Outside Derai, the van turned southeast on the narrow road that dead-ended at their ultimate objective, a tiny farming village called Damghar Kalay. Maggs snuck a glimpse at his watch. Ten fifteen. Right on schedule. On the edge of town, a necklace of lights flickered on a minaret, glistening in the rain-streaked sky.
Aside from the minaret, Damghar was dark. A couple miles beyond it, on the opposite bank of the Swat River, the lights of Mingora glowed. Mingora was the regional capital. With one hundred seventy-five thousand residents, it retained hints of vitality that Derai had lost. Mingora, Derai, and the villages around them lay on a belt of flatland that the icy Swat River had carved from the mountains of the Hindu Kush. With hot summers and plenty of water, the southern Swat Valley was surprisingly fertile, an agricultural oasis. The mountains around it were largely uninhabited, a trackless and beautiful wilderness that in happier times had been called “the Switzerland of Pakistan.” Just seventy-five miles north of here, the massive peak called Falaksair topped twenty thousand feet, a stone fist punching through the sky.
Yet the mountains had not buffered the Swat from the upheaval shaking Pakistan. For years, Talib militants had encroached into the valley from their strongholds on the Afghan border, one hundred miles west. By the summer of 2008, their takeover was nearly complete. Police and government officials hunched in their compounds as black-turbaned Talibs patrolled the streets of Mingora, enforcing their own version of sharia — Islamic law — from the backs of their pickups. They taxed store owners, burned girls’ schools, beat anyone they suspected of crimes against Islam. In June 2008, they even destroyed Pakistan’s only ski resort, at Malam Jabba, twenty-five miles west of Mingora. The Talibs didn’t take kindly to frivolities like snow sports. No one would confuse the Swat Valley with Switzerland anymore.
The Taliban’s control of the Swat did not yet extend to the main road into the valley. Traffic to and from Islamabad flowed without roadblocks. Still, driving up here was risky, especially for Maggs. All six of the Deltas on this mission had rough brown skin and long black beards and spoke Arabic, Pashto, or both. On the road, they didn’t stand out. As a black man, Maggs didn’t have that camouflage. The Mitsubishi was a cargo van, no side windows. Maggs had spent much of the trip lying on his seat, invisible to anyone outside.
Behind the van, the other four Deltas followed in George Fezcko’s favorite armored Nissan sedan. Its trunk held AKs, Glocks, and a handful of grenades. In contrast, the van’s cargo area was empty, aside from a three-speed bicycle identical to a million others in Pakistan — and a black bag that held the most important piece of equipment of all.
THE DELTAS HAD COME in from Bagram a week before. They were good soldiers, tough and experienced. But the fact that they were here at all highlighted the problems the CIA was having in the new world. After rotating for six-plus years through Afghanistan, the Delta ops had picked up the language and looks to blend in. To survive.
Meanwhile, in Islamabad, too many of the CIA’s best and brightest were still stuck in the cold war model. They rarely left the Diplomatic Enclave. They told themselves they were cultivating sources inside the ISI and the army. But from what Maggs saw, they got played by their Paki counterparts as often as not. Fezcko, his old deputy chief of station, was the only senior operative who’d gotten outside the wire and put himself in harm’s way on a regular basis.
Maggs had to admit he missed Fezcko. He missed Nawiz Khan, too, wished Khan could have come on this mission. But a month before, in July, Khan had been sent to Lahore, on the India-Pakistan border. He’d called Maggs with the news. He didn’t have to explain the reason. He was being punished for the success of the raid where they’d caught bin Zari and Mohammed.
Khan had nearly managed to avoid the backlash. His team stayed loyal to him, sticking to the story he’d devised. Only four terrorists were in the house, and all were killed during the attack. No one mentioned bin Zari or Mohammed, much less the Americans involved in the raid.
The physical evidence at the house didn’t match the story. But the Islamabad police knew better than to get involved. Truck bombs were the ISI’s turf. But anyone at the ISI who knew that bin Zari had been at the house could hardly say so, since aiding the attack he’d been planning would have been the only way to know. Khan seemed to be on the verge of escaping punishment. Then he was told of the transfer.
“Sounds like you got off okay,” Maggs said.
“Not so much, my friend. I shan’t have my men with me,” Khan said in his British accent. “Down there I can’t trust anyone.”
Maggs heard cars and trucks in the background. He wondered where Khan was. Not his house, certainly. Khan would never call Maggs from his house. “Maybe you ought to take a trip,” Maggs said. “See the States. Visa won’t be a probem.”
“Generous but entirely unnecessary,” Khan said. “How’s your leg?”
“No more marathons, but not bad,” Maggs said. He’d been lucky. The bullet had missed bone and major nerves. His doctor had promised him that if he took his rehab seriously, he could expect a full recovery. Not that Maggs needed an excuse to exercise.
“And how’s George?”
“Good,” Maggs said. “I’ll make sure he knows where you are.”
“And our friends? Have you heard anything yet?”
“Not yet. Roaches go in, but they don’t come out.”
“Roaches?”
“I promise, I hear anything, I’ll let you know. It was a wild night, wasn’t it?”
“It most certainly was.”
“Be safe down there, Nawiz. You need help, you send a flag up the pole, I’ll rustle up the cavalry, come get your ass. International incident or no.”
“I believe you would. Salaam alekeim, my friend.”
“Alekeim salaam.”
FOR THE NEXT MONTH, Maggs waded through boring assignments, managing security for a congressional delegation, overseeing the installation of new cameras inside the CIA’s floor of the embassy, bringing in two new guards. And, of course, rehabbing his leg.
Then, in mid-August, Nick Ulrich, the chief of station, was called to Kuwait for an urgent meeting. Maggs wasn’t invited, but he heard through the grapevine that the other guests were the chiefs of station from Delhi and Kabul and two lieutenant generals from Centcom. An all-star cast.
Ulrich was gone a day. When he got back, their operational pace picked up markedly. For two days in a row, Bagram ran up Predators to take out weapons caches hidden in the North-West Frontier. On the third day, Indian security forces arrested four members of Ansar Muhammad, Jawaruddin bin Zari’s old group, at a house in Delhi. And Maggs wondered if bin Zari had been broken.
The answer came the next morning, just as he was settling at his desk for his second cup of coffee. Ulrich’s secretary buzzed him.
“COS wants to see you.”
“Of course.”
Ulrich could have called, himself, but he wasn’t the type. Maggs walked down the hall, and Ulrich’s secretary waved him. Without getting up, Ulrich handed him a sheet of the blue paper used only for the most urgent messages.
“Came in this morning.”
TOP SECRET/SCI/CHARLIE BRAVO RED/COS C1 EYES ONLY
LAPTOP BURIED IN KITCHEN OF HOUSE IN DAMGHAR KALAY, SWAT VALLEY. PROVES SENIOR ISI OFFICIALS HAVE DIRECT LINKS TO PAK TERRORIST ATTACKS. ISI UNAWARE. TARGET BELIEVED UNGUARDED. CIVILIANS ONLY. LOC/ADDINTEL TO FOLLOW.