The mujahed yanked a Russian army-issue PSM pistol from inside his vest, pointed it an inch from McGarvey’s head and pulled back the hammer.
“Mohammed,” the slight mujahed warned softly.
The mujahed’s aim didn’t waver, but his eyes flicked to the front seat. McGarvey reached up, grabbed the man’s wrist and jammed his thumb between the hammer and the rear of the slide, making it impossible for the pistol to fire. He twisted the gun right, then sharply left breaking the man’s grip and pulled the gun away from him.
“The next time you point this toy gun at me, I’ll take it away from you again, shove it up your ass and fire all eight rounds.” McGarvey eased the hammer down and handed the gun to the momentarily stunned Mohammed who looked as if he wanted more than anything else to slit McGarvey’s throat.
He took the pistol and held it so tightly that even in the dim starlight McGarvey could see that the man’s hand had turned white.
The slight one from the front said something in Persian, and after several long seconds Mohammed slowly put the gun away. He stared at McGarvey a little longer, and then threw his head back and laughed almost hysterically, his hands now gripped tightly around the barrel stock of the Kalashnikov resting between his knees.
McGarvey figured that the man was insane, and he was going to have to keep a tight watch on his back for the remainder of the mission. The mujahedeen were very quick to take offense, and very very slow to forgive or forget, but they admired courage. And bin Laden’s control was anything but complete.
The night remained deathly still except for the light breeze. After another ten minutes the slightly built mujahed gave a nod. The driver started the engine and headed slowly back to the highway by the same dirt track across the narrow stream that they had taken to get here.
Mohammed sat forward, cradling his rifle and staring at McGarvey, while the mujahed on McGarvey’s right watched out the window.
They stopped on the slight rise just before the highway. In the distance across a flat plain the air base was only partially lit. The airport beacon was still flashing, but the runway lights were out and most of the low, hulking buildings were dark. But there were lights showing on what appeared to be guard towers and tall fences even farther in the distance, which McGarvey took to be the prison.
Nothing moved in either direction on the highway for as far as they could see, nor were there any signs of movement or lights in the sky. If there were an opposite side to the civilized world this was it. Dark, hidden, bleak, a perfect place for a man such as bin Laden. A desert scorpion in its nest ready to strike out with its poison.
The driver headed down the steep track then back up the deeply rutted path to the highway. He turned north and accelerated before he finally turned on the Rover’s headlights. They were so bright after they’d gotten their night vision that they were partially blinded for the first couple of minutes.
Passing the road to the air base they spotted several military vehicles parked just inside the gates about a half-mile away. The guardhouse was lit up, but they saw no signs of movement, nor was the Volkswagen van anywhere to be seen. This seemed to encourage McGarvey’s captors so that as they sped north into the night, putting the base miles behind them, the mood in the Rover got increasingly lighter, the tension melting away. They started to laugh and talk, obviously relieved. They had passed two hurdles, and looking toward the not-so-distant mountains, McGarvey could feel the biggest hurdle of all approaching: Osama bin Laden and his madness.
Something else from Voltaire came to his mind; something he’d written an entire chapter about in the book he’d been working on for nearly ten years.
Voltaire had almost no regard for governments, especially their institutions and bureaucracies. But he understood that governments were not buildings and monuments alone, but were made of people. Voltaire wrote that if a man wanted to obtain a great name, and be the founder of a sect or an establishment, it helped to be crazy. Be completely mad, he said.
“But be sure that the madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age. Have in your madness reason enough to guide your extravagances; and do not forget to be obsessively opinionated and obstinate. It is certainly possible that you may get hanged; but if you escape hanging, you will have altars erected to you.”
Was that it, McGarvey wondered. Was bin Laden looking for an altar; some last act that would go down in history as so tremendous, so heinous that he would never be forgotten?
EIGHT
Into the Afghan Mountains
They passed through the deserted streets of a good-sized town called Charikar about 2:30 A.M. The only evidence that the place wasn’t devoid of life were lights here and there behind the walls of compounds, and a few cars and trucks parked off the narrow streets. There was nothing that looked even remotely like an open hotel or restaurant, although in the city center there were several official-looking buildings in front of which were parked some army vehicles.
Charikar was the provincial capital of Parawn and was the scene of a substantial Russian effort to keep the puppet communist regime in power during the war. In a true Afghan tradition, the mujahedeen never fought in the city until near the end. Instead of confronting the Russian troops, the Afghani warriors manned an extensive series of ditches and tunnels that completely surrounded the place. Russians found it almost impossible to move in or out without heavy casualties. The communists said that they controlled the city. But the mujahedeen sentiment was as simple as it was direct: Do the men in prison control the prison?
His escorts did not seem nervous passing through the town, and McGarvey figured that the farther out of Kabul they went the less influence the Taliban had on the people, and the more bin Laden’s sympathizers were welcome. Listening to the talk flowing around him in Persian it occured to him that if they had been high strung before, they were relieved and even happy now. Even Mohammed seemed to lighten up.
