by Dalton Fury
In short, in just a few years, Waleed Nayef had become one of al Qaeda’s top spies and one of JSOC’s top faceless priorities. His official targeting title by the United States was “AQ Facilitator.”
But even though his job was important and his operations crucial to the success of his new organization, he had long sought something more from his missions. When he was brought in by AQAP leadership and told that he had been selected to join a new operation, he jumped at the chance to work on a mission that, he had been promised, would kill thousands of infidels and greatly affect the West’s ability to fight against Islam.
He was then introduced to David Doyle, the man he knew as Daoud al-Amriki. This was some months prior to their traveling together to Egypt and then to Greece and, at first, Nayef and Amriki shared a mutual distrust of one another. But al-Amriki had slowly begun to rely on the operative he knew as Miguel, and even more slowly he read him in on the mission to come. And Nayef came to respect the American converter to Islam.
The Kuwaiti national was amazed by the full scope of the American operative’s plan. Amriki chose Miguel to be the second-in-command of the mission. Once the action began, Nayef would operate separately from Daoud, and he would be in charge of his own unit of fighters. But his assistance in the training phase would be equally crucial to the operation’s success.
THIRTEEN
On their seventh day in Sana’a, Miguel and al-Amriki were contacted by AQAP leadership and told to gather their belongings, sanitize their safe house, and come to a meeting at a nearby storefront. Here they were met by two men in a four-wheel drive Jeep, and they were driven out of the city. Even though Amriki and Miguel were high-ranking members of the organization, once they passed the last military checkpoint, twenty kilometers outside the capital, they were hooded so they could not see the route they were taking to their destination.
They drove on a series of progressively worsening roads, al-Amriki could tell this by the bumping and jarring of the vehicle’s suspension. They stopped for gas and then continued on. Al-Amriki realized they were heading southeast, from the warmth of the sun on the back of his neck. This was no surprise to him, as AQAP held much territory in the southeastern region of Yemen. This was al Qaeda country, and though that should have been comforting to an AQ operative, here American drones monitored the traffic on the roadways. At any moment, he knew, he could end up just like Anwar al-Awlaki, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, and any one of hundreds of other al Qaeda members who had been taken out by the U.S. from the skies above.
He, and Nayef next to him, did their best to put this fear out of their minds, and they journeyed on to the south with their faces covered.
* * *
After six hours of travel they arrived in Al Kawd on the northern shore of the Arabian Sea, some thirty-five miles northeast of Aden. Fighters from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had taken the town the year before after pushing Yemeni government forces out of the area, declaring the region to be an Islamic emirate, and they had spent the intervening months expanding their territory. In many towns and villages, such as nearby Zinjibar and Jaar to the north, AQAP held a tight grip on much of the province of Abyan.
The main threat to the al Qaeda fighters here was no longer the Yemeni military, as the government in Aden had pulled most of its forces out of the area.
No, Predator and Reaper drones operated by the United States served as the biggest danger to the leadership of the terrorist organization. Over thirty drone strikes in the province in the last year alone had killed scores of fighters.
They spent the night at a small walled home there, and then, at first light, they traveled north in the back of a different vehicle than the one they had used the day before.
Al-Amriki and Miguel were taken north to the village of Al Hisn, and then they were instructed to climb onto the back of a mule cart. The driver of the cart spoke little as he transported them on a dirt road to the west.
There were no trucks passing on the road, but the surface was not in such bad condition. Al-Amriki did not understand why he and Miguel were riding in the back of a slow-moving donkey cart. He asked the cart driver, and the man pointed toward a bright clear sky without saying another word.
Miguel leaned over to Doyle. “Drones,” he said, which was plain enough to Amriki, but it seemed somewhat paranoid to think the CIA flying overhead targeted every vehicle in the province. Doyle presumed a Hellfire missile would be at least as effective on a donkey cart as it would on a pickup truck, so he did not see the point in this level of subterfuge.
They were not targeted and ninety minutes later they found themselves approaching a small hamlet on the banks of Wadi Bana, a wide gulch just south of a mountain range that rose from the brown earth like the arthritic spine of a starving cow. The cart pulled into the small rustic village and then stopped. They were asked to climb out and then an al Qaeda commander in the Arabian Peninsula recognized by al-Amriki and Nayef appeared in a darkened doorway, and he beckoned the men to join him under a thatch awning.
“A salaam aleikum,” said the man.
“Wa aleikum a salaam,” replied the new arrivals.
“Welcome to your new home, brothers.”
Al-Amriki looked around him in the village. Goats and children ambled in the road, old men and women in burkas milled about.
“Where is the base?” Al-Amriki asked.
“This is the base,” the commander said. “The American drones fly overhead, and they see this as just a small village on the banks of the wadi. But, my brothers, it is much more than this. Look carefully.”
