CONGOLESE CONTRACT WORKERS BONTE Ibara and Guychel Mouko cooked up a hot and spicy stew and ate it hungrily while strips of goat meat sizzled over a small fire. After emerging from their hiding place belowground and seeing the carnage of the battle, they decided to leave. The wide eyes in worried faces of other workers indicated they would not be the only ones abandoning this sinking ship of stone.
While everyone else was still out on the bridge, the two Africans moved fast. First, they slipped into the administrative office, where Guychel ransacked the desks until he found the combination for a small safe. He removed their passports and several hundred euros and American dollars.
Meanwhile, Bonte pecked out a letter on the computer and printed it out on the embossed letterhead of the company that had hired them. It stated that his contract had been fulfilled and he had permission to return home. He signed with a ballpoint pen in the unreadable flourish of a busy, self-important bureaucrat and carefully folded it into an envelope, then did an identical letter for Guychel.
Next, they raided the mess tent and found the pantry stocked with everything they needed. Extra potatoes, a few loaves of bread, some cheese, rice, and even a bottle of wine each went into their sacks. The two men did not return to the workers’ barracks but retreated to a single room attached to the garage where the heavy equipment was serviced. It was a good temporary shelter, and they rested there with full bellies, waiting for the hours to pass.
At two o’clock in the morning, they ventured out, each carrying a canvas bag slung across a shoulder. It was silent all along the bridge, one of those rare moments when all construction had been shut down. They hoisted the gear into the bed of a battered white Toyota truck that Guychel Mouko had hidden among the earthmovers. “I want to put as many kilometers behind us as possible before daylight,” he said, starting the engine.
Ibara climbed into the passenger seat and laid his AK-47 across his lap. “There is no choice. Fucking New Muslim Order!” He spat from the window. “They were probably going to kill all of us workers to keep the secrets of this bridge. The Paki army is going to be arriving tomorrow morning, and all exits will be closed. Then escape will be impossible. On top of that, the Americans will probably be back. They will never let this place exist.”
The truck lurched into motion and left the big garage, passed through a big puddle of light, and crossed the bridge, slowing as it approached the checkpoint at the west end. The guard hut was empty. “We are not the only ones leaving,” Bonte commented.
“Then they are wise, too. Only dead men will be here tomorrow night.” Guychel nodded toward the edge of the road. “These rocks will be slick with blood.”
“Not ours.” The two friends settled into silence and drove away.
LIEUTENANT KHALID ATHAR FAROOQ of the Pakistani Army stood in the gun turret of a Humvee, leading a small convoy of Mercedes-Benz Unimog 1300/L trucks packed with a full platoon of soldiers, with another armored Humvee bringing up the rear. Farooq was tired of sitting down and could get a better view and some fresh air by standing behind the mounted machine gun.
His unit had moved out of its encampment a hundred miles away when orders had come to help with a security problem at the mysterious bridge that was nothing more to him than a location on his map. No urgency had been attached to the instructions. A plan was drawn up as Farooq began the complex task of readying his men for the move; there were a thousand items to check before the wheels could roll. As the hours had passed, newer reports came in about a major battle at the bridge; then all contact was lost. A flyover by a Pakistani air force plane at first light showed that the place seemed abandoned.
Twenty-five-year-old Lieutenant Farooq was an experienced officer, a combat veteran of the lawless tribal areas, and as his convoy neared its destination, he felt a familiar prebattle prickling of the hair on his neck. When his Humvee led the trucks around still another hairpin curve in the mountain road, the entire bridge complex came into view about three kilometers ahead. It was huge, precisely carved from layers of stone at the back of a broad valley, and seemed ghostly still. Farooq brought the convoy to a halt, unwilling to take his platoon farther before some reconnaissance. They could use a brief break to prepare for whatever lay ahead, and the lieutenant climbed out and walked forward a hundred meters, accompanied by his platoon sergeant.
“Nothing is moving down there, sir,” said the sergeant, scanning his binoculars over the entire area.
“Put together a small patrol, Sergeant, and send a Humvee down for a quick look,” the lieutenant replied. “Let the rest of the men get out of the tracks to stretch, then make them ready, weapons locked and loaded. I don’t like this place.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant turned away but stopped when the lieutenant, with his binoculars still at his eyes, grabbed him by the arm.
“Hold on, Sergeant. Look at the far end of the valley to the south, just above the hills.”
