Moore plopped into a chair, with Rana standing near the sofa. “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem, Money.”
That was Rana’s nickname for Moore — and it made sense. Rana was paid handsomely for his services.
“I need to know where the leak happened. Did we blow it from the get-go? Was it the Army, the Taliban, or both?”
Rana shook his head and made a face. “I’ll do everything I can to get you something. But for now, let me get you a drink. Something to help you sleep.”
Moore waved him off. “Nothing will help me sleep.”
Rana nodded. “I’m going to make some calls. Can I use the computer?”
“It’s over there.”
Moore retired to the bedroom, and within an hour he realized he’d been wrong. He drifted off into an exhausted sleep, floating relentlessly on black waves, until his heartbeat, like the thumping of a helicopter’s rotors, sent him bolting upright in a cold sweat. He glanced around the room, sighed, and collapsed back onto his pillow.
A half-hour later he was in his car, heading back to the scene. He glanced over at the shattered building, then at the tech center next door. He found a security guard from the tech center and, along with two local policemen, gained access to the building. They went up to the roof, where Moore had already been earlier and from where they’d collected the sniper’s shell casings to search for prints on them.
It was a revelation, an epiphany of sorts, that had come to him as his mind had drifted between the conscious and unconscious, because the problem of how their adversaries had gotten the explosives into the room had continued to burn in his head until a very low-tech solution took hold. All he needed to do was find evidence of it.
He walked along the edge of the rooftop, allowing his flashlight to slowly glide over the dust-caked concrete and steel …until he found it.
The Special Activities Division, operating within the National Clandestine Service, was manned by Paramilitary Ops officers recruited from the military who conducted deniable covert operations on foreign soil. The division was composed of ground, maritime, and air branches. Moore had originally been recruited for the maritime branch, like most Navy SEALs, but he’d been loaned out to the ground branch and had worked several years in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he’d conducted excellent intelligence operations involving the use of Predator drones to drop Hellfire missiles on numerous Taliban targets. Moore had not balked at being moved to the ground branch, and he knew that if he was needed for a particular maritime operation, he’d be sent anyway. Operational lines had been drawn by office staff, not field operatives.
SAD consisted of less than two hundred agents, pilots, and other specialists deployed in six-man or fewer teams, with more often than not a solo SAD operative conducting “black” and other covert operations with the assistance of a “handler” and/or “case officer” who often remained out of harm’s way. SAD operatives were extensively trained in sabotage, counterterrorism, hostage rescue, bomb damage assessment, kidnapping, and personnel and matériel recovery.
SAD owed its existence to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), an agency during World War II that was organized under the Joint Chiefs of Staff and had direct access to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. For the most part, the OSS operated independently of military control — an idea that raised brows and drew deep skepticism at the time. MacArthur was said to have been highly reluctant to have any OSS personnel working within his theater of operations. Consequently, when the OSS was disbanded after the war, the CIA was created under the National Security Act of 1947. Missions that could not be associated with the United States went to the paramilitary group of the CIA — the Special Activities Division — a direct descendant of the OSS.
Chief of SAD David Slater, a steel-jawed black man and former Force Recon Marine with twenty years in the military, joined the morning video conference with Deputy Director O’Hara. The two men stared up at Moore from his tablet computer as he sat in the kitchen of the safe house in Saidpur Village.
“Sorry we couldn’t hook up yesterday. I was in the air en route to CONUS,” volunteered Slater.
“It’s okay, sir. Thanks for joining us.”
O’Hara wished Moore a good morning.
“With all due respect, there is absolutely nothing good about it.”
“We understand how you feel,” replied O’Hara. “We lost some great people and years of intel.”
Moore grimaced and bit his tongue. “What do you know so far?”
“Harris and Stone have been recovered from the rubble. At least what was left of them. Gallagher, who was at Khodai’s house, is still missing. They must have him in a cellar or a deep cave, because there’s no signal from his shoulder beacon. The guy you chased was obviously well trained but still just a low-level guy.”
Moore shook his head in disgust. “Do you think Khodai was wired?”
“It’s possible,” said Slater.
“I thought he was, too. I thought the checkpoint in the lobby was a fake and controlled by them. The X-ray wouldn’t pick up anything, even if he was wired. So Khodai came through without triggering the system. Maybe they threatened him, said if he didn’t blow us up, they’d kill his family, which they did anyway.”
“That’s a pretty good theory,” said O’Hara.
Moore snorted. “But that’s not what happened.”
“What do you got?” Slater asked him.
“Hotel security is, for the most part, pretty good. I think they used housekeepers to get the bombs in the rooms next to ours.”
“Slow down,” said Slater. “How’d they get the bombs into the hotel in the first place? They didn’t haul them through the main entrance.”
Moore shook his head. “They got into the building next door, the tech center, where the sniper was. Less security there, and maybe easier to bribe. The bombs were passed across via a line and pulley from one rooftop to the next.”
“You got to be kidding me,” said O’Hara.
“I’m not. I went up on the tech-center roof and saw where they’d strung the ropes. Then I went over to the Marriott, found the same signs on the edge of their roof. I’ll be uploading some photos I took in a few minutes.”
O’Hara’s voice lowered in frustration. “That’s ridiculously simple.”
“And maybe that was our problem: We’ve got our eyes on the complicated when these guys are using sticks and stones. If they were really daring, they would’ve tried throwing the bombs across …” Moore just shook his head again.
“So those rooms around yours were registered to guests who were never there,” O’Hara concluded.
“Exactly. Someone on the inside made sure they looked occupied in the registration system while they remained vacant. The local cops should be able to nab the one son of a bitch at the front desk who hooked them up. I’ve got Rana putting out some feelers for me.”
“That sounds good,” answered O’Hara. “But at this point, we’d like to get you out of there.”
Moore inhaled and closed his eyes. “Look, I know you’re thinking I let this whole thing go south …a lapse in security, but this whole thing was clean. I’d checked everything. I mean everything. Now …just let me finish this. Please.” He wanted to tell them that he needed to do this for the people who died, and he needed to do it for himself, but the words wouldn’t come.