Helo and Osprey flights were no big now. She flew constantly, all over the country, training special ops teams. She knew she would never really blend in so she didn’t even try. They don’t care anyway, these SOCOM guys, she thought. They don’t care if you are a man or woman, military or contractor, black or white. They only judge you on one thing. Do you contribute to the mission? Do you pull your own weight? She was determined to, and so while she still wasn’t tactical, she now had very tactical teammates.
She thought that working for SOCOM as a contractor with no military background was a little like studying abroad in Morocco. Do your research, be a good student, read books, learn the terminology. She read Dick Couch and Linda Robinson and discovered using jargon like “headshed” helped her fit in. She made it clear she wasn’t taking anyone’s job. There was no biometrics equivalent to her in the active-duty Army, and she wasn’t trying to beat anyone, lift more, outshoot anyone on the rifle range. CJSOTF eventually did offer her a gun, and though in predeployment prep she had shot expert on both M4 and M9, she declined.
Soliman also read War Torn, a series of first-person narratives of female reporters in Vietnam. Some things had changed—one woman had a baby in Vietnam and got a pass for her family to visit—but plenty about being a woman in a war had not. Not in the military but affected by it, shaped by it, in a tenuous relationship with it, she took inspiration from the reporter who carried a stick of Maybelline coral-colored lipstick everywhere she went, a silent safety blanket. Soliman could order an infinite variety of lipsticks at the Bagram PX now.
She had picked the right field at the right time, she could see. The technology was blossoming just as the war drove need. Senator Byrd—West Virginian of the Century, God rest his soul—had moved the FBI’s biometrics lab to Clarksburg and set up the program in Morgantown just as she came out of high school. The 9/11 Commission Report had recommended a national biometric-based entry and exit system based on the government’s experience with Mohammed al-Kahtani. He was a candidate to be the twentieth hijacker but was fingerprinted and denied entry by suspicious border agents in 2001. Later, he was captured at Tora Bora and re-identified when his fingerprints were run again at Guantanamo Bay. The DoD would adopt biometrics after a dining hall in Mosul was hit by a suicide bomber in December of 2004; he had snuck on base using a falsified ID card. While an intern in DC in 2005, she had seen the daily hit count, all of the times two biometrics records in Iraq connected for some reason. It was all rudimentary then, no IED forensics added yet, but it was still fascinating, and she had seen the development of the entire program. There were even opportunities with the UN now, in refugee camps around the world, helping people prove who they are so they qualify for benefits. She was on the front edge of a technological wave, she thought. The Iraq War had ended just as the system was finally getting established, but now she was part of an opportunity to demonstrate the full potential in Afghanistan.
This whole country is like a laboratory, like a giant beta-test, she realized. Can we prove the technology really works? And it’s a chance we might not get again; if we don’t occupy another country in our next war, we won’t be able to enroll the population the same way. We’ll have to rely on signatures like IP addresses and keystroke patterns. Everyone is obsessed with cyber-this and drones-that. Khyber Scones! Biometrics was advancing in ways those talking heads didn’t even realize.
On her first day in Baghdad, her first day in a war zone, her first day in her new job, her boss, a full colonel in the US Army, welcomed her to Baghdad with these words: “You’ll be working with the Army’s sexiest and most successful weapon.” But she had never seen it as a weapon. It made sense on some level, she thought, but I’m an engineer, solving problems. I don’t judge if anyone is a bad guy, I just provide the 1s and 0s and let someone else figure that out.
And it’s not all about bad guys. She helped people get jobs, let them move around freely, let trustworthy people prove they were so. Most of these people are just caught in unfortunate circumstances, she thought. Sometimes they make bad choices. But she wasn’t chasing people anyway. She was chasing data. Chasing the opportunity to have someone else put the pieces of the puzzle together. You would think looking at eyes and fingers all day it would be personal, but it’s not. There is so much data it can’t be.
