Act of War (3 page)

As soon as Jimi Fordyce had given the all clear, the men had begun swimming and the minisub had gone to rejoin the
Texas.
The ASDS had the capability to remain submerged for days without resupply, but the sooner it left, the better. Even along this remote, jagged strip of the North Korean coastline, a coastal patrol had passed right above them. Putting the minisub down in a depression in the sea floor had allowed them to
just barely escape detection. Leaving the getaway car idling in the driveway would have been just asking for trouble and they were already going to have enough of it.

Nothing about the mission was going to be easy, but that’s why Operation Gold Dust had been built around the SEALs. No matter what happened, they would see it all the way through. And things did happen. Even in a business this precise with men this well trained, Mr. Murphy, of the eponymous Murphy’s Law, had a way of popping up at all the worst times. The SEALs had witnessed it during the Bin Laden raid and on multiple other operations. Sometimes, things just happened. But when they did, SEALs adapted and overcame. Failure in their culture was never an option.

The surface swim was made difficult by a strong current that tried to drag them off target. When they finally reached the shore and pulled themselves and their equipment out of the water, they had taken a few minutes to rest. They needed their strength. Towering above them was a cliff the height of an eighteen-story office building.

As if they could read each other’s minds, the three SEALs rose in concert and began prepping their climbing gear.

Billy Tang had worked with SEALs before. They were smart, hard men just this side of machines. They embodied a toughness that very few possessed these days. No matter how bad things got—no matter how cold, how desperate, how dangerous, or how deadly—the SEALs pushed on.

Tang admired them for that and at the same time had a bad feeling that they were all going to be pushed to their limits and would need every last ounce of mental and physical toughness before this operation was over. What they had come to the DPRK to do would be almost, if not completely, impossible to achieve.

K
ARACHI
, P
AKISTAN

S
cot Harvath caught sight of himself as he checked the truck’s side mirror. He was wearing the traditional shalwar kameez—baggy, pajamalike trousers with a long cotton tunic. His skin was tan from having spent the summer outside. He had sharp blue eyes, short sandy brown hair, and was in better shape than most men half his age. He needed a shower and shave, but for a former Navy SEAL in his early forties, he looked pretty good.

Sitting next to him, driving their white Toyota SUV, was twenty-eight-year-old Chase Palmer. Eight years ago, he had been the youngest soldier ever admitted to Delta Force, or the “Unit” as members referred to it. His hair was lighter than Harvath’s, but their appearances were so similar they could have been taken for brothers.

Cradling an H&K MP7 submachine gun in the backseat beneath her burka was twenty-five-year-old Sloane Ashby. In her short military career, she had racked up more confirmed kills than any other female soldier, and most of the men. With her high cheekbones, smoky gray eyes, and blonde hair she looked more like a college calendar coed than a “kick in the door and shoot bad guys in the face” operator.

Harvath moved his eyes back to the taillights several car lengths ahead. The night was alive,
electric.
Motorbikes buzzed in and out of traffic. Trucks clogged the streets. Between the curtains of diesel exhaust, he could smell the ocean. They were getting close. Activating his radio, he said, “Look sharp, everyone.”

With over twenty-three million inhabitants, Karachi was the third-largest city in the world and Pakistan’s most heavily populated. It was an easy place to hide.
Staying hidden, though
, thought Harvath,
required discipline.
It meant not going to your favorite restaurant just because it was your last night in town. But that’s exactly what Ahmad Yaqub had planned.

There had been debate over where to grab Yaqub. Should they do it in Karachi while he was under the protection of the ISI—Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency—or should they wait until he returned to his stronghold in Waziristan?

The Secretary of State wanted to wait. He wanted to pay a rival faction in the lawless border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan to snatch him so there’d be no American fingerprints on the job. Hitting an ISI motorcade in Karachi was asking for trouble.
A lot of it.
The clock, though, was ticking.

Yaqub was an Al Qaeda–linked Saudi who had traveled to Afghanistan for the jihad and had married into a powerful Waziristan clan. From his mountain compound, he helped fund and coordinate terror operations against corrupt Pakistani and Afghan politicians, as well as anyone else seen as enemies of Islam and the Taliban.

