The Towers

by David Poyer

  At the end of an hour the interrogator got up, stretched, rubbed his eyes. He looked at the prisoner, who hadn’t changed position, but whose head was hanging down. He said something to the translator in Pashtun and jerked his head at Dan to step outside.

  In the corridor, he tore off a page from his pad. “Going to be tough to get this down to a UTC coordinate. But this is the best I can give you. It’s in the Shah-i-khot, that’s pretty clear. What they call the Place of Kings. There are three villages in walking distance. He’s described the trail from each village. There are halt points along the rat lines, for springs or cached supplies. What the mountain looks like to the east of it. Apparently there’s a cave there, some kind of hideout. Hope it helps.”

  The Place of Kings. Dan had seen a reference to that before, an intel spot report from Yemen. And Provanzano too, had mentioned it. “I guess what I need to know is, can we trust what he says?”

  “That’s the five-dollar question, isn’t it? I don’t pick up any cuing that he’s lying. If it helps, he swears it to Allah on his heart and limbs.”

  “Is that, like, a guarantee?”

  “No. They all say stuff like that. Like a Mafia guy, swearing on his mother’s grave.”

  “Uh-huh. Great. Thanks.”

  “Want us to follow up? More details on the location? Who’s going to be there?”

  “I already have an idea who’ll be there. We just needed to know where ‘there’ was. But, yeah, if you come up with anything else, shoot it over. Anything that might lead us to the higher-ups. Here’s my direct e-mail.” Dan tore a scrap off the steno page and jotted it down.

  The interrogator said he understood. He rubbed his eyes hard in the glaring light. “Okay, back to it.… Want a Coke? We keep feeding them Cokes. Figure, if they can’t sleep when we give them a break, they’ll be twice as fucked-up when we start the next session.”

  “This seems to go pretty slow.”

  Dix gave him a sharp glance. “It’s a time-intensive process, good interrogation.”

  Dan took a deep breath. “Yeah. I see. I’ll take one. And thanks.”

  Standing once more on the balcony, drinking off the can in swift, too-sweet swigs, he pondered the chain link, the lights, the overflowing buckets, the casually leaning guards. The men in orange squatted or strolled under the blinding lights, between the hanging banners.

  Seen close up, the enemy didn’t look physically menacing. But men like these had blown up embassies, warships, flown airliners into buildings. For a moment he heard again the screams in the darkened, fuel-stinking corridors of the Pentagon. Blair had been through even worse. They had to be interrogated, to gather any intel they could yield. And screen out any innocent sheepherders. But after that, he couldn’t think of anything better than a firing squad. He’d volunteer for it.

  They said they wanted a new caliphate. Something like a new Ottoman Empire, based on sharia and Koranic justice. But by all accounts, Afghanistan under Omar had been no paradise. More like a totalitarian hell. Stonings. Executions. Noses, ears, hands, cut off. Schools closed. Women sold like cattle, beaten like slaves. But all that had been fine with the West. Until they’d attacked New York and Washington.

  Maybe we needed a wake-up call, he thought. We let Hitler go too, and Pol Pot, and all the rest. Until it hits us, we don’t react. Until it’s too late, we don’t care. We’re focused on the next quarter’s market results. The next election. Not what’s coming ten years down the road.

  Anyway, what business of it was his? Whatever he thought wasn’t going to affect anything. Not one iota.

  He finished the can, crumpled it, and tossed it into the darkness.

  * * *

  BACK at the JOC Dan passed the steno sheet Dix had given him to Henrickson to input into CIRCE. Then felt his way to a cot. He stared up at the slowly breathing roof of the tent. Tried to close his eyes, but the lids were on springs. Shouldn’t have gone to the JIF. No, he’d had to. Part of his job. If only Provanzano or Belote had wormed an agent into bin Laden’s inner circle. They could’ve stopped the whole plot. Now they were vacuuming up all this human debris, but did the bedraggled men wearing prison orange actually matter? Were they ALQ leaders? Or just hangers-on, pawns, or warm bodies turned in to settle clan vendettas: “Oh, him—he is a bad man. Yes, he is high Taliban, important Al Qaeda. Give me the thousand dollars reward.”

