Keep up, boss, she thought, as the airfield’s floodlights flickered in the twilight of dawn, the looming sun splashing streaks of orange and yellow across the indigo sky.
A dozen marines guarded the main gate, where perimeter walls gave way to waist-high concrete barriers staggered fifty feet in front of the first level of base security. Their M4 carbines, aimed at an enemy she still could not see, flashed a deafening, stroboscopic barrage of 5.65 × 45mm hell into the boiling inky cloud shrouding the gate.
Suicide bombers.
She looked about her without breaking her stride, searching for Nasseer and his team, but the Shinwari clan was long gone.
How convenient, she thought, as alarms blared across the compound. Before long the base’s fast-response team would reach the gate to reinforce the marine contingent.
But Monica beat them to it, running up to the closest three soldiers, their stances firm, legs spread apart, rifles aimed at the dozen or so figures dressed in white who were emerging through the smoke screen beyond the barriers. The rest of the gate detail also swung their weapons toward them, firing as one, cutting down the threat.
And that’s when she noticed three shadows clad in black, shifting in the haze off to her right, a couple hundred feet away, rushing up the side of the perimeter wall in a deep crouch, chests wrapped in explosives. She saw the wires dangling under their right arms, rigging the charges to detonators in their right hands.
Monica yelled while aligning the closest figure, but the gunfire drowned her voice, the diversion achieving its desire effect, drawing the attention of the marines away from the incoming trio.
Harwich ran up to her, clutching a SIG Sauer P220 in his right hand.
“It’s a fucking Kansas City Shuffle, boss!” she screamed, recalling the scheme of misdirecting the mark to look in one direction while sneaking up to it from the opposite side.
Harwich understood immediately, shouting back, “Taliban style!”
Standing shoulder to shoulder with her CIA superior, Monica fired multiple times, the Glock recoiling, ejecting spent cartridges, then sliding in fresh ones from the ten-round magazine. Harwich did the same with the SIG.
One of the rebels went down, then another. But the moment they did, she realized her mistake, and she yelled even louder as she saw, almost in slow motion, the insurgents’ right hands releasing dead man’s switches.
Harwich must have noticed it too, because he spun back to get behind the wall just as she did. They bumped into each other as they scrambled to put some reinforced concrete between them and the—
Deafening and blinding, the blast engulfed all three insurgents in a ball of flames and smoke that mixed with the thick haze from the initial blast. Even with the towering wall providing partial cover, the shock wave slammed her chest like a fist from God, tossing her back several feet.
She landed on her side, hard, the pain arresting, her ears ringing, her vision blurred.
Blinking, Monica looked up with considerable effort, shaking her head before sitting up and checking her limbs, exhaling when she saw everything still attached where it should be. She also noticed that she still held the Glock.
Staggering to her feet with difficulty, a headache forming in her temples, a powerful ringing in her ears, and feeling light-headed and nauseated, she noticed Harwich slowly rolling on his back a few feet away.
He looked as stunned as she felt, his wide-eyed stare glaring about, trying to get his bearings. Beyond him, barely visible through the dust and smoke hovering over the fortified entrance, she recognized the shapes of several marines sprawled about. Unlike Harwich and her, the soldiers had experienced the full force of three explosive vests from a distance of one hundred feet.
And beyond them, skirting the blistering smoke, several silhouettes materialized from the darkness and the pitch-black haze, advancing toward the temporarily unguarded gate with obvious haste and determination. A few hundred feet to their right and left, two additional groups of armed men raced toward them.
“Get up, boss!” she screamed, though her voice seemed distant, removed, a result of the explosion. “We’re about to be overrun!”
Headlights loomed in the distance from multiple points across the base as a detachment of soldiers raced to the rescue. She could also hear the whop-whop sound of helicopters taking flight on the airfield at the opposite end of the base. But they were still at least a minute away, while the insurgents were seconds from breaching the perimeter.
