Camp’s fingers started to tremble in spite of the cold.
“The suicide bomber accepts death, if he can kill the enemy as well,” Omid said.
“Do all Muslims believe this? Do they all want this?”
“Many Muslims are Twelvers, but only some believe the apocalypse will trigger the Mahdi’s return. Many Islamic countries are content to wait in peace for the Mahdi’s return. And many Muslim governments are afraid of Ahmadinejad too. They know what he believes. They know what he wants. They know what this self-proclaimed deputy of the Twelfth Imam is willing to do.”
“Do you want to stop him, Omid?”
“Did some Germans want to stop Hitler? Let’s just say we do enough to slow him down every now and then. Sometimes a mysterious man on a motorcycle pulls up next to the car carrying a nuclear scientist. Within seconds a magnetic bomb is placed on the car and detonates 30-seconds later as the motorcycle disappears down an alley.”
“You do that?”
“No…but sometimes we don’t see it when others do it.”
“Mossad?” Omid wouldn’t answer. “Why don’t you just assassinate him?” Camp asked.
“He is not the only one within the many factions fighting for power in Iran. If not Ahmadinejad, then there will be others. He may not ultimately be the one who gets to press the button on the suicide vest that sends nuclear fire raining down on the heads of the Zionists…but someone will.”
Omid closed his eyes and laid back down as Camp rolled over to catch a few hours of sleep.
* * *
15
* * *
Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania
Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Raines had been driving for nearly an hour on old Highway 30, passing through Stonybrook and finally past the Smoketown Airport into Bird-in-Hand. The headlights on her Wrangler illuminated the reflective letters on the mailbox which read SEABURY CAMPBELL, SR. Even though it was a few minutes shy of 4:00am, the farmhouse kitchen lights were on as were the lights in the barn for the morning milking. Camp’s two sisters and their husbands kept the dairy farm going while Seabury supervised from his porch swing.
Ruth waved at the approaching headlights coming down the gravel driveway as she flipped four strips of bacon and fried two eggs over easy for Seabury. Leslie tapped on the door glass and walked in on her own.
“Good morning Ruth. Good morning Seabury.”
“Hello Leslie, how’s my favorite colonel doing?” Seabury asked as he got up and kissed Raines on the cheek.
“I’m doing great, and you sound great!”
Ruth placed a plate of bacon and eggs with white toast and a heaping slab of butter in front of Seabury.
“As you can see, Leslie, Seabury is quite faithful to the Mediterranean diet that Dr. Blauw prescribed.” Ruth’s sarcasm was not lost on Sea Bee.
“I’m not changing my life for this damn disease. I’m exercising more, but I’m going to eat what I always eat. For the love of God, I’m a farmer.”
Ruth put another slab of butter in the frying pan as it quickly sizzled to life. “Farmers grow and harvest Mediterranean fruits and vegetables too, Sea Bee. How do you like your eggs cooked, Leslie?”
“Oh, well I wasn’t planning on –“
Ruth broke two eggs into the pan. Raines knew that resistance was futile.
“How about sunny side up,” Raines said as she took a seat at the table across from Sea Bee.
“How old are you, Leslie?”
“Seabury Campbell! That’s rude. You know better than to ask a woman her age,” Ruth scolded as she dropped some bacon into the cast-iron skillet.
“That’s fine. I’m 39, but I’m feeling more like 59 since the injury. Takes a long time to recover and get back into shape.”
“You know, Junior is 41. You two are close in age.”
Leslie blushed and lowered her eyes as Ruth put a cup of coffee in front of her.
“You like cream, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where do your parents live?” Ruth asked as she pulled a fancy plate out of the cupboard and rolled the eggs and bacon onto the plate.
“Well…that’s a complicated story, Ruth. My father was killed in Vietnam when I was only two months old. He never saw me. He and my mother were not married when I was born. She was very young. They were both young. When my mother got the news, she cried for a few days than drove over to Lester’s house.”
“Lester?” Ruth asked as she put another slab of butter in the frying pan and cracked two more eggs for herself.
