by Mack Maloney
Apple and the Iranian general met at the bottom of the cargo ramp. There were no handshakes. They simply stood side by side, ready to count aloud as each detainee stepped off the small bus. Per the agreement, each prisoner was still shackled by hands and feet, had a black mask pulled down over his head, and was barefoot. Each was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit adorned with his ID—K-1, K-2 and so on—painted in large black letters on the back.
Together, Apple and the Iranian general counted off seven men stepping from the van. Two Marines escorted each detainee to the bottom of the ramp where the general would check off a number corresponding to the back of his prisoner uniform. Then the detainee would be allowed to climb up into the plane and be seated. At U.S. insistence, the shackles and hoods would not be removed until the plane was airborne.
The loading process took longer than expected because the detainees came off the van out of order. They were rearranged in their seating by the plane’s pilot, and only then did Apple and the Iranian general agree that the exchange was complete.
Again, there were no handshakes. The Iranian general simply climbed up the ramp and closed it himself with a push of a button. Not thirty seconds later, the plane’s engines revved up once more, and it started pulling away. Apple gave the Marines a pre-arranged signal; they began to slowly withdraw from the runway. The cargo plane pilots added power, their props screeching in the tempest. There was no conversation with the base’s air traffic control tower. The plane immediately went into its take-off roll.
It needed the entire length of the 6,000-foot runway. But somehow, some way, the plane finally went wheels up, and in an explosion of spray and power, slowly climbed into the very stormy night.
Apple returned to his living quarters just outside Camp X-Ray, went directly to his kitchen cabinet, and broke out a bottle of cheap Cuban scotch. He poured some over a few melting ice cubes, and with the thunder still crashing outside, drained the contents of his glass in one noisy gulp.
He was three weeks away from retirement. Full pension. House on the Chesapeake. The works. That this pain-in-the-ass deal was finally over made him very happy. All he had to do was phone in a report to his boss in Washington, then he would go to sleep for at least a week. After that, he could start thinking about packing his government bags for good.
He poured himself another healthy drink, then padded into the living room of his glorified hut. He picked up the secure scramble phone, but before he could punch in the first number, he heard a commotion outside. He could see through his picture window that a Humvee had screeched to a halt on his sandy front lawn. Six Marine guards fell out of it; two immediately ran up to his front door. They did not knock, didn’t bother to ring his doorbell. They simply burst in, soaking wet, M-16s pointing everywhere. They looked scary.
“What’s happened?” Apple demanded of them.
The Marines just grabbed him by the shoulders and carried him out of his hut.
“You’ve got to come with us!” one of them yelled at him.
The ride up to the detainee compound was the most hair-raising episode of Apple’s life. The Humvee driver was a kid no more than eighteen years old, and the other Marines were screaming at him the entire way to go faster…faster!…faster! The kid followed orders, and drove the winding, muddy, very slippery road like a madman, nearly sending the Humvee hurtling over the cliff several times.
Somehow they made it to the main compound gate. This barrier was open—never a good sign. The Humvee roared right through, drove the length of the barbed-wire encirclement, and down another series of hills to an isolated plywood barracks. This was where the seven guys named Khameni had been kept throughout their incarceration.
There was another gaggle of Marines here, excited, soaked, and scary-looking, too. Conversation had been hopeless in the swift ride down here, the wind and torrential rain did not help it now. The Marines yanked Apple out of the Hummer and into the isolated prisoner barracks.
The interior was dark, only the beams from the Marines’ flashlights broke through the fog that had seeped in here. The State Department rep, not used to all this excitement, nearly slipped three steps in. The floor was coated with something very sticky. Another young Marine beside him directed his flashlight at the floor.
“Be careful, sir,” the Marine told Apple.
That’s when Apple realized they were both standing in a pool of blood.
More flashlights appeared, and now they lit up the entire room. On the floor in front of him, Apple saw seven bodies lined up in a row. Each one had had his throat cut.
Apple’s first thought was that these people were Marine guards—but actually the opposite was true. They were detainees, more specifically, the seven Iranian prisoners named Khameni. It took several long moments for this to sink into Apple’s brain. Then, through the blood and rain and wind and chaos around him, it hit like a lightning bolt. He grabbed the young Marine next to him.
“Are these really K-One through Seven?” he asked in astonishment.
The Marine nodded blankly. “We’ve already ID’d them through photographs,” he said. “Those are them, sir.”
Apple nearly slumped to the floor. He felt like he was suddenly living inside a ghastly dream. What his eyes were telling him simply seemed inconceivable. How? Why?
Then another thought struck. This one even more troubling than the seven murdered prisoners.
“But if these are the Iranians,” he mumbled. “Who the hell got on that plane?”
Mary Li Cho drove to the securest location she could find in a hurry, the top floor of a parking garage three blocks from the MCI Arena. She was the only car parked up here, and the other six levels below were just about empty. She was sure no one would intrude on her. The garage was so high, she could see almost all of Washington from here. The White House. The Lincoln Memorial. The Pentagon. The Potomac. All of them sparkling in the warm evening air.
