Brad Thor Read online

  In the middle of the corridor was a door marked Surgeons, which he unlocked and held open for his guests.

  The surgeons’ office was a large square room with windows on the far side that looked out toward the main gate and the old Soviet military base across the road. There was a metal desk in each corner with extra chairs in front. Only two of the desks had computers.

  Stuffed bookcases and mismatched file cabinets lined the perimeter of the room. There was a small door that led to a private bathroom. Upon it was a single hook overloaded with white coats.

  Boyle introduced the only other person in the room, an Afghan surgeon named Dr. Hamid, who was busy at one of the computers. After shaking hands, Boyle led his guests to a couple of chairs in front of a desk on the other side of the room. He disappeared into the bathroom and returned with three clean coffee cups, which he filled with hot water from a dispenser next to one of the file cabinets.

  Dropping a tea bag into each one, he then set the mugs down on the desk, pulled up a chair, and said, “Thank you again for what you did downstairs.”

  Harvath was about to respond when the young Afghan doctor from the waiting room entered with a thick stack of folders tucked beneath his arm. Boyle waved him over and introduced him as Dr. Atash, one of their family medicine residents. He still looked shaken by what had happened.

  He shook hands with Harvath and Gallagher, then excused himself to discuss his charts with Dr. Hamid.

  When Atash had walked away, Gallagher turned to Dr. Boyle and said, “You should think about hiring additional security. Next time, you may not be so lucky.”

  “True,” he replied, “but unfortunately, we need a new ultrasound machine more than we need additional security. But that’s not important. We’re here to talk about Dr. Gallo.”

  “We are,” said Harvath. “And as Mrs. Gallo explained to you in her email, Mr. Gallagher and I have been brought in to help secure Julia’s release.”

  “Well, the hospital is ready to help in any way we can.”

  “That’s good. So let me ask you, when Dr. Gallo came to work here, did you know who she was, or more important, who her mother was?”

  “I did. Julia’s mother is friendly with one of our board members, but she wanted to be treated like every other doctor we have, not like the daughter of Stephanie Gallo.”

  “In other words, no special treatment.”

  Dr. Boyle nodded as he took his tea bag out of his cup and dropped it in the wastebasket. “She also didn’t like talking about her mother or her family much. She was real tight-lipped about it.”

  “But did people know who she was?” asked Harvath as he tossed his tea bag too.

  “If you’ll pardon the graveyard humor, doctors like to say that the only way three people in a hospital can keep a secret is if two of them are dead and the other is in a coma.”

  Harvath had read copies of all the reports dealing with Julia Gallo’s kidnapping. He knew that all of her colleagues at the hospital had been thoroughly questioned. Unfortunately, hospitals weren’t the only places with thriving gossip mills; so were ex-pat communities. Add in the fact that gossiping was the Afghan national pastime, and Julia Gallo was all but guaranteed to have caught the attention of the Taliban. It was just a matter of time.

  “She didn’t trade on the family name,” continued Boyle. “That was for sure. She didn’t need to. She was a damn good doctor and really cared about the Afghans she treated. Maybe even cared too much.”

  “What do you mean by too much?” asked Harvath.

  Boyle showed him an official reprimand that had been placed in Julia’s file. Proselytizing, whether it was religious or political, was strictly against CARE’s rules, especially in Afghanistan. They expected their doctors to lead by example, not by persuasion.

  The medical director detailed their rural medicine program and how Julia had jumped at the chance to travel to remote villages outside Kabul. It was dangerous work, made even more so by allegations that she was encouraging women to do things like go to school, report abusive husbands and fathers, and refuse to enter into forced marriages.

  Looking back, Boyle realized he should have forbidden her from making any more trips outside the hospital, but because of her family’s VIP standing within the organization, he had looked the other way. Instead, he had written up the reprimand, provided Julia with a copy, and put the original in her file. He had hoped it would show her how serious what she was doing was, but it didn’t seem to have worked.

