by Scott McEwen
Shroyer frowned. “The president’s not going to like hearing that. I think he’s seen too many episodes of CSI.”
“I hate to say this,” Webb continued, “but it’s probably better to pay the ransom before the damn video ends up in the hands of Al Jazeera. If that happens, the president’s not going to have much time to sit around watching TV.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Shroyer said, rocking back in his fine leather chair, tapping an unsharpened pencil against the edge of the mahogany desk. “Isn’t it possible such a video might put some fight back into the American people? We’re losing in Afghanistan. This might be the catalyst we need to reignite the will to win.”
Webb wasn’t so sure about that. “Possibly, but—”
“But the president doesn’t think like that, so it doesn’t matter,” Shroyer said, dismissing the idea. “I’m headed back over there after lunch. I’ll tell him about the speaker’s back-channel threats and see what he has to say. In light of this little development, I’m sure he’ll choose to make payment. Christ, he hardly has a choice now. Can you imagine the backlash of that rape playing out on the internet? He’d be crucified in the liberal media.”
Webb agreed that much was probably true.
“So, on to different business,” Shroyer said. “The president green-lighted Operation Tiger Claw this morning. It’s going into effect immediately. The Turkish government is supplying the aircraft and crew, and Agent Lerher and his staff are already in the ATO.”
“Good to hear it,” Webb replied. “It’s bold, and it’s original. The Iranians will never see it coming. It’s going to Delta Force?”
Shroyer shook his head. “The Joint Chiefs want to give it to the Navy. It’s going to be a black operation with a single player, which puts it in DEVGRU’s court.”
“A black operation? Is that necessary?”
“Well, we can’t have the Iranians accusing us of an act of war in the event anything goes wrong now, can we?”
“No, of course not. Disavowing one of our own operators sounds like a much better plan.”
Shroyer shuffled a stack of papers from one side of his desk to the other. “Well, they do volunteer for the privilege, after all.”
Webb didn’t like the sound of that. “I’m not exactly sure that’s what they’re volunteering for, George, though I guess I can see why some here in Washington may find it more convenient to see it that way.”
Shroyer eyed him across the desk. “Cletus, I sometimes wonder if you understand what the military is actually for.”
7
AFGHANISTAN,
Jalalabad Air Base
The briefer was obviously nervous. Gil had seen the fiftyish-looking man arrive in a British helo early that morning dressed in plain clothes and carrying a leather laptop bag. He now sat at a table near the wall in a folding metal chair, continuously checking his iPhone, making the occasional notation in a file, and he was careful to avoid eye contact. Though Gil initially believed him to be an advisor with British Special Forces, he was rapidly coming to suspect that circumstances were different from what he had assumed half an hour earlier, when he had unexpectedly—and somewhat urgently—been ordered to appear in this little building on the far side of the airport for an emergency mission brief.
His natural assumption was that DEVGRU had received actionable intelligence on Sandra Brux’s whereabouts, but this brief was already starting to feel like something else.
He sat down in a chair near the center of the room. “Where is everybody?”
The Brit finally glanced up from his iPhone. “Oh, I should think they’ll be along forthwith,” he replied affably.
So they really did talk that way over there. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Warrant Officer Brux, does it?”
The Brit looked confused. “I’m afraid I don’t know that name.”
This was all Gil needed to hear. He leaned back, an eager anxiety rising up in his gut as the adrenal glands began to secrete, bringing his internal combat systems online. He stared at the Brit until his suspicions were finally confirmed by a simple tell: a knee that began to jig up and down. Gil then realized he’d been selected for a mission that had nothing at all to do with Sandra, and this briefer—now very obviously an agent with MI6—was anxious as hell about it.
The door opened and three CIA men filed briskly into the room looking very official in their well-tailored suits and subdued neckties. Gil recognized the lead man immediately, an agent named Lerher whom he had worked with once before in Indonesia.
