Dead or Alive Read online

  He turned to face the door. Like the windows, it was shuttered and, of course, locked. Behind him he heard a faint creaking as Ybarra came over the railing, then felt an “I’m here” pat on his shoulder.

  Chavez keyed his headset. “Command, Blue Actual, at the door.”

  “Roger.”

  Ding pulled the flexi-cam from his right-thigh cargo pocket, linked it to his goggles, then slipped the lens beneath the door, slowly, gently, going almost as much by touch as he was by sight. Like everything they did, each Rainbow member had trained and retrained, then trained some more, with every tool in their arsenal, the flexi-cam included. If the door was wired, Chavez was just as likely to feel it as he was to see it.

  He scanned first the bottom threshold, then, finding nothing, he moved on to the hinges before finishing with the doorknob and striker plate. Clear. There was nothing. He withdrew the cam. Behind him, Showalter and Bianco had made it over the railing. Ding pointed at Bianco, then at the doorknob. The Italian nodded and went to work with his pick set. Thirty seconds later the lock snicked open.

  Using hand signals, Ding gave them final instructions: He and Bianco would take point and clear the rooms on the right; Showalter and Ybarra the left.

  Ding gently turned the knob, opened the door a crack. He waited for ten beats, then swung the door open another foot and peeked his head through. The hall was clear. Three doors, two on the right, one on the left. In the distance he heard murmured voices, then silence. A sneeze. He withdrew his head and swung the door open all the way, letting Showalter catch it and hold it.

  MP5 at ready-low, Ding stepped into the hall. Bianco followed two paces behind and to his left, taking the hall’s centerline. On the south wall, Showalter reached the left-hand doorway and stopped. The door was partially closed. “At south-hall door,” Showalter radioed.

  “Looking,” Loiselle replied. “No movement.”

  Showalter squared himself with the door, swung it open, and went in. He emerged twenty seconds later and gave a thumbs-up. Chavez crept down the north wall.

  Johnston’s voice: “Hold.”

  Ding held up a closed fist, and the other three stopped, dropped into a crouch.

  “Movement,” Johnston said. “North wall, second window from east corner.”

  The next room, Ding thought. Twenty seconds passed. Tempted as he was to press Johnston for an update, he resisted. The sniper would respond when he had something.

  “Window’s covered in mini-blinds,” Johnston radioed. “Half open. I see one body moving.”

  “Weapon?”

  “Can’t tell. Stand by. Moving to the door. Three seconds.”

  Chavez slung his MP5, drew his suppressed MK23, stood up, and slid down the wall until he was within arm’s reach of the door.

  “At door,” Johnston called.

  It swung open, and a figure stepped out. Chavez took a half-second, saw the AK-47 slung across the man’s chest, then put a round above his right ear. Ding pivoted on his heel, brought his left arm up, and grabbed the man across the chest as he fell. Bianco was already moving up, going through the door, looking for more targets. Chavez eased his man to the ground.

  “Clear,” he radioed five seconds later, then came out and helped Chavez drag the body into the room. They closed the door behind them, got themselves restacked, and crouched down to wait. If his shot had attracted any attention, they’d know in short order. Nothing moved. “At second door, north wall,” he radioed.

  “Don’t see any more movement,” Johnston replied.

  Ding and Bianco cleared the room and came back out.

  “Command, Blue Actual. Upstairs clear,” Ding called. “Heading to main floor.”

  “Roger,” Stanley replied.

  Twenty feet down the hall lay an arch and a sharp right turn to what Chavez knew was the stairway to the first floor. The stairs were open, twenty feet wide, bordered on the right by a wall, and open on the left, overlooking what they’d decided was probably the embassy’s main work area—and the most likely place the terrorists had bunched the hostages.

  This had advantages and disadvantages, Ding knew. If the hostages were bunched together, there was a good chance most of the bad guys were as well. This would make Rainbow’s job easier, having targets concentrated like that, but it also meant the hostages, sitting cheek by jowl, were fish in a barrel should the terrorists open fire.

  Then we just don’t give ’em that chance, mano.

  He crept forward, moving slowly on flat feet until he reached the arch. A quick glance around the corner revealed the ground floor. Down the stairs and to the right was the front wall, windows still shuttered. At the bottom of the stairway would be that short hall and the four unknown rooms.

