by David Bruns
Haskins adjusted his spectacles on the table so they were square with the edge of the briefing book and laced his finger together. He squinted at Don. “Son, is this your first briefing?”
“Yes, sir.”
The room grew tense, and everyone leaned forward. Brendan closed his eyes.
“Just get in country?”
“Yes, sir, I arrived this morning.”
“Where’s the regular briefer?”
Don gulped. “Sick, sir.”
“So your boss has the shits, the microphone dies on you, and you get me as your first briefing?”
“Yes, sir.”
Brendan cracked open an eyelid.
General Haskins offered Don a grim smile. “You must have really pissed off someone in a former life, Riley. Here’s what I want you to do. Our motto here is Find, Fix, and Finish. I want you to find me some bad guys, fix eyes on them, and I’ll go finish them. Now fast-forward through the history lesson and give me some actionable intelligence—something I can raid, someone I can kill, some fucking building I can blow up that gets me incrementally closer to ending this fucking war. Can you do that for me, son?”
Don nodded. He fast-forwarded through a dozen slides or so, stopping on the grainy image from a Predator drone camera. It showed three buildings arranged inside a high-walled compound. He stepped back and lit the first building with his laser pointer. Don drew in a deep breath and spoke in a loud voice.
“This is a known terrorist cell near the town of Kalar, a few kilometers from the Sirwan River and just over the border from Iran.” The next slide showed a map with Kalar highlighted and the Iran–Iraq border painted in red. “The cell consists of approximately ten members and has been under regular surveillance for the past month. Normally, they are quiet, more bark than bite, but two weeks ago that started to change.”
He shifted to a thermal imagery shot. The number of bodies in the buildings had more than doubled. The next series of slides showed truck deliveries and men off-loading boxes and weapons. Don hit his stride as he rattled off details about the site.
“We have solid HUMINT that this cell is receiving Iranian arms shipments and technical support. We believe this is the right time to raid this site and capture as many as possible for interrogation.”
“Now we’re talking, Riley,” Haskins said, nodding. “Captain, what’s your take?”
Captain Andrews leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips at the screen. As Naval Special Warfare Task Group Commander, his SEALs would lead the raid to take down the insurgents. “I need minimum three hours to prep the raid, sir. Eight would be better.”
“You’ve got four hours.” Haskins twisted in his seat. “Colonel James,” he said to the senior Army intelligence officer. “I want eyes on this site full time. Make sure we know everything they know. Report any change in patterns to Captain Andrews’s team immediately.” He raised his voice. “Where’s my RAF rep?”
The man next to Brendan piped up with a sharp, “Here, sir.”
Haskin’s eyes swept past Brendan, landing on the Royal Air Force major next to him. “Your team has close air support on this operation?”
“Affirmative, sir.”
The general nodded and looked around the room. “Alright, people, our CIA friends have given us what we need, so let’s lock it down and sweep these bastards up. I want to see full mission briefs by 1800.” The general stood, signifying the end of the meeting.
The mass of men began to move toward Brendan’s position near the exit. He angled for the wall and fought against the tide of uniformed bodies toward Don.
When he arrived at the front of the room, Haskins was still talking with Don. Don saw Brendan emerge from the crowd and a look of shock crossed his face. The general must have noted it, because he turned toward Brendan.
Brendan felt his face grow hot. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Mr. Riley and I know each other . . .”
Haskins’s eyes drifted down to Brendan’s name badge. “Really, McHugh? How do you know a CIA analyst?”
“He was my plebe, sir. At the Academy.”
The general’s eyebrows went up, and his skeptical gaze swept over Don’s out-of-shape physique. “I suppose that’s a story for another time.” He held out his hand to Don. “Good briefing, Riley. Rough start, but you got the hang of it. Welcome to the war, son.”
Don wiped his palm on his pants before accepting the general’s hand. “Thank you, sir,” he said, coloring slightly. Brendan stood aside to let the general pass and they were alone in the empty room.
