An Act of Treason Read online

  “He will not accept that amount.”

  “Let him set a price, then. The main thing is to keep the Americans safe until they can be put to a maximum use. Spilling their blood in Gilgot would be a useless gesture to satisfy the pride of a headstrong youngster. Be quick about this.”

  The Wise One was correct. The offer was made and rejected, but instead of a counteroffer, there came a polite invitation to the esteemed Muhammed Waleed to attend the celebration in two days’ time and personally meet the warrior nephew, Fariq. Not accepting the deal was a veiled insult to the authority of the Leader.

  “Inshallah,” said Waleed. God’s will. He had everyone leave the room because he wanted some time alone to pray to Allah for guidance-and to make a private call to a very old comrade.

  * * *

  J AKE H ENDERSON WAS A good-looking kid from Petersburg, Virginia, who had been considered a hound dog in high school for the way he had always sniffed after the girls. He liked women, and women liked him. Being in the Army had not changed the broad smile on his chiseled face. The touch of a woman, just the idea of the touch of a woman, usually propelled Jake into high gear. For the only time in his life, two women were pawing his skin, laughing, and he was scared to death.

  “What are they doin’, Javon? Why they bathin’ me and not you?”

  Sergeant Anthony shook his head. “Guess you stink more,” he said, feeling that something awful was in store.

  Both men had been regularly beaten by guards for the past two days, more out of sheer brutality than to elicit information, and had expected another dose of fists and feet when the door had opened and two women carried in buckets of water and folds of cloth. Two guards accompanied them and hauled Jake to his feet, then sliced away the twisted tape that bound him and stood back to let the women work. All had dour smiles as they pushed him to stand in the middle of a square of oilskin. Then one woman used a pair of scissors to cut away the soiled uniform and his filthy underwear. Their boots had been taken the first day, and now Henderson’s stinking socks were removed. All of the discarded clothes were thrown into a corner, leaving Jake stark naked.

  The women soaped and bathed him, scrubbing away the caked-on dirt with a bar of soap that smelled of flowers. A bucket of water doused his head, and the scissors came back to trim his hair and beard. Henderson stood as still as possible, but the chill of the water made him start to shiver. As the younger of the women shampooed his hair, the older one carefully cleaned the dirt from beneath his nails. As she bent to do his toes, her eyes roamed to his penis, which was shriveled almost to invisibility, as if it were trying to hide. She said something in her language, and the guards laughed; then the younger woman used soap and water in and around his crotch, allowing her fingers to rest longer than necessary on the penis. Instead of sexual attraction, Jake’s only feeling was one of horror. He whimpered, and the older woman made soothing tut-tut sounds and told the younger one to stop playing with the prisoner. Big towels were used to thoroughly dry him, and a sweet-smelling oil was massaged deep into the aching muscles.

  Javon Anthony finally began to understand. The morning had been filled with noise outside their hut, even music and laughter lifted from the town square at the foot of the hill. When the door opened, he caught glimpses of the square, where colorful thin banners waved atop tall poles. As the hours had passed, he watched the crowd grow in the town square, and traveling merchants selling items at stalls. The guards were cheerful.

  The younger woman needed several trips to gather the discarded clothes and cleansing items, and Jake Henderson was given a pair of new white jockey shorts before a guard clamped on handcuffs. This time, they put him in a chair, as if trying to keep him clean, and secured him tightly.

  At a small bench beside the door, the older woman unwrapped a dark roll of cloth and exposed three long knives of varying sizes. One was a broad butcher-style blade, while the second was a long serrated knife that ended in a perfect point, for use in cutting joints. The third was slender and slightly curved with a tiny hook on the end, which was used for detail work in skinning animals. “They’re going to cut off my dick and balls!” Henderson screamed to Javon and started urgently thrashing in the chair.

  The woman picked up the biggest blade and moved to Jake’s right side, putting her palm against the simple red tattoo on his bicep, the word “Jen,” short for Jennifer, his fiancée. At a nod, both guards seized him, and she placed the shining sharp edge against his flesh and rocked it gently, top and bottom, then side and side, cutting a rectangle around the tattoo. The slices barely broke the skin and caused little pain and only a thin trace of blood. The younger woman stepped forward and pressed a small cloth on the wound to dry it while the elder returned to the bench and exchanged blades. She held up the little knife with the hook and examined it in the sunlight that streamed through the window before returning to work. With the guards struggling to hold the victim steady, she hooked a corner of the opened skin and peeled it toward her, slid the blade beneath the tiny flap, and pressed the ribbon of flesh against the steel with her thumb. With a slow pull, she ripped the rectangle away from the fatty membrane beneath while Jake Henderson screamed in agony and genuine terror. His eyes were huge. “Javon! They’re going to skin me alive!”

  The woman held up the piece of skin like a prize and dangled the tattoo before Jake’s eyes. Satisfied with her work, she said something, and the younger woman rushed forward again and applied ointment and a thick bandage. Remarkably little blood oozed from the wound. The older woman had returned to the bench and slowly wiped, polished, and sharpened her knives before rolling them up and tying a knot in the small leather strap that held the bundle together.

