The End of America’s War in Afghanistan (The Russian Agents Book 3)

by Ted Halstead

  Or the price they were about to pay to free it once again.

  Abdul knew that Bagram had a recorded history dating back over two thousand years. It had been the capital of the Kushan Empire that had controlled Afghanistan and parts of modern Pakistan and India for three centuries until finally succumbing to foreign invaders.

  Truthfully, Abdul didn’t care. He was proud of Afghanistan’s history, and it was good to remember that Afghans had sometimes ruled others, and not always been ruled by outsiders themselves.

  But Afghanistan was full of other towns and cities with rich histories. Abdul knew that destroying Bagram Airfield would, at best, kill many of the nearby town’s residents. At worst, it could do more than devastate the town. Radioactive fallout might make it impossible to rebuild for many years to come.

  So be it. The past was the past. Abdul had to concern himself with Afghanistan’s future.

  Creech Air Base, Nevada

  Captain John Pettigrew looked over the mission brief and nodded with satisfaction. He couldn’t have managed the prep work better if he’d done it himself.

  The Avenger drone had been landed at Bagram Airfield, refueled and loaded with another R9X model Hellfire missile to replace the one he’d fired. Pettigrew hadn’t even known that model Hellfire was stocked at Bagram, and so was pleased he would still have it available as an option for the next mission.

  Now the Avenger was again in the air with Senior Airman Evans back at the controls.

  An update flashed across Pettigrew’s display, and his eyes widened.

  Pettigrew stood up and quietly asked Evans to put the Avenger on autopilot for a moment.

  Then Pettigrew gestured for attention, and every eye in the drone control center turned towards him.

  “A few of you know what the mission is about today,” Pettigrew said. “I think you all deserve to know. We’re looking for a nuclear bomb headed towards Bagram Airfield. I’ve just been advised that a second nuclear bomb has been located and defused outside Kabul.”

  Pettigrew paused. “We’d already been focusing our search efforts on the area around Bagram. The good news is that now we’re sure we’re looking for just one bomb. The bad news is that our drone’s sensors aren’t very likely to detect its radiation signature. Not anyone’s fault. Just not a job that the sensors were designed to do.”

  Looking around the room, Pettigrew saw nothing but grim expressions. Nobody liked to think that they were doomed in advance to failure.

  Pettigrew smiled. “But after that bad news, there’s more good news,” and waited for the expected relieved laughter to die down.

  “Believe it or not, we’re getting help from the Russians. They have a drone headed our way that should get to us in minutes with sensors capable of detecting the bomb. The Russians have been given the Avenger’s altitude, so they should be able to avoid our drone. Evans, you’ll want to keep an eye out in case they forget,” Pettigrew said.

  “Yes, sir,” Evans said, nervously looking at his display.

  “This is the drone that spotted the bomb that was just defused near Kabul, so we need to be ready to strike the vehicle carrying the other weapon as soon as it’s identified. I’ve been advised the team that carried out that successful mission will need more time to reach Bagram than we probably have,” Pettigrew said.

  Then he turned to Evans, who looked like he had a question. “Go ahead,” Pettigrew said, gently.

  Pettigrew had gone out of his way to make it clear to Evans he harbored no ill will over the previous day’s events, but he was clearly still nervous around Pettigrew.

  “Sir, is there any chance we could get a special forces team out of Bagram Airfield to deal with the weapon?” Evans asked.

  Pettigrew shook his head. “It’s a good question, but from what I hear, the answer is no. You all heard what happened to one of the teams trying to free hostages at one of the girl’s high schools.”

  Everyone nodded soberly.

  “Well, the others had to secure their schools. For example, making sure the Taliban didn’t leave any presents behind. Now they have to make it back from across Afghanistan. Even by helicopter, that’s probably going to take more time than we’ve got. Command thinks these attacks are synchronized so that if one bomb was close to Kabul, the other one is close to Bagram,” Pettigrew said.

  Everyone nodded. They were all familiar with the terror tactic of simultaneous attack.

  “OK, let’s get back at it,” Pettigrew said. “With luck, we’ll be hearing from the Russians soon.”

  It was, in fact, only minutes before a set of coordinates flashed across Pettigrew’s monitor, which were quickly superimposed on a map of the Bagram area.

  Pettigrew didn’t need to ask whether Evans had the same information. He could hear Evans’ heartfelt, “Oh, no,” from where he was sitting.

  Pettigrew looked at Sergeant Alonzo Johnson and asked, “Johnson, are we still tied in with Bagram Airfield’s operations center?”

  Johnson nodded.

  “OK, cut our link to Bagram Airfield at this time. When they ask you what happened, tell them we’re having technical difficulties. I’ll explain why later. There’s no time now,” Pettigrew said.

  Johnson frowned, but nodded and began to carry out the order.

  Pettigrew walked over to Evans and put his hand on his shoulder. “Evans, this time, I’m going to relieve you because I’d never ask someone else to do this. But we both know it has to be done.”

  Evans nodded and stood. He whispered, “Thank you, sir,” and sat in the nearest vacant chair, while Pettigrew took his place at the drone control console.

