by Ted Halstead
Now the voices were even louder, and Neda needed no translation to hear the anger in the words. Vasilyev’s voice came over her earpiece again. “The officer is telling the soldier that he is to obey orders, and the soldier responds that the commander of the entire post has told everyone that every vehicle is subject to a complete search…”
Neda had a clear view of the officer pulling out his pistol and shooting the soldier in the head. He dropped like a stone.
There was a second of stunned silence after the gunshot.
Then, several things happened in quick succession.
The officer threw down his pistol, raised his hands, and began saying something in a loud voice.
Neda heard a “click” in her earpiece that told her Vasilyev was about to translate the officer’s words.
But then he was interrupted as the officer’s body was thrown backward by the impact of multiple rounds from weapons carried by the remaining soldiers in the inspection squad.
The truck that had been under inspection rushed towards the closed gate. Neda shook her head. It was evident that even a large truck like this one would be unable to brush aside the solid metal gate and its concrete supports.
But the truck didn’t get that far. All four of its tires disintegrated, obviously hit by multiple rounds, and the vehicle came to a shuddering halt.
Vasilyev’s amused voice came over her earpiece. “Well, I think one of those rounds was mine on this side, and I’m sure Grishkov managed at least one on his. The other dozen or so rounds came from our American friends.”
The truck was very rapidly surrounded by shouting Afghan soldiers. A few seconds later, the three men in the truck were face down in the dirt, their arms being secured behind them with zip ties.
Neda frowned. This was odd. No gunfire, no resistance? No final blaze of glory?
One soldier remained behind with his rifle trained on the prostrate men, while the rest of the soldiers threw open the back doors of the truck and began tossing out everything they found.
Only now did the door to the command post fly open, and a uniformed officer stride towards the truck. Before he was anywhere near, the officer was shouting something Neda couldn’t hear. From the silence in her earpiece, Neda guessed Vasilyev couldn’t hear it either.
Shouting and cheering rose from the truck. Neda smiled with relief. Whatever the soldiers had found, it was not a nuclear weapon.
Now the officer from the command post was close enough that Vasilyev could hear what he was shouting, and the soldiers’ response. His calm voice came over Neda’s earpiece.
“The officer is telling the soldiers to get away from the truck. The soldiers are saying it’s too late; they already know it’s full of money.”
Several tense seconds passed, with the officer glaring at the soldiers, who showed no signs of moving from the truck.
Then the officer said something in a much calmer tone, which brought immediate results. The soldiers all exited the truck, with one cradling a black plastic cube in his arms. He went with the other soldiers, who collected the prisoners and disappeared into a nearby building.
A few minutes later, other soldiers moved the truck and the officer’s body away, and vehicle inspections resumed.
Then Vasilyev’s voice came over Neda’s earpiece again. “The officer told the soldiers that of course they must be rewarded for their fine work, and he was authorizing an immediate cash award, to be taken from the drug money they had just confiscated. As you will recall from our briefing, American dollars are smuggled into Afghanistan to pay drug traffickers at the wholesale level. I’m betting that after another hefty deduction for this officer, what remains of the cash in the truck will eventually make it to its original destination.”
Neda shook her head in disgust. And this was the country they were risking their lives to protect.
No, that wasn’t right, she thought. Corruption was everywhere, and that certainly included Iran.
They were here to protect the innocent Afghan people who would be the victims of the Taliban’s stolen nuclear weapons. The greed of these men wearing Afghan uniforms did nothing to change that.
But where were the nuclear weapons?
Landi Kotal, Pakistan
Ibrahim Munawar frowned at the sight of the two small white trucks parked inside an otherwise empty nondescript warehouse. The trucks were nearly identical, and each marked with the dents and scratches to be found on most Pakistani commercial vehicles. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about either one.
Ibrahim turned towards Mullah Abdul Zahed as he walked through the door, but before he could even try to say anything was stopped by a sight he had never imagined possible.
Abdul was completely unrecognizable.
“So, what do you think of my disguise?” Abdul asked.
In one sense, it was simplicity itself. Abdul had shaved off his beard, and removed the turban from his head. That was all.
But it was enough.
“I can’t imagine anyone recognizing you,” Ibrahim said, with total sincerity.
“Good,” Abdul said. “It would be awkward if a soldier realized it was me at a roadblock once we cross the border into Afghanistan. I have paid well, and in advance, to pass those roadblocks without interference. However, the reward for my capture is worth quite a bit more.”
Ibrahim shook his head. “Your own mother would not know you.”
Abdul laughed, and rubbed his chin. “I hope you’re right. The truth is, with my face and the top of my head bare I feel as naked as the day she gave birth to me.”
Then Abdul gestured towards the two trucks with a broad smile.
“I want to congratulate you on your success in making these weapons. Without your hard work, we might have never had this chance to repel the American invaders for good,” Abdul said.
If Abdul had expected his words to please Ibrahim, he was quickly disappointed.
