The Mercenary Option

by Dick Couch

  “When the young man was directed to make another meeting, I went in his place. This businessman, when he saw it was I and not the young Gurkha, tried to pull a pistol from his jacket. I was ready for something like this. You know, Mr. Walker, they say that when a Gurkha unsheathes his khukuri, it cannot be returned to its scabbard until it has been bloodied.” He smiled grimly at Garrett. “Of course, this is nonsense, but not on that particular night. I killed the man and called the guard. The packet contained drugs, and the so-called businessman was a distant relative of Haji Waddaulah, the Sultan of Brunei. Possession of drugs in Brunei is a capital offense, but it was widely known and accepted that some members of the royal family use drugs, especially the younger ones.

  “There was quite a stir. I was taken into custody, but released pending further investigation. Charges were dropped on the testimony of the young Gurkha and the less-than-exemplary reputation of the dead businessman. But relations were strained between the sultan and his Gurkha battalion. When I confronted the subaltern, he denied everything. It came down to his word against that of my young Gurkha. This subaltern was not a Sandhurst man, but his father was a member of Parliament.” A look of pure sadness passed over Bijay’s features. “There was little they could do to me. I held the Victoria Cross, and to dishonor me would have invited too much disgrace on the Brigade of Gurkhas. The sultan demanded discipline, so they turned to the young Gurkha corporal. It was decided to separate him from the brigade—to send him home. Mr. Walker, you cannot imagine the shame that follows a Gurkha who is separated from the brigade, the blight it brings to his family name. He cannot go home, he cannot even enlist in the Indian regiments; no other Gurkha will serve with him. He is essentially a nonperson—a dead man. I had no option but to resign in protest. In deference to my years of service, I was allowed to leave before my enlistment period had ended.” Then his eyes sparked with a flash of anger. “And that I agreed not to speak publicly of this incident.”

  Garrett could see that he was in pain. “Kaphar hunu bhanda mornu ramro,” he murmured. It was an old Gurkha proverb that means, “It is better to die than to be a coward.” Bijay met his eyes and nodded solemnly.

  Of course, Garrett had thoroughly researched the matter of Bijay’s retirement from the Gurkhas. There were a number of stories in circulation about the departure of this famous Gurkha, but Garrett had never quite been able to make sense of them. Steven Fagan had given him a file that suggested something of a scandal, one that involved a relative of the sultan, but there had been few details. What Bijay had just told him made sense. And it was in keeping with what he knew about the man—that he took care of his men, and honor was everything to him.

  “And where is your young Gurkha now?”

  “He is working for a company in Kathmandu who finds work for former Gurkhas in corporate security. At my insistence, he was awarded an honorable discharge, and I have personally vouched for his character. He will find work, but it is not the same as serving with the brigade. This young warrior was done a terrible disservice, and for that I will always hold the British responsible.” He was again quiet for a long moment, then looked directly at Garrett. “Mr. Walker, from what you have told me, you also seem to be a man who has been wronged by your service—separated from your men and your work. Yet I sense that you have found something to take its place.” He smiled easily. “Could this be why you have traveled all the way from America to see me?”

  Garrett returned his smile. “My first name is Garrett, and I would be honored if you would call me by that name. Warrant Officer Gurung, I believe only a fool thinks he can take back an insult or regain something that cannot be retrieved. My time with the Navy SEALs was good for me, and I treasure my memories. I was blessed. That I had to leave before I felt it was my time to go—well, I’ve made my peace with that. But yes, I have found something else—work that is important and requires the professional skill and discipline of a soldier. And it is work that I believe to be necessary and honorable.”

  “Would this work be dangerous?”

  Garrett smiled again, broadly this time. “Would I be here talking with you if it were not?”

  “Gurkhali ayo,” Bijay replied. This traditional battle cry meant, “The Gurkhas are upon you.”

