by Tom Clancy
Ozzy was referring to the AH-64D Apache Longbow, the Army’s premier attack helicopter armed with an M230 chain gun, Hydra 70 air-to-ground rockets, and AGM-114 Hellfire or FIM-92 Stinger missiles. The mere silhouette of that helicopter summoned up horrific death in the imaginations of the Taliban who’d seen their fellow warriors shredded under its unceasing fire.
Ozzy got back on his radio and talked to the chopper pilot, requesting that he come to the village immediately and put his chain gun to work on the insurgents.
“We’ll get you back to the landing zone right now,” said Ozzy.
“You hear that?” Moore asked Rana. “We’re heading back. We’ll be okay.”
Rana clutched his Makarov to his chest. “I don’t like this.”
“I’m with you, Rana,” Moore said. “You’ll be fine.”
As the words left Moore’s lips, he flicked his gaze up toward the opposite end of the house, where a figure had just rounded the corner, and the figure’s rifle appeared in the moonlight.
Moore raised his AK-47, set to full auto, and squeezed off a four-round burst that drummed into the man’s chest, sending him thrashing and falling into the sand.
Even as that guy fell, Ozzy and Bob-O came under a hailstorm of fire from the other side of the house—at least three Taliban fighters opening up on them and driving them away from the corner. Bob-O stepped in front of Rana to protect the kid while Moore stole one more look back, then spun around and went charging up beside Ozzy.
Two houses lay on the other side of the street, and Moore noted the muzzle flashes before he hit the deck. One guy was on the flat roof, exploiting the calf-high parapet running along three sides. He fired and tucked himself back behind the stone. Another was at the back of the house, where a knee wall afforded him good cover.
And the last one stood inside the house on the left, shifting into the open window to fire, then rolling back. All three knew that the mud bricks would protect them from the enemy’s rounds.
“Rana, stay with them,” Moore told the kid. Then he crawled two more meters to get close to Ozzy. “Keep them busy. I’m circling around. I’ll start with the guy on the roof.”
“Dude, are you nuts?” asked Ozzy. “Let me frag ’em.”
Moore shook his head vigorously. “I want one alive. Give me a couple of zipper cuffs.”
Ozzy snickered in disbelief but handed over the cuffs.
Moore winked. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hey, Money,” called Rana nervously.
But Moore was already racing out of the alley. Dressed like a tribesman himself and armed with their weapons, if he were spotted, there might be a moment of pause that he’d fully exploit. He charged around two more houses, crossed the dirt road, then reached the back of the house atop which one of the Taliban fighters had carefully positioned himself. The guy had used a rickety wooden ladder, and it was during the next round of gunfire that Moore rushed up that ladder, allowing the racket to conceal his advance.
He came over the ledge and spotted the guy, kneeling down and popping up like a target in a black turban, laying down fire, then snapping back behind the parapet. Bob-O and Ozzy sent their own suppressing fire into the stone, drilling up debris and dust that rose in small clouds along the parapet.
With the Taliban’s attention fully directed ahead, he neither saw nor heard Moore’s approach. Moore took the Makarov in his hand, clutching the barrel so that the grip extended from the bottom of his fist, forming an L-shape.
Then, after taking a deep breath, Moore broke into a running leap, arcing high above his opponent, shifting into an off-beat combination of Krav Maga and his own improvisation. As the guy turned his head, catching a flash from the corner of his eye, Moore came down on him like some taloned predator, driving his knee into the man’s back and forcing the grip end of the pistol into the man’s neck, below and slightly in front of the ear. A sharp blow to the side of the neck would cause unconsciousness by shocking the carotid artery, jugular vein, and vagus nerve.
The guy fell back across the roof, and Moore withdrew the zipper cuffs from his back pocket and bound the man’s hands behind his back. Then he zipped up the guy’s feet and left him there. When he woke up, they’d have some tea and a nice conversation. For now, though, Moore descended the ladder, as once more Ozzy and Bob-O got off some suppressing fire on the other two Taliban.
