The Invisible (Ryan Kealey)

by Andrew Britton

  Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she heard a movement at the back of the truck and tensed, her breath catching in her raw, parched throat. It hurt to breathe, let alone speak, but she relaxed when she heard Machado saying her name.

  “Yeah, I’m…” She cursed as her knee banged painfully against one of the wooden boxes. “I’m here,” she said, the words coming out in an awkward rasp. She moved blindly through the cargo area, hunched at the waist to avoid the tarp, which drooped overhead. She extended her arms and moved them back and forth in an effort to detect any obstacles before she ran into them. A blinding white light suddenly pierced the darkness, catching her full in the face. She squeezed her eyes shut again and glanced away, but not before she caught a glimpse of Javier Machado’s bulky profile. Someone was standing next to him, a smaller, slender figure, but she couldn’t see his face, as she was still blinking the dancing spots from her vision. She had seen something else in that brief moment, something that looked like…a gun in the smaller man’s hand, but that didn’t seem right. Still, she hesitated before moving forward, and Machado seemed to catch her reluctance.

  “Come on, Naomi,” he said quietly, but there was something in his voice that touched off her internal alarm. “It’s time to go.”

  “Go where?” she said. She could hear the nervous tension in her own voice, and she hated it. The last thing she wanted was to appear weak in front of them, even though she knew that Machado had already seen her at her worst. “I thought we were—”

  “Change of plan, Ms. Kharmai,” he said. “Now please, get out of the truck.”

  Naomi hesitated again, but there was nothing to do but follow his instructions.

  Carefully, she edged forward, the spots still dancing in front of her eyes, and Javier Machado stepped up to offer his hand.

  CHAPTER 39

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  It was just after one in the afternoon as Jonathan Harper entered the secure conference room beneath the West Wing of the White House. It had been a long couple of hours—a long couple of weeks, actually—and the stress had been building steadily. Now, judging by the lingering ache in his chest and the perspiration building beneath his arms, it had finally reached its peak. At least the timing is right, Harper thought sourly, but he pushed the distracting notion aside. Now was not the time to focus on minor things, as everything they had worked for boiled down to the next few hours. At last, the end was in sight. With any luck, this operation would mark the end of the strain that had gripped not only the people in this room, but the entire country for the past four days. Wiping his damp hands on his suit pants, he looked around the room slowly, examining the people who had gathered to take part in the administrative and logistical side of Brynn Fitzgerald’s recovery.

  There were about 20 people in the room, he guessed, not a huge number, but that was only because the confined space could not fit more, at least not comfortably. He knew maybe half of them by name; the rest were technicians and assorted aides, many of whom were in military uniform. Kenneth Bale was seated at the large table, engaged in quiet discussion with Robert Andrews. Stan Chavis was seated across from them, on the president’s right. Both men were listening to a briefing being delivered by a brigadier general in army uniform. The west wall, Harper saw, was dominated by three large monitors. Shooting a quick glance at them, Harper was drawn first to the second monitor, which displayed hundreds of lights spread over a large landmass. After staring at the multicolored lights for a second, he realized they denoted the location of ground-based radar stations in Pakistan, along with confirmed SAM missile sites and areas of concentrated troop movements.

  The first monitor displayed what Harper guessed was a higher-resolution view of a specific point on the ground—probably the Afghan-Pakistani border itself, he decided after a moment—and the third showed nothing but a test pattern. That one would display the feed from the 8X recon satellite that was currently moving into position over Sialkot. Harper was not surprised to see it was still en route to its new destination. Unlike the smaller Keyhole series of satellites, the 8X weighed close to 22,000 pounds, and though it had been positioned over the Kashmir Valley that same afternoon—a relatively short distance from Sialkot—it would still take some time to reach its destination. Adjusting a satellite’s orbit was no easy feat to accomplish, particularly in the space of a few hours, but it was certainly easier when the satellite was already fairly close to its new objective.

  Despite the obvious tension, there was an air of anticipation in the room, and that—in Harper’s mind, at least—was cause for concern. It was too early to get overly excited. They had yet to confirm that Fitzgerald was in the surgeon’s house, and if she was not, it wouldn’t matter what else they managed to accomplish. Fortunately, Harper had managed to talk the president into letting Kealey and his team move into position prior to the insertion of the assault team. With any luck, they would be able to verify the secretary of state’s presence before the lives of dozens of men were put on the line. Given Pakistan’s escalating conflict with India, just entering Pakistani airspace without permission was a huge risk. Unfortunately, Mengal’s connections to ISI and the Secretariat itself were not factors that could be safely overlooked, and the only solution was to keep the entire Pakistani government in the dark.

  Once the president had approved the rescue operation, things had moved with incredible speed. Ninety minutes after he’d called with Mengal’s location, Kealey had called back with additional info, including GPS coordinates for the surgeon’s house in Sialkot. Harper had since relayed all of that information to the Pentagon’s National Military Joint Intelligence Center. From past experience, he knew that the material would be used for “IPB,” or Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield. This consisted of examining known enemy locations, force size, and possible extraction points, all in the hope of minimizing risk, while at the same time increasing the probability for success once the op began.

