The Towers

by David Poyer

  “Can’t answer that yet, Denny. We need to get intimate with the topography. Especially those mountains to the south.”

  Laughland nodded and checked his watch. “We do a roundup at 2000. Let’s see where we are by then.”

  Dan got more coffee at the mess in the back of the JSOC, abandoning his fantasy of a nooner. He and Henrickson and Wenck worked the mission profile all afternoon. Tora Bora was actually at the foot of a mountain range. They needed specifics—exact location of the caves, depth, structure, geologics. But the databases were bare. Special Forces had tried to penetrate the valley, get ground-truth intel, but hadn’t made it in far. Plus, both altitude and terrain worked against a missile that had never been designed for mountain warfare.

  Still, they worked the problem, and eventually Wenck found a pass to the south they might squeeze the missile through at the very end of its range, if they let it loiter en route to burn off its fuel load. Scrutinizing the topos, Laughland found several more passes, though most had approaches that rose too abruptly for the Block IIIs. And even if the bunker was deep in the valley, Henrickson found a way to combine a wide sweep north to shed altitude with the pop-up/terminal dive maneuver to get the missile down there. Exposing the airframe to fire, true, but the numbers showed a 90 percent–plus probability of survival. Dan multiplied this by the probable losses going through the passes. The results looked expensive, but war was never cheap.

  By midafternoon he was confident about taking out a bunker of any reasonable size and construction. After all, the Tomahawk warhead had been designed to drive almost four hundred kilos of PBXN and a hardened detonator through the armor of a Kynda-class cruiser. Henrickson set up a five-missile mission from Bremerton, on station with the Kitty Hawk battle group. Striking one after the other, they calculated three surviving missiles should blast through forty feet of concrete or granite.

  Meanwhile, though, those passes nagged. If there were routes through the Spin Ghahr, not only could missiles travel north, escaping AQT could go south. The Pakistani army was supposed to be in blocking positions. But were they up in the passes, the natural bottlenecks? Or down in the valleys?

  Not in his in-box, but Dan couldn’t let it go. When he had the mission as close to finished as possible without final coordinates, he left the sub on one-hour standby to terminal programming and went to find Provanzano.

  First stop: mess line. The CIA man wasn’t there, but Dan got a tray. He’d discovered years ago at sea that, to some extent, calories compensated for lack of sleep. Men stood nodding off, gazes distant. He ate at a folding table with three he didn’t know. “Your guys doing all right?” one asked another. “Or are you still trying to kick-start ’em?”

  “They’re moving. Only trouble is, they all went home for dinner last night.”

  “They come back this morning?”

  “Most of ’em.”

  Dan assumed this meant Afghans, but didn’t ask. He leaned over his MRE and shut his eyes for a moment.

  Someone shook him awake. He discovered his face pressing into the table. “No rest, buddy,” one of the specfors said. “Last inning. Full-court press. Finish this up and go home.”

  When he got back, the CIA man was sitting with Henrickson, looking at the screen. “There’s over thirty passes, just on the topo,” the CIA man was saying. Dan looked down at the top of his head, suppressing a sudden urge to pull him over backward. This was his chair.

  Damn. He had to get some sleep soon. “Tony. I help you?”

  “We were looking at escape routes. Looks like you were, too.” Provanzano rubbed a receding hairline with small white pimples breaking out on it. “In case he doesn’t just sit still and wait for us to come to him.”

  Dan remembered the discussion at the JOC. “I thought that was his strategy. Sucker us in and clobber us.”

  “Maybe so, but there’s also a strain of thought we’re finding in some of the recovered documentation that says, when you’re threatened by overwhelming force, retreat. Classic guerrilla tactics. Live to fight another day. They’ve got a safe haven twenty miles away. I know what the Army thinks, but we might need to do something more.”

  “At least, kick it up the chain,” Dan said.

  “Exactly.” Provanzano stood. “Let’s go see Faulcon.”

  Dan took a moment to react. “General Faulcon?” The commander of all Special Forces in Afghanistan.

