KBL (17 page)

Abbottabad, Pakistan
February 14, 2011, 2035 Hours Local Time

Charlie Becker made a habit of changing his sleeping arrangements every two to three weeks. It was one way of making sure he didn’t fall into a recognizable pattern. Patterns were bad juju, because they put you in the same place at the same time every day, which made it easier for your enemies to find you and harder for you to notice your enemies. For example, sometimes he’d be at Waseem’s tearoom after morning prayers, sometimes after midday. That way he could watch out for watchers. He did much the same with his other daily circuits. He followed no set schedule or itinerary.

Six days ago he’d taken new lodgings in back of a carpentry shop that sat northwest of the Bilal Mosque, at the edge of Hassan Town, a residential subdivision of smallish villas just off Kakul Road. The location was perfect: about a kilometer and a half from the Khan compound Charlie called GZ, and slightly less than that from Valhalla Base. The neighborhood was quiet, mostly retired Pakistan military and faculty from the academy, along with a few shops that had been there before the development started. It was precisely the anonymous kind of place Charlie always sought out. He’d only begun talking to the carpenter, Mohammed, the previous month, although he’d been wheeling himself past the shop since November.

It turned out Mohammed had a thriving business because of all the development in Abbottabad. He’d even worked on the Khan compound. He also, Charlie noted, had a storage shed that faced the plowed field behind the carpentry shop. And so, when it came time to move again, it occurred to Charlie to ask.

Two weeks ago he’d mentioned that he was losing his accommodations, and while he didn’t want to be presumptuous, he’d seen that Mohammed had an unused outbuilding in the alley behind the fence. Perhaps the carpenter would like to rent it for a few weeks?

“It would be an honor, brother,” Mohammed had said.

The shed was a rectangle about the size of a jail cell, with a sloping roof and an earthen floor. Charlie borrowed some of the pallets stacked behind the shop, and he and Mohammed created a sleeping platform. The carpenter had offered him a couple dozen burlap bags as insulation and padding.

It was all very comfortable—and a lot warmer than Charlie’s previous crash pad, which had no glass in the windows. He’d tried to pay Mohammed a few rupees in advance for his lodging, but the carpenter refused, saying he’d been blessed quite enough by Charlie’s request for shelter and didn’t want to insult God by taking his money. He even put a door on the structure to give Charlie some privacy.

It had been a long and cold day—freezing wind blowing off the mountains that ringed Abbottabad in the northwest. And Charlie had felt unsettled, because the seed-under-the-gum-line sensation was back. It was nothing he could put a finger on, just an instinctive reaction to a stimulus he couldn’t identify. He put it out of his mind because the new equipment and crew for Valhalla were coming in. Despite occasional rain showers he had maintained constant countersurveillance from a series of locations way out on the perimeter. He’d been gratified to see that everything seemed to have gone without a hiccough.

On the surface, all that happened was that a family of Pakistanis came to visit their relatives, who lived in one of the newer villas in Bilal Town. Family visiting family. The visitors, a plump, obviously prosperous Pakistani and his equally ample wife, arrived in a Suzuki SUV with Amritsar plates and loaded down with all the essentials you need when you’re visiting family for a week or two, you have babies in tow, and you want to be generous to your cousins or brother-in-law. There were suitcases and bundles and lots of economy-size bundles of Pampers and gifts and all the other miscellaneous stuff well-to-do families carry when they travel with kids.

Charlie had to marvel at what the Agency was capable of these days. The babies—dolls, of course—were so animated and lifelike one was crying and actually kicking its little legs as it was bundled into the house.

The prosthetics were also incredible. Langley had come a long way since fake beards and glue-on mustaches. Today Agency disguises were made by the same people who created special effects and makeup for Hollywood’s most high-tech movies. There were masks that adhered like a second skin;
Mission: Impossible
stuff that was good enough to make it through checkpoints and roadblocks. From eighty yards away, Charlie, a Jurassic relic from the analog days of Walkman cassette tapes, couldn’t tell whether it was real or Memorex.

And NSA’s techno-geeks had gotten good about creating equipment that could be broken down into transportable, innocent-looking packages. Gone were the days of shipping a parabolic electro-snooper in a four-by-four-foot wooden crate weighing sixty kilos. Now even the most sophisticated eavesdropping equipment could be concealed in a couple of everyday suitcases—or something that looked exactly like a Costco-size bundle of diapers. Parabolics unfurled like umbrellas and weighed ounces, not pounds. Lasers that used to need power packs the size of beer cases now ran off two or three quarter-size 2032 batteries.

And next week, two of the old crew would leave, wearing the same faces and clothes the visitors had worn. Charlie had no idea who they were or what they did. But he admired them. He was mobile. He could get around. And he’d created an E&E plan very early on just in case the you-know-what hit the fan. But the people who staffed Valhalla, they were sitting ducks. They seldom left the base, even though Charlie guessed that some of them at least had language skills. They’d have to be able to pass—at least on the surface—to get out to the dead-drop sites, shop for groceries, put out the garbage, handle all the details that running a covert base in a hostile or denied area entailed.

