by Tom Clancy
The demand for specific amounts of daylight and darkness created two security issues. Covering over windows to facilitate total darkness aroused suspicion from the street. Drug and law enforcement officials looked for it. Chronic above-average residential power consumption could trigger a Southern California Edison heads-up report to those same drug and law enforcement officials. Also, a grow space could become quite humid. Open windows at odd hours, regardless of precipitation or outside temperatures, was risky business.
By twelve, Ansara could recite the top dozen most potent marijuana strains in descending order of their THC content, from White Widow seeds to Lowryder seeds. And during all that time Ansara never once smoked pot — and neither did his uncle, who said they were businessmen supplying an important product. If you sell cookies, he’d told Ansara, you don’t sit around eating all the cookies.
It all came to a screeching halt when his mother discovered why he spent so much time with Uncle Alejandro. She didn’t speak to her brother for months.
That Ansara had gone on to join the FBI and had already busted individuals who grew pot was one of life’s true ironies, and yet another irony was, at the moment, fully alive before his eyes. There were only a handful of drug enforcement agents assigned to police California’s twenty million acres of federal forests, and unfortunately Ansara was not one of them. He was up there because he’d been hunting a particular smuggler, one Pablo Gutiérrez, who’d murdered a fellow FBI agent in Calexico and who he believed had direct ties to the Juárez Cartel. During his pursuit of this man, Ansara had found the Oz of pot farms in California — yet he and his colleagues were hesitant to bring down this operation because they hoped to use it to gather more intel on the cartels. It was clear to all that they needed to remove the lieutenants and bosses. If they struck too soon, the cartels would just plant another field a couple miles away.
As security tightened along the U.S.-Mexican border, the cartels expanded their growing operations in the United States. Ansara had spoken to a special agent for the federal Bureau of Land Management, who’d told him that just eight months prior, park rangers had confiscated eleven tons of marijuana in a single week. The agent went on to speculate on how much pot they did not confiscate, how much actually made it out of the fields and was sold …Mexican drug lords were operating on American soil, and there weren’t enough law enforcement officers to stop them. Like soldiers used to say in Vietnam, There it is …
Ansara lowered his binoculars and tucked himself deeper into the shrubs. He thought he’d seen one of the loaders do a double take in his direction. His pulse began to race. He waited a moment more, then lifted the binoculars. The men were back at it and had set aside some boxes whose lids were removed. Ansara zoomed in to find packages of toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap, disposable razor blades, and bottles of aspirin, Pepto-Bismol, and cough suppressant. Larger boxes contained small tanks of propane and packages of tortillas, as well as canned goods, including tomatoes and tripe.
A bird flitted through the canopy above. Ansara jolted and held his breath. Once more he lowered the binoculars, rubbed his tired eyes, and listened to Lisa in his head: “Yes, I knew what I was getting into, but it’s just too much time away. I thought I could do this. I thought this was what I wanted. But it’s not.”
And thus another long-legged blonde with a smoky voice and soft hands had escaped from Ansara’s clutch. But this one had been different. She’d sworn she could put up with his being away and had made a valiant effort for the first year. She was a writer and political-science professor at Arizona State and had told him that it was good when he was away, that she needed time to herself anyway. In fact, on the night of their first anniversary as a couple, she’d seemed completely in love with him. At a party she’d compared him to film and television actors like Jimmy Smits and Benjamin Bratt, and had once described him on her Facebook page as “a tall, lean, clean-shaven Hispanic man with a brilliant smile and bright, unassuming eyes.” He’d thought that was pretty cool. He couldn’t use words like that. But absence did not make the heart grow fonder — not when you’re under thirty. He understood. He let her go. But for the past month he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He recalled their first date; he’d taken her to a little mom-and-pop Mexican place way up in Wickenburg, Arizona, where he’d told her about his own time at ASU and about his work as an Army Special Forces operator in Afghanistan. He’d told her about leaving the Army and getting recruited by the FBI. She’d asked, “Are you allowed to tell me all this?”
“I don’t know. Does hearing top-secret stuff make you horny?”
She’d rolled her eyes and giggled.
And the conversation had gotten serious when she’d asked about the war, about his fallen brothers, about him saying good-bye to one too many friends. After dessert, she’d said she had to go home, and the implication was that she wasn’t really interested in him but that he should thank his sister for setting them up.
Of course, he’d pursued her like any good Special Forces/FBI guy would, and he eventually wooed her with flowers and bad poetry written in homemade cards and more late-night dinners. But it’d all gone to hell because of his career, and he was beginning to resent that. He imagined himself as a nine-to-fiver with weekends off. But then the thought of working in a cubicle or having a boss breathing down his neck made him nauseated.
Better to be up in the mountains with a pair of binoculars in hand and surveying some bad guys. Hell, he felt like a kid again.
The men finished their unloading, got back in the U-Haul truck, and pulled away. Ansara watched them go, then a few more men appeared outside and began filling up backpacks with materials they lifted from the boxes. They finished in about ten minutes and headed off in the direction of the garden.
Ansara waited until they were gone, then turned to head off.
