Strike Force Delta (16 page)

It was for this reason that Harbosi was now out in the
wilds of the Qimruz, unprotected against the rain and cold, riding a very humpbacked horse, looking for a videotape.

Why did the Chief need a videotape? Harbosi had no idea. Khrash's location out on the fringe was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that the men who ran the place were left alone by the central government and thereby the U.S. military. But it was a curse, too, because despite Khrash's being right next to a major trading route with Iran, not everything was available when and where you wanted it. Cigarettes and tobacco were always in short supply, as were wine and hashish. Batteries, lightbulbs, CDs, things easily bought in just about every other city in Afghanistan, were always hard to come by in the Qimruz and especially in Khrash. This applied to videotapes, too. At the moment, not a single one, new or used, could be found in the entire city.

So Harbosi had been sent out to find a videotape. Either a new one or one that could be taped over. At the moment, nothing seemed more important to his boss, the Chief.

Most of the villages scattered about the Qimruz were within 20 miles of Khrash. These places had local rulers, too, subwarlords who were subservient to the all-powerful Sharif. These subwarlords were usually the wealthiest people in their village; owning a TV, a VCR, or even a satellite dish was nothing to them. And with Afghanis being such great hoarders, sometimes these subwarlords had a surplus of items that people in the capital of Khrash found themselves in lack of. Harbosi's quest this cold night was to see if any of these subwarlords might be willing to give up a blank videotape or two for the Chief.

Harbosi had been at it since late that afternoon; that was more than eight hours on the same miserable horse. He'd visited six homes of minor warlords in that time. These people were all polite to him. They took him in for tea and cake, the ritual hospitality famous all over Afghanistan. But when it came time for Harbosi to make his request, his hosts invariably clammed up. They had nothing to spare except for dates and nuts and great praise for Allah. Harbosi was sure at least a few of the subwarlords had had a videotape or two hidden away but were withholding them, strictly for selfish reasons. Again, this was no surprise. Harbosi was a
kardiss
—he knew no one paid any attention to him. Had someone a little higher on the food chain been sent on this mission, it might have had a better chance of success.

But his was not to question why. So he clopped along, his back aching, his fingers turned black from holding the reins for so long. He was heading for the house of a man named Goshi, his last to visit in this part of the Qimruz. It had been raining earlier, but now overhead the clouds parted and the stars came out. It had suddenly become a crystal-clear night. Yet strangely, on a couple occasions Harbosi could have sworn he heard the crash of thunder, somewhere distant.

He reached Goshi's house, a one-story structure made from mud and gravity, located on the northern edge of a very sleepy village. A gray TV satellite dish sticking out of the flat roof offered a hint that Harbosi's search might end here. Both he and the horse relieved themselves in Goshi's front yard, and then Harbosi knocked on the front door.

There was no reply.

Harbosi knocked again. While it was almost 1:00
A.M.
and Goshi might be asleep, certainly someone in his security entourage should be awake, standing watch. But still, there was no answer.

This was so odd, Harbosi toed the door open and looked inside. The one-story house was empty, even though some candles were still lit and a pot of tea still emitting steam was on the dinner mat nearby.

Harbosi was baffled. He knew Goshi a bit. The subwarlord was a particularly brutal man who once slaughtered an entire family—22 of them—simply because he'd heard that some were not removing their shoes at prayer time. Just as the top warlord, Sharif, ruled the Qimruz with an iron fist clutching a Koran, so, too, did Goshi run his tiny domain.

But Goshi was also a very superstitious man and paranoid as well. Always surrounded by bodyguards, he rarely left his house in the daytime. And never,
ever
did he venture out at night. He was famous for this.

Harbosi looked around the empty quarters and thought a moment.

There was only one other place Goshi and his bodyguards could be.

Few people in the world, including just about the entire U.S. intelligence community, knew that the Al Qaeda network had its own air base.

The airfield was located inside the Qimruz, on a ridge called the Obo. It was a small, flat piece of land, hidden by mountains on three sides and a steep cliff on the other. Hard against the same peak that separated this part of Afghanistan from Iran, Khrash was about twenty miles to the south.

