The Midnight House (34 page)

T
he white Mitsubishi van bumped through the center of Derai, a dusty farm town in the heart of the Swat Valley, one hundred miles northwest of Islamabad. The road through Derai was wide and potholed, lined with swaybacked two-story buildings that leaned on one another as unwillingly as employees at a team-building exercise.

The streetlights were out, and the stores were closed, their metal gates pulled down. The streets were empty aside from an old man slowly pedaling a bike ahead of the van, his skinny brown calves rising and falling under his robe. The only proof of life came from the televisions playing in the apartments above the stores.

Given what they’d seen on the road into Derai, the lack of activity wasn’t surprising, Dwayne Maggs thought. Maggs sat in the back of the Mitsubishi, massaging his aching right leg, which hadn’t fully recovered from the bullet he had taken two months before. In the front seat were two Delta operatives, both able to pass for local.

A skinny white cat skulked across the road, head low, fur matted by the summer rain that had been pelting down for an hour. The cat ignored the van with the studied nonchalance of a Manhattan jay-walker and disappeared into an alley on the other side of the street, beside a blown-out police station, its windows gone, concrete hanging at odd angles from its walls. The cops had fled across the river, to Mingora, a bigger and marginally safer town. A gray-and-white cat surveyed the street from between two sandbags atop the station. The cat was probably about as effective as the Paki cops had been, Maggs thought.

Outside Derai, the van turned southeast on the narrow road that dead-ended at their ultimate objective, a tiny farming village called Damghar Kalay. Maggs snuck a glimpse at his watch. Ten fifteen. Right on schedule. On the edge of town, a necklace of lights flickered on a minaret, glistening in the rain-streaked sky.

Aside from the minaret, Damghar was dark. A couple miles beyond it, on the opposite bank of the Swat River, the lights of Mingora glowed. Mingora was the regional capital. With one hundred seventy-five thousand residents, it retained hints of vitality that Derai had lost. Mingora, Derai, and the villages around them lay on a belt of flatland that the icy Swat River had carved from the mountains of the Hindu Kush. With hot summers and plenty of water, the southern Swat Valley was surprisingly fertile, an agricultural oasis. The mountains around it were largely uninhabited, a trackless and beautiful wilderness that in happier times had been called “the Switzerland of Pakistan.” Just seventy-five miles north of here, the massive peak called Falaksair topped twenty thousand feet, a stone fist punching through the sky.

Yet the mountains had not buffered the Swat from the upheaval shaking Pakistan. For years, Talib militants had encroached into the valley from their strongholds on the Afghan border, one hundred miles west. By the summer of 2008, their takeover was nearly complete. Police and government officials hunched in their compounds as black-turbaned Talibs patrolled the streets of Mingora, enforcing their own version of sharia
—
Islamic law—from the backs of their pickups. They taxed store owners, burned girls’ schools, beat anyone they suspected of crimes against Islam. In June 2008, they even destroyed Pakistan’s only ski resort, at Malam Jabba, twenty-five miles west of Mingora. The Talibs didn’t take kindly to frivolities like snow sports. No one would confuse the Swat Valley with Switzerland anymore.

The Taliban’s control of the Swat did not yet extend to the main road into the valley. Traffic to and from Islamabad flowed without roadblocks. Still, driving up here was risky, especially for Maggs. All six of the Deltas on this mission had rough brown skin and long black beards and spoke Arabic, Pashto, or both. On the road, they didn’t stand out. As a black man, Maggs didn’t have that camouflage. The Mitsubishi was a cargo van, no side windows. Maggs had spent much of the trip lying on his seat, invisible to anyone outside.

Behind the van, the other four Deltas followed in George Fezcko’s favorite armored Nissan sedan. Its trunk held AKs, Glocks, and a handful of grenades. In contrast, the van’s cargo area was empty, aside from a three-speed bicycle identical to a million others in Pakistan—and a black bag that held the most important piece of equipment of all.