Had he not matter-of-factly glanced down, he would be dead.
Right there, off to his right, was a small device with a laser cone jutting from its top. Ansara recognized the unit immediately as a laser trip wire, its companion unit located on the other side of the clearing. If he broke the laser, a silent alarm would go off. Ansara tightened his gaze, lifted his binoculars, and spotted several more laser units at the bases of trees. They came into view only if you knew what to look for, and the Mexicans had actually taped leaves and twigs to their sides to further camouflage them. Conventional trip wires and claymore mines had been set up all around the garden, but this was a new section of the park for Ansara, and he had not seen these detection devices before. Damn, if he came up here again, he’d have to be even more careful.
Shouting came from below. Spanish. The words: Up on the mountain. East side. Had they spotted him?
Oh, shit. Maybe he had crossed one of the lasers. He took off running, as the men below came rushing out from the tent.
4 THE GOOD SONS
Miran Shah
North Waziristan
Near the Afghan Border
Moore and his local contact Israr Rana had driven some two hundred ninety kilometers southwest into North Waziristan, one of seven districts within Pakistan’s FATA, or Federally Administrated Tribal Areas, which were only nominally controlled by the central and federal government of Pakistan. For centuries, mostly Pashtun tribes had inhabited the remote areas. In the nineteenth century the lands had been annexed by the British, during which time the British Raj tried to control the people with the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCRs), which became known as the “black laws” because they gave unchecked power to local nobles so long as they did the bidding of the British. The people continued with the same governance, right up through the formation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1956. During the 1980s the region became much more militant with the entry of mujahideen fighters from Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. After 9/11, both North and South Waziristan gained notoriety for being training grounds and safe havens for terrorists as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda began entering the region. The locals actua
lly welcomed them because the Taliban appealed to their tribal values and customs, reminding them that they should remain fiercely independent and mistrustful of the government.
All of which reminded Moore that he was heading into a most dangerous and volatile place, but Rana had told him the trip would be worth the risk. They were going to meet a man who Rana said might be able to identify the Taliban in Moore’s photographs. This man lived in the village of Miran Shah, which during the Soviet invasion had housed a large refugee camp for displaced Afghans who’d fled across the border from Khost, the nearest village in what was a remote region of the country. In fact, many of the roads leading to Miran Shah were frequently impassable during the winter months, and the only electricity available to its inhabitants came from a few diesel-powered generators. To say they were entering a town stuck in the dark ages was an understatement, yet anachronistic evidence of Western influences took Moore aback as he spied tattered billboards for 7Up and Coke strung between a pair of mud-brick buildings. Dust-covered cars lined the streets, and kids chased one another along garbage-laden alleys. A man wearing a grease-stained tunic and leading a pet monkey by a leash shifted past them, along with a half-dozen other men wearing long cotton shirts draped over their trousers and bound at their waists by long sashes. Some of them carried AK-47s and broke off to examine a bombed-out building in the main market area where a whole group of men and women were still sifting through the rubble. Somewhere nearby a goat was being roasted over an open pit; Moore knew that scent quite well.
“Another suicide bomber,” said Rana, who was behind the wheel and tipping his head toward the building. “They were trying to kill one of the tribal leaders here, but they failed.”
“They did a nice job on the building, though, didn’t they?” said Moore.
At the end of the road they were accosted by two more riflemen, members of the Pakistan Army who’d been providing added security, since Miran Shah was suffering from more frequent attacks from pro-Taliban militants camped in the surrounding hills, no doubt the home of that suicide bomber. The government had been taking action against the “Talibanization” of these tribal regions, providing added personnel and equipment, but their efforts had only limited success. Moore had studied the region well, and there were just too many opportunities for government troops to be bribed by the Taliban-backed drug lords, and Khodai, if he had lived, was going to name names.
Rana told the guards at the checkpoint that they were going to see Nek Wazir, who chaired the North Waziristan Shura, or executive council, and was known to speak out strongly against the Taliban chiefs in the area. The guard returned to his associate and checked a clipboard, then came back and asked for their IDs. Moore, of course, had expertly falsified documents that described him as a gun maker from Darra Adam Khel, a small town devoted entirely to the manufacture of ordnance. Travel to Darra by foreigners was forbidden, but merchants from the town routinely moved throughout the tribal regions making deliveries. The guard was quickly satisfied with Moore’s papers, but after their car was searched, he held up a hand. “Why no delivery?”
Moore grinned. “I’m not here on business.”
The guard shrugged, and they were waved through the checkpoint.
“How do you know Wazir?” asked Moore.
“My grandfather fought against the Soviets with him. They both came here. I’ve known him all my life.”
“They were mujahideen.”
“Yes, the great freedom fighters.”
“Excellent.”
“I told you when you hired me that I have very good contacts.” Rana winked.
“This is a long drive, and I told you my bosses are only giving me two days.”
“If anyone knows who those men are, it’s Wazir. He is the most well-connected man in this region. He has hundreds of spotters, even some in Islamabad. His network is amazing.”
“But he lives in this dump.”
