by Randy Singer
Saleet slowed down behind a string of three or four cars in the right lane.
“Pass them!” Wyatt shouted.
Saleet shook his head, murmured something in Arabic, and pulled out to go around. He was on his horn when a car coming from the opposite direction nearly crashed into them head-on but veered off at the last second, bouncing into the ditch.
An explosion rocked the road behind them and Wyatt felt the heat. The drone was locked on now. The soulless hawk flew behind them, moving ever closer. They were nearly at the foot of the mountain, but the traffic would be heavier ahead of them, slowing them down, and the chase would soon be over.
“How can they do this?” Wyatt yelled. “I’m an American!”
87
WASHINGTON, D.C.
John Marcano watched dispassionately as the whole scene played out on a computer screen in a dark-paneled conference room at Langley. He had two of his top assistants with him; they were under instructions to keep the circle of those who knew about this very tight. There were decisions being made in split seconds that would have to be explained later, and Marcano only wanted those he trusted to be in the know.
He had watched the satellite imagery and drone footage of the rendezvous between Saleet Zafar and a man the face-scanning technology had identified as Mokhtar al-Bakri. There had been brief moments of panic as his team tried to identify the man sitting next to Zafar—a man with a traditional Muslim head covering who appeared to have a mustache and a long, lean build. They could not get a good visual on his face.
Marcano’s associates had been smart enough not to say what everyone was thinking. They knew Wyatt Jackson had flown into Dubai. They had lost him somewhere in the UAE. But he would have had time to make it to Yemen, and Saleet Zafar had been friends with Cameron Holloman. Marcano couldn’t be sure—it might be Jackson, but then again, his face was not part of the CIA database, and the drone videos were too indistinct to make a definitive ID. For all they knew, it could have been any one of a thousand associates of Zafar.
But if it was Jackson, he had made a fatal mistake. He had entered Yemen illegally. He was working with a sworn enemy of his country, an imam who preached jihad. He was meeting with a traitor who had cost twenty men their lives.
If Marcano had believed in such things, he might have called it a miracle. Three of his country’s greatest enemies all gathered in a single spot, all within the destruction zone of a single Hellfire missile. He had immediately authorized the strike against al-Bakri. But a firefight had erupted, and al-Bakri was dead before the missile launched. Marcano authorized the drone to fire anyway, taking out al-Bakri’s men.
The director had watched as the drone took up the chase with the vehicle driven by Saleet Zafar. Marcano had authorized a second strike, knowing that the man with Zafar would be collateral damage.
Though Marcano did not believe in divine intervention, he did believe in fate. Wyatt Jackson had pried where he didn’t belong. In Wyatt’s smug self-righteousness, he had embarrassed Marcano and trashed the CIA director’s reputation.
Now, if Marcano’s hunch was right, Jackson would pay with his life.
The director dispatched another drone that would arrive at the scene and take up the chase shortly. This drone, a newer prototype, used guided munitions technology that combined the GPS and satellite-driven navigation of the Hellfire missiles with laser-enhanced precision. Once the drone fixed its laser on an identifiable person on the ground, the laser would stick—driven by readings of light wavelength—and the Hellfire would adjust midflight to hit the target regardless of how fast or in what direction it was moving. The problem the CIA had experienced for nearly ten years with targets outrunning the drones would be a thing of the past.
With the Hellfire 3, you could run, but there was nowhere to hide.
ADEN, YEMEN
I won’t die from a drone strike, Wyatt thought. Saleet’s driving will kill me first.
The imam had reached the bottom of the cliffs and turned onto one of the main four-lane roads running through Aden. Weaving in and out of traffic, Saleet stayed on the horn, running red lights, swerving into oncoming lanes, and even jumping up on the sidewalk to get around cars. He was frantically checking the mirrors and praying in Arabic, or least Wyatt assumed he was praying. People scattered to get out of the way, vehicles screeching to a halt. They flew through one intersection, causing a car to swerve and miss them and crash into another vehicle.
Wyatt assumed the drone was still behind them, but for some reason the remote-controlled aircraft held its fire, its pilot perhaps worried about civilian casualties.
“Where are you going?” Wyatt yelled.
“To the mosque,” Saleet replied, breathless.
“A mosque?”
Saleet jerked the car to the left, and Wyatt banged his right shoulder against the door. He tried to look out the window but couldn’t see the drone.
“They won’t blow up a mosque,” Saleet said.
“What makes you so sure?” Wyatt shot back.
“Allah won’t let them.”
A few seconds later, Saleet turned hard to the right and Wyatt was able to see the sky behind them. He had lost sight of the drone. He heard the mournful call to prayer beginning on loudspeakers all over the city—melodic, distorted, insistent. Cars began pulling over to the side of the road, thinning the traffic.
“There!” Saleet said, pointing to the sky in front of them.
Wyatt saw it too—another drone, or maybe the same one coming at them from a different angle. Out of the corner of his eye, Wyatt noticed a red dot coming through the front windshield, flickering on Saleet’s chest.
A laser! They were marking him with a laser!
