Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs (24 page)

I found one who practically jumped out of his skin when I spoke to him.

The starting point.

“He comes with me,” I said.

We went through to the front of the building. The bodies of the men the sergeant and I had killed were still lying nearby.

“Take his blindfold off,” I told the SEALs who were guarding him. I didn’t give him a chance to thank me before continuing. “You see those guys? We shot them because they didn’t cooperate with us.”

A lie, yes, but a useful one. The man shook.

“I don’t want you to be the third one,” I continued. “I know you have a family. You want to go back to them, and I don’t blame you.”

“Yes, yes,” he stuttered.

“Which one is the Prince?”

“Oh, you know. Let me think. Let me think. Can I get a drink of water?”

Once anyone made a request, I knew they would cooperate. The trick was to make sure that what they said was the truth, not what they thought I wanted to hear.

I got him the water, and he thought for a while, and then agreed to help. He told me which of the men inside was the Prince.

The problem was that I couldn’t trust what he said. He was too fearful, too worried that I would do something to him. So I came up with another little ruse. I went back into the garden and had everyone’s blindfold removed, except for the man my informant had fingered as the Prince.

“Thank you. We have the Prince now,” I announced, starting to lead him away.

The others hung their heads, dispirited—if I’d been wrong, there would have been relief, at least from one of them.

We took the blindfolded Prince aside and began questioning him again. By now he realized we weren’t going to accept his lies and leave, and he gave himself up, admitting who he was. As so often happened, that admission led immediately to more information about the cell he’d run. He gave us other names and intel, all of which led to other arrests.

FEAR AND NERVOUSNESS
were often important indicators, sometimes of truth, sometimes of lies—and always of the great danger that loomed at every corner. Back in Baghdad, we were assigned to help get information on a local al-Qaeda cell. An informant had been found who claimed to know where one of the al-Qaeda operatives was holed up; he agreed to take us to the safe house.

The SEALs were joined by an American observer, an officer who’d apparently come to see how they were doing things. I can’t recall now what his name or rank was; he was definitely an officer but not directly connected with the SEAL command.

I went over the mission with our informant before we started, asking him about where we were going and what else he knew. The area was in a place where al-Qaeda operated, and the suspect was on the list of people we were supposed to be looking for. But there was something a bit off about what the informant told us. What he was saying didn’t quite fit with the map of the area where he said we would find the jackpot.

The way he talked made it clear he was
very
nervous. That wasn’t necessarily unusual—there was always good reason to be nervous in Iraq—but I became suspicious. Was he worried that he would be killed? Or was he leading us to an ambush and was afraid I would figure it out?

I talked it over with the platoon leaders. Admittedly, my doubts were vague; I was working with emotion, not science. With no specific reason to stop the operation, the SEALs decided to proceed, mapping out a plan that would minimize our exposure if things went sour.

We boarded Strykers and drove to the general vicinity of the house the informant had marked. When we got out, I told the NCO in charge that I would take the informer and go a little ahead on foot to scout; they should follow at a safe distance. Anyone watching would think that we were two Iraqis not connected with the American force; this way we would find the target house and make sure there was no ambush without exposing the SEALs.

The informant and I walked down a narrow street, heading for the house he’d identified. His nervousness increased by the step. His breathing became less and less regular, and I’m sure his heart was pounding hard enough to leave his chest. It was late at night; the only light we had to guide us came from the moon and stars. He glanced around continually as we went, as if either he was unsure where he was or he expected something to come out of the shadows.

Big difference, but I couldn’t tell which it might be.

We reached an intersection and he paused, examining each way or maybe debating internally before deciding how to turn. After five more minutes of walking, he stopped in front of a house.

“This is it,” he said.

I glanced at the place. It looked nothing like the house he had described back at the base.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted.

“No?”

“No . . . I . . . uh, I think I am wrong,” he confessed. “I’m sure I am wrong. This is not it.”

“Where then?”

“It must be this way.”

We started walking again. He stopped in front of another house, but his body language made it clear he was just as tentative as before.

“This isn’t the house,” I told him.

“No . . .”

“Where
is
the house?”

“I—it’s, uh . . .”

“Is there a house?”

“Yes . . . I . . . no . . . uh . . .”

I grabbed him and threw him against the wall. Then I pulled out my pistol and held it to his neck.

“I’ll kill you on the spot if you take us to an ambush,” I threatened. I pushed the pistol into his neck. The SEALs were too far away to see what was going on, and I wasn’t about to communicate this over the radio. “I have no trouble shooting you,” I told him. “Take us to the target’s house right now. Now!”

