KBL (30 page)

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
March 29, 2011, 1149 Hours Local Time

“He’s setting us up to fail, you know,” Vince Mercaldi said.

“Of course he is. Did you see the look on his face when you told him we’re down to one option?” Wes Bolin settled into the armchair in the director’s hideaway office. “He so very much wanted B-2s. No up-close-and-personal. No eye-to-eye. That’s why he’s willing to approve all those drone strikes. It’s all remote-control. Sanitized. Impersonal.” The admiral paused to peer over at the CIA director, who was staring at the ceiling. “Tell me, Vince, how do we play this?”

Vince focused on the SEAL. “I think Kate Semerad put it best. She believes he can be nudged into action.”

“Easier said than done, don’t you think?”

Vince removed his aviator frames, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and polished the lenses, slowly, methodically, and in silence.

Wes Bolin laughed.

The CIA director looked at him. “What’s so funny?”

“You always do that.”

“What?”

“Polish your glasses when you don’t want to answer the question.”

“Guilty,” Vince grinned. “Lemme tell you a story. Remember Anwar Sadat?”

“Sure. President of Egypt. Signed the peace treaty with Israel in seventy-nine. Assassinated in October nineteen eighty-one by the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“An assassination in which our pal Ayman al-Zawahiri, UBL’s Number Two, played a part,” Vince said.

“Yeah, he did. But I remember Sadat. Smart dresser. Natty Savile Row suits. Smoked a pipe. Very distinguished guy. I’ve seen film of him.”

“Well,” Vince continued, “he was one of ours.” He caught the look on the Admiral’s face. “CIA’s, I mean.”

“No shit.”

“Nope. No shit. This was the mid-seventies. Oil embargo right after the Yom Kippur War. Bill Colby was director of central intelligence—just took over for Jim Schlesinger. So CIA starts to recruit Sadat. The initial goal was to drive a wedge between him and the Soviets, because he’d already shown some independence by tossing out all his Soviet military advisors in the wake of the Six-Day War in sixty-seven.

“Amazingly, he was receptive. It was probably the money, but you know, maybe it wasn’t—maybe he really wanted peace in his region. But it didn’t matter. In this trade you take ‘yes’ for an answer and go with it. So anyway, once Sadat took the bait, it was Henry Kissinger’s idea to turn him into a sophisticated, peace-seeking American ally. He got Bill Colby to send a team over there. With a suitcase full of money, of course. Set up an account for Sadat, the whole deal. Sorta what we did in Jordan, but on a larger scale.”

“Jordan?” Wes Bolin looked surprised.

“Well, yes. King Hussein.”

“Never heard that.”

Now it was Vince’s turn to look surprised. “Never? Hmmm.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Well anyway, at that point—we’re talking late seventy-four, early seventy-five, right after Jerry Ford became president—Sadat looked pretty much like a tin-pot dictator, dressing in Nehru suits and loud plaid jackets when he wasn’t wearing his uniform. And Kissinger thought no one would take him seriously if he looked like a schlemiel. So the CIA team helped create him a whole new persona. They bought him clothes and taught him how to dress. He was a cigarette smoker. They broke him of that and gave him a pipe. Why? Because, as they told him, it looks sophisticated. Plus, any time you need to think about a question you’ve been asked but you don’t want to look as if you’re being evasive, you just relight your pipe. Take your time. Sit there and suck on it. Think about the question. You’ll look smart. Academic. Considered. Wise.”

“A psy-op team to make him over. No kidding.”

“Nope. And Sadat was no fool. He took our money and he took our advice. And five years later he signed a peace agreement with Israel, and Egypt became the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in the world. And by the way, in September nineteen eighty-one, just a month before he was assassinated, he threw all the Soviets out of Egypt.”

Bolin said, “All very fascinating, Vince. But what’s your point?”

Vince brandished his eyeglasses. “These, Slam, are
my
pipe.”

“They must be, Vince, because you still haven’t answered the question. How do we play this so we—Kate’s words—nudge him?”

