Chapter 12

When Craig Moore, Charles’s father, was recruited by “The Company” he was a major in the Marine Corps serving in Vietnam. When he became Brigadier General people began referring to him as “the General” as if he were a generic entity. Even his superiors began referring to him in this way. The military officers who had recommended the young officer to the espionage agency said that he could have been the author of the book written by Machiavelli. “But,” one of his colleagues said, “he would have been more complete, and his concepts would have been more devious.” One of his favorite sayings was, “When it comes to security assure your future by covering your ass in advance.”

Like all “spooks”(Dark Ops Operatives) Moore was paranoid. For him, there were shadows everywhere and every shadow had meaning. He had always been passionate about recognizing shadows even before they were cast. Since he was involved in the undercover business Craig Moore was obsessed with the safety of his family. His capture was always a threat and members of his family could also be used to embarrass the nation which would have been a disaster for The Company. To that end, when Marvella had surgery for uterine cancer, he instructed the surgeon to implant an electronic bug in the place where her uterus had been. About the time when his son Charles was thirteen, the Company had devised a tracking device that would fit inside a molar. A company-approved dentist created a cavity in one of the young Moore’s molars and implanted the bug in his tooth. Every year during his check-up the dentist “found” a cavity in the same tooth and updated the bug with a more current one.

The General always hoped that Charles would attend the Naval Academy and become a Marine officer. But his early marriage to Claire scrapped the plan. So, he sent him to the University of Colorado to get a degree in engineering. Since The Company required operatives with advanced degrees Charles went on to earn a master’s degree in civil engineering and then a Ph.D. From the time he left the university, he was in the employ of the agency. His gambling addiction was concocted to cover his surveillance of Emilio Cortez, Sarafina’s husband. Emilio, who had a gambling addiction, was being blackmailed by an Arab terrorist organization to provide them with government secrets.

When Emilio had been in the Air Force, he held a sensitive position at North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) located deep inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs. The reader might remember that this facility was depicted in the movie War Games. Through his surveillance of Emilio, Charles Moore discovered that his “friend” Emilio was on the verge of leaking information having to do with the security of Cheyenne Mountain. The same night that Charles discovered the plot Emilio committed suicide by crashing his Lincoln Navigator into a bridge abutment on I-25.

While Charles Moore’s financial trouble was part of the cover neither Claire nor Charles’s mother, Marvella, knew that it wasn’t a real circumstance. Marvella knew that her husband Craig was involved in a secret life, but Claire had no clue about Charles’ involvement with the CIA.

Applegate Engineering, the firm Charles worked for in Afghanistan, was a legitimate civil engineering firm. But all of the top echelon executives worked for “The Company.” Charles was one of them. Unknown to him, Aziza Khan was another.

Craig Moore was Akram Khan’s liaison. When Aziza had accompanied Khan on his fatal trip to Paris it became the General’s job to foster Mrs. Khan through her grieving period and then recruit her as an asset for the agency. After Aziza’s husband had been assassinated, she had not only been mentored by the General but became involved in a torrid love affair with him.

From the time Charles suspected that his daughter Stacy was his father-in-law’s biological child, his wife and daughter became family in name only. He wanted to divorce Claire and disown Stacy. Because of The Company’s demands, however, agency operatives had to maintain their marriages.

When the Applegate/Afghanistan assignment was offered to him Charles resisted accepting it. But as his affair blossomed with Sarafina Cortez, he became intense in his desire to expedite a divorce from Claire so he could marry Sara. When The Company continued pressuring him to take the Applegate assignment, he used the divorce as a bargaining chip. The agency agreed that after he returned from his lengthy assignment in Afghanistan, they would not only bless the dissolution but aid in its accomplishment.

Craig and Marvella were in their home in Colorado Springs watching a National Symphony Orchestra presentation that was being carried live from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. It was 9:25 p.m. The videocast was interrupted by a news flash:

Five American engineers, employees of Applegate Engineering, have been taken hostage by Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan ... Details at eleven.

“I’m going downstairs,” Craig said to Marvella. He had no intention of waiting for the eleven o’clock news. Though Marvella knew what was on his mind “downstairs” was off limits to her. In the basement, Moore put his index finger into the optical scanner. The lock in the steel door clicked and the door sprang open.

The room, measuring eleven by six feet, was little more than a cubicle. Continually awash in the glow of LEDs it was maintained at a constant temperature of sixty-eight degrees. A counter built at table height started three feet from the opening of the door; stretched eight feet to the end wall and turned the corner to the end of the six-foot wall. On the long counter sat four black electronic consoles, all dotted with blinking LEDs in colors of green, red, blue, and amber. In the center was a 36”x 30” computer monitor. On the end wall stretched a flat screen that measured 60” W x 48” H.

The lock clicked as the General pulled the metal door closed. He sat in front of the monitor, slid out the keyboard, and punched in his codes. “Company Situations” came up on the monitor. He clicked on Current. It was at the top of the list.

