Against All Enemies mm-1 Page 3

  Meanwhile, the rest of the hotel was gripped in chaos, with alarms sounding, security personnel screaming, and hotel staff dashing everywhere as the smoke from the explosion began filtering into the air system with the pungent scent of explosives.

  Stealing another look over his shoulder, the man sprinted for the door as Moore whirled and bounded after him, drawing the attention of two housekeepers, who were pointing at them and screaming for security. Good.

  Moore closed the gap as the guy raised both hands and slammed into the rear door, swinging it open before he vanished outside. And three, two, one, Moore hit the door with a gasp, the cooler night enveloping him as he caught sight of the man sprinting toward the same parking lot where Moore had left his car. This was the best exit for him, with the woods beyond, but it would also take them past Moore’s car — and his pistol stowed inside.

  Moore’s anger finally found his muscles. This guy would not get away. This was no longer a decision or even a goal but a cold, hard fact. Moore already envisioned his capture; it was simply time to make it so. As expected, his prey did not have the physical endurance that he did, and the man began to slow as he hit his lactate threshold, but Moore had a long way to go before he reached his …and so he darted up behind the man like a wolf and launched himself into a low kick to the guy’s left leg that sent him screaming and crashing onto the grass, just before both of them reached the asphalt.

  There was an old and very well-known saying about Muay Thai fighting techniques: “Kick loses to punch, punch loses to knee, knee loses to elbow, elbow loses to kick.”

  Well, this asshat had just lost it all to Moore’s kick, and now Moore seized the man’s wrists and maneuvered himself on top to straddle and pin him.

  “Don’t move. You’re done!” Moore said in Urdu, the language most frequently used in the city.

  The man lifted his head, struggling against Moore’s grip, but then his eyes narrowed and his mouth opened in — what? Horror? Shock?

  Thunder boomed somewhere behind them. Familiar thunder. Terribly familiar …

  At nearly the same time the man’s head exploded, showering Moore in blood and causing him to react on instinct, all muscle memory, no forethought, just self-preservation driving him away from the man and rolling onto his side.

  He gasped, kept rolling, still in full control of his body, the evolutions of SEAL training never forgotten, the body remembering, responding, reacting.

  The gun boomed two more times, the rounds burrowing into the dirt not six inches from Moore’s torso as he came onto his hands and knees and bolted off toward his car, right there, just ten meters away. That gun was a Russian-made Dragunov sniper’s rifle. Moore was certain of that. He’d fired them, watched them be fired, and been shot at by men using them. The weapon had a range of eight hundred meters, and up to thirteen hundred if the shooter was skilled and exploiting his scope. The ten-round detachable box magazine could keep this guy in business for a while.

  Another shot punched a hole in the driver’s-side door as Moore reached into his pocket, hit his key fob, and the car chirped. He shifted around the vehicle, out of the sniper’s line of fire, and opened the passenger’s-side door.

  The windshield shattered as another round punched through. Out of the glove box came Moore’s Glock 30, the word AUSTRIA embossed on the.45-caliber pistol’s side. He came around the door, scanned the tree line and hotel beyond, and there he was, leaning forward on the roof of the two-story tech center next door.

  The sniper wore a black woolen cap, but his face was clearly visible. Dark beard. Wide eyes. Broad nose. And Moore nodded inwardly over the Dragunov sniper’s rifle with the attached scope and big magazine that the sniper lifted higher, balancing it with one elbow propped on the ledge.

  Even as Moore spotted him, the sniper saw Moore and fired three shots in rapid succession that hammered the door as Moore rushed back around the car, toward the driver’s side.

  But then, just as the third shot echoed off, Moore bolted up and, cupping his gun hand in his left palm, returned fire, his rounds drilling into the concrete within inches of where the sniper had been perched, about forty meters away. That was beyond his pistol’s accurate range, but Moore figured the sniper wasn’t doing any ballistics homework at the moment, only ducking from wild bullets.

