Black Site df-1

by Dalton Fury

  “Jeff Hammond. You’re Racer?”

  “Yes.”

  Hammond looked at the bandaged forearm of the private operator. “How bad is that?”

  Kolt shrugged. “Not bad.”

  “Looks like it’s seeping blood. You need stitches?”

  “Not today.”

  “I can get one of my guys to take a look.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Hammond motioned for Raynor to sit down on the floor across the tea service from him, and Kolt did so. Raynor looked over the CIA officer and was impressed with what he saw. He was a fit man, fifty or so, dressed in a modified local garb that seemed, to Kolt, to be a more efficient way to blend in than Raynor’s own attire. Hammond wore cream-colored pants, not nearly as baggy and loose as his own salwar, and his loose local shirt was hidden under an olive drab military-style jacket that Kolt had seen on the street many times. A short-barreled AK-74 rifle leaned against the wall behind him. He wore a pakol hat on his curly salt-and-pepper hair. His beard was short, but he would not stand out walking through the market. The only anomaly in the room, the only tip-off that this was not a Pashtun in his simple flat in Peshawar, was the Nalgene water bottle.

  Hammond said, “You are Kolt Raynor. Former Ranger, made it into the Unit, then you were bounced out three years ago for an op that went bad in North Waziristan.”

  Kolt just looked at him. Not a great way to start this meeting, as far as he was concerned.

  “You worked for Peter Grauer at Radiance, but you were a drunk, so you got canned from that job after an arguably justified but utterly incompetent shooting in international waters off the coast of Somalia a couple of months back.”

  Still nothing from Kolt except a blank stare.

  “And now you are here. The lone survivor of a bloodbath that took the life of an ex — Agency case officer and compromised a reliable local agent.”

  Now Raynor looked away, to the empty wall over Hammond’s shoulder.

  The CIA man asked, “You want to fill me in on your actions since Radiance dropped you into the FATA?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “You could be in a shitload of trouble.”

  Raynor did not bat an eyelash. “I’m used to it.”

  Hammond’s eyebrows rose, and he smiled a bit. “Well … you’ve done okay. Actually, Langley is impressed with what you’ve accomplished. There are Agency operatives and agents running around Peshawar, FATA, and the North-West Frontier Province, but nobody has pulled off anything close to what you’ve done. We have overhead surveillance, contacts in the Pak army, NOCs and foreign nationals, but you and Grauer and Kopelman were some real studs to get eyes on, and to learn about this impending AQ op.”

  Raynor just sighed. He was tired.

  Hammond stared at Kolt for a long moment. He himself blew out a long sigh that seemed to take some of the bite from his earlier coolness. “I almost made it into Delta. Before your time. I was 5th Group, had a buddy that made it into the Unit. I managed to survive selection for a while, but wandered off a hill at night, broke my foot. Took four men to get me back up and into a truck.” Hammond laughed, but Kolt knew there wasn’t a damned thing funny about the story.

  He did not respond.

  “After that I figured, screw it, I’ll take the easy road, take a job at the Agency. Work an embassy desk, chat up Russian dignitaries at cocktail parties.” He waved his hand at the austere conditions around him. “That plan worked out about as well as my dream to make it into your old outfit.”

  Kolt started to stand. He wasn’t in the mood for small talk right now.

  “Look, I can use some help as I try to straighten this out over here. I’d like you on my team.”

  Kolt settled back down on the mat. “What is your team going to do about the operation al Qaeda is planning?”

  “Grauer has us in the loop. We know about the Black Hawks, the fake platoon-sized element of Rangers, the al Qaeda men fighting for control of the Eagle 01 prisoners. Which means, we know something very shitty is going to happen unless we can stop it.”

  Raynor nodded.

  “And I’m guessing you share our concerns.”

  “I do.”

  “Then why don’t you take it from the top, tell me what you know, what you saw, what you did? And most important, I’d like to know what you think.”

