The Bin Laden Plot

27 LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

It had been a long day, and it was about to get longer.

As Harrison and Khalila rode the elevator to the seventh floor of the Original Headquarters Building, they discussed the next step in their search for Mixell. They had spent the day at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia, a logistical hub staffed by fourteen government agencies, including the CIA and FBI, which coordinated the collation and dissemination of terrorist-related information within the U.S. intelligence community. Working on the main floor among sixty other analysts, with supervisors observing from glass-enclosed offices on the second floor, they had reviewed the cases being investigated, searching for potential links to Mixell. They had found nothing thus far.

A half hour earlier at McLean, messages had appeared on his and Khalila’s computers — a meeting had been scheduled for 5 p.m. today at Langley, with their attendance required. As they stepped from the elevator and headed down the hallway, Khalila spoke.

“Thank you for what you did the other day, insisting I be authorized access to the Neptune Spear program. When Rolow directed me to leave, you could have done nothing and have been rid of me. Why did you do it?”

“Because my goal is to track Mixell down as soon as possible. He killed McNeil, so he’s probably involved with Neptune Spear in some way. If so, I suspect those leads will take me to the Middle East. As Rolow pointed out, when it comes to the linguistic skills and contacts in the region, you’re the best the agency has to offer. In that regard, it was a logical decision to include you.”

“And in other regards?”

Harrison eyed her for a moment, wondering why he needed to explain the obvious. Upon his return to the agency, Khalila had proffered a deal: he could trust her as long as he didn’t learn her true identity. They had shaken on it, but Harrison had reservations. There was no telling what situation he might be in when he discovered her real identity, nor could he predict her response.

“The inability to completely trust you is a problem,” he replied. “Conditional trust, as you put it, doesn’t really work.”

“Trust is an overblown commodity,” Khalila replied.

“What’s more important?”

“Competence. Putting your trust in an incompetent partner will get you killed.”

“You don’t get it,” Harrison replied. “Both elements are required for a team to function properly.”

Khalila stopped suddenly, and Harrison turned to face his partner, as did Khalila. She stepped closer, stopping only a few inches from his face. At six feet tall, Khalila was only two inches shorter than he was, and her eyes bored into his.

“Oh, I do get it. I just disagree. I know for a fact that complete trust is not an essential element.”

“How do you know that?”

Her lips pursed momentarily, then she replied, “None of your business.”

She continued toward the conference room, bumping into him on purpose as she passed.

Harrison shook his head. He was beginning to regret the olive branch he had extended by requesting Khalila be read into the program. It had been an attempt to establish the trust between them that he considered essential. Then he realized he’d gotten it all wrong. Khalila already trusted him. It was he who didn’t trust her, and his effort had reinforced the wrong side of the issue.

Khalila was already seated when he entered the conference room, and Christine, Bryant, Rolow, and McFarland arrived a moment later. After Christine took her seat, McFarland energized the display.

“We were able to penetrate the JSOC firewall and locate their Operation Neptune Spear files. On the screen is a summary of the critical findings.”

McFarland worked her way down the list. “As McNeil’s video and Jake indicated, the JSOC files confirm that a prisoner was indeed taken from bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. However, the captive’s identity is never mentioned. What we do know is that he was sent from the base in Afghanistan to Kuwait, where he was turned over to Kuwaiti intelligence officials for detention and interrogation.”

Christine asked, “Why would JSOC turn their prisoner over to Kuwait?”

The DDO replied, “Two reasons. The first is because the transfer is a ruse. To get around U.S. laws and regulations, the standard practice is to transfer a detainee to another country with less stringent restrictions on interrogation methods. In reality, the prisoner remains under U.S. control and is interrogated by American personnel, but more effective methods of extracting information can be employed.

“Kuwait was chosen because their government owes the United States a significant debt of gratitude for liberating their country after Saddam Hussein’s invasion. Managing this issue for us would be partial payback.”

“Why would the JSOC files go silent on this prisoner?” Christine asked. “No identity or specific location.”

McFarland replied, “That information is likely hidden under another code name operation, to prevent what we’re trying to do — locate that information. It’s undoubtedly in the JSOC files somewhere, but without knowing the name of the operation or the individual, there’s no way to quickly identify which one of the over one hundred million files in the JSOC directory contains that information. We’d have to search every file.

“We could automate the process with programmed spiders, but searching every file would likely be detected by a cyber watchdog. Plus, it’s possible the information is kept offline in segregated storage or only in paper files if deemed sensitive enough.”

“How do you recommend we proceed?” Christine asked.

“I think we should hold off on this discussion until after the next few slides,” McFarland replied. She waited for concurrence, and Christine nodded her agreement.

McFarland’s presentation moved to the next slide. It was a single-page dossier of a Navy SEAL: a picture of the man’s face in the top-right corner, with the rest of the slide filled with personal information, training, and assignment details. On the bottom of the slide, large red letters were printed.

DECEASED

“We were hoping to discover the identity of the third-floor prisoner by interviewing the SEALs on the third floor. However, we ran into an unexpected issue.”

