by John Weisman
The site had been used by the military on and off since 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt first established an anti-aircraft range there. In 1942 the location was named after Major General George LeRoy Irwin, who commanded the 57th Field Artillery Brigade during World War I.
During the Cold War, Fort Irwin was one of the Army’s key armor and artillery training sites. The NTC was activated in 1979, and a resident opposing force was brought in to challenge incoming units. In the early 1990s, with the realization that much of future combat would occur in urban environments, unlike the great land war against the Soviets, the NTC instituted a curriculum dubbed MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) in December 1993.
Since 2005 Fort Irwin and the NTC had been designated the Army’s main training facility for urban operations training. Many of the local residents had been hired to role-play during the field exercises. Visiting Army linguists got to practice their language skills by donning Afghan or Iraqi dress and confronting the trainees in Pashto, Urdu, Dari, Arabic, and Farsi.
Today troops can train in Afghan villages and Iraqi towns, or wire-strewn urban warrens of alleys similar to the ones the Marines fought through meter by meter in Fallujah. There are clusters of buildings that can be adjusted to reflect the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, or Central or South America, giving troops the ability to practice the urbancentric combat that is known as the “three-block war” in venues that mimic Cairo or Kandahar, Lagos or South Lebanon, Jalalabad or Abbottabad.
On March 8 there were more than five hundred Soldiers on predeployment exercises at Fort Irwin, as well as fifteen hundred National Guard personnel training for urban and border-surveillance operations. The twenty-six SEALs went completely unnoticed.
The fact that Fort Irwin is a busy venue was precisely why Tom Maurer and Dave Loeser had selected it for the initial training site. It was, they understood, far easier to get lost in a crowd than to be the only game in town. And so, near the outer edge of the northernmost urban warfare training area, nestled behind a faux apartment block and down a thirty-foot-wide paved road leading to a Potemkin Village marketplace, they’d created an irregular, pentangled site roughly 225 feet in length and 150 feet at its deepest point, delineating the outer borders with telephone poles laid end to end. Within the irregular pentangle were six structures. One was three stories tall, one had two stories, and the remaining four were single level.
With Loeser’s vehicle in the lead, the SEALs parked their five Humvees a hundred feet beyond the site and dismounted.
The squadron commander and his XO stepped across the telephone poles. Loeser waited until the SEALs gathered around him. He pulled a small spiral notebook from his ACU breast pocket and opened it, checking the notes he had written.
“Here’s the mission,” he said. “Capture/kill a high-value target living in this”—Loeser indicated the three-story structure behind him—“location. Insertion by no more than two helos, which have to land and take off within the confines of the area indicated by the telephone poles.” He paused while the SEALs looked over the layout.
“The HVT will be living with family members and friends who may or may not be armed. The HVT may be wearing an explosive vest or have weapons within close proximity. There will most certainly be children, some of them young, who may or may not be used as human shields. The political implications of collateral damage are huge, especially where it comes to the children.” Loeser paused. “In other words, do not shoot any kids unless they are shooting at you. Everybody with me so far?”
Heron’s hand went up. “Hey, Boss, what about wives? I—”
Gunrunner’s hand shot up. “I know a couple of wives I’d like to shoot.”
Followed by Troy’s: “Okay, what about armed teenagers?”
Loeser waited for the laughter to subside. “Give me a break, guys.” He paused to look at Troy. “T-Rob, you know as well as I do there’s no bag limit on armed teenagers. You bagged enough of them last cycle in Helmand to know that. Wives, on the other hand . . .”
Padre: “There’s a three-wife limit.”
Gunrunner: “Then Rebel better watch out, he’s approaching it.”
More laughter as Rebel’s face flushed red.
Loeser called for order. “Okay, c’mon, guys, back to business. Constraints. Like all HVT templates, we have to be in and out within thirty minutes. We will infil and exfil on helos, so weight will be a factor. Insertion element will be twelve, secondary will be twelve. Assaulters are One-Alpha and Six-Charlie.”
