From the Dark: A Sean Barrett Novel

CHAPTER 1

Helmand Province, Present Day

Today was going to be an easy day to kill the Americans, Sabir thought to himself, as he tried to find a comfortable position between the rocks overlooking the road the US Marines would come down shortly. His father sat across the gap in the valley almost at his eye level, unseen, except that Sabir knew exactly where to spot him. The old man was getting careless, Sabir noted, as his father’s Russian fatigue coat was visible near the edge of the rock he huddled behind. His father had worn the coat during the jihad against the communists, and told the story of the death of its former owner incessantly among the village men and the visiting leaders of the region’s Mujahedeen, Including two nights ago, when the area commander had arrived with his most effective fighters, and the very quiet Pakistani. Sabir had known very well to sit quietly, not ask any questions, and let his father and the other local men discuss their part in this ambush. The locals were only to provide the best hiding spots along the route that was marked on the map; the commander and his fighters would execute the attack and then retreat with their prize immediately from the local area. Sabir was again impressed that the commander knew the exact time the American Marines would be travelling through the area, though he suspected the commander was relying on the Pakistani for that information.

The Marines in the area were known to Sabir and the village, having come to meet with the elders on many occasions to talk about a road project. Sabir, at fifteen, had been allowed to sit at the periphery of the meetings and heard the Americans—speaking through their government translator—offer more and more to the elders, if only they would join the local militia against the Taliban mujahedeen brothers. The men of the village, like their fathers before them, had sat quietly nodding their heads, agreeing to nothing. Sabir even noted that his father had managed to keep his mouth shut during these discussions. Hopefully, they would benefit today from a good showing with the commander. The poppy harvest had not been good, with both poor weather and the government making their fields an example in their show burnings for the Americans. Sabir and his family would need the support of the local Taliban for the winter to come, and today would go a long way in helping them stay in the Taliban’s good regard.

Sabir, his father, and Majeed, another local man situated a hundred meters along the escarpment above the road, had led the fighters to the precise location. Now they were to provide diversionary fire as the real assault moved up from the road embankments. The Americans would not expect this attack, as a usual raid would consist of fire from above and possibly some mortars lobbed in, followed by a quick dispersal. Discussing this attack plan again last night, his father had interrupted the commander to offer his opinions on the attack, insisting that the better approach would be to concentrate all their fire from above, and smash the American devils like he and his brothers had crushed the Russians on this same road. Sabir could only shake his head when recalling the look that the commander had fixed on his father. We will attack in this way, Brother, the commander had said quietly, adding, You and your fine son will be remembered by all the mujahedeen with great honor for your help here. The old fool had finally realized he should shut up, and Sabir had felt chilled by the commander’s words. Did he expect the local men to be martyred in the raid?

Majeed signaled that the Marine patrol was coming around the bend in the road, and Sabir raised his hand to his father as agreed, informing him the enemy would appear in moments. Peering down, he could see the twelve men of the main attack group, six on either side of the road. The Pakistani had stayed back at the regroup position with the two escape vehicles and their drivers. Each of the fighters below the road was already renowned in Helmand for their prowess in battle. Not all were Afghans; two were brothers from Chechnya, veterans of their own struggles with the Russian bastards. Three more were Saudis, rumored to have fought alongside the recently-martyred Emir Bin Laden. They had been active in Helmand province with the commander for the last three years, killing ISAF troops, mainly Americans Marines and British Army operating in the province, but also imposing harsh discipline on villages which had been foolhardy enough to allow a militia post to be raised in their midst. The retribution they dispensed was harsh and clear: Collaborate and the night would not be kind to your men, and perhaps even the women in your village. Sabir noted that they had gathered among themselves, with the Pakistani directly before the raid, looking at a photo, the Pakistani waving his finger at each man, emphasizing some point. He was surprised at the deference each of these hard men, even the commander, showed this man.

The patrol’s lead men came into Sabir’s view, forming a well-known pattern—one on each side of the road, the second five meters behind the first, weapons ready, but today, somewhat casually held across the forearm. The lead man carried an M27 assault rifle, the second carried the slightly older M16A4. They were followed by two Afghan army soldiers, both holding the same weapon that Sabir and his father now trained at them: AK74’s , the slightly-newer version of the AK 47 that seemed to grow from the ground in Afghanistan. Behind them were three more Marines, a small patrol, a daily routine for this outfit that had been stationed in the area for the last two years. As ordered two months earlier from the region’s mujahedeen leadership, there had been no attacks on this outpost, and the local Taliban had noted that the Marines were more relaxed in the last weeks as they set forward on these daily patrols.

