Operation Dark Heart (37 page)

George wrote back, welcoming me aboard and saying he would talk to my Reserve officer about getting my orders extended. I was pleased. I had a plan that would keep me doing something useful but not too dangerous.

Next came a call from Mike Anderson. He had bad news: Somebody was complaining that I was running unsafe convoys. I was stunned. I had been running convoys through some tough stuff for months. I clicked through my mind: no loss of life or material, no one injured, no damage to vehicles. My Bronze Star had even cited me for running convoys. What the hell was going on?

“What’s this based on?” I demanded.

I could tell that Captain Anderson was uncomfortable. “Well, they felt unsafe.”

“Who felt unsafe?” I asked. Turned out “they” were two individuals from the Safe House. I groaned. “What did they complain about?”

“They complained you were running an unsafe convoy.”

I was getting frustrated. “How was it unsafe?”

“Well, they couldn’t say.”

This was bullshit. “Captain, you do understand how we run convoys here, right?”

Captain Anderson was getting exasperated, too. “I know how convoys are run, but they felt you were running them in an unsafe manner.”

“Captain,
all
convoys are fundamentally unsafe,” I said. “You know how we run them—at what would be considered unsafe speeds, even through traffic. But we have unarmored vehicles here, and that’s the way it’s done for security and survivability. Sir, you know that. You also know I’ve run over forty combat convoys.”

I could almost feel Captain Anderson pulling at his collar. He didn’t like this conversation at all.

“Chris, I understand that, but they still complained.”

“What exactly am I supposed to do about it?” I said. “This is bullshit. Total bullshit. What exactly are you asking me to do? Unless you can define for me what ‘unsafe’ is, I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, I don’t know, either.” Captain Anderson shifted gears. His voice got lower and more urgent. “Tony, it seems to me that they’re gunning for you. They want to have something on you.”

“Who’s ‘they,’ sir? What’s going on?”

“I can’t get into that,” Anderson said, “but they’re pretty unhappy with you. It’s one more thing that they’re going to try to use against you.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“You need to quit driving,” Anderson said. It was clear he was trying to help me out.

“That’s kinda hard to do,” I said. “I’m one of the few who is qualified to drive.” By this time, my voice was raised, and I could feel everyone in the SCIF looking at me, including a sergeant with ******

“I’m not telling you not to go on convoys. Just don’t drive.” He was trying to warn me. “Tony they’re looking for something on you. They are looking to kill you.”

“I got it,” I said as reality started to sink in. There was something unseen here.

“I’m serious,” said Captain Anderson. “They’re really gunning for you. You need to take this seriously.”

“I got it,” I said and hung up. I sat back and put my hands on my forehead.

“What are you going to do?” asked the sergeant. He’d heard enough to figure out what was going on.

“I don’t know,” I said. What the hell had I done?

“That’s bullshit,” the ***** sergeant said. “You’ve run convoys the same for the past six months. Are you going to stop driving?”

I thought for a moment. “Hell, no. If they’re going to fire me over driving convoys, there’s no hope.”

I continued driving convoys. There were no problems—and no more complaints. I made sure that those on the missions were folks who were loyal to me.

Shortly after that, at the end of March, I got a terse e-mail from George Anderson. It was about the Iraq-Afghanistan job. “Tony, I’m sorry. I can’t offer you the job. Best wishes.”

And that was that.

What the hell? I felt helpless. I just couldn’t put my finger on anything I had done to draw this level of angst from DIA leadership. This went beyond their usual annoyance with me. It haunted me to the point of distraction.

I tried to shrug it off and keep going, but I was damned confused. Something was going on back in Clarendon, which involved me, but nobody was clueing me in.

First, there were the warnings from Anderson when I was in Washington, and from Jack Foster when I had returned here. Then I had gotten this unbelievable call about my driving. Then this job offer had mysteriously been pulled back.

