He slipped inside and closed the door. The light filtering in from outside was enough for him to see that he was in an empty shop. Piles of trash and scraps of lumber were scattered about. Beyond the front room, he could see directly to the back of the shop where sunlight streamed in through the cracks in a boarded-up window.
McGarvey jammed a piece of scrap wood against the door, which would hold it shut unless someone else put their back into it, then went to the rear of the shop and looked out through the cracks in the window boards. A narrow, garbage-strewn alley separated the rear of the buildings from the brick wall of the ambassador’s compound. There were no guards in sight.
The back door was beneath a set of narrow stairs, and was secured only by a flimsy bolt. He slipped it off and stepped out into the alley, the stench from the open sewage ditch instantly assailing his nostrils. Human waste lay in piles, and the almost completely decomposed body of a dog or some other small animal lay half-buried under a slimy mass of rotting garbage. It was all he could do in his present condition to keep from throwing up what little he had in his stomach.
The wall ran at least thirty or forty yards in either direction, and was ten feet tall. But some of the bricks were missing and a lot of the mortar had fallen out of the joints so that scaling it would present no problem. He picked his way carefully across the filthy alley, and climbed to the top of the wall so that he could see inside the compound. The house was toward the front of the property, and back here was a five-car garage, a lot of trees, an overgrown tennis court, the net gone and big holes in the wire fence, and what probably had once been a large vegetable garden. There was no sign that anyone had been in residence for a long time. Everything was run-down and gone to weed. All the rear windows of the house were shuttered, and there were no tire marks in the driveway leading from the front. Nor was there any trash. If there were caretakers here now, he decided, they were uncommonly tidy for Afghanis.
With the last of his strength he levered himself up over the top of the wall, and dropped down into the garden on the other side.
It was silent. He could not even hear the noise from the demonstration. For the moment he felt that he was as safe here as he could be anywhere in Kabul, and he let a little of the tension drain away as he crossed behind the tennis court and made his way to the back of the mansion.
There were several doors, one of them obviously leading down into a basement, another for deliveries into what was most likely the kitchen and pantry area and another from a broad porch. McGarvey tried the delivery door. It was locked as he expected it would be. He put an ear to the door and held his breath to listen. There were no sounds from within. Not even the sounds of running machinery such as a refrigerator or freezer motor. The house was dead.
He took his jacket off, wrapped it around his pistol, then averted his face and fired one round into the lock. It jammed when he tried it, but then came free in his hand, and he let himself inside.
He found himself in what had been the laundry room. There were hookups for two washers and dryers, but the appliances were gone, and the cabinets on the walls were empty. All the cupboards and shelves in the large pantry beyond it were also empty, as were the walk-in cooler and freezer in the adjoining kitchen. Nor did the kitchen sinks work. Everything, including water had been shut off.
There was nothing here. The Taliban caretakers had stripped the place bare of just about everything useful. The chairs and table were gone, and even the spot where a large industrial range had stood was bare.
Very little light came through the shutters, so that the interior was mostly in shadows. It was somehow eerie. The dining room was empty, and standing in the spacious stairhall he could see that the living room and library had been stripped too. He leaned against the stair rail and lowered his head for a moment to catch his breath. There was nothing here for him other than a relatively safe haven for as long as he could last.
There was a mouthful of tepid water left in the canteen. He drank it and then went upstairs. All the rooms were bare. Even the pictures on the walls and the rugs on the floors had been taken. In a rear bedroom on the top floor, he sat down with his back to the wall, laid his gun on the floor beside him and took off the filthy scarf and cap.
McGarvey felt drained. What anger he had toward bin Laden had faded into the background for the moment. He wanted to lay his head back and sleep. He touched his side where the chip had been cut and his fingers came away bloody. He had to get back to Washington. Too many people were depending on him. He wasn’t going to simply give up here and wait to pass out from weakness, or for some bright Taliban officer to send soldiers here to find him. He wasn’t built that way.
McGarvey got out his satellite phone. The low-battery indicator glowed steadily red, and when he hit the speed dial button, the numbers came up on the tiny screen, but after a few seconds the display flashed a string of six Es, indicating that no satellite had been acquired.
He cleared the screen and tried it again with the same results. The battery was simply too low. He laid his head back and closed his eyes for a second. Without the phone he had no way of finding out if the Taliban government had been convinced to allow the American military to send in transportation for its citizens, or when it was due to arrive at the airport. He would somehow have to find another phone. Short of that he would have to try to get to the airport and wait until the plane arrived. But the chances of pulling that off without getting caught were even more impossible.
His eyes opened. Temperature. Batteries were affected by it. In the winter when it was freezing, car batteries went flat. Maybe the opposite was true.
He removed the small battery pack from the phone, lit his cigarette lighter and held it a couple of inches below the plastic case. Within a couple of seconds the plastic began to melt. He pulled it away from the flame until it cooled down a little, and then waved it slowly back and forth over the lighter, pulling it back whenever the plastic began to melt again. After a couple of minutes the battery pack was getting too hot to handle, so he put it back in the phone. This time the low-battery indicator did not come on.
