The Hunted

by James Phelan

  “It took us three days to get out there in a couple of trucks we borrowed from locals. The roads were out—we’d cut them regularly with B-1 Lancer strikes of 500-pound JDAMs to make sure they didn’t become some version of a silk road from Syria pouring in weapons and ammo that’d do our boys there harm. So, we smashed and crashed our way along, and got to this site, and it was a mess, like nothing I’d seen—it could have been the surface of the moon. An old pockmarked runway that the Brits had cluster-bombed fifteen years earlier in the first Gulf War. The few buildings that had been made out of concrete were little more than rubble. What was left had been stripped and looted by the Kurds or whoever else had been there. We felt conned. The site was important, once, but long past useless now. Our CO nearly capped the fucker who took us there.

  “But then he started talking and pointing and getting all crazy animated and walked out ahead of us, looking at landmarks and the footprints of the old buildings and roads and the runway and stood on a spot and said: ‘Dig. If you dig, you will find it.’ He just stood there, looking at our platoon, telling us to dig.”

  “And?”

  “And we unloaded our gear and started digging. Hard work. Hard ground. Shitty shovels. The second day we sent four guys north twenty klicks to get better picks and shovels. They came back with a fifty-year-old backhoe on the back of the truck. By that night we’d found it. The first one, at least.”

  “What was it?”

  “We didn’t know. There were three trenches, each with a shipping container, the big forty-four-foot ones, buried about ten feet down under a good twenty tons of rocks and sand. We had two chem suits with us, so most of us cleared out, except for the two guys who drew the short straws.” Murphy smiled, almost laughed. “Hell, we had a pissing contest. All twelve of us, in a line, six feet apart, pissing onto what was left of the runway. The two shortest streams were the lucky volunteers. Havock and Lobes. They suited up, went down and opened up the first container. It was chock full of artillery shells, fitted out for chemical payloads. The second container had drums of shit. Containers. Tubs. Canisters. Everything was labeled really neatly, military style. Mustard gas. Sarin. Anthrax. You name it. Then we got to the third.”

  “And?”

  “Lots of paperwork. Inventory of stock. Instructions for making up certain deadly cocktails and how best they could be deployed in the field. Supply invoices for chemical compounds. All of the chemists’ notes and work, including their documentation of what they made from the base chemicals supplied and what the results were.”

  “And?”

  “And—and that third container was the worst of what we found. By far. That’s when we knew we’d fucked the pooch. That this wouldn’t make our careers. We stepped away, from the containers and from the Iraqi, and talked about what to do. All night. All through the night. Pros and cons. By sunrise we came up with two main options. Bury it all again, along with the Iraqi, and hope it never gets found; or if it does, it’s someone else’s problem. Or, second option, we go clean with command. We get someone at DEVGRU or SOCOM to send out the highest-ranking chemical-weapons specialist they could find and make the call on what to do.”

  “And you did the latter.”

  “Yep. We made a call, fairly vague, about intel that may have something to do with US-supplied WMDs to Iraq in the 1980s. Three days later a colonel from the Army arrived via helo. He looked over it all. We could tell he was going through the exact same process we’d gone through. He asked the Iraqi if this was it, if this was all he knew about. The guy replied in the affirmative—and that was his death sentence: a .45 through the frontal lobe by our CO, under orders from the colonel.”

  Walker let out a deep breath. “Shit. Okay. Then what happened?”

  Murphy shook his head, and looked down as though he was ashamed. “Then,” he said. “We followed our orders. We shut up those containers, and we brought it all home.”

  Walker stared at him. “You secretly brought three shipping containers full of Iraqi WMDs home—onto US soil?”

  Murphy nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Firstly, the how,” he said. “We Chinooked it out to Basra, then put it onto an old Liberty ship, and we stayed with it the whole way, to Naval Station Norfolk. It took us near-on two months in that rust-bucket, via a roundabout clandestine route.”

  “That was the time listed as a special training period.”

