Gauntlet (41 page)

U
NBEKNOWNST to the three, the entire scene had been witnessed by an old, worn-out alcoholic who made his home in one of the deserted Stewart houses next to the docks. Wharfdog Charlie, as he was known, had seen it all a few times before. A strange looking submarine would appear, material would be loaded with great haste onto a waiting truck, the submarine would disappear, and the truck would take the highway back to Meziadin Junction, and civilization. Wharfdog had mentioned it once or twice to the cops, but he had very little credibility, and the story usually fell into the pink floating elephant category.

A
RE YOU KIDDING ME?” Richard nearly shouted into the telephone. “You want to send me back on assignment? Now?”

He and Michael Buckingham were on speakerphone in the Embassy in Islamabad. Baxter and Admiral Jackson were on the other end of the line, calling from Langley. The head of the Middle East and Africa Bureau of the CIA and the DDCI, in the same office at the same time. Richard was definitely feeling uncomfortable.

“Why me?” Richard continued, astounded. “I just got back here. I was in Libya. I nearly got my ass shot off in the Sudan. I just found out that my closest friend was tortured to death. I’m tired, and dammit, I need a break.”

“You’re all we’ve got, Richard,” said Baxter. “We’ve been complaining about this for years. We don’t have nearly enough manpower in the Middle East. And besides, you grew up in Islamabad. You know the language, the land, and the customs. All the signs on this Semtex thing are pointing to narcotics connections, and it seems to be coming out of Afghanistan, and probably also Pakistan.”

“You guys are the most powerful Intelligence Agency on the planet and I, little old depleted me, I’m all you’ve got? No way,” responded Richard, cynically.

“Richard, there is no one else right now,” Buckingham said, turning to him. “There’s enormous concern that the Emir may have a nuclear weapon at his disposal, and all of our available agents are working on that, pretty much around the clock.”

“We need you, Richard,” Baxter broke in. “We need to know the origin of those damned messages on Al Jazeera. We know that they arrive at their station in Islamabad, pretty much prepackaged and ready to air. We know that they come care of the reporter who’s airing them, but we need to know where he gets them. Other sources, and even the NSA, are suggesting that there’s a massive strike in the offing. We don’t know if it’s nuclear or if it’s connected to the stolen Semtex. It’s definitely one or the other. Either way, everyone’s feeling very uncomfortable about this. The Emir’s messages are taunting. His confidence is unnerving. The President is damn worried about it. We need you to do this.”

“Are you telling me that with a defense budget of I don’t know how many billions of dollars, and with the avalanche of money the CIA gets each year, I’m the only person who knows the lay of the land in and around Islamabad?” Richard was shaking his head in disbelief at his superiors. “I’m it?”

“Yes, Richard. Your retention level is better than I thought. We have other assets, but they’re all committed at the moment. You are the only available agent we have with the language and cultural knowledge.” The Admiral’s tone became more insistent. “You’re going to the market area in Peshawar. That’s where we think the messages are coming from. And you’re going to follow the trail from there. No one has been able to do it yet, but we’re counting on you to come through.”

“We’ll have your back, Richard,” Buckingham told him. “You won’t be operating solo. But when it comes to finding a lead guy for this particular role, you’re it.”

“Robert, you want me to squeeze the reporter of a high-profile outfit like Al Jazeera?” asked Richard. “Are you nuts? The media on that would be worse than when our SEALs half destroyed the
Haramosh Star!
We rough up a reporter and the entire planet will hear about it.”

“We know, Richard. We know,” said Baxter. “Of course you need to be discreet, and of course you can’t go beating up reporters. But we know that that there’s a big strike coming. There’s a high probability that it will involve that stolen Semtex or be nuclear. Most of us think they’re putting together a dirty bomb, either at a harbor or in a downtown core in one of our major cities. It may be another attack on some major buildings, with thousands of lives lost. We can’t just sit on our asses here. We need to know who’s behind this, so that we can try to stop it. The orders for this are coming from the top. We’ll be deploying other resources, and there will be backup. But you need to do this, forthwith. And Richard, it’s not a suggestion, anyway. It’s an order.”

Richard shook his head. “Come on, guys. This over-the-hill Navy fighter is all you’ve got? Shit, no wonder the world is going to hell. It’s an order, and I’ll do it, but you guys have got to get your asses in gear.”

