I knew it was a no-win situation. I'd either say we weren't ready or take him along, and there was no way I was going to say we weren't ready and let the other team take the first mission we'd ever done. Even so, I decided to leverage my capitulation.
"Okay, on one condition: You give me an OPFUND and let me buy some gear."
Kurt said, "Gear's no issue. I can get you anything you want."
"No. I want to buy my own. The CIA is giving us old-school crap. They aren't opening up the double-oh-seven vault, because they don't want to compromise what they've got. The directorate of science and technology is giving us equipment that looks like it came from an Austin Powers movie set. Retro thinks he can do better by shopping on the Internet. Shit, we were using his personal kit in Charleston. And off-the-shelf stuff won't spike customs, since we'll be flying in commercial."
"I can get George Wolffe on it. He can break through the red tape at Langley."
"That might work but not for this mission. We don't have the time. What we really need to invest in is our own DS&T. Our own shop that does research and development instead of relying on the support of others."
"How much do you want?"
"Twenty thousand should do it."
"Twenty-thousand? What the hell are you going to buy?"
"Come on, sir. You spent more than that on the infrastructure in your office. If I don't need all of it, I won't use it."
He considered, then said, "I'll give you a line of credit of ten thousand, but you itemize what you want and run it by the logistics section first. If you need more, you'll get more, but no buying a bunch of gee-whiz gear just because you have the money. Only get what you think you need."
I agreed, knowing that what I thought I would need was a pretty big door to walk through. I could buy just about anything with that guidance.
Five days later we were ready to go. We'd been through the pre-deployment package of intelligence and cover development, and I was confident in the team. Even Kranz, who had seemed to take my Charleston threat seriously.
The intel itself seemed pretty solid, but I wanted a second opinion from someone I trusted. I'd seen plenty of "solid" intelligence turn out to be nothing but a string of coincidences. After the clinical slide show, I'd flagged Ethan Merriweather for some inside skinny. Ethan was an intel weenie like the rest of that department, but only because he'd broken his back on a parachute operation, which forced him out of the infantry and into military intelligence. He was someone who had hunted terrorists with a gun before being relegated to briefing others to do the same. Someone who thought like me.
"Ethan, what's the story on this guy? How good is the intelligence?"
"You saw the brief. That's the best we've got. He's bad, no doubt."
"No doubt?"
He paused for a moment, considering his words. "Look, in my opinion, he isn't a global jihadist. He's just making some money on the side, but he's doing it for global jihadists, and he knows that. He's no innocent dupe. He'll give us some serious leads."
That had been good enough for me and was the final confirmation I needed to feel comfortable about the mission. The team was clicking, and, thanks to Retro, we were now equipped with the latest technology that he could find.
He'd managed to run up a twelve-thousand-dollar bill on various widgets we "might" need. We'd packed everything into innocuous boxes that would support our cover of salesmen from Advanced Surveillance Solutions. The hardest part had been the guns, but we'd had the CIA's concealment shop build us some inert cameras, which were now stuffed with six Glock 30 .45 caliber pistols. We'd done a test run through an X-ray machine, and short of someone opening the box and physically pulling the cameras apart, we were good to go.
We were due to deploy the following morning, and I was running the operation through my mind while I packed, thinking of the myriad things that could go wrong and feeling the added pressure of being the vanguard for our fledgling little unit.
Whatever I did would set the tone for everything to follow. I had the chance to establish standard operating procedures for the following ten years, as well as the opportunity to ensure we'd only exist for the next ten days.
I took one last look at the pictures of my wife and daughter, wondering what they were doing right this moment, and a little tinge of melancholy hit me the usual feeling I had before deployment.
My being gone was nothing new for my family. I had married Heather after I was accepted into the special mission unit, so she was used to constant deployments. But it still tore at me right before I left each time.
These feelings had become old hat after close to a decade in combat. I didn't want to leave, but once I was gone, I quit thinking about my family, instead focusing on the mission until I was allowed to make a phone call. Then I wanted to get the hell out of whatever shithole I was in and go home. With this new Taskforce, there would be no phone call. No contact whatsoever.
I remember seeing Apocalypse Now as a teenager. There's one scene where Martin Sheen is talking to himself about the war and his life in America. He says, "When I was there I wanted to be here. When I was here I wanted to be there." I had no idea what he was talking about then, but I now understood completely.
Reaper startled me out of my thoughts, plopping down in front of his wall locker next to me. I hastily shoved the pictures into a shoebox, hoping he wouldn't notice.
He did.
"Your wife?"
"Yeah." I went on the offensive before he could start in on my family. "You married?"
He started pulling out kit and said, "Nope. Was once, but it didn't last, which is too bad. She was an absolute hammer. Huge rack, tight ass, everything a man could want, but she was a career woman. Her job took precedence over the marriage."
A little bit taken aback at how he'd described his ex-wife, I said, "Yeah, I know how that goes. Heather was a financial analyst and doing really well, but she had to give that up because of my deployments. What did your wife do?"
"She was into the performing arts."
I had a hard time seeing him with some artsy-fartsy woman, but you just never knew. He did have the sissy haircut.
"Wow," I said, "that's worse than a financial analyst. Not too much call for that career path in the shithole towns surrounding military bases."
He shoved some boots into a bag and said, ''That wasn't it. She could have found a job at any of the posts I was stationed at. I just didn't want her to keep working."
"Why not? I mean, if it made her happy?" "Well, I was nineteen, fresh out of BUD/S and full of piss and vinegar. The marriage lasted about four months." "Huh," I said, at a momentary loss for words. "Would you change that now? After serving as long as you have?"
He zipped up his bag and stood, giving it thought. "No, I don't think so. I didn't mind the dancing so much, but her not wearing clothes while she did it really ate at me. I don't think that would change no matter how long I served."
He walked away, leaving me with my jaw hanging open.
Chapter 9
I kept an eye on the front door of the office while Retro used one of his widgets to crack the password that was denying him access to the computer hard drive. If the passport data was on it, this would be the easiest mission I had ever done. But I didn't think it would be, since we were inside Khalid' s office at the water desalinization plant. The chances of him putting terrorist in.formation on his work computer were about nil.
We'd been in Aden for a little over five days, and the mission itself had gone swimmingly. As fate would have it, our point of contact with the plant was none other than one Muhammad bin Qasim, aka Khalid, aka our target. While he worked in engineer.ing as a CAD/CAM designer, he had a solid grasp of English and was given to us as a sort of guide-slash-interpreter.