She speed-dialed Nash’s number more than fifty times in the next ten minutes, and each time his phone was busy. She was quickly growing annoyed. What kind of game was he playing here? Why all the mystery and intrigue? She got enough of that at her top-secret job.
It was now 8:45. She tried Nash five more times. Still busy. Seat back, she opened her moon roof and looked up at the stars. But instead, she saw the silhouettes of two fighter jets pass silently overhead. They were F-15s…That was strange. Fighter overflights had not been seen here in D.C. since the days immediately after 9/11. Yet these two were clearly circling the capital. Why?
She tried Nash again. Finally, she heard ringing. He picked up right away.
“It’s me,” she said sourly. “Your date.”
“I’m sorry,” he began in a hushed voice. “I’m still at work. And work just got nuts. Are you alone?”
“You’re not here,” she shot back. “So I must be, right?”
A short pause.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he said. “It’s just…”
But she’d heard enough already. He had to work late. OK. No big deal. Certainly no need for a song and dance.
“Just call me then,” she told him coolly. “When you’re certain you can get away.”
She started to hang up, but then heard him say, “Wait…”
“Yes?”
“I have something else I have to tell you,” he said. “And it’s disturbing news, I’m afraid. Some things that we just got in here, at work, I think you should know about.”
Li felt a chill go through her. This was unexpected.
She asked, “What kind of ‘things’?”
“Absolutely top-secret things,” he replied, his voice low. “NSC things. Are you sure you’re in a safe place?”
“I am,” she insisted. “And frankly, you’re scaring me.”
“Well, get used to it,” he said. “Because there’s some scary shit going on.” Another pause. Then he said, “What do you know about Hormuz and Singapore?”
Nash was referring to a pair of highly
classified, highly mysterious incidents that had happened in the past few months.
What occurred at the Strait of Hormuz was nothing less than Al Qaeda trying to pull off an attack to rival 9/11 or anything since. They hijacked ten airliners and two military planes and attempted to crash them into the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln as it was moving through the narrow Persian Gulf waterway. The attack failed because a last-minute piece of intelligence delivered to the Navy allowed them to know exactly where the hijacked airliners were coming from, what their flight paths were, and their estimated time of arrival over the carrier. The advance warning came from a deeply secret special-ops team that had been skulking around the Persian Gulf for months—or at least, that was the rumor.
Then, just six weeks ago, Al Qaeda–led terrorists managed to take over the top floor of Singapore’s Tonka Tower, the tallest building in the world, trapping several hundred American women and children inside. The terrorists wired the building’s glass-enclosed summit with nearly sixty pounds of plastic explosive, intent on toppling the building and killing another two thousand people caught in the floors below.
Just as the terrorists were about to detonate their explosives, one of the dozen TV news helicopters circling the building suddenly landed on its top-floor balcony. Someone inside the chopper shot four of the terrorists dead. Other men from the copter and more leaping in from the roof killed the three others and defused the bombs with seconds to spare. As soon as the crisis was over, the rescuers, who were dressed in U.S. military special-ops uniforms, briefly displayed an American flag, then got back in their TV news helicopter and promptly disappeared.
The Pentagon spin on the matter was both deceitful and marvelous: The rescuers were part of an elite special-ops group, so secret neither their names nor anything about them could be revealed. Truth was, no one with any power inside the Pentagon, the White House, or anywhere else in the U.S. government had the faintest idea who these mysterious soldiers were—only that they were probably the same group who had saved the day at Hormuz.
The problem was, they were not under anyone’s control. They were a rogue team operating on their own, without oversight from higher authority. This type of thing sent shivers down the spines of the top brass.
The whole Hormuz-Singapore thing hit particularly close to home for Li. She’d always suspected her missing bosses, Major Fox and Lieutenant Ozzi, had gone off to look for the mysterious unit.
So when Nash asked about Hormuz and Singapore, Li replied, “I know what happened at both places, more or less…”
“Okay—well, now there’s a third side to the triangle,” Nash said. “Something that ties in Hormuz and Singapore and here it is: There’s been a jail break at the detainee compound at Guantanamo. It occurred while a prisoner exchange was taking place with, of all people, the Iranians. We were releasing seven of their citizens, Taliban types we’d caught in Afghanistan, while they were giving us seven Al Qaeda capos they’d grabbed up recently. The Iranians flew an unmarked cargo plane into Gitmo to pick up their people, and these seven characters were put aboard, still in hoods and shackles. The plane took off, but about ten minutes later, someone discovered the seven Iranians who were supposed to be on the plane were actually back in their detainee hut—with their throats cut. They were all lying on the floor, lined up in a row.”
Li almost burst out laughing. “This is a joke,” she told him. “And a really weird way to get out of our date—”
“It’s no joke,” Nash replied harshly. “And I could get shot for telling you all this. So just listen. This is where Hormuz and Singapore come in. Besides the Al Qaeda and Taliban types at Gitmo, there’s also a number of so-called ‘special prisoners’ being held down there—and that’s also highly classified, by the way. These ‘special prisoners’ are all Americans. There’s a bunch of them. They’ve been deemed threats to our national security and have been locked up down there, without trial, without access to attorneys, some of them for months.”
