The assault team—an amalgamation of 24 SF operators that had been culled from three different units, including the 1st SFOD-D—
was probably doing that right now, Harper realized. And when it came to IPB, Kealey’s team on the ground would continue to play a vital role. Once they were in position, they would be able to send updates regarding the enemy’s force concentration—where the guards were situated on the grounds. Their primary task, however, remained the same: to verify whether or not the secretary of state was even in the building.
Thinking about Kealey and the rest of the surveillance team, Harper shot a quick glance at his watch. They would still be prepping as well, he realized, even though it was already dark in Pakistan. They wouldn’t even try to approach the house until they were completely ready to move, and even then, it would likely take them several hours to get into position. From that point forward, it would just be a matter of watching, relaying updates as needed, and trying to stay out of sight until the assault team arrived.
They were still hours away, Harper realized. And now there was nothing to do but wait. Resigning himself to this fact, he drifted over to join the DCI at the conference table.
Andrews was still talking intently to Bale, but stopped when he spotted his deputy. “John, take a seat.” He waited until Harper was situated before asking the obvious. “What’s the word from your man on the ground?”
Harper knew he was referring to Kealey, but by extension, that included the men he was working with. “They’re at the last staging point, getting ready to move. That might not be for a few hours’
time, and they probably won’t make contact again until they’re ready to go.”
“Why not?”
Harper looked at the DNI, who’d posed the question. “Well, there’s just no point, sir. If they have nothing to report, then they’re only wasting battery time by continuously transmitting. Remember, the one thing they don’t have is a satellite radio, which means they’re stuck with a phone. We can only expect them to make contact when it’s absolutely necessary, such as when—and if—they lay eyes on Secretary Fitzgerald.”
“Or when something goes wrong,” Andrews pointed out quietly.
“That won’t happen,” Harper said, but it had come out forced. He had faith in his people, especially Ryan Kealey, but like everyone else in the room, he knew what was on the line. Looking around, he wondered how many of these people would let Fitzgerald go—just walk away from her completely—if doing so meant sparing their jobs. As a patriot, he wanted to believe the number was small, but twenty years of government service had taught him otherwise. The men and women who really cared would be the CIA officers on the ground in Pakistan, as well as the elite soldiers of the 1st SFOD-D, the pilots of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing, and the dedicated support troops, all of whom were waiting on the green light out at Bagram Air Base in eastern Afghanistan.
“And where is the staging point?” Bale asked, snatching Harper out of his short reverie. Bale looked worried. He had picked up on his forced confidence, Harper thought. “Because if they’re spotted before they even—”
Harper cut him off by holding up his hand. “It’s not a problem, sir.” He managed to sound reasonably sure this time, and he saw some of the DNI’s lingering doubt slide from his face. “They’re about three hundred meters away from the building itself, and they’ve got cover. It’s close enough to maintain a loose vigil, but not so close as to risk being caught. Believe me . . . They know what they’re doing.”
“Let’s hope so,” Andrews murmured under his breath. “For all our sake.”
CHAPTER 40
SIALKOT
Balakh Sher Shaheed stood to the rear of the surgeon’s house, staring across the dark field, eyes fixed on the column of Type 85-II main battle tanks moving into the foothills. Beyond the tanks, over the crest of the highest peaks, he could see the occasional flash of light, purple yellow blooms against the pitch-black sky. It could have been lightning, but Shaheed knew it was something more, and the thought filled him with an excitement he could barely contain. He had seen the same muted flashes eleven years earlier, not far from the place he was standing in now. As he pulled his last cigarette out of a crumpled pack and fumbled for his lighter, Shaheed was overcome with pride, but also with a sense of burning jealousy. He wanted nothing more than to be in that column, working his way toward the fight and a place in the great history of his country, like his father before him, and his before him. Balakh Shaheed came from a long, distinguished line of career soldiers. He took enormous pride in this fact, and he had always measured himself against the great patriarchs of his family. His grandfather had fought in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947, the first major conflict between India and Pakistan after their near-simultaneous seccession from Britain. When the traitor Hari Singh—the last ruling maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir—broke ranks and acceded his kingdom to India in ’47, Hafeez Shaheed had been among the first to join the Azad Kashmir forces, the local militia supported by the Pakistani Army. His bravery in that conflict had earned him the respect and admiration of the top Pakistani commander, Major General Akbar Khan, and his son—Balakh’s father—had continued in that tradition, earning the Nishan-e-Haider, Pakistan’s highest decoration for an act of bravery in combat, during the Battle of Asal Uttar in the IndoPakistani Kashmir War of 1965. Given the heroic precedents set by his forebears, Balakh Shaheed’s destiny seemed predetermined. He was meant to join the Pakistani Army at the earliest opportunity, and that was what he had done, enlisting on his eighteenth birthday, along with 6 other men from the village of Tarnoti, their shared home high in the mountains of the Northwest Frontier Province. The following years had seen him successfully apply to the Special Services Group and then InterServices Intelligence, which he joined in 1995. That was when he had first encountered Benazir Mengal.