  “You got it.” Murphy nodded, and Walker could see that unloading this story, recounting it, sharing it, was some kind of a relief. “We then stayed with it as it was trucked to some disused Cold War site, a minuteman silo or something in South Dakota. Waiting for us was the JSOC Commander—you know the General in charge at the time?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well him, as well as that Army colonel, who had brought down a bunch of Army scientists from Fort Detrick. They were a small team—four, five guys, chemical and biological specialists—and they went through it all. Drum by drum, document by document. It was all legit. We’d found them. WMDs in Iraq. Enough product to kill maybe a million people every which way. And the instructions to synthesize about as much more as you’d ever want or need.”

  “So, why no press release, no media, no fanfare?” Walker said. “This would have galvanized the nation, the whole coalition of the willing, to keep fighting the good fight over there. It would have changed everything.”

  “Yep.”

  “But word never got out.”

  “Clearly not.”

  “Why?” Walker pressed again. “It would have added some spice to Bush’s mission-accomplished speech that year. Why would they cover this up?”

  “I’ll get to that,” Murphy said. “Afterward? After about four days there, we were sworn to secrecy, by the General from JSOC—he’d been with us the whole time too, just him, no support staff. All very weird. Political, right? Well, my team are shit-scared by this point. A few of them were convinced we’d be rubbed out, that some company of Rangers or some other hatchet-job guys would descend and kill us in our sleep. A couple of the boys actually thought the Detrick guys might do it; put some anthrax in our coffee or something.”

  “Why—because of what you found?”

  Murphy nodded. “But instead, we signed a form. The treason clause if we blabbed; a military firing squad, no less. The guys signed fast and we were sent straight back to the Middle East, where we were split up and put into different teams. I went to DEVGRU soon after, and over the next couple of years half that old platoon joined me in that team that went into Abbottabad.”

  “Eight, of the sixteen of you from Iraq,” Walker said.

  Murphy nodded. “Another four I know are dead. Chopper hit by an RPG in ’Stan in ’05.”

  “Operation Red Wings?”

  “Yep. Then . . . Let’s see. Of the other three, I know one bugged out and went private, to some kind of Blackwater-type outfit or whatever they call themselves these days; last I heard he was working in Africa. The other two, no idea. But we need to find out, to be sure. See if those three guys are dead or alive. That’d confirm this is all about that op, not bin Laden.”

  “But you’re sure. I can see it. You think it’s this.”

  Murphy nodded.

  Walker asked, “How’s this been a secret for all this time?”

  “Because it would be a national scandal,” Murphy said. “It would have taken down the President, a bunch of old Senators and Congressmen, and it definitely would have fucked the then VP and Sec Def.”

  “Because the latter were around in the 1980s, in government,” Walker said, the truth setting in. “When we were real cozy with Saddam. Arming him, posing for pictures with him . . .”

  “Yep. You got it.”

  “You brought those WMDs and the paperwork—the inventory, the invoices, the instructions—home, to US soil,” Walker said, the truth now running through his body like a strong electric current. “Because it’s not that we found their WMDs—we found ours—it was comi
ng home. This is where it was from. It was ours from the start. We made it, we supplied it, and we trained the chemists.”

  “Yep,” Murphy said. “We knew that Saddam had WMDs not simply because he used them against his own population, but because we’d sold them to him. We didn’t use them as a pretext to go to war to stop him or find it—we went to war to bury it, to make sure that it remained a dirty little secret that’d be lost to time. And I played a part in it. A big part. And now I’m paying for it. I’m a final loose end.”

  “No,” Walker said. “It’s worse than that, Murph. They’re not just burying this—someone’s going to use it. Whoever knows about this is going to use it—against the American people.”

  97

  “But why would they do that?” Murphy asked. “And who?”

  “That’s what we have to figure out,” replied Walker. “Who else knows about this?”