As the last man of the patrol passed Majeed’s position, he opened fire on the road behind them, and Sabir and his father did the same directly in front of the lead men. The reaction was instantaneous, as the two lead men immediately raised their weapons and began firing at the local men’s positions. Sabir was not a fool; he knew that they had the advantage of surprise and position; he also knew that these US Marines were not like the Russian conscripts his father and the other old men in the village talked about killing so easily. They fought well, were good shooters, and did not shrink back from an attack. However, today they were too relaxed; their guard had been dropping after days of routine and the expectation of a withdrawal from the area in the coming months. As the patrol crouched and moved to the sides of the road, the fighters sprung from their positions. Surprised by the highly-unusual close-quarters attack, the Marines still reacted well. One fighter was killed by the last Marine in line almost instantly as he rose, a shot to the chest. The two Afghan army soldiers were dispatched by the commander himself with a short spray from his weapon. The last marine was shot first in the leg, and then when down, in the face by one of the Chechens, a standard tactic to avoid the body armor worn by the NATO troops. Quickly, all but the third Marine in the line were killed; the two Saudis charged the remaining US Marine, not shooting, but clearly to keep his line of fire directly ahead. Sabir noted, with grudging respect, how the young man, not much older than him, stood firm, and fired his weapon repeatedly. However, he felt the presence too late behind him, as two of the Afghan brothers came from behind, one slamming the weapon from his hand with his own assault rifle, the other pressing his Makarov PPM pistol directly into his neck. They quickly disarmed him and ripped the microphone from his comm gear, smashing it. Wrestling him to the ground, the men held him firm while the commander approached, and pulled a black hood over the marine’s face. Sabir now saw the objective of this raid; looking across, he also noted, with some quiet resignation, the lifeless, bullet-ridden body of his father. He did not hear the other Chechen as he came up behind him, and shot him in the back of the head. There would be only local martyrs left, no survivors.

Dubrovnik, Croatia, Present Day

The man listened carefully as the footsteps approached from behind his position on the terrace. He had tried to be quiet, but his adversary knew him too well. Well, my Draga, his wife, Lucijana, said softly in Croatian to him. I see you really DO never get tired of the view, or is it that cigarette I still smell that brought you out here again?

Sean Barrett chuckled sheepishly. Guilty, he simply replied. He really did never tire of the view, though, looking down on the harbor at night from their apartment on the hills. The night was warm and clear, the soft amber lights of the city playing against the water, while the sounds from an evening football match from the social club below made their way up to them.

She moved closer to him, her hips touching his shoulders, and pulled his ear gently. Do you want him to know his daddy can’t stop this disgusting habit? Knowing that there would be no answer from the large muscular man in front her, she held him a bit closer, and added, Plus, I may have thought that your smoking was sexy when you were sitting at my father’s table, years ago, but I don’t want my man next to me stinky from smoke.

Barrett turned around and pulled her into his lap. The two of them now sat in the chair together. Laughing, he said again, for the hundredth time, I know, Love. I will stop, and soon. He had known her since his first days in Croatia, having met her father and then working with him, watching her grow into the formidable woman he loved and the only one he had ever truly trusted. He adored her. He had been a thirty-year-old man when he had seen her standing proudly next to her father, Pero Kisic, at the port the day he had arrived in the city, right before the Serbs began shelling the city back in 1991. She was little more than ten years old then, and he had seen her again when she came back from Hamburg, now a young business woman, in her early thirties, he now in his late forties. They had both tried to ignore the attraction, but he knew immediately when he had seen her at her father’s office in the old town that he was totally smitten. She had known he was, as well. Pero had seen it and laughed when Sean nervously asked for his permission to marry Lucijana.

My friend, there is no other man who could handle her, plus you are Irish—you love misery. They had married a few years later, and a boy, Nico, had been born two years ago. Barrett could not have been happier. His life was perfect. As he sat on the terrace, he looked down on the harbor and again recalled his first days there.

Barrett had arrived on a small Portuguese trawler in September ’91, planning to use the city as one stop of many to avoid the past with time and distance. Pero had been his local contact made through his network. He was one of the leaders of the Croatian independence movement, and had made some inquiries about obtaining arms through the same channels as the Provos. He had agreed to take the Irishman in, also warning that the situation in Croatia and Dubrovnik, in particular, could make an eventual departure difficult. He had proved to be right. He also owed his life to the fact that Barrett had been stuck in the city when the Yugoslav navy had started shelling the city, and the Serbs had come over the hills from Bosnia and up the coastal road from Montenegro.