Obo Field held just one runway, about thirty-five
hundred feet in length, plus three support buildings and a small fuel tank. This place had been built originally by the Russians during their occupation of Afghanistan; it was used as an emergency base for damaged aircraft to land. This was why the runway was only so long and the base support buildings large but spare. After the Russian withdrawal and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the Great Mullah himself gave the airfield to bin Laden as a gift.

No warplanes could be found here—Al Qaeda didn't have an air force. But it did operate a small fleet of leased cargo planes, all registered to fake companies in Nigeria. Most of them two-engine French-built transports these airplanes picked up supplies from places such as Damascus and Tehran and landed them here. The typical cargo—guns, money, explosives—was then dispersed among Al Qaeda sympathizers on both sides of the border. On rare occasions, very sensitive cargo also flew into Obo Field. WMD materials. Captured U.S. smart weapons. Hostages. . . .

The small airstrip was activated only when a supply flight was scheduled to sneak in, maybe once every two months. The base lay dormant the rest of the time, which was probably why it had escaped the gaze of U.S. spies—or most of them anyway. But as it was, the field just happened to lie within Goshi's territory; in fact it was just a half-mile up the road from his house. This was the only other place Harbosi could imagine Goshi might be this time of night.

Leaving the horse behind, Harbosi started out again and soon reached the ledge that overlooked the Obo ridge and the tiny airfield beyond. Harbosi was about to
start down the trail leading to the base when he heard a series of very loud
bangs!
Three explosions, one right after the other, somewhere nearby.

Harbosi stopped in his tracks. What was this? Three more explosions went off. He hit the ground. He had to be smart here and avoid trouble. He hesitated a moment, but then, instead of going down the trail, he crawled to the ledge and peeked over the other side.

He couldn't believe what he saw.

The tiny base was under attack. Helicopters were flying all over the place, weapons blazing. Tracer bullets were bouncing off the runway, the fuel tank, even the walls of the mountain nearby. Flames were everywhere. It was like the ground had opened up and a little piece of hell had been allowed to escape. Harbosi had never seen anything so violent.

He quickly realized that running for their lives below were Goshi and his men. Scattered all over the small airfield, the helicopters weren't just shooting at them; they were hunting the men down, one by one, and blasting them to bits with their enormous aerial guns.

Now, as Harbosi watched, horrified, one of the helicopters swooped down and let of a dozen or so soldiers jump off. These men were as big as monsters and they were dressed all in black. They chased the remaining bodyguards to ground, firing their huge weapons and herding them into one spot directly below Harbosi. It was down there, at the base of the ridge, that Harbosi saw the final stage of this one-sided gun battle. The soldiers in black cornered the last of Goshi's bodyguards against the rocks and shot them down, each man going with a bloodcurdling scream. Then Harbosi saw the soldiers
walk among the bodies, firing into them, making sure all were dead.

Harbosi was too stunned to move. He could only imagine that Goshi and his men must have been tricked into coming down here in the middle of the night. For a man such as Goshi, who was afraid to go out even in the daytime, it must have been quiet an enticement, or a major order, to lure him out to his death in this dark, miserable place.

The three helicopters abruptly landed. The soldiers in black started unloading equipment from them and were in a great hurry to do so. But exactly what kind of equipment was this? And why would anyone want to attack this lonely area in the first place?

Once the copters were unloaded, the mystery men began scrambling around the smoking air base. One of the helicopters took off again and disappeared over the other side of the mountain; it returned just moments later carrying a large object from wires swinging below its belly. About the size of a small car, this thing was a piece of heavy machinery on wheels. Whether the copter had dropped this load on the other side of the mountain so it could go into battle unencumbered Harbosi didn't know. In any case, once the copter had set the load down, it disappeared again, over the mountain, returning again in no time at all, carrying the same kind of cargo.

The men in black began working on the two wheeled machines. They pushed both devices to a point halfway down the runway. They seemed very determined to get these things to stay in place, removing the wheels and securing them with counterweights, chains, and wires.

