Mission: Black List #1

by Eric Maddox

  But it turned out that there was one person who had been paying very close attention. After I had finished the briefing and the analysts had asked a few halfhearted questions, Colonel Walker took me aside. “That was impressive,” he said and I felt a flicker of hope. Maybe I’d gotten through after all, and to someone whose opinion counted. “Tomorrow you’re going to give the same briefing to Admiral McCraven. Do you know the admiral, Sergeant Maddox?”

  “I know he is currently the task force commander, sir,” I replied, not quite believing what I was hearing.

  “That’s right,” Colonel Walker said.

  I had never spoken to anyone before with a star on his epaulet. Now suddenly I was being asked to meet with the man who oversaw the most elite military unit in the world. My last days in Iraq had taken an unexpected turn. It wasn’t over, I reminded myself, until it was over.

  “In the meantime,” the colonel continued, “I want you to sit down with an analyst and go over your link diagram in complete detail. I don’t want to lose this information when you go home. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” Not only was it understood. It was deeply appreciated.

  Chapter 17

  THE ZONE

  1150 11DEC2003

  I was looking forward to briefing the head of the task force. If I could convince him that my theory of the insurgency leadership was right, maybe the work we had done in Tikrit would continue.

  Colonel Walker’s response had been encouraging. But I had my doubts that anyone else could really step into my role in the mission. It wasn’t that I thought I was indispensable. What was indispensable was the information I had put together over the last five months. It didn’t matter how many briefings I gave to analysts. There was no way I could effectively pass on that information on. Not in the time I had left.

  I was still hoping to hear from Walt about the raid on Muhammad Khudayr’s uncle’s house in Baghdad. It seemed like this was the last best chance we would have of rolling up the two Muhammads. But by the morning of December 12, two days before I was scheduled to fly home, I had received no word from him. I knew that he understood the importance of capturing Muhammad Ibrahim. I just wasn’t sure how committed he was to pushing for a hit that seemed like such a long shot.

  The situation had changed radically since I left Tikrit. There the decision to go on a raid was made only by Bam Bam. It was based on his belief in the intelligence I provided. We had a great working relationship. There was no formal reprimand if a hit turned up a dry hole. But there was always the potential for other, more serious, consequences. If I sent the team out on too many bad hits, it would reflect on my reputation and credibility with the whole team. Maintaining their confidence had been one of my prime objectives.

  It was different in Baghdad. Walt’s request for a raid would have been one of many considered by his commander. Approval would be based on hard data, not the sort of instincts I had developed in Tikrit. It was out of my hands.

  I arrived at the admiral’s office a little before 1200 and a few minutes later Colonel Walker showed up. He had several copies of the link diagram with him and seemed nervous. I could understand why. As the chief intelligence officer for the task force, he was about to turn over the reins to a mere staff sergeant. If I didn’t make a convincing case, it would be his ass on the line. I wasn’t worried. I knew what I was talking about. I knew it better than anyone. And, despite all our setbacks, I still believed in my theory.

  Admiral McCraven was a tall, thin man with a powerful presence. After he and Colonel Walker greeted each other, I was introduced. “Staff Sergeant Maddox is here to give you a briefing on the situation in Tikrit, sir,” the colonel explained.

  “Very good,” said Admiral McCraven. “Staff Sergeant Maddox, you are an interrogator, is that correct?”

  I was about to answer when Colonel Walker jumped in. “Sir, Staff Sergeant Maddox has spent the better part of the last six months in Tikrit, living with the team up there. He and their analyst Kelly have built a link diagram based on the information he has gathered from detainees and sources. I believe you’ll be very interested in what he has to say.”

  “Excellent,” replied the admiral, turning to me. “Are you ready to proceed, Sergeant Maddox?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I could see Colonel Walker out of the corner of my eye. He was still unsure about handing the ball off to me. But I was calm. It didn’t matter who was there. I could brief this link diagram to anyone at any time. I knew it like the back of my hand.

  For the next fifty minutes I went into detail, emphasizing the points that I especially wanted the admiral to retain. I reminded him of the $1.9 million we had found. I explained that the money was intended to fund the insurgency not just in Tikrit, but across the whole country. If there was one thing I wanted the admiral to come away with, it was the name Muhammad Ibrahim. I summarized as much of the search for Muhammad Ibrahim as I thought the admiral could absorb in one briefing. By the time I was finished with the former bodyguard, he was worse than the Antichrist. “If we can catch him, he could lead us to Saddam,” I said confidently.

  I finished by telling him about my interrogation of the fisherman. “As the cousin of Muhammad Khudayr,” I said, “I believe that this man can lead us to where Muhammad Ibrahim is hiding.” If Walt couldn’t sell the raid on this last target to his commander, maybe I could sell it directly to Admiral McCraven. It was worth a try.

  My concluding words were met with a long silence. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d overstepped my bounds. The admiral stared at me as if he were trying to figure out whether I was completely full of shit. Colonel Walker held his breath. I think we were both wondering which option the admiral would choose next: throw us out of his office or thank us for our time and forget about the whole thing.

