“John, are you sure about this?” I asked. “I’ve already been warned about abusing you guys on these missions.” I had been reminded recently that the FBI’s job in country was debriefing and site exploitation to look for the possibility of attacks on U.S. soil. It wasn’t planning raids on Afghan organizations or conducting combat operations.
Through his beard, John broke into a wide grin. “I don’t know of any abuse going on here.”
I grinned, too. “All right. Dave, what are your thoughts?”
“Hey, shipmate, you’re the OIC of this mission,” Dave said. “It would help *** ****, but we don’t have a clear picture of what’s inside of that building if we go in.”
“How close is the bookstore to the telecommunications building?” I asked, in light of this apparent interagency willingness to take this mission on.
“It is a little book stand, actually, about 80 meters from the rear entrance of the building.”
“Do you know the basic layout of the building and can you diagram it for us?”
Dave thought for a moment and then drew a series of squares and lines on the dirty side window of my truck. “I know where the front is, and I think I know where the back is—here and here.”
“Now,” I asked Dave, “do we know for a fact that the technical room that we need to get access to is in this building?”
“Yeah,” said Dave. “We know from our intel that it’s in there.”
“It looks like a big building … do you really think the device that will unlock Lisa’s phone is in there?”
“Yep,” said Dave.
I called over Lisa, who had walked back and was leaning against Dave’s vehicle as she continued to examine the phone.
“Do you have your laptop with you?” I asked.
“It’s in the truck,” she said, gesturing toward the vehicle.
“If we get you access, do you have the right tools to be able to hook up your laptop and download what you need off the network?”
She looked at me like I was slightly unhinged.
“Yeah, I do,” she said. The tone in her voice was questioning.
“How long would it take you?”
She thought for a minute, still eyeing me like I was crazy. “Ten minutes.”
“You’re sure?” I asked. “Ten minutes.”
She corrected herself. “No, fifteen minutes.”
I turned to Dave. “Can you browse for books for fifteen minutes?”
“Easily,” came the answer.
“OK, John, you’re the raid expert here. What do we need to do to get in there and pull this off?”
Realization of what we were thinking about trying to pull off began to dawn on Lisa and she joined our planning circle. I saw her eyebrows go up and her eyes widen.
“This is the deal,” John said to us. “We’ll need to clear and hold a secure corridor in.” John drew a line along the path that Dave had put on the window. He continued, “And since we have limited radios, we’ll need to stay within visual distance of each other—kinda like bread crumbs to follow—each in sight of the other all the way into the interior.”
“Can you rapidly secure a path to get us safely into that building?” I asked John with some disbelief.
John turned to Dave. “What’s your estimate of the distance from the street to the room you need to access in the center?” he asked.
Dave thought for a moment and took a guess. “A hundred meters. Maybe a hundred and fifty.”
We only had six people for this mission: John, the other FBI guy, the translator, Dave, Lisa, and myself. We had far too few people to set up a secure perimeter, so the secure corridor idea had merit.
“There’s no way we can secure the route,” I said. “We’re going to have a hard time stringing ourselves out and having line of sight on each other.” I thought out loud. “We would be fifteen to twenty meters apart.” I looked around at our small band on the Afghan street. “Can we do that?”
“Yes,” said John immediately. “Or, I believe so.”
I turned to Lisa. “Are you OK with this?”
Lisa wasn’t going to miss this bus. “If you can guarantee I’ll have enough time, I’ll be fine.”
Then I looked over at our translator. “Can you explain to them technically what we need and persuade them to allow Lisa access to the room?”
He nodded. “Yes, although I don’t think any explanation will be needed if he comes with us.” He pointed to John, who towered over all of us. John grinned.
“OK, then this is the deal,” I said. “Let’s dump the rest of the 10th Mountain folks off at *** ****** and do a quick rehearsal of how we’re going to do this. We’ll diagram it out again and do a run-through.” As the commander of the convoy, it was my job to move everyone to and from Kabul safely. I didn’t want any nonessential personnel to go with us on the mission and risk the chance they’d play John Wayne if they got nervous.
