by Brad Thor
BLOWBACK
Also by Brad Thor
The Lions of Lucerne
Path of the Assassin
State of the Union
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Brad Thor
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Atria Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thor, Brad.
Blowback: a thriller / by Brad Thor.—1st Atria Books hardcover ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-4165-1023-0
1. Terrorism—Fiction. 2. Middle East—Fiction. 3. Americans—Middle East—Fiction. I. Title
PS3620. H75B58 2005
813'.6—dc22
200504524
ATRIA BOOKS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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For Chase—
Welcome to the world, little one.
Hannibal ad portas
Hannibal is at the gates.
blow•back ’blo-, bak n 1: process by which spent shell casings are ejected from an automatic weapon 2: unintended consequences of a failed foreign policy or botched covert action 3: CIA code name for an agent or operation that has turned on its creators
PROLOGUE
COL DE LA TRAVERSETTE
FRENCH-ITALIAN ALPS
D onald Ellyson tried to scream, but nothing happened. He had done a lot of reprehensible things in his fifty-five years, but this was not how he had expected to die—his throat sliced and hot blood running down the front of his parka. This was supposed to be the discovery of his life, the one that would legitimize him and land him at the top of the academic heap. But the moment of his greatest triumph had suddenly become the last moment he would ever know. And for what? Did his benefactors actually think he was going to stiff them?
Sure, he was known to gamble, and yes, he often stole artifacts from archeological digs to sell on the black market, but so did a lot of other people. It was just the way the world worked. Certainly, the punishment shouldn’t be death.
It was only three years ago that Ellyson had joined a group of archeologists excavating a site southwest of Istanbul. During the dig, a hidden room with a vast trove of parchments had been discovered. Upon closer inspection, the documents appeared to be remnants of the famous Library of Alexandria, which was considered to be the greatest collection of books in the ancient world.
The library had been almost completely destroyed by the Romans who sacked and burned it in both the third and fourth centuries. It was widely assumed that the balance of the library’s contents were destroyed when the Muslims, under the Caliph Umar I, laid siege in 640, but as Ellyson and his colleagues pored over the documents, they realized how wrong that supposition was. Someone at some point in history had apparently managed to preserve a large portion of what remained.
Ellyson was fascinated by what the parchments contained. One in particular was absolutely astounding. It was written in Greek and detailed a firsthand account of one of the most brilliant and most deadly undertakings in ancient history. He never catalogued that manuscript and went to great pains to make sure no one else on the dig even knew of its existence.
It was a treasure map of sorts, and though it did not have a great big X marking the spot, it promised unfathomable rewards. Once out of Istanbul, Ellyson went straight to the most likely source of funding for an expedition like this. He had been in the game long enough to know players who would jump at the chance to get their hands on what the manuscript suggested was waiting out there. And, indeed, the promise contained within the manuscript proved irresistible to his erstwhile partners.
Like Ellyson, those partners had read the classical accounts of Livy and Polybius, as well as works by renowned historians such as Gibbon, Zanelli, Vanoyeke, and a host of others too numerous to list. The more the partners read, the more they learned, and the more they learned, the more they became intrigued with the potential power of Ellyson’s discovery.
Based on the archeologist’s request, the partners spent millions on aerial surveys by planes, helicopters, and even satellites, combing many of the Alpine passes between southern France and Italy in hope of locating a particularly valuable item referred to in the parchment.
Ellyson had defied convention, turning his back on the more popular historical locations, as none of them fit the picture he had cobbled together from his ancient texts. Good fortune, though, did not smile upon his undertaking. Still, despite the lack of progress, the archeologist was confident he’d be successful in the end.
Though at times money was extremely difficult to come by, the men funding Ellyson’s search did whatever they had to do to keep the coffers full. Their organization had been searching for decades for just this type of find and couldn’t stop now. The power it promised to deliver was too important to give up on over something as trivial as money.
It wasn’t until recently, aided by three summers of record-setting heat across Europe, that the snow had begun to melt, glaciers had begun to recede, and, near the Col de la Traversette, Ellyson had uncovered the first pieces of archeological evidence that proved he was on the right track—straps of leather from an ancient harness, shards of pottery, and a small collection of broken weapons. He had narrowed a staggering field of haystacks to just one, but that one was replete with fathomless gorges and crevices, any number of which might contain his needle.
The Col de la Traversette was one of the most treacherous and highest mountain passes in all of France. Over the centuries, both French and Italian authorities had attempted to sabotage parts of it in the hope of stemming smuggling between their countries, but the pass lived on. A mere ten meters wide at the summit, the remote pathway was only accessible during a short period between mid-summer and early fall—and even then conditions could still be unbearable. Locals referred to the region’s weather as eight months of winter followed by four months of hell.