Once set, the men pulled a very thick cable out of one of the embedded machines, stretched it across the runway, and attached it to the locked-down device on the other side. Then a couple dozen of the soldiers yanked on the cable, assuring that it was tight.

That's when Harbosi heard the thunder again. And this time it wasn't so fleeting or distant. It was loud and earsplitting.

And it wasn't real thunder.

But it was close. . . .

The tremendous roar was coming from two huge fighter jets that had materialized out of the clear night sky. They passed right over Harbosi, hideous dark gray shapes, with sharp noses and flames coming from the back. They looked like monsters with wings. Harbosi was a simple religious thug. But he knew a thing or two about warplanes, having dodged bullets and bombs with his Taliban friends when the Americans first arrived. These were fighter jets. American built, this much he could tell. And it was obvious they were going to attempt to land at the small airstrip where the men had stretched out the cable.

But here's where Harbosi got very confused. Their planes were wearing the markings of the ROI—the Republic of Iran, the big Islamic brother next door. Why would their friends the Iranians attack Goshi's airstrip?

The two planes circled the base once, going right over him a second time. One suddenly broke off, set down its landing gear, and went in for a landing. Harbosi saw a large hook lower from the rear end of this jet. Much faster than he could figure out what was going on, the jet slammed onto the runway, its hook catching the
thick cable, yanking the plane to a screeching halt. All this was so loud, Harbosi swore that his eardrums were going to burst.

The jet was enveloped in sparks and smoke, a fiery cloud of its own creation. The soldiers ran out to the plane, engines still whining, and pushed it off the runway and to the side of the little airstrip. No sooner was this done when the second jet fell out of the sky and it, too, slammed down with a shriek, its hook catching the cable and yanking it to a violent noisy stop.

Again, Harbosi was not a smart man—eating, sleeping, walking, talking, that was just about the extent of his intellectual prowess. But he thought he knew what was going on here. The runway was too short for such powerful warplanes as these. They needed help in stopping, like planes landing on aircraft carriers.

But if that is true
, Harbosi found himself thinking,
won't they have trouble taking off, too?

Now came the strangest part. Most of the fires had gone out around the airfield; those that hadn't were quickly extinguished by the soldiers. Meanwhile, the rest of the men in black opened up the three support buildings, pushed all their aircraft inside, and sealed them up. Then all was quiet again.

Just like that, it was as if nothing had happened. . . .

That's when Harbosi felt something very cold touch the back of his neck. He looked over his shoulder to find four of the enormous soldiers standing over him. They were all wearing black ski masks, had huge knives sticking out of their belts and bayonets on the ends of their weapons. One of these bayonets was now resting on the side of Harbosi's cheek.

Harbosi threw up his hands in surrender. The soldiers
hauled him to his feet. He started babbling, telling them that he was a servant of the Chief, who himself was a servant of the warlord Sharif, who praised the Great Mullah and al Zawhari and the sheikh bin Laden himself.

“My friends from Persia,” Harbosi was crying now, “we all praise Allah. You have your own reasons for attacking this tiny piece of my very large country. But I am like you. I am like a brother to Iran.”

That's when one of the huge soldiers pulled off his ski mask. Beneath was a very Caucasian face with steel-cold eyes and fire coming from his mouth. A name was written on the collar of this man's uniform. It said:
Hunn
. He looked absolutely ferocious.

He grabbed Harbosi by the neck and yanked his face to within inches of his own.

“Do I look Iranian to you?”
he growled.

It was the middle of the second night when the
Ocean Voyager
had reached the Suez Canal. It had traveled at high speed over the past 48 hours, keeping its four jet engines on the naval equivalent of afterburner whenever possible. They'd tried to be careful. A huge containership moving at the same speed as a racing boat would tend to drawn attention. Bad weather across the Mediterranean had helped; it allowed the
Ocean Voyager
to rush its way through rain showers and fog, cutting down on the number of potential witnesses. Still, they left more than a few fishermen along the coasts of Italy and Greece scratching their heads and asking the same question: How could something so big and so ugly move so fast?