“You’re the son of a bitch who started this whole mess for me. Anything you want to say for yourself?” Hunter turned the yoke, awkardly coordinating the foot pedals. The plane banked to the left. He still didn’t know what the important information about Rubicon was that he’d unearthed. He hoped to finally find out.
“You recognized me. I was afraid you were going to blow my cover. I’ve been investigating Rubicon for nearly two years and I didn’t want to take any chances,” Ashland craned his neck to look out the window. He held a digital camera.
“That’s it?” Hunter turned toward him, his mouth agape. “You’re saying I didn’t come across some great Rubicon secret? Shit. That can’t be all there is to this goat fuck.”
“I’m sorry. I was the secret.” Ashland shrugged his shoulders. “I set things in motion so that Rubicon and the CIA and even your Force Zulu all believed that you were a threat that had to be neutralized. It was the only way I could protect my cover.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Nothing personal.”
“Right. I’m just a pawn in the Agency’s battle with the Pentagon. So the OGA’s now willing to take out a Force Zulu operator to protect its agents.”
“They’re willing to do it. But I don’t work for the CIA.”
“Who the fuck do you work for then?”
“France.”
“No fucking way. I got screwed by a goddamn French spy?”
Iggy yelled from the cabin. “Believe it, Stone. You got French kissed.”
Hunter shook his head in disbelief. “So what the hell were you doing on the torture express?”
“My cover was blown.” Ashland looked at Hunter and flashed a smile. “But not by you.”
Hunter wanted to take him out, but he didn’t dare let go of the controls for that long until he figured out the autopilot. He had thought of himself as a new breed of super-spy/warrior, believing he had discovered one of the most important secrets of the War on Terror. That had made it worth risking his life. Now it seemed he was a minor player in an unremarkable skirmish. Then he thought of Stella and what she must be going through. He seethed with anger. “If anything happens to Camille Black, I will kill you.”
“Stone! Enough!” Iggy shouted from the back. “No time to explain. Right now I need you to find that tango camp.”
A few minutes earlier, Iggy had opened a clear plastic case of pre-threaded needles, then pulled on a pair of latex gloves. His head turned as he watched Ashland drag a corpse from the cockpit to the back of the plane. He said to GENGHIS, “You still with me, buddy?”
“You sure you can do it?” GENGHIS mumbled.
“Better than I can fly this plane. Hang on. It’s going to hurt.” Iggy stuck his fingers in the bullet hole and pushed around until he found something that felt like an earthworm. He grabbed it and held it while he used gauze to soak up blood until he could actually see what he was working with. He held his breath as he pinched it together with his real hand while his smart hand tied a loop around it, cutting off the wound. He repeated the procedure a couple of times for good measure, then sopped up the remaining blood to make sure he had stopped all the bleeding. In less than a minute he closed the wound with stitching his mother would’ve been proud of.
The Agency had been wrong not to take him back to the frontlines. Even with only one arm and one leg, Manuel Ignatius was still an operator.
“I think we’ve got something,” Stone shouted from the flight deck as Iggy felt the plane descend. “A cluster of structures inside a quarry.”
“On my way,” Iggy said as he removed his leg and brushed the sand off the stump. A couple of blisters were already forming. Whenever he was alone at home, he usually went without the prosthetic leg because it was a relief not to have it rubbing against the stump. Not since Walter Reed Hospital had he let anyone see him without it—until now. He grabbed a pair of binoculars from a pile of gear on a seat, then hopped into the cockpit. Gripping the back of the copilot’s seat with his artificial hand, he steadied himself.
Stone changed the flap settings and pushed down on the yoke, then he banked the aircraft into a tight circle above the compound and pointed. “Look over there. This mine’s abandoned. All the others all have buildings and equipment around them.”
“Yeah, looks abandoned to me. So?” Iggy said.
“Right there. Along the north wall of the ridge between the two pits.”
“Son of a bitch. That’s a familiar footprint.” Iggy studied the area through his binoculars. “I saw several of these in Afghanistan before the invasion. There’s even camouflage netting flapping around. The high winds today must’ve ripped it.”
“SHANGRI-LA,” Ashland said.
