“He does not know. I, however, intend to find out who they are and what they are doing.”
“How will you do that?”
“I will go myself, the day after tomorrow, and I will watch the road to the camp. We have a base in Miran Shah, of course, but Haqqani’s people know about it. They lob in an occasional mortar shell, but otherwise they go on about their business. But we also have some safe houses around town, mostly to the south. Siraj Haqqani’s forces know of some of them, so we do not use them anymore, but my agents have secured a location on the Boya — Miran Shah road, and this happens to be near where the prisoner says this training camp is located.”
“Great. When do we leave?”
“
Embling broke in. “Don’t be daft, lad.”
Sam shrugged. “I’d like to see this for myself. No offense. I’ll tell my office about Dubai, but I’m here. Might as well come along with you, if you’ll have me.”
“It will not be safe. It is Miran Shah; there are no Americans there, I can promise you that. I will be heading down with a handpicked crew of Zarrar Special Service commandos, men I trust implicitly. If you come, I can promise you that myself and my men will be in as much danger as you, so you will benefit from our desire for self- protection.”
This made Driscoll smile. “Works for me.”
Embling didn’t like it at all, but Sam had made up his mind.
Twenty minutes later, Driscoll sat on the cool rooftop veranda of Embling’s house, drinking tea with one hand and holding a satellite phone with the other. The device, like all Hendley Associates sat phones, was equipped with a chip that held an NSA type-1 encryption package that made it secure. Only the person on the other end of the line would be able to hear Driscoll.
Sam Granger answered on the other end.
“Sam, it’s Sam here.”
“What’s the word?”
“The ISI contact seems solid. Not going to promise anything, but we may have a lead on Rehan and his activities.” Driscoll told Granger about the Dubai safe house.
“That is incredible, if true.”
“Might be worth sending the guys over,” Sam Driscoll suggested.
“You don’t want to go yourself?” asked Granger, somewhat surprised.
“I’m going with the major and a team of his SSG guys to North Waziristan for a little SR.”
“SR?”
“Strategic reconnaissance.”
“In Haqqani territory?”
“Roger that. But I’ll be with friendlies. Should be okay.”
There was a pause in the couse in tnnection. “Sam, you are the one whose neck is on the line, and I know you’re not reckless. But still… you will be in the belly of the beast, so to speak, will you not?”
“I will be as safe as the SSG men around me. They seem like they have their heads screwed on straight. Plus, we need to know what the ISI is up to at this camp. Any proof of Rehan or his people there is going to be critically important if we need to leak this guy to the intelligence community at a later date. I’m going to do my best to get pictures and shoot them back to you.”
Granger said, “I don’t know if Hendley will like this.”
“Let’s ask forgiveness instead of permission.”
“Like I said, it’s your neck.”
“Roger that. I’ll be in touch when I get back to Pesh. Don’t stress if you don’t hear from me for a while, it may be a week or two.”
“I understand. Good luck.”
The city of Miran Shah is the capital of North Waziristan, which lies within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of western Pakistan, not far from the Afghan border. The area is not under the control of the Pakistani government in Islamabad, though there is a small and often harassed Pakistani Defense Force base here.
The town and the region, including areas reaching far past the irrelevant Afghan border to the west, are under the control of the Haqqani network, a massive insurgent group that is closely allied with the Taliban.
Jalaluddin Haqqani fought the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s and became a warlord of increasing power and scope. His sons followed in their father’s footsteps, and they had a hand in virtually every aspect of life here in North Waziristan that was not snuffed out by American unmanned aerial vehicles that patrolled the sky above, waiting to be cleared hot for a missile launch.
Their international reach, their dozens of covert insurgent camps, and their close ties with the Pakistani intelligence service made the Haqqani family a natural partner of Riaz Rehan throughout the years. He had used their territory and facilities to train fighters and operatives for missions in India and Afghanistan, and he had reached out to them again recently, asking for their assistance in training a large cell of foreign fighters for a mission.
The Haqqani leadership accepted the request of Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous to send the men, and Rehan himself came along to oversee the initial phases of the training.
Though he had no military or insurgent training whatsoever, Russian rocket entrepreneur Georgi Safronov was the leader of the unit of Jamaat Shariat forces who arrived at the Haqqani camp near Boya, west of Miran Shah, in the third week of October. With him was the man he knew as General Ijaz, as well as his unit of fifty-five Dagestani rebels. The huge force of foreigners was outfitted by the Haqqani forces and billeted in a large cave complex dug into the walls of a hillside.
Much of the training itself took place inside the man-made caves and under corrugated tin roofs painted to look like dirt and farmland so as not to attract the attention of U.S. drones, but some team tactics training did take place in fields and on hillsides. The UAVs were not invisible; specially trained spotters were posted to keep an eye out for America’s “eyes in the sky.” But the UAVs were stealthy enough that Rehan himself ordered the Haqqani network to place absolute priority, not on the quality of the training of the foing of treigners, but on maintaining the security of the operation.
Rehan did not really care if the Dagestani insurgents had the talents necessary to take over and hold a space launch facility in Kazakhstan. No, he was instead interested only in their ability to succeed in a mission here in Pakistan that they would need to undertake to gain control of the two nuclear weapons. If they lost half their number while executing this mission, it was of no great concern to Rehan.
His only concern was that the world learned that nuclear bombs had been stolen out from under the Pakistanis’ noses by foreign terrorists. He felt certain that this would lead to the disintegration of the Pakistani government within days or weeks.
The Haqqani network took Rehan’s order to ramp up security seriously. They sent spies into the villages and neighborhoods between Miran Shah and Boya, keeping an eye out for anyone interested in the movement of men and material. Little happened in North Waziristan without Haqqani knowing about it, but now there was virtually nothing that could avoid detection by the powerful force.
The Pashtun fighters found the Dagestani fighters to be quite good with their weapons and extremely motivated individuals. But they lacked unit cohesion and this was something that Haqqani’s people had developed by necessity in the decade they had been fighting coalition forces over the border.
The only member of the unit who did not know how to handle a gun, or handle himself in any physical sense, was their leader. Safronov had adopted the nom de guerre Magomed Dagestani, Mohammed the Dagestani, but although he now possessed a name that conveyed his intent, he lacked any martial abilities to back it up. But he was smart and motivated to learn, so slowly the Taliban in the cave complex taught him how to use handguns and rifles and grenade launchers and knives, and by the end of the first week he had come a long way.
Rehan was in and out of the camp, splitting time between his home in Dubai, his office in Islamabad, and the cave complex. All the while, Rehan encouraged the Dagestanis to stay motivated for the hard work ahead and