In the weeks that followed, Barrett had moved from one sectarian war to another. It wasn’t his fight, but when he had seen Pero’s village burned to the ground by Serb militias, he owed the man, and it was as simple as that. For the next year, he had fought next to Pero during the defense of Dubrovnik. His particular skills had been well used, and during that time he had told his friend everything of his past. He considered him his brother.

After the war, he had worked with Pero in the construction, or, more aptly, reconstruction business, learning the language and the Balkan approach to business. Pero, with his influence in the government, had secured him an identity. He had moved from Sean Barrett, IRA hard man, to Tim Finnerty, business immigrant, taking advantage of a post-war economy. It had taken another tragic war to help him escape his own, and his past.

Sitting with his wife, Barrett laughed again as Lucijana poked him, knowing that look her man sometimes got as he moved far away. She knew all about him. There were no lies or secrets between them. She knew who he had been in the past, and what he had done both in Ireland and here during the war. She loved him, all of him. When he went away in his head, she brought him back with a gentle nudge. They rose and walked back into the flat, as it was getting cold and dark.

CHAPTER 2

Islamabad Pakistan, Present Day

Major Ashir Jaidi picked up the mobile phone from the night stand next him, but did not speak. There was no need, as only one person would use this number and only once. The paper is complete, Sir, the voice said. He broke the connection, removed the SIM card, and pocketed the card. He would deal with it in short order. First, he would make his way to the breakfast room and join his family for breakfast. His wife, Nadira, already in the kitchen supervising the house staff, would be along shortly.

Ashir moved his way along the hall to his daughter, Laila’s, room. He knocked lightly on the door and heard her customary greeting. The sun and the moon and Papa at the door. All is right with the world.

Pushing the door open, he replied in kind, Someday, Daughter, the sun will come up, but these old bones will stay in bed. It was a tired, but comfortable, joke between them. Laila sat at the edge of her bed, her maid having helped her dress, but, as always, waiting for her father to push the wheel chair from the corner to her bed. He gently helped her into the chair, as usual, noting to himself how frail his young adult daughter had become in the last year. Laila, once a rising biologist working in the pharmaceutical industry, had been living in Boston, working for a small biotechnology company. Their only child, Ashir and Nadira had always encouraged their daughter’s obvious academic talents, and she had blossomed with their support. She had called a year ago after noticing a weakness in her arm for several weeks. The symptoms had rapidly increased, the final diagnosis crushing them all: a severe and quickly-debilitating form of muscular dystrophy, Marburg MS. Unlike most forms of the disease, Marburg patients experienced a quick onset of severe symptoms, not the gradual progression normally found in the more common forms of the disease. Nadira had flown back to the US and, after two months, with intensive therapy and treatment, there had been stabilization, but a cure was a remote dream at this point.

Ashir had spoken with the general about an early retirement from the ISI, the largest and leading of Pakistan’s three state intelligence services. The general had expressed his sympathy, but had been clear that Ashir’s department was vital to the State, and did Ashir not see that his family’s future was tied to the success of Pakistan’s battle with the Indians. There would be no retirement; Ashir would continue to direct his Taliban connections in Afghanistan, keeping the Americans occupied with their war, and the threat of Islamic radicalism; the ISI continued its main objective of thwarting the Indians and their rising stature in the world. As he rolled his daughter to breakfast, Ashir bitterly recalled the conversation. Regardless of his relative stature here in Islamabad, he could never find the facilities to provide the care needed for Laila. He also could not keep Nadira and Laila in the US; the cost was simply too much, so they had returned to Karachi. Since then, his daughter’s condition had been deteriorating quickly, and Nadira’s resentment of his inability to provide for his daughter had grown just as rapidly. The daughter of a senior politician from the country’s founding days after independence from the British, Nadira had married Ashir when he seemed destined for the army general staff. He had fought well in the 1999 Kashmir war, showing a particular talent in directing the Islamic Kashmir militants. After the war, the ISI had taken note, and recruited him specifically to foster the ongoing skirmishes in the contested region between Pakistan and India. Meeting the general in that first interview, Ashir had been promised a brilliant career with a quick rise. He had a remarkable talent to sympathize with these Islamists, using their blind radicalism to push the real aims of the State. A firm secularist, as most in the ISI, the general had seen in Ashir an ability to move these simpletons like game pieces. Ashir had quickly accepted, and had since then developed an extensive network not only with the Kashmir insurgents, but more importantly, the Afghan Taliban and their Al-Qaeda partners. The game was much more complex now, as the country’s own Islamists and Al-Qaeda had developed deep ties. In some cases, the line between Pakistan’s Islamist radicals, Pakistani Taliban, Afghan Taliban, and Al-Qaeda were non-existent. The ISI and the general, specifically, knew the game was now much more dangerous, as the internal threat from the extremists was a major concern. Ashir knew they had fed the fire that might burn the country down. Still, they were managing in the old paradigm, trying to keep the Taliban focused on the Americans and NATO in Afghanistan, while feeding the Americans nuggets to keep their aid flowing into the country. After the Al-Qaeda leader had been found living in Abbottabad, a town in the midst of the army academy and residential homes of officers of military and intelligence officers, the Americans had finally begun to shield themselves. They might still be allies in name, but the situation was very tense. Ashir thankfully reminded himself of his strong opposition to allowing the Saudi to put his compound there. He continued to be amazed that it had taken the Americans so long to stumble onto his location. He also knew it made the current operation that much more dangerous, and the source of its beginnings even more suspicious. He also knew that the general only understood it to be a support operation for a cell operating in Afghanistan.

