Locked On Part 23

Kealty's reb.u.t.tal was short. "President Ryan supported Pakistan to the tune of several billion dollars when he was President."

To which Jack, speaking out of turn but speaking nonetheless, said, "And I was wrong about that. We all were, and I hate to admit it, but I will not stick with a failed policy just to hide the fact I made a mistake."

The journalists on the panel sat and stared at Ryan. A presidential candidate admitting a mistake was alien to them.

The next questioner was from CNN, and she asked both candidates about the trial of the Emir. Kealty repeated his support for the process, and he challenged Ryan to tell him why, exactly, he felt the Department of Justice would not be able to aggressively prosecute Mr. Yasin.

Ryan looked into the camera with raised eyebrows. "President Kealty, I accept your challenge. We have brought several terrorists to trial in the federal system over the past twenty years. Some of those prosecutions were more successful than others. Many of the cases in which the attorney general failed to get a conviction involved defendants who were represented by a powerful legal team who, in the opinion of many legal scholars, bent the rules in the defense of their clients. Now, the American system of justice could not survive without a vigorous defense, but many of these defense attorneys crossed the line.

"This happened on my watch, so I was very close to the work of my AG, and I saw what these defense attorneys did, and I was sickened by it.

"The Emir will not have many of these defense attorneys, and you may think that is a good thing, ladies and gentlemen, but it is not, because nine of these attorneys who advocated for the terrorists who killed thousands of Americans at home and on the battlefields are now working for the Justice Department. If these people, all unabashed advocates of the terrorists, are part of the government's prosecution, and the terrorists' own lawyers are unabashed advocates of the terrorists, who is there to be an advocate of the American people?"

Kealty's nostrils flared on reb.u.t.tal. "Well, Mr. Ryan. You keep calling these defendants 'terrorists.' They are alleged terrorists until they are convicted. I don't know if any of these men are guilty, and neither do you."

Ryan replied, again turning the moderated debate into an unmoderated conversation, "One of the men who was defended by people who are now representing the United States in the Justice Department's case against the Emir said from the witness box, he screamed it, actually, and this was the quote from the trial transcript. 'I hope the jihad will continue and strike the heart of America and all kinds of weapons of ma.s.s destruction will be used.' Can we not take this man at his word that he is an enemy of our nation? A terrorist?"

Kealty waved it away and replied. The moderator had lost all control. "You aren't a lawyer, Jack. Sometimes people say things that are intemperate; that does not make them guilty of the crime for which they are being tried."

"'Intemperate'? Screaming that you hope America is destroyed is 'intemperate,' Mr. President? That's right, you are a lawyer."

The crowd laughed.

Jack put his hand up quickly. "Nothing against attorneys. Some of my best friends are lawyers. But even they tell the most biting lawyer jokes."

More laughs.

Ryan continued, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, you will be forgiven for not knowing about this terrorist, his outburst, and the fact that nine of his defense attorneys now work in the Kealty administration. You will be forgiven because there was very little mention of this in the media at the time.

"But it troubles me, Mr. President, that nine members of your administration worked on the defense of terrorists. Now they are in positions of influence in our government, where they bring the same warped sensibilities to their jobs which, ultimately, is the national security of the United States. And then, when the military commissions are suggested, you and your people say these defendants can only get a fair trial in federal court. I think most Americans would be bothered by this"-he looked to the panel of journalists sitting before him-"if they only knew about it."

Jack also wanted to wink at Arnie van Damm, who, right now, would be reaching for the Maalox. Arnie had told Jack over and over not to antagonize the press, because it didn't look presidential.

Screw how it looks, Jack decided. They have it coming.

"President Kealty's attorney general made the comment recently-again, it wasn't reported by the mainstream press, for some reason-that the FBI put Capone in prison for tax evasion, and maybe we should look into similar means to prosecute the terrorists we captured on the battlefield, because their capture was clearly not in the rule of law. Do you agree with this, President Kealty? Do you or your Justice Department know how many captured terrorists filed U.S. income tax forms last year?"

Kealty did his best to control his rage, but his face reddened under his makeup. He replied, "My opponent believes there is one type of justice for 'us,' and another type of justice for 'them.'"

"If by 'them,' you are saying Al-Qaeda, or the Umayyad Revolutionary Council, or any one of a number of groups that mean to destroy us . . . then yes, that is what I believe. They deserve their day in court, a chance to defend themselves, but they do not deserve each and every right afforded the citizens of the United States."

