Anyone who had gotten past security inside the main gate and again either in the parking garage or through the ground-floor entrance was considered safe. No one bothered to look up as Haaris got off the elevator and made his way to the general’s office. The secretary was gone and the door to the inner office was open. Rajput, the collar of his white shirt unbuttoned, was seated at his desk listening to reports from three of his staff. When Haaris walked in he looked up. He could have been a kindly grandfather, with gray hair and soft eyes.
“At last,” he said. “Gentlemen, please leave us.”
The staffers glanced at Haaris as they walked out but said nothing. The last one closed the door.
Rajput motioned for Haaris to take a seat. “Did you run into any trouble on the way in?”
“Not much. What’s the current situation at the Aiwan? Is Barazani there?” Farid Barazani was the openly pro-Western new president of Pakistan. His election four months earlier was one of the reasons the Taliban had staged their attacks. Almost everyone in the West believed this was the signal for the dissolution of the government, which was why American nuclear strike force teams had been moved into place.
“Yes, I spoke to him less than ten minutes ago. The fool still thinks that he can talk his way out of this.”
“Did you tell him about me?”
“He thinks that you’re here from the CIA to offer him backing. He’s waiting for you.”
“Will he try to call Washington?”
“He might, but we’ve seen to it that the Taliban have cut all the landlines to the Aiwan, and we control the cell phone towers within range.”
“How about satellite communications?”
“We have a good man in their computer section. Nothing will be leaving the Aiwan tonight.”
“Except me,” Haaris said. “Has it been reported to the CIA’s chief of station here that I’m missing?”
“The metro police reported an incident on their wire, one of dozens this morning.”
“No word from Langley?”
“No.” Rajput picked up his phone and said, “Now, if you please.”
A minute later a young man in army uniform without insignia of rank came in.
Haaris got to his feet and unwrapped the kaffiyeh. He stood still as the young technician secured what looked like a dog collar with a device about the size of a book of matches just below his Adam’s apple.
“Say, ‘My name is Legion.’”
Haaris spoke the words, but the voice coming from his mouth was nothing like his own. It was deeper, more resonant, the British accent almost completely absent.
FOUR
The four nuclear weapons, covered in wool blankets, were strapped to wooden cradles in the back of the Toyota SUV, the two uniformed guards sitting on top of them. They were south of Quetta, on the narrow highway to Delbandin, and Usman kept nervously looking in his rearview mirror. He could see the empty highway behind them, but he could also see the blank expressions on the faces of the two men, and he thought it was just like watching the zombie movies that were so popular.
“Aren’t you afraid of getting radiation sickness, sitting so close?” he asked.
Neither one of them wore name tags, and they could have been brothers, with slight builds, narrow faces, dark complexions, wide, dark eyes.
“They don’t leak,” the one on the right said. “And if they did you’d be in the same trouble as us.”
“You’re not nervous?”
“Just drive, Lieutenant. I’m not nervous, as you say, just damned uncomfortable.”
“And I have to take a piss,” the other guard said.
“I’m not stopping out here,” Usman said.
Ten minutes earlier they had passed through the town of Nushki, where nothing moved and very few lights shone. At this point they were fewer than thirty kilometers from the Afghan border, and Usman could feel the brooding hulk of the wild west country, once filled with friends of Pakistan who had now turned enemies. The mix of the nearness of the border and the weapons he was transporting had caused him to have waking nightmares: all he could see were hulking monsters, wave after wave of zombies, mushroom clouds, burning flesh, women and children screaming in agony. His armpits were soaked, his forehead was dripping, even his crotch was so wet it almost felt as if he had pissed himself.
He reached over and took from the glove box the SIG-Sauer P226 German pistol his father had given him as a graduation present from the military academy and laid it on the center console.
“There’s no one out here,” the one soldier said. “So you might as well let Saad take his piss, otherwise we’ll have to listen to him forever.”
“Thirty seconds,” Usman said. “Any longer than that and I’ll drive away without you.”
He slowed down, pulled off the side of the road and stopped. Immediately both soldiers got out and walked a few meters away.
Usman had asked for a radio in case he ran into trouble, but his request had been denied by his unit commander, Captain Siyal. He’d also been made to give up his cell phone.
“They have the capability of intercepting our radio transmissions and even our cell phone calls.”
“What if I break down in the middle of nowhere?”
“See that you don’t.”
“That makes no sense, Captain,” Usman had argued.
They were in Siyal’s office, and the captain spread his pudgy hands. “Personally I agree with you, but I too have my orders. Balochistan has been fairly quiet. Pick up your cargo, drive three hundred kilometers, hand it over and you’re done.”
The captain’s use of the word cargo bore no relationship in Usman’s mind to the things in the back of the SUV. The fact that Pakistan had more than one hundred of the weapons had given him a certain pride, a nationalistic fervor — until now. These things right here were not an abstraction. They were real. They were meant for only one purpose — to kill a lot of people.
He looked over his shoulder in time to see both soldiers lighting cigarettes. He couldn’t believe it. His nerves were jumping all over the place now, and the nearly absolute darkness of the night was pressing in.
Grabbing his pistol, he started to get out of the SUV, but for whatever reason he took the key from the ignition and put it in his pocket.
“What the hell are you men doing?” he shouted, walking around to the rear of the Toyota.
“A change of plans, Lieutenant,” one of them said, and he turned around, a pistol in his hand.
Usman reared back, and at the same time the solider to his left fired one shot that went wide.
Someone else from the darkness off the side of the road opened fire with a Kalashnikov, the rattle distinctive. The rounds slammed into the side of the SUV.
Usman ducked low as he raced across the road in the opposite direction and into the desert, the soft footing making it almost impossible for him to move fast.
Another burst of fire came from the highway, but then someone shouted something, and Usman continued running, as one of the soldiers answered.
“It doesn’t matter, let the bastard go. We don’t need him now.”
Only then did Usman remember the pistol in his belt. He stopped and turned around as he drew it and fired four shots in rapid succession at the side of the SUV, about twenty meters away.
Someone cried out, and Usman took several steps back toward the highway, when another burst of Kalashnikov fire bracketed him, one round slamming into his left side, knocking him backward but not off his feet.