Despite these daunting obstacles, Ellyson had finally found his needle. He was a much better archeologist than he had ever given himself credit for. And the interesting thing about it was that the group funding his project wasn’t even concerned with the entire find, only a part of it—the part he had used as bait. It was all that had been necessary to get them to finance the operation. What they wanted from the find was a mere token to him, something he could easily do without. It was, in his mind, a minor footnote that had been lost to history. If his benefactors were willing to cover the cost of his entire project, he had no intention of denying them such a small item in return.
Even now from his prone position on the floor, Ellyson could see the object they had been after—a long, intricately carved wooden chest. It was right there—theirs for the taking. He didn’t need or want it. So why did they have to kill him? Nobody would have ever known that the box, or more importantly what was inside it, was missing. Much like me, thought Ellyson as he heard the sound of his two Sherpas approaching and watched as his killer removed a small-caliber automatic from his parka.
After calmly replacing the pistol in his pocket, the assassin stared at the wooden, coffinlike box. For over two thousand years, the ancient weapon had lain beyond the reach of man, frozen within the glacial ice of this remote Alpine chasm, but all of that was about to change. The assassin removed a satellite phone from inside his coat and dialed
the ten-digit number for his employer—a man known to him only as the Scorpion.
ONE
L AHORE , P AKISTAN
O NE YEAR LATER
T he narrow streets of the old city contained one of the worst slums in the world. Filth, squalor, and despair were daily accompaniments to the lives of Pakistan’s lowest of citizens—the poverty-stricken Punjabi Muslims. Smaller and darker-skinned than the rest of Lahore’s populace, the most fortunate among them were doomed to lives of mind-numbing menial labor, while the balance found themselves sucked up into the ranks of street urchins, beggars, and homeless. Their plight was one of subcontinental Islam’s dirty little secrets, and it turned the stomach of the man sitting in the stolen Toyota Corolla outside the tomb of Muhammad Iqbal, poet and ideological godfather of modern Pakistan.
A devout Muslim, the man was humiliated to see how the promise of Muslim brotherhood had been denied the Punjabis. Pakistan was a hypocritical tangle of class divisions, and nowhere was that more evident than in the role of women. Beyond the fortunate women of the privileged classes who participated in think tanks, ran charity organizations, wrote novels and plays, and even occupied a handful of token positions in General Musharraf’s cabinet, were those who suffered the daily horrors of domestic abuse, gang rape and murder at the hands of small-minded men professing their love of Allah and their devotion to the Muslim faith. Many, many times the man wished his employer’s ultimate target was Pakistan, but it wasn’t. As horrible as this country was, there was another that was much more evil and in much greater need of an all-powerful, cleansing blow.
His target emerged from the building across the street right on time. Every Wednesday like clockwork, the diminutive professor from Pakistan’s oldest and largest university—the University of the Punjab—visited the old city for lunch. He was a man of strict routine and consistency—traits that had served him extremely well as a scientist, but which were about to lead to his undoing. As the professor unchained his small motorbike and pulled into traffic, the assassin set down the newspaper he had been pretending to read and started the car.
Two blocks before the university, the professor was still oblivious to the stolen Corolla following him. That was about to change. Approaching a busy intersection just before the campus, the professor watched in his mirror as a blue Toyota sped up as if to pass and then suddenly came swerving back hard to the right.
Bystanders screamed in horror as they watched the helmetless professor slammed to the pavement and then dragged beneath the Corolla for over half a block before the undercarriage of the speeding car spat his mangled, lifeless body into the street.
A mile and a half from the Lahore International Airport, the assassin abandoned the stolen car and covered the rest of the distance on foot. Once he was safely ensconced in the first-class cabin of his international flight, he pulled a weathered Koran from his breast pocket. After repeating several whispered supplications, the assassin turned to the back of the book and removed a coded list of names, hidden beneath the tattered cover. With the scientist from the University of the Punjab taken care of, there were only two more to go.
TWO
36º 07’ N, 41º 30’ E
N ORTHERN I RAQ
S oldiers from the U.S. Army’s 3rd “Arrowhead Brigade,” 2nd Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT) had spent enough time in Iraq to get used to the sound of enemy rounds plinking off the armor plating of their eight-wheeled infantry carrier vehicle, but ever since they had driven into the small village of Asalaam, one hundred fifty kilometers southwest of Mosul, things had been dead quiet.
The village was one of many around the Christian enclave of Mosul known for its religious and ethnic tolerance. For the most part, Muslims and Christians throughout the area lived in relative harmony. In fact, the name Asalaam came from the Arabic word for peace. It wasn’t the locals, though, that the SBCT soldiers were worried about. A stone’s throw from the Syrian border, foreign insurgents were one of the greatest threats they faced.
The men had seen their fair share of ambushes in Iraq, including a devastating suicide attack within the confines of their own base, and none of them intended to return home in anything less comfortable than an airline seat. Body bags were out of the question for these soldiers.
