by Gary Haynes
“So they all got away. Even the sonofabitch you say you shot on the roof and the one who fired the Stinger,” Crane said, waving his hand through the air.
“Wait, the man on the roof was incapable of walking. How the hell did he disappear?” Tom asked, straightening up.
Crane held up his hands. “You tell me?”
“You don’t believe me?” Tom wondered if Crane had been sent to do what the kid hadn’t had the experience or guile to accomplish: make him say something to incriminate himself.
“I didn’t say that. I just said he wasn’t there when the command centre asked the police to pick him up.”
“What about the man and the woman in the official line-up? They were all supposed to be vetted.”
“They were,” Crane said. “The Pakistani police raided their houses. Guess what? They weren’t there. Now, let’s go through it again.”
Jesus Christ, Tom thought. Back to square one.
Tom was questioned for a further fifteen minutes. Crane nodded his approval for most of the time, and never once lost his temper or even appeared irritated. When he finished, he looked genuinely sympathetic.
“That’s it. Same as I told the kid,” Tom said.
“Don’t beat yourself up too bad. The guys on the Kennedy detail let it affect their whole lives, even though everyone knows they did all they could. Now it’s home for you. There’s a flight taking the Under-Secretary of Defense and some brass back at fifteen hundred. You’ll be on it.”
“I wanna stay. Help out.”
Crane sighed. “It’s outta the DS’s hands. POTUS’s orders,” he said, using the acronym for the president. “It’s down to the spooks now.”
“She’s still my responsibility. I got a week left as head of the detail. A guy like you can understand that.”
“It’s not up to me. Besides, you’re probably still in shock. And don’t assume you know what makes me tick. You don’t,” Crane said, pushing the chair back against the wall, attempting to ride it.
“Whatever. But I’m not leaving.”
“You disobeying a direct order from POTUS?”
“He’s at the top of the food chain. He don’t concern himself with cleaner fish.”
Crane raised his thick eyebrows. “Wow, you got some self-esteem issues there, Tom. You gonna sprout gills?”
Tom smiled, weakly.
“Seriously, you’ll get through this. You’re a nice guy, Tom. Go home.”
They batted the issue around for a further five minutes. Finally, Crane agreed to pass it by Deputy Director Houseman, who was staying behind to coordinate matters on the ground.
“Appreciate it,” Tom said.
Crane struggled to get his bulk out of the chair. “Interview rooms for midgets. Jesus. They’ll be ordering us to carry stepladders next so they can climb up and feel less intimated.”
“Technically they’re called dwarves. Back home they like to be called little people. And they are the same as you and me,” Tom said.
“I’m joking with ya. You know that, right?”
“Sure I do,” Tom said.
“I know they’re the same. They just come up to your goddamned waist.”
Tom rubbed his temple and sighed. Crane was smart, but he was a jerk, too. He glanced up. “So come on. How do you figure that guy on the roof disappeared?”
Crane was looking serious, his eyes narrowing. “He was evidence. I guess the Leopards had some plainclothes guys on the ground, who cleaned up before the Pakistani cops got there.”
“Yeah. Sure they did.”
“A conspiracy theorist, huh. Well, it won’t come as any surprise to you when I say that if the deputy director lets you stay, don’t trust anybody. You hear me, Tom?”
Tom thought for a moment. “That include you?”
13.
An hour later, Crane told Tom that he’d swung it, and that the old man had asked him to join them for an initial in thirty minutes’ time.
The secure conference room was thirty metres square, the massive windows obscured by gleaming Venetian blinds. Tom sat at a large pine table on one of the matching rattan-wicker chairs, his brown loafers resting on coral-blue tiles. Crane said that it had been swept for bugs ten minutes before. Behind the locked door, two Marines ensured that they wouldn’t be disturbed.
“The ISI are playing hard ball,” Houseman said, cradling a fist. “But we have no jurisdiction here. They won’t allow the FBI to investigate. Anyone else in the US intelligence community, either.”