“Yes, it’s a big problem,” responded the Admiral. “We have a serious lack of resources in HUMINT. We have billions of dollars in toys and satellites and drones and such, but almost nothing on the ground. That’s why Iraq went to hell after we arrived. That’s the problem in Iran and, I might add, in most of the trouble spots in the Middle East. We’re training people like crazy, but to get someone in deep cover takes years. That’s why Goldberg was such a huge loss. That was a four-year mission. There’s only one guy who can do this now, Richard, and it’s you. Don’t blame me that you grew up in Islamabad. Besides, you won’t be on your own. The Embassy is behind you. Your new partner, Jennifer Coe, has a pretty good grasp of what’s going on as well. And basically, all we’re asking you to do is some detective work. Just find out who’s delivering the messages to that reporter.”

“Jennifer, huh,” responded Richard. “Me and blondie against al-Qaeda. Sure, no problem. We’ll just get right at it. Nevermind that neither one of us has any field training.” He got up and left the room.

After he left, Buckingham, Admiral Jackson, and Baxter discussed the situation further.

“How sure are you guys about this?” asked Jackson. “He doesn’t sound very dependable. And the way he left. You just don’t do that. Is he on something? What kind of meds is he taking?”

“Don’t know for sure,” replied Baxter. “Ever since he splashed that Tomcat, apparently because of his vision problems, he’s been on a downhill slide. And this thing with Zak is pretty awful. Those two grew up together. When Richard lost his parents he went to live with Zak and his parents in California. They were like brothers, and there’s a rumor going around that Zak was Richard’s main support system. When Zak went undercover, Richard’s problems became a lot more obvious. He already had a problem with authority, but now he’s become a bit of a loose cannon. He may be on drugs of some kind. We’re not sure. But he’s got a good heart. And dammit, we don’t have anybody else.”

“I think he’s pretty messed up,” said Buckingham. “Unfortunately he saw what was left of Zak’s body at the airport, before Trufit took it to Tel Aviv. He totally broke down. And then, a couple of days ago, when the President read the coroner’s report in his press conference, he got even more upset.”

“Michael, is there really no one else?” asked Baxter.

“We have other people,” Buckingham replied. “But they’re all working on the nuclear threat. For obvious reasons, and on the advice of the director at TTIC, the President has given that priority. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. The nuclear threat seems to be originating from there. Everyone else is chasing various aspects of the same thing. All we need Richard to do is to find out how the DVD’s are getting into the Peshawar marketplace. He knows that area better than any other agent we have. He doesn’t need to do anything beyond that. He’ll be solid when he needs to be. And Jennifer Coe is pretty good. She’ll keep him in line.”

“OK,” said Jackson. “I guess he’ll have to do. But after this, we should ship him off to a psychiatrist. I want to get him some help. It really sounds like this guy is coming apart.”

“At the seams,” said Baxter.

“At the seams,” Buckingham agreed.

O
NE HUNDRED FIFTY MILES to the west of the Islamabad Embassy, Zak had begun to feverishly scrape away at the decades-old mortar surrounding the iron grate, using the long screw he’d found. His fingers were bleeding as a result of the effort, but it didn’t stop him. His left foot, now missing two toes, was sending waves of pain through his body. Zak had decided that Hamani’s cauterization efforts were more for the additional pain they caused than for sealing wounds; his foot was bleeding heavily, and he was concerned that an infection was developing in the stub of the baby toe.

He’d been given a new roommate a couple days earlier — a fact that might have interfered with his plans for escape, under different circumstances. But the man was already missing one entire foot and one hand, and spent most of his time babbling nonsensically to himself in a corner of the small cell. He never caused any trouble, and Zak wondered if the man even recognized the presence of another human being in the room. In any case, he hadn’t taken long to consider the danger of a roommate seeing his digging. Despite his robust psyche, Zak was concerned that he too would soon be talking to imaginary friends. The mental and emotional strain was almost more difficult than the physical pain, and combining the three made survival a chancy proposition at best. Through the haze of pain, Zak fought to maintain his self-discipline, and stubbornly continued to scrape away at the mortar, stopping every few minutes to brush the gravel under the straw that littered the floor.

