Joshuas Hammer km-8 Page 25

  McGarvey got out his satellite phone. The low-battery indicator glowed steadily red, and when he hit the speed dial button, the numbers came up on the tiny screen, but after a few seconds the display flashed a string of six Es, indicating that no satellite had been acquired.

  He cleared the screen and tried it again with the same results. The battery was simply too low. He laid his head back and closed his eyes for a second. Without the phone he had no way of finding out if the Taliban government had been convinced to allow the American military to send in transportation for its citizens, or when it was due to arrive at the airport. He would somehow have to find another phone. Short of that he would have to try to get to the airport and wait until the plane arrived. But the chances of pulling that off without getting caught were even more impossible. His eyes opened. Temperature. Batteries were affected by it. In the winter when it was freezing, car batteries went flat. Maybe the opposite was true.

  He removed the small battery pack from the phone, lit his cigarette lighter and held it a couple of inches below the plastic case. Within a couple of seconds the plastic began to melt. He pulled it away from the flame until it cooled down a little, and then waved it slowly back and forth over the lighter, pulling it back whenever the plastic began to melt again. After a couple of minutes the battery pack was getting too hot to handle, so he put it back in the phone. This time the low-battery indicator did not come on.

  He hit the speed dial button, the numbers came up and a couple of seconds later the phone acquired a satellite and the call went through. Rencke answered it on the first ring. “Oh, boy, Mac, am I ever glad to hear from you. All hell is breaking loose—”

  “There’s no time for that, my phone battery is almost dead. Is a plane coming for me?”

  “We got the clearances …”

  The low-battery light began to flash and the phone lost the satellite for just a moment, but then got it back.

  “… C-130, but you don’t have much time,” Rencke was saying.

  “What time will it be here?” McGarvey demanded.

  “Ten o’clock your time. This morning, Mac—”

  The phone lost the satellite again, chirped once and then went completely dead. Not even the numbers remained on the display, and the keypad no longer worked.

  McGarvey looked at his watch. It was already well after seven, which left him less than three hours.

  In the Afghan Mountains Bin Laden came out of the cave a few minutes after 7:30. He was disguised as an ordinary mujahed; no fatigue jacket, no white robes, not even his cane, so that if a satellite was watching there’d be no positive identification. He’d often traveled this way, only this time he would not be coming back. Two mujahedeen came up the hill as he started down, but he refused their help.

  “Did Ali leave?” he asked, taking care not to stumble. The pain in his hip and legs was excruciating. There was nothing left of the camp. Even the last of the fires had finally burned down.

  “Last night with the others,” one of them replied respectfully. Bin Laden couldn’t seem to remember his name. But it didn’t matter.

  At the bottom they climbed onto horses that had survived the attack and headed down the valley, along the stream. The Taliban military unit at Bagram was sending a helicopter to a rendezvous point about ten miles away for him. The same way Ali got out. And from there bin Laden would be flying by private jet to Khartoum. It was the last act of cooperation from them. It had been made clear that he would never be welcome back. Regretful but necessary, the mullah had told him by phone last night.

  The pain from riding on a horse was much worse than it was walking, but he had taken an injection of morphine just before he’d left the cave, so it was bearable, though the drug somewhat muddled his thinking and his ability to speak or keep in focus.

  As he rode, his thoughts drifted back and forth between Sarah and the bomb. At times the two were mingled together. Sarah’s body had been consumed by fire, as the President’s daughter would be consumed in an awful fire. It was just. The retribution would be terrible, but necessary. His only fear was that something would go wrong. Bahmad might be blocked from entering the U.S.” some of his carefully laid plans and preparations might go awry, or worse he might get himself arrested and under questioning reveal everything. But Bahmad was better than that, he would never allow himself to be captured alive. Even if he was he didn’t know all the details. He knew that the bomb was coming to California aboard a ship, but he didn’t know which ship. Not yet. Not until everything else was in place.

  Bin Laden realized that he had drifted off. He opened his eyes as they came down into the broader valley that ran along the base of the mountain range. Far to the east four of his mujahedeen who had left last night were heading as fast as they could travel for Pakistan, the bomb wrapped in burlap, strapped to the back of a horse. They had no idea what they were really carrying, they only knew that it was of supreme importance, and that their lives depended on getting safely to Peshwar where they would hand it over to two of bin Laden’s most trusted agents.

  “Are you all right, Osama?” one of his mujahed asked respectfully. “Should we stop here for a rest?”

  Bin Laden looked at him with love. He was just a young boy, as most of them were. He shook his head. “There will be time for rest later.”

  The two mujahedeen exchanged a worried glance. Since Sarah’s death in the missile raid he had not been himself. He had changed in some not-so-subtle way that none of them could define. It was troublesome.

  Bin Laden let his thoughts soar like an eagle down the valley to the four men heading east with the bomb. He could actually see them on horseback. They were boys, and they could go on like that day and night. Good boys. Dedicated. Religious. They understood the jihad at a deeper, more visceral level than anyone in the West could comprehend. They felt God not only in their hearts, but in every fiber of their beings.