“Yeah, SHANGRI-LA—right there in the pit of hell. Who would’ve thunk it?” Iggy pointed at the scattering of buildings nestled in the first level in the smaller of two adjoining terraced craters. Together the pits were some thirty kilometers long and between five and ten kilometers wide. Where the camp was situated on the upper level, the terraced benches were at least a football field wide. “Look at that. It’s fucking brilliant to stick it in an old open pit mine in the middle of a desert wasteland—a fortress on a shoestring. They don’t need to guard the perimeter—no one could rappelle down those walls because the sand would crumble into an avalanche. Looks like the main road is the only way in.” Iggy turned to Ashland. “Go in the back and get as many shots as you can—close ups and wide ones. Let us know when you’ve filled the camera and we’ll get out of here.”
Ashland exited the flight deck.
“You think Stella’s down there?” Stone said while he played with the digital controls, apparently familiarizing himself.
“Stella?” Iggy chuckled. “Haven’t heard her called that in a long time.” He lowered himself into the copilot’s seat. He reached into the pocket of his 5.11s and pulled out a booklet. Camille had told him that Stone was fluent in spoken Arabic and he hoped he could read it, too. “If this says what I think it does, I’d bet my good hand on it.”
“What is it?” Stone reached for it.
“Someone dropped it when they nabbed Cam. I was picking it up when the shooting started.”
Stone flipped through it. “It’s a cleric ranting about returning to the roots of the true al Qaeda.”
“Al-Zahrani?”
“How’d you know? What’s all this got to do with Rubicon?”
“His name’s come up a lot lately,” Iggy said. “Can you take us a little lower? I need a good long look. Someone bought up all the commercial satellite pictures for the next several years.”
“Rubicon?”
“You bet—one of their front companies.” Iggy studied the compound, looking for the best avenues of approach. “I’d give one of my right arms for recon on the deck, but I’m afraid a bird’s-eye view is all we’re gonna get.”
“I ran into some tangos outside of Ramadi who trained here in an al-Zahrani camp. They were the ones who kidnapped the geologist Jackie Nelson. I also know Rubicon has a lot of business here.”
“Yeah, like supporting the frickin’ terrorist camp. Obviously, they have a prison here, too. Camille said there’s a former KGB facility built out of an old gold mine. She said there are underground mineshafts in the hills around here. Our guess is that’s where they were taking you. Now I’m starting to think they’re also using it to keep tabs on the al-Zahrani camp.” Iggy lowered the binoculars and looked at the virtual gauges, but didn’t really understand what he was seeing. “How’s your fuel?”
“Twenty-nine thousand and two hundred-some pounds—enough to take us anywhere in Western Europe with leftovers.”
“I only want to get to Bagram, to Black Management’s Camp Obsidian. It’s our nearest Afghan ops center.”
“It’ll take us about an hour to get there.”
“Beautiful.”
“Not really. It takes us too far away from Stella, uh, Camille. I’d rather find what we need locally and g
o back. And if you’re thinking of returning with helicopters, you’re asking for some extreme flying.”
“We have to stage from where we have our assets and that’s Bagram.” Iggy scratched his face and felt a couple days’ stubble.
“I think we should go somewhere here in-country, get gear on the black market and come back tonight.”
“Would never work. I don’t know how to contact Cam’s local suppliers who outfitted us and it would be just you and me. Ashland’s not an operator, GENGHIS is down and that airstrip we used is now out of the question.”
“I don’t want to leave Uzbekistan without her. I speak some Russian. You have to have some spooks on staff with old KGB ties who can set us up, wire us some money. The Uzbeks will sell anything for the right price. We can probably even pick up a few old Spetsnaz mercs in Tashkent.”
“I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it would take too much time to orchestrate. As it is, with all the assets we have in place in Afghanistan, it’ll be all I can do to pull something together for tonight.”
“As soon as he’s done with the pictures, I’m heading to Tashkent,” Stone said.
“No, you’re not.” Iggy pointed at him. He could feel his face and neck getting warm. “This is a Black Management op. We have a command structure. Let me introduce you to it—in our world, I’m a five-star and you get to keep your old rank—what’s that, an E-6, E-7?” Iggy held his gaze. “Got that Devil Dog?”
