The ScanEagles normally patrolled the areas from Al Qaim to Haditha. The day I visited, the aircraft was locked onto a decrepit old bridge. It bore signs of damage to the supports and structures. The patchy road surface looked like a mess of potholes and debris. Tracks diverted down through the dry wadi to bypass it, telling me the bridge was unsafe for cars.
“That bridge is kinda far off the beaten path,” I mentioned to the operator. The tracker display indicated it was miles from any normal traffic.
“Insurgency is using it,” the contract pilot said.
I didn’t see anyone around the bridge.
“All right, I’ll bite. How?”
“Some idiot downloaded instructions on how to blow up a bridge,” the pilot said. “The insurgency has been practicing on this one every night for months.”
“Practicing?”
Bridge demolition explained the damage.
“They’re not very good at it,” he said with a smile.
“So I see.”
Evening came early that time of year, and with it chilly air. Long shadows cast darkness across the revetments as we ate a halfway decent meal. The food wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The ice cream was better. I thought it odd that few Marines were eating chow.
After dinner I asked one of the Marines where the head was.
“Outside the compound, next to the dorms.”
I smiled. “Thanks.” I turned to take care of business.
The Marine called out, “I’d be careful if I was you.”
I stopped. “Excuse me?”
The Marine nodded at the nearby fence line. “Insurgents snuck up on the base a couple weeks back,” the Marine said. “They fired a rocket at the compound after dark and shredded the john.”
“Seriously?”
The Marine pointed at a building about one hundred yards away. It was the flight line access checkpoint.
“The Nigerian guards that man it insist on shining their spotlight in our direction to see into approaching cars. At night, we are the only building visible from outside the wire.”
“What happened with the rocket?”
“It hit next to the john. It’s got shrapnel in it still. The concussion knocked everyone out of their beds.”
“Really?” I said with some skepticism.
“The guys haven’t eaten dinner for weeks because they don’t want to use it after dark.”
I pondered that as I walked into the blue plastic port-a-john. I’d never complain about the port-a-johns or the backed-up bathroom at the Predator compound at Nellis again. At least there, we didn’t have to worry about RPGs.
My deployment had changed my perspective on the war in ways both expected and unexpected. For one thing, I’d never forget that in Iraq, even going to the head is dangerous.
CHAPTER 13
23 Seconds
“One minute.”
The targeting pod’s cross hairs were locked on a white pickup parked under a row of palm trees outside a small white house in Hibhib. The truck was nondescript in every way. There were no markings, dents, paint details, or anything else to set it apart from the other trucks in the Baquba area. We recognized it only because we had tracked it for the past 480 hours, give or take.
The truck wasn’t the target. The man who had just left the house and climbed into the passenger seat was the priority. He was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the declared leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Al-Zarqawi was a Jordanian who set up militant cells in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. He then joined the insurgency during the occupation. For his efforts, al-Zarqawi was given the title “Emir of al Qaeda in the Country of Two Rivers.” He was accused of abducting and executing Nicholas Berg in May 2004 and beheading Owen Eugene Armstrong, another American working in Iraq, two years later. Al-Zarqawi had a hand in more than seven hundred killings in Iraq, mostly from bombings like that of the UN building in Baghdad in 2003.
And by 2006, he was priority number one in Iraq.
Back from my deployment, I resumed my duties as the group’s chief pilot. I spent most of my time helping train pilots for the new squadrons forming in the wake of our success, training new students at the 11th, and flying missions. The number of squadrons had expanded from three when I joined the RPA community three years before to five stateside and a couple more in theater.
More pilots were learning to fly the Predator and Reaper than any other aircraft in the Air Force. The RPA community was slowly climbing out of the basement of the Air Force fleet and taking its place near the top. Unlike when I joined, pilots in the training pipeline wanted to be part of the RPA community because this aircraft was fighting the war on all fronts.
“Thirty seconds, laser on.”
The pilot’s voice crackled through the intercom speaker. I stood behind the 15th Reconnaissance Squadron’s mission commander, watching the event go down. The flight and the crew belonged to the 3rd Special Operations Squadron.
The Task Force in Iraq assigned to the mission to eliminate al Qaeda cells wasn’t looking to capture al-Zarqawi. They wanted him eliminated.
The Predator angled into range, unheard over the surrounding urban noise. Traffic was sparse on this street. There was little chance of collateral damage. A strike now would likely hurt only al-Zarqawi and his spiritual adviser, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman.
Standing in the ops center, I’d invested too much time in tracking him not to be there when we got him. The other crews around me likely thought the same. I was sure other pilots were in the ops center watching me when I’d gotten the Facilitator the year before. The big missions always drew an audience.
Few aircraft had their missions transmitted live around the world like Predator did. Pred porn permeated every office that could access the video feeds. In a way, the world was watching.
But I had mixed feelings about killing off al-Zarqawi.