  Bijay Gurung and Garrett sat and talked through another pot of tea. Garrett told him of the plan and of the recently completed facility in Hawaii. Garrett knew of the history and loyalty that Gurkhas had traditionally held for Great Britain. That’s why Steven Fagan had structured the payroll, insurance benefits, and service pensions for the new force through the Bank of England. This satisfied Bijay; his bitterness was at the British, not the Bank of England. For centuries Gurkhas had come down from the hills to willingly serve the Crown so long as the pay, pension, and death benefits were paid promptly, most of it going back to their families in Nepal. Bijay was not too concerned with where this new force would be sent or the kind of soldiering involved, but he took a keen interest in the uniforms they would wear during their training.

  Garrett spent another three days in Pokhara. On one of them, Bijay took him on a long hike in the foothills of Annapurna, a trek that rambled over close to six thousand vertical feet. Bijay was impressed; first, that the lanky American had the stamina of a Sherpa, and second, that his Gurkhali seemed to improve daily. They traveled back to Kathmandu by air and collected an ex-Gurkha corporal before catching a flight to Singapore, then continuing east to the Big Island of Hawaii.

  Monday, November 11,

  Kahuta, Pakistan

  The A. Q. Khan Research Laboratory at Kahuta was located some thirty miles southwest of Islamabad and was one of the most carefully guarded facilities in Pakistan, perhaps on the subcontinent. It was here that the Pakistanis had developed their bomb. The research complex at Kahuta also housed their guided missile production and test facility. All that the government of India and the rest of the Central Asian nations feared from a nuclear-armed Pakistan emanated from this research complex. In May 1998 Pakistan detonated an atomic bomb and became a nuclear power. That it was a crude, first-generation fission device was of no concern. The Muslim world hailed this development as the Islamic bomb. When the Pakistanis, with the help of the Chinese and the North Koreans, developed the Ghauri II and the Shaheen II surface-to-surface missiles, the Indians now faced a Muslim adversary with nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them with little or no warning. With this gambit, the Pakistanis essentially put in check the overwhelming conventional superiority of the Indian ground forces. A serious move by the Indian army in Kashmir could now provoke much more than an artillery barrage across the Line of Control that now divided the contested province and the two nations.

  While most of the Pakistani arsenal is the product of highly enriched uranium from the massive gas-centrifuge equipment at Kahuta, the Pakistanis also developed a parallel plutonium weapons program. The plutonium production reactor at Kushab and the plutonium extraction plant at Chasma had provided enough material for ten weapons, about a third of the nation’s growing nuclear capability. While plutonium is more difficult and dangerous to handle, the bombs are lighter and smaller. All of India’s nuclear weapons were plutonium munitions. The reactor at Kushab was also used to irradiate lithium 6 to produce tritium for an enhanced-yield plutonium weapon. This tritium boost is a very tricky technology. The Pakistanis had yet to master it, but it would just be a matter of time until they did. They had been at it for some time.

  After the Indians exploded their bomb in 1974, Pakistani President Benazir Bhutto encouraged Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan to return to Pakistan from the Netherlands, where he had been working as a metallurgist. There he had worked for a European consortium that fabricated nuclear components for industrial and military uses. Bhutto gave him the task and the resources to develop the Pakistani bomb. Dr. Khan, an urban, aristocratic, and highly educated man, brought a great deal of experience and intellect to the project, but Pakistan was, and still is, a developing nation. It was a
daunting challenge. One of the most serious obstacles he faced was the lack of engineering talent—talent to develop the reactor processes and facilities to make the plutonium and highly enriched uranium they would need. Knowing it would take time, Dr. Khan began sending bright and promising young men to America to attend the finest universities. One of the brightest and most promising was Moshe Abramin. He and others like him had worked tirelessly at the laboratory complex named for Dr. Khan. The fire that ignited their intellectual souls was religious conviction; there had to be an Islamic bomb to confront the Hindu bomb. But two things conspired to disillusion Moshe. One was the consumptive Western lifestyle of Abdul Khan. He was as arrogant as an upper-caste Hindu and as ostentatious as an American. The other was the support given by President Pervez Musharraf to the Americans in their war against the Taliban. Young men like Moshe Abramin thrived on religious passion, and the “Islamic” freedom fighters who fought the Russians and now the Americans had captured his imagination. When Americans prevailed in Afghanistan, idealistic young men like Moshe Abramin felt humiliated. And he was not alone. Early one afternoon, he and three other young scientist-engineers met in one of the laboratory bays.

