DARKNET CORPORATION (6 page)

Once the trace showed the transponder had traversed the summit and was on
the other side of the mountain range Bill said, “Well! Let’s go exploring.”

Ledge went forward on foot to recce the compound and check it was clear
before they brought the vehicles up. He called up from the compound that it was
clear and checked to see if there was any useful intelligence left behind.
Apart from the detritus of several men staying the night there was none.

They reeled in the camouflage nets and stowed the equipment they had been
using, then mounted up, Mickey riding with Bill in the front to navigate with
the tracker.

Pakistan made logical sense to Bill. If they were going to smuggle drugs,
interception by Afghani security forces even in this remote area would be a
risk. It was much easier to do so in the Pakistani tribal areas overseen by no one
at all. If Abu
Ukasha
was involved, he was much more
likely to be hiding out there too.

The terrain was increasingly steep and for a while Bill was able to
follow tyre marks to see where the track was, but when these became hard to see
on the rocky surface he said, “I can’t see where the track is anymore.”

Mickey navigated, “keep straight on for another 35 metres then bear left
at 20 degrees for more or less a hundred metres.”

“Shit!” said Bill, “we’re on a car rally” and they both laughed.

The track disappeared and the sides of the mountains closed in, but the
trace kept them on a route that followed shingle-strewn stream beds which
became steeper, but passable. Bill thought that without knowing
Bone
had
already come this way he would not have considered there was any chance at all
that they could get a vehicle through here.

They bumped up out of the stream bed onto hard ground and after a few
hundred metres the steepness levelled out and Bill found himself going down
again. They were in Pakistan.

Bill thought that it was all well and good that he had been concerned for
the jurisdiction of the NZ SAS men, but he was, himself, completely without any
legitimacy to be swanning around in Pakistan, never mind the, supposedly
‘semi-autonomous’, Federally Administered Tribal Areas; a euphemism for
‘totally ungovernable’.

Chapter Six

They found themselves on a track and were quickly passing by terraced
cultivated areas and hamlets. Bill was satisfied that the chance of a
catastrophic plunge over a cliff was behind them. Then he thought about what
was in front of them; an ungovernable area, shunned by Pakistani security
forces as too dangerous; a hotbed of armed militias, warlords and bandits.

“How far away are they?” Bill queried.

“They are south of
Parachinar
, about 10K. They
must be going by road. They are moving quite fast now,” Mickey replied.

The transponder showed
Bone
stopping again in the town of Sadda.

“So what now?” said Mickey?

Bill thought the buy they had witnessed was morphine base and explained
that after the opium was boiled down and distilled into bricks; the next stage
is much more complex and uses dangerous chemicals. “I suspect that’s what we
are about to witness.”

They reached the paved road and turned south following the river that
flowed like liquid chocolate; now moving at what seemed an extraordinary speed.
They went past colourful trees and mud brick settlements with lots of
pedestrians in a succulent green valley. Bill found the sudden change from
abject desert to agricultural semi-civilisation, unsettling.

As they drove through two more significant settlements, Ledge called out
on the radio, “We should stop here. We must be getting close.”

Bill pulled over in the next flat space off the road and Ledge pulled in
behind him. They congregated in Bill’s vehicle. Mickey confirmed that
Bone
was on the far side of Sadda, the largest town they had so far seen. The town
was on the other side of a bridge over a river that came from the mountains to
their left and joined the one flowing down the valley.

They decided to use the Bird again to recce forward and pulled further
off the road until they could get into a more private location. They stopped
under a grove of trees. The two NZ SAS men unloaded the Bird, topped it up with
fuel and repeated the launch process Bill had witnessed before. The Bird
quickly leapt into the air and Ledge started the height-gaining spiral
technique. The Bird was quickly out of earshot and sight.

All three men crowded round the control unit watching as the river came
into view. Suddenly, a volley of automatic fire rang out and Mickey and Bill
automatically ducked. Then there were more, simultaneous bursts from several
shooters. The screen of the control unit went blank and they realised the Bird
had been shot out of the sky.

Shocked, or at least, taken by surprise, there was a silent pause. Ledge
thumped down the aerial and threw the control unit aside, leaping out of the
SORV and reaching into its internals for a weapon. He handed an MP5K automatic
machine pistol and two magazines to Mickey and pulled out the same for himself.

