Black Site (16 page)

“I trust the op to get me in.”

“Maybe so. If you can make the jump, that is. They’ve spent a hell of a lot of time on working out your infiltration. But your
exfiltration
is the most poorly thought through component of this operation. Why do you suppose that is?”

“I am to ride out with this Jamal guy, just like I got in.”

“Yeah, and then go to Peshawar? Sounds fine on paper, but that’s a half day’s drive. You’re going to be in an iron box next to a truck engine the entire time? And if you’re caught, you’re dead. I don’t just mean the Taliban who are holding Eagle 01. There are other groups running around the Tirah Valley. Taliban factions, AQ affiliates, warlords whose men would kill you outright, bandits and smugglers who would sell you to the Taliban or AQ, who would behead you as a spy.”

“I know all this.”

“Then you have to know this is pretty close to a suicide mission. Grauer and Webber need you to do this, they hope like hell you can get proof of life on the missing men, but nobody really expects you to survive long enough to get home.”

Kolt understood this in a general sense, but having Pam Archer lay it out in such stark terms made him blow a long stream of steam into the night air.

“I can do it,” he said. Telling her. Telling himself. “I better go get suited up.”

She kept looking at him in the same disconcerting way. He could tell she was frustrated that she hadn’t been able to get him to rethink his mission. Finally she just said, “Good luck.”

“Thanks. Keep an eye on me from above.”

“As much as I can. Sure wish my birds were armed, though.”

Kolt stood, shook her hand. “I’ll be fine.” Shrugged in the dark. “Just help me get our guys back, okay?”

“Okay, Racer.”

Kolt Raynor turned and walked off in the dark.

NINETEEN

Raynor sat in the back of the aircraft, his gear strapped to his body. The flight would be short—they were already so close to the border that the flight path would have to take them north, away from his target, to climb to the correct altitude. From there it would turn, hitting a couple of waypoints on the map along the way, and then turn south, flying along the border just east of the infamous Tora Bora complex, where Osama bin Laden slipped through the noose in December of 2001.

Immediately after a turn back to the west, a Radiance loadmaster would drop the aft stairs of the 727 cargo craft, and Kolt Raynor would drop out into the frozen black sky.

Raynor sat quietly, thinking about the moment when he’d feel nothing but the wind against his body and the pinch of the straps holding the gear tight to him, but his meditation was interrupted. It was the big ex–CIA spook, Kopelman. He’d lumbered aboard the aircraft, and he shouted over the engine noise that came through the open door. He stuck out a hand. “Just came to wish you good luck.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna need it, right?”

“It’s all on your shoulders. If you can make the jump, my guy can get you to the village. If you can lay low and not get compromised, he’ll be back to pick you up four days after that. If you can make it back to Peshawar, I can get you out of the country. Easy as pie!” Kopelman said it with a smile.

“Right,” Raynor replied. He leaned over and adjusted the laces on his right boot where they were biting into his calf.

Bob seemed to notice something in Racer’s tone. “You have any particular concerns you’d like to voice at this late hour?”

“Just a few. Like this contact of yours.”

Bob shrugged. “Jamal is solid.”

“Twenty-five percent solid?”

Kopelman’s bushy eyebrows rose, and he sat down on the mesh bench next to Raynor. “Where did you hear about that?” Raynor did not answer. Kopelman shrugged again. “That’s Langley’s assessment, not mine. Jamal was a walk-in, he had a hell of an interesting story, but that’s all he had. The brain trust on the seventh floor took a pass on him, but a buddy I have who’s still with the Agency slipped me the lead. He knows what we’re working on, and he thought this guy’s story was worth us knowing.”

“What’s the story?”

“This kid has been making his living delivering goods up into the less accessible parts of the valley with a tractor pulling a wooden cart. Eight weeks ago he was in Shataparai, and one of Zar’s men asked him into the compound. Told him they required a weekly delivery of purified water. No local in Khyber pays money for water. They all drink the rotgut shit they get from their streams and wells. But Jamal didn’t ask questions. He made his first shipment, and was searched up and down like he was heading into Fort Knox.”

Raynor nodded, picturing the scene.