“How many in the command element?”
“Three,” Loeser said.
He did not say, “Including me and Captain Maurer.” He and Maurer had discussed the assignment immediately upon the captain’s return from JSOC.
Maurer was not naive. There were only one or two HVTs in the world who met the criterion “devote a Tier One squadron for a couple of months to one single objective.” Usama was at the top of that list. And if it was going to be UBL, there was no way either Tom Maurer or Dave Loeser was going to miss the op. Even if one of them had to go as the K-9.
Rangemaster rubbed his upper lip. “And intel people?”
“Try to factor for two, but one is definite.” Loeser was being vague on purpose. If he had mentioned supplemental helicopters and a Ranger blocking force, the proverbial cat would have been out of the proverbial bag.
Loeser looked around to see if there were more questions. There weren’t, thank God. “Okay. Here’s how we’re going to go about this. Today I want you to walk the site. Discover it, learn it, measure it, war-game it. Look for vulnerabilities—its and ours. Work on identifying potential problems and possible solutions. Then come up with a preliminary action plan keyed to this one problem. At eighteen-hundred hours, we’ll assemble in a SCIF—we’ve been given use of one while we’re here—and talk things over.”
One-Alpha’s Geoff Ziebart looked surprised. “A SCIF?”
“Affirmative, Z. What we’re doing here is compartmented.” He scanned the SEALs. “Everybody hear that loud and clear?” He waited for a chorus of “Aye-aye, sirs.” When he got it, he said, “Good. Understand, gentlemen, this is very close-hold. And it has to stay that way.”
Loeser paused. “Any final questions?”
Heron’s hand went up. “Who’s the target, Mr. Loeser?”
Loeser was ready for this one. He could answer it truthfully, if not honestly. “I can’t say, Roger, because I haven’t been told.”
Gunrunner: “Any time restrictions on getting this planned, Mr. Loeser?”
“Timing’s indefinite, Blair.”
It was, too. Sort of. A full-scale copy of the Khan compound and the surrounding area in Abbottabad was being constructed on a ten-acre section of land adjacent to the rifle ranges at Fort Knox in Kentucky. Fort Knox was more than a gold repository. For the past decade it had been used as a training site for Tier One units. It was close enough to Fort Campbell so that DEVGRU could stage at Fort Campbell, at a site built for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), a site that could be configured to look like Jalalabad or Bagram.
They would load onto SOAR’s MH60-J and MH-47 helicopters and fly to Fort Knox as a complete assault element and rehearse the entire scenario at night under the same blacked-out conditions they’d face in Pakistan. Another plus: the Fort Knox site was isolated enough so that, unlike some other, more commonly known military bases, it seldom drew any media attention. So while Red Squadron’s final training iteration would take place where pilots, assaulters, the command element, and the Ranger blocking force could train together in what is known as a BILAT, or bilateral, exercise on a full-size doppelganger of the Abbottabad compound, for now Fort Irwin was the perfect place to start working out the kinks.
“You’re here for the immediate future,” Loeser said. “But our plans and prep time may be cut short any minute, so you gotta work as quickly as you can. The objective right now is to get this specific tactical problem worked ou
t to my satisfaction, and Captain Maurer’s.”
He cracked a smile. “Hope you like the accommodations, gentlemen, because you’re going to be here for a while.”
21
The White House Situation Room, Washington, D.C.
March 14, 2011, 1636 Hours Local Time
It was, all things considered, the perfect day for this particular meeting. Secretary of State Kate Semerad was in Paris to host a G8 ministerial dinner as well as bilateral meetings with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed, and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto. But if necessary she could use the embassy SCIF and join by secure phone. The secretary of defense had no public schedule at all, and so he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were able to slip out of the Pentagon and be driven into the White House complex unnoticed. The president’s public schedule included a trip to a middle school in Arlington, Virginia, to talk about education, a visit with ISAF commander General David Petraeus, and a separate meeting with, as the official schedule put it, “senior advisors.” In the evening, POTUS would attend a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee.
