“Why difficult?”
“Because you arrive a couple of days before Bin Laden.”
“What?” I was so surprised, even my donkey stopped.
“Yeah, the unexpected guest I mentioned — the man himself.”
“Jesus.” The donkey snorted and moved off.
“He just walked into town out of nowhere — him and twenty other al Qaeda heavy hitters. I recognized a lot of them.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Don't you remember? He paid you a visit. He looked right into your face. You laughed at him.” He chuckled. “They didn't like that. They were going to cut your head off in the morning.”
Christ, my memory was in serious sleep mode, but al-Wassad had just given it a massive jolt. I suddenly put the friendly face and the name together. I'd seen so many pictures of Bin Laden that he was intensely familiar, like a Hollywood or TV star is familiar. In my weakened, addled state, I'd thought I knew him like a buddy rather than as Osama Bin Laden, leader of al Qaeda, Emperor of Terror, Sultan of Slaughter, King of Killers, Monarch of Murderers, Serious Thorn in Three Presidential Asses, et cetera and so on.
“So now,” Lieutenant al-Wassad continued, “I've got a stack of problems. The guy we've spent trillions looking for is having hot tea with the imam down the road, and I have no means of contacting anyone to tell them about it because, of course, I have no means of communicating with the outside world.”
“Why not?”
“Because the batteries on the Ericsson R390 satellite phone would have run out six months ago. There's no means of charging them out here. And then there's the fact that I never deployed with one in the first place, because I'd have kept my head about five minutes if the Taliban had found me on it chatting to Washington. So, the only way to get word out is to do it in person, on foot. And then there's you. I can't just walk out of the place and leave you behind, because, pure and simple, they're gonna kill you at sunup.”
“We need to get in contact with SOCOM,” I said. “And in a hurry.”
“Yeah. Only two problems with that. One, we're going as fast as we can, and two, Bin Laden isn't going to hang around where we last saw him. When they trip over the dead guard, find you gone and me missing, and discover they're eight legs short in the transport department, they're going to smell a rat. And they're going to run.”
“Hmm…” Of course al-Wassad was right, only, as far as I knew, this was the first time in many years someone other than those within Bin Laden's inner circle knew for certain, down to the square mile, where he was holed up. It was information one side would die to have, and the other would die to keep secret.
We'd just about reached the valley floor, a deep gash in the surrounding walls of granite and basalt filled with new snow, tendrils of cloud, scree, and capillary-sized rivulets. I didn't know much about horses and donkeys, but I knew ours were tired and hungry. Soon we were going to ask them to carry us over a mountain and we couldn't afford to have them go lame on us.
I was about to suggest we stop, even if only just fifteen minutes to give them a rest, when there was sudden movement all around us. Our animals skittered and wheeled about, snorting and grunting, wild-eyed with fright. Men covered in snow with occasional splashes of tan and gray camouflage had popped up seemingly out of the ground, surrounding us. Their M4s were raised to their shoulders, trigger fingers twitching. I recognized the brown-and-tan flag patches on a couple of shoulders not covered in snow, on account of it was also my flag. Some advice I was once given in this part of the world popped into my head: “Either you dress like an American soldier, or you're a target.” We'd walked right into an ambush and, with the pakool caps and dark blue cloaks over the padded jackets and salwar kameez, we were probably looking a hell of a lot like a couple of bull's-eyes. One of the soldiers, a lieutenant whose face was blue with cold, shouted, “Odriga! Lasona jakra. Kanh zadi walm Aspai!” I did the rough translation in my head: “Stop or I'll shoot, loathsome smelly dog!”
I did as I was told, and al-Wassad followed my lead. I said, loud and clear, “I am Special Agent Vin Cooper, a major in the United States Air Force. This man is a lieutenant in U.S. Army Intelligence.” One of the soldiers spurted a load of brown chewing-tobacco-stained saliva onto the snow at his feet.
Those M4s didn't waver an inch.
A lieutenant answered, “Yeah, and I'm Snow White and these are my seven dwarfs.” He suddenly pointed his weapon at the clouds and his dwarfs followed suit.
“So which one's Dopey?” I asked.
“That'd be Stephenson,” said one of the men with a snigger.
“Shove it, dipshit,” came the reply.
The men relaxed a little, though most still eyed al-Wassad and me with suspicion. The lieutenant removed a glove and searched in a thigh pocket. He pulled out a small pad. Checking it, he said, “You say your name was Vin Cooper?”
“And still is,” I replied.
“You look pretty beat up, sir,” he pointed out.
“I'm not a morning person.”
“You were involved in the raid on Phunal.”
It wasn't a question. “I was, but I didn't quite make it. You guys Airborne?” I asked.
Someone spat.
“Rangers, sir. We were supposed to rendezvous with you and the SAS assault team. We've been out a few times looking to run into you guys, in case any of you survived. We've got a Global Hawk UAV up there working the border — picked you up coming across the pass.”
“Lieutenant,” I said, “we have vital information and we need SOCOM to hear it. You packing comms?”
“Latest and greatest, sir.”
As he spoke, I heard the deep flat snarl and thrum of a large helo making its way through the hills.
“That's our transport, Major. We're heading back to Bagram and a hot shower. And with respect, sir, you sure could use one.”
The helicopter banked sharply around a wall of blue ice clinging to a sheer granite face. We were so close I was pretty sure the rotor tips were going to raise sparks against the rock.
Through my headphones came the voice of a colonel who was probably sitting in a nice warm room at Bagram Airbase. “You positively identified Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri?” He sounded like a man who'd just been told he'd won the lottery — thrilled on the one hand, disbelieving on the other.
“Yes, sir,” said al-Wassad. “I can even give you his cell phone number.”
“You what…? Tell me this ain't no crank call, soldier.”
“I've got a witness here, sir, a Special Agent with OSI — Major Vin Cooper.”
I gave the lieutenant a reassuring thumbs-up.
The colonel sounded like he was talking from a mouth occupied by a fat cigar. “You got who there with you?”
“Special Agent Vin Cooper, sir.”
Lieutenant al-Wassad gave the astonished colonel a quick overview.
“Son, if you're right about this, they'll give you a ticker tape parade from LA to Times Square and name a street after you in every goddamn town in between. Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? Shee-it! You wanna give me those coordinates? Did you say you had Bin Laden's phone number?”
Al-Wassad reeled off map reference numbers while the chopper copilot showed me on a ground map display that the village I'd been held in was ten or so miles inside the Pakistan border. I wasn't sure what the Army would be able to do with the information, but, now that they had it, I was equally sure they wouldn't sit on their hands with it.