Joshua's Hammer

by David Hagberg

  “Oh, wow, Liz, I don’t know if you want to tell Mrs. M. this, but the President’s holding a news conference around eleven. Your father’s chip went off the air yesterday and the President ordered a cruise missile strike on bin Laden’s camp.”

  “Goddammit—”

  “Wait, Liz. We tried to delay the strike until we were sure what was going on up there, but the White House was convinced that your father was dead, and their only option was to hit bin Laden as hard as they could.”

  “But my father’s okay?”

  “For now. But the Taliban are probably waiting for him to show up in Kabul, and there’s rioting all over the city. The Taliban have given all foreigners forty-eight hours to get out of there, so it’s a little confusing.”

  “What about our assets on the ground?”

  “We have a couple of people at the old embassy, but that’s where a lot of the rioting is concentrated. Dave Whittaker will try to reach them to see if they can do anything to help, but for now it’s up to your dad.”

  Kathleen got up and went into the bathroom, leaving Elizabeth alone for the moment.

  “Did we get bin Laden?”

  “Nobody knows yet. There was a lot of damage, but there were survivors. The NRO is working on the updates, so we’ll just have to wait.”

  “My father will be okay,” Elizabeth said, more for her own benefit than Rencke’s.

  “He’s made it this far, he’ll make it the rest of the way, Liz. He’s tough.”

  “That he is,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll get dressed and come in.”

  “Maybe you want to stay with your mom.”

  “I’ll be there in a half-hour.”

  “Okay, but Dick Yemm is on his way out there, so tell Mrs. M. to sit tight for now.”

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “Your dad’s.”

  “I see,” Elizabeth said. She broke the connection as her mother came back. They exchanged looks and that was enough.

  “I’ll put on the coffee while you get dressed,” Kathleen said. “But I want you to keep me informed.”

  FIFTEEN

  National Reconnaissance Office Langley

  There wasn’t a day went by that Major Louise Horn didn’t miss her old mentor Hubert Wight. But six months ago he’d been promoted to lieutenant colonel and reassigned to Air Force Intelligence Operations in the Pentagon. She was moved up to his old slot as chief of photographic interpretation at the NRO’s Operations Center attached to the CIA’s headquarters (renamed the George Bush Center for Intelligence). She wished he was here right now. A lot of the downloaded satellite images she was looking at were indistinct because of a pall of smoke that still covered bin Laden’s camp. What looked like the remains of a burned-out truck in one photograph turned out to more likely be the corner of a building in the next, and perhaps a storage depot of fifty-gallon oil drums in another. His eye was always sharper than hers, and he had the uncanny ability to pick out some little detail that cleared up whatever mystery they were trying to unravel. It was unrealistic, but several times this morning she had seriously contemplated picking up the phone and asking him to drive out.

  He used to have a miniature gallows and noose on his desk. Everybody knew that it signified what would happen to anyone who made a serious mistake and bounced it upstairs without double checking. Their customers, besides the air force, CIA and National Security Agency, were the President and his National Security Council. They were the big dogs, the ones who set national policy. It was a heavy responsibility that Louise was feeling this morning because she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. When he left, Wight had given her the gallows for her desk.

  She was hunched over one of the big light tables in the dimly lit Interp Center above the Pit where a dozen computer terminals were arranged in semicircular tiers facing the main display. The screen, ninety feet wide and thirty feet tall, showed the real-time positions and tracks of every U.S. intelligence-gathering satellite in orbit. What those satellites looked at was controlled from the consoles.

  The first series of shots they had downlinked during the missile strike were clear enough to make a snap judgment. The camp had been almost totally obliterated. Based on the first look, Louise had sent out the preliminary damage assessment over her signature, complete with a dozen of the best photographs and her interpretation of them.

