GPS units automatically check into the network multiple times every day. Of the thousands of GPS points on Binany’s device, there was one point where Binany had stayed for several weeks. Because the LRA was constantly on the move to stay alive, it was unusual for the GPS data to show a single stagnant position for weeks. It seemed likely that this GPS position might reveal the location of the main LRA camp in K2. If we could obtain satellite imagery of that one point we might know, after years of mere speculation and general intelligence, exactly where Kony was hiding.
* * *
—
The new intelligence was sufficient for the US Special Forces—now led by Colonel Paul Korbel, the fourth commander to fill the post in Entebbe—to ask for permission to fly a surveillance drone over K2 and evaluate the situation from above.
Commander Korbel, a tall man with gray hair and broad shoulders, was somewhat of an anomaly in the Department of Defense: he sometimes brought his State counterpart to operations meetings. We had never seen anyone from State in the field before, and it was deeply reassuring to see Korbel taking measures to improve the continuity between the State decision makers in Washington, DC, and the Department of Defense troops deployed in the field in Central Africa.
US Special Forces gained approval to fly the drone over the coordinate point in Binany’s GPS. At first glance, the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance images didn’t reveal anything resembling a military base. Just some grass-thatched huts arranged in little clusters, satellite homesteads in a clearing in the jungle. But its location—near water but otherwise in the middle of nowhere, deep in Darfur’s no-man’s-land—and the presence of significant agriculture revealed that this was more than just an average encampment. Most important, when the Ugandan army compared the aerial view of the suspected LRA camp with Okello’s hand-drawn map, it was a clear match. Okello looked at the drone images and nodded excitedly. “Yes, here’s the river,” he said. “Here’s Kony’s hut. Here’s where the women stay.”
The third puzzle piece fell into place. We had found Kony’s elusive stronghold in K2. The mission dubbed it Camp Merlin, after the mythical wizard.
Camp Merlin, the drone images revealed, was an established LRA presence with one major camp and a couple of nearby satellite camps. An estimated 125 women and children and 40 to 60 combatants lived there. Okello showed us the exact huts to focus on to capture Kony. We had found the needle in a thousand haystacks.
That’s when Laren called in the middle of the night in 2013 to tell me, “It’s time to bet the farm.”
44
OPERATION MERLIN
“THE UGANDAN MILITARY can bring two Mi-17s to help, but we’ll need at least two more,” Colonel Kabango said when I was in the region in early February 2013 to strategize for the assault on Camp Merlin. US Special Forces had been technically limited to an advising role—they could help train and provide intelligence for the operation, but no US military–contracted assets could go to Kafia Kingi (K2), and air support was once again proving to be a huge hurdle.
The Ugandan army needed to move troops and gather a large presence near Camp Merlin without alerting possible LRA in the area to the impending operation. The Ugandans’ Mi-17 could only fly thirty soldiers at a time. Even if they’d been able to use the two Mi-8s supplied by the Department of State in the politically disputed region of K2, the helos were subject to a huge chain of command, requiring a seventy-two-hour notice to fly. In an active operation, a seventy-two-minute wait, let alone seventy-two hours, could be too long. We needed at least two more helos to transport troops and supplies—radios and other equipment necessary for the operation, as well as tents, bedrolls, blankets, clothes, and other “welcome-home” items for the 150 people we expected would be coming out of Camp Merlin. We would need the helos again at the end of the operation to run relays, getting the women and children and any combatant defectors back to the base in Djemah, and then to fly the SOG troops back from the field. Plus, we always needed enough air assets for the unexpected contingencies that were bound to arise. Our partners were looking at us to supply helos for the mission, and though I promised to look into it, I wasn’t sure what was possible. We had spent countless months trying to secure one helicopter for the counter-LRA mission. How would we possibly find two more, and in such a short window of time?
* * *
—
The next day, just before I flew home to keep working on securing assets for Operation Merlin, General Katumba Wamala, the Commander of Land Forces for the Uganda People’s Defense Force, asked me to take tea with him at the Lake Vic Hotel. I’d been on edge all week, worried about the operational logistics, and General Wamala’s warm and cheerful presence was a balm. The image of him singing with the troops after the first SOG graduation almost two years before was still burned in my mind. I’d been impressed by his ability to kindle and inspire hope in situations where others would have given up. He’d always brought such a positive and supportive attitude to the mission, even when he’d been at the counter-LRA work long enough to have suffered many frustrations and disappointments. I wondered if today, on the eve of an assault that had been years in the making, he would express some degree of doubt or caution.
But he looked me in the eyes and said, “Shannon, it looks like we have him. It is going to happen. Please help us with some extra helicopters if you can.”
He beamed at me, speaking with unbridled optimism about the mission’s potential to secure peace in Central Africa. I knew that we couldn’t miss this opportunity to end the war for good. I had to get the extra helos, no matter the cost.
