I could see that the information was finally sinking in. Just then, a CENTCOM representative approached us. He was visibly excited and he told the admiral that he needed to call Tikrit immediately. They quickly headed off toward the terminal.
Ten minutes later Admiral McCraven was back. “Tikrit is very excited about this,” he told me. “They’re going to try to put something together.” He turned to his staff. “We’re going back,” he told them. “Just as soon as they gas this thing up. There is no way in hell I’m going to be out of Iraq when we bring in the big guy.”
My heart started pounding. I was going back to finish what we’d started. Somebody up there liked me. Then admiral looked back at me. “I want you to stay here, Sergeant Maddox,” he said. “You need to brief General Custard on the link diagram as we planned.”
I looked at Lee in disbelief. If anyone needed to go back, it was me. I needed to see this thing through. My first reaction was to try to talk him into letting us return with him. But I didn’t say anything because I knew it wouldn’t have done any good. The admiral wasn’t asking for my opinion. He’d already decided.
“Wish us luck,” the admiral said as he headed back to the flight line.
I swallowed hard but couldn’t hold back my feelings. “It wasn’t luck, sir,” I said. He stopped and looked back, staring at me for a long moment. Then he turned on his heels and strode toward the bird.
The soldier who had been waiting to drive us from the flight line stepped forward and introduced himself. He was Sergeant Peters and he had been listening in on the conversation. “So you know where Saddam is hiding?” he asked with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah,” I replied distractedly as I watched the refueling trucks pull up to the plane.
“Is he full of shit?” the sergeant asked Lee.
“Normally, I’d say yes,” Lee joked loudly enough for me to hear. “But in this case he just got finished talking to the one guy on the planet who actually knows where Saddam is hiding.”
“So why didn’t you go back?” Peters asked.
“I guess they don’t really need us anymore,” I said. It was hard to admit, but it was true. All they had to do now was get Muhammad Ibrahim to lead them to the farm. My work was done. It was up to the rest of the team now.
“Hey,” said Sergeant Peters, “the admiral was coming out here for a few days of R&R. I was supposed to drive him around. You guys want to go instead?”
I looked at Lee and shrugged. “Why not? The briefing’s not until tomorrow morning. We’ve got nothing else to do.”
Six hours later, I was sitting in my deluxe hotel room with a view of downtown Doha. A wave of exhaustion swept over me. I had been running on pure adrenaline for the last three days. It had finally caught up with me and I could barely keep my eyes open.
We had spent the afternoon getting a quick look around Doha, ending up at a high-end restaurant where Admiral McCraven had a reservation. We had a delicious Middle Eastern meal, the best food I’d eaten in five months. Of course, everything tastes better with cold beer, and Lee and I kept them coming. For the first time since I’d arrived in Iraq, I could feel myself starting to unwind. There is no better feeling than that first meal, that first beer, and that first breath of freedom after a deployment. I couldn’t help but think about what might be going on back in Tikrit, but I wasn’t going to let it interfere with the good time I was having with my best friend.
In the middle of the night I woke up suddenly. The bedside clock read three A.M. With nothing else to do, I turned on the television. By some miracle it was tuned to ESPN. There was an announcement being made that sent a rush of pure joy through me: Jason White, the phenom quarterback for the Sooners, had won the 2003 Heisman Trophy.
It was an amazing capper in what had appeared to be a heartbreaking season for the Sooners. A week ago to the day they had been crushed by Kansas State in the Big Twelve championship game. Back then I was still in Tikrit, hunting down the two Muhammads in Samarra. It seemed like years ago. Life was full of disappointments. A week ago, OU had lost and for all I knew, Saddam had slipped through our fingers again. But there were consolations, too. Jason White had won the Heisman, and the Sooners were still going to the championship game. Anything could happen.
At 0700 I was in the lobby with Lee, showered, shaved, and dressed in my most presentable clothes, which were nothing more than a pair of cargo pants and my trusty blue shirt, washed and pressed by the hotel laundry. Sergeant Peters had come to pick us up for the briefing with General Custard.
“Hey,” he said casually as we walked to the SUV, “I went back to the office after I dropped you guys off last night.”
“Yeah?” I said, only half listening as I went over my mental notes for the briefing.
“Yeah,” he replied. “I found out they did a recon with your guy last night.”
My head snapped in his direction and I could feel my stomach lurch. “What happened?” I managed to stammer.
“I was watching it on the satellite feed last night. That guy Muhammad Ibrahim showed them a location. There was a guy on the roof and another one walking around the house. They looked like they were pulling guard.”
That was exactly what I would have expected at any location where Saddam was hiding. There wouldn’t have been a large presence; just a few men pulling guard. But if they had found Saddam last night wouldn’t Sergeant Peters have been a little more excited? Had the whole thing gone wrong again?
“What happened?” I repeated, preparing myself for the worst.
He shrugged. “It was getting late,” he said. “I went to bed around 1800.”
This guy’s got to be shitting me, I thought. They were about to raid a location where Saddam might be hiding and he went to bed? The least he could have done was give me a call at the hotel.
I was trying my best to contain myself as we drove through morning traffic to the base. It wasn’t easy. As I sat silently in the back of the SUV, I succumbed to a full-blown anxiety attack. I was clutching my pant legs to keep my hands from shaking. At every stoplight I had to restrain myself from jumping out and running to CENTCOM headquarters. I had to know what was happening. Lee was riding shotgun next to Sergeant Peters. He knew what I was going through but there was nothing he could say to calm me down. All I wanted to hear was the answer to one question: did we get him?
We arrived at CENTCOM and followed Sergeant Peters through a maze of crowded hallways. I looked at the faces of everyone we passed, hoping for a clue as to what might have happened last night. We arrived at our destination and he knocked at the door. An Army major stuck his head out and looked us over warily. “Hey, what’s up?” Sergeant Peters asked.
“Nothing,” the major replied. He looked distracted, as if he wanted to get rid of us and get back to his work.
I think our driver finally realized the excruciating anxiety I was feeling. “Hey, sir,” Sergeant Peters persisted, “did anything happen last night?” I appreciated his effort to find out about last night.
“What do you mean?” the major replied.
“Did they get anyone on that raid last night?”
The major craned his head out to see if anyone was within hearing distance. “Yeah,” he said in a low whisper. “We got him.”
I didn’t laugh. I didn’t cry. I didn’t make a sound. I just stood there. I wasn’t thinking about the long months I had spent trying to get to this moment. I wasn’t thinking about all the dead ends and frustrating failures. I wasn’t even thinking about the team I had worked so closely with or the men like Jeff and Bam Bam and Kelly who had believed in what I was doing. Instead I was thinking about Barry Sanders.
Barry Sanders was the great running back from OSU. Even though he was an Oklahoma State Cowboy, I had always considered him the greatest football player ever. But it wasn’t his record of accomplishments that brought him to mind. It was the way he would handle himself after he scored a touchdown. He never danced or dropped to his knees or showboated in any way. He’d simply hand the ball to the referee and jog to the sidelines. Whenever I heard him interviewed he was humble about his achievements, no matter how impressive they were. As I stood in the hallway at 0800 on December 14, 2003, I told myself one thing: Barry Sanders. Remember Barry Sanders.
I don’t remember hearing or seeing anything for a few moments. But as my senses slowly returned, I realized that Lee had grabbed me by the arms. “You did it, Eric,” he was saying. “Holy shit! You did it.”
Sergeant Peters just stared. The major looked confused. “This is the interrogator who got the target for last
