That wasn’t the best news I’d heard all day. The Baghdad shooters didn’t know the situation and the players like our guys. “Why do we need them?” I asked. “We can hit them both.”
“The money caught the attention of the brass back at Baghdad,” Kelly explained. “Now they want to play.”
“But—” I began before Kelly cut me off.
“Look, Eric,” he said. “It’s fine. These are our operators who are coming up. This way we can hit both targets at the same time and we don’t have to get the 4th ID involved. The place is easy to find. It’s not going to be a problem.”
“So when is TOT?” I asked, referring to time on target.
“0100,” he replied. “We’re only going to have a couple of hours at the objectives. Samarra is a hot spot. Bam Bam wants to get in and out. We’ll hit the Khudayr target either way. But we’re going to wait for someone to show up at the pond before we go in.”
“How will you know when someone’s there?” I asked.
“We’ve got eyes on it,” he replied. Kelly was referring to orbiting military satellites that had focused on the exact coordinates of the fish farm and were transmitting imagery as we spoke. I didn’t have time to think about the wonders of modern technology. I was too focused on what was about to go down.
So was Kelly. “Since we found that money, we’re in good shape,” he said to me. “That was terrorist cash and everyone knows it. But, Eric, the way I see it, this could be our last shot. I don’t really know where we go after this.”
“I don’t know where we go either,” I admitted.
“You haven’t got any locations still hidden up your sleeve, do you?” he asked, only half joking. He knew as well as I did that any information I got was only as good as the detainee or source who had given it to me. If tonight’s hits were dry holes, I seriously doubted whether the three guys I was depending on back at the guesthouse would have any more good ideas. Kelly was right. This could be our last shot.
The team headed out for Samarra around midnight. I watched them leave then headed back to the house to wait for the OU football game to get under way. It was an important one: the Big Twelve championship. So far the Sooners had played an undefeated season and, in my humble opinion, had emerged as the greatest college team of all time. They were about to prove it again by whipping the Kansas State Wildcats. I was one hundred percent certain.
I was feeling pretty good. We were on our way to pick up Muhammad Ibrahim, the man who I was sure could lead us to Saddam himself. And OU was going to finish the season in true style by dismantling the Wildcats. It didn’t get any better than that.
Within the first ten minutes of the game, OU had jumped out to a 7–0 lead. Can of corn, I thought to myself and went to check in with Kelly. He was in the communications room as usual, checking the surveillance monitors on the fish farm. “Want to watch?” he asked as I came in.
I sat down next to him. On the screen was live infrared coverage of the target area around the pond and the nearby river. It was clear enough to get a good idea of what was happening on the ground. After watching the empty landscape for about twenty minutes, we both saw the same thing at the same time: two figures emerging from the darkness. We sat bolt upright as they went to the water’s edge, climbed into a boat, and paddled into the pond. It had to be the two Muhammads—Muhammad Ibrahim and Muhammad Khudayr, right where they were supposed to be.
Kelly made a quick call to Walt, his analyst counterpart in Baghdad. “They’re in the pond,” he told them. “I can see them right now.”
“I don’t see anything,” Walt replied. “We’re not going to move until we have a fix on them.”
Kelly swore and slammed down the phone.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I think they’re watching a different monitoring system,” he told me.
“So what?” I didn’t have time to think about the glitches of modern technology. This was going down in real time.
“So if they can’t see it on their channel, then it doesn’t exist.”
“Of course it exists,” I shot back, pointing to the image on the screen. “There’s a boat with two men in it.”
“You see it and I see it,” Kelly replied grimly, “but if they don’t see it, they aren’t going to do the raid.”
“Look, Kelly,” I said desperately. I was talking fast now, trying to think of some way, any way, to make this happen. “These guys know that we only conduct raids after midnight. They can stay in their houses until then. After that they have to find someplace else to hide. Those fishermen in that boat didn’t show up until after midnight. Don’t you see? They’re hiding on the river. They fish for a couple of hours until it’s safe to come back. Most of our hits are over by 0300. You can catch a lot of fish in that time, to make a lot of mazgoof.”
Even while I was talking, trying to convince myself and Kelly, the report from Bam Bam came in. Muhammad Khudayr’s house was a bone dry hole. There wasn’t a single adult male at the place. The fact that many of the women found there were the wives and widows of insurgency leaders, including the spouses of Sulwan, Sabah, and Abu Sofian, did us absolutely no good. We weren’t about to spark an international incident by bringing women in for interrogation. The night’s prospects were quickly turning to shit. I had to think of something. “Kelly,” I said, inspired by my desperation. “Let’s get Bam Bam to do the hit on the fish farm right now.”
He shook his head. “They’re running out of night,” he told me, looking at his watch. It was coming up on 0300. “We’ll have to wait until Bam Bam gets back and talk it over with him then.”
“By then they’ll be gone,” I told him, looking at the glowing images of the fishermen. But even as I said it, I realized it was hopeless. There was nothing Kelly could do. Bam Bam had made it clear that all operations in a place as dangerous as Samarra had to be done under cover of night. The last thing anyone wanted was another Mogadishu.
Once more it looked like Muhammad Ibrahim had slipped away. All I had to even prove he existed was a faint heat trace on a computer screen. Exhausted I sat alone at the dining room table. I thought I could never feel as discouraged I as did right then. But that was before I checked the score of the OU–Kansas State game. The Sooners had been taken apart. Their chances for the championship were all but over.
Chapter 15
OUT OF TIME
Bam Bam was crystal clear: we wouldn’t be going back to the fish farm that night. I knew that he had as much at stake as any of us in seeing the mission succeed. But he was too good of a leader to let his emotions get in the way.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t do my best to talk him into it. “The two Muhammads are at the fish farm,” I pleaded with him. “I’m one hundred percent certain.” Kelly shot me a dirty look. We all remembered what happened the last time I made a confident prediction based on percentages. But this time Kelly actually agreed. “We’ve still got a couple of hours before daylight,” he said. “If we went now we could be in and out before morning. We could just grab whoever’s there and head back.”
“We can go tomorrow,” Bam Bam answered calmly. “We have no assets or support from Baghdad. They agreed to go on this raid and we can’t afford to piss them off.”
Kelly and I should have known enough to back off. But I could feel everything we worked for so long and hard slipping away. We couldn’t let that happen. “As soon as we started going after Muhammad Ibrahim in Tikrit, he went to Samarra,” I said. “Now, since we did the hit on Muhammad Khudayr’s, he knows we’ve followed him there. He’s sure to make a run for somewhere else and this time we may not be able to figure out where he went. This may be the last time he’s even in this area.”
Bam Bam didn’t budge. “First of all, we don’t know for sure it’s him out at that pond. Second, if it was him, he obviously feels safe there. If it’s him, he’ll probably come back. We’ll do the hit tomorrow.” He picked up his gear and just before he went upstairs he turned to me and asked, “How did the Sooners do tonight?” He either didn’t
