[Helluva sniper, isn't he? So what, you may ask, has been going on while Mike has been avoiding the Elders? Well, time hasn't stood still. Action, reaction.]
CHAPTER 12
Izz al Din Kassab had been in the service of the Chechen rebellion for over fifteen years. His uncle Abdul-Sami was a hidden mullah under the Soviets, and had taught him the Qur’an secretly. When the Soviet empire fell, and the Chechens had first dreamt of freedom, Abdul-Sami was one of the first to enlist. He was also one of the first to die at the hands of Russian troops. Izz al Din wept for a day when he heard, then sought out a resistance cell. Even though he was only twelve, his desire to avenge his uncle shone through, and he was accepted.
Over the years, he had battled against Russian control at every turn. Gravely injured in three separate actions, he nevertheless returned again and again to the heat of battle. He survived when others died, and rose up in the leadership of the resistance. Nothing, however, stopped the gradual disaffection of the majority of the Chechen people. Recruiting, funding, planning, all became vastly more difficult, almost impossible. Chechens were actually turning on his comrades, selling them to the Allah-cursed Russians for nothing more than a little quiet! Surely the fools realized that there could be no real peace with the Russians still as their overlords?
Apparently not.
It was Kassab who had found the caves that they were now forced to use, near the northern border of Chechnya. It was Kassab who organized and, to be honest, terrorized the locals into providing food and other supplies. It was Kassab, too, through whom Ibrahim had made his first cautious contacts months ago. Now it was Kassab who was granted the first opportunity to enact the final blow. He had been dispatched with a small group of mujahideen to Groznyy, to find a suitable hide and prepare the site for delivery of the weapon. But there were problems.
“Salah, you son of a diseased camel! No phones!”
Salah, a young and not-too-bright recruit, hung his head. “Izz al Din, I had to call my mother. She made me swear to Allah that I would call her every week!”
Kassab shook his head. “And so you pull out a cell phone and call! You told her where you were! You told her what we are doing! Miserable, stupid, worthless oaf!”
“But Izz -”
“But nothing! Silence!” Kassab waited for a few moments. “Give me the phone.” Salah handed it to Kassab, who promptly dashed it to the ground and crushed it with the butt of his AK. “Now. You will be on sentry duty tonight, and every night, until we complete our mission here. You will also pray every day to Allah that your mother knows how to keep her mouth shut, unlike her son. Now get out of my sight.” Salah slunk away.
Kassab sighed. Maybe it would get easier.
Murphy wasn’t done with them yet, though.
The brief call was captured by an orbiting satellite, recently retasked for this mission. At the programmed time, the bird transmitted back to its controllers. The routine data dump sent the innocuous-sounding call to a bank of computers deep in the desert sands, where another program was triggered to search for certain words and phrases.
Enough were found to launch yet another program, which backtracked the call and nailed down both the point of origin and the receiver. Finally, a fourth program put it all together and added it to the queue of information already gathered.
Unfortunately, that’s where Murphy stepped in again.
To save bandwidth, it had been decided to hold all possible leads until a critical threshold was reached. But the anonymous DOD programmer had decided the threshold should be measured in megabytes, which he could wrap his mind around, not keywords and trigger phrases. So the data sat, hotter than the cores of the stolen nukes, as the bytes trickled in.
Somewhere, Murphy smiled.
=============================
Anisa Kulcyanov was terribly excited. Normally one of the coolest of the intel specialists, she had proven herself under fire in Romania, and as a crew chief for Captain Wilson’s Valkyrie. Little rattled her. This didn’t rattle her either.
“Grez? We have our first solid hit. Can you confirm?”
Greznya came over to Anisa’s station. It was one of four receiving a feed from the NSA’s Echelon program. Echelon was a top secret voice analysis and recognition program, designed to eavesdrop on electronic communication worldwide.