“Smartass.” The CIA director put his glasses back on. “I’m not sure ‘nudge’ is the right word. I think we’re going to have to . . .
induce him
somehow to paint himself into a corner. And how do we do that? Pincer movement. You’re one. You’re going to present POTUS with a great op-plan and show him, not tell him, how you’ll accomplish it.”

“Show him.”

“Exactly. We’ll have a scale model of the compound built out here. We’ll be able to show him precisely how your people will take it down, step by step. You’ll bring the DEVGRU commander with you. Put a face on the mission, something POTUS can get a physical handle on. Y’know—exude confidence. Make it all sound inevitable. All that
oourah
stuff you SEALs are supposed to be great at.”

“
Oourah
’s Marines. We’re
hoo-yah
.”

Vince blinked twice. “Hoo-yah. Got it. Navy. Maritime unit. Cheer sounds like a foghorn.” He sing-songed it like a two-toned foghorn. “Hooo-
yaaah!
”

Slam Bolin broke up. “Y’know, Vince, I went through BUD/S in seventy-eight, and I’ve been a frogman ever since, and I’ve never, ever, thought of
hoo-yah
that way.”

“Of course,” Vince laughed. “It took a Sicilian boy from a landlocked part of California to open your eyes to the obvious.” The CIA director grew serious. “Okay, so Pincer one is your show-and-tell. Then I come around the flank with new information, new intelligence. For that, by the way, we’re going to need a second Sentinel drone over Abbottabad between now and the nineteenth.”

Bolin nodded in agreement. “I’ll get a Blue one assigned.” JSOC had six Sentinels at its disposal. DEVGRU’s RQ-170s were known as Blues.

“Great—your budget, not mine.” Vince had already spent tens of millions on the one Sentinel he’d had overflying the city since Charlie Becker’s insertion.

The expenditure was well worth it. Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 stealth drone had a loiter time measured in days, not hours, because its engine could be shut down and the bat-like craft would glide, riding the thermals, saving fuel. Its flying-wing design was invisible to radar. It had the ability to jam Pakistani radar, monitor their communications, and if necessary reduce them to unintelligible verbal burble. It could send clear color photos and pinpoint-sharp video from fifty-thousand-plus feet. CIA’s Sentinel may have been flying more than five months, but the Pakistanis didn’t have a clue about its existence, even though it was remaining well within the Islamabad Exclusion Zone—the air defense intercept umbrella the Pakistanis had permanently unfurled over and around their capital region.

“No problem, Mr. Director. And if things get too busy, I can get us a third one to stream unilateral video to the JOC in J-bad, to you at Langley, and to JSOC’s Alpha and Bravo op centers.” JSOC maintained a JOC, or Joint Operations Center, in Jalalabad. That was the location from which Wes Bolin and the task force commander, a huge Ranger one-star nicknamed McGorilla, would run the Abbottabad strike. And Bolin’s command had within the past few months also established its second U.S. command and operations center. It was located in Pentagon City, Virginia. The low-profile site, known in-house as JSOC Bravo, sat not half a mile from the Pentagon.

Vince pursed his lips. “All good. Another thing: I’m going to lay low for the next few days while we red-team all our existing intelligence. You saw his face. POTUS is pissed at me because he thinks I’m caballing behind his back. Maybe that’s what his politicos are telling him, maybe he’s getting paranoid because his approval ratings are in the toilet. Well, whatever it is, they’re all wrong. This is no effing cabal. But those guys at the White House have got to get past politics and start behaving like adults when it comes to national security policy.”

“Amen, Mr. Director. You’re preaching to the choir.”

Call Me Vince smiled wryly. “Yeah, but just because I’m right doesn’t mean the Chicago gang likes it. So my instinct is that it’s probably best not to go over there for a while. I’ve got my sources. They’ll let me know. And when I do go, I’ll make sure I’m well armed with irrefutable information. So we’ll take some time now. Build ourselves an unshakable case.”

“And on April nineteenth?”

“I think we should use a Powell Doctrine template. Overwhelming force, followed by inescapable conclusions. But no PowerPoints, no memos, no briefing papers. Like I said, it’s all ‘show me’ and no ‘tell me.’ You gotta make POTUS visualize how your SEALs and Rangers will get in, do the deed, and get out before the Paks even know you’re there. Tell it like it’s a movie. Captivate POTUS. Make him see it in his head.”

