But not Mahmudiyah itself. Tariq turned off Highway 8 north of the big canal, near a cluster of villas marked on Charlie’s maps as Insurgent Central. The development had been built in 1991 for Republican Guard officers and their families, and Charlie had long suspected it was a transit zone for AQI kidnap victims.
Jose gave Tariq about a klik’s lead, while Charlie surreptitiously shot video with his cell phone. One point eight kliks past a walled cluster of villas that had once housed top Baath Party officials, Tariq pulled onto a rutted dirt road, drove east over a fetid, yardwide canal, and two hundred meters later pulled up next to a two-story, stone-faced villa with a clothesline on its flat roof, the easternmost structure of a three-house compound. Between the houses, the canal, and the Baath Party villas sat tilled fields of desiccated sunflowers. From one thousand meters away, Charlie squinted through binoculars as Tariq unlocked a heavy wrought-iron grille door and disappeared.
“If I was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that’s exactly the kind of place I’d stash people,” Charlie told BGAlbatross when he got back. “I should check this guy out.”
She gave Charlie a nasty look. “You already did.” Hell, she was pissed he’d even trailed Tariq in the first place (although she downloaded his photos fast enough).
When he asked for Predator surveillance she said, “No way” and ostentatiously swiveled toward her computer screen.
Dismissed, Charlie returned to the shipping container he called home, turned up the air-conditioning, drank half a six-pack, and imagined how lovely it would be to sell Nicola Rogers to the Hells Angels. Then he pulled off his clothes, ran through the shower, crawled into his rack, and thought about Irish Beth.
Four days later, Friday, 18 June, while Charlie was working a source on lower Hilla Road, Tariq returned. The Iraqi asked for Nicola by name and demanded four thousand dollars.
Nicola paid him every penny and even apologized for Charlie’s behavior. The reason: Tariq brought two “proof of life” videos. The first showed a South Korean, thirty-three-year-old Kim Sun-il, who had been kidnapped not twenty-four hours previously. A tearful, terrified Kim begged his hooded captors not to kill him.
The second was also a gem: new video of Keith Matthew Maupin. Maupin, a Soldier from Ohio, had been captured when his convoy was ambushed by AQI two months previously. There’d been no sign of him since the week after his capture. In this video, Maupin was kneeling, an AK to his head, with three gunmen standing behind him.
When Charlie got back they screened the DVD half a dozen times, Nicola murmuring “holy shit” like a mantra.
Charlie was impressed, too, but wary. “Did you polygraph Tariq?”
“No, I did not polygraph Tariq.” Nicola was visibly annoyed by the question. “C’mon, Charlie, this is pure gold. Besides, there was no time to box him.”
You numskull, thought Charlie, you make the fricking time. Charlie frowned. The timing—Tariq’s sudden appearance and these 24-karat videos—was almost too good to be true. Charlie knew from experience that when things appeared too good to be true, they often were too good to be true. His skepticism was wasted on Nicola, who told him he should take yes for an answer and then ordered him out so she could tell her boss what had dropped into her lap.
Charlie copied the DVD, went back to his shipping container, and spent the afternoon memorizing every tiny detail. He noted every crack and stain in the walls, every irregularity in the marble floors, even the cabriole leg of an armchair barely in the frame of the Maupin video. He froze the picture, zooming in long enough to identify a fleur-de-lis pattern on the chair’s upholstered apron.
Two and a half hours later, a beaming Nicola showed Charlie the opening screen of a PowerPoint entitled “Hostages in Iraq: A New and Important Development from Nicola Rogers.” Nicola was ecstatic: Baghdad’s chief of station had forwarded Nicola’s package to Langley as flash traffic. But that wasn’t all. She’d received an e-mail from the deputy chief of Iraq Group at headquarters saying he was putting her in for a cash bonus.
