we get our man back.”
Ryan did not get a chance to echo the sentiment before the Pakistani replied, “I completely understand your point of view, gentlemen. I have come today to ask you to give me just a few days to work with my contacts in the region. If Mr. Sam is being held by the Haqqani network, I will pull every string I can to either get him released or else get an operation launched to rescue him.”
“You were with him when he was taken?” asked Chavez.
“I was, indeed. He fought very bravely.”
“I heard it was a hell of a fight.”
“Many killed on both sides,” al Darkur admitted.
“Can’t help but notice that you look none the worse for wear.”
“IA
“Where are you hit? Bullet wounds? Shrapnel?”
Mohammed al Darkur reddened as his eyes lowered. “It was a chaotic situation. I was not injured seriously, but men on my left and right died.”
Chavez snorted. “Listen, Major. I don’t trust you, my organization doesn’t trust you, but we
“And you shall have it, I promise. I have people working on that, just as I have men looking into the Haqqani — ISI connection.”
“Again. Results are what impress me.”
“Understood. I do have one question, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I understand you are in Dubai to monitor General Rehan. Is the rest of your team monitoring him now?”
There was no “rest of” Chavez’s team, but he did not say this. Instead he replied, “Trust me, when he comes to Dubai, we will be on him.”
Now Mohammed al Darkur’s eyebrows rose. “My information is that he arrived in Dubai this morning. I assumed I would help you translate any conversations he has at his safe house.”
Chavez looked to Caruso and Ryan. Their passive monitoring devices were dormant in the air ducts of the Rehan compound. If their target was here in Dubai, then they needed to return to the Kempinski and begin the surveillance.
Ding nodded slowly. “We have translators. My team will know it as soon as Rehan gets to his place.”
Al Darkur seemed satisfied by this, and soon Chavez left the apartment with Caruso and Ryan.
In front of the elevators, Jack said, “If Rehan is here, we could already have missed something important.”
Chavez said, “Yeah. You guys hustle back to the bungalow and get on it. I need to head over to the airport and meet the plane to pick up the equipment, but first I’m going to get Embling away from the major and debrief him thoroughly. I’ll see you guys back at the place in a few hours.”
Chavez spent three hours in discussions in the 108th-floor flat. The first hour was exclusively in a room with Nigel Embling. The British expat spent the vast majority of that time going over everything he had learned about Mohammed al Darkur in the past month and a half. Embling’s other contacts within the PDF had convinced him that neither the 7th Battalion of the Special Services Group, called the Zarrar commandos, with whom al Darkur was aligned, nor the Joint Intelligence Bureau, to which al Darkur had been assigned in the ISI, was overrun or heavily influenced by Islamist radicals, as were many sectors of the PDF. Further, al Darkur’s own actions leading an SSG unit against terrorist groups in the Swat Valley and Chitral had won him commendations that would have made him a target of the “beards” in the PDF.
Last, Embling assured Ding Chavez that he himself had been in the room when Sam Driscoll insisted on going along on the Miran Shah operation. Major al Darkur had been against the American’s participation, and had only reluctantly allowed him to go.
It took the full hour, but finally ChaA Amvez was convinced. He spent two more hours talking to al Darkur about the operation on which Sam disappeared, and he quizzed him on his staff and the contacts he claimed to be shaking down to get information on the missing American’s whereabouts. Finally, sometime around noon, Chavez left the men in their apartment and headed to the airport to pick up the sniper rifle and other gear sent in on the Gulfstream.
Ryan and Caruso returned to their bungalow at the Kempinski Hotel & Residences and activated their passive surveillance equipment across the water, and all three cameras came to life. There was definite activity in the house, though at first none of their cameras revealed Rehan to be present. While they waited and watched the feeds from the cameras and listened to various men speaking Urdu stroll through the entry hall and great room, they called Rick Bell. It was just past two a.m. in Maryland, but Rick promised that he, a technical analyst, and an Urdu-speaking translator would be on station at Hendley Associates within forty-five minutes. Ryan and Caruso recorded all received image and audio captures until then, and they fed them on for analysis.
It was after eleven a.m. Dubai time, some two hours after Dom and Jack arrived back at the bungalow, when a flurry of excitement appeared to take over the guard force in the house. Men tightened their ties and took up positions in the corners of the rooms, more men appeared through the front door carrying luggage, and finally a big man with a trim beard came through the front door. One by one he greeted all the guards standing there with a kiss on the cheek and a handshake, and then he and another man, who seemed to be a high-level officer, entered the great room. The men were deep in conversation.
Caruso said, “The big guy is Rehan. Looks about the same as he did in Cairo back in September.”
“I’ll e-mail Bell and let him know you have confirmed Rehan.”
“I should have shot that fucker back then.”
Ryan thought that over. His concerns about Sam in Waziristan and Clark in Europe were eating him up, and he knew it was even worse for his cousin. A year earlier, Dominic’s twin brother had been killed in a Campus operation in Libya. The thought of losing two more operators must have weighed extra-heavy on Caruso.
“We’re going to get Sam back, Dom.”
Dominic nodded distractedly as he watched the feed.
“And Clark will either fix his own situation, or he’ll hang out until my dad takes office, and Dad will look after him.”
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on your dad not to get involved.”
Jack sniffed. “Dad would take a bullet in the chest for John Clark. A few bleeding-heart congressmen aren’t going to stop him.”
Dom chuckled, and they discussed it no further.
Soon Dominic called Ryan over from where he had been sitting in the bedroom, peering through the spotting scope at Rehan’s safe house. “Hey. Looks like everyone is heading back out.”
“Busy fucker, isn’t he?” Ryan said as he hustled back in to watch on the monitor.
Rehan had taken off the suit coat he was wearing, and now he was clad in a simple white shirt and black suit pants. He and the man who was beginning to look like his second-in-command were standing back in the hall with a group of about eight men, most of the guard force that had come with them fromAnin Pakistan, as well as a couple of faces Ryan recognized as being regulars at the house.
The audio was good, Dominic and Ryan could hear every word, but neither man spoke Urdu, so they would have to wait for the translator in West Odenton, Maryland, to translate the conversation in order to put some context to the scene.
Seconds later, Rehan and an entourage left through the front door.
“Show’s over for now, I guess,” said Dom. “I’m going to make a sandwich.”
