by Dalton Fury
Behind it in the warehouse was another helicopter, a nearly identical Black Hawk.
“Jamal? These two choppers? They are in the warehouse back there?”
“Yes, Mister Bob.”
Bob addressed Racer now, incredulity in his voice: “How did you dumb Army fucks manage to lose two helicopters?”
Kolt shook his head, then considered the question seriously. “A Black Hawk is a Sikorsky UH-60. Sikorsky sells UH-60s to Egypt, the UAE, the Philippines, Brazil, and others. A couple of guys with the right equipment could take an Egyptian bird and paint it up like a U.S. bird in nothing flat.”
Kopelman nodded. “This is big. These two choppers can carry forty troops.”
“Forty bad guys.”
“Right. Think about it, Racer. If they find a way to get them over the border, they could land at a FOB or even a full-sized base. There would be confusion, but nobody is going to suspect they’re about to get nailed by AQ from inside the base. AQ can wipe out a lot of our guys with a pair of Black Hawks full of shooters.”
“I know. And then they can get access to a lot of equipment. A lot of weapons. These two Black Hawks could be a game changer in this fight.”
Jamal spoke for the first time. “My uncle … he does not like these people. But he likes his money. It is always so with my uncle. He said the two helicopters were not the only things in the warehouse, but trucks came and took the rest away already.”
“What else was there?” asked Bob. Kolt quickly asked Jamal to speak more slowly and clearly so he could follow the conversation.
“Crates of goods. He did not know what they were. Never saw inside. But he knew that they came from the German’s factory on the other side of Darra Adam Khel.”
“And it’s all gone now?”
“Yes. My uncle says the factory is no longer producing things. He met a local representative of the German there yesterday to get his payment, and there was only an empty factory floor full of sewing machines and metalworking machines, an upstairs office with a desk and a computer and a cot, this German man living and working there, and some armed foreigners guarding the place. It looks like it is about to close down completely.”
Kolt said to Bob in English, “We’re running out of time, Bob!”
Kopelman nodded, then asked Jamal, “Can your uncle get us into the factory?”
“No. He got his money. He has no business there now.”
Bob blew out a long sigh. “I’d love to get a look at that Kraut’s computer.”
Kolt looked at Jamal. “Your uncle said there were ten guards?”
The young Afghan nodded.
Kopelman raised a hand. “Don’t even think about it, Racer. You remember our talk about the definition of the word ‘reconnaissance,’ don’t you? You aren’t going into that factory.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“We are going to pass all this on to Grauer so he can alert the Agency.” Kopelman wasn’t going to wait one second. He closed his laptop and powered up the sat phone. Then he sent Jamal over to a small market to buy himself a cup of tea to help him relax. As soon as the young Afghan climbed out of the car Kolt asked Bob, “Do you believe him?”
“I do. I can’t always tell when a Pashtun is lying, but I can tell when one is scared. He’s scared of us, scared we will think he is somehow involved because his uncle owns the factory. If he had ratted us out, he wouldn’t have shared that intel. I mean, what’s the point?”
Bob spent the next ten minutes on the phone with Grauer communicating from the Radiance Ops Center over the border in Jalalabad. After Bob stowed the phone, he looked back at Raynor in the backseat. “He’s going to inform Langley.”
“What about us?”
“We are getting out of here.”
Kolt was not satisfied. “Bob. Whatever these guys are going to do … they are going to do it soon. They can’t fly those choppers once the winter closes in. Plus, just keeping them on hand like that they run the risk of compromise.”
“I agree. Something nasty is about to go down, in days, not weeks.”
Kolt asked, “Where is the factory?”
“Not far, two klicks to the east of here. Why?”
“Can we drive by? Just to check it out.”
Bob strummed his fingers on his closed laptop. He nodded his head. “Okay. Can’t hurt. When Jamal gets back we’ll head over there before leaving town.” He looked back to Kolt. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Racer.”
“What’s that?”