  The assault team—an amalgamation of 24 SF operators that had been culled from three different units, including the 1st SFOD-D—was probably doing that right now, Harper realized. And when it came to IPB, Kealey’s team on the ground would continue to play a vital role. Once they were in position, they would be able to send updates regarding the enemy’s force concentration—where the guards were situated on the grounds. Their primary task, however, remained the same: to verify whether or not the secretary of state was even in the building.

  Thinking about Kealey and the rest of the surveillance team, Harper shot a quick glance at his watch. They would still be prepping as well, he realized, even though it was already dark in Pakistan. They wouldn’t even try to approach the house until they were completely ready to move, and even then, it would likely take them several hours to get into position. From that point forward, it would just be a matter of watching, relaying updates as needed, and trying to stay out of sight until the assault team arrived.

  They were still hours away, Harper realized. And now there was nothing to do but wait. Resigning himself to this fact, he drifted over to join the DCI at the conference table.

  Andrews was still talking intently to Bale, but stopped when he spotted his deputy. “John, take a seat.” He waited until Harper was situated before asking the obvious. “What’s the word from your man on the ground?”

  Harper knew he was referring to Kealey, but by extension, that included the men he was working with. “They’re at the last staging point, getting ready to move. That might not be for a few hours’ time, and they probably won’t make contact again until they’re ready to go.”

  “Why not?”

  Harper looked at the DNI, who’d posed the question. “Well, there’s just no point, sir. If they have nothing to report, then they’re only wasting battery time by continuously transmitting. Remember, the one thing they don’t have is a satellite radio, which means they’re stuck with a phone. We can only expect them to make contact when it’s absolutely necessary, such as when—and if—they l
ay eyes on Secretary Fitzgerald.”

  “Or when something goes wrong,” Andrews pointed out quietly.

  “That won’t happen,” Harper said, but it had come out forced. He had faith in his people, especially Ryan Kealey, but like everyone else in the room, he knew what was on the line. Looking around, he wondered how many of these people would let Fitzgerald go—just walk away from her completely—if doing so meant sparing their jobs. As a patriot, he wanted to believe the number was small, but twenty years of government service had taught him otherwise. The men and women who really cared would be the CIA officers on the ground in Pakistan, as well as the elite soldiers of the 1st SFOD-D, the pilots of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing, and the dedicated support troops, all of whom were waiting on the green light out at Bagram Air Base in eastern Afghanistan.

  “And where is the staging point?” Bale asked, snatching Harper out of his short reverie. Bale looked worried. He had picked up on his forced confidence, Harper thought. “Because if they’re spotted before they even—”

  Harper cut him off by holding up his hand. “It’s not a problem, sir.” He managed to sound reasonably sure this time, and he saw some of the DNI’s lingering doubt slide from his face. “They’re about three hundred meters away from the building itself, and they’ve got cover. It’s close enough to maintain a loose vigil, but not so close as to risk being caught. Believe me…They know what they’re doing.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Andrews murmured under his breath. “For all our sake.”

  CHAPTER 40

  SIALKOT

  Balakh Sher Shaheed stood to the rear of the surgeon’s house, staring across the dark field, eyes fixed on the column of Type 85-II main battle tanks moving into the foothills. Beyond the tanks, over the crest of the highest peaks, he could see the occasional flash of light, purple yellow blooms against the pitch-black sky. It could have been lightning, but Shaheed knew it was something more, and the thought filled him with an excitement he could barely contain. He had seen the same muted flashes eleven years earlier, not far from the place he was standing in now. As he pulled his last cigarette out of a crumpled pack and fumbled for his lighter, Shaheed was overcome with pride, but also with a sense of burning jealousy. He wanted nothing more than to be in that column, working his way toward the fight and a place in the great history of his country, like his father before him, and his before him.

  Balakh Shaheed came from a long, distinguished line of career soldiers. He took enormous pride in this fact, and he had always measured himself against the great patriarchs of his family. His grandfather had fought in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947, the first major conflict between India and Pakistan after their near-simultaneous seccession from Britain. When the traitor Hari Singh—the last ruling maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir—broke ranks and acceded his kingdom to India in ’47, Hafeez Shaheed had been among the first to join the Azad Kashmir forces, the local militia supported by the Pakistani Army. His bravery in that conflict had earned him the respect and admiration of the top Pakistani commander, Major General Akbar Khan, and his son—Balakh’s father—had continued in that tradition, earning the Nishan-e-Haider, Pakistan’s highest decoration for an act of bravery in combat, during the Battle of Asal Uttar in the Indo-Pakistani Kashmir War of 1965.

  Given the heroic precedents set by his forebears, Balakh Shaheed’s destiny seemed predetermined. He was meant to join the Pakistani Army at the earliest opportunity, and that was what he had done, enlisting on his eighteenth birthday, along with 6 other men from the village of Tarnoti, their shared home high in the mountains of the Northwest Frontier Province. The following years had seen him successfully apply to the Special Services Group and then Inter-Services Intelligence, which he joined in 1995. That was when he had first encountered Benazir Mengal.

