CHAPTER 36

beech 1900 aircraft at twelve thousand feet

afghanistan

0620 local time

Whitney clutched the armrests as the twin-engine, nineteen-
passenger Beech 1900 flew through a patch of rough air. The flight had been incredibly choppy, which was fitting, she supposed, given everything else that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. She glanced at Chunk, who sat two rows ahead of her, talking in a hushed tone across the aisle with Riker. Amazing, she thought, how completely unfazed by the turbulence they are. In that moment she couldn’t help but wonder what it took to rattle a SEAL. Nothing she’d observed since coming to the Tier One had shaken Chunk’s confidence—not the ugly mountaintop mission at the cave, not the al Qadar suicide bomber at the hangar, and not even the surprise Taliban hit at the hotel. One of their own had died, the DIA operative Andy, but even that hadn’t broken Chunk’s spirit. The mood of Gold Squadron’s first platoon was respectfully subdued during the exfil, but this was no funeral march. She thought that in Chunk’s mind, it wasn’t even a retreat. To the contrary, this was the team flying home after a hard-fought win on the road.

It didn’t feel like a win to her.

She stared out the window, lost in thought for a while, and when she looked up, Chunk was dropping into the seat across the aisle from her. “How you holding up?”

She shrugged.

“You know, Whitney, it’s not your fault that Andy died. It could have been any of us. In fact, we’re lucky we came out of it with the numbers we did.”

“I know, but I still feel responsible,” she said. “Is that weird?”

“No. If I had to guess, there’s probably a half dozen of us who’ve been kicking that same thought around in our heads during this flight. Comes with the territory. Just like dying in combat comes with the territory. It’s an implied risk we all accepted when we signed on for this rodeo.”

She nodded. “I get that, but it doesn’t change the conflicted feelings. That’s what I’m having trouble reconciling, I guess.”

“What conflicted feelings?”

“Well, on the one hand I feel vindicated. That op at the hangar proved my theory. It was a drone that attacked our convoy, and they were flying it out of Mingora. I was right about the line of sight transmission data, and I was right about the Chinese HJ-10 missiles. And yet, at the same time, if I hadn’t encouraged you to act on the NSA SIGINT data, you guys would have been back at the hotel when the Taliban murder squad showed up, in which case we wouldn’t have been outnumbered or outgunned, and Andy wouldn’t have died.”

“You don’t know that,” he said, shaking his head. “It could have turned out worse. When we showed up, we were locked and loaded and ready for a fight. But, if we’d come back straight after the hit on the safe house, we might have all been asleep when the Tali showed up.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, looking down at her lap.

“Nuh-uh. Don’t play that game with yourself.”

“What game?”

“That alternate-reality crystal ball shit. You’ll drive yourself crazy,” he said. “I’ve seen it before, and it ain’t pretty. You gotta excise ‘what if’ from your mental lexicon like it’s a malignant tumor, because that’s exactly what it is. We make the best decisions we can, with the information we have at our disposal at the time. Period.”

She chuckled.

“What’s funny?’

“Yi said the exact same thing to me. Must be an NSW thing.”

“It’s the only way to keep your headspace straight,” he said, then narrowed his eyes at her. “But there’s something else on your mind. Tell me.”

She inhaled deeply through her nose, trying to find the right way to verbalize the ugly reality that her instincts and intellect told her was true. In the end she decided to just spit it out. “I don’t think this is over. We still haven’t located the drone, and we didn’t get Hamza al-Saud.”

“It takes time. Commander Day has people looking for the drone, and once we get our photos uploaded into the facial-rec library and get the DNA samples, you’ll be able to reconstruct who we bagged,” he said.

“Theobald looked at all the pics. None of the dead guys were al-Saud.”

“Well, there was that one guy with the ruined face; we still haven’t ruled him out.”

“I know, but my gut tells me that it’s not him.”

“There are always question marks after an op, but you need to look on the bright side. We took out their safe house and their command-and-control hangar. Their entire operation in Mingora is blown. On top of that, we got their transmission gear—the laptop, the antenna, the joystick. That was all you, Heels. You were right. Your instincts and your analysis were spot on.”

“Yes, but what if all we got was what Hamza al-Saud wanted us to get? What if he handed us the proverbial smoking gun—just enough to satisfy our mission criteria and, more importantly, our confirmation bias?”

“Confirmation bias?” he echoed, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes, confirmation bias. It’s a powerful logic trap in which each new piece of information we encounter, rather than being evaluated critically, is interpreted entirely through a lens of preconceptions and used to bolster our existing working theory.”

“Say what?” he said with a chuckle.