  She stubbed out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and immediately lit another. Chain-smoking was a bad habit she’d been trying to break for the past year. And she had done pretty good until last night. She had graduated third in her class at the Air Force Academy. She had wanted to fly jets, but at six-five with an IQ of 160 she was too tall and too smart to be a fighter pilot. She belonged here, and she loved her job, eavesdropping on the entire world. It was a voyeur’s playground, and Louise was nothing if not curious. But what she was looking at now wasn’t squaring with her first assessment. The camp had been heavily damaged, there was no doubt about that, but there were more survivors than she had first suspected. In fact her count was already up to eighteen, and still rising, while her earlier prediction had been for only a handful.

  The Far Eastern Division morning supervisor Lieutenant Mark Hagedorn came over from the processing lab with a fresh batch of 100cm X 100cm transparencies. A third of them were marked with red tabs, indicating that they were infrared-enhanced. “Hot off the press, Maj,” he said. Hagedorn had graduated last in his class at the Academy, but he had the same gift as Colonel Wight. He was able to “see” things. Although his smartass attitude was almost unbearable at times, every supervisor he worked for, including Louise, wished they had a dozen of him.

  Louise looked up. “What did you bring me?” Hagedorn was only a couple of hours into his shift, but already his uniform looked as if it had been slept in.

  “The navy’s gonna be pissed off.” Hagedorn laid a couple of the transparencies on an empty spot on the light table. “Unless I’ve been playing with myself too much and I’m going blind, I think that’s bin Laden in the lower right quadrant.”

  Louise moved a large magnifying lens over the first photograph and studied the image in the lower right corner. It was definitely a man, and definitely dressed like bin Laden. His face was turned to the left, showing his profile. He was looking at a light bloom toward the center of the camp. Louise moved the magnifying lens, but she didn’t need it to see that what she was looking at wasn’t a fire or a secondary explosion; it was a missile strike.

  She looked up.

  “That was the second-to-the-last hit,” Hagedorn said. “But I wasn’t satisfied with the first shots, so I ran these through again, and played with some light values. The flashes from the HE warheads tend to fuzz out a lot of the details.”

  Louise turned back to the transparency. “How sure are you that this is bin Laden?”

  “The computer was about seventy-five percent with the first, but we hit near a hundred percent with the second.”

  Louise switched to the second image, and this time the figure had thrown back his head and seemed to be shouting something up into the sky. There was no doubt in her mind that she was looking at a very-much-alive Osama bin Laden.

  “That one’s after the last strike, so there’s no doubt that the navy missed him,” Hagedorn said.

  Louise cleared the other transparencies off the light table, and Hagedorn spread the rest of the pictures he had brought in sequence. “You’ve enhanced all of these?” she asked.

  “Had to, because we weren’t seeing diddly squat through the smoke, most of which incidentally came from burning diesel. Probably hit their fuel storage area. And the chopper was putting out a lot of smoke too.”

  Louise took her time studying each of the photographs that had been taken at two minute intervals after the attack had ended. The camp was flattened, nothing she was seeing changed her earlier assessment about that. But there were a lot of survivors. She counted at least two dozen, maybe more. But most disturbing was the fact that bin Laden h
ad survived.

  “He’s carrying something,” Louise said.

  “Somebody,” Hagedorn corrected. He laid out three infrared-enchanced transparencies, and it became immediately apparent that bin Laden was carrying a human form. In each succeeding image the heat emanating from the body was fading.

  Louise looked up. “Whoever it is was killed in the raid.”

  “That’s what it looks like. The million dollar question is who. I mean bin Laden loves his men and all that, but he had a gimpy leg and he’s not about to dive into the middle of a missile raid and pick up just anybody.”

  Louise went back to the photograph in which bin Laden had gotten to his feet. She could see that he was carrying somebody. She switched the magnifying lens to the next image showing him heading toward the middle of the camp, and then the next three, a cold knot beginning to form at the pit of her stomach. She looked up again and Hagedorn was staring at her.

  “I think I’m going to show these to somebody who might know what they mean.”

  “Your old friend the colonel?” Hagedorn asked.

