KBL

by John Weisman

  But now the D/CIA had formed a tight working relationship with Wes Bolin over at JSOC. They did better than just get along—they actually enjoyed one another’s company. Big things were in the works. This TDY was, for lack of a better term, the test program to see if the top-down relationship would transfer to bottom-up.

  “Which is why we need you, Ty. You’re basically the only guy here who both knows Pakistan and the folks at Meade well enough to integrate on short notice.”

  Ty had to admit Rich had a point. SAD had its share of SEALs and Marines. But D Squadron, which was one of the two classified mission components of the Fort Meade–based AWG, was staffed in large part by former Delta operators and Airborne Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment. Ty had put in three years at the 1-75 before he’d been selected for Delta. Plus, he’d worked closely with AWG’s C Squadron in Helmand Province in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009. He’d helped them refine an effective method for identifying and targeting high-value targets, Taliban bomb makers, and fabricators of the al-Qaeda network’s improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

  The tactics had originally been developed in Iraq back in 2005 and 2006 by the counter-IED program named Constant Hawk. But they were significantly improved and enhanced in Helmand under the Asymmetric Warfare Group’s Whiskey Solo program.

  And now CIA wanted to adapt Whiskey Solo to the unique mission requirements of AFPAK, the Afghan-Pakistan theater. The new compartment would be called Whiskey Trio. The main challenge? Whiskey Trio had to operate completely under the radar, because the ultranationalistic Pakis went batshit every time some Jihadi was blown into the well-known smithereens by a Hellfire.

  Rich said, “It’s only four weeks.”

  “A critical four weeks, so far as Patty’s concerned.”

  “We’ll check up on her.” Rich read the skeptical look on Ty’s face. “I’m serious, dude. Daily, if you want. Get her full-time care, if that’s what it takes.”

  Ty looked at his boss with pursed lips. “Goddammit, Rich.” He stood up. “I’m going down to the cafeteria for some coffee.”

  Rich’s expression remained neutral. “Sure, go on, think it over. But bring me back a cup, okay? Black, no sugar.”

  Of course he’d volunteered. At heart, Ty was still a Soldier who believed in the old-fashioned values of Duty, Honor, Country. Even so, he’d wrung extra funds out of Rich Erwin so that Patty would be covered 24/7 while he was gone. And on the upside, the TDY would give him a chance to catch up with his old Delta compadre, call-sign Loner, who was running AWG’s D Squadron these days. Loner was a lanky, dark-haired chief warrant officer who lived in Maryland about a forty-five-minute drive from Meade. He was the best pistol shot Ty had ever worked with. And one of the hardest workers.

  Ty would travel in the same way as on his first TDY to Pakistan: on an official—as opposed to a diplomatic—passport and under the alias of Tim White. His cover was technical security consultant to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and the American Consulate in Lahore.

  Loner and two other D Squadron shooters, Kent and Gary, would also come in on burgundy (official) passports as contract security personnel detailed to work as drivers for the State Department’s regional security officer in Islamabad. The RSO would then detail them to the Lahore consulate.

  On paper, Ty would report to the RSOs in Lahore and Peshawar to do security surveys; in essence, he would be the advance man for diplomatic forays. Which he would indeed do, to maintain what is called in the intelligence business “cover for status.” Ty needed cover for status because both consulates, as well as the embassy in Islamabad, were chockablock with personnel the State Department called FSNs: Foreign Service nationals. FSNs were required because, to be blunt, not very many American diplomats are fluent in the language of the country to which they are assigned. Currently, for example, the entire State Department had only six diplomats who spoke fluent Pashto, and none of them worked in Lahore. It was therefore FSNs, not FSOs (U.S. Foreign Service officers) who actually carried out most of America’s diplomacy at the consulate. The Americans were limited to dealing with those Pakistanis who spoke English.

  Moreover, CIA was convinced that many of the FSNs who worked as consular staff, visa examiners, drivers, exterior security guards, translators, clerks, maintenance crew, cooks, and secretaries either reported to, or were officers of, ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service.

  It was a simple fact of life that every American consulate and embassy was riddled with intelligence operatives from the host country. Which is why Ty and his colleagues had to maintain their covers for status and actually do the work their visas said they were supposed to be doing.

