KBL (27 page)

“Gotcha.” It struck a chord. Dick Hallett knew that in the intelligence business there are no coincidences. And he understood “asymmetric” not just because he was a Marine, but because he was a Marine who studied Marines. And one of the Marines he’d studied was a three-star Marine general named Paul Van Riper.

In 2002, then-SECDEF Donald Rumsfeld ordered a major war game, the largest war game the Pentagon had ever put together. It was called Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02), a $250 million multilevel, multitheater multiexercise that ran from July 24 to August 15. MC02 included live, table-top, and computer battlefield simulations. The reason for the war game was Secretary Rumsfeld’s desire to test his theories of “force transformation” and “network-centric warfare,” in which U.S. forces, continuously linked by data, information, and joint operational tactics, defeat an enemy by employing overwhelming technological superiority: precision-guided munitions, automated C3I (command, control, communications, and intelligence), overhead surveillance systems like satellites and UAVs, and sophisticated SIGINT, IMINT, and MASINT (signals intelligence, imagery intelligence, and measurement and signatures intelligence) to spy on an enemy’s communications, capabilities, and positioning. Rumsfeld’s theory was that by relying on technological superiority, you could wage warfare, if not on the cheap, then certainly in a more efficient, digitized manner, resulting in victory less dependent on old-fashioned analog warfare, that is, boots on the ground.

The United States was represented by the Blue Team, and the Blue Team had the best capabilities that the science of war could produce. The bad guys—an unnamed Middle East country that should have been called Iraq—was represented by the Red Team. Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper was in charge of the bad guys. Van Riper is a big proponent of the art of war, not the science of war. As he himself once put it to an interviewer on the PBS science show
NOVA
, “The art of war and the science of war are not coequal. The art of war is clearly the most important. It’s science in support of the art.”

Bottom line: Van Riper employed the art of war against the Blue Team. How do you defeat an overwhelming enemy? You employ the art of war, following dictums written three thousand years ago by Sun Tzu. You go asymmetric.

So Van Riper’s messages were delivered by motorcycle messenger or F2F (face to face), not via cell phone or radio. He used small boats, like the ones used by Somali pirates, to gather intelligence on the Blue Fleet. And then, while his Blue adversaries were still trying to get a fix on him, he launched a massive, preemptive strike combined with suicide attacks.

In the first seventy-two hours of MC02, Van Riper sank one Blue aircraft carrier, ten Blue cruisers, and five Blue amphibious ships and caused more than twenty thousand Blue Force casualties.

As the story goes, Rummy hit the ceiling. Van Riper had hit him where it hurt the most: right in the transformation. At that point, MC02 was suspended. The Blue Fleet was refloated, and the war game was resumed. With certain changes, changes that guaranteed a Blue victory. The Red Force would henceforth follow a predetermined script. It was like the field maneuvers in the movie
Heartbreak Ridge
, in which the idiot major’s force always beats the Recon platoon, until Gunny Highway uses unconventional methods to shake things up and Recon comes out on top.

But real life ain’t Hollywood, and the good guys don’t always win. Real life is politics and hundreds of billions of dollars in defense contracts, and if all those expensive technological goodies like littoral combat ships and F-22 fighters can be defeated by guys in small boats and raggedy-ass insurgents with RPGs, then why are we spending all this $$$$$ on crap that doesn’t work against asymmetric adversaries?

The answer is simple: because we rig the war games so the military-industrial complex can prosper.

Except: Paul Van Riper was more concerned with the art of war than the art of making money. He resigned from MC02. He retired from the Marine Corps. Then he went public. He told anyone who would listen that having overwhelming force and cutting-edge technology doesn’t mean you’re going to win against an asymmetric enemy who can adapt, identify your vulnerabilities, and exploit them.

Van Riper’s theory was proved correct in Iraq by AQI and by the thousands of IED attacks against our forces.

So when Spike came to Dick Hallett with his Abbottabad theory, and Hallett spent two days arguing devil’s advocate but couldn’t shake the keep-it-simple-stupid, makes-sense logic of Spike’s arguments, he and Spike took the case to Stu Kapos, who listened, and then called up to the director’s office and asked for an appointment.

Within twenty-four hours, Hallett had been instructed to commence an operation that would result in a covert CIA entity, Valhalla Base, being established in Abbottabad. From that base an undercover team of CIA spooks would observe the Khan compound from afar and penetrate it utilizing the latest state-of-the-art eavesdropping, thermal, and optical equipment available. The goal: lay eyes on UBL. Then find a way to kill him.

24

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
March 23, 2011, 1600 Hours Local Time

Valhalla Base had been operational since October, without results. Immediately in the wake of the March 14 Restricted Interagency Group (RIG) meeting, NSC Chairman Sorken had started making noises about closing it down. Of course he had. Vince Mercaldi was con
vinced
—he laughed and said “Of course I am” whenever he pronounced it that way—that Don Sorken wanted the entire Abbottabad mission to go away.

Sure he did: Abbottabad was risky. And risky was bad politics. Closing down Valhalla Base would kill the Abbottabad mission.

