interceptor. That basically consisted of sitting in a windowless room with a pair of headphones listening to foreign radio transmissions. The second was to be a Mandarin Chinese interrogator. Since we weren’t at war with China, the likelihood of actually interrogating anyone was pretty slim. But it was certainly preferable to sitting behind a desk monitoring broadcasts eight hours a day. So I signed on. I figured it might prove useful when I left the military and moved into the private sector. A working knowledge of Chinese could be a very marketable skill.
It was also one of the hardest languages in the world to master. Over the next eighteen months I struggled to read, write, and speak it; and, when I graduated in 1999, it was by the skin of my teeth.
There wasn’t a lot of forethought that went into my decision. It wasn’t as if I ever wanted to be an interrogator or even thought I had the skills to be one. But once I made the choice, I was determined to do the best I could. From that point on, I thought of myself as an interrogator and wanted to do interrogations, even though I had no idea how to go about it and wasn’t likely to get the chance.
Instead I was eventually sent to Beijing, where I was attached to the U.S. Embassy as a linguist and translator. Mostly my job consisted of translating newspaper articles and escorting American VIPs around town, sometimes even bargaining for them with the local shopkeepers.
By late summer of 2000, I was back in the States, where I returned to Fort Huachuca for a course that would qualify me to become an E-6 staff sergeant. When I was there I met a woman in Tucson and we got married later that fall. We would go on to have two sons, but our marriage didn’t last. In our first few years together, I deployed six times, and nearly every tour was for six months. Our very young marriage couldn’t take it.
There are many effects of war, not just casualties on the battlefield. Sometimes even two good people cannot make a marriage work. Whatever the reason, it was a difficult and painful decision. Thankfully both of us were committed to the kids as our number one priority.
By the time our second son was on the way, the Army had loaned me out to a military intelligence agency. It was there that I first met Lee. We were sent on various deployments where our specific training and language skills could prove useful. I found myself increasingly desperate to take these trips.
Then came 9/11. Suddenly I knew what I was supposed to be doing: hunting down these sons-of-bitches to the farthest corners of the earth. I started making numerous requests for assignments, anywhere and everywhere. Lee, who spoke Farsi, was naturally more in demand as an interrogator and would eventually serve in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay. I had to be satisfied with a string of backwater deployments, far away from the action. But when the war started and the request came down for experienced interrogators with infantry training to go to Iraq, I saw my chance. I had no hesitation in pointing out to my superiors that I had volunteered for whatever they had thrown at me. Now there was a real war going on, with a real need for interrogators for the first time in decades. I may not have had the opportunity to ever interrogate a prisoner before, but it was not for a lack of volunteering.
They saw my point. It had been a long time coming, but I was finally going to do my job.
Chapter 4
DOGS OF WAR
I woke up at 1100 feeling totally refreshed and revived. I’d only had about three hours sleep. There’s something about getting shot at by a fifty-caliber machine gun that gives you a whole new appreciation of life.
Everyone else was still in the rack, so I took the opportunity to look around. Over the next few days, I’d get a complete picture of the mansion’s layout. Upstairs was a large open area with rows of bunk beds. This was the shooter’s quarters. Each one got both a bottom and top bunk. The bottom was to sleep on; the top was to store their weapons and equipment. There were a few couches and a TV where they played video games in their downtime. A corridor led to the operations room I’d seen on my first night, equipped with maps and computers for receiving and evaluating intelligence.
From the second floor there was a view of the mansion grounds. From the back you could see the Tigris River, down the slope of a dead lawn past the thick brush of the bank. The wide flow of the river created a natural barrier to the post.
Off to one side of the mansion was a guesthouse and behind that a large pool used by the task force. Its chlorinated blue water contrasted starkly with the dry desert in every direction.
Downstairs, past the piles of weapons and ammo in the living room, a spacious kitchen opened onto the dining room. This was the main meeting area, where everyone gathered around the big table to talk and eat. Another hallway led to two more bedrooms and a laundry area with a washer and dryer.
I was loading the few pieces of clothing I’d brought when I heard a voice behind me. “What are you doing up so early?”
I turned to face one of the guys I’d seen in the operations room last night, short and compact, with a Midwestern accent. I couldn’t remember his name.
“Rich,” he reminded me, sticking out his hand. “I’m the analyst around here.”
It didn’t take long to find out that, in the hierarchy of the house, Rich was pretty low in the pecking order. For one thing, he slept downstairs. The upstairs bunks were reserved exclusively for the shooters. Along with Chris, a case officer who ran informants, and Larry, a computer guy who passed information back to the United States, Rich was part of the intelligence team and we all slept downstairs. It was our job to gather the reliable data for the raids. As more and more dry holes started turning up—raids in which the primary target was not captured—these were the guys who would take the heat.
As we talked in the laundry room, I was able to glean more basic information. Added to what I had already gotten from Jared the terp, a clearer picture of the situation in Tikrit was emerging.
The mission of the task force, Rich told me, had been to hunt down High Value Targets. As Saddam’s hometown, Tikrit had been hit hard and repeatedly. It was assumed that most of the HVTs in the area had already been rounded up or had scattered. “Right now,” Rich told me, “we’ll go after anyone we can find. Insurgents, Baath Party members, Saddam sympathizers.” He shrugged. “As long as we’re here, we’ve got to do something.”
I thought about that for a minute, remembering Jared’s theory that Saddam’s bodyguards were worth taking a look at. I still had the list he’d given me in my back pocket. “So…are you getting close to anybody?”
“Not really. But lately we’ve been trying to track down a dude named Haddoushi.”
“Muhammad Haddoushi?” I asked. The name rang a bell; this was the bodyguard Jared thought might still be in contact with Saddam.
I was hoping it would sound like I knew more than I did. “That’s the one,” he continued. “His nephew was killed when they got Uday and Qusay a few days ago. Those family links are important.”
That also fit in with what the terp had told me about the relatives and tribes loyal to Saddam forming an interlocking network. “How do you get information about these people?” was my next question.
“We have sources, but they’re not very reliable. Most of them were handed over to us from the guys here before us.”
Voices from down the hall cut our conversation short. I followed Rich back into the dining room area, where the task force was coming in one by one for an early afternoon breakfast. I would soon learn to adjust to a schedule that started late in the day and ended early in the morning. I would also get to know who was who and what role each one played.
A half dozen highly trained soldiers were at the core of the task force. These were the men who carried out the raids. Even when they weren’t on a mission they functioned as a tightly knit team. They slept in the same quarters, ate their meals together, and played video games with almost the same intensity as they did their job. They never made a big deal about their status as the military’s most elite unit. That fact was already well established. And being part of that unit meant that you handled your superior status with quiet dignity and humility. But there was an unmistakable distinction between them and the rest of the world. I knew from that first morning what side of that line I was on.
Along with me on that side were Rich the analyst, Chris the case officer, and the rest of the intelligence team. This included three bodyguards who accompanied Chris when he contacted the sources providing him with their increasingly unreliable tips. Rounding out the residents were a bomb technician, a radio and communications
