Locked On

26

Brigadier General Riaz Rehan of the Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous Division of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate cut an impressive figure in the back of his silver Mercedes sedan. A lean and healthy forty-six years old, Rehan was nearly six-two, and his round face was adorned with an impressive mustache and a trim beard. He wore his military uniform on most occasions when he was in Pakistan and he looked intimidating in it, but here in Dubai he looked no less powerful, dressed in his Western business suit and regimental tie.

Rehan’s property here was a walled two-story luxury garden villa with four bedrooms and a large pool house. It sat at the end of a long curved road on Palm Jumeirah, one of five man-made archipelagos off the coast of Dubai.

Coastal property in Dubai used to be markedly scarcer, as nature blessed the Emirate with only thirty-seven miles of beaches, but the leader of Dubai did not see the geographical realities of his nation as geographical boundaries, so he began crafting his own changes to their coastline through the reclamation of land from the sea. When the five planned archipelagos were completed, more than five hundred fifty miles of coast would be added to the nation.

As General Rehan’s luxury vehicle turned onto al Khisab, a residential road of stately homes that also, when viewed from high altitude, served as the top-left frond of a palm-tree-shaped man-made island, Rehan took a call on his mobile. The caller was his second-in-command, Colonel Saddiq Khan.

“Good morning, Colonel.”

“Good morning, General. The old man from Dagestan is here now.”

“Extend my apologies for the delay. I will be there in minutes. What is he like?”

“He is like my crazy old grandfather.”

“How do you know he does not speak Urdu?”

Khan laughed. “He is in the main dining room. I am upstairs. But I doubt he speaks Urdu.”

“Very well, Saddiq. I will meet with him and then send him on his way. I have too much to do to listen to an old man from the mountains of Russia yell at me.”

Rehan hung up and looked at his watch. His Mercedes slowed on the small street to let a car from the protection detail that had been following it pass and rush ahead to the house.

Rehan always traveled abroad with a security detail one dozen strong. They were all ex-Special Services Group commandos, specially trained for bodyguard work by a South African firm. Still, even with this large entourage, Rehan found a way to move in a relatively low-profile manner. He ordered his men to not pack his car with bodies; instead his driver and his lead personal protection agent rode with him, just three men in his SUV. The other ten normally stayed with them in traffic, moving around them like spokes to a hub in their unmarked and unarmored sedans.

A general in the Pakistani Defense Force, even one seconded to the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, would not normally operate from a safe house abroad, especially one with an address as opulent as Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

But there was nothing about the life or career of Riaz Rehan that could, in any conceivable way, be considered normal. He lived and worked at the property in Palm Island because he had wealthy benefactors in the Persian Gulf who had supported him since the 1980s, and he had these benefactors because, for thirty years, Riaz Rehan had been something of a wunderkind in the world of terrorist operations.

Rehan was born in Punjab, Pakistan, to a Kashmiri mother and an Afghan father. His father ran a midsized trucking concern in Pakistan, but he was also a devoted Islamist. In 1980, shortly after Russian Spetsnaz soldiers parachuted into Kabul and Russian ground troops rolled in to begin their occupation of Afghanistan, fourteen-year-old Riaz traveled with his father to Peshawar to help organize convoys to resupply the mujahideen fighting over the border. Rehan’s father used his own resources and personality to assemble a convoy of light weapons, rice, and medicine for the Afghan rebels. He left his son behind in Peshawar and set off to return to the country of his birth with his load.

Within days, Rehan’s father was dead, blown to bits during a Russian airstrike on his convoy in the Khyber Pass.

Young Riaz learned of his father’s death, and then he went to work. He organized, assembled, and led the next shipment of weapons over the border himself on a donkey caravan that bypassed the highway of death that the Khyber Pass had become, instead heading north over the mountains of the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan. It was only the hubris of the young and his faith in Allah that sent him through the mountains in February, but his caravan arrived unscathed. And although it delivered nothing more than old British Army Lee-Enfield rifles and winter blankets for the mujahideen, ISI leadership soon learned of the bold actions of the young boy.

