Redback (16 page)

'Not to mention,' shrugged Rashid, 'that the sheer number, nature and changing names of the
anti-coalition, anti-US, anti-each other, even anti-anti groups in Iraq mean that even trying to
keep a tally there doesn't bear thinking about.'

'Precisely, and that's all just the northern hemisphere,' Jennifer Leland stated.

'Quite frankly,' the First Lady said, 'I'm beginning to wonder why any of us bother to get out of
bed. This is a never-ending nightmare.'

'And, just in case anyone is still feeling complacent,' Thorpe announced, 'I tabled three new
international groups for inclusion on the proscribed list, just this last week. Baluchis Jihad,
Atarsa Kára and Golden Crest have all made it to the big leagues.'

'Good, it's about time Atarsa Kára got noticed,' Rashid said. When each person in the
circle either looked puzzled or concerned, he added, 'Well, they've allegedly been setting off bombs
in Istanbul, Cairo and Kuwait City over the last few months, yet it seems they've been running under
everyone's radar.'

'There was also a car bomb attributed to them in Jakarta last month,' Leland added.

Rashid nodded at her, and then turned to his colleague. 'Perhaps, Michael, we at Telamon should
put our minds to developing an orbiting recording system that downloads data from the previous 24
hours, after pinpointing any explosion. That way the perpetrators can be backtracked. Mind you, we
would have to exclude actual war zones to avoid confusion.'

'Now Darius,' Thorpe smiled, 'don't you think we might already have something like that?'

'Perhaps you do, Mr Thorpe,' Rashid smiled back, 'but ours would be available 24-7 and planet
wide.'

Jane Buchanan noticed Hargreaves waiting patiently in the doorway and understood it meant her
husband would soon expect the President to join him. She caught the First Lady's attention and
shared the information by means of a slight tilt of her head towards to exit.

'The fact is,' Adam Lyall said, returning to his point about the threat of worldwide terrorism,
'that while most of those groups have agendas that have nothing to do with the world outside their
own borders, too many of them also happen to hate our guts. But it doesn't mean they're all part of,
or even linked to, al-Qaeda. And if we start believing they are, we're going to get smacked from
behind by someone or something we never saw coming.'

'Quite right,' Thorpe agreed.

'My point exactly,' said Rashid.

'So what are you trying to tell me, Adam?' Brock asked.

Both First Wives caught the signal from Hargreaves in the doorway and Mrs Brock squeezed her
husband's arm. 'I believe the Prime Minister is waiting for you,' she said.

Oh thank God; or the Queen
. Lyall breathed a sigh of relief.

Houston, Texas
Tuesday 2.30 pm

Nathan West sat behind his cedar desk, his back turned to the room. He stared out
the great bay window at the trio of elm trees that had been planted in the south garden the day he
was born. They too would be celebrating 41 years on God's earth next week and, not for the first
time in his life, he wished he could swap places with them.

He'd not long escaped from the family room where his mother and aunt were still glued to the
television coverage of the day's two tragedies, one of which was way too close to home. Nathan had
been calling friends and business associates in both Dallas and Houston to find out if anyone they
knew had been caught in the bomb or its aftermath. The news was so far not good from his old school
friend Charlie Abeling, whose brother was lawyering in Dallas, in Griffin Street where the blast had
occurred.

There was a soft knock on his open study door. Nathan turned his chair to find his housekeeper
frowning in a way most unlike her. Angela, the youngest 72-year-old he knew, had reminded him his
whole life 'to keep a pleasant countenance so the changing wind could never set grimness nor fear in
place'. He'd normally repeat her words back to her, except the worry in those green eyes was
disquieting.

'Angela dear, are you okay?'

'I'm not sure, Mr Nathan. There's two gentlemen from the Department of State here to see you.'

'The State Department? You'd be meaning Uncle's Defence Department surely.'

'No sir, I mean the State one, and they're very official looking for folks just paying a visit.'

'Well, you'd best show them in,' Nathan said, his curiosity an equal match to her worry.

Angela left the doorway and returned a moment later with two suited strangers wearing identically
sombre expressions. By the looks of them, their business with him was private and serious, so Nathan
indicated that Angela should close the door on her way out.

