Strike Force Bravo (14 page)

At that point, the mighty Kazeel, superterrorist, wet his pants.

On a curt nod from Ramosa, two of the policemen lifted Kazeel to his feet and quickly carried him out of the room. Uni followed close behind. Ramosa turned back to the five Americans. “I assume everyone here has a valid passport?”

Hunn spit in his face. Ramosa wiped it off with a neatly folded handkerchief. He never lost his snide grin.

“I'll take that as a ‘no,'” he said.

He gave a quick
“hup-to!”
to the rest of his men. They began filing out, but with their weapons still up, still ready for anything.

Ramosa went out last, walking backward, protecting his tail.

“My condolences on Nine-Eleven, gentlemen,” he said, flashing his seedy gold smile again. “My prayers were with you that day….”

 

Manila International Airport was a typical Third World mess.

Dirty, dark, chaotic, dangerous. It was all breakdowns and plastic baggage and noise, filthy windows, and broken doors. Tens of thousands of people, running, walking, staggering, sleeping, many wearing SARS masks, many carrying knives. It was Saturday morning, an insanely busy time. The line of passengers waiting to depart stretched through the main terminal, out the main doors, and all the way to the curb. Nearly every scheduled flight coming in was at least an hour late. Those going out were even further behind.

It was even worse out on the runways. Air traffic control at Manila International was more rumor than fact. Planes were taxiing everywhere with no reason to their movements. A major accident seemed likely at any moment. A bottleneck of airliners was jammed up at the end of the airport's main runway; all were waiting for some kind of signal to take off and get out of this place. Some of these planes had been waiting here since before sunrise—and that was three hours ago.

A dirty white cargo plane suddenly appeared in the middle of all this. It rolled onto the tarmac from a part of the airport off-limits to commercial aircraft. It was an Airbus A321, the smallest version of the cookie-cutter European airliner. Two large letters,
UN,
had been hastily applied to its fuselage behind the wing; streaks of blue paint were already running off them. A small drama played out on the field. The airplane suddenly stopped. A police Jeep drove up to it. The plane's cockpit door opened and a boarding ramp appeared. Two men were led out of the Jeep and sent up the steps. They were both draped in long, hooded robes. Once they were inside, the door was quickly closed, the ramp was pulled away, and the plane started moving again.

The Airbus rolled right past the traffic jam of commercial airliners, taking a place at the head of the line. This infuriated passengers and pilots alike on the waiting airplanes. But no measure of outrage directed toward the airport's control tower would change anything. The top three people at Manila International—the airport chief administrator, the traffic captain, the security chief—had all been paid off. The UN airplane had priority over every other aircraft.

It waited at the head of the line for just a half-minute. Then it revved up its engines, covering the rest of the planes in dirty exhaust, and went screaming down the runway.

 

Past the airport's fences, over the highway, over the dump, over the shantytowns, the shacks, and up on a hill overlooking the southern end of Manila International a battered rented Ford Taurus was parked, engine running, AC blowing, all four doors wide open.

Ozzi was sitting on the hood, shoulders drooped, ball cap pulled low. He watched the UN plane a half-mile away pull up its gear and start to climb.

In the backseat of the Ford were Puglisi and McMahon. Both were trying to sleep. Red Curry was sitting behind the wheel, chain-smoking. They were all exhausted, except Hunn. He was stalking around the car like a madman, talking to himself and swearing mightily.

“Jesus Christmas!” he screamed, shaking his fist as the airplane carrying Kazeel went right over their heads. The noise was tremendous. “I just can't believe these Zips let that asshole go! Didn't we free these people from the Japs a while back?”

“Gratitude isn't in much supply these days,” Curry said over the roar of the departing jet's engines. “Not for guys like us.”

“Then how about we just nuke this shitty little place?” Puglisi asked with a yawn from the backseat, eyes still closed. “You can get a nuke, can't you, Lieutenant?”