I
SMELL POT.”

“What, Cath? What’d you say?”

Indy had been dozing. The sound of Catherine’s voice brought him back to the claustrophobic present.

The two of them were still imprisoned deep below Sawtooth Ridge, in one of the storerooms in Devil’s Anvil. They had been there for more than 20 hours now. The air was stuffy. Both Catherine and Indy were severely dehydrated.

“Pot, Indy. Marijuana. It’s faint, but I can definitely smell it.”

“Well the marijuana room was just down the way,” replied Indy. “There are probably a few molecules coming in underneath the door.”

“I don’t think so, Indy. This is more than a few molecules. This is pretty strong. I wonder if there’s a passage that connects this room and the marijuana room. Maybe we should move some of this money around and see.”

“I can smell it too, now that you mention it,” replied Indy. “Why don’t we see if we can hunt down the source. It’s better than sitting here, waiting to die.”

Catherine nodded, then caught herself. She flicked the BIC lighter on to look around. “Let’s start with the far wall,” she said. “We can move the money to the center of the room, to see what’s back there.”

The room was larger than it appeared initially, and the mountain of bills was impressive, but they set to work. The physical exertion relaxed Indy a bit, and Catherine was relieved to hear that he was grunting and mumbling to himself in Punjabi again, making the occasional joke. The smell of marijuana became stronger as they worked, and it wasn’t coming from the doorway. Both thought that it must be coming from a shaft or tunnel entering the room from somewhere else, and worked together to move the masses of money back and forth, checking the walls and floor areas to test their hypothesis. Occasionally Catherine flicked on the lighter to give them bearings on the room.

“Yo, Indy, do I look as black as you? You’re covered in coal dust,” she giggled at one point, holding the lighter up to his face. His skin was darker than usual, streaked with sweat, and smeared where he’d rubbed his hands across his face.

“Yes, Cath, you’re as black as midnight. But this ain’t a makeup contest. Now let’s keep moving this stuff around. I’m feeling an air current here, and it’s got to be coming from somewhere.”

They labored on for another 15 minutes before they found it. A small black opening, at floor level, measuring perhaps 30 inches high by 30 inches wide, in the very back corner of the chamber. They had moved a mountain of bills to find it.

“There’s your passageway,” said Catherine. “I think it probably goes to the marijuana room, given that smell.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right. And if we’re lucky, that dumbo Dennis may not have realized that we opened all the locks. He may not have relocked the other rooms. If the tunnel goes there, you might be able to get out that way.”

“Me?” gasped Catherine. “You want ME to crawl through that little hole to God knows where? Me?” She was holding the cigarette lighter at the entrance to the small ventilation hole, attempting to gauge its dimensions.

“Think about it, Cath. You’re smaller, you’re more athletic. You don’t have an ounce of fat on you. You’re not paralyzed with claustrophobia. You have a better chance at it than I do,” replied Indy.

Catherine began to panic. “Indy, I don’t know if I can do it. Not even a dog could crawl through there. You drag me on this God-forsaken mission, and we’ve been trapped down here, no light, no air, for God knows how long. Now you want me to crawl through a little hole at the bottom of a room at the bottom of an abandoned coal mine to go to some damn room full of weed. Indy, I — I don’t know–”

“Catherine, I’ve had years of counseling to get over that incident with the Indian gangs up the valley. I’m having trouble enough in this room, so don’t even get me started on what a tunnel like that would do to me. I can’t do it. But one of us has to. You’re the only other choice.”

“Indy, I don’t know–” she repeated, but he interrupted again.

“You can do it, Cath. Go back to basic training. Focus on the task at hand. Force everything else from your mind. I don’t think I could fit through that hole anyhow. I know you can.”

“Jesus, why did I ever become a cop?” she asked herself. “OK, but you need to be able to pull me back if I get in trouble. You’ve got rope. Tie it around my ankle. If I get jammed and call out, you have to pull me back. Promise?”

“Yes, Cath, I promise. And when we get out of this mess I’ll make sure you get the promotion you deserve. This is above and beyond the call of duty.”

Catherine sighed. “No it’s not. Any member of the Force would do what you and I are doing. This is what the job is all about, I guess. Now tie the rope.”

