Warlord

FORTY-FIVE

THE RED CRESCENT SOCIETY AMBULANCE rolled up Islamabad's Peshawar Road, nearing Golra Mor and the newly opened hospital. It was just after midnight. Any time after ten o'clock, the well-ordered, tree-lined streets of Islamabad were empty, save the occasional white cab or two. It was not a town for night owls. The only restaurant open at this hour was a highly controversial Pizza Hut that had opened in a nearby shopping mall.

Up front, the ambulance driver, Imran, and his paramedic first aider, Ali, were smoking cigarettes and talking, what else, politics. In the darkened rear of the vehicle, the occupant inside the heavy-duty dark green body bag wasn't talking at all.

Imran took a right into the wide entranceway of the new Quaid-e-Azam International Hospital. The ultramodern four-hundred-bed facility had only opened recently after endless construction delays, political infighting, and infrastructure difficulties. Something having to do with an underground parking garage was the street gossip. The wait had been worth it, though, most people thought. The radical, blue-mirrored architecture resembled something one might find in downtown Dubai rather than the capital of Pakistan.

A gift from a national hero. A fierce warlord named Sheik al-Rashad.

The ambulance stopped under the covered entrance to the Emergency Room. The two men inside got out in a hurry. They'd been held up at a security checkpoint for more than two hours and both were eager to get home. The driver said hello to the armed security guard as he swung open the rear doors.

The guard, Muhammad, was an old friend to ISI operative Imran, another ISI agent who'd been disgraced and lost his job. This is where the poor bastard had ended up. Driving an ambulance was shitty enough. The graveyard shift at a hospital was the bottom of the barrel. The paramedic helped the driver slide the body onto the bright yellow collapsible gurney.

"Late night, Imran," the guard said in English. "Looks like cold storage for that one."

The paramedic shook his head and whispered to the driver in Urdu, "Now there's a blinding glimpse of the obvious. No wonder they threw this idiot out of the secret service."

Imran said, "How do you know the secret service threw him out? How do you know he's still not working for them? How do you know they are not working for him? Once ISI, always ISI."

"I heard he got kicked out on his ass."

"Did you now? Do not believe everything you hear, brother. You will live longer."

The large-paned glass ER doors hissed open and the EMS team wheeled the gurney quickly past Registration, past the rows of elevator banks. And, finally, through a set of stainless-steel double doors above which hung a sign that read mortuary/restricted.

The morgue. The smell of death and decay. The myriad, nameless chemicals of the constantly processed dead. They passed through the dead-empty morgue and, as expected, no autopsies were being performed because of the late hour.

At the far end of the facility, beyond the morgue refrigerators, the grossing station, the histology supplies, and the necropsy equipment, there was a nearly invisible black glass panel in the wall. A card reader was next to the panel.

Imran swiped his card and the stainless-steel doors slid wide open. Once the gurney was inside, he swiped his card again, this time on an electronic reader that was the sole way to initiate descent.

The big Otis dropped smoothly at least three or four floors underground. Maybe more. The thing was so fast, so quiet, and so smooth, you really couldn't tell how far down you were going. Felt like a journey to the center of the earth.

They came to a soft landing. "Lands like a butterfly with sore feet, this elevator," the paramedic said. The driver placed the flat of his hand against the center of the door, a scanner read his palm print, and the glass panel slid silently into the floor, rising again after they'd passed through.

The doors opened with a soft electronic ping and they pushed the gurney out into the dimly lit space beyond. It was some kind of reception area, empty now except for one man sitting in the shadows.

"This all right?" the paramedic asked. The man was sitting at a desk with his feet propped up, smoking a cigarette. They'd parked the gurney about ten feet from a modern desk that looked like it had been carved out of a block of steel. The only light in the room was a desk lamp, and the man's face was not visible in the small pool of smoky white light it cast.

"Perfect."

"Will that be it for tonight, sir?"

"You realize I've been sitting here for two hours."

"Sorry, sir. Security checkpoint on the Rawalpindi Circle. Traffic was backed up for five miles."

"Sure it was. Good-night. Thank you."

They left without a word.

The man at the desk stared at the body bag in silence for a few seconds, puffing absently on his cigarette as if he had all the time in the world. He bent down and opened a drawer. Grabbing a liter of Johnnie Walker Blue by the neck, he unscrewed the cap and set it, and a Baccarat crystal tumbler, on the desktop. As he closed the drawer he caught a fluorescent glint of blued steel. The.45 automatic he always brought, no matter how cozy the circumstances.

He heard the sound of a zipper and swung his head around to regard the new arrival.

Looking at the body bag, he saw the wide nylon zipper sliding from the head down past where the waist would be, to just below the knees.

The corpse sat up and stared at him.

The man at the desk returned the stare, smiled, and said, "You look like you just came back from the dead."

"Two fucking hours," the corpse said in English. "I told that idiot Malik to route the driver on the back roads."

