by Gary Haynes
From the oval porthole opposite him, Tom could see a four-blade Apache attack helicopter. It was a state-of-the-art killing machine, the nose-mounted sensor hub housing the night-vision systems for its 30-mm Chain Gun carried between the landing gear, and the Hellfire missiles and Hydra rocket pods on the stub-wings sticking out of the fuselage behind the cockpit. But he knew such weapons had been of little use in a guerrilla war where the combatants had dressed like locals and had lived among them, too.
The Apaches would fly ahead soon and be the second wave of attack, once the Black Hawks had landed at the insertion point and there was no further need for an element of surprise, however brief. Then they would buzz the valleys of the White Mountains in the vicinity, deterring any element of reinforcements. The drone reconnaissance hadn’t shown up any other settlements nearby, but a group of Leopards could always be squatting under scrub or in dugouts.
Tom chewed his lip and grabbed the seat bar as the Chinook hit turbulence. He knew he was heading for a death zone.
The last time he’d flown in a helicopter had been on a short flight from DC to Richmond, Virginia, where the secretary had opened a library at South University. That was a fortnight ago. He’d thought that his time with her would end in a clean slate until he’d gotten the call from his direct superior, informing him that she would be going to Islamabad. He never knew why, in detail. He didn’t have to know. He was only ever told her destination days before if her schedule changed. But he’d felt uneasy from the beginning, a nagging doubt that had played out as fretful dreams.
Crane turned to Tom. “ETA five minutes,” he mouthed, holding up five fingers. He opened up a laptop to get the live feeds. “That’s the view from Sawyer’s video camera in Salt One,” he bellowed. “That’s the interpreter next to him. Bet he didn’t sign up for this. The operators call it flying it into the X. Heavy shit, huh.”
The interpreter was a Pakistani, his face obscured by a black ski mask. Tom knew that his whole family would be killed if he was ever recognized.
The screen was split into quarters, with different images appearing from the various cameras, including those mounted on the Black Hawks’ fuselages. Briefly, Tom wondered what his first words to her would be. Whether it would be appropriate to apologize or simply say he was glad to see her alive? But what if they found her dead already? What if the plan failed at the last moment and she was killed or terribly injured? What would he say or do then? he thought.
As the amber LED lights were cut, he spent the next few minutes zoning out.
“They’re moving in,” said Crane, breaking into Tom’s thoughts.
Tom looked down towards Crane’s lap at the live feeds. “The Black Hawks are shaking a lot,” he said, watching one of the helicopters hover above the fort’s flat roof as the other lowered down to about ten metres above the courtyard. Each had a sniper aiming a suppressed rifle out of the cabin’s open side door, scanning the rescue site for any sign of a fighter.
“Uplift of trapped air,” Crane said. “It’ll be fine. The Delta work top down, bottom up, and converge in the middle. Smooth and fast, smooth and fast. A breacher blows down a door, then the fire teams enter. They take out the resistance. The main dangers are trip wires, IEDs and blind firing around walls. If the whole place isn’t rigged with Semtex, it’ll be fine. Don’t worry. If she’s there, we’ll find her.”
At least Crane is still upbeat, Tom thought. He just hoped he had a right to be, despite the man’s previous misgivings.
On screen, he watched Sawyer lead the assault on the ground. He fast-roped adroitly in leather mitts some seven metres from the bar jutting out from Black Hawk’s fuselage, landing into a swirl of dust and small stones. After being propelled forward by the rotor wash, he took point in the dark courtyard, adjusting his headphones before speaking into his cheek mic. The main building was directly ahead of him, a few outbuildings and vehicle ports left and right. He scanned around with his M4A1 carbine, fixed with a thermal scope and red-dot laser, his four-tube night-vision goggles allowing peripheral vision, but making him look as if he’d landed from another solar system.
After the main interpreter sprained an ankle on the descent and a medic had his ill-secured backpack almost torn off by the wash, the assault teams panned out and ran forward, their torsos clad in sixty-pound ballistic plates. The live feed showed a serious of controlled explosions, bursts of automatic fire and swift movement.