  Chavez tracked his eyes back to the northwest corner of the room, then mentally measured four feet down the wall. Give or take half a foot, that’s where Weber would be coming through. Farther to the left, just visible over the railing, he could see two figures standing together. Each held a compact submachine gun, but not up and ready. Dangling at their sides. Fine by me, he thought. A few feet away on a desk, a green-shaded banker’s lamp cast a pool of light on the wall.

  Chavez pulled back and returned to where the rest of the team was waiting. He gestured: Layout confirmed; move as planned. Chavez and Bianco, joined by Weber and his team once they were through the wall, would take the heavy side of the main room. Showalter and Ybarra would go right at the bottom of the stairs, taking the hallway. He got nods from each man.

  “Command, Blue Actual, over.”

  “Go, Blue.”

  “In position.”

  “Roger.”

  From Weber: “Red Actual, roger.”

  “Moving in ninety seconds,” Chavez said.

  “Standing by,” Weber replied.

  Start the count,” Ding radioed.

  “Five and counting.” This from Weber. Five seconds to Gatecrasher.

  Each of Chavez’s men had a flashbang in hand, pin pulled.

  Four ... three ... two ...

  In unison, Ding and Bianco tossed the flashbangs over the railing and started down, MP5s up and tracking, looking for targets. Ding heard the first flashbang skitter across the floor below, followed a quarter-second later by the Gatecrasher going off. A gout of smoke and debris whooshed across the room. Chavez and Bianco kept moving, Ybarra and Showalter passing them on the right, moving fast for the right-hand hallway that led to the east side of the building.

  The second flashbang exploded. Bright light bounced off the ceiling and over the walls. Ding ignored it.

  Target.

  Over the railing a figure was turning toward them. Ding laid the MP5’s sight over the man’s chest and fired twice. He dropped, and Ding kept moving. To his left he saw another figure but knew Bianco was covering it, and as if on cue, he heard a pop-pop. To Chavez’s right he saw the first of Weber’s team coming through the four-foot-tall oval hole created by the Gatecrasher, followed by a second, third, and fourth.

  Ding veered left, moving toward the center of the room. Screams now. A mass of huddled bodies on the floor. Target. He fired twice and kept moving, MP5 tracking. Behind him he heard Showalter call, “Target, left,” followed by a series of overlapping pops.

  Weber and his team had caught up with Chavez and Bianco now and were fanning out, each man covering a sector.

  “Down, down, down! Everybody down!” Ding shouted.

  To the right: pop, pop, pop.

  Chavez kept moving, pushing through the center of the room, Bianco on his left doing the same, looking for movement. ...

  “Clear,” he heard Weber call out, followed by two more.

  “Clear on the left!” Bianco answered.

  “Hall clear!” This from Showalter. “Checking the rooms.”

  “On my way,” Ybarra called.

  From Showalter’s hallway came a woman’s scream. Chavez spun. Ybarra, who had reached the entrance to the hallway, sidestepped right and pressed
himself against the left wall. “Target.” Chavez sprinted to the hall and took position opposite Ybarra. Down the hall, a figure had emerged from the last room, dragging a woman along with him. The man had a pistol pressed to her neck. Ding peeked out. The man spotted him and turned the woman a bit, shielding himself. He shouted something in panicked Arabic. Ding pulled back. “Showalter, say position,” he whispered.

  “Second room.”

  “Target’s just outside the third door. Ten, twelve feet. He’s got a hostage.”

  “I hear her. How’s my angle?”

  “Half a head shot open.”

  “Roger, say when.”

  Chavez peeked out again. The man turned ever so slightly, squaring off with Chavez. Showalter, his MP5 shoulder-tucked, stepped up to the threshold of his door and fired. The bullet entered the man’s right eye. He crumpled, and the woman started screaming. Showalter stepped out and moved toward her.

  Chavez let out a breath, then slung his MP5 and turned to scan the main room. Done and done. Twenty seconds, no more. Not bad. He keyed his radio. “Command, this is Blue Actual, over.”

  “Go.”

  “We’re secure.”

  Once Chavez did his final walk-through and judged the embassy to be fully locked down, he radioed Clark and Stanley a firm “all clear.” From there, events moved rapidly as the report went from Tad Richards to his People’s Militia liaison, Lieutenant Masudi, then up the Libyan chain of command to a major who insisted that Chavez and his team exit the front door and escort the hostages out the main gate. In Rainbow’s temporary command center, Clark and Stanley, misunderstanding the demand, balked until Masudi explained in broken English that there would be no television cameras. The Libyan people simply wanted to express their gratitude. Clark considered this and gave his shrugged approval.