He hit the speed dial button, the numbers came up and a couple of seconds later the phone acquired a satellite and the call went through.
Rencke answered it on the first ring. “Oh, boy, Mac, am I ever glad to hear from you. All hell is breaking loose—”
“There’s no time for that, my phone battery is almost dead. Is a plane coming for me?”
“We got the clearances …”
The low-battery light began to flash and the phone lost the satellite for just a moment, but then got it back.
“ … C-130, but you don’t have much time,” Rencke was saying.
“What time will it be here?” McGarvey demanded.
“Ten o’clock your time. This morning, Mac—”
The phone lost the satellite again, chirped once and then went completely dead. Not even the numbers remained on the display, and the keypad no longer worked.
McGarvey looked at his watch. It was already well after seven, which left him less than three hours.
In the Afghan Mountains
Bin Laden came out of the cave a few minutes after 7:30. He was disguised as an ordinary mujahed; no fatigue jacket, no white robes, not even his cane, so that if a satellite was watching there’d be no positive identification. He’d often traveled this way, only this time he would not be coming back. Two mujahedeen came up the hill as he started down, but he refused their help.
“Did Ali leave?” he asked, taking care not to stumble. The pain in his hip and legs was excruciating. There was nothing left of the camp. Even the last of the fires had finally burned down.
“Last night with the others,” one of them replied respectfully. Bin Laden couldn’t seem to remember his name. But it didn’t matter.
At the bottom they climbed onto horses that had survived the attack and headed down the valley, along the stream. The Taliban military unit at Bagram was sending a helico
pter to a rendezvous point about ten miles away for him. The same way Ali got out. And from there bin Laden would be flying by private jet to Khartoum. It was the last act of cooperation from them. It had been made clear that he would never be welcome back. Regretful but necessary, the mullah had told him by phone last night.
The pain from riding on a horse was much worse than it was walking, but he had taken an injection of morphine just before he’d left the cave, so it was bearable, though the drug somewhat muddled his thinking and his ability to speak or keep in focus.
As he rode, his thoughts drifted back and forth between Sarah and the bomb. At times the two were mingled together. Sarah’s body had been consumed by fire, as the President’s daughter would be consumed in an awful fire. It was just. The retribution would be terrible, but necessary. His only fear was that something would go wrong. Bahmad might be blocked from entering the U.S., some of his carefully laid plans and preparations might go awry, or worse he might get himself arrested and under questioning reveal everything. But Bahmad was better than that, he would never allow himself to be captured alive. Even if he was he didn’t know all the details. He knew that the bomb was coming to California aboard a ship, but he didn’t know which ship. Not yet. Not until everything else was in place.
Bin Laden realized that he had drifted off. He opened his eyes as they came down into the broader valley that ran along the base of the mountain range. Far to the east four of his mujahedeen who had left last night were heading as fast as they could travel for Pakistan, the bomb wrapped in burlap, strapped to the back of a horse. They had no idea what they were really carrying, they only knew that it was of supreme importance, and that their lives depended on getting safely to Peshwar where they would hand it over to two of bin Laden’s most trusted agents.
“Are you all right, Osama?” one of his mujahed asked respectfully. “Should we stop here for a rest?”
Bin Laden looked at him with love. He was just a young boy, as most of them were. He shook his head. “There will be time for rest later.”
The two mujahedeen exchanged a worried glance. Since Sarah’s death in the missile raid he had not been himself. He had changed in some not-so-subtle way that none of them could define. It was troublesome.
Bin Laden let his thoughts soar like an eagle down the valley to the four men heading east with the bomb. He could actually see them on horseback. They were boys, and they could go on like that day and night. Good boys. Dedicated. Religious. They understood the jihad at a deeper, more visceral level than anyone in the West could comprehend. They felt God not only in their hearts, but in every fiber of their beings.
Last night they had brought the nervous pack animal up into the cave where the package was waiting for them, and listened as bin Laden explained the importance of their mission. “You will take this to men who will transport it to Mecca where it will be buried in a place of honor,” bin Laden told them.
He rubbed his hand along the horse’s muzzle, then touched the hem of the burlap covering the bomb. He could almost feel the warmth emanating from it.
The four mujahedeen watched him, their eyes wide. They were impressed because they thought that they were being ordered to carry the remains of bin Laden’s daughter home for burial. They were suddenly filled with a religious zeal and an overwhelming love for bin Laden. “We will not fail you,” Mohammed’s brother Achmed promised. His grip tightened on the strap of the Kalashnikov rifle.
“Of course you won’t,” bin Laden said. “Insha’Allah.” He embraced each of the four men, and then watched as they led the horse out of the cave and down the hill where they mounted their horses and headed off into the darkness.
His thoughts came back to the present, and tears filled his eyes. He was seeing these mountains for the very last time. Leaving the mortal remains of his beloved Sarah forever bound with the Afghan soil. It was a pain more unbearable than that of his cancer. He began to recite to himself the opening chapter of the Qoran, peace coming very slowly to his soul.
