To the south, a road dead-ended at a massive garbage pile, a hundred-foot-tall monument to Afghanistan’s poverty. No fires were visible on the pile, but a haze of black smoke drifted from the trash. The stench of sewage filled the cabin as the Black Hawk flew through the smoke’s inky tendrils. Women and children trudged over the smoldering debris, looking for rags or scrap metal, anything they might trade for dinner.
In a field nearby, scrawny boys played soccer with a makeshift ball. Wells could see a breakaway develop even before the players did. A kid in a raggedy blue T-shirt cut past his defender, awaiting a pass from the midfield—
But before Wells could see what happened next, the game faded behind him. These Black Hawks cruised at 150 miles an hour. Wells decided to imagine that the kid had scored, in keeping with his newly optimistic outlook. Maybe he should write a self-help book. The power of positive thinking. And shooting first.
The fearsome mountains of the Hindu Kush jutted ahead of the helicopter. The peaks, capped with snow even in summer, stretched hundreds of miles to the northeast. Near Afghanistan’s border with China, they rose above 20,000 feet. Around here they were closer to 15,000 feet, still higher than any in the continental United States. The CIA and the Pentagon believed that bin Laden was hiding in the Kush or just south, in Pakistan’s Peshawar Province. But without solid intelligence, finding anyone in the Kush was impossible. The range was an endless maze of valleys and caves, among the most difficult places on earth to search. Snow fell by October. By December the dirt tracks that the Afghans optimistically called roads were impassable. The guerrillas holed up in tiny villages and waited for spring, knowing that even the best-equipped American units could not touch them. In the summer, the Talibs moved between the mountains and Kabul, planting bombs, hijacking supply trucks, and generally wreaking havoc.
And they were getting more dangerous. A month before, fifty Taliban had attacked a police station east of Kabul. When a rapid-reaction team from Bagram responded, a second band of guerrillas ambushed it. Eight American soldiers died.
Then mortar fire hit the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Blessing, an outpost near the Pakistani border. Six men died. Mortar attacks weren’t uncommon in Afghanistan, but attacks this accurate were. So two squads from camp had hiked into the mountains to talk to the villagers who lived north of the base. Everywhere they went, the soldiers offered gifts: medical supplies, pens and paper, and candy — Afghans loved Tic Tacs, for reasons no one could figure. The idea was to keep the locals friendly, or at least neutral, and get information about the source of the mortars. In most villages, the squads were met with tea, suspicious looks, and little else.
But in a nameless village twenty miles north of Camp Blessing, the soldiers got a surprise. Bashir Jan, the village’s headman, told them about a guerrilla outpost to the west. Besides fifty Taliban, the camp contained several “white fighters,” he said. And why had he given up this precious information? The guerrillas were stealing the village’s goats and refusing to pay, he said.
“The guys said he was furious,” Holmes told Wells. “Couldn’t have been madder if they’d taken one of his wives.”
“Never look a gift goat in the mouth,” Wells said.
Bashir’s report was the one that had spurred Exley to get the satellite photographs. Now the mercenaries, whoever they were, were about get a call from Companies A and B. Two companies from the 10th Mountain Division, including the unit that had first discovered the camp, would provide tactical support. The plan didn’t make the 10th Mountain happy. Their guys were the ones who’d died in the mortar attack, and they had developed the original intel. As far as they were concerned, they deserved the kill.
But the terrain demanded an air attack, as Wells had realized immediately when he’d seen the satellite photographs. Armored vehicles couldn’t get through, and an assault on foot was impossible. The camp-ground was hundreds of feet above the valley. Guerrilla snipers would devastate attacking infantry. Plus the mountains in this part of the Kush were riddled with tunnel networks. If they got advance warning, the guerrillas would disappear into their underground labyrinth before they could be destroyed.
Thus the 10th Mountain had been pulled back like a rottweiler on a choke chain, and the Special Forces ordered in. The helicopters would strike at dusk, destroying the camp before the Talibs could respond. Speed would be key. If the operation worked as planned, the guerrillas would panic. The Special Forces would cut off the caves. With that route blocked, the guerrillas would flee down the mountain, into the unfriendly arms of the 10th Mountain, whose men would wait at the base of the valley.
