Robert Cubitt's Blog - Posts Tagged "books"
The Girl I Left Behind Me
Chapter One
Death crept into Pakistani airspace at the relatively slow speed of 170 knots. From the ground far below it was invisible to the naked eye. So small was it in comparison to its height that it didn’t even cast a shadow on the sides of the mountains.
In the air conditioned control room at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, Captain Cory Duncan of the United States Air Force checked the position of his aircraft.
“OK guys, we are now in Pakistan air space.” He flicked his radio switch. “Achilles One Zero this is Catcher Five. What is the status of hostile aircraft?”
“Achilles One Zero, we have six PAF aircraft in the air at present. We classify them as two pairs of Chengdu Sevens and one pair of Mirage Threes. All are deployed along the frontiers with Kashmir and India. No hostile aircraft in your sector.” The radar operator of the E3 Sentry aircraft, flying high above the Indian Ocean, signed off with a cheery ‘“Have a nice day”‘.
“OK guys, we have 400 miles to target. No hostiles in the area.” At the current cruising speed of their aircraft it would take more than two hours to reach the target.
The mission specialist sitting at the next console raised his head. “We are under radar surveillance, but no missile signatures at present.”
Their General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper RPV would show up brightly on the Pakistani air defence radar systems, and no doubt half a world away a radar operator was tracking their 170 knot progress across his airspace. It was well within the capability of the Pakistani Air Force to locate and destroy a Reaper, but for reasons best known to themselves they had never tried. They raised merry hell every time a mission such as this was carried out, but never raised a finger to stop them. In the meantime mission Catcher Five flew on towards its target at 50,000 feet.
* * *
In the far off city of Abbottabad in North West Pakistan a man settled himself onto a roof to carry out his part of the Catcher Five mission. He was born in Pakistan and regarded himself as a Pakistani patriot, but his wages had been paid by the United States of America ever since he had returned home from his short trip to that country.
In this town the leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist movement had been tracked down and killed by U.S. Navy Seals. Now it was his mission to bring about the end of another enemy of Uncle Sam and, as far as he was concerned, an enemy of his own country.
From his battered rucksack the man pulled out a metal clad attaché case. Opening it he withdrew a rectangular object from its foam rubber packing. It was painted in a camouflaged pattern and had an aperture at one end housing a lens. He laid it gently on the parapet of the roof and took out the other object in the case, a collapsible tripod. The tripod was screwed into the base of the device, the legs were extended then the whole assembly set down carefully behind the waste high wall that surrounded the roof. On hot nights people slept up here and it wouldn’t do for a sleepy child to fall over the edge of the roof.
The man sighted along the device and lined it up carefully on the house that was providing temporary accommodation for the second in command of the Taliban in North West Pakistan.
A check on his watch showed it was still a long time to go before the aircraft would be in range. No point in wasting valuable battery life by switching the device on too early.
* * *
Trying to overcome his boredom Cory remembered back to when he had joined the United States Air Force and had imagined himself screaming across the skies in a jet fighter, dog fighting with whatever enemies Uncle Sam asked him to fight. For a while that is what he had done, flying F17s in Germany and then South Korea, though he had never been engaged in a dog fight. On 20th March 2003, Cory had flown his F17 into Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was disappointed when the Iraqi air force refused to take to the skies to fight him and his comrades.
Now he was posted to 432nd Fighter Wing at Creech, and wore his flight suit only as a way of distinguishing himself from the ground staff at the base. The aircraft he flew was controlled by signals bounced off satellites while he sat at a console in Nevada and the Reaper was high above the mountains and plains of Afghanistan and Pakistan and, more rarely, Iran.
This mission had started out as a routine tasking to detect the incursion of terrorists along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It was a search and destroy mission, and they were ‘weapons free’ to engage any hostile targets they encountered. About an hour into the mission they had been re-tasked to this new operation, a missile attack on a house in a city a third of the world away.
“OK, target is confirmed at location.” The intelligence analyst announced, looking up from his computer screen.
“What is our target?” Cory asked out of curiosity.
“A house.” The analyst replied.
“No shit Sherlock. That’s so helpful.”
Staff Sgt Willy Westheimer blushed in acknowledgement of his gaff. “Sorry, Sir. It’s a senior figure in the Taliban, that’s all they’ve told me.”
