by Fritz Galt
With sixty seconds to act, he made his way swiftly through the dark toward the entrance hall. He found the door to the coat closet, slid it back and saw the alarm box in the glow of its own green and red indicators. The green light signaled that the security system was turned on. The blinking red light meant that his surreptitious entry had been detected.
With one deft movement, he reached up and found the key vibrating in the warm alarm box. He turned it at once. There was an electronic click, then both indicators turned off.
He was safe until the next shift arrived.
From his previous visit to the listening post, he knew that it was used for eavesdropping purposes rather than clandestine meetings.
Deep in the interior of the house, he found a bathroom. He turned on the light, stepped inside and quickly closed the door. He stared at the flat, porcelain Turkish toilet. A hidden room lay behind it and was accessible through a single painted piece of plywood.
He stepped onto the toilet’s two sculpted footprints and pressed his knuckles against the board until one side gave way. It swung into the opening, and he entered the small room.
There, he found a desk lamp and switched it on, revealing two desks weighed down by bulky electronic surveillance equipment. A second room seemed to be for storage. In it, he found what he was looking for. A large cardboard box held a jumble of field surveillance equipment.
He reached in and pulled out an efficient little pack consisting of a bugging device and its matching receiver and earpiece. The bug was no more than a simple disk the size of a point-and-shoot camera battery. He squeezed the raised “On” button, thus activating it, and slid it under the carpet between the two rooms. He slipped the receiver and earpiece in his jeans pocket.
He might not have access to professional surveillance equipment for some time, so he checked the box for what else he might take with him.
He dug out a signal transponder and its accompanying tracking device. They could come in handy tracking people or vehicles. He reached around some more and pulled out what looked like a roll of Lifesavers, the Tropical Fruit variety. It was the perfect spy camera, complete with photoelectric microchip and USB connection.
He discovered a waterproof pouch elsewhere in the room, and attached it to his waist. Then he put all the items he had selected into it. Finally, he pulled the receiver’s earpiece out of his pocket, jammed it into an ear and turned on the receiver.
“Testing one, two, three,” he said aloud, directing his voice into the part of the room where the bug lay under the carpet. A microsecond later, he heard his own voice transmitted into his earpiece.
“Gotta go,” he said.
“Gotta go.”
He smiled at hearing his voice repeated through the earpiece.
Swiftly, he turned off the light, left the room and made sure to close the panel behind him. He reset the alarm, which gave him a minute to exit the listening post before the alarm armed itself.
Then he slipped out of the house through the back door.
Congressman Connors pounded the gavel once more and called the hearing to order.
“Director Friedman,” he began. “That was a rather impressive and moving recording of the final moments of your officers’ lives, especially that of your son. We all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to them and pay tribute to their valor. I only wish that the exact identity of the perpetrator of the crime could be as evident and clear.”
He eyed Lester Friedman across the carpet from him. Lester bore a smile that he would rather see beamed at terrorists than at him.
“But be that as it may,” he continued, “I’d like to turn to even more pressing business. I understand that you have disturbing news of another al-Qaeda target.”
“That’s right, Mr. Congressman,” Friedman said. He leaned forward and spoke with a conspiratorial whisper into the microphone. “I am prepared to testify that the Central Intelligence Agency has learned of a pending terrorist attack on a massive scale against a singular target in the United States.”
His words lingered in the air.
“How credible is this evidence?” a Senator from Florida finally asked.
“This intelligence is based on documented evidence found in the Tora Bora cave complex.”
The Senator cleared his throat. “And just exactly how big is this intended strike?”
“Let’s use the words of the document itself in translation from the original Arabic,” Friedman said with emphasis, and held up a page to read. “Quote: ‘This plan is designed to exceed the scope of the airplane attacks of September 11.’ End quote.”
The Senator from Florida was energetically pursuing Friedman now. “And what specifically is this singular target?”
“That we do not know,” Friedman admitted. “But you can bet that we’re looking into it, both from a raw intelligence standpoint and by analyzing what can be accomplished in the short amount of time remaining.”
“And what’s the timeframe we’re looking at?”
Friedman held up the page once again and read, “‘December 11.’ The three-month anniversary of September 11. That’s eight days from today, gentlemen.”
Connors felt beads of perspiration forming on his brow. He felt like he was standing on a volcano that was about to explode. “And exactly how do you intend to acquire this raw intelligence?”
Friedman looked him squarely in the eye. “Through George Ferrar.”
“Do you have him in custody?”
“We have made a positive identification of him in Peshawar, Pakistan. As you know, Pakistan is not an easy place for a foreigner to hide. I think I can safely predict that we’ll have him rounded up within twenty-four hours.”
Lying back on his bed in the one-star Green’s Hotel in Peshawar, Ferrar turned on the eavesdropping receiver and listened through the earpiece. At the moment, nobody had entered the listening post.
It was early dawn and people outside his window were stomping their feet to keep warm. He heard the scraping noise of shop owners opening their tiny stores that sold notions for sewing. Women began stoking fires beneath the pots of dye.