  “We have rehearsed this many times, but let us go over it one more time. The time has come, and may Allah grant us the courage to carry out our duties. With the help of our freedom-fighting brothers, we have a good plan. Now we must act. Much depends on us; we cannot fail.”

  The three men quietly shared glances among themselves, each with fear in his eyes. Had Moshe not been there to urge them forward, one or all of them would surely shrink from the task before them. But they were in his power, and they could feel his intensity.

  “By our hand and our daring, we will put the wrath of God in the hands of the servants of God, and strike a blow that will send the infidels reeling back across the sea. They will not dare to oppose us once we have such power. The Great Satan who has so long plagued our lands will leave for good, and the people of God will be free to live and worship as God intended. Now, let us go over the plan a final time.”

  Glancing around to ensure that they were alone in the lab, Moshe carefully unrolled a set of design specifications for one of the centrifuge banks. Inside on a separate sheet of paper were two pencil drawings. One was of the nuclear core storage vault and the other was of the conventional explosive holding facility. The Pakistani bombs were fission devices, primitive by the thermonuclear standards of the United States and Russia but still very nasty little atomic bombs. While the current regime in Islamabad did more than a little saber-rattling with their nuclear status, they were very careful in safeguarding their nuclear arsenal. The weapons were unconstituted; that is, the warheads and the rockets were not mated, so there was no possibility of an unintended nuclear launch. Furthermore, the two primary functioning components, the nuclear core, or pit, and the nonnuclear high-explosive wrapper, or HEX, were stored separately. The fissionable material, cast in spheres of plutonium or highly enriched uranium, was kept in one part of the complex, and the carefully milled explosive hemispheres, which caused the precise implosion to create a nuclear event, were stored elsewhere. The mating of two explosive hemispheres to a nuclear core and the proper alignment of the firing harness to bring about a high-order nuclear detonation was but a formality for a nuclear engineer trained in such procedures. Moshe was such an engineer. He rolled out the two drawings onto one of the drafting tables. The three others gathered around him.

  “Mirza, have you rechecked your clearances for entry to the atomic explosive storage vault?” Mirza Riaz was a slight man with rich chestnut-colored skin, oily black hair that clung to his scalp in ringlets, and a wisp of a mustache. He was Moshe’s age, and they had studied at MIT together. Moshe trusted him and felt he had the nerve to carry off his part of the plan.

  “All is in order; see for yourself.” He proffered the clearance credentials hung on a lanyard around his neck.

  On a sturdy, reinforced lab cart with pneumatic tires were two oscilloscopes with an assortment of wires and probes attached. Clipped to the cart were the authorizations for Mirza to conduct continuity checks on the explosive components. The O-scopes were metal shells that contained plaster facsimiles of the real explosive wrappers. Moshe inspected his credentials and the cart.

  “Excellent. When you are passed through to the storage facility, you will go about making your checks, just as you have done before. When you get to U-17 and P-18 storage areas here”—he pointed at the drawing—“you will be at the farthest limit of the television coverage. These are the HEX assemblies we must have. You, Naser, will stand here with your hands in your lab coat to shield Mirza while he makes the exchange. Move slowly and deliberately, just as you normally would in conducting these routine tests, and you should have no problems. Understood?”

  Mirza nodded, but Naser stood and simply stared at the paper. “He understands, do you not, my large friend?” Mirza said. Naser was a big man, running to fat. He jumped slightly and mumbled something to the affirmative as Mirza gave him a sharp jab in the ribs with his elbow. Moshe gave him a long look and turned back to the second drawing.