  At the time, Mengal had been a major general in ISI and the head of JIN, Joint Intelligence North. He was already a legend, owing to his actions during the Siachen war, and Shaheed admired him tremendously right from the start. The general had taken the young Special Forces havildar under his wing, and Shaheed had returned the favor by carrying out numerous acts of brutality at Mengal’s bidding. Then, when Mengal had been forced to resign his commission in 2001, he had asked Shaheed to join him in private enterprise. Shaheed had done so without hesitation, and he had never really regretted the decision.

  He had earned a small fortune over the years that followed, much of it accrued through Mengal’s cross-border smuggling activities, but for the most part, they were standard deals, arranged in advance with reliable customers. The most dangerous part was the border crossings themselves, and even then, bribes to the right people all but negated the risk. Shaheed had begun to miss the army, so when the general had revealed his plan to abduct the U.S. secretary of state, Shaheed had jumped at the opportunity. Mengal had never revealed his overall objective, but that didn’t matter to Shaheed; he was once again in the heat of battle. He had been one of the assaulters during the strike itself, and it had been the defining moment of his life.

  But it had been five days since they’d taken the secretary, killing a dozen American security officials in the process, and the thrill of that attack was already starting to fade. The real action was taking place less than 100 kilometers to the north, and Shaheed wanted nothing more than to be there, fighting for his country as he had in the Kargil district eleven years earlier.

  Taking one last drag on his cigarette, he flicked the butt into a clump of sod, then adjusted the strap of his weapon, cursing as the fabric rubbed over the raw patch of skin at the back of his neck. He knew he should not have the weapon slung, but it was hard to take the Americans seriously. Their senior diplomat had been snatched in broad daylight, and according to the Western media, little progress had been made in locating the people responsible, or the secretary of state herself, for that matter. The general was making the tape at that moment, and when it was done, it would be routed through an intermediary to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. Soon after that, it would find its way into the hands of the U.S. president, and once that happened, the whole world would see how serious they actually were. If the first tape had made their demands clear, the second would undoubtedly complete the cycle. The content would effectively destroy any lingering notions of defiance still being entertained by the American government.

  With this thought, Shaheed smiled to himself. He wondered how the general was planning to illustrate the steadfast nature of his resolve. Perhaps he would remove a few of the woman’s fingers for the benefit of their American audience, or maybe he would settle on some other useful part of her anatomy. Either way, Shaheed knew it would not end there. Mengal had not revealed what he intended to do with the woman when it was all over, but Shaheed had no doubt that her life would end in Pakistan. He only hoped that he would be there to witness her final moments. Perhaps, if he was feeling charitable, the general would even give his senior lieutenant the honor of pulling the trigger.

  Adjusting the strap of his AK-47 once more, he sighed and cast another longing glance to the lights in the north. After a while, his mind began to drift, finally settling on the first interrogation he had conducted after his acceptance to ISI. The prisoner had been an Indian sergeant, a havildar much like himself, except this man had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, captured after Pakistani troops had surrounded an artillery position in the Mushkoh Valley. The sergeant had proved all but useless. He was simply too low in the chain of command to have access to any actionable intelligence, but Shaheed had enjoyed the experience nonetheless. He could remember the first time he had lowered the blade to the man’s skin, preparing to shear it from his body, and the rush he had felt as the blood spilled onto the earthen floor, the Indian havildar screaming, screaming….

  As Balakh Shaheed, a third-generation soldier of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, reveled in the memory of his first murder, he was completely unaware of the man lying prone less than 80 feet in front of him. He was also completely obliv
ious to the 3 other men in the field, all of whom had their eyes and weapons trained on him and the second guard standing watch at the back of the house.

  Ryan Kealey was the closest, the man directly in front of Shaheed. He had watched intently as the guard had wandered out of the house, the screen door slapping shut behind him. Then he had moved under the canopy of the large tree in the garden. Kealey had watched in disbelief as he lit a cigarette, cupping his hands to keep out the rain. That single act was almost enough to throw a blanket of doubt on the whole thing. Surely, a man as unprofessional as this could not be involved in the abduction of Secretary Fitzgerald, which had been carried out with consummate skill. Nevertheless, the AK slung round the guard’s neck seemed to verify what they had learned from Fahim’s copious notes, and Kealey had felt a surge of adrenaline the moment he saw it. Now, for the first time, he was completely certain that Brynn Fitzgerald was somewhere inside the house.

  Kealey was partially concealed beneath a juniper shrub in the broad, grassy field. He waited, watching through the AN/PVS-17 night-vision scope mounted to his rifle. Finally, the guard directly in front of him turned away for a split second, his head swiveling toward the second guard at the back of the house. Kealey used that stolen fraction of time to check his watch, cupping his hand over the illuminated display. He saw it was 2:36 AM, which meant they had been watching the house for just over three hours.