“If I see a German dude out front on smoke break I’m jumping out of this cab and beating the shit out of him.”
Kolt nodded appreciatively. “No argument from me.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Minutes later Jamal was back behind the wheel and they were headed east, and once again the Hilux was stuck in a traffic jam. Cars, trucks, bicycles, rickshaws, donkey carts, donkeys without carts that had been packed with incredible amounts of bags, boxes, and other items. They crawled along with the rest of the traffic, and Bob began regretting his decision to take a look at Buchwald’s factory.
It was almost dark when they reached a wide intersection. Jamal motioned to a compound on the northwest corner. “That’s the place.” Jamal pointed to a nondescript single-story wall, behind which stood a two-story wood, metal, and sandstone structure. It was the size of a small grocery store, except for the fact it was multilevel.
Two malevolent-looking security guards stood out front. Another sat Indian-style on the roof.
Raynor had no doubt there would be more inside.
Kolt asked Jamal, “No chance you have an uncle that owns this place, too?” He asked it in English, and Bob translated.
Jamal just shook his head. The joke was lost on him.
They found themselves stuck in the intersection. A dispute between truck drivers in front of them delayed everyone in all four directions, first as the two vehicles honked back and forth at one another, and then as the men climbed down from their cabs and began arguing animatedly on the dusty street. Kolt and Bob used the delay to take in as much of the area as possible.
Bob spoke aloud in English as he looked out the grimy window of the car, giving voice to his observations of the compound. “It’s buttoned up pretty tight. Sheet metal fence. Gate wide enough for a semi to get in and out of. Looks like a satellite dish on the roof. Regular phone and electric wires running in and out.”
Kolt was not listening. Instead he had his eyes on the crowd. Dozens of men in salwar kameezes or more Western-style Pakistani dress strode up and down the sidewalks and crossed between narrow spaces between the vehicles on the street, hustling home as night fell. Women were in the crowd too, but they did not walk alone. All the women had male escorts with them, as was the custom here in Taliban-controlled Pashtunistan.
Kolt looked back quickly toward the factory, and he made a decision.
The truck moved forward as traffic rerouted itself around the protracted argument between the truck drivers.
Sixty seconds later they were again stuck in a jam. They’d moved forward only one hundred yards, and now they were a block past the factory. Kolt tapped Jamal on the shoulder. “How do I look?” The young driver turned back from the right-sided steering wheel. He stammered his response in surprise. Raynor had dressed himself head to toe in the blue burka Kopelman had bought earlier.
“You … you look like a woman,” Jamal said.
“Am I pretty?” Raynor joked.
Jamal just laughed nervously. Pashtun men did not act this way, did not joke like this.
Kopelman turned around in his seat to see what his man was doing. “What the hell is wrong with you? Quit screwing around!”
But Kolt turned serious now. Behind his mesh veil he said, “Bob, you know that any woman not accompanied by a man on the street is going to stand out like a sore thumb around here, right?”
“Absolutely. You wouldn’t make it thirty seconds on the street, so don’t even think — �
�
“Then you’d better tell Jamal to come with me.” Kolt opened the back door of the cab and climbed out in his burka. In his cloaked arms he held a simple bag with his Pashtun clothing.
“Racer!” Kopelman sounded at once terrified and furious, but he did manage to shout it in a whisper. Raynor stepped down to the pavement and began walking away from the truck as the sun set over the sandstone hills to the west.
Fifteen seconds later, Jamal caught up with him and walked stiffly beside. Kolt could almost hear the young man’s heartbeat.
They walked fifty yards, back in the direction of the factory, past dozens of other pedestrians and shopkeepers out in front of their stores. Raynor remained hunched over to take a few inches off his height, and from seeing women walking with men in the area, he knew to walk behind Jamal, even as he whispered directions to the young Afghan. “Straight ahead. No, let’s turn up this pathway with the steps.”
