Killing Ground

“By Pakistan I take it you mean the tribal region,” Delahunt said.

“That’s always been our premise, and there’s nothing here to suggest otherwise,” Brognola said. “The ambushers we were able to recover are with Army Intelligence at Bagram. They’re going through personal effects while the bodies are autopsied to see if there’s some dietary tip-off as to where they might have been holed up.”

“Dietary tip-off?” Kurtzman asked. “That’s a new one on me.”

“Different tribes, different crops,” Brognola said. “If any of them have undigested food in their system, it could be as good as finding fingerprints in a homicide case.”

“‘Alimentary, my dear Watson,’” Delahunt said, invoking a Sherlock Holmesian British accent. When Wethers shot her a stern glance, she told him, “C’mon, Hunt, a little levity won’t grind things to a halt, okay?”

“Does that make it another one of our ‘union perks’?”

Delahunt laughed. “Hey, what do you know, Hunt made a funny.”

“Okay, people,” Brognola interceded. “Can we get back to the task at hand? Following up on this ambush is just our first step. There’s a wider picture we need to be looking at, as well.”

Brognola paced before his colleagues as he quickly reiterated what he’d told Price earlier regarding concerns about the ease with which the Afghan National Army had been striking lopsided blows against the Taliban while the joint U.S.-NATO effort was being stymied at every turn. When he stressed how the ANA’s solo triumphs coincided with growing calls for Western pullouts, all three members of the cyberteam agreed on the need to look for another explanation besides a run of good luck on the part of the home team.

Kurtzman, the crew’s wheelchair-bound leader, was the first to respond after Brognola had completed the briefing. “I’ll start culling sat-cam databases for signs of Taliban movement along the border,” he said.

“Good,” Brognola said. “Also see what you can do about getting one of the orbitals to make a few extra passes over that whole stretch of mountains. BASIC would probably be your best bet, but use my name and pull in markers with the National Reconnaissance Office or some of the private firms if you have to.”

“Will do.”

“You didn’t bring it up,” Wethers said, “but shouldn’t we also be looking into how the Taliban knew where our ops teams were positioned? From the sounds of it, they were right on target when they came out of that tunnel.”

“Not to mention they were breathing down Striker’s neck from the get-go up on that ridgeline,” Delahunt added. “I’m smelling a tip-off.”

Price had just wrapped up her call with Bolan and rejoined the group in time to overhear the last exchange.

“Striker’s thinking the same thing,” she told Wethers. “AI assured him they’re looking into it.”

“All the same, let’s do our own checking,” Brognola said. “Did he have anything new to report?”

“A possible break, actually,” Price said. “A recon chopper came across someone lying wounded in the mountains near Jalalabad a couple hours ago. He was unconscious with multiple bullet wounds, but he was too far from where the ops team was attacked so they’re thinking maybe he’s part of that Taliban crew the ANA took out around the same time.”

“It’d be nice if that was the case,” Brognola said. “Especially if we can get him to talk.”

“It sounded to Striker like it’s pretty touch-and-go as to whether this guy will even pull through,” Price said. “They flew him to Bagram and he’s still in surgery. Apparently he’s got internal injuries and nearly bled out.”

“Let’s hope for the best,” Brognola said. “We could use a break.”

“One other thing,” Price added. “Striker wants carte blanche in terms of his next move. He wants to go with the first strong lead on where they took O’Brien’s body.”

“Not a problem,” the big Fed said. “I’m sure that whole situation is weighing on him.”

“‘No man left behind’? Yeah, I think it’s a concern for him,” Price said. “Can’t say as I blame him.”

“Me, either,” Kurtzman interjected, “but he was following that same code when he went to help the guys being ambushed. It’s not like he was retreating.”

“I’m sure he realizes that, but still…”

“C’mon folks,” Brognola said, stuffing the cigar in his shirt pocket so that he could have both hands free to roll up his sleeves. “We’ve got a big haystack to comb through, so let’s get cracking.”

“Will do,” Delahunt said. “I’m wondering, though…Given the situation over there, is the President still looking to make that photo op in Kabul next week?”

Brognola shook his head. “He’ll still be going to Istanbul for the NATO conference, but he’s scratched the side trip.”

“Smart move,” Delahunt said. “Last thing we need is the Taliban feathering their turbans with an assassination.”

5

Spin Range, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan

As Brognola was rallying his cybercrew in the Stony Man Computer Room, halfway around the world, high in the arid mountains just north of Safed Koh Range, the enemy the SOG was trying to place in its sights was huddled in an inauspicious farm hut, with dirt floors and windows draped loosely with flaps of leopard skin to fend off the cold winter air. In the center of the room three men sat close together on mats set around a low, candlelit table, warming themselves with hot tea and steamed rice sprinkled with shaved bits of roast lamb. They spoke quietly, barely above a whisper, but their words carried both passion and urgency as they addressed events of the past twelve hours.