Indy reached for the 20-foot rope that Dennis had either not seen or not bothered to take when he forced them into the storage room. He secured the rope around Catherine’s left ankle. She bent down and held the lighter at the entrance to the small tunnel again. Then she knelt down further, and stuck her head into the tunnel to peer ahead. Her heart was racing, and the walls of the tunnel were so close that she barely fit. She had to control her breathing.

“Dammit Indy, I hate this shit.”

She plunged into the tunnel and began wriggling down its length. Five feet. Ten. Fifteen. At 20 feet the rope ran out.

“Indy, I don’t see anything yet,” she shouted back down the tunnel.

Indy thought of the configuration of the rooms. “Keep going, Cath. You’ve got to be getting close. But we’re out of rope.”

Catherine panicked. “Indy, I can’t do this. Pull me back. Please.”

“Cath, just try a few more feet. Please.”

Catherine gulped. The walls were closing in. She couldn’t breathe. Sweat was pouring off her. Then, just when she thought she really couldn’t take it any longer, the tunnel widened. It entered the marijuana room at about two feet above floor level.

“Indy, I’m there. I’m in the marijuana room.” She crawled out of the tunnel and walked gingerly toward the door. It opened when she pushed it. “And the door’s unlocked. I’m out.”

T
OMORROW would be the day, thought Kumar. A day too awful to contemplate. A day that would end the lives of the two lads sitting with him, watching television. They were in a private suite of rooms adjacent to the Long Beach PWS manufacturing facilities. The two had spent the last three weeks of their lives moving from this suite to the simulator and back again. Kumar had driven them around some, and showed them the hot spots in Los Angeles — Hollywood, Disneyland, and various movie studios. Neither one had shown much interest in these things, other than stating that America was indeed the home of Satan. When not in the simulator or taking lessons from Kumar himself, they spent their time in prayer, and reading the Koran. They prayed five times daily, and the direction of Mecca was depicted by arrows on the floors in both the simulation room and the suite.

He had ordered pizza for them, on the assumption that teenagers on opposite sides of the globe were, in reality, not all that different. Wisely, he had chosen the vegetarian variety, supplemented by ample amounts of Pepsi. Before long Kumar, who had never married and had no children of his own, found himself becoming protective of Javeed and Massoud, physically and psychologically scarred as they were.

He knew that letting himself care was the worst thing he could possibly do. But Kumar found himself starting to like these wounded children. Did he really have to do this, leading the boys to their deaths? Eventually, though, he shook his head and gave himself a stern lecture. It wasn’t his place to worry about things like that. Yousseff was right — there was nothing he could do to help these boys. They had already chosen their path. It broke Kumar’s heart to see it. But Massoud and Javeed had their own demons, and the Emir and Yousseff had their master plan. Even if he tried to change things, Kumar knew that he had no chance against men like that.

J
IMMY, BA’AL, AND IZZY had reached the Meziadin Junction and were headed south toward Kitwanga, in northwestern BC. They were still driving the old five-ton cube van. The Semtex was buried beneath several layers of tarps in the back. Four old tires lay on top of the tarps, and fishing and camping gear was scattered on top of that. “Fishing in the Charlottes” was the official cover story. There were coolers with ice and gutted fish in the back to cover their tracks, should they need to use the story. They even had fishing licenses. Took the company truck.

Ba’al had taken the first leg of what would be an 18-hour trip, driving from the northwest pole of the province to the southeast corner. After two hours of talking without pausing for breath, Jimmy had fallen asleep in the back of the van, exhausted from his long and stressful journey in the sub. Ba’al and Izzy were talking quietly, hoping to make the time go faster.

“You know what’s amazing about this place, Izzy?” asked Ba’al.

“Tell me, oh wise one,” moaned Izzy. “Is it something other than the women?”

“No. But compare this to the trip from Peshawar to Jalalabad. There are no guns in BC, or very few anyway. We don’t fear for our safety here. We can live here for 50 years without anyone taking any shots at us. You have the same beauty as northern Pakistan, but no guns. No violence. If one person gets shot it makes provincial headlines. If a policeman gets shot it makes national headlines. Compare that to back home, with land mines, bandits, the Soviets, the Taliban, and the endless warring between tribal bosses. The crooked cops... ”

Izzy had to laugh at that. “Marak is totally honest. You just need to know who he actually works for.”