McFarland flipped through the next few slides, each one containing a dossier of a SEAL assigned to the third floor of bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad. On the bottom of each slide, in bold red letters, was DECEASED.

“It turns out that every member of the third-floor SEAL team is dead.” She went through the details of each death: mission in Afghanistan, helicopter crash during a training exercise, car accident, et cetera.

“We were surprised that every SEAL assigned to the third floor is deceased but were stunned when we attempted to contact the other assault team members.” McFarland flipped through another twenty slides, each one annotated with DECEASED on the bottom, stopping on McNeil’s slide. “It turns out that McNeil and Nagle were two of only three surviving men who entered the compound at Abbottabad. Now that they’re dead, there’s only one man left alive.”

McFarland advanced her brief to the next slide, which had a familiar picture and name.

Jake Edward Harrison.

Heads turned toward Harrison as he digested the information.

He’d been aware that several of the SEALs who participated in the bin Laden raid had died, but he hadn’t kept track of everyone. Until McFarland flipped through her slides, he hadn’t realized that he was the only member of the assault team still alive. Considering the odds of the entire team, sans one, meeting their demise, it left only one logical conclusion.

Someone was systematically killing every member of the assault team.

McNeil had put the pieces together and believed it was related to what the video revealed — that a man on the third floor had been taken captive, with the event being a closely held secret. That led to a second conclusion.

Osama bin Laden had been taken alive.

It seems the others around the table had reached the same conclusions. They eyed each other, waiting for someone to say aloud what each was thinking.

McFarland broke the silence, offering a more nuanced assessment. “Analysis has identified two primary scenarios. The first scenario is that Osama bin Laden was captured instead of killed. In an effort to keep that knowledge secret, the men who know he was taken alive or could piece things together are being silenced.

“The second scenario is that bin Laden was, in fact, killed, and al-Qaeda has learned the identities of the SEALs who participated in the Abbottabad raid and is arranging their deaths.”

McFarland turned to Christine, awaiting her questions or direction.

“Any comments?” Christine asked.

Rolow replied, “The implications of bin Laden being captured are far worse than al-Qaeda exacting revenge. If he was taken alive, we’d be dealing with a rogue U.S. organization covering its tracks, operating outside the law, willing to murder anyone who threatens to expose what they’ve done.”

Christine asked McFarland, “Any thoughts on how to proceed, from an Analysis perspective?”

“The first step should be to determine whether bin Laden was killed or taken captive. Once that’s determined, we’ll know which scenario we’re dealing with. I recommend a two-pronged approach. The first is to prove bin Laden was indeed the man killed on the third floor.”

“How do we do that?” Bryant asked. “The body was buried at sea.”

“It was, but what isn’t well known was that a sonic beacon was included in the plastic bag with the tie-down chains, so his body could be located and retrieved later if desired. The beacon has enough battery power to transmit for twenty years, maybe longer. With the necessary support, the body can be located and a DNA sample taken. That will determine whether the man we buried was bin Laden.”

“How deep is the water where he was buried?” Christine asked.

McFarland looked up USS Carl Vinson’s reported location at the time of bin Laden’s burial, then pulled up a bathymetric chart of the Arabian Sea. “Just over nine thousand feet.”

“Does the agency have a deep-submergence vessel that can go that deep?” Christine asked.

Rolow shook his head.

“Then we’re going to need assistance, which complicates things. We’ll need to disguise the reason we need a DSV, or at least minimize the number of people who know. If we’re truly dealing with a bin-Laden-is-alive scenario, we’ll need to prevent the organization responsible from being alerted. They’ve already proven they’re willing to take draconian measures to cover their tracks, and we need to ensure agency personnel don’t become additional casualties.”

“Agreed,” McFarland replied. “I’ll ensure our DSV requests are for an innocuous reason.”

“What’s the second method to figure out which bin Laden scenario we’re dealing with?” Christine asked.

“The other approach is to prove bin Laden is alive. To do that, we need to track down the prisoner taken from the third floor. The only lead we have takes us to Kuwait, so we should start there.”

“I agree,” Rolow said. “I recommend we send Harrison and Khalila to Kuwait, to see if they can ferret out where the prisoner is located.”

Christine nodded her agreement. “Start fleshing out the details, and let’s reconvene tomorrow. Anything else we need to discuss tonight?”

No comments were offered, so Christine said, “I think we know what we need to do: if Osama is dead, verify the body we buried is his. If he’s alive, find him.”

Christine departed the conference room, as did the others except for Bryant and Rolow.

Once they were alone, Bryant turned to Rolow. “Assigning Khalila to this mission is a mistake. You should reconsider.”

“Her contacts in the region are already the best in the agency,” Rolow replied. “If we manage this issue properly, we can improve those contacts dramatically.”

“I agree with you on that. It’s the contacts she’ll need to engage that I’m worried about — they’re too dangerous. Khalila is a crown jewel for both sides, and getting her involved in this issue puts her too much at risk. If they get their hooks into her, we might not get her back.”

“We were always going to have to risk her at some point,” Rolow replied. “This is it.”