  Kolt considered it. He didn’t know if Hammond was any good, but he did know that Hammond and his three men were the only guys here, so he decided to help him if he could. He spent the next five minutes telling Jeff Hammond about his actions over the past four days. Other than the actual name of Jamal, he left little out.

  When he was finished the CIA man leaned his head back against the wall. “So, we can’t hit the compound at Shataparai without killing the prisoners, and we can’t send a rescue mission in to get them out without heavy losses?”

  “Complete losses, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Hammond nodded. Said, “Don’t guess it matters much.”

  “Why not?”

  Hammond picked up the water bottle, stood. Walked over to the balcony of the flat. Looked through the curtains out the window. He changed the subject. “There will be a peace jurga in Kabul in January. A big peace conference with the Afghani government and the Afghani Taliban. Some say this might stop the fighting over there.”

  “You think the Chechens are going to hit that? That’s two months away? These guys aren’t going to sit on their hands for two months!”

  Hammond looked back to Raynor. “No, they aren’t going to hit the peace jurga. We believe al Qaeda is going to try their best to kill it before it happens.”

  “How can they do that?”

  “With an operation that will embarrass the U.S., and thereby weaken the Afghani government. Our allies in the Pakistani government as well.”

  The stakes were suddenly much larger than Raynor had envisioned. “You must have found something in the data we harvested from the German’s laptop.”

  Hammond nodded. “Yes. That was very helpful. Before we got the computer dump and figured out what they were really up to, we thought they were going to just nail some forward operating base over the border, kill some marines, dance around and proclaim victory for the year by getting in the last hit before the winter comes.”

  Hammond said nothing else.

  “So? What’s the plan? How will they prevent this peace conference?”

  Hammond’s eyes showed worry.

  “Talk, man! Look, I want to get Eagle 01 out of this. Anything you can say — ”

  “We are reasonably certain Eagle 01 was taken from Zar’s compound last night, just a few hours after the shoot-out in Darra Adam Khel.”

  Kolt launched to his feet. “What? Where are they now?”

  “We don’t know where they are.” Hammond hesitated. Then, “But we think we know where the AQ contingent that has them is going.”

  “Where?”

  Hammond looked out the glass door and into the darkness.

  “Where?”

  Jeff Hammond shook his head. Took a sip from the water bottle. “I’ve got orders, Racer. You are not cleared for that.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Thought we were part of a team.”

  Hammond shrugged now. “‘Need-to-know.’ You know how that goes.”

  Kolt launched across the room, grabbed the operator by both lapels of his military jacket, pulled him to his feet, and pushed him against the wall. The water bottle flew through the air, slammed onto the floor, and bounced across the room. “I’ve risked my life to get you the intel you have! Kopelman died for it! At this point in the game, asshole, I decide if it’s something I need to know!”

  Hammond looked shocked and angry, but not totally unsympathetic. Still, he did not back down. “Grauer explained your contract status with Radiance to my higher-ups. You’ve got no security clearance whatsoever. You’re just a private citizen. Langley told me to get what I can from you, but under no circumstan
ces was I to pass on classified intel to you.”

  Kolt grabbed the man tighter. Nodded slowly. “It’s true. I’m just a private citizen. Which means I can walk away from this whole thing right now. I can hop a bus for Islamabad and be sitting at a café with a reporter for The New York Times before happy hour tonight.”

  Hammond did not respond to the threat.

  Kolt let go of the man’s jacket and took a half step back.

  “You want me on the team? You have one chance to have me on the team. Tell me what the target is.”

  Jeff Hammond went back to his spot on the floor. Slowly Kolt returned to the mat in front of the CIA officer.

  Hammond said, “From Buchwald’s laptop we got an account number for a bank in Quetta. We looked into the account. A month ago it was accessed by a high-ranking foreign national intelligence officer, a guy Langley trusted. A guy we’ve had on payroll for several years. A guy who set up an operation for us, ran it effectively, to the best of our estimation, for some time.”