  Hostile surveillance and infiltrators were the reasons there were always areas within embassies and consulates that were secure, and where no FSNs were allowed. The regional security officer’s office suite was one of those secure areas. The consulate’s SCIF was inside the RSO’s suite. If the facility was large enough, CIA preferred to have its own SCIF. But in Lahore, even though the consulate was located in Pakistan’s second largest city, it shared quarters.

  The regional security officer was a fortysomething smart-talking redhead Second Amendment devotee known around the consulate as Mr. Wade. His radio call sign was Mountaineer, because Mr. Wade had gone to West Virginia University and his blue and gold WVU sweatshirt hung on a coat hook in the office. He wore it as a good luck talisman during football season, and so he was wearing it now, because the 9–4 Mountaineers were scheduled to play in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando in five days. Wade had done tours in Baghdad, Kabul, and Beirut. It hadn’t taken him thirty minutes to figure out who Ty worked for.

  But since RSOs are Foreign Service specialists, as opposed to Foreign Service officers, and they often have disdain for their caste-conscious FSO colleagues, Mr. Wade had been more than willing not only to play along, but to give Ty his wholehearted support. Besides, Mr. Wade enjoyed the company of the three AWG Soldiers who had dropped in shortly after Ty had arrived. They called themselves Eugene, Gary, and Kent. Wade labeled them The G-Men and The Demon. Demon because Kent, who insisted on opening beer bottles with his teeth, could also do incredible things with the boot knife he invariably carried in his sock.

  “Yo, Mr. Wade. Merry-merry.”

  The RSO looked up. “Yo, Mr. Tyster, or should I say Mr. Tim. Merry-merry and a White Christmas to vous, too.” Wade giggled and jerked his thumb toward the SCIF door. “You got a call from House o’ Spooks.”

  “They say what they want?”

  “Yeah. They said NSA just intercepted a secure message and now can confirm that Santa Claus is indeed coming to town.”

  “Everywhere but here, right?”

  “Oh, no. Santa always makes an appearance in Lahore. Instead of a sled he travels in a tuk-tuk, and he brings us dust and rain. Especially rain.”

  The RSO jerked his thumb toward the Keurig machine. “Coffee? I got a care package today. Wolfgang Puck French Vanilla.”

  Ty’s idea of real coffee was day-old percolator-brewed mud. “I’d settle for Yuban.”

  “Whoban?

  “Yuban.” Ty parked himself on the edge of the RSO’s desk. “You know, the famous caffeine terrorist, Yuban Bin Laden.”

  “You ban Bin Laden?” Wade stifled a cackle. “Then you didn’t hear him say, ‘Wake up and smell the coffee, because Yuban Bin Tryin’ for almost ten years.’ ”

  “Don’t remind me.” Ty slid off the desk. “Wasn’t there some CNN report a couple of months back that he was here in Pak, living the life of luxury in some villa?”

  “Yeah, I heard it. Total disinformation. Listen, I know this country. He ain’t here. He’s hiding in plain sight.”

  “Where?”

  “Washington. Driving a cab.”

  “Funny.” Ty plucked a mug off Wade’s bookshelf, took it over to the Keurig, and made himself a cup of the RSO’s coffee. “Not bad.” He blew over the top. “Hot. Langley say what they want?”

  Wade stuck his low
er lip out. “Uh-uh. But it can’t be good news. It’s Christmas. At Christmas, all bosses turn into Grinches. You’ll see—they’ll probably extend you again. Ask you to work right through the holidays.”

  “Don’t even think that.”

  “You’re right. Positive thoughts only. They’ll fly you home first class. Give you a month’s paid leave. Promote you to the senior service.”

  “Please,” Ty said, “give me some of what you’re smoking.”

  “That would be mistletoe.”

  They laughed. Then the RSO grew serious. “Truth? The Pakis are the Grinch.”

  Ty snorted. Wade was right about that. The Paks had been getting real aggressive of late. It was growing more and more difficult to break surveillance and get out into the boondocks, which is how Ty thought of the target-rich environment of North Waziristan, where he and the AWG personnel had spent the past eight weeks slipping tags onto targets that would be surveilled by UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) flying at fifty, sixty thousand feet.

