He had been nothing more than God’s warrior, and he found himself now longing for the peace of Paradise. There had never been any innocents in the struggle, it was something they didn’t understand in the West. Nor did they understand that when an infidel died he simply went to hell for a period until his soul was finally cleansed by the fire. Then the gates of Paradise would open even for him. In the end they all would become brothers in one; all children of a merciful God.
Ali Bahmad came into the chamber and stood respectfully in the shadows without speaking until bin Laden noticed him.
“Yes?”
“Your daughter has returned.”
“Alone?” bin Laden asked softly. He was relieved.
Ali Bahmad nodded. “She’s coming down the hill now.”
“Thank you for letting me know. After prayers have her come to me.”
“As you wish.”
“What about Hamed? Have you heard anything from him?”
“He passed Sarah on the trail. But she was on the way back so he didn’t stop.” Bahmad explained. “She hid from him.”
Bin Laden suppressed a smile. His daughter was independent, for which he was both proud and fearful. “When he reaches the others I want to know.”
“Very well,” Bahmad said, and he turned to leave as a tremendous explosion shattered the early morning silence. It had come from down in the camp, and for a millisecond bin Laden wanted to believe that there’d been an accident in the fuel storage pit across from the helicopter.
A second explosion, then a third and a fourth shattered that illusion. McGarvey had not come here with a deal! He had been sent with his GPS chip to find this camp and guide the missiles to it!
Bahmad had already turned and was racing up the tunnel to the entrance, as three guards clutching their Kalashnikovs came running from the back.
Bin Laden grabbed his rifle and half-limped half-raced after Bahmad as so many explosions ripped into the camp that it sounded like continuous thunder. They were Tomahawk missiles; he well remembered the sound, like an incoming jet airliner, followed immediately by a very sharp slap as the burst shoved a wall of compressed air outward followed immediately by a mind-numbing blast.
Sarah was out there. Bin Laden was sick with fear and impotent rage. The Americans had always fought by then own sense of rules; fair play they called it. They had never gone after a man’s family, or even after an enemy leader, only the soldiers and weapons. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Bahmad lay on the floor of the tunnel just within the entrance, watching the attack. Dozens, maybe more, of the missiles rained down on the camp, the bright flashes lighting up the entire valley even brighter than day. Bin Laden could think of nothing other than his daughter. She was down there, her body naked to the devastation falling all around her.
Bin Laden stepped around Bahmad’s prone figure, when his chief of staff reached up, grabbed a handful of pant leg and pulled him back.
“Get down, you fool!” he shouted over the terrible din.
Bin Laden batted Bahmad’s hand away with the butt of his rifle. “Get everybody out of the cave, I’m going after my daughter.”
“You’ll get yourself killed! They’re targeting the camp not us up here!”
The three guards came from behind and tried to drag bin Laden back from the entrance. He swung his rifle viciously catching one of them in the face, pushing him back against the other two.
“You know what to do,” bin Laden snarled at Bahmad, and he stumbled outside as the missiles continued to fall on them, one after the other, sometimes in pairs, sometimes so many at once they could not be counted.
Keeping as low as he could despite the terrible pain in his knees, bin Laden scrambled down the steep hill into the maelstrom, as he searched the far side of the camp and the opposite hill for his daughter. It was hard to make sense of what was happening. The bright flashes and concussions made it nearly impossible to think. The helicopter was already destroyed, as were many of the buildings. Debris rained down in an area at least four hundred meters in diameter. Dust filled the air, and black, oily flames shot a hundred meters or more into the cloudless sky from the cache of fuel that had been dug into the ground and covered by camouflage netting.
He had fought for ten years against the Russians in these mountains, but he’d never seen anything as bad as this. He wanted to strike back, raise his rifle and lash out at the monsters who were doing this to them. But he was helpless.
At the bottom of the hill, he started through the bombed out buildings, his right arm over his head to protect himself from the dirt and rocks and brick and steel falling all around him, when a bright flash bang erupted directly in front of him. He was thrown back by a blast of hot air that felt like a brick wall. As he fell he could hear or sense pieces of metal softly whispering past his head like a thousand jagged pellets from a huge shotgun.
He’d lost his rifle when he’d been thrown back, and his head boomed as if he was inside a kettle drum when he picked himself up and started forward in a daze. At that moment the missiles stopped coming. In the deafening silence he thought he could hear men crying out, some of them screaming in agony. Three of them appeared from behind a low brick wall, all that remained of one of the buildings, and started toward him, blood streaming from dozens of wounds.
Too soon, the thought crystallized in his brain. He desperately waved his men back. This was just a pause in the action, the missile attack wasn’t finished. There would be a second round.
Others were pulling themselves out of the rubble when he spotted Sarah, the mangled stump of her left arm spurting blood, stumbling across from where the helicopter had been. He was instantly gripped with such nausea and fear that for a brief moment he was unable to move, when a missile struck fifteen or twenty meters behind her, throwing her body forward in a spray of rocks and debris and blood.
More bombs fell around them now, all through the camp, in a rolling thunder that hammered off the hills. Staggering forward, totally oblivious to the destruction around him, bin Laden reached his daughter’s body and fell to his knees beside her.