  Kevin Boyle was a good person, and Harvath could see that. He believed in what he was doing for the people of Afghanistan and he cared very much for his staff. He felt guilty about what had happened to Julia Gallo, but what he didn’t know was that her kidnapping had nothing to do with what she was encouraging the women of Afghanistan to do. It had everything to do with her mother and her mother’s close ties with the new president of the United States.

  If the Taliban hadn’t been able to snatch her in the countryside, they might have eventually come to the hospital to grab her. And if that had happened, Harvath knew that it would have been much worse than what had transpired in the waiting room that morning.

  He asked Boyle to fill in several blanks from the reports he’d read about the kidnapping and then asked a few additional questions about hospital security. Gallagher also asked one or two of his own.

  When they were finished, the men stood and shook hands. As if it was an afterthought, Harvath said, “I heard you’re a Navy man?”

  “I am,” replied Boyle with a smile. “They’re the ones who sent me to medical school. How about you?”

  “I was in the Teams.”

  The medical director was impressed. “Well, I can understand why Mrs. Gallo wanted you on board.”

  “If I had known there was another Navy man in Kabul, I wouldn’t have had to bring a Marine on the team,” Harvath said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at Gallagher, who rolled his eyes.

  Removing his Afghan cell phone and opening up the address book, Harvath added. “If I need to call you, where can I get hold of you?”

  The medical director dictated a number he said was good day or night, and Harvath entered it into his phone.

  Boyle accompanied the men to the bottom of the stairs, where they all shook hands one more time, and after Harvath assured the surgeon they could find their own way out, said good-bye.

  Despite having seen most of the small hospital on their tour, Harvath wanted to poke around a little bit more before they left. He was particularly interested in locating the mechanical room and any other below-grade facilities. As they looked around, he took a mental inventory of everything he saw.

  A half hour later, they were nearing the double doors that led into the waiting area when a voice from down the hallway called for them to stop.

  The men turned to see Dr. Atash jogging in their direction.

  “I need to speak to you, please,” he said, slightly out of breath.

  “If this is about what happened earlier,” replied Harvath as the young doctor drew closer, “it’s okay. You don’t need to say anything.”

  “No. This is about something that happened in Nangarhar.”

  “Nangarhar?”

  “Yes,” he said. “At the Nangarhar Hospital in Jalalabad.”

  As Jalalabad was home to the other ISS compound and had been his stomping ground the majority of time he’d been in Afghanistan, Gallagher was interested immediately. “What happened?” he asked.

  “I had been working there for the last month as part of my residency program. I was taking care of a boy, a teenager actually, who had been struck in a fight. His jaw was fractured. As I came into the exam room, I overheard his father talking with him in Pashtu about a woman, an American, who had been kidnapped.”

  “Were they from Jalalabad? Which neighborhood?” asked Gallagher.

  Dr. Atash shook his head. “No, they were from a village in Khogyani.”

  “Did they mention her by nam
e? Did you overhear a description or anything that could prove they were talking about Dr. Gallo?” asked Harvath.

  “No they didn’t.”

  “Did you tell anybody about this?”

  Atash shook his head once more.

  “Why not? Why keep this to yourself?”

  “I assumed it was another aid worker. These things happen all the time. The organization they work for pays the ransom and the worker is returned. It’s not my job to get involved in these things. I could put the entire hospital at risk.”

  “So why are you telling us?”

  “I apologize for not saying something upstairs, but it wasn’t until I finished reviewing my charts with Dr. Hamid that he told me who you were. He didn’t know that I hadn’t heard about the kidnapping.”

  “Did you know Dr. Gallo?”

  “Not well. She taught obstetrics here to my class. But she’s my colleague and I want to help her. Besides, I’m also Pashtun and it’s my duty to repay you for what you did for me this morning.”

  Ten minutes later, Harvath and Baba G walked out of the CARE hospital and headed for the main gates.