A high-risk operation, Wells thought. But the soldiers in these helicopters had the best chance in the world of pulling it off. And they had a secret weapon.
THE SUN WAS LOW as the four-helicopter convoy reached Jalalabad, one hundred miles east of Kabul. From here, they would fly northeast along the Pech River and into the mountains. One of the Apaches had briefly flown over the valley two days before, the only live visual recon of the campsite. More overflights might have spooked the guerrillas.
Wells looked at his watch. 1840. They should be at Chonesh in less than an hour, assuming nothing went wrong. An hour after that, they’d know where they stood. If they hadn’t broken the camp by then, they would probably be stuck in a firefight, with little chance for reinforcements until the morning.
Afghanistan was eight and a half hours ahead of Washington, so Exley was probably at work right now, Wells thought. He pictured her in their suite in Tysons Corner, sipping coffee from the ridiculous mugs that Shafer had bought. She knew this mission was happening tonight, and though she hadn’t asked for details, she had to know it wouldn’t be easy. Yet she’d given him her blessing to go, encouraged him even. Because she’d known he needed the action, needed to feel useful.
In truth, the Special Forces were doing him a favor by letting him participate in this mission. Technically, Wells was replacing B Company’s second medic, who had been shot in the leg two weeks earlier and was recovering in a military hospital in Germany. But Special Forces units were often short a soldier or two. Initially, Wells had worried he might distract the other men in the unit, who’d fought together long enough that they knew one another’s moves instinctively.
The night before, he’d told Holmes he’d sit out the attack if Holmes thought he didn’t belong. “No hard feelings if you don’t want me, Glen,” Wells said.
“You kidding?”
“What do you mean?”
“You gonna make me say it out loud? These guys love you. You’re better for morale than the Cowboys cheerleaders.”
“Really?” Despite himself Wells had felt a flush of pride.
“John, look, we’ve got some history. I don’t pretend to know you all that well, but it’s obvious, what happened in New York is all twisted in your head. Put aside the politics for a minute and think on what you did. The people you saved. That’s what these guys see. Believe me. Hughley wants you out there tomorrow. I do too.”
1910. THE PECH RIVER FLOWED shallow and fast beneath the Black Hawk, its clear water reflecting the gold of the sun’s dying rays. Two children stood beside the river, waving their thin brown arms metronomically as the helicopter roared by.
The Black Hawk banked left, turning north into a narrow valley, hidden from the sun by a crumbling rock ridge. In the sudden darkness, the helicopter’s gunners hunched intently over their 7.62-caliber mini-guns.
In these valleys, the ride got dangerous. Fly too high, you opened yourself to a lucky shot with an RPG or a SAM. Fly too low, especially at night, you could get taken out by a canyon wall. The topo charts for these valleys were notoriously sketchy. The pilots usually stayed low, figuring they could dodge a mountain more easily than a missile.
The helicopter pulled up steeply as the valley tightened. Ahead, a trickle of water coursed down a near-vertical rock face. The Black Hawk banked right and cut through a gap in the rocks, its skids skimming th
e tops of the stubbly oak trees that speckled the mountain. The helo topped the ridgeline, and a new valley opened beneath. The Black Hawk followed the contours of the mountain downward, changing pitch and direction like a supercharged roller coaster.
“In my next life I want to be a helicopter pilot,” Wells yelled to Hughley.
“I know what you mean.”
Suddenly, Wells was cold. A few minutes before, they’d been in the sun at 6,000 feet. Now they were in shadows at 10,000, and the temperature had fallen twenty degrees. He was glad he’d followed Hughley’s advice and thrown thermals in his pack. Even if the mission went perfectly, they’d be out all night.
1930. THE BLACK HAWKS SLOWED while the Apaches raced ahead. Part of the plan. The Apaches didn’t carry soldiers, but without them the operation had little chance of success. The Apaches — AH-64 helicopters, each carrying a crew of two — were the secret weapon that would enable twenty-two American soldiers to take on fifty guerrillas. In the Army’s dry jargon, the Apaches would “prepare the battlespace for the insertion.”