By his third trip over the mountains, the ISI was helping him with intelligence on Russian forces in his area and within months powerful and wealthy Wahhabi Arabs from oil-rich Gulf States were footing the bill for his shipments.

By the time he was sixteen, Riaz was leading huge convoys with Kalashnikov rifles and 7.62 ammunition over the border to the rebels, and by 1986, when the American CIA delivered the first lot of shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to Peshawar to the ISI, the ISI entrusted the twenty-year-old operative from Kashmir with getting the high-tech weapons over the border and into the hands of the missile crews who’d already been trained and were now just waiting for their launchers.

By the time the war ended, the ISI had Rehan pegged as a prime candidate to be a top-flight international operative, so they sent him to school in Saudi Arabia to improve his Arabic, and then to London to properly Westernize himself and study engineering. After London he joined the Pakistani Defense Force’s officer corps, rose to the rank of captain, and then left the military to become an agent of, but not an employee of, the ISI.

Rehan was used by Pakistani intelligence for recruiting, organizing, and orchestrating the operations of the smaller terror groups active on Pakistani soil. He served as something of a liaison between ISI leadership and the criminal and ideological groups who fought against India, the West at large, and even Pakistan’s own secular government.

Riaz Rehan was not a member of any of the jihadist organizations with whom he worked, not the Umayyad Revolutionary Council, not Al-Qaeda, not Lashkar-e-Taiba, not Jaish-e-Mohammed. No, he was a freelancer, a contract employer, and he was the man who translated the general interests and goals of the Pakistani Islamist leadership into actions on the ground, in the trenches.

He worked with twenty-four different Islamist militant groups, all based in Pakistan. And to do this he adopted twenty-four different cover identities. To Lashkar-e-Taiba he was Abu Kashmiri, to Jaish-e-Mohammed he was Khalid Mir. He was, in effect, twenty-five people, including his given name, and this made him virtually impossible for Indian and Western intelligence agencies to track. His personal security was also helped along by the fact that he was neither fish nor fowl: not a member of a terror group, and not a member of the Pakistani intelligence services.

Terror cells acting under his patronage executed missions in Bali, Jakarta, Mumbai, New Delhi, Baghdad, Kabul, Tel Aviv, Tanzania, Mogadishu, Chittagong, and all over Pakistan itself.

In December 2007 in Rawalpindi, Riaz Rehan conducted his biggest operation, though no more than a handful of upper-level ISI and PDF generals knew about it. Rehan himself selected, trained, and handled the assassin of Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto on behalf of the Ministry of Defense and the ISI. And in true cold, calculating Rehan fashion, he also selected the man who stood behind the gunman, the man who blew the assassin up, along with a sizable portion of the crowd, with a suicide vest, right after the prime minister had been shot, to ensure that these dead men would indeed tell no tales.

It was crucial to the leaders in Pakistani intelligence who used the jihadist groups and criminal gangs as proxy fighters that they keep their hands clean, and Rehan was the cutout who helped them do just that. For Rehan himself to stay clean as the cutout, they put great resources into his personal and operational security. Rehan’s contacts in the Arab world, wealthy oil sheiks in Qatar and the UAE whom he had known since the war with Russia in Afghanistan, began to sponsor him to further insulate and protect him. He was bankrolled by these wealthy Wahhabis, and eventually, in 2010, he returned to the Pakistani Army at the rank of brigadier general simply because his powerful Arab friends demanded of the ISI that Rehan be given a senior operating role in the nation’s intelligence structure. The Islamist generals put him in charge of Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous, a role normally given to a higher-ranking major general. This handed over to Rehan the responsibility for all international espionage assets and operations.