A few miles north of the city they crossed a stone bridge over a raging mountain river, and ten minutes later they pulled off the highway and bumped along a narrow, extremely rocky track that wound its way west and, as far as McGarvey could tell, south, back toward the river. The mountains were all around them now, and the early morning hour was very cold; perhaps in the high thirties.
At one point the driver stopped the Rover and shut off the headlights. They sat in silence for a full five minutes to let their night vision come back, and then started off again. Now the track rose so steeply in places that the driver had to switch into the low range of four-wheel drive, and even then the going was nearly impossible at times.
For a couple of thousand yards they followed what was probably a donkey path, very slowly, a fifty-degree slope rising on their right, and a shear cliff that dropped three hundred feet down into the river on their left. They could hear the low-throated roar and feel the tremendous power of the water rushing through the narrow gorge below, and even the mujahedeen seemed respectful of this place.
Gradually the walls of the steep cut began to widen, until they came dramatically out to a long, rising valley, the end of which rose suddenly toward a pair of snow-capped mountains that were probably still twenty-five or thirty miles away. The hills on either side of the valley were covered with brush and small trees in dark irregular patterns like long waves on a barren sea.
The path ended, finally, and the driver had to pick his way to the northwest toward a cut at the base of the valley, negotiating around the larger boulders, but driving over everything else with back-jarring bumps. It seemed as if they were at the top of the world here in this valley, even though the mountains rose far above them. The scale was impossible to accept.
A half hour later they crossed a wide, shallow stream, and turned north again, following its twists and turns, and finally after a long loop that ran with the contours of the hills, they came to the bombed-out ruins of a small village. Only a few mud and stone walls were left intact. Shattered bricks, splintered wooden poles and trees an
d glass and pottery shards littered the entire settlement. Even before the bombing—probably by the Russians if this had been a mujahedeen stronghold, McGarvey thought—this place had to have been a very mean spot in which to subsist. And yet as they came from the south he could see that the river went directly through the middle of the town where patios had been constructed, villagers could sit in the mornings with their tea, or in the late afternoons for their prayers beside the flowing water. He also picked out the remnants of several small fields of corn mostly gone to seed now, and perhaps a half-acre of grapevines in what was once a well-tended vineyard. There’d probably been goats and chickens and all the other basic necessities of a simple Muslim life. Laughing children playing in the dusty streets, old men talking Islam in the chai khanas, tea houses, while their veiled women went about their chores floating through the village like ghostly figures; seen but not seen except behind the walls of their homes.
They parked on the far side of the village in the ruins of a barn. The driver shut off the engine, got out and walked back about twenty yards to a clearing where he studied the sky to their south for a minute or so. When he came back he pulled off his balaclava and stuffed it in a pocket. He was just a kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with a thin mustache, scraggly beard and wide, dark eyes beneath finely drawn eyebrows.
He said something in Persian.
“In English, Farid,” the slightly built mujahed said. “For our guest.”
He took off his balaclava, and McGarvey saw that he had guessed correctly back at the checkpoint. The mujahed was a young woman, not a man, with fine features, high, delicate cheekbones, a clear complexion, full, rich lips and dark, almond-shaped eyes that were alive with simple amusement.
“The sky is clear. No one follows.” Farid’s accent was very strong.
“We have only two hours to make our first camp,” the woman said. “We’ll have to hurry.” Her voice was soft and cultured, she’d been educated in England or perhaps Europe, or at the very least tutored by someone very good. She turned and looked back at McGarvey. “You knew when we stopped at the airport, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t sure,” McGarvey said. “It had to be very dangerous for you to come into Kabul, and then to talk to that officer.”
She shrugged matter-of-factly. “My father expects it of me. He’s a religious man, Mr. McGarvey, but he is a Saudi, and modern.”
“Are you Osama bin Laden’s daughter?”
“I am Sarah, his oldest child.”
The CIA had little or nothing of any substance about bin Laden’s family. He knew nothing about her.
Mohammed, who had taken off his balaclava to reveal a heavily pockmarked face under a thick salt-and-pepper beard, was angry. He scowled, and then said something in Persian to Sarah. He wasn’t as young as McGarvey thought he was from his voice. Sarah shot back a reply, her left eyebrow rising. He mumbled something else under his breath, and then climbed out of the car and stalked off.
“Not everyone has come to an equal understanding. But we can hope, Insha’Allah,” she said regretfully. She opened the door, then reached across to roll up the driver’s window, grab the keys and hit the door locks. “We have a long distance to travel before dawn, so we must leave now.”
Farid and the other mujahed, who looked almost as young, pulled camo netting over the Rover making it practically invisible from the air even during the day. Sarah walked over to where Mohammed was waiting, his Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, and she said something to him. It was obviously a conciliatory gesture. He towered menacingly over her, and for a brief moment McGarvey thought he was going to strike her down. But then he looked away insolently. She reached out and touched his arm, and he stepped back as if he was getting ready to strike again. His hand reached for the pistol in his tunic, but Sarah stood her ground, and after several seconds he withdrew his hand.
She came back, pulling a round felt cap on her head, and stuffing stray strands of black hair inside it. She got her rifle from the other mujahed, named Hash, slung it over her shoulder, then came over to where McGarvey was standing just outside the barn.