  “International goodwill,” he muttered to Alistair Stanley.

  Ten minutes later Chavez, his team, and the hostages emerged from the embassy’s main entrance amid the glare of klieg lights and applause. They were met at the gate by a contingent of Swedish Security Service (Säkerhetspolisen) and Criminal Investigation Department (Rikskriminalpolisen) officers, who took custody of the hostages. After two solid minutes of handshaking and hugs, Chavez and his team moved out onto the street, where a gauntlet of People’s Militia brass and soldiers offered yet more backslapping.

  Richards appeared at Chavez’s side as they pushed through the crowd toward the command center. “What the hell’s going on?” Chavez shouted.

  “Hard to catch the words,” Richards replied, “but they’re just impressed. No, amazed would be a better description.”

  Behind Chavez, Showalter yelled, “At what, for Christ sake? What the fuck were they expecting?”

  “Casualties! Lots of dead people! They didn’t expect any of the hostages to make it out, let alone all of them. They’re celebrating!”

  “No shit?” Bianco called. “What’re we, amateurs?”

  Richards replied over his shoulder, “They haven’t got the best track record with hostage rescue.”

  Chavez smiled at this. “Yeah, well, we’re Rainbow.”

  21

  HAD HE BEEN in an objective frame of mind, Nigel Embling might have recognized his current mood as nothing more than self-indulgent crap, but at that moment it was his considered decision that the world was in fact going quickly and directly to hell. Later he would likely reevaluate that decision, but right now, sitting at his kitchen table over a cup of tea and reading the morning’s Daily Mashriq, one of Peshawar, Pakistan’s half-dozen daily newspapers, nothing he saw improved his mood.

  “Bloody idiots,” he grumbled.

  His houseboy, Mahmood, magically appeared in the kitchen’s doorway. “Something, Mr. Nigel?” Mahmood, eleven, was too happy and eager by half—especially at this time of day—but Embling knew his household would be a shambles without him.

  “No, no, Mahmood, just talking to myself.”

  “Oh, that’s not good, sir, not good at all. Touched, that’s what people will think. Please, if you would, be certain to save your talking for at home, yes?”

  “Yes, fine. Go back to your studies.”

  “Yes, Mr. Nigel.”

  Mahmood was an orphan, his mother, father, and two sisters having died in the rash of Sunni-on-Shia violence that had plagued Pakistan following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Embling had all but adopted the boy, giving him food, board, a small stipend, and, unbeknownst to Mahmood, a steadily growing trust fund he’d inherit when he turned eighteen.

  Another mosque burned, another faction leader found murdered, another rumor of rigged elections, another ISI intelligence officer arrested for stealing state secrets, another call for calm from Peshawar. It was a damned shame, all of it. Not that Pakistan had ever been the model of peace, mind you, but there had been some periods of mostly calm, though even that was just a sham, a thin film covering the cauldron of violence always boiling just under the surface. Still and all, Embling knew there was no place else for him on earth, though he’d never quite understood why. Reincarnation, perhaps, but whatever it was, Pakistan had certainly wormed its way into his life, and now, at age sixty-eight, he was firmly and irrevocably rooted in his adopted home.

  Embling knew that most men in his position would be, and perhaps should be, afraid—an Anglo-Saxon Christian from England, birthplace of the British Raj, or “rule” in Hindi. For the better part of ninety years, from the mid-1850s to just after World War Two, Great Britain had held sway over what it called the “Indian Subcontinent,” which had at various times during its history included India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somaliland, Singapore, and Lower and Upper Burma, today known as Myanmar, though Embling still and always would call it Burma, political correctness be damned. Though memories of the British Raj in Pakistan had faded with time, its impact had never completely disappeared, and Embling could see it and feel it every day he went out, in the stares from the old-timers in the market and in the whispered conversations between policemen who’d heard the stories from their parents and grandparents. Embling did nothing to hide his heritage, and he couldn’t have if he’d wanted to anyway, what with his perfect but ever-so-slightly accented grasp of Urdu and Pashto. Not to mention his white skin and six-foot-four-inch frame. Not a lot of natives with those traits.

