Full Assault Mode (36 page)

“What do we have here today, Carlos?” the new ambassador growled, alerting everyone in the small soundproof conference room that calling the new director Bill wasn’t going to cut it. Not if they valued their jobs. It was also obvious to everyone in the room that Bill Mason probably would still prefer the title admiral over ambassador.

Carlos figured someone above his pay grade had already briefed the ambassador on the ongoing mission. Or maybe the ambassador was just looking to hear it all again from Carlos.
Typical military officer,
he thought.

“We are handling zero-seven-zero-six currently. Operation Shadow Blink kicked off about five hours ago with a covert embed. The insertion of zero-seven-zero-six was spot-on. Besides a momentary Predator glitch, no issues yet. We anticipate linkup in a couple of hours, once the sun comes up.”

“Is that it up on screen number three?” Mason asked as he pointed with all five fingers.

“All three screens are dedicated to the operation currently, sir,” Carlos informed him. An operation of this importance required it. At any time, the reconnaissance Predators could blink or go tits up for maintenance. It was a lesson learned the hard way over the years. Things materialized in an instant on the other end of the downlink. Not having backup cameras could prove disastrous. It had before.

“Screens one and three are currently covering key intersections approximately three to four miles north and south of what you see on center screen two,” Carlos said. “That’s the infiltration point.”

Carlos noticed Mason shift his eyes from screen 3, lock eyes with him for a few seconds, and then turn to stare at screen 2. He wore a high-end white button-down, collared shirt tucked into a pair of tan slacks that rode slightly high around the ankles, exposing his dark blue socks as he walked. The waist line on his britches rode equally high, giving the navy man the makeup of a 1960s university professor. The striped tie was noticeably uncomfortable for the former military man, appearing to restrict his air intake and shade his face perpetually red. With his hands on his hips, Mason focused on the movement of the hot spot in the middle of screen 3.

“Who is moving down there?” he asked with great curiosity, stepping a few feet closer to the screen.

Anticipating the question, Carlos quickly answered. “Not exactly sure, sir, but we believe that is either Embed Asset zero-seven-zero-six or his shadow moving down there. The insert team confirmed all other props neutralized prior to their exfil.” Carlos wondered if he would have to explain what the slang term “props” meant or who the insert team was.

Mason’s eyebrows narrowed and his lips tightened. “Shadow?”

“Uh, yes, sir, operationally we simply refer to the other man, Joma, as the embed’s shadow,” Carlos answered, trying to anticipate the admiral’s next question and wondering if he had listened to anything the intel analysts had told him during his initial in-brief and read-on to current operations.

“Also, sir, it is standard operating procedure to establish a specific support group for each of our embeds. I’m zero-seven-zero-six’s handler, and two other assets, people we refer to as saviors, actually, are in Afghanistan now, briefing the chief of station and the ambassador to Afghanistan on Shadow Blink.”

“Yes, I’ve been briefed, young man,” Mason answered, without taking his eyes off the plasma screens.

Carlos decided to test the waters a bit. “Sir, we call him ‘shadow’ because the success of this mission hinges on zero-seven-zero-six’s ability to stay with Joma. As you know, Joma is the link to the other nuke-plot cell we are looking for in the North-West Frontier Province.”

Admiral Mason didn’t respond as he accepted a ceramic mug of coffee from an observant office assistant. Carlos wondered if it was because he either was entirely on board with the operation or if he had severe reservations.

Carlos thumbed a laser pointer and tried to hold the red dot steady on the moving individual on screen 2. “That guy there, he moved to the back of the truck here and got in for a few seconds.” Carlos added, “Now he is back out.”

The ambassador listened intently as he stared at the large plasma screen on the wall. He was very comfortable with viewing scenes like this, black-and-white video footage from twenty-five thousand feet over some obscure and far-off worthless piece of land on the other side of the world.

Deep down, these types of scenes and actions had a way of stirring a great deal of patriotism in the former admiral. He knew it took guts to do what special operations soldiers did. As he grew older and wiser, he wondered if he could have ever measured up had he been selected in his prime.

“This embed asset zero-seven-zero-six fella, former military?” the ambassador asked, as if to let Carlos know to use the full official term for the company’s human assets.