Lerher was an agent attached to JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, and he was an ice-cold professional, long desensitized to the fact that he was moving live human beings around on the game board.
Gil stood up as Lerher crossed the room to offer his hand.
“Gil,” Lerher said, his demeanor crisp and impersonal as always. “Good to see you again.” He placed his briefcase on the table and watched in silence as the other two agents set up a digital photo projector on a desk at the back of the room.
Gil retook his chair to wait, pushing Sandra from his conscious thoughts. There would be no more room for her until mission complete.
“Lights,” Lerher said.
The lights dimmed and the photo of a thirty-five-year-old Middle Eastern male appeared on the wall. He had a neatly trimmed beard and chiseled features. A white kufi covered his closely cropped black hair, and a battered 5.56 mm AK-74 with a folding stock hung from his shoulder.
“Okay,” Lerher began, resting against the edge of the table. “This mission has been designated Operation Tiger Claw. The man you see before you is Yusef Aswad Al-Nazari—your primary target. He’s a Saudi national, age thirty-five with no known relatives. He is also a Sunni. He studied physics at the University of Stuttgart, and he has managed to fly completely under our radar until last month when Mossad brought it to our attention that he is personally responsible for three different bombings in Tel Aviv and at least half a dozen here in Afghanistan over the past two years . . . killing at least one hundred twenty people.”
During an intentional pause, Gil glanced at the Brit, now realizing he wasn’t British at all, but an Israeli Mossad agent, very probably educated in London. His arrival in the British helo must have been a precaution against anyone knowing there was an Israeli operative roaming the base, a risky prospect in a Muslim country.
Lerher continued. “Recent electronic surveillance has revealed that Mr. Al-Nazari is presently working to construct a radiological weapon, strength unknown, for use against Israel. Next photo.”
The photo of a woman with long black hair appeared on the wall.
“This is your secondary target. Her name is Noushin Sherkat. She’s a native Iranian. Next—”
“Hold there a second.” Gil sat forward on the chair, studying her face. She had fierce dark eyes and was no more than thirty years old. He had never been ordered to hit a woman before. “What’s her story?”
Lerher’s reply was noncommittal. “Her story is that she will soon be joining Mr. Al-Nazari in the afterlife.”
Gil caught Lerher exchange a furtive glance with the Mossad agent before saying, “Next photo.” There was a tentativeness about the JSOC man that hadn’t been there the first time Gil had worked with him, and this told Gil the other shoe was yet to drop.
A satellite photograph appeared with a map overlay. Lerher took a laser pointer from his breast pocket. “You will make the hit here approximately ten miles southwest of the city of Zabol in the northern reaches of Sistan-Baluchistan Province.”
Seeing the map, Gil felt a sudden surge of adrenaline.
He leaned forward, studying the overlay. The selected target area was twenty-five miles over the Afghan border into Iran, not much more than a couple of hundred miles north of where Operation Eagle Claw had ended in a humiliating failure during the hostage rescue operation back in November 1979, resulting in the loss of eight US Marines and Air Force personnel.
&n
bsp; After pausing long enough for this reality to sink in, Lerher continued. “Al-Nazari has no idea that he’s been compromised, no idea that we’re listening to his telephone conversations. He doesn’t even vary his schedule. It’s not that he’s careless as a general rule, rather, we believe he’s simply grown complacent, living within the relative safety of Iran’s borders.”
Gil scrutinized the topography of the terrain, barren and largely deserted. He turned to Lerher in the dim. “So he’s operating inside of Iran with or without Ahmadinejad’s approval?”
Lerher seemed to vacillate for a moment. “Well, as you know, the right hand doesn’t always know what the left hand is doing within the Iranian government. Our impression is that the Iranian president has been kept out of the loop on this one. We may safely assume, however, that someone with significant influence is supplying Al-Nazari with the necessary materials and logistical support. It is extremely important for this man to be eliminated before he constructs a radiation bomb or begins to pass his skills along. For the most part, he seems to be guarding his secrets at the moment, but we can’t expect that to last.
