KBL (35 page)

He peered into the younger man’s eyes, searching for confirmation. There was none there.

How to make him commit? Sure, Hallett could order Spike to go—and the analyst would have to obey. But Hallett understood he needed a passionate, committed emissary, not a by-the-numbers bureaucrat in the Situation Room. “Spike, you’re a Marine, right?”

“For a while,” the analyst nodded. He patted his ample belly. “Course I was just a bit thinner when I did my four in the Corps.”

“So was I,” Hallett said. “And I did seven.” He looked at the analyst. “So what do we Marines do, Spike? We take it to the enemy. When ambushed, we counterambush. We do not retreat.”

“And your point?”

“Is that you need to think of April nineteenth as a counterambush. Yeah, Sorken and that asshole Dwayne Daley are laying for us. Screw ’em. We don’t retreat. We attack, attack, attack.”

“No retreat, eh?” The analyst cocked his head. “Attack, attack, attack.” He cracked his knuckles. “Y’know, that actually makes sense.” He massaged the back of his head, then fixed Hallett with an uncharacteristically steely stare. “But hear me out. Then it’s going to be ‘take no prisoners’ so far as I’m concerned. Screw the NSC. Screw the politicians. The director has to understand that going in.”

“He already does, Spike. That’s why he wants you with him.”

The analyst’s face told Hallett all he needed to know. The BLG chief opened his notebook, pulled a pencil from his pocket, and drew a green line through the appropriate entry. “ ‘No prisoners.’ You hold that thought, Spike, and you’ll enjoy every single minute of your Haj.”

32

Abbottabad, Pakistan
April 12, 2011, 0500 Hours Local Time

Charlie Becker wheeled himself south on Narian Link Road in the darkness, past the girls high school, heading for the graveyard. He’d received a bursted message telling him to clear the cemetery dead drop, so he was on his way. It had to be done early, before the city started waking up. No problem: he’d left Hassan Town at four. The moon was a sliver obscured by clouds and there was a slight chill to the air, a welcome breeze coming off the mountains to the north.

The street was silent. No traffic, no pedestrians. He rolled up to the graveyard and pushed himself through the open gate as a lone truck passed him, spewing diesel fumes as it headed north toward the main highway. He listened to its engine decrescendo into the distance.

Charlie was energized. No—it was far more than that. He was motivated, galvanized, invigorated.
They’re coming. They finally made up their fricking minds. They’re going to take the sonofabitch down.

A message had arrived last week, asking if he could physically drop fireflies—position them—adjacent to the compound. His response was an immediate and unconditional affirmative. And here they were. He’d collect them. Hold them. And set them when ordered.

Charlie maneuvered through the open gateway, working his dolly down the rough path. Three rows south, two rows west. Second grave on the right. The dead drop was ingenious. One of the stones at the bottom of the memorial had been chiseled out and replaced by a hollow container made of some sort of composite. A perfect match for the stones used in the memorial. Rap it with a stick and it felt like stone. How the technical people back at Langley had accomplished this, and how they’d installed it, Charlie neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was that it worked.

He reached down, moved the false stone, and pulled out a small wrapped package about the size of a paperback book. He knew what the packet contained: fifteen Phoenix Beacons, thirty 2032 batteries, and fifteen positioners, mini-stakes just a little bit bigger than golf tees that affixed with waterproof adhesive to the bottoms of the infrared flasher casings. Charlie secreted the package in his tunic, replaced the stone, scattered dust to hide his tracks, and made his way back toward the empty street.

They were coming. Soon. Charlie smiled to himself as he headed south on the empty roadway. He glanced at the dark sky. It would be light soon. The muezzin at the Umar Mosque two hundred yards away would be calling the faithful to morning prayer.

Charlie would be there, too.

Facing east.

Reciting the proper words.

But praying for an entirely different outcome.

Allahu Akbar.
God is great.

Subhana rabbiyal ad-heem.
Glory be to God almighty.

Sam’i Allahu liman hamidah, Rabbana wa-lakal hamd.
God listens to he who praises Him.

And Charlie would be thinking
inshallah
—God willing that my particular prayer will be listened to and answered.

Answered in the near term.

And most important, answered with extreme prejudice.

Allahu Akbar!

God, Charlie knew, is indeed great.

