BLOWBACK (2 page)

After that, one by one, they all departed. And as they went, each one swore allegiance to the man who had called the meeting, the man they now referred to as Ameer ul Momineem, the Commander of the Faithful. The man who had clawed his way up from being a tribal militia leader and kept going until one day, the mantle of Ameer of Waziristan had fallen on him, bestowed by none other than Omar the One-Eyed. Despite Omar’s blessings, the Ameer had had to fight off and subdue several contenders. Today, both Al Qaeda and the Taliban accorded him the respect and importance he felt he deserved.

T
he Ameer waited till the last of them had gone before he spun around towards the large, full-length mirror at the far end of the room. When he gestured, the mirror swung to one side and a man emerged from a tiny cubbyhole behind it. Like the Ameer, the newcomer was dark with saturnine features. Like him, he was unusually tall – but that was where the similarities ended. The newcomer’s slender, almost athletic build and demeanour were such that they wouldn’t raise a second glance. He could blend effortlessly into any crowd, in any society, in most of Asia.

‘What do you think?’ The Ameer raised his eyebrows.

‘It couldn’t have gone better,’ the man replied with a smile.

‘What about Saifullah?’

‘He could be trouble – if he is allowed to live, of course.’

‘Take care of him then,’ the Ameer said impatiently.

‘Consider it done.’

‘Good. What’s your plan now?’

‘The director has placed me at your disposal, Ameer.’

‘So you can report to him about everything we do?’

‘If you want me to.’ The man eyed him levelly, aware that the more he tried to justify his position, the less he would be believed. ‘Only if you want me to.’

‘Really?’ The Ameer stared at him unblinkingly. ‘Why should I trust you? Your agency is not exactly the benchmark of trust and truth. And these days, with the American pressure, how can anyone know which way you will turn?’

‘You’ll have to take my word for it,’ the man said. ‘My loyalties lie with Allah... only with Allah.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Try me.’

‘And how does your director feel about this?’

‘This area is not even in my beat any more, but he still sent me here, didn’t he?’

‘That is because I specifically asked for you. He knows I will not deal with anyone else.’

‘You can read what you want into it.’ The man shrugged.

The Ameer stared at him. Finally, he nodded. ‘Fine, I believe you.’

‘Then tell me, what is it that you wish to do and...’

‘Not wish; this is what I
am
going to do.’

In a low tone, the Ameer repeated some of what he had said earlier, but this time there were subtle yet powerful differences in what he outlined. His one-man audience listened with total attention, his impassive face giving away none of the excitement the words unleashed in his mind.

‘Excellent,’ he said when the Ameer finally stopped. ‘You can bank on us for whatever help you need, but rein in your loose cannons – we need to maintain a low profile for some time.’

‘You don’t need to check with your director?’

‘No. Trust me. I have carte blanche on this one. In fact, I’ll personally take care of the India operations.’

‘That would be perfect.’ The Ameer looked satisfied. ‘Will you go there yourself?’

‘Of course! I’ll brief the director and move immediately.’

‘You must tell him not to rush me on this one. It may take a year, maybe more, but I’ll make it happen.’

‘These things take time, we all understand that.’ The man nodded understandingly. ‘But if anyone can do it, you can.’

‘Thank you for your trust.’ The two men embraced.

‘Keep in touch the usual way,’ the Ameer said in parting. ‘And yes, don’t forget to resolve my Swat problem before you leave.’

‘Consider it done. Allah hafiz!’

As he walked out to the waiting jeep, the man pulled out a Thuraya satellite phone from his pocket. Unlike the Iridium, Inmarsat or the newly launched Globalstar satellite phones, the UAE-based Thuraya phone was the communication weapon of choice for many because it was much harder for anyone to track or monitor conversations on the Thuraya channel.

‘Afghan Force Headquarters.’ The high-pitched nasal American accent crackled through loud and clear, making the caller wince slightly and move the handset away from his ear.

‘Colonel Johnson, please.’

‘May I know who is calling?’

‘Sher Khan.’ The ISI agent provocateur had used and discarded so many names by now that he barely remembered his real one.

‘Yes, Sher Khan?’ A moment later the colonel was on line. ‘How is it going?’