Kabul
The morning was in full bloom, the sky crystalline clear. From an opening between the slats of the shutters covering a window in a front bedroom, McGarvey looked down at the quiet street. The two soldiers were still parked in front, so no one suspected he was here yet.
He felt detached, somewhat distant because of his fatigue, but he had to keep his head. He had to think his way out of this. Coming here he’d formed a vague plan of overpowering the caretakers and stealing their clothing and identification papers. He figured that with such a disguise he might be able to get out to the airport. From there he would have to improvise. But with the C-130 on the tarmac, and a line of anxious Americans pushing to get aboard, he thought he’d have a better than even chance.
That was no longer possible, there were no caretakers here. He had to come up with another plan no matter how improbable. Out there he had a chance, and he had faced worse odds before.
He went to the back bedroom where he retrieved his phone, the cap and the scarf and headed downstairs to the back door.
When the American military transport came in for a landing, the airport would be cleared of all other traffic. The Taliban would not want to create an incident that might cause a military retaliation. This was bin Laden’s fight now, and they would want to stay as distant from it as possible. The C-130 would land, taxi to the terminal, pick up its passengers, then taxi back to the end of the runway for takeoff. If the Taliban were waiting for him they would have to logically assume that he would try to make it to the terminal and somehow bluff his way aboard. Their attention would be concentrated there, wanting to get the plane loaded and away as quickly as possible.
Peering out the laundry room door at the backyard, the first glimmerings of a plan came to him. It would be all or nothing, and would depend on timing and luck. But he decided that it was his only real chance for getting out.
He pulled on the cap, wrapped the scarf around his neck and slipped out the door and hurried past the tennis court to the wall.
The bricks were in much better condition on this side, so it took him three running attempts to reach the top and pull himself over. He dropped down into the sewage-clogged alley, crossed the ditch and let himself back into the empty rug merchant’s shop.
He had to stop for a couple of minutes to catch his breath. The slightest exertion was difficult, and scaling the wall had used almost all of his reserves.
The narrow street in front was still deserted. Nothing seemed to have changed in the half-hour he’d been inside the ambassador’s compound, which he found was odd. But he couldn’t dwell on it now. Stealing another car was a possibility he was going to have to consider. But if no one had discovered the Rover yet using it one last time might pose less of a risk.
His luck ran out when he left the shop and started down the narrow street.
Dozens of men suddenly materialized out of the shops and homes up and down the street. Some of them were armed with clubs, but none of them were in uniform, nor did he see any guns.
McGarvey stopped, and held his empty hands out. An older man with a long white beard, wearing a leather apron, shouted something at him in Persian. Some of the others murmured angrily. McGarvey put his hands over his ears, showing them that he was deaf.
The old man pointed to the shop that McGarvey had just come out of and shouted something else. They thought he was a thief. He shook his head and again held out his empty hands to show them that he had taken nothing. He took a step forward and the old man backed up warily. They were just ordinary people trying to protect their neighborhood in troubled times. Had they been interested in politics they would be demonstrating at the old American embassy.
More people were coming out of their homes and shops into the street behind him, ringing him in. Soon it would be impossible to move two feet let alone break free. It had to be now.
He shook his head and walked directly toward the old man. He didn’t think he had much to fear from these people o
nce he got away from here. They might report a religious crime to the Taliban, but they probably wouldn’t go to the government to report a suspected thief. They would deal with it in their own way by running him off.
The old man and those around him backed up, and when it looked as if McGarvey wasn’t going to stop, they parted for him.
He shook his head as if he was disgusted as he passed through them, and without breaking stride or looking back he headed down the street the way he had come in. Once he reached the corner and got out of the neighborhood he figured he would be okay. But the crowd was becoming agitated, the men shouting something, arguing with each other.
Ten feet from the corner rocks and bricks began to rain down around him, one of them hitting him in the shoulder. Covering his head, he bolted, and a huge cry rose up behind him.
He almost made it to safety, but as he turned down the side street a brick smashed into the side of his head, driving him to his knees and temporarily blacking out his vision. A wave of nausea rose up from his gut causing him to retch as he got unsteadily to his feet and stumbled away as fast as he could move. He was dizzy, moving mostly on instinct, and the day was suddenly very dark, his vision reduced to a narrow tunnel directly in front of him. But there were no more rocks, and at the next corner he looked back. In the distance, what seemed to him to be a mile away, the crowd had stopped just at the edge of their district as he hoped they would. The last he saw of them they were shaking their fists and clubs.
There was a huge knot on the side of his head just above his right ear. When he explored it with his fingers it was extremely tender to the touch, but there was no blood. As he walked, he wrapped the scarf around his mouth and nose, and gradually his vision began to clear.
Down several intersecting streets he could see road blocks and more people heading in the direction of the embassy, but no one noticed him heading in the opposite direction, or if they did, nobody seemed to care.
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