He ate his breakfast quietly with his daughter, as Nadira gave instructions to the maid for the small dinner party to take place in the evening, a party he knew could neither be afforded nor would result in the promotion Nadira thought might happen by having the general, some colleagues, and their spouses for dinner. Nadira was not naïve; she knew her husband’s work was sensitive, but she had no concept that his job was to be the shield for the general—the one who could, and would, be thrown down when the time came for reckoning. Both Ashir and the general understood, though, that whether it be a new Islamist regime, the worst outcome, or a rapprochement with the Americans, there would be officers who would be sacrificed, and those who had been directly in command would be the ones to be put up for the trials. The general, a wily and seasoned player, had kept his alliances separate and found a new level of faith, being seen at the right mosque, with just enough devotion to appease the faithful, but keep his colleagues at ease. The General understood that Ashir’s skills were quite specific, and indeed, required in the short term, but his long term future was to deflect blame. As Ashir smiled across the table at Laila, the desperation and resolve grew again inside him. The General did not realize Ashir was playing a more dangerous game, one to give his daughter the hope that he saw draining every day from her eyes. He rose and kissed her gently on the forehead, saying, Let’s keep it easy tonight, Darling. No need to be formal.

Laila laughed ruefully. I’m sure Mother will not be so relaxed.

Well, you and I can keep it light and easy. I must go now. You know Raza. He is worse than your mother if I am late, referring to his driver and bodyguard, but also his most trusted lieutenant. They had fought together, and the older sergeant had been saved from an Indian Ghatak commando’s knife by Ashir. Since then, the man had been devoted to his Major Jaidi. Ashir had come to deeply respect Raza’s natural intelligence, his analysis, and mostly, the complete ruthlessness with which he treated the enemy. He came from one of the poorest districts of Karachi. From a family of smugglers from spices to women and heroin, his skills had been bred in his early youth and sharpened with the discipline of the army and, finally, the ISI. Raza was lethal.

Leaving the house, Ashir mentally checked his surroundings. His man was across the street on the scooter in the alley, and he would take position behind Raza in the armored Toyota SUV. Raza, as usual, was parked in the small driveway, engine running, waiting for his boss. Ashir knew the disinterested appearance was a ruse, but any professional would know the same. Raza had a Beretta 93 strapped to the driver’s door, ready, in a quick holster. The man on the scooter was changed daily, and his position was never exactly the same. Ashir strode to the car. Raza did not get out; bad practice and simply unnecessary. Getting in, Ashir sat in the front. He placed the SIM card on the newspaper on the gear box area; Raza pocketed it without a word. Raza hit the button to open the metal gate and quickly turned onto the street, taking one of the many routes to their office which was housed in a low, commercial area occupied by trading houses, internet cafes, and small shops. The building was owned, through several front companies, by Ashir’s department. His team was not located on the commercial first floor, which was rented by a very legitimate mobile phone business, again owned by the department. Entering the back entrance, they walked the four flights of stairs to an apartment door, entering into a non-descript hallway ending in another closed door. Looking into the unseen camera above, they were buzzed into the main operations area, which occupied the entire space once comprised of two apartments. No one looked up from their computer screens or from the conversations on the many mobile phones in the area. Only the man sitting at the small desk at the entrance nodded at them. The small video monitor sitting next to the M4 assault rifle on the desk