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  He slipped into a prime spot in the “duck hide” and trained his binoculars on the farmhouse he could now see jutting out behind the far stand of maple trees. There were lights in the downstairs rooms, but no cars outside, and the big double doors to the barn were closed.

  THE DARK-SKINNED, Punjab-born guard, who was observing Mack from a position almost a hundred yards away had made a colorful journey from his home village in Pakistan to West Norfolk, Connecticut. A devout Muslim, Ali had been recruited to the Taliban at a very young age, and then joined that section of the Pakistani army that owed no loyalty to its comrades nor to the national government.

  Ali had always been a freedom fighter, with sympathies only for the hard-line religious fanatics who had, before 9/11, ruled Afghanistan. In the ensuing years, having been almost destroyed by the U.S. forces, the Taliban had been making a rapid comeback, striking at the Pakistani army over and over.

  Ali, who had been an enormous favorite of the Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud, had been dispatched to join the Pakistani national army and work on the inside. And his successes had been formidable. He and Mahsud had staged constant attacks on the official forces, and even more constant raids, during which they stole automatic weapons, grenades, mines, and all the equipment required to make suicide vests.

  With Ali’s inside information, the Taliban pulled off some dreadful military-style coups, bombing and blasting their way into the headlines, and effectively running up a battle-scarred recruitment flag, which appealed to young Pakistani and Afghanis who were as fanatical and misguided as Ali himself.

  But the Pakistani government started to hit back. Baitullah Mahsud was killed by an American Drone, and Ali’s position as master spy, traitor, and confidante of the boss became too dangerous. He deserted, and headed back to the lawless tribal areas of South Waziristan, the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas), which lie to the south of the Khyber Pass right on the Afghan border.

  With the Swat Valley under constant watch by the official military, these vast FATA lands of no-cities and few towns became the second most important training grounds in the world for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Driven ever closer by the western and homeland forces ranged against them, the two organizations now combined.

  They built joint camps where they instructed young men in manufactured combat zones. Deserters from the army, like Ali, were appointed to positions of immense authority, training the new arrivals in weaponry, explosives and unarmed combat.

  Stolen arms were run in through the mountain passes on a daily basis. And by night they fought in the hillsides alongside local warlords who thought they could defeat the U.S. Army.

  Ali and his rookies crept silently through those almost impenetrable mountains, seeking out and attacking American patrols. They tried to bomb and booby-trap their own national army. They selected any target that would thrust them into the Western media. They sent in suicide bombers to strike at cricket teams and innocent women and children in their own city market places.

  But eventually, with a price on his head, and a manhunt being conducted to locate and arrest him, Ali was spirited out of the country on the usual student route to Bradford, England. From there, in possession of elaborate documents, obtained at great cost by al-Qaeda, he made it into the United States on a three-month course in Western Literature at a Boston-based college. From there he promptly disappeared, and hooked up at last with Mike’s Sleeper Cell, which had been his ultimate objective ever since he vanished from the nuclear-armed forces of Pakistan.

  As he stood silently in this Connecticut woodland with a German Luger tucked in his waistband, Ali, one of nature’s everlasting combatants, was wondering who on earth was this character with the binoculars, staring across the field directly at the house in which was being planned the most secretive, classified operation that al-Qaeda had conducted for years.

  He could, he supposed, have defied Ibrahim’s orders and shot the guy dead, no questions asked. But Ali was a veteran, and he’d been on the run. He knew the consequences of indiscriminate killing in a place like the United States. Nothing but trouble. Lucky for Mack Bedford, who did not know he was there.

  Ali understood the significance of the stranger’s presence. And he knew the questions that needed to be answered: (1) Who was he?; (2) Was he working for the police or Intelligence services?; (3) Could he have been just a bird-watcher or some nature nut?; (4) Did this mean someone was on to them?; (5) Did this also mean they should all pull out of here right away?