“Lester was my dad’s name, hence I got Leslie. Lester’s parents didn’t even know their son’s girlfriend was pregnant. My mother handed me over to my grandmother, said ‘good luck’ and walked out the door. She never returned.”
“That’s horrible, Leslie. Did you ever try to find her?”
“No…I’ve never even been curious. If she didn’t want me then, well, I guess I don’t want her now. But I was blessed with an incredible childhood. My grandparents are my heroes. They gave me more love than a human being deserves.”
“Are they still living?” Sea Bee asked as he added more butter to his toast.
“As a matter of fact they are. They still live in the same house they were married in, up in New Hampshire. My grandfather Karl just turned 90 years old. The man is amazing, and he still goes to work five days a week, eight hours a day. My grandmother is 89 years old. Lydia is slowing down a bit now, but she still keeps Karl fed and in line.”
Ruth smiled and nodded her approval and understanding.
“Karl sounds like he might be World War II era. Did he serve?” Sea Bee asked.
“That’s a story! He had been working in a hospital as an orderly after he and Lydia married. When he was drafted, they put him through training as a medic. I guess they figured medic-by-orderly osmosis or something. December of 1944, Karl was sent to the Ardennes Forest on the German-Belgium border.”
“Oh my, was he in the Battle of the Bulge?”
“He was, Seabury. He and the rest of the American divisions were so green, so new. They hadn’t seen any combat yet.”
Seabury grabbed Ruth’s hand and explained.
“Hitler chose the Ardennes Forest and purposefully left it soft, hoping to draw the Americans and British in,” Seabury recounted from his World War II history. “Then he sent in more than 250,000 men and hundreds of Panzers. It was a blood-bath.”
“Was Karl wounded, Leslie?” Ruth asked.
“Worse than that, Ruth, he was captured by the Germans and spent five months in prisoner of war camps. At first, he was taken to Stalag 9B at Bad Orb, Germany. But 350 of them were pulled out from the thousands of other POWs. If you were Jewish or even looked ethnic, you were given special treatment.”
“Is Karl Jewish?” Ruth asked.
“No, but he had a longer nose, a darker complexion, and the Germans decided he was ethnic enough.”
“Hell, I’ve got a schnoz bigger than an Amish buggy. Guess I’m Jewish, too.”
“Karl and his 350 buddies were put on railroad boxcars in the middle of winter and sent on a week-long journey with no sanitation, food or water to Berga-an-der-Elster, a little village maybe 50 miles south of Leipzig. Berga was a slave-labor camp that was full to capacity at 400 men, but with more than 1,000 it was unthinkable. They worked 12-hour shifts, slept two to a bed in lice-infested bunks, and were fed starvation rations as they dug tunnels into a mountainside for German munitions.”
“Oh, Leslie,” Ruth gasped.
“Seventy men of the original 350 died within the first two months. After the beatings and the work and limited rations, Karl weighed 84 pounds when the Americans finally liberated them in April of 1945, but not before the Nazis forced them on a 150-mile death march.”
The old farm kitchen was quiet. No one had any words to utter as all contemplated what a poor American soldier must have gone through almost 70 years before.
“Well, on that happy note, we have so
me work to do, don’t we Seabury?” Leslie concluded.
“I’ve never done anything like this, Leslie. I’m not a TV anchorman.”
Leslie laughed as she removed a small digital video camera from her backpack and a small tripod.
“No experience necessary, Seabury. I’ll set the camera on the tripod, press the RECORD button, and I’ll walk away. It won’t hurt at all.”
“You still think this is a good idea?” Seabury asked as he pushed his chair back from the farmhouse kitchen table.
“Well, sir, you said that you don’t want Camp to know while he’s serving in Afghanistan. You may be right; it may distract him from his mission. But he’ll be upset that he wasn’t told,” Raines said as she took her fancy plate to the sink.
“Don’t you worry about those, Leslie, you two get to work,” Ruth added as she gathered up the coffee mugs.
“Leslie, do you think Junior tells us everything he’s doing over there in the war? Or do you think he holds things back so his mom and dad won’t be upset?”