Moreover, if they were discovered, CIA would deny their existence. That was how it worked in the real world. And they knew it. Yet, still, they were here.

Not only here, but volunteers.

That, thought Charlie, took real guts. It came to him as he wheeled himself around the corner and crossed onto Hassan Town Road, that today was Valentine’s Day. Maybe he should send them all flowers. Bouquets for the Brave. The thought brought a smile to his face.

2042 Hours

He worked his way slowly toward the alley between the shop and the house next door. It was very dark. The waxing moon was obscured by clouds tonight. He was wet, chilled to the bone, and couldn’t wait to climb into dry clothes, wrap himself in his burlap insulation, and get some sleep.

The dolly almost flipped when it hit a crease in the uneven pavement—what there was of it. Times like these Charlie wanted his Surefire, one of those mini LED flashlights that gave you 120 lumens on one lithium battery.

From sixty feet away he could see a car parked on the road in front of the carpentry shop. His antennas went up. Mohammed drove a Toyota pickup, which was parked alongside the shop. This was something else—midsize, dark. He stopped. Waited for some traffic on the road. After perhaps sixty seconds a car turned from Kakul Road onto Hassan Town Road, its lights hitting the parked car as it drove past, heading northeast. The car’s interior was empty.

Charlie pushed off, his sticks scuffing the pathway. He made his way past the parked vehicle, brushing the hood with his hand as he did. The metal was cool. The car had been there for a while. He pivoted his dolly and pushed himself sideways, into the alley.

And sensed someone behind him.

He swiveled. Ducked.

Not fast enough.

He took a strike from something hard. The blow came upward, glanced off his left shoulder, then his head, knocking off the
qarakul
.

Charlie grunted, raised his arms to defend himself. But the guy was just too big. Too quick.

Used a long tire iron. Caught Charlie under the arm. Smacked him off the dolly. Stomped his hip. Rolled him. Kicked him in the ribs. Knocked the breath out of him.

Charlie flailed at the guy’s feet and legs, but couldn’t reach them.

Charlie was thinking
knife.
Gotta get to a knife.

He carried three. Two were local. One was special.

But there was no time. No way.

No way because he was being rolled. Like a fricking barrel. Kicked and struck and rolled.

Back out toward the road.

Which is when he caught a glimpse. Saif Hadi’s flattened nose and thick eyebrows were all he could see because the sonofabitch was wearing a hood. Just like he’d worn in Iraq for all those beheadings.

It was surreal. All Charlie could think in that heartbeat of shock and recognition was Bogie’s line,
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine
.

Meanwhile, Saif, who had probably never seen
Casablanca
and never would, was grunting and cursing as he kicked Charlie toward the car, careful to stay away from Charlie’s arms and hands.

Careful because he understood that Charlie, legless, was a grappler. A ground fighter.

Saif was snarling, growling, muttering as he kicked.

Charlie couldn’t make it out at first, because
oh, shit
, he realized through it all, Saif was speaking Arabic and Charlie was thinking in Pashto.

Then it came to him. Saif was saying, “I will kill you Mr. José, fuck you, Mr. José, fuck your mother, Mr. José, I’m going to kill you slowly, kill you, Mr. José.”

Over and over.

Charlie thought,
This is not real
.

But it was.

So Charlie knew what he had to do.

Catch Saif’s foot.

Twist and roll.

Break his fricking ankle.

Bring him down.

Then kill him.

But it wasn’t happening.

Saif was keeping his distance. Dancing around, kicking from behind.

Using the tire iron.

And the blows were taking a toll. Charlie took one at the base of his spine that felt like a Taser hit. Shot numbness right into his brain.

His arms, which had been up around his ears like a boxer’s to protect his face, dropped.

Which is when Saif smacked him upside the head. Smacked him good, too.

Because everything went white.

Then black.

13

Murree Road, Dor River, Pakistan
February 14, 2011, 2057 Hours Local Time

Charlie struggled back into consciousness slowly. Little pieces of life ebbing and flowing. Like breathing, which was hard to do. And trying to figure out why everything was so fuzzy. And why it was so dark. And what was rubbing against his face, his head, his lips. And why he couldn’t feel his hands. And why there was constant noise. And where the fuck was he?

The last question was the easiest. He was in the trunk of a car. The car was moving at a pretty high rate of speed over a paved road that needed work. And it was cold.

Everything else was up for grabs.

He worked his shoulders. There was considerable strain on them. That was because his arms were pinioned. They were bound behind his back, overlapping so that his right palm touched the inside of his left forearm and his left palm the outside of his right forearm. From the feel of things, he’d been secured with duct tape. Lots of it.