“Army, sir,” Carlos said. “He’s relatively new to the program. This is his first major embed operation. He is a special case that acquired some, well, let’s just say unique preparation.”

“Green Beret?” the ambassador asked with an equal amount of enthusiasm and assumption. Mason was a longtime Special Forces fan and always had a soft spot in his heart for Green Berets. “What special training could a Green Beret need?” he asked with a condescending and questioning tone.

“No, Mr. Ambassador, former Special Missions Unit operator, DSC and triple Silver Star winner, and a boatload of other valor awards,” Carlos answered, ignoring the question and now knowing the ambassador hadn’t been briefed yet on the details of Shadow Blink. Carlos decided he didn’t need to make it that easy for the new director. The ambassador was retired now, and everyone had to earn their pay in Tungsten. Carlos did, as Kolt was now.

“A SMU?” the ambassador asked, using the slang acronym pronounced as “smew.” “Army? Delta?” the ambassador quickly said after swallowing a mouthful of coffee and turning his head with an eyebrow raised toward Carlos.

Western Pakistan

While Carlos and Ambassador Mason were getting to know each other, two thousand miles away their little project in Central Asia had taken care of his first problem. Kolt not only had a stranger alive that could potentially compromise his identity but also had seen headlights in the distance. He knew he needed to take action immediately. The stranger had to die.

Kolt leaned toward the terrorist, who was gasping for air. Their eyes locked on each other. The terrorist’s eyes willed with hope that Kolt would save him. That Kolt would at least offer him assistance and make his pain more manageable.

But if the dying man’s eyes begged for mercy, Kolt’s eyes signaled cold-blooded death. Kolt reached up with both dirty hands and wrapped them around the stranger’s light brown neck. His eyes widened and stayed glued on Kolt’s. He didn’t blink. Kolt positioned his thumbs directly on the front of the stranger’s neck. In an instant, he pressed his thumbs, still covered in his own dried blood, against the stranger’s larynx with every intention of killing the man quickly.

The stranger reacted with more strength than Kolt imagined possible given the man’s condition. As asphyxiation kicked in, the natural instinct to survive accelerated. Kolt maintained the pressure as the stranger jumped out of reflex. He sensed death. He didn’t like it at all.

His right hand reached for Kolt’s face. Kolt turned away but kept him in his peripheral vision. The hand grabbed Kolt’s left wrist. Kolt concentrated on maintaining full pressure with his thumbs. Kolt stared at the stranger as he strangled him. Fifteen seconds later, the stranger went limp. His eyes locked open, still staring directly at Kolt.

Even though the man was now dead, Kolt noticed the grip on his left wrist was still tight. Kolt turned his eyes from the stranger’s and looked at the hand. In a second or two, the grip released and the hand fell to the cloth seat.

Kolt slowly climbed out of the driver’s seat and moved around to the lead truck to find Joma. Joma appeared to be coming out of the drug comma, but the effects hadn’t worn off entirely. Kolt knew it would be any minute now and suddenly noticed the ties on his ankles and wrists.

Shit!

Kolt had forgotten about his responsibility to remove Joma’s restraints before he woke up. If he woke, still flex-tied, it would be one more piece of the puzzle that Kolt would have to somehow smooth over at best, and at worst it could be a potential showstopper. He reached for a shard of tempered glass from the vehicle windows, but the piece crumbled in his fingers to pea-size pellets. Kolt picked up a piece of sharp metal from the warhead that had impacted the dark blue Toyota’s front end and started to cut away at the wrist tie.

Joma’s sudden struggling startled Kolt. Joma obviously didn’t know who was behind him.

“It’s me, Joma—Timothy!” Kolt whispered, trying to calm him down while flinging the flex ties into the darkness.

“Praise be to Allah, praise be to Allah,” Joma repeated.

“You are hurt. Your leg,” Kolt said, pulling the soiled cloth of Joma’s pants away from the wound to inspect it.

Joma rolled over and looked at Kolt.

“You are injured, too, no?”

“Yes, Joma, but we are so fortunate,” Kolt said, trying to add a sense of amazement to his comment. “I think we are the only survivors.”

“Where are we?” Joma asked.

