Gauntlet (5 page)

“Richard, this is Dan Alexander of TTIC. Could I ask you—”

“T-Who?” came the impatient voice.

“TTIC,” repeated Dan. “The Terrorist—”

“Sorry. Don’t want any. I’m in the middle of important stuff here.” There was a sharp click as Richard hung up.

There were eye rolls from almost everyone except Turbee. This was humor he could recognize; this was Homer Simpson. His shrieking laughter cut through the silence in the room.

“Turbee, shut the fuck up. Johnson, get that asshole back on the line.” Dan rubbed his temples, trying desperately to think around Turbee’s laughter.

In due course Johnson did get Richard back on the line. This time Rhodes led the charge, and the interview went a bit more successfully.

“Richard, you know Zak Goldberg better than anyone. He’s given us some disconcerting information about a possible terrorist strike. I can’t go into details with you here and now, but can you tell me your view as to the reliability, the quality of Intel passed along by him?”

“Sure, that I can answer. I’ve been in this business for years. I’ve known Zak all my life. There is no one finer, none more careful. He’s doing what he’s doing right now because he is the best. If he says there’s going to be a terrorist attack, and gives you chapter and verse, then it’s going to happen, unless you stop it. Period.”

Similar validation and corroboration was being received up and down the command chain. If Goldberg said it, you could take it to the bank. This was the real deal.

T
HEY HAD BEEN CLIMBING since dawn. They were a small party of four on horseback, in the Sefid Koh range just northeast of Mount Sikarim. The Daka Plain lay more than 2,000 feet below them. The roofs and minarets of Jalalabad reflected the light of the rising sun, now that the early morning fog had started to burn away. The Kabul River could be seen weaving its serpentine course through the ancient city, and the view of the Hindu Kush was breathtaking. The Khyber Pass lay northeast, and the tiny village of Haft Chah, which clung to the western slopes leading to the pass itself, was just visible. The party had stopped for a few minutes to give the horses time to rest and graze on the mountain bluegrass.

Zachariah Goldberg was one of the horsemen. Zak’s father, Joe Goldberg, had been one of the CIA officers in charge of advising and assisting Afghani resistance groups in their insurgency against the Soviet invasion. It was rumored that Joe had met Osama bin Laden himself, when the villain had still been favored by the Intelligence Community. Once upon a time, bin Laden had been the enemy of the enemy, and the closest thing the US had to a friend in the area.

In the course of his journeys through the Middle East, Joe had met Zak’s mother, a stunning Pashtun woman from Kabul. Zak was a product of that union. When Afghanistan began to destabilize, Joe moved his family to Islamabad, and ultimately settled there. With Zak’s parents being stationed in Islamabad alongside Richard’s, it was natural that Zak and Richard, being of the same age and inclination, had become good friends. Their relationship had remained close, and always affectionately competitive. It was a competition in which Zak usually came out ahead. If Richard ran a seven-minute mile, Zak did it in 6.45. If Richard benched 100 pounds, Zak did 125. If Richard scored 92 percent on a physics exam, Zak scored 95 percent. Zak was slightly taller than Richard, and had the broad shoulders, clean-cut good looks, and dark-blue eyes of a born leader. Richard was younger by a couple of months, and naturally fell into a secondary role in their friendship. He never took their competitions seriously, choosing instead to look up to Zak for his talents, and enjoying the fact that they could push each other to greater and greater heights. Over time he’d come to view Zak as the older brother he’d never had, turning to him for guidance and support in times of trouble.

They’d both ended up in California in their late teens. Zak went because his parents wanted a safer and more secure environment for their son. Richard had gone to California to live with the Goldbergs when his parents were killed in a car accident. If he thought of Zak as his brother, he considered Joe and his wife to be stepparents. When they became older, there were periods when the two men saw little of each other, as Zak went to the Marines and Richard went to the Navy, but they had stayed in touch. They had always been able to count on each other, regardless of their situations or locale.

Both eventually went to the CIA, and, in one of those strange coincidences of life, both returned to the Islamabad Embassy in response to acts of terrorism against the USA. They both had the language skills and knowledge of that country that the Intelligence Community so desperately needed. Zak, who had the greater ability and promise, went undercover, first in Kabul and then in Jalalabad. He proved to be a brilliant and courageous operative who, over the years, gravitated closer and closer to important inner circles in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Richard would have followed suit, but there were growing concerns about his ability to remain cool under fire, and there were whispers about a substance-abuse problem of some kind. Now Zak hadn’t seen or heard from Richard in almost four years; his status as an undercover agent kept him from contacting anyone from home. He’d heard the rumors, before he went under. But he still considered Richard to be his brother and closest friend. He missed the man.

