The End of America’s War in Afghanistan (The Russian Agents Book 3)

by Ted Halstead

Lombardy nodded bitterly. He’d always known that was a possibility, especially if the Taliban gunman had been wearing something like a flak jacket that could absorb part of the shock.

  Collins asked quietly, “How many of the team made it?”

  Martins shook his head. “Too soon to say for sure. Three are en route to hospital at Bagram with critical injuries. One is confirmed dead at the scene.”

  Lombardy asked, “And the school?” Even though he could guess the answer.

  “They’re still searching through the rubble. But I don’t think there’s much hope. The entire building collapsed. There are even reports of injuries from homes nearby struck by debris ejected from the explosion,” Martins said.

  Lombardy frowned and gestured towards the bomb in front of them. “I sure hope they can find whoever sold these explosives to the Taliban.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  CBI Secret Detention Facility, Ten Kilometers South of Mumbai

  Before now, Akshay Roshan had no idea life could be this miserable. From the moment the van had entered the unassuming single-story cinder block structure, things had steadily gone from bad to worse.

  Though land this close to Mumbai was generally sought after, government documents showed that a chemical spill had made it hazardous pending cleanup. Somehow, the cleanup had dragged on for years, with no completion date in sight.

  Akshay had been hustled out of the van through a small door. Once unlocked, it led to a small room with only one feature—an elevator door.

  The elevator seemed to go down forever. In fact, it was passing the floors containing administrative offices and sleeping quarters for the guards and staff, who often worked consecutive shifts. One of the best ways to keep the facility secret was to keep its staff as small as possible.

  Another excellent way was to promise that any security leaks would result in the offender becoming a guest of the facility.

  Akshay was questioned at length using drugs and sleep deprivation. Though he had dreaded being beaten or waterboarded, neither ever happened. Not because his interrogators had any moral qualms over such methods, but because they considered them ineffective.

  Eventually, they were satisfied that Akshay had nothing useful left to tell them, and he was left alone in his cell.

  Until today.

  Two unsmiling men led Akshay to a room with three dark wooden tables. Each had a single chair behind it. One table was set in front of the far wall. The other two were set back halfway between that wall and the door, with about a meter between them.

  There was a man sitting at the far table, and another at the right-hand table. Both were middle-aged, and each was wearing a dark suit and tie. They both had manila folders filled with papers in front of them. Each had been looking through their contents but stopped when Akshay was led to the sole remaining table.

  There was nothing on Akshay’s table.

  The floor was white, and the walls and ceiling black. Because of that, until now Akshay hadn’t noticed the black LED display mounted on the far wall, directly above the head of the man sitting at the table there.

  Now, though, the LED display switched on. It showed the image of a robed, blindfolded woman holding a pair of scales.

  Once Akshay had been seated, the two men who had escorted him from his cell had taken up station standing on either side of the door. Now, one of them said, “This court is now in session, the honorable Judge Bachchan presiding.”

  The judge looked at the man seated at the table beside Akshay and asked, “Is the prosecution ready?”

  The man nodded and said, “We are your honor.”

  The judge nodded back and said, “Good.”

  He then turned to Akshay. “You are charged with selling explosives that resulted in the deaths of dozens of innocent children in Afghanistan. How do you plead?”

  Akshay could feel all the blood drain from his face. “Your honor, I never intended for the explosives I sold to be used in such a way! I was told they would not be! I was promised they would be used in a war thousands of kilometers away…”

  The judge interrupted Akshay, saying, “Your beliefs and suppositions are irrelevant. Are you pleading not guilty?”

  Akshay’s head bobbed up and down. “Yes, your honor. Not guilty.”

  “Very well. The prosecution may present its case,” the judge said.

  “Excuse me, your honor! Am I not entitled to have a lawyer to represent me?” Akshay asked.

  The judge nodded. “Ordinarily, yes. We have a staff of defense lawyers with the necessary security clearance to handle cases such as this, with their fees paid for by the government. However, once they learned of the charges and evidence against you, they all refused to represent you.”

  The judge paused. “This has never happened before in all of the cases heard at this facility. Those cases have included other charges of mass murder. Perhaps the lawyers were unwilling because so many of the victims were children. In any case, we offered to double their fee. They all still refused. So, that left compelling one of the lawyers to represent you.”

  The judge shrugged. “I decided not to do that for two reasons. First, I thought it unfair to the lawyers, who, in any case outside this facility, could not be forced to represent you. Perhaps more important, given their reaction to the evidence against you, I thought it highly unlikely any of them would provide effective assistance in your case.”

  Akshay shook his head stubbornly. “It’s still not right.”

  The judge nodded. “Perhaps. But life is not always fair, as those Afghan children discovered. We can only do our best.”

  After looking down at his notes, the judge continued, “You do, however, have full rights in representing yourself. That means you can raise objections to any evidence presented by the prosecution, and offer any testimony you choose on your behalf. Now, before we proceed, do you have any questions?”