“I overheard one of the Americans soldiers say we were in Gulistan,” Kolt said, turning his palms upward as if he was unsure of where that was.

That startled Joma. “Gulistan?” Are you sure?”

“I can’t be sure, Joma, but I think that is what I heard,” Kolt answered convincingly. “Are you familiar with that place?”

“Yes, yes, Timothy. Praise be to Allah. We are in Pakistan. The hills, the stars, the wonderful aroma. I am certain of it,” Joma answered.

“What should we do?” Kolt asked.

“Nothing,” Joma answered.

“Nothing?” Kolt asked

“Timothy, it is best that we preserve our strength. We are both injured. We won’t make it far, and I’m uncertain which way to go until morning. Someone will come. It’s Allah’s will,” Joma said.

“But are you sure, Joma?” Kolt replied. “Will we be OK staying here?”

“Yes. Yes we will. Someone will find us in the morning. This I am certain of.”

“OK, Joma. I trust you,” Kolt replied.

“Yes, Timothy, we are no longer in your country. Pakistan is my birthplace. We are in the heart of my people, the Zarranis. We will be OK here. But now we must rest to preserve our strength.”

*   *   *

Kolt awoke to bells ringing as he laid motionless on the desert floor. He was lying in a drying pool of his own blood, and only his blinking eyes showed any life as the goat licked his cheeks. The soft ringing of the bell wrapped around the lead goat’s neck confused him slightly. If the bell ringing wasn’t enough to assure him he was still alive, the colorful camels loaded down with family belongings sure did.

The stench of death lingered in the air. It seemed to hold to the tiny ambush area sitting in the middle of nowhere. An old man with a long cane poked at the dead. Once certain of their death, he reached down and pulled off their shoes and dropped them into a yellow cloth bag being held by a boy no more than six or seven years old. To a family of nomads making their way to cooler climates for the summer, shoes were more valuable than money.

Another little boy, who was no older than Kolt had been when he stalked deer as a kid behind his grandma’s house, squatted in front of Kolt with the barrel end of his AK-47 less than a foot from Kolt’s head.

The boy yelled out, “He lives! He lives!”

He didn’t see the person that grabbed his left foot and pulled him away from the truck. But he definitely felt the excruciating pain.

Kolt spoke first,
“Assalam ahkam
.
”

“Where are you from?” a middle-aged man asked.

Kolt paused for a moment. He wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to this. He wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he was an American. But that was something better left to Joma to explain. Something to be eased into carefully.

“Joma, where is my friend Joma?” Kolt responded as he wondered how long he had been out.

“Who are the others?”

“Brothers,” he answered, pausing to gauge their reaction. The nomad tribesman whispered among themselves as a little boy offered him a cup of water.

Kolt didn’t know who might find him half-dead in the desert. He hoped it wouldn’t be a coalition patrol that might have accidentally strayed across the unmarked border with Afghanistan. After all, he was there to access al Qaeda, not to spend valuable time at a U.S. interrogation facility like those in Bagram and Kandahar. He rolled the dice.

“We came to join the struggle against the occupiers,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster. “We are heroes from the infidel prison in Cuba.”

Sensing the tribesmen were less than convinced, Kolt added, “Look, my friends, we are all still dressed in our white prison garments. The infidel dogs refused to return our belongings.”

One of the marvels of the eighteenth-century backdrop of vast wasteland and uninhabited valleys is the speed of the word of mouth. Even without a landline phone system, news travels fast. It wasn’t long after Kolt took a shot with the nomads that his wish was answered.

Within earshot, somebody yelled out, “This one is alive as well.”

Kolt knew it must be Joma. Joma would vouch for him. Joma was his cover. Without Joma, Kolt would have little chance of surviving alone in the lawless land of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. A place where the Pakistani military had no control over the populace or the Taliban.

Another tribesman, younger and clean-shaven, wearing a short, rounded chartreuse and lime-green cap known as a
taqiyah,
came around from the left. He stopped to talk to the bearded man with the black turban who had been questioning Kolt. They spoke in a Pashto dialect prevalent to the area near Quetta. They motioned toward Kolt several times. The conversation was heated, and Kolt strained to hear what they were saying. Kolt wondered if Joma had turned on him.