Retribution (33 page)

CHAPTER 65

 

J
ames Scott hurried back to a second desk that he'd staked out in the operations center—this one in the rear of the bridge near the AO cell. The air operations cell controlled the air in the northeastern quarter of Afghanistan, where Scott's team perched on their hilltop.

Five large flat screens covered the one wall of the bridge and, like other operations centers, the desks and computers rose like stadium seats on platforms facing the displays. A large air-ground map shone in the center flat screen. Scott could see on the map Kabul to the south, down the valley, and the several mountain ranges that encircled Bagram. The airfield's single runway was at just less than five thousand feet above sea level, but the mountains to the north, east, and west all climbed up to fifteen thousand feet in less than a few miles. It made for an elevator-like descent when landing.

“What's the weather looking like for the next twenty-four hours?” Scott asked one of the staffers. He had just returned from his conference call with Tranthan.

The young, freckle-faced man, a Kansas native, Scott had learned, frowned. “Frankly, sir, not good. There's a sandstorm blowing in from the northwest.”

“How soon before it arrives?”

“Hold on, sir.” The airman turned to his computer terminal to pull up the weather report. The picture of a dark-haired girl in a bright white-and-red cheerleader's uniform was taped to the terminal. “Here it is. Winds expected up to sixty miles an hour in the next six to twelve.”

“What will that do to air?”

“It will shut down the Blackhawks.”

Just as Scott had feared. Exfiltrating Parker and his team had just become immeasurably more complicated and uncertain.

“Can you raise the team?”

“Yes, sir.”

Scott had tried to keep the communications down to a minimum, but Furlong needed to know his options.

Scott took the headset.

“Slashing talon six, this is checkmate six, over.”

The
six
meant that the commanding officer was talking to another commanding officer. five would be the second in command and one through four might be the different platoon commanders.

“Checkmate six, this is slashing talon six.”

“Severe weather expected your position from twenty-one-hundred zulu to oh-three-hundred zulu. No air. Do you copy?”

“I copy, twenty-one-hundred zulu to oh-three-hundred zulu.”

Zulu time provided a uniform reference point— Greenwich Mean Time. Translated, a storm was going to hit at three in the morning and stay there until well after sunrise.

The conversation with Furlong didn't last much longer than a few seconds. Scott imagined the captain tucked in behind a pile of rocks looking out over the valley with his thermal night-vision binoculars. The optics would pick up anything with a heartbeat or a body temperature above the cold rocks. Furlong would be lying in the dirt, camouflaged, marking the locations of his men and feeling the tickle of an occasional scorpion crawling up his sleeve.

“What are they doing down there?”

A group of servicemen had grown quickly below them, at the lowest level of the bridge.

“Sir, if you don't mind, I might check this out. I've been wondering myself.”

“Yeah, please do.”

Scott watched the five screens as he sat in his chair, sipping a cup of black coffee that had a stale taste to it. He looked into the cup, seeing the stain on the ceramic above the liquid lines from past cups. The mug was borrowed from the mess and well used.

The airman came climbing back up the steps quickly, a stunned look on his face.

“What is it?”

“Sir, they're watching CNN International on the terminal.”

“And?”

“They're reporting that the Pakistani weapons complex at Kamra was attacked an hour ago. Two nuke cores are gone.”

CHAPTER 66

 

H
is temperature was rising.

Parker leaned back on the prayer rug and touched his hand to his forehead, then ran it through his hair. The skin was cold and wet, and the hair was matted with sweat from the fever. Parker's neck felt stiff, almost as if welded in place; as he tried to turn it, pain shot through his shoulders. His head was starting to pound. Even staying still, he felt as if a large wooden mallet had struck him in the rear of his skull.

Parker squeezed his fist, once, twice, and then a third time, suppressing the pain and trying to focus. “It is time for prayers.”

Umarov and Liaquat, who were still by the fire, looked over at him lethargically. The disease was now in its sixth hour. They were probably starting to feel the initial effects, their eyes glowing eerily in the twilight.

A wind was rising out of the northwest.

Parker looked up in the sky and could see bright twinkling stars, despite his sense that there was a coming change of weather.

The cave was well above ten thousand feet and, being closer to the heavens, the stars seemed more pronounced, much brighter than home. But Parker had seen it happen before, a sky full of stars and then a sandstorm. You could go from unlimited visibility, spotting mountaintops a hundred miles away, to being blinded, unable to see even one's hand.

