Black Site (27 page)

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Kolt drank an ice-cold Coca-Cola, his feet propped up on a couch in Kopelman’s small but secure one-room office. Bob had gone up the street to another World Benefactor warehouse to retrieve a large aid truck. Once back in the building, he’d clear out the contents of one of the large packing crates in the cargo hold. He would use this to hide Racer during tomorrow morning’s return to Peshawar.

Jamal had walked up the street to grab a dinner of rice and vegetables for all three men.

Raynor was instructed to lie low, to not answer the door, to not do anything but sit there in the room with the shades drawn and rest.

And call his boss.

“Hey, Pete,” he said when the connection was finally made through Kopelman’s satellite phone.

“Racer, it’s good to know you made it out.”

“Thanks to Bob and his local contact. And, I assume, thanks to Pam Archer and her Predator.”

“Affirmative. We had the UAV over you for much of your … mission.”

Kolt sighed.
Shit.
“How much did you see?”

“I think the UAV caught just about all of the most exciting parts last night.”

“Right. Okay.”

“Quite a thriller, watching all that in real time. None of us here, however, saw you doing much of anything that we talked about you doing.”

“Yes, sir. Had to make some game-time changes to the op.”

“Game-time changes? It was almost like you were playing an entirely different sport.”

Kolt did not respond.

For a moment neither did Grauer. Finally he said, “Pam checked on Zar’s compound. There is no sign of any changes to the force structure. Killing the two men seems to have worked. They don’t seem to be aware their compound was infiltrated.”

“That’s good news.”

Grauer cleared his throat. “You found them, didn’t you?”

“Pete … I shook T.J.’s hand.”

“My God.”

“All four guys on the team and one of the helo pilots survived the crash. All five of them are still alive. Skip Knighton, the Agency Mi-17 pilot, is sick, but the rest are okay.”

“Proof of life?”

Kolt paused. Sighed. “I filmed part of my conversation with T.J.”

“Good work. Upload your file to—”

“I lost it in the river.”

A short delay from Grauer. “Shit, Kolt. That’s why you went in.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Grauer sighed. He was not pleased, but he recovered and moved on. “Did you find out which building they were in?”

“Yes, sir. But it’s complicated.”

“Explain.”

Raynor told Grauer about the hidden Kord machine guns, and the fact that Zar kept one of the prisoners sequestered from the others as an insurance policy. He then told him the odd story of the counterfeit Rangers, the German, the phony gear, and the power struggle between the Taliban and the foreign al Qaeda contingent that T.J. had mentioned.

“What in the name of God are they up to?” was all Grauer had to say. He had Kolt on the speaker in the Operations Center. Immediately analysts began speculating about what this new information meant. The conclusions were the same as those Kopelman, T.J., and Raynor had suspected. Al Qaeda was planning some sort of infiltration-type attack in Afghanistan, and with good equipment, it was highly likely they would be successful.

Finally Grauer said, “Okay, son. You’re going to need to sit tight on that side of the border for a bit. Bob will look after you. I’m going to go to my contacts at the Agency, as well as Colonel Webber. Our job was to find the men, and as far as I’m concerned, we’ve done our job. But with everything you just told me, I don’t think anyone is going to be too interested in hitting that compound. We’ll just wait to hear back from them and take it from there.”

“Yes, sir. I thought maybe Bob could check with some of his contacts in the area, see if anyone knows anything about this German guy.”

Grauer answered back immediately: “I was thinking the same thing.”

THIRTY-TWO

At first light the next morning Jamal left the World Benefactors warehouse on foot. He walked along the road to the west until a passing bus stopped and picked him up. He’d been told by Bob to go back home and await further instructions. He was also to contact Zar’s camp and tell them his truck had broken down, so he would not be able to make his delivery that day.

Again Kolt Raynor had to cram his body into a tiny space. A crate that had shipped milk powder had been emptied, and that was to be his accommodations for the short ride back to Peshawar. Raynor was stiff and sore from the past four days in the field, so even though the crate was a little larger than the stash compartment in the Hilux, it took Kolt longer to fold himself inside. Kopelman actually hammered the wooden lid back on, a bit too tightly for Kolt’s liking, and soon the ex–Delta officer heard the truck’s rear door slide down and lock into place.