Since leaving traditional service and going undercover, Zak’s path had twisted and turned, leading him to now find himself with three other horsemen, standing at the fork of a rocky trail, enjoying the majestic view and sipping water from their canteens. With Zak were Yousseff, his lieutenant, Marak, and Ghullam, Marak’s right hand and protégé. The other men were speaking about the
Haramosh Star,
a ship that was currently concluding a refit at Karachi Drydock and Engineering, Yousseff ’s private Skunk Works. There were great plans in store for the ship. Yousseff himself was the mind behind a vast drug-fueled business enterprise and, had statistics of such things been kept, was the single largest employer in northern Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US government had been interested in his drug smuggling activities for some time, although there was no concrete information on him. Zak’s mission in this circle was to get close enough to Yousseff to bring him down.

Zak looked up, trying to figure out which way they were heading. Ahead of them, a massive cliff of granite rose vertically for almost 5,000 feet, forming a wall between Afghanistan and Pakistan. A slender crack split the granite, and through that crack wound an extremely narrow and dangerous trail—the continuation of the path they were currently on. It was a famous smuggler’s route, on which Yousseff was rumored to have grown up. The local people called this thin and treacherous cliff trail the Path of Allah. Horses had to be led through it on foot, and even then only horses that knew the route and traversed the path often made the trip safely. The path was completely invisible from the air, and did not appear on any map. Once the trail passed over the cliff, there was a climb of another 1,000 feet, over the course of half a mile, before the route’s completion. The average slope was 45 degrees. It was high mountain country, subject to extreme changes in weather. Even in August, a snowstorm could dump several feet of snow on the pass, rendering it unusable. Travel from mid-October to mid-February was impossible.

To the south, across a flinty bank of shale, the Path of Allah’s sister trail led to Mount Sikarim. There, too, the horses had to be led, the men going on foot; it was too dangerous to ride across the treacherous slope. After half a mile of shale, that path found solid land again. Twelve miles further, after a myriad of false trails, forks, and high mountain passes, lay the Sikarim caves. This was the path they would be taking today.

The others knew Zak as Shayam. He had spent quite a bit of time in the al-Qaeda training camps farther to the south, and had been involved in terrorist raids against Americans. He had distinguished himself in battle, and earned loyalty and trust, by sending his fair share of RPG’s into American camps and supply columns. He’d made a career of trying desperately for the near miss, deviating his aim just a fraction to the right or left to minimize damage. Without getting caught. But he had dealt with this eventuality with his commanding officers when he went into the field. He had to maintain his cover, no matter what the circumstances. He had even been on several missions with al-Qaeda into Iran, and was amused at the ease with which the Iranian border opened up for his grim crew. They were even supplied with weapons, apparently by the Iranian army. If he ever returned to Langley, his debriefing would take many months. When he had gone undercover, his orders had been clear, and had come from the highest levels—do what needed to be done to connect with the inner circle of the enemy. This he had done, and over the years he had drawn ever closer to the prize. More than four years undercover. More than four years away from home. Zak sighed deeply. It had been a long road. He hoped to reach the end of it soon, and go home.

Pulling his focus back to the current situation, he let go of the reins and allowed his hand to creep toward his robes. He had with him the GPS Morse code transmitter, hidden deep inside one of his pockets, and started to type out a new message, his hand hidden. He kept his face passive. He knew that those with him were warriors who lived and died by spotting enemy action, even that done in a surreptitious manner, immediately. The risk was huge, but so was the impending threat.

That was as far as he got. In his effort to conceal what he was doing, he’d been holding his hand at an unnatural angle on the small transmitter. It slipped and flew out of his hand, and through a hole in his cloak, landing on the hard shale and clattering as it bounced off the rocks. Marak looked up instantly, his hard and ruthless eyes scanning the slope to find the cause of the noise. With a quickness that belied his size, he dismounted and threaded his way between the shale and rock to retrieve the small device.

“Yousseff, look at this.” Marak held up the small silver device, no larger than a watch, with its two small buttons and softly pulsing red light. Yousseff immediately identified it.

“It is a GPS locator.” Yousseff had used similar devices many times in his own business. He motioned to the two other riders. “Who?” he asked.

“Him.” Marak pointed to Zak. “It fell out of his
chapan
.”

“You, Shayam? You would betray us?” Yousseff shook his head. “Marak, take him,” he ordered.

Z
AK KNEW the game was up. He would be Shayam no longer. So close, he thought. More than four years getting here. Now here he was, almost on top of the lair, and the mission was disintegrating, thwarted by a hole in a damn cloak. Zak had seen other men caught betraying Yousseff, and knew that the next few hours would not be pleasant. He made the quick decision that he would rather die fighting, and reached for his revolver, a copy of a 9 mm Beretta. He pulled it out and fired a round, but Marak had reached for his own weapon at the same instant, pushing his master to the ground.

