Construct
Virginia
2002
Once the new initiative was approved, I brought in guys like my dear friend Frog, a crusty twenty-five-year veteran of the SEAL teams and a navy Force Master Chief (more respected than a three-star admiral); the worldly ops guru and former USAF pilot “Caped Crusader”; the battle-proven Ranger and his good friend Chesty; and a five-language femme fatale, Lisa.
I invited a few members of my previous “Muslim Africa group,” including surveillance experts “Taz” and “Buddha” and several CTC analysts and targeting officers like Joanne from the UBL task force, Jeff, and our NSA veteran Vogue (she was the best-dressed woman in the federal government, and deadly dedicated, too!).
I inherited my first deputy, Marc, and a young female operations officer, Jen. To this day, both are dear friends. Jen has risen through the ranks, and Crusader, Ranger, and Chesty are all SIS-4s in our directorate of operations. Last but not least was “Genghis,” a retired Green Beret colonel who opted for the sure action of an Afghanistan deployment before he joined us operationally. Supported by the talents of a SIS-level admin/security officer of note, Cash, the XXXXXXXXXX was born.
Our targets were located worldwide.
There was not a member of the team who had not been touched in some personal way by the 9/11 attacks. I know that fueled my own drive. Anytime the exhaustion started to take hold of me, I would flash back to watching our people jump from the World Trade Center. Instantly, I’d be filled with rage—it was like an adrenaline rush. I’d throw myself back into my duties with all the passion and experience I possessed.
They say a professional never makes business personal. That was supposed to be our way in the clandestine realm as well. But after 9/11 and seeing those people fall to their deaths … all of it was personal for me and to every member of our team.
We trained for weeks on high-speed driving scenarios, full kinetic scenarios, and anything else our trainers dreamed up. They were endlessly creative. We spent hour after hour firing live ammunition in scenarios that got as close as possible to real-world situations. In the movie Glory, there is a scene where Matthew Broderick’s character watches as one of his Union soldiers demonstrates his marksmanship. Standing, with no stresses on him, the soldier nails the target every time. Then Broderick steps up to him and starts firing his pistol into the air next to the soldier’s ear. The stress of that quickly made him nonfunctional.
We developed a modern training system that incorporated real-world stressors. We rarely shot on a range the way you’d see at a civilian facility. Instead, we would move and shoot targets arrayed in different locations and from different distances. We’d shoot from behind cars and other cover. The point was anyone with practice and discipline can hit a stationary paper target from the ready position without any stress applied. We needed to be able to shoot accurately in dynamic circumstances. Our training reflected that, and our people rose to the occasion. By the end of our workup cycle, I knew that all our people we’d put into the field were deadly accurate shots in any situation with any of the weapons we’d be using.
We gelled quickly as we rolled through our training syllabus. At the end of our workup, I thought it important that we show Cofer Black the kinds of capabilities we’d developed. I invited him down to our black site to show him what we could do. I knew when we were done, he’d tell the seventh floor that he’d seen us flash our teeth.
In the early spring of 2002, he joined us at our remote black site, which was secluded enough that nobody would hear any gunfire or explosions. I escorted Cofer to the crow’s nest, an observation deck that overlooked our shoot house.
A shoot house is an enclosed live-fire range, built to resemble the interior of a building, be it an office, a home, a bar—whatever. Elite SWAT and SOF warriors practice in these sort of facilities, as do special army and navy top-tier units.
Different types of ammunition can be used depending on the scenario. This includes live ammo and Simunitions, also known as sims rounds. While they sting like the dickens, sims rounds are not lethal and do not inflict bodily injury.
A couple of our analysts and support people joined Cofer on the crow’s nest, where we passed eye and ear protection around to everyone. The crow’s nest provided a great top-down view of the scene below. I made sure Cofer was settled, then went down to join the rest of the crew for the scenario.
For our demonstration, we set the shoot house up to look like an Irish pub, complete with a full-size bar on the right tended by a mannequin, and eight to ten tables in the general sitting area. The target perp, role-played by our communications guru, Coy, sat on a couch in the center of the room, flanked by a female mannequin and four mannequin bodyguards. Stacked outside the entrance waited our entry team, dressed in tactical black and kitted up with body armor, masks, eye protection, and weapons galore.
On my command, Ranger breached the door and pitched a flash-bang grenade inside the pub, which lit up the room. Even with their eye and ear protection, the audience above recoiled. Immediately, Crusader, Ranger, Chesty, Frog, and I dynamically entered the room and shot the notional bodyguards using live ammo from our M4 carbines. We exited through the rear of the pub, where Jeff rolled up with our getaway car. We piled in and sped off.
Time on target: 110 seconds.
We fired ten to twelve shots.
Cofer came down to greet us and was as excited as I’d ever seen him, beaming with pride like only a “father” could. I told him that as good as this was, that scenario was not going to set us apart. Bystanders could have been killed or wounded, or a local off-duty cop might have been inside the pub. We’d thought through those possibilities, then developed capabilities designed to minimize those risks.
I asked Cofer to take a break, come back in an hour, and he’d see the real show.
For the second act, we were dressed in civilian clothes. As Cofer took his place in the crow’s nest, I explained that no eye or ear protection would be necessary.
Inside the pub, Coy sat at his couch with the same mannequin tending bar. However, this time he had four live bodyguards. All were former tier-one special operators, independent contractors with the CIA. Their instructions from me were simple: play the damn role for real. If something raises your concern, address it. If all seems normal, then act accordingly. I did not want them to cut us any slack.
They fully understood the game; they were professionals. This time, we trickled into the bar without the forcible entry. Bourbon, one of my surveillance specialists, and I sauntered in, got two beers from the bartender, and started conversing in our native Spanish.
Crusader and Frog followed and sat opposite us, the former speaking in his favorite foreign language and Frog nodding (not understanding a bloody word). Ranger and the others casually walked in to take their assigned places. Then in strolled Jen and Mark, the latter my original deputy. Jen possessed an innate gift of gab so good that she could verbally out-spar a truck driver. She looked around at the place and immediately started bitching at her notional husband, Mark, at how dumpy the place was. The crowd above started to chuckle. Jen and everyone else played on, not missing a beat. The unhappy couple moved to the back wall of the pub, Jenn’s complaining escalating. She went full Hollywood, and everyone above was distracted by her tantrum.
Suddenly, she turned and slapped Mark right in the face. He recoiled, knocking over a preplanted pitcher of ice.
The people inside our saloon roared with laughter as all eyes remained locked on the disturbance. A nanosecond later, my concealed handgun, loaded with Sims rounds, appeared right in the face of the nearest bodyguard. Ranger, Chesty, and Crusader did the same. That left all four tier-one operators paralyzed, staring at the barrels of our Glocks and subsequently prone, facedown on the floor. Frog duct-taped the perp, and off we went.
Time on target: ninety seconds. Shots fired? Zero. Collateral damage? Zero. A Predator drone or Tomahawk Land Attack Missile we were not. Surgical, deliberate, avoiding unnecessary casualties—that was our greatest asset to the war on terror.
At the debriefing, I explained to Cofer that this was our intended style. We were surveillants with teeth.
That night, we celebrated our final exam with Cofer at our black site compound. At one point, he told me, “If I brought in a hundred civilians and asked them to guess what your guys did, none would have any idea of what you really do for a living.”
“Boss,” I replied, “that is our goal.”
Now it was I who was as proud as any father could be. We were formed, trained, ready. Cofer went back to Langley and told the “head shed” we were open for business.
It was time to see what we could do in the real world.