When Charlie gave her a quizzical look, she showed him all twenty-one screens. She’d composed a piece of fiction explaining how she’d developed Tariq Zubaydi as her AQI penetration agent. She’d used Charlie’s surveillance photos to illustrate the narrative. Charlie, unnamed, was described as “an American operative.”
“Well,” she said, misreacting to Charlie’s scowl, “he is my agent. I told him to bring me—and only me—every DVD they give him. He promised he would. I only paid him after he agreed.”
Charlie felt like puking. Or quitting. Going the contractor route himself. He and Beth had talked about it. She’d been in favor. It was Charlie who’d hemmed and hawed like he had a flawed gene. The same gene that kept him at the Regiment for almost twenty-six years. The same gene, when he was offered a quarter mil by one of the private intelligence outsourcers, made him turn them down and apply to CIA, where the Brahman at human resources told Charlie even with his code word clearances he was lucky to get a GS-14 salary because he didn’t have a college degree.
So here he was, still a cog in the federal machine. BGAlbatross tells lies and gets a bonus. And what does operative Charlie have to show for his scars? A master sergeant’s pension, the Silver Star, the two Purple Hearts, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Combat Jump Wings, and the four rows of ribbons in the shadow box on his living room wall is what.
And yet. . . and yet . . . when he actually accomplished something—taught a young Ranger tradecraft that might save his life someday, killed or captured a high-value target, worked a source who got him one step closer to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi— to Charlie, that mattered. Duty. Honor. Country. That mattered, too. Later, he’d tell Jose, “I’m fricking old-fashioned is why. A dinosaur, that’s me.”
So Charlie didn’t puke. Or quit. Instead, he stuck his desert-booted foot in the figurative door and browbeat Nicola until she approved Predator surveillance of bayt Tariq Zubaydi.
With Nicola’s support, there was a bird overhead by 1830 hours. Charlie watched real-time, noting the half-dozen-plus vehicles that visited Tariq’s house over an eight-hour stretch. Got a look at some of the individuals. Washed the identifiable pictures not through Baghdad Station but Langley’s Big Pond photo database and its newest VEIL (Virtual Exploitation and Information-Leveraging) software. And came up with a couple of palpable hits.
At 0320 hours he woke Nicola and made his sales pitch: Tariq’s knowledge of tradecraft, his unique access to real-time information, and his links to known bad guys all made him a viable target.
“It’s the duck rule,” Charlie insisted.
Just after 0400 hours, wilting under Charlie’s barrage, Nicola grudgingly admitted that Tariq quacked like a duck and was therefore probably more than just a grocer who spoke some English.
“That’s right—that’s why we gotta pick him up.”
“Impossible, Charlie.”
She was so fricking consistent. But this time there was way too much at stake to let her have her way.
“Nicola, don’t be obstructionist. This guy knows stuff. I saw it in the interrogation room. He knows people. I saw it in the Predator surveillance. We gotta grab him.”
“If we do, I’ll lose him as my agent. I won’t get any more videos.”
Geezus. Did she see nothing? “He’s not your agent. He’s probably Zarqawi’s agent. He’s a walk-in. An unvetted walk-in, no less. He’s probably target-assessing us for AQI.”
“An AQI agent?” Nicola’s eyes narrowed. “But I told Langley . . .”
“Let me bring him in—you can box him. Then he’s vetted. Then we flip him. Double him back against AQI, like I did Faiz.”
She looked at him blankly.
“The mole. Remember?”
Nicola’s eyes lost focus. She squirmed, her body language telling Charlie she was nervous her lies would be discovered. So he switched gears. “Y’know, I’m convinced Kim and Maupin are in Tariq’s neighborhood.”
BGAlbatross cros
sed her arms. “Headquarters says AQI warehouses hostages in Fallujah, not Baghdad.”
“HQ could be wrong.” Charlie played off her quizzical look. “Fallujah? It’s complicated and risky. Think about the logistics. Moving Kim north with all our coalition roadblocks and thousands of troops, secreting him, making the video, and then getting it back to Tariq? And all in less than twenty-four hours?”