Taking up position on the far side of the SORV from that which they had
come Mickey and Ledge slammed a magazine into the weapon and cocked it. Bill
followed suit with his Glock 19.

“Do you think they spotted us coming in here?” asked Mickey.

“
Dunno
,” said Ledge, “I suspect they shoot at
anything in the sky that isn’t a bird ‘round here. They’re plagued with UAV’s.
They’re probably stoked they actually hit something.”

Bill was thinking ahead, “Let’s take up fire positions in the trees, back
along the track, away from the vehicles. If they come up here at least we can
get ambush advantage. But if we get into a shit-fight the only way out of here
will be the way came in.
Bloody hell!”

They waited tensely for several minutes, but nothing happened. After a
while Mickey said, “I’ll go back down the track on foot and see if there’s a
search going on.”

Mickey slipped the hand with his MP5K under his shirt and strode off back
the way they had come. When he returned a quarter of an hour later, he reported
that there was nothing unusual on the main road.
People were
coming and going as normal, with no groups congregated or anything to see.
He suggested that the Bird might have come down in the river and been washed
away quickly downstream. If that was the case there would have been nothing for
anyone to find and celebrate over. They might just go about their business.

Bill gave a blow of breath out through pursed lips. “What are our options
for watching
Bone
now then?”

“No worries,” said Ledge, “we just let the tracker home us in on them as
we recce in on foot.”

“You can’t go wandering into the town with a tracker control in your
hands,” said Mickey, incredulous.

“Almost,” was the
reply.
“I’ll just put the
tracker under my shirt, open, and you can guide me in, tracking from the other
control unit.”

“Brilliant!” said Bill.

They rigged up one of the control units with a rope looped through one of
the handles and around Ledge’s neck so that it would stay open under his shirt,
facing away from his body so that he didn’t accidentally operate any of the
keys. He put the radio in his turban and pulled the loose end piece of the
turban over the earpiece cable and tied it around his neck so that it would
flap open to reveal it.

He pulled a Kalashnikov out of the Mobile Armoury, loaded a magazine onto
it and slung it over his shoulder.

“It’ll help me blend in and discourage anyone from hassling me,” he said,
referring to the Kalashnikov.

Off he went trying to look like a tribesman. Bill and Mickey thought he
looked convincing enough.

“We’re pretty vulnerable here, you know. There’s no backup for your
backup,” said Mickey as the remaining pair monitored the control unit and
checked the radio signal with Ledge.

“
I’m
your backup, we watch each other’s backs,” said Bill
stridently.

“She’ll be right mate! Look, all we have to do is get eyes on Abu
Ukasha
; get the coordinates to control and get the hell out
of here.” Bill tried to sound more assured than he felt.

Ledge gave them a running commentary as he crossed the bridge over the
river flowing out of the mountains and entered into the town of Sadda. He noted
that while a few people looked at him, nobody seemed interested enough to speak
to him or take any more notice. He was clearly more relaxed now that he
appeared not to be a sore thumb.

“You’re
5*5
. If we lose the signal, we’ll go
mobile and close up,” Bill reassured Ledge.

At the far side of the bridge the road veered off a little to the right,
with the bulk of the town on his left.

“He’s about a kilometre in front of you, but according to the map you
need to be on the minor road on your right to get to it,” Bill relayed.

There were lots of cars parked on this side of the bridge, and the road
to the left was hardly wide enough for more than one car. Ledge surmised that
cars were mostly parked here and people walked the rest of the way.

“Minor road?” came back Ledge, “it’s only about six foot wide.”

Ledge described the architecture. It was pretty medieval. Most of the
alleyways were never built for anything but foot traffic. The centre of the
town was single story mudbrick hovels side by side. They had rough window
openings and many had only ventilation holes in decorative patterns. Despite
this slum-like deprivation it was very clean. There was no rubbish, but it was
still pretty smelly.

Most of the buildings on the outskirts of the town were walled compounds
with both large courtyards and two storeyed buildings, varying in size from
modest to stately. He came to a fork and asked Bill which one to take.

“Keep right,” said Bill, “you are about four hundred metres to go, but
the road snakes around a bit.”

Ledge reported the road straightening out again after the corners and
said, “
There’s
only a few compounds along here. It
must be one of them.”