Mustering strength, ignoring the mounting headache and her aching body, and not waiting for Harwich, Monica did her best to face the incoming threat. Holstering the Glock, she took a knee by a fallen soldier and grabbed the M4 next to him.
Her fingers moved automatically, verifying a chambered round. Remaining in a kneeling position, she aimed the M4 at the closest wave of assholes and fired seven rounds before the rifle ran dry.
As she cursed and snagged a fresh magazine from the marine’s ammo belt, a line of bullets from the threat now less than a hundred feet away ripped through the dirt a foot from her.
Shit!
She rolled away on instinct while swapping magazines. But she never got the chance to fire another round. Her shoulder struck something hard, like a log, breaking her roll.
It was the right boot of the largest man she’d ever seen, with arms as wide as her thighs, wielding an air-cooled .50-caliber M2 Browning machine gun. His features were hidden with camouflage cream beneath a Stars and Stripes bandanna. Dressed in a Special Forces black uniform under body armor, the giant aimed his cannon at the insurgents.
“Stay down, little miss!” he shouted in a baritone voice, opening up his monster of a gun, which was fed by an ammunition belt stowed in a large rucksack hanging from his right shoulder.
He did not just fucking call me “little miss”!
Monica was momentarily taken aback by the reverberating noise and awe of this weapon, and she grimaced while getting showered with hot spent cartridges. But before she could get out of the way, the man had leaped over her, running toward the insurgents while mowing them down.
Three more men followed Goliath and his mighty cannon, running around her and Harwich. One was completely bald and quite husky, built like a pit bull and clutching a suppressed Heckler & Koch MP5A1. He was followed by a similarly built man sporting a full head of dark hair and by a short and wiry man with ash blond hair, a thick mustache, and a damn lollipop in his mouth. Both were also armed with MP5A1s.
They dashed past her like ghosts, cruising through the haze and the pungent smell of cordite from the explosions while firing their submachine guns.
Who are these guys?
The blond soldier glanced down at her while firing. The lollipop shifted as he shouted over the noise of the reports, “This ain’t no place for skirts!”
Monica stared in disbelief.
He did not just say that!
Anger made her surge to her feet, clutching the M4 and scrambling after them as the foursome tore into at least thirty insurgents with a mixed-caliber barrage.
Monica joined in the fight, ignoring the side stares from the chauvinistic assholes, focusing her fire on the right flank, near the charred concrete marking the spot where the suicide trio had detonated their vests. Several insurgents emerged through the smoke veiling the lower section of the perimeter wall. She limited her shooting to single rounds, making each count, but doing so made her momentarily ignore her left flank.
Her peripheral vision caught, at the last minute, two dark figures materializing through the haze. But before she could shift targets, she felt the unambiguous energy of two .50-caliber rounds whooshing overhead, ripping through the air just before both insurgents vanished behind clouds of crimson.
Sniper, she thought, as Harwich stepped up to her and covered her open flank with another M4 carbine and she returned her attention to the men trying to sneak in by the wall.
The force of six worked in unison with overlapping arcs of fire, cut
ting down the threat with synchronized accuracy. Then some of the insurgents began to fall forward, shot from behind and from the side by an unseen ally.
As the Humvees reached the front gate and a pair of Apache helicopters zoomed overhead, dispersing the smoke, Monica spotted Nasseer and his clan off to the right of the main gate, laying down suppressive fire from behind their 4 × 4s, tearing into the Taliban lines with multiple volleys of surgical destruction. The Shinwari boss held his Russian PK machine gun in his right hand while holding the belt feeding it with his left in an impressive display of strength and control.
Harwich waved at the Shinwari warriors, who continued flanking the Taliban rebels.
Two weathered coupes raced up the main road from the center of town, less than a mile away, drawing the attention of the Apaches. The attack helicopters banked toward the fast-moving threat while unloading a dozen Hydra rockets and 30mm fire from their underside M230 chain guns. It was a brief but fiery, and even synchronized, show that dwarfed the suicide vest explosions and pretty much vaporized the incoming cars before they got anywhere near the base.