At the time, Mengal had been a major general in ISI and the head of JIN, Joint Intelligence North. He was already a legend, owing to his actions during the Siachen war, and Shaheed admired him tremendously right from the start. The general had taken the young Special Forces havildar under his wing, and Shaheed had returned the favor by carrying out numerous acts of brutality at Mengal’s bidding. Then, when Mengal had been forced to resign his commission in 2001, he had asked Shaheed to join him in private enterprise. Shaheed had done so without hesitation, and he had never really regretted the decision. He had earned a small fortune over the years that followed, much of it accrued through Mengal’s cross-border smuggling activities, but for the most part, they were standard deals, arranged in advance with reliable customers. The most dangerous part was the border crossings themselves, and even then, bribes to the right people all but negated the risk. Shaheed had begun to miss the army, so when the general had revealed his plan to abduct the U.S. secretary of state, Shaheed had jumped at the opportunity. Mengal had never revealed his overall objective, but that didn’t matter to Shaheed; he was once again in the heat of battle. He had been one of the assaulters during the strike itself, and it had been the defining moment of his life. But it had been five days since they’d taken the secretary, killing a dozen American security officials in the process, and the thrill of that attack was already starting to fade. The real action was taking place less than 100 kilometers to the north, and Shaheed wanted nothing more than to be there, fighting for his country as he had in the Kargil district eleven years earlier.
Taking one last drag on his cigarette, he flicked the butt into a clump of sod, then adjusted the strap of his weapon, cursing as the fabric rubbed over the raw patch of skin at the back of his neck. He knew he should not have the weapon slung, but it was hard to take the Americans seriously. Their senior diplomat had been snatched in broad daylight, and according to the Western media, little progress had been made in locating the people responsible, or the secretary of state herself, for that matter. The general was making the tape at that moment, and when it was done, it would be routed through an intermediary to the U.
S. embassy in Islamabad. Soon after that, it would find its way into the hands of the U.S. president, and once that happened, the whole world would see how serious they actually were. If the first tape had made their demands clear, the second would undoubtedly complete the cycle. The content would effectively destroy any lingering notions of defiance still being entertained by the American government.
With this thought, Shaheed smiled to himself. He wondered how the general was planning to illustrate the steadfast nature of his resolve. Perhaps he would remove a few of the woman’s fingers for the benefit of their American audience, or maybe he would settle on some other useful part of her anatomy. Either way, Shaheed knew it would not end there. Mengal had not revealed what he intended to do with the woman when it was all over, but Shaheed had no doubt that her life would end in Pakistan. He only hoped that he would be there to witness her final moments. Perhaps, if he was feeling charitable, the general would even give his senior lieutenant the honor of pulling the trigger.
Adjusting the strap of his AK-47 once more, he sighed and cast another longing glance to the lights in the north. After a while, his mind began to drift, finally settling on the first interrogation he had conducted after his acceptance to ISI. The prisoner had been an Indian sergeant, a havildar much like himself, except this man had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, captured after Pakistani troops had surrounded an artillery position in the Mushkoh Valley. The sergeant had proved all but useless. He was simply too low in the chain of command to have access to any actionable intelligence, but Shaheed had enjoyed the experience nonetheless. He could remember the first time he had lowered the blade to the man’s skin, preparing to shear it from his body, and the rush he had felt as the blood spilled onto the earthen floor, the Indian havildar screaming, screaming. . . .