General Zahir Rashid of the Afghan National Army, at sixty-three by far the oldest of the three, was out of uniform, dressed like the others in plain shepherd’s clothing. There were streaks of gray in his neatly trimmed beard and a glimmer of intensity in his dark brown eyes. A veteran of Afghanistan’s United Front, Rashid had come into his own once that group’s militia had morphed into the ANA. He was also widely credited as the mastermind behind the string of recent victories Afghan troops had racked up against the Taliban. The previous night, in fact, he’d taken to the field and led the successful defeat of an insurgent squad in the mountains near Jalalabad. However, that one-sided skirmish would never have been possible without the input of the man seated directly across from him.

It was Aden Saleh, a high-ranking member of the Taliban and the warrior who’d eluded Bolan in the aftermath of the Safed Koh conflagration. He’d not only apprised Rashid of the Taliban’s movements in the Spin Range, but had also seen to it that the insurgent group stalked its way blindly into an ambush that had resulted in the deaths of all but one of its men. The ploy had been easy enough to carry out, because for the past six months Saleh had been in charge of orchestrating each and every incursion into Afghanistan made by the black-turbanned renegades. Saleh’s reasons for betraying his own men were simple. As with any organization, there were schisms within the Taliban. The majority of those who’d fallen in the Jalalabad battle, like most of the others slain by ANA forces over the past few weeks, were part of a dissenting minority opposed to a strategy to regain control of Afghanistan, not by acting alone, but by entering into a covert alliance with Rashid and other rogue ANA generals. This alliance also had outside force whose support, Saleh and his superiors felt, would be essential to ensuring that any coup would not be quickly undone by the U.S.-NATO coalition.

Spearheading efforts on behalf of that outside force was the third man seated at the table.

Eshaq Faryad, a native of neighboring Uzbekistan, had been among the first soldiers to set foot in Afghanistan during the 1979 Soviet invasion, and for ten years he’d remained in the country, doing all he could to help fend off counterattacks by the mujahideen. Years after the Soviet occupation had been squashed, thereby forcing him to flee back across the border, Faryad was back, this time in collusion with some of the same Afghan leaders he’d earlier fought against. As before, his primary objective was to place the country under Russia’s yoke. And while Uzbekistan had been awarded its sovereignty following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Faryad’s allegiance remained with Moscow, and all these years the bald, clean-shaved man had continued to receive orders—as well as a steady, sizeable income—from the Russian capital’s intelligentsia apparatchik. In recent years that organization’s official title may have changed countless times, but in his heart Faryad still considered himself KGB—SVR to the rest of the world.

The three men had come together to discuss a number of issues, but two in particular weighed most heavily on them in terms of immediacy.

First was the matter of the U.S. soldier whose body had been hauled away from the ridgeline in Safed Koh by the sniper who’d killed him after he’d triggered a Taliban-set land mine. Captain Howard O’Brien’s corpse lay just outside the hut, stripped and covered beneath a layer of snow brought down from the higher elevations. His weapons, along with a microcomputer, had been confiscated and what was left of the recon officer’s uniform was being washed and mended in hopes some use could be made of it. Meanwhile, the men squabbled over what to do with the body.

Saleh wanted to use the slain officer as barter in hopes of negotiating the release of Azzizhudin Karimi, the low-level Taliban fighter who’d survived the ambush by Rashid’s ANA troops the night before in the hills outside Jalalabad. But Faryad and Rashid opposed the idea, taking the sniper’s word that the other U.S. soldier who’d been on the ridgeline had to know O’Brien was already dead. They knew there was no way the U.S. would exchange a live prisoner for a dead one. For that matter, Rashid was equally skeptical that they would even be able to use O’Brien to secure the return of the bodies of the men who’d fought alongside Saleh when they’d ambushed the Special Ops team in the mountains of Safed Koh. The Afghan general had already learned from his informants at Bagram Air Base that those victims were in the process of being autopsied at the request of U.S. Army Intelligence.

Saleh had been enraged by the news of such desecration, but he realized it was pointless to argue any further for trying to leverage O’Brien’s body as a bargaining chip. This was, he decided, one of those situations when it was best to back off from his position for the sake of maintaining the alliance with those seated across from him. Besides, acquiescence now would likely serve him down the line should a time come when he would need one of them, in turn, to side with him as swing vote on some other matter.

“Very well,” the Taliban leader finally relented. “We’ll make use of his weapons and uniform and just dispose of the body.”

“Preferably in a way that it’s never found,” Rashid added. “If the Americans are kept wondering about his fate, it will be something of a victory.”

“Agreed,” Faryad said.

“I’ll see to it personally,” Saleh said.

“It’s settled then,” Rashid replied. “Let’s move on.”

“Before we do, what about the computer?” Faryad asked.

“What about it?” Rashid said. “We don’t have the access code. Without that, it’s of no use to us.”

“We should try to crack the code,” the SVR agent suggested. “If we can get into the system, it could prove invaluable.”

“If you know anything about hacking, you’re welcome to try,” Rashid countered.