  “Us. Me, I mean. My team. Sixteen of us at the time.” Murphy paused, added, “And the colonel at Fort Detrick. The old General in charge of JSOC in ’03. Maybe some other brass at the Pentagon. Certainly someone in the White House from then, you’d think. Probably a handful of Senators and Congress on some secret committee.”

  “Damn.” Walker’s mind went to McCorkell. He was there then, wasn’t he? No. That was part of the four-year gap when he wasn’t working for the National Security team.

  “Right? We’re fucked. If that’s what this is all about, then this is a clean-up op, or maybe worse. The US Government against us. What are we going to do?”

  “I’ve got to give my guy McCorkell a hurry along.” Walker started to dial.

  “Is he the President?” Murphy said. “Because I’ve got to tell you, anyone less ain’t going to make any difference. Got it? If the government wants you dead, you’re dead.”

  “My guy will shake the world to get to the people he needs to,” Walker said. “We’ve got to keep it together . . . And, this doesn’t feel to me like the US Government is after you. This is different.”

  “Oh? Speaking from experience?”

  “Yes.”

  Murphy nodded. “You know what it’s like, to lose guys like this?”

  “Lost one of my best friends in ’Stan back in 2010,” Walker said, his ear to the phone as it started to ring through. “We went to high school together. Played football together. Went camping as teens. Adventures. Girls. You name it.”

  “Branch?”

  “Army.”

  Murphy nodded.

  “I got the scars. I know what it’s like.”

  “Where?”

  Walker said, “Wrong place.”

  “IED?”

  Walker nodded.

  “Fuck that,” Murphy said. “They’re the worst.”

  “Right.”

  Beat.

  Murphy asked, “Who was he with?”

  “Delta.”

  “Damn.”

  “Distinguished Service Cross and a whole bunch of other decorations.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yep.” Walker looked out the window. McCorkell wasn’t picking up—it went to voicemail. “He’d been there and done that enough times to make wiping his ass seem a task he had to think about.”

  “Can I ask something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “How’d it make you feel?”

  “Sad. Angry. Full of vengeance.”

  “Right. And? Ask me,” Murphy said, “all I’ve seen and done? I wish we’d never put boots on the ground in that country. Just tell the Gen Pop, you got a week. Move on. Outta town. To the closest border refugee station. There’s some fire and brimstone coming. And then just flatten the fuck outta the joint, then precision the fuck outta everything that stays behind. Toast it. All of it.”

  Walker got that. He’d seen it. Heard it. Too many friends spent their lives for what was, in the end, a war on a word: terrorism.

  “This is on our doorstep now,” Walker said. “You got that, Chief Petty Officer Murphy?”

  Murphy nodded.

  “This? This is someone else getting access to that op in Iraq,” Walker said, redialing McCorkell. “As secret as it was. They got into it, and they’ve got their hands on those WMDs.”

  McCorkell answered. Walker spoke fast.

  •

  “Ann?” McCorkell said urgently into his phone as he drove. He’d just hung up the call from Walker, and what he had learned in that three minutes had rocked his world. “I need another list. Personnel again. From an op in Iraq back in 2003. But it should pop up in a PDB from that time.”

  There was a pause.

  The President’s National Security Adviser said, “I can’t get that. The dead SEALs was one thing.”

  “You can get this.”

  “No. The dead SEALs was the protection case that was in a PDB I delivered last week,” Ann said. “What you’re asking for now is old, and not on my watch. Hell, it was even before your time in the White House.”

  “Not before. I did stints either side of that guy being president.”

  “And you know the PDBs are all protected under Executive Orders.”

  McCorkell knew the PDB—Presidential Daily Briefing; he’d given thousands of them. And he knew that they were technically compartmentalized Top Secret documents.

  “I’m working on it from my end right now,” McCorkell said, “and I need all the assistance I can get.”

  “I can’t help you, Bill. Try the Pentagon.”

