His bored attitude quickly disappeared. He obviously took a lot of pride in his accomplishment. “Over the last few months I kept running across bodyguards and their family members,” he told me. “So I made the list. For example, tonight the bodyguard we are going after is an Al-Muslit. That’s one of the big tribes loyal to Saddam.” He pointed to a section of about forty Al-Muslits on his list.
“Anyone I should be paying special attention to?” I pressed. I could tell he appreciated my interest in his work. I had his attention now. I also had the feeling that what he was telling me might prove very useful.
He tapped his finger next to another name on the list. “Al-Haddoushi,” he said. “Especially Muhammad Al- Haddoushi. He was very close to Saddam.” He leaned forward. “They may still be in contact.”
There was something else I needed to know. “Why did you focus on the bodyguards?” I asked Jared.
“Look,” he said, as if he was explaining it to a kid, “there’s attacks going on all the time in Tikrit. IEDs, RPGs, ambushes. Somebody has to be doing it. I think these bodyguards might have some answers.”
“So you’re an interrogator?”
He shook his head, and then nodded at the men around us, getting ready for the raid. “These guys do their own interrogating,” he explained. “I just translate. But when they’re done, they sometimes let me ask questions about my list. After that, we ship the prisoners down to Baghdad, to the BIAP jail. I guess they get interrogated down there.”
I knew better. There were so many detainees at the airport compound that most of the them were just being stored until someone could figure out what to do with them. Detainees brought from Tikrit and elsewhere were not a high priority. But the information the terp was providing had given me an idea. After five days in Baghdad, interrogating mostly low-level prisoners, I didn’t feel as if I’d accomplished a lot. Maybe I’d be of more use in Tikrit. And maybe there was something to Jared’s bodyguard theory.
“You think they could use a full-time interrogator up here?” I asked.
“Not really. We’ve been able to handle it so far.”
That wasn’t the answer I was looking for, so I came at it from another direction. “Where do you guys get your intelligence?” I asked.
Over the next few minutes, Jared gave me a rundown on the insurgency situation in Tikrit. It was the 4th Infantry Division, he told me, which had initially developed informant sources in the area and passed along whatever information they gleaned to the task force. They were kept pretty busy at first, hunting down the High Value Targets that were still clustered in Saddam’s hometown. But it wasn’t long before that well had run dry. The way the terp saw it, the only reason they were still in the area was because of Izzat Ibrahim Al-Duri.
“Who’s that?” I asked, once again showing my ignorance.
“He’s Black List number six,” Jared told me. “You know, from the deck of cards?”
That part I got. The DOD had put together a pack of playing cards at the beginning of the war. On the face of the cards were the fifty-five most wanted men in Iraq: the Black List. Saddam was Black List #1, the Ace of Spades. His sons, Uday and Qusay were BLs #2 and #3. They’d already been accounted for, killed in a bloody shoot-out in Mosul the day before I arrived in Baghdad. BL #4 was the presidential secretary, Hamid Mahmud, while #5 on the list was the notorious Chemical Ali. As BL #6, Al-Duri, the King of Clubs, was a top military adviser to Saddam and a prime suspect in the insurgent activities around Tikrit. There were fifty-two in all. Along with the three Jokers that made it fifty-five.
The deck of cards was part of a major effort to take the hunt for Saddam and his cronies nationwide. There was no question that finding him was a top priority. Ground troops, Special Operations Forces, and intelligence operatives had scoured the country in the months after the invasion. Every person on the deck was a High Value Target for the U.S. military. But there was only one Ace of Spades. I never heard anyone say it, but we would have gladly traded every wanted man on the entire deck of cards for Saddam.
“We’re pretty sure Al-Duri is still around here somewhere,”
Jared told me. “If we can find Al-Duri, he might lead us to Saddam.”
I wanted to ask another question. I wanted to ask a lot of other questions. But Jared’s information dump was over. The team was ready, locked, and loaded. The hit was about to happen.
Chapter 2
OUTSIDE THE WIRE
A total of eight of us would go on tonight’s raid. Aside from Jared and me, there were six shooters from the task force, including a guy who introduced himself to me as Carl. He’d been given the chore of keeping an eye on me during the operation.
“Stick close,” he said. “We’ll be attached to a platoon from Fourth ID. Our job is strictly SSE.” He saw the puzzled expression on my face. “Sensitive Site Exploitation,” he patiently explained. “Fourth ID will lock down the location. Then we’ll go in for a search and interrogate whoever we find.”
“Al-Muslit.” I nodded, remembering what Jared had told me.
“That’s the plan,” he replied, but something in his voice told me that a hit doesn’t always go according to plan. I followed him out to the rear of the mansion where two top-of-the-line Mercedes sedans were parked. I found out later that the luxury ride I was in had previously been driven by two teenage nieces of Saddam’s, the daughters of his half brother Barzan. Barzan was one of the most wanted men in Iraq, the Five of Clubs in the deck of High Value Targets; his house had been raided shortly before my arrival. The team had been using the girls’ car ever since.
It was after one A.M. when Jared and I climbed into the backseat of one of the Mercedes, with Carl at the wheel and another shooter, named Sam, riding shotgun. The other four members of the team were in the car in front of us. We peeled out and headed off at top speed to link up with the 4th ID platoon at their camp near Beiji, a village just north of Tikrit.
Whatever lingering fatigue I had evaporated in a rush of adrenaline. Traveling between the compound and the 4th ID outpost, we were in enemy territory, subject to RPGs, sniper fire and anything else they could throw at us. And, since there was a nine P.M. curfew in place, anyone on the road at that hour had to be an American. We needed to get where we were going fast, and within minutes were rocketing through clouds of dust at a hundred miles an hour.
As we skidded into the last curve that would take us down a mile-long straightaway to Beiji, the darkness around us suddenly erupted in deafening chaos. The driver lurched violently to avoid the gunfire and it felt like we were trapped inside a rolling steel drum as he swerved. From the flashes of light and the thudding noise, I knew that a fifty-caliber machine gun had opened up on us. I also knew that, with a gun as big as a fifty-cal, it’s hard to miss.
The car in front of us had disappeared into the dust as Carl slammed on the brakes and we went into a long slide. “Oh fuck!” someone said, as Carl threw open the door and jumped out.
“Secure the vehicle!” he shouted to Sam as he ran into the darkness, yelling, “USA! USA!”
As quickly as it had started, the incoming fire was over and the three of us sat in silence waiting for what would happen next. I remember thinking nothing, my mind still reeling from the reality of getting shot at, my pulse hammering in my ears. So this was what it was like outside the wire.
After what seemed an eternity, Carl reappeared in the beams of the headlights. He got back in the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel and trying to catch his breath.
“What happened, man?” asked Sam.
“The guard up ahead didn’t get word we were coming through,” Carl said, starting the car again and pulling back onto the road. “He said we fired first. I guess that’s the standard line when you light up your own guys. Luckily he couldn’t shoot straight.”
“What about the others?”
“They’re okay. Let’s just get linked up and we’ll figure out what went wrong later.” He turned to the backseat. “You all right?”
“No problem,” I said as casually as possible. The last thing Carl needed was some cherry interrogator freaking out on him. He had other things to think about. So did I. I couldn’t remember if I had packed an extra pair