[[[At 1:05HRS The Goloban Hotel sustained an attack by an as yet unknown number of terrorists believed to be Taliban\\\\\ The desk clerk said he had seen several women going into the housekeeping door. All were dressed in black burqas, \\\\\\ At 1:01 a call came into the switchboard from rm#1016 ... the line went dead\\\\\\ A security guard was sent to the tenth floor and didn’t return. Police arrived at 1:22\\\\\ Along with the assistant manager five policemen went to the 10^th floor\\\\\\In the hallway of the 10^th floor the body of the security guard was found\\\\\In room 1016 two dead terrorists were found. The bridge of both of their noses had been smashed\\\\\

The General felt a sense of pride as he muttered, “Charles hasn’t forgotten everything I’ve taught him.

The occupant was missing\\\\\The occupants of rms 1018 and 1020 were missing\\\\\rms 1022 and 1024 were undisturbed.]]]

He entered a series of numbers. The screen at the end of the room glowed green. He typed a code on the keypad on the console. A white grid map came up on the screen. “Well,” he said in relief, “that’s something at least.”

The map was a grid of the city of Kabul within a map of Afghanistan. About fifty miles from Kabul, on the road to Jalalabad, two tiny green lights pulsed. With a welcome sense of relief, the General murmured, “She’s alive too.” After her husband Akram had been assassinated in Paris Aziza Khan was recruited by the Company and mentored by Craig Moore, which turned into a love affair. He knew that his son and Aziza had been captured with four other Applegate employees. Based on the transmissions emanating from the chips in their molars he knew they were all still alive.

He dialed a number on the secure phone, waited for someone to answer then said, “Sorry to bother you, Pit.”

“You’re not, General,” the voice on the other end of the phone responded. “I was expecting your call. They’re moving towards Tora-Borah. They’ll be in Pakistan within four hours. You know what that means?”

“Yes,” Moore said, “once they’ve reached Pakistan POTUS won’t authorize a rescue.”

Pitt said, “I’ve already contacted the team, General. They’ll all be ready to go at 1200 hours tomorrow.”

Hearing a chuckle on the line Moore said, “You know what this means, dontcha, Pit?”

“Yes, General, it means the same as it has always meant. If it works, no one’ll ever know. If it doesn’t, we’ll just be as fucked as we always could have been. This time though, those bastards will be holding up our severed heads for the world to see.”

The Team

Clarence Sievers joined the Marine Corps in the mid-1960s. A superb athlete, at the age of fifty-six, he was extremely fit. At 5’ 11” he weighed 185 pounds and was as solid as a rock. His dark brown hair was close cut showing gray at the sideburns. His jaw was under-slung which gave credence to his bulldog nickname. His craggy face highlighted an oft-broken nose that was crumpled between two piercing green eyes. For unknown reasons (some think that Sievers had been slated by the Commandant of the Marine Corps for special service) he was fast-tracked to the rank of staff sergeant. On Paris Island, he served two years as a D.I. It was during this period when, because of his intense training and merciless badgering of marine recruits, he was given the name Bulldog.

During a visit by then Major Craig Moore, who was there to look in on his Special Ops unit, he saw Sievers nose-to-nose with a terrified recruit, holding the petrified marine by his jumper, literally misting the young man’s face with saliva. Major Moore said, “Sievers is more than an ordinary Bulldog, he’s a pit bull.” From that time on he became known as Pit-bull Sievers, shortened to Pit by those who knew him.

When he was deployed to Vietnam, he served under Major Moore in his Special Ops unit. When the war was over, he joined Moore as an operative with The Company. It was during the planning of Operation Eagle Claw—the failed attempt at rescuing U.S. hostages from Iran—that both Moore and Pit Sievers begged the powers that be not to attempt the attempt as a joint service operation. They both lobbied the Department of Defense to let either the Marine Corps or Delta Force undertake the attempt as a sole participant. But the President insisted that a joint attempt would move forward. Eagle Claw was such a disastrous failure that it resulted in the devastating loss of assets and life. It probably cost the Georgia-born President a second term in office.

Later, when Ross Perot staged his private successful snatch of his EDS employees the General and Pit Sievers were asked to advise in planning the successful raid.

Chief Petty Officer Cliff Whiting, a forty-six-year-old Navy man, was an expert working out of Camp Pendleton Marine Base at the LCAC (Landing Craft Air Cushion) training operators on what is commonly known as “Hovercraft.” Though hovercraft had never been used in any major military operation, there were seventy of them in existence.

With the ability to move troops over both land and water, The LCAC can travel at a top speed of 35 mph over water and 28 mph over land. Its main drawback is the noise it generates while operating, plus the tremendous cloud of dust it creates over land. To that end Whiting had been working with former engineers of Lockheed’s Skunk Works, to develop a stealthy hovercraft. He supervised testing of the LCACOC, (OUTCROP) in the Mojave Desert, which emulates much of Afghanistan’s terrain.

