward the Fusion Cell a hand snagged his sleeve. “Your sweatshirt’s on inside out,” a Marine light colonel said. Sad, dark eyes, arms swelling under rolled-up sleeves. Dan groped for a name, then did it the easy way; dropped his eyes to the tag.
“Pete! Pete Friedebacher.” They shook hands. “You made O-5. Congratulations. When did that happen?”
“Not long after Ashaara.”
Friedebacher had led the Quick Reaction Team, the USMC/SEAL outfit that had tamped down the Maahdist insurgency in the Red Sea. Dan had worked with him to locate the hostages, with the idea that if they did, they’d find Al-Maahdi there as well. “Heard you and Monty were here. Stuffed back in the SCIF. What’s going on? Got bin Laden nailed?”
“Just what you heard, Pete. Just what you heard.”
“Working with the OGA?”
“And the Land Information Warfare Activity, and the intel cell down at Task Force Cutlass. Trying to sew it all together and Frankenstein something that walks like an intel picture.”
“Wait a minute. And your output goes to Hatchet, and they go out and get him. Right? Shit, where do I sign up? They’ve got me reading books and boiling down operational lessons.”
Dan asked what books, and Friedebacher told him two volumes the Army had had translated. One was by a Russian general, about tactical lessons from Afghanistan, and the other was interviews with mujahideen commanders, how they’d viewed the same battles the Russians described. He was supposed to meet with the guys who were drawing up concepts of operations and advise them how the Taliban might react.
“That sounds worthwhile,” Dan said.
“Sure, but what’m I going to say, I read my way through the war? You find Osama, the way you found Al-Maahdi, I want in. Deal?”
Dan shook his hand again and said he’d like to talk, but had to get to the VTC.
The screens were set up at the end of the tent, walled off by canvas drapes that isolated a dozen folding metal chairs. He showed his ID to a sergeant and got the last seat. The others gathered were generals and colonels.
The image came up on the big-screen projector, centerpieced with the visages of the CENTCOM commander, General Steven Prospero Leache, US Army, and of Roman Annunziata, the bearded, somewhat effeminate-sounding assistant SecDef for counterterror. Dan knew Leache, a lame-duck CINC who’d narrowly survived sexual-harassment charges. He didn’t know Annunziata. If the election had gone the other way, Blair might have been in his seat. The new assistant SecDef had worked on Star Wars and for think tanks. His thin face was bearded; with those full lips he might have passed for an Arab himself. Smaller subscreens surrounding the duo were of Faulcon, the SOF commander, and the other high-level players. Each of the stars had a camera and a monitor, and every one had an American flag prominently positioned just behind him.
Annunziata kicked off by asking for a round-robin. A two-star out of Oman summarized the day’s activity across Afghanistan. Operations around Kondoz were complete; the area was pacified. Marines from Kandahar Airport and special ops forces from Task Force Cutlass, along with Australians and Germans, were conducting sweeps east and north of that city. Heavy bombing was continuing. An Air Force general spent a long time recounting each strike, so that finally Annunziata broke in, smiling, to ask him to cut it short. Faulcon introduced a Special Forces colonel, who spoke about tribal militias and their recruitment by his A teams. He seemed more optimistic than Dan, having just had tea with two of those leaders, thought was warranted.
Leache said, “Right now, we’re focusing south of Gardez, the Shah-i-khot valleys. I want to put the Tenth Mountain and all the SOF we can muster in there. I expect that to happen as soon as possible, a big push. What are our limiters?”
Annunziata jumped in. “I want to keep the number of US troops to a bare minimum. I’ve made that point before. A light footprint. That’s how we’ve gotten so far.”
A colonel beside Dan leaned over. Sotto voce, he muttered, “He’s the one who wanted more artillery support yesterday. Then he complains we’ve got too many troops in-country, like he’s saving them for something else.”
Dan had thought about this for some time now, and the meeting with the Pashtuns, the video-teleconferences, the arguments were coalescing into something he recognized. One of his papers for his postgraduate degree had examined the response of Hitler and the German High Command to the Stalingrad crisis. Washington 2001 wasn’t Berlin in 1942, nor was Afghanistan Stalingrad. But there was the same mission creep. At first the target had been bin Laden. Then it had become regime change, ousting Omar. Now the Taliban themselves were the targets, and Afghanistan was going to have a democratic government. Each time the scope widened, the number of their enemies increased geometrically. One more step, and all Islam would fill the target window—which, from the news reports from home, would be all too welcome to some.