  Louise shook her head. “You wouldn’t know him. He’s next door in the DO. Name is Otto Rencke. But first I want you to enhance everything we’ve downloaded so far. I don’t want to make a mistake.”

  CIA Headquarters

  Rencke went over to Murphy’s office. Dick Adkins and Dave Whittaker were already there with the general who’d just returned from his home in Chevy Chase. “He’s alive and on his way to Kabul,” Rencke told them triumphantly.

  Murphy was rocked to the core. “Was he hurt?”

  “His phone was going bad so we didn’t have much time. He was ten or twelve miles outside of bin Laden’s camp, and he figured that he could make it down to Kabul sometime tonight, his time. Another ten or twelve hours.”

  “Then what?” Adkins asked. “And what the hell happened to his chip?”

  “He didn’t say about the chip, but he’s going to try to make it to the ambassador’s old residence,” Rencke said.

  “I’ll see about getting our people over to him,” Whittaker said, but he didn’t sound so sure. “They’re under siege at the old embassy so it’s going to be a problem for them.”

  “Okay, assuming that he gets that far without running into a Taliban military patrol or the crowds, getting him out of the country isn’t going to be a piece of cake,” Adkins said.

  “We’re not going to leave him there,” Murphy said firmly. “What do you have in mind, Otto?”

  “There’s maybe fifty Americans in Kabul right now, and they have to get out too. It’d make sense if we sent a C-130 from Riyadh to pick them up.”

  “It’s likely that the Taliban are looking for him,” Adkins said. “If he’s spotted they’ll never let him get close to the airport, let alone get aboard—even if the Taliban do let us fly in.”

  “Mac said that if we could get a C-130 in there he’d get aboard,” Rencke countered, keeping his temper in check.

  “I don’t know how,” Whittaker said.

  “If Mac says he can do something, then we’d better believe him,” Adkins flared. He turned to Murphy. “I can get the plane, that’s no problem, but we’ll have to put pressure on the Taliban government to give us flight clearance.”

  “I’ll call the President right now,” Murphy said. “He promised that if we found out that Mac was still alive he’d give us whatever we needed to get him out in one piece.”

  “I’ll get Jeff Cook started. He can pull some strings, and with any luck by the time the C-130 approaches Afghani airspace we’ll have the clearance,” Adkins said, and he picked up the phone.

  Murphy glanced at the clock. It was coming up on two. “The rest is going to be up to Mac, although I don’t know what the hell the President is going to say to them.”

  “We only hit bin Laden’s camp,” Whittaker pointed out. “It’s not as if we hit an Afghani civilian target. There’s nothing else up there.”

  “There’s more,” Rencke said as Murphy reached for the direct line phone to the White House.

  The general stopped.

  “Mac told me that there’s no doubt now that bin Laden has the bomb.”

  They all looked at him, the office suddenly very quiet. It was their worst fear. The reason they had sent McGarvey into what they all thought was a suicide mission.

  “If he wasn’t killed in the raid he’ll use it against us.”

  “Do we have anything new from the NRO?” Murphy asked, subdued.

  “Not yet, but they’re working on it. The NSA is monitoring the usual lines of communications he’s used in the past, but unless we get lucky we might not know for sure until it’s too late.”

  “Until it’s too late,” Murphy repeated softly.

  Rencke nodded glumly. “Mac wants a SNIE developed for the National Security Council by first thing in the morning. I’ve already called Fred Rudolph and told him what might be coming our way, and INS will have to be notified asap. Mac wants all of our assets worldwide put on alert, because the only way we’re going to stop this shit is if somebody spots him.” Rencke shook his head. “Oh, boy, this is the big one. If bin Laden is alive, and he wants to get a nuclear weapon to the U.S. and set it off, he’ll do it.”

  “We’re pretty good too, Otto,” Murphy said.

  “Yeah, but if he’s alive he’s gotta be seriously pissed off, ya know? He’s gonna be one motivated dude.”