He could not see Jamal’s face in front of him, could barely make out a damned thing through the obscuring mesh of the burka face hole. But he imagined Jamal was probably in a state of panic.
They walked up stone-and-wooden steps and soon arrived at a part of the arcade that had closed for the evening. They were just one street over from Buchwald’s factory now, and the coast seemed to be clear. Raynor reached out and grabbed Jamal by the arm. “I want to walk around the factory, go around to the back, and then head back to the truck. Okay?”
Jamal nodded slowly. “Okay. Please promise me you will not speak, and you will not fight anyone.”
“I promise,” Kolt said. He hoped like hell it was a promise he could keep.
Jamal turned and headed toward the factory, still walking stiffly and self-consciously. Raynor knew he’d put the helpful young man through a lot in the past few days, and he also knew he would not be alive without him.
Racer followed him toward Buchwald’s factory.
* * *
Less than ten minutes later Raynor and Jamal climbed back into the truck. Bob had shifted over behind the wheel, the engine was already running, and he immediately pulled into traffic. Without speaking he headed west back through town and toward the Hayatabad road to the north, the way back to Peshawar.
He looked over to Jamal in the left seat, saw the young man to be sweat covered and white as a ghost. Kopelman just patted him on the shoulder as a way to say both I understand and I’m sorry.
Then he turned and shouted back to the man in the backseat just now uncovering himself from the blue burka. “Damn it, Racer! I hope you have one hell of a good explanation of why you pulled that stunt!”
Kolt shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t let me go if I asked permission.”
“Go where?”
“We walked the perimeter of Buchwald’s factory. Bob, I figured it out. I know how to get into that place without being sighted by any sentries. If we pick up a couple of items in the market and come back here tomorrow morning, I can get in and get a look at Buchwald’s computer.”
“The sentries won’t see you?”
“They won’t see me get in. I’m not saying they won’t see me once I’m inside.”
“So you are going to kill ten guys?”
“If I have to, you’re damned right I am. Anyway, I only saw four on the outside.”
Bob drove in silence through the darkness. In minutes they had left the town behind and turned north. With good luck and good traffic flow they’d be in Peshawar in a half hour.
Kopelman thought it over as he drove. Finally he said, “No. No way. Too risky. We found the German, we found the choppers. We’ve passed that on to Langley. We reconnoitered the factory and confirmed it is still occupied. We’ve done enough.”
Raynor barked back. “Enough for what, Bob? We’ve found a pair of helos that we can’t hit from the air because of collateral damage. We’ve also found five prisoners that we can’t rescue, and potentially forty Taliban about to be used in an al Qaeda plot that could, easily, kill hundreds. An op at an unknown time, an unknown place, and … shit, it’s an unknown op.”
“You’re not going into that factory, Racer. It’s too dangerous.”
“When we get back to Pesh, I want you to call Grauer. We’ll see what he says.”
“I’m in charge of you while you’re in-country.”
“And Colonel Grauer is in charge of you! See if he orders you to order me into the factory to get access to Buchwald’s computer. I guarantee that he will.” He paused. “Grauer won’t mind risking my life for that potential intel haul, and I don’t mind either.”
“I do mind, Racer, although at the moment, the thought of you taking a bullet in the ass is pretty damned appealing, I’ll have to admit.”
“I can do it, Bob. Trust me.”
A long pause as the Hilux cleared the gate at the exit to the congested village. There was no checkpoint for those leaving.
“I’ll think about calling Grauer. But I’m going to tell him what I saw, and what I saw … you cannot penetrate.”
“Pete knows what I can do.” Kolt said it in a confident tone, and he was confident Grauer would let him try.
But could he do it? On that question the confidence left him.
Raynor had no idea.