  Last night they had brought the nervous pack animal up into the cave where the package was waiting for them, and listened as bin Laden explained the importance of their mission. “You will take this to men who will transport it to Mecca where it will be buried in a place of honor,” bin Laden told them.

  He rubbed his hand along the horse’s muzzle, then touched the hem of the burlap covering the bomb. He could almost feel the warmth emanating from it.

  The four mujahedeen watched him, their eyes wide. They were impressed because they thought that they were being ordered to carry the remains of bin Laden’s daughter home for burial. They were suddenly filled with a religious zeal and an overwhelming love for bin Laden. “We will not fail you,” Mohammed’s brother Achmed promised. His grip tightened on the strap of the Kalashnikov rifle.

  “Of course you won’t,” bin Laden said. “Insha’Allah.” He embraced each of the four men, and then watched as they led the horse out of the cave and down the hill where they mounted their horses and headed off into the darkness.

  His thoughts came back to the present, and tears filled his eyes. He was seeing these mountains for the very last time. Leaving the mortal remains of his beloved Sarah forever bound with the Afghan soil. It was a pain more unbearable than that of his cancer. He began to recite to himself the opening chapter of the Qoran, peace coming very slowly to his soul.

  Kabul The morning was in full bloom, the sky crystalline clear. From an opening between the slats of the shutters covering a window in a front bedroom, McGarvey looked down at the quiet street. The two soldiers were still parked in front, so no one suspected he was here yet.

  He felt detached, somewhat distant because of his fatigue, but he had to keep his head. He had to think his way out of this. Coming here he’d formed a vague plan of overpowering the caretakers and stealing their clothing and identification papers. He figured that with such a disguise he might be able to get out to the airport. From there he would have to improvise. But with the C-130 on the tarmac, and a line of anxious Americans pushing to get aboard, he thought he’d have a better
than even chance.

  That was no longer possible, there were no caretakers here. He had to come up with another plan no matter how improbable. Out there he had a chance, and he had faced worse odds before. He went to the back bedroom where he retrieved his phone, the cap and the scarf and headed downstairs to the back door.

  When the American military transport came in for a landing, the airport would be cleared of all other traffic. The Taliban would not want to create an incident that might cause a military retaliation. This was bin Laden’s fight now, and they would want to stay as distant from it as possible. The C-130 would land, taxi to the terminal, pick up its passengers, then taxi back to the end of the runway for takeoff. If the Taliban were waiting for him they would have to logically assume that he would try to make it to the terminal and somehow bluff his way aboard. Their attention would be concentrated there, wanting to get the plane loaded and away as quickly as possible.

  Peering out the laundry room door at the backyard, the first glimmerings of a plan came to him. It would be all or nothing, and would depend on timing and luck. But he decided that it was his only real chance for getting out.

  He pulled on the cap, wrapped the scarf around his neck and slipped out the door and hurried past the tennis court to the wall.

  The bricks were in much better condition on this side, so it took him three running attempts to reach the top and pull himself over. He dropped down into the sewage clogged alley, crossed the ditch and let himself back into the empty rug merchant’s shop.

  He had to stop for a couple of minutes to catch his breath. The slightest exertion was difficult, and scaling the wall had used almost all of his reserves.

  The narrow street in front was still deserted. Nothing seemed to have changed in the half-hour he’d been inside the ambassador’s compound, which he found was odd. But he couldn’t dwell on it now. Stealing another car was a possibility he was going to have to consider. But if no one had discovered the Rover yet using it one last time might pose less of a risk.

  His luck ran out when he left the shop and started down the narrow street.

  Dozens of men suddenly materialized out of the shops and homes up and down the street. Some of them were armed with clubs, but none of them were in uniform, nor did he see any guns.

  McGarvey stopped, and held his empty hands out. An older man with a long white beard, wearing a leather apron, shouted something at him in Persian. Some of the others murmured angrily. McGarvey put his hands over his ears, showing them that he was deaf.

  The old man pointed to the shop that McGarvey had just come out of and shouted something else. They thought he was a thief. He shook his head and again held out his empty hands to show them that he had taken nothing. He took a step forward and the old man backed up warily. They were just ordinary people trying to protect their neighborhood in troubled times. Had they been interested in politics they would be demonstrating at the old American embassy.

  More people were coming out of their homes and shops into the street behind him, ringing him in. Soon it would be impossible to move two feet let alone break free. It had to be now.

  He shook his head and walked directly toward the old man. He didn’t think he had much to fear from these people once he got away from here. They might report a religious crime to the Taliban, but they probably wouldn’t go to the government to report a suspected thief. They would deal with it in their own way by running him off.

  The old man and those around him backed up, and when it looked as if McGarvey wasn’t going to stop, they parted for him.

  He shook his ‘head as if he was disgusted as he passed through them, and without breaking stride or looking back he headed down the street the way he had come in. Once he reached the corner and got out of the neighborhood he figured he would be okay. But the crowd was becoming agitated, the men shouting something, arguing with each other.

  Ten feet from the corner rocks and bricks began to rain down around him, one of them hitting him in the shoulder. Covering his head, he bolted, and a huge cry rose up behind him.