Ozzi took the question half-seriously. “It might take a few weeks. But…”

He looked out on the mountainside slums. They stretched for miles. “I'm not sure it would make much of a difference here,” he added.

A brutal, smelly wind blew by them. They were quiet for a long time.

Then Ozzi let out a moan. “Well, this is just great,” he said. “We're at the end of the world here—and damn it, now we've got to fly back. I'm not looking forward to the ride home, boys. I don't even know if I still have a job.”

Suddenly Hunn stopped pacing. He looked at Ozzi strangely. Hunn was a huge individual, perpetually unnerved and like a time bomb ready to go off at any moment. But for a few seconds he turned pro.

“Wait a minute,” he said to Ozzi. “Why are you getting us all bummed out?”

Ozzi just looked up at him. “Did you just say ‘bummed out'?”

“Yes…sir. You're bumming us out.”

Ozzi was confused. “Don't I have a good reason to?” he asked sincerely. “We just went through a major-league Chinese fire drill, and I'm sure, with the UN involved, we lit up every phone between here and D.C. I'll be lucky if they let me sweep my office when I get back.”

“Get back?” Hunn asked him. “You keep saying that. Get back where?”

“To the states. To Washington. And for you guys, probably back to Gitmo.”

All four men started laughing and couldn't stop. Hunn was almost in tears.

“Oh man, Lieutenant,” he told Ozzi, “I understand you're the new guy around here. But, sir…you got to get a four-one-one on this. We ain't going back.” He turned toward the spot where the “UN” plane was now just disappearing into the west. “And believe me, that guy ain't getting away this easy….”

On the Pakistan-Afghan border

The three SUVs arrived at the abandoned air base just after midnight.

This place was called Bakrit. Built by the CIA for the resupply of Afghanistan resistance fighters during their war against the Soviet Union twenty-five years before, the base was surrounded by snowcapped mountains and high, barren plains. The runways had been made long enough back then to support all kinds of aircraft, from large cargo jets to U-2 spy planes. The main strip was more than three miles long. It could handle anything flying these days.

The small A321 200 Airbus arrived five minutes later. It touched down in the dark aided only by the pilot's night-vision goggles. Blowing up a small storm of snow and dust, it taxied to where the three SUVs were waiting. The men in the SUVs were high officers in the Intelligence Service of Pakistan, an organization that, despite its name, was closely aligned with Al Qaeda. Each SUV was carrying two officers; each was heavily armed.

The plane stopped and its cockpit door opened. A ladder folded out and Kazeel and Uni climbed down. Kazeel was immediately whisked into the second-in-line SUV; Uni took a seat in the third. Their separation was a matter of security procedure. Though joined at the hip, Kazeel and Uni almost never traveled together, especially on the ground, because, simply by osmosis, Uni knew almost as much about the next big attack on America as Kazeel. Furthermore, Uni held on his person, at all the times, a piece of information that, when implemented, would activate Kazeel's sleeper agents who were waiting to carry out the big attack. This was known as the
sharfa
—loosely Arabic for “The Key.”

Only Kazeel and Uni knew the
sharfa
and it would be acted on only when it was confirmed that the weapons for the big attack were safely in place. Crude and hardly perfect, it was the terrorist version of a fail-safe. If the worst ever happened to Kazeel, Uni would still be around to activate The Key, and the plan could still move forward.

So for them to be killed by the same bomb, rocket, or land mine would not be wise. An entire brain and a half would be lost.

Thus the separate cars.

 

The small caravan screeched away and drove north, toward the section of northwest Pakistan known as the Pushi.

Their destination was even more remote than Bakrit. It was so isolated, in fact, and wild in its terrain that in better days NASA sent its lunar astronauts to the Pushi so they could train in the most moonlike conditions possible without actually leaving the Earth.

The trip would take four hours. The three SUVs passed several military checkpoints along the way. In each case they were simply waved on through by Pakistani troops, even though it was an open secret that Sheikh Kazeel himself might be riding in one of the three trucks.