Daoud did as instructed, and soon he saw. Between the rustic stone buildings, motorcycles were hidden under brown tarps. The building’s roofs were similarly covered with brown canvas, creating tentlike firing positions on the roofs from which armed men peered down, covering the roads with their weapons and scanning the skies with binoculars.
A long barn just ahead next to a corral filled with barnyard animals was missing one of its walls. Across a stretch of dirt and sand what appeared to be a nondescript building stood, but al-Amriki realized that it was a solid baked-brick structure, in front of which were stacked row upon row of tractor tires painted brown. In front of the tires was a long line of what al-Amriki recognized to be wooden target stands.
He knew now he was looking at a firing range; men could fire from under the cover of the barn and not be seen from the air.
As he walked with Miguel and the AQ commander, he was shown obstacle courses disguised in the twists and turns of a small market, a bomb-making factory in a pair of simple buildings with a covered walkway between them, a garrison that held forty armed men and their gear that was actually more than a dozen one-room homes with adjoining portals in the walls, and an underground armory built into a hillside and reinforced with sandbags, cement, and rebar.
The American AQ operative had been to secret bases here in Yemen, as well as in Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea, and Lebanon. But he had never seen anyplace like the one in which he now stood.
Al-Amriki looked out across the complex. “It looks just like a normal village.”
“It does, and to the drones in the sky, that is exactly what it is. We have a mosque, fifty-four individual homes, a market, a madrassa. Even livestock and children and women. From the air it appears as if the roads in our complex are connected to the roads of Al Hisn, but in actuality they are not. We have checkpoints to prevent anyone from venturing anywhere near here other than those who are allowed entrance.”
“And what about security in the base?”
“Twenty armed sentries at any one time. We have them on the roofs, as well as on the hillsides on all points of the compass, but they carry radios instead of rifles. The drones have strong eyes. We have heavy machine gun emplacements, as well.”
“And where will my men be billeted?” asked al-Amriki.
“In the clinic on the far edge of the village, closest to the wadi. You and your men will be protected by both Allah a
nd the Red Crescent on the roof.”
“And our training?”
“Will take place in the larger structures, as well as down in the wadi in the narrow cuts of earth that will block out a clear view from above.”
“I am very impressed. You have thought of everything.”
The older man nodded without emotion. “The reach and strength of the Americans has only made us more powerful, brother. We have lost many Shahid along the way, but those of us who have survived the Americans for ten years are mightier than we would have been without this challenge.”
* * *
The twelve operatives who would join al-Amriki and Miguel on their mission trickled in over the course of the next day. In ones and twos they came into the village in mule carts, each time thinking they were just stopping here for a moment before heading to some walled military complex farther up in the hills to the north. Quickly they were escorted into the small white clinic building, where they met al-Amriki and Miguel, the two men who would lead them on an operation that they knew nothing about.
On his second night in the village, al-Amriki assembled all of his handpicked operatives in the largest room in the clinic. They sat on cots or stood along the walls illuminated by candlelight, the few small windows in the structure covered with canvas. In the village around them, sentries were told to keep a watchful eye over the new students.
David Doyle, aka Daoud al-Amriki, addressed his operatives while standing at the front wall. “Men. You are brave to join this mission. You have been promised that you will meet danger and death along the way, and still you have agreed to come with us. But danger and death will lead you to paradise, where you will be rewarded for your proud sacrifice.
“Paradise, my brothers, is in your future. Now your training begins. Our target is the West, so as soon as this meeting is concluded, we will begin living as Westerners. We will shave our beards, we will dress in Western clothing, eat Western food, tell Western jokes. We will each be given a new identity and documents to support this new identity. We will have e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other things so that our legends will stand up to all but the most directed scrutiny.”
It was clear by the reactions in the room, even under the dim lighting, that the order to shave their beards and act like infidels was an unpleasant surprise.
“Blaspheme?” asked one man, a twenty-five-year-old muscular Pakistani with a long angular nose.
“Regrettably, yes. But we will be forgiven our transgressions in paradise, I swear it.”
“What is our mission?” asked a twenty-two-year-old UK citizen with Saudi heritage.
Doyle did not want to tell them any more, but he knew these men were devout soldiers of Allah, and they were clearly pained by news of this transformation that they were about to undertake. He could not jeopardize their devotion to his mission, so he decided to give them a taste of the operation to come.
“I will not tell you everything yet. You will not learn the full scope of the operation until you prove that you are capable of contributing to its success. But I will tell you that our destination and our target is the United States, and our goal is a body blow to the West. We will kill thousands, we will disrupt their ability to make business and to make war, and we will bring them to their knees. Inshallah, we will tear down the American government and see that it is replaced by a government that weakens all of their so-called democratic institutions.”
“How?” someone asked.
Al-Amriki smiled. “We will do this by becoming wolves in sheep’s clothing, and then entering the center of the flock.”
