Allah's Scorpion (20 page)
Authors: David Hagberg
GUANTANAMO BAY
Across the bay from Leeward Point Field, which served as Gitmo’s airport, the U.S. Navy Station senior personnel were housed in base headquarters, which was also home to the U.S. Army’s senior Detainee Ops personnel.
The navy ran the station, but the army was in charge of the prisoners—mostly al-Quaida and Taliban, and the mujahideen who fought for them.
The navy’s ONI handled most of the prisoner interrogations after the backlash against the army’s methods at Abu Ghraib, but Army MPs were still in charge of security at all six camps.
It was an odd melding of the services, but it seemed to work, despite pressures from Amnesty International, the ACLU, and the international media to close the place.
This morning McGarvey and Gloria Ibenez had flown down aboard a Navy C-20D, which was a Gulfstream III used to transport VIPs. They were seated at a conference table at base headquarters across from Brigadier General Lazlo Maddox, who was the CO of detainee operations, his chief of intelligence operations, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Higgins, and Lieutenant Commander T. Thomas Weiss, the one Gloria had warned McGarvey about. He was the senior ONI officer at Delta.
“I was asked by the secretary of defense to cooperate with you,” General Maddox said. “And that’s what we’ll do. But I don’t like it.” He was a tall, rangy man in his early fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair cut short in the Depression-era style with no sideburns. He was dressed in camouflage BDUs.
“We appreciate it, General,” McGarvey said pleasantly, and he glanced over at Weiss, who had an angry scowl on his face. “We’ll try to cause as little disruption as possible, and get out of here as soon as we can.”
“There will not be a repeat of last week’s incident in which three of my people were KIA, do I make myself clear?”
Gloria stepped in before McGarvey could speak. “Excuse me, General,
but my partner and I did not start it.” She was hot, but on the way down she’d promised to control herself. “Your three people were already dead by the time we stumbled onto the prison break.”
but my partner and I did not start it.” She was hot, but on the way down she’d promised to control herself. “Your three people were already dead by the time we stumbled onto the prison break.”
McGarvey sat back. They had not made a decision to play bad-cop, good-cop, and it wouldn’t work with Maddox anyway. He’d seen the general’s jacket. As a young captain during the first Gulf War he had been awarded every decoration except the Medal of Honor. His nickname was “Icewater.” But with Weiss it could be different. The man was in love with himself.
“If you had stayed out of it, your partner wouldn’t have been shot to death,” Weiss jumped in angrily. He was in crisp summer undress whites. “And most likely the Coast Guard would have recovered all five prisoners, and the strike force that hit us, before they got five miles offshore.”
“They could have been halfway back to Iran before anybody knew they were gone,” Gloria shot back. “Bob was just doing his job, something you apparently don’t understand.”
McGarvey held up a hand. “Can we get back on track here?”
Weiss started to say something, but Maddox held him off. “Amnesty International will be here in two days to make sure we’re no longer using Biscuit teams.” Psychiatrist M.D.s had been used in units called Behavioral Sciences Consultation Teams, Biscuit teams for short, to help interrogators increase the stress levels of prisoners. It made questioning of them a lot easier. But there had been ethical issues and the White House had ordered the practice be stopped. “You will be gone from this base before they arrive. Is that also clear?”
“I expect we’ll be done by then,” McGarvey said.
Maddox turned to Weiss and then Gloria. “And the fireworks between you two will cease and desist right now.”
Weiss wanted to protest, but he nodded darkly.
Gloria smiled. “Sorry, General, just trying to do my job.”
“Very well,” Maddox said. “What brings a former CIA director here, or is your mission so secret we can’t be told?”
“Not at all,” McGarvey replied pleasantly. He watched Weiss’s eyes. “Al-Quaida has hired an ex–British Royal Navy submarine captain, and we think the organization is trying to raise a crew for him. The five men who were broken out last week were all ex–Iranian navy.”
Weiss didn’t blink.
“We didn’t know that,” Lieutenant Colonel Higgins said. He was a West Point graduate who had never seen battle. He’d gotten his law degree and had spent a large portion of his career at the Pentagon. He was a mild-mannered–looking man, with thin brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Like Maddox, he was dressed in BDUs.
“Not ex-navy,” Weiss put in. “We think they were on active duty when they were rounded up on the Iranian border. We were working on confirming it, in which case they would have been released.”
“Why wasn’t I told?” Higgins demanded.