A muezzin used an electronic speaker mounted on one of the mosque’s minarets to call out the dawn prayer, and for several minutes the city came to a standstill. What were the vast majority of Pakistanis praying for—the Saudi-funded madrasah religious schools that taught Pakistani youths how to fire rifles and build bombs, or the forces of modernization that could ultimately lift Pakistan out of its near-zero growth rate?
Ten percent of the country would pray for the orthodox hardliners, and fifteen percent, the elite of the country, would pray for a modern state. The remaining three quarters, made up of one hundred million Pakistanis, was the big question mark. Maybe their industrious, can-do spirit would turn toward the almighty rupee.
The silence was broken by sounds transmitted directly into his ear. The surveillance team, known as transcribers, had just entered the hidden room at the listening post.
There were two voices, both speaking in Urdu.
That made sense. The CIA hired native speakers of Urdu to monitor the various bugs placed around Peshawar in its several major hotels and in the boardrooms, as well as headboards, of the big Islamic players.
His understanding of Urdu was limited, but developed enough to catch the gist of a conversation and sophisticated enough to understand the emotional content.
The transcribers hired by the Americans didn’t sound agitated in the least. Their talk of tea and sweet cakes relieved him. Neither had noticed his prior intrusion.
A donkey-pulled cart creaked by in the alley below, and children began to call out to their schoolmates. He rolled out of bed and closed the window.
He fit the receiver back into his ear. The two transcribers were discussing key terms to listen for in their various bugged transmissions. In the course of their conversation, one mentioned a recent treasure trove of al-Qaeda documents that the Agency had uncovered at Tora Bora.
> So there was valuable evidence in the cave. Perhaps that’s what Bolton was trying to protect.
Then the men discussed a date, December 11, for a “big strike” against America. He froze as he lay there. It had to be Bolton and the bombs.
A big strike next week meant he had eight days to track down Bolton and derail his plans.
Out of the dizzying volume of information the men were inadvertently imparting to him, a term hit him like a cold splash of reality. As they began discussing smuggling, the name “Beaver Tail” came up.
Beaver Tail Island was a tiny, wooded American islet known only to locals and unmarked on any maps. It lay off the larger Mt. Desert Island which itself lay off the central coast of Maine. Beaver Tail Island was in fact where he and Tray Bolton had spent their youth.
Bolton was definitely heading for Maine. And it made sense, from a terrorist’s point of view. Maine had a rugged coastline perfect for smuggling weapons and outlaws from Canada into the United States.
With one smooth motion, he rolled out of bed.
The train would take a good twenty-four hours or longer to reach Karachi. Pakistani or American security forces might be watching for him at the airport. A long taxi ride across the country would be too conspicuous. He took a deep breath. He had only one choice.
Fifteen minutes later, he found himself in the middle of a big bus “depot” area next to the old Grand Trunk road, the old main road from Islamabad to Kabul. In truth, the depot was part parking lot, part access road.
Amidst the mishmash of donkey cart taxis and two-stroke auto-rickshaws sat overloaded, brightly painted buses all waiting to depart for who-knows-where, black smoke pouring out of their exhaust pipes.
Somewhere in that confusion was a bus for Karachi.
Outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Lester Friedman found Charles White, his prematurely balding aide, waiting for him in the limousine. The two men left at once for Langley.
“Give me the history between Connors and Ferrar,” Lester snapped.
“It turns out Ferrar rescued Connors’s daughter from the Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization in the Philippines,” Charles began.
“Really? But Connors made it sound more like Ferrar saved his entire family.”
“Yes, technically the congressman is correct, sir. It turns out that the group holding her hostage was demanding a ransom, and Congressman Connors had to deliver the money in person deep in the jungles of the Philippines. Ferrar was there to arrange the transfer of money and personally negotiate the release of Connors’ daughter.”
“So, we’re talking about an American hero here.”
“Maybe. Maybe not, sir,” Charles said with a shrewd grin. “As you know, elements in Abu Sayyaf were trained by al-Qaeda, and the organization is even linked to bin Laden through marriage.”
“Go ahead,” Lester said, allowing himself a smile. “I think I see where you’re going with this.”
“I’m only suggesting that the fact that Mr. Ferrar was so closely connected with Abu Sayyaf during Mr. Connors’ ordeal, and the fact that he successfully negotiated Mr. Connors’ daughter’s release when so many have failed in other such negotiations, might indicate possible collusion…”
“Between Ferrar and Abu Sayyaf,” Lester completed his thought. “And therefore between Ferrar and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.”
“Unfortunately, I have no direct evidence to support this.”
“In this case, I think no more evidence is needed.”
As the Peshawar-Karachi bus jostled him against fellow standing passengers, Ferrar grabbed more tightly onto a handrail above him. It was his only support in the swaying forest of sweating locals for the next ten hours.
He peered out an open window at the fallow fields of the Punjab. Farmers were out there with hoes, clearing old growth from between the mounds where they would plant next season’s crops. The hardscrabble life brought back memories of his own rural upbringing in Maine.
He had been raised on a farm on the mainland, but passed his summers in the wilds of Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island and trawling for shrimp off the shores of Bar Harbor. He often pulled oars in a race against his high school pal Tray Bolton as their rivalry spilled over into every aspect of life.