  Frankly, Ty was exhausted. Between the cover work and his real job, he’d been putting in eighteen-hour days. He was actually looking forward to the three-day Christmas weekend when the consulate would be shut down. “Guess I’d better call home.”

  “Tell House o’ Spooks you want a replacement for Christmas.”

  Ty punched the cipher lock on the SCIF door, opened it, eased inside, and then closed it firmly behind him.

  Wade watched the CIA man open the SCIF door. He hadn’t been briefed on Ty’s mission, but as they used to say during the Cold War, the RSO had been around the bloc. He knew Ty was working one of Langley’s counterterrorist programs, and it hadn’t been lost on him that the three other civilian contractors looked very similar to some JSOC personnel he’d run across in Kabul, where they were known as Erasers.

  Ty set his notepad down, then dialed the number Wade had left for him. It was a Langley number, but one with which he was unfamiliar. The phone was picked up after two rings. Ty said, “Two-one-four-one.”

  The operator said, “Clearance?”

  Ty recited the clearance code.

  The operator said, “Go secure.”

  Ty hit the button on the side of the instrument and waited until the LEDs went from green to red. “Secure.”

  “I’ll connect you now.”

  There was a pause. Ty heard the phone ring three times. Then an unfamiliar voice said, “Ty Weaver?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Stuart Kapos. Good to talk to you.”

  Stuart Kapos? Whoa. Ty estimated that there were eight or nine levels of management between him and the director of the National Clandestine Service. “Sir?”

  “Forget ‘sir.’ Call me Stu. Like the phone.”

  Ty laughed. STUs was Armyspeak for secure telephone units, an older, more cumbersome predecessor of the instrument on which he was currently speaking. “Sir—uh, Stu.”

  “Good to have you on the line. Two things, Ty. One: I apologize for extending you in Pakistan. But you have to understand that Whiskey Trio is mission critical. We’ve killed a large number of HVTs because of you and your colleagues. And we’ve put the fear of God into many others.”

  “Thank you . . . Stu.”

  “You’ve spoken with Patty—two days ago, I think—and you know that we’re looking out for her.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ty’s mind was racing. What did the director of CIA’s National Clandestine Service want with him?

  “So here’s the second item.”

  “Sir?”

  “I need you to go provocative.”

  “Provocative?”

  “You and your AWG team have done brilliant work, Ty. The Paks have no idea where you’ve been or what you’re doing. But now that has to change. I need you to get out of the embassy. Lose the official car. Leave a big wake. We want to see how they react. How closely they follow. If they try to impede you or provoke you, and if so, how.”

  “You want me to blow my cover.”

  “In essence, yes.”

  In essence? It was a lot more than essence. Stu Kapos was asking Ty to paint a big red bull’s-eye on his back. “So you’re using me as bait, right?”

  There was a pause on the line. “In a manner of speaking.”

  In a manner of speaking? WTF. Ty rolled his eyes. Bosses never, ever fricking changed. “Why? For what?”

  “Let’s put it this way. We’re very interested in learning how closely ISI monitors us. And how they do it. More than that I can’t say right now.” There was a pause. “Does that still work for you?”

  “How critical is this?”

  “Absolutely mission critical.”

  Ty thought about what Kapos was saying. “I’ve got an official passport. They can’t arrest me.”

  He waited for Kapos to agree.

  Kapos didn’t agree.

  This was not good juju.

  “I mean, the best they could do is PNG me, right?”

  More silence. Then: “It would suit the mission better if you carried your blue passport instead of the official one.”

  Jeezus H. Why not just ask him to wear a suicide vest? “You’re not serious.”

  “You have your blue passport with you.”

  “Sure. But I don’t have a Pak visa in it.”

  “Not to worry. We’ll cover you.”

  “Cover me?” Ty paused. “If you don’t mind my asking, Stu, what exactly does ‘cover me’ mean?”

  “It means that we will do everything we can to protect you.”

  “And what if they bounce me around a bit?” The Paks were not known for being touchy-feely.

  “They could do that,” Kapos said.

  Ty considered the possibilities. “Let me ask you a direct question. What if they come after me?”

