Neither option was appropriate today.
Rapp had come into Pakistan dark. With Mike Nash already serving as the diplomatic pincushion designed to draw attention away from the NOC, Rapp hadn’t wanted to upset the applecart. Though Nash now stood higher than Rapp in the government service rank system, this would mean little to the Pakistanis. If Rapp dropped into the country under his true name, he would immediately upstage Nash’s efforts. This would be counterproductive to Irene’s strategy and hamstring Rapp’s ability to clandestinely meet Ashani.
True-name travel was out.
Plan B would have normally been to slide into Pakistan using one of his many carefully cultivated legends, but this wouldn’t work either. Though he still didn’t understand exactly what the Iranians were up to, Rapp knew enough to intuit that his need to speak with Ashani was time-sensitive. This precluded the normal method of changing legends, which would have involved a flight from Afghanistan to a neutral country, a liaison with local CIA officers to facilitate a document and possible appearance change, followed by another series of flights that bounced around the region before terminating in Islamabad.
This left plan C.
Plan C was what Irene would have probably termed risky, while Rapp’s mentor and former Cold War legend Stan Hurley would have labeled it getting shit done. Even though Pakistan was a country that enforced its borders, there were ways to get into town unnoticed.
Or at least overlooked.
Ever since a 2005 earthquake had rocked the Pakistani territory of Kashmir, relief efforts had flowed by air from Bagram to the stricken towns. This arrangement originally came into being because the former Soviet Air Force base was already the American logistical hub for Afghanistan. It had proven to be a simple matter to load Chinooks with much-needed food, water, and medical supplies and fly the aircraft into the devastated areas. Now, six years later, the flights continued, though responsibility had shifted from the military to various nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs.
Whether or not the aid was still needed was a logical question, but in Afghanistan, logical questions often went unanswered. Like the war effort itself, the earthquake relief effort was functioning on autopilot. As a taxpayer, Rapp was as disgusted by this waste as he was with the rudderless wartime strategy. A strategy that burned through funds at a frightening rate with little to show for the investment. But as a clandestine operative, Rapp was only too happy to hop on a relief flight and head east.
As was usually the case in austere parts of the world where money flowed and bad actors flourished, the CIA had brokered an “agreement” with one of the NGOs chartered with moving the unending supply of American largesse into Pakistan. This agreement was as simple as it was profitable. Occasionally, an extra worker would be added to the flight manifest. Once the helicopter landed, said worker exited the aircraft and melted into the countryside with no one the wiser. After boarding the Chinook, Rapp had recognized one of the pilots and negotiated a slight detour in the helicopter’s return flight.
A detour to Islamabad.
The helicopter had set down in an abandoned field, and Rapp clandestinely entered Pakistan. Existing as a ghost had its own operational difficulties, chief among them communication. Fortunately, after hiking to a small village, Rapp was able hail a cab that deposited him in the city proper. From there it had been a simple matter to procure a burner phone and one of the CIA’s prestaged vehicles.
Unlike many of his Agency counterparts, Rapp did not believe in secure communications. Though he didn’t pretend to understand how modern cryptology worked well enough to critique its performance from a scientific aspect, Rapp knew history was littered with battles lost and wars forfeited because one side or the other found out the hard way that their “secure” codes weren’t so unbreakable. As such, Rapp treated every electronic communication as if it were already compromised.
“Okay,” Kennedy said, drawing out the word. “How do you want to do this?”
Though he was calling on an unsecure line, Rapp had taken several precautions, the first being the phone itself. Unless the ISI had seeded every disposable phone in Islamabad with malware, it was reasonable to assume that Rapp’s handset wasn’t compromised.
The second precaution came via the telephone line Rapp had dialed, or rather the one he hadn’t. Though the connection had ultimately been routed to Kennedy’s desk, Rapp had dialed a throwaway number. In a nod to the old “one-time pads” that had been used during the Cold War to encrypt written messages with a single-use and therefore theoretically unbreakable code, the Agency’s Science and Technology Department had implemented a number of phone numbers that were tied to single-use VPNs.
These VPNs fed into secure VoIP channels, which in turn were routed to the red phone at Irene’s desk. Rapp felt confident communicating to Kennedy in broad terms, but the information he had to deliver required more detail than he felt comfortable trusting to the wizardry of ones and zeroes.
“I’ve got some grunt work to do,” Rapp said. “Send me one of the interns from accounting.”
Rapp’s response was code for a crash meeting request. While Rapp had no intentions of going to the embassy, the embassy could come to him in the form of one of the in-country case officers. The man or woman wouldn’t have time to run a full SDR, or surveillance detection route, but the risk was worth the reward. The information he’d extracted from Moradi was time-sensitive, meaning that Rapp couldn’t afford to entrust it to a dead drop.
He needed to talk to a human being.
Now.
“I’ll send an intern,” Kennedy said, “but I’m going to need you to work something else after you debrief them.”
Rapp suppressed a flash of irritation. Kennedy knew better than to superced his on-the-ground decisions. “Look, I’m kind of busy and—”
“It’s about CRANKSHAFT,” Kennedy said.
CHAPTER 55
JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN
“CAPTAIN Garner, do you have a minute?” Scott Coleman said.
The Ranger Company commander looked up from where he’d been stenciling red grease pencil marks on the clear acetate overlaying a set of military maps covering the far wall of the TOC. Much to Scott Coleman’s satisfaction, someone still preferred good old-fashioned paper and pens to computer wizardry. This was not to imply that Coleman didn’t appreciate technology.
He did.
He also had seen it fail firsthand, usually in a spectacular fashion at the exact moment it was most needed. Handheld digital tablets that showcased a networked common operating picture might be all the rage, but a paper map never ran out of battery power or glitched in the middle of a firefight.
“For you? Of course. I heard you were the one who pulled Sergeant Saxton out of the water.”
“Guilty,” Coleman said with a smile. “How’d you know?”
“Saxton tried to turn in his Ranger tab. Said he couldn’t handle the shame of being saved by a SEAL.”
Coleman laughed as Garner held out his hand. “All bullshit aside, thank you for saving my Ranger. I owe you one.”
“I don’t know about the saving part,” Coleman said, accepting Garner’s handshake. “Your boy was doing pretty good on his own. I just pointed him in the right direction.”
“Bullshit,” Garner said after pausing to spit a stream of brown liquid into a paper coffee cup. “Sergeant Saxton is the kind of Ranger you want at your back when bullets are flying, but I’ve seen rocks that could swim better. When we get back to the States, I’m sending his ass to SCUBA school.”
Coleman chuckled.
The interservice rivalry between SEALs and Rangers was more hype than reality, but working with someone from another service was always dicey. As a SEAL, Coleman instinctively knew what he was getting when someone with a Trident walked into the room. It wasn’t that he thought SEALs were superhuman as much as he understood a frogman’s strengths and weaknesses because he was one. Working with Rangers could be the equivalent of suiting up with a new football team for the first time. They might be capable athletes, but Coleman needed to ensure that he and his unfamiliar teammates were all operating from the same playbook, preferably before they took the field. That said, Garner had a sense of humor and none of the bravado that sometimes infected members of this unique community, especially when they had to swallow their pride and acknowledge the contributions of operators outside their chosen branch. Coleman thought he could work with Garner.
Hopefully, the feeling was mutual.
“Dive school requires equal parts ability and grit,” Coleman said. “One of those characteristics can be taught. The other can’t. You’re either born with grit or you aren’t. Based on what I saw, Saxton has no issues in that department.”