  “Why the hell not? He’s a real approachable guy.” Provanzano sniffed and strolled away. After a moment, Dan followed.

  * * *

  THE general was so gaunt his face looked vacuum-sealed. They said he had only one good eye, but Dan couldn’t tell which one. Both were cold as a cryogenic experiment. His office was a corner of the TOC walled off with vertical dividers. A map of the Tora Bora valley was overlaid with grease-penciled Mylar, with numerous erasure smears. Remaining were curved arrows showing three axes of advance into the valley, the inward-toothed embrace Dan knew now meant “isolate,” and the pronged arrows and bar that meant “clear” in NATO tactical shorthand. Each was lettered with the name of an Afghan warlord and the designation of his accompanying A-Team.

  Faulcon’s glance said he and Provanzano had a working relationship. “This is the guy I told you about,” Provanzano provided by way of introduction. The general nodded in Dan’s direction, then seemed to recall something. He frowned, then stood.

  Faulcon saluted. Dan nodded, feeling awkward as always, then decided, to hell with it. And saluted back, even though the Navy didn’t salute indoors. What could they do? Take away his birthday? Although Nick Niles probably would, if he could figure out how.

  “The Medal winner,” Faulcon said, sticking out bony fingers. “I’m honored.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Dan endured a grip that felt as if it could fracture phalanges. “It should’ve gone to a National Guard doctor, and some marines. But I wear it in their honor.”

  Faulcon motioned to chairs. “What’s on your mind, Tony?”

  Halfway through the explanation Faulcon swiveled to a terminal and began bringing up screens. He studied one as Provanzano finished, then rotated the monitor toward them. Pricks of white dotted a black featurelessness. “IR,” he said. As if every word cost him a dollar.

  Dan leaned to see, but got no wiser. “Uh, what are those, General?”

  “Campfires. Reaching up toward those passes.”

  “We haven’t seen that imagery yet,” Provanzano said. “But it only backs us up. What’s our level of confidence in the Pak army?”

  Faulcon considered. “Low.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to stay and face the music?”

  “I’m aware that’s a possibility.”

  “Of course you are. Come on, Randy. I can give you two Twelve teams. You can draw assets from Ka-Bar and Cutlass. SAS, SBS, SEALs. Spot them in the most likely passes.”

  The general thought. “The passes are in Pakistani territory.”

  “So what?”

  “No penetration. Even in hot pursuit. We need their cooperation.”

  Dan said, “There are, what, customs agents in these passes? Pakistani border guards? I don’t think so. Who’s going to see our troops?”

  Faulcon’s shoulders moved fractionally. “Pakistani special operations.”

  “In the passes?” Provanzano shook his head like a wet Labrador. “They’re not going up there. Not those boys. If anybody’s going to block them, it’s got to be us.”

  “I proposed that yesterday. And was turned down.”

  “Sometimes you have to disobey a stupid order,” Dan said.

  Both men glanced at him, Faulcon with evaluating eyes, Provanzano with a smirk. The general leaned to a phone console. “Sergeant? I need the JAG in here.”

  The legal officer looked as lean and fit as any of the other officers in the headquarters. A little older, that was all; Harrison Ford–ish; slightly graying. Provanzano went over it again with him.

  “You want to be very wary abo
ut irritating the Pakistanis,” the adviser said. “We’re going to be dependent on them, if he does escape.”

  “Let’s see. We’re going to neglect an opportunity to catch him, so we have a better chance later on?” Provanzano chuckled. He seemed to be ribbing the general, as an equal, perhaps even a superior.

  “The ambassador to Pakistan has threatened to resign if we do any cross-border incursions. Musharraf has promised to render OBL to us.”

  Provanzano: “Again: Does he have the capability to do that? In a part of the mountains he doesn’t even govern?”

  “What about hot pursuit?” Dan asked. “Isn’t that legal doctrine?”

  The JAG said, “That generally pertains to the law of the sea.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, in general terms, any objection to hot pursuit at sea will be much weaker, since you’re not actually infringing on the sovereign territory of another state.”