"You knew about the checkpoint?"

"It was my fucking checkpoint! Of course I knew about it."

"Scotch?"

"What is it?"

"Johnnie Blue."

"How much did you bring me?"

"They don't make trucks that big."

Abu al-Rashad, the lower half of his body still zipped into the body bag, was the most powerful man in Pakistan. He looked it, even in this ridiculous pose. Every inch the warrior, all six feet of him, his skin leathered and darkened by decades in the saddle and sun, his thick hair still jet black at forty, his white smile startling in the creases of his ruggedly handsome face. He was the kind of man who could take the skin off your hand with a simple handshake.

He threw back his head and laughed. "It is good to see you bearing gifts, my brother. A sign you are up to something big. Are you?"

"Let's go into your office and have a drink, shall we. I will tell you my plans."

"And then I will give you a tour of my new bunker. I have two other floors besides this one. Communications, battlefield command center, my bedroom suite with a suitably shy French maid, and a first-rate kitchen with a chef also from Paris. Even a movie theater."

"Built beneath a hospital so the Americans won't bomb you to paradise." Smith smiled. "Nor the Israelis."

"A little trick I learned from Hamas."

"Amazing. The Israelis knew the Hamas HQ was under the hospital in Gaza City and yet they didn't bomb it. I would have."

"You and me both, brother. Boom-boom."

"Well. You certainly seem to have your life exactly the way you want it for now."

"I do. Except for the fact that there's a fifty-million-dollar price tag on my head and I have to travel about my own country in a fucking rubber body bag."

SHEIK AL-RASHAD LOOKED AT SMITH, the Arab's large black eyes gleaming in the lighting hidden in the ceiling crown moldings. His office, deep inside a bunker beneath a civilian hospital, was paneled in ebony. His desk was of intricately carved ivory, depicting the life of the Prophet. He leaned back in his deep black leather desk chair, placing his hands behind his head. Having just heard what Smith intended to do, al-Rashad now said, "You, my beloved brother, are fucking insane."

Smith said, "That quaint premise was clearly established years ago, old friend. My only question to you is, are you or are you not willing to aid me on this latest, admittedly insane, but nonetheless potentially devastating operation of mine?"

"There was one question I have," the Sheik said and he wagged his head in the familiar Afghan way. Smith smiled at the ritualistic game they were playing.

Ah, the enigmatic smile of the wizened yet wise warlord. Could mean yes. Could mean your head. Could mean nothing at all. He gave the old devil a wry smile in return and they were both content to sit in silence for a time sipping their scotch. The bottle on the Sheik's magnificent carved desk was already half empty.

"Your question?"

"This idea of yours is fraught with risk. You could easily be killed or captured by the British. A catastrophe that would put all of our plans in jeopardy. Especially if you were captured and tortured."

"Yes."

"So. One wonders. Why do you yourself need to be personally involved at all? Surely the team can handle this without you."

"Perhaps, perhaps not. But I must be there. I'd pull the trigger if I had the skill. You will understand when I tell you this target holds great symbolic interest for me. This is no ordinary operation. It is intensely personal."

"I understand now. I agree. You must go. And if things should go wrong, you will take yourself out of the picture, of course."

"Of course. Cyanide is my constant companion."

The Sheik turned his eyes toward the ceiling, tapping the tips of his fingers together, clearly mulling this over. He thought like a chess player. It was the reason for his ascension to power in the void created by the absence of Osama bin Laden. He was always at least four moves ahead.

"It would be good public relations, naturally," Sheik al-Rashad admitted. "An explosive international media strike right to the heart of the enemy."

"Well put. And wholly accurate."

"It is not surprising that it is you who has conceived this assassination. You are always following your natural inclinations."

"Naturally. It is my sole destiny and what I live for. But I tell you. Not a bomb on this earth could rival the devastating effect this will have on our enemies."

"Not even the precious nuclear arsenal we will soon control at Islamabad?"

"All of those weapons will be in the hands of the Sword of Allah before we are done, brother. Only a matter of time."

"An extremely powerful nuclear device seems to have gone missing at the Islamabad nuclear weapons facility."

For the first time, Smith's face showed excitement.

"Good, excellent. Without a problem I hope?"

"The security guards at the airport storage facility were put in place by my ISI friends years ago. All of the guards' families are held at one of my bases in the mountains, under constant threat of death. No one will ever know how we are removing the weapons."

"We are so close now, brother, so very close," Smith said.

"How old is the boy now, by the way?" Al-Rashad asked, sipping from his glass.

"In his twenties."

"Old enough to fight, old enough to die."

"Yes. Old enough."

"I know very well why we, the glorious forces under my command, would glory in this particular invader's death. What I still cannot understand is why you, of all the people on this planet, would want to kill him. There is a good English word for it. What is it? Like a souk, sounds like, perhaps?"

"Bizarre?"

"Ah, yes. Bizarre."