“I’m serious, Chunk. Confirmation bias is something I have to police constantly to do my job as an analyst effectively.”

He plunked his elbow down on the armrest and eased his chin into an upturned palm. “All right, I’m all ears.”

“We hit his safe house, but al-Saud isn’t there. Is that coincidence, or is it because he knew we were coming? We hit his operations center, but al-Saud isn’t there and neither is his drone. Coincidence, or because he knew we were coming? Then, Taliban attack us at our hotel—same question yet again. You see where I’m going with this? This is thrust and parry, Chunk. We’ve been strategizing and operating like we’re driving the bus, but that’s a dangerous confirmation bias to have, and it’s going to get more people killed if we’re not careful.”

“Okay,” Chunk said. “Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right about all of that—why would al-Saud leave any personnel and equipment behind at all? Why not just ghost the facility completely so that when we show up, we find nothing? Witnesses can be interrogated. Computers can be hacked. He gambled on us taking both off the X and extracting critical information that could undermine his operation and reveal his whereabouts. That’s stupid. Look, Whitney, I’ve spent my entire career chasing down shitheads like this guy. I know terrorists. I know how they think. I know how they react. Most of them are chickenshit hypocrites who use poor brainwashed teenagers to do their dirty work. I know it’s tempting to imagine every bin Laden wannabe as the next global terrorist mastermind, but trust me when I tell you that ninety-nine percent of these guys are just angry, deluded sadists, corrupted by power and ideology. Be careful not to put this guy on a pedestal.”

“Well, someone makes up that one percent, right?”

Chunk nodded. “That’s fair. But our network of intelligence is very mature in this region—more than twenty years old, predating even 9/11. A bin Laden doesn’t materialize out of thin air. The one percent you’re thinking about are all on someone’s radar.”

Whitney blew air through pursed lips, literally and psychologically deflating. She nodded but refused to concede or walk back her conviction.

“I’m not trying to shut you down here, okay?” he said. “That wasn’t my intention. What I’m trying to point out is your confirmation bias. You think al-Saud is a terrorist mastermind, so you interpret everything he does through that lens, resulting in your own bias.” She raised her eyebrows, and he chuckled. “Yeah, that’s right—me read books. Me think big ideas too.” Then, holding up his hands as she began to protest, he continued, “The way I see it, on one end of the spectrum there’s me, who thinks al-Saud is just another terrorist dirtbag with delusions of grandeur. On the other end is you, who thinks he’s the next bin Laden. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.”

“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation,” a voice said behind her headrest. “Mind if I weigh in?”

She rotated in her seat and saw Theobald leaning into the aisle.

“By all means,” Chunk said with a nod.

“You said you think the drone is airborne right now,” Theobald said, looking at Whitney.

“That’s right. I think as soon as we hit the safe house, al-Saud scrambled the drone.”

“You think they were using the Mingora runway at night after the airport was closed?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then how are they flying it? Line of sight using another portable transceiver?” Theobald pressed.

“Exactly.” She pulled out her tablet computer and navigated to the picture index from the last hit. “These are the images you guys took at the warehouse where you found that control gear. Now if you look, here’s the CONEX box with the suicide bomber. But the warehouse is big enough to hold multiple CONEX boxes. In fact, if you look closely, it almost looks like the floor is lighter in a couple of rectangles next to the one Hamza left behind. We know he uses handoffs, and that requires multiple transceivers and multiple pilots.”

“But they don’t need a CONEX box for that,” Chunk said. “They certainly didn’t haul a CONEX box into the Hindu Kush when they hit us the first time. All’s they need is a laptop, an antenna, a power supply, and peripherals. They can fit all that in a couple backpacks.”

“Yes, but you can’t fit a dozen HJ-10 AGMs in a backpack. You can’t fit spare drone parts and aviation fuel in a backpack,” she fired back. “I’m telling you, he took his show on the road. Hamza al-Saud has selected another target, and I’m willing to wager my job that he intends to hit that target before the drone runs out of fuel.”

“Have we checked any LOS transmissions in the drone control frequency band?” Chunk asked her.

“Yes, people are working on it,” she said.

“I think I’m starting to figure out how your brain works,” Chunk replied. “And what did the signal nerds come back with?”

“So far nothing,” she said through a sigh. “But I’m still holding out hope. It’s much more difficult and time consuming to sift through historical data from multiple sources than to have a dedicated, focused search running in real time.”

“Okay, let’s presume NSA comes back with no LOS transmissions in the vicinity of the Mingora airport during the time between the safe house hit and the hangar hit. Are you ready to drop it?”

“No,” she said.