It was the job of the intelligence analyst, the third member of the Reaper flight team, to confirm the nature of the target before they released any weapons. It was his responsibility to decide if they were the enemy or just a bunch of kids on their way to school. In this case, however, he wouldn’t even see the human target, so this time he wouldn’t be responsible for identifying him when the time came. That was the responsibility of a man risking his life on the ground in Pakistan.
Time ticked by and the crew chatted to relieve the boredom. An imaginary line in the sky was finally passed and Lieutenant ‘Ace’ Vincent, the weapons specialist, announced that Catcher Five was within range to begin the attack sequence.
“Taking us down to attack height.” Cory pushed forward the joystick mounted on the arm of his leather chair. It was hardly any different from that used to control a games console. In the sky above Pakistan the Reaper’s nose dropped and the aircraft began to descend to 20,000 feet.
* * *
On the sweltering roof in Pakistan the man checked his watch again. The mobile phone in his hand vibrated to indicate that a text message had been received. The message contained only one word, the code word for the mission to proceed.
The man flicked a switch on the side of the rectangular object, then sighted along it again. Half a mile away a miniscule green dot appeared on the side wall of a house.
* * *
“We have laser lock.” ‘Ace’ informed the team. Like Duncan he had joined the Air Force to fly in fast jets, but now flew a technology driven operating console instead. Still, it wasn’t too much of a hard life, playing computer games at Uncle Sam’s expense, and just down the road was the city of Las Vegas. For a gambling man like ‘Ace’ that could only be good news. Meanwhile, the Raytheon sensor systems aboard the Reaper had picked up the electromagnetic signature of laser light being reflected from the target, which was all that ‘Ace’ needed to carry the mission through to its conclusion.
* * *
The man turned as he heard voices approaching up the stairs that led to the roof. The house was supposed to be empty, and he had paid hard American dollars for it to be so. The door at the top of the stairs was jammed shut from the outside, a stout chair wedged under the handle, but if someone wanted to gain access to the roof it wouldn’t take much effort. The voices faded and the man relaxed a little. The tiny nudge of his foot against the tripod that held the laser target designator went unnoticed. Over the half mile space between the roof and the target the tiny angle of error was magnified so that it now shone its slender beam not on the original house, but on a very similar one a few metres further along the street.
* * *
“I have visual.” Ace called, informing his pilot that the on-board camera had aligned itself to the source of the laser reflections and was now providing a visual feed to them. The TV screen showed an oblique angle view of a typical concrete and cinder block building arranged in a square around a central courtyard. The same pictures were being viewed in an operations room on the other side of the country, just outside Washington DC. There were no people visible in the house, even when Ace zoomed the camera to get a close up. In the heat of the day all sensible Pakistanis sought the cooler interiors of their homes or workplaces. The lucky ones would have air-conditioning, but a lack of vents on the exterior walls suggested that this house wasn’t that lucky.
“Visual identification confirms target. You are weapons free.” Willy announced as his computer screen displayed a fresh message. “I repeat, you are weapons free.”
Raising the safety guard Ace pressed the weapon release button. “Missile launched.” He stated flatly, as though they were engaged in a practice drill rather than actual warfare.
It took 1.2 seconds for the electronic command to reach the Reaper and release the missile carried on one of its external stores pylons. The AGM-114 Hellfire missile streaked away under the power of its solid fuel rocket. The aircraft lurched slightly as it reacted to the sudden loss of the 100lb weight.
The missile’s electronic brain adjusted the angle of attack as it responded to the laser signal that originated on the ground and the missile powered the final 2 miles to its target. Dropping from 20,000 feet it hardly needed the power of its rocket, which only served to speed its descent. The sonic boom created as it broke the sound barrier wouldn’t be heard above the blast of its explosion.
* * *
Youssef left the Madrassa at the end of his school day and headed for his father’s house. He felt quite elated; his tutor had just told him that he was making good progress in his studies. It would soon be time for him to start repaying some of the cost of his education by teaching English to the younger students.
