American runaways became carnies. Setiawan’s fate was that of a suicide bomber.
Hali continued, “Stoney and Murph have been trolling every database they can lay their hands on since you left.” Eric Stone and Mark Murphy were the Corporation’s IT experts, along with their other duties. “Nothing much by way of news out of any of the ’stans.”
“Tell them to keep an eye out. I’m looking at a blond guy in NATO gear who looks like he’s in a world of hurt.”
“I’ll pass it on,” Hali Kasim, the ship’s chief communications officer, said.
Cabrillo switched back to the tactical net. “Recommendations?”
Linda Ross spoke up immediately. “We can’t leave him here. We all know that in a day or two he’s going to be the star of a jihadist beheading video.”
“Eddie?” Juan asked, knowing the answer.
“Save him.”
“Don’t even ask,” Linc rumbled.
“I didn’t need to.” Juan still had the target house under observation and wouldn’t shift his focus. “What are they doing now?”
“They have him up on his feet,” Linda replied. “His hands are tied behind his back. A couple of the village kids have come out to see him. One of them just spit on him. The other kicked him in the shin. Hold on. The captors are shooing the kids away. Okay, they’re leading him up behind the square, heading in the same direction as our target house. And they’re walking, and walking, and . . . Here we go. Three houses left of where Seti’s staying.”
“Linc, take the target,” Juan ordered. He paused a beat for the big former SEAL to get his binocs fixated and then switched his own to where the four terrorists were pushing their blond captive into a mud and stone house that was indistinguishable from all the others.
Two of the Afghans took up guard duty outside the simple wooden door. Juan tried to peer through the open window next to it, but the inside of the humble house was too dark to discern more than vague movement.
The Corporation had been hired to get Gunawan Bahar’s son away from al-Qaeda, not rescue a foreign soldier, but as was the case in the operation in Antarctica, Cabrillo’s moral compass was the primary force behind their actions. Saving that stranger, while not getting paid the million dollars Bahar had already forked over with the promise of another four when his son was on a plane back to Jakarta, was just as imperative in his mind.
Juan recalled the tears in Bahar’s eyes when he had explained during their only meeting about how his son idolized an elder cousin and how this boy had been secretly radicalized in a Jakarta mosque. Because of the mental challenges Seti faced, Gunawan had told him, the boy couldn’t rationally join a terrorist organization, so in effect he’d been kidnapped and brought here to this al-Qaeda mountain retreat.
Cabrillo had seen the undying love in the man’s tormented expression and heard it in his voice. He had no children of his own, but he was president of the Corporation and captain of its ship,
* * *
“YOU MUST UNDERSTAND what a blessed child he is,” the father had said, “a true gift from Allah. Outsiders may look upon him as a burden, but they can’t possibly know the love my wife and I have for the boy. It is perhaps wrong for me to say this, but of our three sons little Seti is our favorite.”
“I’ve heard that from other parents of special-needs kids,” Juan had replied, handing over the white cotton handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit coat so the man could dab his eyes. Like a lot of Muslims, Gunawan Bahar wore his emotions on his sleeve. “He is untouched by the ugliness of the real world.”
“That’s it exactly. Seti is truly an innocent and will remain that way all his life. Mr. Cabrillo, we will do anything to get our boy back. Of his cousin, we do not care. His parents have disavowed him because they know what he has done. But you must return my precious Seti.”
Like many of the private contracts the Corporation handled over the years, this meeting had been set up by a mysterious facilitator named
Juan had ordered Eric Stone and Mark Murphy to tear their newest client’s life apart and had additionally run the operation by Overholt at the CIA as a courtesy. Just because Langley was upset at Cabrillo and his team didn’t mean Juan wouldn’t check to make sure Bahar wasn’t under investigation.
The last thing they needed now was to unknowingly work for some terrorist mastermind.
Gunawan Bahar had turned out to be just as he had presented himself, a wealthy Indonesian businessman grieving for his kidnapped child who was willing to do anything to have the boy returned to his family.
Upon their handshake, Bahar’s most fervid desire had become Juan’s, and not only because of the money. He felt a groundswell of anger toward anyone who would exploit a child like Seti, and it was made worse by what they intended the boy to do.
Now Cabrillo had taken responsibility for another life, that of the captured soldier. His desire to rescue him was as strong as his desire to save Setiawan.
Juan flicked his eyes to where the sun was setting over the mountains to the west, judging they had another thirty minutes till dusk and an hour until full dark. “Eddie, Linc, keep watch on the primary target. Linda, you’ve got where they’re keeping the soldier.”