It might be difficult to collect all the data now, but it’ll pay off in the long run. If not this tour, the next one. It’s an act of faith, paying it forward, she knew. You had to have faith in the trickle-down effect. You have to trust the system, to know it’s all going to work. Not always, but enough. The system wasn’t perfect, and she knew most never saw the fruits of their labor. They either put data into the black hole, or they took it out on the other side in some Einstein alternate universe, but they never saw both sides.
But now that she worked in the J2 and sat in the weekly SOCOM command briefs, she had seen both sides. She had seen the system work, and she was more sure of this big picture than ever. Biometrics was just one part of it, certainly, of what they called Identity Operations or, sometimes, Identity Dominance. Knowing for sure who someone is. But you could see it pay off when an old record would pop, full of biographical info that was really hard to re-create later, and she would always tell her colleagues, “That unit from 2006 just got you a great SITREP today.” In Iraq it was about fingerprints, but in Afghanistan now they had the funding and technology to focus on identity generally: iris scans and photos, sure, but also DNA and documents and media and all of the other little trails we leave. And it would only get better. SOCOM was collecting the biometrics data of every indigenous force they trained worldwide.
Sure, it can feel like spinning your wheels when you are collecting and collecting and not catching anyone. But when she was out in the field, working with an ODA team in a village, at least at the end of the day she could report she had enrolled twenty-three people that were unknown before. This wasn’t like Vietnam and body counts. This was an achievable goal, a census of Afghanistan.
The two Chinooks crossed high over the ODA compound, circled back over the river, and began to flare as they descended in tandem. They were landing at the compound, good. Once, they had dropped her alone in the middle of a village, and it was summer and she was wearing short sleeves. It still bothered her, that she could have been so culturally insensitive, bare arms and a woman alone.
She began to gather her go-bag and equipment. They had not been shot at on the flight. She had never been shot at while flying, not a single time she knew of, on any milk run or courier mission. After that first flight out of Baghdad, she had never feared flying again. She only feared being slow, being late with a profile or report, screwing up her data, her one little biometrics piece, and then hearing the next day something happened. A green-on-blue attack, an Afghan police recruit that she said was vetted turning out to be Taliban. She only feared that one of her SOCOM teams would get hurt because her system failed.
This was the biggest contribution she could make, be ready to go embed with any ODA or Marine unit or special operations team that needed her. Her little part to prevent more ramp ceremonies. She saw them, all the time, on the flight line at Bagram. The flag-covered coffins, every day it seemed. When she saw them, her gut twisted like a limb caught in a toothed coal shearer from back home. She would see them and then cry and turn away, but somehow there always seemed to be more the next day.
After so many years—9/11 was over a decade ago!—it had taken so long, but she was finally really doing her part. She wasn’t just reading about it anymore. It was a privilege and an opportunity and an honor. The tears from that day, out in the park with the United Way, they still came back readily enough too. And always more ramp ceremonies.
She looked out the back of the Chinook, and the ground drew close, and she saw two guys on four-wheelers waiting for her. They looked so thin. They get so little food out here, the air drops are so sparse, and she had so much at her big base.
She
slung on her pack and jogged down and out of the back of the bird and into the dust cloud kicked up by the rotors.
No more ramp ceremonies.
THE POLICE CAPTAIN turned off his cell phone and discretely approached al-Muhandis.
Two helicoptera, malem, the captain may have said. Two of the big fat ones. My brother’s son, out on the ridge with his goats, he saw them and called right away. They will be here very soon.
The Engineer may have sat at the end of a long workbench, a string of students on each side, the tabletop covered in boards and wires and drying glue and black electrical tape.
We must move you, malem. Now, to my cousin’s house in Baghlan. We can take the police laarey.
Too late, the Engineer said. He gestured at the Tea Boy huddled in a corner of the long room. The boy was wary, two black eyes and a limp from the police captain’s … play with him the night before. But the boy had nothing to fear from him; that was an Afghan indulgence, not his.
Habibi, I need you to send a message, the Engineer called.
