Killing Ground

5

Spin Range, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan

As Brognola was rallying his cybercrew in the Stony Man Computer Room, halfway around the world, high in the arid mountains just north of Safed Koh Range, the enemy the SOG was trying to place in its sights was huddled in an inauspicious farm hut, with dirt floors and windows draped loosely with flaps of leopard skin to fend off the cold winter air. In the center of the room three men sat close together on mats set around a low, candlelit table, warming themselves with hot tea and steamed rice sprinkled with shaved bits of roast lamb. They spoke quietly, barely above a whisper, but their words carried both passion and urgency as they addressed events of the past twelve hours.

General Zahir Rashid of the Afghan National Army, at sixty-three by far the oldest of the three, was out of uniform, dressed like the others in plain shepherd’s clothing. There were streaks of gray in his neatly trimmed beard and a glimmer of intensity in his dark brown eyes. A veteran of Afghanistan’s United Front, Rashid had come into his own once that group’s militia had morphed into the ANA. He was also widely credited as the mastermind behind the string of recent victories Afghan troops had racked up against the Taliban. The previous night, in fact, he’d taken to the field and led the successful defeat of an insurgent squad in the mountains near Jalalabad. However, that one-sided skirmish would never have been possible without the input of the man seated directly across from him.

It was Aden Saleh, a high-ranking member of the Taliban and the warrior who’d eluded Bolan in the aftermath of the Safed Koh conflagration. He’d not only apprised Rashid of the Taliban’s movements in the Spin Range, but had also seen to it that the insurgent group stalked its way blindly into an ambush that had resulted in the deaths of all but one of its men. The ploy had been easy enough to carry out, because for the past six months Saleh had been in charge of orchestrating each and every incursion into Afghanistan made by the black-turbanned renegades. Saleh’s reasons for betraying his own men were simple. As with any organization, there were schisms within the Taliban. The majority of those who’d fallen in the Jalalabad battle, like most of the others slain by ANA forces over the past few weeks, were part of a dissenting minority opposed to a strategy to regain control of Afghanistan, not by acting alone, but by entering into a covert alliance with Rashid and other rogue ANA generals. This alliance also had outside force whose support, Saleh and his superiors felt, would be essential to ensuring that any coup would not be quickly undone by the U.S.-NATO coalition.

Spearheading efforts on behalf of that outside force was the third man seated at the table.

Eshaq Faryad, a native of neighboring Uzbekistan, had been among the first soldiers to set foot in Afghanistan during the 1979 Soviet invasion, and for ten years he’d remained in the country, doing all he could to help fend off counterattacks by the mujahideen. Years after the Soviet occupation had been squashed, thereby forcing him to flee back across the border, Faryad was back, this time in collusion with some of the same Afghan leaders he’d earlier fought against. As before, his primary objective was to place the country under Russia’s yoke. And while Uzbekistan had been awarded its sovereignty following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Faryad’s allegiance remained with Moscow, and all these years the bald, clean-shaved man had continued to receive orders—as well as a steady, sizeable income—from the Russian capital’s intelligentsia apparatchik. In recent years that organization’s official title may have changed countless times, but in his heart Faryad still considered himself KGB—SVR to the rest of the world.

The three men had come together to discuss a number of issues, but two in particular weighed most heavily on them in terms of immediacy.

First was the matter of the U.S. soldier whose body had been hauled away from the ridgeline in Safed Koh by the sniper who’d killed him after he’d triggered a Taliban-set land mine. Captain Howard O’Brien’s corpse lay just outside the hut, stripped and covered beneath a layer of snow brought down from the higher elevations. His weapons, along with a microcomputer, had been confiscated and what was left of the recon officer’s uniform was being washed and mended in hopes some use could be made of it. Meanwhile, the men squabbled over what to do with the body.

Saleh wanted to use the slain officer as barter in hopes of negotiating the release of Azzizhudin Karimi, the low-level Taliban fighter who’d survived the ambush by Rashid’s ANA troops the night before in the hills outside Jalalabad. But Faryad and Rashid opposed the idea, taking the sniper’s word that the other U.S. soldier who’d been on the ridgeline had to know O’Brien was already dead. They knew there was no way the U.S. would exchange a live prisoner for a dead one. For that matter, Rashid was equally skeptical that they would even be able to use O’Brien to secure the return of the bodies of the men who’d fought alongside Saleh when they’d ambushed the Special Ops team in the mountains of Safed Koh. The Afghan general had already learned from his informants at Bagram Air Base that those victims were in the process of being autopsied at the request of U.S. Army Intelligence.