Li couldn’t believe this. “Are you saying these are American citizens who were helping the terrorists?”
“No,” Nash replied. “What I’m saying is that these ‘special prisoners’ and the guys who showed up at Hormuz and Singapore are one and the same.”
Li was astonished, almost speechless. “These heroes everyone has been looking for are in jail? Who the hell is responsible for that?”
“That’s a question for another time,” Nash said hurriedly. “The important thing is that the way it looks now, seven of these ‘special prisoners’ somehow managed to take the places of the seven Iranian POWs who got their throats slit. How? No one has a clue. But even that doesn’t matter anymore—in fact, it’s a very moot point.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Nash said deliberately. “Shortly after take-off, this plane blew up in mid-air. One second it was on the radar, the next it was gone. It went right into the sea, taking everyone with it.”
She gasped. “My God…What happened?”
“The Iranians themselves most likely planted a bomb onboard,” he told her. “You know, set to go off as soon as the plane left Gitmo? The brain trust here think the Iranian bigwigs never intended for the plane to get back home. Their POWs were all related to high government officials in Tehran, and the mullahs probably didn’t want a bunch of Taliban heroes with connections inside the government to be running around loose. Iran’s a pretty volatile situation these days.
“Now, you’ll probably never hear word one about this ever again. We got our Al Qaeda guys as promised at a checkpoint in Iraq, and the Iranians got rid of seven troublesome relatives, one way or another. A good day all around. Everyone should be happy.”
“Except for the ‘special prisoners’ on the plane,” she said. “Who were they really?”
“Well, that’s the bad news,” Nash answered slowly. “That’s why I felt it was important to tell you all this. That you heard it from me first—and not someone else.”
A much longer pause. “They’ve ID’d at least two of the people who were aboard that plane.”
A troubled breath.
“And it was your bosses, Li,” he said. “Those guys, Fox and Ozzi. We just got the official word from Gitmo. Both are confirmed deceased.”
It wasn’t quite House on Haunted Hill, but it was close.
It sat behind a row of empty warehouses at the end of a dead-end street, near the Potomac Reservoir extension road, just over the line in Virginia. The Navy had built this place back in the 1920s as an auxiliary weather station, but the sailors back then were better at sailing ships than constructing houses. This one was ugly from the first nail, and eighty years of rain and heat had only compounded the error. It had a strange, miniature-Kremlin look to it, with a skin of faded-green shingles and two creaky turrets rising from the back. A black brick chimney, leaning 70 degrees, sprouted atop the sagging roof. Add the rickety fence, the dirty brown lawn, and the two dead apple trees out front, and what was once homely was now just plain creepy.
This was what Li called home. She lived here for one reason only: The rent was very, very low. In fact, when she first came to live in D.C., she nearly had to turn around and go back home, so few were safe living spaces for young women just starting out on the government payroll. After weeks of searching and living out of a bag, this place became available. It was convenient and it was affordable. Creepy or not, she took it.
She parked out back now, in the small turnaround. Li had lived here for almost a year, but she’d yet to go into the garage, never mind park in it. It was cold up here as usual. A fog had lifted off the reservoir and was pouring through the old chain-link fence and into her backyard. She made sure her car was as close as it could be to her back door, then grabbed her briefcase, her phone, and her unused overnight bag. It was her habit to always hurry inside.
She climbed the back steps to the porch. From here, over several very bad neighborhoods and the winding Potomac beyond, the lights of the Linc
oln Memorial burned dully in the mist. The normal bustle of the city was lacking, even way up here. Li paused for a moment, trying to make some sense of it. Everything was so quiet. Even the wind was still. But then she heard a muted rumbling from the south. What was that? Not a truck on the highway nearby. Not thunder, in the clear sky.
She looked out from under the porch’s roof.
Two more F-15s flew overhead.
BOOTS ON THE GROUND
A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq
Karl Zinsmeister
Boots on the Ground is a riveting account of the war in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division as it convoys north from Kuwait to Iraq’s Tallil Air Base en route to night-and-day battles within the major city of Samawah and its nearby bridges across the Euphrates. Karl Zinsmeister, a frontline reporter who traveled with the 82nd, brilliantly conveys the careful planning and technical wizardry that go into today’s warfare, even local firefights, and he brings to life the constant air-ground interactions that are the great innovation of modern precision combat. Readers of this vivid day-to-day diary are left with not only a flashing sequence of strong mental images, but also a notion of the sounds and smells and physical sensations that make modern military action unforgettable.
Includes photos taken by the author while with the 82nd in Kuwait and Iraq!
“A fast-moving story of courage and competence, written by an observer who offers a far different picture from what was presented by our mainstream media. A moving tribute to what free soldiers united in a common cause can accomplish.”