 

 

THE DELTAS HAD COME
in from Bagram a week before. They were good soldiers, tough and experienced. But the fact that they were here at all highlighted the problems the CIA was having in the new world. After rotating for six-plus years through Afghanistan, the Delta ops had picked up the language and looks to blend in. To survive.

Meanwhile, in Islamabad, too many of the CIA’s best and brightest were still stuck in the cold war model. They rarely left the Diplomatic Enclave. They told themselves they were cultivating sources inside the ISI and the army. But from what Maggs saw, they got played by their Paki counterparts as often as not. Fezcko, his old deputy chief of station, was the only senior operative who’d gotten outside the wire and put himself in harm’s way on a regular basis.

Maggs had to admit he missed Fezcko. He missed Nawiz Khan, too, wished Khan could have come on this mission. But a month before, in July, Khan had been sent to Lahore, on the India-Pakistan border. He’d called Maggs with the news. He didn’t have to explain the reason. He was being punished for the success of the raid where they’d caught bin Zari and Mohammed.

Khan had nearly managed to avoid the backlash. His team stayed loyal to him, sticking to the story he’d devised. Only four terrorists were in the house, and all were killed during the attack. No one mentioned bin Zari or Mohammed, much less the Americans involved in the raid.

The physical evidence at the house didn’t match the story. But the Islamabad police knew better than to get involved. Truck bombs were the ISI’s turf. But anyone at the ISI who knew that bin Zari had been at the house could hardly say so, since aiding the attack he’d been planning would have been the only way to know. Khan seemed to be on the verge of escaping punishment. Then he was told of the transfer.

“Sounds like you got off okay,” Maggs said.

“Not so much, my friend. I shan’t have my men with me,” Khan said in his British accent. “Down there I can’t trust anyone.”

Maggs heard cars and trucks in the background. He wondered where Khan was. Not his house, certainly. Khan would never call Maggs from his house. “Maybe you ought to take a trip,” Maggs said. “See the States. Visa won’t be a probem.”

“Generous but entirely unnecessary,” Khan said. “How’s your leg?”

“No more marathons, but not bad,” Maggs said. He’d been lucky. The bullet had missed bone and major nerves. His doctor had promised him that if he took his rehab seriously, he could expect a full recovery. Not that Maggs needed an excuse to exercise.

“And how’s George?”

“Good,” Maggs said. “I’ll make sure he knows where you are.”

“And our friends? Have you heard anything yet?”

“Not yet. Roaches go in, but they don’t come out.”

“Roaches?”

“I promise, I hear anything, I’ll let you know. It was a wild night, wasn’t it?”

“It most certainly was.”

“Be safe down there, Nawiz. You need help, you send a flag up the pole, I’ll rustle up the cavalry, come get your ass. International incident or no.”

“I believe you would.
Salaam alekeim,
my friend.”

 

 

FOR THE NEXT MONTH,
Maggs waded through boring assignments, managing security for a congressional delegation, overseeing the installation of new cameras inside the CIA’s floor of the embassy, bringing in two new guards. And, of course, rehabbing his leg.

Then, in mid-August, Nick Ulrich, the chief of station, was called to Kuwait for an urgent meeting. Maggs wasn’t invited, but he heard through the grapevine that the other guests were the chiefs of station from Delhi and Kabul and two lieutenant generals from Centcom. An all-star cast.

Ulrich was gone a day. When he got back, their operational pace picked up markedly. For two days in a row, Bagram ran up Predators to take out weapons caches hidden in the North-West Frontier. On the third day, Indian security forces arrested four members of Ansar Muhammad, Jawaruddin bin Zari’s old group, at a house in Delhi. And Maggs wondered if bin Zari had been broken.

The answer came the next morning, just as he was settling at his desk for his second cup of coffee. Ulrich’s secretary buzzed him.

“COS wants to see you.”

“Of course.”

Ulrich could have called, himself, but he wasn’t the type. Maggs walked down the hall, and Ulrich’s secretary waved him. Without getting up, Ulrich handed him a sheet of the blue paper used only for the most urgent messages.