Juan’s binoculars kept scanning the rest of the village and its access road.
The three acknowledged, and their careful observation continued. No detail was overlooked. Linc made sure to point out that there was a gap in the stone wall behind which they were keeping Seti that was big enough for Linda but not his muscled bulk. Linda reported that she’d seen in the flare of a match that there were two Taliban in the house with the prisoner and that he was most likely on the floor, judging by the angle of the Afghanis’ heads.
Just as the last of the sun slipped behind an icy peak and turned the underbelly of clouds blanketing the sky a dazzling shade of orange, Juan saw headlights approaching up the road below him. Three vehicles—the goat truck, the sedan with the prisoner, and now this new one—all in one day. Had to be what passed for gridlock in these parts, he thought.
It took several long minutes for the vehicle to make its grinding ascent to the mountain village, and the daylight was almost gone by the time it trundled into the square. A school bus, though half the normal length, it was painted in fantastical colors, with a string of beads hanging across the inside of the windshield and a rack on top that was currently empty. Garish trucks like this were the workhorses of central Asia, transporting people, animals, and goods of all kinds. When the team had passed through Peshawar on their way here, they had seen hundreds of them, no two exactly alike.
Cabrillo switched to night vision goggles. The NVG didn’t have the optical resolution of his regular binoculars, but with the light fading he could still make out more detail.
Several men stepped down from the bus. The first one was unarmed and greeted the village headman with a warm embrace. He looked vaguely familiar to Cabrillo, and he wondered if he’d seen that face on a terrorist watch list. The three that followed carried metal suitcases as well as the ever-present AKs.
Juan quickly assumed that this was a senior Taliban official and that the boxes contained video gear for the captured soldier’s execution. This was confirmed when one of the guards laid an elongated box on the ground and lifted the lid. The Taliban leader stooped to withdraw a three-foot-long scimitar straight out of One Thousand and One Nights, much to the delighted roars of the others.
Subtlety was not a virtue among these men.
Cabrillo described to the rest what he observed, and asked, “Is anyone thinking what I’m thinking?”
Linc replied, “That I broke the promise I made to myself after getting out of Tora Bora never to come to this part of the world again?”
“There’s that, yes,” Juan said with a chuckle, “but I was thinking that taking the bus would be a hell of a lot easier than hoofing it the twenty miles back to our SUV. We planned on carrying the kid out. He can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. The variable is if the soldier can walk that far. Stealing that bus negates the unknowns.”
“Sounds good to me,” Eddie Seng agreed.
“Linda?”
“What about its fuel load? Does it have the range to get us out of here?”
“There are no Exxon stations around here, so they must be able to get at least as far as Landi Kotal, the town on the Paki side of the Khyber Pass, maybe all the way to Peshawar.”
“Makes sense to me,” Linc said.
Linda nodded, then remembered no one could see her. “Okay. We go for the bus.”
The Muslim call to sundown prayers echoed across the deep valley, and the men in the town square and others from the village made their way toward the tumbledown mosque. The guards remained outside the building where they were keeping the soldier, and no one left the house where Seti was sequestered.
There was no generator in town, so as the twilight deepened some lamps were lit, emitting feeble light through dirty windows in a few of the houses. Both target houses had such lamps. Fuel was expensive, so the lamps were snuffed out one by one within an hour. Like the lives of so much of the world’s population, these people’s lives were dictated by the earth’s stately rotation.
Cabrillo and his team continued to watch the sleeping town through their night vision gear. The two guards maintained their vigilance for another hour before they too succumbed to oblivion. Nothing moved, no smoke from a chimney, no roving dogs, nothing.
They gave it another hour for good measure before emerging from their foxholes.
Juan felt a few joints pop as he unlimbered himself. So many hours of immobility in the chilly air had stiffened him like a board. Like the others, he took a minute to flex feeling back into his muscles, moving slowly so as not to attract attention. His moves mimicked tai chi.
The team was traveling light, carrying just enough weapons and gear for the one night on the mountainside. They all carried the Barrett REC7 assault rifle with tactical lights slung under the barrels, but all armed themselves with their preference of pistols. Cabrillo favored the FN Five-seveN on a shoulder rig so he could clear the attached silencer quickly.
