Qandahar

By Herman Edward Seiser

In Qandahar, the destinies of the first woman President of the United States and a jihadist commander from Afghanistan intersect on one day in late March 2009.

            Abu Mahmoud Rahman has waited decades to take vengeance on the country where he grew up – America. He devises a meticulous plan to crush the United States economically by destroying the world's two largest oil and natural gas facilities, one in Saudi Arabia and the other near Houston, Texas.

            U.S. Vice President Lorraine Valerie Forster, an acclaimed historian and former college president, becomes the U.S. President on March 4, 2009, the day President Richard Templeton dies after suffering a massive stroke. Forster wants to pursue Templeton's goal to bring home from Iraq and Afghanistan all U.S. military forces as some Congressional leaders attempt to stymie her presidency.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scarlet Leaf Publishing House
• Release date: Nov 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215008508

Book preview

By Herman Edward Seiser

Scarlet Leaf

2022

© 2022 by Herman Edward Seiser

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, with the exception of a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

All characters in this book are fictive, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Scarlet Leaf Publishing House has allowed this work to remain exactly as the author intended.

PUBLISHED BY SCARLET LEAF

Toronto, Canada

Chapter One

Jihad: A belief that Islam will be spread worldwide through a 'holy war.'

EARLY MAY 2008

He stepped around some of the heavy growth of a huge, opium poppy field in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand Province. His hands moved back and forth, side to side, to clear a path for himself through four-foot-high flowering plants. Then he stopped and gazed over the verdant field.

Gray-bearded, turbaned men, their scarred and wrinkled faces burnt deep brown by the sun, handled spatula-like knives to scrape out a creamy, lactose-like substance from unripe seed pods. Children in tattered clothes and women in full-length, powder-blue burqas walked behind the old men collecting the poppy bud juice.  They did not recognize the tall, bearded man brushing by them as they worked.

Abu Mahmoud Rahman walked by a wizened old man, who gently squeezed a bulbous poppy bud between his calloused thumb and index finger. An opaque, pinkish-white paste sprinkled with minute flecks of gray matter oozed from the cutting. It was opium in its purest form.

The stranger made his way to the edge of the field, scratched his graying beard. He tried to calculate how much the crop was worth in American dollars. This small field of some twenty hectares, he figured, would easily bring at least $100,000 into the Jihadist Front’s treasury.

The Jihadist Front harvested opium poppies from some seventy other fields of similar size throughout the province that bordered Pakistan to the south. Some of the annual harvest was shipped west in Toyota sports-utility vehicles and pick-up trucks to Iran. The remainder would be trucked to the port at Karachi, Pakistan.

An army of Jihadist Front dealers made arrangements for transshipment of the raw opium from Iran through Turkey, where it would be processed into pure heroin. The eventual destination of the shipment was Berlin. At an underground storehouse in Spandau, it would be cut and packaged. Smugglers would distribute the packages to dealers in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

Shipments heading to Karachi were refined into heroin at labs in Qandahar, packaged and tied into plastic-wrapped bundles of five kilos each.  Bundles in sealed wood crates were hidden beneath stolen United Nations grain shipments carried in two-ton trucks.  The six-wheel Volvos maneuvered through mountain passes and over long stretches of dirt roads from Qandahar to the Pakistan border town of Chaman.  The trucks crossed without stopping and continued their journey.  Border guards had been bribed in advance. Three days later the bundles were offloaded at night in a fetid alley way behind an abandoned two-story warehouse on the Karachi docks. Each package was quickly re-wrapped in durable American-made trash bags and then stuffed into half-filled bags of Pakistani-manufactured, powdery gray cement. Crews topped off the bags with shovels-full of cement before sending them through a machine that sewed the tops with heavy-duty fishing line. Another crew stacked the canvas bags on pallets, fifty bags to a pallet.

At dawn, forklift crews hoisted the pallets and loaded them into truck-size containers. The containers were locked and then marked in code on the outside with red spray paint. Huge dock cranes lifted the containers, slowly swinging them over and lowering them into the S.S. Hyderabad’s bow, mid-ship and stern holds. The destination: port of Long Beach in southern California. The ship was scheduled to arrive in three to four weeks.    The Jihadist Front used only a very small percentage of its proceeds from the sale of raw opium and refined heroin to buy food, clothing and shelter for its thousands of followers living throughout Afghanistan. Most of the $3 billion in annual profits went to buy weapons and military equipment.

Abu Mahmoud managed the entire weapons-buying operation through the use of two satellite phones and teams of couriers that traveled by truck, car and horseback to arms dealers in Dushanbe in Tajikistan, the border of this former Soviet republic wrapping around Afghanistan’s northern frontier. The Tajiks procured American dollars and pounds Sterling from a Jihadist Front account to purchase heavy weapons from Russia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Dealers in Iran and Pakistan supplied the bulk of the Front’s small-arms weapons and ammunition.

