by John Weisman
“Super.” Hallett sipped from his mug. “What’s in it?”
“Fireflies.”
Hallett hadn’t heard the term before. “And they are?”
“We used to call them Phoenix Beacons.”
“Gotcha. We had ’em in Central America.” Between 1984 and 1987 Hallett had been deputy station chief in San Salvador and a trusted advisor to the government when it fought for survival against Soviet- and Cuban-supported communist FMLN guerrillas. Phoenix Beacons were miniature infrared flashers powered by 9-volt batteries. They were easily concealable and could be seen from hundreds of yards away. He’d supplied the Salvadorans with beacons over the protest of the State Department, some factions of which, Hallett believed then and now, had wanted the communists to win. The Salvadorans were basically blind after dark. The beacons helped guide their helicopters at night. The only problem back then had been short battery life. He mentioned the flaw to the SEAL.
“You probably had the nine-volt version,” Bailey said. “Today, they’re LEDs, powered by 2032 batteries—the ones about the size of a quarter—and they can blink away for a couple of weeks, maybe longer. Besides, today we remote-control them.”
Hallett heard the SEAL pour himself a fresh cup of coffee from the ever-present thermos on his desk. “We’re sending twenty, more than enough for your guy to lay out our approach.”
“Super.”
“He’ll do box-and-ones.” That was the five-flasher pattern favored by the Night Stalkers for a hot approach.
“Gotcha,” Hallett paused. “So you want Charlie to position the fireflies adjacent to the compound.”
“Affirmative. We’ll give him positioning data.”
“Clandestinely.”
“That’s the usual procedure.”
“You do know,” Hallett said, “Charlie’s a double amputee, right?”
There was silence on the other end.
“Larry?”
“Ah, Dick, I, uh—”
“Gotcha.” Hallett did some mental scrambling. “Tell you what,” he said. “Lemme run it by Charlie.”
There was a pause.
“Listen, Larry, Charlie’s a Ranger. He’s tough as nails, and so far as he’s concerned, we’re the ones with disabilities, not him. So let me check. If he feels comfortable, then it’s a go. Because we’re not talking about whether he can or can’t physically, it’s whether he can get in and get out clandestinely. If he tells me he can, then he can. If not, we’ll get one of the people at Valhalla to lay ’em down for you.”
“What kind of operational experience do they have?”
“They’re case officers.”
“Dick, I’m talking the sort of stuff we do.”
“Neither has a military background.”
There was another pause on the line. “Then I’d really like Charlie to get this done for us,” Bailey said emphatically. “Rangers know all about box-and-ones and where they should go, and how to compensate if things don’t work out perfectly.”
“I agree, Larry. I’ll get back to you.” Hallett rang off, put a question mark next to the line in his notebook, and eyeballed the next item on his list. Which caused him to stand up and look around the bullpen of an office.
He’d set the place up so there was no overt hierarchy or caste structure implicit in its design. He sat in the middle, in the same sort of cubicle everyone else worked in. Well, maybe a little larger. He had a couch in his workspace, and a coffee table, and two armchairs. BLG also had its own conference room, an AV room for teleconferencing, and a SCIF. Hallett, who’d done a tour in Buenos Aires and come back as an espresso addict, had also made sure the unit had a grade-A coffee machine, an industrial-strength, computer-driven gizmo that made a wide array of coffees, espressos, mochas, teas, even hot chocolate.
Hallett saw who he was looking for, grabbed his mug, which was emblazoned with the eagle, globe, and anchor of the Marine Corps, and zigzagged to the outer edge of the bullpen. The analyst known as Spike was setting up for the day. He was already in shirtsleeves, sans tie, his sport coat hanging precariously from the top of the cubicle wall.
He looked up as Hallett approached and dropped the cruller he was eating onto a paper napkin. “Morning, Chief.”
Hallett swallowed coffee and peered over the cubicle wall at the chaos on Spike’s desk and work table. “If clutter indicates success, then you gotta have a lot of good news for me, Spike.”
