Warlord

FIFTY-FOUR

MUHAMMAD IMRAN SPED AWAY from the hospital in the Red Crescent ambulance, leaving the staff and patients completely unaware of the ferocious drama that had just taken place deep belowground. He took the first entrance into the city's largest park. Inside the densely wooded area, in the predawn hours, there would be no vehicular traffic; and certainly no pedestrians out for a stroll.

Due to the seemingly endless power outages, most of the city was dark. Unless you lived in a section of the capital that housed some important minister, or retired generals, the chances were your street would have an interrupted electric supply at least twice a day. Imran believed the founder of Pakistan, the beloved Jinnah, was probably rolling in his grave over the current state of his country. Turmoil, to put it mildly. But Imran's employer, al-Rashad, would soon right all the wrongs, of that he had no doubt.

He drove the big white ambulance at very high speeds now, along the serpentine road leading to an ancient stone gate on the far side of the city. This arch was the entrance to Islamabad's "old town." It was all that remained of the original settlement of Saidpur.

The streets here were narrow and circuitous, with many dead ends, and the chances of being followed were minimal. The only thing he feared now were Pak Army or police helicopters with searchlights. But, so far, nothing in the sky, nor in the rearview mirror.

Muhammad Imran's knowledge that his ambulance now had, in addition to his powerful employer stuffed into a bag, one easily armed and detonated nuclear device two feet behind him was a bit worrisome. But he was sanguine. This night, or perhaps the next one, had always been his destiny. The Sheik had gathered him in, seduced the young ISI agent like the hypnotic imam he was, mesmerized him like so many countless thousands of Muslim jihadists.

Since the hospital's completion he and his constant companion, Ali, had practiced all of the Sheik's carefully planned and meticulously designed escape routes regularly. But this was the first time they'd executed the Islamabad hospital evac for real. All the plans were pretty much the same, although the level of menace had appreciated considerably, considering the fierce armed attack on what had previously been considered the ultimate secret bunker.

He doused his lights and took a hard right into a narrow, darkened, dead-end street. At the cul-de-sac stood a crumbling four-story warehouse, unoccupied for decades, with blacked-out windows. He couldn't see them, but he knew snipers were on the roof watching him and ready with rocket-propelled grenades affixed to the muzzles of their weapons should the Red Crescent ambulance ever be followed. An unseen electric eye caused a garage door in the warehouse to begin rising.

Imran drove inside the cavernous space and the three-inch-thick steel door closed swiftly behind him.

Fluorescent lights above automatically illuminated, revealing the Sheik's unique collection of antique and modern ambulances, plus a brand-new silver Rolls-Royce Phantom and a red Ferrari Italia. All of them, which were maintained by a staff of excellent mechanics, were always filled with petrol and ready to roll at a moment's notice.

Imran and Ali climbed out, went to the back of the vehicle, pulled open the rear door, and removed the gurney and its occupant. Ali unzipped the bag and a smiling al-Rashad sat upright and brought up a laugh from deep in his belly.

"Fooled the bastards, didn't we, my brothers? Americans. Or Brits. Or both. How in God's name do you suppose they found us?"

"Someone betrayed you, sir," Ali said, voicing his conviction.

Imran smiled. "Indeed we did fool them, however, sir. Which vehicle would you like to use for the continuation of the journey north to the mountains of Chitral?"

"The Battlewagon."

"We may well need her tonight, sire. A wise and inspired choice."

The Battlewagon, a nickname given the mechanical behemoth by the wily Englishman known only as Smith, when he made good use of her in Afghanistan some years ago, was a huge, heavily armored 1958 black Cadillac Landau hearse weighing nearly six thousand pounds. Its original V-8 engine had been replaced by a Mercedes-Benz 5.5-liter twin-turbocharged V-12 engine rated at 500 horsepower.

Powered by the same engine as the modern Maybach limousine, the hearse topped out at a shade less than 150 miles per hour and ran a 0-to-60 time of under twenty seconds. It was also equipped with all-wheel drive and the Range Rover air-suspension system for off-road driving.

It was heavily modified in other ways. Its armament included twin.50-cal machine guns invisibly mounted behind the dummy plastic chrome front grille, two gun ports for shooters on both left and right sides, and a wide rear door that dropped down from the roof to form a rock-stable battle platform.

On that platform, a swivel-mounted Dillon M134 Gatling gun could easily be mounted.

This state-of-the-art, lightweight, revolving six-barreled machine gun fired at a rate of three thousand rounds a minute. It could change the nature of any firefight in a heartbeat. It was this very weapon, the Sheik liked to tell close friends, that was turret mounted inside a special U.S. Secret Service Chevrolet Suburban. "You know, the one always trailing behind the American president's limousine like an intern in heat," he said.