They had even lusted after the same girl, and Bonnie Taylor was worth it. A fully formed woman at fifteen, she radiated vitality and a sunny smile. Bolton had claimed her first, boldly stating his intentions to Ferrar on numerous occasions. Football stars, the two young men had their choice of cheerleaders and fans, but Bonnie was the only one they cared enough to compete for.
In a quiet manner, the youthful Ferrar had accepted his fate. Bonnie was Bolton’s girl whether he or Bonnie liked it or not.
Sure, he and Bonnie had traded intimate smiles, walks on warm summer evenings down Main Street in Bar Harbor, passing glances in hot rods roaring side-by-side while waiting for the light to turn green.
Somehow competition had driven the two men closer to each other, rather than apart. For Bolton, the whole thing was the competition. For Ferrar, the whole thing was Bonnie.
Bonnie had joined them on their rollicking cross-country drive to California. She had checked into the International House at Berkeley, and the two men were forced to settle for bachelor living for four years.
Bolton had boasted about his conquests whenever they happened, which was often. Ferrar chalked up Bonnie’s willingness to the licentious Seventies, forgiving her for being a victim of the times.
Conversely, on the rare occasion when he stole a kiss from her, he celebrated the openness of the times—she could give herself to more than one man.
In retrospect, Bonnie was neither of theirs, no matter how much they claimed her heart or her body. In the end, she had departed the left-leaning institution for the Coast Guard Academy. Armed with her mathematics degree, she had graduated from Officer Candidate School on the Thames River near New London, Connecticut, and two weeks later Ensign Bonnie Taylor was underway on a sea tour aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter.
And where were Tray and he? Their testosterone levels soaring to new heights to meet the challenge, they both enlisted in the military.
Tray’s foster father was an officer at the submarine base across the bay from Bar Harbor, and Tray opted for a career in the Navy. Eventually the Seals asked Tray to join their elite ranks and he disappeared into the murky waters of special operations.
Ferrar looked up at his hand, severely creased by the grip he was using to keep his balance. He was a farm boy since birth, and the Army was his destiny. It wasn’t so much the allure of military service as a desire to emulate Bonnie that he enlisted in the Army. Three years into his enlistment, he was selected into the Green Berets.
During those challenging, but exhilarating three years, moving from boot camp to a string of Army bases, he had lost touch with Tray, only to encounter him in a new force created by the Department of Defense. Born out of the demise of the Navy Seals, the DEVGRU Development Group organization was formed, nominally to test weapons and tactics. Within six months, both Tray and Ferrar were fully indoctrinated into the Department’s ultimate counter-terrorist group.
Ferrar had never extracted from Tray Bolton specific details about his three years with the Seals, but by the time he met up with Tray in DEVGRU, it was clear that something in Tray had changed.
Perhaps it was Tray’s checkered past in and out of juvenile hall, or his foster family upbringing, or perhaps Navy life itself didn’t suit him, but Ferrar soon realized that Tray was in trouble on many fronts.
For one thing, Bonnie refused to see him any longer. Commander of her own cutter in San Francisco, California, she was a force to be reckoned with, and Tray was put in his place time and again.
Then there were the underworld figures in Tray’s life. Ferrar knew them only by their sudden appearances and equally quick exits from Bolton’s life. All in all, it didn’t paint a pretty picture.
Ahead of him, several Bedfo
rd trucks laden with cabbage were lurching down the road. Today Bolton would be riding high upon a Pakistani Army transport vehicle to Karachi, while Ferrar swung back and forth in someone’s stinking armpit on a public bus.
But their destination was the same.
It always had been.
Chapter 8
Congressman Connors had just entered his office in the Rayburn House Office Building when his receptionist handed him the phone.
“I think you’ll want to take this call,” she said.
He stopped below the seal of the great state of Oklahoma and took the receiver. “Yes?”
“This is George Ferrar.”
Connors paused to restart his heart. Behind Ferrar’s hushed whisper, he heard men shouting, cranes creaking and chains clanking.
“Where the hell are you?” he asked.
“Some place I shouldn’t be,” Ferrar answered. “They don’t take too kindly to uninvited visitors at a seaport.”
“Which seaport?”
“Sorry, can’t say,” Ferrar said. “If you want to hear any more, this conversation has to be off the record.”
Before Connors promised anything, he had to check out Ferrar, who had become a rather unreliable source of information lately. “Tell me one thing first. Why the hell did you kill Bolton and the others at Tora Bora?”
He heard a short, incredulous laugh.
“Do you really believe that?” Ferrar asked.
“I saw them add five stars to the CIA wall. And you weren’t one of them.”
“I didn’t kill the unit. It was Bolton who ambushed us.”
“Then how come Bolton is dead and you’re not?”
Connors looked around. His staff was watching him with interest.
There was a pause on Ferrar’s end of the line. “How would you feel if Bolton rematerialized, alive?”
Connors lowered his voice and turned his back on the rest of the office. “I’d feel very differently, but I can’t say I’d feel any better about the men who died.”