Raines couldn’t look Seabury in the eyes. She knew he was correct, but she knew Camp would want to know, and she knew he would be upset. It seemed like the best thing to do.
“Dr. Blauw said that since you were older when the Alzheimer’s was detected, it may progress fairly rapidly…you may get worse, faster. Now’s the best chance, Seabury, to tell your son what you’re feeling…what you’re going through.”
“Let’s get going while I’m still sharp. Things get a bit fuzzier as the day gets older.”
Seabury grabbed his red jacket off the hook behind the kitchen door and his John Deere cap.
“Honey, where are you going? Leslie has the camera in the house,” Ruth said not sure if Seabury’s mind was fading already.
“I want to film this in the barn. It’s where my boy and I spent most of our time together.”
Seabury walked out the door and headed to the barn. Leslie grabbed the camera and tripod and followed out the door.
Seabury pulled a milking stool over in front of the stalls. The barn was empty now that all of the cows were out in the pasture grazing. Leslie put the camera on the tripod.
“Ready?”
Seabury nodded.
Raines pushed the record button and verified the framing. She backed up, waved, and walked out of the barn. As she was closing the barn door she heard Seabury start to speak.
“Hello, son…this is your daddy…Seabury Campbell, Senior…that makes you Junior…well, I’m not sure how to start this so, here goes…I’ve got some bad news.”
ISAF Headquarters
Kabul, Afghanistan
General Ferguson returned to his office at 2330 hours with his two coffee-pouring majors waiting for the telephone call. It was 1400 hours back at Langley, an odd nine-and-a-half hours behind. Ferguson knew that Langley had no intention of being inconvenienced with an off-hours call, so it was his job to suit up and go back to the office before retiring for the evening. Whatever the issue was, it was worthy of a late night call.
The call finally rang in on Ferguson’s desk. The telephone was right next to him, but he motioned for one of the majors to answer it.
“General Ferguson’s desk. Major Spann speaking…yes, sir…please hold, sir.”
Spann put the call on hold and handed the phone to Ferguson. He shuffled through some papers he hadn’t been looking at before the phone rang, then finally took the call off hold and answered with his ‘busy’ voice.
“Ferguson.”
“General Ferguson, this is Special Agent Daniels, and I have Agent Fallon Jessup with me. My apologies, sir, for the lateness of the call.”
“What can I do for you this evening?”
“Sir, you’ve already received our classified briefing regarding the shipment on Russian rails heading toward Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. There’s another component that may or may not be related, but I wanted to bring it to your attention. Actually, we met with Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Raines at Fort Detrick, and she asked if you had been informed.”
“I’m listening.”
“Sir, Agent Fallon Jessup here. Two commercial mosquito misters were sold by an Illinois company to the city of Hamburg, Germany. The sprayers were stolen out of the warehouse in Hamburg, and the serial numbers showed up at a port in Jakarta, Indonesia. The police in Jakarta tracked the sprayers down to a black market importer who sold them to an unknown party in Islamabad, Pakistan.”
“That’s a very nice story, Agent Jessup; thank you for sharing it,” Ferguson said with no attempt to hide the contempt in his voice.
“Sir, if someone was trying to cook a special recipe of a biological agent, then a commercial sprayer, a misting device like this, might be the ticket to creating an aerosolized bio-weapon,” Daniels added.
Ferguson grew silent.
“Sir, I know you have your finger on the pulse with Special Ops missions going in and out of Pakistan. Perhaps you could include this information in your ops planning and briefings. We sure would like to see these two SkitoMisters immobilized. Has Captain Campbell’s mission launched?”
Ferguson and his two majors looked uncomfortable.
“Special Agent Daniels…when did you acquire this intelligence?” Ferguson asked.
“Sir, we’ve been following this paper trail for several weeks now. With the stockpiles on a Russian train headed for the Iranian border, we’ve been connecting some dots.”