  Dan wished he’d known this when he’d been skipper of USS Horn, sweating their trespass into Egyptian territorial waters. But the JAG was still talking. “It’s not a generally recognized doctrine when you’re incursing across a land border. Which is why we couldn’t use it in Cambodia. For example. Now, we just got UN Resolution 1373. That speaks to the issue of state sovereignty. A government has an obligation not to allow its territory to be used by terrorists. That’s what we’d use to request him back. From Pakistan.”

  “Request him back?” Provanzano said.

  “Extradite him.”

  “We don’t want to extradite this guy,” Dan said, suddenly disgusted. “Get real.”

  “The alternative’s to let Pakistan try him in their courts.”

  “That can’t be the only alternative,” Dan said. “Not to get personal here, but he killed three thousand US citizens. You don’t let a guy like that … you don’t extradite him.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Provanzano, clapping theatrically. “On the other hand, we’re building this whole antiterror coalition around getting him. If we do nail him, how do we retain that momentum?”

  Dan stared, not sure anyone could actually mean what the agent had just intimated. “You’re saying we—what? Let him go?”

  Provanzano chuckled. “Down, boy! Just thinking out loud. Best case: We locate his bunker tomorrow and either you or the Air Force turn it into dust and hamburger. All we’re discussing is the goal-line play, if we don’t.”

  Faulcon cleared his throat and the others fell silent. Not looking at the JAG, he said, “So these would be black missions. Never acknowledged. Never admitted.”

  The legal officer looked at the tent overhead. “If there’s a clash with Pakistani special forces?”

  “Our men lost their way. We apologize.”

  Provanzano said, “We execute the stop plan with SEALs and SBS teams, cross-border if necessary. We don’t tell the SecDef or Pakistan. No one knows they’re there. If they get him in Pakistani territory?”

  The JAG said carefully, “It would be better if the body was found on this side of the border.”

  “Thanks for coming by, Tony. Nice meeting you, Dan.” Faulcon nodded curtly, turning back to his screen. “The J-3, please,” he said into the intercom; then, to them, “That’ll be all.”

  * * *

  “THAT went as well as we could have expected,” the CIA man said as they walked back toward the intel tent.

  Dan didn’t answer. He was still trying to figure out what the agent had meant about bin Laden’s capture harming the coalition. Wasn’t that what going into Afghanistan was all about?

  “You look pensive.”

  “Just tired.”

  “You must be used to missing sleep. At sea, and so forth.”

  “Yeah, well, it doesn’t get easier.”

  “I’m sure. Which brings up something I wanted to sort of confab about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In private.”

  Private turned out to be a sharp right turn toward the airstrip. Dan snugged up his field jacket against a chill wind, even though it was a sunny afternoon. He followed past rows of smaller tents and newly arrived containers being unloaded by a working party. A man in a black motorcycle jacket sauntered some distance behind them. Belote? Following them? Provanzano hiked without speaking for some minutes. A transport came in, hovered, touched down. The howl and roar swelled and faded.

  They walked across empty ground, dried grass crunching under their boots. Dan wondered about mines. He was about to say something when they came to an abandoned revetment, or maybe an antiair position. A U-shaped earthen berm covered with more dried grass and stunted bushes. Provanzano sighed. He perched his ass on the slope of the middle berm, the bottom of the U. Reached behind a bush and came out with a bottle. “Want a drink? Just joking. I know you’re not the type.”

  “Not for quite a while.” Dan looked around, wondering where Belote had gone. He couldn’t see him anymore.

  “I admire that. It does help lubricate the occasion, though. Sure?”

  “What did you want, Tony?”

  But he wasn’t going to be rushed. He screwed off the cap and took a swig, gazing off toward the mountains, over which heavy clouds hovered as if caught by hooks. Cutty Sark. Despite himself, Dan remembered the burn. The first swallow.

  “Beautiful country, isn’t it?”

  “Haven’t seen much of it.”

  “This part of the world is where empires go to die. I don’t want us to be the next one.”

  “I doubt anybody does.”