On the one hand, he was a symbolic leader of the movement. Eliminating him sent a message to al Qaeda and its supporters throughout the world that they could not win. On the other hand, the war was already over if al-Zarqawi was the best and brightest al Qaeda had to offer. We’d watched him so much that I thought he was more bluster than anything else. There was video showing him unable to work an AK-47 and mishandling a stolen SAW machine gun. It always made us laugh. An AK was designed so an idiot or a child could operate it. What did that say about him?
Trailing al-Zarqawi had become our primary mission as tensions in Al Anbar wound down. Fighting still raged in the Sunni Triangle, but it had subsided to a level where the Marines could transfer control of the Predators back to the Army. Al-Zarqawi had been busy while coalition forces focused on Al Anbar.
The year before, al-Zarqawi had declared war on the Shia in Iraq. He’d used suicide bombers to attack coalition forces and Shia militias. He’d also developed a series of terrorist training camps within the city limits of several towns. Locals were afraid to turn him in because of threats of violence. His cells operated openly, making car bombs and setting up IEDs.
What he worried about was the “White Devil.” We were a silent killer whose mere mention brought fear into their ranks. They suspended operations when they knew we were in the area.
Pushed out of Fallujah, al-Zarqawi set up shop near Baquba. There he directed the rebuilding of an organization we had torn apart during the battle. When we started the hunt, intelligence could only point to an area and tell us he was in there somewhere. It was the best their sources could give them. So we sent our aircraft there on the chance we’d get a whiff of his activity. It turned into a slow, methodical hunt like the one for Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
The Task Force’s efforts to capture al-Zarqawi kicked into high gear in February 2006 when interrogators began building a picture of what al-Zarqawi’s organization looked like. They started small, with captured operatives, and held them
at a compound on the base. Abu Ghraib was for the common insurgent. If you got sent to “the compound,” you had something the Task Force wanted. The interrogators had a reputation for getting every drop of information.
My first assignment in the Air Force was as an interrogator. In fact, I was one of the last Air Force interrogators before headquarters transferred the function to the Army in 1995. I supported our early operations in Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti. I even won the CIA’s Exceptional Human Intelligence Collector Award in late 1994 for my work supporting Haiti. Contacts my team cultivated revealed an assassination attempt against former president Jimmy Carter. Ever since, I appreciated what the interrogators could bring to the fight and I vowed to use the information to track down al-Zarqawi and the leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq.
When they got a tip that al Qaeda fighters were operating near Al Kazariya, we flew to the village and started to scan the area, looking for any trace of movement. It was my turn to fly for the 3rd Special Operations Squadron and I could see a road suspected of trafficking weapons in my HUD. It ran northeast from Baghdad, through Baquba on its way to the Iranian border. It was late, and the road was devoid of cars and trucks.
We suspected Iran was supplying al Qaeda in Iraq and the insurgency with guns and explosives. The Iranians had no real interest in the Iraqis. Their support was an attack on the United States. I watched too many Iranian helicopters fly from bases deep in Iranian territory to drop supplies for the insurgency in marshy eastern Iraq to be convinced otherwise.
I even tried to shoot one down once, but the three-star general running the air war called me off.
My sensor operator scanned the road as we got to the outskirts of Al Kazariya. I rotated between the squadrons so much that I had no idea with whom I was flying. Most flights I got a name and a little small talk. I was a guest at the squadrons now, not a member. I missed being one of the boys, so I enjoyed the time I got on the stick even if it was doing pattern-of-life missions.
The intercom connected to the tactical operations center remained quiet. The 3rd Special Operations Squadron was now directly tied to the Task Force, just like the 17th was linked to their JOC. We could talk directly to the collection managers, JTACs, and commanders.
Nothing stood out as we scanned the road and village. There were no indications of a possible IED. No one walked around the streets. This was the start of the hunt, and the Task Force threw out a wide net, looking for anyone we could follow up the chain.
Moving to the cluster of houses, we searched for any movement. The blocks were small, maybe three to four houses per street. We could see most of the village and keep an eye on the main road all at the same time. We were running the targeting pod parallel to the main road, and houses zipped through the HUD in a blur. We were in the process of shifting to another sector for a fresh search when we saw the flash.
“Whoa, what’s that?” I said.
The sensor instinctively stopped the ball in place.
“What?”
“You didn’t see that?” I asked.
“See what?”
He looked confused. I pointed to my HUD in the direction of the flash.
“Move back that way, slowly. I saw something flash. A hot spot.”
It could have been anything. Cooking fire, guy taking a piss or a smoke break. But I still wanted to check. The sensor panned the ball back slowly and paused to give us both a chance to truly see the picture. After about three blocks, we saw another flash in the extreme corner of the HUD.
“Up there,” I said.
The cross hairs shifted up and to the right and stopped on a house with a walled-in backyard. The yard was large enough to hold a crude obstacle course. Fighters ran around the obstacles. Others were shooting AK-47s. The whole area looked like a cheesy 1970s James Bond flick.
We sat for a moment, surprised at the audacity of building a training facility within a block and a half of a major road. Apparently, security wasn’t a concern for these guys.
I called the Predator LNO. He wasn’t there. He hadn’t checked off for a relief break or even to change out with another LNO. Bad timing, I thought as I posted my query in chat.