“That’s what I figured,” he said with a tired chuckle. “Okay, well, how else could they control the drone?”

“Satellite relay comms is the standard protocol for the Predators,” Theobald said.

“Yeah, but I thought we already ruled that out. They might have a drone, but there’s no way in hell al Qadar has a satellite, so don’t even fucking go there, Miss Confirmation Bias,” Chunk said, looking at her.

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she said, shaking her head.

“Is there any chance they could hack into one of our satellites, or piggyback their signal off a commercial one and control it that way?” Chunk asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “That question is outside my area of expertise.”

“Understood, but who can answer it?”

“We need to talk to a drone guy,” Theobald said. “And a signals guy, and a radar guy, and probably a cyber guy too. More importantly, we need access to folks with the tech and resources to locate, track, and shoot down the drone in real time.”

“Where can we do that?” Whitney asked.

“Kandahar,” Chunk said. “That’s the command and control for all drone sorties in the region, and they have the firepower necessary to finish the job.”

“Then we need to go to Kandahar,” she said definitively.

“No, uh-uh,” Chunk said. “We’re regrouping in J-bad. We’ve got wounds to lick, and if you do find us a target to hit, that’s where we want to launch out of. Not Kandahar.”

“But I—” she began to protest, before Theobald cut her off.

“I’ll take you,” the DIA man said. “There’s nothing for us in J-bad. Our NOC is blown; we lost Andy. I gotta talk with my Head Shed, but I imagine the plan is to head home and regroup, so going to Kandahar is actually on the way for me. Besides, no offense Whitney, but you showing up there by yourself with your little blue CAC card, harassing everyone with crazy questions, ain’t gonna get you far.” He turned to look at Chunk. “I’ll get her into the OGA compound. I know a bunch of those guys, including a couple of drone pilots. I think we’ll get a better response on the spooky side than if we go marching into the Air Force operation center, making wild-ass claims and conjectures.”

“You’d do that for me?” Whitney said to Theobald.

“Sure,” he said, pinching the skin between his weary eyes. “Because I happen to think you’re onto something.” She watched the man’s eyes tick back toward the rear of the Beech, where the body of his fellow DIA agent lay underneath a camo poncho liner. He closed his eyes, and his jaw tightened. “And anyway, like I said, we need to get Andy home to his girls.”

“All right then, it’s settled,” Chunk said. “When this bird lands, my team will get off, and you guys can head to Kandahar.”

“Do we have enough fuel to just drop them and go, or do we need to refuel?”

“We could probably make it, but we need to stop,” Theobald said.

Whitney looked at her watch, unable to help herself. The drone was up there—she was sure of it. Every minute could mean the difference.

Theobald saw the look.

“I know we’re in a hurry,” he said, “but we can’t let Andy travel like this. We need to get him properly . . . set up. They have what we need at J-bad. I promise we’ll be quick.”

She stole a glance at the booted foot sticking out from under the shiny poncho liner. Beside him, Stan sat on the floor against the bulkhead, his face in his hands, openly weeping. She felt her stomach tighten. Maybe if she’d been better on the rifle. Maybe if she’d moved faster, and they’d gotten out of the building quicker . . .

She shoved the thoughts back into the shallow grave in her mind, where she knew they would dig themselves back out in short order, but right now she had no time for this.

“Of course. I’m so sorry, Bobby. So . . . I’m just—sorry. Take your time. I’ll wait on the plane. And thank you—both of you,” she said, looking between him and Chunk. “For trusting me.”

Theobald nodded, stood, and headed to the back of the plane leaving them alone.

Chunk sat with pursed lips, looking at his hands. Finally, he looked up at her. “I don’t think we got al-Saud either.”

“You really don’t?”

“No. My gut tells me he’s still in Pakistan.”

“Mine too.”

Chunk got up from his seat. “I’ll tell the guys that when we land they should clean weapons, clean up, and fully reload. If the drone is still up there, and you find that son of a bitch, we need to be ready. I’m gonna move the team to COP Blackfish, east of J-bad and right on the border. It’ll cut twenty minutes off the infil back to Pakistan if you find us a package. Plus, there’s a whole squad of JSOC army shooters there, and we’ll make it a FARP with armed and fueled air from the 160th. We’ll use Russian-made Mi-17s the Stalker boys keep handy for this kind of shit, so if we have to go after your boy, we can do it with full-on air, but deniability. You get us a location and a green light, and we’ll kill that motherfucker. Okay, kid?”

She smiled and nodded, unsure why her eyes were suddenly rimmed with tears.

Chunk didn’t say anything else, just glanced at Andy’s body, then back to meet her gaze in solidarity.