“Gotcha.”

“I’ll get our technical support people to build a scale model of the compound. Better yet, not just the house, but the whole area. Where the helos will land, how the SEALs will make their assault.”

“Agreed. It’s perfect.”

“Exactly. All ‘show me,’ no ‘tell me.’ That’s how you’ll convince him—by making it impossible for him to do anything except give us a go.”

“Aye-aye, Mr. Director.” It was good counsel, and Bolin intended to follow it.

Vince scratched his nose. “Where are your SEALs now?”

“California. Training.” Bolin paused. “I’ll bring them back. Give them a couple of days off while we finish the full-scale replica at Fort Knox.”

“Knox?”

“Yup.” The admiral saw the quizzical expression on the director’s face. “It’s close enough to Fort Campbell, where TF One-sixty, the Army’s Night Stalker unit, is based so that they can stage at Campbell and rehearse the approach in the helos they’ll use on the mission. Plus, Knox is big enough so that we can build the entire five-hundred-yard street and the houses as well as the compound. That way the pilots will learn the layout. We’ll bring in the Ranger blocking force, the supplemental helicopters, the whole Assault package. And no one will notice, because we’re constantly training there.”

“Great.” Vince was impressed.

“The helos are the important thing here, Vince. The flight and the air assault are the elements that can most easily go awry. For these SEALs, this is just another capture/kill mission. They’ve done hundreds. Thousands. Sure, there may be wrinkles inside the house. Bodyguards, suicide vests, human shields. But those are nothing these guys haven’t faced on a regular basis for the past ten years. Nah—this is nothing special for them. Except who they’re going after. Only the target is special.”

“So are you gonna tell them who the target is?”

“Yeah,” the admiral said, “at some point. I don’t want them surprised when they stare the sonofabitch in the face.” He grinned. “Shock can affect accuracy.”

“Can it now?”

“You better believe it.” Bolin stretched. “I’ll leave for J-bad within the next couple of days to start the ball rolling on the support side and make sure our JOC is up to snuff.”

“Jock? Like athlete?”

“Nope. JOC, like Joint Operations Center. It’s where the Ranger commander and I will be situated when this goes down.”

“Ah—just like our OC. But joint.”

Bolin caught the wry look on the director’s face. “Yes, Vince. You say OC and I say JOC.” He paused. “Anyway, I want to make sure all the elements are there ready to roll. That’s something best done face to face.”

Vince nodded. “Agreed.” Then, silence. All that Bolin could hear right then was the muffled hiss of the white sound piped between the quadruple panes of window glass, making them impenetrable to eavesdropping devices or lasers.

“Wes,” the CIA director massaged his nose between with his thumb and his index finger, “there’s one question that’s been nagging me for weeks now. And I think we have to have an answer ready for the nineteenth.”

“And that is?”

“What are we gonna do with UBL’s body? I mean, we don’t want a Che Guevara situation.” In October 1967, a Cuban American CIA contract agent named Felix Rodriguez had been instrumental in capturing the Argentine communist revolutionary and terrorist Che Guevara in Bolivia. Rodriguez even interviewed Che before the Bolivians executed him, amputated his hands, and ultimately sent them to Fidel Castro as proof Che was dead. Shortly after Che’s execution and autopsy, the Bolivian Army buried his body in an unmarked grave near the small Bolivian mountain city of Vallegrande. But by the early twenty-first century, someone who had been in Vallegrande and seen the burial talked, and Che’s body was exhumed. Vince understood all too well something similar must not happen with Bin Laden. “We gotta get rid of it before it becomes an icon or a relic.”

The admiral looked at the CIA director with mock shock. “You mean you’ve already assumed he won’t be brought back in cuffs, so your good friend the attorney general can try him in New York federal court?”

“Y’know, the sorrow of it all is that Eric Holder would probably try to do exactly that.” Then Vince gave Slam Bolin a wicked smile. “But gee, Wes, somehow I just don’t get the feeling Usama’ll be taken alive, y’know?”