“You’re the last person I expected to see here, Don,” Brendan began. “How did you—” He stopped when Don looked down at the floor, blinking his eyes.
When he finally spoke, his voice was husky. “It wasn’t my fault, Bren. I swear it. It was at the end of youngster year,” he said, using Academy slang for his sophomore year. “I got sick—really sick. Abdominal stuff, you know, and before I knew it I was medically NPQ’d.” Brendan winced at the term for being found “not physically qualified” to continue in the United States Navy.
“It was the worst thing that could have happened to me, and I—I was so ashamed. All I wanted to do was serve my country, and for six months, I couldn’t be more than five minutes from a toilet. It was awful. I just went home and lived like a hermit. Then, one day, the CIA knocked on my front door. Remember at the end of my plebe year I helped Professor Klaus write that paper on organic cryptology? You know, encoding messages in DNA?”
Brendan had no idea what Don was talking about, but he nodded his head anyway.
“Well, somebody at the CIA read it and they called me up. The fucking CIA, Bren! They offered me a full scholarship to MIT. I got my health together and finished in two years. Now I work as an analyst in the National Counterproliferation Center in DC. Pretty cool, huh?” Don was smiling now. This was the Don he remembered.
Brendan punched him lightly in the arm. “Good for you, Riley. You were a shitty plebe anyway. This new gig suits you.”
“Yeah, I guess I was. If it hadn’t been for you and Liz I never would have made it through plebe year. How’s Liz, by the way? Is she here, too?”
It was Brendan’s turn to look at the floor. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to Liz since the grad party at Marjorie’s.”
When they went their separate ways after graduation, rather than remind himself how much he missed her, it seemed easier to just not talk to Liz. Then the not talking became a habit, and pretty soon Brendan was too embarrassed to call her. At first, Marjorie pestered him to call Liz, but after a while even she stopped.
“Really?” Don’s eyebrows were raised. “After I got kicked out of the Academy, I was too ashamed to keep in touch with anyone, even Marjorie, but I figured you two would always be together.”
Brendan shook his head. “Well, you figured wrong, buddy.” It was strange how talking to Don made him suddenly want to call Liz, like their conversation had triggered some strange need to reconnect with his once best friend. He wondered what she was doing right now.
Brendan’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw it was his task unit commander, Lieutenant Commander Radek. “This is Lieutenant McHugh, sir,” he answered.
“Brendan, I need you back at home base on the double. You’re on the mission tonight.”
CHAPTER 7
Kalar, Iraq
21 July 2007 – 0300 local
The walls of the compound glowed an eerie, pale green through the lens of Brendan’s night vision goggles. His earpiece crackled and Radek’s voice said: “Five minutes to go. McHugh’s team will breach the wall.”
Brendan dialed the volume up a touch. When things got hot, he wanted to make sure he could hear Radek over the background noise.
He squirmed deeper into the dirt. The land around him was rock, sand, and a few scrubby trees—not much cover. Even though the sun had gone down hours ago, the ground beneath him was still warm, and the gentle desert bre
eze did nothing to cool him off.
The only sign of life was a lone dog barking from a cluster of houses a few hundred yards away. The entire area was without power tonight, thanks to US control of the power grid in this part of Iraq. These people rarely had more than a few hours of electricity a day anyway, so no one would think anything amiss. Some of the houses, including the one in front of him, surely had generators, but fuel was too valuable to waste on electricity and lights would only attract unwanted visitors.
Radek’s whisper floated in his ear as his OIC acknowledged their air support: two RAF Tornados were somewhere up in the moonless sky, each with enough ordnance to level the compound in front of them many times over. They also had a Quick Reaction Force of an additional sixteen SEALs on fifteen-minute standby.
Brendan waited for the final call to engage from CJSOTF. Before that, Radek would get a final sitrep from the intel team. In the situation room back in the Green Zone, there would be live feed from the on-station Reaper UAV up on the big screen. The drones were piloted out of air-conditioned secure trailers on Creech Air Force Base, half a world away in Nevada.
