Black Site (42 page)

It was Pam.

“Why are you calling me on my mobile?”

“Pete. We need to arm Baby Boy. He has two pylons for Hellfires. I can bring Baby Girl home and then launch Baby—”

“Do you have any Hellfires lying around that I don’t know about? Under your bunk maybe?”

“No, sir. But you can talk to Langley. This is a special circumstance.”

“Their Reapers will be on their way soon, and they will have air-to-ground munitions.”

“We don’t even know if they will be cleared to fire. We don’t know if Delta will be coming over to rescue our personnel.”

“No, Pam, we
don’t.
Just keep monitoring the feed.”

“But—”

Grauer terminated the call.

*   *   *

T.J. was not particularly impressed with the Pakistani Black Hawk pilots. Gunfire popped and cracked over at the stockade, there were pockets of surviving defenders around the perimeter, and the two choppers landed right in the courtyard, not twenty-five yards from the battle.

But T.J.
was
impressed with the twenty-five Chechens. As soon as the birds landed, the al Qaeda fighters dispersed, headed in small units to take over all the outbuildings while providing covering fire into the stockade.

They were organized, well trained, and seemingly fearless.

As if he could read minds, Daoud al-Amriki spoke into his headset. “Every one of these men has been handpicked. They all have combat experience, either against the Russians in Chechnya and Dagestan, or against coalition forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are true fighters, brave warriors.”

T.J. did not answer, but he watched their movements and noted the leaders of their unit, and he could tell these men were excellent soldiers. He could also tell they were bloodthirsty. A pair of Khyber Rifles were taken alive at the front gate. While T.J. watched from the seat of the Black Hawk he saw the young Pakistanis kicked to the ground and then riddled with rifle fire at point-blank range. Another injured sentry tried to surrender, raising his bloody hands while leaning against the front bumper of the minivan. He was gunned down where he stood.

The first team of Chechens entered the front door of the stockade in a tactical train. T.J. heard an incredible amount of fire inside the building, and he tried to picture the scene. The American operators here at this black site would be outnumbered, but they would have the best defensive position inside the prison walls.

An explosion blew flame and debris out the open windows. The gunfire stopped, and then a pair of Chechens in Ranger uniforms appeared in the doorway, wobbled slowly back outside on teetering legs. The second man was on fire; his backpack and his left arm were totally engulfed in flames, though he seemed unaware of this fact. Both men were dazed from the blast. They just stood out in the open as another team of five men rushed past them into the smoking entrance to the stockade.

The burning man was knocked to the ground by a pair of his comrades, and he was dragged away from the entrance and rolled around in the dirt to extinguish the flames. The other man who had staggered out after the blast pitched forward into the gravel of the driveway. T.J. could not tell if he was dead or not, but no one came to him to render aid.

The second team of assaulters on the stockade fared better than the first. After a full minute of constant gunfire, the pace and intensity of the firing slowed. Another five-man team was called through the door, and then another.

Al-Amriki spoke into a radio on his shoulder, and seconds later the al Qaeda operative T.J. knew as the Turk appeared in the open door of the Black Hawk. He alone was not dressed as a Ranger. He wore the black salwar kameez uniform of an Arab fighter, and he wore a pistol on his belt, but in his arms he carried only an expensive-looking video camera. He wasn’t filming at the moment; instead, he just tucked low as gunfire crackled in the stockade, kept up a conversation for a few minutes in the American al Qaeda operative’s ear.

T.J. could not hear a word over the spinning rotors, but soon the gunfire died out completely, and the engines on the two Black Hawks were shut down.

Then T.J. heard the tail end of the conversation in Arabic.

The Turk said, “No more than ten minutes, you understand!”

Al-Amriki replied, “Ten or fifteen, yes.” David the American leaped from the helicopter just as the first of the surviving Americans were dragged out of the front door of the stockade.

*   *   *

Kolt made it to his second overlook after ten minutes of scrambling down one hill, racing across the road on the Suzuki, and then dumping the bike and climbing up the hillside just to the west of the black site. The fight had raged for most of this time. But it had since quieted down; even the destroyed towers around the Sandcastle’s perimeter had all but stopped disgorging their black smoke into the air.