Around two in the morning they reached the Krutuk mountain range. The Pushi lay beyond. This was where the terrain became particularly rugged and as unearthly as advertised. The three trucks began climbing. They easily went over a series of small mountains;
boodis,
the locals called them. But soon enough the mountains became larger and the roads became steeper. The going became very slippery as some of the higher peaks were encased in thick, icy clouds. After another 90 minutes, they'd reached the Pushi, a hidden valley surrounded by Himalayan-like summits. The village of Ubusk sat in its center. For the past 10 years, this was what Kazeel had called home.

The three SUVs roared through the village at high speed, waking many of its 400 villagers. Then the vehicles began climbing the
boodi
on Ubusk's north side. This small mountain was known as Pushi-pu. Kazeel lived at the top.

His house was square, two stories, with a flat roof and many windows. It had four rooms in all, a palace by this region's standards. The largest room was the master sleeping quarters. It was all windows, including six in the ceiling. Kazeel had a monstrous water bed in here, but he never used it. Most nights he spent here, he slept in a blanket on the floor.

The rest of the house was spare of furniture. However, there were many high-tech media devices about. Largescreen TVs, radio receivers, video recorders, CD players—all American-made. There was also an extensive videotape and DVD collection on hand. All of these were American as well.

The house had a grand view of the ring of barren mountains surrounding it. It looked out over the valley and gave an impressive panorama of the night sky as well. The view from the bedroom was the best. Both the sunrise and sunset could be seen from here. In the morning, the mountains turned a weird orange; in the late afternoon, they took on a shade of blue.

But the house's location had nothing to do with aesthetics. Kazeel, being joyless and sexless, saw nothing of the beauty in nature. Why he lived at the top of this mountain was all about his security.

There was only one road up to the top. A small army of security guards watched this entrance, located at the southern base of the
boodi.
These guards were Ubusks, men from the village; they were also distant cousins of Kazeel. They kept an eye on things while he was away, guarded him when he was home, and provided protection for him whenever he moved about Pakistan or Afghanistan. They were very loyal and fierce fighters. Kazeel trusted them highly.

Their checkpoint was heavily fortified. Not only were they armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades; they also had an old T-72 Russian-made tank hidden inside a rock shed next to the entrance to the access road. The tank could hit a target just about anywhere in the valley below, including the village, as well as the road leading up to Kazeel's mountain.

Seven men were waiting inside Kazeel's house. They were the people who'd helped him plan the attack on the
USS Lincoln.
They'd all had a hand in 9/11, too. Once Kazeel was airborne out of Manila, he'd used a secure in-flight phone on the Airbus to call a meeting of these men. Without a doubt his closest advisors, all of them were made men in Al Qaeda as well. They all lived in caves nearby, which was no surprise. After the United States landed in Afghanistan and tore up the Taliban, the Pushi was where this pack of rats came to hide.

Kazeel's small convoy arrived at the base of his mountain just before 4:00
A.M
. The horizon was just beginning to brighten, the start of a cold and windy day. They drove up to the main checkpoint, the place where the tank was hidden. But no one came out to meet them. Kazeel was puzzled. The guards were supposed to be on alert 24/7. He had his driver beep the horn. Nothing. The driver beeped again. Finally, four sleepy gunmen emerged from the tank house.

They went pale when they saw Kazeel through the back window. They'd taken a vow to lay down their lives for him. But he'd caught them napping.

Kazeel got out of the SUV and greeted the men warmly nevertheless. This surprised them, but they recovered quickly. The hugs and double-cheek kissing went on for nearly a minute.

Then Kazeel climbed back into the SUV and proceeded up the hill.

His compatriots had been waiting since midnight. They knew all about his brief capture—they thought, by a CIA team—and subsequent quick release. His safe return was a great relief for them. He was the alpha dog here, the godfather of the clan. Without him, the rest would be nothing. Kazeel rarely let them forget it.