The LCACOC was a customized hovercraft that was covered to look like a desert outcropping and had stealth characteristics, which means that it couldn’t be detected by radar. Additionally, to mitigate the noise and visible dust it had skirts that touched the ground and a vacuum that sucked up the dust that it stirred up. The drawback was that it had to stop every four to five miles to jettison the collected dirt, a task that took about five minutes. On behalf of the Company, CPO Whiting had been interfacing with the General to have the OUTCROP readied for just such a rescue attempt that was presented to them by the Goloban Hotel raid.

Lester Streeble (“Batman”), having never been in the military was folded into the Company before completion of his Doctorate at Cal Tech. The epitome of a pencil-necked geek, he was tall and skinny with a large Adam’s apple. Lester grew up as the only child of two college professors—both eggheads—who were avid spelunkers (cave explorers). On summer vacations his parents took him caving which gave him the bug at an early age. What attracted him most about caving was his fixation on bats. At the age of eleven, he became fascinated with them, began studying them in their environment, and read everything he could find on Bats. By the time he entered college Lester was recognized as one of the leading experts in the world on Chiropterans (bats). While doing his master’s study at Cal Tech in aeronautical engineering he made a working, flying model of a bat that earned him a major award from the Aeronautical Society.

His notoriety attracted the attention of The Company. Under their auspices, working with the group that designed the Predator unmanned aircraft (drone), Lester developed an actual-sized working bat directed by radio control. It could be used as a surveillance camera as well as having the ability to fire darts that could either kill or disable enemy soldiers using narcotics or poison. Though having poor social skills Streeble, designated by the agency as “Batman” had inestimable value in the espionage business.

By 18:00 hours the next evening the team had been assembled, transported to Andrews Air Force Base, and had loaded the equipment, including the LCACOC and a small flock of Streeble’s bat drones. The C-17 Globe Master III painted dark gray with no markings, lifted off the Andrews runway at 19:17 (7:17 p.m.). Its destination was a 3500 ft. landing strip midway between Kabul and Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Though the team had been assembled on a hasty basis they had been involved in strategy sessions that took the positive aspects of Eagle Claw and melded them with Ross Perot’s Operation HOTFOOT (Help our two friends out of Tehran) which successfully sprung two E.D.S. employees from captivity by Ayatollah Khomeini.

The attack on Tora-Bora which attempted to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden in the wake of 911 was unsuccessful. The Company knew that the main reason for the failure was the inability to get good surveillance into the caves. After Batman had successfully tested his menagerie of bat drones, The Company had confidence that this part of the equation would take care of that obstacle.

The Plan

Under cover of darkness, the hovercraft would be offloaded from the Globe Master. It would travel the distance to within five miles of the cave which had been identified by GPS. The team would walk the remaining five miles and set up the BBP (Batman’s Back Pack). Just before sunrise, when the live bats were returning to the cave, Batman would send in ten of his bat drones. Once the bats were in place, hanging from the roof of the cave with the rest of native the bats, they could surveil the cave and take out the bad guys with treated darts, after which the team would move in to rescue the hostages. A large helicopter would rendezvous outside the cave, and after obliterating the LCCACOC they would escape under cover of darkness.

The weather was good. It was clear that a new moon would allow the hovercraft to move through the desert with a minimal chance of visual contact with the enemy. The C-17 landed without incident; the equipment being unloaded within seventeen minutes of the plane coming to a stop. The cave would be five hours distant. Only five miles from the cave both Charles’s and Aziza’s electronic implants still flashed, they knew at least that two were alive. The implants of all five hostages were emitting strong signals. Because of the rough terrain, it took three and a half hours to negotiate the final five miles on foot. Behind an outcropping of rocks fifty yards from the cave entrance that hid them from view of the cave, they set up their attack base.

At 2:37 am Batman had his “Bat Pack” operational, the bats hanging from a titanium Tee. They would be operated by a laptop with a gaming control. Though each member of the team was equipped with night vision goggles they awaited the harbinger of sunrise when the native bats would be returning to the cave.

Just before dawn with an ambient glow in the east, they heard the returning bats before actually seeing them, their flapping of wings sounding like soft applause. Releasing the first bat Streeble fine-tuned the bat cam. When it entered the cave, he directed the drone around the chamber before finding a spot where it would hang upside down and roost. As it flew around the large grotto it sent back images of the sleeping hostages and their captors. There were six captives, five men and one woman. The woman was resting against one of the men. Each was clad in a black burqa, their hands bound behind their backs with plastic ties. Two guards were sitting cross-legged with AK47s in their laps. Seven other men, all wearing black Taliban turbans, were sleeping around what appeared to be a wood-burning heater made of pottery. Batman parked the drone on a roost in the middle of the cave. He reported the layout to Pitt and the General.