  Still, he was mostly shown respect, and that had nothing to do with lingering deference to the Raj but rather his own history. He had, after all, been in Pakistan longer than many of the people you might find in the Khyber Bazar market on any given day. How many years, exactly? he thought. Give or take holidays or brief assignments to Pakistan’s neighbors . . . Say, forty-plus years. Long enough for his former (and sometimes current) compatriots to have long ago labeled him as “gone native.” Not that he minded. For all its shortcomings and all the near misses and dodgy spots he’d seen, there was no place for him but Pakistan, and in his secret heart he took it as a point of pride that they thought him so well integrated that he was “more Paki than Brit.”

  Embling, at the tender and naive age of twenty-two, had been one of MI6’s many postwar Oxford recruitments, having been approached by the father of a schoolmate who Embling had thought worked as a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Defence but who was in fact a scout for MI6—one of the few, in fact, who had warned his superiors that the infamous traitor Kim Philby was a less-than-stellar catch who would in time either muck up so badly he would cost lives or be tempted and slip over to the other side, which he did, working as a mole for the Soviets for many years before being exposed.

  After surviving the rigors of MI6 training at Fort Monckton on the Hampshire Coast, Embling was assigned Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, or NWFP (or Pakhtunkhwa or Sarhad, depending on who you were talking to), which abutted Afghanistan, at the time just becoming a playground for the Russian KGB. Embling had spent the better part of six years living in the mountains along the border, making inroads with the Pashtun warlords who ruled the gray ar
ea of overlap between Pakistan and Afghanistan. If the Soviets put out feelers in Pakistan’s direction, it would likely come over the mountains and through the lands of the Pashtuns.

  Save the occasional trip home to the UK, Embling had spent his career in the Central Asian Stans—Turkistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—all of which fell in varying degrees and in various times under the rule or at least the sway of the Soviet Union. While the American CIA and his compatriots in MI6—officially known as the Secret Intelligence Service or SIS, a term Embling had never taken to—were fighting the Cold War in the fog-shrouded streets of Berlin and Budapest and Prague, Embling was traipsing the mountains with the Pashtun, living on quabili pulaw dampukht (rice with carrots and raisins) and bitter black tea. In 1977, unbeknownst to his superiors in London, Embling had even married into a Pashtun tribe, taking as his bride the youngest daughter of a minor warlord, only to lose her two years later in a Hind airstrike when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Her body had never been recovered. He often wondered if that was why he’d stayed in Pakistan long after he’d retired. Was some sad part of his heart still hoping to find Farishta still alive somewhere? Her name, after all, when translated into English, meant “Angel.”

  A pipe dream, Embling now thought.

  A pipe dream, just like the idea of a stable Pakistan.

  Seven thousand miles away in Silver Spring, Maryland, Mary Pat Foley was having a similar thought over a similar beverage—her one cup of half-caf/half-decaf reheated and salted coffee she allowed herself in the evening—but on a wholly different topic: the Emir, and the two questions that had plagued U.S. intelligence for the better part of a decade: where he was and how to catch the bastard. With few and only fleeting exceptions, and despite being the White House’s Public Enemy Number One, a position with which Mary Pat mostly disagreed. Certainly the guy needed to get caught or, better yet, put down for good and scattered to the winds, but killing the Emir wasn’t going to solve America’s problem with terrorism. There was even some debate over how much, if any, operational intelligence the Emir possessed; Mary Pat and her husband, Ed, now retired, tended to fall on the “not a hell of a lot” side of the argument. The Emir knew he was being hunted, and while he was a grade-A sonofabitch and a mass murderer, he sure as hell wasn’t stupid enough to put himself in the operational need-to-know loop, especially nowadays, with terrorists having stumbled onto the beauty of compartmentalization. If the Emir was an acknowledged head of state sitting in a palace somewhere, he would likely be getting regular briefings, but he wasn’t—at least no one thought so. He was, as best the CIA could tell, holed up somewhere in the badland mountains of Pakistan, along the border with Afghanistan. But that was the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack scenario, wasn’t it? Still, you never knew. Someday someone would get lucky and find him, of that she was certain. The question was, Would we get him alive or otherwise? She didn’t really care either way, but the idea of standing toe to toe with the bastard and looking him in the eye did hold a certain appeal.