Stone stared at him for several seconds, then said, “Yes, sir. Understood, sir.”
“Good. What’s the distance between SHANGRI-LA and Bagram?”
“You wouldn’t know the station identifier code for Bagram, would you, sir?” Stone said. His voice was stiff with an underlying tone of controlled anger, but Iggy didn’t care. Stone had accepted him as the alpha dog and that was all that mattered.
“Oscar–Alpha–India–X-ray.”
Stone punched the code into the flight computer and a color chart of the Bagram airspace appeared on one of the LCD monitors. “Electronic Jeppesens. Cool. Says here the range is five hundred forty nautical miles—that’s pushing it for helos, sir. And sir, I’m an E-8.”
“Master Sergeant Stone, huh? You don’t see a lot of Master Sergeants out doing field work.”
“I volunteered, sir.”
“Good for you.”
“And you can call me ‘Top,’ sir.”
“We’ve got a rescue to plan, Top.” Iggy reached into one of the pilot’s salesman’s cases and dug around until he found a pen, paper and a calculator. He sighed. “I hate this back-of-the-napkin math when roughing out a mission. Let’s see, we can knock the back rows out of the Pave Hawks and stick in two one-hundred-eighty-five-gallon tanks and that will up our fuel to—three-sixty plus two times…” His voice trailed off, but he continued to move his lips and scribble on the notepad. “A gallon of JP8 weighs six point eight pounds…accounting for all the weight from the extra fuel coupled with the high altitude flying out of Bagram, I calculate a burn rate of nine hundred sixty pounds an hour, give or take twenty.”
“Just listening to your calculus, I’d say you’ve got about five hours of flying time,” Stone said as he tried to read Iggy’s ciphers.
Iggy looked over at Stone. “You’re good—four hours, fifty minutes plus the twenty minute emergency reserve. Average of one-twenty knots is a safe bet, so we need four and a half hours to target. That means refueling twice which isn’t easy.”
“Ferry tanks?”
“Too much drag. We don’t have that kind of time. We’ve got refueling arrangements with the big military for Combat Shadows and Combat Talons, but that’s usually when we’re working jobs across the border in Pakistan or Iran, and it’s expensive.”
“Air-to-air refueling is the way to go—Stella has Pave Hawks?”
“Afghan theater—right where we’re headed.”
“Too bad she doesn’t have Pave Lows so we could take more troops in.”
“We’ve got ’em, but they’re all committed right now. When I left, it was very hot in Northern Pakistan, chasing down another lead on Abdullah. I might be able to move some around. I’ll do what I can. We’ve also got a half-dozen Super Cobras with the latest upgrades.” Iggy turned in his seat and shouted. “GENGHIS, you still with us?”
“Haven’t got rid of me yet,” GENGHIS yelled back.
“I’m not coming up with any good ideas about how to get into that camp,” Stone said. “It’ll be risky, but I’m thinking we’re going to have to pass as tangos and try the main gate.”
“Nah,” Iggy shook his head and pointed to the larger crater. “We’ll fly a Pave Hawk right up to their backside. We’ll come in at night, drop down into the pit at the far end—I’d say it’s about twenty clicks from the camp—we fly inside the bowl right up to the rock ridge. It’ll give us both audio and visual cover.” Iggy motioned to the ridge between the two pits with his artificial finger. A narrow bench along the south tip of the ridge joined the two craters. “You fly. How tough is it to fly that in the dark?”
Stone laughed. “I can barely keep a helo in the air. You need real bus drivers—the best ones you’ve got.”
Iggy pursed his lips and made a whistling noise as he exhaled through them. “My top flier is in Iraq. He’s a cocky son of a bitch, but Beach Dog could pierce the eye of a needle in a sandstorm.”
“I know the guy. Real friendly type.” Stone banked the plane in another circle. “It’s about fifteen hundred miles from Baghdad to Bagram—around three hours by jet if you’re not exactly respectful of everyone’s airspace. It’ll be tight. What the hell is taking Ashland so long?”
“Cam’s been wanting to buy a jet. We could sure use one of our own right now.”
“Outsource it. Get Blackwater to fly Beach Dog up. They rent out.”