Mohammed al Darkur, Sam Driscoll, three ISI captains, and a dozen Zarrar commandos flew out of PAF Base Peshawar at four a.m. in a Pakistani Air Force Y-12 turboprop transport aircraft. The pilot took them to the southeast, over the mountains of Khyber and Kurram Agencies, and finally into North Waziristan.

They landed on Miran Shah's one useful runway and were immediately shuffled by local forces into an armored personnel carrier for the ride through the dark town to the military fort.

Within seconds of entering the main gate of the base, al Darkur, Driscoll, the three captains, and two sections of soldiers piled into four heavy-duty delivery trucks with canvas-covered beds, and they rolled straight out of the rear gate of the compound. If any Haqqani network spies were watching the comings and goings of the PDF forces in town, this would throw them off the scent. There would be spies near the fort, and the ISI had developed certain countermeasures to lose any surveillance they picked up before heading out to one of their safe houses.

The four delivery trucks rolled back through town at dawn, pa.s.sed the airport to the west, and separated onto different roads. Each truck pulled into a different small walled compound in a different part of the city, and the men inside the vehicles climbed out and then climbed aboard new trucks. Spotters on the roofs of the compounds watched to see if their visitors had picked up any tails and, when they deemed the streets clear of Haqqani watchers, radioed down an all clear to the new trucks. The gates were reopened by men stationed in advance at the safe house, and the new, cleansed trucks departed.

The four vehicles drove individually through the early-morning traffic toward the south, and then each vehicle, s.p.a.ced five minutes or so apart, headed out of Miran Shah. Driscoll found himself in the back of the third truck; he'd been cloaked with a shawl to cover his Western features, but he peeked out of it and saw armed men walking the streets, riding on motorcycles, and peering out of walled buildings. These were exclusively Haqqani's fighters; there were thousands, and even though the PDF had a tiny outpost here and the ISI maintained a few safe houses, Miran Shah was Haqqani's town.

As they drove farther south, leaving the town and entering cultivated fields, Sam thought he could hear automatic weapons fire behind him. He motioned to one of the soldiers in the truck with him, trying to find out if the man knew of the source of the fire. But the young soldier just shrugged as if to say, "Yeah? Somebody is shooting, so what?"

Driscoll's truck turned west on the BoyaMiran Shah road, and it headed along steep cliffs, made twists and turns, and climbed with a rumble in the engine that let the American operator know that the vehicle was straining under the effort. Finally, just after seven in the morning, the truck turned off the road, climbed a steep rocky path that led to a compound on a flat table on a steep hillside, and then pulled through the open front gate.

Two of the other trucks were already there, parked in a two-car garage facing the main gate. Al Darkur, two captains, and one of the two squads of security got together in the dusty courtyard and began speaking animatedly in Urdu. Driscoll had no idea what the problem was until Mohammed himself stepped over to him. "The other truck did not make it. They were hit in the center of town. One of my captains has been shot in the wrist, and a soldier was. .h.i.t in the stomach. They made it back to the base, but they do not think the soldier will survive."

"I'm sorry."

Al Darkur patted Driscoll on the shoulder. "We made it though. Congratulations. Before I was only going to let you sit and watch while we did the work. But now I need you to help."

"Just tell me what you need."

"We will set up surveillance on the road. The camp is just three kilometers farther west, and everyone who goes there from the airport or the city of Miran Shah must pa.s.s on the road below us."

The six soldiers joined with six men who were already there at the compound and formed into a low-profile security cordon, while al Darkur, Driscoll, and the two ISI captains used a window in a second-story hallway as an observation point. They set up a pair of long-range cameras and pulled mattresses off beds in other rooms so that they could keep up the surveillance with minimal breaks.

Al Darkur had one of his captains bring a large trunk into the hallway, and he set it down near Driscoll's mattress.

"Mr. Sam," al Darkur said in his singsong Pakistani accent. "Am I correct in a.s.suming you had a military career before the CIA?"

"I was in the Army, yes."

"Special Forces, perhaps?"

"Perhaps."

Al Darkur smiled. "Even though you are my guest, I would feel better if you outfitted yourself in the gear my captain has here for you."

Driscoll looked in the trunk and found an American M4 rifle with a 3.5-power Trijicon ACOG scope, an Original Special Operations Equipment chest harness with Kevlar and steel armor and eight extra magazines for the rifle, a helmet, and a utility belt with a Glock 9-millimeter pistol and extra magazines.