  Neither of us was prepared for what happened next. The admiral looked at his watch and turned to the colonel. “I’m scheduled to fly to Dohar, Qatar, tomorrow, colonel,” he said. “Staff Sergeant Maddox will be accompanying me on that flight.” Then he looked at me. “Sergeant Maddox, I will be briefing General Custard, the J-2 for General Abizaid at CENTCOM, on the status of the situation. I don’t have time to learn everything about this thing.” He gestured to the link diagram on the table. “You will be briefing him on it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Colonel Walker cleared his throat. “Sir, Sergeant Maddox is scheduled to redeploy on Sunday the fourteenth. I assume that will be no problem.”

  “None whatsoever,” the admiral replied. “He can catch a civilian flight to the U.S. from Doha. I need CENTCOM to hear what he has to say.” The meeting seemed to be coming to an end. But before it did, I had a request to make.

  “Sir,” I said, “I have a partner who arrived in the country with me. He’s also scheduled to redeploy back to the States on Sunday. Would it be all right if he came to Doha with me so that we could return home together?”

  “I don’t think that’s a problem,” the admiral replied. I wondered how Lee would feel when he heard that the head of the task force had approved his travel plans. “Colonel Walker,” the admiral continued, “I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention.”

  He shook my hand. “Staff Sergeant Maddox,” he said sincerely, “I want to thank you for your hard work. It’s sergeants like you who win wars and make officers like Colonel Walker and me look good.”

  From the moment we left the admiral’s office, the colonel treated me as if we were best buddies. He even started calling me by my first name. It didn’t matter that he got my first name wrong. What mattered was that Colonel Walker was on my side.

  My first thought was to ask him to push for the raid on the target that Muhammad Khudayr’s cousin had identified. But there was no way I could directly interfere with the decision-making process. Walt was the only one who could sell the raid. He had a connection with the team in Baghdad and they trusted him. Colonel Walker would not have been willing to pull rank and
interfere with that relationship. And I wasn’t about to ask. All I could do was hope that Walt was making a good case for the hit.

  Meanwhile I hunted down Lee to give him the news. We were going to Doha and were flying there on Admiral McCraven’s personal bird. I had to convince him that I wasn’t bullshitting. We ended the day at a restaurant that had been opened at BIAP for U.S. personnel. It was surprisingly good and I tried my best to enjoy the food. But the fact that I was actually leaving was just beginning to sink in. One of the most significant parts of my life, professionally and personally, was coming to an end. Looking back, I was proud to have worked with so many dedicated men, especially the team in Tikrit. We had tried to stop bad men from doing bad things. We were part of the greater good and had come very close to accomplishing what we had set out to do. Unfortunately, by this time tomorrow I would be on a plane with Iraq far behind me. It wouldn’t matter how close we had ever been to capturing our target, Black List #1. We’d tried and failed.

  When I got back to my tent, I lay down and closed my eyes. But I knew it was pointless. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep on my last night in Iraq.

  I got up and headed over to the prison. It was where Lee and the rest of the interrogators were hanging out. I was looking for someone to talk to, but I had to be careful. Aside from Lee, the rest of these guys were going to be staying behind for weeks or months to come. The last thing they wanted to hear was somebody talking about what it felt like to be going home. It was just good to be around fellow interrogators. I sat down and picked up an old magazine.

  After a few minutes, a major came in and spotted me. “Hey, Maddox,” he said. “Now that they sent your fisherman out on a recon, does that mean we can get rid of him tomorrow?”

  I sat bolt upright. “What recon?” I was fully alert now.

  “You didn’t hear?” he replied in a deliberately disinterested tone. “They took him out yesterday.”

  “Did they find the target?”

  “Yeah. In fact, they’re on the hit right now.”

  Suddenly we were back in the game. I had a whole new admiration for Walt. He had been willing to risk failure if it offered even the slightest possibility of accomplishing the mission. I had underestimated him and now, at the eleventh hour, he had come through.

  The phone rang and one of the interrogators picked it up. After a short conversation he called over to me. “Eric, you know someone named Muhammad Khudayr?”

  I jumped up, feeling a huge surge of adrenaline. “Hell, yes, I know him. Why?”

  “That was Walt on the phone,” the interrogator replied. “They got Muhammad Khudayr and a few other guys. He said you’d know what he was talking about. They’re bringing him in now.”

  “What about Muhammad Ibrahim?” I asked.

  The major shrugged. “Walt said they didn’t get him, only Muhammad Khudayr.”

  It was good news, but not what I’d been hoping for. If Muhammad Ibrahim had been at the target, Walt would have known. Muhammad Khudayr was my only link to the former bodyguard. But I was running out of time to follow up the lead. I had needed Muhammad Ibrahim to be at that house.

  But one Muhammad was better than none at all. I turned to Lee. “You want to work tonight?” I asked him.

  “Do I have a choice?” he replied with a grin. He nodded to the night shift interrogator. “We’ll take the new detainees coming in.”