Moore brushed his shoulder along the wall as he headed back around the next house, reaching the corner where, to his left and about ten meters ahead, the second Taliban fighter was hunkered down at the knee wall. He was armed with a rifle but also had a pistol holstered at his side and wore a heavy pack that Moore assumed was loaded with more magazines. Moore shuddered over the decision: The guy seemed too far away to catch silently from behind. And if Moore ran forward at the wrong angle, he could be caught by Ozzy’s or Bob-O’s fire. Getting taken out by doing something bold was one thing; doing something reckless and getting shot by his own people was to reach a level of stupidity usually reserved for adulterous politicians.
Since Moore was carrying an AK-47, if he did fire, then the third Taliban might assume that his buddy was responsible for those rounds. But then came an even better diversion: The Apache Longbow and its thundering rotors swooped down, banked hard right, then began to wheel over them. The wind and roar stole the Taliban fighter’s attention, as did the powerful spotlight that panned across the alley.
Moore raised his rifle, got off three rounds, punching the guy in the back, blood spraying. Then he whirled and took off along the wall of the next house, within which stood the last guy. Moore got down on his hands and knees and crawled beneath the side window, then came around the front of the house. Bob-O and Ozzy ceased fire, and Moore was able to position himself beneath the open window through which the last guy was firing.
At this point, yes, they could lob a grenade and finish the guy, but Moore was already an arm’s length away from the insurgent. He rolled onto his side and strained his neck to peer upward until there it was, the guy’s rifle barrel hanging above the windowsill, within reach. Moore grabbed the rifle by the upper hand guard and used it to haul himself onto his knees, just as the guy, screaming in shock, let go of the weapon and reached for his holstered pistol.
By the time he freed his weapon, Moore had thrown down the AK and leveled his Makarov. Three rounds sent the thug crashing onto the floor. Moore had used his own pistol because one of the oldest of old-school combat rules said that only as a last resort should you put your life in the hands of an enemy’s weapon.
The Apache was already leaving, called off by Ozzy.
Only the fading whomp of rotors broke across the Mana Valley. Finally, a dog barked, and then someone hollered in the distance. English.
Moore jogged back across the street and down to the end of the alley, where he met up with Ozzy and Bob-O. The stench of gunpowder was everywhere, and Moore found himself shaking with adrenaline as he crouched down.
“Nice job, Puke,” said Bob-O.
“Yeah,” breathed Moore. “Took one alive up on the roof. I get to interrogate him.”
“We killed four more, but the rest fell back into the mountains,” said Ozzy, cupping one hand over his ear to listen to the reports from his men. “We lost them.”
“I want to talk to Old Man Shah, let him lie to my face about this,” snapped Moore, referring to the chief of the village.
“Me, too,” said Ozzy, showing his teeth.
Moore drifted over to Rana, who was still sitting in the alley, knees pulled in to his chest. “Hey. You okay?”
“No.”
“It’s over now.” Moore proffered his hand, and the young man took it.
While Ozzy’s team policed the bodies of the Taliban who’d been killed (and fetched the prisoner Moore had bound up on the roof), Moore, Ozzy, Bob-O, and Rana reached the mud-brick fort. The rectangular buildings were surrounded by brick walls rising about two meters and a large wooden gate before which now stoo
d a half-dozen guards. Ozzy told one of the guards that the chief of the Shawal tribes needed to speak with them immediately. The guard went back to the house, while Moore and the others waited.
Chief Habib Shah and one of his most trusted clerics, Aiman Salahuddin, stormed out of the gate. Shah was an imposing man of six-foot-five or so, with a large black turban and a beard that seemed more like a bundle of black wires than hair. His green eyes flashed in Ozzy’s light. The cleric was much older, perhaps seventy, with an ivory-white beard, hunched back, and barely five feet tall. He kept shaking his head at Moore and the others, as though he could will them away.
“Let me do the talking,” Moore told Ozzy.
“Yeah, because I’m about to tell him off.”
“Hello, Chief,” said Moore.
“What are you doing here?” the chief demanded.