  Finally he got up. Henrickson gave him the eye but didn’t say anything. Dan went to another terminal and read the latest reports, then searched again for Pajaur, Pajuar, Bajuar, Bajaur, and every other possible spelling. He got a couple more hits but nothing eye-opening. He went out into the main tent, woke a cartographer, and worked out a UTC coordinate from the directions the prisoner had given. Then went back to his own terminal and retrieved all the imagery he could find for that location. Nothing much was visible on the ground. A rocky valley. He zoomed in and out, squinting, searching for shadows or changes over time. Didn’t see any.

  He woke to Wenck standing over him. “Jay-wick meeting, Commander.”

  “Thanks, Donnie. You making out okay?”

  “Yeah, okay. Boy, these guys are really interested in CIRCE.”

  “That so?”

  “They wanna know all kinds of stuff. Keep asking for copies of the software. And I keep telling them, it doesn’t reside here.”

  “Good on you, Donnie. Keep that up.” Dan patted the kid’s spindly shoulder. Then did a quick moist shave from bottled water, grimacing at his body odor as he stripped his shirt off.

  “Oh, and, Commander—we’re getting some high numbers on that meet site.”

  “High? How high?”

  Donnie told him.

  * * *

  THE JWC meeting was in the bigger tent, five men and one woman around a field table. Army, OGA, spec ops, and Dan. Belote and Provanzano sat off to the side, not exactly part of the discussion, but also, Dan noted, not missing a word. Some wag had duct-taped a sheet of yellow paper to the back of his monitor. It read, Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory. Even more are false. And most are uncertain. Clausewitz.

  An army colonel, the chairman, briefed first. After a quick overview of the last twenty-four hours, he said British communications intercepts indicated ALQ leadership were planning an emergency regrouping, or at least a meeting of the withdrawing high leaders, somewhere north of Kandahar. The location was not mentioned in the intercepts, but one of the speakers had mentioned “the woods.” “The most likely meet place is the remote border region near Pakistan,” he concluded. “That’s the broad brush. The challenge is getting more specific, so we can get shooters or weapons there at the same time.”

  “I disagree,” one of the analysts said. “Why meet on this side of the border? When the Pak side’s safe? I think the meeting’s in North Waziristan, the same sites we’ve seen before.”

  Belote said, “We need a firm location. We’re throwing brains at this problem, but I’m not seeing results coming back.”

  The analyst shook his head. “We’re on it. But these guys have pretty decent comm discipline. And we don’t speak the language.”

  Dan sat back, listening to them wrangle. Once again, a split was growing between Defense Intelligence and the CIA. They started from the same facts, but interpreted them differently. One side wanted the meeting in Afghanistan; the other said it was going to be out of their reach, in Pakistan. Apparently bin Laden was as much at home on one side of the border as the other.

  “Dan?” Belote said. “We’ve got a deadlock. What’s your crystal ball coming up with?”

  He sat for a moment, mustering his thoughts. He had nothing to prove. But the numbers were getting convincing. “CIRCE’s generating an eighty percent confidence level the meet’ll be in Pajuar.”

  Heads came up; gazes sharpened. “Where’s Pajuar?” a woman asked.

  “We’re pretty sure, based on JIF work as of this morning, that it’s a valley to the north of the Shah-i-khot.”

&n
bsp; Dan keyed it in and turned his notebook so they could see the overhead. “Imagery as of two days ago. A steep valley. Wooded—so the phrase ‘in the woods’ could apply. Located at the intersection of trails from these three villages, so if someone approaches by one trail, there are two escape routes. Also, we’re seeing a high degree of probability both OBL and Al-Zawahiri will attend.”

  The analysts looked skeptical. “This is based on what?” one said. “A computer program?”

  “It does the same thing you guys do. Goes through tons of material and generates connections. Looks for patterns. Gradually outlines recurrent activities and infrastructure. It knits that into a web, then makes predictions based on probabilistic calculations.”

  “A computer can’t do analysis,” one of the analysts said. “You need to look inside your target’s head. Live in his skin. All this thing is doing, it’s re-creating the past.”