“Gil, we’ve got this guy nailed down to a fairly specific and isolated location not very far over the border into Iran. We’ve had him under drone observation for the last three weeks. We know his routine. We know that he travels with minimal security. Now is the time.”
“I obviously can’t walk in there on my own. I assume you’ve made arrangements for transport at the Afghan border?”
This time Lerher’s glance at the Mossad man was obvious. “No, we can’t risk having your movement detected. Al-Nazari would vanish the second it looked as though anyone might be moving against him. You’ll HAHO in, jumping from a Turkish commercial airliner during a scheduled flight from Kabul to Tehran. Next photo.”
Another map appeared on the wall, this one showing in red the projected flight path from the city of Kabul to Tehran. A green x indicated the point at which Gil would exit the aircraft inside of Iranian airspace.
“We’ve got Turkey’s cooperation on this?”
“We do,” Lerher answered. “It’s an audacious mission, Gil, no doubt about it. That’s why it’s going to succeed.”
“What am I jumping out of?”
“A Boeing 727. It’s out there on the tarmac. Our people are going over it now, making all the necessary modifications. It’s in good shape. You’ll be jumping during a black moon from thirty-five thousand feet, using GPS to guide you as close to the kill zone as possible before you touch down. You’ll probably have to travel close to thirty miles under canopy because it would look suspicious for the pilot to veer off course. This is a black operation, so you won’t be taking your usual gear. You’ll use a Dragunov SRV for the hit.”
Gil glanced again at the map, reaffirming that he would be jumping very deep into Indian country. “And my extraction?”
“After the hit, you’ll lay low and evade until dark,” Lerher said. “Once it’s dark, you’ll make your way south to the extraction point where the Night Stalkers will pick you up well inside the Iranian border. Now, we don’t expect you to have any contact with Iranian troops. This province is a wasteland, and there’s nothing there to protect. However, the area is rife with heroin smugglers sneaking back and forth across the border at all hours of the day and night. This is the reason we’re so confident we can hit Al-Nazari inside of Iran without anyone suspecting US involvement. Allow me to illustrate.”
He looked to the back of the room. “Next photo.”
A map of Sistan-Baluchistan Province appeared on the wall, marked with multiple scattered dots of different colors.
“Sistan-Baluchistan is the hub for eighty-five percent of the world’s heroin traffic. Each red dot that you see on this map indicates an assassination. Each blue dot indicates a bombing. And finally, yellow marks the spot of an abduction. All of these have taken place since 2008. As you can see, the region is basically a civil war zone—one of the best-kept secrets in the Middle East—so there won’t be any reason for the Iranians to suspect outside involvement.
“Allow me to make one thing very clear, Gil . . . every reasonable attempt is to be made to prevent the Iranians from knowing you were ever there. If this operation works the way we’re hoping it will, it can open the door for a multitude of future clandestine operations inside of Iran, and I don’t need to tell you how valuable that’s going to be.”
“Are my comms Russian as well?” Gil never paid much heed to a briefer’s admonitions about post-hit protocol. Once the hit was made, he was on his own time, and he would do whatever was required to get his ass back alive.
Lerher shook his head. “Your radio and GPS will be of Chinese manufacture. Your prep team from SOG will be in directly to brief you on the particulars.” He paused again, glancing at the Mossad agent to see if there was anything to add. The man shook his head. “Well, then,” Lerher said, “I guess that should about cover mission overview. Do you have any more questions before I call in the prep team?”
“Yeah,” Gil said. “How soon do I leave?”
“You will board an Air Force cargo flight for Kabul in exactly”—Lerher checked his watch—“eleven hours, forty minutes. Shortly thereafter, you will board the 727 bound for Iran. Good luck.”
