“We’re here on a mission of mercy.”
Mustafa pulled out his gun. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’re here for Sarah,” the Pakistani captain said gently. “She lives in Allah’s mansion, and we’ve come to take her the rest of the way home.”
Mustafa let the relief wash the tension from his body. He put his pistol away. “Good,” he said. “I sent the others back, I’m coming with you.”
“There’s no room,” the captain said. “Besides, you have no papers.” He took out his pistol and shot Mustafa in the forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. “Foolish man,” he muttered half under his breath. By sending his three companions away the stupid mujahed had made a difficult task easy. Allah be praised. In three hours they would have the holy package aboard an airplane on its way to Karachi, their part of the mission completed in time for a couple hours of sleep before morning prayers. “Insha’Allah.”
It wasn’t until after four in the afternoon before Roland Murphy finally got over to the White House to brief the President. He had held off to give the NRO time to recheck their analysis, and to get some new photos from the next series of satellite passes, and for Rencke to make sure that they all understood exactly what they meant.
The President was waiting for him in the Oval Office with his national security adviser Dennis Berndt, but no one else.
“Bin Laden has survived,” Murphy told them without beating around the bush. He took a dozen enhanced photos out of his briefcase and spread them on the coffee table in front of them. Attached to the images were the computer generated identification probabilities which were nearly at one hundred percent.
The news did not come as a complete surprise to them. Murphy had called two days ago to alert the President to the possibility. But now that it was confirmed Berndt was his usual disdainful self.
“What the hell took so long, General?” he demanded.
“I wanted to make absolutely sure first. I didn’t want to go off half-cocked. We have enough problems as it is.”
“Are you finally sure now?” Berndt smirked. “No possibility that the CIA could be wrong … again?”
“There’s always that possibility, Dennis,” Murphy said. “But being an ass won’t help the situation.”
Berndt started to say something, but the President held him off. “So we missed again, and now he’s going to strike back, and I think we all know what that means.” The President gave Murphy a bleak look. “At least we got McGarvey out of there. Is he going to be okay?”
“They’re releasing him from Ramstein sometime tonight. He should be back here in the morning,” Murphy said. “But he might not have the answers either.”
“Is he fit to return to work?”
“I haven’t talked to him yet, Mr. President, but I can’t imagine how I could stop him from coming back. He’s going to have plenty to say.”
“It was just plain bad luck this time,” Berndt said.
“No, Dennis, it was poor planning,” Murphy shot back. “If we had given Mac a little more time he would have come back with the deal we sent him over there to make. As it is now there’ll be no more talking. Bin Laden has got the bomb and he’s going to use it against us.”
“You don’t know that for sure, General,” Berndt said, still trying to slip out of any responsibility. “Could be we did the right thing. Maybe this time we put the fear of God into bin Laden and he’s going to back off. Have your people taken the time to at least give that possibility a consideration. Let’s not close any doors here.”
“That was discussed,” Murphy said. “But we discarded the idea as wishful thinking.”
“I don’t see why,” Berndt said, turning to the President. “Maybe we should put out feelers through the Taliban government. Offer some sort of a reparation payment in exchange for getting word to bin Laden.”
Murphy took several more photos out of his briefcase and spread them on top of those already on the coffee table. “That won’t work, Dennis, and this is why.” He was still having trouble accepting the young woman’s death. It was the worst thing that could have happened.
“What’s this now?” Berndt asked. He’d lost a lot of his usual bluster. When he calmed down he was quite bright. The trouble was he was easily excited.
“These are shots of bin Laden carrying a body across his camp minutes after the missile raid was over.”
The President picked up one of the photographs and studied it for a long time. His shoulders seemed to sag. “Who is it?”
“His daughter,” Murphy said softly. “Her name was Sarah. She was just nineteen years old.”
The President closed his eyes for a moment. “You wouldn’t have brought these over if you weren’t sure about this too.” He looked up. “How did it happen?”
“It looks as if she helped escort McGarvey out of the camp. She was coming back when the attack began, and she was caught out in the open.”
The President’s eyes were drawn to the photograph of his daughter on the desk. “I never meant for that to happen,” he said softly.
Murphy nodded. “It was a tragic accident, Mr. President, that none of us anticipated. But bin Laden will almost certainly strike back. Maybe even against you.”
“He has the motivation now, if he never had it before,” the President agreed.
“She was a terrorist who—” Berndt said, but the President cut him off with a withering glance.
“She was just a baby girl, Dennis. Nineteen.” “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but accident or not, we cannot back down now. We’re going to have to go after the bastard with everything we have. The bounty hasn’t worked, and we’ll never know if McGarvey’s attempt to negotiate a solution would have worked — all that is too late now. We have to kill him. I don’t think there can be any argument about that now, can there be?”
“How difficult would it be for us to arrest him?” the President asked. He was grasping at straws and Murphy could sympathize with him.
“First we’d have to find him, and that in itself might present a big problem. The Taliban may have finally kicked him out of Afghanistan, and if that’s the case he could be almost anywhere.”
“Khartoum,” Berndt suggested.
“That would be my first guess,” Murphy conceded. “But even if we did find him, arresting him would be problematic. There would be casualties, possibly heavy casualties.”
“Kill him,” Berndt said.
Murphy eyed the national security adviser with all the more distaste because this time he had to go along with him, even though he didn’t agree. “That might be the only viable option.”
The President got up and went to the bowed windows where he stretched his back. This was the first real test of his administration, and he was learning, as every other President had, that there were never any easy answers, and that even the power of the United States was very limited.
“Maybe the bomb is already here,” he said.
“Mac didn’t think so.”
“Would killing bin Laden stop someone else from using it against us? Does he have an heir apparent?”
“We don’t think he is training anyone to take over, but of course we can’t be sure about that. What we do know is that he’s the one holding the organization together. Personal loyalty. He’s a hero to the Islamic peoples. They respect and trust him. When he’s gone the money will certainly dry up, and so will the contacts.”
The President turned back. “Can we do it?”
On the way over here Murphy had known that his briefing would probably come to this. But he no more had the answer now than he did an hour ago. “I don’t know, Mr. President.”
“McGarvey got to him once, maybe he can figure out how to get to him again,” Berndt suggested.
“It’s not that easy. Bin Laden wanted to be found. He wanted the meeting. This time it’ll be different. He’ll be expecting someone to come after him, so if we do something like this — assuming that we can find him in the first place — we’ll have to hit him very hard, but not with missiles-with ground troops. And most likely without the knowledge or consent of the local authorities.” Murphy shook his leonine head. “There’s a lot of room for disaster there, Mr. President.”
“We’re not going to be held hostage by that sonofabitch like Carter was with the Iranians,” the President said forcefully. “I’m deeply sorry about his daughter, but he chose to keep her with him on the battlefield. And he chose to acquire a goddamn nuclear weapon and threaten us with it. His choices, General, every one of them. What