On top of that, I had refused to provide to the Pakistanis the intel we had on Wana serving as the Taliban and al Qaeda base of operations, but someone on the U.S. side had passed it to them. I suspected either General Barno or his staff.

Apparently, there had been a demand then that the Paks take action—and they did. Kind of.

Amid much fanfare, several thousand Pakistani army troops had attacked heavily fortified compounds just outside Wana. It looked at first like they’d surrounded al Qaeda fighters and possibly al-Zawahiri, but suddenly, whoever was there just happened to melt away. Most, if not all, of the al Qaeda–allied foreign militants fighting alongside local tribesmen escaped. Goddamnit, I thought. We had it right. We had suspected a Tier 1 HVT—someone at the level of al-Zawahiri—because of the patterns of activity *** ************** in Wana. If we were right about Wana, I was betting we were also right about the identification of ****** *** ******** ** *** ***** *** key safe havens. The Paks had let him escape. Probably deliberately.

I tried to focus on my job. ADVON was wrapping up, but I wanted to stay and go forward with the Rangers, as they had requested. Jack Foster offered to send a note to Phil Trent, the DoD HUMINT operations chief in Clarendon, seeking to extend my stay—an offer that I gratefully accepted.

As Foster told me later, Trent told him that was fine, that he could have whomever he wanted.

By the way, Trent asked, who is Tony Shaffer, Trent was a senior operations guy, so he was above the level where he kept track of ********* ****** ******** **** **** ******* *** **** ********

Get him on a plane, Trent told him. I want him back here within a week.

At about the same time, I walked into the SCIF to find a message that Anderson had called me. He had asked for me to call him on the Iridium immediately.

I went outside the tent for some privacy and phoned him.

“Sir, what’s up?”

He got right to the point. “Tony, I think you need to get back here as soon as possible. When will you have things wrapped up?”

I thought it through, trying to keep my mind off the odd stuff of the last several weeks. “We’ve got the progress review on the status of ADVON, the handoff of our activities to the main body, and then we have a briefing to General Ennis at the end of next week when he comes in for a visit. I could come back after that.” (General Ennis was the global head of DIA HUMINT and Trent’s boss.)

“Right after that, I need you to get on a plane,” Anderson said.

“What about the spring surge?” I asked.

“Tony,” Anderson said, “you need to get on a plane and come back.”

So much for the Rangers, I thought.

“OK,” I said. “I got it. As soon as I finish briefing Ennis.”

This was strange. They were allowing me to brief General Ennis. So whatever was going on had nothing to do with security or my leadership abilities.

I got my staff together, and we organized our PowerPoint presentation. As we do in the military, we color-coded our progress: red—stalled; amber—broken; and green—on track. I gave my presentation, proud that everything was green except the telecommunications issues. I’d had to fire the guy who was doing that because of his lack of expertise, but, aside from that, all of my stated operations objectives were met, and General Ennis seemed pleased. He didn’t hint at any problem, and I had the impression he didn’t know I’d been called back.

It took two days to catch a flight out. I ended up coming back with Mitch, a member of my ADVON team. We were finally able to hop a flight on a C-17 bound for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona—another nonstop flight with air refueling. Jack had introduced me to the Delta medics, and they gave me Vioxx, a painkiller, for my knee, and Ambien so I could sleep through the flight. I accepted both.

From Arizona, we caught a C-17 to Charleston Air Force Base, where we picked up a rental car there and headed home. As we hit the Beltway in the Washington area, I reminded myself that I’d done nothing wrong.

Still, I wondered just what the hell I was facing.

25

DARKNESS FALLS

IT was Friday night, well after close of business, by the time I got to my home, ** * ****** ** ***** **** *** ******* ***** I could get into the ****** *** **** ** ********** Whatever the Inspector General had come up with, it couldn’t be much. I’d always played it straight. Yes, I pushed the envelope and behaved obnoxiously at times to paper-pushing bureaucrats, but they can’t fire you for finding ways to get your job done.