His benefactors in the UAE, those who knew him (or more precisely knew of him) since his days as a teenager humping mule trains over the mountains solidified their special relationship with Rehan by giving him access to a walled compound on Dubai’s Palm Islands. This became, for all intents and purposes, his office. Yes, he had an office in Islamabad at the beautifully maintained headquarters of the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence in Aabpara, but as often as not he was in Dubai, away from those in the government of Pakistan who did not know he existed, or in the Army of Pakistan who did not support his goal for a caliphate.

And away from those few in the ISI who actively sought to bring him down.

General Rehan arrived at his compound a short time after his call with Colonel Khan, and a few minutes after that he sat across the table from Suleiman Murshidov, the venerable spiritual leader of Jamaat Shariat of Dagestan. The old man must have been eighty, Rehan thought, as he looked at eyes milky from cataracts and skin like beach sand blown into folds by the wind. He was of the mountains of the Caucasus, and Riaz assumed he had never been to Dubai, had never seen skyscrapers higher than the squat Soviet-era concrete monoliths in Makhachkala, and had never met with a person in power in a foreign intelligence organization.

A few of Rehan’s officers and guards stood around the dining room, and the old man was in the company of four others, all younger, some much more so. They didn’t look like security, more like sons and grandsons. They also appeared as if they were here under duress. Perspiration glistened on their foreheads, and they glanced around at the armed security walking the grounds and the house as if they might, at any moment, be taken prisoner by these dark-skinned men.

The Dagestani spiritual leader had asked for this meeting several days ago, and Rehan knew why. The general thought it was childish, really. Rehan had been traveling the world in the past few months, meeting with insurgent groups and international terror outfits in Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Chechnya, and Yemen.

But he had bypassed Dagestan. Jamaat Shariat, the main Dagestani Islamist group, took a backseat to the Chechens in the eyes of Rehan and his men. More so now that Jamaat Shariat had lost the commander of their armed wing, Israpil Nabiyev. But even before Nabiyev had been captured by the Russians, Riaz Rehan had not bothered to include the Dagestanis in his meetings. The Chechens worked with the Dagestanis, so he had met only with the Chechens.

And now, Rehan assumed, the Dagestanis were mad. Offended at the slight. They had sent their spiritual leader here to explain that they were still viable and only Jamaat Shariat spoke for Dagestan, blah, blah, blah.

Rehan looked at the old man across the table. The Pakistani general was sure he was about to be lectured by this holy man from the mountains.

Everyone in the room spoke Arabic. Rehan greeted the contingent from Dagestan, asked after their needs, and inquired about their journey.

With the niceties out of the way, Rehan was anxious to finish his morning meeting. “How may I be of service to you today?”

Murshidov said, “I am told by my friends in Chechnya that you are a man of God.”

Rehan smiled. “I am a humble follower.”

“My people have been dealt a painful blow with the capture of Israpil Nabiyev.”

“I have seen this. I know he was a valiant commander of your troops.” In truth, Rehan did not think much of the Dagestanis. He knew the Chechens better, had more respect for their abilities as fighters. Still, this Nabiyev fellow had impressed the Chechens. They said he was supposedly a cut above the other Dagestani fighters who’d been, by Rehan’s way of thinking, little more than cannon fodder for the Russians.

Murshidov nodded, appreciative of the kind words. “He was my great hope for the future of my people. But without him, I believe now we must look outward for assistance.”

Oh, so there is a pitch to be made today. Rehan was pleased. If this old man needed something, then maybe he wouldn’t have to sit through a tongue-lashing. “I am at your service. How can I help you?”

“The Chechens say you will soon lead Pakistan.”

Rehan’s face remained impassive, but inside him his blood began to boil. He had sworn all the attendees at his meetings to secrecy. “That is premature. Right now, the situation is difficult for—”

But the old man kept talking, almost as if he were talking to himself and did not know Rehan was in the room with him. “You have told the Chechens you will gain control of nuclear weapons, and you have offered these weapons to the Chechens. They have refused you, because they are afraid that if they possessed the nuclear weapons they would become a nuclear target themselves.”

