RW16 - Domino Theory Page 4

  “Not really,” I told her. “But I’d love to learn.”

  I’ve always considered myself something of a sports fanatic. Now granted: the sports I follow closely — ass kicking, butt stomping, and face smashing — aren’t likely to be included in the Olympics anytime soon. But the fact that they haven’t won favor with a mass audience yet doesn’t diminish their pleasure.

  “The Commonwealth Games are going to be held in India in 2010,” Minister Dharma told me. “This is a very large event for us.”

  Background: the Commonwealth Games are the equivalent of the Olympics for the Commonwealth.

  What? What’s the “Commonwealth”?

  The Commonwealth of Nations is an organization of some fifty-four countries around the world. Most, though not all, were at one point British colonies, part of the British empire when Britannia ruled the waves. It’s not a political organization, exactly; it aims to generally encourage democracy and that sort of thing, but it’s probably closer to something like the VFW or American Legion for countries than the Republican or Democratic Party.

  Or Labour to Tories, to give it the British spin.

  The Games are held every four years in different places around the globe, ranging from Australia to Canada to Scotland. The 1998 games were in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. And in the fall of 2010, they were being planned for Delhi, India.

  A total of thirty-one sports ranging from archery to wrestling were to be held there, along with seven other “para-sports,” which are a special subset of sports for people with disabilities. There are complicated rules about which sports member countries have to field teams for and how the scoring runs, but I’m guessing that if you’re interested in any of that you already know a lot more about it than I do. My understanding of the rules is only a little more advanced than Shotgun’s, who summarized the games by saying, “Girls in shorts! Hot shit!”

  The minister wasn’t calling to ask if I cared to compete in lawn bowls.6 There had been various rumblings that the Games would provide a perfect opportunity for the likes of Osama bin Laden to demonstrate that the U.S. wasn’t the only Great Satan in the universe. The 2008 Mumbai attacks were more than ample demonstration that terrorists not only had India in their sights, but could strike at will there.

  The minister wanted me to help make the Games a less attractive target.

  * * *

  The Mumbai attacks in November 2008 got a brief amount of air time in the States. They were huge in India, the equivalent of 9/11. Say 26/11 in India, and people know that you’re referring to the date of the attacks, and the attacks themselves.

  More than ten separate groups — the exact number is still debated — worked together to strike Mumbai in a series of coordinated attacks beginning November 26. They hit a women and children’s hospital, a movie theater — real brave pricks, eh? The action culminated in a hostage situation at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, a ritzy five-star hotel that deserved a much better fate.

  The terrorists were eventually defeated, thanks to action by the police, the Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad, the Rapid Action Force, Marine Commandos, and the National Security Guards’ Special Action Group (SAG).

  (You can get more information about SAG’s op at the Palace Hotel by Googling “Operation Black Tornado.”)

  One hundred and seventy-five people died in the attacks. All but a handful were civilians. Over three hundred more were injured. That’s how these assholes define success — killing innocent people.

  At first, Pakistan did not want to acknowledge that the attack had not only been launched from its soil, but that Pakistani citizens had been deeply involved. But that’s Pakistan’s usual modus operandi. The country’s intelligence services have a tangled history with radicals, as anyone with even a passing knowledge of what’s been going down in Afghanistan since 9/11 can tell you.

  There have been some changes. And in fact, though the Pakistanis eventually filed an official protest against our extracurricular activities at the madrassa, they were secretly appreciative of the raid, and even offered to help Indian intelligence with future ones.

  An offer viewed with appropriate jaundice, in my view. But I’m getting off the track.

  The Mumbai attacks were a wake-up call not just to India but to Pakistan and the world. I don’t want to build the terrorists up to be supermen or give them more credit than they deserve. But the attacks demonstrated that these Islamic radicals had tremendous discipline and patience. They made good use of cell phone technology and GPS mapping systems. They gathered considerable intelligence on their targets beforehand. They did this by working in small cells for security with the sort of organization you normally only see in the military.

  Impressive, to be honest. And very dangerous.

  The Mumbai attacks showed the Indians that they had some glaring deficiencies. There was a total lack of shared intelligence among the many different police agencies and intelligence units — something that’s improved, but just barely.

  Part of the problem is the sheer number of agencies responsible for India’s national security. There are national and state intelligence agencies, police, the military, big cities. The intelligence community alone could populate several of our western states.

  The attacks also showed that maritime interdiction and even basic capabilities relating to port security are another problem, though they didn’t make much of a dent in the news coverage. The Indian navy is getting better, but as someone wrote recently in a private report perused by yours truly, it’s “far from ready to declare a sufficient readiness posture.”

  Or to put it in Rogue terms — they still got big bull’s-eyes on their butts.