“Then I’m glad I finally cleaned my desk up,” the analyst deadpanned. He finished the cruller, wiped his fingers, locked them behind his head, and stretched. “Nothing’s changed, Dick.” He held up a transcript. “This is Arshad and Tareq in the car, thirty-one March. They talk about ‘the Diamond,’ al mas, which is one of the codes for Bin Laden. But the conversation in and of itself is no absolute confirmation that UBL is living with them.”
“Could you read it, please?”
“Sure.
TAREQ: Did you lock the gate, brother?
ARSHAD: Of course. It is important to protect our jewels, our diamonds.
TAREQ: Indeed, brother. That is why we keep our valuables behind locked gates.
The transcript says Arshad laughs at this point.” Spike shrugged. “The earlier part of the conversation they didn’t get. And subsequently, until they got out of earshot, it was all about family—kids, wives, the normal stuff.”
He looked at the disappointed expression on Hallett’s face. “Boss, there’s no smoking gun. Never has been. Frankly, I don’t think there ever will be.”
“Why, Spike?”
“Because he’s smart. Because he’s disciplined. He knows how to keep himself below our radar. And so are the Khans, or whatever their real names are. But I’m as certain that he’s there in that building, on that compound, as I’ve ever been about anything. The food, the couriers, the way the house was built, the overhead we’ve seen, the full-court press ISI staged in Abbottabad—and, more significantly, nowhere else—in the wake of the NATO leak. Each piece itself doesn’t mean much. But take them all together?”
The analyst threw his hands into the air. “Dick, the guy is there. But if we don’t go in and find out for ourselves, it may be another ten years before we get this close again.”
Hallett mirrored Spike’s gesture of futility. “I agree. But as the director has made very clear, it’s POTUS’s call.”
“And more’s the pity,” the analyst sighed. “Y’know, we had him in our sights as far back as Khartoum in the nineties. The Saudis tried to kill him back then—and screwed it up. Billy Waugh, the retired Special Forces guy who was in Khartoum working surveillance on Carlos the Jackal, was there when that happened. He surveilled UBL in K-Town in, what, ninety-two? ninety-three? Could have killed him back then. Billy even suggested it and drew up an op-plan. But he was turned down. In the light of the Church hearings in the seventies, when Congress almost destroyed the Agency, the Ford administration buckled. Ford signed Executive Order 12333 and lethal findings became a no-no. Billy once said that for the price of a ten-cent bullet we could have saved ourselves the pain of 9/11 and a bunch of other stuff. And he was right. But the Seventh Floor said no—claimed they’d never get it past the White House and it wasn’t worth going to the mat over.
“Or the time we found Imad Mugniyah aboard the Ibn Tufail.” The analyst saw the question mark in his boss’s eyes. “It was a Kuwaiti-flagged ship, in the Gulf. This was ninety-six, around the time of the Atlanta Olympics. I remember that op because I was at the CTC back then, working Mugniyah. The op was called Golden Ox Returns. We had SEALs and Force Recon Marines ready to go, and an amphibious task force straining at the leash. I mean, this was the guy who’d bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in eighty-three. Who killed two hundred forty-one Marines and Sailors when he bombed the Marine barracks at Beirut Airport at the behest of the Iranians. Who killed the Navy diver Bobby Stethem aboard TWA Flight eight-four-seven. Dumped his body on the tarmac in Beirut. But Clinton’s furshtunken NSC and the go
ddamn DCI—I think it was John Deutch—got in the way. Wouldn’t permit it. ‘Abort abort abort’ was the message from the White House. Not enough evidence, their people told us.
“Not enough? We had a fricking ninety percent probability. They said ninety wasn’t good enough.” The analyst shook his head. “Ninety percent? Nothing in this whole place”—he gestured around the room—“is ninety percent. Ninety percent? Jeezus H. If I get sixty-five, seventy percent probability I’m in heaven. They even had his fingerprints on file. Back in ninety-six, this guy was the most wanted terrorist on the face of the earth. But the White House said it was a risky op. It could have made the Kuwaitis mad. Or the Saudis. Bullshit. The bottom line was the White House had no balls. No one had any balls.”
“I can’t argue with any of that, Spike.”