As Balakh Shaheed, a third-generation soldier of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, reveled in the memory of his first murder, he was completely unaware of the man lying prone less than 80 feet in front of him. He was also completely oblivious to the 3 other men in the field, all of whom had their eyes and weapons trained on him and the second guard standing watch at the back of the house. Ryan Kealey was the closest, the man directly in front of Shaheed. He had watched intently as the guard had wandered out of the house, the screen door slapping shut behind him. Then he had moved under the canopy of the large tree in the garden. Kealey had watched in disbelief as he lit a cigarette, cupping his hands to keep out the rain. That single act was almost enough to throw a blanket of doubt on the whole thing. Surely, a man as unprofessional as this could not be involved in the abduction of Secretary Fitzgerald, which had been carried out with consummate skill. Nevertheless, the AK
slung round the guard’s neck seemed to verify what they had learned from Fahim’s copious notes, and Kealey had felt a surge of adrenaline the moment he saw it. Now, for the first time, he was completely certain that Brynn Fitzgerald was somewhere inside the house.
Kealey was partially concealed beneath a juniper shrub in the broad, grassy field. He waited, watching through the AN/PVS-17 nightvision scope mounted to his rifle. Finally, the guard directly in front of him turned away for a split second, his head swiveling toward the second guard at the back of the house. Kealey used that stolen fraction of time to check his watch, cupping his hand over the illuminated display. He saw it was 2:36 AM, which meant they had been watching the house for just over three hours. They had waited for dark in an abandoned factory outside Sialkot, studying the surveillance shots that Fahim’s men had taken. Kealey’s initial impression of the Afghan’s organizational skills had only been supported by the quality of his intelligence. They had verified, through distinguishing physical characteristics picked up on film, that Mengal had at least 10 men on the premises. They had also managed to verify that the general himself was present, along with the Algerian, Amari Saifi. In short, all the major players were on-site. For this reason, the assault itself had been moved up, and the helicopters were already en route.
The core of the assault force consisted of two MH-53 Pave Low Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) helicopters. Each MH-53 was carrying 12 Special Forces operators, in addition to the standard flight crew of four—2 pilots, 1 flight engineer, and 1 gunner on the platformmounted 7.62mm minigun. The Pave Lows were being escorted to their destination by four AH-64 Apache gunships, each of which was armed with a full complement of thirty-eight HYDRA 70 rockets, eight Hellfire missiles, and the standard 30mm nose cannon. Kealey thought that the size of the rescue operation—at least in terms of the number of people the Pentagon had sent, as well as how they had been sent—was perfect for the current mission. The size of the aerial force was small enough to evade Pakistan’s outdated groundbased radar, and the Apache gunships guaranteed a modicum of protection from everything except fixed-wing fighters. And if they showed up, the whole thing would be over, anyway. The size of the incoming force would certainly be enough to get Fitzgerald out, assuming she was even there to begin with. And that was the problem. The only person they had not been able to locate was Brynn Fitzgerald. Kealey felt sure that she was on the grounds, but he needed to know her exact position. She was either in the house or the barn, which was located less than 30 feet to the left of the house, as viewed from the rear. The lights were on in the barn—a man had walked out earlier, and his silhouette had been plainly visible, even without NVGs—but there were no windows, and moving closer in hopes of catching a glimpse inside would entail too great a risk. At least, that was what had been decided in Washington. Their role was still strictly limited to surveillance. Harper had set the rules of engagement several hours earlier, just after they had moved to the last staging point, a ridge overlooking the back of the farmhouse. They were not permitted to engage without provocation, and they were to take all steps to remain undetected. In short, they were there only to keep track of things until the assault team arrived. According to Harper, the National Security Council had arranged for a select team of SF operators to be assembled in Afghanistan shortly after the abduction in Rawalpindi. These were the same soldiers who were currently inbound to Kealey’s location. The foresight, above all, was what had impressed the younger man when Harper