Authors: David Hagberg

Soldier of God (17 page)

BOOK: Soldier of God

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Berndt’s flesh began to crawl, the hairs at the nape of his neck stood up, and he had a bad taste in his mouth. When this next part was broadcast, no one in America would get a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow would be a day of panic and chaos.

“We will strike in America’s heartland.We will deliver a blow that the infidel will never
forget.
This
time we will send our arrow of justice into the heart of the evil ones.We will prove that there are truly no innocents among the evildoers.

“By now our soldiers of God are ready to strike the very nests where the children of the infidels lay their heads each evening to sleep; where they dream in peace certain that their parents are near to protect them; where they first learn the heretical words that cause them to wrongly believe that there are gods other than the One God.

“Infidels, send your children to bed, but do not expect them to wake in the morning.”

One of the president’s staff stifled a sob.

“There will be no further compromise.
Insha’allah.”

Bin Laden looked away and made a gesture to someone off camera, and the tape went to snow.

The president and the others in the Oval Office, struck with the enormity of bin Laden’s message, did not move at first. Always before the warnings were vague, calling for terrorist strikes against the U.S. and our interests. This time he had specified the targets: America’s children in their homes.

“Al Jazeera is giving us another fifteen hours before they broadcast it,” Berndt said. “Shall I play it again?”

The president tore his eyes away from the television and shook his head. “No need to ask if he means it, or if he has the resources to carry out his threat.”

“No, sir.”

“Is McGarvey back yet?”

“He should be arriving about now. I expect his people will be bringing him up to speed right away.”

The president’s jaw tightened. He glanced again at the blank screen, then nodded as if he had made a tough decision. Everyone in the office was looking at him, waiting for him to say something, to let them know how they should react.

“This attack will not happen,” he told his people. “I am putting every resource available to me for the single purpose of finding bin Laden and killing him.” His expression hardened. “He will not be offered amnesty, nor will an attempt be made to arrest him and bring him to trial. Any possible collateral damage will not become a consideration. I want to be very clear on those points. No deal making. We’re going to get that bastard once and for all.”

It was the reaction Berndt had expected. Haynes was slow to get angry, but once there he became an unstoppable force.

“I’ll meet my National Security Council at noon. That should give Mac time enough to get fully briefed and up to speed.” He gave his staff a reassuring look. “I’ll speak to the nation tonight at eight,
before
the tape is broadcast. There will be a lot of panicky parents who’ll want to know that we’re doing something to stop the monster.”

No one challenged the president, who had already broken several laws by ordering an assassination, nor did Berndt think that the Democrats would do so. The current mood of the country was one of subdued anger at the al-Quaida terrorists and frustration with Washington for not having gotten rid of bin Laden. Once this tape hit the airwaves, all that would change. The entire country would be behind the president.

TWENTY-TWO

At that moment it was 6 P.M. in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and arguably one of the most dangerous spots on the planet, when a Gulfstream bizjet with British tail numbers touched down at Jinnah International Airport. Ground control directed the pilot to taxi to a private boarding gate on the west side of the field, which serviced Pakistan International Airlines’ diplomatic and VIP passengers.

When the jet was parked and the engines were spooling down, the steward, a young Bangladeshi man supplied by the air-leasing service, opened the door and lowered the stairs, then stepped aside politely as the lone passenger got up and exited the aircraft without a word.

Khalil, who had traveled from Vancouver via Montreal, London, and Cairo under the name of Thomas Powers, walked over to a waiting Mercedes sedan and got into the backseat. He was dressed in a stylish linen suit, with a white silk shirt, a pale blue cravat loosely tied around his neck, and hand-sewn tan Brazilian loafers.

Even something more than a casual glance would not connect him with Thomas Isherwood or with the terrorist who had hijacked the
Spirit of ’98
thirty hours ago. He was a completely different man now. His facial expression was different, the way he carried himself was not the same, and the color of his eyes and hair, which had both been dark, were now light brown.

The major change was the look in his eyes. On the cruise liner he had been a man on a carefully controlled military mission, but now he was a wild animal, scarcely in control of himself, poised to strike at anything that crossed his path. A Bengal tiger who was disappointed and angry because he had missed his kill, he was extremely dangerous as a result.

A minute later the steward came over with two pieces of matched Louis Vuitton luggage and placed them in the trunk.

The solidly built, capable-looking driver, dressed in a Western business suit, handed a sealed manila envelope—addressed to Ibn Rashid care of the Sheraton Karachi—over the seat to Khalil, who accepted it without a word. Inside were Khalil’s new passport, stamped by Pakistan customs, as well as several other identity and credit documents.

