Cramer was base chief at Chapman from 2007–2008.
FIFTEEN
It was 8:35PM Tuesday in Washington, DC, 5:35AM Wednesday in Dushanbe. The Op Center on the seventh floor of the George Herbert Walker Bush Center for Intelligence’s Old Headquarters Building flourished with activity. Over a dozen men and women sat around the long, glossy conference table, their attention fixated on the multiple wall-mounted, high definition flat-screen monitors. The monitors displayed the real time feed from the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) the air force had tasked to this operation.
The UAVs focused close on the convoy of four Kamaz Ural-4320 trucks travelling down a strip of dusty, potholed Afghan highway. Another monitor displayed a digital map of southeastern Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan, with moving colored dots representing the positions of the various assets in play, identified by chyron labels.
For many of the Agency staff present, it made an exciting diversion from their normal daily routine of manning a cubicle or shared office space, and writing or reading reports. They just hoped it wouldn’t take too long. Most of the CIA headquarters staff worked a routine nine-to-five shift, and had anticipated returning to their upper middle-class suburban homes and families in time for dinner and their preference of evening television.
Matt Culler had already called his wife to let her know that it would be another late night.
The director of the National Clandestine Service was present, along with the director of the Counterterrorism Center, and the Near East Division chief. So was the president’s national security adviser, digitally, by way of video teleconference from her West Wing office. The national security adviser was unwed, practically lived out of her office, and, despite her lack of experience with intelligence matters, liked to micromanage everything on behalf of the president.
The pair of MQ-9 Reaper unmanned combat aerial vehicles had been on the Taliban convoy for the last twenty minutes. The GPS tracker Avery had planted on the truck was still transmitting, allowing the Reapers’ pilots and sensor operators to locate the target.
When the Reapers caught up with the convoy, the trucks had been stopped near the Tajik town of Kulob, about fifty miles north of Afghanistan. Here, one of the Reapers also spotted a man getting into the lead truck. The variable zoom feature on the Reaper’s DLTV 955mm Spotter provided a remarkably close-up and clear image that had allowed for positive identification of Mullah Adeib Arzad. His face was well known to everyone watching in the Ops Center and to the airmen operating the Reapers. He’d been at the top of the White House’s kill list for the past two years.
But the fervor died quickly out. When the trucks started rolling again, Mullah Arzad was no longer with them. He stayed behind with two bodyguards.
It was briefly debated whether or not one of the Reapers should kick-off a rocket into the house Mullah Arzad had gone into, but this option was shot down by the national security adviser. They had no intelligence on this place, and she wasn’t going to authorize a strike on Tajik soil that could result in civilian casualties. The administration was already taking plenty of heat for collateral damage from drone operations in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
The Op Center, which had been tracking the GPS signal even before the Reapers were put into the air, reported that the convoy had stopped here for an hour. Analysts took note of the farm, for future reference. It was obviously a safe house for Mullah Arzad, and the Taliban didn’t have much of a presence within Tajikistan, so that likely meant the property belonged to a trusted ally, like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. This information would be passed to Colonel Sergei Ghazan of GKNB’s counterintelligence section at the appropriate time.
The four Ural trucks now continued south on the highway in the direction of the Afghan border.
The weather was optimal for drone flights. The sun had risen early and shined brightly over Tajikistan, and the sky was clear, with high cloud coverage. If someone on the ground looked up and concentrated their attention, it was possible they’d see a tiny, glimmering object hovering in the sky and think it not quite large or fast enough to be an airplane or they may hear a feint buzzing sound. By this point, with over a thousand drone strikes conducted in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Taliban and al-Qaeda were alert for the signs of UAVs in the sky.
Al-Qaeda and Taliban feared drones the most, even more than they did JSOC search-and-destroy teams breaking into their huts or caves in the dead of night. Like any extensive ongoing counterterrorism operation, the drone strikes resulted in a survival of the fittest situation, whereby the dumb or lazy terrorists were immediately located and killed, and the smarter ones learned from the mistakes of their predecessors and continuously adapted and survived and became ever more challenging prey. Mullah Adeib Arzad definitely fell into the latter category, and he’d likely disappear once he received word of his close call.
Arrangements were already being made to task the next available drone to the Tajik farm providing Mullah Arzad sanctuary. But it would be two hours before the air force would be able to put a Predator on target, and by that time, there would be no further sighting of the Taliban commander at this location.
The Reapers, two of them, were deployed from Bagram Air Base near Kabul, where CIA still maintained an active base for launching drone missions against targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. USAF technicians at Bagram had performed a pre-flight maintenance check on the drones. Then, locally-based air force pilots had steered the Reapers down the runway and put them into the sky and transferred control of the drones to the 432nd Wing’s Reaper command-and-control center at Creech Air Force Base, in Indian Springs Nevada, near Las Vegas. Here, airmen with identical command stations piloted the Reapers by way of Ku-band satellite link.
Contrary to common misconceptions and poor journalism, CIA does not own or operate the drones it utilizes, and CIA staff does not fly Predators and Reapers from the Langley headquarters building. The drones are owned, operated, and maintained by the air force. Through the CIA Office of Military Affairs, headed by a USAF general, the Agency is able to relinquish operational control over drone missions. CIA also maintains covert bases across Africa and the Middle East from which drones are deployed.
The possibility of intercepting the trucks and seizing the cargo and taking Mullah Arzad’s entourage alive had been considered and turned down. Thanks to Avery obtaining the registration number of the aircraft that delivered the weapons, it was now clear who supplied the weapons. The GPS tracker would only continue transmitting for another twenty hours or so before its Iridium battery died, and it would take time to organize the ground troops and prepare an assault, especially as US military forces were in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan and had all but ceased offensive operations.
And any American military op had to first be approved by a committee of senior Afghan military and security officials. Not coincidently, the Taliban often had advance warning of American military offensives.
So with a cargo of SA-24 missiles, the national security adviser and intelligence chiefs decided to take no chances and simply eliminate the threat outright, and also deliver a significant blow to the Taliban by eliminating one of its top commanders.
The convoy reached the Afghan border crossing at 9:14AM, Tajik time. Culler and the others assembled in the Ops Center and at Creech AFB watched unsurprised as the four Ural trucks passed through the border checkpoint without being stopped by the Afghan troops manning the border crossing.