But during the middle of the attack, as everyone stared at the Apache’s massive display of force, another wave of insurgents mounted a last-ditch effort. Monica spotted them first, taking aim at two rebels armed with RPGs and approaching a concrete barrier. A half dozen rounds struck the insurgents in the chest. They dropped their launchers while collapsing—and while the four soldiers, plus Harwich, stared at her.
“Good shooting, little miss!” the big guy with the big Browning shouted in his booming voice.
“Not bad for a fucking skirt, huh?” Monica retorted, while the blond soldier grinned and winked, a lollipop protruding from the corner of his mouth, fingers playing with one end of his ridiculous mustache, which reminded Monica of porn stars from the 1980s.
It ended as quickly as it had started, especially after a hundred marines set up M2 and M240 machine gun defensive fighting positions around the gate and four Apaches patrolled the field leading to the road into town. Units deployed in and around the city of Kandahar were pulled back to protect the airfield. In addition, all aircraft, armored vehicles, and NATO divisions participating in Operation Mountain Thrust, fighting insurgents in the Sulaimans, were recalled as KAF went into lockdown mode.
Monica inspected the carnage they had inflicted on the enemy while ambulances hauled away wounded marines who had miraculously survived the attack. Harwich thanked Nasseer and his team for a timely intervention, before he went on to find any survivors among the Taliban and bring them to the detention center for interrogation. Before Monica joined him, she watched the four nameless soldiers disappear in the controlled chaos of a base recovering from an attack. She then stared at the line of machine gun emplacements set amid new concrete barriers shielding them from the cruel and unpredictable land that was Afghanistan.
* * *
But beyond the smoke and war equipment, beyond the vast poppy fields leading into town—past the mud-and-brick skyline of bazaars, mosques, and markets—two UAZ-469 Goats reached the eastern edge of town after a nonstop journey south from Jalalabad.
The two-car caravan turned west on highway A1 and crossed the city without disruption, going around checkpoints and roadblocks abandoned in haste moments ago by direct orders from NATO High Command at Kandahar Airfield.
The tired and weary travelers continued west for another fifty miles, following the foot of the Sulaimans, before turning left on Southwest Road 2 and then right on an unmarked trail that eventually led them up steep switchbacks carved into the side of the mountain to a compound nestled in the dense wooded gradients high above Lashkar Gah.
23
A Pound of Flesh
JALALABAD. NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
It had taken the Kidon a couple of hours to break the al Qaeda man.
He could have done it sooner, but he had to pause twice to let Zameer vomit.
In the end, Aaron had asked his informant to just wait outside the Mossad safe house on the outskirts of town, where they had driven the Land Cruiser after exiting the Khyber Pass.
Strapped to a table, writhing in inconceivable pain, the insurgent continued begging for a bullet—anything to end a treatment no prisoner could endure, few interrogators could dispense, and most could not witness without getting sick.
“Please,” Qadeer mumbled. “Please … end this…”
“Soon, my friend,” he whispered. “I just need to be certain.”
So he waited, leaving the needles in place at specific spots in the man’s body to amplify the pain he had inflicted with a scalpel while also keeping Qadeer in a state of hyperawareness, preventing his body from shutting down. In a way, the technique was the opposite of Chinese acupuncture.
Qadeer had not budged when Aaron cut him, but he could not tolerate the way those needles stimulated his nervous system, smothering all semblance of resistance.
“That is … where they are … going … I swear,” he mumbled, before once more begging for it to end.
Aaron examined the deliberate damage he had inflicted on this man, removing just the right pound of flesh from just the right places before letting the needles do their magical work.
“But there is nothing there,” Aaron replied, looking at the location north of Lashkar Gah where the man claimed there was an old Soviet compound from the 1980s.
“There … is … I swear … Oh, please … kill me.”
Aaron stared into the man’s surviving eye. “I believe you,” he finally said. “Now, tell me more about this bomb.”
