In the hours before the raid, I hung out with Basim, Amir, and Luay. It wasn’t an active interrogation, just a way of keeping the connection between us active. These three had been more help to me than most of the other detainees combined and we all had a vested interest now in seeing this through.
Joining us that afternoon were all the terps who I had come to depend on over the past several weeks. Jimmy, Samir, and Jafar had learned to function like a well-oiled machine, trading off sessions with one another and even working together to make sure the translations were accurate. As the days and weeks of intense work had progressed, I had moved from the main house to a cot in the guesthouse. The terps settled in there, too, making sure one of them was available day or night. It wasn’t a requirement of the job, but I think as time went on they had begun to realize that Muhammad Ibrahim was a key figure in the insurgency that was tearing their country apart. They wanted to be a part of the effort to bring him in, and they realized how important to the mission they were.
As evening fell, I could smell the aroma of steaks being cooked on a makeshift barbecue grill the team had set up on the front porch. Cookouts were a regular part of the routine. I rounded up my three terps and took them with me for dinner. I found myself wishing I could bring the three roommates, too, but they were still prisoners. Regardless of how much I might have liked those guys, that was one barrier that couldn’t be crossed.
As I sat eating my meal, Kelly came over to run down the plan for the night. “We’re going back to hit Muhammad Khudayr’s house,” he told me. “But they’re going to send the team up from Baghdad for the fish farm.”
That wasn’t the best news I’d heard all day. The Baghdad shooters didn’t know the situation and the players like our guys. “Why do we need them?” I asked. “We can hit them both.”
“The money caught the attention of the brass back at Baghdad,” Kelly explained. “Now they want to play.”
“But—” I began before Kelly cut me off.
“Look, Eric,” he said. “It’s fine. These are our operators who are coming up. This way we can hit both targets at the same time and we don’t have to get the 4th ID involved. The place is easy to find. It’s not going to be a problem.”
“So when is TOT?” I asked, referring to time on target.
“0100,” he replied. “We’re only going to have a couple of hours at the objectives. Samarra is a hot spot. Bam Bam wants to get in and out. We’ll hit the Khudayr target either way. But we’re going to wait for someone to show up at the pond before we go in.”
“How will you know when someone’s there?” I asked.
“We’ve got eyes on it,” he replied. Kelly was referring to orbiting military satellites that had focused on the exact coordinates of the fish farm and were transmitting imagery as we spoke. I didn’t have time to think about the wonders of modern technology. I was too focused on what was about to go down.
So was Kelly. “Since we found that money, we’re in good shape,” he said to me. “That was terrorist cash and everyone knows it. But, Eric, the way I see it, this could be our last shot. I don’t really know where we go after this.”
“I don’t know where we go either,” I admitted.
“You haven’t got any locations still hidden up your sleeve, do you?” he asked, only half joking. He knew as well as I did that any information I got was only as good as the detainee or source who had given it to me. If tonight’s hits were dry holes, I seriously doubted whether the three guys I was depending on back at the guesthouse would have any more good ideas. Kelly was right. This could be our last shot.
The team headed out for Samarra around midnight. I watched them leave then headed back to the house to wait for the OU football game to get under way. It was an important one: the Big Twelve championship. So far the Sooners had played an undefeated season and, in my humble opinion, had emerged as the greatest college team of all time. They were about to prove it again by whipping the Kansas State Wildcats. I was one hundred percent certain.
I was feeling pretty good. We were on our way to pick up Muhammad Ibrahim, the man who I was sure could lead us to Saddam himself. And OU was going to finish the season in true style by dismantling the Wildcats. It didn’t get any better than that.
Within the first ten minutes of the game, OU had jumped out to a 7–0 lead. Can of corn, I thought to myself and went to check in with Kelly. He was in the communications room as usual, checking the surveillance monitors on the fish farm. “Want to watch?” he asked as I came in.
I sat down next to him. On the screen was live infrared coverage of the target area around the pond and the nearby river. It was clear enough to get a good idea of what was happening on the ground. After watching the empty landscape for about twenty minutes, we both saw the same thing at the same time: two figures emerging from the darkness. We sat bolt upright as they went to the water’s edge, climbed into a boat, and paddled into the pond. It had to be the two Muhammads—Muhammad Ibrahim and Muhammad Khudayr, right where they were supposed to be.
Kelly made a quick call to Walt, his analyst counterpart in Baghdad. “They’re in the pond,” he told them. “I can see them right now.”
“I don’t see anything,” Walt replied. “We’re not going to move until we have a fix on them.”
Kelly swore and slammed down the phone.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I think they’re watching a different monitoring system,” he told me.
“So what?” I didn’t have time to think about the glitches of modern technology. This was going down in real time.
“So if they can’t see it on their channel, then it doesn’t exist.”
“Of course it exists,” I shot back, pointing to the image on the screen. “There’s a boat with two men in it.”
“You see it and I see it,” Kelly replied grimly, “but if they don’t see it, they aren’t going to do the raid.”
“Look, Kelly,” I said desperately. I was talking fast now, trying to think of some way, any way, to make this happen. “These guys know that we only conduct raids after midnight. They can stay in their houses until then. After that they have to find someplace else to hide. Those fishermen in that boat didn’t show up until after midnight. Don’t you see? They’re hiding on the river. They fish for a couple of hours until it’s safe to come back. Most of our hits are over by 0300. You can catch a lot of fish in that time, to make a lot of mazgoof.”
Even while I was talking, trying to convince myself and Kelly, the report from Bam Bam came in. Muhammad Khudayr’s house was a bone dry hole. There wasn’t a single adult male at the place. The fact that many of the women found there were the wives and widows of insurgency leaders, including the spouses of Sulwan, Sabah, and Abu Sofian, did us absolutely no good. We weren’t about to spark an international incident by bringing women in for interrogation. The night’s prospects were quickly turning to shit. I had to think of something. “Kelly,” I said, inspired by my desperation. “Let’s get Bam Bam to do the hit on the fish farm right now.”
He shook his head. “They’re running out of night,” he told me, looking at his watch. It was coming up on 0300. “We’ll have to wait until Bam Bam gets back and talk it over with him then.”