But so, Charlie knew, is a Barnes 70-grain TSX bullet. Or a Match King 77-grain. If Bin Laden wanted to recite
kalimah shahada
on his way to martyrdom, either one would help him along the path equally as well.

33

Fort Knox, Kentucky
April 15, 2011, 0900 Hours Local Time

Commander Dave Loeser and Captain Tom Maurer surveyed the mock-up. It had been built by CIA contractors and Army carpenters and excavators over the previous five days. They’d used just over ten acres of cleared land behind the eight-hundred-meter rifle range and built a road from west-southwest to east-northeast, 430 meters long and 9 meters wide. At its northeast terminus, the road dead-ended into a narrower road that ran almost due north-south. Sixty-five feet from the T, an eight-foot chain-link fence ran for two hundred feet. Halfway down the fence was a twelve-foot-wide gate. Then the fencing continued another hundred feet.

Behind the fence sat four structures. Three of them were one story; one was three story, with terraces on its second and third floors. The third-floor terrace, which faced roughly south, was enclosed by a seven-foot privacy shield. All the windows on the north side of the three-story structure were opaque. Behind the structures and enclosing the compound, making it into a five-sided compound, just over an acre, ran another 485 feet of fencing.

Across the road from the compound sat three houses. One faced the three-story structure; the other two sat farther southwest. Behind the houses lay a six-acre, rectangular plowed field. The field behind the compound was also plowed into neat rows.

Behind the twelve-foot-wide gate were a pair of 125-foot-long, 12-foot high walls built of plywood, creating a twelve-foot-wide alley, at the rear of which, on the eastern wall, was a twelve-foot-wide steel gate. On the western wall, a four-foot-wide doorway had been cut and fitted with a steel doorframe, on which hung a steel door secured by a hasp and lock arrangement. The western yard, which held only two small boxlike structures twelve feet tall attached to the plywood wall and enclosed by the fencing, was roughly one hundred by one hundred feet.

Tom Maurer paced off the courtyard. “We can get one helo in here easily.” He pointed at the flat roof of the three-story structure. “The assaulters on Chalk One can fast-rope onto the roof, drop onto the terrace, and blow through the windows. Then Chalk One drops the Rangers on the road to act as a blocking force. Chalk Two lands here. Assaulters blow the wall or the door, blow the wall opposite, and hit the guest house and the main house simultaneously. Rangers in Chalk Two are perimeter security inside the compound, and the K-9 and handler follow the assaulters.”

He turned to face south and pointed to the plowed field beyond the compound. “Enabler helo comes down there. SSE group, JMAU, and us, plus another Ranger platoon, maybe a small CIA element, a translator.” He looked at the Red Squadron commander. “Piece of cake, right?”

“Yeah, until we do it for real.” Tom Loeser pointed at the third-floor terrace. “No visuals, are there?”

“Nope. We have no idea what’s inside. The doc CIA sent in never made it past the main gate. No one’s been in there. Thermal readings give us zilch.”

“So we have no idea at all what the interior of the house looks like?”

“None at all. But we seldom do, and houses are houses, right?”

“Yeah, but Murphy is Murphy, too. So when we red-team this, let’s make sure we put some iron doors inside—something they’ll have to blow.”

The DEVGRU CO nodded in agreement. “Good idea.” He looked at the squadron commander. “When do the boys get in?”

“Tomorrow. I switched things around a little. Six-Charlie and One-Alpha are my assault element, with Five-Charlie and Three-Bravo as my backup. Do you want to stage a walk-through?”

“No,” Maurer said. “No walk-throughs. And no daylight. They’ll bunk here, but we stage at Fort Campbell, fly ninety minutes—contour stuff to shake them up a little, then come in from the north, just like we will when it’s for real.”

Loeser said, “When do we tell them?”

“When we’re airborne,” Maurer replied. “When we’re across the Pak border. On the approach. Not before. I don’t want them worked up. I want them to think that this is just another HVT capture/kill.”

“It ain’t, though.”

“It is but it isn’t. I just don’t want them thinking about it for very long. I want them sharp. I want them thinking hop and pop, shoot and loot, not who the target is. Because he may not even be there. Besides, fact is, there’s still no decision. The admiral’s slipping this stuff to us under the table so we can make ready and cut Mr. Murphy’s participation to a minimum.”