“Well, perhaps you should have connected a bit sooner. You’re well aware of the fact that Campbell’s operational detachment is moving into North Waziristan as we speak. Unfortunately, they only have unit comms with contingency plans to use their SAT phones if the situation on the ground warrants. We’ve got a drone watching from above and tracking all 17 beacons. We intend to see 18 beacons on egress. But there’s no way to initiate communications while they’re navigating the mountain passes. It would have been nice to get this information a bit earlier. Anything else?”
“No, sir, just the SkitoMisters.”
“Well, glad to know the Agency is spending our time and money trying to protect the Taliban from a mosquito infestation. Sounds like an important mission. Goodnight.”
Ferguson rubbed his eyes and pulled a cigar out of his top drawer. He was irritated and tired but mostly tired of separate US government agencies and their reluctance to share intelligence with each other in a timely manner.
“Major Spann, get Creech Air Force Base on the line. I want a status report on Alpha Team.”
“Roger.”
Ferguson lit up and paced back and forth in front of the classified maps that filled two walls in his rectangular office. He paused to review Alpha Team’s mission plan and time markers which were laid over the Khost – Miran Shah map with great detail. Checking his watch, Ferguson ran his finger from the northwest starting point and stopped where the time marker said the team ought to be as Spann talked with the Tactical Operations Center at the stateside Nevada base.
“Sir, all 17 beacons gathered in Toledo according to plan. Final leg of the ingress, six dials from Sherwood Forest.”
Ferguson traced the mission plan from the cave complex called Toledo, through the riverbed complex of caves, over Bannu Road and into Datta Khel Village. They were only six hours away.
* * *
16
* * *
Miran Shah District
North Waziristan, Pakistan
At 0930 the two squads of Alpha Team mustered in the largest cave. The weather was cooperating perfectly for the final six hour push into Datta Khel Village. Weather conditions were miserable. Heavy snow was falling, the wind had picked up and was whipping around the rock walls of the Hindu Kush. The daylight traverse to the village would require as much cloaked transparency as both snow camo and blowing snow could afford. Once out of the Hindu Kush, the Alpha Team would have limited cover. Omid would lead them directly to the house he had surveyed a few days before, so the team wouldn’t have to remain exposed fo
r very long.
“Listen up,” Manson said as he placed the map in front of Alpha Team. “We’re two clicks out, but at point-six kilometers per hour we could be there in two-and-half hours. We’ve allowed six hours in case of hostiles. We stay spread out along the river bed so snipers have a more difficult kill zone. Once on Bannu Road, we stay smart. Any vehicles, military or other, we go down and hold until they pass. Do not engage. Clear? If we have to engage before Datta Khel, then kiss Major Banks goodbye as we scurry back over the Hindu Kush.”
“Gentlemen, take a look outside,” Sanchez said pointing to the cave opening. “The weather has gone red. Ain’t nobody flying a bird up here in this white-out to save our sorry asses. The blowing snow will cover us, but if momma nature warms up, we could be looking at rain. The mission is right on track, 20 clicks in 53 hours. Two more clicks and, as Manson said, we only need two-and-half dials, but we will use six full dials if we need them. Once we find Banks, get a beacon on him immediately. The drone boys are watching our 17 beacons, and they’re expecting an eighteenth. It’s the only way ‘eyes in the skies’ can distinguish us from Haji. Questions?”
Camp pulled some ice out of his three-week beard as everyone pulled their snow camo masks over their faces for the rapid descent into Datta Khel Village.
In less than 10 minutes Alpha Team had descended the steep footpaths that merged with the riverbed. The trail was completely covered with blowing and blinding snow. The two squads were spread out, but the two scouts with the M4A1s were moving too slow for the clock ticking in Manson’s head. Manson gave a hand signal to Brick, and the CW2 stopped his unit. Manson walked over to Omid who was 30 meters ahead of Camp.
“I need you on point with the scouts, Omid. You know the route. We can’t see shit.”
Omid nodded and ran to the front. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Omid took point, and the pace doubled. No one in Alpha Team could be sure that Omid was actually keeping them on mission, but the blinding snow gave them few options.
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