The Mercenary Option

by Dick Couch

  Friday morning, January 3,

  central Afghanistan

  Lieutenant Colonel Tom Carswell was inspecting one of his patrols some fifteen miles east of Site South. He had been warned to increase his surveillance activity toward the south and west of the site. They were already on alert, and his men were working twelve on, twelve off as they shepherded the progress of the pipeline crews across the Afghan plain. Here in the Dasht Margow there were few inhabitants, but those few they did encounter had to be searched for weapons and warned away from the construction areas. There was a ten-mile exclusion zone along the pipeline corridor, but Afghans were not known for accepting restrictions on their movements from foreigners or a central government. The area was clearly marked, but they often found breaks in the six-foot chain-link fencing, and occasionally body parts from the detonation of a land mine. On those rare occasions, Carswell would observe the carnage and wonder about these Afghan hill people. If anyone should understand land mines, it was these people, and the minefields that guarded the pipeline were clearly marked. They were, he concluded, ignorant, illiterate, independent, defiant, or more probably, all of the above.

  “Hey, Colonel,” his driver called from his Humvee, “they want you on the radio.”

  Carswell was talking to the sergeant in charge of the patrol. Like Carswell, he was wearing desert-pattern battle dress, Kevlar helmet, goggles, and body armor. “Tell them I’ll call ’em back,” he shouted and turned back to his sergeant.

  “No can do, sir. They say it’s urgent, and they have to speak with you now.”

  Carswell returned to the Humvee and snatched the handset from his driver. “Carswell here…. Oh, yes, sir…. Understood, sir.” He looked at his wristwatch. “It’ll take us about thirty minutes to get back. We should be there by ten-hundred…. Right away, sir. We’re leaving now.” He returned the handset. “Saddle up, Corporal; we’re headed back to the site.” Then turning to his patrol leader, “Sergeant, we’re now at Level Two alert. That means deadly force is authorized if you come across anything that you even remotely consider a threat. And I want you to double the frequency of your comm checks.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied and returned Carswell’s salute.

  Tom Carswell found Dave Wilson arguing with one of his foremen. They were across from each other over a section of plywood and two sawhorses. A roll of blueprints was held in place by rocks, and the debate concerned how many recent pipe welds had or had not been x-rayed.

  “Aw, for Christ’s sake, Dave, my guys have already done that! How many goddamn times do I have to tell you that?”

  “Frank, you know the procedure, I know the procedure, and those welders sure as hell know the procedure. If it isn’t logged in at the time of the inspection, it didn’t happen. You weld it, you inspect it, and you x-ray it. And you record it—right then, not a few days later. It’s in the contract. I know it’ll cost you a few hours to x-ray them again, but that’s the way it is.”

  “A few hours! Hell, more like the better part of a day.”

  “Excuse me,” Carswell said. Wilson and the foreman had been glaring across the makeshift table so intently that Carswell’s approach had gone unnoticed. “I hate to interrupt his conjugal visit, but we’ve got some bigger fish to fry. I just got the word that we’re under a Level Two alert.”

  The weld X-rays were forgotten. “Jesus, Colonel. Do you know what this means?” exclaimed Wilson.

  “All too well, Dave, but there’s no way around it. The sooner you get your people mobilized, the sooner I can make my report.”

  Dave Wilson stood silent for a moment, hands on his hips, gazing skyward. A Level Two meant that all work stopped and that all construction personnel had to be ready to evacuate the site with ten minutes’ notice. Wilson was wearing Levi’s, a soiled T-shirt, and a white plastic hard hat. Only the black lettering on the front of the helmet, identifying him as “The Man,” distinguished him from hundreds of other workers on Site South.

  “Well, for crying out loud. Okay, Frank, get back to your crew and pass the word. Report to me at my trailer when you’re ready.” Frank snatched up the blueprints and strode off, mumbling a string of obscenities. “Where are you going to be, Tom?”

  “Who knows,” Carswell replied. “I’ll be rounding up transport—probably best to get me on my radio. Sorry about this, Dave, but I agree with the higher-ups on this. Better to be safe than sorry.”