8
AFGHANISTAN,
Nuristan Province, Waigal Village
Badira was eating her afternoon meal when Sabil Nuristani, the village headman, came into the hut asking where to find Naeem.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve not seen him since this morning. I think he left for Kabul.”
Sabil looked into the room where Sandra, dressed once again in a grubby gown, lay shackled to the bed by the ankle of her bad leg. She was sleeping. “How long will she live?”
“That depends,” Badira said, tired of being asked that question.
“On what?”
“On how much more brutality she is forced to endure.”
The old man stood brooding, deeply troubled on many levels. He was not Taliban, nor was he a Pashtun. He was Kalasha, and the Kalasha people were not like Naeem and his reckless band of Wahhabi fanatics, an ultraconservative arm of Islam. Sabil’s direct ancestors, those of the Nuristani line, had lived in the Hindu Kush for centuries. The province had even been named for them, in fact. The Kalasha people had their own traditions, their own customs, and they heavily resented the militant presence of both the Taliban and their new friends in the HIK.
Naeem was an upstart lieutenant from the Pashtun south, sent north to help bolster the Taliban presence in the face of the burgeoning Hezbi factions. He had chosen Waigal Village not only because it was isolated far up in the mountains, but also because most of the middle-aged men were dead from recent regional disputes over resources and land. This meant the rest of the villagers were easily scared into submission. The teenaged men of the village had no fathers to teach them tribal ways, no one to give them direction or to keep them on the straight and narrow. As a result, they had been highly impressed with Naeem’s heroic tales of the jihad—most of which Sabil suspected to be lies—and they were beguiled by his promises of the afterlife and all of the women they would experience should they be killed fighting the infidel.
“I’ve sent word to Aasif Kohistani,” Sabil confessed at length. “Once he learns that Naeem is trying to ransom the American wom—”
“But he’s Hezbi!” Badira said, fearing the HIK even more than the Taliban. “You should not have done that. Naeem will kill you.”
“It’s done. The woman is a danger to us all. This village will be very hard to attack, so the Americans will not differentiate when they come. They will drop bombs on everything, shoot everyone.” He stood gnawing his fingernails, convinced they were all in imminent peril.
“I wish you had waited,” Badira lamented. “The ransom demand has already been delivered to Kabul.”
Sabil waved his hand at her. “They will never pay. The amount Naeem wants is insane. His
Wahhabi ideas have addled his brain. I even heard him telling the boys around the fire that he once met the Great Usama. Can you believe it? As if Bin Laden would have bothered to even look at a fool such as him.”
“Bin Laden was a fool,” Badira said wearily. “His jihad has brought us nothing but trouble.” She glanced into the room where Sandra was having a fitful dream. “You realize that Aasif Kohistani cares nothing for this village—or for you. He may come and take the American away, but he will not protect you from Naeem.”
“As long he takes her out of here,” Sabil said. “Then I will have done my duty to the village. Naeem is not long for this earth in any case. Fanatics such as him never are.”
He left a short time later. Badira went into Sandra’s room, waking her up. “You need to take your medicine and drink some water. You’re dehydrating.”
The antibiotics were keeping infection at bay, but Sandra’s bullet wound was still fevered and painful. “You’re sure you don’t have anything stronger than aspirin?” she asked. “The pain . . . it’s horrible. I can’t take it anymore.” She was in despair.
Badira sat looking at her. “I can give you opium. That’s all I have.”
“Heroin?”
“No, opium—from the poppy.”
Sandra consented, whimpering, “Okay, anything.”
Badira went to the door and told the teenage guard to go and bring her some opium and a pipe from one of the elders.
The boy got to his feet, an AK-47 hanging awkwardly from his shoulder. “For you?”
“For the American. Be quick. She’s in great pain.”
The boy looked at her skeptically. “The elders won’t—”
“Tell them Naeem has given orders. Go!”
The boy eyed her balefully for a long moment, then turned and went away.
