The Deadly Hunt

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If you were looking to disappear, the Afghan province of Helmand would be the place to do it. Hundreds of miles of desert, hills and mountains are interrupted only by the occasional huddle of mud-brick houses. The remote village of Musa Qal'eh in Helmand is still Taliban country. When Kandahar fell last month, as many as 1,500 Taliban fighters and their leaders are thought to have passed through the village. One of them may have been Mullah Mohammed Omar, the former ruler of Afghanistan and America's second-most-wanted man.

Last week there were other visitors. Five four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying about 20 U.S. special-forces soldiers raced through Musa Qal'eh with U.S. helicopters and fighter-bombers overhead. Accompanying them was a band of Afghan fighters and the governor of Helmand, Haji Shir Mohammed. The convoy was on its way to the nearby town of Baghran to meet an aged, white-bearded tribal leader named Rais, better known as "the Baghran"--the most powerful warlord in the area and a possible link to Omar.

Since last month, the U.S. has been impatiently following the glacial negotiations meant to secure the surrender of Taliban fighters around Baghran. Rais, who fought hard for the Taliban, said last week he was willing to surrender to the new U.S.-backed Afghan government. What got the U.S. especially interested were intelligence reports that it was Rais who had chaperoned Omar on his escape from Kandahar. Rais denies those reports. On Saturday, Governor Shir told TIME that in meetings with U.S. special forces, Rais had "confirmed the absence" from the area of both Omar and Osama bin Laden but agreed to help in the search. The Americans spent three days in Baghran, seized heavy weapons and ammunition, but made no arrests. The protracted surrender talks appeared to have let Omar slip away yet again. People in Baghran were saying he might be next door in Oruzgon province.

After weeks of fast triumphs, the war has drifted into a frustrating endgame, a double manhunt for Omar and Osama. Every day seems to bring a new theory about bin Laden's whereabouts. Is he dead in a Tora Bora cave? Hiding out along one side or the other of the Afghan border with Pakistan? Safe in Chechnya, Iran or even Saudi Arabia? The Pentagon has tabled plans to send additional U.S. troops to hunt in the mountains of Tora Bora. And there was never a chance that Pakistan would want the U.S. to deploy the troops necessary to seal off its 1,510-mile border with Afghanistan. Doing that, says a U.S. intelligence official, "would have taken hundreds of thousands of people holding hands."

The war is in a lower gear. You could hear the new tone last week from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Look at the difficulty the United States of America has tracking down the ten-most-wanted criminals," he said. "There are people who have been on those lists for years and years."