The sergeant no longer needed the big glasses. Two fast-moving F-18 fighter-bombers were streaking in low, and large canisters were tumbling free beneath them, glinting in the early sunlight. Both soldiers spun away and broke into a run back toward the trucks, screaming at their troops, “Take cover! Incoming!”
The pair of U.S. Air Force F-18s from Kandahar peeled out of their run, the thundering engines roaring off the cliffs and mountains. Another strike set was coming in right behind them, already toggling their switches when the first large napalm containers slammed into the valley and exploded, splashing out tidal waves of the incendiary fuel-gel mixture.
The first bombs struck near the old fallen bridge, and each of the others marched just a little farther up the valley, cooking it with immense heat and roaring flames that rolled forward in swaths of orange, red, yellow, and black. The mission was to turn the valley into a wasteland by saturating the hillsides with the hellish brew that would burn out the motion sensors and cameras and anything else that the deadly fingers of napalm could touch.
After the second set of F-18s banked out of their bomb runs and screeched away, Lieutenant Farooq peered from his hiding place in a ditch and saw that the valley had been turned into a charred and burning wilderness that stank of jet fuel. Then he looked at the bridge, which seemed untouched, still dominating the area. His men, emerging from their cover, were also staring at the balls of fire still lashing the valley. “Hold up on that patrol, Sergeant, and set up defensive positions here until we can figure out what’s going on,” Farooq said. “I’ve got to report this.” He took his time getting to the radio, trying to keep his hands from shaking, thankful to still be alive. The mighty crush of the napalm had fallen almost two miles away, and he still had felt the flash of its heat, as if it had landed right on top of him.
Three B-52H Stratofortress bombers that had been around longer than the men who flew them had taken off hours before from the isolated secret base on the island of Diego Garcia, a thousand miles from the coast of southern India. Eight engines hung below swept-back wings with a span of 185 feet carried the large planes at a very high altitude with ease, unseen by anyone below.
In what was no more than a routine milk run for the biggest bombers in the U.S. arsenal, the triangle of three aircraft reached a plotted GPS location only thirty seconds after the F-18 napalm strike. The large doors on the bottom of the planes opened with the hiss of hydraulics, and every B-52 spilled out fifty-one Mk-82 general purpose bombs, each weighing five hundred pounds.
Lieutenant Farooq was recovering from the shock of the napalm attack, and leaning against his Humvee, smoking a cigarette, while his superiors processed his new information. He looked around to satisfy himself that everyone was in position and the road was blocked. Nobody would leave or enter the area at his end until they could assess what was going on. The fires were out in the valley, but smoke still rose like thick mist from the earth.
He heard a high-pitched whine in the heavens, no louder than wind whistling through trees, and for the second time that morning, his world erupted.
The B-52 bombs hammered down just far enough away to give Farooq a chance to actually see the explosions blossom in towering spouts of earth and dirt before the sound reached his ears and the concussions slammed him. He staggered and fell, and his men again dove for protection. The vehicles rocked on their suspensions and the 153 bombs strolled along, punching the ground and gouging out craters in ragged, side-by-side lines that stretched more than a mile. A dust cloud rose like a curtain and drifted toward the soldiers. Farooq’s ears were ringing, his jaw was sore from gritting his teeth, and he pulled a scarf across his nose and mouth so he could breathe.
He had never experienced anything like this. What was it? He had never even seen the planes that dropped the bombs, and looking up now, he still could not find them. Rising to a knee, he pulled his binoculars to his eyes and was finally able to spy the flight of three bombers disappearing on a steady northward course. Turning back to the damage, the young officer realized the target had once again been the valley, which was now twisted and pulverized. After being scoured by napalm and crunched by bombs, it was a no-man’s-land. The bridge was still untouched, but he doubted that would be the case very long. He reached again for his radio to alert his superiors, knowing that they still would not believe that the Americans were actually attacking in Pakistan with a full military strike, not with unmanned drones or a team of special operations soldiers, but in force, with the heavy, frontline weapons that had been in use since the Cold War. If they didn’t believe him, he would invite them to come and see for themselves, for he knew this party was just starting.
Even as the shaky lieutenant was updating his report, he heard the throaty sound of a multiengine airplane approaching and saw an AC-130 coming up the valley, low and slow and ominous. “Now a Spectre gunship is coming in,” he yelled. “It’s going after the bridge.”