“Same thing happened in ninety-eight. JSOC set up an op—it was called Rhino, as I recall. We had Delta and Rangers training out at Edwards Air Force Base. Bin Laden was in Kandahar. We had solid intel. But the Clinton National Security Council people said no. Too risky. We were told that if we didn’t have one hundred percent surety, we had to scrub. We had eighty-eighty percent surety. So we scrubbed. And Bin Laden? He walked away again.
“There’s more. In oh-seven, somebody saw Ali Atwa walking the streets of Beirut.” He saw the quizzical look on Hallett’s face. “Ali Atwa was Imad Mugniyah’s accomplice on the TWA hijacking. He’s still on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list. So somebody fingers him, and we know he’s in Beirut. But nobody wants to go get him. CIA? We’re too busy with the Valerie Plame case and defending ourselves because of all those enhanced interrogations to actually perform our core mission. State’s against it because it’ll stir up the Syrians. FBI? They can’t be bothered. Ancient history, they say.”
He looked at Hallett. “That’s why we, or, okay, we and JSOC, we gotta go to Abbottabad. Break into the goddamn compound. See for ourselves. And if it is him, put a bullet in his head then and there.” Spike slammed the desk in frustration. “Every time we have these guys in our sights, every fricking time, POTUS says no. Or the Seventh Floor says no. Or State says no. You can’t get anywhere. And where did all those nos lead us? Khobar Towers. The embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Cole. The World Trade Towers. Bali. Madrid. London.”
He looked up at Hallett. “Jeezus H, Dick, what’s next? Does he have to kill another three thousand Americans before we get serious about putting him in the ground?”
Hallett had heard it all before. And the man was right. Spot-on.
But Spike was an absolutist when it came to UBL. It was all black-and-white to him. But here and now, there were politics involved. There always are. And Richard Hallett understood a few truths about politics. One of the most important was that politics weren’t black-and-white absolutes but various shades of gray. Another was that, once every decade or so, it was actually possible to shame, or coerce, or even blackmail a politician into doing the right thing.
Blackmail? Well, yes. For a while Hallett had been one of CIA’s legislative affairs liaison officers, lobbying Congress, and he had seen how the Pentagon dealt with the politicians. Some senators or representatives would go on a Pentagon CODEL, or congressional delegation, to someplace overseas. And being senators or congressmen, they’d get into trouble. Sometimes it was women, or booze. Sometimes they’d put themselves in compromising positions with the locals, or hit on some State Department officer who’d scream harassment or attempted rape. Or tap their toes in the wrong men’s room. And the Pentagon liaison officer traveling with them would open his briefcase filled with cash, pull the right strings, and everything would be covered up.
Until there was a budget hearing the Pentagon deemed critical. At that point, that selfsame liaison officer would show up at the hearing and make a point of saying hello to every one of the people whose asses he’d saved. And tell them how much he was counting on their support.
The lesson hadn’t been lost on Hallett. Which was one of the reasons he was an optimist now. A pol was a pol. There were ways they could be . . . convinced. Not the president, but perhaps some of those around him.
But he didn’t say any of that to Spike.
“Spike,” Hallett said, “I’m persuaded this time will be different. There’s only one person you have to convince. Not the Seventh Floor. Not State. Not Defense. Just POTUS.”
“And that, chief, is why there’s a problem. POTUS is so fricking political he won’t do anything that might hurt his chances of reelection.”
“You don’t think he’s capable of nonpolitical actions?”
“I haven’t seen any so far.”
“You think it’s pretty much Mission Impossible?”
“Probably.”
That gave Hallett the opening he’d been waiting for. “Then your mission, Spike—and by the way, you don’t get a choice—is to change POTUS’s behavior pattern and convince him to do the right thing.”
“Very funny, Dick.”
“No, I’m serious. You’re going to the April nineteen meeting with the director. You and he representing all forty-three-plus thousand of us. Sit Room. Bells and whistles.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Call it Vince’s specific request.” Hallett brandished the notebook. “He wants you to close the deal.”
“Close the deal. Me.”
“Affirmative. You know UBL better than anyone. Who better?”
