The Fourth Horseman (2 page)

“I have orders to meet with Group Captain Paracha.” The GP was the commander of the top-secret nuclear storage depot here on base.

“Not at this hour.”

Usman was driving a Toyota SUV with civilian plates and no markings that had been waiting for him at the international airport. The windows were so darkly tinted that the interior of the car was all but invisible to anyone looking in. He’d been stopped at the barrier, and the sergeant along with an armed guard who stood to one side had come out to see who’d shown up. Security across the country was tight because of the troubles.

“Call him.”

“Impossible.”

“He needs to know that I am here.”

Another of the guards came to the door of the gatehouse. “A call for you, CT,” he said.

“In a minute.”

“Sir, it’s Paracha.”

“Shoot the lieutenant if he moves,” the CT told the armed guard, and he turned on his heel and went into the guardhouse.

Usman understood the physical facts of his orders, if not the reason for them, though if he had to guess he figured this move tonight was only one of many similar operations across the country in response to the terrorist attacks. But this was desperate. Like leaping off a tall cliff into the raging ocean because a tiger was at your back. And he felt naked because he wasn’t wearing a uniform—only big-city blue jeans and a T-shirt.

The CT returned almost immediately. “You’re late. The group captain is at headquarters waiting for you. Do you know the way, or will you require an escort, sir?”

“I can find it,” Usman said.

The CT stepped back and motioned for the barrier to be raised. He looked green in the harsh lights.

*   *   *

Group Captain Kabir Paracha, at forty-seven, was an unlikely military officer. His desert camos were a mess, he’d forgotten his hat, and his sleeves were rolled up to just below the elbows, the straps that were meant to hold them higher poking out. But he was the correct man for the job because his primary training had been as a nuclear engineer at the Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratory. He understood the nature of the devices he was meant to guard. Especially the consequences if they ever had to be used.

He was waiting next to his Hummer, a driver behind the wheel.

“You’re late,” he said as Usman got out of his SUV. “And in civilian clothes.”

“Pardon me, sir, but there were only three lightly armed men at Post One. This place should be crawling with patrols.”

“We are told that the problems are confined to the north. I was ordered to maintain a low profile. And your trip makes no sense. It’s insanity.”

“Do you mean to disobey orders?” Usman demanded.

The GC’s face fell and he looked away for just a moment. “No. But I will send two of my people with you. For the weapons—the
mated
weapons. Do you completely understand the sheer folly?”

Usman could guess. Almost all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were stored in the unmated configuration: the trigger circuitry was stored in one spot, while the Pit—the physics packages that contained either highly enriched uranium or plutonium fissile cores plus the tritium accelerators that greatly increased a nuclear weapon’s explosive power—were stored elsewhere. The procedure was for safety’s sake, and it was something that the leadership assured the Americans was standard.

“I agree with you, sir. But I too must follow orders. These are difficult times.”

“Indeed,” Paracha said. “Follow me.”

Usman followed the group captain across the base to a series of low concrete bunkers inside a triple barrier of tall, razor-wire-topped electric fences. Guard towers were located at fifty-meter intervals, and from the moment they approached the main gate, they were illuminated by several strong searchlights.

All of it was wrong. Anyone watching the bunkers and the high-security perimeter had to know what was here. And now the lights and the two vehicles were nothing short of an invitation. Insanity. Paracha was right: what was happening here and across the country was sheer folly.

Once they were passed through the triple fences, a thick steel door leading inside one of the bunkers rumbled open with a loud screech of metal on metal that had to be audible for miles.

Four heavily armed soldiers, one of them a flight lieutenant, motioned for Usman to drive inside what appeared to be a loading area about thirty or forty meters on a side. At the rear was a large freight elevator, its steel mesh gates open.

A small tug towing a cart on which were strapped four small nuclear weapons shaped like missile nose cones emerged from the elevator and the driver came around to the rear of Usman’s SUV.

Paracha spoke to the four armed guards, then came over to where Usman had gotten out of his vehicle and opened the tailgate with shaking hands.

