“I’m scheduled to ship out of here in a couple of days,” I said. “But I may still get something out of these fishermen. Especially Khudayr’s cousin.” I looked him the eye. I had nothing to lose now. “If I get a target, will you push to have it hit?”
Walt smiled. “All I can do is make a recommendation to the commander,” he replied. “But he usually goes with what I suggest. Kelly told me that if anyone could get anything out of those two fishermen, it would be you. That’s why I’m here.”
“Let’s get to work then,” I said.
Aside from his knowledge and support of the work we’d been doing in Tikrit, Walt proved his worth in another way. He was a pretty good interrogator. As soon as we brought back Muhammad Khudayr’s cousin, the two of us went at him fast and furious. It was as if Walt understood the urgency I was feeling as my final hours in Iraq ticked down. By the intensity and volume of our questioning, we made it clear to the fisherman that we were determined to get the answers we were after. When one of us slowed down, the other picked up the slack and the prisoner hardly had a chance to catch his breath.
It was still a good three hours before his story started to crack. At first, he insisted that Muhammad Khudayr was no more than a distant relation and that he had no idea who his business partner might be. I was still holding back on mentioning Muhammad Ibrahim. I wanted him to bring it up first.
But I was running out of time. I finally had no choice but to give him the name of the man I’d been desperately searching for. “Your cousin’s partner is Muhammad Ibrahim, asshole,” I shouted. “You know it and I know it. And here’s something else I know. You’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison for aiding and abetting a known terrorist. We tried to help you but you didn’t want our help. Now it’s too late.”
That did the trick. The fisherman started talking. In fact, once he got started, it was hard to keep up with him. “Yes, mister,” he admitted. “Now I remember. It was Muhammad Ibrahim. Ever since Muhammad Khudayr’s brother, Abu Sofian, died, they are always together.”
“Do they go to the fish farm?” Walk asked.
“Almost every day. But they never stay there.”
“Where do they stay?” I asked.
“My cousin’s house or the house Muhammad Ibrahim rented in Samarra.”
We had already been down that road. It had ended in two dry holes. “Where else?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he insisted. “They have left Samarra.”
“When?” interjected Walt.
“Four days ago,” the fisherman answered. “That was the last time I saw them.”
“Where did they go?” I pressed.
“They are always together,” the prisoner replied, trying to avoid the question.
“I didn’t ask you that, shithead,” I shouted. “I asked you where they went.”
He looked from Walt to me and back again. You could almost hear the gears turning in his head. He had reached the inevitable conclusion. There was no way out now but our way. “I swear I don’t know,” he began, and then took a deep breath. “But my cousin and I have an uncle in Baghdad. Perhaps they are there.”
“Where is your uncle’s house?” Walt asked.
The fisherman gave us the location. By now he was fully cooperative. His was the typical profile of a broken prisoner, going from evasive and defiant to ready, even anxious, to help. He had no objection when we informed him that he was going on a recon to point out the exact location of his uncle’s place.
After we sent him back to his cell, Walt and I conferred. “I think this uncle’s house is as good a target as we’re going to get,” I said.
“You think they really might be there?” Walt asked.
After everything that had gone down in the last forty-eight hours, the last thing I wanted was to make another bad call. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I think it’s worth a shot.” What I didn’t say was that it was probably going to be the last shot, at least on my watch.
Walt nodded. “I’ll run this by the commander. I’m pretty sure he’ll go along with it. He’s as aggressive as they come.”
I paused, picking my next words carefully. “Thanks, Walt,” I said sincerely. “You know, I always assumed you were kind of…a dick.”
He laughed. “Same here,” he replied. “I always assumed you were trying to get Kelly on your side and discredit our input on Tikrit.”
That’s because your Tikrit intelligence was always wrong, I wanted to tell him. But I figured I’d said enough. I needed his help. Whatever was going to happen from here on out was going to happen without me. I needed someone to finish the job.
But, as it turned out, my usefulness had not quite come to an end. Later that evening, as I was winding down from the intense session with the fisherman, Lee asked me to come down with him to the flight line. A recent raid had gathered some detainees and he wanted me to help get them in-processed.
As we were standing at the runway, waiting for the choppers to set down, a full-bird colonel approached. He was on a first-name basis with Lee and after a friendly greeting I was introduced.
“Staff Sergeant Maddox,” Lee said, “this is Colonel Walker, the J-2.” That was impressive. J-2 meant that the colonel was the senior intelligence officer for the entire task force. He out-ranked every other intelligence official, analyst, and interrogator in the task force. Theoretically, Colonel Walker would have known about every information gathering operation that the task force was involved in. But it didn’t work that way. I knew from direct experience that intelligence gathered in Tikrit, for instance, pretty much stayed in Tikrit. The intent was to keep the decision making as local as possible. Kelly and other analysts elsewhere knew better than anyone what the situation was in their part of the country. They tried to keep oversight from task force headquarters to a minimum in order to avoid unnecessary interference. It was for that reason that I was not required to write lengthy reports of my work. It avoided complications.
But now that I was face-to-face with the man in charge of task force intelligence gathering, I was beginning to have second thoughts. He was obviously interested in what had been going on in Tikrit. And it was just as obvious that he was pretty far behind the curve.
“How long have you been up in Tikrit, Sergeant Maddox?” he asked me.
“Five months, sir,” I replied.
“What have you been doing there?”
“Just trying to get rid of the bad guys, sir.”
“Any luck?”
I paused. Could I even begin to explain how close we’d come? “We did all right, sir.” I answered.
“How come I haven’t seen any of your interrogation reports?” he continued.
I swallowed hard. “Sir,” I answered, “I was told not to worry about writing them up.”
“I don’t know who told you that,” he said, clearly irritated. “We need those reports. Especially after that pile of money you all found. Can you write up a quick summary of what you’ve been doing in Tikrit?”
“Certainly, sir,” I responded. “But I don’t know how clear a picture a written report might convey. It’s a complicated situation. I do have a link diagram that I can provide. And I can brief anyone who might be interested.”
“Excellent,” Colonel Walker said. “When are you shipping out?”
“Sunday the fourteenth, sir.”
“I’m having an analyst’s meeting on Thursday. I’d like you to be there. And bring your link diagram.”
The colonel left and, watching him disappear into the darkness, I turned to my friend. “Lee,” I asked, “anyone ever want to know anything about Tikrit before we found that money?”
“Eric,” he replied. “We’re in Baghdad. We stay focused on Baghdad.”