The windshield shattered as another round punched through. Out of the glove box came Moore’s Glock 30, the word AUSTRIA embossed on the.45-caliber pistol’s side. He came around the door, scanned the tree line and hotel beyond, and there he was, leaning forward on the roof of the two-story tech center next door.
The sniper wore a black woolen cap, but his face was clearly visible. Dark beard. Wide eyes. Broad nose. And Moore nodded inwardly over the Dragunov sniper’s rifle with the attached scope and big magazine that the sniper lifted higher, balancing it with one elbow propped on the ledge.
Even as Moore spotted him, the sniper saw Moore and fired three shots in rapid succession that hammered the door as Moore rushed back around the car, toward the driver’s side.
But then, just as the third shot echoed off, Moore bolted up and, cupping his gun hand in his left palm, returned fire, his rounds drilling into the concrete within inches of where the sniper had been perched, about forty meters away. That was beyond his pistol’s accurate range, but Moore figured the sniper wasn’t doing any ballistics homework at the moment, only ducking from wild bullets.
Four hotel security guards were already rushing into the parking lot area, and Moore pointed and shouted to them, “He’s up there! Get down!”
One guy rushed at Moore while the others darted behind several other parked cars.
“Don’t move!” the guard ordered — and then the sniper took off his head.
Another guard began barking into his radio.
When Moore returned his gaze to the building, he spotted the sniper on the far east side using a maintenance ladder to descend to the lot below, gliding swiftly, like an arachnid leaving its nest.
Moore sprinted away and the path grew uneven, the grass turning to gravel and then back to pavement. A narrow alley between the tech center and a row of small one-story offices behind it led northwest toward Aga Khan Road, the main thoroughfare in front of the hotel. The scent of sweet pork had filled the alley, as the hotel’s kitchen exhaust fans filtered in that direction, and Moore’s stomach growled even though a meal was hardly on his mind.
Without slowing, he turned left, his Glock leading the way, and there, not twenty meters ahead, sat an idling Toyota HiAce van with two gunmen hanging from the rear driver’s-side and rear passenger’s-side windows.
The sniper ran toward the rolling van and leapt into the passenger’s seat as the gunmen to the rear raised their rifles at Moore, who had the better part of two seconds to lunge down into a small alcove as the bricks above him shattered under automatic-weapons fire. Twice he tried to peer out to get a tag number, but the incoming was relentless, and by the time they ceased fire, the van was turning onto the main highway. Gone.
Moore rushed back to his car, grabbed his cell phone, and, with a trembling hand, tried to make a call. Then he just stopped himself and leaned back on his car as more security guys swarmed him, with their chief demanding answers.
He needed to call in the van, get eyes in the sky on that vehicle.
He needed to tell them what had happened.
Everyone was dead.
But all he could do was breathe.
Tucked tightly into the Margallah Hills overlooking Islamabad, Saidpur Village offered a picturesque view of the city and attracted a steady stream of tourists searching for what some guides called the “soul” of Pakistan. The guides said you could find it in Saidpur.
However, if the city had a soul, it had just grown darker. Columns of smoke still wafted up from the Marriott Hotel, cutting lines across the star-filled sky, and Moore stood there on the balcony of the safe house, cursing once more. The explosion had not only taken out their room but two other adjacent ones to the right and left, and before others could get near the area, the roof in that section of the building had collapsed.
With the assistance of three other operatives called in to help secure the area, along with a special forensics team and two crime scene specialists, Moore was able to work with private hotel security, the local police, and a five-man Inter-Services Intelligence team even while he fed a steady stream of misinformation to Associated Press reporters. By the time the story hit outlets like CNN, they were reporting that a Taliban bomb had gone off in the hotel and that the terrorists had claimed responsibility because they were seeking revenge for killings by Shiites of members of a Sunni extremist ally of the group known as Sipah-e-Sahaba. A Pakistan Army colonel had been inadvertently caught in the blast. Between the hard-to-remember names of the groups and the vague circumstances, Moore felt certain the story would continue to grow more convoluted. His colleagues in the room had carried nothing that would identify them as Americans or members of the CIA.
He turned away from the balcony and into a voice within his head: “I can’t disrupt their lives. My sons are in high school now. My wife was just promoted. She works right there in the tech center next door. Pakistan is our home. We’ll never leave.”
Moore clutched the stone rail, leaned over, lost his breath, and began to vomit. He just stood there, with his forehead balanced on his arm, waiting for it to pass, trying to release it all, though the bombing had, in effect, brought it all back. He’d spent years trying to repress the memories, grappling with them during countless sleepless night, fighting against the urge to take the easy way out and drink the pain away …And for the past few years he’d wanted to believe that he’d won.
And then this. He’d met his fellow operatives only a few weeks prior and hadn’t made anything other than a professional connection with them. Yes, he felt terrible over their loss, but it was Khodai, the torn colonel, who pained him the most …Moore had learned a lot about him, and the loss felt significant. How would Khodai’s nephew react to his uncle’s death? The lieutenant had thought he was helping both men, and while he must have known that Khodai would be endangering himself by talking to Moore, he probably denied any thoughts of his uncle being murdered.
Moore had promised to protect Khodai and his family. He’d failed on every level. When the police arrived at Khodai’s house just an hour ago, they’d found the man’s wife and sons stabbed to death, and the agent assigned to protect them was missing. The Taliban were so well connected, so thoroughly wired into the pulse of the city, that it seemed virtually impossible for Moore and his people to get any real work done. That was his depression talking, of course, but the Taliban had spotters everywhere, and no matter how hard he’d tried to blend in — growing the beard, wearing the local garb, speaking the language — they’d guessed who he was and what he was after.
He wiped his mouth and stood taller, glancing back to the city, to the lingering smoke, to the lights twinkling out to the horizon. He swallowed, mustered up the courage, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
A few hours later, Moore was on a video call with Greg O’Hara, deputy director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. O’Hara was a fit man in his late fifties, with grayish-red hair and a hard, blue-eyed stare magnified by his glasses. He had a penchant for gold ties and must have owned a hundred of them. Moore gave him a capsule summary of what had happened, and they decided they would speak again in the morning, once the other teams had completed their investigations and logged their findings. Moore’s immediate boss, the chief of the Special Activities Division, would also participate in the call.
One of Moore’s local contacts, Israr Rana, an operative he’d recruited himself after spending the past two years in Afghanistan and Pakistan, arrived at the safe house. Rana was a college student in his mid-twenties, with a keen wit, birdlike features, and a passion for playing cricket. His sense of humor and boyish charm allowed him to gather remarkable amounts of intel for the Agency. That, coupled with his ancestry — his family had become fairly well known over the past century as both great soldiers and cunning businesspeople — made him a near-perfect operative.