“So let’s go look around. We have tons of time. Go check it out and be back up here before dawn.”
“Take it easy, Coastie. We have to be very careful, or else we can stumble into an ambush or a mine field. This ain’t no walk in the park. Overconfidence can get you killed. We will go soon, but we move quietly and slowly.”
Ledford chewed on her lower lip. She knew she was anxious, while Swanson had done this kind of thing before. “I know that,” she said.
“Then shut the hell up,” Swanson told her. “We go when I’m ready.” He looked at his wristwatch. Less than an hour ago, they had still been in the plane, and now she wanted to sprint down into bad-guy country. Rookie nerves. He went back to combing the area with his night-vision binos, checking the map and making notes with a ballpoint pen in his pocket notebook.
“Are you ready yet?” Fifteen minutes had passed, and Ledford was impatient. There was nobody down there but those few guys at the fire.
“Keep your voice down. Sound carries,” he said.
“We can’t just stay here. What do you want to do?” She was exasperated. The answer to what Joey had seen was right down the hill.
Swanson switched off his flashlight, put away the notebook and binos, took a sip of water, and rolled onto his back. “I’m going to sleep for an hour. Stay awake and don’t say another fucking word.”
* * *
T
WO THIRTY IN THE
morning. Sergeant Hafiz stifled a yawn as the need for sleep pulled at his eyes. The radio on his belt buzzed, and he acknowledged the incoming call, listened carefully, and terminated it. The convoy of visitors was only two miles away now, paused on the roadway, ready to come in. Before giving the signal, Hafiz made a quick call to the replacement patrol that was now down in the valley. “What’s going on?” he asked the leader.
“Nothing. Very quiet.” The voice was calm, which was good. Hafiz did not want anything else unexpected happening.
“Keep it that way. We’re going dark up here for a few minutes. Keep those people alert and spread out. No errors, not now.”
“Yes, Sergeant. I’m at the old bridge if you need me.”
“Very well. Base out.” Hafiz changed channels on the portable radio and inhaled deeply to steady himself. The vehicles, carrying the party of Ayman al-Masri from the New Muslim Order, were waiting nearby, ready to come in. At the sergeant’s order, sirens along the bridge whined to life. All engines shut down, every light was turned off, and when the sirens stopped thirty seconds later, the area was enveloped by total silence.
At the campfire beside the old bridge, the patrol leader sipped his tea and stared back toward the massive bridge that had just vanished before his eyes, as if it had been sucked into a hole in the night. The wail of the sirens bounced off the sides of the valley, bringing curses from the Taliban fighters trying to sleep on the ground. They were hard men but had refused to go any farther than this point. He was going to accuse them of being afraid of the Djinn, hiding like scared children, but they probably would have killed him on the spot for insulting their manhood. Better to leave them alone. A relief patrol would come down at dawn. Maybe the Taliban would be braver in the daylight.
Up top, three sports utility vehicles sped onto the bridge with their lights off and were guided into the underground garage by men carrying soft red lights. When large doors to the outside slid closed, all of the lights came on again, work resumed, and Sergeant Hafiz approached the middle vehicle. Guards with machine guns pounced out of the lead and trail SUVs and formed a perimeter; then the door of the middle Ford Excursion opened, and a slender, bearded man in the rugged clothes of a mountain dweller stepped nimbly onto the concrete. His dark eyes rapidly swept his surroundings, and then he exchanged greetings with Hafiz. Ayman al-Masri, the head of personal security for Commander Kahn, did not smile. He seldom did.
* * *
W
HEN THE FIRST SIREN
began to turn over with its slow growl, Beth Ledford jumped in surprise. Instantly, there was a hand resting softly on her back. “Steady, Coastie. Keep sharp while we see what’s happening.”
“All of the lights on the big bridge just went out,” she said. Her voice was as tight as a piano wire, as was the rest of her body.