  Town of Bagram, Afghanistan

  Mullah Abdul Zahed had been happy. The last roadblock before reaching the main entrance gate at Bagram Airfield was behind them. They had driven through most of the town. Only a handful of kilometers remained between him, his weapon, and his glorious destiny.

  After so many years of waiting, Abdul was finally allowing himself to imagine what life would be like without the American occupiers. He knew that there were many, including even men who had been fighting in the Taliban cause their entire lives, who believed he and those who would follow in his place would be content to return to life as it had been before the Americans came.

  But they were wrong. So very wrong.

  Time had dulled the memory of so many. But not the memory of Abdul’s faithful followers, the ones who would ensure Afghanistan followed the one true path.

  During the decade the Taliban had been in power in Kabul, resistance to their rule had never stopped. Warlords with their soldiers sprang up everywhere. Some were supported by foreigners, like the cursed Americans. Others made their money from control over a portion of Afghanistan’s opium production. They only had one thing in common.

  They all hated the Taliban.

  So, Abdul and his followers believed the solution was simple. Some thought the Pashtun people, led by the Taliban movement, consisted of a mere forty percent of Afghanistan’s population.

  Abdul knew that the correct number was over sixty percent.

  One fact, though, was clear. Many of those who lived in Afghanistan were not Pashtun.

  That would have to change.

  The solution would not be death camps of the sort the Pol Pot regime had used in Cambodia, or the Serbs had used in Bosnia. History had shown repeatedly that, sooner or later, governments using such methods were overthrown by outsiders.

  No, they would have to be more subtle. Encourage settlement in the worthless border region with China, much of it now a nature reserve, by non-Pashtuns. Then, cede the territory to China in return for a large cash payment, including its hapless inhabitants.

  The Chinese had shown they could turn even the most troublesome minorities, such as the Uighurs, into productive assets. Why not the Hazara and the Tajik as well?

  Non-Pashtun ethnic groups near the Pakistani border could find themselves cut off from opium production income. Many had fled t
o Pakistan before. They could be encouraged to do it again.

  There were so many solutions to the problem. It just took being creative.

  Reversing the so-called “progress” of women was simple on its face. Make sure that the women elected to the illegitimate “National Assembly” as well as the surviving girls who attended high school quietly disappeared. No ISIS-style public beheadings. In fact, no bodies at all.

  Just unmarked graves in the mountains that would never be found.

  But that would be just the beginning. Female literacy, female education in any form, and female employment outside of a family farm or family-run business would be illegal. The penalty for violations would be death.

  Abdul had spent over twenty years working quietly behind the scenes to make sure that once he was gone, the Taliban would continue on the correct path. The key was making sure that the leaders in critical positions, the ones with real power, thought as he did.

  Of course, he had opponents. Some thought he was dangerous.

  Others thought he was mad.

  One after another, over many years, they fell by the wayside. Some Abdul outlived. The Americans took care of many others.

  For those opponents who remained, some were discovered to have kept opium money that should have gone to Taliban operations for themselves. Others were found to have sold their Taliban brothers to the Americans for money. Yes, many scandals had been discovered about Abdul’s opponents over the years, and he had taken care of a few more using this method just before settling out on this final journey.

  Some of the scandals were even true.

  Certain opponents had accidents, always somehow without witnesses. Some fell from heights. Others had their brakes fail. One unlucky man stepped on a mine.

  Well, everyone knew Afghanistan was a dangerous place.

  Abdul was roused from these happy thoughts by the realization that the truck had stopped moving. When the driver gestured helplessly at the gridlock before him, Abdul called for one of the men in the truck bed to come forward. Instructing him in simple and clear terms, Abdul sent him to discover what had halted their progress.

  When the man returned with the explanation, Abdul didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. A glorious future for the country he loved, put on hold by a donkey.

  Well, it seemed that the donkey’s cart had been righted, and they were about to resume their way forward.

  What was that sound?

  Chapter Forty-One

  Creech Air Force Base, Nevada

  “From this moment on, no one is to leave this command center without my express approval. Is that understood?” Pettigrew asked.

  A chorus of “Yes, sirs,” several of them sounding puzzled, and others resigned, followed.

  Well, at least some of them understand what’s about to happen, Pettigrew thought.

  “Sir, I’m passing you a message from the Russian drone operator. It’s on your screen now,” Johnson said.

  Pettigrew read the message, and nodded. So, there weren’t going to be any position updates from the Russian drone. The operator had been ordered to fly back their drone to base in Tajikistan to preserve “valuable Russian government property.” The operator wished the Americans good luck in carrying out the remainder of their mission.

  Well, Pettigrew couldn’t say he blamed them. He’d been surprised to get any help from the Russians, and hoped someday he’d learn why they’d bothered.

  Right now, though, he had a very unpleasant duty to perform.

  Pettigrew ordered the sensor operators to focus the Avenger’s optics on the coordinates provided by the Russians. They had obviously anticipated the order, because the target came into focus almost immediately.

  The mission orders specified that the vehicle carrying the bomb was believed to be a small truck, probably white. Sure enough, there it was. Though several minutes had passed since the Russians had provided the coordinates, it was still right where it was supposed to be.