Rehan did not speak. The muscles in his face flexed under his trim beard. He glanced up at Khan and the other colonels in the room with him. He gave them a look that he knew would indicate to them that they would never work with those Chechen fools again if they could not keep a conversation like that to themselves.

Rehan almost stood and left the room. He was about to do just that, but Murshidov kept talking. The old man appeared to be nearly in a trance, unconcerned about the impropriety of the words that came from his mouth.

“I know that you wish to give the bombs to an organization outside of Pakistan. When you do this, when the world learns nuclear weapons have been stolen, then your weak civilian government will fall, and you will take power in a coup. My men, general, can take your bombs.”

Now Rehan forced a laugh. “I do not have any bombs. And if I did have them, I would not need your men. I respect you, old man. I respect your sacrifice and your submission to Allah, and the wisdom you have gained just by virtue of being old. But you come here to my home and say things like this?”

“We have a need for the bombs. And we are not afraid.”

Rehan stood now. Angry and tired of the old man from Russia. “What bombs? What bombs are you talking about? Yes, my country has nuclear weapons. This is common knowledge. They were designed and manufactured under the direction of A. Q. Khan, a Pakistani patriot and a good Muslim. But I am a general in the Army and a member of external intelligence. I cannot just back a truck up to a warehouse and ask the men there to load nuclear missiles into the bed of the truck. That is foolishness!”

Murshidov looked at Rehan through his cataract-clouded eyes. “Your plan has been explained to me in great detail. It is remarkable, and it can work. But you have failed in one respect. You made your offer to the wrong people. The others you invited into your scheme have refused you, and now you can do nothing. I am here to show you that Jamaat Shariat is the right path for you. We will help you, and you will help us.”

Rehan looked to Khan. Khan shrugged. What the hell.

General Rehan sat back down on the sofa. “You think you know things that are not true, old man. But you make me curious. What will you and your poor mountain men do with nuclear bombs?”

Murshidov’s glassy eyes seemed to clear suddenly. He smiled, exposing thin, brittle teeth. “I will tell you exactly what we will do with nuclear bombs.”

Ninety minutes later, Rehan rushed toward the helipad behind his house and leapt into his Eurocopter EC135. The aircraft’s rotors were already turning, their pitch increased as soon as the door was locked, and in seconds the helo lifted over the house, dipped a little as it headed out over the gulf, then banked toward the incredible skyline of Dubai.

Khan sat next to him in the back of the six-seat chopper. The colonel spoke into his headset, told his general that he had made the secure satellite connection with Islamabad, and Rehan need only speak into his microphone. “Listen to me, brother,” Rehan said, nearly frantic with excitement. “I am leaving now for Volgograd.” He listened. “Russia. Yes, Russia!”

The Eurocopter headed toward the skyscrapers of downtown Dubai. Just on the other side of these was Dubai International Airport. There, the crew of a Rockwell Sabr Rocopeliner jet was scrambling to prepare their aircraft for immediate flight.

“I will know by tomorrow, but I think we are in position to begin Operation Saker. Yes. Get everyone ready to move at a moment’s notice. I will come to Rawalpindi and brief the committee myself just as soon as I am finished.” He listened to the other man for a moment, and then said, “One more thing. Last month I met a contingent of four Chechens in Grozny. I want you to draw up a plan to eliminate these four men, quickly and quietly. One of them talks too much. I am glad he did it in this instance, but I cannot have him talking to others. I want them all out of the way to make certain that we plug this leak before all the water passes through the dam.”

Rehan nodded to his second-in-command, and Khan then disconnected the call.

“It is too much to wish for?” Rehan asked Khan.

“Allah is good, General.”

Brigadier General Riaz Rehan smiled, and he willed his helicopter to fly faster, because he had no time to waste.

If all the polls in America were correct, then Jack Ryan would be President of the United States again soon, and once Ryan was back in the White House, Operation Saker would not stand a chance.