  “Not exactly.” Dan understood where the analysts were coming from. All most people owned were their skills. No wonder they’d perceive his contribution as a threat. “I agree, it doesn’t get into OBL’s head, the way one of you could. It doesn’t care why he does what he does. But does he repeat himself? Or does he do what you don’t expect, because you don’t expect it? At each decision point, the target has to make a decision. The program runs out the consequences, examines them from his point of view, and makes its predictions based on how he sees the world.”

  “But you can’t know everything he knows.”

  “Of course not. This isn’t a magic mirror from a fantasy novel. But when it gives us a probability that high, there may be something there. At least it’s worth checking out.”

  “That’s how you got Al-Maadi,” Belote put in.

  Dan turned to face him. “There were other inputs. HUMINT. Overhead imagery. But, yeah, that’s what vectored us in on his hideout.”

  They discussed it, and the skepticism deepened. No one had ever heard of Pajuar. The interrogation report hadn’t come through the proper channels, been scrubbed down and blessed by CFLCC. He found himself getting angry, starting to argue that if they waited, the opportunity would slip away. As so many others had. He started to quote Sun Tzu: In war, the supreme consideration is speed. But instead, closed his mouth. He pushed too hard. Had been told that over and over, during his career. Maybe this was one of those situations where stepping back, taking a deep breath, and admitting the other guy might be right was the better part of valor.

  Tony Provanzano had been sitting off to the side, occasionally lifting the inhaler. Now he cleared his throat, and discussion stopped. “Can I put in a word?”

  “Yes, sir. Go right ahead.”

  “We’re not here to argue. Okay? Commander Lenson thinks it’s worth following up. Your guys aren’t convinced. So, here’s what I suggest we do. Everyone go back to your terminals. If this place was ever a meet site, there’s going to be some mention of it. Somewhere. Or it’ll be in the document exploitation. Maybe under another name. We just need to drill down until we find it. Okay?”

  The colonel pointed to a young analyst. “Mike, get the CTC in on it. I know we had a team in there two years ago. All right, everybody. Get out there and dig. We’ll reconvene right after the morning brief.”

  Dan pushed back his chair. But as he headed for the exit, Belote took his arm. “Boss wants you.”

  “Before you leave. A little private conversation?” Tony Provanzano drawled.

  * * *

  THE OGAs had a separate berthing tent. Only the green wash of a dangling chemlight penetrated the darkness. “Sit on the bunk,” Provanzano said. “Okay, first, what’s this I hear about you pushing for privileged access to the JIF?”

  Dan was astonished. Then realized, when you tried to short-circuit any bureaucratic process, especially when it had the letters A, R, M, and Y in it, the wires heated up fast, and sparks started to fly . “I was over this afternoon. Sat in on an interrogation. There was a report filed that—”

  “I know what was filed, and that’s the reason it’s filed, so it gets confirmed and evaluated and cross-checked. What we don’t need are Navy commanders playing interrogator. Then jumping to conclusions and putting their suspicions out as fact.”

  Dan was about to protest, then thought, to hell with it. As his eyes adapted to the darkness he made out the OGA agent half-reclining on the far end of the bunk. “Just trying to do my job.”

  “Your job’s to run CIRCE for us. And to give us a window into it.” A sniff; Dan caught again the sharp scent of eucalyptus and camphor.

  “That’s not my understanding of what the Working Group’s been set up for.”

  “Then your understanding’s wrong. Intelligence is a team sport, sport.”

  There wasn’t much Dan could say to that, so he didn’t say anything. Engines shrieked outside; tires squealed as another load of ammunition or fuel or human bodies touched down. He started to get up. “That all?”

  “No. Sit down.” Provanzano sniffed. “You’re really seeing eighty percent?”

  “I’m not saying he’s absolutely going to be there. But right now, that’s what the probabilities say.”

  “The fog of war.”

  “That, and these are cunning people. They’ve probably got several stories running, just to keep us scampering up and down these valleys.”

  “No, he’s going to be there,” Provanzano said.

  Dan started to argue, then stopped. He was agreeing? “You have other sources.”

  “I agree, no intel picture’s foolproof. But with the SIGINT, CIRCE, and your info from the JIF, it’s the closest thing to a firm location we have.”