  Akshay wished desperately he could think of any, but instead found himself saying slowly, “No, your honor.”

  The judge turned to the prosecutor and said, “Present your case.”

  The image of the blindfolded woman disappeared from the LED screen and was replaced by a frozen image of Akshay under interrogation.

  “Your honor, as you know, the defendant was subjected to interrogation under the influence of pharmaceuticals immediately after his detention. This was done due to the threat posed by the explosives he had already admitted to having sold. However, the video the court is about to see was made a full day after administration of the last dose. I have a certificate from a doctor attesting to the fact that the defendant could not have been under the influence of the drugs by that time. I request that this video be admitted into evidence, and to play it for the court at this time,” the prosecutor said.

  “Objection!” Akshay said frantically. He remembered everything he had said, both while he had been drugged and later when he had not. “These statements were made under duress!”

  The judge looked at Akshay coolly. “Were you beaten or threatened with violence?”

  Akshay shook his head.

  The judge said, “Overruled.” Turning to the prosecutor, he said, “Proceed.”

  The video clip played for about half an hour, long enough for Akshay to describe in detail how he had smuggled the CL-20 compound out of HEMRL, and subsequently sold it.

  When the clip finished, the screen went black. Into the echoing silence that followed, the judge asked Akshay, “Was that you speaking in the video we have just seen?”

  Akshay nodded mutely.

  “Do you have anything you wish to add or retract from the statements we have just observed?” the judge asked.

  Akshay shook his head.

  “Very well,” the judge said. Turning to the prosecutor, he said, “Proceed with your case.”

  A still image with over a dozen mangled bodies filled the screen.

  “Your honor, this is a picture showing some victims of a Taliban attack on a girl’s high sch
ool in Afghanistan. Analysis by our scientists of the explosives used confirms the conclusion of the Americans that the explosives were identical to those sold by the defendant, as shown here,” the prosecutor said, holding up several stapled pieces of paper.

  “Request that these documents be entered into evidence,” the prosecutor said.

  “Objection!” Akshay said, and then stopped, clearly at a loss for words.

  “Yes? What is your objection?” the judge quietly asked.

  “Your honor, I knew nothing about the planned use of these explosives. If I had, I would have never sold them. The men who bought them lied to me. Surely that must count for something!” Akshay said.

  The judge shook his head. “You knew very well that what you were selling was the most powerful conventional explosive ever produced. You knew that was why it was valuable. And you knew that the men buying it were planning to use it to kill people. Even the lie you were told admitted as much. So no, your ignorance of the actual planned use of the explosives counts for nothing at all,” the judge said.

  The judge turned to the prosecutor and said, “Your documents will be entered into evidence. Do you have any further exhibits to present?”

  The prosecutor shook his head. “No, your honor. The prosecution rests.”

  The judge turned back to Akshay. “Do you have anything further to say in your defense?”

  Akshay felt as though the room was spinning around him. Finally, he said in a near whisper, “I wish I could have it to do all over again. I would have never sold those explosives.”

  The judge nodded and said, “I believe you.” Gesturing towards the image that was still on the screen, he added, “If they could speak, I’m sure they would wish you had never sold the explosives as well.”

  Leaning back in his chair, the judge said, “This court finds you guilty. I am ready to render my verdict.”

  The judge frowned and looked down at his notes.

  “Many countries have abolished the death penalty. India is not one of them. However, it is applied only rarely, in fact, in only ten cases in the past twenty years. The circumstances must be beyond the simple taking of a life. Those circumstances could include, for example, the undoubted innocence of the victims. Such as helpless children.”

  The judge paused to glance at Akshay, with no readable expression.

  “Naturally, the law provides the death penalty as an option for cases where more than one person has been killed. We do not yet know the exact count of how many died due to your actions. But we do know the number is in the dozens.”

  The judge looked again at Akshay, who seemed ready to faint.

  The judge appeared to be anything but concerned.

  “The record will reflect that these two considerations are the ones that have led me to pronounce the death penalty in this case.”

  Akshay shook his head violently. “This is not proper. India is not a country that kills its citizens in secret. This is a democracy, and Indian citizens have rights!”

  The judge nodded. “This court shares your concerns. Our strong preference would have been for a public trial, which along with the charges already discussed, would have included your betrayal of the oath you swore at the time you became an employee of the Indian government.”

  Now the judge fixed an icy stare on Akshay. “The democracy that guarantees you the rights you feel have been violated.”

  The judge continued, “This court believes the Indian people should know the crimes you have committed, and the punishment you will receive. Both because the people have the right to know, and as a cautionary tale that would help prevent others from going down the same path.”

  Akshay felt a glimmer of hope. “So then why not give me a public trial? I want people to hear that I didn’t want to kill those children!”

  The judge shook his head. “As you pointed out, India is a democracy. The people’s elected representatives have recently passed laws providing, under extreme circumstances, that trials may be held in secret. The President himself has determined the shame that would fall upon India if our role in this crime were to become known cannot be borne.”