The lumbering plane climbed for some altitude and banked to the right as the sensors precisely computed the target and the side-firing gunners opened up, raining 40 mm and booming 105 mm cannon fire. As the aircraft flew past the bridge, left to right, the shells started at one end and walked all the way across, tearing up the surface and destroying almost every vehicle and piece of equipment on it. It made three passes before departing, leaving the surface in smoking ruin.
Farooq had fallen speechless. The voice on the radio was calling for him to answer, but words failed him. The destruction he had witnessed in the past few minutes was beyond imagination. He heard someone yelling, “Lieutenant! Lieutenant!” in his face and felt someone shaking him hard, but Farooq was too dazed to answer until his platoon sergeant finally slapped him and poured water onto his face.
“Helicopters, sir,” the sergeant shouted. “I hear helicopters.”
SECRETARY OF STATE MARK Grayson was the youngest son of a judge in Oregon, and both of his brothers were lawyers. It had been pounded into his head during family dinners for as long as he could remember that there are two sides to every story, even when pictures and witnesses and evidence pointed to a slam-dunk conviction of an accused person. Presumed innocence was the foundation of the American system of justice. Now he was seated on a sofa across from the president of the United States, having to accuse one of his own trusted advisers of treason, based on flimsy, circumstantial evidence gathered by the national intelligence community. They had been wrong before.
The president had come up from the Situation Room, where he had been monitoring the attack in Pakistan, because Secretary Grayson had said he had a matter that needed his urgent and immediate attention. The president listened to Grayson and to Andy Moore of the CIA with an expression of disbelief.
“Let me be certain that I understand you, Mark,” he said. “A senior diplomat, the head of the Bureau of American-Islamic Affairs, a man who had cleared the most stringent background checks, actually has been working with a terrorist organization dedicated to destroying the United States? Is that even possible?”
Grayson thought he saw the president’s eternal air of absolute confidence deflating. “I’m afraid so, sir. The intel community has been onto him for a couple of days. There’s no doubt in my mind that Bill Curtis has for some time been aiding the New Muslim Order and its leader, Commander Kahn. Unbelievable and unproven, but an apparent fact.”
The president slid his half-glasses down his long nose and read the one-page report again. He asked the CIA briefer, “You’re sure about this one, Andy?”
“Yes, sir. We had hacked the e-mails of Mohammed Javid Bhatti, a Pakistani at the UN, who is his main contact. Bhatti received an encoded message a few hours ago from Pakistan, and we back-tracked it to the security chief of the New Muslim Order, a man named Ayman al-Masri. Bhatti passed it on, word for word, to Curtis.”
“What did the message say?”
“We’re still breaking it down, sir, but one of our specialists in Pakistan has been questioning that prisoner picked up during the raid on the bridge, the guy who built it, and he confirms the bridge was to be a haven for Commander Kahn. He repeatedly coughed up Bill Curtis’s name as an old friend. If the bridge was being built for the New Muslim Order, and the e-mail is directly from the NMO, then Mr. Curtis has some explaining to do.”
“You bet he does.” The president laid the report on a small table, took off his glasses, folded them and put them in his shirt pocket, then looked at his watch. Almost midnight. “I remember once a long time ago when I actually wanted this job, even went out and campaigned for it. I don’t know if I would do it again. Your recommendation on the Curtis situation, Mr. Secretary?”
“We should take him into custody immediately and quietly,” said Grayson. “Do it under Homeland Security provisions and declare him an enemy combatant, so the case will be under a military tribunal. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the burden will be on Curtis to earn our trust. At present, although he is an American citizen, he cannot have an open trial in a public courtroom.”
The president looked steadily at both Grayson and the CIA man, Moore. “Well, Mark, it looks like you’ve got to take on the Pakistani complaints after all. Our guys are kicking butt over there on that bridge. It is hard to imagine having a mole this high in the government. Good job digging this guy out. Go get Curtis, and find him a cot in Guantánamo.”
“Yes, sir.” Grayson sat back, glad that his part of this meeting was done.
The White House chief of staff picked up the ball. “One more thing, sir. We have to consider that Curtis may be orchestrating some kind of high profile strike against the Mars mission. The Pentagon, Homeland Security, and NASA are already on it.”
The president closed his eyes and pushed his head back against his tall chair, stunned. “How long do we have before the America launch?”
“About seventy hours, sir. No need to scrub it until we find out more. There are always threats before a mission, and this one is from a man who is already known to be mentally unstable. We will stay on it. Meanwhile, security is being increased at the Cape. If there is any confirmation, we will stop the mission. Best for now to keep this information under wraps, and just stay alert.”