Chapter Five
Afghanistan
NESTLED AMONG THE stark hills three miles north of Hamid Karzai International Airport, the former brick factory was now a compound consisting of climate-controlled trailers, a faux training village, shooting ranges, a burn pit, and a holding facility known as the Salt Pit.
Those who had been held there had another name for it: the Dark Prison.
Covered with antennas, watchtowers, and sandbags, the base spanned over two square miles.
If Afghanistan was the main event of the Global War on Terror, Eagle Base was the ticket office, and it was the compound where Walker and Staub lived, worked, and trained.
It was home to the Zero Units, the Afghan paramilitary teams, vetted and trained by the Americans, and it was from Eagle Base that the CIA ran the secret war.
“Hey, Clorox,” Staub said to the supervising contractor. “Who’s on overwatch right now?”
CIA contractors usually used call signs while in country. “Clorox” had earned his nickname by claiming that his blond hair and beard were natural.
“That’s Toad in the south tower, Garbo to the east,” Clorox said.
Staub waved at the two men in helmets and black balaclavas. Toad, the man farthest from him, returned the wave with a middle-finger salute.
“What’s his problem?” Walker asked.
“I kicked his ass in yesterday’s bench press competition,” Staub explained.
“He said you cheated,” Clorox said.
“I didn’t. Chris will back me up on that.”
Clorox leaned in to look at Walker, who nodded.
“Here’s a little friendly advice, fellas,” Clorox suggested. “Always be nice to the guy who has you sighted in through his high-powered scope.”
“Good tip,” Staub replied.
Walker drove the Rover past the compound’s vast motor pool of indigenous vehicles before parking at the low two-story operations building where the case officers met. It was originally built by the Soviets in the eighties, but the Agency had expanded it with several wings.
“Welcome back,” Leonard Fisk said, greeting them at the entrance.
Though Fisk spent most of his time at Bagram or Langley, direct action operations were planned at Eagle Base.
“Come on, I have us set up in a SCIF upstairs.” He pronounced the acronym as skiff, a sensitive compartmented information facility.
Fisk led them inside. After swiping their IDs at a locked door, they passed through an inner room they called Cortex, where raw ISR feeds were displayed on monitors bolted to the wall.
A half dozen officers, technicians, and specialists sat glued to screens much like air traffic controllers in towers guiding and directing aircraft on the ground and in the skies.
After clearing Cortex, they entered a stairwell and hustled to the second-floor SCIF.
The entire operations building was hardened against incoming and outgoing radio transmissions, but the mission planning center was so sensitive that it was, effectively, a SCIF within a SCIF.
Walker and Staub secured their cell phones in a honeycomb of lockboxes before following Fisk through the windowless maze, eventually arriving in a six-seat conference room filled with the detritus of CIA case officers on the hunt: binders, bulletin boards, Post-it notes, and photos of high-value targets.
A sixty-inch Samsung flat-screen was affixed to the front wall.
Fisk plugged an HDMI cable into his laptop and began typing while Walker and Staub settled in.
“Movie?” Staub asked.
Fisk didn’t reply. After a few more keystrokes, the Samsung lit up with a PowerPoint presentation title screen, a blue background with the Agency seal in one corner and a single word across the center in fifty-point font: “BACKDRAFT.”
“Already seen it, Lenny,” Staub said. “Quite the cast.”
“Okay,” Fisk said. “I’m reading you both in on BACKDRAFT, a capture-kill op targeting leadership elements of HQN. Chris, you’ll have lead.”
HQN, the Haqqani Network, was a semiautonomous offshoot of the Taliban closely related to al-Qaeda.
“Which elements?” Walker asked.
Fisk punched a key on his laptop. The TV screen shifted to a series of surveillance photos of a man in his fifties. “This guy, Abdul Nasr, is on a little field trip to Lashkar Gah. He’s been HQN’s weapons supplier for the past year.”
“He’d be a big get for us,” Walker said.
“Indeed. We’ve been looking for him in Cairo, but we obtained new source reporting that he’s here, in Afghanistan. Further reporting indicates this house in Lashkar Gah, five hundred clicks southwest of us, is one of his safe houses.”
Fisk flipped the chart forward to reveal photos of a dull mud house that could be anywhere in Afghanistan. The pictures were oddly angled because they were taken covertly by an asset in Lashkar Gah, the distant, dusty capital of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.
“How do we know this is the house?” Walker asked.
“We’ll discuss that in a minute. But it was confirmed by a second source, here.”
“And by here, do you happen to mean something coming out of the Pit?” Staub asked, referring to Eagle Base’s interrogation and detention facility.
“Need to know,” Fisk said, using the intelligence colloquial for “I can’t answer that.”
Some case officers regarded the men from the CIA’s Special Activities Center as equal colleagues.
Others, like Fisk, maintained a class distinction between the paramilitary knuckle-draggers and what some considered the more cerebral work of the case officers.