* * *
Jamal dropped Raynor and Kopelman off in a square a quarter mile from Bob’s apartment. The heavyset American spy had no reason to not trust his Afghani agent now — surely if Jamal was playing for the other team neither Kopelman nor Raynor would still be alive. Nevertheless, there was no operational need for Bob to show the agent exactly where he lived. After parting ways with Jamal, the two Americans walked a circuitous route back to Bob’s flat, passing electronics shops, spice shops, auto mechanics working late into the evening. Bob stepped into a small restaurant while Kolt circled the block to keep moving and came back around in front of the eatery just as Bob stepped out with a bag of cooked rice with bits of lamb.
The two men sat down on mats in Bob’s living room just after nine in the evening. They ate, mostly in silence, and then after he’d pulled rice and meat from his thick beard and licked his fingers clean, Bob Kopelman turned on the sat phone and called Pete Grauer.
Kolt drank bottled water and listened intently as Kopelman told Grauer about the drive to the factory, and of Kolt’s reckless reconnaissance, in drag, no less, of the perimeter. Bob did not protest Raynor’s actions to Grauer as much as Kolt had feared, though he did say more than once that Racer was a risk taker.
Then Bob told Pete of Racer’s desire to try entering the factory. Bob was still firmly against the attempt, feeling the CIA had enough intel to act against the cell. Even if the Agency did not have the entire operation wrapped up or even a good understanding of the plot, Kopelman argued, the CIA could use their own assets in the area, whatever those might be, to get into the factory and to hit the warehouse. From Bob’s side of the conversation Kolt got the impression that Grauer was skeptical of the CIA’s understanding of things in and around Peshawar, and to Kolt this meant he’d probably get the go-ahead to attempt to penetrate Buchwald’s location.
He was right.
Bob nodded, handed the phone over to Raynor.
“Sir?”
“Can you do it, Kolt?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have one source telling you there are as many as ten armed personnel in the target location. What if he’s wrong?”
“There might be fewer.”
“And there might be more.”
“I’m willing to take that risk. I’m willing to do it alone.”
A pause on the other end of the line. “Look. I talked to Langley today. They knew nothing about Buchwald, about the warehouse and factory south of Peshawar, about Chechens in Pakistan, about Turkish and Yemeni AQ operators running an op in Peshawar. You and Bob are the tip of the spear on this.”
“Did they listen to you? Are they taking this situation seriously?”
“Very seriously. They are sending a guy over t
o Pesh tonight — he’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning. He’s Special Activities Division, a veteran, top-notch by his reputation. He’s going to debrief Kopelman.”
Kolt looked up at Bob, said into the phone, “The Agency is going to debrief a guy they deemed unreliable, who has been running an agent who they also deemed unreliable?” Bob just rolled his eyes and shrugged. Kolt was more direct: “Assholes.”
Grauer’s chuckles crackled over the satellite link. “Yeah, hypocritical, but smart on their part. I’m actually a little surprised. They seem really worried about this. Almost like they know something we don’t about what’s going to go down.”
“So, you are saying you are giving me permission to go into the factory?”
Another pause by Grauer. “Racer, what I’m about to say may seem cold, but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway. I am willing to risk you to do this, but I’m not willing to risk Bob. We can use any info we can get, but not at the risk of the best Radiance human intelligence asset in western Pakistan. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly clear. I just want Bob’s agent to drop me off near the target location tomorrow at noon, and then go someplace to stand off until I call him for the pickup. Bob won’t be involved at all. He will stay up here in Pesh and meet the guy from SAD.”
The connection hissed for a moment. Kolt imagined Grauer sitting in the Ops Center and running his hand over his razor-short hair. Finally he said, “Your plan is authorized.”
“Thank you, sir. Passing you back to Kopelman.”
Bob took the phone back, his eyes locked on Raynor’s. “Racer looks happy, which means you said yes.” He listened, then told Grauer he’d call him after Raynor left with Jamal the next morning, and then meet with the CIA operative for the debriefing. He hung up and then dialed Jamal’s mobile phone. As it rang he changed his mind, disconnected the call.
“Might as well let the kid get a good night’s rest. If I tell him he’ll be going on a mission with you in the morning, he won’t sleep a wink.”