  Ali understood one other thing: The only person who could supply immediate answers to those questions was the guy with the binoculars. And since he was not permitted to shoot him, Ali needed to capture him, and either coax or punch those answers out of him.

  The present and former Pakistani militant could feel the ground was wet beneath his trainers, soft and quiet. But parts of it were badly overgrown and difficult to walk over without stepping through vegetation. He was accustomed to a quiet approach toward his targets, but this ground would be a little noisy for a silent stalking.

  Still, the guy with the binoculars was dressed in civilian clothes and would be unsuspecting. And Ali knew how to frighten the life out of a victim when making a surprise approach from behind. He’d been taught that all of his life by instructors and also by his father who had been a member of the 1980’s Mujahadeen—the modern masters of the art of slitting the throats of young Soviet officers in the Afghan mountains.

  He began to move forward, slipping between the trees, making a line of sight that kept him hidden from the direct gaze of the interloper. He had advanced, zigzagging unobserved for sixty yards, keeping his eyes on the trees, and always keeping a substantial tree-trunk between himself and the guy with the bins.

  His next move was one of around ten yards, and this required him to move left, around eight feet, and then go forward in a straight line, directly at the next tree, behind Mack. He made the eight-foot walk silently, hesitated, and then took two short strides forward.

  And that was where he stepped on a thin dead branch, fallen from a scrub oak. It snapped, creating a muffled sound, too heavy to be a small woodland creature, too light to be a grizzly, and too sharp to be just a small falling branch.

  Mack Bedford heard it and froze. Years of patrolling the same mountains where Ali had fought had taught him that to re-group, swing around, or relay anxiety in any way would be a poor—if not fatal—idea. He had to remain still, projecting unawareness.

  He raised the binoculars, and swiveled his left eye trying to work out whether his stalker was armed. He spotted Ali standing still as a statue next to a tree thirty yards away, or, in U.S. Navy parlance, “right on his six o’clock.” Both of the man’s hands were free and unencumbered at his sides.

  Mack betrayed nothing, and decided to allow something he had never once permitted any instructor to do in SEAL Sniper School. He would let the man “walk up on him,” and, if he so wished, grab him from behind.

  Plainly, if the man had been some kind of a gamekeeper, he would already have shouted and announced his authority. It was more likely to Mack that the bastard was indeed a terrorist and might even have been the big fella, Ben al-Turabi. But he had not been able to see that clearly in his split-second of vision around the left lens of the binoculars.

  He would not even have considered allowing a “walk up” if the man had been carrying either a knife or a gun, but that didn’t seem the case. Mack understood military odds, and right now they were heavily in his own favor, with only a remote likelihood that he’d have to kill his attacker. Because that would mean he’d have to call Ramshawe and get the clean-up squad in, ahead of the Connecticut State Police, which could blow everything. No, Mack would not kill the man unless he truly had to.

  Ali stayed frozen for a full minute and then began once more his advance, more careful now, tip-toeing across the ground, and then making a sudden and brutal lunge at Mack, ramming his right forearm around the former SEAL commander’s neck and s
queezing the windpipe with all of his strength.

  Ali stood six-foot-four, a tad taller than Mack. He knew to raise Mack’s left-arm up into a harmless high position and then keep throttling the windpipe until he received a sign of submission. He was not, however, prepared for Mack’s right elbow, which came around with the ramrod power one of the steel-drive rods on a steam locomotive.

  The back of that right elbow exploded on the side of Ali’s head, almost cracking his skull. And a fraction of a second later the left elbow made the same arc and crashed into the Pakistani’s left temple.

  The speed and animal strength of his quarry had stunned Ali, but not taken him out of the fight. With his brains zinging, he somehow hung on to Mack’s neck, and the big Navy SEAL moved into Phase Two of this classic U.S. Special Forces maneuver.

  He leaned forward, and, through his own wide-apart ankles, he clamped an iron-grip on the back of Ali’s lower right leg, hauling him off balance, straightening up and then crashing back, lying, as it were, in the Pakistani’s lap.

