One day, Col Steven McCain, the handsome and athletic new Commander of 438th AEW, rang me up and said something important had to be discussed. “My place or yours?” I inquired, to which he replied that he was hurrying over to my office. We skipped the usual exchange of pleasantries and McCain sombrely started by asking me if I had any intelligence information of some infiltration on the Base. “Not that I know of,” I replied, taken aback and somewhat embarrassed that as the Base Commander, I wasn’t aware of such a serious breach. “I would request you to look into it,” McCain suggested. “What kind of infiltration is it?” I inquired, to which McCain replied that it was highly classified, but “I will let you into a bit of it; we have credible reports that there are Taliban on the Base.” Phew! “This surely needs to be checked in quick time,” I replied and requested more details but wasn’t able to extract any more information. I immediately informed the Director General Air Intelligence (DGAI) about this development, who seemed as surprised as I was. Given the intelligence gathering wherewithal the Americans had, we were sure that something serious had happened which had somehow escaped our notice. I immediately went into a closed-door session with my intelligence staff and apprised them of the development. The consensus that emerged was that unless more details are known, all we could do was to intensify security checks and be more alert, which were rather loose plugs for a serious breach. After a day of intense speculation, I again met McCain and told him that I needed a lead to make some headway, for which he may have to get special permission from his Headquarters. This time he promised to get more information and shortly after our meeting, he again dropped by my office.
“There are several Taliban who have been identified on your Base. While we are keeping them under observation, at this point in time I can confirm at least ‘one Taliban’ who could be an imminent threat to us. He has been observing our activities and has been making copious notes which need to be immediately retrieved. Any delay could endanger American lives,” continued McCain. Where, pray, does he operate from, I wondered, when McCain volunteered more information. “There, I will show you,” as we shuffled out of my office. “You see that water tank, there … right under it. He is there, right now, according to our latest reports.” I had to rush to see this ‘Taliban’ in the act so I sped off, waving a see-you-later to McCain.
As I approached the water tank, I saw a familiar figure sitting on a chair under the tank. The other day, I had stopped by to inquire about the overflowing water and he was there to explain a problem with the float valve. I asked him if he had anyone else to give him company to which he replied that he had to do an eight-hour shift, alone at a stretch, which was just as well as he got time to prepare for his private studies. I inquired if I could have a look at his notes, which he was more than keen to show me. A valve operator couldn’t have made better use of his time, if his poetry and prose notes were any indicator of his activities. I asked him about the American way of life that he was exposed to and he replied that it was amusing to see men and women working like ‘ants’. “We have a lot to learn from them,” he suggested, as I walked back to my jeep.
I called up my Field Liaison Unit officer in-charge to keep a tab on the water tank attendant and report his activities and his contacts over the next few days. Next morning I confronted McCain and asked him about the remaining Taliban. He said that his people were keeping them under watch, but the water tank guy was of greatest concern to his higher-ups. When I told him that he had been interrogated, his ears lit up. He heard with disbelief when I told him that the guy was an employee of the Military Engineering Services and was performing his duties as a water tank attendant for some years. The notes had not been retrieved as his exams were nearing, which got him wondering if I was talking about the right person. “Wasn’t he wearing a grey ‘Taliban’ dress and had a beard? Has he not been observing stuff being off-loaded from transport aircraft? Does he not maintain a log of all activities on the tarmac?” Intelligence information could not have been more fetid, I thought, as McCain rattled off those questions while I wryly smiled, much to his consternation. “Yes,” I replied, “he was wearing a ‘shalwar-kameez’ and had a beard but by that criterion, quite a large portion of Pakistani population could be classified as Taliban. The fellow had never seen such large aircraft disgorging tons and tons of cargo, off-loaded in minutes, so obviously he was keen to see what was going on. When he was not distracted by US personnel jogging on the tarmac in the mid-day sun, he got back to his studies, taking notes. I don’t see what is all the fuss about,” I curtly told McCain. He agreed to pass on the results of my investigation to the concerned authorities. In the event, there was a silence over the Taliban affair as the paranoia subsided.