  “A guy who was playing you all along,” Kolt said.

  Hammond shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “What was the operation he ran?”

  Jeff Hammond looked at his water bottle but did not drink from it. He seemed torn as to what he should say, but finally he looked up into Kolt’s eyes, and the words came out with speed and intensity.

  “A black site. A secret prison, a place where we could house high-value targets without anyone knowing that we were holding them. A place where the locals could do the interrogation while Agency … ‘advisers,’ shall we say? could help out with the questioning.”

  “I thought black sites were illegal now,” Raynor said, but with no great surprise in his voice.

  “There are some gray areas. Still … Langley has not read Congress in on the existence of this particular operation.”

  “Guess there isn’t too much of a gray area then.”

  Hammond shrugged. “I’m just a grunt on the ground, Raynor. The Sandcastle wasn’t my baby.”

  “The Sandcastle?”

  “That’s the site.”

  “So, you think al Qaeda is going to attack this Sandcastle?”

  Jeff Hammond just nodded. “Helmut Buchwald, the German guy you iced, took money from the Quetta account to finance his gun-making factory. The guy who ran the Sandcastle made a large withdrawal from the same account just five days ago. He is on leave at the moment, not on duty at the Sandcastle. The only reasonable conclusion is that the Quetta account was some sort of operational slush fund, which suggests the two men were paid by the same masters. If Buchwald was working for al Qaeda, which you and Bob established to Langley’s satisfaction … then the guy who runs the Sandcastle just got paid by al Qaeda.”

  “Paid for what?”

  “Best guess would be access to his location. Complicity in an op against it. They even gave him time to get out of there before the shit hit the fan, to go on leave.”

  Kolt asked, “But … wherever this Sandcastle is, how the hell are they going to get the Black Hawks there? They’d show up on radar the moment they left the FATA. If they were heading to Afghanistan we could knock them out of the sky with no problem. If T.J. and the men were in the choppers, then they would be killed, but they’d have to assume we wouldn’t let them just fly over the border and — ”

  Hammond shook his head. “The black site … it’s here.”

  “Here? You mean, here in Pakistan?”

  “I mean here in Khyber.”

  Kolt shook his head like he hadn’t heard correctly. Then, slowly, he muttered, “Holy shit.”

  “Fifteen miles west of Peshawar, just outside of Landi Kotal, right smack dab in the Khyber Pass. It was an old British garrison and stockade, a hundred fifty years old. One of dozens of little fortresses overlooking the pass. The al Qaeda Black Hawks can fly fifteen miles low, through the pass, without being picked up on radar.”

  Raynor’s mouth hung open. “Back up a second. You guys are operating an Agency prison in a Taliban-controlled area?”

  “Ironic, huh? Actually, the Taliban don’t run Landi Kotal.” He looked at the floor. “Not yet, anyhow. There is a special ops unit of the Pakistani Khyber Rifles at the black site, the best of their best and all vetted by Langley. The Khyber Rifles hold Landi Kotal itself, although the highway through the pass is full of Taliban ambush sites.”

  Kolt still could not believe what he was hearing. “Who are the prisoners at the black site?”

  “All HVTs. We’ve gotten more actionable intel out of the Sandcastle than any other source in the past three or four years. That’s where we picked up the final pieces of the puzzle that led us to OBL last year in Abbottabad. Right now at the site there are two AQ superheavyweights, a couple of well-informed AQ foot soldiers, and two dozen or so Afghanistan Taliban. Big shots, regional commanders, military wing, even a prominent former spokesperson, kind of a VIP. These are all guys either the Pakistani army picked up in Pakistan and handed over to us, or … in some cases — to tell you the truth — in most cases…”

  He paused. Looked off into space for a moment. It was clear Hammond was still struggling with telling secrets. It was hardly standard operating procedure for a man in his profession.

  Kolt pressed. “In most cases, what?”