“Yes, yes, I will.”

I radioed back that we’d been a little confused but were now straightened out and they should keep following us. The informant took me to a house a short distance away. He seemed to have calmed a bit, as if seeing the gun had flipped a switch for him.

For good or ill, I couldn’t be sure.

The place he took me to was quiet and unlit. I could tell it was abandoned—the garage was wide open, unusual in Baghdad.

“I need an EOD guy to check the house,” I told the SEALs.

The explosives expert was called in and the house searched for booby traps as the area was secured.

Standard operating procedure called for the homes on both sides of the house to be evacuated, but in this case I suspected that we were being watched—I still thought in the back of my mind that this was a setup. If the families were taken outside, they might be targeted, so I told the SEALs to leave the families where they were and do the search with them in place. They did.

There were no booby traps and no explosives. But there were al-Qaeda documents in one of the rooms of the house, so it had been a real hiding place for them.

Why had the informant led me around in different directions? Why had he been so afraid?

The truth is, I don’t know. I didn’t know then, and I’ll never know now. Maybe he’d gotten lost earlier, or maybe he chickened out of a plan to lead us to a trap and took us to an old safe house instead. Maybe he wanted to do the right thing, then worried that he would be killed for it.

Maybe my threat convinced him I was the greater danger. Maybe he just decided he wanted to be righteous rather than evil. I never saw him again, so I don’t know what his half of the story was.

When we got back to the base, we went over to the chow hall to get something to eat before debriefing the mission. The VIP guest started arguing with the SEALs. He wasn’t talking to me, but I would have had to have been deaf not to hear.

“I never heard of a terp leading a mission,” he told them. “I don’t understand why you’re letting him lead you.”

I interrupted before any of the SEALs could answer.

“Hey, buddy, let’s eat,” I told him. “Then you and I can talk.”

He grumbled something in response, but shut up. After we finished eating, we went to do the debrief. I’m not sure what he told the SEAL commanders or what they told him, but when they were done, he came to me and told me to explain myself. It was clear he thought I had too much autonomy. He seemed to think I should translate and do nothing else.

“The source made me uneasy,” I told him. “Maybe it was an ambush. Should I have sent the SEALs in? Should I have sacrificed my brothers?”

He wasn’t really satisfied. For some reason, he started talking about families whose houses were next door to the target, feeling it had been a huge violation of protocol not to evacuate them.

“You wanted to take the family into the street?” I said. “There were no obvious signs of bombs. If the mujahideen were watching, they would have shot the family, then blamed it on the Americans. What do you think would have happened with the media? Or the insurgents?”

Things had become so bad in Baghdad that the insurgents would routinely punish anyone seen to cooperate with Americans—even if that cooperation was simply avoiding a bomb. That was another reason to keep disruptions to a minimum; I didn’t want to hurt people by helping them.

I talked to the VIP for a while, explaining my advice and my decisions. He clearly didn’t know that much about Iraq, let alone how the terrorists we were dealing with operated, or what average Iraqis thought.

I doubt I convinced him, but he at least ended the conversation by being polite.

“You have my full support,” he told me.

How much that was worth I have no idea, but I guess it was better than him saying I should be court-martialed.

GETTING COURT-MARTIALED—
or, more accurately, fired—was hardly the worst thing that could have happened to me. Around this time I took a trip back to Mosul to see the family. I traveled in secret, and no one knew I was there.

Or so I thought.

A few days after I arrived, I was driving in the city when I noticed a car behind me. It sped up when I sped up, slowed when I slowed—never a good sign.

I watched them in the mirror when I reached a checkpoint. There were two men in the front, both bearded, both obviously watching me.

Not against the law. But about as obvious a warning as you could find anywhere in Iraq.

I sped off. Moments later they appeared behind me.

Once more I did my trick of slowing down and speeding up, until there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were following me. Fortunately, the street had enough traffic and people around that the men behind me couldn’t do anything.

We drove for a short while, the other car shadowing me but never falling too far behind. Finally we came to a small valley and a stretch of road that was more open. I slowed; the car sped up. As the men pulled close, I started to veer to the side, as if to get off the road and let them go ahead. Then, as they drew next to me, I pushed my car hard to left, into them. I must have caught them completely by surprise, because I managed to slap into their car. The vehicle flew off the side of the road, spinning onto the side.

I hit the gas. After driving about a half mile and making sure they weren’t still behind me, curiosity got the better of me and I turned around to see what had happened. As I drove back down the road, I saw a crowd had gathered by the side. They were staring at a car, upside down, in the ditch.

I made my way home via a circuitous route and didn’t stay in town very long after that.