  “You mean if they try to use force?”

  “Affirmative.”

  There was no hesitation in the NCS director’s answer. “You’re trained. You should protect yourself.”

  “Including deadly force?” In these politically correct days, when the Justice Department was going after CIA officers and prosecuting contractors, he wanted absolutely specific instructions. No winks and nods.

  Obviously Stu Kapos understood the situation as well. “You will do whatever is appropriate to the situation. I’m not giving you permission to be a cowboy. So you do what you have to do—and let me be specific here, that includes lethal force—and we will back you up every way we can.”

  “Understood.” Ty had no idea why they were asking him to get aggressive, or to blow his cover. But Stu Kapos’s corridor reputation was better than good. Unlike so many of the backstabbing managers at the Agency, he was, as far as Ty had heard, pretty much a straight shooter.

  Moreover, while Ty may have had qualms, he was also mission-driven. Which was why, instead of quibbling, he asked the Soldier’s question: “When do you want me to start?”

  “ASAP. Use the AWG people as your extraction team. Set up a protocol, so if there’s an incident they’ll come get you and bring you back to the consulate—sovereign U.S. territory. It’s all been worked out with their people.”

  “And the folks from State?”

  “We’re leaving them in the dark.”

  “Even the RSO? I mean, ostensibly I’m working for him.” Ty very much wanted Wade to have some idea of what was going on. He might need the RSO’s protection and contacts if things went to hell.

  “You can tell him you’re planning to get in the Pakis’ faces. Nothing more. Nothing about learning how they work.”

  Ty sighed into the mouthpiece. “Okay. Will do.”

  “Look, Ty.” Ty could hear Kapos breathing. “I know how tough this is on you and your family. But you’re doing God’s work, here. Believe me.”

  The former Delta operator cracked a grim smile. “Frankly, Stu, I better be. It’s my ass you’re hanging out in the cold.”

  6

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  Janua
ry 4, 2011, 1645 Hours Local Time

  Under normal circumstances, the president’s daily intelligence brief was delivered by either his national security advisor or the special assistant to the president for counterterrorism at 6:30 AM in the residence or 7:30 in the Oval Office. The fourth of January, however, was a travel day, and so the briefing took place at 9 AM on Air Force One during the flight to Andrews Air Force Base as the First Family traveled back to Washington from their Christmas and New Year’s vacation in Chicago. The one event listed on the president’s schedule January 4 other than travel was a 4:30 PM meeting in the Oval Office with the secretary of defense, a meeting that was closed to the press. The only thing out of the ordinary about the meeting was that no photographs were released. But no one in the White House press corps, or anywhere else, for that matter, noticed it.

  One of the reasons for no photographs was that it wasn’t just the secretary of defense who was waiting in the Oval Office when the president arrived, accompanied by his special assistant for counterterrorism. Waiting alongside SECDEF Richard Hansen was D/CIA Vince Mercaldi. And Mercaldi, at the last minute, had asked that Vice Admiral Wesley Bolin also join them.

  Bolin wore civilian clothes so as not to attract attention. He needn’t have bothered; there wasn’t a reporter assigned to the White House who could identify the elusive JSOC commander, who for years had successfully kept himself under the press’s radar.

  Mercaldi and Bolin were unhappy when they saw the counterterrorism advisor shamble into the room in the president’s wake. Dwayne Daley had gotten the job after retiring from CIA in order to campaign for the president, serving as the campaign’s director of intelligence policy. In return, he’d been promised the Agency’s directorship. But due diligence showed Daley’s record to be spotty at best. As CIA station chief in Yemen, he had been blind to the ever-crescendoing support for Usama Bin Laden. His reporting on what happened in Sana’a was superficial and simplistic, ignoring shifting tribal alliances and their significance. Although he spoke Arabic, he allowed the Yemenis to control his access to anything but the most inconsequential intelligence. When the USS Cole attack occurred on his watch, Langley discovered, much to its embarrassment, that he had been deaf, dumb, and blind to the depth of the al-Qaeda threat within the country. Later, as CIA’s assistant director for intelligence, he had made a series of misstatements that had caused embarrassment both at the White House and in the intelligence community.