Hunting Osama

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That could easily be someplace like the famously impregnable eastern Afghanistan cave complex called Tora Bora, built by mujahedin during the 1980s war against the Soviet Union. Russian troops tried three times to take it and failed. The caves are cut into the jagged, 13,000-ft. peaks of the Spin Ghar range 35 miles south of Jalalabad. They make an ideal retreat: a vast honeycomb of tunnels 8 ft. wide, carved 1,150 ft. deep into the mountain. The warren of entrances, tiny slits in the rock, lead into ventilated chambers heated and lighted by generators. Best of all, the bunker is virtually invisible from the sky and untouchable from the ground; the nearest road ends in a village that is a three-hour walk away in the valley below. Saif Rakhman, secretary to one of Jalalabad's new militia commanders, fought the Soviets at Tora Bora. He couldn't stop from laughing when a reporter asked to visit there. "If you want to sacrifice yourself," he said.

No one really knows if bin Laden is inside. On Saturday the Northern Alliance claimed to know he was hiding somewhere near Kandahar. And former Taliban director of information Mohammed Naeem Safai agrees. "Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are still in Kandahar," he told Time from a refugee camp in Pakistan where he is hiding. "They do not want to leave. They have no option but to die." But 1,000 to 2,000 al-Qaeda fighters probably are in Tora Bora, and they are in U.S. gunsights. According to intelligence officials in the neighborhood, "the Arabs" rented houses in the area and paid local villagers to truck in food and water, until they recently disappeared into the caves. Which is why U.S. special-ops men were in Jalalabad last week trying to enlist tribal warriors to attack the underground hideout. One of three new regional Pashtun commanders, Haji Zaman, just returned from years of exile, said he "met face-to-face with U.S. officials in the past few days" but groused that they had not provided enough weapons or warm clothes to prepare his fighters for a campaign. Fellow commander Hazrat Ali announced he "had decided to eliminate the Arabs at Tora Bora" but set no timetable. True to tribal code, local elders were sent off to Tora Bora to try negotiating a surrender first.

In Washington talk of U.S. commandos probing dark Afghan caverns has quieted. Even with nearly 1,500 Marines dug in at Forward Operating Base Rhino, to the southwest of Kandahar, the Pentagon has no current plans to use them in a manhunt. The U.S. prefers to blast away from the sky. "Our specialized approach is to put 500-lb. bombs in the entrance," says Marine General Peter Pace, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But on Friday night air strikes hit villages instead. Local villagers reported 40 to 200 civilians perished in the bombardment of Kama Ado and two other villages near Tora Bora. At a hospital in Jalalabad, Said Hassan sat tending his brother's son, 10, the only survivor in his family. "The whole village collapsed with people buried inside," he said. On Saturday the Pentagon denied hitting the villages but said it was reviewing the strikes.

If the bombs don't bury the wanted men, then money might--in the shape of the $25 million bounty on bin Laden's head. And if bombs and cash don't work? Then there will be only one alternative left: U.S. forces really will have to go house to house and cave to cave, looking for the most-wanted terrorist leaders. Last Friday Rumsfeld said the war had entered "a dangerous phase" and that American forces may actually be in more danger now. He sounded like he meant it.