In the cabin of Wells’s Black Hawk, the crew chief held up five fingers, silently signaling that the helicopter would reach the landing zone in five minutes. The soldiers nodded, their faces expressionless. The silence was anticipation, not fear, Wells thought. These men wanted to get on the field and play.
1933. THE BLACK HAWKS SWUNG over a ridge and hovered at the southern end of the Chonesh Valley. Two hundred yards ahead, the Apaches were preparing the battlespace. Their preparation consisted of firing AGM-114N Hellfire missiles at the guerrilla camp.
The Army had developed Hellfires at the height of the Cold War to defeat the armor of Soviet T-80s. A generation later, the missiles were reengineered to take out an enemy that preferred caves to tanks. In place of shaped charges to cut through steel, these Hellfires held a fine aluminum powder wrapped around high explosive. The twenty-pound warheads sprayed molten shrapnel in every direction, killing anyone in a twenty-five-foot radius.
As Wells watched, the forward Apache fired two missiles. The Hellfires glowed in the dusk, trailing brilliant white exhaust as they screamed toward the plateau and exploded in orange fireballs. Seconds later the sounds of their impact reached the Black Hawks, echoing off the valley’s rock walls and into the night.
Whoomp!Whoomp!The trailing Apache fired two more missiles. For the first time, the guerrillas responded. A small white burst flared toward the helicopters, a rocket-propelled grenade fired blindly into the night. At this distance, the RPG was as harmless as a baby’s fist. It ran out of propellant short of the Apaches and crashed to the valley floor.
The Apaches fired their last Hellfires, then pulled up to make way for the Black Hawks. Time to go in. Wait too long, and the guerrillas would regroup, or just disappear into the caves. The Black Hawks accelerated toward the plateau. Wells pulled on his night-vision goggles for a closer look. Already the guerrillas were reorganizing. Two men ran out of a cave holding an RPG launcher. They twisted toward the Black Hawk and fired. Again they missed, but not as badly as before.
“No white flag,” Wells yelled to Hughley.
“You were expecting one?”
“Surrender’s not part of their playbook. They’d rather die.”
“Let’s help ‘em, then.”
1935. THE BLACK HAWKS REACHED the landing zone. The men in the cabin leaned forward, poised to unhook their harnesses and rappel down. Side by side, the Black Hawks descended — a hundred feet, ninety, eighty—
Whoosh! An RPG sailed between the helicopters, exploding against the side of the mountain. On the plateau below, guerrillas fired AK-47s, the rounds clattering off the Kevlar floor mats that protected the Black Hawk’s cabin. The Black Hawk’s gunners perched over the mini-guns, firing back in controlled bursts. The brass jackets from spent machine-gun rounds poured out of the guns and into the night. The helicopter lurched downward, leveling out fifty feet above the ground. The lead gunner raised his left fist, the signal to drop.
“Now!” Hughley screamed above the turbines. “Now!”
12
BEIJING, CHINA
THE BANQUET HAD BEGUN HOURS BEFORE, but the tables remained spotless, the linens pressed, the buckets of champagne chilled just so. Tuxedoed waiters changed plates and filled glasses with perfect efficiency.
From the outside, the banquet hall looked as drab as every other building in Zhongnanhai, the walled compound in Beijing where China’s leaders lived and worked. But inside, the hall — officially called Huairentang, the Palace Steeped in Compassion — seemed to have been transported directly from Versailles. Mirrors gilded with twenty-four-karat gold lined the walls. Orchids and lilies flowed out of a red ceramic pot, a priceless fourteenth-century treasure. Behind a screen a pianist played Chopin on a Stein way grand. Oversized crystal chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, beaming soft light on the hard faces of the men who sat at the table.
The food, too, was superb: moist dumplings of sweet potatoes and ginger; fresh steamed lobsters, their meat basted with a sweet-spicy chili; the choicest cuts of lamb, sizzled in a slightly bitter soy sauce; shark-fin soup, a Chinese delicacy, the fins succulent and chewy.