  Four hotel security guards were already rushing into the parking lot area, and Moore pointed and shouted to them, “He’s up there! Get down!”

  One guy rushed at Moore while the others darted behind several other parked cars.

  “Don’t move!” the guard ordered — and then the sniper took off his head.

  Another guard began barking into his radio.

  When Moore returned his gaze to the building, he spotted the sniper on the far east side using a maintenance ladder to descend to the lot below, gliding swiftly, like an arachnid leaving its nest.

  Moore sprinted away and the path grew uneven, the grass turning to gravel and then back to pavement. A narrow alley between the tech center and a row of small one-story offices behind it led northwest toward Aga Khan Road, the main thoroughfare in front of the hotel. The scent of sweet pork had filled the alley, as the hotel’s kitchen exhaust fans filtered in that direction, and Moore’s stomach growled even though a meal was hardly on his mind.

  Without slowing, he turned left, his Glock leading the way, and there, not twenty meters ahead, sat an idling Toyota HiAce van with two gunmen hanging from the rear driver’s-side and rear passenger’s-side windows.

  The sniper ran toward the rolling van and leapt into the passenger’s seat as the gunmen to the rear raised their rifles at Moore, who had the better part of two seconds to lunge down into a small alcove as the bricks above him shattered under automatic-weapons fire. Twice he tried to peer out to get a tag number, but the incoming was relentless, and by the time they ceased fire, the van was turning onto the main highway. Gone.

  Moore rushed back to his car, grabbed his cell phone, and, with a trembling hand, tried to make a call. Then he just stopped himself and leaned back on his car as more security guys swarmed him, with their chief demanding answers.

  He needed to call in the van, get eyes in the sky on that vehicle.

  He needed to tell them what had happened.

  Everyone was dead.

  But all he could do was breathe.

  Saidpur Village

  Islamabad, Pakistan

  Three Hours Later

  Tucked tightly into the Margallah Hills overlooking Islamabad, Saidpur Village offered a picturesque view of the city and attracted a steady stream of tourists searching for what some guides called the “soul” of Pakistan. The guides said you could find it in Saidpur.

  However, if the city had a soul, it had just grown darker. Columns of smoke still wafted up from the Marriott Hotel, cutting lines across the star-filled sky, and Moore stood there on the balcony of the safe house, cursing once more. The explosion had not only taken out their room but two other adjacent ones to the right and left, and before others could get near the area, the roof in that section of the building had collapsed.

  With the assistance of three other operatives called in to help secure the area, along with a special forensics team and two crime scene specialists, Moore was able to work with private hotel security, the local police, and a five-man Inter-Services Intelligence team even while he fed a steady stream of misinformation to Associated Press reporters. By the time the story hit outlets like CNN, they were reporting that a Taliban bomb had gone off in the hotel and that the terrorists had claimed responsibility because they were seeking revenge for killings by Shiites of members of a Sunni extremist ally of the group known as Sipah-e-Sahaba. A Pakistan Army colonel had been inadvertently caught in the blast. Between the hard-to-remember names of the groups and the vague circumstances, Moore felt certain the story would continue to grow more convoluted. His colleagues in the room had carried nothing that would identify them as Americans or members of the CIA.

 
; He turned away from the balcony and into a voice within his head: “I can’t disrupt their lives. My sons are in high school now. My wife was just promoted. She works right there in the tech center next door. Pakistan is our home. We’ll never leave.”

  Moore clutched the stone rail, leaned over, lost his breath, and began to vomit. He just stood there, with his forehead balanced on his arm, waiting for it to pass, trying to release it all, though the bombing had, in effect, brought it all back. He’d spent years trying to repress the memories, grappling with them during countless sleepless night, fighting against the urge to take the easy way out and drink the pain away …And for the past few years he’d wanted to believe that he’d won.