It was about a mile from the school to his home and the heat made him uncomfortable. He hadn’t yet become acclimatised. When his parents had returned to Pakistan to manage the building they had inherited from Youssef’s Grandfather the boy had remained behind in Britain to finish his education. Now that he was here he was finding it difficult to adapt to some features of his new home.
Keeping to the shade the man on the roof went unnoticed by Youssef, as did the laser designator that directed its needle thin beam across the rooftops of the quiet suburb. The sun glinted off the Reaper’s wing as it went into a turn to maintain its position, but that too went unnoticed.
* * *
“Target destroyed” announced ‘Ace’, as the view at the centre of his TV screen disappeared in a bright flash of light. As the burst subsided the TV screen showed a cloud of dust and flying debris. The blast of the metal augmented 18lb explosive charge had left only one wall standing. Along the street debris crashed to the ground, risking the lives of anyone in the open at that moment. In a richer country glass would have shattered, but here there was no need of it and little money to pay for it even if there had been a need.
“Taking us home.” Cory announced. By home he meant back into Afghan airspace. Their mission to Pakistan might be complete, but their patrol still had several hours to run. He pulled the joystick backwards and to the right and the aircraft at once climbed and reversed its course. With the Reaper capable of staying aloft for up to 42 hours it wouldn’t be them that landed the aircraft back at Bagram Air Base.
* * *
On the roof the man stared aghast as the dust cloud cleared to reveal that the wrong house had been destroyed. His ears were still recovering from the blast of the detonation, so it was some minutes before the noise of panic in the streets reached him. Running men, some of them armed, drew his attention. Rats leaving the sinking ship.
The man returned his gaze to the place where a house had once stood. He hoped that it was unoccupied, but knew in his heart it was unlikely to be so. Women and children had been observed at that house and any hope for them was already lost. He offered up a fervent prayer for their souls, then dismantled his equipment. A few minutes later a text message was on its way to Islamabad, telling of the terrible mistake that had been made.
Turning his back he didn’t see the drama unfolding at the stricken house. A young man being physically restrained from throwing himself into the wreckage to search for survivors. It was a sensible precaution as the last remaining wall of the house collapsed inwards into the space the man had been heading for.
* * *
Youssef felt the blast before he heard it, the vibration travelling through the earth in a straight line as the sound bounced and ricocheted off the walls of the buildings to assault his ears a split second later. Smoke and dust rose in a plume. He had been in Abbottabad long enough to have a good sense of the source of the plume. His eyes opened wide in fear and he started to run. The heat of the day no longer mattered as he built up his stride to his full bowling pace and then beyond. He bounced off walls as he refused to slow down to round corners.
As he rounded the final obstacle between himself and his father’s house he was left in no doubt. Where there had once been a happy home where he had lived for the past several weeks. Now there was just a heap of rubble, the dust settling back onto it. He howled in anguish at the loss of his family. He continued his headlong run towards the rubble, desperate to start searching for survivors. Surely someone must be alive. There was no time to waste.
Strong hands grabbed at him, the first few slipping off as his weight and speed carried him forward. But they slowed him enough and other hands completed the job, holding him back. He was forced almost to the ground and pinned in place.
“No brother. It isn’t safe. You’ll get yourself killed.” Youssef heard the words but his brain refused to comprehend their meaning.
“My Father. My Mother. The children. I must help them.” The men struggled to restrain him.
“No, brother. They are beyond your help now. Let Allah take them.”
Youssef collapsed onto his knees, his body wracked with sobs, his laboured breathing combining into wheezing gasps. Satisfied that he wouldn’t attempt to approach the wreckage of the house again, the men relaxed their grip. Sirens indicated the approach of rescue vehicles and they moved out of the way, anxious not to become casualties themselves. Youssef reluctantly went with them.
A lone man approached the distraught Youssef and he felt something hard bang into his side. He registered the presence of a weapon. They weren’t unusual in this part of Pakistan, but he wasn’t used to seeing them in this quiet neighbourhood.
“After you have buried your family, look for me outside the mosque.” The man said, then turned and walked away. Youssef saw him climb into the front of a pick-up truck that already held half a dozen other armed passengers in its cargo space. As the rescue vehicles arrived the pick-up drove away at a pace that wouldn’t attract attention.
Author's note: I hope you enjoyed this short extract from my latest book. If you would like to read on then please visit my website http://robertcubitt.com/books to find out how to buy a copy.