A split was developing within the military too. A crisis required three perceptions: high threat, time constraints, and a looming change in the military balance. In this case, the Spe
cial Operations Forces and the SecDef were on one side—light, highly kinetic operations that depended on local allies supported by overwhelming airpower. On the other side was Big Army, which dreaded being fed piecemeal into demanding terrain where the sensors and weapons they’d spent billions on could be frustrated by an agile fourteen-year-old with an AK.
If they went in too light, soldiers would die. If too heavy, they risked repeating the Soviet experience. Either way, if they failed, heads would roll and budgets would be reshuffled.
But that wasn’t Dan’s problem. As far as he was concerned, all they had to do was get the man behind 9/11. The one who’d nearly killed him at the Pentagon, and Blair as well. Blair—God, he had to call her. They hadn’t spoken for days.
The conference wrapped, with Annunziata asking Leache to stay on the VTC for a one-on-one.
“How’s the localization holding?” Dan asked Donnie Wenck as soon as he got back to the Working Group spaces.
The analyst shrugged, not taking his eyes off the screen. The stick of a lollipop stuck out of one corner of his mouth. His hair was too long, getting rumpled. He was sitting cross-legged on the chair, knees sticking out, a blanket draped over him. “Getting a little fuzzy around the edges,” he mumbled.
This wasn’t good news. Dan coughed. The thin, dry air irritated his lungs. A hard-edged polygon signaled a firm location. When the edges began to bleed, or alternate locations metastasized at other nodes, the probabilities degenerated swiftly. They had to move now. The way they’d been set up in Ashaara, when Friedebacher had honchoed the Quick Reaction Team. Small, fast, violent, and agile. Bin Laden was always on the move. That mobility was his primary security tool; an extensive network of caches, supporters, vehicles, and safe houses had made it work despite several attempts to target missiles against him. He’d built those networks out of cash, terror, and loyalty to tribe, religion, and family. Now he’d be calling on them to ensure his survival and, if it came to that, his escape.
Their quarry had never been a passive target. He made mistakes, but emerged from each setback stronger. He’d be readapting, setting up his own chess moves to counter the American victories. With each day’s hesitation, each hour, their chances were going to drop. “Can you tell which way they’re tending?”
“Not yet.”
“Where’s Monty?”
“Crashed.”
“Link with TAG holding up?”
The petty officer said it was, but it was obvious his mind wasn’t on the responses. He kept toggling alternate routines, causing the lines and intersections to jiggle, quiver, and finally settle in slightly different patterns. Like a digital I Ching. The lines were the yarrow stalks, the polygrams like the eight trigrams, 4,096 answers. Dan had considerably more confidence in CIRCE, though.
“They going in?” Donnie muttered. “You go to the VTC? They let you in?”
“Yeah.”
“This’s our chance for payback. We gonna take it?”
Dan sat massaging stubbled cheeks. He didn’t know how to answer. So he just watched the vibrating images on the screen.
* * *
ALL that afternoon he watched as one after the other forces moved out of billets and formed up for embarkation. The howl of jet engines was nonstop. But even as troops lined up on the aprons, he listened to heated exchanges on the command nets, read e-mail traffic that argued against committing troops. Even the State Department was weighing in. Their cable laid out all the arguments against a major assault in the Shah-i-khot. Drew parallels to the joint Army/SEAL mission into Kandahar at the beginning of the war, the one that had resulted in heavy losses. It concluded that by inserting a large force in difficult terrain and bad weather without heavier organic arms, especially mortars and artillery, the Army ran the risk of casualties so heavy they’d erode support for the whole mission in Afghanistan.
Finally Dan picked up the phone. Provanzano’s number didn’t answer. Go over his head? It didn’t take long to make that decision. He walked down the SCIF and caught a figure he recognized. General E. H. Salter. The Army one-star who ran the JOC. Template reported their results to him for transmission to Faulcon. And if what Provanzano had said about Salter’s remembering him from Desert Storm was correct, Dan might even have a little traction.
“General, excuse me. Dan Lenson. From the Fusion Cell. Trying to track what’s going on. Can you—”
The operations center commander looked him up and down. “I know who you are, Commander. And I remember what you did in Iraq. And that you’re my Navy liaison too.”
“Yes, sir. I didn’t mean—well, never mind.”
“What’s going on is that we’re waiting on a decision to launch this operation. You’re CIRCE, correct?”
“Correct, sir. Out of TAG.”
“I don’t know what that is. And I guess I don’t need to, if it’s Navy. Is the localization holding?”
“No, sir. It’s been degenerating since midnight local. The longer we wait, I’m afraid, the worse it’s going to get.”
The general swore, then added wearily, “I’ve got your output on my screen. Keep it coming.”
“Sir, if CENTCOM or the White House don’t approve a ground force in the Shah-i-khot, we should at least do a strike.”
