by Eric Maddox
I’d gotten as much out of Luay as I could, at least for the moment. It was time to move on to the next prisoner. “I’m going to talk to Muhammad Ibrahim’s son now,” I told Basim, Amir, and Luay. “You want to hang around and listen?” Once again, I was going against interrogation doctrine, but letting prisoners talk to each other had served me well so far and I was curious what might come up if the three of them were on hand.
But they weren’t interested. In fact, they seemed terrified at the prospect of even meeting the kid.
“If he knows we are helping you, our families are dead,” Basim explained on behalf of the others. “He may be just a boy, but his father is very powerful. We cannot be seen by him.”
“No problem,” I replied. I glanced over at Luay. He had tried his best to help. Maybe he’d be useful later. I turned back to Basim and Amir. “What do you say, guys?” I asked them. “Want another roommate?”
They agreed and the three of them were escorted out. Luay would get his own cot, a share of the cigarettes, and a chance to spend some time with his new best friends. I wished I could have been a fly on the wall for their rap sessions.
Muslit Muhammad Ibrahim Omar Al-Muslit was a pretty pathetic specimen. The son of a high government official, he’d obviously been pampered and protected his whole life. It was hard to imagine that his father was a ruthless insurgency leader. Muslit was scared of his own shadow.
I started off the questioning slowly and reasonably. I was just trying to get a feel for whom I was dealing with. It didn’t take long. He naturally insisted that he knew nothing about Muhammad Ibrahim’s activities. But I actually felt sorry for him when he explained why.
“My father is embarrassed that I am his son,” he told me. “He would never trust me with any important information.”
“What kind of information would that be?” I asked, trying to determine exactly what he did or didn’t know.
He sank lower in his chair, as if he wanted to disappear completely. “He is hiding from the Americans,” he said sorrowfully. “If he told me where he was, he is afraid I would tell you.”
“Would you tell me?”
“Even if I could, I have nothing to tell.”
“I’ll decide that,” I replied. “How long had you been at the house where we found you?”
“Only three weeks. No more.”
“Where were you living before you moved to Samarra?”
“On my uncle Sulwan’s farm in Kirkuk.” That was another location I needed to look into. The kid knew more than he thought.
“Why did you leave?” I continued.
“My uncle was nervous. He thought he was being spied on.”
“Had you ever been to Samarra before?”
“We used to go fishing here. When I was little, my father would take me to the river.”
“You don’t go anymore?”
He shook his head and gave me a forlorn look. “My father hates me.”
Muslit was breaking my heart. “Do you miss fishing with your dad?”
“Yes,” he replied sorrowfully. “He still fishes at his pond in Samarra. But he never asks me to go with him anymore.”
“How often does he go fishing?”
“He is there all the time.” This was getting interesting. I had another place on my list of Muhammad Ibrahim’s hangouts. I continued questioning in the same quiet, measured tone. I was encouraging him to reveal more about his troubled relationship with his dad. There was a lot of information between the lines.
“When was the last time you saw your father?” I asked.
“He was at the house two hours before your soldiers came,” he said.
“What?” I could hardly believe my ears. But it was obvious the kid wasn’t lying. He didn’t have it in him to be deceptive. Muhammad Ibrahim had been at Sulwan’s rental house. If we’d gotten there two hours earlier we could have rolled him up. As frustrating as this information was, it was also gratifying to know that we had been on the right track. Bam Bam’s decision to go directly to the rental house had been correct. We just got there too late.
“When was the last time Sulwan was there?” I continued.
“He was also there that evening. He left right before dinner as he usually does.”
“Where does he go?”
The kid shrugged.
“Does you father still live there?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes he goes to another place. I don’t know where it is. He doesn’t take me with him.”
“Do you know when he’s going to be there again?”
Muslit shook his head. “He would never tell me such a thing.”
“When was the last time your father was there before last night?”
“He was gone for three days. He came home in the afternoon and left in the evening.”
“What car did he use?”
“He was picked up. By Abu Sofian’s brother. His name is Muhammad Khudayr.”
“Where did they go?”
“I think to Muhammad Khudayr’s house.” I thought back to Basim’s insistence that our target for last night had been at that exact location. It was time for a consultation. I left Muslit and went back to the room where my three homeboys were bunking.
“Hey, Basim,” I told the driver as I came through the door. “Maybe you were right. Muhammad Ibrahim may have been at Khudayr’s place last night.”
“Of course he was,” Basim replied smugly.
“Okay,” I continued. “So I’ll give you that one. Tell me where he is now.”
Basim shrugged. “He could be anywhere. At a hotel or an abandoned building or maybe at another relative’s house.”
I thought for a moment. “What did he do for relaxation when he was in Samarra?” I asked.
“He went fishing,” Luay chimed in, wanting to be helpful. It was confirmation of what Muslit had just told me: that his dad was an avid fisherman.
“Where does he go?” I asked Luay.
“They have a fish pond,” he replied. “Muhammad Ibrahim and Muhammad Khudayr own it together. They have stocked it with fish from the river. The pond is right next to the river.”