The terrain was rugged, with ankle-twisting boulders and fields of loose stones that could be dislodged into a hissing avalanche with an ill-placed boot, so the team moved cautiously, each covering the next, and always one person watching the village for any sign of movement. Like wraiths, they walked under the thin silver glow of a millimetric slice of moon, their NVGs giving them the advantage over both the landscape and the darkness.
Cabrillo led them into the village, hugging the walls, but not so close that their black uniforms would scrape against the rough-hewn stone. At a preplanned spot, Cabrillo stopped and dropped into a crouch. He pointed to Linda and Eddie before indicating they would rescue Seti. He and Linc would save the better-defended captive.
With the big ex-SEAL covering his back, Juan approached the back of the house where the soldier had been taken. He peered in through a window. Despite the grime caking the single pane of glass he could see three cots in the room. Two of them were occupied by the prone forms of sleeping men. The third cot didn’t have bedding, which meant it wasn’t likely there was another guy out roaming around.
The prisoner had to be in the house’s front room, which if tradition held would be a combination living/dining/kitchen area. Its only window was next to the door, so they would be going in somewhat blind.
Juan made a motion with his hands like he was parting water.
Linc nodded and started down along the left side of the house while Cabrillo padded along the right. At the corner both men paused. A minute turned into three, and Juan was starting to get worried. They had to coordinate their assault with the other team. He was waiting for Linda to give him a single click over the tactical radio, telling him she and Eddie were in position.
It was because he was straining his ears so hard that he heard it—a distant whine, like a mosquito at the far end of a long room. He knew that sound and realized they had to move now.
This could be a blessing or a curse, he thought just as Linda signaled they were ready. Linc had heard the click too, and he and Juan moved in such perfect accord that they were around the corner of the house at the same instant, striding forward at the same pace and moving their hands into the exact same position.
Momentum, along with Juan’s hundred and eighty pounds and Linc’s two-forty, came together as both men slammed into the seated and snoozing guards, cracking their heads together with just a fraction less force than needed to crush bone. The two men never knew what hit them and went from comfortable REM sleep to a near-coma state in a fraction of a second. They eased the guards onto the ground, making sure to hide their AKs under a wooden cart stacked with hay.
They waited a moment to see if the disturbance had been detected. Juan could still hear the faint buzz. He pointed to his ear and pointed up toward the night sky. Linc shot him a quizzical look, not understanding.
Juan stretched his arms wide and waggled them like an aircraft in flight.
Linc’s eyes went wide. He knew as well as Juan that there was usually only one kind of aircraft flying in Northern Waziristan—Predator drones.
There was no reason to think that this village was the unmanned aircraft’s target, but there was no reason to think it wasn’t. Intel on the Taliban leader who’d arrived in the bus might have filtered up the chain of command, and now CENTCOM had an armed drone overhead looking for a target of opportunity.
He wasn’t worried about them firing a Hellfire missile just yet. The rules of engagement were pretty clear that confirmation of the target’s location had to be verified before the trigger could be pulled. They’d wait until dawn to use the drone’s advanced cameras to pick their man. What bothered him was the chance that a local insomniac would hear the aircraft and raise the alarm.
More than anything, Juan wanted to call Lang Overholt and ask the old spook to find out if there was an operation in the works for this village, but two things prevented him. One was that he couldn’t risk talking while this close to the target, and the second was that Overholt would freeze him out, or worse, be frozen out himself.
If the Corporation was going to continue enjoying the successes they had, they needed to mend fences in Washington, and soon.
He peered through the window, and when he saw nothing but his ghostly reflection, he realized the glass had been blacked out. He pulled his rifle up behind his back and drew his silenced automatic from its holster. Linc did likewise.
The door had no lock or latch. It was just seven poorly sawn boards held together by a lattice backing.
Cabrillo pressed a gloved hand against it, testing how easily it would open. It moved slightly, the hinges fortunately greased with animal fat so they did not squeak. For the first time on the mission, he started to feel the icy fingers of apprehension. They were putting their primary duty in jeopardy for this, and if something went wrong, Setiawan Bahar would pay the ultimate price.
He pressed on the door a little harder and glanced through the crack with his NVGs. There wasn’t enough light for the sophisticated electronics to amplify, so he opened the door wider. He felt it tap gently against something on the floor. He pulled off a glove, squatted, and reached a hand around the bottom of the door. His fingers touched something cold and cylindrical. He explored the shape and found two more. They were metal cans stacked in a little pyramid. Had the door opened farther the cans would have fallen. There would be ball bearings or empty shell casings in the cans so they would rattle when they tumbled. A simple, homegrown burglar alarm.