The operatives smiled in the flickering candlelight, their hearts strengthened by their new leader’s words.
“Now … my brothers … my wolves. Go change into your sheep’s clothing. Read the papers you will be handed that show you your new identities. Learn every last bit of it. Memorize it. Turn into the person you will pretend to be.
“Each and every one of you speaks English. Use your English, beginning now.” Daoud al-Amriki, David Wade Doyle, switched effortlessly into his mother tongue to finish. “I want only English spoken between the fourteen of us.
“Soon Miguel and I will interview you, one at a time. You will have adopted the legend you have been handed, and I want to believe this legend. When you pass this test you will be given more information, and then you will be tested on this. There will be much work in the coming days, but remember, every day we are here will be another day closer to our jihad.”
Al-Amriki was pleased with the reactions on the men’s faces. These were all educated young men, many had themselves led al Qaeda operations. These were not mindless gunmen who would do as they were told, running into the enemy’s cannon fire if ordered to do so. These were not fools in a Waziristan market, ready to pick up an AK and charge an Abrams tank because some malik with a smooth tongue spouted off a few verses of the Koran. No, each and every one of these twelve men had served and served well for years; they had fought on the front lines and they had penetrated deep into enemy territory. There was not a man here who had risked less than David Doyle himself to prove his fidelity to the cause.
Four of them were Pakistanis who’d grown up with the language and had gone to school in the United Kingdom, two more were Turks who learned English to study in the UK. Two were Iraqis who’d learned the language and then served in and around American troops for years as translators. And three of the men, just like Doyle’s assistant commander Miguel, had studied in universities in the United States and spoke fair to good English. These three men were from Oman, Yemen, and Morocco.
Al-Amriki and Miguel had developed a curriculum for their time here in the Wadi Bana camp. Each of the twelve operatives-in-training would have to pass a course to prove that they could blend into American society. In addition to the changes to their hair, clothing had been purchased online from various sources by support personnel of this mission. University T-shirts, blue jeans, American-style tennis shoes, and baseball caps would be worn at all times inside the buildings, though outdoors they would wear local dress to hide their mission from the drones.
Each one of the operatives would live and breathe his legend here in the camp. This tiny speck of flatland at the edge of the wadi in southern Yemen would become, at first light tomorrow morning, a virtual college town.
Daoud al-Amriki had failed before, for reasons he still did not understand.
But he had thought of everything this time.
He would not fail again.
FOURTEEN
The flight from Fort Bragg to Cairo took all night. The CIA Gulfstream raced over the north Atlantic, landed to refuel at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and then climbed back into the dark skies to continue on toward Egypt.
Other than a couple hours of shut-eye, for the duration of the trip the AFO cell led by Major Kolt Raynor worked in the dim cabin of the Gulfstream. The team pored over laptops loaded with FalconView, a DOD mapping software that gave them a bird’s-eye view of the AO, much like a higher-resolution Google Maps, though, unlike Google Maps, it also provided them with powerful mapping and analytical tools that helped them “see” the area before going there in person. They created their own maps of choke points and bottlenecks near the important locations, like the safe house and target areas relayed to JSOC by the CIA personnel already on the ground in Cairo.
They also studied the material given to them before departure by the intel folks at Bragg. This electronic folder contained schematics of the safe houses in and around Cairo, as well as the logistical assets available to them — cars, vans, boats, motorcycles — and the stores of equipment such as guns, ammo, food, water, and batteries cached at each location. Kolt and his three subordinates looked over the size and layout of each safe house and noted where they would park cars and stow their own gear. They even discussed escape routes and rally points in the case of an assault on their hide.
Kolt and Slapshot were very much accustomed to this work; both men had taken pa
rt in numerous AFO cells in their careers in a wide variety of locations. Digger was new to this sort of operation, other than the previous week’s lightning-fast, in-and-out op in Tripoli, but he did have an impressive résumé of combat and counterterror ops under his belt, many of which had been extremely dicey.
Hawk had done one brief stint of AFO cell duty herself the previous year in Libya. She had been involved with Operation Red Baron — covert work with the CIA to locate Gaddafi in Tripoli. She had been on the ground in his hometown of Sirte at a joint safe house when the deposed leader made a run for it. She tried to go along to the ambush site with CIA assets in order to ID Gaddafi, but the agency men there with her would not allow it, as adding a female to that chaos seemed like an incredibly bad idea. It was not because she couldn’t handle what she would see, it was, instead, because the lack of law and order likely would have affected the rebels, keeping them from acting like gentlemen during the flurry of celebration after Muammar’s capture and killing.
Kolt had learned this and more about Hawk first thing that morning, when he dropped in on the shrink’s office at the compound and asked for a look at Sergeant Bird’s file. As the officer in charge of the AFO cell, it was well within his purview to dig into every detail of the men — or in this case woman — he would be taking with him on the upcoming operation.