  “And do not forget the other components stored there as well,” Moshe continued. “These are not under direct surveillance and should be no problem. You can collect them on the way out.

  “Allama and I are scheduled to weigh ten of the nuclear pits and record their temperatures. In some respects, our job will be easier. There are TV monitors in the core storage vaults, but none are trained on the end of the vault where we will be weighing the spheres. There is, however, a viewing area on the upper level, and anyone watching from there can clearly observe us. We will have ten chances to switch two of the pits if we are to succeed. Are you ready, Allama?” Allama was a lab assistant and worshiped Moshe as much as he did Allah. He nodded enthusiastically. Moshe made a show of checking his watch, then looked at each man in turn. “Is everyone ready?” He waited while each man looked him in the eye and said that he was prepared to begin. “Then let us be about God’s work. Remember, you are scientists and engineers. Conduct yourselves with assurance and confidence as you go about your duties. Then move quickly when it is time to do what must be done. Allahu Akbar.”

  “Allahu Akbar,” they intoned and followed Moshe out the door. Mirza was the last to leave, pushing his cart.

  Later that afternoon, the four men were admitted to the secure storage areas. They moved in pairs because of the mandatory two-man rule. All of them padded about in shoe-socks and white showerlike caps. Mirza and Naser began to check the explosive components, moving their instrumentation cart from one pair of hemispheres to the next. Nasser read the checklists while Mirza poked and prodded the wiring assemblies that surrounded the molded HEX components. With each move, they connected their wire wrist straps to components they were testing to prevent sparking from static electricity. Mirza passed a stream of phony data to his hulking assistant. Nasar duly noted the information on his clipboard. When they reached U-17, Mirza tugged at his hair cap and snatched a look behind him. They were alone save for the black lens peering out from the white box in the corner of the storage area.

  “Okay, Naser, here we go. Move a little to your left and start with the checklist.” Naser just stood there, unmoving. A single droplet of sweat fell from his nose to the clipboard he held. “Now,” Mirza hissed with an emphatic tug on his sleeve. Naser moved to his left.

  Without incident, Mirza was able to exchange the HEX components for the plaster duplicates. When they were finished with all their tests, they were able to remove two beryllium neutron reflectors and two neutron generators and spirit them from the HEX storage area in their lab cart.

  Across the research complex, Moshe pushed and Allama pulled the scales through the security doors and into the vault where the nuclear materials were stored. It took them several minutes to level and test the scales that would weigh the material down to a fraction of a milligram. Once the scales were calibrated and in
place, they began to take the nuclear pits in their storage containers from their storage cubicles and shuttle them to the scales. Once at the scales, they carefully removed the cantaloupe-sized spheres from their case and gently placed them on the scale. There was no actual radiation hazard, but both men were double-gloved in deference to the toxic material.

  “Eleven point six, two, seven, one, one, three kilograms,” Moshe said, adjusting the balance as they weighed the first pit.

  Allama repeated the figure, entered it on his chart, and noted the reading on the temperature probe.

  “Are we clear?” Moshe murmured.

  Allama glanced up and saw two technicians standing at the viewing port above them. They were engrossed in conversation and paying them no particular attention.

  “N–no,” Allama reported. “We are under observation.”

  The two moved on. After weighing the sixth sphere, Moshe glanced upward and saw the two men still standing at the window, still talking. They continued, but after weighing the seventh pit, a sphere of plutonium, he returned it to the container waiting next to the scale. His instructions had been to obtain one pit of highly enriched uranium and a second of plutonium. Moshe removed an identical container from the compartment under the scale and handed it to Allama. He gasped and almost dropped it.

  “Return it to the storage cubicle,” Moshe ordered with measured firmness as he took the weighed pit and container next to the scale and with shaking hands placed it in the compartment below. A quick glance told him that the two men were more interested in their conversation than the work being done in the vault.