Andrew Britton - The Invisible

“Let’s hope so,” Andrews murmured under his breath. “For all our sake.”

SIALKOT

Balakh Sher Shaheed stood to the rear of the surgeon’s house, staring across the dark field, eyes fixed on the column of Type 85-II main battle tanks moving into the foothills. Beyond the tanks, over the crest of the highest peaks, he could see the occasional flash of light, purple yellow blooms against the pitch-black sky. It could have been lightning, but Shaheed knew it was something more, and the thought filled him with an excitement he could barely contain. He had seen the same muted flashes eleven years earlier, not far from the place he was standing in now. As he pulled his last cigarette out of a crumpled pack and fumbled for his lighter, Shaheed was overcome with pride, but also with a sense of burning jealousy. He wanted nothing more than to be in that column, working his way toward the fight and a place in the great history of his country, like his father before him, and his before him. Balakh Shaheed came from a long, distinguished line of career soldiers. He took enormous pride in this fact, and he had always measured himself against the great patriarchs of his family. His grandfather had fought in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947, the first major conflict between India and Pakistan after their near-simultaneous seccession from Britain. When the traitor Hari Singh—the last ruling maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir—broke ranks and acceded his kingdom to India in ’47, Hafeez Shaheed had been among the first to join the Azad Kashmir forces, the local militia supported by the Pakistani Army. His bravery in that conflict had earned him the respect and admiration of the top Pakistani commander, Major General Akbar Khan, and his son—Balakh’s father—had continued in that tradition, earning the Nishan-e-Haider, Pakistan’s highest decoration for an act of bravery in combat, during the Battle of Asal Uttar in the IndoPakistani Kashmir War of 1965. Given the heroic precedents set by his forebears, Balakh Shaheed’s destiny seemed predetermined. He was meant to join the Pakistani Army at the earliest opportunity, and that was what he had done, enlisting on his eighteenth birthday, along with 6 other men from the village of Tarnoti, their shared home high in the mountains of the Northwest Frontier Province. The following years had seen him successfully apply to the Special Services Group and then InterServices Intelligence, which he joined in 1995. That was when he had first encountered Benazir Mengal.

At the time, Mengal had been a major general in ISI and the head of JIN, Joint Intelligence North. He was already a legend, owing to his actions during the Siachen war, and Shaheed admired him tremendously right from the start. The general had taken the young Special Forces havildar under his wing, and Shaheed had returned the favor by carrying out numerous acts of brutality at Mengal’s bidding. Then, when Mengal had been forced to resign his commission in 2001, he had asked Shaheed to join him in private enterprise. Shaheed had done so without hesitation, and he had never really regretted the decision. He had earned a small fortune over the years that followed, much of it accrued through Mengal’s cross-border smuggling activities, but for the most part, they were standard deals, arranged in advance with reliable customers. The most dangerous part was the border crossings themselves, and even then, bribes to the right people all but negated the risk. Shaheed had begun to miss the army, so when the general had revealed his plan to abduct the U.S. secretary of state, Shaheed had jumped at the opportunity. Mengal had never revealed his overall objective, but that didn’t matter to Shaheed; he was once again in the heat of battle. He had been one of the assaulters during the strike itself, and it had been the defining moment of his life. But it had been five days since they’d taken the secretary, killing a dozen American security officials in the process, and the thrill of that attack was already starting to fade. The real action was taking place less than 100 kilometers to the north, and Shaheed wanted nothing more than to be there, fighting for his country as he had in the Kargil district eleven years earlier.

Taking one last drag on his cigarette, he flicked the butt into a clump of sod, then adjusted the strap of his weapon, cursing as the fabric rubbed over the raw patch of skin at the back of his neck. He knew he should not have the weapon slung, but it was hard to take the Americans seriously. Their senior diplomat had been snatched in broad daylight, and according to the Western media, little progress had been made in locating the people responsible, or the secretary of state herself, for that matter. The general was making the tape at that moment, and when it was done, it would be routed through an intermediary to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. Soon after that, it would find its way into the hands of the U.S. president, and once that happened, the whole world would see how serious they actually were. If the first tape had made their demands clear, the second would undoubtedly complete the cycle. The content would effectively destroy any lingering notions of defiance still being entertained by the American government.

With this thought, Shaheed smiled to himself. He wondered how the general was planning to illustrate the steadfast nature of his resolve. Perhaps he would remove a few of the woman’s fingers for the benefit of their American audience, or maybe he would settle on some other useful part of her anatomy. Either way, Shaheed knew it would not end there. Mengal had not revealed what he intended to do with the woman when it was all over, but Shaheed had no doubt that her life would end in Pakistan. He only hoped that he would be there to witness her final moments. Perhaps, if he was feeling charitable, the general would even give his senior lieutenant the honor of pulling the trigger.

Adjusting the strap of his AK-47 once more, he sighed and cast another longing glance to the lights in the north. After a while, his mind began to drift, finally settling on the first interrogation he had conducted after his acceptance to ISI. The prisoner had been an Indian sergeant, a havildar much like himself, except this man had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, captured after Pakistani troops had surrounded an artillery position in the Mushkoh Valley. The sergeant had proved all but useless. He was simply too low in the chain of command to have access to any actionable intelligence, but Shaheed had enjoyed the experience nonetheless. He could remember the first time he had lowered the blade to the man’s skin, preparing to shear it from his body, and the rush he had felt as the blood spilled onto the earthen floor, the Indian havildar screaming, screaming. . . .

As Balakh Shaheed, a third-generation soldier of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, reveled in the memory of his first murder, he was completely unaware of the man lying prone less than 80 feet in front of him. He was also completely oblivious to the 3 other men in the field, all of whom had their eyes and weapons trained on him and the second guard standing watch at the back of the house. Ryan Kealey was the closest, the man directly in front of Shaheed. He had watched intently as the guard had wandered out of the house, the screen door slapping shut behind him. Then he had moved under the canopy of the large tree in the garden. Kealey had watched in disbelief as he lit a cigarette, cupping his hands to keep out the rain. That single act was almost enough to throw a blanket of doubt on the whole thing. Surely, a man as unprofessional as this could not be involved in the abduction of Secretary Fitzgerald, which had been carried out with consummate skill. Nevertheless, the AK