A FEW DAYS
after I left, Soheila received an envelope at home. There was a letter inside, along with a single bullet.

“We know your husband is an infidel,” read the letter. “We will kill you all.”

There was more along the same lines, threats and lies. The cowards didn’t even have the courage to sign the letter.

Soheila immediately called me on the phone.

“Don’t worry about that,” I told her.

“How can I not worry? They will kill us all.”

From what was said and the way it was addressed, I felt the threat was really just addressed at me, but that wasn’t much comfort to my wife. She said that others had gotten exactly the same kind of letter and then been killed.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I am safe. This is just what they do, to scare you.”

“Well, that they have done.”

BY NOW I WAS
long past the realization that I had to escape Iraq, but I’d started to wonder if we really would get to America. The more that I accepted it as my new dream—the more I wanted it—the less possible it seemed.

Waiting had become its own kind of torture. Finally I decided that I couldn’t, and shouldn’t, think it would happen. I wasn’t going to America. It was my dream, and because of that, it would only be a dream. It would never happen. Ever.

Because if I did think it would happen, if I kept wishing for it, I would be devastated if it didn’t come true. If I couldn’t go to America, it would be as if I had climbed an enormous mountain, then slipped as I reached for the summit. To dream so hard and fail—it was a loss I couldn’t take. I’d be shattered.

I started telling myself the opposite of what I hoped. I told myself that America was impossible.

I told myself to plan for Iraq. Iraq was the opposite of a dream, but it was all I had. I steeled myself and imagined only that dismal black pit of never-ending turmoil and desperation. I would survive it, no matter what. Whatever it took, I would be hard enough.

Soheila, meanwhile, was working on her own plan. She kept it secret from everyone—including me, even though we were talking several times a day. She thought of it all the time, working on the nuances. My wife has very vivid and important dreams, ones that present omens, but this was not simply a dream. This was a plan, and plans require action. Finally, in January 2008, with the violence of bomb blasts and assassinations ringing in her ears, Soheila made her plan reality.

12

Soheila Escapes

O
NE WINTER DAY
in 2008, a friend of a friend came to our house in Mosul and told Soheila that she had heard people talking about her, saying they would come and kidnap her and the children.

The person had connections with the mujahideen and had a reputation for honesty. Whether it was because of that, the letter with the bullet in it, or the bloodshed she’d seen around her, Soheila decided at that moment she could no longer stay in Mosul. She had to take the kids and escape to Baghdad.

While the fact that I was in Baghdad made it the obvious place for her to go, it wasn’t the only reason. Soheila had an aunt in the city; if she couldn’t stay with me at the base, she would hide with her aunt. She arranged a ride with a van driver who made regular trips to the city.

She didn’t mention any of this to me, and told the children and my mother only enough so they wouldn’t worry—or try to talk her out of it. Early one morning after getting the warning, she took our four kids and some belongings, and piled into a white van for what should have been a six-hour drive to her aunt’s house.

There were a dozen or so other people in the van, all headed to Baghdad for various personal reasons. Every seat was full. Soheila didn’t know anyone else in the van. She kept to herself and told the kids to be quiet, not wanting to attract attention.

The direct route to Baghdad, the one that most vehicles would have taken before the war, was subject to so many ambushes, IEDs, and assorted mayhem that few civilians ever went that way. In fact, military convoys avoided the route as well. Instead, everyone took a circuitous route east through Kurdish-controlled territory, greatly lessening the time they were in danger.

This van did exactly that. Once free of the city, the ride became a dull drone across mostly vacant, arid land, yellow boredom sifting between the windswept sand: a very welcome boredom, punctuated by anxiety as the van approached towns and cities. Fear ebbed as the ride continued, each slow-moving minute taking them closer to Baghdad and Soheila’s dream of safety.

Hours after they started out, the van came to a checkpoint south of Kirkuk. This was not unexpected; they’d already gone through several other checkpoints on the open road. But as the vehicle pulled to a stop, Soheila glanced out the window and realized that the people manning the checkpoint weren’t wearing uniforms. Instead, they wore the ragtag clothes of mujahideen, their faces covered with scarves to hide their identities.

The van was quickly surrounded by fifteen men, all brandishing rifles with long banana clips of ammo.

The driver glanced to the back before opening the door.

“Guys,” he told his passengers, his voice soft but breaking, “do nothing. Maybe we will die, maybe we will go on without harm. It is up to God.”

Soheila told the children to put their heads down as the men walked toward the bus. “I will be okay,” she told them. “Just be good. Just be quiet.”