‘Chugging along sir, chugging along,’ replied the man with many names in fluent, almost unaccented English, his tone light and cordial. ‘I’ve got some news for you.’ He lowered his voice as he named Saifullah and mentioned his whereabouts.

‘Good job, Sher Khan!’ The colonel was unable to mask his satisfaction. ‘We’ve been trying to pin the bastard down for a long time.’

‘That’s what you pay me for, sir.’

‘Subtly put, buddy!’ said Colonel Johnson with a laugh. ‘Don’t worry, the payment will reach your bank the usual way... if the intel is good.’

‘It’s as good as gold, sir, don’t worry about that.’

‘We’ll find out soon enough.’ The colonel chuckled. ‘A couple of our birds are already up and about. Let me divert them in the right direction.’

‘Happy hunting then! I’ll find out on the morning news, sir.’

From memory, the man called another number. Like every experienced operative, especially one working on the dark side, he didn’t have any phone numbers stored in the memory of his sat phone – one never knew whose hands it might fall into. This time it took a while for the phone to be answered.

‘Yes?’ The male voice at the other end was peremptory. Like Sher Khan, the ISI director spoke fluent English, although his accent was more pronounced, an unavoidable hangover of his British education. But his years at home and the nature of the job he held had eliminated all traces of finesse from his speech. ‘What did the bugger want?’ he asked.

‘Exactly what we want, sir,’ the agent provocateur replied. ‘He’s talking about Project Mike, sir.’

‘You must be joking!’

Sher Khan could almost visualize the shock on the director’s face. ‘No, sir. I couldn’t believe it either when he told me.’

‘He mentioned the… it… by name?’

‘No, no, but the game plan he spelled out is aiming for pretty much the same thing.’

‘Hmm. He thought of it on his own, or did you help him along?’

‘A bit of both, sir… a bit of both,’ Sher Khan said triumphantly. ‘I tweaked him as we went along, making it amply clear that our support would only be forthcoming if things went according to plan.’

There was a moment’s silence at the other end. ‘In the circumstances, he is our best bet, isn’t he?’

‘That he is, sir,’ Sher Khan replied without hesitation. ‘The others are too erratic and unreliable.’ For a moment he wondered whether to mention Saifullah and the fate he had condemned him to.
Sometimes these arseholes warming the chairs at
Headquarters think they know it all. In any case, what the boss doesn’t know can’t hurt him.
Sher Khan had no illusions about his dispensability. He knew that upsetting the director of the ISI, especially this particular man, was not a career enhancing proposition; it could well turn out to be a life threatening one.

‘I agree with you.’ There was another short silence. When he finally spoke, there was a sharp, decisive edge in the director’s voice. ‘Okay, then you go ahead to India and get the operation going again, but be very careful... there should be no fuckups... We can’t handle the fallout if you’re taken alive. Not after what happened in Mumbai.’

‘Don’t worry, sir.’

The director rang off and Sher Khan resumed his journey in a much happier frame of mind. Nothing that lay in the future bothered him in the least.
God, country, new challenges every day... and of course, money – lots of it. What more could a man want?
He smiled as he tossed the phone down on the seat beside him, settled himself behind the wheel and roared into the night.

A few weeks later, he would surface in the central Indian town of Aligarh. Here he would go by the name Mujib. Mujib, who bore an uncanny resemblance to the man named Mukesh who showed up occasionally in the northern desert town of Jaipur. And to the man named Michael in the southern coastal town of Kochi.

S
her Khan had barely left the house when the elderly mullah who had started the applause joined the Ameer who was standing just outside the door, gazing sightlessly into the darkness, in the direction in which Sher Khan had vanished.

‘Did he buy it?’

‘Of course he did.’ The Ameer laughed. ‘People always hear what they want to hear.’

‘They
only
hear what they want to hear.’ He joined in the Ameer’s laughter. ‘You are confident they will do what we want and give us what we need?’

‘Do they have a choice? They have hankered after this for so long that the buggers must be salivating right now.’

‘So while they drool over their fabulous Project Mike, we go ahead with our plan?’

‘Of course we do. This time there will be no half measures. We’ll strike only when every cog is firmly in place. By the time they realize what the game is, it will be too late for anyone to do anything about it.’

‘True… And have you located the other Ameers?’