Angela was halfway across the marble foyer on her way to inform the ladies about their unexpected
visitors when a howl of such animal anguish came though the walls at her that it stopped her dead in
her tracks. She scuttled back to the study, almost falling over her feet in her haste.

One of the visitors opened the door in search of her. 'It's his family, ma'am.They were on that
train in Europe.'

Angela felt the chill of his words in the marrow of her bones. Her knees bent, her hand reached
for the steadiness of the wall beside her. She wanted to wail, to succumb to the news. Instead she
pushed past the visitor and in a stride was by Nathan's side. She knelt in front of his wheelchair
and held her favourite boy's head as he cried.

Peshawar, Pakistan:
Wednesday 12.30 am

Mudge and Brody, jammed into the back of an auto-rickshaw, were doing their seventh
circuit of almost the same route around the cantonment. They'd gone up and down Qasim and Khyber
roads a few times, then down Hospital Road to do several blocks, around either Saddar Road or
through The Mall to Sir Syed Road.

Along the way they'd parked on corners, lurked in alleys, dropped into cafés and tried
their best to blend in.

The shops and businesses in the area had mostly been shut for hours, but the food stalls in
Saddar Bazaar were still running hot and there was a heap of traffic around - both two- and
four-footed, plus a horde of mad bastards in cars and trucks. As usual there were hundreds of blokes
moving a hell of a lot of shit around, mostly on vehicles not nearly big enough to take the
loads.

Brody couldn't recall a single decent sized town on the subcontinent, or anywhere in South-East
Asia for that matter, that ever shut down completely, yet he'd often wandered the centre of
Melbourne in the early hours searching for any signs of life. He loved this part of the world and
dreamt of retiring to a big hill town in India or Thailand where day or night, just like here in
Peshawar, there was a constant dynamic vibe of motion and enterprise. It was as if half the
inhabitants were insomniacs who believed that if everything stopped, they would all cease to exist.

Brody tried to shift on the too-small seat, then glanced at Mudge who was devouring his second
mutton-burger. 'Mate, you're gonna be shitting through the eye of a needle tomorrow,' he said.
Despite eating barbecued chicken, a bowl of liver and tomato
kaleji
and a dozen
samosas
- all since dinner - as well as enough cola to float a boat, the human disposal unit
next to him had then spotted a
chapli kebab
stall just after midnight.

'Not me Spud, got guts of steel you know that,' Mudge said.

A stifling whiff of diesel fumes from the farting truck beside them brought Brody's attention
back to the traffic and the reason they were roaming the streets of Peshawar under a high full moon.
Unlike the Pakistani truckies and Afghan refugees carting stuff here and there around town, the two
blokes in the auto-rickshaw up ahead had been moving only themselves around and around the streets
for three hours now. This was odd for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that
Peshawar was not the kind of place where hoons did blockies to show off to the girls. In fact, any
women around these parts were all
burqaed
-up or home in bed.

That Ashraf Majid and Bashir Kali were up to no good was obvious, but so far there'd been no
clues as to what that might be. A couple of local lads doing a three-hour chai shop crawl wasn't
that unusual, except that these boys weren't locals and their night on the town seemed to be more
about the crawl than places they were visiting.

Brody was starting to wonder if maybe Bamm-Bamm Kennedy was right and the best thing might be to
take the bastards off the street before they could do any damage.

Yeah right
. He knew a summit would need to be convened to get a decision on whether the
in-country SASR and/or Special Forces could even let Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence know
they were, in fact, in the country. So he could forget joining any official round-up of the bad
guys, assuming that the ISI took advantage of its own green light.

So far things were not looking good. Already today, their cavalry had arrived too late to pick up
Jamal Zahkri and his crew. Brody's phone tip-off had given them a rare porthole of opportunity to
snare one of the world's Most Wanteds, but it had clearly not been enough.

According to Mudge, a truck-load of ISI guys had storm-troopered around from the Storytellers'
Street nearly 14 minutes after the surprise high-level Atarsa Kára convention in Café
Baba had broken up and ten minutes after Brody had set off to tail their original mark, Ashraf, and
his boyhood mate.