His greatest coup had been the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi. She was the American-backed “puppet” who had been predicted to win the election and become president of Pakistan. She had made no secret of the direction she would take the country and how she intended to crush the Taliban.

Yaqub knew there would be an investigation into her death and had left just enough clues to confuse everyone. Some believed a rival political faction had ordered her death. Some blamed the Taliban. Some swore it had come from deep within the ISI, whose continued hold on power was dependent upon chaos reigning throughout the region. Where these clues didn’t lead, though, was back to Ahmad Yaqub. Or so he had thought.

But people in Waziristan talked, especially when money was involved. The Taliban often lamented that cash was the greatest weapon the Americans brought to the battlefield. Money frightened them more than the drones that killed without warning. American dollars were like a cold
wind in winter. No matter how well constructed your house, the wind could always find a way inside. And a particular gust of American dollars had done just that.

The U.S. had made the apprehension of Ahmad Yaqub a top priority. They had moved heaven and earth to compile as much information on him as quickly as possible. The best intelligence on Yaqub had come from a private intelligence agency run by an ex–CIA spymaster named Reed Carlton.

As part of the Carlton Group’s force protection contracts with the Department of Defense, they had developed unparalleled human networks throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nobody collected better intelligence in the region than they did; not even the CIA.

Within twenty-four hours of being tasked, the Carlton Group had reached out to its networks and had assembled an impressive dossier on Yaqub. They knew exactly where he was, how long it would take him to do his banking and assorted business in Karachi, and where he’d be spending his last evening. But the Carlton Group’s expertise didn’t end there.

In addition to hiring top people from the intelligence world, Carlton also recruited the best talent from the Special Operations community. One of his greatest accomplishments had been landing Scot Harvath.

Harvath had served on SEAL Teams 2 and 6, with the Secret Service’s Presidential Protection Division, and under a prior president who had successfully used him to covertly hunt and kill terrorists. Harvath and the President had enjoyed a simple understanding—if the terrorists refused to play by any rules, Harvath wasn’t expected to either.

Carlton saw in Harvath a bottomless well of raw talent. When he hired him, he had not only honed Harvath’s exceptional counterterrorism skills, he had also taught him everything he knew about tradecraft and the world of espionage.

When he was finished, Harvath had become more than just a talented hunter and killer of men. He had become an apex predator—a creature who sat atop the food chain, feared by all others.

There was one other plus Harvath brought to the current assignment—plausible deniability. The Carlton Group was a private
organization. If Operation Blackbird went sideways, there wouldn’t be a trail leading back to the White House.

In order to give the United States even greater insulation, Harvath had suggested using Kurdish Peshmergas instead of American operators for the hit. The Peshmergas had trained with U.S. Special Forces, were tough, and could be relied on no matter how bad things got.

The Peshmergas would be augmented by a couple of trustworthy Pakistanis from the Carlton Group’s network who had supported delicate, in-country covert operations in the past. Harvath and his people would not get involved unless absolutely necessary. That was the best he could offer. The U.S. had to move on Yaqub. Time was running out. It had to be now and it had to be in Karachi. The Secretary of State had reluctantly agreed.

Once they had the green light, Harvath and Carlton began planning the operation. There was layer upon layer of detail to be covered—weapons, logistics, contingencies, and personnel chief among them. The key was to get Yaqub in transit. That was when he’d be most vulnerable. Harvath knew exactly who he wanted with him on the assignment.

Chase Palmer was smart, aggressive, and very talented. By twenty-eight, he’d seen more action than many Unit operators ever would and was already looking for his next adventure. Having worked with him on a previous assignment, Harvath had been quite impressed and knew he’d be perfect for the Carlton Group. That was all it had taken.

With Chase on board, there was only one other operator he had wanted along.