Swanson grunted in acknowledgment. He could see that, and therefore no words were needed. “Get into your sniper mode. Loosen up so that if you have to take a shot, you can make it count. Alert, but don’t engage. Scoot around so you’re still covering our six, and have your weapon safety off and ready.”
The sirens grew to a full howl, the volume at earsplitting decibels as it echoed through the long valley. Swanson propped his CAR-15 beside him and checked the load, then went to the night-vision goggles. The only available light was the campfire, which was still flickering merrily down below, and it did not seem that any of the men around it had even changed position. So whatever was happening at the top of the valley had not disturbed them: It was expected. The alarm sirens were turned off, and the shrill whine spun back to silence; then the lights came back on.
“No movement here. You got anything?”
“No. Just darkness back this way.” Beth kept her eyes on the hillside. “That was all kind of spooky. You think an electrical failure?”
“More likely, they were doing something they didn’t want anybody to see.” Kyle smiled at her. “It doesn’t matter to our mission. These things always have unexpected wrinkles. Stay cool.”
“I am cool, Gunny.” She shuffled back away from the entrance.
“OK. Your turn to catch some sleep. We’ll pull out in about another hour. At around four in the morning, the biorhythms of those guards will be dragging them down like anchors. Their heart rates and blood pressure will be so low they might as well be offline. Even whoever is standing watch will be about to fall over with sleep. That’s when we go. You take a combat nap now, so you can be fresh.”
“I don’t think I can sleep,” she said, lying back. “Too darned tensed up.”
“Coastie, you sleep when you’re told. So rack out.” He turned away and watched the empty valley, wondering about the momentary blackout.
* * *
A
YMAN AL
-M
ASRI WALKED WITH
Hafiz to a row of brightly painted golf carts. “The last time we met, Hafiz, I believe you held the rank of colonel. You have been severely demoted.”
“I wear whatever rank my orders tell me to wear, although I prefer no official rank at all.” Hafiz motioned to the lead cart. “I need to show just enough to get the job done.”
“And is the job done here? Is this place safe for the Commander?”
“That’s for you to decide, not me. All I can tell you is that I like what I have seen. It is a virtually impenetrable place with an automatic defense umbrella the likes of which you have never encountered. Even most bombs would just bounce off. When fully online, it would take a long, all-out assault by a determined enemy to defeat it.”
Al-Masri got into the cart and settled his robes. “Frankly, I find such claims hard to believe. I saw what the Americans did to the caves of Tora Bora with their devil bombs, and believe they can do the same here. I will not put the Commander in jeopardy.”
“I had a lot of doubts, too, when I arrived. Now, after studying it, I cannot think of any better place to ride out a storm. There were no defense systems at Tora Bora, just caves. Surely this place could eventually be taken down—history has shown that no defensive position can hold out forever—but to do so would extract an enormous cost, and become a gagging bone in the throat of any attacker.” He pushed the accelerator, and the battery-powered cart jerked forward. “This is only the prototype, the first of many, each to be stronger than the one before it. We are drawing a line which the Americans and their allies will think twice about attempting to cross. They are not used to fighting against technology and modern defenses that match or surpass their own, and the sort of little Special Forces raid that took the life of Osama bin Laden could simply never happen here, my friend. However, before dazzling you with the missiles and guns and electronic wonders of it all, I want to get some bad news out of the way. The genius who created this has gone totally insane. I have him secured in the infirmary, and I’m waiting for final orders from the ISI about what to do with him. You should see him first.”
“To the infirmary, then, Hafiz. I need to inspect it anyway.” The string of carts buzzed down the wide main tunnel.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
I
T WAS FIVE
IN
the afternoon in Washington, nine hours behind the time at the bridge in Pakistan, and the small staff that worked at the Bureau of American-Islamic Affairs building on Observatory Circle was shutting down for the day. Undersecretary Curtis tidied up his own desk and left with them, courteously calling the clerks by name as everyone headed for their cars, joking that thankfully there would be no receptions or official dinners tonight. Everybody deserves a night off now and then.
