SOUTHEASTERN PAKISTAN. NEAR THE AFGHANISTAN BORDER.
The Cessna 208B Grand Caravan fitted with tundra tires came in low and fast, its single Pratt & Whitney PT6A-140 turboprop propelling it to Formula One speeds.
Prince Mani al Saud sat at the controls while Zahra Hassani finalized checks prior to her upcoming low altitude–low opening insertion.
Developed during World War II for drops over hostile enclaves, the LALO technique minimized the time airborne troopers spent vulnerable to ground fire. But there was a catch: if the main chute failed to open, the low-altitude drop—typically from around four hundred feet—prevented the trooper from deploying the reserve chute.
So Zahra just didn’t wear a reserve, confident in the way she had carefully folded her main canopy. Instead of the reserve chute, she carried the handful of components in a rucksack strapped to the front of her tactical vest, next to her suppressed UZI submachine gun.
Her hair tied in a ponytail, her features darkened with camouflage cream, wearing black tactical cargo pants made of a cotton/nylon/Teflon ripstop fabric and a matching long-sleeve shirt and boots, Zahra felt ready for business.
She flexed her gloved hands before checking the rest of her gear, including her suppressed .22-caliber Ruger, secured to her waistband, and spare magazines for both weapons. She rested her right palm on the rubber handle of her Israeli-made Dustar seven-inch fixed-blade tactical knife, her thumb feeling the Velcro strap that kept it in its sheath.
Satisfied that her gear was in order and secured, she sat in the copilot’s seat as the desert rushed ridiculously close to the belly of the single-engine plane flying into Afghanistan twenty miles south of Chaman. The route would keep them 120 miles south of Kandahar, away from the fighting.
The nature of this mission meant that Zahra flew alone with the prince tonight, having left the rest of the crew with the Citation X at the Karachi airport.
Towering dunes, some two hundred feet high, rose above them as Mani wedged the Cessna through these canyons sculpted by the constantly shifting sand. The scene beyond the large Plexiglas windshield resembled some sort of video game as he steered the Cessna through these surreal and fluctuating channels.
The meandering and quite dangerous path took them in a fairly steady northwesterly heading, their low altitude and the seemingly endless pyramids of sand—barchans, as they were called—making their entrance into the NATO war theater invisible to radar. And their distance from Kandahar also made the likelihood of overhead UAVs quite unlikely.
But the catch was that they could not really see the horizon or even the very distant Sulaiman Mountains, due to the soaring dunes, which forced them to rely on the GPS to navigate through this rat maze to their destination.
She stared at Mani’s profile—a fine nose, a strong chin, and a full head of very burnished hair under a Bose headset—as he maneuvered them across one of the most desolate and ravaged places on earth. Yet it looked peaceful, even dreamlike, as infinite silica crystals reflected the moonlight in a shimmering gleam hovering just a foot or two over the surface.
“You know, it’s actually beautiful,” she said into the microphone built into her helmet. It was connected to a Wouxun KG-UV6D transceiver just powerful enough to stay in communication with Mani, who wore a matching set connected to his Bose headgear. All other radios were off, per his agreement with bin Laden for complete silence, to minimize electronic detection.
“Yeah,” he replied, eyes front as he turned the yoke and worked the rudder pedals to bank the Grand Caravan to the right, negotiating another turn in this powdery labyrinth. “That’s Afghanistan for you. One moment charming and the next deadly … like you.”
She hugged herself tightly without realizing it, her eyes on this man who’d had such a physical and emotional impact on her life.
You will always be safe with me.
She blinked the thought away and asked, “How much longer?”
Risking a glance at the GPS, he said, “Fifteen minutes. All set?”
“All good here.”
“Say hi to Pasha for me,” he said.
“Ha-ha,” she replied, recalling the fiery nephew of bin Laden, with whom she had collaborated on the occasions when Mani met with the sheikh over the years. Pasha was head of the sheik’s security, just as she protected the Saudi prince, meaning they had had to work together to coordinate their bosses’ safety, though not without a degree of friction. Pasha was a firm believer in Sharia law.
They continued zigzagging, constantly banking to avoid the next sand dune, before continuing northwest, always northwest, the drop point looming closer as the Sulaimans slowly rose before them.
Mani maintained his altitude relative to the ground, even as sand turned to rocky terrain slanting heavenward, climbing steadily as the land rose.
“Two minutes,” he said, without taking his eyes off the windscreen. “Got your GPS coordinates?”
“Yep.”
“Remember,” he said, “we’re deep in no-man’s-land. The GPS maps around here aren’t that accurate. They’re more like … guidelines.”
“Got it,” she said, standing, placing a hand on his shoulders, and squeezing gently. “I’ll be right back.”
“You know where to find me,” he responded, turning diagonally toward the mountain range when the terrain became steeper. He kept his right wingtip thirty feet off the rocky southern face while approaching the coordinates provided by bin Laden.
She headed for the cabin and slid the side door open. In preparation for this jump, realizing they would be alone, Mani had had the door spring-loaded, so it would close after she released it.
The foot of the mountains and the desert projected below the rectangular opening. Somewhere off to her left she could barely make out the distant glow of Lashkar Gah by the foot of the Sulaimans.
Part of the plan was to jump off this side of the plane and into the gorge, giving herself maximum altitude without Mani having to increase his separation from the incline.
“Time!” he shouted.
Zahra kicked her legs and jumped while holding the rip cord, which she pulled the instant she cleared the tail.
The canopy blossomed with a sudden pop above her. The winds carried her slightly farther west than planned, but she still approached the ground less than a half mile from her desired touchdown.
She tugged the handles of her rectangular chute, guiding it to a relatively flat patch of terrain, landing with a short run the moment her boots touched the ground thirty seconds later.
“Made it,” she spoke into her mike.
“Enjoy the hike.”
“Enjoy the flight. See you.”
“Not if I see you first.”
And just like that, as the turboprop continued its northwesterly heading along the mountainside, she removed her harness and gathered her chute, hiding it under some rocks before moving the rucksack from her front to her back. Releasing the Velcro straps securing her suppressed UZI to the side of her battle vest, Zahra verified that she had a round in the chamber and then placed it in single-shot mode.
She turned off the transceiver to conserve battery and maintain radio silence before inspecting the GPS display on her wrist. It marked two locations.
The first was the planned rendezvous spot, which she had to reach by dawn, an old and secret Soviet bunker currently used by Akhtar as his headquarters.
The second marked her alternate location, where she would go if her primary target became compromised: a clearing eight miles west of the bunker.
Briefly closing her eyes while inhaling the cold mountain air and listening to the Cessna’s engine fading in the darkness, Zahra began to make her way to the red spot on her GPS.