Everybody nodded in agreement.
We moved the last two miles to the ****** to drop off the rest of the crew that we’d brought to town and hung on to the three vehicles. In the lobby of the ******* we sat on two chairs and a couch and did a quick run-through. Dave described the exterior of the building and where he thought the target material might be in its recesses. We decided that one of the FBI guys would remain with the vehicles, Dave would stay outside as a lookout (he would try to stay inconspicuous by pretending to shop for books), while John, Lisa, the translator, and I would go in.
Then we moved out to execution. We would only get one shot at this.
The PTT office, which also doubled as the Kabul post office, was the tallest building in town. A sullen slab of a building, it sat on a street with a few scruffy trees and clusters of makeshift shops around its front and side.
NATO and ISAF troops had been shot at in the area, and bombs had been tossed at them. Nevertheless, we figured that by keeping a low profile with just the six of us, in civilian clothes, we could come in under the radar and be in and out before anybody knew what happened.
That was the theory. Now we had to test it.
We moved into position, parking the vehicles along the street near the rear of the building in a line and in a way that wouldn’t make it obvious to any observer that we were headed for the telecommunications center.
One FBI guy stayed behind with the vehicles, while the rest of us moved casually, but deliberately, for the back door of the building. Dave took up position by the bookshop next to the telecommunications building. He appeared to have a good view of the street in case anybody appeared who could cause us trouble. We hoped.
The remaining four of us—John, myself, Lisa, and the translator—then slipped in the back door. From that point on, I had only limited sight of Dave, and it would take a couple of seconds for him and the FBI guy who was guarding the vehicles to get to us if there was trouble inside.
The pucker factor was way up as we moved in.
In a line we walked into a crowded L-shaped lobby, with a caged counter that ran around the lobby from the back door to the front. Groups of two or three people were coming in every minute or so. I stationed myself toward the rear end of the lobby, where I could see both the front and the back doors.
John motioned that he, the translator, and Lisa were moving behind the long counter. They stopped one guy, and I could see Lisa talking and then the translator gesturing and speaking. The guy didn’t look happy. At first he shook his head, and then Lisa and the translator spoke to him some more. Finally, he gave a reluctant nod and opened a door to what appeared to be the back room. My eyes, still adjusting from the bright light outside, could not make out what was in there.
All three disappeared. I turned my attention to the lobby. Every now and then, John would poke his head out and nod. I’d walk back to see Dave still standing at the book stall.
I had the impression from John’s nods that the guy had given Lisa the device she needed to unlock the phone. Then, I learned later, they had deve
loped a ruse to get the guy to leave the room. That’s when Lisa grabbed her computer and linked it up to the control system for the network.
Fifteen minutes. She said she needed fifteen minutes. The clock was ticking.
I looked around the lobby. This could end up being the longest fifteen minutes of my life. I kept glancing out the window for a glimpse of Dave and also kept an eye out for John.
People started to take notice of me. It wasn’t hard. An armed Westerner standing in the lobby of their phone company/post office. While they wouldn’t be able to tell if I was an American, I certainly wasn’t UN, since they didn’t carry guns and wear body armor. More and more people glanced my way. Then they stared. Then they stopped and stared.
An old Afghan woman came over to speak to me. She was wearing a black dress and had a white head scarf and held a large, blue carryall. I tried to move away from her, but she wasn’t deterred and followed me around, chattering away. Even when I attempted to tell her I didn’t speak Pashtu, she didn’t stop talking. More and more intense-looking men were coming in off the street. I saw one look my way and whisper in another’s ear. He glanced grimly at me and then headed out the door.
Trouble.
Then John popped his head out and I tilted my head inquiringly at him. Finished? He shook his head and held up his hand to me, palm toward me, fingers spread. Five more minutes. I groaned. Goddamnit. This was going like molasses in winter.