DN31> Hostile Act on-screen, request permission to engage.
We were there. We were armed. A single Hellfire could have taken out the whole complex.
TF145TOC> STBY.
We were told to stand by. I felt a little deflated as I spun up the missiles. I didn’t expect to shoot, but I got ready just in case. We were still a new asset for this supported unit and they had so far been reluctant to use us as a strike asset.
TF145TOC> need you to stand off 5nm.
Standing off five nautical miles meant we would not be shooting.
DN31> c.
We were being positioned for overwatch duty. The Task Force had a lot of tools at their disposal, most of which were more suited to a mission like this than we were.
DN31> orbiting to the SE.
TF145TOC> c.
From that vantage, I could monitor the street entrance to the house and see the entire training compound. I watched one figure jump over a barricade, fire half a dozen rounds from the hip, and attempt to smash a dummy with his rifle butt. His motions were so spastic that an American would have downed him before he’d even scaled the barricade. I sort of felt sorry for the guy. He was full of spirit and machismo but had no inherent physical talent. Lucky for him he would be captured soon.
Just as he finished with the dummy, I saw clumps of dirt explode around the trainees. One insurgent collapsed immediately.
“Oh shit,” my sensor operator blurted out.
“Watch for squirters,” I said.
The sensor refocused and started actively scanning the perimeter. Rotor blades from a pair of Apache attack helicopters flashed through the HUD. Judging by the size of the divots, these were 20mm rounds hitting the compound.
“Runners to the south,” the sensor called out.
One of the trainees or maybe an instructor smartly ran around the corner of the building and joined up with a couple of other armed insurgents. They huddled low against the wall. These guys looked more competent, more experienced. They assumed the helicopters would lose sight of them, but they must have missed the lesson at terrorist school about the White Devils.
DN31> Squirters south side.
Another helicopter flashed through our HUD. Moments later, a second burst hit. Unlike the first pass, which strafed the length of the compound, this burst concentrated on the men hiding against the wall. The 20mm rounds cut their silhouettes into the wall before they collapsed in the dust. The attack choppers made a couple more passes before pulling off target.
We hadn’t been released from the target, so we continued to watch. Occasionally, the flash of a rotor could be seen in the HUD. The helicopters were orbiting the compound, searching for any movement.
I wonder what they are waiting for, I thought. Then a Black Hawk dashed over the target and hovered in the street. Thick black lines dropped from both sides. Fast ropes.
In seconds, a special operations team descended and spread out. There was no return fire. The team blew open the gate of the compound and flooded inside. A small convoy of HMMWVs rolled up and a couple of bodies were loaded into the back.
We’d found one of al-Zarqawi’s camps. It was like fitting a piece in the puzzle, but we were a long way from finishing it. Over time, information from the survivors of this raid and others led the Task Force to capture some of the facilitators and leaders. The Task Force kept working until a team of interrogators got one of al-Zarqawi’s associates to betray him.
Sheikh Abd al-Rahman became our target.
The first night, a crew found Sheikh Abd al-Rahman and then promptly lost him as the driver weaved through rush-hour traffic. The second night, we reacquired the truck, and the crew managed to stay on him. The truck was a
white HiLux with a crew cab. It was well maintained but not flashy. It could be anyone’s car; it just happened to be a more reliable vehicle. The truck blended in well with the traffic in and around Baquba.
We were required to have a long standoff from the target. This limited our chance of being detected. But it also degraded the optics so that facial recognition was impossible. The Task Force had to rely on other sources to verify that we were in fact following al-Rahman. So while they worked out that problem, we remained locked on the little white pickup. By day, we trailed discreetly behind him as he made his rounds. By night, we watched his home. We documented anyone who came and went and analyzed if it was al-Zarqawi or just a courier.
It was early morning when I got my first chance to track al-Rahman. The truck was still parked at the safe house when he climbed into the cab with his driver. I shut off the autopilot and made a slight turn to the right to make sure I had control.
I checked the tracker map above the HUD and put the Predator in a lazy orbit off to the side of the road so I could watch him drive in either direction. The engine started and the driver slid into the traffic moving up and down the road. The sensor operator kept the truck in the middle of the HUD as I turned the Predator so we could follow. All around him, taxis with orange-and-white panels rode nearby. Trucks lumbered along the road, passing carts pulled by donkeys. A white vehicle in Iraq blended in with the environment like a rabbit in a snowstorm. I pressed my finger against the target truck on the HUD screen. I figured I couldn’t miss him if I was touching him.
He drove for a few miles before turning onto a dirt road. I had no idea where he was going. Though we’d been able to do so with other targets, it was too early to figure out his complete pattern of life. And he was more erratic than the others. He didn’t keep a schedule like the Facilitator or the Captain.
He was good.
I let the Predator fly past for a few miles before circling back. We never lost sight of him and I wanted to make sure we didn’t overfly the car. When that happened, we would momentarily exceed the gimbal limit inside the targeting pod, sending it careering toward the horizon.
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