  And then this. He’d met his fellow operatives only a few weeks prior and hadn’t made anything other than a professional connection with them. Yes, he felt terrible over their loss, but it was Khodai, the torn colonel, who pained him the most …Moore had learned a lot about him, and the loss felt significant. How would Khodai’s nephew react to his uncle’s death? The lieutenant had thought he was helping both men, and while he must have known that Khodai would be endangering himself by talking to Moore, he probably denied any thoughts of his uncle being murdered.

  Moore had promised to protect Khodai and his family. He’d failed on every level. When the police arrived at Khodai’s house just an hour ago, they’d found the man’s wife and sons stabbed to death, and the agent assigned to protect them was missing. The Taliban were so well connected, so thoroughly wired into the pulse of the city, that it seemed virtually impossible for Moore and his people to get any real work done. That was his depression talking, of course, but the Taliban had spotters everywhere, and no matter how hard he’d tried to blend in — growing the beard, wearing the local garb, speaking the language — they’d guessed who he was and what he was after.

  He wiped his mouth and stood taller, glancing back to the city, to the lingering smoke, to the lights twinkling out to the horizon. He swallowed, mustered up the courage, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  A few hours later, Moore was on a video call with Greg O’Hara, deputy director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. O’Hara was a fit man in his late fifties, with grayish-red hair and a hard, blue-eyed stare magnified by his glasses. He had a penchant for gold ties and must have owned a hundred of them. Moore gave him a capsule summary of what had happened, and they decided they would speak again in the morning, once the other teams had completed their investigations and logged their findings. Moore’s immediate boss, the chief of the Special Activities Division, would also participate in the call.

  One of Moore’s local contacts, Israr Rana, an operative he’d recruited himself after spending the past two years in Afghanistan and Pakistan, arrived at the safe house. Rana was a college student in his mid-twenties, with a keen wit, birdlike features, and a passion for playing cricket. His sense of humor and boyish charm allowed him to gather remarkable amounts of intel for the Agency. That, coupled with his ancestry — his family had become fairly well known over the past century as both great soldiers and cunning businesspeople — made him a near-perfect operative.

  Moore plopped into a chair, with Rana standing near the sofa. “Thanks for coming.”

  “No problem, Money.”

  That was Rana’s nickname for Moore — and it made sense. Rana was paid handsomely for his services.

  “I need to know where the leak happened. Did we blow it from the get-go? Was it the Army, the Taliban, or both?”

  Rana shook his head and made a face. “I’ll do everything I can to get you something. But for now, let me get you a drink. Something to help you sleep.”

  Moore waved him off. “Nothing will help me sleep.”

  Rana nodded. “I’m going to make some calls. Can I use the computer?”

  “It’s over there.”

  Moore retired to the bedroom, and within an hour he realized he’d been wrong. He drifted off into an exhausted sleep, floating relentlessly on black waves, until his heartbeat, like the thumping of a helicopter’s rotors, sent him bolting upright in a cold sweat. He glanced around the room, sighed, and collapsed back onto his pillow.

  A half-hour later he was in his car, heading back to the scene. He glanced over at the shattered building, then at the tech center next door. He found a security guard from the tech center and, along with two local policemen, gained access to the building. They went up to the roof, where Moore had already been earlier and from where they’d collected the sniper’s shell casings to search for prints on them.

  It was a revelation, an epiphany of sorts, that had come to him as his mind had drifted between the conscious and unconscious, because the problem of how their adversaries had gotten the explosives into the room had continued to burn in his head until a very low-tech solution took hold. All he needed to do was find evidence of it.

  He walked along the edge of the rooftop, allowing his flashlight to slowly glide over the dust-caked concrete and steel …until he found it.

  The Special Activities Division, operating within the National Clandestine Service, was manned by Paramilitary Ops officers recruited from the military who conducted deniable covert operations on foreign soil. The division was composed of ground, maritime, and air branches. Moore had originally been recruited for the maritime branch, like most Navy SEALs, but he’d been loaned out to the ground branch and had worked several years in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he’d conducted excellent intelligence operations involving the use of Predator drones to drop Hellfire missiles on numerous Taliban targets. Moore had not balked at being moved to the ground branch, and he knew that if he was needed for a particular maritime operation, he’d be sent anyway. Operational lines had been drawn by office staff, not field operatives.