Her right leg was shattered, a big rock was embedded in her right shoulder, and her face was a mass of cuts and torn flesh. But she was still alive. There was still some awareness in her dark, pretty eyes.
“My Sarah,” bin Laden whispered as the missiles continued to rain down on them. He knew that she couldn’t hear him, but her eyes lit up in recognition.
“Father,” she mouthed the word, blood welling from her mouth.
Bin Laden, tears streaming down his face, gently cradled his daughter in his arms. Not this one, he prayed. Please God, not Sarah. But it was useless. She was going to die here and now, and no power on earth or in heaven would save her. No miracle would be enough.
He looked into her eyes as he held her, watching her life run out, feeling it in the unnatural looseness of her muscles. “Peace, my little one,” he said. “Insha’Allah.”
Sarah’s face went utterly pale, and blood stopped bubbling out of her mouth at the same time the last missile struck a hundred meters away, destroying the nomad tent.
Bin Laden threw back his head and screamed a cry of anguish from the bottom of his soul, while in another compartment of his brain he could feel his heart already hardening for the terrible task that lay ahead of them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The White House
President Haynes glanced at the clock when the direct line from the CIA chirped. It was 10:05 p.m. Waiting with him in the Oval Office were his national security adviser Dennis Berndt and his chief of staff Tony Lang. He’d been in a blue funk all evening, ever since he’d agreed to the missile attack on bin Laden’s mountain camp. “This isn’t a war game, Dennis,” he’d peevishly told his NSA earlier. “Real people are going to get killed up there.” “Sometimes things like this have to be done, Mr. President,” Berndt had replied.
The problem was that he saw no other way out of the gravest situ
ation the U.S. had faced since Pearl Harbor. The President put the call on the speakerphone. “Good evening, Roland.”
“Good evening, Mr. President,” Murphy replied, tiredly. He sounded resigned. “The attack just got over, and it looks good. From what we’re seeing the camp was completely wiped out. There won’t be many survivors.”
The President looked at his advisers. “Was there any indication of a secondary nuclear explosion?” It was something he’d worried about.
“No, sir. My people tell me that even if we had hit the package, it would not have caused a detonation. But we’re putting a drone on target now to check for radiation.”
“No accidents this time?” the President asked. “We didn’t hit anything we weren’t supposed to hit?”
“No, sir. There’s nothing in the near vicinity of bin Laden’s camp,” Murphy assured him. “We’re putting together the damage assessment now. Should be ready in a couple of hours once we get the data back from the drone. I can bring it over to you tonight.”
“That’s not necessary, Roland. It’s too late for any sort of an announcement tonight in any event. I’m scheduling a news conference for eleven in the morning. If you can get over here by nine it’ll be plenty of time.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I’m sorry about McGarvey, he was a brave man. What he tried to do for us out there was very courageous. But he never really had a chance.”
“You’re probably right, Mr. President.”
“I’ll call his wife—”
“Mr. President, why don’t we wait on that until morning,” Murphy said. “I haven’t told his daughter yet either.”
“You can’t think there’s still hope.”
“McGarvey’s come out of tough situations before. He’s a survivor. Let’s wait.”
Berndt was shaking his head in disgust, and for some reason it irritated the President and he shot him a dirty look.
“Okay, General, we’ll hold it until morning,” the President agreed. “But I want you to know that if there’s any sign that McGarvey’s still alive I’ll give you anything you need to get him back. Anything.”
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”
“Try to get some sleep, Roland. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
“You too, Mr. President.”
In the Afghan Mountains McGarvey crouched in a depression above the path waiting for them to come after him. As soon as he’d heard the first batch of what sounded like incoming jets down in the valley he’d slipped away. He knew what they were, but Mohammed and the others had jumped up and run down river to the cliff to look.
It was just his bad luck that they’d had the presence of mind to take their weapons with them. But he had managed to grab Mohammed’s pack and get out of there before they came running back. As soon as he’d found a suitable vantage point from which to defend himself, he’d retrieved his gun and spare magazine of ammunition from the bundle of filthy, stinking clothing, blankets and food. The gun was oily and gritty from something that had gotten all over it, but he pumped a couple of rounds out and the mechanism worked okay.
McGarvey watched the path carefully, as he considered his options. He was pissed off, but his anger would have to wait. For the moment his biggest challenge would be saving his own life and then somehow getting out of Afghanistan. The time for talking had ended when the first cruise missile had struck. If bin Laden had survived he would use the bomb. There was no doubt about it. Their only hope now was to stop it before it got to the States.
For that he needed a phone to warn Otto, and to work out a means of getting out of the country. That’s providing he could first survive the three-to-one odds he was facing now, and then make it down to Kabul without running the car off the mountain cliffs.
He thought about trying to reach Pakistan over the mountains, but that would be next to impossible without guides and provisions. And it would take far too long. Because of the missile attack they no longer had the luxury of time.
