The Fourth Horseman Page 5

  Blowback was a term that President Miller hated more than any other, and she let her displeasure be known by the look on her face and the tone in her voice. “I want to talk to Haaris first.”

  TEN

  The ISI’s Russian Hind attack helicopter carrying Haaris touched down in Jinnah Park two miles southeast of Rawalpindi and trundled beneath a canopy of trees before its engines shut down.

  The ephemeris data of the American KH-14 spy satellite that showed the exact position of the spy bird for any given latitude and longitude twenty-four/seven had been programmed into the chopper’s navigation systems. Two years ago, within ten days after the bird had been launched and went operational, the data set had been stolen by an ISI-paid computer hacker working out of a commune in Amsterdam. The pilot merely linked the data to his GPS receiver and he was showed the route that would avoid detection.

  The gunfire and explosions around the Army General Headquarters had subsided a few minutes after Haaris’s speech, and even here in this isolated spot Pakistan seemed to be holding its breath.

  Haaris pulled off his kaffiyeh, shirt and trousers and stuffed them in the nylon bag, from which he pulled out his blazer and put it on. He took the computer collar off, detached the microchip processor, which he pocketed, and then put the collar in the bag. The clothes and other things would be destroyed.

  The only other person in the chopper besides the pilot and copilot was ISI captain Qadir Aheer, a totally disagreeable little rat-faced man whose complexion was pocked from teenaged acne. He was constantly chuckling as if he were in on a very big joke.

  A yellow Toyota pickup truck was parked about ten meters away in a copse of willows.

  “It has a half tank of gas,” Qadir said. “But you will be on your own and you will have no weapon. You’ve been a Taliban prisoner tonight.”

  “Of course,” Haaris said indifferently. The most difficult work had already begun. The next would be convincing the U.S.—but slowly, gently, with finesse—to take military action against Pakistan beyond the nuclear response raid that should happen sometime before dawn.

  “But you will have to present the illusion.”

  “I need your help.”

  Qadir grinned. “Yes, you do. That part is unavoidable. You will simply be an American spy who got in the way and who luckily escaped with his life.”

  Haaris felt no malice for the man, who was simply doing a job he was ordered to do, except that the little bastard would enjoy inflicting the pain on someone he knew was his better.

  Qadir yanked on the breast pocket of Haaris’s blazer, tearing the material. He ripped Haaris’s white shirt down the front, the buttons popping off, and he slapped Haaris in the face as hard as he could.

  The pilot and copilot did not turn around.

  Qadir picked up a Kalashnikov and slammed the butt of the assault rifle into the side of Haaris’s face, nearly dislocating his jaw and breaking a couple of teeth. He then slammed the rifle butt into Haaris’s chest, cracking a couple of ribs, and then raised it like a club.

  Haaris grabbed the captain’s hand and stayed the blow. “That will be enough.” It hurt to talk.

  “The Taliban wouldn’t have been so easy on you,” Qadir said, grinning ear to ear. “I think we need to complete the illusion.”

  “As you wish, Captain,” Haaris said. He pulled out his pistol and shot the man in the face, just above the bridge of his nose.

  Qadir fell back against the rear of the copilot’s seat.

  The pilot turned around. “What do you want us to do with the captain’s body?”

  “On the way back dump it out the door.”

  “How shall we report it?”

  “He was a captain who exceeded his orders,” Haaris said.

  “Yes, sir,” the pilot said.

  Haaris shoved the pistol in his belt but left his bag behind. He climbed down from the helicopter and went directly to the pickup, not bothering to look over his shoulder as the helicopter lifted off and swung back to the north toward ISI headquarters.

  * * *

  Gunfire to the north toward Islamabad had all but died down, but smoke from the fires that had been set earlier still flickered in the overcast sky, and the smell was everywhere, as Haaris drove east along a narrow dirt track through Koral and then Shaheen Town.

  His face was on fire, and his ribs hurt so badly that it was difficult to take even shallow breaths.

  He came over a low rise and stopped. In the distance, maybe five or six kilometers, Gandhara International Airport was still lit up. Closer to his position, where the dirt track met with the main highway from the city, he could make out several cars and pickup trucks.

  He put the SIM card back in his phone and called General Rajput. “I need some help.”

  “Where are you, David?”

  “A few klicks from the airport, but the highway is blocked. I think the Taliban still hold it.”

  “My hands are tied, you must understand this. I’m told that Captain Qadir, who got you out of there, was himself shot to death less than fifteen minutes ago. I’ve sent two gunships to retrieve his body.”

  “I’m more important than a dead man, goddamnit!”

  “You’re an American.”

  “An embarrassment to your government if I’m recaptured. Give me air cover, General, and clearance for my aircraft to take off and I’ll be out of your hair.”

  Rajput was silent for several beats. When he came back he sounded resigned. “Keep your head down and get word to your crew to start the engines. We’ll clear the highway. Your window of opportunity will not last long. I suggest you take advantage of my friendship as quickly as possible.”

  “Go with Allah.”

  “And you too.”