She pursed her lips. “You have a point... I guess.”
He paused. “C’mon, let me bring Tariq in.”
He saw she was weakening.
“For chrissakes, Nicola, if we can pinpoint just one hostage.”
“But the consequences, Charlie.”
“Nicola, think about the consequences of not doing this.”
“Not doing?”
“An old sergeant major used to tell me, ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.’”
When her expression told Charlie she had no idea what he was talking about, he spelled it out. “Our main thing is hostages, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What if bringing Tariq in resulted in retrieving a hostage? Or some solid information about where a hostage—hostages— are being kept?”
Nicola calculated the odds. Then: “You can go. But I’m writing a memo to the file that this is being done against my better judgment because I believe your operation to snatch my valuable agent—which is how headquarters thinks of Tariq— is too risky. After all, Charlie, your operation could compromise him.”
* * * *
20 June 004, 0410 hours. It took Charlie less than fifteen seconds to pick the lock on Tariq’s wrought-iron security gate. He eased it open and, with Fred’s infrared flashlight focused on the vintage lock of the front door, he picked that, too. Charlie’s op plan was basic. They’d made a silent approach. Charlie mounted an infrared flasher, visible from a thousand yards away, above the front door. Now they’d make entry stealthily, suppress any resistance, restrain Tariq, then follow up with a thorough SSE—a sensitive site exploitation—to discover any goodies Tariq might have lying around. Like his cell phones, his laptop, his PC hard drive, or any notes, phone messages, memos, or photographs.
Charlie would signal Harlan and Paul, who were in an Archangel truck two kliks north. They’d ID the house by its infrared flasher. Charlie’s team would bundle Tariq into the truck, pile in themselves, and haul butt to Baghdad in plenty of time for a Father’s Day breakfast of Egg McMuffin at the Camp Victory Mickey D’s. It was textbook. Classic.
0411. Charlie eased the inner door open. The beam of Fred’s IR flashlight swept the entry. He saw no trip wires or other booby traps. His left index finger pressed the switch of the IR SureFire attached to his M4 and painted the low-ceilinged foyer left-right, right-left, his eyes leading the muzzle.
All clear. He, Jose, and Fred started forward. Tuzz would remain outside, making sure they weren’t interrupted.
0412. The three men soundlessly cleared the sparsely furnished living room, then moved into the dining area.
That’s where the hair on the back of Charlie’s neck stood up. Something’s wrong.
He couldn’t put a face on it, but his instincts were screaming oougah-oougah, dive, dive, dive.
Screw ‘em. Back to work. Kitchen: clear. Jose’s upturned thumb told them that the small laundry room was okay, too.
The ground floor was safe.
0413. Charlie started upstairs. For someone packing sixty pounds of gear he moved with the nimbleness of a ballet dancer. He was climbing the marble stair treads one at a time when he stopped abruptly.
Realized what was wrong.
Realized he’d been an idiot. “Shit.”
He backed down the stairs, headed for the kitchen.
Jose: “What’s up, boss?”
“This, dude.” Charlie’s gloved left index finger swept the small kitchen table. Even through the NVGs, the trail of dust was clear.
“And this.” He went to the fridge. Opened it. It was empty. Pulled the curtains aside and looked under the sink.
Nothing. No knives, forks, or spoons in the drawers under the counter. No dishes in the cupboards. No food in the pantry. No laundry in the washroom. No signs of life.
Tariq Zubaydi didn’t live here. Nobody lived here. This was a safe house.
There was no wife, no crippled kid. Of course Tariq was good; of course he’d had training. Tariq was fricking AQI. A disinformation agent, just as he’d told Nicola.
Charlie shook his head, disgusted at Nicola’s naïveté and his own obtuseness. Abu Hadidi. That was the war name the sonofabitch had coughed up. It was probably his own fricking war name. How dumb can I be?