The Front’s profits from the sale of raw opium and heroin are deposited into a single account at a Pakistan National Bank branch in Quetta. Abu Mahmoud established the account ten years before the Taliban began their rule of Afghanistan in 1996. Heavily armed Jihadist mujahidin have guarded the bank branch ever since, inside, and out, day and night, seven days a week. Every bank customer has to pass through security screening before entering and leaving the bank. Arms dealers wanting to do business with the Front have to have authorized individual accounts at the Quetta bank. Funds for weapons purchases are transferred electronically from the Front’s account to an individual dealer’s account.  Dealers who want their money transmitted to a bank elsewhere in the world or request cash upfront are dropped immediately as clients, and blacklisted.

In a coded language of Pashto, Arabic or English, Abu Mahmoud alone has the authority to disperse funds from the Jihadist Front account for all weapons’ purchases.

MID-DECEMBER 2008

Port of Karachi, Pakistan

Two 450-feet long freighters, with bridges at the stern, three derricks each on the foredecks

above four cargo holds, sat in dry dock. They were the last of seven ships for one client, the Jihadist

Front, to undergo refitting and repainting, their hulls bow to stern in matte black. The five others were out of dry dock and at anchor in the harbor.  Each Pakistani-flagged ship was Liberian registered and named after seven cities in Spain: Barcelona, Cadiz, Cartagena, Cordoba, Sevilla, Toledo, and Valencia.  The ships’ crews would come from the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Ships’ officers, including captains, already had been hired. They were Indian and Filipino Muslims from Kashmir and Mindanao.

Dawn, January 10, 2009

Pakistan’s Navy Pier, Port of Karachi

Signs in Arabic and English warned onlookers and intruders they would be shot on sight. Pakistani soldiers patrolled each end of the wide, nearly fifteen-hundred-foot-long loading dock. They also stood guard outside three-story warehouses from which forklifts maneuvered toward the Cartagena, the Sevilla, the Toledo, and the Valencia.

Abu Mahmoud Rahman stood in a control tower fifty feet above the middle of the pier. With binoculars he surveyed the ships’ loading operations. Below him on the dock, forklifts stacked large, wooden ordnance crates.

A derrick crane mid-ship on the Cartagena lowered cables to hook a netted load of crates. A stevedore standing on the pier with a walkie-talkie communicated with the derrick’s operator. He gave a thumbs-up and yelled in Arabic into his walkie-talkie: Lift, lift up, up. The cable went taut, the netting bunched around the crates. Ten shoulder-fired, American-made FIM-92A Stinger missiles went skyward. Over, over ... steady, steady, the stevedore said, keying the walkie-talkie.

When the netted load was directly over the ship’s forward hold, the derrick operator radioed the dock-side stevedore: Over now, over the hold.

Down, down. Steady, steady, the stevedore said. The derrick operator slowly lowered the net into the hold. A crew deep inside the Cartagena’s hold watched as the netting touched down. Another walkie-talkie keyed from the hold.

Stop, stop, stop. Okay, the below-deck stevedore radioed the derrick operator. A crew carried ten crates out of the loose netting and stacked them. Pull up, pull up, the walkie-talkie crackled. At first slowly, then with alacrity, the rope netting zoomed up out of the hold. The derrick crane swung out over the dock and lowered its cargo net for another load.

The crated missiles were strapped into hidden compartments below the hold's steel deck. Crewmen covered the compartments with thin steel sheeting, the corners, and edges of which were spot-welded shut. The false floorboards were now flush with the hold’s main deck.

Into similar compartments in the Cartagena’s three other holds went twenty canvas-bagged, Swedish-made Carl Gustav M2 anti-tank rocket launchers; twenty-two Russian-made RPG-7 shoulder-fired, rocket-propelled grenade launchers; twenty U.S.-made M240 belt-fed machine guns, each with six-thousand rounds of 7.62 millimeter cartridges; fifty Chinese-manufactured AK-47 assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition; and fifteen nine-millimeter American-made Beretta pistols, also with ammunition.

At the same time, another matching supply of armaments was loaded into the four holds of the Sevilla, all sealed in hidden compartments beneath the holds’ deck. The same cargo also was hoisted and lowered into the holds of the Toledo and the Valencia.

Forklifts traveled deep into the warehouse for more cargo to be loaded into the four ships. Bow, stern and mid-ship derricks hoisted, one at a time, American-made inflatable boats into the holds of the Sevilla and the Cartagena. Ten each also would be loaded into the holds of the two other ships.

Capable of carrying a four-man crew, the Omega boats were 17.5-feet long with a beam

of 8.5 feet and weighed about 300 pounds empty. The controls and steering apparatus for each craft were mid-ship under a canvas-topped canopy. The boats, made in Charleston, South Carolina had stern and bow fittings for mounting the M240 machine guns. Japanese-made, 100-horsepower Yokosuka outboard marine engines were the last cargo to be loaded. Twenty each were lowered into the center holds of the Cartagena, the Sevilla, the Toledo, and the Valencia.