  Haaris shut down his phone, but this time he did not remove the SIM card. There was no need for it now.

  Within three minutes a pair of Bell gunships materialized from the northwest, and swooping fast and low, opened fire with their GAU-17/A 7.62-millimeter machine guns. In a single pass the vehicles parked on and off the road had been reduced to little more than burning sheet metal, and the Taliban fighters little more than blood mist and scattered body parts.

  The choppers made tight arcs and came back, the gunners looking for targets, but there were none and the pilots peeled off and headed back the way they had come.

  At the bottom of the hill, Haaris had to take care to avoid the carnage until he could get up on the highway and race to the airport. Passing the signs to the arrivals and departures terminals, he drove around to the military aviation side, no one coming out to challenge him.

  The Gulfstream was on the tarmac in front of one of the closed hangars, its engines running, the hatch open and stairs lowered.

  Gwen stood at the open hatch and when Haaris pulled up and got out of the pickup, she came down with the copilot, Dan Francis, and together they propped him up and helped him aboard.

  “Get us the hell out of here,” he croaked. The pain in his mouth was bad, but he made it sound worse.

  “Get him strapped down,” Ed Lamont said.

  Francis helped with that, and then he raised the stairs and closed the hatch as they started to roll.

  “We thought for sure that they had killed you,” Gwen said.

  “They wanted to,” Haaris said.

  “I’ll get the trauma kit.”

  “First I need a large brandy, and as soon as we’re out of Pakistan’s airspace get me Mr. Page on the secure phone.”

  ELEVEN

  Walter Page’s call came into the White House Situation Room, his image up on the flat-panel monitor. It appeared as if he was still in the Watch at CIA headquarters.

  “Madam President, Dave Haaris is in the air and on the way out of Pakistan. I just talked to him on an encrypted phone. They’ve been given permission to fly over Saudi Arabia and Egypt to our air force base at Incirlik, Turkey.”

  “Why there, why not Ramstein and then home?” Miller demanded, her impatience
rising. There was always a certain rhythm and meter to crisis situations, a metronome that could not be altered without bad effects.

  “They weren’t allowed to refuel at Gandhara, so they’ll have to make the stop. And Haaris was banged up.”

  “How badly?”

  “His says that his injuries are uncomfortable but not life-threatening.”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “As soon as they’re safely on the ground in Incirlik a secure circuit can be arranged,” Page said.

  “Now,” the president said.

  “They haven’t cleared Pakistan’s airspace yet.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “He needs medical attention.”

  “And I need to talk to him,” Miller insisted. “I know Haaris. He’s a good man who’s been in the middle of a situation for which I need more information. Doing nothing at this moment is not an option, but neither is doing the wrong thing.”

  “As you wish,” Page said. “May I listen in?”

  “Of course,” Miller said. Several moments later Haaris’s image came up on the split screen, Page to the left.

  “Madam President,” he said, his voice distorted. His face was red and swollen.

  “Where are you at this moment?”

  “We haven’t been in the air very long. I suspect we’re about one hundred miles south of Islamabad en route to Karachi, where we’ll fly up the Gulf of Oman to Saudi Arabia.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’ve been better, but I’ll live. The bastards aren’t terribly civilized, you know.”

  “You can save your full report until you get home, but I need to know what the situation on the ground is. Do you know about this Messiah who showed up out of nowhere?”

  “Only what General Rajput told me. Is it true that he murdered President Barazani?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Incredible,” Haaris said. “And let me guess, he admitted openly that he killed the president and probably that the Taliban are in reality Pakistan’s friends.”

  “Yes, did you see the broadcast?”

  “No, but the group that captured me suddenly got up and left. Five minutes later a squad of ISI security showed up and got me out of there.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “There were many explosions and a great deal of gunfire, but from where they took me I couldn’t say if it was more concentrated in Islamabad or Rawalpindi. But it stopped just before my captors took off. I can tell you that they were happy. One of them wanted to shoot me, but another one—I think he was probably the leader—said something to the effect: ‘Why bother?’”

  “You had no trouble taking off from the airport? No one challenged you?”

  “No. I think it must have been the ISI’s doing, but frankly I don’t see how they’ll be able to hang on. They used to be friends of the Taliban, but that relationship hasn’t existed for several years.”

  The president looked around the table at the others. They were grim-faced. “I’m in the Situation Room.”

  “Yes, I can see that, Madam President.”

  “I’m considering launching our NEST people. They’re standing by now.”

  Haaris sat forward. “Have there been any reports yet of missing weapons?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “There’ll be more. Launch the teams immediately.”

  “More? How can you be sure?”

  “If this Messiah claims that the Taliban are friends of Pakistan, his first move will be to get as many WMDs into their hands as quickly as possible. It’s no secret that our intention is to neutralize as many as we can.”

  “Yes,” Miller said. “My concern is an Indian preemptive strike. The entire region could go up in flames. The loss of life would be nothing short of catastrophic.”

  “Telephone Mr. Singh,” Haaris said. Manmohan Singh was India’s prime minister, who held the actual executive power. “He’ll listen to reason. And have you spoken with Sabir?” Nasir Sabir was Pakistan’s PM.