“Great idea.” Iggy swiveled in the seat, starting to get up. “I’ve got a secure satellite phone in one of the rucksacks. I’ll start putting everything into place. We’ve got to get to Cam tonight before they fuck her up too bad.”
Stone stopped him before he could leave. “You can’t possibly trust Ashland,” he said in a low voice.
“He’s French,” Iggy said, as if he had used his strongest swear word. “They ally with you only because they don’t have the cajones to take you on, mano-a-mano. But we might need him.”
Ashland cleared his throat. He stood in the doorway of the flight deck. “Camera’s full.”
“Get us out of here,” Iggy said as he stood, ignoring Ashland.
He hopped to the door, but Ashland didn’t move.
Ashland said. “Let’s be clear. When it comes to stopping terrorists, we’re allies—the War on Terror is where we have differences. I’ve risked my life for two years to infiltrate Rubicon—an American company funding terrorists to secure future business—and what’s your CIA doing? Tell me who has cajones.”
Iggy pursed his lips and took a deep breath. He wanted to punch him out on principle, but the son of a bitch was right.
Iggy pushed by him and hopped down the aisle to search for the sat phone and a laptop so he could rough out the SMEAC. If they were going to pull it off tonight, he needed his operation orders ready when they landed.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Shangri-la
The picture of the bearded leader was plastered everywhere in the camp—on banners, on murals painted on the sides of buildings and woven into tents. She had tried to listen in on several conversations to at least pick up which one he was, but she couldn’t decipher anything. As the truck carrying Camille pulled into the terrorist training compound, the driver started honking his horn nonstop. Young men poured outside and circled around the pickup, glaring at her. Half of them wore white dishdashi, the other trousers and shirts. From the hatred in their eyes, she could only guess that some saw her as a Western whore, others as the devil herself. Their rage jabbed her from all directions. Any moment, they could mob her and she sure as hell was going to t
ake as many with her as possible. Her hands were tied in front and she was confident she could at least spray an AK. She eyed the tango with the nearest assault rifle and prepared to ram herself into him and seize it for her big finale.
One of the men grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet. He yelled something to the crowd and they started chanting. If she threw her body weight against the cross-eyed tango, she could probably get his weapon. The crowd was ready to rock any moment and she preferred to be the one on the offense.
Three. She took a deep breath.
Two. She leaned back to give herself a little more force.
One.
At that instant, she saw a man step from a tent and everyone looked toward him. He had a long peppery white beard and flowing white robe.
The Osama wannabe.
Abort.
The leader of al Qaeda, or at least one faction of al Qaeda, was less than ten meters from her. She could no longer grab an AK and spray.
She now had to aim.
The al Qaeda leader said something that quieted everyone down, then dispersed the crowd. He slipped back into a small white tent with stylized Arabic phrases over the doorway. She guessed they were verses from the Koran. It was the only tent without his image plastered on it. She had just located his lair.
A man in his mid-thirties, an elder in the crowd, directed the men in the pickup, pointing to a small building near one of the construction sites on the far side of the camp, deeper into the crater. The truck engine started and the driver honked for the leftover crowd to get out of his way. He didn’t wait, just started moving, bumping into anyone in his way.
Haji was on a mission from god.
The pickup weaved through the center of the camp and she was starting to feel a little carsick. It was so hot the doors of the buildings, tent flaps and sides of tents were open. Most of the tents seemed to be dormitories and the fixed structures included a mosque, an open-air madressa and an office building crowned with satellite dishes and antennae.
The compound was perched on the upper level of the abandoned open pit mine’s wide bench. On one side was a fifty meter ridge of solid rock that ran for a couple kilometers beyond the camp, then seemed to open up into another pit; on the other side of the camp the ground suddenly dropped off a good fifteen meters to the next bench, leading to the lower depths of the mine. She could see half a dozen terraces and estimated that the mine was a hundred to a hundred fifty meters deep. The far side was several kilometers away and the south wall was a vertical cliff dropping to the crater’s depths. Except for the rock ridge behind the main compound, the walls seemed to be crumbling. Large chunks of several benches had collapsed and were now sand piles on the next level.
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