  Dan coughed into a fist. “So, what are we going to do about it? Set up a cordon, block the trails out, and put a Hatchet team down on him?”

  A pause. Such a long one, Dan finally added, “I don’t think I know where you’re going here, Tony.”

  “Well, it’s like this. OBL is what we call a locus. He attracts radicals. So? Let him do what he does best. Use him to vacuum up the malcontents and senior Taliban and other anti-US elements. Let them come to him, then take them out.”

  Dan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean we shouldn’t take him down?”

  Provanzano gestured like Brando’s Don Corleone. “Don’t get excited! I’m just thinking out loud. We don’t have to be as straight-line as the military. Sometimes the most direct path is not the one that gets you where you want to go. So we ask, is OBL actually the enemy’s center of gravity here? Or is it the tribal militia leaders who ally with him? Of course we take him down eventually. But at the right time. Should we wait until we have more forces in-country? Cheese all the rats into one box, then pour concrete over ’em? The way we see it, this war’s just getting started.”

  Osama bin Laden had been a CIA creation anyway, Dan remembered. He cleared his throat. “I’m not getting a good feeling, Tony. Is the Working Group going to take our localization up the chain? Because if you’re not, I am.”

  A chuckle from the dark. “Just what I expected. Which is why you’re getting passed over, right? Never going to pin on those captain’s eagles.”

  He sat motionless in the dark, feeling cold.

  The agent’s voice went on, confiding, reassuring. A hand pressed Dan’s knee. He looked down at it in the dark, oppressed by a nameless fear. “Don’t worry. We don’t work that way. What’d I just tell them in there? What’re they doing, right now?”

  “More research.”

  “Why?”

  “To confirm the intelligence. Before we act?”

  “Now you’ve got it. And if we get one more indicator, yeah, I’ll take it up the chain. All the way. And we’ll bust the Beard’s bubble, for good.”

  Dan hoisted himself from the bunk. Hesitated, looking at the man smiling at him. Then lifted the flap and went out into the foreglow of dawn.

  17

  Leaders’ Recon

  TEDDY clung to the handholds as the six-wheeled Land Rove
r jolted and banged, raising a roil of powdery tan dust that pointed to them clear as an arrow for miles. The wind was icy cold, the clear sky darker than it ought to be. Far to the north contrails etched opal into that deep cobalt like scratches on a sapphire.

  They were out on a leaders’ recon, a hasty reconnaissance to get eyes on a village thirty miles to the east of Jaguar where the Alliance said there were a lot of Taliban, or anyway sympathizers. He suspected it was as much to let the locals get a look at them as to do a formal recon. The Aussies didn’t drive on the roads, such as they were. Potholes and ruts, laid over some old-ass camel track; the going was only a little rougher completely off them. And you could hit a mine anywhere in Afghanistan; the Soviets had laid hundreds of thousands. He pulled his fleecy vest closer, grateful for the warmth. He’d ordered a dozen, on the Team credit card, and gotten them rushed in by the daily C-130 from Masirah.

  He and Knobby Swager and Tatie were out with the SASRs. The bushies, as the marines called them. The Special Air Service Regiment had arrived a couple of days after the 15 MEU. They wore floppy bush hats, heavy beards, and strange, two-color camo patterns that Teddy thought made them look like toads. They were the most profane troops he’d ever served with, although at times it was difficult to tell exactly what they were saying. Still they seemed to be highly tactical, and almost every one he’d talked to claimed to be sniper-qualified. Two had even been in Desert Storm, though he and they had fought in different quarters of Iraq.

  Echo was still out of Jaguar, still part of Task Force Cutlass. The weather was much colder than they’d expected. There’d been flurries of snow, though it didn’t stick, evaporating in hours rather than melting. But although days had gone by, they hadn’t seen action since Kandahar. The Special Forces were getting missions up north, but the SEALs were still just acclimating, training, at most doing these piddly patrols. The biggest thing that’d happened all week was when somebody had dropped an MRE heating tab into a plastic water bottle and popped it down the gas vent of the Porta Potti while Teddy was taking a crap. The explosion blew purple disinfectant all over him. The SEALs thought “smurfing” the chief a great prank. Every man denied knowing anything, but Teddy had his suspicions. The guilty party would pay.