I managed to find a contractor in Entebbe who had two Mi-17s available for charter for Operation Merlin. Funding the helos was an unforeseen and significant cost. We’d entered the mission anticipating that we’d only be involved for a short time, and the unrealistic timeline had affected how we’d used our resources. Howard stepped up again in a major way and we managed to scrape together the money for the helos. Kony’s capture didn’t seem like a long shot anymore. It seemed like the next possible thing.
* * *
—
We began to build a fuel base for the operation, and we understood that US Special Forces continued to send the drone over Camp Merlin, searching for visual confirmation of Kony’s presence. Each successive flyover gave ever more detailed visuals of Merlin—the locations of agricultural fields and simsim drying racks, and the patterns of movement; where and how individuals slept; whether they used private or communal latrines—that made it possible to distinguish LRA rank and file from leadership without seeing anyone’s face. But there was no sight of Kony.
Then, on February 12, while the US intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance plane was watching Merlin, Kony made a call on his satellite phone. For the first time in five years, he could be seen and heard by people on the outside of the LRA. He was threatening one of his commanders. An ivory cache had been discovered a few days before, and he blamed the commander for having trusted a subordinate to bury the ivory instead of doing it himself.
A few days later the drone feed picked up the gruesome execution of one of Kony’s officers. A person believed to be Kony forced a group into a circle around the victim and then shot him point-blank. After the murder everyone dispersed, walking back to their huts, leaving the body there on the ground. We seemed to be catching up to Kony at his most vulnerable moment, at odds with his leadership, grasping for control. And he appeared to have gained significant weight, which meant he’d likely been holed up at Merlin for some time.
Operation Merlin needed to be launched immediately, while we knew Kony was there. But fuel had to be lifted into position. And it seemed prudent for the SOG troops to run a rehearsal of the assault. Intelligence put Kony’s hut in the middle of Camp Merlin, which meant the SOG would have to navigate the surrounding fields and huts successfully in the early morning without raising an alarm
. Recent intelligence had also revealed that there was a small Sudan Armed Forces presence within a short distance north of Merlin. We didn’t know if the Sudanese forces were stationed there to protect Kony and his camp, but we had to consider that they might use their minor antiaircraft weapons to fire on the SOG soldiers during an assault on Merlin. It seemed better to be overprepared. The SOG built thatch huts in an exact replica of Camp Merlin and conducted a full rehearsal at night.
* * *
—
On Friday, March 1, 2013, I landed in Entebbe for the launch of Operation Merlin. I went straight to the US base to meet with Commander Korbel, and arrived just as Admiral Losey, who had been in the field ahead of the mission, was about to fly back to Stuttgart. They both seemed as optimistic as General Wamala had been three weeks before.
Admiral Losey pumped my hand, and I remembered the feel of the cold edges of the coin he had pressed into my palm almost exactly a year ago. Today his ever-present grin seemed less practiced, more genuine. “This intervention has worked well,” he said. “It’s a great example of the benefit of public/private partnership.” He spoke as though we had already succeeded.
* * *
—
The next morning I met Commander Korbel for an early breakfast at Faze 3. He chattered eagerly about the recent video feed of Camp Merlin and invited me to come to the US Special Forces compound after we ate, telling me he had something he wanted to show me. The atmosphere at the base was high energy, full of smiles and thumbs-ups, an extra kick of confidence and motivation in the air. The document Colonel Korbel wanted to share with me was a plan for information dissemination and coordination with NGOs after the assault. This was a critical piece of the operation, the one that had been missing in Operation Lightning Thunder in 2008. This time the US offered clear recommendations to communicate with civilians after the attack. Civilians would be notified as soon as possible of Kony’s successful capture and, most important, warned of any potential threat of reprisal killings if LRA elements managed to escape. The US plan seemed solid and I knew that Invisible Children could be on standby to get word out through the vast HF, FM, and shortwave radio networks that had been built.
* * *
—
Korbel was planning to fly up to Djemah the next morning to set up an operations and communications command, but I wanted to get to the forward base right away to catch Laren before he flew up to the temporary forward base that was much closer to Merlin, to be with Colonel Kabango during the assault. Just as I was heading to the airbase to fly out to the field in our Cessna Caravan, Laren called.
“The birds aren’t here,” he said. “We’re supposed to start moving troops tomorrow, and the helos we chartered haven’t arrived. The contractor’s AWOL. I can’t get ahold of him.”
I felt my first flicker of doubt. We were cutting it close with five aircraft. There wasn’t room for error or mechanical failure. If we didn’t have the air support, we simply couldn’t get troops into position to make the assault.
“I’ll check the airfield here in Entebbe,” I said.
I made a quick tour of the tarmac and saw two white Mi-17s sitting on the field. When I checked the tail numbers I discovered that they were indeed the helos we’d chartered. Two mechanics were working on them, the batteries out on the ground. I said the helos were already due in Obo and the mechanics shook their heads. They wouldn’t be flying anywhere today.
