Even linking the exercise with the helicopter theft seemed unlikely. It was almost certainly just a coincidence.
Bad luck wasn’t much of a consolation, though.
“End of the day, all of this makes the Indians look bad,” said Doc. “But it doesn’t really change anything as far as we’re concerned. Two more tangos running around in India aren’t going to change the basic equation. The damn country is a recruiting paradise. And it’s a wall-to-wall hideout. That hellhole you were in the other morning is exhibit A, Dick. You can’t tell your tango from a ragpicker without a scorecard.”
Doc was just getting started.
“Let’s say they took the helos, and not the Pakis or whoever,” he continued. “Stealthy attack birds? Hell, they’re shitloads easier to stop than some poor schlep who’s got C4 taped to his scrotum. And with all due respect to the secretary of State, nuclear proliferation treaties are all very well and good, but they’re not worth jack when it comes to dealing with a dirty bomb in a train car, or a couple of containers in a ship sailing into Bombay. Hell, this stuff is great television fodder, but it has nothing to do with our jobs here.”
He rose from his chair.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he added, “I have to get back to work. I have a couple of wrenched knees that need to be taped.”
It was vintage Doc, and a good lecture.
But our aim, if not our job, wasn’t just to help train Special Squadron Zero to test the Indian defenses at the Commonwealth Games. We wanted to prevent a strike. Every training exercise could go off without a hitch, and if some jackass with a bomb under his headdress blew himself up at the closing ceremony, our op would have failed.
Yes, that’s a very high standard. But when you’re Red Cell International, it’s what people expect. Never mind the political shenanigans. Or the money that was currently being wasted on contracts with people who had no business being allowed in the country, let alone giving its military any advice. Forget about the screwed up efforts to coordinate intelligence. Ignore the choked arteries of the government and military bureaucracy. The bottom line was results, not excuses.
And Doc’s main point was indisputable: it was time to get back to work.
* * *
The one person whose perspective we didn’t have on the two escapees was Fatty’s. Since it was just about teatime, I decided to pay him a visit.
Urdu was half a block from the hotel, polishing his car, when I went down. He wiped off the dried polish with a smile, then threw the rag in the trunk and hopped in the car.
“Hot day, Mr. Richard.”
“It’s always hot in Delhi, Urdu.”
“No, we have winter.”
“When is that?”
“One week. December.”
It was hard to believe, given the sweltering heat and shirt-soaking humidity, but Delhi does have a winter, and it can get all the way down to eight or nine degrees Celsius … which works out to about forty-eight Fahrenheit. A typical day in February would see the mercury hit twenty-one C, or about seventy.
That’s balanced out by the sand storms of summer, when the temperature can touch forty-four C — in the area of 112 F.
“It gets so hot you wish for the monsoons,” said Urdu as he navigated through a series of chokepoints, bringing us through the early afternoon traffic. He had heard of the helicopter theft; everyone in Delhi had. As far as he was concerned, it was clearly the work of the Pakistanis.
“They have sworn blood to have our throats,” he explained. “They encourage the terrorists. And then there are the outlaws in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Do not forget the Maoists.”
“Who could forget them?” I said.
Far from being a remnant of the Cold War, the Communist Party of India was formed only in 2004 from the merger of two other parties. They had vowed to violently overthrow the government. While they don’t get as much ink as Islam nutjobs, these guys were responsible for more than two dozen murders and bombings since their creation.
“So what would you do?” I asked him.
“We take the fight to them. We attack these terrorists in their beds at night. No hold back.”
Cabdrivers. If I were president, I’d replace my national security advisor and half the CIA with them.
* * *
With the political fallout continuing, Minister Dharma had transferred our remaining prisoner to the Interior Ministry. This wasn’t a big loss. We’d gotten everything we could from him. He hadn’t been pals with the two escapees, and aside from saying that Fatty was the laziest terrorist he’d ever met, hadn’t done more than confirm things we’d already known. I’m not sure what the Interior Ministry did with him; for all I know he’s a passport clerk in Mumbai.
Fatty, meanwhile, was now under protection of a plainclothes detail from the NSG, the National Security Group. The NSG’s Special Action Group (SAG), the people who pulled off the counterterror raid in Mumbai I mentioned earlier, wanted to talk to him. Through some sort of backroom handoff, military intelligence apparently “owned” him, to which I say …
Never mind what I say. The important thing was that his bar bills were no longer being paid by Special Squadron Zero, but we still had access to him. We went over to get his thoughts on the most recent developments.
Obviously, the organizations in question were under the misunderstanding that Fatty was an effective spy and didn’t want to blow his cover. The unit watching him had been told to be ultra-discreet. They had two men outside the hotel in cars, two in the lobby, and two more on the floor directly below Fatty’s suite. Another pair was in the hotel suite. They rotated at irregular intervals.
When I arrived, they were about ten minutes from a planned shift change, and decided to go through with it a little early. I went up in the elevator with the two men who were going into the suite. The elevator had been locked off so that it had to stop on the floor below the suite; there the two plainclothes guards would check visitors out before letting them proceed.