“Came in this morning.”

“LOC/ADDINTEL” stood for location/additional intelligence.

“HUMINT (D)” meant that the information had come from a human source, rather than an electronic intercept or another spy agency. “D” meant that the informant was a detainee.

“R” stood for the reliability of the source, “C” for corroboration. Both were scored on a scale of 1 to 5. In this case, the information was considered likely to be accurate even without independent confirmation.

And “IAR” meant immediate action required.

MAGGS HANDED BACK
the cable. He had lots of questions. Why were the interrogators sure the laptop existed without independent corroboration? Had this come from bin Zari, or someone else? And why did the coding have a “Charlie Bravo” handle? Charlie Bravo meant that the note had come from Centcom through Bagram. But information from bin Zari should have run through Langley, not the military. After all, he and Fezcko were the ones who’d caught the guy.

“They broke Jawaruddin.”

“Maybe,” Ulrich said. He was in his early fifties, with a full head of thick, brown hair, a bulbous nose, and a broad, almost stately, chin. He looked like he belonged on an English estate circa 1925, chasing foxes and shooting grouse. He was far from dumb, and Maggs figured he was good in meetings with the ISI and the Pak generals. But Maggs didn’t like him, and the feeling seemed to be mutual.

“You want me to put a team together—”

Ulrich raised a hand to cut him off. “Squad’s coming from Bagram tomorrow,” he said. “Deltas.”

“Deltas?” Ulrich was notoriously turf-conscious. Yet losing this assignment didn’t seem to bother him. Maybe he knew that the Deltas had a better shot at pulling off the job than his own agents. Maybe he didn’t think the laptop was important. Or maybe he’d been told the score and decided not to fight. Maggs couldn’t ask. Whatever he was thinking, Ulrich wasn’t the type to share.

“Deltas,” Ulrich said. “Six. But they’ll be detached to us for the assignment.”

“Right.” Maggs saw now. Technically, neither the Deltas nor any American military forces could operate in Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. After all, the United States was at peace with Pakistan. Legally, anyway. But getting the approval of the Pakistani authorities for this job might be tough.
We need to go up into the Swat and steal a laptop that proves you’re all terrorists. Not a problem, right?

To get around the legalities, the Deltas would be “TR”—temporarily reassigned—and handed over to the CIA, which didn’t have to follow the military’s rules, for the operation. Maggs understood the logic. But he didn’t like it. He would be running six guys he didn’t know on a job that was based on intel he couldn’t verify.

“Got it,” Maggs said. “And I’ll be in charge.”

“Correct. We’re always talking about improving cooperation with the Pentagon. Now’s your chance.”

“Thanks, boss.”

 

 

THE DELTAS ARRIVED
the next day. The good news was that they were every bit as professional as Maggs expected. They understood that they wouldn’t have the usual military backup for this assignment. No air support or Black Hawks to come for them if things got messy. They would get in and out quietly, or not at all.

The bad news was that they didn’t have any better read on the intel than Maggs did. They’d gotten their orders the same day as Ulrich and Maggs. Major James Armstrong, the squad’s leader, said the source wasn’t being held at Bagram.

“You’d know,” Maggs said.

“We’d know.”

More proof that this tip had come from bin Zari, Maggs thought. But why were his interrogators so sure they could trust him? Maggs wished he could talk through his concerns with Armstrong. But bin Zari’s capture remained a closely held secret. Even in Islamabad, Maggs and Ulrich were the only CIA officers who knew. So Maggs shut his mouth and went ahead trying to figure a way into that house. He would have had an easier time if the agency had decent informers in Damghar. Or anywhere in the Swat. But the CIA’s only halfway trustworthy source in the entire valley, the deputy mayor of Mingora, had fled six months before. The Taliban had set a truck tire on fire outside his house and promised him that the next time his head would be inside it. The Talibs didn’t know the mayor was an informer. If they had, there would have been no warning at all. They just didn’t like him.