| "The International Criminal Mastermind sat in his impregnable mountain redoubt, biding his time..." |
Times change, but one thing that does not change is the modus operandi for clandestine and daring plans and the venues where they are made. If Adolf Hitler had his Wolfschanze, Alderhorst and lastly, the Fuhrer Bunker, terror mastermind and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden also had his own lair in the rocky and dusty Afghan Mountains where he made plans that shook the very foundations of the US.
In his hidden retreat so far from the galaxy's crowded suns and worlds, Helmuth was in no enviable or easy frame of mind... |
A casual look at the simple cluster of crude mud buildings slowly disintegrating in the scorching Afghan heat, might give one the impression of the place being a remnant of some tribal habitation in the mountains. Intelligence officials think otherwise. This, they say is the place where 9/11 was born. For beneath the dusty courtyards and exercise grounds is a lethal warren of booby-trapped tunnels and caves, in other words, Osama bin Laden's lair during his stay in Afghanistan under the protection and patronage of the Taliban. Officials have said that sometime in the mid 1990's Osama bin Laden and his henchmen came here to Tarnak Farm, near Kandahar on the Pakistan border, adding that the complex might as well have been the "the base" - which in Arabic means "Al-Qaeda" for the organization, reports The Daily Mirror.
Every alarm in Helmuth's dome had burst into frantic warning as the massed might of the Galactic Patrol was hurled against the twenty-six vital points of Grand Base... |
Officials said that this was also the place where thousands of jihadis learned their tricks of the trade before going out on their deadly missions all over the world. Bin Laden, officials said also meetings in 1998 with his operatives for planning "spectacular", in other words the day, which changed the world for the US-9/11. The CIA, soon after the meeting persuaded the Pentagon to sanction a Cruise missile strike on Tarnak Farm, which intelligence said, was a vipers' nest of fundamentalist terrorism, but by the time the missiles struck, bin Laden and his inner coterie has disappeared.
| "Helmuth, speaking for Boskone — out!" |
Officials say, that though the structure is slowly disintegrating, some of it still remains. According to the paper, quoting intelligence officials, at the centre of the compound is the building that was once Bin Laden's modest home, where he ate and prayed with his lieutenants. Within the perimeter walls are exercise bars and a barracks-style accommodation block for trainees. The now-rusting bars, the report said, were once part of an assault course used to force discipline and fitness into recruits and to provide them with some military training. There are also pits, several feet deep, where Al-Qaeda and Taliban recruits were brutally punished, with those trying to leave the harsh training regime, being executed. Beneath the camp, officials said was the complicated maze of tunnels, all heavily mined and booby-trapped, which have not yet been totally de-mined by the US bomb disposal squad.
Kinnison approached star cluster AC 257-4736 warily, as before; and as before he insinuated his speedster through the loose outer cordon of gardian fortresses... |
"These tunnels are almost impenetrable. So far the Americans have only managed to get as far as the first two metres- and one man has died doing this," the paper quoted an intelligence official as saying. |