“They’re in a difficult position,” Crane said. “If they’re seen to be too pro-West, they’ll play into the hands of the Pakistan Taliban. And they got enough on their plate with the Shia Leopards just now. On the other hand, if they alienate us, they won’t get what they want.” He pinched an ear lobe, looking a little smug.
“Which is exactly?” Tom asked.
“About ten US divisions heading into Tehran,” Houseman said.
“We should leave them to fight their own battles. The Pakistanis double-crossed us,” Crane said, his tone surly. “Goddamned lying sons of bitches who caused the deaths of thousands of US and coalition forces.”
Tom knew Crane was referring to bin Laden. If it weren’t for the Pakistanis, he would’ve been captured in Tora Bora back in 2001. A bunch of al-Qaeda and Taliban lieutenants, too. After that, the ISI babysat thousands of insurgents in the Pakistan Tribal Areas. Then they just picked up where they’d left off. When bin Laden’s six-year holiday in Abbottabad was factored in, Tom was inclined to agree with Crane.
“That maybe, but I want to know what we’re going to do to find Lyric?” he asked, a little more bluntly than he’d intended.
“My money’s still on the Leopards,” said Crane. “Backed by the Iranians.”
“The ISI had to be involved,” Tom said. “The assault couldn’t have happened if they’d done what they said they would. The helicopter didn’t arrive on time. The snipers just disappeared. And it was too well organized.”
Houseman cleared his throat. “Listen, son. The Leopards have ex-military in their ranks. They were capable of it. The Iranians equip them with top weaponry. We ain’t dealing with farmers with AK-47s here. The building was razed to the ground by thermobaric charges.” He snatched up a bottle of water, took a frustrated pull.
Tom saw Crane staring at him.
“When a country is going down the tubes, people start to do all sorts of weird things. It could be as simple as rogue elements,” Crane said. “Or just plain corrupt ones. God knows it’s a national disease. Besides, the ISI are saying it was Shia traitors in their ranks. Shia cops, too. You remember when Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, got assassinated?”
Tom nodded.
“Then you’ll recall it was two of her own bodyguards. Peppered her with thirty rounds. Sikhs, who did it for revenge after the army stormed their temple and killed hundreds. Religion in these parts overrides any other affiliation.”
Tom studied Crane’s face. He guessed he’d been a handsome man once. But now his features looked tired, his eyes hooded, his mouth drooping at the sides.
Houseman banged the bottle on the table, as if he wanted Tom to stop staring. Clenching his jaw muscles, the old man said, “Up until the generals took over here, the Pakistanis were talking about declaring war on us if we attacked the Iranians. That gives you a hint at how complicated this area of the world is. They were buddies; now the Pakistanis regard Iran as an existential threat.”
“I don’t get it,” Tom said.
“You obviously ain’t heard of the Iran-Pak gas pipeline,” Crane said. “The Pakistanis have an ongoing energy crisis. They figured sidling up to the Iranians would go a long way to fixing that. The thing is now, the new Sunni regime here wouldn’t let an Iranian pipeline cross their land if their lives depended on it.”
“I thought the Iranians wanted to invade Balochistan to get their hands on natural gas,” Tom said.
“You’re right. They’v
e got the resources to find and extract it. The Pakistanis don’t. All their efforts are focused on national security.”
“And so what now?” Tom asked, pursing his lips, feeling a little out of his depth.
“There are no contingency plans for such a kidnapping,” Crane said. “Not on foreign soil that ain’t fully cooperative. That’s the risk, and Lyric knew it.” He sat back in his chair, began riding it, as appeared to be his habit.
Tom bristled. “What are you saying?”
Crane ignored him. “The flight to Kabul leaves in twenty minutes. Get what you need.”
“Wait a second. Lyric is very likely to be right here in Islamabad. And we’re leaving?”
“POTUS has ordered the closure of the embassy in forty-eight hours,” Houseman said. “You come to Kabul with us or you go home.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Tom said. “But why Kabul?”