“The compound was full of Zar’s men, no surprise there, but there were a couple of foreign guys. Westernized assholes. Turks, he thinks. Jamal thought the water might be for them, but there was too much of it. After his third trip to Shataparai he was contacted on his cell phone, ordered to go to a pharmacy in Peshawar, pick up a package, and deliver it to the compound. He sneaked a peek as he was bringing it out. It was antibiotics. Western stuff. Not something that would normally be used around here, or even known about around here.”

“That’s it?”

“No. One of the guards is kind of a dolt, apparently. Five weeks ago the guy was making conversation while Jamal was hand pumping water into their tank. The guy said there were some Westerners in the compound, they were prisoners, and the Taliban and al Qaeda were fighting over them. Zar protected them from both factions, but was trying to rid himself of the burden of the prisoners. He followed Pashtunwali, but he didn’t want to get in the middle of a fight between those two goon squads.

“The next day, Jamal went to the U.S. embassy.”

“So neither you nor any Western intelligence agency has ever worked with Jamal before that?”

Kopelman did not answer directly. Instead, he said, “I’ve been working with Pashtuns since I was a zit-faced punk passing them Stingers in the eighties to knock down Russian Hinds. I
know
the Pashtuns. I’ve looked in this kid’s eyes. He’s telling the truth. He’s a loyal agent.”

“Why would he work with us?”

Kopelman just looked off into the empty space toward the rear of the aircraft’s cabin. “He’s got his reasons. Good ones.” A pause. “Jamal is as solid a source as I’ve ever had. I’d stake my life on it.”

Or mine, at least,
thought Kolt.

Just then the loadmaster leaned into the conversation. “We’re ready to go.”

Kopelman stood, shook Raynor’s gloved hand again. “See you in Pesh.”

“Expect it,” replied Kolt with a tone that conveyed both the intensity brought on with his game face and his continued annoyance that Bob had been less than forthright about some of the details of this operation.

Kopelman’s large body turned away. Behind it Raynor saw Grauer leaning inside the side door of the aircraft.

He had to shout over the three spinning Pratt & Whitney turbofans. “Good luck, Racer!”

Kolt just nodded to his former commanding officer. Said, “I’ll get it done.”

“I know you will.” Grauer turned away. The loadmaster shut and sealed the hatch, and then put on his headset to communicate with the cockpit crew.

Kolt Raynor suddenly felt extremely alone.

*   *   *

He rehearsed his actions in the air over and over inside the plane. Old habits learned years earlier in a Delta recce troop were hard to break, and this time he was his own jumpmaster. He stood up on the shiny cold metal flooring and recited the jump commands. His black assault boots grabbed the floor like glue. Underneath the flight suit and the black Patagonia long underwear, Kolt was drenched from head to toe: a combination of nerves, altitude, prebreathing on the oxygen console, and the double layer of clothing he knew he would need at twenty-five thousand feet over the Pakistani badlands.

He spoke aloud, but he alone could hear his words. “Fly flat and stable, keep legs slightly bent, don’t backslide, check altimeter, check left, front, and right, clear my immediate airspace, check altimeter, wave off fellow jumpers, arch back, pull rip cord, brace for severe jolt, and pray for good canopy.”

Kolt thought about what he’d just said. “Wave off fellow jumpers?” Kolt looked toward the loadmaster, who was busy stowing seats and snapping into his safety line. He wore an Army olive green flight suit and green Nomex gloves similar to Kolt’s. But he also wore a large gray helmet with a full plastic face piece to protect his eyes. Kolt was pleased he hadn’t heard him say that. The engine roar all but drowned out his entire voice.

Kolt lost himself in his thoughts. His memory bounced back several years to his last high-altitude jump. The skies over Iraq treated him well back then. He prayed for the same this time around, even though, this time, he would be jumping alone. He much preferred the feeling of heading into harm’s way head-on knowing he had a team of professionals heading in with him.

Soon the loadmaster shook Kolt’s shoulder and signaled it was time to go. He unhooked Kolt’s green air hose from the oxygen console and hooked him to the bailout bottle on his left hip. Kolt stood and moved aft as a set of stairs lowered into the slipstream below the tail of the 727. He turned around, facing the front of the plane, and gave a brief thumbs-up to the loadmaster, before slowly backing down the stairs until he could no longer see the man or the cabin. He stood by at the bottom of the stairs, enveloped in the incredible noise of the wind blast. He held tight on the rail, kept his eyes fixed through his goggles on the caution lights next to him.