“Down Youssi!” he yelled, firing simultaneously.

Zak’s bullet only grazed Yousseff’s right shoulder. When he fired, his horse bolted at the abrupt noise, and caught Marak’s bullet in the neck. It reared in shock and pain, throwing Zak into the hard shale rock, almost at Marak’s feet. The sharp rock he landed on sliced open his thigh.

Pain flooded through him. He saw Marak’s massive arms reaching down for him, to yank him up off the stony ground. He could feel blood running down his leg from the wound, and wondered vaguely if the bleeding was serious. Then he forgot about his leg. Marak was a large and powerful man, standing over six feet tall, with the body of a weightlifter and the fists of a boxer. He grabbed Zak by the neck and rammed his enormous fist into his nose, smashing it. A second blow and Zak felt his jaw crack. His nervous system was flooded with piercing waves of pain, then mercifully shut down as he plunged into unconsciousness.

Yousseff reached for the device and examined it. He found the on/off switch and turned it off. “Here is what we need to do,” he said, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead and speaking quickly. “Take this man, Shayam, or whoever he is, along the Path of Allah, and to the dungeon below Inzar Ghar. Extract from him whatever information you can, and drop his body into some remote canyon in the Hindu Kush. Vince will be waiting for me at the shipyard in Karachi, as we’ve already planned. I need to be there in three days. Marak, Ghullam, be at the Islamabad hangar early tomorrow morning. There will be much to arrange.”

“What about you?” asked Ghullam. “Surely you’re not going the rest of the way alone?”

“There is no choice, Ghullam. It will be fine. I grew up in these mountains. They are home to me.” Yousseff turned again to Marak. “Marak, old friend, you saved my life. Thank you.”

“Yousseff, you have saved mine many times. And in any event, you are the boss,” replied Marak. “You do recall that, don’t you?” he added with a grin, rather sheepishly rubbing the back of his head with his hand.

“Yes, I do remember,” said Yousseff, looking down on Jalalabad. For a few moments he grew quiet as his mind wandered back. “Yes, I do.” He had never forgotten it. He allowed his mind to return to the childhood fight that had shaped his life. The day he had learned never to be where his adversaries assumed he would be. Now he based his life on that principle, and his vast smuggling operations incorporated the theme over and over again.

Y
OUSSEFF SAID AL-SABBHAN was 12, and weighed in at 87 pounds. Marak el Ghazi was 14, and weighed over 110. Yousseff, while physically quick, was no match for Marak’s snakelike reflexes, or his much greater physical strength. Marak had already earned the nickname
Rasta
, which meant “snake.” If the match had been taking place in Las Vegas, the odds would have been 50:1, or worse, against Yousseff. The younger boy knew this, but had no choice. Marak had cast dishonor on Yousseff’s family by calling one of his sisters a whore. When Yousseff had demanded an apology, Marak had responded by calling all of his sisters, and his mother, whores. He had then continued the taunting, saying that he would only apologize if he was forced to. Marak had challenged Yousseff to fight, and the small boy had accepted. He now regretted having acted so impulsively. He knew he had no chance of winning, much less coming out undamaged. But the duel had been set. The Four Cedars. Noon. Tomorrow.

“Youssi,” said Izzy, the little friend who had been faithful since his earliest memories. “What are you going to do? He’s twice your size, and mean as a cornered dog. He’ll kill you!”

“Don’t know, Iz. But I can’t back down.”

“Youssi, please don’t,” sobbed Rika, the bright-eyed ten-year-old girl who thought she was in love with him. “He’s too big, he’s too mean. Don’t.”

“Rika, he has called my sisters whores. He can’t get away with that.”

The Four Cedars was in fact a small cedar grove just south of Jalalabad. The space marked by the four trees formed a large arena, about 20 feet square in dimension. Schoolboys often settled disputes there; the statement “I’ll see you at the Four Cedars” was clearly understood as a call to battle. Yousseff knew the area well—not from fighting, which he was not interested in or good at, but from the climbing that he loved. He had spent many delicious afternoons perched in the tops of these cedar trees. There was a special group of branches near the crown of one of the trees that permitted him to lie securely, flat on his back, more than 60 feet above the ground. He loved to gaze upwards at the clouds and feel the gentle rocking motion of the tree in the wind, drifting, free from gravity. He had made a bet with one of his friends earlier that year that he could scoot to the top of one of the trees and make it back down in less than 20 seconds, and won. When Marak had said to name the place, he, for reasons he did not understand, had named the Four Cedars. Maybe instinctively he had felt that battles are more easily fought on home turf. The Four Cedars were more a home to him than to Marak, albeit from a different vantage point.