The ambulance-mounted Gatling gun was the Sheik's favorite range weapon, and he longed desperately to use it on a real foe. Perhaps tonight his wishes would come true, he thought, dozing off as the miles reeled away, lulled to sleep by the hum of the big tires.

Imran kept his speed low and the hearse's lights doused for the initial hour of the journey. Reaching the main road north without being stopped at a single checkpoint, he snapped the headlights on and sped up. Fast, but not fast enough to attract unwanted attention. In front of him lay a long hard way over very bad roads, climbing thousands of feet from Islamabad toward the Sheik's impregnable mountain stronghold near Chitral in the mountains of northern Pakistan.

His secret mountaintop redoubt, called Wazizabad, had existed for centuries; honeycombed with miles of tunnels and cavernous caches of weapons and outfitted with twenty-first-century communications technology. All within a few days' ride of what had once been the scene of one of the most devastating defeats in the history of British Army warfare.

In 1838, an army of twenty-one thousand British and Indian troops had set out from the Punjab to take control of regions in Afghanistan. Four years later, in full retreat, the remaining British 16th Lancers force of sixteen thousand was caught on open, frozen ground and the treacherous gorges and passes along the Kabul River. In that single massacre, the British Army was reduced to forty men. Harassed by Ghilzai warriors, only one Briton survived. They let him live for one reason: he was sent back to tell the tale of what happens when foreign armies invade Afghanistan.

Occupying the top of one of the tallest peaks in all Pakistan, the exact location of the Sheik's fortified position known as Wazizabad still remained unknown despite countless attempts by the Sheik's countless enemies to find it.

Meanwhile, the great one rested, secure inside his dead man's bag, with some foodstuffs and a large bottle of water with a long tube to keep him hydrated as they climbed into the higher altitudes. He made not a sound from the rear of the hearse and Imran concluded he'd imbibed one of his special potions and fallen fast asleep, as was his wont on long journeys. Who could blame him? The fact that he was sleeping in extremely close proximity to a weapon of mass destruction would never even occur to him, much less keep him awake.

An hour later, they were well enough away from civilization to stop worrying about police roadblocks. All the driver Imran feared now was the appearance of American drones, gunships, and helicopters out looking for an unusual vehicle speeding northeast into the mountains bordering Afghanistan. If the Battlewagon happened to catch the attention of a Predator drone on the prowl, or a C130 Spectre circling at twenty thousand feet, the three men's lives would end in a spectacular fireball.

Five minutes later he crested a steep hill at high speed. Waiting at the bottom of the hill he saw a brightly lit Pak Army barricade across the road. There had to be fifty heavily armed soldiers surrounding the concrete barrier, their searchlights already trained on him, army M-113 armored vehicles with heavy machine-gun turrets already swiveling in their direction.

Imran thumbed his microphone and informed Sheik al-Rashad to prepare himself for an army stop and possible search. He slowed the vehicle, giving Ali time to scramble into the open space behind the front seat and be ready at the gun ports with his semiautomatic assault rifle. Under a blanket on the seat beside him, Imran had the most lethal battlefield weapon in the world today: an AA-12 automatic shotgun capable of rapid-fire 12-gauge shotgun shells or fragmentation grenades. It gave him a good feeling in close combat situations.

Imran slowed the Battlewagon to a crawl as he approached within a hundred yards of the barrier. Then he rolled to a stop, invoking the old warrior's rule "let them come to you." Twenty soldiers, assault rifles at the ready, approached the ambulance.

"Here they come. Fifty yards and closing," he said over the vehicle's intercom system. "Ready?"

"Ready," he heard the two men in the rear say, almost in unison.

"They're splitting up, ten to a side. Surrounding the vehicle. One soldier approaching me on the left, driver's-side window. Ali, cover my left, I've got the right side."

"Got it."

Imran smiled as he lowered his window. "Yes, sir, Sergeant," Imran said. "How can I help you?" The man had his weapon leveled directly at Imran's face. He had a powerful SureFire light attached to the lower rail of his weapon, using it to peer inside the front seat.

"Lower the other window," the sergeant said.

"Of course, sir," Imran replied and did.

"How many in the vehicle?"

"Just me sir. And a corpse in the rear."

"Destination?"

"Takim City," Imran said, naming the village of his birth. "The funeral is at sunrise."

Two soldiers were now at the passenger-side window, peering into the hearse with their weapons at the ready.

"We are going to search this vehicle. Keep your hands where I can see them and get out. Now."

"All right. Don't shoot. I'm getting out."

Hearing those words, Ali opened fire through the gun port, first taking out the sergeant standing outside Imran's window. Imran simultaneously raised the automatic shotgun and fired a long burst out the far window. The three or four soldiers outside simply disintegrated. He then floored the accelerator, using the trigger on the steering wheel to fire the twin.50-cal machine guns mounted behind the grille at soldiers blocking his way.