Second Lieutenant Kurt Billings, from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was wondering why the hell they hadn’t seen anything, when the vehicle commander of the lead Stryker came over his headset and said, “Lieutenant, so far we’ve got absolutely zero contact. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is moving out there. I don’t even see any dogs.”
“Must be pot luck night at one of the local madrasas,” joked the radio operator.
“If so, then somebody should be manning the village barbecue pit,” replied Billings. “Stay sharp and keep your eyes peeled. There’s got to be somebody around here.”
“I’m telling you, sir,” said the vehicle commander, “there’s nobody out there. The place is a ghost town.”
“This village didn’t just dry up overnight.”
“Maybe it did. We’re in the middle of nowhere. These people don’t even have telephones. Besides, who’d care if they did dry up and blow away?”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation for why we’re not seeing anybody. Let’s just take it slow,” said Billings. “Do a complete sweep of the village and then we’ll dismount. Got it?”
“Roger that, Lieutenant,” responded the vehicle commander as their Stryker began a circuit of the village.
For this assignment Billings had organized his men into two, eightman fire, or assault, teams. The first team, designated Alpha, was with him in the lead armored vehicle, while Bravo team, under the command of Staff Sergeant James Russo, followed in the second Stryker. Their assignment had been to check on the status of three American Christian aid workers based in Asalaam, who hadn’t been heard from in over a week.
It was scut work, and Billings didn’t like taking his men out to check up on people who had no business being in Iraq in the first place—even if they were fellow citizens. Not only that, but the term Christian aid worker was a gross misnomer in his opinion. He’d yet to meet one whose primary reason for being here wasn’t the conversion of souls for Christ. Sure, they did good work and they filled in some of the gaps that were invariably left behind by some of the larger, more established and experienced aid organizations, but at the end of the day these people were missionaries plain and simple. They also had a rather otherworldly talent for getting themselves in trouble. There were times when Billings felt more like a lifeguard at a children’s pool than a soldier. While young missionaries might have the best of intentions, they more often than not lacked the skills, support, and all-around basic common sense to be living in what was still very much a war zone.
And that was another thing. The U.S. military was supposed to be in Iraq backing up the Iraqi military and Iraqi security forces, not helping lost twenty-somethings find their way. But whenever one of these situations popped up, which they did at least once or twice a month, it always fell to the American military to go out and rescue their own people. The Iraqis didn’t want anything to do with them. They were too busy trying to put their country back together to be wasting their time on rescue efforts for people they had never invited into their country in the first place, and frankly Billings couldn’t blame them. He had suggested to his superiors that missionaries ought to be required to post a bond before entering Iraq, or at least be required to pay the cost of their rescue the way stranded hikers and mountain climbers have to do back in the States, but his superiors just shrugged and told him it was out of their hands. If young Americans needed rescuing, even in the wilds of Iraq, then that’s what the U.S. Military was going to do. Never mind the fact that it might put more young American lives in jeopardy in the process.
Billings studied the faces of the men on his fire team and toggled the transmit button of his radio. “Russo. You copy?”
“Loud and clear, Lieuten
ant. “At twenty-five years old, Russo was an old man compared to the eighteen-to nineteen-year-olds on his fire team, but not nearly as old as Billings, who was twenty-eight.
Billings heard the beep tone that indicated Russo had taken his finger off his transmit button and said, “This might not exactly be a routine check-in-on-the-children op. Let’s be very careful on this one.”
“We’re careful on every one.”
Billings smiled. Russo was right. They had one of the best platoons in Iraq. They’d been in country for three months and had chalked up some impressive wins against the bad guys and no one had suffered so much as a hangnail. “Just the same, there’s something about this that doesn’t feel right. Make sure your guys stay focused.”
“Will do, Lieutenant. In fact, if Alpha team would rather stay nice and cozy inside their vehicle, I’m sure those of us with Bravo team would have no trouble sorting this one out. “There was a chorus of chuckles from the men inside Russo’s Stryker.
“Not on your life, Sergeant,” replied Billings with a smile. “When we get in there, you make sure your men watch and learn from us.”
“Hooyah, Lieutenant.”
Billings turned to the men inside his Stryker and said, “Gentlemen, Sergeant Russo seems to think we’re not needed today. He says Bravo team can handle the assignment themselves.”
“Fuck Bravo team,” said a young private named Steve Schlesinger.
Normally, Billings wouldn’t put up with language like that, but he liked his men to get pumped up before going into potentially dangerous situations. Besides, eighteen-year-old Schlesinger was their shining star. He had uncovered and helped defuse more improvised explosive devices in the last month than anyone in Iraq over the last year. The kid had a sixth sense for danger, and despite the fact that he was from Chicago and thought the Cubs were a better team than the Milwaukee Brewers, Billings liked him.
