Gary Haynes - State Of Honour

After they had decided that gathering intel from Pakistani assets and sources was their best bet, the door opened and a young Special Forces officer with red hair came into the room without knocking, his face flush with excitement.

“You better have a real interesting thing to say, captain,” a broken-nosed colonel said.

“I’m sorry, sir. But we’ve located Lyric,” he said, his arms barely able to refrain from punching the air.

“The GPS,” the colonel said, excitedly.

Everyone in the room now knew what Tom had always known. Apart from the tracking devices hidden in her specially made jewellery – her necklace and ring – she’d agreed to have one implanted under the skin of her upper left arm. But due to its sensitive location, it wasn’t large or sophisticated enough to prevent jamming.

“Yeah, our techs designed them,” Crane said, preferring to lean against the beige wall rather than sit at the table. “But don’t hold your breath.”

“Where is she, son?” Houseman asked.

“Upper Kurram Valley, sir. We lost the signal for a while there, but, hell, we’ve found her now.”

“Federally Administered Pakistan Tribal Area. A stronghold of the Leopards,” Crane said, soberly. “It’s picture postcard. Northern Af-Pak border country. Less than a hundred and fifty klicks away, which means it’s easily accessible by stealth helos. The two major tribes are the Bangash and the Turi. In Upper Kurram, the Bangash are Shia. The Turi are all Shia. They’ve both sent alotta young men to join the Leopards.”

The assembled men nodded, all tacitly accepting that Crane was the expert in such things.

Tom held back from saying that they had to act fast. It was as obvious to everyone concerned as saying a diet of fries and pizzas wasn’t a great idea if you wanted to lose weight. So he kept quiet and did his best to fade into the background, hoping that his presence would be accepted, even though in truth he had no right being here, at least as far as the president was concerned.

He watched Houseman report to the POTUS on a secure video link. After the input of more than a dozen people, including the Director of the CIA – who everyone knew was actually coordinating matters at Langley – a process that took forty-five minutes, the president decided that the National Security Council would consider a rescue plan.

The chances of finding bin Laden in the compound in Abbottabad had been estimated to be forty per cent when a similar sounding had been taken. The chances of getting the secretary out alive were deemed to be half that at best. But no lines of communication had been established, and every minute that passed meant the chances of getting her out alive were diminishing. There really wasn’t any other option, despite the odds.

Houseman turned to Crane. “Go along with Lieutenant Sawyer. He’ll liaise with JSOC. Give ’em the benefit of your local knowledge. I want a plan ready to go in two hours.”

Crane looked aghast. “That’s not enough time. Even if we’ve got UAVs sending back photos of the brand of toothpaste they prefer,” he said, referring to the unmanned aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance.

“I think we can do it in the timeframe, sir,” Sawyer said. He turned to Crane. “Two hours is standard prep for a mission.”

Tom saw Crane’s pale-blue eyes bore into the lieutenant.

“Yeah, for a kill or capture mission. Lyric’s life is at stake here,” he replied.

“We haven’t got time for a red team analysis, or for this. Get to it,” Houseman said.

Tom left with Crane and Sawyer, figuring everyone was still too preoccupied to care.

In a similarly secure, adjacent room, Tom, Crane and Sawyer were hunched over a large stainless-steel table, doing final checks on the rescue site via the twenty printed satellite photos spread out before them. The site was an ochre-red fort abandoned by the Frontier Corps of the Pakistan Army three months previously, after it had been almost overrun by the Leopards, and all supply routes had been cut off. Black-and-white drone feeds were playing on laptops either side of the photos.

“I count at least thirty pax,” Sawyer said.

Tom frowned.

“That ain’t disrespectful,” Crane said to Tom. “It’s military speak for people.”

Sawyer looked quizzical.

“Tom’s sensitive about such things,” Crane said, turning to Sawyer. “He thought you were calling the locals Paks.”

Tom shook his head, thinking that Crane was baiting him deliberately, but let it go. He looked back at the photos. A few hundred metres beyond the fort there was a makeshift town, which all but surrounded it. A ragbag collection of awnings, thin sheets of battered-out metal containers, and mud and stone and wooden structures. Home to four thousand Shia refugees from ransacked and burnt-out towns and villages further south and east. Innocent civilians who’d escaped from the sectarian tyranny that was blighting the country. As a result, the helicopters couldn’t land far enough away to enable an approach on foot, which Sawyer favoured. There’d be no element of surprise, or the advantage of sneaking up on the fighters before they had a chance to arm themselves. So a creep in, creep out mission was out of the question. They’d have to go in shooting from the off.

Sawyer had spoken with the JSOC Commander already. If the plan was a goer, it had been agreed that two Black Hawks from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s Night Stalker Unit, stealth helicopters fixed with anti-radar cladding, which could fly as low as thirty metres and at a hundred and thirty miles per hour, would carry the Delta troop as the first wave of attack. An MH-47E/G, multi-mission Chinook with terrain avoidance radar would transport a platoon of Army Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment, a light-infantry-combat formation, which was part of the US Army Special Operations Command. The Rangers were carrying out weapons training for their Afghan counterparts alongside the Delta troop, most of whom were ex-Rangers themselves. They would secure the immediate perimeter. Despite the ban on armed drones, Reapers loaded with Hellfire missiles would protect the assaulters from above, backed up by a couple of adapted AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.

A second Chinook would carry the civilians and double up as a flying ambulance for any wounded. Crane said he’d travel in the rear Chinook, together with a back-up interpreter and five CIA counterterrorist operatives whom he’d handpicked already. The entire search and rescue operation would be relayed in real time to Houseman, the Director of the CIA and the White House Situation Room via state-of-the-art surveillance equipment: a squadron of MQ-1C drones, infrared cameras secured outside and onboard the gunships, and robust video cameras fixed to the lead operators’ Kevlar helmets.

Tom had kept quiet about going along at this juncture, but he was desperate to be in on the action.

Crane scratched the back of his head. “I’m still not sure about it.”

“With respect, sir, this is special ops not covert ops,” Sawyer replied.

“You don’t say. There was me thinking we could dig tunnels under them and pop up wearing Halloween masks and then blame it on… Who? The freakin’ Chinese? Of course I’m aware it’s a special ops, I’m just saying I’m not sure about it.”

“If you would like to put forward an alternative, sir, I’d be happy to consider it with JSOC.”

“What, in about two minutes? It takes me longer than that to make sure I’ve shaken all the drops off when I take a leak these days,” Crane replied, stretching his back.

“He’s right,” Tom said to Crane.

“Is he, now? So you’re a trigger-happy Leopard and you see Sawyer here and his buddies arriving like the Seventh Cavalry. What are you gonna do, huh, feed the secretary grapes?” Crane gripped his forehead, clearly frustrated.