  “I know, Tom. Any idea what this is all about?”

  “They haven’t told me,” Carswell replied. “Probably a piece of hard intelligence that says we are targeted. When I know, you’ll know.” He swung himself back into the Humvee. “We’ll talk soon. Let me know when the camp is ready to move.”

  Dave Wilson headed off in search of his various crew foremen. They worked in shifts, twenty-four hours a day, so many of them would be sleeping. Rather than get on the radio and put out a general alert, he wanted to talk personally with each one. It would take a few minutes longer initially, but it would save time in the long run. Men tended to grouse a little less if they were told in person. Strange thing, Wilson mused; the longer the project took, the more money he and others on the TAP crews would make. Yet anything that delayed the project angered them all. He grinned to himself; guess that’s why I unretired and came back to work, he thought. It’s all about getting the job done.

  Dave had not enjoyed telling his foremen to drop what they were doing and get their people ready to leave. He dreaded telling Trish even more. But when he got back to the trailer, she was dressed in traveling attire, and their two bug-out kits were resting by the door.

  “We may as well try to eat some of this,” she said, peering into the small fridge, not bothering to look up. “It’ll go to waste when they shut the power down. How about some tuna on rye?”

  Late Friday morning, January 3,

  Herat, Afghanistan

  The airport at Herat still bore scars from the U.S. and British fighter-bomber attacks delivered the night of October 7, less than a month after 9/11 and just prior to the Northern Alliance push south. Since then, the control tower, eight-thousand-foot runway, and fuel depot had been rebuilt and made serviceable. Ariana Afghan Airlines, the national carrier, which boasted two Boeing 727s, maintained a single-flight scheduled service to Kabul on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. For the most part, the airport handled military traffic and non-scheduled flights from Karachi and Lahore. Over the last six months, traffic in and out of Herat had almost doubled as a result of support for Site North of the TAP. The two MH-60 helicopters that landed just after sunrise were not infrequent visitors to Herat, as was the nonmilitary C-130 that had landed the previous evening from Diego Garcia. This was the same MC-130 that took Garrett and company into the Dasht Lut, but now it was in civilian dress. All three aircraft now bore the markings and logo of the Joseph Simpson Jr. Foundation. The foundation had been active in delivering food and medical supplies to central and western Afghanistan. The flight crews seldom remained overnight, but they paid a premium for refueling services so were treated with respect by airport personnel. The MH-60s, like the MC-130, did their best to look like conventional civilian versions of the aircraft, but occasionally a curious military pilot would wander by and appraise the aircraft with a critical eye.

  The Gurkhas left their rucksacks and weapons on the helos and got off the aircraft in twos and threes and made their way to the C-130. They were parked near one of the deserted general aviation buildings well away from the small terminal, and left to themselves. Inside the 130 was everything needed in the way of food, ammunition, and clothing to resupply the men coming out of the field. The sun was well up, but an auxiliary power unit kept the inside of the aircraft cool. There were also another half dozen Gurkhas, ready for duty as needed. On the flight deck, just behind the pilots’ seats, where the flight engineer and navigator were stationed, Steven Fagan rose to greet Garrett Walker and Bijay Gurung. After a few polite words, Bijay excused himself to att
end to his men. Garrett and Steven seated themselves in the comfortable flight-crew captain’s chairs. The two pilots sat forward at the controls, talking quietly and allowing what privacy they could to the men behind them.

  “Hot coffee?” Garrett nodded, and Steven poured him some from a carafe and freshened his own. “So tell me about it, and tell me again about the phone number that Bijay got from Khalib.”

  Garrett gave him a quick narrative of their insertion, their trek across the Dasht Lut, the engagement, and the successful extraction. “I thought for certain we’d find both weapons there, but we searched the two vehicles thoroughly. There was only one. Any ideas about where the other one is?”