  I was finally going to interrogate Muhammad Khudayr. It was a name I had first heard from Thamir Al-Asi’s son, who had identified him as the brother of the dead insurgent leader Abu Sofian. He was closer to Muhammad Ibrahim than anyone else on the link diagram. And Muhammad Ibrahim was one step away from Saddam himself. The two Muhammads weren’t just ghosts or figments of my imagination any more. We had one of them. Now we just had to get the other one.

  It was 0200 before the shooters showed up with the four new prisoners. They were hooded and handcuffed. Muhammad Khudayr was one of them. The others were unknown. I immediately asked the team commander, but was told Muhammad Ibrahim was not at the site. The shooters had been given a photo of him. It was the same blurry black-and-white snapshot I had carried around in my wallet for weeks. They knew who they were looking for. But they hadn’t found him.

  I had only a few hours left to question Muhammad Khudayr. But despite the pressure, I felt calm and totally in control. I was in my own personal zone, a place of complete confidence and self-assurance. It’s a strange sensation, almost an out-of-body experience, like a batter at the plate, when the ball is as big as a grapefruit and impossible to miss.

  As I prepared for the interrogation, I realized that I had been in that zone for a while now. It had started in mid-October, when I had questioned Ahmed Yasin. He had verified that his family was heading up the insurgency. That key interrogation had confirmed my theory. It gave me the incentive to look for this specific family of bodyguards even when the official hunt was focused on High Value Targets. More important, it had given me the ability to intensely focus on my job. A really good interrogator can usually get one out of twenty-five detainees to break and provide actionable information. An average interrogator might get one out of a hundred. Now I only had one to break and one night to do it. I wasn’t worried. I was in the zone.

  0218 13DEC2003

  On my way to the interrogation cell, I ran into Lee’s terp John, with whom I would be working for the night.

  “I thought you were leaving, Eric,” he said as he hurried alongside me.

  “I’ve still got six hours,” I replied. “I’m really going to need your help, John.”

  “Of course.” I could see he was picking up on my energy.

  We got to the prison where Lee was handling the in-processing. I pulled him aside. “This is going to go fast,” I told him. “I need you to get a few of the prisoners I brought with me from Tikrit. I might need their help.”

  “Give me the names,” Lee replied. He had his game face on. “I’ll have the guards round them up. They’ll be sitting out in the hallway in three minutes.”

  “Will they be able to hear the interrogation from there?” I asked. I only wanted them in on the questioning when it suited my purpose.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lee assured me. “I’ll have them wear earplugs. They won’t hear a thing.”

  “Great.” I told him who I wanted: my most reliable collaborators, Basim Latif and Sabah’s brother Luay.

  We headed for the cell where the detainees from the hit were being held, still handcuffed and hooded. The guard pointed out Muhammad Khudayr. John and I walked him to the interrogation room. It was coming up on 0400.

  The last thing I wanted him to know was that I was in a hurry. I needed him to think that we could go on all night and day if necessary. I started, as usual, with the basics.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Muhammad.” From his first answer I knew that he wasn’t going to cooperate willingly.

  “Muhammad what?”

  “Muhammad Khudayr.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I live at the house where your soldiers came to get me.”

  “How long have you lived there?”

  “Since the fall of Baghdad.”

  “Where else do you live?”

  “My family lives in Samarra. I visit them when I am not looking for work.”

  “How long have you lived in the Baghdad house?”

  “About two months.”

  At that point I took a calculated risk. This game of cat and mouse was eating up time I couldn’t afford. I had hoped to get a feel for whom I was dealing with and what he wanted to hide from me before getting to the important questions. But this was no ordinary interrogation. Muhammad Khudayr wasn’t going to give me the time of day, much less the time I needed to break him. I was going to have to speed this up and to try something new, something I would come to think of as the “brutally honest” approach. I had no choice.

  “Muhammad,” I said, keeping my voice p
itched low so that he had to work to hear me, “I want you to look at me and listen carefully. I know exactly who you are and what you have done. I have captured and questioned many people who have worked for you. They’ve told me everything. You have to stop thinking about how you’re going to get out of this situation. You need to stop thinking about what you are and are not going to tell me. I am going to explain exactly what you need to do. The only way you can help yourself is to help me. And the only way you can help me is to tell me where I can find Muhammad Ibrahim Omar Al-Muslit.”

  He stared at me defiantly. “I do not know this person.”

  “Let’s try this again,” I said in the same measured tone. “I know that you are personally responsible for the deaths of many Americans and Iraqis in Samarra and Baghdad. I know that you work directly with Muhammad Ibrahim Omar Al-Muslit. I know that you have been with him constantly since your brother Abu Sofian was killed a month ago.” I leaned forward. “I know everything you’ve done.”

  “I don’t know the man you are looking for.”

  I stood up and motioned for the guards to take the prisoner to the back of the room and gag him. I ducked into the hallway, where Lee was waiting with the detainees from Tikrit. As he had promised, they were wearing earplugs. I blindfolded Luay, the brother of the Samarra insurgent leader Sabah, and brought him into the interrogation room. Sitting him in front of me, I removed his blindfold and earplugs. He hadn’t seen or heard Muhammad Khudayr, who was watching from the back of the room. I was improvising now, hoping I could pull off this last-ditch attempt to break the prisoner.