Panetta told the president and members of his national security team they had tracked someone “who used to be—and could still be—one of bin Laden’s couriers” to a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. “If that’s the case, we’re hopeful that he can lead us to bin Laden.” Gary and Sam handed out satellite images of the compound to everyone in the room.
As Obama stared at the images, Gary and Sam walked the commander in chief through the history of the lead, much the same way they’d done a few weeks earlier in Panetta’s office. In the days leading up to this meeting, Gary and Sam had worked a total of fifteen hours writing and rehearsing what they’d say, getting their language just right and highlighting the key points. They had delivered their briefing for Panetta, then gone back to their offices to edit their presentation and practice again. They had been told they had seven minutes to tell Obama what they’d found.
So, on script, they recounted the CIA’s interest in couriers, how they believed early on that they might be one way to track down bin Laden. They described the compound and then went over some new intelligence they had discovered more recently. They explained that the courier, his brother, and their families lived in the fortress. The brothers were tall, fair-skinned, and bearded. They looked like everyone else in the neighborhood. No one knew what the brothers did for a living. And the families almost never left the compound. Not to attend the local religious school. Not to visit a doctor. There were no signs of internet access or telephone lines running to the compound.
The compound was segmented so it was difficult to move from one part of the property to another. It was a challenge even to get into the place. You had to open one gate to drive in, then get out of the car, close the gate behind you and open a second gate to drive into the main part of the compound. Even though the brothers had no apparent means of support, they’d managed to buy this million-dollar property. Surveillance showed one brother was always at the fortress. If one left, the other always stayed behind. The people inside didn’t put their trash out for collection like everyone else in the neighborhood. Instead, they burned it on-site, in a wide yard where goats were pastured. Through telephone intercepts, the intelligence team discovered that the brothers’ wives were lying to their extended families about where they lived.
Something was going on there. After laying out everything they knew, the CIA briefers said there was a possibility the brothers could be harboring bin Laden.
Panetta jumped in, “Mr. President, it’s very preliminary. But we think this is the best lead we’ve had since Tora Bora,” he said.
Silence. No one in the room wanted to show what they were really thinking. Tony Blinken, Vice President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, was skeptical. Yes, it wouldn’t have been brought to the president’s attention if there wasn’t something there. But they’d had so many false leads over the years, it was hard to take this too seriously. Donilon was impressed. Panetta and his team were “quite careful” about what they knew and what they didn’t know. Maybe there was something to this.
Obama, as usual, showed no emotion. He was calm and collected, and clearly interested, but there were too many “maybes,” he said. Couldn’t the brothers be protecting a powerful criminal? Maybe a different high-ranking Al Qaeda figure?
Obama’s poker face didn’t bother Morell. He’d worked with the president long enough to know he didn’t bark orders or blurt out his thoughts. He usually deliberated at length before making any decision. But that day, sitting behind his desk, Obama surprised Morell. The president was very direct and clear.
“Number one, Leon, Michael, find out what the hell is going on inside the compound,” Obama said. “And number two: don’t tell anybody else. This is known only by us. Don’t tell the secretary of state. Don’t tell the secretary of defense. Don’t tell the chairman of the Joint Chiefs…. This is just us for now.”
The president got it, Morell thought to himself. He knew there was enough there to move forward. They had to get more information and get it back to him quickly. Morell knew that would be difficult. He just didn’t know how difficult and dangerous it would prove to be.
COUNTDOWN: 232 DAYS
September 11, 2010
Somewhere in the Adirondack Mountains
The leaves crunched under Jessica Ferenczy’s feet as she trekked along the grassy path to the river. She could see the water glistening in the distance, through the trunks of the oaks and maples. Another quarter mile and she’d be there, at their special spot.
Ferenczy was tired. After she’d finished her evening shift, she’d headed back to the 115th Police Precinct in the New York City borough of Queens. She’d quickly changed into civilian clothes, jumped into her Jeep Cherokee, and by midnight, she was headed north on the New York State Thruway. Three hours later, she let herself into her little cabin in the Adirondack Mountains. It was the early hours of the morning. She tried to sleep, but she couldn’t relax.
She made coffee. She sat quietly in the kitchen, jotting down her thoughts in a spiral-bound notebook. At dawn, the birds began to sing outside. Jessica stopped writing and stared out the window. A bright pastel sunup painted the sky. When the early mist burned away, she picked up her paper and a pen and headed out to the river.
She walked with thoughts worn smooth by nine years of repetition. This place was hers, the cabin and seventy acres of trees and wilderness and riverbank. This was supposed to be their place. Jerome should be here with her. They should be together. But Jerome Dominguez, the love of her life, was gone forever. She would never see him again.
Ferenczy reached the river’s edge and sat down in a sturdy wooden lawn chair by the fire pit. She pulled her mobile phone from her pocket and shut it off. No interruptions. This was her time.
It would be sunny and warm today, much like it was on the morning of September 11, 2001. She leaned back and shut her eyes and let herself feel how broken she still was.