“Have you ever been there?” I asked, turning to Basim.
He nodded. “They go there all the time. I have driven them. They fish and drink whiskey.”
That pissed me off. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I demanded.
“You didn’t ask,” he replied, grinning. “Mister, my brain doesn’t work like yours, but if you ask me I will tell you what I know.” It was hard to stay mad at the guy.
“So where is this pond?”
“It’s behind Muhammad Khudayr’s house,” Basim explained. “There’s a dirt road there. You can follow it for about five kilometers and you will see it. There is a little shack by the shore.”
“You think they might be hiding there?”
“Sure,” Basim replied. “Hiding from their wives.”
The three of them had a good laugh. Then Amir looked me straight in the eye, put his hands on my shoulders. “I know this pond,” he said. “My father has been there many times. It is their sanctuary. You will find them there. I am sure of it.”
I didn’t need any more guarantees. It made sense. There was a curfew in effect across the entire region. If Muhammad Ibrahim had left the rental house last night he wouldn’t have gone far. He had to be somewhere close by to avoid the roadblocks and patrols. An isolated fishing hole outside of town sounded about right. And I was ready to cash in on the credibility that $1.9 million had earned the team.
“We missed Muhammad Ibrahim by two hours,” I told Kelly as soon as I got back to the house to brief him. I wanted to start out with fresh intelligence before I made my pitch for another raid.
I watched as the same emotions I’d experienced crossed Kelly’s face: frustration, followed by the elated realization that we were hot on the trail of the bodyguard. “So what’s our next move?” he asked.
“Kelly, we need to do another raid.”
As exasperation clouded his expression, I hurried on before he could object. “Just listen for a minute. Muhammad Ibrahim was staying at his brother Sulwan’s rental house in Samarra. Sulwan doesn’t stay at that house. He goes somewhere else, almost every night. Where does he go?”
“You tell me,” Kelly answered skeptically.
I plowed on. “Basim told me that he has seen Sulwan at the market buying quantities of food. Who’s that food for, Kelly?”
“Get to the point, Eric,” he snapped.
“All right,” I said. “I think that Sulwan is taking that food out to Saddam. I think he stays the night there to guard him and comes back in the morning.”
There was a pause. “So where is he?” Kelly asked at last. “Where’s Saddam?”
“Wait,” I pleaded. “Just hear me out. Remember that I told you how Saddam is partial to a certain kind of fish, prepared a certain way?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “I remember. Mazgoof, wasn’t it?”
“Very impressive memory,” I joked before getting back to business. “So suppose you’re a dictator who is used to having whatever you want, whenever you want it. Are you going to go without your daily serving of Long John Silver’s?”
“What are you getting at, Eric?” Kelly was losing patience fast.
It was time for the payoff. “Muslit, Muhammad Ibrahim’s son, told me that he used to fish with his father. They don’t do it anymore, but that’s another story. Muhammad Ibrahim likes fishing so much that he bought a pond with Muhammad Khudayr and stocked it with fish. They’ve even got a little cabin out there. Fish, Kelly. You see where this is going?”
“You want to raid a fish farm?”
“Does that sound crazy?”
He thought for a moment. “Not any crazier than any of the other shit you’ve told me. I’m just glad we found that money. That’s going to give us some clout when we try to sell this raid.”
“What happened to all that cash?” I asked.
“We’re going to hand it over to Civil Affairs. The 4th ID is due to pick it up, and Bam Bam will brief them on how we found it.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re going to take credit for it,” Kelly explained. “They’ll have a press conference and may even take the reporters out to the site. They get the glory and we stay under the radar. That’s the way we like it.”
I laughed. “And the way they like it, too. Pretty soon they’ll start believing it themselves.”
“It’s not their fault. We asked them to do it.” He stood up. “Come on. Let’s see if we can get a hit on this fish farm.”
We found Bam Bam sitting with the rest of the shooters in the dining room. As Kelly and I started to brief him, they all stopped what they were doing to listen in. An eerie silence fell over the place. At that moment, we were all thinking the same thing: there might actually be a shot at rolling up Saddam. No one said as much, but you could feel it in the air. I think Bam Bam felt it, too. He agreed immediately to raid the fish farm that night.
I had hoped to go on that hit. I was certain that this would be the one that would bring in Muhammad Ibrahim. I wanted to be on hand for the occasion, but it was also just part of my control freak nature. It was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn from my months in Tikrit. In a house full of Type A personalities, I wasn’t the alpha dog. The fact was, I didn’t need to be on the hit. They had already decided to take Luay as a guide, and I would have just been extra baggage. I had told the team everything I knew about the targets they were going after. Most of them had already studied the link diagram in detail. They had a good grasp on Muhammad Ibrahim and his network. They were totally up to speed.
In the hours before the raid, I hung out with Basim, Amir, and Luay. It wasn’t an active interrogation, just a way of keeping the connection between us active. These three had been more help to me than most of the other detainees combined and we all had a vested interest now in seeing this through.