  Outside, Javon Anthony could hear the merriment increasing as he prayed for his friend, who remained tied to the chair, mumbling incoherently, sounding like he was going mad with fear.

  The door opened, and six of the terrorists who had taken them prisoner came inside, laughing with a fat man with a thick gray beard. The old man approached Jake Henderson and bent forward, hands on knees. He spoke with a thick accent. “Hallo, American. I am Mustafa Khan, the leader of defense forces in this area. In a few minutes, we will be called to the town square. I shall walk down the path beside my nephew, the courageous Fariq, who led this especially trained team of strong fighters in Afghanistan. People have come from all around to pay them honor today for their deeds on the battlefield. Then we will bring you to the square, and Fariq will personally give you over to the women as a symbol of his victory. It will be quite a sight. Afterward, we shall have a feast.”

  “Fight them, Jake! Fight back!” Anthony screamed, somehow lurching up from the floor, only to be knocked back down again by the guards. “Fight the bastards! You goat-fuckers are all dead men! Hurt him like that again and the United States will destroy this fucking dirty village, and I’ll see you in hell!”

  Mustafa Kahn walked over and slapped his cheek hard. “Your time will come, black man. Just not today. Be patient.”

  * * *

  T HE PREVIOUS DAY, THE United States had unexpectedly received information on the captives from a very reliable source, and early that morning an unmanned Predator robot plane had been launched to carry out a reprisal raid. The aircraft coasted without detection into a circular pattern nine thousand feet above the village of Gilgot, too high to be heard, and its controllers back at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan scanned the target zone with an infrared camera. Clear shots of the cluster of buildings came onto the command screen in real time and confirmed the nugget of information, that an American was to be sacrificed during a celebration honoring the terrorists who had kidnapped two soldiers and slain a third. The camera also provided a close-up picture of the small building where the prisoners reportedly were being held.

  With that confirmation, the order was given without a second thought. Two Hellfire air-to-ground missiles slid off the rails beneath the drone. Pushed by solid-propellant rocket motors, they tore away on flights
of their own, homing in along the invisible path of a reflected laser beam.

  The Hellfires appeared seemingly from nowhere in the clear sky and crashed into the center of the village, and the twin impacts of their twenty-pound blast-augmented warheads exploded almost simultaneously with terrifying thunder. The hut on the hill saved the lives of those inside, but the small building seemed to leap on its foundation when it was socked by a gigantic concussion wave, then a shower of debris. Mustafa Kahn struggled to the door in time to see a huge and pulsing orange-red fireball consuming his village.

  Behind him came the maniacal laugh of Sergeant Javon Anthony, who was rolling from side to side. “Told ya, motherfucker! Tried to warn your stupid ass. There goes your fucking party. Big storm headed over the mountains, straight for this shithole, and you and your pissant nephew gonna die hard!” The laughing continued until the guards beat him unconscious.

  * * *

  W ARLORD M USTAFA K AHN WOULD never learn how his village had been discovered as the hiding place of the prisoners. He staggered among the bodies, hearing the cries of the injured and seeing the devastation spreading from the big crater on the northern edge of the square. He had failed to protect his people, the worst thing that could happen to a tribal leader. He did not want a follow-up missile strike, which would either kill him outright or ignite a rebellion that eventually would have children kicking his severed head around like a ball. Even while Kahn spoke the usual promise that Allah would take the ultimate revenge on the Americans, he was regarding his nephew and his friends as objects worthy only of his scorn, filthy things that had brought doom to Gilgot. The six young fighters were transformed into a commodity. Mustafa Kahn believed he had sacrificed enough to show them honor and protect his own dignity. Now they had to go.

  He reestablished contact with the esteemed Taliban chieftain Muhammed Waleed to say that he would welcome a price of twenty-five thousand dollars for each American soldier in his possession, and that he would throw in the half-dozen brave heroes who had captured them as a bonus. The deal was accepted, and three highly polished SUVs arrived that night to whisk away all of the men, who had been traded like a herd of camels. The young fighters were glad to leave Gilgot with their own skins intact.

  Mustafa Kahn finally could relax, count the money, and consider the overall episode to have been a profitable venture. He had long been eyeing a beautiful falcon whose owner and trainer was asking about twenty-five thousand dollars for the graceful bird. Now he could buy the falcon, share about ten thousand dollars among the villagers who lost family members in the missile attack, and still have another fifteen thousand left over. He also had curried favor with the powerful Muhammed Waleed, the leader of the Taliban.

  4

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  CIA D IRECTOR B ARTLETT G ENEEN and his luncheon guest remained politely silent while Filipino servants in white tunics and creased black trousers set a table in his office with regular china instead of the elite tableware used to impress politicians. When the stewards left, the two men nibbled quietly on vegetable salads and small servings of jumbo shrimp sautéed in a light mustard sauce. They had known each other for a long time and would tend to business in its turn.

  Geneen was a carryover from the previous administration of President Mark Tracy and had been reappointed by the new president, Graham Russell. The director had spent his entire professional life remaining studiously nonpolitical in the intelligence world. From his point of view, it did not matter who was sitting in the White House, for he served the office, not the man. Geneen gave unvarnished advice, heavy on facts, and stayed out of the line of political fire. He had other people do that kind of thing. One of them was sitting across the table.