She studied his face as if trying to read something from his expression. Her own expression was one of concern and weariness, as if she was tired of the struggle. And yet he could see clearly stamped on her face a fierce determination and pride.
“Have you come here to assassinate my father, Mr. McGarvey?” she asked directly, without guile.
McGarvey shook his head. “Just to talk,” he said. He was already beginning to admire the young woman.
“About what?”
“We want the killing to stop.”
She nodded her understanding. “Then I think that you must have a great deal to say.”
“I do. But am I going to be wasting my time?”
She thought about that, and took a moment to formulate her answer. She was being very serious. “My father is not the monster you in the West think he is. But he is a very hard man, as the Russians found out.” She smiled wistfully. “He too wants peace, but an honorable peace.”
“Will he listen to me?”
“Listen to an infidel?” she asked rhetorically. Then she cocked her head and pursed her lips. “Do you believe that the prophet Isa was God? You call him Jesus.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about religion.”
“Then your task will be doubly hard. For us, Islam is life.”
“I understand.”
Sarah gave him an odd, thoughtful look. “I don’t know if you can. But I hope so.”
McGarvey motioned toward Mohammed who had hunkered down and was looking out across the valley toward the mountains as he smoked a cigarette. “What about him?”
Sarah followed his gaze. “He is an Afghani, and maybe he is already too old to change. I think he is a spy for the Taliban.”
The admission of a weakness in bin Laden’s armor was extraordinary, and McGarvey wondered if she had told him that to get some kind of a reaction, or merely because she was young and naive. He didn’t think she could be much older than eighteen or twenty.
“Why not send him away?” McGarvey asked.
This time Sarah laughed out loud, the sound soft and throaty. “Better to have a spy you know in your midst, than one you don’t watching you from a distance.”
Farid and Hash had taken four bundles from the back of the Rover. They put McGarvey’s bag and laptop into one of them, and the mujahedeen, including Sarah, shouldered the heavy loads.
“I can carry some of that,” McGarvey said.
“You have your work to do, we have ours,” Sarah replied.
They headed north from the village along the base of the foothills that stretched up the long valley, Sarah and Farid in the lead, with McGarvey in the middle as usual, and Mohammed and Hash bringing up the rear.
Within the first fifty yards they fell into an easy, loping gait that for the first mile or two seemed unnecessarily slow. But as the floor of the valley continued to rise toward the distant mountains, sometimes hardpan and rock-strewn, at other times swampy, the ground muddy, McGarvey could feel the altitude in his lungs and his legs. He was in excellent physical condition, but he had to wonder how long Sarah and the others could keep up the pace, and if he could match it.
They spoke very little on the trek, though from time to time Farid would look back over his shoulder at the sky to the south and then shoot McGarvey a glance to make sure he was okay. He smiled each time and gave the thumbs-up sign.
Sarah was very small, maybe five-feet-two, and slender. Although her pack was as big as the others, and she carried a rifle and a bandolier of ammunition, it was she who set the pace, never once faltering or slowing down.
Around 3:30 A.M., the village already several miles behind them, they turned to the northwest into a steep arroyo down which a narrow stream bubbled gaily. They climbed for twenty minutes until the defile took a turn to the right, putting the valley below them out of sight for the first time. At a small
flat spot beneath a long rock overhang that would protect them from the air, Sarah stopped and took off her pack.
“Five minutes,” she announced. She took a Russian-made canteen from her pack and filled it in the stream. The others did the same.
This place had been used as a rest stop before. McGarvey could see the disturbed sand, and farther back beneath the overhang someone had built small campfires. The rocks were blackened and the overhead was dark with soot.
Sarah came back and offered him a drink from the canteen. The water was sweet and cool. Simple pleasures were the best, the line came to him from somewhere, and he smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“How are your legs?” she asked.
“I’ll live. Is it much farther?”
She glanced at the defile, then back east. The sun rose here around 4:30 A.M. this time of year, and the tops of the distant mountains were already turning pink. “Another twenty minutes. But it is very steep.”
“Is your father’s camp nearby?”
She shook her head. “We have to stop for the day. It’s too dangerous for us to travel. But we’ll get there by tomorrow morning.”
Mohammed and the others were still at the stream and out of earshot. “Dangerous for whom?” he asked. “Not the Taliban, you have a spy with you.”
“I believe you call them Keyhole satellites.” She gave him a bemused look. “I think they might be watching us because of you.”
Actually the satellites’ infrared detectors could pick up the heat signatures of human bodies better at night. But the KH11 and -12 series were in positions just now to watch the ongoing troubles in Yugoslavia, and one to watch a possible treaty violation in Antarctica. He didn’t tell her that.
McGarvey offered her a cigarette, but she declined. He lit one for himself. “Do you miss Saudi Arabia?” he asked.
The question startled her. She started to say something, but then changed her mind and shook her head. “I was born in the Sudan,” she said at length. “But I’ve never been to see my father’s family.” She lowered her eyes. “Have you been to Riyadh?”
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