She could still see his handsome face. Dominguez was a buff Spanish-American with a magnetic smile and personality. For two years, he was part of the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit, an elite squad that responded to all kinds of crises. Before that, he was an NYPD Highway Patrol officer. He was a saver of lives. Over his fifteen-year career, Dominguez had stopped suicides, rescued hostages, and extricated people trapped in wrecked cars.
He was a real-life Batman. He kept tools in his car, just in case he needed to help stalled drivers or assist at an accident scene. He was also a member of the New York Air National Guard’s 105th Security Squadron.
Dominguez was never off duty. In 1999, on his way to an air force base in Texas for a Guard training session, he saw a school bus overturn on a rural road. He stopped at the scene and quickly took charge, pulling a dozen kids to safety just before the bus burst into flames. The rescue was written up in local newspapers. A TV station did a segment for the evening news, but Dominguez was reluctant to take any credit. He said he’d only done what was needed, nothing more.
When he worked at the NYPD Highway Patrol, he usually arrived to emergency calls on his Harley-Davidson Road King. He was dashing. Six feet tall, 205 pounds, with brown hair in a high-and-tight military shave, brown eyes with hazel around the edges, a barrel chest, and thick muscular arms. But it was his smile, with a little dimple on his left cheek, that was so disarming.
Ferenczy smiled in her chair.
Jerome was outgoing, sweet, a gentle guy who could charm anyone, especially women. His black leather jacket completed the picture…. He looked like he’d stepped off the pages of an entertainment magazine.
That leather jacket! He was wearing it the night they met, December 19, 1998. Back then, she was a police officer in the 30th Precinct in Harlem, a predominantly black neighborhood in upper Manhattan. She had volunteered to help with the precinct’s annual community Christmas party.
They’d arranged to treat the kids to visits with officers from special NYPD units. The mounted patrol was bringing a horse, and a bomb squad guy was s
howing off an explosives-sniffing dog and a little robot that disabled suspicious devices. They’d finish up with the Highway Patrol motorcycle cop and his Harley chopper.
When the special units showed up in the parking lot, Ferenczy’s job was to escort the kids outside to snap Polaroids of them with the officers. But the night was bitterly cold, with temperatures in the teens, and a windchill that made it feel like single digits.
Ferenczy shuffled the kids back and forth from the precinct’s muster room to the parking lot, getting colder with each passing minute. It got so bad they decided to send home the animals and take pictures inside with the robot, so no one would get frostbite.
While Ferenczy was loading more film into her camera, someone said they heard a motorcycle pulling into the parking lot. That poor biker cop! They’d forgotten to call him off.
Thinking she’d only be in the parking lot for a minute, she ran outside in just a T-shirt and jeans, leaving jacket, hat, and gloves inside. She stepped out into an Arctic blast.
“Holy shit,” she muttered, her breath emerging like a cloud. She’d have to make this quick.
She saw the taillight of a police motorcycle. The guy’s back was turned to her. Ferenczy was so cold she ran up behind the policeman and snuggled against him for warmth. She still hadn’t seen his face… he could have been anybody! As her face grazed his left shoulder, she noticed something wonderful. He smelled perfect: a mixture of soap, motorcycle exhaust, and campfire smoke.
She didn’t know why, but she blurted out, “Hmmm… Is this my Christmas present?”
“Yes, I am,” he responded. He never missed a beat.
From that moment on, they never spent a day apart.
They came from different worlds.
Ferenczy’s father, Arpad, grew up in rural Hungary during World War II and emigrated to the United States in 1956. He ended up in New York City, got married, had two daughters, and settled on Long Island, New York. His marriage didn’t last long.
Ferenczy had a special bond with her father. He taught her how to fish and work with tools. He took her on road trips, sleeping in tents in state parks. Jessica was self-sufficient, independent, and dependable.
She didn’t know what she wanted to do after high school. She drifted from job to job, and finally decided to take the NYPD entrance exam. Why not? Being a cop meant good money and benefits. She was twenty-five when she graduated from the police academy in 1993.
Jessica Ferenczy and Jerome Dominguez.
While she’d had some boyfriends, she didn’t consider herself a “girly” kind of woman. Ferenczy adapted to the masculine culture around her. She worked out and had muscular shoulders and arms. She shaved the sides of her blonde hair into a mohawk.
Meanwhile, Dominguez came from a distinguished family. His father, Jeronimo, was a doctor, a devout Roman Catholic with a successful medical practice. The family lived in the Pelham Bay Park section of the Bronx, in a waterfront home that was once a fishing retreat for legendary New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
Dominguez and his brother, Frank, had a wonderful childhood. They always had friends in their house, playing war games and swimming, jumping from their porch into the water of Long Island Sound. And one day, young Jerome saved his brother’s life.
Frank suddenly fell into a seizure, and Jerome recognized that his brother was in trouble. He bolted upstairs and told his mother, who called an ambulance. From that moment on, Jerome knew what he wanted to do for a living: help people in trouble.
After graduating high school, he entered the police academy. He graduated in 1985, and two years later, enlisted in the Air Force National Guard.