  “Not yet.”

  “Then, Madam President, I strongly suggest that you send the teams in immediately. And once they have accomplished their mission, contact both PMs to let them know what you have done and that the U.S. will continue to stand by as an ally to both nations.”

  “It’s possible that India will strike as soon as they find out I’ve launched the teams.”

  “Not while our personnel are on the ground there. But every minute that you delay could mean the loss of more weapons to the Taliban.”

  “They wouldn’t have the means to launch them.”

  “If they have the cooperation of the air force they will,” Haaris said.

  “Thank you, David. Have a safe trip home.”

  Page remained on screen after Haaris was off.

  “Let me know as soon as he clears Pakistan’s airspace,” Miller said.

  “Okay.”

  Miller cut the connection.

  Everyone around the table stared at her, their expressions even darker than before, their mood easy to read.

  “Discussion,” she said.

  “There’s no question but we launch now,” Kalley said. “Haaris was right, we mustn’t delay.”

  “He’s a CIA analyst.”

  “Whom everyone trusts,” Secretary of State Fay said. “Haaris is the last word on the Pakistan question. The agency has built an entire desk around him.”

  “No one at the Pentagon doubts his expertise,” Secretary of Defense Spencer said, and Admiral Altman agreed.

  “The man has never been wrong.”

  And that was one of the main sticking points for Miller. The man was never wrong. It was a condition in people—especially in her advisers—that she’d always found disturbing.

  Before her election, she’d been only a one-term junior senator from Minnesota, but before that she had been the dean of the University of Minnesota. It had been an important job, heading one of the leading universities in the U.S., the job made more interesting because of the geniuses who answered to her administration.

  But she had, for the most part, let them do their own thing. Before she had taken the job, a friend of hers who was the dean of a small but prestigious Northeastern college had given her a piece of advice that she’d always thought was sound.

  “Venerate your geniuses—the straight-A students who will go on to do major things, win prizes, bring honor to your school. But take special care of your C and even your D students because they are the ones who will go out into the world and make millions with which they’ll endow your new library or science wing.”

  It was the same for her in the White House. She was bombarded by geniuses—eggheads—but it was the workers in the trenches, the ones with real-world experiences, that she most admired. The problem was that Haaris was both an egghead and a man of the world.

  “If the Taliban are truly in charge—or at least are partners—they will retaliate,” she said.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Secretary of Defense Spencer replied. “We have to strike now.”

  “We won’t get them all.”

  “No,” Spencer said. “But we’ll get most of them.”

  Politics, Miller had decided early in her campaign for president, was like chess. The opening moves for control of the center board were decisive. A master against a mere journeyman could force a checkmate in the first four or five moves. But against an out-of-control wild man who was likely to do the totally unexpected, even the superior player sometimes had serious trouble.

  Like now.

  The screens lit up in red, and a moment later Page was back on. “Madam President, we’ve had a nuclear incident in Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. It may be a detonation of the weapon taken from Quetta Air Force Base. We have a WC-135 Constant Phoenix aircraft operating out of Kandahar that is measuring particulates in the atmosphere, and we’ve a seismic confirmation of a ten-kiloton-plus event.”

  Haari
s came on. “We can see it off to the north,” he said. “Definitely a nuclear explosion.”

  “Have you been affected?” Miller asked. She felt numb.

  “Physically we’re okay. Have you sent the teams?”

  She looked at the others, and nodded. “They’re on their way.”

  PART

  TWO

  The Mission

  TWELVE

  The Gulf water one hundred yards off Florida’s west coast was in the mid-eighties, and Kirk McGarvey, just finishing his five-mile swim for the day, was warmed up—his body heat keeping just ahead of the drag from cooler water. Sometimes like this in the mornings just after dawn, he felt that he could swim day and night forever. Across the Gulf to the Bay of Campeche if he wanted to.

  He was in his early fifties with the solid build of an athlete, the stamina of a man much younger and the grace of a world-class fencer, which in fact he had once been. He was not an overly handsome man, but a certain type of woman found him very good looking because of his almost always calm demeanor even under the most trying of circumstances. When McGarvey—Mac to his friends—showed up you just knew that everything would turn out fine. It was an aura that he radiated.

  After his air force days with the Office of Special Investigations, he’d been snapped up by the CIA, where at the agency’s training facility outside Williamsburg, Virginia, he had gone through the field operator’s course with the highest marks ever recorded. He’d been a natural for special operations from the beginning. And he’d been groomed to think on his feet, which came naturally to him, and to kill with a variety of weapons, including sniper rifles, pistols, knives, garrotes, and if the need arose, with his hands.

  A sailboat heading south toward the Keys was low on the horizon, just a couple of miles out, and McGarvey considered taking out his own forty-two-foot Island Packet ketch, docked behind his house on Casey Key, about seventy miles south of Tampa. Maybe down to the Dry Tortugas, then ride the Gulf Stream up to the Bahamas, maybe spend a month or so before the hurricane season started in earnest.