Death crept into Pakistani airspace at the relatively slow speed of 170 knots. From the ground far below it was invisible to the naked eye. So small was it in comparison to its height that it didn’t even cast a shadow on the sides of the mountains.
In the air conditioned control room at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, Captain Cory Duncan of the United States Air Force checked the position of his aircraft.
“OK guys, we are now in Pakistan air space.” He flicked his radio switch. “Achilles One Zero this is Catcher Five. What is the status of hostile aircraft?”
“Achilles One Zero, we have six PAF aircraft in the air at present. We classify them as two pairs of Chengdu Sevens and one pair of Mirage Threes. All are deployed along the frontiers with Kashmir and India. No hostile aircraft in your sector.” The radar operator of the E3 Sentry aircraft, flying high above the Indian Ocean, signed off with a cheery ‘“Have a nice day”‘.
“OK guys, we have 400 miles to target. No hostiles in the area.” At the current cruising speed of their aircraft it would take more than two hours to reach the target.
The mission specialist sitting at the next console raised his head. “We are under radar surveillance, but no missile signatures at present.”
Their General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper RPV would show up brightly on the Pakistani air defence radar systems, and no doubt half a world away a radar operator was tracking their 170 knot progress across his airspace. It was well within the capability of the Pakistani Air Force to locate and destroy a Reaper, but for reasons best known to themselves they had never tried. They raised merry hell every time a mission such as this was carried out, but never raised a finger to stop them. In the meantime mission Catcher Five flew on towards its target at 50,000 feet.
* * *
In the far off city of Abbottabad in North West Pakistan a man settled himself onto a roof to carry out his part of the Catcher Five mission. He was born in Pakistan and regarded himself as a Pakistani patriot, but his wages had been paid by the United States of America ever since he had returned home from his short trip to that country.
In this town the leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist movement had been tracked down and killed by U.S. Navy Seals. Now it was his mission to bring about the end of another enemy of Uncle Sam and, as far as he was concerned, an enemy of his own country.
From his battered rucksack the man pulled out a metal clad attaché case. Opening it he withdrew a rectangular object from its foam rubber packing. It was painted in a camouflaged pattern and had an aperture at one end housing a lens. He laid it gently on the parapet of the roof and took out the other object in the case, a collapsible tripod. The tripod was screwed into the base of the device, the legs were extended then the whole assembly set down carefully behind the waste high wall that surrounded the roof. On hot nights people slept up here and it wouldn’t do for a sleepy child to fall over the edge of the roof.
The man sighted along the device and lined it up carefully on the house that was providing temporary accommodation for the second in command of the Taliban in North West Pakistan.
A check on his watch showed it was still a long time to go before the aircraft would be in range. No point in wasting valuable battery life by switching the device on too early.
* * *
Trying to overcome his boredom Cory remembered back to when he had joined the United States Air Force and had imagined himself screaming across the skies in a jet fighter, dog fighting with whatever enemies Uncle Sam asked him to fight. For a while that is what he had done, flying F17s in Germany and then South Korea, though he had never been engaged in a dog fight. On 20th March 2003, Cory had flown his F17 into Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was disappointed when the Iraqi air force refused to take to the skies to fight him and his comrades.
Now he was posted to 432nd Fighter Wing at Creech, and wore his flight suit only as a way of distinguishing himself from the ground staff at the base. The aircraft he flew was controlled by signals bounced off satellites while he sat at a console in Nevada and the Reaper was high above the mountains and plains of Afghanistan and Pakistan and, more rarely, Iran.
This mission had started out as a routine tasking to detect the incursion of terrorists along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It was a search and destroy mission, and they were ‘weapons free’ to engage any hostile targets they encountered. About an hour into the mission they had been re-tasked to this new operation, a missile attack on a house in a city a third of the world away.
“OK, target is confirmed at location.” The intelligence analyst announced, looking up from his computer screen.
“What is our target?” Cory asked out of curiosity.
“A house.” The analyst replied.
“No shit Sherlock. That’s so helpful.”
Staff Sgt Willy Westheimer blushed in acknowledgement of his gaff. “Sorry, Sir. It’s a senior figure in the Taliban, that’s all they’ve told me.”