He looked up at the major with a wink. "I would feel better, too." Driscoll suited up. It felt good to carry what was essentially the same rig he used in the Rangers. Once outfitted with the fighting gear, he looked up to al Darkur and gave him the thumbs-up.

Al Darkur said, "Now we drink tea, and we wait."

The Sunday after the debate, Benton Thayer walked alone through the parking lot of the Chevy Chase Club, one of the oldest and finest country clubs in the greater D.C. area. Even though it was not yet noon and he was decked out for a day at the links in Hollas large plaid pants and knits and a purposefully clashing Ian Poulter tartan flat cap, Benton had just left the rest of his foursome after only nine holes. With the last debate out of the way, he'd taken the first half of his Sunday off for some time outside on this crisp fall day, but he needed to get back to the city and back to work. As President Edward Kealty's campaign manager, he would have to wait until after November 6 for some R&R.

And as Benton headed for his white Lexus SUV he told himself he'd likely have a lot of free time after November 6. Not just because the election would be over, but because his man would lose, which meant his government-sector prospects in D.C. would be zilch, and his private-sector opportunities around here would be tinged by his failure to retain the Oval Office for his boss.

No self-respecting campaign manager throws in the towel publicly with three weeks until election day, and Thayer had five radio spots and nine television interviews planned for Monday, when he would confidently declare just the opposite of what he knew to be true, but the forty-three-year-old walking alone in the parking lot was no idiot. Short of Jack Ryan being caught with his pants around his ankles outside a day care, the writing was on the wall, and the election was over.

Still, he considered himself a good soldier, and there were the media appearances in the morning that he needed to prepare for, so he was off to work.

As he climbed into his Lexus, he noticed a small manila envelope tucked under his windshield wiper. He leaned out, grabbed the package, and sat back in the car. Thinking that someone who belonged to the club must have left this for him-the grounds were fenced and guarded, after all-he tore into the bag without a thought.

Inside there was no note, no indication of who had left the package. But what he did find was a small thumb drive.

If he had been anywhere else, at the mall, in his driveway, returning to his car from his office at campaign headquarters, Benton Thayer would have taken an unknown and unsolicited package like this and tossed it in the street.

But this was different. He decided to give it a look when he got to work.

Two hours later, Thayer had switched into khakis, an open-collared dress shirt, a wrinkle-free navy blue blazer, and loafers, no socks, and he sat at his desk in his office. The thumb drive had been forgotten for a bit, but he held it now, turned it back and forth, looking for any clue as to who had pa.s.sed it. After another moment's hesitation, he sat up and began to connect the drive to his laptop, but he stopped himself, hesitating again. He worried about the mysterious drive containing a virus that could either damage his machine or somehow steal the data from it.

Seconds later, Thayer stepped into the large open loft that served as the "war room" of the Washington campaign office. Around him, dozens of men and women manned computers, phones, printers, and fax machines. A buzz of activity fueled by a long row of coffee urns on cloth-covered tables against the wall to his left. There, at the closest table, a college-aged girl was filling her eco-friendly travel mug with hot coffee.

Thayer didn't know the girl; he didn't bother to learn the names of more than the top five percent of his staff. "You," he said with a point of his finger.

The young lady jolted when she realized he was talking to her. Coffee splashed out of her mug. "Yes, sir?" she replied nervously.

"You have a laptop?"

She nodded. "At my desk."

"Get it. Bring it in here." He disappeared back into his office, and the college girl scurried to do as she was told. The third of the room that was in earshot of the exchange stopped working and stared, watched the woman grab her Mac and rush back toward Thayer's office as if they were regarding a condemned criminal on the way to the gallows.

Benton Thayer did not ask the girl her name or what she did. Instead he instructed her to put the thumb drive into her MacBook Pro and open the folder. She did this with slightly quivering fingers that were still sticky with spilled sugary coffee. As the single folder opened, revealing several files, Thayer told her to wait outside.

The young lady was all too happy to oblige.

Satisfied now that his own machine would not be damaged by a corrupt thumb drive, Benton Thayer began going through the files that had been surrept.i.tiously delivered to him.

There was no explanation, no electronic version of a cover sheet. But the file was t.i.tled "John Clark." Thayer knew a couple of guys named John Clark, it was a common name, but when he opened the file and saw a series of photos, he realized he did not know this man.