“The flight time is thirty-five minutes,” Houseman said. “We still got a fully operational set-up there. Otherwise we’d be flying back to the States and doing this from a computer screen at Langley. Now get outta here before I change my mind.”
Reluctantly, Tom stood up and strode over to the door. They hadn’t said anything explicitly, but he guessed the real meeting would begin as soon as he reached the corridor outside.
14.
“You okay?” Houseman said to Crane after Tom had left.
“I guess.”
“Anyone knows what she’s going through, it’s you, Dan.”
“Yeah,” Crane said, his mind going back.
He was walking down a narrow street in Beirut, Lebanon, the air thick with the smell of Arabic coffee and grilled chicken. It was midday, and he was sweating badly beneath his flannel shirt. The so-called South Lebanon conflict, the Israeli occupation, which had begun in 1982 and would last until 2000, was in its fifth year.
The small white Fiat came screeching around the corner with four masked men inside. His cover was that of an aid worker from Chicago and he wasn’t strapped. But now he wished he had a weapon, if only to have the option of ending it before they took him. He knew what that would mean. The torture first, followed by the years of solitary. Then his corpse would be lifted from the trunk of a car and thrown into a drainage ditch. By the time it was found, the insects would’ve had a feast and his mother would have nightmares, because the authorities would not allow her to see his face when they flew his body home.
He didn’t run, because the only place to run was back the way he’d come, and a second vehicle had already stopped halfway through a three-point turn, all but blocking off the street.
They exited the Fiat fast. He was fit and trained, but he knew they’d only make it worse for him in the close confines of the car if he fought them. There was a time for that and a time for raising your hands, he’d learned. He took an instep hard in the groin, and a cosh over the back of his head as he doubled over. He blacked out then.
The makeshift cell Hezbollah had kept him in in Lebanon was a bare concrete room, three metres square, without windows or artificial light. The door was wooden, reinforced with iron strips. When they first dragged him there, he lay in the filth that other men had made. They left him naked, his wrists and ankles chained. He was gagged with rag and tape. They had broken his nose and split his lips.
Each day they fed him on half-rancid scraps like he’d seen people toss to skinny dogs. He drank only tepid water. Occasionally, he heard the muted sound of children laughing, and smelt a faint waft of jasmine. And then he could not say for certain how long he had been there; a month, maybe two. But his muscles had wasted and he ached in every joint. After they had said their morning prayers, they liked to hang him upside down and beat the soles of his feet with sand-filled lengths of rubber hose. His chest was burned with foul-smelling cigarettes. When he was stubborn, they lay him bound in a narrow structure shaped like a grow tunnel in a dusty courtyard. The fierce sun blazed upon the corrugated iron for hours, and he would pass out with the heat. When he woke up, he had blisters on his skin, and was riddled with sand fly and red ant bites.
The duo were good at what they did. He guessed the one with the grey beard had honed his skills on Jewish conscripts over many years, the younger one on his own hapless people, perhaps. They looked to him like father and son. They took him to the edge of consciousness before easing off and bringing him back with buckets of fetid water. Then they rubbed jagged salt into the fresh wounds to make him moan with pain. They asked the same question over and over until it sounded like a perverse mantra.
“Who is The Mandarin? His name? Who is The Mandarin?”
He took to trying to remember what he looked like, the architecture of his own face beneath the scruffy beard that now covered it, and found himself flinching at the slightest sound. They had peeled back his defences with a shrewdness and deliberation that had both surprised and terrified him.
By the time they freed him, he was a different man.
15.
The Ariana Hotel was in the Diplomatic Quarter, Kabul, near the US Embassy and the Presidential Palace. But it hadn’t been open to the public for well over a decade. The former hotel still housed the headquarters of the CIA in Afghanistan. The compound and the roads around it were some of the most heavily protected in the capital, following a day-long siege by insurgents in September 2011. Crane had grinned and had told Tom that to the average Afghan, the quarter was as inaccessible as a Playboy Bunny.