“Alpha three down. Medevac,” Sawyer shouted, looking over at an operator seven metres from him, his body splayed on the ground.
With that, another Delta was blown into the air three metres in front of Sawyer. He landed heavily, his legs a twisted mess. The operators couldn’t use their fragmentation grenades, because they had no idea where the secretary was being held. But the local fighters were using them to devastating effect. That and a triangulation of small-arms fire.
“Jesus,” Tom said.
The movement ratcheted up to something approaching frantic. Gunfire crackled and breaching charges erupted. A flurry of tracer rounds flew through the air from a corner turret and, a few seconds later, there was a massive explosion coupled with a white flash. Tom heard the muted voices of the men on the ground.
“Salt Two down,” said Sawyer. “A bird’s down. A bird’s down.”
“Shit!” Tom said.
With that, an Apache hovered before blowing off the turret. A funnel of flame exploded upward from the black smoke ball, the smashed clay bricks showering down onto the courtyard. Tom thought it might as well have been made of balsa wood for all the protection it had afforded.
“Wow,” Crane said. “See that? Got those RPGs for damn sure.”
As the operators moved into the main building they began to clear the warren of corridors. Their eyes were covered by helmet-mounted NVGs as they aimed suppressed, desert-tan HK416 assault rifles and Colt carbines, assaulting the building from top and bottom, just as Crane had said they would. The insurgents fell away like ghosts, or buckled under double taps to the head and body from relatively close quarters, after they were fixed with IR lasers. Once a section was cleared, an assaulter shouted, “Move,” and his teammate would shout, “Moving,” before taking a step. It was precise. Calculated.
Outside, a second Apache fired a rocket at the far left-hand side of the surrounding wall of the fort compound, smashing a gaping hole in the clay bricks.
“There ain’t enough room to put the Chinooks down in the courtyard and the gate is likely to be rigged. Hence the hole. We’re going in,” Crane barked. “And put your goggles on or you’ll be picking grit out of your eyes for a week.”
Tom felt a rush of adrenalin. He’d been in combat zones many times, but this was something else.
21.
The Chinook hovered before descending ten metres from the fort’s outer wall. After it touched down in the landing zone, the tail ramp lowered so that they could disembark quickly without squeezing through the cabin doors. A bearded master sergeant, holding an HK fixed with an AG416 40mm grenade launcher, led them through the smoke and swirling dust whipped up by the rotors, over the chunks of bricks and into the main courtyard. The downed Black Hawk was burning up in the far right-hand corner, the other circling in front of the bullet-ridden walls of the main building. The Delta told them to follow his steps, saying that they hadn’t swept the area and IEDs could be anywhere.
Tom saw a dozen bodies lying dead or groaning on the ground, including three operators, who were being attended to by medics. A group of women, hugging children and wailing, sat in the courtyard to the left. In front of them, a couple of Delta stood either side of the second masked interpreter as he attempted to comfort the innocents and obtain intel in the process. Directly behind him, four operators were securing those insurgents who’d surrendered or had been captured alive with plasticuffs before hooding them. At the doorways to the outer buildings, infrared lights visible only via the operators’ night-vision goggles signalled that they’d been cle
ared of any threat.
Tom, Crane and the others were met at the central door by another five Delta, all wearing mismatched uniforms and padded gloves. One was holding a Belgian Malinois dog on a lead, its eyes protected by a ballistic visor, its torso sheathed in body armour. The dog snarled when they came close, bearing huge fangs. Its Delta handler jerked the lead and took point. Sawyer remained behind, organizing the ongoing security of the periphery with the rest of the troop, together with the Rangers who had disembarked from a Chinook beyond the wall.
The interior was thick with dust and stank of stale smoke and kerosene. Guided by the operators’ helmet-mounted flashlights, the dog led the way, its snubbed snout tracking the scent of the secretary via an article of clothing taken from her bedroom at the embassy. The GPS had pinpointed the building, but the signal had faded en route, so it was impossible to tell her exact position in the many dark corridors and small rooms that constituted the fort proper. The corridors were on three levels and narrow, no more than two-metres high, creating a claustrophobic effect. The walls were uneven, the floors pitted and strewn with small rocks.