At the daily White House press briefing, questions to the new press secretary, Jay Carney, focused on Japan’s nuclear disaster, gun control, gay marriage, the antigovernment demonstrations in Bahrain, and military intervention in Libya. The subjects of Usama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were never raised.
The focus on those other problems made it a lot easier for D/CIA Vince Mercaldi and a trio of his aides, as well as Vice Admiral Wesley Bolin and Rear Admiral Scott Moore, Slam Bolin’s detailee to the National Security Council—and the other members of the Restricted Interagency Group to enter the West Wing and make their way to the Situation Room on the West Wing’s basement level unnoticed by pesky reporters. By the time the president arrived six minutes late, everyone was seated at the long rectangular table.
As POTUS entered the room, Vince rose. The others joined him, and there was a ragged chorus of “Good afternoon, Mr. President,” which brought a brief smile to the commander in chief’s face.
The president took his usual chair at the door-end of the table, facing Vince, who anchored the opposite end. The national security advisor sat to the president’s right, Dwayne Daley to his immediate left. The secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Admiral Wes Bolin held down the table to the president’s left, and Rear Admiral Moore sat next to the NSC chairman on his right. The president looked down the table at the CIA director, who was flanked by three individuals wearing blue CIA staff badges on chains around their necks. “Vince,” he said, “you asked for this meeting, so why don’t you begin.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” The CIA director adjusted his glasses. “I’d like to introduce my colleagues.” He looked to his right. “Some of you may know Stu Kapos, who is director of the National Clandestine Service. Across from Stu, to my left, is Dick Hallett, who runs our Bin Laden Group. And next to Dick is the BLG’s chief analyst, a former Marine whose staff badge reads George S. Nupkins. I can assure you all that the name is a pseudonym. For those of you unaware, it’s one of CIA’s venerable traditions that all of our covert people receive in-house pseudonyms. And George here—we prefer to call him Spike—selected his own pseudonym from a character in Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers.”
Vince peered over his aviator frames at Spike, a tall, rumpled, beer-bellied, double-chinned, curly-haired fiftyish fellow in a rumpled gray suit, white button-down shirt, and striped rep tie. “George Nupkins was the mayor of Ipswich in that book, wasn’t he, Spike?”
“Yes, sir, ’e was,” the CIA analyst answered in a badly bogus Cockney accent. “ ’Appily married, too, just loike me.”
Everyone laughed.
The D/CIA continued. “I brought Spike with me today because he probably knows more about UBL than anyone in the world except UBL himself.” He waited for the murmurs to subside. “And also, Mr. President, because Spike’s the chap who came up with the inoculation program I mentioned in January. You said you’d like to meet him. Well, here he is.”
The president’s eyes lit up. “Congratulations, Spike. Great idea.”
Spike nodded appreciatively. “Thank you, sir. I just wish we’d gotten a positive on the DNA.”
“I do, too,” the president said.
“But I must also add, sir,” Spike continued, “that I am nonetheless convinced that UBL is in residence at the Khan compound.”
“Even without conclusive evidence?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Why are you convinced, Spike?” The president massaged his chin.
Vince frowned. The CIA director had spent enough face time with POTUS to know the chin massage meant he didn’t like what he was hearing. Now the president was tapping the table with his pen, another bad sign. “We have no photographs, Spike. No confirmed sightings. No armed bodyguards. No solid evidence at all. Everything’s circumstantial. Wouldn’t hold up in court.”
Vince was happy to see Spike hold his ground. “That’s not quite true, sir.”
“Not quite true?”