Yes, Haji, the boy replied. He had studied his Koranic Arabic well, unlike these other uncouth manglers of the tongue. How could they even understand the imam’s teaching on Friday at the mosque?
Take a motorbike and go to the talib camp just outside of town and tell them to radio the other katibat about attacking the kuffar when they arrive here, the Engineer said.
But malem, the police captain protested. The kuffar can hear the radio now.
I know, the Engineer may have replied, they must hear the radio. There is no time to clean the material, but we must all leave this room immediately. Get to your homes and your fields. None of the pieces must be with you. Take off your gloves and throw them in the fire.
No matter his instructions, they were not so disciplined when he was not around.
What do we do if they arrest us? one of his students asked. They will torture us. How can we resist?
Yes, they will torture you, the Engineer said. We have seen this. Everyone knows it. Remember the Throne verse of the Koran. Say the Ayatul Kursi to yourself, over and over again, and invoke the greatness of Allah who knows and sees and has supremacy over all.
They all got up and left the room quickly. When the Engineer stepped outside into the sunlight, he saw that the two helicopters had landed on the edge of the village and the Crusaders were already invading the sanctity of each home, gathering everyone outside. Twelve men, and a few women in their inappropriate men’s uniforms, and one more that he did not recognize. She was covered, but not in an abaya, and he could see her red hair falling from beneath her scarf. She is Nuristani, maybe, or one of Alexander’s Greeks?
She was holding a small black box that looked like his old-fashioned Polaroid camera from university. She was placing the box against the face of each Afghan, showing the uniformed kuffar which buttons to push, how to align a white dot on the side with each villager’s eyes.
She’s a traveling teacher, he may have thought. Just like me.
The men in front of him queued politely to have their fingers rubbed. Some rolled their own fingers on the device. They had done this before, he could tell. Some were confused by it. He had the soft hands of a dentist after years of wearing powdered latex gloves. He stayed in the back of the line, always drifting away if he could. The chance they already had his fingerprints was small, but why risk it?
The Crusaders had scanned over half the village when he heard yelling on their radios. They gathered, and talked, and held their rifles with renewed interest, and rushed back to their helicopters. The woman with red hair followed.
Habibi, always dependable. The Engineer got in a white Hilux pickup truck with the police captain and headed south.
MOHAMMED FROM KUNDUZ squatted against a mud wall.
Five more Mohamads and Mohameds and Muhammads waited in the wings, but this one was different. Hayes could see it on his report. The SEEK scan and check said this was the Mohammed who had been sticking his fingers inside pressure plates for the last month.
None of the others had popped on the scan, but they’d question them anyway, just to be sure. Never know what you might learn. They checked the dead too, the squirters the team guys had to shoot. They always squirt, it’s like they can’t help it. A few of them kicked out records. You can still run the fingerprints and the iris scan, if you prop open the eyelids.
Hayes and his linguist and a few detainee interrogators were there. None of them wore uniforms, unless you count the standard contractor polo shirt. Hayes knew them all by name and not organization. At the end of the tour he would eventually ask where they were all from. Only half were government agencies.
The commander of the local Afghan commando unit also stood near and watched. He was a major or lieutenant colonel, probably. Hayes swore he was high on hashish and mentally retarded. No, seriously, this wasn’t some offhanded insult. Like really, medically mentally retarded. His family would have bought him the job anyway. Get him out of the house.
So this was the game: Somebody had approached Mohammed from Kunduz and said, “You make ten Afghanis a day cutting poppy. How about fifty a night to wrap tape around wood?” Now, who was that? And who taught him to wrap tape around wood? That’s who they really wanted.
But getting these peons to talk their way up the food chain was tough. Not under the constraints they had now. You can’t hurt them, you can’t make them uncomfortable, you can’t threaten them, you can’t offend the local populace, you can’t offend NATO, you can’t offend our local partners. Yes, don’t offend the mentally handicapped commandoes or child rapists. Not that the locals had such constraints with each other; Dostum put the foot soldiers of his enemies in shipping containers and forgot about them. But he could only ask politely, and only for a short time.