  He almost made it to safety, but as he turned down the side street a brick smashed into the side of his head, driving him to his knees and temporarily blacking out his vision. A wave of nausea rose up from his gut causing him to retch as he got unsteadily to his feet and stumbled away as fast as he could move. He was dizzy, moving mostly on instinct, and the day was suddenly very dark, his vision reduced to a narrow tunnel directly in front of him. But there were no more rocks, and at the next corner he looked back. In the distance, what seemed to him to be a mile away, the crowd had stopped just at the edge of their district as he hoped they would. The last he saw of them they were shaking their fists and clubs.

  There was a huge knot on the side of his head just above his right ear. When he explored it with his fingers it was extremely tender to the touch, but there was no blood. As he walked, he wrapped the scarf around his mouth and nose, and gradually his vision began to clear.

  Down several intersecting streets he could see road blocks and more people heading in the direction of the embassy, but no one noticed him heading in the opposite direction, or if they did, nobody seemed to care.

  The Rover was where he had left it, parked between the battered Mercedes and the Flat van. But he approached carefully to make sure that it had not been staked out. As far as he could tell, however, there wasn’t a single soul around.

  He got behind the wheel, touched the starter wires together and the car’s engine came immediately to life. He backed out of the parking slot, drove out the alley and headed down the street to the main boulevard that led to the airport.

  To the south on Bebe-Maihro Street, toward the city center, there seemed to be roadblocks, military vehicles and soldiers everywhere, directing the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of people heading toward the embassy. Traffic was being diverted away from the barricades, and was already backing up.

  To the north, in the direction of the airport, the road was clear, but that was the direction they’d be expecting him to come. There was only one main road to the airport, and it would be heavily guarded until the American transport aircraft came in, picked up its passengers and departed. Airports were very large places, however. They sprawled across hundreds of acres of flat countryside. There might be only one road to take passengers to the terminal, but there would have to be several access roads for cargo deliveries, fuel and aircraft repair supplies, and for maintenance vehicles to have access to the ILS lights and electronic aids.

  McGarvey headed straight across the broad boulevard, and found himself in another section of narrow, winding streets that sometimes opened to broad avenues lined with apartment buildings, or parks, or other districts of craftsmen-wool merchants, tin-and copper smiths and even goldsmiths. Like the other areas of the city he’d seen this morning, most of these shops were closed, some of them boarded up, others with steel mesh security shutters lowered over their windows and doors. The anti-American demonstrations had turned into a national holiday of sorts.

  He worked his way generally north and east, sometimes finding himself stopped by dead-end streets and having to backtrack several blocks before he could find another way. It was like being a rat in a maze. At one point he came around a corner into the middle of another large crowd of people and official vehicles, their blue lights flashing. He jammed on his brakes. But it wasn’t a roadblock as he had feared. A large building that might have been a warehouse was on fire. Flames and smoke shot several hundred feet into the sky. Firemen using antiquated equipment poured water into the building, while on the other side of the street dozens of men had formed a bucket brigade and were dousing down their own shops and houses in a frantic effort to stop the flames from spreading. No one noticed him as he backed up and hurried off in the opposite direction. The houses and shops and other buildings began to thin out about the same time the pavement ended. The streets continued in some places only as narrow dirt tracks. He came around another corner, and t
he track abruptly stopped at a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. For several long seconds he gripped the steering wheel and simply stared at the fence as he tried to catch his breath. His vision had gone blurry again, but when it began to clear he realized that he had reached the airport. Directly across from him, perhaps fifty or sixty yards away, was what looked like the main east-west runway. He could make out the white lights along the paved surface. In the distance to the right he could see the markers at the end of the runway. Straight across was a line of maintenance and storage hangers, and in the far distance to the left were the control tower and terminal.

  His heart skipped a beat. Pulling away from the terminal was the distinctive, squat shape of a C-130 Hercules transport. McGarvey checked his watch. It was already past nine o’clock. It had taken him two hours to come this far, but the airplane was almost an hour early.

  In minutes his last chance to get out of Afghanistan would be at the end of the runway and lined up for takeoff. He needed to find a way to get out there, or at the very least signal to them.

  As the C-130 majestically started up the long taxiway, McGarvey threw the Rover in reverse, backed around and spit gravel as he raced through the labyrinth of narrow, bumpy tracks. This far from the city center the dwellings were little more than crude adobe brick hovels. But there were people around, most of them farmers tending small fields or herds of goats. Some of them looked up in astonishment at the speeding car, others didn’t bother.

  He got lost several times and had to backtrack so that he could keep the airport perimeter fence in sight. The C-130 was nearly to the end of the runway by the time he reached a gate. There were no guards, but the gate was secured with a heavy chain and thick businesslike padlock.

  He jumped out of the Rover, drew his pistol and fired three shots into the lock. The bullets fragmented on the hardened steel and ricochetted dangerously around him, but the lock held.

  The Hercules had reached the end of the taxiway and was turning onto the runway as McGarvey popped the Rover’s rear lid, pulled the spare tire out of its compartment and found the tire iron. At the gate he jammed the tool into one of the links of the chain and tried to pry it open. The tire iron bent, but the chain held.