  “You’d be wrong. We’re gonna get seduced in here, just like he wants. It may go okay for a while, but then it’s going to turn ugly. We can blow shit to pieces, but we can’t fix this country. Or even hold it. Like I said: where empires go to die.”

  Dan stood hugging himself. “Get him, and get out.”

  “I hope we can. But he’s not the only bad guy out here.”

  Dan started to speak; Provanzano waved him into quiet. “We’re tasked to go after threats to the United States wherever they exist. And since 9/11, all of a sudden, our funding in that area’s unlimited.

  “Now, you’ve been passed over for captain. But we have quite a few former Navy people in our organization. You could be filling a seat with a lot more responsibility than the typical captain gets. A lot more. Let’s get specific. I’m referring to a program like CIRCE, but more ambitious. I’m going DCI special compartmented now, okay? Our goal is to monitor every communication within the continental United States.”

  “Within the country? I don’t think that’s legal,” Dan said.

  “You don’t think we do domestic surveillance?”

  “I didn’t say you didn’t do it. I said I didn’t think it was constitutional.”

  “What did you just say to Faulcon?”

  “What?”

  Provanzano repeated, “What did you just say? About how bin Laden killed three thousand Americans. Zircon Prime will prevent another 9/11. Use technology to spot terrorists inside the country, before they strike. And that’s only the beginning. Big changes coming down the pike, my friend. Big. We’ll get you Navy orders until your official Navy retirement date. Then transition you to FS status.”

  “But I don’t want to work for you,” Dan said. “I don’t want to be part of expanding domestic surveillance. Or of anything else you do, actually.”

  Provanzano took another swig, frowning. An executive-style jet whistled overhead, touched down with a squeal of tires. “I’d hoped you’d grown beyond that attitude, Dan. Every institution has the imperative to grow itself. There isn’t one that doesn’t. The army. The navy. The church.”

  “The post office.”

  The bottle paused halfway to Provanzano’s lips. “You fucking with me, Commander?”

  “Just pointing out not every human institution is corrupt.”

  “Corrupt is a harsh word.”

  “Give me another, I’ll use it.”

  “Okay, I’ll give yo
u another. Realpolitik. We need to be smart across the spectrum. The wave of the future will be asymmetrical threat. We want to be that threat. For Al Qaeda. And others who want to bring us down. That line’s got to be drawn.”

  “Absolutely. But spying on your own citizens? There are certain things that aren’t right.”

  “Even if it means more Americans will die?”

  “Yes,” Dan said. “Even then. A lot of us have died for our liberty before.”

  “Liberty. You think Americans still care about liberty? I think they’d much rather have security. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t think they do.”

  “Then you’re a dinosaur. This isn’t 1776. Or even 1940. Protecting America isn’t just about ships with guns on them. Or maybe the Navy thinks it’s purer than the rest of us?”

  Dan considered this. He’d asked himself this question over the years, in many different ways. “I think in some ways, yes. You learn at sea that falsehood kills. That means truth is absolute. Not relative. Duty’s absolute. Honor’s absolute too. Don’t smile. Yeah, I used the H-word.”

  “Couldn’t help it. Sorry. What else?”

  “And you learn … you’re all in the same boat. You take care of your shipmates. And they take care of you.”

  Dan paused, reaching for something bigger. Wiser. Something he was still trying to put into words. But maybe that was the problem. No matter how hard you tried, the things that really mattered wouldn’t go into words.

  The CIA officer leaned back on the embankment. He’d found a scrap of jagged steel, a piece of shrapnel, perhaps, and was tossing it in a palm. “Well, that might be true at sea. But in politics? Just not realistic. Hey, ask your wife! Let me quote Horace Walpole: ‘No great country was ever saved by good men, because good men will not go to the lengths that may be necessary.’”

  “I understand that,” Dan said. “And I didn’t mean we don’t need intelligence. Just like we need armed force. But you can’t trade freedom for security. Or actually, the illusion of security.”

  “They’ll be happy to make the trade,” Provanzano said. “And they’ll thank us for it.”