“Yes, Mr. President, not quite true. There’s solid evidence. It may be what you call circumstantial, but it is nevertheless evidence—and it is, to my mind, conclusive when taken as a holographic entirety. The Khan brothers, for example, are known to be UBL’s most trusted couriers. We’ve been tracking them in earnest since 2004. Arshad Khan—his nom de guerre is Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, but his real name may be either Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq or Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, we’re still working on that one—bought the Abbottabad property in 2003 and built the residence in 2004. At that point in time it was on the outskirts of the city. Isolated. Surrounded by big, open plowed fields. The perfect spot for a hideout. And Arshad—I’ll call him that so it won’t be confusing—built it differently from any other house in Abbottabad. It is three stories, so three families can live comfortably. But here’s what: the two Khan families live on the first floor—the ground floor, that is—and in the guest house. The second and third floors are reserved for a VIP occupant and his family. This we know for sure through eyes-on surveillance, as well as thermal imagery from drones.” Spike paused long enough to drink from the bottle of water in front of him.
“The third-floor balcony,” he continued, “has a seven-foot-high privacy wall. Bin Laden is somewhere between six foot four and six foot five. There is Sentinel footage—” The analyst caught the blank look on the president’s face. “Sentinel, sir, is the RQ-170 stealth drone we have dedicated to the Khan compound and overflights of Abbottabad—of a male, six foot four or six foot five, judging from the shadow he threw and the time of day, walking in the courtyard of the compound. We do not have a picture of his face, but he resembles photos we do have of UBL. His gait is much the same, and his shoulders are stooped exactly like UBL’s shoulders. And finally, there’s the food.”
The president looked surprised. “The food?”
“The food,” Spike continued. “Arabs eat lamb and rice, emphasis on rice. Pakistanis eat chicken and lentils. Whoever lives in that compound eats lamb and rice. Regularly.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dwayne Daley said. “How do you know that?”
“We did some dumpster-diving.”
“Oh, yeah?” Daley rapped the table triumphantly. “I read reports that they burn all their garbage inside the compound. How could you dumpster-dive that?”
“They do burn the garbage,” Spike said. “We got hold of the ashes. More than once. The forensics are solid. The occupants of that compound eat like Arabs, not Pakistanis.”
SECDEF broke in before Daley could argue any more. “Okay, Spike, let’s say for argument’s sake you’re right. Bin Laden lives in that compound. The question then becomes, how do we get him?”
“That is the question,” Spike said. “And I am not a military strategist.” He looked across the table at the SECDEF, the Joint Chiefs chairman, and Wesley Bolin. “I can tell you for a fac
t that both Khan brothers are in residence. The younger one, Tareq, recently returned from an overseas trip. And according to one of our eyes-on assets in Abbottabad, he will be in residence there for the foreseeable future. It is my opinion that UBL is also currently living in that house on that compound, along with at least one of his wives and some of his children. I am convinced of it. How you get him is for you-all to figure out.”
“Indeed it is.” Vince Mercaldi opened the folder he’d brought with him. “Seems to me we have three alternatives here. One is an air strike: we flatten the compound and kill everyone inside. Two is a boots-on-the-ground mission, which you, Mr. President, have already heard about in general terms from Admiral Bolin. And third would be a joint mission with the Pakistanis.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded. “An air strike by B-2 stealth bombers is doable. We could also employ Tomahawk missiles.”
“Alternatives that we should explore, Mr. Secretary,” Vince said. “I’d like to suggest right now, however, that we do not consider a joint mission with the Pakistanis.”
Daley frowned. “And why would that be? They are our allies.”
“Because in some arenas they are not our allies,” Vince said. “Not at all. Last month, we shared with the Pakistanis intelligence about two capture/kill missions we were about to launch in northeast Afghanistan against the Haqqani Network and a Taliban commander who travels back and forth between Afghanistan and Waziristan. I had the Paks’ communications networks monitored, and I can tell you without a doubt that elements of the ISI warned the people we were planning to hit.”
The president’s eyes widened. “They did?”
“Yes, Mr. President, they did. We went through with the raids, of course, so as not to alert the Pakistanis, and we were, quote, ‘surprised’ when we came up dry. But it is conclusive that elements of ISI and segments of the Pakistani military as well are collaborating with our enemies. If you would like, I would be happy to supply you with the relevant CDs and transcripts. We have it all documented.”