Moore tried to temper his anger. He tried, all right. And failed. “Before we were attacked by the Taliban, we came in peace, looking for these two men.” Moore shoved the pictures into the chief’s hand.
The man gave the photos a perfunctory glance and shrugged. “I’ve never seen them before. If anyone in this village is helping the Taliban, he will suffer my wrath.”
Ozzy snorted. “Chief, did you know the Taliban were here?”
“Of course not. How many times have I told you this, Captain?”
“I think this might be the fourth. You keep telling me you don’t help terrorists, and we keep finding them here. I just can’t understand that. Do they accidentally drop down out of the sky?” Ozzy had clearly damned to hell the “art and science” of negotiation.
“Chief, we’d like to continue our search with your help,” said Moore. “Just a few men.”
“I’m sorry, but my men are very busy protecting this village.”
“Let’s go,” said Ozzy, turning away and marching off with Bob-O behind him.
The cleric stepped up to Moore and spoke in English: “Go home with your friends.”
“You’re helping the wrong people,” Rana suddenly blurted out.
Moore glared at the young man and put a finger to his lips.
The cleric narrowed his eyes at Rana. “Young man, it’s you who are very much mistaken.”
It took another two hours for Ozzy’s Special Forces team to comb through the village and surrounding farmhouses, ever wary of another attack.
In the meantime, Moore questioned the man they had captured. “I’ll say it again, what’s your name?”
“Kill me.”
“What’s your name? Where are you from? Have you seen these guys?” He shoved the pictures into the man’s face.
“Kill me.”
And it went on like that, over and over, until Moore got so frustrated that he gave up before he said something he shouldn’t have. Moore’s CIA colleagues would take over the questioning anyway. Might take a week or more to crack this guy.
When Ozzy’s team finally returned to the helicopter, Moore debriefed them before they took off.
“This farmhouse right here,” Moore said, pointing to the home on a satellite photograph. “It’s pretty far back. Anyone get it?”
“We did,” said Bob-O. “Old farmer with one eye there. Couple of sons. Not happy to see us. They didn’t fit the description of your guys.”
“So there it is,” said Ozzy.
Moore shook his head. “My guys are here. They’re probably watching us right now.”
“And what’re we going to do about it?” asked Ozzy, throwing up his hands. “We’re between a rock and, well, another rock. And some mountains. And some pissed-off tribesmen. And some dead Taliban. Better tell your boys back home to ship these folks some Walmart gift cards for their trouble.”
The surprise visit wasn’t a total loss. Moore’s bosses had been unsure which way the chief’s loyalty was swinging these days, and now they knew. To believe that not a single person in this part of Shawal had seen Moore’s targets was ridiculous. They’d seen them, talked to them, perhaps trained and eaten with them. Moore had experienced this time and again, and for now there was nothing else he could do but leave behind the photographs and ask for the chief’s assistance.
“Was the mission a failure?” asked Rana.
“Not a failure,” answered Moore. “We’ve just been delayed by some unforeseen weather.”
“Weather?”
Moore snorted. “Yeah. A big shit storm of silence.”
Rana shook his head. “I don’t know why they choose to help the Taliban.”
“You should know that. They get more from the Taliban than anyone else,” Moore told the young man. “They’re opportunists. They have to be. Look where they live.”
“You think we’ll ever catch those guys?”
“We will. It just takes time. And that’s my problem, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps Wazir will have some news about your missing friend.”
Moore sighed deeply in frustration. “That’d work. Either way, I’ll be out of here by tomorrow night, and I just wish I could have some vengeance for what they did to the colonel and his family. If those guys just walk away, that’ll never stop burning me.” They climbed aboard the chopper and within ten minutes were in the air.
Before they even landed in Kabul, Moore saw that he’d received a phone call from Slater.