“I explained the importance of suitable transport for the weapons. Since we’re near the Torkham border crossing, I expected we would use large commercial trucks with the weapons hidden in a secret compartment. Thousands of trucks cross at Torkham daily, so they can’t give every truck a thorough search,” Ibrahim said.
Though Ibrahim hadn’t asked a question, his expression made it plain he expected a response.
Abdul nodded. “I considered doing exactly what you just described. If a better method hadn’t been available, it’s what we would have tried. But before I go on to explain what we’ll do, let me explain why I rejected the secret compartment approach.”
Ibrahim said nothing but nodded impatiently.
Abdul shook his head. The impetuous nature of all youth.
“The American military has a permanent presence at Torkham. We must assume they know of the weapons’ theft and will be on the alert to prevent their transport to Afghanistan. The Americans are not stupid, and know they are the weapons’ most likely target.”
Ibrahim shook his head stubbornly. “They still can’t thoroughly search every truck.”
Abdul nodded. “True. But in spite of your belief that we could shield the weapons’ radiation signatures from the Americans, what if their technology is more advanced than we know? Maybe they don’t have to open and search every truck to find the weapons.”
Now Abdul could see he’d scored a hit, as Ibrahim’s expression went from obstinate to thoughtful.
“OK, you’re right,” Ibrahim said. “We don’t know for sure what technology the Americans have, and if they’d made major advances in radiation detection, those improvements could well be held secret.”
Abdul smiled. “Good. Now, I’ll explain our plan. First, I’ll point out that we’ve used this method to transport ordinary explosives into Afghanistan several times, and have never been detected.”
Ibrahim nodded and visibly relaxed.
Now Abdul walked up to one of the small trucks, and opened its two rear side by side doors, revealing the interior.
&
nbsp; What he saw made Ibrahim gasp in dismay.
“You can’t be serious!” he cried. “We’re talking about nuclear weapons transport! What amateurs came up with this contraption!”
If Abdul was offended, he gave no sign. In fact, it was the reaction he’d expected. Though he’d never tell Ibrahim, it was nearly identical to his response when he’d been shown “the contraption” about a year earlier.
“The elastic lattice you see here will be adjusted to precisely match the size and weight of the weapon. Once adjusted, it will be impossible for the weapon to touch any of the metal sides of the truck’s interior. Also, the energy of any bump the truck encounters will be safely dissipated,” Abdul said.
Ibrahim’s eyes narrowed. “Bumps? Aren’t we crossing at Torkham?”
Abdul shook his head. “No. We will cross the border at night, across open country using the four-wheel drive in these trucks. The location isn’t far from here, but well out of sight of the Americans. We will rejoin the main highway once we are north of Torkham.”
Ibrahim looked…stunned. “Trucks across open country at night? How can you possibly expect that to work?”
Abdul reached inside the truck and lifted what Ibrahim immediately recognized as a glow stick.
“We make these glow sticks ourselves using Chinese kits. The glow agent we use is turmeric, which contains a fluorescent substance called curcumin that glows a bright greenish-yellow color in ultraviolet light. The headlights on these trucks can be switched from UV light to ordinary light once we get back on the highway. So, the glow sticks will light up the route we’ll use across the border,” Abdul said confidently.
Ibrahim frowned. “Can’t these sticks be seen by anyone? After all, I understand these are used at parties!”
Abdul nodded. “That’s why we make these glow sticks ourselves. The concentration of curcumin we use creates a glow visible to our drivers using UV goggles, but anyone else would have to be standing on top of them to see their light.”
Ibrahim shook his head. “And you’ve moved explosives this way successfully three times?”
“Yes. Each time we had the sticks picked up afterward to refill them with fresh glow agent since it otherwise fades over time. Of course, it wouldn’t do to leave them behind, anyway. Someone might get curious,” Abdul said.
“You said we’d cross open country, but all I remember near Torkham is hills. Just how far will we have to drive before we reach the highway north of Torkham?” Ibrahim asked.
Abdul nodded. “Well, to be honest, we’ll be driving all night. But as I said, we’ve done this successfully three times over the past year. I think it makes sense to go with a proven method.”
Ibrahim shrugged. “Very well. I want to supervise the process of getting the weapons placed correctly in these lattices of yours. The risk isn’t just the obvious one of an explosion. Dislodging one of the weapons’ components through careless handling could also cause failure.”
“I was counting on your participation. Everyone involved has been told that you’re in charge, and to follow your orders to the letter,” Abdul said.
As Abdul had hoped, this was exactly what Ibrahim wanted to hear.
“Good. When will we get started?” Ibrahim asked.
“Immediately,” Abdul replied.
Ibrahim nodded. “I’m glad. I know this has all taken longer than you expected, and I’m worried that the Americans have had more than enough time to prepare for our attack.”
“Don’t be too concerned,” Abdul replied with a smile. “I’ve had many years to plan this, and I have a few surprises in store for our American friends.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Landi Kotal, Pakistan
Afan Malik’s head was still spinning from the enormity of what his uncle had said. Like many Afghans, he had taken it for granted that the Americans would never leave, just as they had never left Germany, Japan, Korea, and so many other countries.
