As we talked in the laundry room, I was able to glean more basic information. Added to what I had already gotten from Jared the terp, a clearer picture of the situation in Tikrit was emerging.
The mission of the task force, Rich told me, had been to hunt down High Value Targets. As Saddam’s hometown, Tikrit had been hit hard and repeatedly. It was assumed that most of the HVTs in the area had already been rounded up or had scattered. “Right now,” Rich told me, “we’ll go after anyone we can find. Insurgents, Baath Party members, Saddam sympathizers.” He shrugged. “As long as we’re here, we’ve got to do something.”
I thought about that for a minute, remembering Jared’s theory that Saddam’s bodyguards were worth taking a look at. I still had the list he’d given me in my back pocket. “So…are you getting close to anybody?”
“Not really. But lately we’ve been trying to track down a dude named Haddoushi.”
“Muhammad Haddoushi?” I asked. The name rang a bell; this was the bodyguard Jared thought might still be in contact with Saddam.
I was hoping it would sound like I knew more than I did. “That’s the one,” he continued. “His nephew was killed when they got Uday and Qusay a few days ago. Those family links are important.”
That also fit in with what the terp had told me about the relatives and tribes loyal to Saddam forming an interlocking network. “How do you get information about these people?” was my next question.
“We have sources, but they’re not very reliable. Most of them were handed over to us from the guys here before us.”
Voices from down the hall cut our conversation short. I followed Rich back into the dining room area, where the task force was coming in one by one for an early afternoon breakfast. I would soon learn to adjust to a schedule that started late in the day and ended early in the morning. I would also get to know who was who and what role each one played.
A half dozen highly trained soldiers were at the core of the task force. These were the men who carried out the raids. Even when they weren’t on a mission they functioned as a tightly knit team. They slept in the same quarters, ate their meals together, and played video games with almost the same intensity as they did their job. They never made a big deal about their status as the military’s most elite unit. That fact was already well established. And being part of that unit meant that you handled your superior status with quiet dignity and humility. But there was an unmistakable distinction between them and the rest of the world. I knew from that first morning what side of that line I was on.
Along with me on that side were Rich the analyst, Chris the case officer, and the rest of the intelligence team. This included three bodyguards who accompanied Chris when he contacted the sources providing him with their increasingly unreliable tips. Rounding out the residents were a bomb technician, a radio and communications guy, and an air tactician, whose job was to coordinate air support for the raids. Counting Jack and Matt, the first and second in command, the mansion was home to about sixteen men, give or take the occasional analyst or brass from Baghdad.
The entire team had arrived in Tikrit only three weeks before me and they were still trying to get a feel for the environment. They were on the same steep learning curve I was on just three weeks ahead of me. I listened carefully as the shooters at the dining table talked matter-of-factly about last night’s raid while they ate their breakfast.
My own breakfast was an MRE—meal ready to eat. I had noticed the well-stocked refrigerator and pantry in the kitchen but I didn’t know whom all that food belonged to, much less if I could help myself.
“Hey, man,” said the guy with the handlebar mustache, who I would later find out was the air tactician. “We got a whole supermarket in there. You don’t have to eat that shit.”
The fact was, I liked MREs, providing I could pick just the best parts out of two or three of them at the same time. Right then, what had my attention was the shooters’ conversation. Jeff, the Texan I’d met the night before, had come downstairs and was talking to Carl, who’d accompanied me on the raid.
“So,” he asked casually, as if I wasn’t even in the room. “How did Eric do last night?”
Carl nodded his approval. “Went right at the guy. Didn’t even flinch when we got lit up, either.”
If Jeff was the least bit impressed, he didn’t show it. Instead he turned to me and said, “I don’t know when you’re going back, but I’d still like you to interrogate that bodyguard.”
“I’m here as long as you need me. Anything I should know about the guy?”
“Fourth ID picked him up. Drunk off his ass. Supposed to be a big shot, but nobody knows for sure. Maybe you can find out.”
“Okay.” Despite the good report Carl had given me, I felt bad about last night. The task force had done their job. My job had been to find Nezham. I didn’t know what the expectations were, but for me the bottom line was I hadn’t found the guy they were looking for. Maybe I’d have better luck next time, though who knew if there was going to be a next time.
After breakfast I rode with Jeff out to the 4th ID prison where the detainee was being held. With Jared due to ship out, there was a new terp for the session, a haggard-looking Iraqi-American named Adam. He seemed harmless enough.
As the three of us drove through the sprawling 4th ID base, Jeff gave me a brief tour. Formerly Saddam’s palace complex in Tikrit, it was as big as a good-size college campus. There were up to fifty mansions, each the size of the task force quarters, and three massive castles interspersed around manmade lakes. There had once been a luxurious garden, but that had long since died from lack of attention.
“The Fourth ID controls this base camp,” he told me. “We just live here. Fourth ID is responsible for most of the Sunni Triangle. They make the rules and they own the battle space. We go after the HVTs. It is as simple as that. We get whatever we want and need to find them. If a detainee or source knows something about an HVT, we get them. Other than that, Fourth ID is in charge.”
Five minutes later we were at the detention facility. I didn’t know what this little prison had been before; it was nothing more than a large office room with two windows and a doorway. But it worked well as a prison. There was enough space to allow thirty to fifty detainees to stay in the big room and still maintain tight security.
“Let’s go see the sheriff,” Jeff said as he parked the car next to the entrance, where three guards were staring into the detention room monitoring about two dozen captives.
“We’ll be right back. We’re going to talk to the sheriff,” Jeff notified the guards and they nodded their approval. Across the way there was another building guarded by a mutt dog with a menacing snarl. The sheriff was the 4th ID staff sergeant in charge of the battalion detention facility. He informed us that the drunk bodyguard had not completely detoxed but that they did have another bodyguard who had been detained the day before. Jeff and I agreed that talking to anyone was better than no one at all. So the sheriff released the bodyguard to us and we watched as the prisoner was handcuffed with thin plastic zip ties and an empty sandbag was placed over his head. We put him in the backseat with Adam and returned to the task force headquarters.
Jeff, who had done most of the interrogations before I came, had used the mansion’s guesthouse for questioning detainees. It was there that we took the bodyguard. The place was well suited for the task at hand. It had four bedrooms, the largest of which had a couple of couches, some plastic folding chairs, and a piece of plywood propped on ration boxes to serve as a table. The windows were also covered with plywood but what really made it ideal was the air-conditioning. Considering the long hours spent in there, and the intensity of the work being done, air-conditioning was essential to cope with the 120-degree heat.