Pat Vanner, who had been in the NSA before resigning, knew of it and knew it was one of the few tools they could use quickly. A few phone calls from Mike to OSOL, and then to the SecDef, had finally convinced the NSA to allow Vanner’s intel girls access. “One time only,” they were quick to add. The wheels of government turn slowly, even under the most urgent circumstances, and the downloads had just begun.
In fact, days had passed since a homesick muj had called his mother to reassure her that yes, he was okay, and yes, he was eating his meals.
“What is it, Anisa?”
“A cell phone call from Groznyy to Kvanada. A muj calling his mother.”
“And?”
“And, he said that Kassab’s team was in place and awaiting their, I quote, ‘weapon of Allah’s Fire.’”
“A ‘weapon of Allah’s Fire’ sounds like a nuclear weapon to me.”
“To me as well.”
“Can we lock it down any more precisely than Groznyy? And who is Kassab?”
“Kseniya is working that.”
At her name, Kseniya turned. “Possibly Izz al Din Kassab, a known fighter in the Chechen rebel forces. Last known position was with Giku Inarov, the current rebel leader. Location, though, is unknown.”
“Maybe not any longer. Okay.” The English word had crossed into Keldara just as quickly as any other language. “Get the best fix we can on the location of that call. Priority on any other transmissions or activity in and around Groznyy. Irina, see what the Russians have available for HUMINT in that area. And Kseniya, get a full dossier on Kassab. The Kildar needs this information.”
She grinned. “Good job! Now, get back to work - there’s lots more data to massage. We might just get lucky again.”
=============================
“Okay, Grez, what do you have?” Mike asked.
This wasn’t the first time Greznya had briefed Mike. Her status as Vanner’s wife had little to do with it. She had proven time and again that she was a highly capable intelligence analyst in her own right; marriage had simply solidified her status in the eyes of the Keldara. So marching upstairs and reporting didn’t phase her at all.
“Izz al Din Kassab and a team of fighters have rented a small tenement building near the center of Groznyy. They are apparently an advance group, waiting for others to deliver one of the nuclear weapons.”
“Timetable?”
“It is not clear, Kildar. Within the next few weeks, certainly.”
“And who is Kassab?”
“A long-known fighter in the Chechen resistance. He has been associated with Giku Inarov, one faction’s leader, for some years now. Full information is in this file.” She laid a folder on the desk.
“Would Kassab have been able to pull off this assault on his own?”
“Unlikely. He has never operated independently. Nor has he shown any indication of the planning abilities required for an exercise of that magnitude. Background, wounded many times in service to one leader or another. Keeps coming back; he‘s a true believer. Knows his role. Never had any official attention, so he‘s kept his head down.”
“How did he let a slip like this happen then?”
“Murphy?”
Mike grunted. “Probably. Okay. He’s been a good soldier, following someone else’s plan, then.”
“Exactly our conclusion, Kildar.”
“What do we know about Inarov?”
“Born in 1964. Educated in Groznyy as a construction engineer. Fought with rebels in both first and second Chechen wars. Served as head of Chechen Security Council between wars, but removed in disgrace.”
“Why?”
“He was accused of taking hostages while acting in the position.”
“So he couldn’t give up the habit even to go legit. What else?”
“Selected as Vice-President of separatist government in 2006, rose to Presidency in 2007. Declared the Caucasus Emirate in October of that year, following a series of visits by Taliban and al-Qaeda representatives.”
“Caucasus Emirate?”
Greznya looked up from her notes. “Apparently, he is attempting to unify all of the former Soviet and current Russian republics in the north Caucasus into an Islamic state. This definitely includes Georgia.”
“Oh, joy. Why haven’t we heard of this joker earlier?”
“According to the CIA, there is little support for Inarov outside a very limited base in the southern mountains. His greatest successes have come outside Chechnya; inside Chechnya, the current government lists him as their number one target.”
“Great. So we have a guy living practically next door who wants to take over the whole area, who knows how to operate outside his own area, who now has nuclear weapons and has nothing to lose.”