After five minutes or so, the dog, salivating now and snorting, moved down a slope below ground level. It stopped at a reinforced metal door at the end of a pitch-black corridor peppered with rat droppings. The air here smelled of something akin to rotting vegetables. An operator carrying an M4 Super 90 shotgun moved up before banging on the door and calling out. There was no answer. Tom clenched his jaw muscles, feeling anxious. Crane stepped forward and ordered the door blown open.
“We can’t risk it,” Tom said, intervening.
He knew that if the door opened inward, the secretary could be killed as it careered into her.
“Blow it down, son,” Crane insisted.
Ignoring Crane, the Delta spoke into his cheek mic. “A metal door, sir. Lyric could be beyond it. No question of knocking out the hinges with Hatton rounds. It’ll need an explosive breach.” After getting an order from Sawyer, he said, “Copy that.”
The rear operator came forward and placed a strip of adhesive breaching explosives over the lock, which would rip it apart. He primed it with two blasting caps, so that if one malfunctioned there’d be less chance of failure, and reeled out the connecting wires. Tom and the others retreated a way back down the dim corridor. As blast shields were held up in front of them they lowered their heads. Tom just hoped the door would blow back outwards.
“Fire in the hole,” the Delta shouted.
After a two-second delay, the explosion was ferocious, making the shields almost buckle, the shock wave exaggerated by the confined space. An operator ran forward, with bolt cutters strapped to his back. He leapt over the blown-down door, his red-dot laser scanning the room. He flipped up his night-vision goggles, activated his helmet flashlight and double checked for any sign of the secretary, a booby trap or Leopard.
“Clear,” he shouted.
The dog handler moved forward, closely followed by Tom and Crane. Tom saw the dog scratching at the floor. The Delta crouched down and used a gloved hand to clean the dirt from a small piece of flooring.
“It’s a hinge,” he said.
“Jesus,” Tom said, fearing they would find the secretary’s body beneath.
The Delta used the butt of his carbine to dislodge the small padlock securing the hinge.
“Watch out, Chris. It could be rigged,” an operator called out from behind.
A Delta brought up a blast shield and, crouching behind it, the man called Chris lifted the trap door. Nothing happened. He shone his flashlight down.
“One body, likely dead,” he said, clinically.
“Male or female?” Tom asked.
“Looks like a woman’s body.”
Tom’s face turned the colour of wet clay. He scrambled forward. Peering down, he shone his handheld flashlight into the hole. It was about two metres deep and three metres square. A small body, its face shrouded by a black square of muslin, lay against the far mud wall.
“Tom?” Crane said.
“It’s her clothes,” he replied “The body is dressed in her clothes.”
The dog barked and strained at the leash, desperate to descend into the hole.
“Go down, Tom,” Crane said. “It’s only right it’s you. But don’t touch the body.”
Tom tucked his flashlight into his webbed belt, slung his MP5 over his shoulder and lowered himself into the hole. He coughed, gagging on the smell of decaying flesh. After taking out the flashlight, he held it up and saw the emerald ring on the blackened finger, the pear-shaped necklace lying on the flat breasts. Was she burned? he thought, unable to conceive of such a death.
He pulled off his goggles and knelt down. Clenching his jaw, he lifted the veil. He saw a stained skull. The tracking device that had been hidden under the secretary’s skin was lodged between the two front teeth. They were black-green in colour, as if they’d been sculpted from serpentine stone. He arched back and slumped down in the damp earth. Breathing heavily, he took off his helmet and winced. He figured the reason for the intermittent signal from the sensors was down to their subterranean position.
Crane dropped down into the hole, his bulk almost filling the space. “This one’s been dead for as long as you’ve been waking up with a boner,” he said, putting his hand to his nose. He scanned around with his Maglite. “They threw a few dead rats in to make it smell convincing. You gotta hand it to them—this is cute.”