A group of men standing just outside the lobby was beginning to grow. First there were two or three. Then six. Then a dozen. Two had AK-47s that were clearly visible, but not yet pointing my way.
Word had gotten out that something was going on.
Finally John appeared and nodded. Lisa, computer tucked against her, was right behind him.
“How did it go?” I asked.
“I got everything,” she said. “It was amazing. Just amazing.”
“Glad you are happy,” I called after her as she moved out the back door and into the alley.
I moved toward the back door and saw the man who had been with John and Lisa come out of the room and move along the counter, speaking tersely to a man who appeared to be a colleague. His tone was not a happy one. He saw me and froze—apparently he did not know if I understood what he had just said—and he now looked at me with fear in his eyes.
I eyeballed the growing crowd of grim-faced men and then looked back at him.
The men were moving into the lobby like bees in a hive that had been disturbed. I swung my weapon, still on AUTO, around as I walked backward, back into the light of day.
Finally, I hit the door and backed through it onto the street. Dave had spotted John and Lisa and had signaled to the FBI guy to start the engine on his car.
Dave casually took the computer from Lisa, who brought her M-4 up, pointing it at the building to cover me as I moved. I continued backing down the alley at a deliberate pace and onto the street, watching for any threat to come flying out the back door of the PTT.
John hopped in the FBI truck, while watching to see if anyone came around from the front. Lisa climbed in with Dave, while the translator got in with me. I was last. I started my truck, picked up the Motorola radio, and said, “Go!”
We took off.
Wow. Not bad for not having detailed diagrams of the building and little knowledge of what was kept at the PTT.
It took a good quarter hour for the adrenaline rush to wear off and for my perception of reality to return to normal—about the time it took for us to drive back to the Ariana and rendezvous with the 10th Mountain troops who were waiting for us to bring them to the bazaar.
After we parked the trucks and dropped off the troops, we went for pizza at the Italian army-run club room near the ISAF HQ.
We were amazed that we’d pulled off the raid—a real “interagency effort,” if you wanted to call it that—involving Washington, the FBI, and the DIA. Not that we could talk about it much back at Bagram without our collective HQs coming down on our heads for having decided on our own to go on a dangerous mission without clearance.
We all took our pizza outside into the small garden area without talking. Each of us was still coming down.
“Dave, tell me you at least found a book while you were waiting,” I said as I finished my pizza and took a long swig of Coke.
“Nope,” he said after taking a bite of his pizza. “Lots of old texts, some real quality stuff, but he would not come down on price. Maybe he’ll sell it to me next time.”
“Yeah, maybe …”
We reassembled the convoy, now with the 10th Mountain troops present, at about 1600 hours in the VIP parking area of the ISAF HQ. One of the British NCOs came over to question what we were doing in “his” parking area.
“Fighting a war,” I replied.
“Sir, you should do that somewhere else.”
He was right. Perhaps the Bahamas would be a better choice of location for the next war.
After the usual wild ride, we landed back at Bagram. It was quite a trip—in and out without a scratch—into what was Indian Territory, in broad daylight. We wouldn’t be able to take any real credit for it because of internal politics, but no one on the team really cared. Lisa would pass the information along to Washington although how it would be used we might never know. But we had accomplished the mission: Extracted critical information that would not normally have been shared, or made available, by the Afghan government.
Now it was time to chill and smoke a stogie or two with Sergeant Kate.
11
IED
WHOOOOOOM …
The giant blast washed over us, coming at us through the tires, the firewalls, and the windshields of the convoy I was commanding. We were in the crowded center of Bagram village, within sight of the base.
Shit. An IED.
I could see a mushroom cloud billow up just off to the right of my windshield near the gates of the base.
I grabbed the radio. “Keep going!” I shouted into it. We had to get out of this mess and into Bagram Air Base.