The first sign of trouble was the empty chair across from the elevator when the door opened.
The two NSG men I was with exchanged a look. The one on the right patronizingly put his hand out to keep me back while the other drew his weapon and went out into the hall.
The two guards had disappeared. There was no sign of struggle, nothing out of place that we could see — the hall was just empty. There were no guests on this floor, no restrooms, not even an ice machine — nothing except the stairwell, which was clear.
The NSG men wanted me to stay there while they went upstairs, but I wasn’t about to do that. We called for backup, sent the elevator down, then began trotting up the stairs to the penthouse level.
The stairwell opened at the side of a small foyer that consisted of the elevator door and the door to the suite. There was another empty chair near the suite door. It was knocked over.
One of the NSG men reached for the door handle. I stopped him and pointed to the carpet. There were small spots of blood leading inside.
He said something in Punjabi — a curse I believe — then reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, putting it over the knob so he wouldn’t disturb any evidence.
The door was locked. He took out his passcard, buzzed the lock open, then pushed the door cautiously.
He called Fatty’s name, then for the agents who’d been inside.
No answer.
Two more NSG men came out of the elevator behind us. Everyone looked at each other — not a word was spoken — then began moving into the suite, guns out, two to a side in mutual support. I was at the rear.
The main suite room was empty. But there were blots of blood on the floor here. We followed them around to the bedroom, then to the bath.
Both NSG bodyguards were lying in the whirlpool, facedown. The tub was full of blood. They’d been shot in the head, at close range with small caliber bullets.
Fatty was out in the hot tub. He’d been garroted. His tongue, swollen, was sticking out of
his mouth.
They found one of the girls who’d been with him in the service area near the air conditioners; she’d been thrown to her death.
The other was in the bushes nearby. They both appeared to have been raped before they were killed and tossed over. Apparently the killers had decided to mix a little perversity with business before taking their leave.
( II )
Give the bastards credit — in less than half a week, they had managed to embarrass, befuddle, and bamboozle some of India’s finest counterterrorist groups. To use the politically correct term, they had kicked the good guys in the balls.
The worst part of the fiasco was that no one could agree on who exactly it was who’d been doing the kicking.
We have a tendency in the West to see our enemies as something like a mirror image of ourselves, with maybe some long beards and AK47s. We think of them as organized along the lines of an army, with a commander-in-chief at the top of the pyramid: Osama bam Lambfuk, or whatever sociopath mass murderer happens to be au courant. The generals take orders from him, passing them on to colonels and captains and on down the ladder, until some dumb schmuck of a pimple-faced eighteen-year-old virgin turns himself into an exploding shitbox in the middle of the city.
But that’s not an accurate picture.
Some organizations that use terror as a weapon are highly structured. Think of the PLO in its prime, Hamas at present, the Viet Cong, or even the early Nazi and Fascist parties if you want to stroll down memory lane. In cases like that, the groups’ goals are usually pretty specifically political. Often they’re related to a specific geographic area or grand cause — take over a country, exterminate a people.
Those are the sort of goals that require a large political organization, and the groups use terror as a weapon because it helps them achieve them. Or rather, they think it does, which is something else again.
But not every group that practices terror is organized, or even wants to be. If you just hate someone — nonbelievers, for example — then there’s no need to elect a chairman to achieve your goal. You just go kill them.
These groups tend to be small, even a few dozen. When viewed from the outside, their organizational principles may look chaotic, even schizophrenic. But they’re not usually. And the ones that are use that to their advantage.
Small means hard to infiltrate. Small means, potentially, disciplined.
It doesn’t mean not capable of big things.
Some of the most dangerous groups operating today are very small cells of like-minded terrorists who have little if any formal connection to larger groups, or Osama bin Goatherder. Many have had contact with al Qaeda, bin Goatherder’s favorite charity, but others just look at it as a model of inspiration.
Al Qaeda has directly sponsored a variety of terrorist actions, as we all know. But just as importantly they have acted as a financial seed organization for many. They take the CARE idea to the opposite extreme, providing money and training.
Al Qaeda isn’t the only one — Iran has what is essentially a rival organization seeding its own brand of psychotic dickwads throughout the Middle East, and there’s an Arabic dictionary’s worth of groups willing to pass expertise and the occasional euro to anyone willing to take it.
All of this support has created a hothouse environment for terrorists. Many different groups, with different goals, are thriving. The one thing they have in common is — they like to kill innocent people.
In a way, it doesn’t matter who exactly the group is, or even what their motivation is. It’s the end result that concerns the general public. Murder sucks, it’s got to be stopped.
A few years ago, the Virginia/Washington, D.C., area was terrorized by a nutcase and a teenage sidekick who decided they were going to snipe people for the hell of it. Were they any less effective because they didn’t shout “God is great!” after every murder? Would we have been more concerned if they did?
Actually, we might have had quicker media coverage and a better response from law enforcement if they had, but that’s more about us than them.