  * * *

  The Indian government was rightly concerned about the Commonwealth Games being a serious target for terrorists, but it took threats to pull out from countries such as New Zealand and England to get progress on the terror front. A number of initiatives were undertaken by both military and civilian authorities. That sounded like a great idea, but it quickly became part of the problem. Take the police, take the army, take the navy, add military intelligence, the intelligence units run not only by the Indian federal government but by the country’s twenty-eight states and seven union territories — add that all up and you have bureaucracy that puts our American tangle to shame. We’re talking about a veritable Gordian knot of information supported by a veritable chokehold of bureaucracy. You think feuding between our CIA and FBI is a problem? Take a trip to India.

  Most of these people are extremely well intentioned, dedicated to doing their jobs and dealing with the threats as they perceive them. But they’re also just as dedicated to the organizations they work for, and the various viewpoints that those organizations have of the world.

  Getting intelligence from point A to point B, let alone acting on, can be as difficult as getting airplanes in and out of O’Hare Airport. And failing to do so smoothly can result in a lot worse problems than chronic flight delays.

  It’s the boring, mundane side of the war we infidels are fighting against an enemy who tends to solve his problems by strapping a few pounds of plastic explosive to some poor schlep’s chest and sending him into a crowd.

  You didn’t pick up this book to hear about cutting through red tape, or the necessity of banging heads together to make things work. My job — thank God — wasn’t to bang everyone’s heads together and make them play nice. I was brought in to replicate the original Red Cell.

  In an Indian kind of way.

  Being new, the Interior State Security and Commerce Ministry didn’t have its own intelligence or operations unit. It was probably the only government entity that didn’t. But it did have money, and Minister Dharma, anxious to advance herself politically, decided to use it to burnish her agency’s standing in the government.

  Or at least that was my read. Hers was that she was trying to improve the security situation for the Games. The interpretations are not mutually exclusive.

  Special Squadron Zero
was supposed to gather intelligence, act on it, and test the security arrangements at the Games. To do that, Minister Dharma recruited specialists from throughout the Indian military and intelligence fields, then hired my company, Red Cell International, as a consultant to help tell them what to do.

  Minister Dharma kept relatively close tabs on Special Squadron Zero. I’d like to think that she OK’d the operation in Pakistan because she understood that to beat terrorists you have to take the fight to their doorstep, but I’m not delusional. Dharma was more than willing to expand Special Squadron Zero’s portfolio as long as she saw a benefit to her position.

  You have to understand, this was an inside-the-government game. The operations were never going to be public; no newspaper reporters were coming along as inbred embeds. She got her points in cabinet meetings, where she not only got to announce great progress in security, but could also show that her colleagues weren’t doing their jobs.

  Using an intelligence agency for political gain?

  Gosh darn, where have we heard that before?

  * * *

  Since I’m doling out brain dumps here, let me give you one more on India for Islam.

  Like a lot of radical groups, India for Islam’s leaders were connected with several mosques throughout India. The mosques were spread across the country. The only thing they really had in common were imams who preached the need for India to return to its roots.

  That doesn’t sound bad at all, until you translate it according to the context that was used. If you listened to the speeches, you would understand pretty quickly that “roots” meant India during the time period when it was dominated by Muslim rulers. This was trumpeted as a golden age for the subcontinent, and even mankind in general. The imams wanted to return to that Golden Age. This could only be done by bringing back Islamic law and the dominance of the one true religion. Pure adherence to the Word of Allah would prompt a return of the moguls. Islamic India would once more become the center of the universe.

  Arguing with their interpretation of history would be pointless. Religion — let’s not even get started. And while some psychologist might be interested in understanding how their being bullied as kids led them to violence or whatever, the bottom line was that the imams appealed to a very small but fanatic group of people.

  All young men. All capable of murder, if properly trained.

  ( V )

  Even by Rogue Warrior standards, the Kashmir operation was a rousing success. We’d retrieved a spy, grabbed two key members of the terrorist organization that was aiming at the Games, and even picked up a bonus member to provide additional information.

  So why wasn’t I feeling that good about it?

  Shotgun’s theory was that Fatty — who, yes, did turn out to be our agent — had strained my back. But even though I did return from the mission with a little crick in my neck, that wasn’t the problem. I sensed a Murphy deficiency.

  Strictly speaking, Murphy’s Law does not require that things always go wrong at the worst possible time. While that has been my general experience, it’s not the actual math. The equation is more Einsteinian than Newtonian — the closer you get to the perfect op, the more likely the odds are that something will screw up. But just like betting on a hundred-to-one favorite at the Kentucky Derby, it doesn’t always happen.

  I pondered the vicissitudes and algebra the afternoon following the raid as Captain Birla and I briefed Minister Dharma in New Delhi.

  About Minister Dharma: as I said earlier, she had the sexiest telephone voice I have ever heard. Ah, but in the flesh …

  Still beautiful.

  Lips, full. Cheeks, a dusty blush color. Eyes, penetrating and yet somehow soft. Brow, clear, not a wrinkle even hinted.

  Breasts — aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh.

  And in perhaps the greatest cruelty of all, she was smart and had a personality that at once managed to convince you not only that she was in charge, but that she would listen to what you said and take it into account when she made decisions.

  If Karen had met her, I would have been in very serious trouble.