As the gunmen walked around the van, Soheila practiced what she would say when they took them out:

Kill us all, not just one.

Sand whipped everywhere outside. It was hot; the desert sun was unmerciful. The land was bare as far as the eye could see—except for the mujahideen.

The gunmen conferred with one another, apparently unsure what to do. Finally, one began to yell.

“Men! Out! Out! Now! Or we will kill you where you sit.”

The few young men who were passengers got out; they were pushed to the ground, hands bound behind their backs.

The kids began to cry. Soheila, sure she was going to die, tried to comfort them, but it was an impossible task.

“Ssshhh,” she soothed. “Sssshhh.”

The gunmen kept the young men on the ground and stalked around the van, occasionally stopping to talk among themselves. Gradually it became clear to Soheila that they had made some sort of mistake; they had stopped the van searching for someone or something that clearly wasn’t there. They didn’t know what to do—which made things even more dangerous.

An hour passed, then a second one. No other car, no other truck came close.

Soheila waited. The easiest thing for the mujahideen to do at that point was simply to kill everyone and leave. There’d be no witnesses, no one to pursue them.

Kill us all,
she rehearsed.
Don’t leave any of us. Above all, don’t leave me.

Finally, one of the gunmen walked to the van. Soheila felt her breath melt from her lungs. She clasped the children tightly.

“Go,” the man told the driver. “You are not the vehicle we want. Go.”

Go!

GO!

One of the mujahideen cut the bonds off the young men, who jumped into the van. The driver hastily put the vehicle into gear and drove away.

Soheila didn’t breathe until the gunmen were out of sight. She was still trembling when she got to her aunt’s in Baghdad, hours later.

SOHEILA NEVER TOLD
me the story while we were in Iraq—never, in fact, until we started working on the book.

Thinking of it now, I am the one trembling: I’d not realized how close I came to losing everything precious to me.

Some things, maybe, are better off unknown.

SOHEILA HAD CALLED
her aunt, so she wasn’t surprised to see her in Baghdad. I, on the other hand, was stunned.

“Johnny, I’m here,” she told me on my cell phone.

“Yes, I am talking to you.”

“No, I am here—in Baghdad.”

“What?”

“At my aunt’s.”

“What? Where are the children?”

“They’re here, too. We’re not going back.”

I can’t lie: my first reaction was tremendous joy. I wanted to see them all.

But in the next moment, I felt incredible anger and fear.

“Why did you risk our kids’ lives?” I asked, not even knowing the extent of what had happened. “You’re in danger here. Serious danger.”

“Less than in Mosul. You don’t know.”

“I know the danger. It’s everywhere.”

“You don’t know.” She was steadfast and insistent—the fabled mama lion protecting her cubs. “Johnny, we needed to get out. Mosul was not safe. Our lives were threatened.”

“It is safer than Baghdad.”

“No, you don’t know what it is like. You don’t know.”

“But even if that was true—you just came. Without a plan. Without telling me!”

“I had to come!”

You can imagine the rest of the conversation.

Soheila never gave an inch. She was not going back. My anger eventually settled into acceptance, then relief, and finally action. They were here; we had to make a plan for a permanent home.

I didn’t trust her relatives, who were Shia. At the time, many of the most active insurgent groups in Baghdad were Shia, and I had no idea whether there might be some family connections with those groups. I’m not now accusing them, and wasn’t then. I simply had no way of knowing, and ignorance was deadly. Trusting too much, even a relative, would have been insane. As much as I wanted to see my wife and kids, it wasn’t safe even to do that. My presence would endanger them.

I told Soheila to look for an apartment, and only when she found one—it took about ten days—could I go and meet her and the kids.

GRADUALLY, I CAME
to see that Soheila had made the right move. Mosul was, at that time, even more dangerous than Baghdad. Regardless of how serious the threat she had heard really was, it could not have been ignored. Soheila would have had to flee somewhere. And how many times could she continue doing that?

There was also the fact that our separation was wearing on her and the kids, pushing them to a breaking point.

Of course, there’s a certain male pride in me that hurts to admit that she was right and I was wrong—that I didn’t know what was best for my family, or at least couldn’t make it happen. But pride is a useless thing against danger.

Baghdad, meanwhile, had become more stable. I was seeing the bad side of it every night, the devils working against peace, but my immersion in the darker side kept me from seeing the growing light. While it was far from a paradise, sections of the city were now relatively peaceful, even safe—at least as far as that word had any meaning in Iraq. Soheila and the children could have a home in the city where they didn’t have to hide all the time. And where I could stay at night without having to worry about being seen or spending days getting back to the base.