Yet the nine men at the table, China’s supreme leaders, had manners more suited to an all-you-can-eat buffet. They ate greedily, lifting slabs of foie gras into their mouths, sucking loudly on giant Alaskan king crab legs. At first glance, the nine could hardly be distinguished. Oversized wire-rim glasses and helmets of black hair framed their faces. They wore black suits and white shirts and red ties knotted tightly around their throats. All but one smoked, sucking deeply on Marlboros and Hongtashans, stubbing out their cigarettes on the sterling silver ashtrays around the table.
They could have been a family of undertakers, very successful undertakers. They were the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee. And only history could explain their frenzied eating. Even the youngest of them remembered the Cultural Revolution, the decade beginning in 1966 when Mao and the Red Guards upended China. Four of these men had spent their twenties in reeducation camps, brutal places where they spent their days dragging hoes through rocky soil and their nights confessing their sins at “struggle sessions.” All nine had known family members and friends who didn’t escape the camps, who died from pneumonia or famine or beatings by the Red Guards.
No one in this room ever talked openly about those years. But they remembered. And all nine had learned the same lesson that the Cultural Revolution taught everyone in China — though the lesson wasn’t the one that Mao had hoped to teach. Or maybe it was. Take what you can, while you can. Because no matter how secure you think you are, you’ll lose everything if the Party turns on you.
AMONG THE LOOK-ALIKES at the table, Li Ping, the defense minister, stood out. Unlike the rest, he didn’t smoke. He couldn’t avoid drinking. To have skipped the toasts would have been impolite. But he sipped his wine while the others guzzled.
And where the other eight were paunchy, Li was trim, thanks to his workouts. Li wasn’t modest about his physique. He challenged army officers half his age to work out beside him and smirked when he left them behind. “It’s the fat pig that feels the butcher’s knife,” he told them.
The others on the committee called him “The Old Bull,” emphasizing the “old,” not-so-subtly implying that he ought to act his age. Li didn’t care. Exercise kept him strong. He wanted to distinguish himself from the men around him, whose bodies and minds were equally corrupt.
To the world outside Zhongnanhai, Li was a “conservative,” a “hard-liner.” He knew his reputation. He couldn’t read English, but each morning his deputies gave him translations of CNN and foreign newspapers. The foreigners didn’t understand him or China, he thought. He wasn’t conservative. He didn’t want to undo the progress of the last two decades. But unlike the “liberals” who ran the Party, he didn’t care about getting rich. His ambitions ran deeper.
China’s elite was composed mainly of technocrats, eng
ineers, and economists who spent their lives doing the Party’s bidding. They rose slowly, running villages, cities, then provinces. Along the way they proved their loyalty to their bosses while building power bases of their own. Li had followed a different path. He’d come up through the Army, the only real soldier in the Party’s top ranks.
Li had served with distinction in China’s last major war, its invasion of Vietnam in February 1979. As a young captain, he’d commanded a company that was among the first units over the border. The war was not even an asterisk in the twentieth century’s bloody history, but Li had never forgotten it.
The Vietnamese had known the Chinese were coming. Their soldiers and militiamen were battle-hardened from a decade of war with the United States. China sent in a huge army, hundreds of thousands of soldiers. But its men were underequipped and unready, peasants who’d received only a few weeks of training before being sent to the border. Some could barely load their rifles.
Li’s company was in the vanguard of a division attacking Lao Cai, a town just south of the border. His unit came under constant fire from the Vietnamese militias. The ground was soft and spongy and the mines were everywhere. The Vietnamese especially liked simple explosives that the Americans called “toe poppers,” pressure mines with just enough power to blow off a man’s foot. Making matters worse, Li’s only medic was killed by a sniper in the battle’s first hours. After that he’d had to leave injured men where they lay. Taking care of the wounded was a luxury the Chinese army couldn’t afford.
In the first two days of fighting, he’d lost fifty men, a third of his soldiers. But somehow he and Cao Se, his first lieutenant, kept his company together even as the units around them collapsed. Finally, facing the prospect of a devastating defeat, the People’s Liberation Army brought up heavy artillery. The big guns surprised the Vietnamese and turned towns near the border into rubble. By the time Li’s unit limped into Lao Cai, only dogs and amputees were left.
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