“Do you recognize what these are?” he asked.

“Nuclear weapons meant to be carried by rockets.”

“Plutonium bombs for the Haft IX missiles. And do you know the significance of that fact? The exact meaning of the thing?”

Usman only had his orders to pick up four weapons, drive them to the airport at Delbandin, a small town three hundred kilometers to the south, and deliver them to a Flight Lieutenant Gopang, who would load them aboard a small transport aircraft and fly away. Once the delivery was made he was to return to Islamabad.

“No, sir,” Usman said, his voice quiet. He was suddenly in the presence of something so overwhelmingly powerful that all of his certainty had evaporated.

“These missiles have a range of less than one hundred kilometers. Does this mean something to you?”

Usman shook his head.

“These weapons were not meant to be launched against India or against anywhere else
outside
of Pakistan. They have been designed to kill any force threatening us from
inside.
They are meant to be used against our own people.”

“The Taliban. Enemies of the state.”

“Save me the propaganda, Lieutenant. These people were once our allies.”

“And now they are our enemies,” Usman said. And the fault rested entirely with the ISI. Just as the CIA was at least partly to blame for bin Laden. The Americans had funded the fundamentalists in Afghanistan, who drove the Russians away, and when the war was over the same Stinger missiles had been turned against Americans, which in turn had finally led to the attacks on New York and Washington. The events of the last two weeks were Pakistan’s 9/11, and nothing short of a miracle would stop Islamabad from falling.

“I won’t push the button, I only helped design the things and now I’m in charge of guarding them,” Paracha said. “You won’t push the button either, you’ll merely deliver them somewhere.”

Usman had nothing to say.

Paracha stepped closer. “Are our hands clean, Lieutenant?” he asked. He shook his head. “We’ll never be clean.”

THREE

The fires in the city became visible about ten miles from the airport, the night sky glowing unevenly beneath a low cloud deck. The situation was just as bad as the CIA thought it would be, and just as good as Haaris had hoped. Revolutions were not born on sunny days.

He was dressed now in long loose trousers, over which he wore a filthy long shirt and a kaffiyeh wrapped around his head, concealing his false beard and showing only the bridge of his nose and a hint of his eyes.

Virtually no traffic moved on the broad highway that had been built to service the new airport. But there had been intense fighting this evening: the shot-up, burned-out remains of several cars and pickup trucks littered the ditches in a quarter-mile stretch, and several bodies lay where they had fallen along the side of the road.

Haaris sat in the front seat next to Lieutenant Jura, a Beretta pistol holstered on his chest and a Kalashnikov propped up between his knees.

They came around a long sweeping bend to a half-dozen pickup trucks blocking both sides of the highway; at least twenty armed men dressed much the same as Haaris stood either in front of the trucks or in defensive positions behind the vehicles or in the ditches. Several of them were armed with American-made LAWs rockets, meant to take out tanks.

Although he had remained silent since leaving the airport, Jura now said, “I’ll do the talking,” and he slowed, coming to a stop a couple of meters from two men who stood ahead of the others.

One of them came forward, a Kalashnikov assault rifle hanging casually from his right shoulder. He was tall and muscular, his face mostly hidden behind his scarf, his eyes behind aviator sunglasses.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“There is to be another demonstration in front of army headquarters. We have been ordered to attend.”

“Ordered by whom?”

“That is none of your business, brother. Your job is to attend to those fools who are trying to leave the city. Not freedom fighters ready for holy work this night.”

The man shifted his weapon to a firing position, though he did not exactly point it at Jura. He leaned down and looked in at Haaris. “And who the hell are you?”

Haaris pulled out his Beretta pistol. “I have been in Paris, and I’m bringing good news to the revolution. We have our funding. Stand aside and let us pass.”

“If you shoot me, you won’t get five meters,” the second man, with an AK47, said, but he didn’t seem so certain.

“But then you would be dead, so whatever happened to us would be of no concern. Call your unit commander.”

“I am in charge here.”