When he found his new hide, he took just a few seconds to rest, to control his heavy breathing, to allow the sore and strained muscles in his legs and back to replenish their stores of oxygen. Then he looked out across the hillside, one hundred yards away, down into the fort.

He had neither binoculars nor a scope on his rifle, so he used his naked eyes. He could see the Black Hawks—their blades no longer turned. Beyond them was a group of men in Ranger uniforms. These would be the Chechens. Kolt hefted his Kalashnikov, propped the magazine on a rock to steady the weapon, and looked down the iron sights.

He lifted his head.

Where were T.J. and his men? He did not know for sure if they were part of the operation, but he had a feeling they were down there right now, somewhere in the fortress. Kolt did not want to just pepper the Chechens and the choppers with AK rounds and risk taking his old mates out accidentally. Plus, there were likely still Agency men there, either hiding or being held prisoner by the al Qaeda guys.

Kolt squinted. Among the Ranger uniforms he saw one man dressed in black. It was hard to be sure, but he thought the guy held a video camera in his hands.

“What the hell?”

Below him, on his right, commercial traffic passed on the Torkham Road, completely unaware of the danger two hundred yards above.

Kolt knew what he had to do. He
had
to get closer. AQ would set up a perimeter in seconds if they were any good, so he leaped back up on his exhausted legs and started toward the Sandcastle, the western wall covering the enemy’s view of his advance.

*   *   *

T.J.’s cuffs had been unfastened and he was led out of the helicopter at gunpoint by one of the Chechen Rangers. He was then reunited with his three colleagues. Troy Kilborn had taken a grazing round to his right hip when the chopper in which he was riding took fire from the CIA men on the roof. He was in pain, and his pants leg was bloody, but he was able to stand.

The four Americans stood together in the dirt, twenty-five yards from the front door of the stockade. Three Chechens guarded them, their weapons pointed directly at the Americans’ chests.

From the stockade a man appeared. He was an Arab, dressed in a white jumpsuit, and he squinted into the sun, shielding his eyes with his hand as he stepped out. He was followed by another man, and then another. Soon a line of Arabs staggered out and stood in the courtyard. They were confused. More like bewildered, but the Chechens who spoke Arabic comforted them, and the Turk aggressively hugged two of the older Arab men in the group.

While this was going on the surviving CIA men were led out under guard and ordered onto the dirt near the shot-up minivan in front of the stockade. All of the Americans were wounded, some gravely.

FORTY-FOUR

Jeff Hammond had taken an AK round in his right forearm and another in his right thigh. He had tried to stanch the heavy bleeding while still two levels down, fighting it out with the al Qaeda attackers. But a flash-bang grenade had so disoriented him that he did not even remember being led up the stairs, pushed out of the building, and dumped down here in the dirt.

He looked around him. Glenn, Nelson’s communications man, was still alive. Hammond had yelled at him to put on body armor just before the battle had begun, but apparently he’d never gotten around to it. It looked like Glenn had taken a rifle butt to the face—his nose was clearly broken—but he was sitting up next to Hammond. Next to him was one of Hammond’s men. Tyrone. He was unconscious, and bleeding from multiple wounds.

Hammond looked away from his man, up at the sky. Wished he saw a flight of Chinooks coming out of the blue, laden down with Delta Force assaulters.

But the sky was clear.

“You guys American?”

Hammond turned his head. Twenty feet from him he saw four men in the same phony Ranger gear, but these guys were covered by three tangos with M-4 rifles.

The CIA officer knew exactly who they were. “Yeah. You are the JSOC boys?”

“Yes,” said one of the men. “I’m T.J.”

Hammond knew he was the missing lieutenant colonel, Joshua Timble. “Thought there were five of you left?” he asked.

“There were.”

“Any idea what their plan is?” asked Hammond. He watched the Arab prisoners file out of the stockade. The Chechens led them around the side of the building, positioned them near the wall of the stockade, and began handing them canteens of water, hugging them, and motioning for them to wait right where they were.

T.J. shook his head, then did a quick head count of the al Qaeda forces. He counted al-Amriki and the Turk, and eighteen Chechens. Apparently they’d lost seven men in the attack. There were sixteen prisoners here at the site, all of whom were now standing together by the wall of the stockade.