The apartment she found was old and small, with just one room. Even for two people it would have been too small, and we had four children. But it was in al-Mansour, a good area of Baghdad five or six miles from the airport. And we both knew it was temporary.

Soheila spent the next days and weeks asking around about possible houses or apartments we could move to, but it was hard. I was working, and she had to spend most of her time caring for the children. My mother came for a visit and surprised me with what elsewhere would have been a commonplace suggestion.

“Your apartment is too small,” she told me. “Find another place. You have to think of your kids.”

She was right but her point had real significance for us: we had to move not because of violence, but because our apartment was too small.

I don’t know if that will make sense to anyone who hasn’t lived it, but it was an incredibly liberating realization. Finally, life was becoming more routine.

Of course, it was also a major logistical problem, since finding a new place involved quite a bit of house hunting. I was working and Soheila had her hands full with the kids. We needed help. Without telling anyone, I borrowed a car and drove back to Mosul and our old house. I pleaded with my brother’s widow, my sister-in-law, to come and help.

“Come to Baghdad and be with Soheila,” I begged. “Come and help her find a better place. The kids need a better house to grow up in.”

She agreed, and became a great help to us. Together, the women found a house we could rent not far from the apartment. It was much newer and bigger than the apartment—not opulent or even grand, but after living in one room for two months, it felt like one of Saddam’s palaces. There was even a school within walking distance—and the route was not one favored by car bombers or other terrorists.

My older kids had lost a lot of school. It’s hard to estimate, but it’s likely they went about half the time they might have if there had been no war. Soheila enrolled them in the local school and then started working with them so they would be ready when school started up again in August.

We had no furniture in the house to speak of when we moved in. Suddenly items started arriving from nowhere—the SEALs had decided to help us, finding and donating items. I also ended up with a car—not the BMW that I coveted, but an older Mercedes that had been confiscated by the Iraqis during a raid. It technically wasn’t my car; it belonged to the unit I was working with. But I was allowed to treat it like my own, and I did so, taking care of it and driving it on my off days as well as back and forth to the base.

The area was relatively well off, and maybe because of that, the neighbors were too polite to ask probing questions like where had we come from and whom I worked for. I’m not sure what their reactions would have been—and in any event, I wasn’t about to put them to the test. I didn’t get close to any of the neighbors, which lessened the chances that they would find out anything about my background or circumstances.

There were many adjustments to be made. With the tempo of operations slowing down a bit, the SEALs gave me more time to be with my family. I started staying with them at night regularly. But that itself became a problem: I had to get used to sleeping with my wife again. When she would move in the middle of the night, I would wake up in shock. It was oddly disorienting and strangely comforting at the same time.

Sometimes when I woke, I didn’t know where I was. My mind would race through my escape plan:
What do I take, what way do I go?

Then I would realize I was in my own bed, with nothing to fear. I’d feel a little ashamed at the moment of panic.

MOSUL REMAINED
a terrible place, at least for my family. My brother-in-law was killed in 2008, undoubtedly by the mujahideen, though the exact circumstances have never been made clear. He hadn’t been working with the Americans, so their motivation is somewhat murky. But then, they never really need much to justify killing anyone.

BY NOW, EAST COAST
SEAL teams had taken over in Baghdad, and I worked with a series of platoons from Teams 2, 10, 4, and 8 as they helped different Iraqi units. We were assigned missions all across the country, acting almost like specialists in a hospital might, called in to make arrests or do some other job in a particularly tough area, or make an arrest in a sensitive area—a mosque or some other region where it was best that an Iraqi force lead the way. Typically, we would stay a few days, handle an assignment or two, and then head back to Baghdad. One time we were assigned to capture a cell leader in an area near the Iranian border; we walked fifteen miles to the target house, a long walk for me, if not the SEALs.

There were also plenty of assignments in the capital. Sadr City remained a hotbed for the terrorists, and any operation there was dangerous. One time we came under fire unexpectedly. As we waited for the Quick Reaction Force—in this case, a unit with heavily armored Abrams fighting vehicles—I took a gun from one of the Iraqis and laid down covering fire so the men nearby could move back to a better-protected position. I doubt I hit any of the militiamen firing at them, but I gave them enough pause to slow their gunfire and let the others retreat.

The missions had long ago assumed a certain sameness, and yet each one was unique in its own specific way. A raid on the Mother of All Mosques—Umm al-Qura in Baghdad—yielded AKs, pistols, and media propaganda. Trips into Sadr City yielded suspects and occasional gunfights, including one with ten insurgents and another where more than twenty militiamen were arrested.