The compound was perched on the upper level of the abandoned open pit mine’s wide bench. On one side was a fifty meter ridge of solid rock that ran for a couple kilometers beyond the camp, then seemed to open up into another pit; on the other side of the camp the ground suddenly dropped off a good fifteen meters to the next bench, leading to the lower depths of the mine. She could see half a dozen terraces and estimated that the mine was a hundred to a hundred fifty meters deep. The far side was several kilometers away and the south wall was a vertical cliff dropping to the crater’s depths. Except for the rock ridge behind the main compound, the walls seemed to be crumbling. Large chunks of several benches had collapsed and were now sand piles on the next level.
They had no concertina wire, no fences to protect them. They didn’t need it. There was one way in and one way out. Camille kept studying the terrain for alternate exits, but didn’t discover any.
The truck stopped at a building site on the south perimeter of the main compound, two hundred meters from the nearest tent. Concrete pillars had been poured for something and one wall had been roughed out, but no tools were scattered about and she didn’t get the feeling that any progress had been made there for a long time. Adjacent to the site was a small eight by ten shack made of scrap lumber. A padlock hung on the door, but it wasn’t locked. No one had gotten around to painting the boss-man’s likeness on its side. The tangos were slipping.
The truck stopped in front of the shed. Two tangos stayed in the back of the truck to guard Camille, but they didn’t need to. She wasn’t about to try to escape until she knew she could get the head of al Qaeda first.
Several men wheeled out a concrete mixer, then started throwing tools from the shed, emptying it as fast as they could. They clearly had not been expecting houseguests and she hated to impose.
Chapter Seventy-Six
The private firms’ role in the region continues today, with contractors now part of the CIA/military operation attempting to run down Osama bin Laden and his associates along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
– Salon.com, April 15, 2004, as contributed by Peter W. Singer
Camp Obsidian, Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan
The Black Management war room was stuffy from the breath of over two dozen men. Nearly half wore flight jumpsuits, the rest combat fatigues. Hunter stood out with his Day-Glo orange prison uniform which he hadn’t taken time to change out of because he wanted to be included in Iggy’s planning before the mission briefing, not that he had been allowed any real input. Iggy didn’t miss a chance to remind him who was in charge. The only break Hunter had taken was to make sure the body of his fellow Bushman was offloaded from the Gulfstream, identified and transferred over to the big military. When he had ducked away the plan called for a minimum of four Super Cobras for close air support and Iggy was still hoping for six. He was curious if he had managed to round up the additional gunships.
Hunter looked around the room for a place to sit. There was an empty chair by the helo pilot Beach Dog. The last time he’d seen him was in Baghdad when he had knocked him out and duct taped him to a steering wheel. He decided it was better to grab the seat beside GENGHIS.
Standing at the head of the conference table, Iggy introduced his staff-adjutant, intel, operations and logistics officers. Hunter looked back to the doorway to see if the others were coming in, then he realized Iggy must only have included the flight crews and the team leaders. The commanders would brief their men en route, he guessed.
Each of Iggy’s officers briefed his area of responsibility in the op orders, then Iggy spoke, outlining his commander’s intent. So far so good, Hunter thought when he heard that the extraction of Stella was the primary objective and destruction of the tango training facility was secondary.
A giant LCD screen displayed one of Ashland’s long range photos of the terrorist training camp, marked up with arrows and symbols showing each chalk, aircraft, and the surface danger zone. Iggy used it to describe the fire plan sketch.
“Each Pave Hawk will insert a team of three operators. CHALK ONE provides recon, security and support by fire.” He gave the grid where the main force was going. “CHALK ONE will locate the objective while CHALK TWO sets up a kill box around the tangos’ barracks using Claymores to cover our egress.” He explained that Camille-Stella-was being extracted, so that everyone knew that one extra body would be reentering friendly lines. The entire operation was expected to take forty minutes. Iggy continued, “If everyone’s taken out, the Cobras will destroy the target. Now I anticipate a successful mission and upon completion, the Cobras will go in hot and neutralize the camp. When we’re finished, not one of those muj is ever going to threaten America.”
Hunter opened his mouth, then forced it closed. He caught himself shaking his head and tightened his neck muscles. This was definitely not the plan they had roughed out. He flipped to the second page of the op orders to be sure. Without saying a word to him, Iggy had slashed the number of troops to a fraction of the originally planned size.
When they last left off, Iggy was going to shuffle things around so they would have Pave Lows, helicopters that could carry over thirty troops. Without consulting him the operation had gone from fifty tier-one operators to six. Stella had the men and the equipment, but Iggy had obviously decided against it, if that had ever really been his intent. Hunter could’ve accepted the decision from regular military, but this was Stella’s company and her life was the one on the line. He remembered Stella once telling him that she had to give Iggy a minority stake in the company to lure him on board and Hunter was starting to wonder if this didn’t give him a motive to want her out of the picture. He took a deep breath as he tried to hold his military bearing together, listening intently to the rest of the briefing on the mission’s execution, then the administration and logistics. He knew there was no need to hear the command and control section of the briefing because it was far too clear who was in control of Stella’s army.
“Two Cobras will be running forward reconnaissance and providing route security and CAS.”
Hunter wrinkled his brow and felt himself get warm.
“We are expecting soft targets only, so the Cobras are carrying full complements of Hydras and fully loaded turrets with HE and SLAP rounds. The Pave Hawks are each outfitted with rocket pods. The intent is to level the camp after the extraction. We’re taking along AIM-9 Sidewinders in case the Uzbek air force manages to get its MIG off the ground. When inside Uzbek airspace, if anyone lights you up, you’re authorized to neutralize the threat. They’ve allowed al-Zahrani to train terrorists in their country and they’ll have to face the consequences.”
Beach Dog leaned back in his chair and stretched. He was in the requisite olive green flight suit, but wore a bright red, yellow and blue Hawaiian shirt over it like a smock. He held one finger in the air and started speaking before Iggy called on him. “You expecting hostile locals?”
“Negative. We don’t anticipate letting them know we’re there. The only tricky part is crossing the border. The Russians are still helping them keep up their radar equipment there. We’ll fly nap-of-the-earth and through known radar gaps. Intel says that everywhere outside of the border zone, the old Soviet radar net hasn’t been working for years. They have some localized radar at their major airports, but they don’t even have radar contact to control commercial flights over their territory and rely exclusively on position-reports by pilots. Their airspace is up for grabs and tonight Black Management’s going to own it. As for their forces, they have less than two dozen operational Fishbeds and Fulcrums-for you post-cold warriors, I’m talking about MIG-21s and MIG-29s. Their pilots get very little training time in them because Uzbekistan is too cash-strapped.”