Then he began clicking through pages and pages of data on the man. A dossier of sorts. A personal history. U.S. Navy. SEAL team. Military a.s.sistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group. Thayer had no idea what that was, but it sounded shady as h.e.l.l to him.

Then CIA. Special Activities Division.

Targeted killings. Sanctioned denied operations.

Thayer shrugged. Okay, this guy is a spook, and a spooky spook, but why should I care?

Then specific operations were laid out. He thumbed through them quickly. He could tell these were not CIA doc.u.ments, but they seemed to contain detailed information about Clark's Agency career.

It was a complicated mess of information. Information that might be interesting to someone. Human Rights Watch? Amnesty International? But Benton Thayer? He was growing bored looking through it. He carried on an internal dialogue with the mysterious person who delivered him this thumb drive. Jesus. Like I give a s.h.i.t. Get to the point.

Then he stopped. Huh? Is this the point?

Photos with Clark and a younger John Patrick Ryan. Details of their relationship, spanning a quarter-century.

So the guy is old, and he's ex-CIA. Ryan is old and ex-CIA. They knew each other? That's all you've got, mystery man?

And then, after a rundown of John Clark's years in Rainbow, a single doc.u.ment that seemed to be out of place. An allegation of a murder Clark committed in Germany, thirty years ago.

Why isn't this in its place in the timeline? Thayer read it carefully. From all the information present, he got the impression that this intel was coming from a source outside of the United States.

He flipped to the next page.

A doc.u.ment detailing a presidential pardon given in secret to Clark for a.s.sa.s.sinations carried out at CIA.

"So . . ." Thayer muttered to himself. "CIA chief Ryan orders Clark to kill people, then President Ryan papers over the crimes after the fact."

"Holy s.h.i.t!"

Thayer picked up the phone, pushed a pair of b.u.t.tons. "It's Thayer. I need to see him tonight, just as soon as he gets out of Marine One and back into the White House."

Traffic on the BoyaMiran Shah road had been light throughout the day, and it turned near nonexistent at night. Some transport vehicles, Taliban on motorcycles, and a few brightly colored buses with small mirrors hanging from the sides like Christmas ornaments. But the men in the observation post saw nothing that seemed at all out of the ordinary. Mohammed al Darkur said that his prisoner had mentioned that ISI officers were coming into the area via aircraft, which meant they had to land at Miran Shah, and they had to travel this road to get to the camp.

But in the first thirty-six hours of the surveillance, Driscoll and the others had come up empty.

Still, al Darkur photographed each and every vehicle that pa.s.sed. He had no way to be certain some high-ranking ISI officer, even General Riaz Rehan himself, would not dress himself up like a goat herder to make his way to the Haqqani training camps, so after each vehicle pa.s.sed their position, al Darkur and his men reviewed the high-res images.

But so far they had seen no indication that the ISI, or even some foreign force, for that matter, was operating in the area.

Just after midnight, Driscoll was manning a night-vision camera on a tripod facing down to the road while the other three men lay on their cots in the hallway behind him. A jingle bus had pa.s.sed a minute ago; the dust it kicked up still hung in the air above the Miran ShahBoya highway.

Sam rubbed his eyes for a moment, and then looked back.

Instantly he pushed his face tighter into the eyecup of the optic. There, on the road below him, four darkened pickup trucks had pulled to a stop and men rolled out of the back of the beds. They carried rifles, their clothing was black, and they moved stealthily up the rocky hillside, directly toward the ISI safe house.

"We're getting hit!" shouted Driscoll. Mohammed was at his side with his radio in his hand a moment later. He used his binoculars, saw the dozen or so men down a hundred yards below them, and turned to one of his captains. "Contact the base. Tell them we need a priority exfiltration, now!" His subordinate headed for his radio, and al Darkur turned back to Driscoll.

"If we take the trucks, they will destroy us with those RPGs on the road."

But Sam was not listening-he was thinking. "Mohammed. Why would they a.s.sault like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"They have to know we are watching the road. Why did they go to the road, the low ground, and not the high ground behind us?"

Al Darkur thought about it but only for a moment. "We are already surrounded."

"Exactly. That's a blocking force below us; the attack will come from-"

An explosion rocked the rear wall of the compound. It was thirty yards from where al Darkur and Driscoll stood in the hallway, but still it knocked them to the ground.

The ISI major began shouting commands into his radio and he climbed back to his feet. Sam grabbed his M4 and ran toward the stairs, took them three at a time as he rushed to meet the enemy who would be trying to breach the rear wall.