The Afghan
Frederick Forsyth
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 0399153942
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A chilling story of modern terrorism from the grandmaster of international intrigue.
T he Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War, The Odessa File-the books of Frederick Forsyth have helped define the international thriller as we know it today. Combining meticulous research with crisp narratives and plots as current as the headlines, Forsyth shows us the world as it is in a way that few have ever been able to equal.
And the world as it is today is a very scary place.
When British and American intelligence catch wind of a major Al Qaeda operation in the works, they instantly galvanize- but to do what? They know nothing about it: the what, where, or when. They have no sources in Al Qaeda, and it's impossible to plant someone. Impossible, unless . . .
The Afghan is Izmat Khan, a five-year prisoner of Guantánamo Bay and a former senior commander of the Taliban. The Afghan is also Colonel Mike Martin, a twenty-five-year veteran of war zones around the world-a dark, lean man born and raised in Iraq. In an attempt to stave off disaster, the intelligence agencies will try to do what no one has ever done before-pass off a Westerner as an Arab among Arabs-pass off Martin as the trusted Khan.
It will require extraordinary preparation, and then extraordinary luck, for nothing can truly prepare Martin for the dark and shifting world into which he is about to enter. Or for the terrible things he will find there.
Filled with remarkable detail and compulsive drama, The Afghan is further proof that Forsyth is truly master of suspense.
imperfect command of Pashto. He would be likely to be a Baluchi heading home to Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. It was too early for the drivers to be rising, and unwise to rouse the driver of the chosen truck; tired men woken suddenly are not in the best of tempers and Martin needed him in a generous mood. For two hours he curled up beneath the truck and shivered. Around six there was a stirring and a hint of pink in the east. By the roadside someone started a fire and set a billy on it to
variant. Two years later the head of Al-Qaeda from the Yemen left his compound far in the invisible interior with four chums in a Land Cruiser. He did not know it but several pairs of American eyes were watching him on a screen in Tampa. On the word of command the Hellfire left the belly of the Predator and seconds later the Land Cruiser and its occupants were simply vaporized. It was all witnessed in full colour on a plasma screen in Florida. The two Predators out of Thumrait were not
captain thought for a while. ‘The loading of the carpets takes place at dawn,’ he said. ‘It will take several hours. They must be well below decks lest the sea-spray touch them. Then I shall depart, sails down. I shall cruise close past the end of the harbour mole. If a man were to leap from the concrete to the deck, no one would notice.’ After the ritual salutations he left. In the darkness Martin was led by the boy to the dock. Here he studied the Rasha so that he would recognize her in the
attackers who had provoked the bar fight and that they were islanders. The police would never get further than that, and no arrests were ever made. In fact the killers were local low-life and they had nothing to do with Islamist terrorism. But the man who had paid them was a senior terrorist in the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen, the principal Trinidadian group on the side of Al-Qaeda. Though still low profile across the western media, JaM has been growing steadily for years, as have other groups right
to the April G8 were almost complete. The entire delegation would fly in a chartered airliner from Heathrow to JFK, New York, there to be formally met by the US Secretary of State. The other six non-American delegations would fly in from six different capitals to the same Kennedy International. All the delegations would remain ‘airside’ within the airport, a mile away from the nearest demonstrators and protesters outside the perimeter. The President was simply not going to allow those whom he