Vince had already spoken to the secretary of state on the subject. Kate Semerad agreed that CIA’s outpost should be kept operational. And she would be happy to make that argument to the president. If, that is, her colleague at Defense was also on board.

“We’ve got to present a united front,” she insisted. “This is a president, and you know this as well as I do, Vince, who tends to go with the last person he talks to. And Don’s in the goddamn office ten times a day and you and Rich and I are not. And you also know the president’s a purebred political animal. First, last, and always.”

She laughed, a tinge of bitterness in her voice. “Shit,
I
sure know it, the way he creamed me in the primaries in oh-eight.”

Vince knew enough not to say anything.

“Bottom line? He’ll talk to Don and his Chicago people and they’ll tell him ‘Stay away.’ Will that be final? I’m not so sure. I think he’ll do the right thing if we can find a way to . . .
encourage
I guess would be the most printable word I could use . . . encourage him to do it. But we can’t accomplish that unless you and Rich and I are on the same page.”

Vince promised he’d get her a definitive response from SECDEF within forty-eight hours. That had been forty hours ago.

So now it was Spike’s turn to make his argument about UBL and Valhalla Base to the secretary of defense. But SECDEF Hansen was in Cairo—and seven hours ahead. Moreover the SECDEF’s Cairo schedule was chockablock full, programmed to the minute. He had a meeting scheduled with the Egyptian military chief Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, a session with Essam Sharaf, the interim prime minister, as well as visits to Army headquarters and the Mukhabarat, a Q&A press availability, a short meet-and-greet with Cairo’s sizable group of U.S. military personnel, and a dinner with members of Egypt’s interim government.

It took half a dozen phone calls between Vince’s chief of staff and the SECDEF’s military assistant before arrangements could be made for a secure, fifteen-minute teleconference at 2315 Hours Cairo time, 1615 at Langley.

Vince Mercaldi knew Rich Hansen was not in favor of a spec-ops assault on the Khan compound. But he was also sure that the SECDEF would want Valhalla Base kept operational. He knew that because Hansen had had the Joint Chiefs chairman go through the Air Force chief of staff to come up with attack plans using stealth bombers flying eight and a half miles—just under fifty thousand feet—above the target. The strike would be flown by the Air Force’s 509th Bomb Wing from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri by B-2 Spirit bombers. The weapons would be the Joint Direct Attack Munitions.

JDAMs are tail-kits that incorporate global positioning systems (GPS) and inertial navigation systems (INS) onto a wide range of general-purpose munitions. The problem for Abbottabad was that under normal circumstances JDAMs had a thirteen-meter CEP, or circular error probability. In English, that meant that their accuracy was only within a forty-two-foot-three-inch bull’s eye.

Nowhere near good enough for this particular mission.

For JDAMs to be accurate within three meters (just under ten feet), they would need what is known as a terminal seeker. The point of impact would have to be “painted” on the target by a forward air controller utilizing an infrared beam that the munitions’ guidance systems would key on. Only then could the strike use five-hundred-pound bombs to surgically flatten the complex but still ensure that the six homes across the ten-meter-wide road that ran past the Khan compound’s front gates went unscathed.

For that kind of pinpoint accuracy, a pair of FACs—forward air controllers—would be needed to paint specific parts of the villa. The FACs would need to be infiltrated prior to the bombing raid. They’d also require a safe house in Abbottabad as the Air Force had no Pashto-capable FACs. CIA had a safe house. And the language-capable people to run it.

1612 Hours

Dick Hallett punched the cipher combination into the door lock and waited until the latch was released. Then he pushed it inward. He’d insisted, despite OSHA regulations, that all the exterior doors to BLG areas open inward, because that meant the hinges were inside, and thus protected. Hallett had broken into more than a few locked-down locations overseas by tapping out door-hinge pins.

He and Vince proceeded into BLG’s SCIF, where Spike and BLG’s two AV technicians were waiting.

Hallett introduced Sue and Jessica, the technicians, then ushered the director to a conference table. Vince eased into the center chair of the three that had been prepositioned and opened his jacket so Jessica could affix the mike to his lapel and give him an earpiece. Spike, rumpled as ever, clipped on his own microphone and sat on the director’s right. Hallett dropped into the remaining chair.

Sue focused the camera. “Hey, it’s the Three Amigos,” she said as she brought their pictures up on the four-foot-wide screen.

“Amigos, Sue? ‘Wherever there is
eennjustice
, you will find us,’ ” Hallett bellowed theatrically, “ ‘wherever
leeberty
is threatened,
ju
will find’ ”—he spread his arms wide—“ ‘
los Three Amigos!!!
’ ”

The SECDEF’s face suddenly lit up the screen. “
Hola, amigos!
”

Hallett’s face reddened. “Sorry, Mr. Secretary.”

Rich Hansen broke into a wide smile. “It’s okay. After all the pomp and circumstance here in Cairo, a little levity is just what’s called for.” He paused. “How’s it going, Vince?”

“Hot and heavy,” the CIA director replied. “We’ve got a little problem here, and we need your help.”