Tom didn’t have the strength to punch him; couldn’t even bring himself to swear.
22.
Mullah Kakar lived in a dingy house in one of the oldest and cheapest sectors of Islamabad, with narrow streets and poor infrastructure. He’d rarely ventured out at first, and when he had he’d always been accompanied by his four bodyguards, all of whom were from Peshawar, and had fought against ISAF in Afghanistan. But after meeting up with the British ex-SAS soldier called Proctor in the foothills of the Hindu Kush five months ago, he’d taken to moving about the city more often, at least at night. As far as the Westerners were concerned, he was dead, after all. Besides, when the call had come from one of Brigadier Hasni’s men, ordering him to meet a driver at a coffee house a ten-minute walk away, he’d told his bodyguards that they would be leaving shortly. This was something that required little or no thought. When Hasni beckoned, a man moved, unless that man didn’t care for moving that much, and was content to push himself around in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
He switched off his fat, black-and-white TV, the grainy screen shrinking like a deflating balloon, and slipped on a pair of rubber-soled sandals, his mind fixed on the meeting at hand. Hasni, whom he knew on what he referred to as a professional basis, was as remote and dangerous as a snow leopard. But he’d controlled the ISI and therefore Pakistan’s foreign policy for over a decade. And although he professed to be a practising Muslim, Kakar knew that Hasni, like most high-ranking ISI officers, was motivated by two things only: political power and patriotism. Despite its historically pro-jihadist stance in Afghanistan, the ISI was essentially a nationalistic organization, rather than a religiously motivated one.
Kakar moved the blue-and-white sheet that separated his meagre living space from the equally cramped kitchen. He walked through the dim passageway to the wooden front door, the familiar smell of damp and sewerage filling his nostrils. As he got to the door he took out the photograph of his wife and three children. They’d been killed in a HIMAR attack five years ago. He knew that the mobile rocket launcher was accurate up to a distance of almost two hundred miles. He’d thought, at first, that his family had been in the wrong compound at the wrong time. But over the years, he’d come to the conclusion that the Westerners had killed them out of revenge for what he had done.
He placed the photograph into the pocket of a woollen vest, hanging on a hook screwed into the bare concrete wall. He knew that he would join them in Paradise one day. He just hoped it wouldn’t be too soon. He had a lot of revenge killing of h
is own to do first, despite the fact that he’d already murdered thirty-eight ISAF personnel since their deaths.
Apart from his young family, he had seen many people die in his country. Innocent men shot for talking on cellphones, the snipers having been told they were Taliban spotters. Others had been hauled off by security forces, tortured and never seen again, simply because their neighbours had wanted to earn a few hundred dollars or a acquire a small goat herd, the neighbours making up some story to rid themselves of someone they disliked, envied or who had slighted them over a family marriage proposal. The Westerners had been murderers, their materialism an infectious disease.
By 2005, he had acquired the mullah title. It happened in the way some people acquired accents. The more a person used it, the more people accepted it, until, in some peculiar way, the user believed it to be real as well. He was by this time devoted to the cause, both as an active fighter and strategist. Two years later, he’d planned and executed the act that had made him notorious. The murder of the British Defence Secretary in London.
As a result of the assassination and his subsequent bloody activities, the US had offered a million-dollar reward for information leading to his capture, or death. That hadn’t been revoked, so, unlike some Taliban leaders, who had received a tacit amnesty, he was still a wanted man. But ISAF had left his beloved homeland. God’s will, he believed. And now, he was a ghost.
And so it was without too much trepidation that he stood up from the seat at the small table and walked to the door as the black Mercedes pulled up outside, a man driving without others. His bodyguards rose with him, their handguns tucked into their belts, concealed by long shirts and vests. As Kakar approached the car the driver’s window slid down.
“Just you,” he said.
Kakar didn’t like his tone. Nothing short of dismissive, he thought. He nodded to his bodyguards outside the coffee house, and sat in the back of the sleek car, which eased into the traffic like a shark moving among its prey.