Then again, bedlam had broken out around us. The usual heavy traffic ground to a halt. It was as if the cars suddenly got stuck in cement. Panic-stricken drivers hopped out of vehicles and began running back and forth. As the smoke billowed up, pedestrians dropped their goods and joined them. Bicycles were thrown down in our path. People screamed and pushed, and knocked against our vehicles. No one seemed to know where to go, what to do.
There was no way we could get through this gridlock. I ordered everyone out of their vehicles to set up fields of fire.
We were trapped 300 meters from the gate with no way to move forward or backward—in a perfect kill zone.
Up until that point, it had been a—relatively—quiet day. It was a Friday, and we’d convoyed into Kabul, dropped off the intelligence folks for their operation, and then gone over to Kabul International Airport to drop off John and pick up two new FBI agents who were starting their tour of duty. John’s ninety-day tour was done, and it was time for others to take over.
Kabul Airport was originally built by the Soviets in the 1960s when Afghanistan was starting to modernize and actually was attracting thousands of tourists each year. It was heavily bombed by U.S. forces about a month after the 9/11 attacks. The eastern portion of it was now controlled by ISAF, while a smaller section was used for commercial traffic—whatever there was of it in a combat zone. The FBI flew in and out of the third section of the airport, which was controlled by the CIA.
John hopped out of the truck carrying his bags, and we shook hands, not saying much. We’d been through a lot together.
“Well, brother, it’s time to go,” he said.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” I said, thinking back on our marathon ****** interrogation of Arash Ghaffari and John’s role as enforcer in our raid on the telecommunications center. “If you come back, I hope we can work together again.”
John grinned through his beard. “I hope so, too.”
&nbs
p; I introduced myself to the new FBI guys, Brad Daniels and Kent McMillan. Brad was goateed but with the same broad grin as John, and Kent was thin and wiry, with close-cropped brown hair.
“Welcome,” I said. “Who’s driving?”
Brad and Kent looked at each other, and Brad gave a small shrug. “Hey,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
“Let’s get going,” I said.
I had some tasks I wanted to accomplish before we headed back to Bagram, and it was already midafternoon. We had to get back to Bagram before dark. Besides, the mess hall served Alaskan king crab on Friday nights, and you had to get there early before it got too rubbery.
“Stick with Tony,” John told them. “He’s going to take good care of you.”
With that, he moseyed over to his plane, a two-prop Bombardier that he would fly in to Tashkent in Kurdistan. From Kurdistan, he would fly commercial home.
“I’ve heard good reports about you,” Brad told me, “that you’ve done a great job helping us out here. I’m looking forward to working with you.”
“Same,” I said. “You’ve got some big shoes to fill—literally.”
My sense was that Brad was as gung ho as John, although he didn’t have the deep experience John had since John was former Special Forces. It would be interesting to see how they performed when they were tested, and, guaranteed, this country would test them. I just didn’t know that it would be so soon.
In the convoy, I took the last vehicle. The intelligence personnel took the first vehicle, and I put the two new FBI guys and John Coleman, an FBI agent who had come in with us from Kabul, in the second vehicle since Brad and Kent had the least experience. I figured that if something went wrong, I’d be the guy in back doing command and control.
We headed over to ISAF headquarters to meet up with the intelligence folks. We generally staged our convoys in their VIP parking lot, which annoyed the hell out of them, but what were they doing to do—shoot us?
We stopped briefly at the bazaar on the ISAF grounds in between the Afghan and ISAF checkpoints, where you could buy everything from eighteenth-century muskets to the latest pirated DVDs. Walking around the colorful, noisy event, with its carnival atmosphere, it was easy to forget there was a war on. Nevertheless, I pulled the new FBI agents back to reality with a safety-and-operational-review tactics brief, going over how to drive inside the city and then the driving techniques when we hit the open road. Hit it full blast, I told them. I gave them radios and my handle, which was “Fox.” They chose handles for themselves. We also went over emergency reaction drills if a vehicle was hit by an IED.
Operation Dark Heart Page 14