“Standby for final head count,” Radek’s voice whispered in Brendan’s ear. Brendan tensed and pictured the compound in his head. “We have a total of nine, I repeat nine, hostiles in two locations. Two are in the main house on the second floor, six in the east building, probably a bunkhouse. IR indicates the lone guard just went to take a leak. Be advised we want live captures, if possible.
“McHugh’s team will breach the wall and take the main house, my team has the bunkhouse. McHugh, you are cleared to place the charges.”
Brendan keyed his microphone. “Roger, team leader.” His hands automatically checked his weapons: M4A1, the Sig Sauer P226 on his hip, the Bowie knife strapped to his calf. He shifted his torso inside his Kevlar vest as he came up on one knee and signaled to his team. The men moved as a unit over the next hundred meters, crouching low, the only sound the whisper of sand under their boots. Three men remained at the recover point to provide covering fire, while the rest continued to the wall. Two men placed charges eight feet apart, working quickly to outline a makeshift doorway. They retreated to their rally point.
“Charges in place, team leader,” Brendan whispered into his mike.
“Blow it.”
“Fire in the hole.” Brendan nodded to his demolition expert and put his face in the dirt to save his night vision. The trigger man punched the remote, radio-frequency trigger.
The muffled explosion, like someone had slammed a door, rang through the night air. His team was on their feet before the echo had even faded, racing through a rain of concrete and cinder block chunks.
The first few seconds were the most critical of any raid—those few moments when the targets were roused from sleep by the noise, stunned, unsure whether the sound was real or part of a dream. Before any lights were turned on or weapons found in the dark. Those first few seconds made all the difference between a high body count and a successful raid.
Brendan’s team burst through the cloud of dust that filled the gap in the compound wall and made a sharp left toward the two-story house. The first two men in the team hit the wall on either side of the door, while the third man shot through the lock and kicked the door open. The first two tossed in flash-bangs, and the glass on the windows next to them blew out as the concussion grenades went off. Weapons raised, they entered the room and fanned out.
“Clear!”
Brendan rushed in with two more men behind him. The sharp smell of the expended grenade lodged in his nostrils. He dimly heard more flash-bangs being detonated from the direction of the bunkhouse, followed by sharp bursts of automatic weapons fire.
The first team took the back room on the ground floor, while Brendan’s team took the stairs to the second floor. The muscle memory of “kill house” tactics took over. As the first man, Brendan stood by the door as the rest of his team stacked in tight single file behind him. He kicked open the flimsy door. The flash-bang was in his hand and through the door before he even formed the thought in his head. He closed his eyes.
Bang.
Eyes open, weapon up, through the door. Scan.
Two targets registered in his senses. The first held a handgun.
Brendan released two shots to the man’s chest and a third to the head.
Shift.
The second man raised his arms.
Calls of “Clear!” sounded from his left and right as the rest of the team swept the room.
“Take him down,” Brendan shouted back. The other two SEALs rushed at the target while Brendan kept his rifle trained on him. They forced the man to his knees, and Brendan heard the sound of zip ties being tightened. The pair heaved their prisoner to his feet and patted him down. One let out a low whistle as they pulled out a long knife from a sheath in the small of the man’s back. In the ghostly green of the night-vision goggles, the handle glowed a brilliant white. The SEAL handed Brendan the knife, a Zippo lighter, and a half-used pack of Marlboros from the man’s breast pocket before marching him to the door. The captive’s jaw quivered as the SEALs forced him to step over his comrade’s corpse.
The assault team met in the dirt yard formed between the three buildings and the wall. One of the SEALs had found a generator and energized the lights. The team who had raided the bunkhouse frog-walked their prisoners into a line and forced them to their knees. In the harsh illumination of the floodlights, the prisoners looked confused and a little frightened, their hair matted with sleep and their dirty beards bent into all sorts of odd shapes.