Joining us that afternoon were all the terps who I had come to depend on over the past several weeks. Jimmy, Samir, and Jafar had learned to function like a well-oiled machine, trading off sessions with one another and even working together to make sure the translations were accurate. As the days and weeks of intense work had progressed, I had moved from the main house to a cot in the guesthouse. The terps settled in there, too, making sure one of them was available day or night. It wasn’t a requirement of the job, but I think as time went on they had begun to realize that Muhammad Ibrahim was a key figure in the insurgency that was tearing their country apart. They wanted to be a part of the effort to bring him in, and they realized how important to the mission they were.
As evening fell, I could smell the aroma of steaks being cooked on a makeshift barbecue grill the team had set up on the front porch. Cookouts were a regular part of the routine. I rounded up my three terps and took them with me for dinner. I found myself wishing I could bring the three roommates, too, but they were still prisoners. Regardless of how much I might have liked those guys, that was one barrier that couldn’t be crossed.
As I sat eating my meal, Kelly came over to run down the plan for the night. “We’re going back to hit Muhammad Khudayr’s house,” he told me. “But they’re going to send the team up from Baghdad for the fish farm.”
That wasn’t the best news I’d heard all day. The Baghdad shooters didn’t know the situation and the players like our guys. “Why do we need them?” I asked. “We can hit them both.”
“The money caught the attention of the brass back at Baghdad,” Kelly explained. “Now they want to play.”
“But—” I began before Kelly cut me off.
“Look, Eric,” he said. “It’s fine. These are our operators who are coming up. This way we can hit both targets at the same time and we don’t have to get the 4th ID involved. The place is easy to find. It’s not going to be a problem.”
“So when is TOT?” I asked, referring to time on target.
“0100,” he replied. “We’re only going to have a couple of hours at the objectives. Samarra is a hot spot. Bam Bam wants to get in and out. We’ll hit the Khudayr target either way. But we’re going to wait for someone to show up at the pond before we go in.”
“How will you know when someone’s there?” I asked.
“We’ve got eyes on it,” he replied. Kelly was referring to orbiting military satellites that had focused on the exact coordinates of the fish farm and were transmitting imagery as we spoke. I didn’t have time to think about the wonders of modern technology. I was too focused on what was about to go down.
So was Kelly. “Since we found that money, we’re in good shape,” he said to me. “That was terrorist cash and everyone knows it. But, Eric, the way I see it, this could be our last shot. I don’t really know where we go after this.”
“I don’t know where we go either,” I admitted.
“You haven’t got any locations still hidden up your sleeve, do you?” he asked, only half joking. He knew as well as I did that any information I got was only as good as the detainee or source who had given it to me. If tonight’s hits were dry holes, I seriously doubted whether the three guys I was depending on back at the guesthouse would have any more good ideas. Kelly was right. This could be our last shot.
The team headed out for Samarra around midnight. I watched them leave then headed back to the house to wait for the OU football game to get under way. It was an important one: the Big Twelve championship. So far the Sooners had played an undefeated season and, in my humble opinion, had emerged as the greatest college team of all time. They were about to prove it again by whipping the Kansas State Wildcats. I was one hundred percent certain.
I was feeling pretty good. We were on our way to pick up Muhammad Ibrahim, the man who I was sure could lead us to Saddam himself. And OU was going to finish the season in true style by dismantling the Wildcats. It didn’t get any better than that.
Within the first ten minutes of the game, OU had jumped out
to a 7–0 lead. Can of corn, I thought to myself and went to check in with Kelly. He was in the communications room as usual, checking the surveillance monitors on the fish farm. “Want to watch?” he asked as I came in.
I sat down next to him. On the screen was live infrared coverage of the target area around the pond and the nearby river. It was clear enough to get a good idea of what was happening on the ground. After watching the empty landscape for about twenty minutes, we both saw the same thing at the same time: two figures emerging from the darkness. We sat bolt upright as they went to the water’s edge, climbed into a boat, and paddled into the pond. It had to be the two Muhammads—Muhammad Ibrahim and Muhammad Khudayr, right where they were supposed to be.
Kelly made a quick call to Walt, his analyst counterpart in Baghdad. “They’re in the pond,” he told them. “I can see them right now.”
“I don’t see anything,” Walt replied. “We’re not going to move until we have a fix on them.”
Kelly swore and slammed down the phone.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I think they’re watching a different monitoring system,” he told me.
“So what?” I didn’t have time to think about the glitches of modern technology. This was going down in real time.
“So if they can’t see it on their channel, then it doesn’t exist.”
“Of course it exists,” I shot back, pointing to the image on the screen. “There’s a boat with two men in it.”
“You see it and I see it,” Kelly replied grimly, “but if they don’t see it, they aren’t going to do the raid.”
“Look, Kelly,” I said desperately. I was talking fast now, trying to think of some way, any way, to make this happen. “These guys know that we only conduct raids after midnight. They can stay in their houses until then. After that they have to find someplace else to hide. Those fishermen in that boat didn’t show up until after midnight. Don’t you see? They’re hiding on the river. They fish for a couple of hours until it’s safe to come back. Most of our hits are over by 0300. You can catch a lot of fish in that time, to make a lot of mazgoof.”