“I know,” Ba’al answered. “Here, though, Marak blows away three guys on the Vancouver docks and it’s still a story, almost 30 years later.”

They reached the Highway 16 junction at Kitwanga, and turned east. The highway, called the “Yellowhead” by the locals, extended to the Alberta border, although Izzy and Ba’al wouldn’t be following it that far. The scenery was once again spectacular, the road winding on an easterly course through the Hazelton Mountain range. Ba’al kept his speed just a few miles above the speed limit, going with the flow of traffic. “Don’t stand out,” Yousseff had told them sternly. “Not in any way.”

“Do you ever get lonely for home, Ba’al?” Izzy asked at length.

“Yes, of course I do. These mountains are beautiful to be sure, but nothing like the Hindu Kush. The river here is nice,” he said, motioning to the white water of the Skeena. “But you can’t drift down it, like the lazy Indus. And the weather is too damn cold. Inland here, 30 below zero in the wintertime. It’s madness. Yeah, lots of the time I pine for home. So does my wife. But a few weeks in Jalalabad is enough. I miss home, but when I am there, I want to be somewhere else.”

“Me too,” said Izzy. “Vancouver is fine for me most of the time. And we do live like kings. I don’t think I’d want to move back home, given a choice.”

It was 7AM when they reached the mountain town of Smithers, their first stop. They did everything they could to keep it short. “Pretend that the police are right on your heels,” Yousseff had said. “They are clever. They are looking for the Semtex. They will be unrelenting.” They filled up on gas, then went through a fast food drive-through. At the Smithers airport, Jimmy gave Izzy and Ba’al bear hugs. None of them knew when, or even if, they would see each other again. It was something they were trying not to think about too much.

G
ENTLEMEN, which areas face the highest probability of attack?” The President was in the Situation Room, now almost as famous as the Oval Office. He looked around the room at the people who’d been called to meet with him. Thirteen men were debating the problem. All men. Maybe that was the problem, he thought. No women. He wondered if a woman would have a different perspective. Maybe the answer.

As usual, Admiral Jackson was in the thick of it. “The NSA is picking up a lot of chatter from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Most of it from the Internet. Most of it highly encrypted. The bastards don’t know we can read it. There are ongoing references to a nuclear or dirty bomb threat to one of the coastal cities. It all started with Goldberg’s message. The stolen Semtex seems to be related, but no one can figure out how. I suspect a combination of the Semtex and a nuke. A radiological dirty bomb. They may bring the Semtex in one way, and the radioactive material via another route, and then combine them at the last moment.”

“How bad would it be?” asked the President.

“Bad,” replied the Secretary of Defense. “It could poison an inner city harbor and the surrounding buildings for hundreds of years. Depends on what they use. It could do what nothing else has done so far. If it came down in the business district of New York it would make Wall Street and every building for a dozen blocks around it uninhabitable.”

“So which cities do we need to protect, Admiral?” asked the President. “Where are we looking?”

“You can go up and down both coasts guessing,” Jackson answered, shaking his head. “I think the West Coast is more likely than the East, given that the
Haramosh Star
is due in Vancouver. Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, or maybe Los Angeles. If the stuff is coming north from Mexico, I’d say Phoenix, Tucson, Vegas, and maybe even San Diego would be the prime targets. Las Vegas would be an attractive candidate for any Islamic radical. Maybe some of the southern Texas cities, like El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, or even Dallas Fort Worth. Hard to say at this point. If they bring it through British Columbia somehow, maybe one of the cities in Idaho or Montana. Definitely hard to say.”

“God dammit, we spend billions and billions of dollars on Intelligence and you guys can’t tell us more precisely than saying this thing is probably going to land somewhere on the West Coast or in the Southwest?” demanded the Secretary of Defense.

“We can, in time. Right now we’re half a step behind this thing, and we’re having trouble getting ahead of it. We need to take protective measures. We need to go to Threat Level Orange for those areas. We need more eyes and ears than we have. And we need to alert the public about it as well. The Intelligence Community would welcome another hundred million pairs of eyes, quite frankly,” responded the Admiral, somewhat defensively.