“Come with me,” he said. “The simulator is behind my office.”
They headed in the direction of the office — Kumar’s base of operations, where he planned and oversaw the workings of Pacific Western Submersibles. From there they entered the simulator room. A large metal container, arranged on springs and cantilevered arms, was rocking back and forth as they entered. Kumar pressed a large red “stop” button on the wall, and the unit stilled. Then he opened a door in the compartment. Two young boys were sitting within, one of them holding a rectangular steering mechanism that controlled the direction of the unit in three dimensions on a screen in front of them.
Kumar made the introductions in their native Urdu. These boys were Massoud and Javeed, the two youths handpicked by the Emir to carry out his attack on the United States. They had been with Kumar for three weeks, logging many hours in the simulator, learning exactly how to handle and operate the sub in which they would carry out their mission. Now Yousseff did his best to comfort and distract the boys with an account of how things were in their homeland, making up stories about Afghanistan as he went along.
Before long, he sighed and shut the door. “Why must they always be so young?” He turned and looked to Kumar. “Tell me about these children,” he said. “What has brought them to this point?”
“Do you really want to know, Youss?” asked Kumar, hesitating. “It is hard enough for me, and I’m not the one pushing the buttons, so to speak.”
“No, I do not really wish to know,” Yousseff sighed. He had been struck by the dull, lifeless eyes of these young jihadists. He knew that their stories would be sad, and much like the stories of thousands of other young men from his country. And though he wished it were otherwise, and that he himself didn’t have to send these boys to their deaths, he knew that they had decided on their fates many months ago, when they joined the Emir. There would be nothing else for them. “I know that they wish they were dead, Kumar,” he said. “I suppose that is all I need to know. If it were not this mission, they would find some other way to reach Paradise. We are not responsible for their deaths.”
Kumar gazed long and hard at his mentor. He wondered how much of the speech was meant for him, and how much was meant for Yousseff’s own conscience. “But how many others will die in this war the Emir is waging, Yousseff?” he asked quietly. “How many?”
“Very few,” Yousseff replied casually, shaking off the gloom that had engulfed him for a moment. “This will be an economic blow. It will fracture the nation’s economy, and we will take advantage of that. This is a situation created by the Emir. If we hadn’t taken the job, some other group of terrorists would have. This event was cemented when the Semtex was stolen in Libya. We are not responsible for what will unfold, Kumar. None of us are. We just have advance notice. We will take advantage of it. But we are not responsible.”
“I am not sure, Youss,” Kumar said softly. “Do you really want to be involved in something like this? Is this really who we are? Who you are?”
“Look at it this way. We stand to make billions because of this deal. Because we know what is coming. That money will be used to build schools, homes, and hospitals in Afghanistan. That I will promise you. Thousands in Afghanistan will live, and just a few Americans will die. Weigh the scales, Kumar, and calm your conscience. Have you done as I asked, and liquidated our holdings here?”
Kumar looked a little glum. “It’s done. The money is already in escrow accounts. It closes tomorrow.”
Yousseff knew that selling this business, along with the real estate it covered, was painful to Kumar, even as leaving the Karachi Harbor had been so many years ago. “Kumar,” he said, “when we are back home you will have a business many times this size. We will buy the whole inner harbor in Karachi.”
“I know, Youss, I know. But I have built an organization here. I have friends, and contacts, who are close to me. None of the employees even know that this is coming. It’s difficult to justify.”
“Look at the other side of the coin for a second, Kumar,” replied Yousseff. “You will become fabulously wealthy. Beyond your wildest dreams. You wait. In any event, everything that you know here, all of the knowledge that you gained from this place, you can load onto a bunch of DVD’s. You can use it to rebuild what you have here, whenever you want.”
Kumar nodded quietly, giving up the fight. He looked again at the man he thought he knew so well, and wondered for the hundredth time where Yousseff was leading them, and why. He’d also begun to question why he and his friends followed this man so willingly, when he was taking them places that they did not wish to go.
At that moment, things were taking a decidedly somber turn for Indy and Catherine. Indy was breathing heavily, fighting the overwhelming panic that accompanied his claustrophobia. The lights had been out for more than 12 hours now. The room was becoming stuffy. They had no flashlights — those had been in the belts and packsacks, which Dennis confiscated when he found them. They had but one cigarette lighter for light, and they were trying to use it sparingly. They had no food or water. The room was getting warmer, and they were both starting to ache with thirst. Catherine, for her part, was exhausting herself with endless mental calculations. Even if Devil’s Anvil was a major artery for the Asia-to-America heroin trade, it might be used only once or twice a month. The dealers would have to wait for a large shipment to arrive, in Vancouver or some spot up the coast, load it into a van, drive it to Fernie, and then take it south to the mine. It wouldn’t be a daily affair. Maybe not even a weekly one. Catherine thought that they could die of thirst in less than three days. So far she’d kept those calculations to herself. There were more immediate concerns for her to deal with. Indy was silent most of the time, fighting the demons of claustrophobia. Catherine tried to help when she could, but she didn’t have much experience with claustrophobia and wasn’t entirely sure how it could affect someone so dramatically.
“Would it help if you talked about it?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, maybe a bit,” replied Indy. “Maybe.” Her voice had a soothing effect, coming from just a few feet away in the coal-black darkness. They were underground, deep beneath Sawtooth Ridge, so there was no stray daylight to find its way through the cracks. Indy found that anything even remotely soothing was a welcome relief, and thought that it would probably be a good idea to continue talking.
“I wasn’t even 25 years old,” Indy began. “Just a kid, really. I was hot on the track of a large network of East Indian dealers. It was shaping up to be a major bust, and I was able to use my Toronto experiences with similar gangs to perfect advantage. I knew the lingo and the culture. But I got made.”
“How?” asked Catherine.
“A major buy was taking place on a large farming property up the valley. A huge buy. One of the purchasers recognized me. He and I had crossed paths in my Toronto days. Within a second someone had slapped cuffs on me. Someone kicked me in the groin, and once I was on the ground, someone else kicked me in the ribs a couple of times. Hard. I had a couple of hairline fractures. So I was on the ground, in a lot of pain, wondering what would come next.”
“I don’t even want to ask,” came the disembodied voice from a few feet away. “But tell me.”
“Things got ugly after that.”
“They weren’t ugly already?” she interrupted.
“Not in relative terms. Someone pulled out a gun and fired three or four rounds at me. Amazingly, I only got nicked by one bullet. Flesh wound in my leg — not that big a deal, although it hurt like hell and scared me even more. The leader of the gang got pissed with the shooter and told him he’d stuff the gun up his ass if he fired one more shot. Then he said that because I had betrayed the brotherhood, or his brothers, or whatever, my punishment should be a little more dramatic. A warning, he said, to anyone else inclined to undercover work in an East Indian gang.”