The Mexican guy in the photograph, Tito Llamas, a lieutenant in the Juárez Cartel, had turned up in a car trunk with a bullet in his head. Likewise, Khodai’s associates who’d been photographed with Llamas had all been murdered. The only guys in that picture who hadn’t turned up dead thus far were the Taliban. Moore needed to get back to Islamabad ASAP. He wanted to talk to the local police about Llamas and see if there were any other leads he could gather. He thought he might buy himself a little more time by “accidentally” missing his flight back home.
He didn’t reach the city until morning, and he told Rana to go home and get some sleep. He went to the police station, met with the detectives there, and positively identified Tito Llamas’s body. The cartel member had been carrying falsified documentation, including a fake passport, and Moore was able to share with the local police what data the Agency had on the cartel member. Needless to say, those detectives were grateful.
A surprise e-mail from the old man Wazir was very welcome—that was until Moore read its contents.
The two other Taliban in the photograph that Wazir had mentioned were unimportant and were actually Punjabi Taliban, named for their roots in southern Punjab. They were distinguishable because they did not speak Pashto and traditionally had ties with groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed. The Punjabi Taliban now operated out of North Waziristan and fought alongside Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
But that history lesson wasn’t the important part of the e-mail. Wazir had found the men, but both had been murdered. He said the Taliban had discovered their security leak and had killed everyone associated with it …except Moore, of course, and he was no doubt at the top of their hit list.
Maybe it was time to go home.
TRAVEL PLANS
Shawal Area
Afghanistan
SAMAD AND HIS two lieutenants had fled the farmhouse before dawn and had made the laborious ten-kilometer hike across the border and into Afghanistan. They chose a well-beaten path and had joined a small group of five merchants so as not to draw any attention to themselves. As Samad had reminded his men, the Americans were watching from the sky, and if they took what seemed like a route with better tree cover, their vibrations might be detected by one of the many REMBASS-II unattended ground sensors that the American Army had carefully hidden along the border. That movement would subsequently trigger one of the Americans’ many Kennan “Keyhole-class” (KH) reconnaissance satellites that would begin taking pictures of them. Their images would almost instantaneously flash across screens in Langley, where analysts sat twenty-four-seven, waiting for Taliban fighters like him to make such mistakes. The response would be swift and fatal: a Predator
drone piloted by an Air Force lieutenant colonel sitting in a trailer in Las Vegas would drop Hellfire missiles on his target.
Once in the valley, they found Mullah Omar Rahmani seated on a pile of blankets inside one of a dozen or more tents erected in a semicircle beneath several walnut and oak trees, and hidden from the east by patches of lemon vines. The morning prayers were over, and Rahmani was sipping tea and about to have some round sweet flatbread the Afghans called roht, along with some apricots, pistachios, and thick plain yogurt (which was a true luxury in the mountains).
Rahmani greeted them with a terse nod, then stroked his beard, which swept down toward his collarbone, terminating in a sharp point. His gaze, slightly magnified by a pair of thick wire-frame glasses, seemed permanently narrowed, which made it difficult to determine his mood. He’d pushed his white turban farther back to expose deep lines spanning his forehead and the lima-bean-shaped birthmark staining his left temple. His long linen shirt and baggy trousers hid his considerable girth, and were he to remove the camouflage-pattern jacket tightly hugging his shoulders, he might seem just a hair less intimidating. That jacket—old, tattered at the elbows—had been worn during his battles with the Russians.
Samad had to assume that Rahmani was not pleased with all the attention recently drawn to the area, although he might commend Samad for his quick thinking and ability to once more fool the Americans.
Rahmani lifted his chin toward them. “Peace be unto you, brothers, and let us thank God that we are here this morning to enjoy this food and to live another day—because the days grow more difficult for us.”
Samad and his men took seats around Rahmani and were served tea by several young men attending to him. A chill spread across Samad’s shoulders as he sipped his tea and tried to calm his breathing.
It was, admittedly, difficult every time Samad was in the man’s presence. If you crossed him, if you dared fail him, he would have you executed on the spot. This was not a rumor. Samad had watched the beheadings with his own eyes. Sometimes the heads would be hacked off. Other times they would be sawed off slowly, very slowly, while the victim screamed, then drowned in his own blood.