“An air strike? The weather’s not exactly cooperating.”
“We have Tomahawk. I have a package laid on.”
Salter frowned. “My understanding was, the mountains gave you problems with the weapon’s flight profile.”
“Uh, yes, sir, unfortunately that’s correct. If they’re down in one of those valleys. But we could use a Hellfire from one of the Predators. We have to hit this meeting.”
“No more missile strikes. That’s what the previous president did. Anything he did, they’re not going to approve.”
“Yes, sir, that came through loud and clear. But that clock’s ticking. This meeting—if they’re still having it—”
“My information is that it’s been called off.”
Dan closed his eyes. That was why the localization was degenerating. “Where did that intel come from, sir? Did it get routed to Fusion?”
“I’ll have to defer to someone else on that,” the JOC commander said. Salter looked as if he was about to throw something, but didn’t. He grimaced up at the roof of the tent. From nowhere, Dan wondered if it was light outside or dark.
* * *
DAN was back in the Fusion area, scrolling through reports from the interrogation facility, when Friedebacher stopped at his terminal. “Stand down,” he said.
“What’s that, Pete?”
“They decided not to go. Canceled the mission.”
He felt cold and enraged and resigned. Because he’d seen it all happen before, and from both sides—the operating-force side and the West Wing side. He was all for civilian control. But there was a barrier between civilian and military as invisible yet as definite as that between water and air. Different mind-sets, cultures, attitudes toward risk. At its worst, an arrogance that assumed a man in a chair thousands of miles away knew better than the one confronting the enemy. “You’re shitting me. After we had the troops loaded? Advance units in the air?”
“That’s the way it goes.”
Dan jumped up, fists balled, and stalked out into the main area. Operators were shutting down their stations, getting up. A hum of angry voices. “What a balls-up,” someone said with a Scottish accent. Dan rubbed his face. The choice had been between using native allies, corseted with Special Forces, or the Tenth and Eighty-second. He’d heard reasonable arguments on both sides. But what possible justification could there be for scrubbing the operation altogether? Unless somebody didn’t really want bin Laden caught.
No; that was paranoia talking. Maybe the special operators had him already and were just keeping it under wraps. But no such word had percolated up to the Working Group. They’d had him located. But now every time he looked at the screen, the polygon was bigger, the edges fuzzier.
&nbs
p; “He’s not there anymore,” Dan said. Accepting the inevitable, bitter as it was and disastrous as the downstream might be. “We missed our chance.”
Friedebacher had followed him. Dan added, “They’re not meeting there. Or finished early. Now they’re breaking up, retreating up into the White Mountains. Or over the border, into Pakistan.”
The marine shrugged. “Then we go into the mountains after ’em.”
“It would have been a lot easier, at Pajuar.”
“We’ll get him,” Friedebacher said. “Take it easy. No way we’re letting this bastard get away. Payback.”
“Payback,” Dan echoed bitterly. Trying to keep his hands from shaking, trying not to relive the terror of darkened corridors and flame and the rubbery give of body parts underfoot. “If he gets time to dig in up there, we may not be able to pry him out. Not without huge casualties.”
“We’ll get him,” Friedebacher repeated. But doubt now seemed to haunt his voice as well.
19
DAN got no sleep that night. All the reachback comms to the United States and CENTCOM and K2 and the Counterterrorism Center went down. Donnie Wenck went off to help the techs from the Eighty-sixth who were working on it. They got it up again after two frantic hours, but the backlog kept all three of them at the terminals streamlining inputs. There was muttering about hostile hacking, but Dan doubted Al Qaeda had expert programmers. He admitted to Monty he could be wrong, though.
When Template finally came back up, the picture kept shifting. Then a report from British signal intelligence reported an intercept for a source close to bin Laden, and suddenly CIRCE zoomed in, not only localizing but beginning to show a direction of motion. Doing what Dan always found so uncanny: predicting where the target would move, as if it knew his motives, fears, and yearnings better than did its human subject himself.
He stared at the screen, hearing the hinge of fate creak. When you ran CIRCE alone, the target individual was centered in a black screen, connected by lines of different hues to other individuals of interest. Each line vibrated at five cycles per second, tugging each node or point of intersection this way and that in a Brownian motion that made it seem almost alive. The subroutines confirmed it. The HVTs were moving north out of the Shah-i-khot, ascending into even more remote heights. Dan moved down the length of the tent asking for Predator imagery, hoping to get eyes on the mountain passes their quarry seemed headed toward. But weather had grounded all the drone flights. From the topo, it would be a hell of a place to fight. He went into the historical files then, looking for hide sites and locations the mujahideen had used during the Soviet War.