  Now both were on the ground. Ali had let go of Mack’s neck as he tried to save his backward fall. But it was too late. Ali was down, on his back, and his straight right-leg was jutting through, beneath Mack’s crotch. And the SEAL had a hammer-lock on the back of Ali’s ankle. He was, in effect, sitting astride Ali’s right thigh.

  Ali winced backward, and Mack leaned back and heaved, ripping the hip joint out of its socket. Like all SEALs, he’d practiced this with a fight-partner a thousand times, and it never failed. The main difference between hard training and this was the defeated SEAL would tap twice on the victor’s back, signifying that he was helpless. This present attacker would not walk unaided for a minimum of eight months.

  Mack sprang to his feet, placed his right boot on Ali’s neck, and said quietly, “Okay, pal. Now tell me, who the fuck are you?”

  In a long and colorful career in combat, Ali had never been in such pain, nor so utterly amazed at any turn of events. He just lay there, drifting toward an agonized unconscious state, trying to focus on the face of this monster, who had, he knew, completely disabled him.

  Mack reached down and yanked the pistol from Ali’s belt. And the Pakistani militant was lucky he was not Ben al-Turabi, because if Mack had recognized him, he would have shot him straight between the eyes. One terrorist at a time, two at a time, or altogether, it would have made no difference to Lt. Commander Bedford.

  As things were, he drew back and hurled the handgun into the middle of the wood, to a place where it probably would never be found. He stared into Ali’s face, and recognized only that he was gazing at someone from the Middle East, perhaps an Arab, more likely a Persian or a Pashtun.

  But just then two things happened. Both bad. Ali passed out with the pain from his wrecked leg, and heading down the blacktop drive was some kind of a ramshackle black pick-up truck. Mack could see there were two people in the front seats, but there could have been more in the rear.

  In reality, he was just witnessing a couple of Mike’s team on their way to the shops in Torrington, to buy the green paint and overalls. But he didn’t know that. So he turned away from the stricken Ali, and headed back into the woods since he wanted to avoid being fired at by terrorists with AK-47s.

  It had, he decided, been a confusing incident. His brief was simple: to take out Ibrahim Sharif, Yousaf Mohammed, Ben al-Turabi, and Abu Hassan Akbar. Right now he had no idea whether they were in the house or anywhere near Mountainside Farm. He did not even know if this Faisal al-Assad was in the house, nor indeed whether Faisal even knew the four men he was after.

  That would take more investigation. But not now. It was far too dangerous for him to remain on this property, unarmed, in broad daylight, having maimed one of their guards. There were probably too many of them, all heavily armed, and his orders were to work quietly, in complete secrecy.

  Mack watched the truck race by. It turned right along the road toward Torrington, and would very soon pass his own parked black Nissan. Mack hoped they would not remember it, and, glancing back at the property, he exited the woods and turned in the same direction along the road as Mike’s fertilizer truck.

  He was unaware of the significance of the vehicle. But, out of habit, he watched it through the glasses as it disappeared, and he wrote down the registration number in his notebook, noting also that it was a Dodge Ram, with Massachussets registration, and that it was old, black, and muddy.

  Then he walked back along the deserted road to the Nissan and looked forward to a cup of tea in the Blackberry River Hotel, right there by the fire, as darkness descended across these cold mountains.

  BY 4:30 P.M. Ali had not showed up at the farmhouse. Mike’s boys had phoned in from Torrington and said they had not seen him guarding the wood when he they drove by. At 5 p.m., Ibrahim formed a search-party to coincide with the arrival of the others.

  He sent three of his team down to the front woods, where Ali was extremely easy to find since he was yelling his head off from a spot fifty yards along the post-and-rail fence, right by the duck hide. He’d been there for around ninety minutes with his leg now swollen to the size of a New Jersey pumpkin. He was freezing cold, in overwhelming agony, unable to move, and embarrassed beyond belief.