By that time, in a bid to have his action plan supported, Bamm-Bamm was half way out to Himalaya
Trek & Tours near the Pesh Airport. There, in the backrooms of what was a front for their covert
mission in this lawless frontier, Kennedy planned to (a) set his own Agency straight about who was
really turning up in the street where they'd been told to expect low-level al-Qaeda operatives, and
(b) secure permission to detain all these damn terrorists himself.

Brody meanwhile, during a leisurely taxi pursuit of Ashraf and Kali, had updated the CO of his
Aussie Recon Unit, Captain Carter, via a scrambled mobile call to the same HQ. His question, given
that their prey had literally strolled away from capture without even knowing it was imminent, had
been: 'now what?'

Carter said he'd get back to him asap, no doubt after he'd nipped across the hallway to consult
with his US counterpart and the local CIA boss. Will Carter was commander of Brody's five-member
Special Air Service Regiment patrol. He was a good bloke but his hands were tied by playing support
fiddle to Captain Nolan, who in turn was orchestrated by Agent O'Leary.

The SASR troopers were secretly deployed up here in Woop Woop, alongside a 12-strong US Special
Forces detachment. Together, with only the CIA knew how many spooks, they were part of the ongoing,
never-ending fight against militants, insurgents, terrorists and Taliban in the region. 'Operation
Northern Arrow' was, however, an unofficial Coalition counterinsurgency mission.

Brody lit a smoke, a sweet change from exhaust fumes, and wondered what kind of cell they'd be
chucked in if the Pakistani Intel organisation discovered what the Aussies and Americans were doing
here. The ISI didn't have the best rep when it came to their treatment of spying foreigners, even
those ostensibly on their side. Then he remembered: if the shit started flying, the presence of the
Special Forces guys was covered by the concurrent official US-Pakistani military exercises going on
north-east of town. That would leave only the Aussies with some explaining to do.

That'd be bloody right
. Brody took a swig from his water bottle.
How the hell do we
always end up like shags on a rock?

By the time Captain Carter had rung back with his answer, the two 'known terrorists' had led him
all the way out to Karkhanai Bazaar, at the edge of the Tribal Areas, on the road to the Khyber
Pass. There they bought what looked like a Playstation before heading back to town. By 19.00 hours
they were ensconced in the Hotel Marhaba where Ashraf had been staying for, at least, the last three
days. How long he'd actually been in town, or rather not in Morocco, was anybody's guess.

Carter's answer had been, 'keep up the surveillance' followed by an emphatic, 'under no
circumstance engage the enemy'.

So Brody rang Mudge who joined him outside the Hotel Marhaba, where they remained until the boys
began their three-hour sightseeing tour at 21.30. And here they were. Still.

'Are we keeping going with the round and round?' asked the auto- rickshaw driver, their third for
the night, as he pulled up behind an old GAZ, a seriously-abused Russian car with no roof, and four
goats on the back seat.

'Maybe once or twice more,' Brody shrugged, glancing at this watch. Their relief team was due any
minute.

'Yeah,' Mudge said. 'But only because we've got nothing better to do. It's not like we can go to
the pub.'

The driver rolled his eyes but took off after the GAZ and the goats until Brody noticed that
their targets had turned into Qasim Road, again, and asked him to take the next left.

Mudge burped. 'Okay, now I've had enough to eat.'

'Thank God,' Brody said, and then waved at the street. 'So, what's the common denominator do you
think?'

'Well, I'd put my money on it being the American Consulate on the corner back there.'

'My thoughts exactly,' Brody agreed. 'We'd better go wake Bamm-Bamm.'

Killeen, Texas
Tuesday 3 pm

'During the Cold War, you know before the Russian commies fell flat on their red
faces, this here was the biggest base in the free world. During peacetime it's open to the
public.'

'Oh, well shit Micah, how we going to get in?'

'Easy as, Jesse-Jay; because these morons apparently don't know we are at war. It seems they've
been paying no mind to their own government which keeps telling us we're fighting a war - somewhere.