“It’s still off-limits to the local cops,” he said as they rode past a checkpoint with huge cement bollards in an adapted Land Cruiser. “For how long, who the hell knows these days?”
The boxlike, cream-coloured structure looked run-down. Tom saw more than three dozen armed guards on the perimeter, together with mobile rocket launchers. Two IAV Strykers, eight-wheeled, armoured fighting vehicles fitted with M2 .50-cal machine guns, were parked either side of the main gate.
“You’re not taking any chances, that’s for sure,” he said.
“Yeah, but looks are deceiving.”
“The Taliban breach this?” Tom asked.
“Green on blue nightmares. You can’t trust anyone in an Afghan uniform. And on the streets it’s worse than ever. We’ve lost a total of fifty-two core collectors since the military pulled out; fifteen in the last month alone. We stopped making that official a year back. You know, Tom, more people are killed coming down off a mountain than ascending it. Leaving an occupied country ain’t no different. They held off for a while there. To encourage us, I figure. But now they want as many dead as possible. I give it maybe three years before even what’s left of us are gone for good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I think.”
“You still got your gun on you?”
“Yeah. You want me to hand it in?” Tom asked.
“You’re a special agent, ain’t ya? You just keep it close. A SIG?”
“Standard-issue.”
“I favour the Kimber Eclipse Custom II,” Crane said, easing the handgun out of his shoulder holster and weighing it in his hand. “Now that barrel alone is five inches, but it’s a .45 ACP and is fitted with these here low-profile night-sights,” he went on, fingering the back of the gun where the sights were mounted in rounded dovetails. “And it’s only a four-pound trigger pull. I got it in 10mm, too, and that’ll take a man’s head clean off.”
“A good piece,” Tom said. “But mine allows an easy draw.”
“You wanna hold it?”
“I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself,” Crane said, holstering it. He took out a slim cigar from his jacket pocket, lit it with a gold lighter. “You smoke, Tom?”
Tom shook his head. He looked at Crane. He took a long pull on the cigar before puffing little smoke rings out of the open window. He was a strange kind of guy.
16.
Twenty minutes later, Tom was feeling frustrated that nothing positive seemed to be happening. He found himself at another intelligence briefing in another secu
re conference room, although the security had been ratcheted up several notches. He’d had to show a laminated badge to a Marine outside the shockproof door, who’d checked his name off on a clipboard list, and had noticed that the plaster had been replaced by lead-lined walls to eradicate the threat from electronic listening devices.
Crane and Deputy Director Houseman were present, together with half a dozen CIA analysts, a couple of high-ranking US Army officers, and a lieutenant in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, or Delta Force, called Mark Sawyer. He was a troop commander in B Squadron, a six-foot blond with a boyish nose and neat little ears, eyes the colour of cornflower.
B Squadron contained seventy-five operators split into three troops, which were in turn made up of teams of five. It was stationed at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina. The Delta Force squadrons, together with SEAL Team 6, made up the direct action and reconnaissance element of the tier-one Special Missions Unit of the US Armed Forces. Sawyer’s troop was on standby on the off chance something happened in the next day or two. They’d been training Afghan Special Forces as part of the US commitment to assisting the country’s security services following the official withdrawal, which Tom felt was the only piece of good luck that had happened so far.
Like the façade, the interior of the Ariana wasn’t exactly five star, but it had modern facilities and was clean. Apart from the flat-screens and the ubiquitous blue tiles, the basement conference room had a large moulded-plastic table and chairs. It was lit by fluorescent strips, which had added a clinical aspect to what had started as a frosty meeting. Tom knew it was the way when different departments with ultimately competing budgets had to get something done together, the continuing US debt crisis just making that dynamic more acute. But gradually everyone put aside their differences and concentrated on the clear-cut task of getting the secretary home safely, although they had nothing material to go on as yet.