Brendan saw that most of them were his age, maybe even younger. All except the man he had taken down in the upstairs bedroom. He was old enough to be Brendan’s father. Their commander? Brendan studied him in the white glare of the spotlights.
Whereas most of the captives stared at the ground or exchanged furtive glances with one another, this man returned Brendan’s gaze without fear. His dark eyes, icy with confidence, were set in a thin, handsome face. Despite having been roused from bed, he looked fresh and alert, and his short-cropped hair, shot with gray at the temples, was neatly trimmed around his ears. A few days’ worth of stubble coated his chin. Unlike the others, he was dressed in tan trousers and shirt, and his breast pocket was still undone from when the SEAL had removed his pack of cigarettes.
There was something else, the way the man wore his clothes . . . like a uniform. This guy was military, Brendan was sure of it.
Brendan weighed the knife in his hand. Then he stepped forward and slid the cigarettes back into the man’s shirt pocket.
“Thank you,” the man said, in perfect English.
Brendan’s thoughts were interrupted by Radek. “McHugh, what’s your status?”
Brendan turned away from the prisoner. “Two hostiles in the upstairs bedroom. I took one out, this one surrendered. He was carrying this.” He hefted the blade in his hand. The slight curve of the handle seemed to mold to his palm.
Radek let out a low whistle. “Wow, dibs on that, McHugh. That is a beautiful we—”
“I don’t think so, Commander,” the prisoner said.
Radek’s eyebrows went up, and Brendan said, smiling, “Oh, and he speaks English really good, too.”
“Well,” the man replied.
“What?” Radek asked.
“He speaks English really well, not really good. ‘Well’ is an adverb that modifies the verb ‘speak,’ while ‘good’ is an adjective which can only be used to modify a noun.” The man gave them a smug smile. “May I have a cigarette, please, Commander?”
“I don’t fucking believe this,” Radek said. “I’m getting fucking grammar lessons on my own fucking language from an Iraqi in the middle of the fucking Iraq desert.”
The sound of the UH-60 Black Hawk helo landing outside the compound made conversation difficult for the next few minutes. A wave of dust rolled through the breach in the wall, followed by the Sensitive Site Exploitation Team, whose job
it was to strip the compound of anything that might be useful: cell phones, laptops, maps, papers, anything that wasn’t nailed down.
Radek held up three fingers to the team lead to indicate he needed three body bags. The man nodded and spoke into a handheld radio. Radek raised his voice: “Alright, let’s get bags over their heads and get them loaded on the Black Hawk. I—”
“I won’t be going anywhere, Commander.” The older prisoner’s icy voice cut through the background noise and made Radek pause. Brendan saw his OIC ball up a fist, and for a moment, Brendan thought Radek might punch their captive. He took another step closer to the kneeling man.
“Bag this guy, McHugh. And if he says another word, gag him.”
“That would not be a wise move, Commander.” The man smiled at Brendan. “Lieutenant, could you please retrieve my passport from my bedside table upstairs? I think we can clear this up quickly and I can be on my way.”
Radek’s eyes narrowed, then he gave Brendan a tight nod. “Take one of the EOD guys with you, Bren. I don’t want any surprises.”
Radek needn’t have bothered; the drawer was half-open already, the Iranian diplomatic passport in full view. Brendan realized the man must have been reaching for it when the raid started. The dark maroon cover was worn, and the gold letters faded, but Brendan could make out the title: Islamic Republic of IRAN. On the inside of the back cover was the inscription, “the holder of the passport is not entitled to travel to occupied Palestine,” which Brendan knew meant Israel. He flipped to the inside cover. The man’s unsmiling picture was there, along with his diplomatic clearance. Alizera Mogadaham was his name.
He beckoned to one of the techs who was taking pictures of the room. He placed the passport on the nightstand, open to the picture page, and laid the knife next to it. “Get some pictures of these things,” he said, “and see if you can get a couple of shots of the older guy in the courtyard—without being too obvious about it.” Normally, they didn’t photograph their captives until processing in the Green Zone, but he wanted to make sure they got something.