The day in Washington had been a scorcher, with high humidity adding to the misery of being outside, even for a little while. Only tourists braved the heat. Curtis’s personal automobile, an elegant metallic red BMW M3, was parked beneath cover in a reserved space, but even so, a blast of roasted air rushed out when he opened the door. He opened the passenger door to let the furnace heat dissipate with a cross-draft. Out in the parking lot, others were doing the same. No true Washington resident would get straight into a car on an afternoon like this. Let the trapped hot air escape, then jump in just long enough to turn on the engine and get the air conditioner pumping on high, then get back out. It took at least two minutes before even the most anxious commuter would slide onto the hot seat and grip a steering wheel that had been baking for hours.
Curtis removed his coat and tie and folded them carefully while he waited for the powerful BMW V6 engine to cool the interior down to a comfortable level. In another minute, he was motoring away from the BAIA, enduring the rush hour traffic northwest around the Beltway to McLean, where he peeled off onto State Route 267, the Dulles International toll road. Once on the long straightaway, it was almost impossible to get off of that road until you hit the airport exit, and Curtis had to fight the urge to let his machine really run, to set free the 414 horsepower as he passed the Leesburg Pike and Wolf Trap, and the pavement unrolled ahead. Instead, he stayed in the slow lane, moving in behind a small hotel bus. He would get the chance to open her up on the return trip.
Once settled into the pack, he activated the automated built-in cell phone and instructed it to dial a number in New York. The big ears of the National Security Agency constantly swept international conversations in the D.C. area, but Dulles was almost a dead zone; there were so many calls going on between thousands of passengers and their homelands that even the NSA system was overwhelmed. A carefully conducted call to a foreign mission at the United Nations would hardly be noticed if the words “terrorism” and “bomb” were not mentioned.
Cultural attaché Mohammed Javid Bhatti had been expecting the call and he answered on the third ring. They chatted aimlessly for a full minute. Was it hotter in New York or Washington. How the traffic was. How the UN was empty in August, and how they were both looking forward to the weekend. The attaché confirmed that he would be attending a reception the following week.
“Will you be bringing your guest?” Curtis asked.
There as a pause. Javid Bhatti deliberately gave the response that he had memorized. “No, I will arrive alone. I have communicated with my home office, and the guest will not be able to make it. There will be no one sent to replace him.” He meant that the Pakistani ISI had decided not to risk having one of their trained assassins being captured while operating on American soil.
Now there was a longer pause. When William Lloyd Curtis asked a favor, he normally got it. He swallowed his disappointment and kept his voice even. “That’s fine, then. So I will see you at the reception.”
“I’ll be there. You furnish the blondes.”
Curtis laughed and closed the call. The attaché loved to party, and getting women and booze for him had been a good investment. No need to be angry at him. Javid was just a messenger boy. Curtis was peeved, however, at having his request rejected by General Gul at the ISI. With so much at stake, and the days counting down toward a major attack, was the ISI getting cold feet, playing him?
Curtis no longer had to paddle along the Dulles road like some grandma in a used Honda. He cut out from behind the passenger van and into faster traffic, ignoring the horn blowing and finger waving of other drivers as he stomped the accelerator and the BMW responded with a burst of blurry speed that catapulted him to ninety miles per hour. The speed limit was sixty-five, but Curtis had not spent sixty-five thousand dollars on a luxury muscle car to do the speed limit.
18
THE VALLEY
K
YLE
S
WANSON LET THE
night speak to him. He was fully alert, all of his senses constantly bringing in and updating information, but those people down below, except for the one guy who had stayed up and was walking around, were at the low point of their entire day: bored, tired, and hard asleep. The darkness felt heavy, and the steady grinding of big equipment up on the bridge was almost like white noise, lulling the brain into restfulness, assuring everyone that things were normal.
“OK,” he said, giving an easy shake to Beth Ledford’s arm. “Time to move out. Police up your trash. Leave no target indicator. No one should ever know that we were here.”