  Why wasn’t it moving?

  Pettigrew told the sensor operators to pan the camera a short distance ahead, both to check on what could be causing a delay and to see whether there were other small white trucks nearby.

  It turned out that there were no other trucks of any color or size nearby. But the reason the truck was stationary was now clear.

  The Bagram street the white truck was on was hemmed in on both sides by buildings, which were lined with stalls immediately outside them covered with canopies. Judging from the volume of the traffic, it was probably market day.

  Most of the traffic was composed of sedans, along with a number of scooters and motorcycles. Not far ahead of the small white truck, there was also a bus.

  And just ahead of that, there was a donkey cart.

  The cart had overturned, and Pettigrew couldn’t see but correctly guessed that the donkey’s harness had become tangled in the cart and its overturned cargo.

  As he watched, the cart’s driver succeeded in enlisting the help of several other men to right the cart, untangle the harness and get back underway. It looked like people passing by had already helped themselves to much of the cargo, which looked like a fruit of some kind. The rest was scattered in the street.

  It looked like traffic could get moving again any minute.

  Pettigrew still hesitated. Shouldn’t he try Bagram, and see if a special forces team could somehow get to the truck in time?

  Another look at the map told him that idea wasn’t going to work. In a matter of minutes the truck would be close enough to Bagram Airfield to inflict casualties.

  If it wasn’t already. The mission brief had stressed that command’s information on the bomb’s potential yield and blast radius was only an estimate.

  Every second Pettigrew hesitated he was risking the lives of service members and civilians from both the U.S. and Afghanistan who were at Bagram Airfield.

  Plus, there were a lot more of them at Bagram Airfield than there were people living in the town of Bagram.

  Pettigrew still wondered if he’d be able to live with doing this.

  It seemed as though he was watching someone else go through the next steps of designating the small white truck as a target, locking an R9X model Hellfire on the truck, and announcing, “Missile launched.”

  But Pettigrew knew it was all him.

  He had seconds to hope that the truck didn’t have the bomb after all. Though another part of his mind immediately chided him for that thought, since it would mean the bomb was still out there.

  OK, then Pettigrew would hope that the R9X’s kinetic warhead wouldn’t set the bomb off. That was possible, wasn’t it?

  In fact, it was possible. An explosive warhead would have made the bomb’s detonation much more likely. A detailed analysis performed later estimated that the choice of the R9X warhead had reduced the likelihood of the bomb’s detonation by over half.

  It had also reduced the proportion of fissile material that would be consumed, if the bomb did detonate.

  But luck was not on the side of the town of Bagram that day.

  The bomb detonated. Only about half of its fissile material was used, so if it had been detonated as designed, the explosion would have been even more devastating.

  This mattered for Bagram Airfield, and the adjacent Parwan Prison. It meant no casualties for the airfield instead of mass deaths and injuries at and near the gate, and far fewer for the prison.

  It did not matter much for the town of Bagram. It was simply too small.

  Software had saved the Avenger’s optical sensors. They were programmed to cut off automatically when an event like a nuclear explosion occurred.

  The Avenger itself was saved by several of Pettigrew’s decisions. He had fired the missile from high altitude, and several kilometers away. Just as important, he had set an oblique course at top speed away from Bagram, and executed it as soon as he’d fired the missile.

  For a moment, Pettigrew thought none of this would be enough as the shock wave
from the explosion hit the Avenger, and he had to fight for control. It passed quickly, though, and he was able to regain level flight.

  In the meantime, the sensor operators had refocused the optical data feed on the town of Bagram. Once Pettigrew regained control, the picture came into focus on all their monitors.

  There was no mistaking the distinctive mushroom cloud. Any doubt about what had just happened was immediately erased.

  “Johnson, advise Bagram Airfield that there appears to have been a nuclear detonation in the town of Bagram. Reestablish our data link with Bagram, and get me General Robinson ASAP,” Pettigrew ordered. Johnson nodded, and immediately got to work.

  “OK, everyone, listen up. There are to be no communications of any kind with anyone outside this room unless I give you my direct authorization. What I said earlier about not leaving this command center now goes double. I am going to ask General Robinson to designate everything that happened today as Sensitive Compartmented Information,” Pettigrew said.

  Everyone in the room nodded, since they all had an SCI clearance for the Avenger, both systems and operations. They understood that today’s events would be a separate “compartment” with its own code word designation.

  They also knew that the already severe penalties for divulging Top Secret information were increased for SCI. That was because two steps were taken before an SCI clearance was granted.

  First, the already thorough background investigation for Top Secret clearance was done again, this time in more detail. As a result, many who had been granted TS clearance were denied it at the SCI level.

  An unlucky few also had their TS clearance revoked.

  Next, anyone who was granted an SCI clearance was given a briefing on its implications and requirements, including penalties for either inadvertently or deliberately disclosing SCI information.

  “Once General Robinson decides whether or not to agree with my SCI recommendation, we will proceed accordingly. If he does agree, you will all receive a briefing on your responsibilities with regard to safeguarding this information. Is that all clear?” Pettigrew asked.