“Dan, we just weren’t sure,” Weiss said. “And we still aren’t.” He glanced at Gloria. “If we could have recaptured them alive we might have found out.”
“There’ve been no IDs on the bodies of the strike force they sent against us,” Higgins told McGarvey. “We think they were al-Quaida, but in light of this they could just as likely have been Iranian special forces here to rescue their people.”
“With the cooperation of the Cubans—” Gloria said, but McGarvey held her off with a gesture.
“That’s purely speculation,” Higgins replied calmly. Unlike Weiss, who was posturing, he was in control; a lawyer discussing the dry facts of a civil case. “They probe our perimeter at least once a week, and that’s been going on for months now.”
Gloria wanted to protest, but McGarvey held her off again. “Our people are working on that aspect.”
“I’m sure they are,” Maddox said. “Which brings us back to the question at hand. What are you doing here?”
“We have the names of four additional prisoners we believe might have navy backgrounds. We’d like to interview them. If al-Quaida is trying to raise a crew the word will have gotten out. They may have heard something.”
“There’ve been no unauthorized communications to or from this camp,” Weiss said, and he looked to Higgins for confirmation, but the colonel merely cocked his head as he looked at McGarvey.
“Right,” McGarvey replied dryly. “They’ve got themselves a sub captain, now if they can come up with a crew they could hit us harder than 9/11.”
“Isn’t the CIA forgetting something?” Weiss wanted to know. “Captains
and crews don’t mean much if they don’t have a boat. Or are you saying they managed to snatch someone’s submarine.”
and crews don’t mean much if they don’t have a boat. Or are you saying they managed to snatch someone’s submarine.”
“We’re working on it.”
“I’ll bet you are. In the meantime, the prisoners belong to me.”
McGarvey held his silence. If Weiss was on someone’s payroll, he was either very dull, or bright enough to hide behind what was almost too obvious a show of stupidity.
Weiss again looked to Higgins for support, but again the colonel said nothing. “Give me your names, and I’ll check them against our database,” he told McGarvey. “If I come up with something, I’ll arrange for the interviews. Supervised interviews.”
McGarvey nodded. “We’ll need a translator who speaks Farsi as well as Arabic.”
“We have them,” Weiss said. “And I’ll be looking over your shoulder.”
Otto had come up with the four names, out of the three-hundred-plus prisoners being held here. But he had no solid evidence linking any of them with the Iranian navy, only speculation derived from the transcripts of the interviews of more than two thousand detainees since the start of the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The only real information he’d come up with was on the five prisoners who had been broken out last week. McGarvey didn’t think they would learn much from these four, but he wanted to see what Weiss’s reaction would be. If the navy spook was the conduit, breaking him could give them a path that might stretch all the way back to Pakistan.
“I have no objections to that, provided you promise not to interfere, and that you’ll give us a decent translator,” McGarvey said.
“We can have one of ours flown down by this afternoon,” Gloria suggested on cue.
“I have some good people on staff,” Weiss said, not asking the obvious: Why hadn’t they brought their own translator in the first place?
But Higgins got it, and he managed to hide a slight smile behind his hand.
“Very well,” McGarvey said.
Gloria took four thin files from her attaché case and handed them across the conference table to Weiss. “Assa al-Haq, Yohanan Qurayza, Zia Warrag, and Ali bin Ramdi,” she said. “We know that they’re here, but not much else.”
Weiss briefly glanced at the material, then nodded smugly. He’d managed to push his weight around. “Go over to the BOQ, get settled, and grab a late lunch over at the O Club. As soon as I come up with something, I’ll send a runner for you.”
“Make this happen, Commander,” General Maddox said. “Without trouble, so our guests will get what they came for, and leave on schedule.”
“You can count on it, sir,” Weiss said. He got to his feet, nodded to Higgins, and left.
“We’re in a delicate situation here, Ms. Ibenez,” Maddox said. “Is there any chance that Cuban intelligence knows that you’ve returned?”
“I honestly don’t know, General,” she said. “It might depend on if there’s a leak here on base.”
The general’s expression darkened. “Do your job and get out of here.” He gave McGarvey a bleak look, then got up and left the conference room.
Colonel Higgins stayed behind. “Do you need transportation?”
“Just get us a vehicle, we won’t need a driver,” McGarvey said. “What’s the problem with Weiss?”
Higgins managed a slight grin. “Tom takes some getting used to. His friends love him, but everyone else has trouble with him. But he’s got a tough job to do, and he’s under a microscope that stretches all the way back to Washington. Your being here doesn’t help.”
