“Perhaps Wazir will have some news about your missing friend.”
Moore sighed deeply in frustration. “That’d work. Either way, I’ll be out of here by tomorrow night, and I just wish I could have some vengeance for what they did to the colonel and his family. If those guys just walk away, that’ll never stop burning me.” They climbed aboard the chopper and within ten minutes were in the air.
Before they even landed in Kabul, Moore saw that he’d received a phone call from Slater.
The Mexican guy in the photograph, Tito Llamas, a lieutenant in the Juárez Cartel, had turned up in a car trunk with a bullet in his head. Likewise, Khodai’s associates who’d been photographed with Llamas had all been murdered. The only guys in that picture who hadn’t turned up dead thus far were the Taliban. Moore needed to get back to Islamabad ASAP. He wanted to talk to the local police about Llamas and see if there were any other leads he could gather. He thought he might buy himself a little more time by “accidentally” missing his flight back home.
He didn’t reach the city until morning, and he told Rana to go home and get some sleep. He went to the police station, met with the detectives there, and positively identified Tito Llamas’s body. The cartel member had been carrying falsified documentation, including a fake passport, and Moore was able to share with the local police what data the Agency had on the cartel member. Needless to say, those detectives were grateful.
A surprise e-mail from the old man Wazir was very welcome — that was until Moore read its contents.
The two other Taliban in the photograph that Wazir had mentioned were unimportant and were actually Punjabi Taliban, named for their roots in southern Punjab. They were distinguishable because they did not speak Pashto and traditionally had ties with groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed. The Punjabi Taliban now operated out of North Waziristan and fought alongside Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
But that history lesson wasn’t the important part of the e-mail. Wazir had found the men, but both had been murdered. He said the Taliban had discovered their security leak and had killed everyone associated with it …except Moore, of course, and he was no doubt at the top of their hit list.
Maybe it was time to go home.
7 TRAVEL PLANS
Samad and his two lieutenants had fled the farmhouse before dawn and had made the laborious ten-kilometer hike across the border and into Afghanistan. They chose a well-beaten path and had joined a small group of five merchants so as not to draw any attention to themselves. As Samad had reminded his men, the Americans were watching from the sky, and if they took what seemed like a route with better tree cover, their vibrations might be detected by one of the many REMBASS-II unattended ground sensors that the American Army had carefully hidden along the border. That movement would subsequently trigger one of the Americans’ many Kennan “Keyhole-class” (KH) reconnaissance satellites that would begin taking pictures of them. Their images would almost instantaneously flash across screens in Langley, where analysts sat twenty-four-seven, waiting for Taliban fighters like him to make such mistakes. The response would be swift and fataclass="underline" a Predator drone piloted by an Air Force lieutenant colonel sitting in a trailer in Las Vegas would drop Hellfire missiles on his target.
Once in the valley, they found Mullah Omar Rahmani seated on a pile of blankets inside one of a dozen or more tents erected in a semicircle beneath several walnut and oak trees, and hidden from the east by patches of lemon vines. The morning prayers were over, and Rahmani was sipping tea and about to have some round sweet flatbread the Afghans called roht, along with some apricots, pistachios, and thick plain yogurt (which was a true luxury in the mountains).
Rahmani greeted them with a terse nod, then stroked his beard, which swept down toward his collarbone, terminating in a sharp point. His gaze, slightly magnified by a pair of thick wire-frame glasses, seemed permanently narrowed, which made it difficult to determine his mood. He’d pushed his white turban farther back to expose deep lines spanning his forehead and the lima-bean-shaped birthmark staining his left temple. His long linen shirt and baggy trousers hid his considerable girth, and were he to remove the camouflage-pattern jacket tightly hugging his shoulders, he might seem just a hair less intimidating. That jacket — old, tattered at the elbows — had been worn during his battles with the Russians.
Samad had to assume that Rahmani was not pleased with all the attention recently drawn to the area, although he might commend Samad for his quick thinking and ability to once more fool the Americans.
Rahmani lifted his chin toward them. “Peace be unto you, brothers, and let us thank God that we are here this morning to enjoy this food and to live another day — because the days grow more difficult for us.”
Samad and his men took seats around Rahmani and were served tea by several young men attending to him. A chill spread across Samad’s shoulders as he sipped his tea and tried to calm his breathing.
It was, admittedly, difficult every time Samad was in the man’s presence. If you crossed him, if you dared fail him, he would have you executed on the spot. This was not a rumor. Samad had watched the beheadings with his own eyes. Sometimes the heads would be hacked off. Other times they would be sawed off slowly, very slowly, while the victim screamed, then drowned in his own blood.
Rahmani took another deep breath, set down his teacup, then folded his arms across his chest, his black shirt and scarves pulling tighter across his neck. He studied them for a moment more, sending an icy pang into Samad’s gut, then cleared his throat and finally spoke again: “The Army has grown too unstable for us now. That much is clear. Khodai could have caused even more damage, and while I am grateful for the work your men did back in Islamabad, there are now many loose ends — particularly the agent our sniper spoke about at the hotel. We’re still looking for him. And now our new relationship with the Juárez Cartel in Mexico has been threatened because we were forced to kill their man. All of this means we must move more quickly.”
“I understand,” Samad said. “The CIA has recruited many operatives in the area. They pay well. It is hard for young men to resist. I have two men tracking one right now, a boy named Israr Rana. We believe he’s responsible for helping to expose the link.”
Rahmani nodded. “Some of us argue that patience will triumph. The Americans cannot and will not remain here forever, and when they leave, we will continue to train here, and we will bring Allah’s will to the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan. But I do not agree with sitting down and waiting for the storm to pass. The problem must be dealt with at its source. I’ve been working for the past five years on a project that will soon come to fruition. The infrastructure is in place. All I need now are the warriors to execute this plan.”
“We would be honored.”
“Samad, you will lead them. You will bring the jihad back to the United States — and you must use the contacts you’ve made with the Mexicans to do that. Do you understand?”
Although he nodded, Samad grew tense because he knew asking any favors of the Mexicans might both insult and incense them. Yet if he could somehow garner their support, his mission stood a far greater chance of success.
But how?
He would have to resort to hudaibiya—lying — as the Qur’an exhorted him to do when dealing with infidels.
“I must caution you and all of your men, Samad,” Rahmani went on. “Nearly one hundred of our fighters have already dedicated their lives to this plan. Some of them have already given their lives. There is much at stake here, and the consequences for failure are great, very great indeed.”