had briefed him a few hours earlier. The members of the NSC might not have expected to find Fitzgerald, but they had certainly been prepared for it, and Afghanistan was as close as the operators could get without a direct invitation from Musharraf. Of course, that was no longer a consideration, and now all they had to do was carry the mission off without a hitch, which was usually the hardest part. During their last conversation, Kealey had pointed out that he and his men were more than capable of getting the job done, that there was no need to bring in an entire assault force. Harper said that he had suggested as much to the president, but Brenneman had decided to err on the side of caution. Besides, they had to fly in to retrieve Fitzgerald, anyway, so there wasn’t much point in leaving the operators behind. After relaying this piece of information, Harper had reemphasized the mission objectives. The deputy DCI knew him too well, Kealey thought. Admittedly, he had considered the pros and cons of “engineering” a little provocation. Once the first shots were fired, all bets would be off, and he’d have no option but to go in after her. He felt confident that they could pull it off, especially after what he’d seen with Mengal’s guard and the cigarette, but he wasn’t about to contradict Harper or the president. Not with the secretary of state’s life on the line.
Shifting his weight ever so slightly, Kealey peered once more through the night-vision scope attached to his rifle. He was grateful for the scope’s rubber eyecups, which served to keep the rain off the glass. The weapon was a SIG 550, an assault rifle manufactured by SiGARMS, a company based in Exeter, New Hampshire. Kealey had never used the 550, but he knew it was favored by police snipers for short-range work, and he liked the heft and feel of it. The weapon featured an integral folding bipod; a side-opening, skeletonized polymer stock; and a detachable mount, which had been modified to accept the AN/PVS-17.
Despite its quality, the rifle was a secondary tool, as he didn’t expect to use it. Of far more importance was their communications gear, which, regrettably, wasn’t quite up to par. The encrypted Motorola radios, which Owen had picked up at the embassy, were fine, but they were lacking the ability to communicate directly with their controllers via satellite radio. That would have required additional equipment, which Fahim’s organization had been unable to provide. As such, they were forced to use the Globalstar sat phone that Owen had brought into the country. As the team leader, Kealey had the phone secured in a pouch designed for the PRC-148, a portable radio of similar size and shape. A thin cord ran from the phone to a handsfree headset. Unfortunately, the phone’s battery lasted only nineteen hours on a full charge, and that was on standby. They could count on no more than three hours of actual talk time, so Kealey had kept it on standby, powering up only to relay updates when needed. Harper was his contact on the other end. To the best of Kealey’s knowledge, the deputy director was still in the Situation Room at the White House, where he had immediate access to satellite coverage. One of the four 8Xs in orbit had already been retasked and was now positioned to provide a live infrared feed of Qureshi’s house and the surrounding area. Unfortunately, even the 8X was incapable of penetrating clouds, which rendered it useless until the storm had moved on. The government did have satellites that could see through cloud cover, most notably, the Lacrosse radar-imaging series, but like the KH-12s, they moved too low and too fast to really prove useful in tactical situations. The guard beneath the tree was distracted again. Kealey checked his watch again and decided to check in with the other operatives. The rain, while lighter than it had been that afternoon, was still heavy enough to drown out the sound of his voice as he checked in with each member of the recon element. He started with Manik, who had nothing new to report, then moved on to Owen and Walland. He was about to move on to Massi when several things happened simultaneously. The barn door creaked open, then opened all the way, revealing a large square of yellow light. A tall, bearded man in flowing robes stepped out of the barn, pausing to light a cigarette. Kealey, tracking the man through his scope, immediately recognized the face from the photographs Harper had shown him in Oraefi. Although Fahim’s surveillance photographs had already placed Amari Saifi at the house, this was the first time Kealey had actually laid eyes on him. As he was processing this new development, he missed the calm but urgent transmission coming over his earpiece. Cupping his hand over his ear, he murmured, “I didn’t catch you, Massi. Say again.”
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