Charlie took a good look at the living room. A faux Persian was centered in the room. Atop it sat a couch, a coffee table, and two armchairs. The two lamps were attached to timers.
He dispatched Jose and Fred upstairs. They returned ninety seconds later to confirm what Charlie already knew: The place was empty.
0417. Charlie examined the furniture. Christ, there was something familiar about the armchair. The cabriole leg. He’d seen it in the Maupin video. Even through the green-tinged monochrome of his NVGs he could make out the faded fleur-de-lis pattern. AQI videoed Keith Maupin in this house. Tomorrow he’d come back with a forensics team to search for DNA.
“We’re on to something.” They moved the couch and chairs. Rolled the rug. And discovered exactly what Charlie thought they’d discover: a two-foot-square plug of plywood inlaid into the marble floor.
Then: gunfire. Unmistakable. AKs. Simultaneously: Tuzzy’s suppressed M4 and his voice in Charlie’s ears: “Hostiles. Two groups, I count eight muzzle flashes.”
“Fred, cover with Tuzz,” Charlie said into the mike. Then Charlie pinged Paul in the truck. “Get your asses up here.”
He pulled the Treo out. The infrared picture from the Predator showed one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten hostiles coming in a flanking movement, four from the west, the rest from the south. Bad news: They’d been suckered. And capture was not a viable option here.
Charlie hit the rapid dial. The Treo flamed out—dropped signal. He ran to the doorway, rolled outside, disregarding the AK rounds impacting the stone facade above his head, and tried again. On his flanks, Tuzz and Fred were proned out, squinting through NVGs, squeezing off two-shot bursts.
It seemed an age, then the phone connected. In an even voice, Charlie said, “This is Archangel.”
“Archangel, Ops,” came the reply. It was the operations center at the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force.
Charlie spoke in shorthand. “SITREP hostiles. Running Bear.” SITREP stood for situation report and Running Bear was the code word for tonight’s contingency plan—CONPLAN in mil-speak.
“Running Bear CONPLAN,” the voice on the other end confirmed. There was a five-second pause while Archangel’s position was retrieved from the Predator s GPS display and his coordinates were punched into a computer. Then: “Fourteen minutes, Archangel.” That’s how long it would take for the pair of Apache attack choppers circling Camp Taji to reach Charlie.
“Roger that.” Charlie rolled onto his side and tapped Fred on the back. “Fourteen minutes, dude.” Then he stowed the Treo and scurried back into the living room on all fours. He pulled his combat Emerson from its sheath and shoved the blade tip between plywood and marble. Damn, it was tight. “Hoser— gimme a hand here.”
The two of them removed the plug.
Revealing a ladder.
Leading to a tunnel.
Leading who fricking knew where.
Nowhere good.
0420. Charlie focused the IR flashlight into the hole. The tunnel floor was nine, maybe ten feet below. Quickly, he started to shrug out of his gear. He’d made that mistake once—got himself wedged so tightly he’d had to cut himself loose. Almost got himself killed.
He peeled down to basics: body armor, mags, knife, pistol, flashlight, NVGs, and commo kit. Jose started to
do the same. Charlie waved him off. Charlie was a master sergeant, and master sergeants led by example. “Twelve minutes until cavalry gets here, dude. You stay with Fred and Tuzz. If I need you I’ll call.”
Jose picked his M4 off the floor. “Stay safe, boss.”
“No other way.” Charlie rolled onto the ladder, tested the rungs, and when they held, eased his way down.
At the bottom, he scanned through his NVGs. Checked the compass on his watchband. The tunnel went north, and as far as he could see it was unoccupied. But the damn thing was just over a yard wide and less than four feet high.
Charlie stood five-eleven. Geezus H. My back and my fricking legs are going to kill me by the time I get through this. Charlie looked up. Jose’s bearded face peered down at him, green through the NVGs.
Agents of Treachery Page 20