What the hell were they thinking? They could have waited for at least a couple of days. He didn’t want to get into a firefight with his mujahedeen. He was outnumbered and outgunned. But he didn’t think Mohammed was going to simply give up and scurry back to camp. The man had a score to settle and it was going to be here and now.
McGarvey raised his head a couple of inches above the rim of the depression in time to see Farid dash up the path and duck behind a large boulder. They were about five hundred yards from the camp, just beyond the copse of trees and the pool where Sarah had almost been raped. The stream tumbling over the rocks just below the path made a lulling sound, but from farther up he could hear the deeper throated roar where it fell down a series of cataracts.
“We have to go back now, mista Farid called up.
McGarvey studied the path and the rocks and brush below it. He could make out the flash suppressor on the end of Farid’s rifle, but he could not spot the other two mujahedeen.
Farid suddenly leaped up and darted another ten yards up the path, throwing himself into the ditch. A second later Hash sprung from the trees and keeping low raced to the protection of the boulder Farid had just left. He leaped up and fired a sustained burst into the rocks and boulders about twenty yards farther west from McGarvey’s position, the gunfire shockingly loud in the narrow defile, bullets ricocheting all over the place.
They knew that he was up here somewhere, and they were trying to draw him out to pinpoint his position. He was at a triple disadvantage; they not only outnumbered and outgunned him, but these were their mountains. They were just as at home here as McGarvey was in Paris or Washington.
Except for the sounds of the stream a stillness descended over them. The problem was Mohammed. He was out there somewhere too, and between the three of them they had probably hatched some sort of a plan.
He checked over his shoulder, but so far as he could tell nothing moved on the steep, rock-strewn slope that rose four hundred feet to the top of a hill studded with scraggly wind-bent trees.
They wouldn’t want to stick around here too long. It was the one weakness in their plan. They knew that they had to get back to the camp as soon as possible to see what had happened, help with the wounded and pack up what remained to bug out. Unless Mohammed forced them to stay until McGarvey was dead they might not come after him if he doubled back, climbed down to the valley and made it to the Rover.
He dumped the contents of Mohammed’s pack on the ground and hurriedly searched through the greasy, filthy clothes for the car keys or anything else he could use, while keeping an eye on the path below. There was nothing for him among the mujahed’s meager possessions. It was Farid who had driven the Rover, so the keys would either be in his backpack at the camp by the pool, or with him in a pocket. If he could make it down to the Rover he would find something to pop the ignition lock and hot-wire the starter.
Farid jumped up and fired a burst into the hill to the west of McGarvey. An instant later Hash fired another sustained burst walking his shots east. McGarvey had to duck down and cover his head as the shots hammered the rocks directly below him. Too late he realized that they knew where he was hiding and they were pinning him down. He looked over his shoulder when a rifle muzzle was jammed into the side of his head.
The firing from below suddenly ceased and Mohammed laughed wildly. Blood dripped from the filthy bandage on his wounded hand, and his face was cut up from flying rock chips. “I warned him about you,” he shouted triumphantly. “But he wouldn’t listen.” He stepped back a little, the rifle never wavering from McGarvey’s head. “Put your gun down. Get to your feet.”
McGarvey carefully laid his gun on a flat rock and got up, spreading his hands out to either side, letting a calmness come over him. Mohammed’s eyes were red and they kept flicking from McGarvey to the path below. He held the Kalashnikov in a white-knuckled death grip. His clothing was dirty and ripped from his climb up the hill over the rocks. The butt of his pistol had worked itself
half out of his vest, the hammer snagged on the corner of a pocket. If he tried to pull it out in a hurry it would catch. “So now what? Are you going to take me back to bin Laden?”
“You’re not going to leave this place alive.”
“That would be a very big mistake—”
“You didn’t come here to talk,” Mohammed shouted.
“That’s not true.”
“Where else did your missiles hit, mista Mohammed demanded. He was working himself up.
“I don’t know,” McGarvey replied calmly.
“Liar,” Mohammed snarled. “Come up here now,” he called down to Hash and Farid.
McGarvey figured he had only a couple of minutes before the other two got up here and then the odds against him would be impossible. He smiled. “I’ll tell you what, Mohammed. If you turn around right now and get the hell out of here I won’t kill you.”
Mohammed was surprised and then enraged. He poked the rifle muzzle sharply into McGarvey’s chest. It was a mistake.
“Just go, and you’ll live to fight another day,” McGarvey said, in an infuriatingly relaxed tone. “But if you poke me again I will kill you. For Sarah.”
The mujahed’s face turned purple. “Slut,” he shouted wildly. He pulled the rifle back, his left hand on the stock, his wounded right hand near the trigger guard, and he swung the heavy butt at McGarvey’s head. McGarvey ducked the blow and drove his shoulder into the man’s chest, knocking him off his feet. McGarvey yanked the Kalashnikov out of Mohammed’s hands and spun around.
Hash and Farid were halfway up the hill, aware that something was happening above them, but not quite sure what it was. McGarvey fired a couple of rounds over their heads, and they hit the ground, scrambling for cover. Mohammed was clawing for his pistol. McGarvey turned back to him. “You can still leave here alive.”
Joshuas Hammer km-8 Page 18