‘Not yet, but I know I will. They are out there, just waiting to be found.’ The Ameer’s eyes gazed into some distant horizon. ‘It will be the Tanzim of all Tanzims,’ he whispered. ‘And once they are in place and the nuclear arsenal is in our hands, nothing can stop us.’

Both men stood in the darkness, silently watching the night deepen around them as they dreamt of the future… a future they hoped would arrive soon.

T
he director of the ISI was not actually salivating, but he was close to it. He sat for a long time pondering over the conversation he had just had with Sher Khan. Then he picked up his phone and made another call. Considering the late hour, it was not surprising that the man who answered the phone in Dacca, the capital of Bangladesh, sounded groggy.

‘Wake up, my friend, this is no time to be sleeping. Project Mike has just been given a new lease of life.’

‘What?’ The man, who had very recently been appointed the director of the DGFI (Directorate General of Forces Intelligence) in Bangladesh, came awake at once. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Exactly what you just heard,’ the ISI director replied.

‘Allah be praised! Tell me about it.’

So he told him. When they finally went back to bed, it was with great satisfaction and a marked sense of achievement. At last things had begun to move in the desired direction. Op TOPAC was finally going to succeed.

A
t the same time, several hundred miles to the northwest, an MQ-9 Reaper UAV sliced through the cold, dark night, unseen and unheard, and closed in on the unsuspecting target below.

Unlike the lightweight MQ-1B Predator, the Reaper is a weapon system and not just an individual drone. Initially called Predator B, it was finally renamed the MQ-9 Reaper, the ‘M’ to signify its ‘multi-role’ designation and the ‘Q’ to imply an unmanned aircraft system. Each Reaper system consists of four individual Reaper drones operated by different flight teams. Weighing 2223 kilograms and powered by a 900-horsepower turboprop engine, a Reaper can carry 1814 kilograms of fuel and 1701 kilograms of weaponry. Its arsenal is a mix of laser guided bombs and missiles, typically fourteen Hellfire missiles, as against the two Hellfire missiles that a Predator drone can carry. Like most standard fighter jets, the Reaper can also carry two bombs – normally the 226-kilogram GBU-12 laser guided precision bombs – but it can also be fitted with GBU-49s that are equipped to strike any target in any kind of weather without the need of a laser designator. Though still not as visible or notorious in the Af-Pak theatre of war as the more often used Predator drone, with its top speed of 482 kilometres per hour the Reaper is a hunter with the ability to destroy time-sensitive targets with persistence and precision.

Tonight, only one of the four drones would be used, and that was more than enough to deliver the desired destruction. In fact, the massive firepower it had on board could easily have taken out several more such targets without difficulty.

The Reaper took one final circuit of the sleeping village and then there was a sudden flare of light and two pairs of Hellfire II missiles slid off the firing rails and escaped into the night.

Hellfire II is an optimized version of the AGM-114 Hellfire, a laser or radar guided air-to-ground missile system designed to defeat hard targets while minimizing the exposure of the launch vehicle to enemy fire. Designed in the early 1970s and first used as a multi-mission, precision attack weapon in 1985, the Hellfire missile is a miniature aircraft in itself, complete with a guidance computer, steering control and a propulsion system. Depending on the variant used, the Hellfire AGM-114K payload can be a High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) warhead, powerful enough to burn through the heaviest of armour; or the AGM-114M blast fragmentation warhead used to defeat bunkers, other urban targets or light vehicles; or the AGM-114N where a metal augmented charge (MAC) is used against ships and enclosed structures such as caves and bunkers. The first three generations of this missile used a laser seeker that was highly accurate but needed the missile operator or launch platform to deliver it to the target, thereby exposing itself to enemy fire. The fourth generation is an air launched, radar guided, inertially guided missile that utilizes millimetre wave radar technology to seek its target. This guidance is impervious to clouds or obstacles, making it truly ‘fire and forget’ and capable of engaging multiple targets simultaneously.

With shocking speed, the four 64-inch long, 100-pound Hellfire II missiles lunged forward, and seconds later the three-room, single-storey house that they targeted disappeared in a blinding explosion of sound and light. By the time the dust settled, the mullah from Swat Valley had ceased to exist; parts of his body were scattered amidst the bloody debris.