The soldiers returned fire, but the stunning surprise of an armed hearse caught many off guard and they died in a hail of bullets. Imran took a hard right turn and veered off the road, still accelerating in the sand as he headed straight for the barrier's end. Two armored vehicles opened up, but the rounds were no match for the Battlewagon's heavy armor and bulletproof glass. He did an end run around the barrier and, still firing the twin fifties, plowed through the mass of soldiers between him and the paved road. Ali, still at the gun port, was mowing down anyone in sight.

Throwing up a great wake of sand, the Battlewagon roared back onto the road north.

Six teams of two soldiers, mounted on powerful motorcycles with sidecars, were waiting for them on both sides of the road. As Imran desperately accelerated away, they tucked in behind him. Their powerful Kawasaki military motorcycles were more than fast enough to gain on the much heavier vehicle.

Soldiers in the armored sidecars began firing heavy machine guns at the escaping hearse, hundreds of rounds thudding off the armored rear door.

"They'll go for the tires next!" Imran shouted. "I'm lowering the platform, sire! Are you in position?"

"Go, go, go," al-Rashad screamed, and Imran knew that he was more than ready.

The platform lowered hydraulically, giving the Sheik time to get his hands on the weapon grips and triggers and slide forward onto the seat that swiveled with the gun itself. As soon as he felt the platform lock into place, he opened fire with the Gatling gun. The rotating barrels spat long, continuous jets of what looked like liquid fire. Since it was still dark, he could see exactly where he was shooting. He was methodical, first training his hail of lead on the motorcycle to his left. The thing was literally blasted off the road, exploding as it careened into the desert. Seeing the effect of this phenomenal weapon, the five other terrified riders began to brake and swerve.

The outcome for the five remaining motorcycles was immediate and devastating. Three more flaming machines went pinwheeling off into the desert on either side of the road, exploding into massive balls of fire that climbed fifty feet into the nighttime sky when their fuel tanks exploded.

"Our enemies are no more," al-Rashad announced proudly as he climbed out of the seat.

Imran raised the battle platform to its closed position and pushed the Battlewagon to its limits as he climbed the narrow rutted highway into the cold dark mountains. Now that they'd been identified, it was only a matter of time before the Predator drones and Cobra helicopter gunships would appear on the horizon along with the rising sun. Their own weapons useless against such enemies, Muhammad Imran knew it had now come down to a race against time. It was a race he had to win, and he flogged the Battlewagon like a demon out of hell up the twisting and deeply rutted road.

Forty minutes later, the somewhat battered Battlewagon, having encountered no aerial adversaries, rolled into a hidden cavern built into the side of a mountain by the Sheik himself over thirty years ago.

Waiting inside was a small army of veteran Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, and many fine Arabian horses. The Sheik, protected by his men, would complete the journey to the secret stronghold on horseback, his precious cargo loaded onto the backs of the most primitive pack mules.

His cargo consisted of a small aluminum case measuring two feet by one and a half feet containing fissile material. The case weighed exactly 320 pounds. Inside this miniaturized nuclear device were a six-inch detonator and three coffee-can-sized aluminum canisters. Inside each canister was a single critical mass of plutonium (or U-235) at maximum density under normal conditions. To detonate, it was simply a matter of connecting all three and placing the device on a timer.

Or using a remote radio-controlled device.

The resulting explosion of this small case now strapped on a pack mule would be sufficient to take out the West End of London. Humans in the immediate vicinity would likely die from the force of the conventional explosion itself. Survivors of the blast would die of radiation poisoning in the weeks afterward. Those farther away might suffer radiation sickness in the days and weeks after, and some of them might recover.

Al-Rashad smiled at the irony of it all, watching the incredibly sophisticated nuclear device being unloaded from the aluminum coffin and transferred to the waiting mules. Donning his ancient desert garb, a woolen tunic over baggy trousers, he marveled at how absurd warfare had become in the new century. Weapons worth millions still had to traverse the rugged mountains on the backs of mules. And corpses in body bags mysteriously came to life and made more corpses.

He shrugged into his heavy bearskin coat, a gift from a long-deceased Soviet colonel, and swung up into the saddle. He bade farewell to Muhammad Imran and Ali who were climbing into the back of a white Toyota Hilux truck for the long ride back to Islamabad.

An hour later he was riding at the vanguard of his column of heavily bearded fighters, welcoming the warming sun to another day in this earthly paradise. He was at his best when returning home to his mountains, and he sat tall in the saddle, a broad smile on his deeply war-weathered face.

Wazizabad.

It was his home, his fabled fortress, his castle. And before the sun set this day on the faces of these much loved mountains, turned them pink in the dying light, he would return once more to the unassailable sanctuary that had defined his real world for as long as he could remember.