So you try to understand them, figure out the right questions to ask, the one’s they will answer. First, do you even have the right Mohammed from Kunduz? So you ask his father’s name, his brother’s name, his tribe, who he works with. Ask about their valley, what is happening there. They only care what is happening in their valley anyway. Of course, if we weren’t in their valley, they wouldn’t care about us either.
But that usually breaks down too. Everyone knows they don’t value education, but everyone forgets they don’t have proper nutrition either, Hayes thought. They have poor eyesight, their bodies and minds don’t grow correctly. Some places, they think they’re still fighting the Russians, a bunch of big white guys in standard uniforms speaking a language they don’t understand.
So they got the man talking. This wasn’t like breaking some high-ranking Al Qaeda guy trained in counterintelligence. This is just another Mohammed from Kunduz we’re talking about. Hayes squatted with him, and the main interrogator and linguist too, and they made progress, until they finally asked him, There is a new trainer here, right? A new man that teaches you to make IEDs?
The linguist translated. The only word Hayes picked out was “mines.” Pashto had grabbed the English word.
Silence. Mohammed from Kunduz, who was happy to tell you about his father and brothers and cousins, got evasive. He shifted his feet, rocked back and forth in his squat, and looked away.
Tell him we found the room, Hayes whispered to the interrogator. That we found the piles of wires and circuit boards and timers and those screens you use for sifting the explosives you cook up. The hot glue guns were even still warm.
The interrogator tried this new tack, so then Mohammed from Kunduz gave up another guy, Mullah Abdullah maybe, and said he was the man for mines in this district.
But it was never that easy. You had to pay attention, make sure it was your man.
But Mullah Abdullah doesn’t teach you to make the mines, does he? Hayes asked.
No, then a long story, about where Abdullah kept the mines, in an old dry kariz maybe, near his qalat.
See, this isn’t right, Hayes thought. We don’t want the local man, we want the new one.
So t
hey pressed him, and asked about the new man who had just arrived, and Mohammed from Kunduz got even more uncomfortable, and so Hayes and his linguist and the interrogator pressed harder, shouted maybe, their detainee sweated and rocked and looked far away, and Hayes asked again, What is the name of new emir who comes to Kunduz and teaches you to make the mines, and then Mohammed just put his head in his hands and went completely silent, and no more sound came from him except a quiet and quick mumbling over and over to himself. Arabic now. The Koran.
And that’s it, Hayes thought. There’s nothing more we can do, not anymore.
The Engineer is the one name they never give up. Never, in all his years working interrogations, had he scored it a single time. Hayes was convinced: they’re scared to death of this guy.
THE BLACK HOLE doesn’t have a name, photo, fingerprint, iris scan, or DNA sample of the Engineer. But his profile is not completely empty, because, as JIEDDO promised, we can learn a lot about him by the IEDs he creates.
Our composite image of the Engineer is the amalgamation of very few men. Explosive device circuit designs are remarkably consistent—one main power supply, a trigger that actuates a transistor, a current dump to the blasting caps, a safety light, an arming timer—and so we can be sure that a relatively small number of minds have been producing many bombs over many years.
One could argue that, like an invasive species, IEDs were introduced into the Levant and Mesopotamia by none other than T. E. Lawrence. His targets were the Turkish railroads that supplied Ottoman garrisons; no way for a train to find a new route to outflank such a mine. Al Qaeda itself began as a movement of intellectuals, an outgrowth of the Afghan Arab movement founded by Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian who received his PhD at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and the college-educated Osama Bin Laden. The CIA trained the Afghan Arabs in the 1980s in the use of remote firing devices—they weren’t called IEDs then, at least not generally—and they spread from there. In the 1990s, veterans of Afghanistan taught the skills to mujahideen fighting in Chechnya. Fewer IEDs were utilized in jihad in Bosnia and Kosovo, but that was purely practical. Yugoslavia was awash in conventional weapons, especially, and infamously, landmines.
All the Ways We Kill and Die Page 20