“Not all year. But yes, this ‘dump,’ as you call it, provides ample cover and limited scrutiny from the government.”
The dirt road turned lazily to the right, and they climbed up into some foothills to arrive at a pair of modest-sized brick homes with several tents standing behind them. A pair of satellite dishes were mounted on the roof of the larger structure, and generators hummed from beneath the tents. Farther back were pens for goats and cows, and to the left, in the valley below, lay hectares of tilled fields where local farmers grew wheat, barley, and a Persian clover called shaftal.
Two guards appeared on the roof, bringing their AK-47s to bear. Nice. Wazir had built himself a protected headquarters here in the hills, thought Moore.
They were met at the front door by an old man whose beard fell in great white waves across his chest. He wore light brown robes and a white turban with matching vest, and he clutched a water bottle in his right hand. There wasn’t much remaining of his left hand, the fingers gone, deep, ragged scars stitching across the back of his hand and up his arm, toward the sleeve. Moore checked again and realized that part of the old man’s left ear was missing. He’d been caught in an explosion, all right, probably mortar fire. He was lucky to be alive.
The introductions were brief. Moore’s cover name was Khattak, a Pashtun tribal name, and with his darker hair and complexion (both inherited from his mother’s Italian/Spanish ancestry), he could almost pass for a Pakistani. Almost.
Wazir chuckled when he heard the name. “That is not you, of course,” he said in accented English. “You’re an American, and that is okay. It gives me a chance to practice my English.”
“That’s not necessary,” Moore told him in Pashto.
“Let me have my fun.”
Moore pursed his lips and nodded, then broke into a smile. You had to respect the old man. His weathered blue eyes had most certainly gazed on the deeper levels of hell. Wazir led them inside.
The noontime Muslim prayer, Dhuhr, had just finished, Moore knew, and Wazir would no doubt be serving some tea. They shifted into the cool shadows of a wide living area with colorful cushions arranged around an intricately detailed Persian rug. Three places had been set. The cushions, known as toshaks, and the thin mat in the center, a dastarkhan, were all part of the “ceremony” that was daily tea. Something was cooking in one of the back rooms, and the sweet aroma of onions and something else wafted throughout the room.
A young boy appeared from a back hall and was introduced as Wazir’s great-grandson. He was seven or eight and carried a special bowl and jug called a haftawa-wa-lagan. They carefully washed their hands. Then the boy returned with the tea, and Moore took a long sip on his, sighing over the flavor, which always reminded him of pistachios.
“How was the drive?” asked Wazir.
“Without incident,” Moore answered.
“Very good. You have the photographs?”
Moore reached into the small pack he’d had slung over his shoulder and withdrew his tablet computer. He thumbed it on and handed it to Wazir.
The old man deftly thumbed through the intelligence photos, as though he’d used such a device before. And Moore asked him about that.
“Let me show you something,” he said, then called to the boy, who helped him to his feet.
He led them down the hall and into a back room, an office, that left Moore’s mouth hanging open. Wazir had banks of computers, two wide-screen televisions, and at least a half-dozen laptops all running at the same time. His electronic command post resembled the bridge of a starship. News websites and television programs flashed, along with screens showing bulletin boards and social-networking sites. The man was plugged in, all right.
And there, on a nearby table, were several tablet computers just like Moore’s.
“As you can see,” Wazir said, waving his good hand across the room, “I like my toys.”
Moore shook his head in surprise. “I’ve been here for, I don’t know, two, three years? Why haven’t I heard of you until now?”
“That was my choice.”
“Then why now?”
The old man’s smile evaporated. “Come on, let’s finish our tea. Then lunch. Then we’ll talk.”
After they returned to the living area and took their seats, the boy brought in an onion-based quorma, or stew, along with chutneys, pickles, and naan — an unleavened bread baked in a clay oven. The food was delicious, and Moore felt stuffed by the time they were finished.
Wazir pierced the silence with a question: “What is the most difficult thing you’ve ever done in your life?”
Moore glanced at Rana, whose body language said, This matters.
With a resigned sigh, Moore faced Wazir and asked, “Is this important?”
“No.”
“Then why do you ask?”
“Because I’m an old man, and I’m going to die soon, and I believe that brotherhoods are formed in life’s sacrifices. I’m a collector of nightmares, if you will. It’s the recounting, in the cool of the day, that allows courage and truth to flourish. So, in the name of brotherhood …what is the most difficult thing you have ever done in your life?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever faced this question before.”
“Are you afraid to tell me?”
“I’m not afraid, I’m just …”
“You don’t want to look at it. You’ve hidden it away.”
Moore gasped, and he was unsure if he could maintain his gaze on Wazir. “We’ve all done many difficult things.”
“I need the most difficult. Do you want me to go first?”
Moore nodded.
“I yearned to make my father proud. I wanted to be a good son.”
“And how was that difficult?”
Wazir raised his stump. “I got hurt early in the war, and with that the paternal glow of pride, each time I entered the room, was quenched from my father’s gaze. His son was a cripple now, no longer a warrior. It was never the same with him after that. And there was nothing harder for me to do than make him proud.”