The call to prayer grew louder, and cars stopped in front of them. Wyatt felt trapped. They were surrounded by multistory buildings, backed up by traffic. Ahead on the left was an apartment complex that looked like it had been bombed out by the Saudis. On the right were half-finished construction sites and deserted sidewalks as the call to prayer continued.
“We’re stuck!” Saleet yelled.
The drone dove toward them. Would it fire here in the middle of the city?
“Hang on!” Saleet shouted. But before Wyatt could brace himself, Saleet drove up on the sidewalk and bounced along for a hundred feet before turning right into a small parking garage. He crashed through the gate arm and swerved to the right, barely missing the cars parked at an angle, squeezed in next to each other.
They were safe here for a moment, shielded from the drone by the concrete of the garage. But Wyatt knew one missile could probably level the entire structure.
“They’ll expect me to exit over there,” Saleet said, pointing toward the other side of the garage. “But we will surprise them.”
He began a clumsy three-point turn, hitting at least two other cars in the process, and circled back to exit the same way he had come in.
“You’ve been watching too many movies!” Wyatt yelled.
“Allahu Akbar,” Saleet said, with a sudden calm that frightened Wyatt. The prayers filling the air seemed to give the imam a source of strength. He looked straight ahead as if in a trance.
“I am ready to die for Allah,” he said.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
John Marcano popped a mint in his mouth as he watched the video feed from the drone, now hovering over the parking structure, waiting for the Land Rover to exit. It was just a matter of time. The vehicle would emerge and the drone would lock on again. This time, once the laser hit the imam’s chest, the pilot had instructions to fire. Yes, there would be collateral damage. But there was always collateral damage.
Surprising no one, the Land Rover came bounding out the same way it had entered. It raced across the sidewalk and clipped the front fender of an oncoming car before swerving into the other lane. A white flash filled the screen—a silent explosion that seemed sterile and surreal. The Land Rover was reduced to ashes as the blast formed a massive, smoking crater
in the road, destroying other vehicles and damaging nearby buildings. Smoke rose from the street and people got out of their cars, screaming and running in every direction.
The pilot confirmed that he had locked on with the laser and destroyed the target. Collateral damage had been kept to a minimum. The passenger in the Land Rover was a given. Perhaps two or three other drivers. Otherwise, the strike had been clean.
Marcano knew that he would have a lot of explaining to do, but it would all be worth it. He would have to convince the Saudis to take credit for the strikes. The Yemenis would complain about civilian casualties and claim that the missiles had killed dozens of women and children. They would make lots of noise on the international stage. But ultimately they would be ignored. There was a civil war in Yemen, and this was the price to be paid.
The real explaining would take place a few miles away. Marcano thanked the men who had assisted in the operation and then prepared some notes for his briefing. He dialed a secure line to the White House and requested a meeting with the president.
“It’s urgent,” he said. “She’ll want to be interrupted.”
88
The ghost of Wyatt Jackson haunted Marcano as he rode in the backseat of the sedan to the White House. As he had done before, he would have to eyewash the president on these latest developments.
He would have to let her know that there was at least a chance Jackson had been killed in a drone strike. That way she would understand how critical it was to convince the Saudis to take responsibility for the bombings. But Marcano would need to be careful about the way he explained this. He would paint a scenario where the CIA had no reason to believe that Jackson was in the Land Rover at the time of the strike. Only in hindsight, only after reviewing additional satellite and drone photographs, had they developed their suspicions. It would be a difficult line to walk, but the critical point was this—nobody could ever prove that Jackson had been killed. There would certainly be no DNA in the ashes.
White House security processed Marcano, and he joined the president’s other grim-faced advisers in the Situation Room. Philip Kilpatrick was there. He looked like he had aged fifteen years in the last week alone. The gray beard seemed more haggard than before, and his eyes bugged out behind the black-rimmed glasses. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie loosened, as if he were a blue-collar workingman trapped in a white-collar uniform.
Perhaps it wasn’t so much that he had changed but that the air around him had changed. From confident to wary, the man who was always two steps ahead suddenly finding himself struggling to keep up.
Marcano’s nemesis, the young and cocky vice president, was in the room as well, looking like he had dressed for church. Marcano knew that Leroy Frazier would jump at any chance to discredit the CIA and spout his moralistic tripe about the need for America to lead in the fight for global justice. He was too young and idealistic to understand the complexities of global engagement, the shades of gray that colored international espionage.
Defense Secretary Simpson was also present. But the man who concerned Marcano the most was Attorney General Wachsmann. He was no fool and undoubtedly assumed that such a hastily called meeting would involve some CIA shenanigans he would be asked to support. He had argued against putting Saleet Zafar on the kill list in the first place, and now Marcano would be reporting on the imam’s death.
The president entered the room, and a second round of handshaking commenced. She took her seat at the head of the table and didn’t waste a second. “John, you called this meeting. Let’s get started.”
Marcano handed confidential folders to everyone. He knew that once they had the memos and satellite photos, he would lose their attention. But this was all about creating a paper trail anyway, so he didn’t really care.
