Hans had been sent to locate and identify the new email hub in Pakistan. Naturally, the new center was far away from the existing headquarters. He used the cover story of being a reporter and even had a couple of the other team members act as his camera crew. There was little in the way of what they could use for a headquarters in this area and there was no way to set up an operation undetected. The new email hub was operating near the Khyber Pass close to the lawless Northern Area. While they could set up headquarters easily near Islamabad, the capital city, they would be nearly 200 km away from where the communications center was. This was not a good situation.
When Hans got back to his hotel room in the capital city, he phoned the man in the suit to inform him of the situation. There would be no way to put people in undercover this time. Even if they could turn the operative, they could not monitor him as they had with Nedim. Given the tribal warlord factions in the Northern Areas, it would be suicide to send anyone in.
The new communications person was located in a remote village. He had a generator, solar power unit, and a satellite Internet connection. Al-Qaeda had definitely seen to it he couldn’t be turned without them knowing about it. They still had no idea just how much the authorities knew, but given the cell roundups, Hans figured it wouldn’t be long before the coding system would change. True, the operatives already in the field would have to be notified of code changes via some riskier means such as a phone call or personal contact, but in a short while, all of the good intelligence they had gathered from Nedim would be useless.
“Were it up to me,” Hans finally said, “I would tell the Brit to stay where he is and give all of our information to Vladimir. He has the time and the skill to do the analysis. It is not as though we are going to be working this one closely. Perhaps we can get to the new Indian communications center.”
The man in the suit didn’t like Vladimir. He was always being shown up by Vladimir. He was loath to give the guy any more information about this operation than he had to. Still, Hans’ assessment was correct. Vladimir had both the skill and the time. Obviously he had the time given all of the other things he had done without direction. He couldn’t even be punished for those things now because those things gave them their only solid leads.
Someday one of the very same agencies Vladimir was now working with was going to be sent to arrest him for his work in the Russian mafia identity-theft rings. The man had to know that, but didn’t seem to care. Perhaps he assumed his ties to clandestine organizations would always keep him working as he was currently. There was some truth in that. If you were good and had a reputation, there was always a government who could give you a new identity and put you to work in a back room somewhere. With the man’s skills he would be most difficult to find unless you were trying to hire him.
One thing the world didn’t need right now was an outright war with one or more factions of the Russian mafia. Every government needed them to ensure al-Qaeda never got any of the stockpiled Russian nuclear or chemical weapons. They had already taken it upon themselves to handle one such situation and every government involved in this operation knew it. Piss them off now, and al-Qaeda would be able to purchase the entire Cold War stockpile for next to nothing.
“We need to put some kind of long distance surveillance on him somehow,” the man in the suit finally said. “I can let the Brit work remotely from here for a while since he is already on his way, but we need to find an excuse.”
“An excuse?” Hans asked.
“We need someone high enough up in al-Qaeda visiting this location to warrant an air strike taking him and his hub out. Something which can be on the news and my government can use to state publicly they are helping in the war on terrorism. Any one of the major cell coordinators or attack planners will do. We cannot just strike him now as that would tip our hand and the others will go to ground on us.”
“Agreed,” said Hans. “Since anyone monitoring from a hillside will need to look native …”
“I will make the calls and get the people,” replied the man in the suit.
“There is another option available to us since you are ready to burn this lead. The tribes run a lot of drugs through that pass. He is close enough to the Afghanistan border that we could send the GPS coordinates to the Americans if we had a contact we could trust. Even someone in the Afghan military could send some troops across the border to clean this up. They just need a good excuse.”
“That is a risky play. There has already been a lot of saber rattling about prior incursions. If a drug caravan stops there for the night, we would be better off having the Russian mafia come in, take the drugs, and kill everyone in their usual fashion.”
“Long way for them to fly choppers, especially across a war zone.” “True, but it would remove all suspicion. Everyone can recognize the work of the Russian mafia. They specialize in brutal theatrical killings. The warlord who lost his drugs would be looking for them. At any rate, we need to get someone watching him. Stay at the hotel a few more days. I will send someone to contact you.”
The man in the suit hated to admit it, but Hans was correct. Given all of the radar and air patrols over Afghanistan today, there was no way the Russian mafia would be able to fly a squad of choppers across undetected. If they flew low, some al-Qaeda soldier would probably shoot them down. If they encountered fighter jets they wouldn’t be lucky enough to encounter pilots who understood what was going on.
He also knew that his government was paying little more than lip service to the hunting down of al-Qaeda within its borders. This operation was almost completely shut down thanks to the news reports about Nedim. There were only a few in the intelligence service who knew anything about this operation. One of them would no longer communicate with anyone involved. So far there was no evidence that he had turned, just that he knew he had been compromised and was keeping his distance.
Many of the clerics in this country were supportive of al-Qaeda trying to kill infidels and, in particular, Americans. Quite a few distanced themselves from the methods after 9/11. A plane hitting the Pentagon would not have brought nearly every nation into Afghanistan. If a nation didn’t have boots on the ground they had money or equipment there. Even countries that didn’t like America were standing in line to get in on the action. China bought an unprecedented amount of U.S. Treasury notes shortly after 9/11 so the Americans would be able to fully fund any response they deemed necessary.
Indeed, the man in the suit wondered why China hadn’t simply poured troops through that narrow little slit of a border they shared with Afghanistan. He assumed it was due to the Chinese culture having this deep sense of honor when dealing with officials and matters of state. They had lost citizens in that attack and were looking to dish out some retribution. The Afghan people may never realize this, but they should be thankful for that sense of honor. When the Americans said they wanted to build a coalition and lead the attack, the Chinese stepped aside and let them. The Russians had even offered to mix it up in Afghanistan once again. Had the Chinese poured in from their border and the Russians from theirs, the current population of Afghanistan would be about one third of what it is today.
Then again, Pakistan would have lost a lot of people as well. It was no secret that a lot of al-Qaeda members had slipped across the Pakistani border during the war. Because they had a coalition and were bound by United Nations treaties, coalition forces didn’t invade Pakistan to get them. True, there had been some border incursions, but it was doubtful his government would have known about them had they not watched CNN. Sad to admit, but true.
The Afghan border had never been monitored in more than a few places. The lawlessness of the Northern Areas made that impossible. Those warlords owed their lives to the Americans as well, though they didn’t know it. China wouldn’t have thought twice about crushing that region on their way in. They would have occupied Pakistan all the way up to the Khyber Pass, and given the size of their military, Pakistan would have had to submit to the occupation.
Yes, his government had possessed nuclear weapons for quite some time, but that wouldn’t have helped. China had more of them and Russia more still. As soon as Pakistan lobbed one at either army everything between the Indian and Russian borders would cease to exist. If anything were left, India would be certain to come in and finish off the job.
The man in the suit wanted all al-Qaeda members executed. He made a mental note to have Nedim killed as soon as this operation got to a more normal pace. He had no special love for the Americans or any other country targeted by them. No matter how you did the analysis, al-Qaeda was going to be the reason his country got exterminated. How he wished more members of his government could see that!
***********************
You are reading a special promotional version of “Infinite Exposure” containing only the first 18 chapters. This is the first book of the “Earth That Was” trilogy. You can obtain the entire trilogy in EPUB form from here:
[…] <Previous Post Next Post> […]