“We must pray.”

Umarov grunted, stood.

Parker rose on his knees and then pushed up with his hands. His head swam as he tried to stand erect.

Yousef had left the cave some time ago. Parker could hear his voice, seemingly on a cell phone, at the edge of the encampment. He sounded excited.

Parker took a prayer rug to an opening on the far side of the huts and the first of three trucks parked between the remaining walls. The trucks were covered with dry, brown tarps that started to flap in the rising breeze. He faced west, toward Mecca, and removed his shoes.

“Do you have water?”

Liaquat had laid his prayer rug down, behind Parker's, as if to keep an eye on the stranger. Liaquat looked somewhat unsteady himself.

“Yes, of course.” Liaquat yelled to one of the women in the cave. “Bring us some water for Al-Wudu.” The ritual of the prayer required a cleansing.

The old woman from the cave brought a pitcher.

“I noticed on the flight you made your fist.” Liaquat, the physician, was talking. His suspicions seemed to be building. “Did you hurt your arm?”

“Yes, years ago.” Parker knew that attempting to evade the question would cause more curiosity. “It is nothing.”

The woman handed Parker a small metal cup.
Odd.
Parker looked at the woman in detail as she held the brandished pitcher up to pour. She had short, stump-like fingers, fat and rounded at their tips. The woman would die soon. Parker had seen it before. She was sick. Her lung disease was cutting off the oxygen to her body, causing her fingers to club. When hit by the meningitis she would be one of the first to die.

Liaquat washed his hands, three times, and then his face, and then the back of his neck. As the woman came to Parker, he looked into her eyes. Her head was covered, but her eyes in the glow of the fire seemed to be large and tired. She and her people lived in the worst of a stark, barren, cold, hopeless world. Parker washed his hands three times, and then his face and neck. The water was bitterly cold. For Parker and his rising temperature, it felt good.

“So, Umarov is from Grozny?”

“Yes.” Liaquat laid his prayer rug down next to Parker's.

Parker noticed Umarov's accent, when he spoke, had the hint of something other than Arabic. Chechen had similar consonants and sounds to Arabic but sounded quite different.

“He has the mark of the
Crni Labudovi
?”

“Yeah.”

Parker decided to play journalist.

“So Umarov was originally from Grozny, raised a Muslim.”

“Yes.”

“But the Black Swans are Bosnian?”

Liaquat looked around. No one else was within range of listening.

“All you need to know is that he's a killer.” Liaquat said the words in a near whisper. “His family was killed in the first Russian purge of Grozny. He joined the Committee of Revolutionary Justice with Nidal. He blew up a Russian train back in the late eighties. It killed a lot of Russian children on a holiday.”

“And that's how he got to know Yousef?”

“Yes. They were with Nidal together, but the Russians were giving Nidal help with explosives against the Americans.”

“So Nidal cut him loose. He disappeared for a while and then showed up in Bosnia. He did such a good job that they made him a brother of the
Crni Labudovi
.”

Meaning, he killed more children
.

“And then back in Grozny against the Russians in 1996. And finally he came here to Yousef.”

The Maghrib prayer began at sunset. And Parker followed the Salah, or prayer, through its separate steps. But Yousef was nowhere in sight.

At the end, he turned to the right and spoke to evil and then to the left and spoke to good. And then Parker thought the last of the Longfellow poem.

They all stood at the completion of the prayer and hugged each other, kissing each other on the cheek.

Yousef came across to them, looking like a child at Christmas. “My friend, get your pencil and paper. I have news. Very special news.”

“What is it?”

“We have our weapons. They are being moved as we speak!”

Umarov gave Yousef a look. Parker noticed the look as well. It said,
You're talking too much.

Thank God Umarov never heard from Knez,
Parker thought. It was clear that Parker would be lying in a pool of blood by now if Knez had ever communicated to anyone any suspicions.

“Weapons?”

“Yes, Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Zulfiqar did well. They will be here by midnight. Praise Allah!”

“Praise Allah!” Parker managed to beam a smile. “But they must be used in the right way, yes?”

The trap had been baited.

“One will go to our cell on the lake—”

“We speak too much.” Umarov interrupted Yousef.

“Perhaps, perhaps.” Yousef hesitated. “My friend, you will be the first to know, but let's wait a little more.”