Saleh had been enraged by the news of such desecration, but he realized it was pointless to argue any further for trying to leverage O’Brien’s body as a bargaining chip. This was, he decided, one of those situations when it was best to back off from his position for the sake of maintaining the alliance with those seated across from him. Besides, acquiescence now would likely serve him down the line should a time come when he would need one of them, in turn, to side with him as swing vote on some other matter.

“Very well,” the Taliban leader finally relented. “We’ll make use of his weapons and uniform and just dispose of the body.”

“Preferably in a way that it’s never found,” Rashid added. “If the Americans are kept wondering about his fate, it will be something of a victory.”

“Agreed,” Faryad said.

“I’ll see to it personally,” Saleh said.

“It’s settled then,” Rashid replied. “Let’s move on.”

“Before we do, what about the computer?” Faryad asked.

“What about it?” Rashid said. “We don’t have the access code. Without that, it’s of no use to us.”

“We should try to crack the code,” the SVR agent suggested. “If we can get into the system, it could prove invaluable.”

“If you know anything about hacking, you’re welcome to try,” Rashid countered.

“I know someone,” Faryad said. “I’ll look into it.”

“As you wish,” Rashid said, eager to change the subject. “Now, we need to discuss how to deal with Karimi.”

Saleh’s simmering resentment got the better of him. Before he could check himself, he found himself blurting, “If you’d finished him off when you had the chance, there would be nothing to deal with.”

A sudden tension filled the room. Rashid’s face reddened as he stroked his beard and then busied himself with his tea, buying time to choose his words carefully.

“I saw him go down,” he said, squarely meeting Saleh’s steely gaze. “We were in the midst of a firefight, and I had to deal with those still putting up resistance. By the time we’d taken care of the others, Karimi was gone.”

“He disappeared?” Saleh scoffed. “Just like that?”

Faryad quickly intervened, eager to defuse the confrontation.

“I’m sure Karimi was well-trained, like all the Taliban,” he told Saleh. “And no doubt had tried to slip into a hidden tunnel and make his escape, just as you did—though not as successfully.”

Saleh knew Faryad had resorted to flattery in hopes of appeasing him. Much as it rankled him, the Taliban lieutenant played along, turning back to Rashid with what he hoped would pass for a look of conciliation.

“My apologies, General,” he said. “It’s just that Karimi could prove to be a loose cannon. I know the man personally—he was starting to have his suspicions about the way dissenters were being conveniently killed off in your attacks. If he’s interrogated, he could tip our hand and undermine everything.”

“From what my contacts at Bagram tell me, he’s been unconscious since the Americans found him,” Rashid assured Saleh. “He’s not expected to survive surgery, much less be in any position to be questioned.”

“If there’s any chance he might survive, the risk is still there,” Saleh countered. “And it’s too great a risk to leave to chance.”

“What are you suggesting?” Rashid said.

“The attack we’d planned on Bagram,” Saleh said. “Though we’ve had to call it off, the teams are still in place. I say we make use of them.”

The Taliban leader was referring to an intricate plan to attack the American military base during the U.S. President’s scheduled visit to Kabul the following week. Just prior to meeting with the others, General Rashid had learned that the appearance had been canceled, and before they’d broached the matter of O’Brien’s corpse and belongings, the three men had agreed to suspend the assault on Bagram. They still hoped for a chance to take out the President, but instead of carrying out the mission on their own, the men had decided it would be better instead to lend what resources they could to Kurdish militants from the PKK, whose operatives in Turkey were already targeting the Istanbul NATO conference, which the U.S. commander-in-chief still planned to attend. No contact had been made with the Turks yet, since those involved in the Bagram plot had yet to be diverted from the Afghan capital.

“I understand what you’re suggesting,” Faryad told Saleh, “but even if we could modify the plan and carry it out on short notice, would it really be worth it? Neutralizing a drone like Karimi hardly matches the importance of killing a president.”

“I’m telling you,” Saleh insisted, “if Karimi makes it through surgery and talks, it could set back everything we’ve been working for. Or worse.”

Rashid, seeing a chance to smooth things over with Saleh, ventured, “The medical facility at Bagram would be an easy enough target. And security at the base won’t be as heightened as it would have been for the President. We wouldn’t need to stage a full assault.”

The SVR agent mulled things over, then asked the Taliban leader, “How soon could you be in a position to carry this out?”

“My men could be ready at a moment’s notice,” Saleh said.

He turned to Rashid. “What about the men you have stationed on the base?”

“The same,” the general responded. “Provided I can get through to them, they’d be ready to act within a matter of hours. Maybe sooner.”

Faryad calmly finished his tea, then offered a whimsical smile. “This might well be a way to kill two birds with one stone. If we can silence Karimi while striking the Americans where it hurts, maybe it will give them extra incentive to get out of our way once and for all.”

Saleh rose to his feet, signaling an end to the meeting. “Let’s do it!”

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