Joshua's Hammer

by David Hagberg

  The President was grim-faced. It was clear to everybody watching and listening that he had been forced into ordering the attack. It was something abhorrent to him. And yet he was being firm. During his campaign he’d promised the American people that he would take back the fear. And this was the first necessary though painful step in that direction.

  “The mission was a success,” he continued. “Preliminary reconnaissance aircraft and satellite photos indicate that the terrorist camp was obliterated. Wiped from the face of the earth. There was no loss of American lives, nor were any civilian targets damaged or destroyed. This was a surgical strike.”

  The President looked directly into the television cameras. “I made it perfectly clear when I was hired for this job, and I will make it perfectly clear again: The United States has a zero-tolerance policy toward all acts of terrorism against Americans, wherever they may be, and against the monsters who perpetrate them. There is, and will continue to be, no safe haven for terrorists anywhere on earth. Strike at us, and we will find and destroy you. And that is a promise.”

  In the Afghan Mountains

  Sunset was in another twenty minutes at 8:27. McGarvey had gone without proper rest for more than forty-eight hours, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep it up.

  The worst part had been climbing down the steep cliff beside the waterfall. He’d almost lost his footing several times, and when he finally reached the lower camp his legs had shaken so badly he had to stop for ten minutes before he could go on.

  Twice making his way down the arroyo to the valley he’d stumbled on rocks and nearly broke an ankle. Afterward, however, the going was much easier and he had allowed himself the luxury of a cigarette and a drink of water.

  The day had been very warm, but now with the sun behind the mountains to the west the temperature was dropping fast. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but a strong wind blew down the valley and he could smell the snow on the upper peaks. Just thinking about what this valley would be like in the dead of winter made him shiver, and he picked up the pace.

  Already he was behind schedule. The climb down the cliff and through the arroyo had taken much longer than he thought it would. He tried jogging, but after a hundred yards or so he was winded because of the altitude, and he felt a very sharp, painful stitch at his side, so that he had to slow down. The feeling he’d had at the top of the cliff that someone was behind him—perhaps Farid had turned around and come back after all—had finally faded. He stopped several times to look back, but each time he saw nothing. No movement of any kind. He could have been on a deserted planet.

  As he walked he thought about Sarah. If she had taken her time getting back to the camp she would have missed the attack. But if she had hurried she would have been caught in the middle of it. Then her only hope would have been to get inside the cave. Either way if she had survived it would have been a terrible blow for her. Everything her father had taught her about Americans would have been proven true. They were not to be trusted, their word was as godless as their society.

  However badly we hurt them up there, the surviving mujahedeen would be tending to their wounded. McGarvey knew from the last time bin Laden had been hit that his people would be gone from that location within twenty-four hours.

  But they would be sending someone for him. Of that he had little doubt. And if they came he would have to kill them. The time for negotiating had passed.

  He spotted the outlying stubble of the abandoned cornfields, and the outlines of the bombed-out buildings in the village, and he picked up the pace again. It was possible that there was another, faster path down from bin Laden’s camp; the route they had taken might have been only for his benefit. Even now he thought that he would have a hard time retracing his steps. Every arroyo looked almost exactly the same from the valley floor as every other one.

  With darkness coming he angled to the west up into the hills above the valley. He reached a spot from where he could look down into the village, and held up. Nothing moved below. From where he crouched in the scrub brush he could make out the barn where they had parked the Rover, and even a bit of the camo netting. On the other side of the village he could see the wide stream meandering down the valley. And above him, at the crest of the hills, there was nothing.

  He settled down to wait until it was completely dark, his back against the trunk of a short, gnarled tree. If someone was down there now, the advantage would be theirs until nightfall. He wanted a cigarette, but the breeze was at his back and would carry the smoke down into the village. Instead, he ate a piece of nan and drank some water. The little bit of food helped, but every bone in his body ached, and one of the stitches from his operation had opened and the wound was seeping blood.

  This mission could have succeeded if the missile attack hadn’t been carried out. Yet from the President’s point of view there wasn’t any other choice, especially with Berndt constantly in his ear. When the chip went off the air they had to assume the worse, that McGarvey was dead. Now, if bin Laden had survived, the battle was going to be on his terms, and it would very likely end in disaster.

  He toyed with doing the totally unexpected. If he turned around now and headed back up to bin Laden’s camp he might possibly make it before daybreak. But even if the camp hadn’t been dismantled and abandoned by then, actually finding bin Laden and putting a bullet in his brain would be next to impossible. McGarvey had turned the problem over in his head, trying to come up with a scenario that made sense in which he could get back there, find bin Laden, kill him and then get free again. But each time he came up against several brick walls, not the least of which was his exhaustion. Spending the night and the entire day hidden in the mountains before he went in wouldn’t do much good either. Without supplies his condition would worsen.

  He drifted off, thinking about Katy and Liz waiting for him back in Washington. They would be worried, because Otto couldn’t keep a secret from Liz, and she in turn would have told her mother what was going on. But it was no good thinking about them for now. One step at a time. It was all he could do.

