They ran to the drop-off at the next level of the mine with GENGHIS and Hunter leapfrogging one another’s positions, firing back at the tangos. The burning tents exposed their position and Camille hoped the IR pointer would be bright enough against the flames as she roped the beam.
The chop of rotors came from the pit in front of her and the Hawk rose from the depths, then hung directly off the ledge, nearly flush with the bench floor, but with a three foot cleft between the crew door and the edge. Running toward the open door as fast as she could force al-Zahrani to move, she wasn’t sure how she was going to get him to jump the gap. She kept running and leaped, giving him a fast choice: jump or plummet.
He jumped.
They landed on the metal floor. She immediately smacked him on the back of the head, knocking him out.
The Hawk’s gunner mowed down the approaching tangos. Green tracers hit the fuel tank and sparks flew. She hoped the damn thing really was self-sealing. Ashland came out of nowhere and sprang aboard next, but Hunter and GENGHIS were still twenty meters away, providing cover for one another.
“TIN MAN this is LIGHTNING SIX. Recommend take the Cobra in hot after we egress.”
“Copy that. Call it in at your discretion. Got that DRAGON ONE?”
“DRAGON ONE here. That’s affirmative and welcome back LIGHTNING SIX.”
Hunter reached the helicopter first and jumped inside, landing on al-Zahrani. He got up, reached out his hand and helped GENGHIS aboard.
“Beach Dog, pick up Iggy and get us the hell out of here.” Camille keyed the mike. “DRAGON ONE, LIGHTNING SIX. Light up the fuckers.”
Chapter Eighty-Five
In the United States, for instance, the executive branch hires contractors. Although the U.S. Congress approves the military budget, its access to information about contracts is often limited. The president can use this advantage to evade restrictions on U.S. actions, effectively limiting congressional checks on foreign policy… Furthermore, contractors can facilitate foreign policy by proxy, allowing the government (or parts of it) to change events on the ground, but at a distance that allows for plausible deniability.
– Foreign Policy, July/August 2004, as contributed by Professor Deborah Avant
41° 34' 34.96 N, 63° 07' 25.32 E (Uzbekistan)
Camille had heard the detailed account of the harrowing basket separation and she held her breath along with everyone else while Beach Dog pulled the Pave Hawk straight back, away from the MC-130. The basket released. She let out a sigh of relief and held onto Hunter while Beach Dog hot-dogged, surfing the wake, tossing the Hawk in sharp turns that knocked the passengers into one another. They were wedged in tightly, but Camille didn’t mind sitting on Hunter’s lap even though she knew she really shouldn’t in front of GENGHIS, Beach Dog and Iggy. They would just have to deal with it. She wanted the safety and reassurance of the closeness. Her body was still revved from the constant adrenaline bombardment and as exhausted as she felt, she still couldn’t relax. The happiness and relief of being with Hunter kept getting interrupted with flashbacks to the horror of al-Zahrani each time he groaned from the back row.
Al-Zahrani was lying on his side with his arms bound behind his back and shackled to his feet. Part of her wanted to take a blade to him, but she was so repulsed by him, she didn’t want close contact. A couple of bullets through his forehead would have been cleaner. And she still felt dirty. She could hardly wait to get his smell and touch off her. Whenever they touched down in the Uzbek desert to refuel the Cobra, she planned on taking a dirt bath in the sand.
Memory of the rape smoldered inside. But she knew she couldn’t tell Hunter. Iggy, maybe, but not Hunter. It would absolutely kill him to know what al-Zahrani had done to her. It would be even worse because he had gotten there only an hour too late to save her from him.
Packed in with everything else was a creeping sense of guilt from having killed her former mentor Joe Chronister. At the same time, part of her was glad she’d done it because of what he had done to Jackie and because of how he had sabotaged her dream.
Al-Zahrani cleared his throat loudly and everyone looked around. He and Ashland were crammed together onto the stretched nylon bench with no leg room due to the internal fuel tanks. Ashland looked miserable, hugging the door to put as much space as possible between them.
“That was quite the cluster fuck,” al-Zahrani said with a perfect American accent.
Camille was shocked to hear him speaking English, let alone American English. He had given no indication of it earlier and the intel reports she had read on both him and Abdullah had been clear that neither of them spoke English.
“Depends on whose side you’re on,” Iggy said.
“I meant for our side. For the US,” al-Zahrani said, craning his neck.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You have to have a secure satellite uplink onboard, don’t you? Contact the DDO or the Director. Inform him you have NOC BARKER in your custody and you just compromised GOLD DRIFT.”
“Holy mother of god,” Iggy said, unbuckling his harness so he could turn around completely and get a good look at the guy.
“You can’t believe this piece of shit,” Camille said as she felt the helicopter descending to land and refuel.
Al-Zahrani smiled. “Maybe you know it as SHANGRI-LA. That’s only the designation for the Rubicon op running us. The Agency program is called GOLD DRIFT.”
“No one’s calling anyone. We’re handing him over to Force Zulu,” Camille said. As far as she was concerned, he was Hunter’s trophy. He had already been on the team that captured bin Laden and taking in al-Zahrani would make him a legend in the spec ops community. She could really get into the idea of dating a legend, almost as much as creating one.
“You can’t do that,” al-Zahrani said, his voice becoming alarmed. “The Pentagon will fuck it up even more than they already have.”
“Ashland, shut the fucker up,” Camille said, turning back toward the front of the helicopter.
“You do it. I’m not touching him.”
“I got it,” Iggy said as he took out his knife and sliced off the lower part of his 5.11s that covered up his dumb leg. Camille watched as he squeezed into the back and had to lean part of his weight on Ashland’s lap.
Al-Zahrani jerked his head away as Iggy tried to gag him. “You dumb fucks. You destroyed the CIA’s most successful counterterrorism operation against al Qaeda.” Iggy stopped. “We might be able to salvage some of it, but not if you give it over to the wannabe spies at the Pentagon. They have the finesse of a rhino.”
“Ah, I understand now. You’re an agent provocateur,” Ashland said with the arrogance of a professor. “Don’t you see? It’s not only Rubicon ensuring that the War-on-Terror industry doesn’t extinguish itself by mopping up all the terrorists. The CIA’s in with them, just like I suspected.”
Al-Zahrani laughed. “You sound like some dumb-ass conspiracy theorist, like that Frenchman who claimed the US was behind 9/11. How in the world did bozos like you find us and manage to do so much damage?” Al-Zahrani shifted his weight and tried to get upright again. “We’re running a false-flag op. Rubicon is the contractor running SHANGRI-LA. By outsourcing it, the president didn’t have to inform Congress. There’s also plausible deniability. A greedy company running a terrorist training camp would be a huge scandal, but not a White House scandal.”
“Clever, but the Americans didn’t invent that tactic,” Ashland said, sounding more and more to her like a Frenchman. “The tsarist secret police used to set up fake Russian dissident groups among the émigrés in Paris.”
Al-Zahrani cleared his throat. “We’ve succeeded in splitting al Qaeda between my faction and Abdullah’s. I’ve recreated the succession problem after Mohammad’s death that split Islam between the Shi’a and Sunni. I keep my followers focused on purity of the movement and that means the foremost duty of the faithful is wiping out Abdullah’s heretics.”