  “We think it may be in Karachi or somewhere nearby. There’s a possibility that Mugniyah wanted one for his own purposes. The thought of him in possession of a nuclear weapon has them tied up in knots in Washington. The Pakistani security services and military forces are on full alert in and around Karachi. They will be out looking for Mugniyah, but they will be doing it quietly. The U.S. Navy will be checking any ship coming out of Karachi, but there are a lot of ways to move contraband in and out of Pakistan. Our best bet is that phone number Khalib gave to Bijay. I passed it along to Janet and Dodds. They’re working up a plan of action. We should be hearing from them in the next few minutes. How’s our wounded Gurkha?”

  “He’ll be okay. It was Padam, and he has a 9mm round that embedded in his thigh. One of the other Gurkhas cut it out during the helo flight here, if you can imagine that. He’s sleeping it off now with a heavy dose of morphine and antibiotics. He told Bijay to wake him if there was another operation—said that he’d be ready for duty if needed.”

  “I have a GSI Gulfstream on the tarmac in Islamabad for contingencies. Want him medevaced?”

  Garrett thought about it for a moment. The man’s life was certainly not in danger; he knew enough about combat casualty care to know that. But it would send a message to the other Gurkhas that no expense would be spared when one of them got hurt.

  “Not a bad idea. How long will it take?”

  Steven took up a handset from the console and dialed a number. “We have a dedicated satellite channel for secure comm…. Yes, hello, Pinch Hitter, this is Base Runner. We need you at our location as soon as you can get here…within the hour as soon as you have takeoff clearance. Get back to me with an ETA when you’re airborne and advise Home Plate…. Understood, Base Runner, out.” Steven looked at Garrett and grinned, “Helluva way to fight a war, huh?”

  A few moments later, the console speaker crackled, and Janet Brisco’s voice came over clearly, as if she were in the next room.

  “Base Runner, this is Home Plate. You there, Steven?”

  “I hear you fine, Janet. I have Garrett here with me, and you’re on the speaker phone. What do you have for us?” They were working with a secure, dedicated satellite link so with conscious effort, she abandoned the military-speak.

  “Well, we may have a one-time shot at this guy. Dodds is right here; I’ll let him tell you about his plan. Go ahead, Dodds.”

  “G’day, gentlemen. How’s the weather where you are?”

  “Hot and dry, but the air conditioning is working, thank God,” Steven replied. “What do we do next?”

  “I think we can pinpoint the location of the phone number you have. Our preliminaries show that it belongs to an import-export company in Tehran. Probably an accommodation address or a shell corporation of the MIS. Is Bijay there with you?”

  “We can get him,” Garrett said. “Wait one.” Garrett spun from his seat and dropped from the flight deck to the cargo area. Bijay was there with the other Gurkhas. They were cleaning their weapons and overhauling their field gear, preparing for battle. The two quickly returned to the flight deck.

  “Okay, Dodds, we have Bijay here. Go ahead.”

  “Janet says this is for your ears only, so why don’t you guys put on your headsets.” There was a moment of scrambling while the three of them donned headsets. Each was fitted with a boom mic. Garrett and Steven were seated, while Bijay leaned over Garrett’s shoulder.

  “Everybody on?” Steven asked. Garrett and Bijay gave him a thumbs-up. “Go ahead, Dodds.”

  “Okay,” LeMaster continued, “here’s the deal. This number is a cell phone number that probably has a scrambler, but can take calls in the clear. If Bijay can call him and keep the connection open for a few minutes, we can track the exact location of that cell phone. We don’t necessarily have to have the connection open, but we can be quicker and more precise if we can keep him talking. You okay with that, Bijay?”

  “I understand. I believe I can do this, or at least I will do my best. After all, I have in fact been given a message of some importance from a dying man.”

  “How are you going to do this, Dodds?” Steven cut in. “And is this a real-time capability?”

  “It will be real-time. A great deal of effort has gone into cell-phone locator technology. It’s based worldwide on the twenty-four orbiting GPS satellites. The commercial application is called E-911, or enhanced-911, as a locator for people in distress. But commercially this requires a special chip and user permission due to privacy issues. The military and NSA research efforts have taken this to a level where we can find any bloke with a cell phone if we know roughly where to look. Cell coverage is the problem, so we piggyback on the Iridium Global Star Network to extend local coverage out into remote areas, in case this guy is not in Karachi.”