“So I get to make another Haj to the White House. Make the case for action with all those pols sitting in the room. Y’know what that makes it? Eid al-Adha.” The younger man bit his lower lip. “And I’m the sheep whose throat gets slit.
“That meeting on the fourteenth?” he said. “Dick, I took the course on nonverbal behavioral indicators. I read body language. Y’know what all that massaging of chin and tapping of pen told me? It told me the president is looking for ways not to act. And how SECDEF’s arms were crossed, uncrossed, crossed again? Means SECDEF is real iffy. And the frigging politicos? No friggin’ eye contact and pushing their wheeled chairs back from the table every time somebody mentioned a strike. That meant they’re all looking for excuses, and scapegoats to blame when something goes wrong.”
He looked up bitterly at Hallett, whose arms were resting on the cubicle wall. “We’re being set up, Dick. We are so screwed.”
Hallett had heard enough. “Get off it, Spike. First, we’re not being set up—at least not yet. The director’s got our political back. And we’re not screwed, either. Not if we do what we’re capable of doing—which we are. Second, you’re the best man for the job. I know it, the director knows it—and frankly, you know it, too. You did great last time. Yeah, the president is shaky. Wishy-washy. Blows with the wind. We all know that. But we also believe he can be convinced—you can call it shamed or whatever else you want to call it, but ‘convinced’ is the most positive—to do the right thing. Whatever the term, you’re the one the director believes can get POTUS to give us the go. Why? Because you’re passionate, because you know your stuff, and because you’re the best informed. Trust me—you’ll close the fricking deal.”
He peered into the younger man’s eyes, searching for confirmation. There was none there.
How to make him commit? Sure, Hallett could order Spike to go—and the analyst would have to obey. But Hallett understood he needed a passionate, committed emissary, not a by-the-numbers bureaucrat in the Situation Room. “Spike, you’re a Marine, right?”
“For a while,” the analyst nodded. He patted his ample belly. “Course I was just a bit thinner when I did my four in the Corps.”
“So was I,” Hallett said. “And I did seven.” He looked at the analyst. “So what do we Marines do, Spike? We take it to the enemy. When ambushed, we counterambush. We do not retreat.”
“And your point?”
“Is that you need to think of April nineteenth as a counterambush. Yeah, Sorken and that asshole Dwayne Daley are laying for us. Screw ’em. We don’t retreat. W
e attack, attack, attack.”
“No retreat, eh?” The analyst cocked his head. “Attack, attack, attack.” He cracked his knuckles. “Y’know, that actually makes sense.” He massaged the back of his head, then fixed Hallett with an uncharacteristically steely stare. “But hear me out. Then it’s going to be ‘take no prisoners’ so far as I’m concerned. Screw the NSC. Screw the politicians. The director has to understand that going in.”
“He already does, Spike. That’s why he wants you with him.”
The analyst’s face told Hallett all he needed to know. The BLG chief opened his notebook, pulled a pencil from his pocket, and drew a green line through the appropriate entry. “ ‘No prisoners.’ You hold that thought, Spike, and you’ll enjoy every single minute of your Haj.”
32
Abbottabad, Pakistan
April 12, 2011, 0500 Hours Local Time
Charlie Becker wheeled himself south on Narian Link Road in the darkness, past the girls high school, heading for the graveyard. He’d received a bursted message telling him to clear the cemetery dead drop, so he was on his way. It had to be done early, before the city started waking up. No problem: he’d left Hassan Town at four. The moon was a sliver obscured by clouds and there was a slight chill to the air, a welcome breeze coming off the mountains to the north.
The street was silent. No traffic, no pedestrians. He rolled up to the graveyard and pushed himself through the open gate as a lone truck passed him, spewing diesel fumes as it headed north toward the main highway. He listened to its engine decrescendo into the distance.
Charlie was energized. No—it was far more than that. He was motivated, galvanized, invigorated. They’re coming. They finally made up their fricking minds. They’re going to take the sonofabitch down.
A message had arrived last week, asking if he could physically drop fireflies—position them—adjacent to the compound. His response was an immediate and unconditional affirmative. And here they were. He’d collect them. Hold them. And set them when ordered.