For a long time, Dominguez struggled with his weight, once ballooning to almost three hundred pounds. He realized he had to change his lifestyle or he’d face serious health issues. One day he began running, and he didn’t stop. He hit the gym and started training with weights. When he showed up at Ferenczy’s precinct that night, he was a hunk. When the pair came in from the cold, Jessica’s friends noticed the goofy look on her face. She was smitten with the motorcycle cop.
After the Christmas party ended and everyone went home, Dominguez called Ferenczy on the phone. They talked for hours. Jessica had to work the next day, a Sunday, but Jerome knew she was off the following day. He called her on Monday morning.
“Can I come over for breakfast?” he asked.
“Come on over,” she said.
She hung up and rushed around her tiny apartment in Lindenhurst, Suffolk County, trying to straighten up. She left the door unlocked so Dominguez could just walk in when he arrived.
Ferenczy was washing dishes when he showed up. Their eyes met. She had an odd feeling, like he was supposed to be there. Like he had walked through that door a hundred times before.
Dominguez dropped his keys on the kitchen counter, walked to her, put both hands on her face, and kissed her. Ferenczy let go of the dishes. It wasn’t like the kiss was super-exciting or lusty. It wasn’t like she had been hit by lightning. No, it was more like she had been kissing this man her whole life. It was a perfect fit.
It was like that for just about everything in their relationship. They even joked about it.
“I’m going to find you sooner in our next life,” she’d say.
He felt the same way. Dominguez said they’d been together in a past life, but somehow got separated. And every time they found each other, something happened to tear them apart. Until now.
They moved in together and subsequently bought a house on Long Island. Dominguez wanted to get married in a big church ceremony at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, but he had been married years before. The relationship ended in divorce. In order to marry in a Catholic church, he had to have his first marriage annulled—which he promised to do.
Meanwhile, Dominguez introduced Ferenczy to his parents and brother, and they treated her like family. When they had started dating, she took him to her favorite campground, a secluded place north of New York City where she’d sleep under the stars. He loved the outdoors, and soon that became their spot, their getaway, a place where they could talk and laugh under the stars, a place where they could discuss their future.
Dominguez said he wanted to retire after twenty years on the force and set up a training center for police officers and military personnel. It would have to be well outside the city, deep in the mountains, he said. Ferenczy loved the idea. They started to save money.
On July 6, 1999, her birthday, the couple headed to their state park. They walked into the woods and found a convenient rock on the riverbank. Under the moonlight, they made their vows. They promised to love and honor each other, and to look out for each other’s parents. They exchanged rings. An official ceremony would come later, but for all intents and purposes, they were married.
When they returned to the city, they told everyone about their ceremony. They continued their journey together. They saved, enjoyed family and friends, laughed, made love, bought their first house. Everything seemed perfect. They complemented each other’s strengths and shortfalls. He liked to spend money; she was the saver, the one who paid the bills on time. He lived life to the fullest, riding motorcycles, scuba diving—“go big or go home,” he’d say. She was more grounded. “You have to think things out first, and plan for the future,” she’d say.
They planned a camping trip for the weekend of September 7, 2001. Just before they left the house, Dominguez went to check the mail. The letter had arrived at last: The diocese had granted the annulment. Thrilled, he hugged Ferenczy and called his parents. They’d tie the knot officially on December 19, 2001—the third anniversary of their frigid meeting in the precinct parking lot.
They spent the weekend at their favorite campsite, worked on the guest list for their wedding. Saturday and Sunday passed in a haze of swimming, drinking, and suntanning.
Ferenczy spent the following day testifying in a lower Manhattan courtroom, and was called to return the following day. Doming
uez said he’d drive her to the precinct, where she could catch a ride to court with another officer. Ferenczy dressed like a professional that day, in a suit, heels, makeup, and earrings. When they arrived at the police station, she leaned over to give Dominguez a kiss goodbye. But he wasn’t having any of that. He held her face with his hands—just like he’d done the first morning they were together—and kissed her long and passionately.
The other officers in the lot rolled their eyes and cheered. “Get a room!” they said. It was all in jest. They were the perfect couple.
After arriving at the courthouse Ferenczy learned she had some time to kill. As she headed for a local deli for some breakfast, she called Dominguez.
“You want to meet me to get something to eat?” she asked him.
Dominguez said yes. He said he and his partner were nearby. “I’ll be there soon,” he said. They talked a little bit longer, then the phone cut out.
Ferenczy noticed a cop up the street was looking up at a building about ten blocks down. “Oh shit,” she mumbled. It was an airliner, flying way too low, headed straight toward the cluster of skyscrapers on the southern tip of Manhattan. The airplane slammed straight into the North Tower—Tower One—of the World Trade Center. Smoke and flames belched outward, debris rained down to the ground.
Ferenczy stood in stunned silence, then opened her phone. There was no signal. At that moment, a million people were doing exactly what she was doing, calling out to their beloveds.
She started to panic. Dominguez was headed in her direction. He probably knew what just happened. Hell, he probably saw it, too. He’s going in there to rescue people, she thought.
Despite her heels and formal clothes, Ferenczy took off running toward the World Trade Center. She passed the courthouse and saw cops dropping their folders with paperwork and other important items on the front steps, turning, and running toward the danger.
Countdown bin Laden Page 3