  “We get the idea, Dodds,” Steven interjected; Dodds LeMaster could go on in great detail about technical issues. “Did you get help from our friends at Langley on this?”

  “I’m sure we would have, but there wasn’t time,” LeMaster replied. There was a hint of smugness in his voice. “Since I know we’d have a lot of interagency bureaucracy to deal with, I just hacked into the NSA system. Janet says it’d be better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”

  “Janet’s right on this one. What do you want us to do?”

  “I’m going to dial the number from here. The call will go through a local exchange in Karachi. I am in the NSA system right now. When the call goes through, we start the tracking process. You ready, Bijay?”

  “I am prepared. You may make the connection.”

  There was silence on the net save for the pulse tones of LeMaster’s dialing.

  After three rings, a heavily accented voice came on the line, speaking in English. “Yes.”

  “This number was given to me,” Bijay began in halting Arabic, “by a man in the desert. His name is, or was, Khalib. Do you understand me?”

  “What is it that you want?” the voice came back in fluent Arabic.

  “One moment,” Bijay replied, again searching for the right words. “Ah, here I think. I was given a message for you to hear. I am sorry. My speech is not good.”

  “Please go on,” the voice said. There was the noise of machinery or an engine in the background. “I am listening.”

  “The man named Khalib is dead. He said I must communicate with you. Please, do you understand me?”

  “I am listening,” the voice intoned.

  For the next three minutes, Bijay delivered Khalib’s message in his halting accent, pausing often to ask if his listener understood his meaning. When he was finished, the other party broke the connection with no acknowledgment other than a terse “Allahu Akbar.” There was an immediate outgoing call from the phone, but LeMaster was unable to monitor the call, as it was coded. He recorded it for future examination. He was, however, able to download an exact set of GPS coordinates. Dodds read them back to Steven and Garrett. There was a rustling of paper as they unfolded a map to reveal a wider coverage of central Afghanistan and southern Pakistan. Back on Diego Garcia, Dodds LeMaster and Janet Brisco were doing the same thing. Brisco was quicker than the others.

  “Oh, my God; get those choppers turning!” she said over the net. “Get airborne. Get airborne now! Light combat load!”

  Frid
ay noon, January 3,

  central Afghanistan

  “Okay, Colonel,” Dave Wilson said into his Motorola transceiver. “All of my crew foremen have reported in. We’re ready to move as soon as you give us the word. What now?”

  “Now we wait, Dave,” Carswell replied. “My patrols report no unusual activity. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a false alarm. We’ll get the all-clear soon, and you can go back to work.”

  “And if we don’t, then what? If it is the real thing, how are you going to get us out of here? We have more people than you have Humvees. You going to lead us across the desert on foot like Moses?”

  “Very funny. The plan calls for a military escort for an evacuation. We have a supply convoy due in here in about an hour. If push comes to shove, they’ll dump their load, and we’ll truck you out of here. In the meantime, stand by to stand by.”

  “Thanks, Tom. Keep me posted. I’ll be out roaming around the camp, checking on my people.”

  He turned to Trish, who was working a crossword puzzle at the table in the kitchen alcove.

  “Want to take a walk around the camp?”

  “Why not. Hey—what’s a six-letter word that means ‘To go forth from’?”

  “How about ‘exodus’?”

  “Perfect!” She scribbled in the word, then rose from the table. “Let’s go.”

  Early Friday afternoon, January 3,

  Herat

  As the GSI Gulfstream was on its final approach into the Herat Airport, the two MH-60 Pavehawks lifted into the air and headed south. Each helo carried six passengers; Garrett, Janos, and four Gurkhas were on one bird, Bijay and five other Gurkhas on the other. After the wounded Gurkha was loaded onto the Gulfstream, both the MC-130 and the GSI jet left Herat. The Gulfstream headed for Diego Garcia and the Naval Medical Facility there. The 130 followed the Pavehawks south, but at a much higher altitude. With Steven Fagan aboard and the aircraft’s extensive communications suite, they were well positioned to serve as a command and control platform, and airborne relay.