What Hill?
If the man in the suit thought the Brit was well and truly corked off with his last tirade, it was nothing compared to this one. He had spent three pointless weeks here doing what Vladimir could have and probably was. Good thing the Brit doesn’t know about Vladimir, thought the man in the suit, otherwise he would kill me and toss my body out in a street somewhere with a note allegedly from al-Qaeda on it.
What had the Brit on a tear today was the local news. The Pakistani government was up in arms about a U.S. Incursion onto sovereign soil. In truth it had been Afghan troops with Brits and a few other nations, but around here, everything was blamed on the Americans.
The incursion itself was small and wouldn’t have happened had the Pakistani government sent troops to occupy the Khyber Pass. That request came almost weekly and had been coming for a year. It came from every government involved in the operation and lately even from governments not involved. Support for al-Qaeda went too high in the government for that to happen, though. As a result, this incursion happened.
A force of Afghan troops along with several other countries had pursued a band of al-Qaeda troops into the pass. Everyone assumed they were al-Qaeda troops because they didn’t stop to answer questions, simply started shooting. As a result, air support had been called in. When the fighters got to the pass their instruments picked up the transmissions from the hut the email hub was using. The rest was pretty much predetermined after that. Rather than strafe the troops in the pass, the fighters locked onto the hut and there now was a fifteen-foot-wide crater where it used to be. After that they went back and helped mop up the force desperately trying to get away.
Some of the al-Qaeda force had even been taken prisoner according to the news reports. Now the government was raising hell over both an incursion and an abduction on their soil. The man in the suit had done hundreds of abductions on their soil, but thankfully he had never had a reporter embedded in his unit. Yes, once again “film at eleven” had buggered up what would have otherwise been a nice clean operation.
There was only one other person in the room. That other man was pure muscle, no brain. He could do what you told him if you didn’t use too many syllables or talk too long. By the time that man realized the Brit was trying to kill me I would be dead and he would be fetching a tarp and the car, thought the man in the suit. No, for this one I need to keep my distance and let him burn out, the man in the suit decided.
There was no doubt the email hub was off-line. Vladimir had sent a note saying the site had stopped transmitting to his server about an hour ago. Shortly after that the news report came. For a brief hour there had been the hope the hub was moving to a more accessible location. That hope was pretty much gone now. They didn’t even know who the person was. Pakistani intelligence had sent a squad up to investigate the damage and potentially return the bodies, but even if they found a body this team could not be certain their guy had died.
It was at this point the man in the suit’s train of thought was interrupted. Not by a knife or other attempt on his life, but by the silence. He realized the Brit had wound down and was staring at him. Apparently there had been some question he was supposed to answer.
“You will need to excuse me, I was trying to determine how we would tell if our hub operator had been killed. We don’t know his name or have any real information on him. What was your question?”
“Can I go back to nabbing these guys now?” “No. I need you to go to India and help Hans. They have the trainer and the new email hub under surveillance now and are short-staffed. Two of their team have taken jobs working at the same companies the men work at, which leaves them little time for email analysis. We need to know what they are up to there. It sounds like it will be the next big strike.” “Are we going to just watch that one happen, too?” “Our hands aren’t tied there. The Indian government doesn’t know what we are doing or even that we are there.” “So, if anything goes wrong we are on our own.” “To some extent, yes. We have taken over a farm about twenty miles outside of town and have some troops there with a pair of helicopters. It is unknown how long they can remain undetected.” The Brit was a bit calmer now. He had heard that British Secret Service had been the ones demanding more intelligence before making arrests. They didn’t know, at least openly, that this team wasn’t bothering with arrests. Had they known they might have authorized it, but it was still dicey. After the bombings they were a lot more willing to look the other way when it came to abductions and planes making unscheduled flights to Germany.
In his current state of mind, the Brit mused out loud, “We could take them both now and really blind al-Qaeda.”
“The powers that be think al-Qaeda will write this one off as collateral damage. We hope they will send a new trainee to the trainer. If that happens, then taking these two down has merit. If that doesn’t happen, then they are correct. We should know in about two weeks.”
“Correct about what?”
“That the email network is comprised of dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals. They believe we have uncovered only a small portion of the network and found it by luck.”
“Two weeks isn’t so long to wait. What makes them think the network managed to get so large, or am I not authorized to know that?”
“Do you know how many new email hubs have been discovered when going through the machines of those you grabbed?”
“No.”
“None. Weeks with the best technicians going through them and none have been found. Even those working in Germany were using Nedim or the trainer as their hub.”
“That would make one believe there aren’t more hubs.” “Nedim is the only hub that was handling American operations and those of the African continent. We have not found email from any cells in France, Spain, China, or Russia. Do you think al-Qaeda isn’t operating in those countries?” “We know they are.”
“Hence, the decision from above. We would only blind them in a few countries for a while. Roundups have been occurring in those countries so blinding them would be of questionable good as far as stopping operations. It is possible that few cells in the other countries are using the Internet email communications method. We know the 9/11 hijackers were. So, we need to find the other hubs.”
“There has been little, if any, cross talk between hubs. At least there was some after Nedim was outed in the press. Perhaps another outing would force another scramble?”
“In two weeks’ time I will approach the powers that be. In three weeks’ time we should have our final answer. There is still the possibility we will stumble into the new hub via the cell phones used by those you rounded up. It is the hard way, but we managed to find and turn Nedim. Turning the next one will be more difficult, but not as difficult as finding them.”
“The Americans could give that hub to us.” “How so?”
“They have been scanning the images in every international email message since 9/11. They could at least give us the messages complete with headers so we could begin tracking.”
“How do you know this?”
“I have killed for many different countries. People whose lives depended on me keep in touch from time to time. They tell me things that may keep me alive or are simply as a warning telling me to stay frosty because a call may soon be coming.”
“Do you think they would contact you with respect to taking someone out?”
“They have before. Never an al-Qaeda member, but drug dealers by the score. Just what do you think I was doing when you found me?”
The man in the suit had forgotten that. He had met the Brit in Pakistan after being instructed on where to find him. The Brit had been sent into the lawless Northern Areas in Afghanistan to take out a drug lord who was shipping too much poppy product to drug buyers in the States. They could have easily sent him to that hut with a team he chose and he would have made it look as if one of the warlords had offed the guy. Had Hans known of the Brit’s background he surely would have suggested it. This operation was starting to have too many rings of complexity. Something bad was going to happen. The man in the suit could feel it. Just wasn’t like him to overlook a solution that obvious.
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