Thomas Isherwood, who had traveled to and from Alaska, and Thomas Powers, who had made his perfect escape here to Karachi, no longer existed. Those identities were as false as the Rashid persona.

In fact, Khalil thought, he sometimes had trouble remembering his real identity, his real background. Since he received the call fifteen years ago and slipped underground, he had become a man with no name and no past.

The name “Khalil” had been assigned by the CIA simply as a code word, a way to identify him. He had found out about it from a source in the Egyptian Embassy in Washington and had adopted it as his own.

Very few people outside the business even knew that code name.

All that would change when the director of the Central Intelligence Agency lay at his feet, the rich, red American blood flowing like a river. What sights would be seen in McGarvey’s eyes at the time of his passing.

The car was waved through the airport security gate, and Khalil settled back, not noticing the slums they had to pass through to get into the city proper. Most people in Karachi were desperately poor and filled with a
religious fervor. They were a dangerous force, like dynamite near an open flame, ready for one spark to set them off.

He was in a very dark mood this evening, mostly because of his failure, but also because of his impatience to get on with the task he had set himself to do: kill Kirk McGarvey.

Impatience was rare for him, and whenever the mood arose, like now, he stopped to closely examine its cause. In his business inattention to detail could get you killed.

On the desert, where the nearest oasis might be one hundred kilometers away, and where noontime temperatures might reach fifty-five degrees Celsius, to make an error in judgment because the wanderer was in a hurry was a sentence of death.

He had never failed before, nor had he ever been bested by anyone. Bin Laden had warned him that if he ever came up against McGarvey to kill the man immediately. He had been unable to do that, and the only reason had been his own weakness, his lack of ability He was desperate to right that wrong.

He looked at his reflection in the window. Perhaps he had lost his edge. Perhaps he had been away from the desert for too long.

Not yet, not yet. There was at least one more battle to be won.

His real age was nearer to fifty than the CIA guessed, but he looked thirty-five. Tall, with an olive complexion, dark flashing eyes, and a feline grace, Khalil could project an intimate warmth if the circumstances dictated it, but could in an instant become as cold, indifferent, and deadly as a king cobra ready to strike.

His family had been Bedouin, wanderers on the open deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. They had a tradition of being tough, heartless people who had to be that way in order to survive the harsh conditions, not only of the desert, but also of the constant internecine fighting of the royal family, of which they were a minor branch.

It was a way of living that had been bred into them over the generations. And like theTikritis of Iraq, which spawned such warriors as Saddam Hussein, Khalil’s family had been exceedingly strong and close knit, in contrast to the modern Saudi family that was as often as not dysfunctional and scattered.

Since the oil boom many of the royals had spent untold billions of dollars on hedonistic pleasures around the world—yachts, jets, mistresses.

All that time Khalil’s family believed that the royals needed to pay more attention to their internal affairs and to the principles of Wahhabism, the strictest and harshest form of Islam.

Only through Allah will the world be saved.

As a child growing up in the late sixties and early seventies, Khalil was trained to be a true Bedouin. A hard, religious fundamentalism was beaten into him by his masters. He learned to be heartless when it was needed, cruel when it was called for.

The Bedouins’ philosophy, and Khalil’s, was a stern obedience to the fatalism of a harsh environment.

Even in this modern age a true Bedouin is able to harden his heart in order to kill his own daughter as an offering to Allah.The refinements of modern life are nothing more than the effeminate devices of degenerate men.

Khalil had never been able to think in any other way, though he could easily slip into the role of the playboy if and when the need arose.

And during the rare times he went home, he acted the role of a kind, loving husband to his wife, and a compassionate father to his children.

To his house staff and servants, he was by all accounts a considerate man. His third cousin, Prince Faisal, once told him that a man could be judged by how he treated his inferiors.

It was important that a man do the correct things when important people were observing, and do the necessary things when important principles were at stake.

Khalil looked up out of his thoughts long enough to realize they had already driven past the Chaukhandi Tombs, because they made the turn on Shahrah-e-Faisal Road directly into the heart of the modern city with its luxury hotels and high-rise commercial buildings. Away from the outlying districts, Karachi could be a large city almost anywhere in the world.

Yet it was here, right in the capitalistic heart of Pakistan, and not in some mountain hideaway as Western intelligence thought, where the real planning for the
jihad
had taken place well before 9/11.