  “How do you want to play this?” asked Gallagher. “Should we get the military involved?”

  “We don’t even know if Dr. Gallo is being held in that village.”

  “If we can roll up this Elam Badar and his son Asadoulah, it might not matter. Get to them, and we may just get to Julia Gallo.”

  “We could also end up spooking whoever has her.”

  “That’s a possibility, but at the very least,” responded Gallagher, “somebody has got to get eyes on that village.”

  “I agree,” said Harvath. “I think we ought to take a drive to—”

  Gallagher cut Harvath off as he pulled his vibrating cell phone out of his pocket and, looking at the caller ID, said, “It’s Rashid.”

  Baba G raised the phone to his ear and listened. After a short conversation, he flipped it shut. Looking at Harvath, he said, “We’ve got bad news.”

  “What is it?”

  “Rashid just heard from his cousins. The Afghans are going to move Khan again. They say that if we’re going to grab him, we have to do it tonight. They want to meet with us in half an hour.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Gallagher made the drive from the CARE hospital to Kabul’s famed “Chicken Street” in just under twenty minutes. As it was one of the city’s most popular shopping districts, it wasn’t unusual to see foreigners walking up and down the street, and as it was only a block away from the headquarters of the Afghan National Police, it also wasn’t unusual to see high-ranking ANP and even NDS officials doing their shopping here. It was therefore an excellent location to hold a clandestine meeting.

  The small shops of Chicken Street’s rug merchants sat cheek by jowl with antique dealers and jewelry shops. Anything could be had on Chicken Street, from traditional Afghan carpets, vintage rifles, and ivory-handled knives, to gold necklaces, silver earrings, or bracelets studded with one of Afghanistan’s most prized gemstones, the intensely blue lapis lazuli.

  Gallagher parked a block away and paid a group of street kids, who materialized out of nowhere, a buck apiece to keep an eye on the Land Cruiser.

  As Harvath stepped out of the truck, he was accosted by a new group of children, who shouted, “Mister, mister. I’m your bodyguard, okay?”

  Gallagher had warned him about this, as well as the burka-clad women who trolled Chicken Street with phony prescriptions, begging naïve Westerners to give them money to buy medicine for their “sick” children. Kids who begged to be bodyguards were harmless, in his opinion, and even respectable, as they were actually willing to work for their money, but the women with the bogus prescriptions were simply scam artists.

  Harvath looked at the bright faces of all the kids gathered around him. “Yak dollar, mister. Only yak dollar,” they said, yak being the Dari word for “one.”

  “Okay, yak dollar,” Harvath relented, and the children all cheered. The gaggle of boys tagged along until they reached a nondescript rug shop, where Harvath gave them each a dollar and the shop’s owner shooed them away.

  After the kids had disappeared, the owner showed the two Americans into the back of his shop, where he pulled a trap door down from the ceiling and extended an aging wooden staircase that led to the second floor. The men mounted the narrow steps single file and emerged in a warehouse space that smelled faintly of tobacco and damp carpets.

  Sitting on a large rug at the opposite end were Inspector Rashid and his two cousins, Marjan and Pamir. In the middle was a pot of tea. Judging from the steam coming from their cups, it appeared to be Afghan and not American.

  The shop owner retreated to the first floor, telescoped the stairs back into their hiding place, and closed the trap door to give the men their privacy.

  After conducting the customary greetings, the three Afghans invited their American counterparts to sit down and take tea. Harvath wanted to get straight to business, but he knew you never said no to tea, so he sat down and accepted a cup. Fortunately, the Afghans were in no mood for chit-chat. Once the tea was poured, they got right to the point.

  Marjan was the first to speak. “Our president is so determined that Mustafa Khan stand trial for his crimes that he wants to watch over him personally.”

  “What do you mean personally?” asked Harvath.

  “He is going to have Khan moved to the presidential palace.”