With the Taliban and Al Qaeda having put a price on her head for all her kills in Afghanistan, the Army had removed Sloane Ashby from combat. They had assigned her to the Unit compound at Fort Bragg, where she had become a trainer for Delta’s all-female detachment known as the Athena Project. She was a good instructor, but she was far too young to be mothballed and she missed the action. When Carlton met her and offered her a position, she had jumped at the chance.

Noting the intersection they were approaching, Sloane said, “Khayban-e-Jami coming up.”

They had driven the routes between Yaqub’s safe house and his
favorite restaurant multiple times. The team knew every intersection and had plotted multiple points where they could grab him. When they did, the Peshmergas would have to move fast. The key was incapacitating his bodyguards as quickly as possible.

Yaqub’s destination was a popular restaurant called Bar-B-Q Tonight. It was close to the Karachi Yacht Club and just across the street, ironically enough, from Benazir Bhutto Memorial Park. Whether that provided an added sick appeal for Yaqub was anyone’s guess.

“Fifteen meters to the intersection,” Sloane called out.

“Damn it,” Chase swore as the car immediately in front of them began to slow. “We’re going to lose them. The light’s changing.”

Yaqub’s two-car motorcade had already entered the intersection, trailed by the Peshmergas.

“Try to stay with them,” Harvath replied.

Chase leaned on the horn. “C’mon, Chicken Little. Be a man. Move your ass.”

“Easy with the horn.”

“This guy’s gotta be the only idiot in Karachi who doesn’t push through a yellow light.”

“We’ll be okay,” said Harvath. “Let’s just not draw attention to ourselves.”

Chase tried to steer around him, but there wasn’t enough room.

“Not good,” Sloane stated from the backseat.

“Everybody, stay calm,” Harvath instructed. He didn’t like the idea of being separated from the motorcade or the rest of his team either, but there was no use blowing their cover. They’d been very careful and had made sure not to get too close, repeatedly switching positions. The ISI was well trained and would be looking for a tail. There was also no telling how many of the motorbikes or scooters zipping through traffic might have been spotters.

“We know where they’re going,” Harvath continued, “and we’ve got eyes on—”

Before he could finish his sentence, a massive truck came barreling through the intersection and slammed right into the car carrying the Peshmerga fighters.

G
o, go, go!” Harvath shouted as Yaqub’s motorcade began to speed away.

Chase rolled into the car in front of them and then stepped on the gas. The tires of their heavy SUV smoked as he pushed the smaller vehicle into the intersection.

“Contact left!” Sloane yelled as gunfire erupted between the Peshmerga fighters and eight armed men who had leaped out of the truck.

Picking up Chase’s rifle, Harvath shouted out what he wanted. They weren’t going to leave any of their team to die.

Chase braked and pulled the steering wheel hard to the left. The large SUV skidded sideways and as it did, Harvath and Sloane aimed their suppressed weapons out the window. Coming parallel across the intersection with the truck that had plowed into their Peshmergas, they began firing.

The compact MP7s Harvath and Sloane had brought were personal defense weapons designed for close-in work. They fired the HK 4.6x30mm round, renowned for its ability to penetrate body armor. In order to have further reach, Harvath had grabbed Chase’s Hoplite. It was a lightweight, concealable “truck gun” built by a company called Citizen Arms. The extremely accurate rifle fired the 5.56 round and was made even more effective by its Aimpoint Micro T-1 quickfire red dot sight. Sloane took the attackers closest to them and Harvath focused on the ones farther away.

Harvath dropped the first man he fired on and then readjusted and
took down a second. Sloane nailed one in the throat and a second with a headshot. The attackers moved to take cover behind their vehicle. As they did, Harvath and Sloane continued to fire. It gave the Peshmergas enough time to move to a better position. The last man on their team punctuated the fight by throwing a fragmentation grenade into the attackers’ truck.

“Grenade!” Harvath yelled. “Go, go, go!”

Chase stepped on the gas and sped out of the intersection just as the grenade detonated. Windows shattered behind them and a massive column of fire raced up into the night sky. Within seconds, shards of debris rained down on the roof of their SUV like a metallic hailstorm.