It was the job of the intelligence analyst, the third member of the Reaper flight team, to confirm the nature of the target before they released any weapons. It was his responsibility to decide if they were the enemy or just a bunch of kids on their way to school. In this case, however, he wouldn’t even see the human target, so this time he wouldn’t be responsible for identifying him when the time came. That was the responsibility of a man risking his life on the ground in Pakistan.
Time ticked by and the crew chatted to relieve the boredom. An imaginary line in the sky was finally passed and Lieutenant ‘Ace’ Vincent, the weapons specialist, announced that Catcher Five was within range to begin the attack sequence.
“Taking us down to attack height.” Cory pushed forward the joystick mounted on the arm of his leather chair. It was hardly any different from that used to control a games console. In the sky above Pakistan the Reaper’s nose dropped and the aircraft began to descend to 20,000 feet.
* * *
On the sweltering roof in Pakistan the man checked his watch again. The mobile phone in his hand vibrated to indicate that a text message had been received. The message contained only one word, the code word for the mission to proceed.
The man flicked a switch on the side of the rectangular object, then sighted along it again. Half a mile away a miniscule green dot appeared on the side wall of a house.
* * *
“We have laser lock.” ‘Ace’ informed the team. Like Duncan he had joined the Air Force to fly in fast jets, but now flew a technology driven operating console instead. Still, it wasn’t too much of a hard life, playing computer games at Uncle Sam’s expense, and just down the road was the city of Las Vegas. For a gambling man like ‘Ace’ that could only be good news. Meanwhile, the Raytheon sensor systems aboard the Reaper had picked up the electromagnetic signature of laser light being reflected from the target, which was all that ‘Ace’ needed to carry the mission through to its conclusion.
* * *
The man turned as he heard voices approaching up the stairs that led to the roof. The house was supposed to be empty, and he had paid hard American dollars for it to be so. The door at the top of the stairs was jammed shut from the outside, a stout chair wedged under the handle, but if someone wanted to gain access to the roof it wouldn’t take much effort. The voices faded and the man relaxed a little. The tiny nudge of his foot against the tripod that held the laser target designator went unnoticed. Over the half mile space between the roof and the target the tiny angle of error was magnified so that it now shone its slender beam not on the original house, but on a very similar one a few metres further along the street.
* * *
“I have visual.” Ace called, informing his pilot that the on-board camera had aligned itself to the source of the laser reflections and was now providing a visual feed to them. The TV screen showed an oblique angle view of a typical concrete and cinder block building arranged in a square around a central courtyard. The same pictures were being viewed in an operations room on the other side of the country, just outside Washington DC. There were no people visible in the house, even when Ace zoomed the camera to get a close up. In the heat of the day all sensible Pakistanis sought the cooler interiors of their homes or workplaces. The lucky ones would have air-conditioning, but a lack of vents on the exterior walls suggested that this house wasn’t that lucky.
“Visual identification confirms target. You are weapons free.” Willy announced as his computer screen displayed a fresh message. “I repeat, you are weapons free.”
Raising the safety guard Ace pressed the weapon release button. “Missile launched.” He stated flatly, as though they were engaged in a practice drill rather than actual warfare.
It took 1.2 seconds for the electronic command to reach the Reaper and release the missile carried on one of its external stores pylons. The AGM-114 Hellfire missile streaked away under the power of its solid fuel rocket. The aircraft lurched slightly as it reacted to the sudden loss of the 100lb weight.
The missile’s electronic brain adjusted the angle of attack as it responded to the laser signal that originated on the ground and the missile powered the final 2 miles to its target. Dropping from 20,000 feet it hardly needed the power of its rocket, which only served to speed its descent. The sonic boom created as it broke the sound barrier wouldn’t be heard above the blast of its explosion.
* * *
Youssef left the Madrassa at the end of his school day and headed for his father’s house. He felt quite elated; his tutor had just told him that he was making good progress in his studies. It would soon be time for him to start repaying some of the cost of his education by teaching English to the younger students.
It was about a mile from the school to his home and the heat made him uncomfortable. He hadn’t yet become acclimatised. When his parents had returned to Pakistan to manage the building they had inherited from Youssef’s Grandfather the boy had remained behind in Britain to finish his education. Now that he was here he was finding it difficult to adapt to some features of his new home.
