you.”
“Lots of stress in a normal campaign. This is not a normal campaign.”
“No, it’s not. I’m fine. Let’s get back to work.”
“Whatever you say, Jack.”
54
Gerry Hendley lived alone. Since the death of his wife and children in a car accident, he had wrapped himself in his work, continuing on as a senator before leaving public service, and then taking over as the head of the most private spook shop in the world.
His work at Hendley Associates, on the white side as well as the black side, kept him occupied a good sixty hours a week, and even at home he watched the overseas markets on FBN and Bloomberg to keep his edge for the white side of his work, and he read
Gerry had trouble sleeping, understandable due to the intense pressures of his occupation as well as the loss he had experienced in his life: most important, the loss of his family, though the death of Brian Caruso the year before and the current situation with John Clark also took a personal toll on Hendley.
Hendley coveted sleep, it was a scarce and precious commodity, so when his phone rang in the middle of the night, it filled him with anger even before his wondering about the news to come filled him with dread.
It was three-twenty a.m. when his phone rang, rousing him from his rest.
“Yeah?” He answered in a gruff and annoyed tone.
“Good morning, sir. Nigel Embling calling from Pakistan.”
“Good morning.”
“I’m afraid there is a problem.”
“I’m listening.” Hendley sat up in bed. Now the anger disappeared and the woe appeared.
“I have just learned that your man Sam is missing near Miran Shah.”
Now Gerry was up and walking toward his office, heading for his desk and his computer. “What do you mean missing?”
“The unit of soldiers he was with was attacked by Haqqani network fighters several days ago. There were heavy losses on both sides, I am told. Sam and others were making their escape in a vehicle; my contact, Major al Darkur, was in the front. Your man was in the back. It is possible he fell out of the vehicle on the way to safety.”
On the surface that sounded, to Gerry Hendley, like utter bullshit. His first inclination was to think the ISI officer Embling had put up as reliable had double-crossed his man in the field. But he did not have enough data to make that charge just yet, and he certainly needed Embling’s help more than ever now, so he was careful to avoid lashing out with any accusations.
He’d been a senator just long enough to know how to talk out of both sides of his mouth.
“I understand. So there is no word on whether he is dead or alive?”
“My man went back to the location of the skirmish with three helicopters full of troops. The Haqqani folks had left thei
Hendley gritted his teeth. He felt that death in battle might well have been an end preferable to Driscoll than whatever the Taliban had in store for him. “What do you suggest I do on my end?”
Embling hesitated, then said, “I know very well how this looks. It looks like the major has not been truthful to us. But I’ve been at this long enough to know when I’m being played. I trust this young man. He has promised me that he is working to find the location of your man, and he has promised to keep me apprised of the situation several times a day. I ask you to allow me to relay this information to you as I receive it. Perhaps between the three of us we can come up with something.”
Gerry did not see that he had any options. Still, he said, “I want my men to meet this major.”
“I understand,” replied Embling.
“They are in Dubai at the moment.”
“Then we will both come to them. Until we find out how the operation in Miran Shah was compromised, I don’t think it is a good idea to send anyone else here.”
“I agree. You make arrangements, and I’ll notify my men.”
Hendley hung up, then called Sam Granger. “Sam? Gerry. We’ve lost another operator. I want all senior staff in the office in one hour.”
Riaz Rehan’s second attack on India came two weeks after the first.
While his Bangalore attack was bloody, it could be quickly and easily attributed to a single Lashkar-e-Taiba cell. And while LeT was undoubtedly a Pakistani terrorist organization and virtually everyone in the know realized it was, to one degree or another, backed by “the beards” of Pakistan’s ISI, the Bangalore massacre did not scream “massive international conspiracy.”
And that had been by Rehan’s careful design. To start with a big event that opened the eyes of everyone but did not put too much direct focus on his organization. It had worked, arguably it had worked too well, but Rehan had not yet noticed any detrimental effects of the massive body count, such as wholesale arrests of his LeT operatives.
No, everything was moving according to his plan, and now it was time to begin phase two of that plan.
The attackers came by air, land, and sea. By air, four Lashkar operatives traveling under forged Indian passports landed at the airport in Delhi, and then met up with a four-man sleeper cell that had been there for more than a year, waiting to be activated by their ISI handlers in Pakistan.
By land, seven men successfully crossed the border overland into Jammu, and made their way to Jammu city itself, taking residence in a boardinghouse full of Muslim workers.
And by sea, four rigid-hulled inflatable boats landed at two different locations on the Indian coast. Two craft in Goa on India’s west coast and two in Chennai in the east. Each boat carried eight terrorists and their equipment, meaning sixteen armed men for each location.
This put a total of forty-seven men in four different locations across the width of India, and all forty-seven men had mobile phones with store-bought encryption systems that would slow down India’s intelligence and military response to the attacks themselves, though Rehan hailed no doubt the transmissions would eventually be decoded.
In Goa the sixteen men split into eight groups, and each group attacked a different beachside restaurant on Baga and Candolim beaches with hand grenades and Kalashnikov rifles. Before police could kill all of the attackers, 149 diners and restaurant workers were dead.
In Jammu, a city of more than four hundred thousand, the seven men who’d crossed overland from Pakistan broke into two teams. At eight p.m. the teams blew open the emergency exits at movie houses on opposite sides of the city, and then the men, three in one location and four in the other, ran through the broken doors, stood in front of the movie screens, and opened fire on the huge Friday-night theater crowds.
Forty-three Indians lost their lives at one theater, twenty-nine at the other. Between the two locations, more than two hundred people were injured.
In the massive coastal city of Chennai, the sixteen terrorists attacked an international cricket tournament. Security for the tournament had been beefed up after the Bangalore attack, and this undoubtedly saved hundreds of lives. The sixteen terrorists were wiped out after killing twenty-two civilians and police and injuring just under sixty.
In Delhi the eight-man cell entered the Sheraton New Delhi Hotel in the Saket District Centre, killed the