The truck’s engine coughed and then roared to life, and soon they were on their way.

Bob had told Raynor that it was a thousand-to-one chance that the contents of the World Benefactor vehicle would be inspected at the border crossing from the FATA into Peshawar, but Bob had also said there was no reason to roll that thousand-sided die. Kolt would hide out and deal with his cramping muscles, and he would shut the hell up about it.

And Kolt Raynor did what he was told.

They arrived in Peshawar just after 9 a.m. The truck stopped and the rolling lift door opened and finally the lid of the milk powder crate was pried off and Raynor struggled to stand back up, to step out of the crate, and to stagger out of the truck. He found himself in a garage. Bob had already disappeared through a doorway, and Kolt followed him through, climbed some stone steps, and entered a small urban home, nondescript and utterly devoid of anything that looked American or even Western.

Bob stood in the tiny kitchen, already putting on a tea kettle, and this time he placed two cups on the table and pulled milk from his fridge.

They sat in silence for a few minutes while the water boiled, a few minutes more while the tea brewed. Kolt had regained sensation in his extremities after the tight confines of his uncomfortable morning ride, and he was ready to begin the hunt for this mysterious German somewhere around Peshawar. Sitting quietly over a pot of steeping tea seemed like an absurd waste of time, and he started to mention this to Bob, but the burly bearded man just held his hand up before he could speak.

Bob seemed to get pleasure in this local custom, and he did not want to be disturbed.

Tea was poured, sugar was spooned, milk was added, and the concoction was stirred, all by Bob Kopelman. Raynor thought the man looked and acted nothing like an American here, in this house, performing this foreign ritual.

Finally, Kolt took his cup and brought it to his mouth. Bob sipped his own, and then spoke, as if the two men had just stepped into the room from opposite ends of the house to find one another.

“Big day today for me. Not so much for you to do. I’ll work the phones, maybe run out and have tea with a couple of my local contacts, try to find this Kraut working for al Qaeda.”

“I can help you—”

“You can help me by finishing your tea, heading into my spare room, and plopping your ass on the bed. I put a first aid kit in there for your boo-boos, and I’ve got a shitty battery-operated AM radio on the desk you can entertain yourself with, but other than that, I don’t want you to do jack squat.”

“Bob, at least let me—”

“You can take a shower, but the water won’t be hot. The electrical grid around here is overtaxed—there are brownouts throughout the day, and always at this time of the morning. The Taliban bomb the power stations and transformers pretty regularly, and the locals don’t really fight back anymore, so don’t expect much electricity during your stay.”

Raynor knew when he was beat. This guy would get his way. He’d sit tight, and his blood would boil while doing so, but Bob was running this show.

Raynor spent the day in the guest room of Kopelman’s house. He’d eaten well, rehydrated his body, coated the worst of his cuts with antiseptic and bandaged them, and gotten a little sleep. He spent the rest of the time waiting for the call from Grauer, the call that would let him know what to do next.

Kopelman spent his morning on his phones. He had at least five different mobiles, not including the satellite, and he sat in his office, across the main living space of the house, and mumbled into one phone after the next. Raynor heard English, but he could not understand much of it because the old CIA man whispered and spoke in short, terse sentences. Then he made a call and conversed in Dari. Raynor barely knew a word of it, but he recognized the tenor and tone of the language. Then there were a half-dozen conversations in Pashto. Raynor understood that Bob was trying to track down the German man, but he had no idea whom he was calling or where he was focusing his search geographically.

Then Bob made a call and spoke Dutch. Raynor gave up trying to figure out the big man’s game plan; instead, he rolled back on the bed and tried to go back to sleep.

His full stomach churned with the worry and the guilt.

Kolt had just dozed off when Bob leaned into the spare bedroom. “Racer, I’m meeting a guy at the Pearl Continental Hotel. He may have a lead on the German.”

Raynor sat up quickly. “I’ll come with you.”

“No, it’s going to be just me and a contact sipping scotch. I don’t need a Delta shooter on this run.”

Racer did not want to sit here, but he did what he was told. “Okay.”