He walked through his front door with no fanfare. The Pakistani Intell men were nowhere in sight. The seven friends greeted Kazeel with exaggerated warmth, sloppy kisses on both cheeks, four, five, six times. Kazeel finally had to put an end to it. He threw up his hands and then Uni ushered him away.

Kazeel didn't bother to wash up after his long ordeal, nor did he change out of his Western-style clothes. Rather, he commenced the meeting immediately. He and the seven men sat on the floor in the main room of the house. The windows were blacked out with cardboard and curtains, shutting off that grand view of the universe. Candles were lit. Uni dispensed bowls of yogurt and lamb's guts and cups of tepid tea.

Kazeel did not eat or drink. He got right down to business.

“Brothers, we are in possession of the launchers,” he said, his tired voice betraying no hint of triumph.

There was applause from the others.

Kazeel went on: “And I have secured the means to get them into the United States—thanks to our new
judus.
”

More applause. Several men shouted: “Praise Allah!”

“Now, all we need are the missiles themselves,” Kazeel said. The other men quickly settled down. They looked at each other worriedly. Kazeel was surprised by their unease. Something was wrong.

“Brothers, you have known of this need all along,” he began lecturing them. “This was the agreement with our New Friends. They would get us the launchers. They would get us the funding. They would get the weapons into the United States. But we had to ‘get our hands dirty together'—and that meant our providing the missiles. And I assured them that this we could do.”

The seven men looked at their dirty feet for a very long time. Finally one man spoke up. He was Abu al-Saki el-Saud, a minor Saudi prince.

“But just as with the launchers, the missiles too are a very hard item to get these days,” he said nervously as Kazeel was known to have a volatile temper. “Supply was never very good anyway. And now, our friends in the Afghan are all gone. Our friends in Iraq, gone as well and our brothers in Syria have become women since the Americans landed next door. And Brother Ghadafi—well, as we all know he
is
a woman. So, my sheikh, it has become very hard for us to…”

“Are you saying you could find
no one
who would want to make a deal with us?” Kazeel cut him off tersely. “With all our contacts? Are our old friends deserting us?”

“It is the quantity, brother,” El-Saki told him bravely. “We could probably get one or two missiles from the Yemenis. A couple more from the Egyptians. One or two from the Irish. Maybe even our friends inside the Pakistani military could find two or three. But you require at least thirty-six. A very large number all at once. Why?”

Kazeel paused for a long moment. Outside, the wind began to howl.

“Brothers, we have been in this
jihad
together for a very long time now,” he began, fingering his crusty beard. “We have had our highs and lows. We have been praised by Allah and cursed by him. But you must believe me, we are now in a new chapter, thanks to our newfound friends. And along with this new alliance comes the greater need for security, even amongst ourselves.”

Kazeel took a deep breath. He was trying his best to sound sincere, but the truth was, he didn't trust any of the seven men, even though they were his closest friends. He barely trusted Uni.

“This is why you must believe in me now,” he began again. “And believe that the plan I have in mind, with the blessings of our
judus,
will make the events of September 11, and anything since, look like child's play. But as for the kernel of the plan itself, I have to keep it close to my heart and no one else's.”

The seven men shifted uneasily on the floor. They did not like being left out of the loop. But this was one of the things that had changed since Kazeel hooked up with the
judus.
The risks they took had not decreased, as even now, sitting here like this with Kazeel, was enough to get them all shot on sight by any of their various enemies. But access to what was going on inside Kazeel's head was quickly becoming a thing of the past.

“It's a security issue,” Kazeel told them, quite aware of their concerned looks. “In this case, and for what is at stake, some things are best not known, even by myself. But again, be reassured, that this is a massive assault we are talking about—one that will attack the very fabric of the Americans' way of life, praise Allah, in ways they can never dream of.
That
is why so many weapons will be needed.”

Kazeel had actually expected some applause at this point. Some praise, even if it was perfunctory and rote. But all he got from his associates were more nervous stares. There was still doubt in the room, Kazeel could taste it.