  “If you hear me out, you’ll find that I’m helping you,” McCorkell said. “You’ve been looking at this in the wrong light the whole time. Me too. This is going to be a big deal when you see it—it’s going to shake some trees in the Navy and the Army, and you’re going to come out of it with all kinds of accolades.”

  The current National Security Adviser to the President was silent.

  “Where are you?” she said finally.

  “Me? I’m in DC.”

  “But where?”

  “Headed to the Pentagon, to see about this op in Iraq, in case you couldn’t see any sense,” McCorkell said.

  Ann allowed herself a small chuckle.

  “That personnel list would be handy, if you can dig it up. That or the PDB,” McCorkell said. “I could get the names off Murphy, go into a meeting with the Joint Chief of the Navy that way. But I thought it’d be easier coming from you, so I can confirm it with Murphy prior to me sitting down and selling this to the Rear Admiral.”

  “This is Murphy’s theory?”

  “And Walker’s. It’s sound. It makes sense—more than Abbottabad. We just need to confirm the list against the members who have been killed.”

  “Okay, Bill. Okay. Meet me. I’ve just left the office—I’ll get the list sent to me and meet you. You can talk me through this new theory. If it sounds legit, I’ll go back to the White House with you and get whatever you need.”

  “Okay, where are you?”

  “The Archer, a bar, off—”

  “I’ll meet you there soon.”

  “You know it?”

  “Know it? They’ve got a drink named after me.”

  “The dog with a bone?”

  “Close. See you there in ten minutes.”

  98

  Walker had ended the call with McCorkell and looked at the handwritten list on the hotel stationery. Eight guys. Half of the SEAL platoon. A quarter of the SEAL troop. A fraction of their DEVGRU team, known colloquially as Team Six. He passed the list to Murphy.

  Murphy read the names in silence. He held the small notepad with reverence, as if it were the most precious piece of paper he’d ever come across, and to tip or tilt it would allow the names to fall right off the page and be forever lost.

  “These were good men,” Murphy eventually said.

  After a minute’s silence had passed, Walker spoke. “They were all in Abbottabad?”

  “Yes. They were there. NCIS were right. But they were also all at Iraq, the WMDs.”

  “You’re sure?”


  “Absolutely. Damn good men. Good, fine men . . .”

  Walker looked out the window again. “So, it is about reprisal and what you guys found there. A clean-up. Rubbing you all out so that whatever goes down later today can’t be tracked back, that future attacks can’t be prevented, at least not by any of you.”

  Murphy watched him for a minute before he spoke. “What’s your plan, Walker? Use me as bait to flush out Menzil and whoever may be left?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. Yet. I still think there’s more to this. There’s something bigger at play, beyond killing you all. It can’t just be about revenge against the SEALs who found the WMDs.”

  “Well, killing us would be a serious blow to the DoD. It’s a powerful message, hunting the hunters, right? It’d say to every American, ‘No matter who you are, or where you are, we can get you. If you fuck with us, we will get you. It’s just a matter of when.’ Right?”

  Walker nodded.

  Murphy said, “But you’re thinking there’s more . . .”

  Walker nodded.

  Murphy looked again at the eight names of the dead.

  “I could go to wherever NCIS have set up this witness protection of the Abbottabad team,” Murphy said. “And I could talk to them. If you can’t. I mean, NCIS ain’t buying your theory, are they? So, use me that way—we call Grant, tell them I want to go in, join their protection, and once I’m in, I start asking around. Who knows?”

  Walker thought about it. All of a second.

  “No time, not yet,” he said. “We do what we can to stop this demonstration event at 17:30 today, then we look at our next options.”

  99

  Levine worked on her laptop from the now-empty room of the Murphy family in the St. Louis Hyatt. The Facebook page was connected to several other social media platforms, relaying the information to as many people as were connected, some ten thousand people. She was a well-known user to the other members and followers, and they knew that what her alias said, her alias meant. She knew that not all the followers would respond, but maybe half would. She included news outlets to the feed. Levine knew that they’d show up.