  The long battle with America’s changing foes over the years had drawn deep lines of worry in Geneen’s sharp, emaciated face, and his white hair was almost entirely gone. Age made no difference in his determination to keep the nation as safe as possible.

  His guest at this 12:30 P.M. lunch was another CIA veteran, James Monroe Hall, a special assistant to the deputy director of operations. Hall was calm and sipped some iced tea, waiting for Geneen to speak.

  “Jim, this beheading thing and the capture of our two soldiers poses a problem for us,” the director said.

  “Tough call for the new president,” Hall agreed in a neutral tone.

  “President Graham cannot let this atrocity go unpunished,” Geneen repeated. “To do so would make him appear soft on terrorism. He is furious about the incident.”

  Hall shrugged his shoulders and spread butter on a tiny triangle of toast. “With all due respect, the bottom line is that all ten men in that squad were volunteers, and this Wilson boy is only the latest single casualty in a dirty war that has cost thousands of American lives. He died doing his job. They screwed up by parking in exactly the same place every night. Now the squad leader and another soldier are gone. A terrible development.” He paused, dabbed his lips, and drank a little water.

  “I see fault here with everybody in the command structure who allowed that practice of keeping in the same position night after night, at least all the way up to the battalion level. They made it too easy for an ambush, bypassing established defensive protocol. It was a snafu, but shit happens in war.” He had laid out facts and not ventured any suggestion.

  The CIA director picked up the remote control for a large flat-screen television that was set into the wall of his office. He clicked a couple of times with no result. “I hate these things,” he said, continuing to punch buttons. The machine finally flickered to life, and with another click the terrible pictures of Eddie Wilson being murdered came onto the screen. “Jim, the public relations fallout from this gruesome torture has been extraordinary-an evil and macabre execution that has gone all over the Internet and has received millions of hits. The Muslim crazies are crowing about death to all Americans, and our own crazies here at home are demanding that the president nuke somebody.”

  “Turn it off. I’ve already seen it about a hundred times, and it still disturbs me,” said Hall. “Gruesome, yes; tragic, yes; but the soldier’s death really changes nothing. The kidnappers, however, are slick. Our best guess is that they were not killed by that Predator strike in Pakistan. We were too hot for revenge, pumping in those Hellfires without really having eyes on the exact target. The Pakis up in that village there claim we wiped out a wedding party, and they paraded the usual corpses of some dead kids. I call bullshit on that, but the strike unquestionably made this bad situation even worse. Now the Pakistani government, with more than enough problems at present, has to pretend to be outraged with America.”

  Geneen speared a prawn with a toothpick. “Which is why I asked you by for lunch today, Jim. I need some alternatives.”

  “I have no crystal ball, Director. Our sources say that our kidnapped soldiers were in the village at the time the Predator came in, but they have now been moved, as have the kidnappers. We do not know where.”

  The CIA leader watched Jim Hall carefully, almost able to see the wheels turning behind those brilliant blue eyes. “Options?”

  “Several, I should think,” said Hall. “Another highly visible hit with a Predator or a cruise missile could send the message that this thing isn’t over, no matter how much the Pakis complain, but it would create a further mess. Big explosions always do. Or we could pay someone a bunch of money to have these bad dudes killed for us, but that would not send the proper message of our determination and strength. Best option is to stage a precision black operation with a low probability of further collateral damage.”

  Geneen walked to one of the bulletproof windows in his office, turned, and examined Jim Hall, the assassin at sunset. Hall would turn sixty-two soon but looked ten years younger. Twenty-four years in the Marines and another two decades with the CIA. He was slim for his age, still held a military posture at six feet tall, and was in superb physical condition. His nails were manicured, the hair trimmed, and the shave perfect on tan
ned skin: a well-groomed killer. “You already have something in mind, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Director. I have been looking at it since I heard about the Predator screwup. We have to do a precision strike now, something close-in and absolutely certain.”

  “Nothing is absolute.”

  A grin slid across Hall’s face. “This might be. We send in two of the best snipers available, spend some money to set up the tangos, and then our guys blow them away.”

  “What about the prisoners?”

  Hall shook his head. “A separate issue at this point. We cannot rescue them without making a large military footprint. The Predator apparently accomplished one good thing in getting these boys moved away from the badlands and farther along the food chain of responsibility. Our agency can try to locate them through covert sources, but we cannot mount a major rescue operation. However, we can sure as hell punish the kidnappers, which will motivate the Pakistanis to turn them over in a political settlement.”

  Bart Geneen had been thinking along those same lines. There was a limit to what even the CIA could do. “Have you chosen the snipers?”

  Jim Hall placed a folder on the white tablecloth, flipped it open, and handed a head-and-shoulders photograph to the director. “Kyle Swanson is one of them. He ran that Palace of Death thing in Iran and other dicey assignments for that Task Force Trident special ops group. He’s the whole package. Gotta be on the team.”

  “I know Swanson. He is very good. But why not just use the SEALs or perhaps some FBI sharpshooters?”