Kopelman leaned a Kalashnikov rifle against the wall inside the door of the guest room. Sternly he said, “You won’t need this.” Then he shrugged as he turned away. “Unless you do.”

Kolt heard Bob leave the house about 3 p.m., but he did not hear a car start or the garage door open.

Raynor lost track of time. He felt better physically, lying there in the quiet house, with only distant but persistent street noises to keep him company. But this downtime after his operation into the Tirah Valley was tough on his mental state. He worried and brooded, wondered if something he had done might just lead to the failure of the operation to rescue the prisoners. He wondered if these five men, men who had finally been located to a fixed area so that a plan could be concocted to go in and get them out, might already be gone. Might already be on the road, chained together, hidden for the winter season, only to reappear next with the spring offensive, once again to serve as human shields for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Raynor lay there on the bed, his mind full of worry about his decision to enter Zar’s compound. Zar was no fool. He’d made it this long in power in the valley. It would just take a hint of danger for the warlord to have his captives moved or, God forbid, to get rid of them permanently.

Shit,
Kolt thought. What if his actions got the men killed? What if by him coming here he’d actually done more harm than good?

Kolt heard a key in the front door. He leaped to the Kalashnikov, hoisted it to his shoulder, flipped down the safety, and began moving up the hallway toward the main room.

Bob Kopelman locked his front door behind him, and turned to Raynor. Kolt lowered the rifle as he noted an expression of utter glee on the face of the other American. “A grand total of
one
German fitting T.J.’s description in Peshawar, and I found his ass!”

Thank God. A lead, an objective, something to shoot for. “Who is he?” Kolt asked.

“Helmut Buchwald.”

“Okay.
What
is he?”

“He’s an armorer. A gun maker. He worked for Walther, then Heckler & Koch. He got fired from HK for poor quality control. An internal investigation found out he was sabotaging rifles headed to the U.S. military, but they fired him quietly and never charged him with a crime. Apparently he’s a big-time anti-American. He’s married to an Iraqi woman who was picked up in Baghdad for insurgent ties. I guess he’s playing for the other team now.”

“And he’s here?”

Bob nodded eagerly. “I met with a guy who gets foreigners the papers they need to travel through Pakistan. Reporters and spooks, mostly, but I had a hunch that he would cross paths with this German. I was right. He’d helped Buchwald find some real estate here. He showed up in my contact’s office six weeks ago with a Turk. My contact says he pegged the Turk as AQ almost immediately.”

“Real estate?”

“He rented a warehouse in Darra Adam Khel about a month ago. He’s also rented a factory not too far from his warehouse. Illegally, of course. The government doesn’t know he’s here, and even if they did, they don’t have much say in Darra Adam Khel.”

“Why not?”

“Darra is called ‘the Gun Village.’ It’s a lawless warren of tiny one-room factories and a smugglers’ bazaar of guns, ammo, and dope. The Pak government doesn’t run the show down there. It’s Taliban all the way.”

“Shit. What’s the German guy going to do with a factory and a warehouse?”

“I know a guy who knows a guy. Buchwald has hired local talent, highly skilled armorers, less-skilled metalworkers, also tailors and painters, and he’s made purchases in the bazaar here in Pesh. Fabric of different types. Plastic, steel. Everything he’s snatching up would fit with someone building up an operation to manufacture counterfeit military clothing and personal equipment. Copies of U.S. general issue gear, perhaps?”

“That’s our man.”

“There’s more. According to an armorer who worked in his place, Buchwald oversaw the manufacture of four dozen local copies of M-4 rifles.”

“Four dozen? Holy shit!”

“Yeah, the scale of this is bigger than your friend suspected. T.J. may have seen only a few Chechens, but with an entire factory churning out clothing and gear and guns, we could be talking about an enemy operation of fifty tangos or more.”

“A platoon of Chechen jihadists posing as Rangers.”

“Looks like it.”

“But why?”

Kopelman shrugged. “I don’t know. And I
hate
when I don’t know something. So I was thinking we might go down to Darra Adam Khel and find out.”

Raynor answered immediately. He couldn’t take another day sitting on a bed and going stir-crazy. “I’d like that a lot.”