  He woke twenty minutes later, the night almost pitch-black except for the starlight. He was deeply chilled and it took several seconds before he could loosen his muscles enough to simply stand up.

  The village was nothing but indistinct shadows and angles. As he picked his way down the hill he took out his gun, and by feel made sure the action still worked smoothly and the safety catch was off.

  He reached the cornfields ten minutes later, still stiff and cold despite the exertion. When he got to the first building to the north of the barn where the Rover was parked, he stopped in the deeper shadows to watch and listen. The only sounds were the gurgling of the nearby stream and the wind in the hills above him. It would only take a minute or so to pop the car’s ignition switch and hot-wire it. If he didn’t run into any trouble on the way out of the mountains he figured he could reach the Taliban checkpoint near the airport before dawn. From there it would be anyone’s guess what he might encounter. But if he got that far he would have at least a chance of getting out of the country.

  He slipped around the side of the building and worked his way through the rubble, holding up every ten yards or so to watch and listen. It was quiet. It did not look as if the camouflage netting covering the car had been disturbed. It was going to be good to sit on a soft seat with back support and the car’s heater for a change. He couldn’t remember then last time he’d been this cold or strung out.

  Farid came out of the barn, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, and nervously lit a cigarette.

  McGarvey held perfectly still in the darkness, his stiff, aching muscles totally forgotten for the moment. There was another route back after all and Farid had taken it. But had he returned alone? McGarvey didn’t think that Farid would have had time to return to the camp and then get back here, even if there was a shortcut. The only other possibility was that someone else had started out after him.

  If that were
the case then this was a trap. But McGarvey wondered if he was simply being paranoid. Rather than face bin Laden’s wrath for failing, Farid may have decided to come back on his own hoping to get a jump on McGarvey when he showed up at the car. But he had to assume the worst.

  After a few minutes Farid tossed the cigarette away and went back into the barn.

  McGarvey stepped out of the deeper shadows and hurried to the rear of the building, taking care not to stumble on the loose rocks, bricks and pieces of wood lying everywhere. Most of the back wall of the barn was gone. Farid had climbed up on a pile of rubble and was looking toward the north, the same direction McGarvey had come from. Had he been standing there earlier there was a good possibility he’d seen McGarvey coming in.

  It was very dark back here. An entire army of mujahedeen could be hidden in the village and they would be invisible.

  McGarvey stepped inside the barn and ducked down behind the Rover. Flattening himself on the dirt floor he looked under the car. He could see the rubble pile that Farid was standing on, but so far as he could tell no one was crouched waiting on the other side.

  He got up and crept to the back of the car, and checked outside. There was nothing there. But he knew that it was distinctly possible that this was a setup. The problem was that he could not stay here all night waiting for something to develop.

  He moved to the other side of the Rover, then keeping his eye on Farid, he took several steps closer and raised his pistol. “You should not have come back,” he said softly.

  Farid spun around, a guilty look on his face. But he did not look frightened, nor did he try to reach for his rifle. His eyes flicked to something behind McGarvey.

  All that took only a split second. It was a trap.

  McGarvey jumped up on the hood of the Rover and rolled to the other side of the car as a burst from a Kalashnikov rifle raked the floor where he’d been standing.

  He hit the dirt floor on his right shoulder, brought his gun around and fired two quick shots at Farid’s retreating figure as the mujahed disappeared around the corner outside.

  Whoever had fired from the door had come from the other side of the barn. He was moving cautiously around the back of the Rover. McGarvey looked under the car, saw a pair of boots and fired, hitting the man in the ankle.

  McGarvey jumped up as the mujahed cried out in pain. The man was staggering backward, trying to keep his balance while he tried to bring his rifle to bear. McGarvey rushed around the back of the car, batted the rifle aside with his free hand, and crashed into the mujahed, sending them both sprawling to the ground outside the barn.

  McGarvey jammed the muzzle of his pistol in the mujahed’s throat just below his chin. If he pulled the trigger the bullet would crash into the man’s brain, and he knew it. His struggles stopped immediately.

  “How many others did you bring with you?” McGarvey looked up to make sure that Farid hadn’t come around from behind the barn.

  “Six,” the mujahed grunted.

  “Including Farid?”

  The mujahed hesitated a fraction of a second. It was enough to tell McGarvey that he was lying. “Who sent you? Was it bin Laden or Ali?”

  “Screw you.”

  “I didn’t come here to lead the missile attack. I came to make a deal.” McGarvey took the rifle from the mujahed and tossed it aside. “I won’t kill you if you give me your word that you and Farid will return to the camp.”

  The mujahed shouted something in Persian as Farid came around the corner of the barn. McGarvey rolled left and fired three shots as Farid brought his rifle up, all three of them hitting the young man in the chest and driving him backward.

  McGarvey turned around. The mujahed he had wounded in the leg had reached his rifle and he was snatching it out of the dirt as McGarvey fired one shot, catching the man in the temple, killing him instantly.