Greznya grimaced. “Essentially correct, but we’re still uneasy.”
“How so?”
“Inarov has had success against the Russians in both wars. They were all on a much smaller scale, however. The few followers he still has are from the same mold - small unit commanders, capable, but not imaginative. From reading the Russians’ dossier, I think, and both Patrick and Stella agree, that the conception and planning of this action is beyond him.”
“Someone is doing his thinking for him,” Mike agreed. “What we do about that, though…” He trailed off, then picked up the phone. “Daria. Combat staff meeting, thirty minutes.” Hanging up, he said to Greznya, “Do we have any idea where J and Cottontail are?”
“We’re in contact with them daily. They have skirted the Pankisi, and are near to entering Dagestan.”
“Contact them now. Have them head to Groznyy. We need eyes on the ground.”
=============================
“At least we have a starting point,” opined Adams.
The briefing hadn’t taken long. Mike’s initial shock at seeing Katrina - “This is part of her training, Kildar,” explained Daria - had quickly evaporated as he listened, again, to Greznya’s information.
“What we do from here, that’s the question,” added Nielson. “We can’t commit fully on the basis of this report alone.”
“Of course not,” said Mike. “Options? Oleg?”
“Attack. The more we send to the Cold Lands, the happier the All-Father will be.”
Mike disagreed, but before he could speak, Greznya spoke up. “Foolish man! This is our only link to the source - if we kill them all, where do we go next?”
“We still need to take them down,” said Adams. “Can’t have them setting there.”
“Until we can trace them back to Inarov, if he is the one behind this, then we have to.”
Vanner spoke. “We need better intel. J and Katya will get there in a couple days, but what will we miss?” He shook his head. “I think we need to tap into Chechnik’s sources.”
“Do it,” growled Mike, “Just don’t expect me to talk to him.” He turned to Adams. “Oleg has a good point, though. We’re going to have to plan to take it down. I want you to take Pavel and his team to Groznyy too. Take someone from Intel -”
“Anisa,” said Vanner.
“Fine, Anisa. And make sure you have Cottontail’s black box. Daria, they’re going to need transportation and a base -”
“Rent or buy two vans in Tbilisi, and find a warehouse near Groznyy.”
He had to grin. “Damn, it’ll suck when you leave. I hope you’re taking notes, Katrina!”
“Be assured, I am,” she replied, grinning back.
“Knock it off, you two,” said Adams. “How soon do you want us there?”
“Give J some time to get there and develop some sources. Say, four or five days?”
Adams nodded. “Done. Full load?”
“Urban package. I’ll call General Umarov and see if we can’t borrow a couple choppers to get you to Tbilisi quicker.” He turned to Nielson. “Any word yet on the Rangers?”
“I expect them day after tomorrow.”
“They dropping in again?” On the previous deployment, the Ranger company had parachuted in from a Ukrainian An-120 transport.
“Yep. Gotta keep those jump wings.”
“Oorah. Will we have sufficient bunk space?”
“Barely. The three emergency shelters you had Meller build last summer are vacant.” A late-winter avalanche had come close to burying one of the Keldara compounds. Mike realized that if anything happened to their homes, they would have nowhere else to stay. In a Georgian winter, that would be quickly fatal.
So he had three long buildings constructed for use as emergency shelters. They also served as large meeting halls, and gathering places for the whole community. The villagers from Alersso had rented them on occasion for weddings and other celebrations. They‘d also been used during the worst of the influx of refugees as temporary housing. “I don’t think the Keldara have any plans for them in the near future.”
“Good enough. Same company, right?”
“First of the seventy-fifth. Guerrin is still commanding.”
“That’ll make it easier.” He looked around. “I think that does it.” People stood to leave. Mike noticed Katrina make her way through to his side. “Yes?” he asked.
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him quickly. “See? I can be the Kildaran you need.”
“Out!” he said, but smiling.
“Yes, Kildar,” she replied, and walked - no, swayed - out.
AARGH!
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