  “How long will it be before we have information from these criminals?” Minister Dharma asked Captain Birla. “This should be a priority.”

  “It is very hard to predict, Minister,” said the captain. “To get information we can trust — sometimes this is a problem that cannot be solved. Interrogation can take a long time.”

  She glanced at me.

  “There are some things we can do to speed the process along,” I said.

  “You are proposing the infamous waterboarding?”

  I swear I thought she said waterbed. For once, I was short of words. Captain Birla replied.

  “I am confident with our methods,” he said, “we will get results.”

  “You must do so quickly,” she said. “We need information.”

  The Games were coming close, but that wasn’t why the minister wanted to speed things up. She needed new information to use during her cabinet meetings. Having already bragged about the raid, she now needed to present a trophy.

  One thing I give her credit for. A lot of politicians in her position would have been more than happy to look at the operation and say, Game over. We win. Everybody back on the bus and party!

  Not Minister Dharma. She realized that where there was one cockroach, there were bound to be more.

  * * *

  Speaking of cockroaches, Captain Birla and I went over to see Fatty right after the briefing ended. Fatty — aka Aban Numbnuts Khalid (I’ve translated from the Arabic) — was holed up in a hotel on the outskirts of the city.

  “Holed up” undoubtedly gives you the wrong idea. The word was more like “ensconced,” or maybe “luxuriating.” The ministry had rented the penthouse floor of a five-star hotel to debrief him.

  Or fete him. They’d stocked the bar and brought in a pair of personal “assistants” as well as a masseuse — all female of course — to help him “recover” from his ordeal.

  Did I mention that there was a large hot tub on the penthouse patio? And that the government had also supplied a table’s worth of Indian delicacies, and a box of cigars imported straight from Habanno?

  We found Fatty surrounded by his “aides” on the patio when we went over. It was hard to see through the haze of smoke that hovered over the hot tub.

  “Captain Birla,” said Fatty, waving an opening in the haze. “Commander Rick. Have some drinks, please. Ladies, cigars for my friends.”

  Captain Birla passed, as did I.

  “Food, then. There is very much good food.” Fatty waved toward a table near the tub. It was crowded with brightly colored Indian delicacies. But neither the captain nor I was in much of a mood to eat.

  “We must need to talk,” said the captain.

  “In good time,” said Fatty, slipping a little deeper under the water. “We all have priorities.”

  “Adult swim time,” I growled. “All of the kids out of the pool.”

  The girls leapt out, grabbing towels as they went. They’d been bathing without the benefit of suits.

  It was a beautiful sight.

  Unfortunately, it implied that Fatty was in a similar state. I stopped him as he started to get out of the hot tub.

  “You stay there,” I told him.

  I’d have tossed him a towel, but the smallest thing capable of covering him up was a six-man tent.

  “You should not be mean to me, Commander Rick. I have just risked my life for my country.”

  “Yeah, that looked real dangerous.”

  “I am speaking of Pakistan,” he protested. “Among the radicals. Every day it was a danger. If they discovered who I was, my throat would have been slit.”

  “They’d’ve had a hard time finding it under all those chins,” I told him.

  I went over to the bar and poured myself a drink — Bombay Sapphire on the rocks, of course.

  Fatty insisted on smoking a stinker while talking with us. I didn’t mind the stench �
� it reminded me a little of the burning crocodile carcasses I’d smelled in Thailand, which brought on a wave of pleasant nostalgia. The smoke, though, was so thick that it made it hard to see Fatty’s eyes.

  Am I implying that I thought he was lying?

  Yes.

  Why didn’t I trust a spy? You might as well say, why didn’t I trust someone who lies for a living. Fatty’s job description came down to one sentence: lie your way into the enemy’s heart. His résumé consisted of one successful lie after another. So naturally I had to wonder what he was lying about now.

  Fatty had only joined the group a few weeks before, enlisting through a mosque in Hyderabad. He’d provided very little actual information before the raid; external sources had given us the location and layout of the facility. As far as I was concerned, he still had to prove himself.

  Fatty began by confirming that India for Islam was tight with certain elements of the Pakistani intelligence service.

  “How tight?” I asked.

  “Very.”

  “Did they provide instructors?”

  “This, I am not sure.”

  “Money?”

  “Maybe money.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I pick things up.”

  Not from the floor, I thought.

  Captain Birla pumped him with questions. Was the group related to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the organization responsible for 26/11? Were the men we had grabbed the ringleaders? How were they planning to get to India?

  Fatty gave the same answer to all.

  “I am not sure.”

  He did describe some of the training. Most of it was fairly generic, primarily involving physical training designed to get recruits into shape. There’d been some injections — steroids, Fatty thought — and pills. Both had become standard procedure in heavy training regimes immediately before an operation, so that at least indicated the attack had been imminent. There was weapons training — AK47s — and some explosives work. They had walked through an assault on a guard post and the entrance to a building, but Fatty’s descriptions were so generic that the target was as likely a condo in South Beach as a stadium in Delhi.