He explained that earlier that day, they had confirmed a sighting of Mokhtar al-Bakri, aka Pinocchio, in Aden, Yemen. Amazingly, he was meeting with Saleet Zafar and a few other men. Marcano had authorized drone flights to obtain surveillance video and await further orders.
“The first photo in our package is from our satellite feed. It’s hard to tell who’s there. The second photo is from our drone. It’s taken from behind Saleet and his men but you can see al-Bakri facing them. The third photo is a close-up of al-Bakri’s face.”
The others in the room leafed through the photos. It was possible to discern the vague contours of al-Bakri’s face and the back of Saleet Zafar. A man stood behind Zafar with a weapon, and another man stood next to him wearing a traditional head covering and a long brown coat.
Not included in the folders—because Marcano had left them out—were any shots taken from in front of Zafar, any shots that would show the gray mustache on his sidekick.
“A firefight erupted during the meeting, and al-Bakri was shot,” Marcano continued. “The next photograph was taken a few seconds later. Everybody scattered, so I authorized a drone strike on Zafar, who, as you all know, was on our list of enemies.”
Marcano waited a minute as they riffled through the next few pages showing the crater and the aftereffect of the missiles.
“Saleet Zafar escaped into the city, but we had one of our drones run him down. We missed once when we fired at his vehicle, thinking it was clear of others. It was prayer time and we were afraid that he was headed toward a mosque and would disappear into a crowd. You’ll remember that we had already lost this man once.”
By now, virtually everyone around the table had already leafed through the other photos, well ahead of Marcano’s narrative. They had seen the devastation of the street in Aden and they knew that Saleet Zafar had not survived.
Marcano finished his narration anyway, photo by photo, explaining that the Hellfire 3 missile had struck with precision, keeping casualties to a minimum. He admitted that it wasn’t ideal, but their only alternative would have been to let Zafar escape.
“The Saudis have in the past admitted to firing their missiles at mosques and commercial districts. If they agree to take responsibility here, it will be just one more example of their insensitivity to collateral damage. There will be international condemnation for the killing of a Muslim cleric, but the noise will die down quickly as long as the strike is blamed on the Saudis rather than the United States.”
There was some halfhearted debate, but eventually they adopted Marcano’s proposal. The president would direct the secretary of state to cut a deal with the Saudis. The U.S. would continue its support of the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen, and in turn the Saudis would take credit for these two hits. They would need to do it quickly. Photos of the devastation were already circulating.
“Who was with Zafar?” Seth Wachsmann asked.
“The man behind him was probably al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. We tried to run a facial recognition on the man beside him but came up empty.”
Wachsmann took off his glasses and leaned closer to the photo. He looked up at Marcano and narrowed his eyes. “Was that man part of the collateral damage?”
“He was. He fled with Zafar and was in the vehicle when the missile hit.”
Wachsmann looked at the president, but she didn’t return his gaze. The conversation soon shifted to a plan B—what if the Saudis weren’t willing to take credit? And finally, for the first time since the meeting started, the ever-composed John Marcano took a deep and relaxing breath.
After the meeting, he pulled the president aside and spoke with her privately in the West Wing. “I need you to know about a possible worst-case scenario,” Marcano said.
They were both standing. Marcano had told her this would be very short.
“Wyatt Jackson flew to Dubai last week. We have no record of him crossing into Yemen, but it’s possible.” Marcano watched the president’s face tighten, her eyes wary. She could apparently sense what was coming.
“We don’t know why he went, but it’s possible he might have been meeting with Saleet Zafar. We know Zafar was a friend of Cameron Holloman’s.”
“What are you
saying? Get to the point.”
“That the man with Zafar might have been Wyatt Jackson.”
“And you knew this at the time you authorized the strike?” The president’s voice was sharp and accusatory.
Marcano stayed calm, his own voice low and even. “Of course not. There was no record of Jackson flying anywhere near Aden. At the time we were focused on Zafar. The men with him were an afterthought. In hindsight, looking back through the photos, I’m just saying there is a possibility it might have been Jackson.”
The president sighed, exasperated. She began to speak but stopped herself. When she did, her voice was soft and ominous. “John, Wyatt Jackson better make it back to the United States alive. There is no rationale that could justify taking him out if we had even the slightest hint that he was the person with Zafar.”
“I assure you, Madam President, we did not. But with respect, if it was Wyatt Jackson, then he had entered the country of Yemen illegally and was conspiring with our terrorist enemies. Under our rules of engagement, we would have been justified.”
“He’s an American citizen, John. He’s entitled to due process.”
“This is a war, Madam President. If he was conspiring with our enemy, he is entitled to no such thing.”
89
VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA
When she returned from her run on Wednesday morning, Paige had a text message waiting from Wellington. Saleet Zafar was killed in Yemen! Wellington had embedded a link, and Paige immediately clicked on it.
The link was to an Arabian news source complete with pictures that showed the smoking crater on a city street in Aden, Yemen. The Saudis had taken responsibility for the strike, but the locals were saying they saw an American drone.
Still sweaty, Paige sat down at her computer and searched for every article she could find. Wyatt was supposed to have met with Zafar. But he was also supposed to be returning to Dulles International Airport tonight, flying out of Dubai.