Haaris pulled the hammer back, and with his left hand moved the end of the kaffiyeh from his face. “If you should make it to Paradise, remember me.” He started to pull the trigger.

The man suddenly stepped back and waved them through. “Go with God,” he said.

“And you, my brother,” Haaris said.

They had to maneuver their way slowly past several pickup trucks, the armed warriors watching, until on the other side, the road clear, Jura sped up.

“Anyone aiming anything at us?” Haaris asked, decocking his pistol and holstering it.

Jura checked the rearview mirror. “Not yet.” He glanced at Haaris. “The general said that you had balls. But you could have gotten us shot back there. Most of those guys were stoned. Opium. They chew balls of that shit all the time.”

Haaris shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” Since his parents had been killed in a rock slide—he’d been there when their mangled bodies had been dug out—and since his abuse at public school, he had been mostly indifferent to his personal comfort or well-being. He didn’t know if he actually cared whether or not he survived to live another day, and he wasn’t sure if this was a gift or a curse. But like a man who could feel no pain because of a medical condition, Haaris couldn’t feel fear.

Just as well, he thought. But this night was important, and no matter what happened he had to present himself as invincible. Which made him smile.

*   *   *

The entrance to the sprawling Inter-Service Intelligence compound in Islamabad was next to a hospital, the gate guarded only by a plainclothes officer armed with a pistol. No sign identified the place, which looked more like the campus of a university—a number of mostly low slung modern buildings separated by well-tended lawns and fountains were grouped around the eight-story main headquarters building, on the top floor of which was the director general’s office.

This area of the city was all but deserted now, most of the trouble centered around the Army Headquarters Building ten kilometers away in Rawalpindi.

The guard recognized Lieutenant Jura and waved him through. On the other side of the gate completely out of sight from the main road, they were stopped by a half-dozen heavily armed soldiers and four bomb-sniffing dogs. They were made to get out of the car so that they could be searched with security wands of the same type that at one time had been used at airports and then thoroughly patted down.

Haaris’s and Jura’s pistols were taken, as was the Kalashnikov from inside the car, before they were allowed to proceed.

“They knew we were coming but they’re jumpy because this place will probably get hit sometime tonight,” Jura said.

“Maybe not,” Haaris said, and the lieutenant gave him a sharp look.

“Pardon me, sir, your bravado got us past the roadblock, but the Taliban setting fire to the city might not be so easily convinced.”

They were admitted to the parking ramp beneath the headquarters building after submitting to another, even more thorough search.

“Remember what happens tonight, Lieutenant,” Haaris said, getting out of the car in front of the elevator. “Pakistan’s future is at stake.”

“Yes, sir. I know. We all know it.”

“Stay here, I’ll be back.”

*   *   *

The ISI’s Covert Action Division covered the entire third floor of the building. A hundred or more cubicles took up the center of the room. Offices, conference rooms and two data centers faced outward around the perimeter on three sides, and the fourth—the side facing toward the presidential palace—was taken up by General Hasan Rajput’s large suite of offices, along with the offices of his deputy director and staff.

Anyone who had gotten past security inside the main gate and again either in the parking garage or through the ground-floor entrance was considered safe. No one bothered to look up as Haaris got off the elevator and made his way to the general’s office. The secretary was gone and the door to the inner office was open. Rajput, the collar of his white shirt unbuttoned, was seated at his desk listening to reports from three of his staff. When Haaris walked in he looked up. He could have been a kindly grandfather, with gray hair and soft eyes.

“At last,” he said. “Gentlemen, please leave us.”

The staffers glanced at Haaris as they walked out but said nothing. The last one closed the door.

Rajput motioned for Haaris to take a seat. “Did you run into any trouble on the way in?”

“Not much. What’s the current situation at the Aiwan? Is Barazani there?” Farid Barazani was the openly pro-Western new president of Pakistan. His election four months earlier was one of the reasons the Taliban had staged their attacks. Almost everyone in the West believed this was the signal for the dissolution of the government, which was why American nuclear strike force teams had been moved into place.