  “Where are they going to put him? In a guest room?”

  Marjan shook his head. “Of course not. There are two cells beneath the palace.”

  “When are they going to move him?”

  “As early as tomorrow,” replied Pamir.

  “Which is why,” interjected Rashid, “we must do this tonight.”

  They were right. Grabbing Khan at the old Soviet base made more sense than trying to launch an assault on the presidential palace, but they still didn’t have everything they needed.

  “What about a map of the tunnels?” asked Harvath.

  Pamir reached into a small shoulder bag that was sitting on the floor behind him and pulled out a medium-sized tube. “Right here.”

  Harvath looked at Marjan. “You can sketch the base layout, as well as the interrogation facility?”

  The NDS operative nodded.

  “Then the only thing we’re missing…” Harvath began to say, but his voice trailed off as Inspector Rashid stood and disappeared behind a pile of carpets.

  He returned carrying a watertight, high-density, plastic Storm case and said, “Are the munitions.”

  Gallagher looked at Harvath and smiled. “I told you he was good.”

  “I never doubted it for a second,” lied Harvath.

  The room was warm and he removed his jacket and set it on the floor behind him. Rolling up his sleeves, he looked at the Afghans as Rashid retook his seat and said, “Now we need a plan.”

  They spent the next six hours evaluating their objective and assessing their options. The shopkeeper downstairs kept the tea coming and sent his son out twice for food.

  One of the biggest things bothering Harvath about the operation was the satellite imagery he’d seen. According to Marjan, the Afghans had reconstructed several of the base buildings to use as barracks. The NDS operative’s assurance that the barracks were only used when training exercises were being conducted did little to stem Harvath’s concern, especially considering that the interrogation facility was located beneath one of them.

  Not knowing how many Afghan Special Forces soldiers were guarding Khan was one thing, but they also had no way of gauging how many soldiers would be in the barracks above, or how many would be on the base in general. The fact that his team could easily be outnumbered and overwhelmed weighed heavily on Harvath’s mind, as did the fact that if that happened, there would be no cavalry he could call for help.

  He and Gallagher drilled Rashid, Pamir, and Marjan relentlessly. Looking at his watch, Harvath decided they all n
eeded a break. There were only a couple of hours of daylight left and he wanted to drive the perimeter of the base, as well as visit the ruins of the old palace at the end of Darulaman Road to see what kind of vantage point it might provide.

  The men agreed to reassemble at midnight, and Harvath warned them all one last time not to talk to anyone, especially Rashid, who had repeatedly offered to reach out to a few more contacts to see if he could nail down the exact troop strength at the base. It was more important that they maintain the element of surprise. Besides, based on Harvath’s plan, it didn’t matter if the Afghans had five men there or five hundred. Either it was going to work or it wasn’t.

  Harvath wrapped the Storm case in a plastic garbage bag and waited while Gallagher brought the Land Cruiser around. Once it was loaded, the two Americans drove down Chicken Street and headed for the Darulaman Road.

  Baba G was uncharacteristically silent.

  “You can still back out,” said Harvath.

  “What makes you think I want to back out?”

  “Nothing. I’m just saying.”

  “I don’t like rush jobs.”

  Harvath nodded. “Nobody does, but when the window of opportunity opens, you move or it closes.”

  “We can still bring Fontaine with us.”

  Harvath understood Gallagher’s apprehension, and the idea of bringing someone as qualified as the Canadian was tempting. Though he and Baba G had both the right kind of training and the experience for an operation like this, Pamir and Marjan were a different story. At best, the two Afghans were window dressing. If the fit hit the shan, there was no way of knowing how they’d react. Having Fontaine along would dramatically improve their odds, but he had the potential to be a political liability. Harvath couldn’t allow the president or the United States to be implicated in what he was going to do. “We’re not taking him,” he finally said.

  Gallagher understood and changed the subject. “So you’re sure Boyle will let us stage at the hospital?”