Three Pakistani military troop-transports rolled down the pier and braked to a stop. From the back of the trucks emerged sixty men, all carrying satchels shouldered over their traditional Afghan clothing. The Jihadist Front mujahidin marched in regimented formation up a wide gangplank and boarded the Cartagena. Minutes later, three other troop-transport vehicles roared down the pier before stopping. Sixty more Afghans disembarked and quickly boarded the Sevilla. The trucks backed up and turned around. They sped off back down the pier, passing six other troop transports. One hundred and twenty Jihadist fighters also boarded the Toledo and the Valencia.

By late evening the four ships steamed passed the breakwater into the Arabian Sea. The Cartagena, the Sevilla, the Valencia, and the Toledo were heading to an anchorage ten nautical miles off the coast from Suhar in northern Oman. In the waters of the Gulf of Oman, the 240 Jihadist Front mujahidin would undergo three days of training in the piloting of the Omega boats. An Omani Navy 20,000 dead-weight tonnage supply ship was contracted to provide high-octane gasoline for the Omega boats’ outboard engines. Mid-ship derrick cranes on the supply ship would hoist and then lower into the holds of each of the four vessels gasoline-laden, aluminum jerry cans strapped to pallets.

Abu Mahmoud Rahman was on board the flotilla’s lead ship, the Sevilla.

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Pakistan Navy Pier, Port of Karachi

Over the span of two days the same number and types of weapons and Omega boats and outboard engines that were loaded into the Cartagena, the Sevilla, the Toledo and the Valencia went into the Jihadist Front’s three other ships. Slightly more than 180 seasoned Jihadist fighters boarded the Cadiz, the Barcelona and the Cordoba. The cargo ships steamed into the Arabian Sea at dawn

6

three days later and headed to the Gulf of Oman off the coast of Suhar. The fighters on board the ships also would undergo three days of training to learn how to handle the inflatable boats.

Sadiq Haqqani, a veteran of the Afghan-Soviet War and a Jihadist Front commander, stood in the Barcelona’s wheelhouse. He’d just clicked off on a satellite telephone call to Abu Mahmoud Rahman.

Chapter Two

Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

—Presidential Oath of Office

1:14 A.M. EST. MARCH 4, 2009

Washington, D.C.

Two armor-plated, black Chevrolet Suburban vans with bullet-proof, tinted windows screeched to a stop on a recently plowed driveway off Massachusetts Avenue.

Secret Service agents in dark suits exited the vehicles almost simultaneously at the front entrance to Number One Observatory Circle. Six ran through snow to set up a defensive perimeter along the front, sides and rear of the three-story house, the official residence of United States Vice President Lorraine Valerie Forster.

Jogging to an open front door, agents Janet Watson and Gabriella Nunez entered a well-lighted foyer, then slowed to a walk.

At the foot of a dark-wood staircase, the Vice President stepped onto a polished terrazzo floor in low-heel shoes, her footsteps echoing softly as she walked toward the agents. Stopping, Forster handed one of the agents her leather handbag and with both hands loosely tied a scarf around her neck, tucking the ends under the lapels of a knee-length wool coat. How do I look? she asked Watson. I’d just gotten to sleep when I got the call.

You look fine, Madam Vice President, said the agent, considering the circumstances. The agent pointed to the side of Forster's head. You have some loose hair you might want to do something with, ma’am. The Vice President walked over to a hallway mirror and looked at her reflection a moment. She pulled off a wide brim felt hat and held it in one hand. Fingertips deftly combed two strands of graying hair behind her ear.  She straightened the hat on her head and turned around.

Better? the Vice President asked.

Vice President Lorraine Forster had slipped into bed at the end of the eleven o’clock news the night before and read a few pages of an intelligence briefing on the deteriorating situation in Iraq. She had to be up early for a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting with the President. Her Chief of Staff had called about a half-hour after she’d fallen asleep.

The President’s in emergency surgery, Helen Brown said to the bleary-eyed Vice President, fumbling with a switch on a bedside reading lamp. The Secret Service is on its way now to pick you up.

What’s wrong with Richard? Forster turned away from the light as it came on. She recalled the President had been examined the previous week at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Doctors said then he was in good health.

He’s had a stroke, Lorraine.

2:21 A.M. EST.

George Washington University Hospital

The Suburban carrying the Vice President rolled into a reserved parking space less than ten feet from the hospital’s emergency entrance. The slender African American Secret Service agent stepped out and opened the rear door. Thank you, said Forster, sliding off the back seat. The air was brisk.  She pulled up the collar on her coat.

Your Chief of Staff is on her way, said agent Nunez as she and Watson accompanied the Vice