* * *
Drenched in sweat, Aaron stepped out thirty minutes later and found Zameer sitting by the railing around the front porch, a cigarette in his right hand, which was still trembling.
The Hindu Kush mountains rose sharply while traversing the nation from the northeast to the southwest, becoming the Sulaimans near the middle of the country.
“Are you okay?” he asked his informant.
He nodded slowly, his eyes on those distant snowcapped peaks. “Yes, sahib. I’ve just never seen…”
“I know. Dirty business. But necessary.”
“Did you … learn what you needed to?”
Aaron nodded, his eyes shifting south. “I did. And I need to leave right away.”
“Where?” Zameer said, making a face.
The Kidon tapped the informant on the shoulder. “Take the Land Cruiser. Head back to Pakistan. I’ll be in touch.”
Zameer narrowed his stare. “But … how are you going to—”
“I’ll manage. Now get out of here. Someone is coming to clean up in there,” he said. “And you don’t want to be anywhere near here when they arrive.”
24
RN-40
COMPOUND 57. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
The brothers embraced after nearly five years apart—since Akaa had fled the country in the wake of the American invasion following the September 11 attacks. Pasha had gone with him while Akhtar remained behind to lead the holy resistance movement in Kandahar province.
They cried, laughed, and cried some more. Their journey from those early years of battling the Soviets in the mountains alongside Osama bin Laden had been violent, turbulent, and intensely unpredictable. They fought the invasion force with everything they had, from Chinese automatic weapons and mortars to hit-and-run attacks in the middle of the night to car bombs. They buried IEDs along all Soviet access roads and launched rocket strikes against their garrisons. They were outarmed and outnumbered, but the mujahideen believed they had Allah on their side—plus the Americans. Areas like the Panjshir Valley, the Sulaiman Mountains, and Jalalabad turned into killing fields, with the death count on both sides rising to insane levels.
But the rebels persevered through a war of terror, instilling fear in the heart of the enemy, shooting down their aircraft with Stinger missiles, making them pay dearly for every town they took, every road they secured, and every hill they controlled
. The Soviets could defeat the insurgents in any given region, but they could not keep them defeated. Sooner or later the mujahideen would strike back, frustrating the Soviets’ best efforts to achieve control of any given area for very long. They kept up the pressure, using their iron will against Soviet technology, until the pain level was too hard for Moscow to stomach. And in May of 1988, Moscow began a ten-month-long withdrawal from the embattled nation.
After the invading force returned home, the communist government left in place held on to Kabul for almost three years, supplied by Moscow.
Akhtar remembered the day when the mujahideen finally liberated the city, though the intense fighting had left it in ruins. But they had done it. The underfed mountain goats had repelled the mighty bear. He had been just a boy when Kabul fell, and so had Pasha. But boys or not, Akaa had made sure they had done their part in the fighting. He had made sure their pesh-kabz blades were stained with Soviet blood.
But those glorious days following their victory were short-lived.
Soon—and much to bin Laden’s detriment—Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and a host of other rival factions that made up the mujahideen turned on one another for control of the government. And the civil war didn’t limit itself to Kabul. Herat, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Lashkar Gah, and other cities also became embroiled in chaos as tribes attacked each another viciously, without regard for civilians caught in the cross fire.
The fighting was no longer about jihad. And it certainly wasn’t about the good of the Afghan people. It was about power, about control. And it was bloodier and crueler than the war against the Soviets.
So Osama bin Laden had to step in.
By then he had already founded al Qaeda, an organization global in scope, seeking to reinstate an Islamic caliphate around the world. When word got out that gunmen at militia checkpoints in Kandahar and other cities had begun raping women, Akaa forged an alliance with Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the largest group of former mujahideen, the Taliban. The alliance between al Qaeda and the Taliban had been quite natural, since both believed in a strict interpretation of Islamic law. But while al Qaeda maintained its focus on global jihad, the Taliban concentrated on restoring order inside Afghanistan.
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