President Musharraf and his National Command Authority were happy to cooperate with the American CIA’s hunt for terrorists in the remote mountains of Drosh, Chitral, and Shoghot on the far north border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was an open secret among Muslims that only the bandits and Kashmir rebels were left up there. But it occupied
the Americans, who thought they were making real progress in their “war on terrorism,” and Pakistan benefited because American aid was starting to flow.

The faint trace of a smile briefly crossed Khalil’s face. The early days of the movement in the mountains of Afghanistan had been a wild adventure. Khalil, like many Saudis, longed to go back to nature. It was no different than Americans who camp in the woods. For many Saudis, including Khalil, it was going back to the desert to a simpler time when religion and a respect for the land were important.

If the oil were to be permanently shut off, the West would be forced to return to its roots, just as the Saudis would have to return to the desert.

It was an intriguing thought.

Downtown on M. R. Kayani Road near the red sandstone pile of brick cupolas and balconies that housed the Sind Provincial Assembly, the driver slowed the Mercedes and entered a parking-garage ramp beneath the modern glass-and-steel, forty-eight-story M. A. Jinnah Commercial Centre.

“Were we followed?” Khalil asked, softly.

“No,” the driver replied succinctly. Karachi was his city The suggestion that he had been careless in his duties coming from anyone other than Khalil would have angered him. As it was, he took it to be a reasonable question from a professional.

He pushed a button on a remote control, and a steel gate rolled back allowing them entry. Five levels down, at the far southeastern corner of the ramp, he stopped in front of a single elevator, its doors open.

“Leave my bags in the trunk, and remain here. I won’t be long,” Khalil said. He got out of the car and walked across to the elevator. The doors automatically shut and the car started up.

The floor-selection panel was locked out, and a miniature closed-circuit television camera was mounted in the ceiling. Security was unobtrusive but tight. Wealthy men conducted their business in this building. It was expected that security measures would be in place.

In order to hide the lizard, change his color to red and place him in a rose garden.

The elevator stopped at the twenty-fifth floor. Across a thickly carpeted hall, a plain wooden door opened as Khalil approached. An old man in
evening clothes, whom Khalil had known all his life, nodded pleasantly. “Good evening, Mr. Rashid. I trust your trip was a productive one.”

Khalil preferred the mountains, although this place was a more secure hideout. “I’m in a hurry.”

The old man smiled indulgently. “If you will just go straight through, Mr. bin Laden is waiting.”

Khalil passed through the small, plainly furnished receptionist’s office, into a dimly lit, plushly decorated corridor right out of an English manor house, to a small windowless room at the end. The walls were plain plaster, and the only furnishing was a Persian rug in the middle of a plain tiled floor. A single light in the ceiling cast a pale yellow glow.

He slipped off his loafers and sat down at one end of the carpet to wait, but it was only a minute or two before the door opened and Osama bin Laden, dressed in a British tailored business suit, but with an open collar, a gentle smile on his clean-shaven face, walked in. Khalil started to rise, but bin Laden waved him down.

“Please, do not arise for me, my friend.” He spoke in Arabic, his voice strong and clear. He took off his shoes and sat down on the rug. “You had a safe journey. Would you like refreshments?”

Khalil looked for a sign in bin Laden’s eyes that he was disappointed or angry because of the failure to kidnap Shaw. But there was nothing to be seen except for the pleasure of seeing an old and trusted lieutenant.

“No, thank you, my brother. In fact, it is not my intention to stay with thee for long this evening. I have further urgent business elsewhere.” The Arabic language was more formal than English; rightly so, in Khail’s mind.

“All of us have urgent business to attend to now,” bin Laden said. “I have ordered the next phase in the war against the infidels to begin. I have rereleased the message.”

Khalil let his surprise show. The tape was not to have been made until after Shaw had been safely brought to Pakistan, put on public trial, and convicted for the world to see. “The timing is perhaps incorrect?”

“In fact, the timing is perfect,” bin Laden replied mildly. “My message was delivered to Al Jazeera last night, and as I suspected would come to pass, a copy of the tape was handed over to the CIA in Doha and transmitted
to Washington. By now the criminals in the White House believe they know what they are faced with.”

“We have lost the element of surprise that made the September attacks so successful,” Khalil pointed out. He had come to Karachi expecting to be chastised for his failure. Instead he was being told the next attack on American soil was going ahead

“We will strike fear into their hearts,” bin Laden said. His voice was still mild, but he was angry. His mouth was set, his eyes narrowed. This was bin Laden just before a battle.

Khalil knew that he had to choose his words with care. “Yes, my brother, but their law enforcement agencies will be watching for our soldiers.”

Bin Laden’s expression darkened. “They are already in place.”

BOOK: Soldier of God

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