“No way they can fly out with all these guys,” Timble said.

“I was thinking the same thing.” Hammond rolled up onto his left elbow, wincing with the pain in his leg. He then made to check on the other two men, but a Chechen appeared over him and kicked him back onto his back.

*   *   *

The Turk shouted a command and six of the Chechens pulled RPGs from the rear Black Hawk, then ran off in different directions. One man in each tower, and two at the front gate. T.J. assumed it was an attempt at a thin perimeter security. More of a trip-wire setup than an actual guard force. Then one of the men guarding him and his men grabbed T.J. by his fake body armor and pulled him away from the others and closer to the prisoners.

T.J. noticed that four Arab men in prisoner jumpsuits, two older and two younger, had been led to the rear helicopter. These, he determined, were AQ. The remaining prisoners, twelve members of the Afghanistan Taliban, stayed near the wall of the stockade, eagerly drinking water and trying to communicate with the Chechens. Some dropped to pray; others smiled or even laughed.

Al-Amriki was on his walkie-talkie, over by the Black Hawks. He finished his transmission moments later and returned to Timble’s side. Together the two men silently looked at the prisoners.

Soon the Turk began filming the scene.

T.J. was beginning to get a bad feeling about where this was all going.

Without warning, Daoud addressed the Taliban arrayed in front of him. Surprisingly, to T.J. anyway, he did so in English. Josh thought it highly unlikely the majority of these men would speak English.

“Gentlemen. We have kept you here, in some circumstances, for years. We, the American government, the Pakistani government, the Pakistani Frontier Corps, and the government of Afghanistan, have all been involved in your capture, your imprisonment, and your torture. Some of your brothers have died here due to this torture.”

“What the hell is goin’ on, boss?” asked Roscoe, twenty-five feet away. A rifle butt slammed into the back of his head, and Roscoe went down. Timble started to move to help his teammate, but an armed Chechen behind him got in his way, led him back to his place with his rifle. The Turk stepped close to Timble now, panned slowly across his face with the camera, and captured the Black Hawk helicopters squat and still in the courtyard. The other three Delta men were filmed from the shoulders up, just a quick pan, and then the Turk turned around and centered on al-Amriki, who had restarted his speech. The Turk filmed al-Amriki from the back, capturing both his Ranger uniform and the crowd of Taliban prisoners in front of the baked mud wall.

“We will be closing this prison here in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Your Taliban brothers have grown too strong for us to hold you here any longer, so we must return to Afghanistan.”

Timble noticed the Turkish cameraman had started panning along a neat row of Chechen “Rangers” standing at parade rest in front of the two Black Hawks.

“Unfortunately, men, we cannot take you with us. I have been ordered by the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA to execute you immediately.”

T.J. muttered, “Oh my God.”

Al-Amriki stepped back quickly, and the Chechen Rangers stepped forward in their line, raised their weapons at the Taliban. Those who had understood the English were no clearer on what was happening than those who did not.

But Josh understood. He raised his arms and started to shout. The Chechens rushed past him to close the distance.

The Chechen near the Delta team raised his rifle to his shoulder and covered all three operators. Another man placed a rifle barrel to T.J.’s neck.

The camera missed all of this. It was, instead, focused on al-Amriki’s back, and on the Chechens on either side of him.

Daoud al-Amriki raised a gloved hand high in the air, brought it down as he shouted, “Fire!”

At a distance of no more than twenty feet, ten Chechens opened up on the stunned Taliban: their counterfeit M-4 rifles barked and snapped, supersonic rounds cracked through the air and burrowed into their targets. The dozen Taliban HVTs began bucking and spinning and falling, their empty hands raised in surrender even as blood shot from their chests and heads and the baked mud wall behind them exploded into dust and shone with crimson splatter.

Every single one of the ten Chechens in the firing squad emptied his weapon into the men. Three hundred rounds, fired from short distance, into the tight mass of a dozen humans, left nothing alive downrange. A dozen dead bodies, as torn as their torn jumpsuits, red with spilled blood and scattered flesh.