“I understand.”
Near Canada,
Parker recalled, and believed he had what he needed.

Umarov continued to frown.

“No, brother,” Yousef told Umarov. “It's okay. This is why we wanted Sadik here now. When the time is right he will tell the world! With this, the world will listen to my fatwa!”

“This will make you formidable, formidable indeed!” Parker came over and hugged Yousef again, placing a kiss on first his left cheek and then his right. “You must tell me everything.”

“Soon, indeed.” Yousef continued to smile like a child. “Please. Let us go in by the fire. The women will bring us some food.”

Parker followed, looking briefly up into the mountains. Somewhere up there the team was probably learning of the change in the game.
If they thought the weapons were here, the team would be on top of us by now.

Inside, everyone huddled by the fire, in all, more than a dozen men, sharing a common plate of
chapli
kabab and chai. Again, Parker sipped the tea, savoring the moisture. And again, he passed the cup to Yousef. Again, Yousef sipped the tea from the same cup. The comment about the headache passed his ears.

He imagined his mother, sitting in her airplane seat, the flight attendant bringing her a cup of tea with cream and sugar.

Parker looked at the AK-47s stacked next to the entrance to the cave.

Parker thought of his grabbing one of the machine guns and spraying the huddle next to the fire. He wouldn't survive the attack, but that didn't matter.

But we wouldn't know where the nukes were.
The highly enriched uranium cores would disappear into a place like Danish Abad.

Yousef was obviously intoxicated by his achievement. He continued to smile and babble on. “You see this, my friend.” He held up a cell phone to Parker. This one, unlike the others, had a short stub of a cigar-shaped antenna. “This is a Mobal.”

“Mobal?” Parker thought he mispronounced
mobile
.

“Yes, an Iridium. A satellite phone.”

“I see.”

“It has one number in it. You see it here, my friend.” Yousef showed a single number in the phone's directory. “With this, a simple touch, I can activate the cells that will deliver this blow to the heart!”

“I don't understand.”

“A nuclear weapon is being delivered to the heart.”

“The heart?” Parker was playing the journalist, writing on his pad. But to himself he thought,
Chicago
.

“Yes, my friend. But I cannot say more, not now. But you will be the first to report it. And the name of Yousef al-Qadi. You will report on the rise of a new Islamic nation.”

 

 

The wind started to howl through the encampment.

Parker was slowly slipping away. Fortunately, the interview with Yousef was long over. The headaches were becoming horrific now. He had begun to shake uncontrollably from the fever.

“You don't look good, my friend.” Liaquat pulled next to Parker at the fire. “Do you have a fever?”

“I may.”

Liaquat turned to Umarov. “Oh, I spoke with London.” Liaquat had been gone for some time. This explained it.

“Yes?”

“Knez is dead.”

“What?” Umarov leaned up. As he did, he grabbed his head. The quick change seemed to have caused his head to pound. “Not Knez. Not Knez.”

“I'm sorry. He was found murdered.”

“In London? Who would have hurt my brother there? He knew no one.”

Liaquat glanced toward Parker at that moment. Liaquat knew more than he was saying.

“You had a brother?” Parker asked.

“Yeah.” Umarov's face glistened with the sweat. “Not by kin, but by blood.”

“What?”

“I was a mujahideen with the
muslimanska oslobod-ila
ka brigada
. He was my blood brother. We fought together. On more than one occasion, he saved my life.”

Parker had heard of the Gestapo mujahideen. A corps was formed of Muslim fighters from other countries. The best, or the best in killing, were then taken into the
Crni Labudovi
.

Umarov continued to mutter while Liaquat kept watching Parker.

Parker turned away, pulling his rug up against the remnants of the mud wall that once was a hut near the opening to the cave. The wind continued to blow. The stars were now gone. A sandstorm was just beyond the opening in the wall, causing the canvas covering the trucks to begin to flap. He would have to move quietly and quickly. He would have to find the trail that followed the ridgeline down and then around into the next valley.

Time was running out, but the mission had changed. Now he had two nuclear weapons to find.

Parker was thinking that the fierce sandstorm might provide a clean escape when the victorious raiding party arrived back at camp. He'd had only fitful bouts of sleep, and his temperature had risen through the night. He steadied himself against the wall as he stood, then wiped his drenched forehead with the shawl that his editor had given him.