COMPOUND 57. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
“How am I supposed to fulfill my obligation when you can’t seem to keep me safe long enough to do so?” Dr. Khan asked, his hands holding a pair of probes connected to a digital oscilloscope as he took measurements from one of the printed circuit boards he had removed from the weapon.
It was a very fair question, but one that Akhtar did not feel like answering at the moment.
“This is a project of immense technical finesse. It’s not one of your stupid machine guns!” the scientist added, the steady drone of the air conditioner and recirculation unit mixing with the heavy breathing of Akhtar’s men as they made the final preparations to leave.
“We don’t have a choice. Pack what you need. My men will haul it.” Akhtar turned away to catch up with Pasha at the other end of the lab, by the hall connecting to the stairs leading to the main floor. The Americans were coming. Despite all of his precautions, despite the altitude, the thick canopy of stone pines, and the camouflage scheme painted on all roof surfaces, the enemy had somehow located this long-abandoned Soviet bunker.
It was time to go higher and deeper into the mountain.
To a place beyond the reach of their planes and helicopters.
As he walked off, Akhtar was pleasantly surprised to hear the professor ordering his men to crate up the device, minus three hundred pounds of armored plates and other unnecessary components. The technicians responded immediately, moving about the lab efficiently, gathering all of the required gear to secure the bomb to a carrier resembling an ambulance stretcher, easily carried by four men.
Akhtar approached Pasha, who was gearing up.
Placing a hand on his shoulder, he said, “Hold them back, brother.”
“They have no idea what’s coming their way,” Pasha replied, staring at Akhtar’s narrow and heavily lined face beneath a dark turban.
Grabbing his Remington sniper rifle, he rushed outside the compound, where his force of 150 well-trained and heavily armed men waited for his command. Another eighty men protected the compound and would escort Akhtar through a system of tunnels and hidden trails up the mighty Hindu Kush mountains, where the Taliban had a secret headquarters nestled in its snowy peaks.
There, Akhtar would wait for bin Laden’s courier.
There, at an altitude over twelve thousand feet, his brother would be safe, beyond the reach of NATO helicopters and troops operating primarily in the Helmand River valley.
But to get there, Akhtar first needed to get away from here.
And that’s where I come in.
Pasha stepped beyond the protection of the heavily fortified gate. His plan was simple: hit the incoming force hard and fast from the front while killing any escape route. Keeping two-thirds of the warriors with him, Pasha ordered the rest to move quietly around the advancing American soldiers and take offensive positions by the clearing a mile down the mountain, where one of his scouts had observed a pair of Chinook helicopters unload precisely forty-four soldiers an hour ago.
Let them come, he thought, confident that the math was in his favor this afternoon, climbing up the nearest stone pine to get a clearer picture of the incoming team marching single file up an old trail rigged with IEDs.
Settling on a wide branch and breaking up his silhouette with a camouflage poncho, he brought the front end of the American platoon into focus on his Leupold scope. Below him and spreading across the front of the compound, a force of almost one hundred battle-hardened warriors prepared for battle, the business ends of their mixed weaponry pointed at the enemy.
Let them come.