  Farid was still alive. He was struggling to pull a pistol out of his vest, but he was too weak to do it.

  McGarvey got up, walked over and crouched down beside him. Blood covered his chest, and bubbles were forming over the lung shot. His face was deathly pale, flecks of foamy blood on his lips. He was a dead man and he knew it.

  “I didn’t want to kill any of you.”

  Farid whispered something in Persian.

  “This should never have happened to you. To any of you, but the killing and terrorism has to stop. No more jihad.”

  Farid was very young, and as McGarvey watched the life drain out of his face, a great sadness came over him. Along with it he thought about Sarah, sincerely hoping that she had come out of the missile attack okay, and about his own daughter who, because of her father, had almost been killed three times. A waste, all of it was a terrible waste. The sins of the fathers were to be suffered by the sons. Only now McGarvey was afraid that the daughters would somehow bear the brunt.

  Farid whispered something else in Persian, and then was still.

  “Goddammit,” McGarvey said, and he sat back. “Goddammit to hell.”

  CIA Headquarters

  The CIA was on emergency status. The most effective deputy director of Operations that the Company had ever known was stuck in badland and all the stops had been pulled to get him out of there.

  Adkins had temporarily assigned Elizabeth as acting assistant to Otto Rencke, who had set her up at a computer terminal in his offices. She was working on flight plans from Riyadh down the Gulf and across Pakistan to Kabul, the most direct route, and the one that made the most sense, considering what her father was facing. But she was also working out several alternative routes, including one that passed through Indian airspace, and the much longer way, northwest through Syria and Turkey, then straight east over the former Russian republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, across the Caspian Sea and then Turkmenistan.

  The Russian route, as she thought of it, would be tough. Flight clearances might take days, if they were ever given, and there would have to be a refueling stop somewhere. In addition, that route put the flight path over northern Afghanistan where the rebels fighting the Taliban had Stinger missiles. They were shooting down anything that came within range.

  Elizabeth sat back and pushed a wisp of blond hair off her forehead. She hadn’t had much time to worry about her father all day, but relaxing for a moment she tried to envision what he was going through, and it sent a shiver up her spine.

  Waiting was infinitely more difficult than doing, she decided. In the field, on the run, you were too busy to spend much time worrying about what might happen. The adrenalin was pumping, inner reserves were kicking in and everything you’d learned in training and from previous missions—the good ones as well as the bad—became foremost in your mind. When your survival was at stake, your focus tended to be sharp. But sitting here waiting, wondering, fretting, was the pits.

  Rencke came in from a staff meeting at 5:30 P.M. Elizabeth jumped up. “We’ve got Pakistan,” he said, dumping an armload of file folders and computer printouts on his already-overflowing conference table.

  “Thank God,” she said. “When do they get airborne?”

  “They left fifteen minutes ago.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes went automatically to the half-dozen world clocks on the wall. The one for Kabul read 0500. Rencke knew exactly what she was thinking.

  “It’ll be broad daylight when they touch down,” he said. “Around ten in the morning, his time. But there wasn’t much else we could do, Liz. The airport closes down after dark. Besides, they have to think he’d want to make a try under cover of darkness. This might throw them a curve.”

  “It might also make it impossible for my father to even get close to the airport, let alone make it to the airplane.”

  “The longer he stays there, the greater the risk he faces,” Rencke started to hop from one foot to the other, but stopped. “Oh, wow, Liz, I’m really scared. But your dad’s pretty smart, he’ll figure it out. And he’s tough too.”

  Her heart softened. “Okay, Otto, take it easy. How do we
get the ETA to my father?”

  “When he gets to the ambassador’s old compound in Kabul he’s going to call me.”

  “You said that his phone battery was low. What if he can’t call?”

  Rencke looked even more forlorn. “There’s no phone in the compound, I checked. But even if there was he’d have to go through their international exchange, and the Taliban control every call out of the country.”

  “Could he get to one of the other embassies?”

  “He might.” Rencke shook his head in frustration.

  Elizabeth tried to put herself in her father’s place, think what he might do. “Maybe he could rig up a battery charger.”

  “There’s no electricity to the house. No water, no sewer, nothing.”

  “I thought there was someone living there, like caretakers.”

  “So did I. But right now there’re only a couple of Taliban guards stationed outside.” He brightened a little. “One good thing, all the rioting is concentrated downtown at our old embassy for now.”

  “For now,” Elizabeth repeated glumly.

  “He’s got to get out of there, Liz, and he knows it. There’s too much at stake now. We need him back here or we’re going to be in some very big shit.”

  This was something new. She looked at him. “What do you mean? What else is going on?”

  Rencke was getting agitated again. “This is eyes-only shit. The big enchilada. It’s why your dad took the chance going over there in the first place.”

  “What is it?”

  “Oh, shit, Liz. Oh, goddam shit.” Rencke suddenly stopped moving. “It’s lavender again. It’s bin Laden, he’s got a nuclear weapon and he wanted to give it to us, but the missiles ruined that deal. Your dad was going to talk him out of it. That’s the real reason he went over there.”