If you want to stop a murderer, mass or otherwise, you have to start by knowing what or who the hell it is you’re up against. If you’re looking for a sniper, you don’t want to waste a lot of time analyzing who buys strychnine in the metro D.C. area.
Or to put it in biblical terms:
Know thy enemy, so that you may smote the motherfucker before he smoteth thee.
You’ll find that in the Old Testament, Book of Marcinko, Chap. V, lines 32 – 33.
* * *
Not knowing who to smote, the Indian security forces went about smoting whatever the hell they could. Literally thousands of people were arrested all around the country.
I’m not saying that some or even most of these people didn’t belong in jail, or that checking on them was a complete waste of time. But it wasn’t the best use of resources, and there was a good deal of collateral damage. To take one example — the overnight doubling of the prison population in one of the states led to a riot, which led to a prison escape. Among the prisoners who escaped were two men who had organized a terror cell within the jail. That cell ended up perpetrating a series of terror incidents several months later — but we’ll save that, and the danger of prisons as terrorist breeding ground, for another book.
Meanwhile, the politicians and press screamed that Pakistan was organizing and harboring terrorist groups. True statements, even if in this case they were made by people who had no idea what the hell they were talking about.
What you had was a massive domino effect — one terrorist action setting off a reaction, encouraging another, etc., etc. In a perverse kind of way, the reaction helped the terrorists: all of Islam is under attack, their arguments went. We need a holy war to end the persecution.
Start in India, move on to the Middle East. Eventually, all of Islam would rally to their brothers’ cause. Islam would be reunited as a grand world force.
That may or may not have been anyone’s actual plan, but it was hard to argue that events weren’t leading in that direction as the cabinets in both countries began meeting around the clock and their armies were put on high alert.
* * *
How do you run a disarmament conference in the middle of that sort of crisis, let alone host a world-class sporting event?
Short answer: you don’t.
But our State Department didn’t figure any of that out. On the contrary, disarmament was now even more important.
Which made me suddenly a very popular person at the Foggy Bottom. Everyone wanted to get my perspective on the crisis.
It’s nice to feel wanted.
Ha.
I did take one call, naively believing that maybe there was one person13 in Washington who actually wanted an honest appraisal of the situation. It took all of sixty seconds for me to realize that the only thing the caller really wanted was some sort of cover for a position he’d already decided on.
My sat phone suddenly lost its signal. Quaint, but effective. I didn’t bother taking any calls from Omar, either, or his lackeys.
I spent a few hours with NSG’s investigative staff, reviewing what I knew and what I’d seen. I felt sorry for the guys I met with. Neither man had apparently known the dead agents, but you could tell the murders had affected them.
I know what that’s like. When you’re in a war, everyone you work with is a brother. “Do not ask for whom the bell tolls” isn’t just the name of a famous novel or a line from a seventeenth-century poem, it’s a statement of fact. We’re all connected in battle.
After that, I headed back to my state-paid posh digs, figuring I ought to put in an appearance for whoever was watching my comings and goings there. My cab was blocked by several cars from a high-level African diplomat, who apparently had decided to bring half his family along for his official visit. I got out near the end of the driveway and trekked toward the entrance, still working over the different threads of everything that had happened duri
ng the day.
My guard was down — or, more specifically, up, as I was looking at the plainclothes security people accompanying the diplomatic delegation. Because of that, I missed the real threat — a miniature torpedo that struck my right knee and nearly knocked me over.
I looked down to find the urchin I’d chased into the slums a few mornings before. She was still wearing the prison shirt, now adorned with a variety of beads and buttons.
“There you are, U.S. Joe!”
She gave me one of those smiles they use to get money out of people in UNICEF ads.
“Let go of the leg, ragamuffin,” I growled.
“My name is Leya, U.S. Joe! Don’t you remember?”
She was a chirper. She had a bright voice to go with bright eyes. If you’re in the business of outsourcing wake-up calls to India, she’s your girl.
I reached down and unhooked her from my leg. She grabbed on to my hand with both of hers. The stuff they use on mousetraps is less sticky.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I asked.
She laughed. It was the sort of laugh an IRS agent gives you when you ask if he’s here to lower your tax assessment.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“You have a candy bar?”
“No, I don’t have a candy bar. Go home.”
“I know a lot about the boat.”
“What boat?”
“You asked about a boat. I have answers, Bozo.”
“Do I look like a clown to you?”
She giggled. It turned out she didn’t actually know who Bozo was.
“Give me a candy bar,” she said, “and I will tell you all about the boat.”
You could look at it as extortion. Or a business deal. In my mind, though, it was charity — the skinny rail of a brat had to be at least ten pounds underweight.
I’d noticed a candy machine in the hotel lobby, around the corner from the desk. I took her inside and got her a Cadbury Crunchie Bar — ninety-nine cents anywhere in the world except for a ritzy hotel, where it cost five hundred rupees, a little more than ten bucks.
RW16 - Domino Theory Page 14