"As I said, I have my private reasons. Deeply personal reasons. To me, they are not the least bit bizarre. It is my life's work. Leave it at that."

"Your precious reasons. All very mysterious. And always your gold to pay for them. It is, I assume, already in my vault at the bank in Basel?"

"Of course. It was in Switzerland a week ago. I'm surprised you received no confirmation."

"I have been out under the stars these last weeks. There are no confirmations there, only the almighty presence of Allah."

"I confirm that one million British pounds in gold bullion now sits quietly in your vault at La Roche and Co. in Basel."

"Your gold, your gold. Old friend, I must tell you something about gold. It is not so effective an inducement now, you know. Over the years, you and all the others-the Americans, Russians, the Chinese-all of you have made me rich beyond imagining. Perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps in hindsight, you should have kept the tiger hungry."

"Our business tonight is not about gold, brother."

"No. Of course not. Tonight is about…how do you put it in English…your vendetta."

"Are we not fortunate that, on so many occasions over the years, my personal reasons and yours have been in such perfect alignment?"

They both laughed deeply, remembering that they had long shared a certain sense of irony, a thread of humor that bound them, a connective tissue not common between their two cultures. It was one reason Smith was still alive after all these years. The all-powerful Sheik al-Rashad thought he was funny.

"Tell me more. Where is the boy now?"

"Afghanistan. Based in a U.K. forward operating base in Helmand. Serving as a spotter with the Blues and Royals regiment."

"And how do you know this?"

"It is my business to know everything."

"Impossible. My men, both my military and my intelligence operations, would have known of his arrival in the war zone."

"A very closely guarded secret, to be sure. All prearranged with the U.K. print and broadcast media who have entered into an understanding not to provide coverage. But he is here, serving on the front lines, that I assure you."

"Not Iraq? That's what the world was told by the Western media."

"No. At the last minute Iraq was deemed too dangerous. The British Army decided against it. But he was determined to fight. So. He has secretly been deployed to Afghanistan on condition that his whereabouts remain unknown."

"But you know," Al-Rashad said, smiling.

"I do. Known to be in Iraq, he would obviously have become a Taliban target. As the boy himself said, 'I would never want to put someone else's life in danger when they find themselves sitting in a foxhole next to the Bullet Magnet.'"

"The Bullet Magnet?" Sheik al-Rashad laughed. "Delicious! And this delusional Bullet Magnet thinks he is anonymous in Afghanistan?"

"No one knows the Magnet is here. Except, of course, for me. And now, you. With your help, I shall kill him. To maximum political effect, I can assure you."

"You are the strangest of men, my dear Mr. Smith. You know that, do you not?"

"I am not only stranger than you do conceive, brother, I am stranger than you can conceive."

"Tell me what you need, my friend," the Sheik said, "and it is yours."

"Primarily, I will need the sniper Khalid. Where is he now?"

"At my main training base in the Hindu Kush mountains."

"You once told me Khalid was the best Taliban sniper in existence."

"None deadlier, believe me."

"And he has the new weapon I sent months ago?"

"He has not let it out of his sight."

From Kandahar, Smith had arranged for the infamous sniper Khalid Hassan to be sent the very latest British sniper rifle, the L115A3, known by the British as simply the "long range rifle." Now in service with all U.K. combat units in Afghanistan, it was capable of killing with pinpoint accuracy at unheard-of ranges up to one mile. The new telescopic sight had twice the magnifying power of the older model. It could even cut through the heat haze off the desert floor.

"I am glad he received it."

"Received it? I think it receives him! I'm beginning to think he loves that damn gun. The two are never separated, keeps it in his bed when he sleeps. Between you and me, I suspect he fires it all day and fucks it all night."

Smith laughed. "He is having success with it, then?"

"Oh, yes. What a weapon! I tell you, it is devastating to enemy morale when a number of their fighters are suddenly shot in almost the same instant, and they cannot even see where the firing is coming from. They tend to withdraw most rapidly behind their lines. We will need more of these guns for the coming time, many more."

"I shall see that you get them."

"And what exactly will you require from me?"

"I will need provisions delivered to me at your camp in the south of Afghanistan, in Helmand Province near the town of Sangin. Food, water, weapons, and ammunition for a week. Horses and mules. A Furaya satellite phone and an automobile battery in my saddlebag to power it. My target has been under surveillance. He is on patrol most every day. He operates out of a small British forward operating base on the outskirts of Sangin. If all goes well, I anticipate a five-to seven-day mission at most. Weather will be a factor. High winds will delay us. But I am optimistic we shall succeed."

"Inshallah."

"Inshallah."

"Your request is granted. I will speak with General Machmud. Everything will be in readiness when you arrive at my small base camp. I look forward to your triumphant success, my friend and brother in arms. And the death of this…this infidel princeling…this Bullet Magnet, as he calls himself. Let Khalid Hassan's message of lead find the dead center of his heart."