“You are about 100 metres,” Bill advised.

“OK. Then I have eyes on the one it is. It stands on its own. There is
vacant land around it, then no other buildings for a while down this road,”
Ledge reported.

“How far away is the nearest cover? Over,” Bill asked.

“About 50 metres on one side of the road, but the compound on the
opposite side of the road is maybe only 20 metres.
There’s
also other compounds
at the back, higher up, with the closest maybe 25
metres or so, but they’re not accessible from this road. There are terraced
fields in between.”

“The compound is big. It’s about 25 metres frontage at the roadside. It’s
got a double door entrance and it looks like there’s a two storey gatehouse or
whatever.
Impressive.
Then it goes back about 50
metres up the hill. There’s
another two storey building
further back with a dome roof
. It has a window opening, but it’s on the
second story. The main building is about in the middle of the compound and the
back looks like it’s a courtyard.
Can’t see much from this
angle.”

“The four-wheel-drive must be just inside the double gates. It’ll be a
parking courtyard in front of the main part of the complex,” Ledge suggested.

“I can see an armed lookout on the wall further back. I can’t go any
further along here without sticking out like dog’s balls. There’s nothing along
there. I’ll stop at the compound across the street and go back. It’s as close
as I can get without being suspicious.
Out.”

Ledge was worried that if he looked out of place and someone came out to
investigate him from the compound he would be found out immediately. He quickly
looked down the side of the property opposite and took in as much as he could
without loitering and turned back the way he came and walked at the same pace
he had come.

“I am going to walk around where the compounds at the back are to see
what kind of vision we can get on the target.
Out.”

Ledge walked back along the road until he found the narrow little street,
nothing more than an alleyway, going to the right curving back up the hill. He
followed it until there was a junction with another lane, going off to his
right that would lead back towards his target. When he reached the end of the
street there was only terraced fields and an outlook over the target compound.
Luckily at this time of the day the Sun cast shadows from the high walls and he
was able to sit down, as if to catch his breath, and survey what he could see from
this elevated position.

The two storeyed building in the centre of the compound obscured the
gatehouse, but he could see a door and windows looking out onto the rear
courtyard. There was only one sentry who walked the perimeter of the walls,
armed with the ubiquitous Kalashnikov. He timed and took note of the sentry
taking about five minutes to go right around the entire wall. He also noted
quite a bit of smoke and steam emanating from the rear courtyard and caught a
whiff of a nasty, acrid smell.

Ledge continued relaying everything he saw in as much detail as he could.
Bill and Mickey listened intently, getting a good impression of the layout.

He estimated the height of the walls at about 3 metres, with a few
ventilation holes, but no opening other than the front double gates. There was
a row of small bushes down from the rear compound marking the boundary but they
were only infrequent and small. Not really a hedge, just a line of bushes
interspersed with open space. He guessed that the distance from where he was to
the rear of the target compound was probably 30 metres.

Finally, he decided that if he stayed where he was any longer he was
going to use up his luck and moved back down the shadow of the walls to the
lane, making his way north out of the town.

When Ledge re-joined his comrades Bill said, “Well done Legend, you’re a
Legend. What do we know then? “

Ledge said, “It’s pretty clear this is their lab. They’re obviously
refining the morphine base into heroin. Is this the kind of hideout that
Monarch
would use?” Bill was not convinced.

“The only way we will find out is to go look,” said Mickey.

“Fuck. We can’t go knock on the door and ask!” Ledge was only half
sarcastic.

“I’ve got a plan. It was brewing away while you were coming back, Ledge,”
said Mickey.

“We’ve got that pin-hole camera. All we need to do is poke it into the
ventilation holes or make a hole in the mudbrick walls and have a
shufty
with the camera. If we spot
Monarch
, we call
it in and bugger off.”

“How thick is that wall,” asked Bill.

“From experience, a wall that high, could be a foot and half, maybe, half
a metre,” replied Ledge.

“And how do we get a hole that deep through the wall?

Ledge said nothing but held up his forefinger and went off to the mobile
armoury and rummaged around for a minute. When he came back he said. “
Tah
Dah!” showing an u-shaped piece of steel tube with a
ball the size of a tennis ball on one end at 90 degrees to the ‘U’ and a bend
in the opposite side half way up. “You remember we used this in Banyan
province?” he said to Mickey.