Red. Red. Red.

Green.

Kolt pushed backward, kept his head up, dropped a few feet until his legs hit the slipstream, which slammed them back and up, turning his body horizontal. The wind smashed into his face and chest, the cold blast against his oxygen mask and goggles biting through the seams like fat needles puncturing his skin.

He fell facedown toward the black badlands below him.

Even in the hottest of summer months, the temperature at this altitude can send icicles through a jumper’s veins. This visit was in early November. At his current altitude he was floating in twenty-degree weather.

Out of habit, Kolt counted out loud. His words vibrated behind his oxygen mask up to his earlobes. “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand, pull!” Kolt arched his back hard, kept his left arm half bent out in front of his head to maintain balance, and reached back to his right shoulder for the silver ripcord handle. He gave it a vigorous tug, pushing out and away at 60 degrees.

Thankful for the good canopy above him that blocked his view of the stars, Kolt reached up high for his left toggle, pulled it down to head level, and arced in a 180-degree turn. He turned his head to the left to see the 727’s lights being swallowed in the distance by the dark night. The big bird would be on final approach over Jalalabad not long after Raynor’s boots touched the earth. A few seconds later he checked his small compass on his right wrist to confirm he was heading due east.

At twenty thousand feet above the tribal region of Pakistan, just east of the Afghanistan border, Kolt easily identified the lights of Peshawar in the far distance. So far so good.

Kolt’s next waypoint was the lights of the small village of Landi Kotal, off his left shoulder. He strained under a moonless night to locate two more scattered towns along the N5, the highway through the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan. He thought he might be a little north of his route, so he pulled on the right toggle and shifted to the right twenty degrees.

Kolt turned his left wrist over and checked his altimeter—thirteen thousand feet. Suddenly, Kolt’s left side dropped as if he was no longer being suspended from above. He felt like a puppet with only one string. Kolt struggled to right himself, but before he could manage a hold on his left riser he started spinning rapidly clockwise. A free-fall parachutist might experience a partial malfunction of his parachute once in a lifetime. But Kolt had been there before. In fact, he had experienced the same malfunction years earlier during his initial operator training. He knew he had to act quickly or risk losing consciousness due to the violent uncontrollable spinning.

A dozen of his left suspension lines had snapped. He didn’t have to check his altimeter to know he was losing altitude fast. With his right hand he reached up to where his right shoulder and chest met and grabbed the red cutaway pillow. With his left hand he reached up to his left breast and found his oval-shaped ripcord. With solid grips on both Kolt yanked the cutaway pillow in his right hand from its pouch and immediately pulled his reserve cord with his left hand.

Kolt’s main chute separated and floated away as Kolt felt the obvious sensation of free-falling in an upright position. In a second, his reserve silk caught air, causing his leg harness to snap him vigorously in the groin.

Feel pain. Still alive. Must be a good chute.

Kolt checked his altimeter again. He had lost four thousand feet during the escapade. He quickly toggled to his left toward his drop zone, still several miles distant. He’d never make his rendezvous with Jamal on time now.

But Kolt had no time to worry about that—he had to concentrate on his landing. He reached for his right toggle, drew it down to waist level, and executed a tight right-hand turn, heading back into the wind in the opposite direction. At one thousand feet Kolt made his final turn.

He knew he was in the mountains, which meant there was little chance of his landing on level ground. He pulled the quick-release strap holding his big rucksack to his body, allowing it to drop the length of the fifteen-foot tether. Looking down now, he could see nothing in the blackness below him, but he had to keep his body ready for the moment when the—

For the third time on this jump, a violent tug to his harness jolted his body and burned into his skin between his legs.

Raynor lurched to a sudden stop, but his feet had not yet touched the ground.

He was stuck in a tree. Instantly he began swaying with a cold valley breeze.

There was no moon, and his night vision equipment was stowed in the pack that had been hanging far below him. He had no idea how far he was from the earth, or what sort of terrain he’d find when he hit it, so he spent a couple of minutes perfectly still, intently focused on the sounds around him. Satisfied that he was alone here, he retrieved a small flashlight from a pocket on his shoulder. It had a filter which emitted a lower-intensity red light, and he switched this on.