Afan had fully expected that at some point, he would be called upon to play his part in fighting the Americans. Maybe not as an armed fighter. The Taliban had plenty of those, and not so many like him with university degrees.
But to fight in some way, and either be imprisoned or killed? Afan had genuinely believed that was inevitable.
So, Afan felt sadness for the sacrifice being made by his uncle and many others. He was also experiencing a tremendous feeling of…relief.
And with that feeling of relief, came shame. Here Afan had done nothing but press the record button on his cell phone, and he was going to live his life in a free country while so many others died.
Afan had to talk to somebody. He was sitting at a cafe with his glass of tea untouched in front of him, surrounded by other men. But he felt utterly alone.
Of course, he would never tell a soul about his uncle’s plans. He would die first.
No, Afan just had to talk to someone he trusted, to let out some of what he was feeling.
OK, he would call Shaan, his best friend at university.
When he took his phone out of airplane mode to make the call, Afan was focused entirely on what he was going to say to his friend Shaan. Even if he had thought about the security of the recording files, he would have believed they weren’t going anywhere.
And he usually would have been right. His phone’s backup settings had been set to “Wi-Fi only” not because of security, but because of money. Afan was charged by the megabyte for cellular data usage, and the rate wasn’t cheap.
However, Afan and his cell phone had been to this cafe before, and the phone remembered its Wi-Fi password. It logged in automatically as soon as he took the phone out of airplane mode, and next searched for files that needed to be backed up to cloud storage.
The phone found three new video files and got right to work. Afan, intent on his call, never noticed.
Even then, as recently as the previous year, the video files would have been safe from prying eyes. They were labeled merely one, two, and three and so in the past would not have attracted attention from any country’s monitoring program.
A few months before, though, the U.S. National Security Agency had begun a new data collection program called “Sapphire.” The NSA had learned from Edward Snowden’s release of information from the “Boundless Informant” program that it was best to make the names of its collection efforts less colorful and less descriptive.
Sapphire collected data only from areas of high interest to U.S. intelligence agencies. Those included both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Sapphire had access, some by agreement with companies owning the data and some not, to all cloud storage uploads originating from areas of interest.
A new Sapphire capability was the ability to scan video files and search the associated audio content for preset keywords. Some keywords had a low value because they were in fairly common use, like “Taliban.” Higher value keywords included “nuclear,” “Green Zone” and “Bagram.”
The three video files that Afan had unwittingly uploaded were collected and stored at the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, better known as the Utah Data Center. They were immediately placed in the analysis queue, but how quickly they would be processed was anyone’s guess.
Files matching specific search parameters submitted by an analyst were the top priority.
Ones with a keyword in their title were next, though such files were rare.
The file upload location was also a factor. So, an upload from Afghanistan generally had a higher priority than one from Pakistan. But one from close to either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border had one of the highest priorities, along with other known areas of substantial Taliban activity.
Once processed by the Sapphire program’s software, if a file was determined to warrant further review, it was assigned a priority and sent to an analyst’s queue. Depending on the priority, it might be anywhere from hours to days before an analyst looked at the file.
In s
hort, it was terrible luck for Afan that Sapphire existed at all. But the sheer weight of the amount of data needing review was on his side.
Afan finished his phone conversation with Shaan, which had helped to calm him. Unfortunately, it had done nothing to resolve either Afan’s sadness for his uncle’s fate, or his guilt at how he would benefit from Abdul’s sacrifice.
Afan was then careful to return the phone to airplane mode. It didn’t matter, since he’d talked long enough for the cafe’s excellent Wi-Fi connection to send all three video files to cloud storage backup, from where they had gone on to Utah.
Afan had no idea, which was just as well. At this point, there would have been nothing he could do about it.
Crossing the Afghan-Pakistan Border
Ibrahim Munawar looked nervously through the truck’s windshield as it bounced slowly forward in the darkness. He had learned to keep his teeth set together since some of the bounces were sharp enough to make them clack together painfully.
To be fair, Mullah Abdul Zahed had warned him. It was just that bad as they were sometimes, Pakistan’s roads hadn’t prepared him for this experience.
Ibrahim snorted with amusement at his own expense. Road? There was no road.
Only the drivers had the special goggles that let them see the UV glow sticks marking their way. Ibrahim had to admit that Abdul had been right. Once or twice, Ibrahim thought he’d seen one of the glow sticks when he’d looked out a side window, but he’d never been sure.
Ibrahim was confident, though, that nobody would be able to see the glow sticks from a distance. That had been a real worry for him.
As the truck lurched again, Ibrahim winced. That left the worry of whether the elastic lattice cradling the warhead they were carrying could keep it from exploding.
As though in answer to his thoughts, about a kilometer ahead, there was a brilliant flash of light. It was immediately followed by the thunderclap announcing an explosion.
The driver sitting next to Ibrahim in the cab cursed and threw off his UV goggles. A part of Ibrahim sympathized, since he was sure viewing the explosion through the goggles had been painful.