  The judge nodded towards the two men who had escorted Akshay to the courtroom. They had been standing silently on either side of the door ever since.

  The judge knew from his file that Akshay was, at least nominally, a member of India’s small Christian minority. This probably inspired his next words.

  “The sentence will be carried out immediately. May God have mercy on your soul.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  U.S. Cyber Command, Ft. Meade, Maryland

  Carol Banning had been an analyst with U.S. Cyber Command for five years now, coming on board not long after its elevation to the status of a “unified command.” Co-located with the National Security Agency, it had only a small fraction of the over fifty thousand employees who worked in one capacity or another at Fort Meade.

  There had been many critics of the decision to keep USCYBERCOM at Fort Meade, especially after it had become a unified command. One undeniable advantage, though, was that it made it easier to share information and cooperate on programs of common interest.

  Like Sapphire. Though NSA resources were used to collect data, store it, and perform the initial assessment, anything flagged for further review was assigned to analysts at both NSA and USCYBERCOM. Which one depended on the data’s content, and which organization had the analyst with the greatest relevant expertise.

  Carol’s best three languages were Dari, Pashto, and Arabic, though she was fluent in several others, including Uzbek, Turkmen, and Urdu. This ability made her one of the very few analysts fluent in all the languages spoken in Afghanistan, and one of the analysts in highest demand.

  As a result, she had a rare privilege. If Carol thought an intercept assigned to her by an initial review wasn’t worth her time, she could pass it on to a more junior analyst. It was a privilege Carol never used to shirk work. There were always more intercepts to review. Instead, the point was to use her talents where they were most needed.

  That decision process began before she even opened an intercept file. Carol immediately noted that the Sapphire software had grouped three video files, based on the place and time of their upload. Simultaneously, from the Afghan-Pakistan border region.

  Then she saw the keywords that had resulted in the files being flagged for an analyst. “Taliban” was pretty common. “Bagram” wasn’t.

  And Carol didn’t think she’d ever seen “nuclear” before.

  OK, these were going to be worth a look.

  As soon as she clicked on the first file, Carol froze.

  “What in the world…that looks like Mullah Abdul Zahed,” Carol thought to herself. A few seconds later, the image on the screen identified himself as precisely the man she’d thought she recognized.

  “There hasn’t been a confirmed sighting of him in years,” Carol thought, as the Taliban leader continued to speak.

  “They’ve done what?” Carol thought in near panic, as Abdul calmly explained why it had been necessary to destroy Bagram Airfield with a nuclear weapon.

  Carol turned up the volume on the nearby TV, which was already tuned to a cable news network. It was reporting on yet another wildfire in California. She turned to two other news channels…nothing about Afghanistan.

  OK. So, this was a recorded announcement for something the Taliban had planned. And the other two video files?

  Carol opened the next file and found it was once again Abdul, this time taking responsibility for a nuclear attack on the Green Zone in Kabul.

  The last file was Abdul, speaking even more solemnly, explaining why the Taliban had destroyed both the Green Zone and Bagram Airfield.

  Carol’s fingers blurred as she typed a verbatim transcript in both the original Pashto and an English translation for all three messages.

  The same thought kept running through Carol’s head again and again as she typed.

  How long would
it be before the attacks described in these messages happened?

  The White House, Washington DC

  President Hernandez frowned as he saw the large LCD display at the other end of the Situation Room was on, though so far it just showed the logo of USCYBERCOM. A woman Hernandez had never seen before stood next to the screen. She was doing her best to conceal her nervousness and mostly succeeding.

  Understanding a person’s true mental state was a talent that had served Hernandez well in business, and even better in politics.

  General Robinson, the Air Force Chief of Staff, was the only other person in the room, and he stood as soon as Hernandez entered. Hernandez impatiently waved him back down.

  “So, General, Chuck told me he agreed with you that we should be the only three to see these videos. Will the reason be clear by the time we finish watching?” Hernandez asked.

  “Chuck” was Chuck Soltis, the White House Chief of Staff. Among his many duties was deciding who else got to learn what the President did. That often meant deciding who would be in the room when the President was briefed.

  “Yes, sir, I think so,” Robinson replied. “I should also add that Ms. Carol Banning here is the analyst who flagged the importance of these short clips, and is the one who prepared the English subtitles, which were not present in the originals.”

  “Right,” Hernandez said. “Now, do I understand correctly that these videos were intercepted by us, and have not yet been broadcast anywhere?”

  “Yes, sir,” Robinson replied. “When you watch them, you’ll understand why.”

  Hernandez nodded and gestured for the videos to start playing.

  As soon as the first image came on the screen, Hernandez gestured for Robinson to stop the playback.

  “That’s Mullah Abdul Zahed. I thought the CIA believed there was a good chance he was dead, and that the Taliban was keeping his death quiet because he was the last surviving member of the Afghan Taliban regime we forced from power in 2001. Then they thought they’d found him, but it turned out to be a trap that a Seal Team barely escaped. Are we sure this is a new video?” Hernandez asked.