Walker had detected the first signs of Fisk’s attitude when they had been training together at Camp Peary, the Virginia CIA training base better known as the Farm.
“And who’s source?” Walker asked
“Mongoose.”
Walker and Staub traded a glance.
Staub smiled. “Let me guess, Abdul Nasr wanted to deck out his vacation house in lovely Lashkar Gah and for that, he needed some new rugs.”
“Correct.”
“And the confirmation may or may not have come from some poor bastard in the Salt Pit.”
Fisk remained noncommittal.
“Quite a risk for him to take these pictures,” Walker noted.
Fisk didn’t reply. He flipped to the next chart, a high-resolution satellite image. “Given the long distance to Lashkar and the crowded urban environment, the chief wants this to be a light footprint.”
“Meaning,” Walker said, “no involvement from JSOC.”
The CIA’s Special Activities Center was akin to a specialized military force unto itself, comprising three branches: Ground, Air, and Maritime.
Walker and Staub were both with Ground Branch.
Depending on the mission scope, direct action ops were either conducted by the CIA and their Afghan partner forces or farmed out to forces falling under Special Operations Command, SOCOM, or JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, comprised of tier one units that included the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team Six.
“Conventional military assets for the quick reaction force, but the main effort is Agency and Agency assets.”
Walker gazed at the images. “This everything?”
“We’re working up a threat assessment package on Taliban strength in Lashkar Gah. Right now, it’s looking like there are two or three active cells, platoon-strength, though that varies.”
“Why does it vary?” Walker asked.
Fisk paused, as though weighing whether he should share more sensitive intelligence.
“We think Nasr is training them. Cells are rotating through, learning how to make bombs, using his house as a base of operations. Clearly, we’ll time the op based on a gap between intervals.
I need you two to concentrate on the house and Nasr.”
“Uh-huh,” Staub said with a dose of cynicism, because he’d been in a hundred meetings like this over his career in the SEAL Teams and Ground Branch.
“We’re going to need a lot more than a few pictures from the outside of the house.
We need to know if the doors open right or left, who exactly is inside, back doors, window placement, disposition of the neighbors. ”
“Understood,” Fisk said. “Which is why I’m sending Mongoose back out there.”
“Under what pretext?” Walker asked.
“Let us worry about that. I told him what we need. He’ll get back in the house, but this time wired for video. You’ll get the take.”
“When?”
“He’s leaving for a sales trip to that region tonight.”
“I thought he was just there. These pictures you have are new.”
“Like you guys said, they’re not enough. I’m sending him back.”
Free of the operations building, Walker and Staub made their way along a dirt sidewalk that led to their vehicle, eyes adjusting to the bright sunlight.
Now that an op was taking shape, Walker wanted to head back to Bagram to coordinate a QRF—Quick Reaction Force—with the conventional Army battlespace owner.
“I heard Fisk has orders back to Langley,” Staub said.
“Not surprised,” Walker replied. “He’s punched his ticket here in the hot zone. Now he can do an administrative tour stateside and move on to Europe as deputy chief. He speaks French.”
“He speaks douchebag. Hope that French lands him in some shithole like Cameroon.”
They were nearing the parking lot when a pair of Air Force A-10 Thunderbolts rocketed overhead, ascending out of Bagram Air Base, fifteen miles north of Eagle Station. After the roaring echoes died away, Staub caught the distant look in Walker’s eyes. “Overthinking something again?”
“Maybe,” Walker replied.
There was no reason to lock the Land Rover on the fortified base, so Walker simply opened the door, turned the key in the ignition, and started the engine. He performed a three-point turn to leave the parking lot and waved as he passed through the security gate.
“I don’t like the idea of Fisk sending Naji back out there so soon after his last visit.
If Taliban fighters are using this bombmaker’s house, then they’re going to figure out who Naji is and what he’s up to.
A lot of Westerners visit his shop. While he’s in Lashkar, I could imagine a Tali contingent scooping up his family for leverage. ”
“Isn’t he supposed to be getting out of here soon?”
“Yes. He’s over his year commitment already. The last time I saw him, he told me Fisk is dragging his feet on the special immigrant visas for his family. Now we’re sending him halfway across the country while his family is exposed. I’m starting to wish I’d never sent in that contact report.”
Staub kept his eyes focused on the distant hills as the truck neared the exit gate. “Who’s up on favors right now?”
“I am,” Walker said. “For backing you up on that bench press.”
“Time was, you would back me up on that and not count it as a favor.”
“Time was, you wouldn’t have had to cheat.”
Staub laughed. “So, let’s just say I owe you one.”
“You do.”
Staub surveyed the Afghan countryside, took a deep breath, and turned back to his partner.
“I’m not feeling good about this either. Let’s get a Zero Unit surveillance team to keep an eye on Naji’s family.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“Great minds,” Staub replied.
“Fisk might not go for it. If they get burned, it might compromise the mission.”
“He’ll never know.”