I sent the Caravan on up to Djemah with some of the essential radio supplies and stayed behind in Entebbe with the Mi-17s. I hoped my presence would keep the pressure on to get them out first thing in the morning, the latest possible moment when they could leave to get the troops in position. I sat on the airfield most of the afternoon watching the mechanics do the maintenance. Finally, just before dark, they did a preflight test. The helos were ready to go, they said.
That night, I met with Adam Finck, Africa Regional Director of Invisible Children, and we took a walk along Lake Victoria. I hadn’t been able to share details of the sensitive mission. Now that Operation Merlin was drawing so near, I knew I could trust Adam to help coordinate the return of the more than one hundred women and children who would likely be coming out of the LRA soon. I was springing something vital on him at the last minute, and was extremely grateful when he agreed to cancel everything else for the next few days to be completely available to assist the former captives leaving Camp Merlin.
* * *
—
On Sunday morning, I came back to the airfield at first light. I couldn’t trust the Mi-17s were airborne unless I saw it with my own eyes. By 8:00 they lifted off, en route to Obo. I exhaled.
At 8:30 I met Commander Korbel and we boarded a US Air Force plane bound for Djemah. Recently, the Special Forces had become concerned that there wasn’t enough fuel ready at the forward-most base, so they had brought the US Air Force in to drop barrels—a hundred over the last several days—using their planes that were night-rated so they could keep running relays of fuel after dark, something that had always been a limiting factor for us in the field. The US military had really gone all in on this, another sign to me that everyone anticipated a successful mission.
The troops would be dropped later that day across a mountain range from Camp Merlin. They’d bed down during the remaining daylight hours to avoid being seen by farmers or cattle herders and then start their twenty-mile march that night, walking two nights in a row to make a dawn assault on Merlin on Tuesday morning.
When we landed in Djemah, just a few hours before we were to insert the Ugandan troops, Laren was there on the red dirt airfield to greet me. His usually inscrutable face wasn’t hard to read today: he beamed with enthusiasm. For more than two months now, since Okello’s defection, he seemed to have been riding a resurgence of hope in the mission, and today was the happiest and most positive I’d seen him since we’d begun our work together. “We got this!” he said.
While Laren prepared to head north to the temporary forward base, Commander Korbel set up the US Special Forces operations and communications tent inside the Ugandan base so the Ugandans could be “read in” as the operation was progressing. He had also brought a ground tent so he could stay there in the Ugandan camp instead of with the other Green Berets in the US base up the road. I was truly grateful to him for this.
Early in the evening, I walked over to the US operations tent to get something to drink. They’d been handing out cold purple Gatorades all afternoon and I wanted one more to tide me through the day’s last heat. Korbel looked up when I walked in. We’d been sharing easy banter all day, but now he was eerily quiet.
“We just got our eyes over Merlin,” he said slowly. “It’s empty.”
“What? Kony’s gone?”
He nodded. “The only sign of life is a couple of baboons.”
It couldn’t be! It didn’t make any sense. We’d been told that satellite imagery of Camp Merlin was being gathered every day, for weeks. And he’d said so recently that the camp was full of life, that he’d seen smoke from the LRA’s cooking fires. How could the entire population of Merlin have evacuated so quickly? And how had they known to leave? It couldn’t have been a coincidence. They must have been tipped off to the impending assault. But how? And by whom?
Korbel shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The same thing happened before Operation Lightning Thunder in 2008. The intel got leaked and Kony up and left.”
What were we going to do? I had to talk to Laren and Colonel Kabango. I walked to our mess tent in search of Laren, dreading what I had to say, unsure how I was going to break it to him. He eyed me quizzically when I came in. I could see him register that something was wrong.
“Sit with me,” I said, pointing to one of the pilot’s trunks.
He sat down stiffly, braced for whatever I had to say. Slowly, I forced out the words. “Merlin is empty.”
&
nbsp; He didn’t speak. We sat together, hanging our heads. Finally he put his arm over my shoulders. “I quit,” he said. “I just can’t do this anymore.” Tears streamed down his face.
I had never seen Laren cry, never seen him show emotion this way.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I feel like I failed you. And the SOG guys, they are so exhausted, they are so spent from this mission, they haven’t had leave in so long, and we asked them to give it their all for this last mission. One of the guys has a jacked-up heart and he’s out there walking, bad heart be damned, because he’s expecting to find Kony.”
“We need to pray,” I said. I clung to Saint Jude, still hanging around my neck all these months. I felt hopeless. Please, God, I prayed. Don’t let the darkness win.
DIGITAL GLOBE
* * *
—
But when the SOG troops reached Camp Merlin two mornings later, they found nothing but a ghost town: empty rings of circular thatch huts and rectangular drying platforms for the simsim, a few pumpkins, a sack of marijuana, and some opium growing in a field. The camp appeared to have been empty for at least a week. Kony was long gone. The SOG torched the camp, nothing left when they walked out but dust and smoke, the orange lick of flames glowing bright against the dun-colored grass and barren trees.
To Stop a Warlord Page 22