Keeping to the shade the man on the roof went unnoticed by Youssef, as did the laser designator that directed its needle thin beam across the rooftops of the quiet suburb. The sun glinted off the Reaper’s wing as it went into a turn to maintain its position, but that too went unnoticed.
* * *
“Target destroyed” announced ‘Ace’, as the view at the centre of his TV screen disappeared in a bright flash of light. As the burst subsided the TV screen showed a cloud of dust and flying debris. The blast of the metal augmented 18lb explosive charge had left only one wall standing. Along the street debris crashed to the ground, risking the lives of anyone in the open at that moment. In a richer country glass would have shattered, but here there was no need of it and little money to pay for it even if there had been a need.
“Taking us home.” Cory announced. By home he meant back into Afghan airspace. Their mission to Pakistan might be complete, but their patrol still had several hours to run. He pulled the joystick backwards and to the right and the aircraft at once climbed and reversed its course. With the Reaper capable of staying aloft for up to 42 hours it wouldn’t be them that landed the aircraft back at Bagram Air Base.
* * *
On the roof the man stared aghast as the dust cloud cleared to reveal that the wrong house had been destroyed. His ears were still recovering from the blast of the detonation, so it was some minutes before the noise of panic in the streets reached him. Running men, some of them armed, drew his attention. Rats leaving the sinking ship.
The man returned his gaze to the place where a house had once stood. He hoped that it was unoccupied, but knew in his heart it was unlikely to be so. Women and children had been observed at that house and any hope for them was already lost. He offered up a fervent prayer for their souls, then dismantled his equipment. A few minutes later a text message was on its way to Islamabad, telling of the terrible mistake that had been made.
Turning his back he didn’t see the drama unfolding at the stricken house. A young man being physically restrained from throwing himself into the wreckage to search for survivors. It was a sensible precaution as the last remaining wall of the house collapsed inwards into the space the man had been heading for.
* * *
Youssef felt the blast before he heard it, the vibration travelling through the earth in a straight line as the sound bounced and ricocheted off the walls of the buildings to assault his ears a split second later. Smoke and dust rose in a plume. He had been in Abbottabad long enough to have a good sense of the source of the plume. His eyes opened wide in fear and he started to run. The heat of the day no longer mattered as he built up his stride to his full bowling pace and then beyond. He bounced off walls as he refused to slow down to round corners.
As he rounded the final obstacle between himself and his father’s house he was left in no doubt. Where there had once been a happy home where he had lived for the past several weeks. Now there was just a heap of rubble, the dust settling back onto it. He howled in anguish at the loss of his family. He continued his headlong run towards the rubble, desperate to start searching for survivors. Surely someone must be alive. There was no time to waste.
Strong hands grabbed at him, the first few slipping off as his weight and speed carried him forward. But they slowed him enough and other hands completed the job, holding him back. He was forced almost to the ground and pinned in place.
“No brother. It isn’t safe. You’ll get yourself killed.” Youssef heard the words but his brain refused to comprehend their meaning.
“My Father. My Mother. The children. I must help them.” The men struggled to restrain him.
“No, brother. They are beyond your help now. Let Allah take them.”
Youssef collapsed onto his knees, his body wracked with sobs, his laboured breathing combining into wheezing gasps. Satisfied that he wouldn’t attempt to approach the wreckage of the house again, the men relaxed their grip. Sirens indicated the approach of rescue vehicles and they moved out of the way, anxious not to become casualties themselves. Youssef reluctantly went with them.
A lone man approached the distraught Youssef and he felt something hard bang into his side. He registered the presence of a weapon. They weren’t unusual in this part of Pakistan, but he wasn’t used to seeing them in this quiet neighbourhood.
“After you have buried your family, look for me outside the mosque.” The man said, then turned and walked away. Youssef saw him climb into the front of a pick-up truck that already held half a dozen other armed passengers in its cargo space. As the rescue vehicles arrived the pick-up drove away at a pace that wouldn’t attract attention.
Author's note: I hope you enjoyed this short extract from my latest book. If you would like to read on then please visit my website http://robertcubitt.com/books to find out how to buy a copy.