In fact, I’d been told by one of the senior staff who was aware of the investigation’s results that they were just going to fire a shot over my bow now that my two protectors—DIA Director Lt. Gen. Pat Hughes and DIA Director for Operations Maj. Gen. Bob Harding—were gone. I figured the worst they could do to me was a letter of reprimand.

First thing Monday morning, I headed over to DIA headquarters, leaving my equipment, ********* **** ******* ****** **** * ********** ****** **** at home. I figured I’d turn them in later. As usual, when I got to Clarendon, I called upstairs to the cover staff and told them * *** **** *** ** *** ***** ******* *** ** **** **** *** *** ** ** ***** ***** ******* ****** **** * *** ******

One of the sergeants said he’d be right down. I had done this dozens of times over the years, so I knew the routine. The sergeant would bring down my DIA badge and swipe me in, and *** ** ** ** *** *** **** ******* ** *** ******* ***** *** ******** ********** *** **** ** ** ***** ******* ***** *** *** **** **** ********* **** **** ** ******** ******* *** ****** ****** ** **** ** ******* ******** ** ** ****** ********** ***** ************* ******** ***** ******** ****** ******* ****** *** ** ***

Then the sergeant showed up, a big manila envelope tucked under his arm. * ******* ** ********* ** **** ******* **** He avoided my eyes.

“Sir, we have to go to the sixth floor,” he said. “You have to see Colonel Sadler.”

That was a bad sign. Colonel John Sadler was the executive officer to deputy director of HUMINT operations for DIA. I remembered that Huntington had been the one who’d predicted in that meeting when I was an Iraq war intelligence planner that U.S. Armed Forces would be greeted with children throwing flowers at their feet. Well, that hadn’t happened. He didn’t like me much but, more important, he didn’t ordinarily have ******** ** ** **** *** ******

“Where’s Captain Anderson?” I asked immediately. He would have to know about this.

“Sir, Captain Anderson is not here.” Another bad sign. Anderson was my boss. If there was just going to be a letter of reprimand, Captain Anderson would have had to be in on it.

I knew something else was up.

The sergeant swiped me in, but kept my ID. We got onto the elevator, where we ran into Dan Orlando, senior operations officer for DH01, which was Europe. Orlando greeted me jovially.

“Hey, Tony, are you back or are you going?” I was still wearing my rugged Afghanistan getup.

“I just got back,” I said briefly, glancing at the sergeant. He looked down. *** ***** *** ****** ** ** * *** ******

“I hear you’ve been doing great stuff in Afghanistan,” Orlando said.

“I thought so, too, but I get the impression that I’m still not ringing the bell for some folks around here,” I said.

Orlando shot the sergeant and me a puzzled look. “Well, good luck,” he said as he got off the elevator at the third floor.

“I have a feeling I’m going to need it,” I said, looking at the sergeant again, who continued to eyeball the floor.

In silence, we rode the elevator to the sixth floor and got off, heading for the executive offices where Colonel Sadler’s office was. The sergeant stayed right at my elbow. We walked into the small waiting area, but no one was there except for the admin guy, a captain, sitting at his desk.

“Let Colonel Sadler know that Tony Shaffer is here,” the sergeant said.

The captain nodded. “Colonel Sadler isn’t here right now,” he said. “Go ahead and wait in his office.”

There was no one in Colonel Sadler’s office. I contemplated taking my jacket off, but decided to keep it on and sat down at the table opposite Colonel Sadler’s desk. Might as well be comfortable, I thought. We waited ten minutes. I tried to make some chitchat with the sergeant, but he just gave me an uncomfortable nod. He was not diggin’ this one bit.

Then Colonel Sadler burst into the room with three other people. He seemed almost bubbly. I stood up.

“Major Shaffer,” he said.

“Colonel,” I responded.

“Do you know why you’re here today?” he asked, retreating behind his desk.

I couldn’t resist. “To give you decorating advice for your office?”