  They drove the truck along the field and manhandled him onto the flatbed as carefully as possible. They drove him back to the house and listened while he explained what had happened. But his information was poor; he was not even certain he would recognize his attacker again.

  Ibrahim conducted a brief conference with Yousaf and Ben and Abu, during which they accepted that Ali could not be admitted to an American hospital. There would be questions, requests for his name and address. And when he could not answer, an inevitable call to the police. He could not leave here. But neither could he stay while he was in this kind of medical state, feverish, screaming, and unable to move on his own. At 5:40 p.m., Abu Hassan walked into the main room of the farmhouse and shot Ali dead with two shots to the back of the head.

  “God speed unto Allah,” intoned Ibrahim, and four of the group picked up the body, took it outside, and dumped it in an outhouse. It was an ignominious end to a brave but foolish young man.

  AS ALL THIS WAS GOING DOWN at Mountainside Farm, Mack Bedford was pouring his second cup of tea. He had changed his shoes, removed his parka, and was reclining in a fireside chair. He was reading a magazine, half-heartedly looking at the ads for winter vacations, when he came upon one that brought back vivid memories.

  It was a tour of the Holy Land, a place where he had once served, assisting with the training of the Israeli Defense Force. It listed the stops—the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, parts of Jerusalem, and south to Bethlehem and Hebron, and then the other historic town in the Negev Desert, Be’er Sheba, with its layers of history. The town where Abu Hassan had committed mass murder at the 2004 bar mitzvah.

  Mack and some of his colleagues had loved Hebron. Although it was in Israel, it had one of the most naturally Arabian centers anyone could imagine. Mack remembered the sight of farmers, coming into the market with their produce in great panniers strapped to the flanks of their camels. He remembered the sheep and goat herders, and the casbah with its pottery, sculpted olivewood, and colorful glass.

  He and his men had been taken by Arabs to see the town’s huge Islamic school, home to almost two thousand students. He could recall immediately the warmth and generosity of the local people, their delight if any of the SEALs knew even a smattering of Arab words.

  He remembered the fresh fruit, especially the pale, sweet Hebron-grown peaches, treasured throughout the Middle East. But most of all he remembered the gigantic edifice of the Tomb of the Patriarch, which dominated the city from its high and windy hill. Mack would remember until the day he died the feeling of pure humility he experienced when they told him that inside those mighty sandstone walls was the last resting place of Abraham, in the Land of Canaan, where he forged his Covenant with God.

  He could
, almost, remember the quotation from Genesis, which was engraved on a plaque: “And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘I have heard the cry of my people in Egypt, for I know their sorrows, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, to a land flowing with milk and honey. To the place of the Canaanites.’”

  He smiled at the memory of the guys from Foxtrot Platoon, SEAL Team 10, who’d been with him in Hebron. Chief Petty Officer Frank Brooks, PO Billy-Ray Jackson, and Gunner Charlie O’Brien. They were all gone now, killed by an illegal missile fired by terrorists across the Euphrates River.

  Mack put down the magazine and sipped his tea. He had some serious thinking to do, mostly involving what might happen when someone finds the guy with the broken leg. Right now he was amazed at how much he suspected, but how little he really knew. And he tried to distil his knowledge, and indeed his plan.

  Who now owned Mountainside Farm? Could it now be occupied by the four men he was supposed to kill? And how could he find all this out without getting himself killed? There was also the question of what they were up to—and how it all might tie in to a potential hit on “Abe’s Place,” wherever that may be. He took another long look at the big-scale local map that Aimee Cutler had given him. There was the $875,000 farm with its clear view of Haystack Mountain. There was Torrington, and there was Route 44, which ran right past the hotel. He had spent little time checking out the land beyond his ops-area, especially the mountains between here and the New York State border.

  The lettering that marked these mountains was printed sideways, running along the length of the peaks. Mack turned the map to read it and then sat, bolt upright, almost capsizing his Earl Grey tea, as he read the words before him: “Canaan Mountains.”