Against All Enemies

Tom Clancy, Peter Telep Against All Enemies

WE THINK AL-QAEDA IS BAD, BUT THEY’VE GOT NOTHING ON THE CARTELS.

— unidentified senior FBI agent, El Paso, Texas

EVERYONE HAS A PRICE. THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO FIND OUT WHAT IT IS.

— Pablo Escobar

IN MEXICO YOU HAVE DEATH VERY CLOSE. THAT’S TRUE FOR ALL HUMAN BEINGS BECAUSE IT’S A PART OF LIFE, BUT IN MEXICO, DEATH CAN BE FOUND IN MANY THINGS.

— Gael Garcia Bernal

Prologue

RENDEZVOUS FOXTROT

0215 Hours, Arabian Sea

5 Miles South of the Indus River

Coast of Pakistan

A darkened ship is a burdened ship, Moore thought as he stood outside the pilothouse of the OSA-1 fast attack craft Quwwat. She was indigenously built by the Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works and based on an old Soviet design, complete with four HY-2 surface-to- surface missiles and two twin 25-millimeter antiaircraft guns. Three diesel engines and three shafts propelled the 130-foot-long patrol boat at thirty knots across waves tinged silver by a quarter-moon shimmering low on the horizon. Running at “darken ship” meant no range or masthead lights, no port or starboard running lights. International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS) dictated that were an incident to occur, Quwwat would be at fault regardless of the circumstances.

Earlier in the evening, at dusk, Moore had walked down a Karachi pier with Sublieutenant Syed Mallaah, trailed by four enlisted men, a SPECOPS team from the Pakistan Special Service Group Navy (SSGN), an organization similar to the U.S. Navy SEALs, but, ahem, their operators were hardly as capable. Once aboard the Quwwat, Moore had insisted on a quick tour that ended with a cursory introduction to the commanding officer, Lieutenant Maqsud Kayani, who was distracted as he issued orders to leave port. The CO couldn’t have been much older than Moore, who was thirty-five himself, but the comparisons stopped there. Moore’s broad shoulders stood in sharp juxtaposition to Kayani’s lean cycler’s physique that barely tented up his uniform. The lieutenant had a hooked nose, and if he’d shaved in the past week, there was no clear evidence. Despite his rugged appearance, he had the twenty-eight-man crew’s utmost attention and respect. He spoke. They jumped. Kayani eventually gave Moore a firm handshake and said, “Welcome aboard, Mr. Fredrickson.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate your assistance.”

“Of course.”

They spoke in Urdu, Pakistan’s national language, which Moore had found easier to learn than Dari, Pashto, or Arabic. He’d been identified as “Greg Fredrickson,” an American, to these Pakistani naval men, although his darker features, thick beard, and long, black hair now pulled into a ponytail allowed him to pass for an Afghan, Pakistani, or Arab if he so desired.

Lieutenant Kayani went on: “Have no worries, sir. I plan to arrive at our destination promptly, if not early. This boat’s name means prowess, and she’s every bit of that.”

“Outstanding.”

Point Foxtrot, the rendezvous zone, lay three miles off the Pakistan coast and just outside the Indus River delta. There, they would meet with the Indian patrol boat Agray to accept a prisoner. The Indian government had agreed to turn over a recently captured Taliban commander, Akhter Adam, a man they claimed was a High-Value Target with operational intelligence on Taliban forces located along the southern line of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Indians believed that Adam had not yet alerted his own forces of his capture; he had simply gone missing for twenty-four hours. Still, time was of the essence. Both governments wanted to ensure that the Taliban was not tipped off that Adam had fallen into American hands. Therefore, no American military assets or forces were being used in the transfer operation — except a certain CIA paramilitary operations officer named Maxwell Steven Moore.

Admittedly, Moore had misgivings about using a security team of SSGN guys led by a young, inexperienced sublieutenant; however, during the briefing he’d been told that Mallaah, a local boy from Thatta in Sindh Province, was fiercely loyal, trusted, and highly respected. In Moore’s book, loyalty, trust, and respect were earned, and they would see if the young sublieutenant was up for the challenge. Mallaah’s job was, after all, rudimentary: oversee the transfer and help protect Moore and the prisoner.

Assuming that Akhter Adam made it safely aboard, Moore would begin interrogating him during the trip back to the Karachi pier. For his part, Moore would use that time to determine if the commander was indeed an HVT worthy of serious CIA attention or somebody to leave behind for the Pakistanis to play with.

Forward of the port beam, the blackness was pierced by three quick white flashes from the Turshian Mouth lighthouse guarding the entrance to the Indus River. The sequence repeated every twenty seconds. Farther east, nearer the bow, Moore picked up the single white flash from the Kajhar Creek light, and that flash repeated every twelve seconds. The sealed-beam revolving beacon of the often-disputed Kajhar Creek (aka the Sir Creek light) was situated on the Pakistan-India border. Moore had taken special note of the lighthouse names, locations, and their identifying flash sequences from the navigational charts rolled out during the briefing. Old SEAL habits died hard.

With moonset at 0220 and fifty percent cloud cover, he anticipated pitch-black conditions for the 0300 rendezvous. The Indians were running at darken ship, too. In a pinch the Turshian Mouth and Kajhar Creek lighthouses would keep him oriented.

Lieutenant Kayani held true to his word. They reached Point Foxtrot at 0250 hours, and Moore shifted around the pilothouse to the only available night-vision scope mounted on the port side. Kayani was already there, manning the scope. Meanwhile, Mallaah and his team waited on the main deck, midships, to haul the prisoner across once the Indian vessel came alongside.

Kayani backed away from the night scope and offered it to Moore. Despite the gathering clouds, starlight provided sufficient photons to bathe the Indian Pauk-class patrol boat in a green eerie twilight, bright enough to expose the numerals 36 painted on her hull. Approaching bows-on, at twice the weight of the Quwwat, the five-hundred-ton Agray carried eight GRAIL surface-to-air missiles and dual RBU-1200 ASW rocket launchers up on her bow. Each ten-tube system was capable of deploying decoys and ASW rockets for surface-to-surface and antisubmarine warfare operations. The Quwwat felt diminutive in her presence.

As the Agray began to drift down the port side and prepared to come about to make her approach, Moore spotted her name painted in black letters across the stern, rising above the mist agitated by the bow wash. He then glanced through the pilothouse door out to the starboard bridge wing and caught a short-long, short-long light flash. He tried to remember which lighthouse used that light sequence. The Agray completed her turn, and Kayani was now busy leaning over the port side, directing the placement of fenders to minimize any hull damage once the two ships came together.

The flashes came again: short-long, short-long.

Lighthouse, my ass, Moore thought. ALPHA-ALPHA was International Morse Code