  “In most cases the Agency picks up guys on the Afghani side. Guys we know are dirty, guys we need information from, and guys we don’t want to hand over to the Justice Department. So we hood them, zip-tie them, drive them over the border, and hand them off to the Khyber Rifles. We just sort of play like these tangos got popped in Pakistan by the Pakistanis, instead of in our area of operations over the border.”

  “So the Khyber Rifles can interrogate them?”

  “The Khyber Rifles have some men that know which side their bread is buttered on. They work for us. They interrogate the prisoners.”

  “With Agency officers there to observe?”

  “You got it.”

  Kolt’s voice turned darker. “You are talking about extraordinary rendition.”

  Hammond chuckled without smiling. “It’s not as extraordinary as you might think. No ghost planes, no secret international treaties or complicated chains of custody. We just toss their asses on a donkey cart and hump them over the border. No muss, no fuss.”

  “Unless the Sandcastle gets hit by a platoon of al Qaeda operatives posing as Americans. They slaughter the American advisers and then release the HVTs, who then reveal the existence of the black site to the world.”

  “Yeah … unless that happens.” Hammond blew out a long sigh. “Shit. Can you fucking see the fallout on this? Forget Abu Ghraib. This is that times one hundred. Plus the White House is going to go ballistic. Not to mention the Agency men who’ll be wiped out in the attack. I’ve got some good friends at the Sandcastle right now.”

  “Then pull them out. Leave the prisoners and the Paki guards and just get our boys out of there!”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yes, actually, it is that simple!”

  “Langley has to give the order, and they haven’t given the order. They are afraid that without the Agency guys at the Sandcastle, the Pakistani guards will just fold up like a cheap suitcase and let the HVTs go. If they do that, or they kill them, and word leaks out that this was a CIA black site, then that will bite us in the ass. It will hurt our friends in the Pakistani government, which means they could lose their fingernail hold on power. If the extremists take over Pakistan, this is going to turn into a soup sandwich.”

  “So what are you guys doing to stop them from taking over the Sandcastle?”

  “We’ve alerted the SAD guys at the black site. And I will head over there in the morning as soon as the road opens.”

  “You and three guys in a minivan?”

  “Yeah, for now, basically, that’s about it. Langley is working with Colonel Webber at Delta to develop a hit to pull our guys and the HVTs out of there, but again, that would involve the
White House, and there is no assurance we’re going to get authorization for a ground incursion into Pakistan from the White House. Since the OBL hit, they’ve pretty much put the kibosh on sending military over the border in any numbers that could be noticed. Hopefully, when they learn what’s at stake they will see that pissing off Islamabad is the lesser of two evils.”

  “Damn.” Kolt shook his head in disbelief. “I’ll go with you.”

  Hammond shook his head. “I’d love that — I could definitely use an ex — Delta gun — but I’ve got orders. We are to have no operational relationship with you.”

  “Man … screw your orders. You weren’t supposed to tell me all that shit you just told me.”

  “Yeah … well, I can deny that. But if I put you with my team heading to Landi Kotal … can’t see how I can keep that from Langley.”

  Kolt stood. “Then I’ll go on my own.”

  Hammond slowly rose. He lifted his folded Kalashnikov from its resting place leaning against the wall.

  “You have gear?”

  Kolt shook his head. “Negative.”

  “You have wheels?”

  Again, “Negative.”

  Hammond clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth while he thought. Then he said, “Tell you what — I just happen to have a gassed-up Suzuki dirt bike and an AK. A backpack with ammo and water. I just might accidentally leave all that behind in the garage when me and my men leave at six a.m.”

  Raynor just nodded. “Why don’t you leave now?”

  “The pass doesn’t open until six. Before that we’d get nailed by bandits or Taliban checkpoints within a thousand yards of travel. Anyway, AQ doesn’t have the night vision equipment our guys do. They are too smart to hit in darkness. If we leave here at six we’ll still be at the site a half hour before first light.”