  SAD consisted of less than two hundred agents, pilots, and other specialists deployed in six-man or fewer teams, with more often than not a solo SAD operative conducting “black” and other covert operations with the assistance of a “handler” and/or “case officer” who often remained out of harm’s way. SAD operatives were extensively trained in sabotage, counterterrorism, hostage rescue, bomb damage assessment, kidnapping, and personnel and matériel recovery.

  SAD owed its existence to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), an agency during World War II that was organized under the Joint Chiefs of Staff and had direct access to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. For the most part, the OSS operated independently of military control — an idea that raised brows and drew deep skepticism at the time. MacArthur was said to have been highly reluctant to have any OSS personnel working within his theater of operations. Consequently, when the OSS was disbanded after the war, the CIA was created under the National Security Act of 1947. Missions that could not be associated with the United States went to the paramilitary group of the CIA — the Special Activities Division — a direct descendant of the OSS.

  Chief of SAD David Slater, a steel-jawed black man and former Force Recon Marine with twenty years in the military, joined the morning video conference with Deputy Director O’Hara. The two men stared up at Moore from his tablet computer as he sat in the kitchen of the safe house in Saidpur Village.

  “Sorry we couldn’t hook up yesterday. I was in the air en route to CONUS,” volunteered Slater.

  “It’s okay, sir. Thanks for joining us.”

  O’Hara wished Moore a good morning.

  “With all due respect, there is absolutely nothing good about it.”

  “We understand how you feel,” replied O’Hara. “We lost some great people and years of intel.”

  Moore grimaced and bit his tongue. “What do you know so far?”

  “Harris and Stone have been recovered from the rubble. At least what was left of them. Gallagher, who was at Khodai’s house, is still missing. They must have him in a cellar or a deep cave, because there’s no signal from his shoulder beacon. The guy you chased was obviously well trained but still just a low-level guy.”

  Moore shook hi
s head in disgust. “Do you think Khodai was wired?”

  “It’s possible,” said Slater.

  “I thought he was, too. I thought the checkpoint in the lobby was a fake and controlled by them. The X-ray wouldn’t pick up anything, even if he was wired. So Khodai came through without triggering the system. Maybe they threatened him, said if he didn’t blow us up, they’d kill his family, which they did anyway.”

  “That’s a pretty good theory,” said O’Hara.

  Moore snorted. “But that’s not what happened.”

  “What do you got?” Slater asked him.

  “Hotel security is, for the most part, pretty good. I think they used housekeepers to get the bombs in the rooms next to ours.”

  “Slow down,” said Slater. “How’d they get the bombs into the hotel in the first place? They didn’t haul them through the main entrance.”

  Moore shook his head. “They got into the building next door, the tech center, where the sniper was. Less security there, and maybe easier to bribe. The bombs were passed across via a line and pulley from one rooftop to the next.”

  “You got to be kidding me,” said O’Hara.

  “I’m not. I went up on the tech-center roof and saw where they’d strung the ropes. Then I went over to the Marriott, found the same signs on the edge of their roof. I’ll be uploading some photos I took in a few minutes.”

  O’Hara’s voice lowered in frustration. “That’s ridiculously simple.”

  “And maybe that was our problem: We’ve got our eyes on the complicated when these guys are using sticks and stones. If they were really daring, they would’ve tried throwing the bombs across …” Moore just shook his head again.

  “So those rooms around yours were registered to guests who were never there,” O’Hara concluded.

  “Exactly. Someone on the inside made sure they looked occupied in the registration system while they remained vacant. The local cops should be able to nab the one son of a bitch at the front desk who hooked them up. I’ve got Rana putting out some feelers for me.”