With the exception of the Special Mission Units and some members of the special operations community, the generals guiding the efforts of US boots on the ground increasingly seemed to be in search of a job. Were they nation-building? Trying to win hearts and minds? Building a stable democracy? Or killing bad guys in Afghanistan so that the jihadis didn’t have the chance to kill Americans on US soil?
Nash was no longer sure.
Neither were America’s allies.
If nature abhors a vacuum, regional stability does doubly so. Nash was angry that Pakistan wasn’t taking a more active role in stabilizing the conflict raging on their doorstep, but the Marine in him understood. You had to fight the war you found yourself in, not the one you hoped for.
Pakistan’s leaders guided their country with a pragmaticism born from years of navigating the region’s turbulent waters. They were nothing if not experts at judging the way the wind blew and tacking their nation’s course accordingly. If the United States was no longer certain how to solve the problem of Afghanistan, Pakistan was not going to do the work for them. Nash was in Islamabad to show the flag, as the old saying went. To remind his Pakistani counterparts that the US was still in the business of exterminating terrorists and America expected some sort of measurable return on investment for the more than ten billion dollars in “aid” that had flowed into Pakistani coffers since 9/11.
At least that was Nash’s official story.
The truth was that Nash’s visit was meant to be provocative if not outright confrontational. Thanks to Rapp, Nash was a war-on-terrorism hero, the public face for the countless men and women who operated behind the veil of operational secrecy. Nash’s trip to Pakistan was as overt as the message he was conveying from the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—you’re either with us or against us. Nash didn’t know President Saad Chutani, but he had enough familiarity with the quasi-dictator to understand that this message wasn’t going to be received well, especially in light of the botched Ranger raid against the HIG compound.
A compound notionally located on Pakistani soil.
But a diplomatic fireworks display was exactly what Irene had in mind.
The more the Pakistani political class and their enablers in the ISI were focused on Nash’s visit, the less they might be paying attention to Rapp’s shenanigans as he cowboyed along across Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Not to mention the NOC, Noreen Ahmed, who’d also slipped into country.
It was Noreen’s presence more than the need to bring the Pakistanis back to the straight and narrow that had prompted Nash’s trip. That said, as much as he detested the fact that he was wearing a suit instead of the outdoor wear that normally served as the uniform of the day for a Rapp operation, Nash was committed to accomplishing his goal. Once a covert officer’s cover was rolled back, he could never be reinserted into the clandestine world. And nothing said rolling back your cover like the president of the United States pinning a medal on your chest in front of a roomful of reporters. Like it or not, this was Nash’s new job and he’d be damned if he’d end his first official trip with nothing more to show for his efforts than a few diplomatic niceties and a couple of handshakes. Once a Marine, always a Marine, and Marines didn’t phone it in.
Ever.
“All right,” Nash said after locking his laptop in the Gulfstream’s safe, “let’s go give ’em hell.”
Judging by the stricken expression on poor Bill’s face, this was not the expression Nash’s predecessor employed while preparing his team for a round of diplomatic sparring.
Maybe that was part of the problem.
CHAPTER 47
JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN
“I’M telling you, he was Iranian.”
Mitch Rapp made the statement in a tone that brooked no argument. The tone of a person who spoke Farsi and knew a Persian accent when he heard one. From an evidentiary perspective, this should have been one of Rapp’s less controversial statements.
It was not.
“I’m not saying he wasn’t,” Colonel Nick Petrie said, his patronizing tone suggesting that he was doing exactly that. “We’ve certainly had our share of dustups with Iranian special operations types and intelligence officers smuggling weapons and fighters, but that was in the Western theater. We’re in RC East.”
While Rapp did not concern himself with the overall strategy of the war in Afghanistan, he could certainly see that things weren’t progressing according to plan. He hadn’t devoted much brainpower to reasoning out the cause of the current morass. Rapp was an intelligence officer, not a military strategist. But with men like this in charge, it wasn’t hard to understand why America was doing little better than treading water as the Taliban and other unsavory elements solidified their hold on the populace.
“This is not a debate,” Rapp said, his expression challenging the colonel to say otherwise. “Besides the HIG shitbird, there were three other men in that cavern bidding for Ranger Saxton. Two spoke Arabic with Saudi accents, and the other one was Iranian. An Iranian who said he knew me from a prior dustup I had with some Quds Force and Hezbollah douchebags. If I were in your shoes, I might devote more energy to finding out why that collection of talent was huddled together in a cave thirty minutes south of here and less to trying to explain away a problem by pretending it doesn’t exist.”
As much as he’d hoped for a different response, Rapp had expected this reaction from Petrie. September 11, 2001, was a tragedy of unspeakable magnitude, and it had galvanized the military and intelligence services in a manner not seen in Rapp’s lifetime. For the first time since December 8, 1941, America’s populace, politicians, and the men and women who carried out kinetic diplomacy on their behalf had been fused with a unity of purpose. The initial invasion into Afghanistan had been facilitated and controlled by CIA Jawbreaker teams with Army Special Forces A-teams providing the muscle. Those days had been the Wild, Wild West, but shit had gotten done. Within two months of the American invasion, the Taliban had been on the run, Al Qaeda was all but destroyed, and US-backed forces had taken control of the majority of Afghanistan.
That had been a decade ago.
Many of the brave men and women who’d thrown caution to the wind while executing some of the most audacious operations since the Normandy landing were long gone, replaced by careerists who often seemed more concerned with gaining their next star or setting up a lucrative postmilitary career than with winning the war.
Petrie was Exhibit A.
“We won’t be conducting operations in the vicinity of the Spin Ghar mountains. Period.”
The rejoinder came from a lean man dressed in civilian clothes who was seated to the colonel’s right. This back-and-forth bullshit was the exact scenario Rapp had been trying to avoid when he’d marched into the brigade tactical operations center, or TOC, and asked to see Colonel Petrie along with his S2, or intelligence officer, in a closed-door meeting. The brigade commander had intimated that his schedule was extremely busy, but he would try to work Rapp in sometime in the next several hours.
Rapp had intimated that Colonel Petrie could walk into the conference room or be dragged.
The conversation had gone downhill from there.
Colonel Petrie was now seated in his secure conference room, but the meeting was not the cozy conversation Rapp had envisioned. In addition to Petrie’s S2—his aide-de-camp whose purpose seemed to be to satisfy the colonel’s never-ending craving for Diet Cokes—the S3, or operations officer, and a trio of nervous-looking captains, the colonel was flanked by the man in civvies.
The man now inserting himself where he most assuredly didn’t belong.
“What’s your name?” Rapp said.
“Tim,” the man said. “Tim Sellers. I’m with the Department of Agriculture.”
“Why are you here?” Rapp said.
Tim’s cheeks colored. “The Department of Agriculture has been designated by the Department of State as the lead agency to oversee reconstruction efforts in this area of RC East. Our charter is to work with both governmental and nongovernmental organizations to bring stability to Afghanistan via three pillars: education—”
“Stop,” Rapp said.
“Stop what?” Tim said, the flush on his cheeks deepening.