“Does he have any friends?” Gloria asked.
Higgins shook his head. “None that I know of.”
CIA HEADQUARTERS
Adkins and the others stood up as his secretary, Dhalia Swanson, ushered Bob Talarico’s widow, Toni, and her two children, Robert Jr. and Hillary, into the DCI’s office.
It was nearly two o’clock and he’d not had the time to have lunch, for which he was grateful now, because his stomach did a slow roll. Toni
Talarico was a small woman, scarcely five feet tall—Bob had called her his pocket Tintoretto—but this afternoon it seemed as if she had sunk inside herself. Her ten-year-old son was as tall as she, and her eight-year-old daughter came to her mother’s shoulders.
Talarico was a small woman, scarcely five feet tall—Bob had called her his pocket Tintoretto—but this afternoon it seemed as if she had sunk inside herself. Her ten-year-old son was as tall as she, and her eight-year-old daughter came to her mother’s shoulders.
She wore a black dress and a small pillbox hat, and the children, one on each hand, were dressed in black as well.
They looked shell-shocked. It was the first impression that came into Adkins’s mind. They weren’t so much sad as they were dazed, especially Toni. It was as if they’d been in a fierce battle, but that they expected Bob to be here in the DCI’s office waiting for them. They wanted someone to tell them that everything would be okay.
But it wouldn’t be. Because Bob was dead, and Adkins thought back to when his wife had died. He hadn’t really accepted that fact as reality until six months later when he woke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. He’d turned on every light in the house and had gone searching for her, convinced that she had been hiding from him. That morning, he’d finally come to terms with his loss, and had finally begun the process of grieving and healing.
He sincerely hoped that Toni would recover faster than he had; for her children’s sake, if not for her own.
Her husband’s boss, Howard McCann, gave her and the girl a hug, and shook Robert Jr.’s hand. “I’m sorry, Toni,” he said, choking on the words.
She smiled up at him and patted his arm. “He knew the risks when he took the oath. I just want to know that what he gave his life for was worth it.”
“Every bit,” Adkins said. “What he and his partner did might have saved us from another 9/11, or at least pointed us in that direction.”
Toni looked at the others—the DDCI David Whittaker and the Company General Counsel Carleton Patterson. “Where is she?”
“We can’t tell—” McCann started.
“She’s back in Cuba following up,” Adkins said. “She has Kirk McGarvey with her. But that can’t leave this room.”
Toni actually smiled, which nearly tore Adkins’s heart out. “Bob always said that he was the best man to ever work here. And don’t worry, Mr. Director, we’re a CIA family. We know how to keep a secret.”
“Dad taught us,” Robert Jr. said, trying very hard to be brave.
Adkins caught his secretary’s eye. She was at the door, tears streaming
down her wrinkled cheeks. She started to leave, but he motioned her back. “You may stay,” he said.
down her wrinkled cheeks. She started to leave, but he motioned her back. “You may stay,” he said.
She closed the door and came to stand just behind Toni and the children.
Whittaker handed Adkins a long narrow hinged box, and a leather-bound citation folder. “You must also understand that this cannot be made public.”
Toni’s lips compressed, and she nodded. “But the children and I will know. That would have been enough for Bob. He wasn’t looking for hero status.”
“But he was just that, Mrs. Talarico,” Patterson told her. “An American hero.”
Adkins opened the silk-lined box that contained an impressive-looking medal attached to a ribbon and brass clasp, and he and everyone else in the room straightened up.
“The United States of America, the Central Intelligence Agency, and a grateful nation, bestow posthumously the Distinguished Service medal to Senior Field Officer Robert Benjamin Talarico, for service far beyond the call of duty,” Adkins began solemnly. “Although the details of the mission in which Robert gave his life cannot be disclosed at this time, be assured that the operation was of extreme importance and absolutely vital to U.S. interests here and abroad, as well as the safety of all Americans everywhere.
“Be also assured that witnesses on scene, including his partner, Senior Field Officer Gloria Ibenez, report that to the very end Robert did not hesitate to perform his duty, even though he was under direct fire from a hostile force superior in numbers and armament.”
Adkins looked into Toni’s eyes, momentarily at a loss for words. But then he handed her the medal and the citation folder. “He did good,” he said softly. “Really good.”
“Thank you, Mr. Director.”
Adkins gave her a hug. “If you need anything, day or night, call me,” he said in her ear. “And my name is Dick.”
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