  Adkins put the phone down. “Jeff will arrange the C-130, but they’ll need formal orders. They’ll have to fly down the Gulf to avoid Iranian airspace, but the real problem is going to be Pakistan. The President will have to talk to them for over-flight permission. As it is Jeff figures that the one-way air distance is around sixteen hundred miles. But if they have to fly another route, over India let’s say, it’ll take twice as long.”

  “Can we make contact with Mac?” Murphy asked Rencke.

  “No, his phone is still on simplex. But he said that he would call again once he got to Kabul. We have until then to come up with something for him. He’ll need an ETA.”

  “We will, Otto,” Murphy said seriously. “You have my word on it.”

  Adkins and Whittaker got up. “We’d best get to it then,” Adkins said and they left.

  Rencke got to his feet. “We can’t leave him stuck there, General.”

  “We won’t,” Murphy said. “What did Kathleen say when you told her.”

  Rencke looked like a startled deer caught in headlights.

  “I know you called her,” Murphy prompted gently.

  “She’s a tough lady, but I thought she should know what’s coming down,” Rencke said defensively.

  “Maybe we should send someone out to be with her.”

  “Already done, General,” Rencke said. “And Liz is on her way in right now. I’m putting her in the loop.”

  “Good idea,” Murphy agreed. “If you hear anything else let me know. But we will get him out of there. And we will stop bin Laden.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rencke said, but he didn’t seem to be very convinced about the second part.

  Bin Laden’s Camp

  “We will talk now,” bin Laden said. The morning was surreal, almost like a nightmare of hell. The sky over the camp was still filled with smoke. The distant mountains, usually crisp in the clear air, were obscured. Below there was a lot of frantic activity as their remaining mujahedeen cleaned up the missle damage, buried their dead and sifted through the rubble for anything usable. Although the order to pack up and leave had not come yet, everybody knew that they could no longer stay here. If the Americans suspected that anyone had survived, which they surely did by now, they might mount another attack. Even if they didn’t, however, there was little or nothing left here except for the facility inside the cave. There were other camps, other caves that had not yet been pinpointed.

  Bin Laden was numb with fatigue and grief. He wanted to run away and hide somewhere until it was time to die. His body was on fire, his left l
eg ached from the bone cancer eating at his hip and pelvis. Strange thoughts and visions kept popping into his head like lightning flashes, there for one brilliant split second, and then gone. He’d actually managed to do his midmorning prayers, lingering over each word, savoring each as if it were a sip of blessed ice water in the middle of the hot desert. But when he was finished he did not feel the same refreshment of spirit that he usually felt. Sarah, the light of his soul, was gone, and the only thought that allowed him to hold onto even a small portion of his sanity was that he would soon be joining her in Paradise, if indeed she was there. The Qoran said nothing about women in heaven. But Allah was just. He would not abandon her. He could not.

  Bin Laden closed his eyes for just a moment, seeing the missiles raining down on them, feeling Sarah’s lifeless body in his arms.

  “As you wish,” Bahmad said softly. He had read most of that from bin Laden’s body language. He watched the struggle the man was going through with some sympathy because he had been there himself.

  Sarah’s body, completely wrapped in linen, lay on a prayer rug in the middle of the main chamber. When it got dark they would burn it. Bahmad was brought back to the funeral for his parents. He’d felt an impotent rage that he’d tried to quench all of his life. But now, though he wanted to feel some sadness for the girl, that part of him was already burned out. Sarah had been a wonderful girl; a daughter that he’d never had, never would have. They had talked often about life in the West, and she’d hung on everything he told her. And yet he still could not feel the loss. All he could feel now was a little sympathy for bin Laden, and the stirrings of anticipation for what might be coming next.

  Leaning heavily on his cane, bin Laden walked back from the entrance and settled wearily on the cushions in front of the brazier. A young mujahed brought him tea, and then bin Laden dismissed him and the other guard standing by. They looked nervously to Bahmad who nodded, and they went out.