For obvious reasons, toting a dead body around with us was a nonstarter,and the only decision remaining was where we were going to leave it. Knuckles and I debated the DNA problem, and, given his description of the fight, I decided that trying to clean the body of all traces of him would be impossible. We took the belt with the blade that had scraped him, but left the remains right there, at the linkup site. It was an old, weathered greenhouse deep in the jungle at the end of a nature trail. Fortunately, the trail didn’t look like it had been a used hotel attraction for years, and with any luck, the body wouldn’t be found for months. Even if it was, we stood a better chance of getting out of there clean without trying to move it with us.
Thinking like this made me feel a little bit like the character fromDexter, but the mission took priority, serial killer vibes or not. We could deal with the fallout after we were clear.
We’d made it back to Shoshana’s safe house on foot and I’d gotten a complete debrief. After he’d described in clinical detail all that had happened, I’d asked about the command I’d given him:What hostile intent was shown to initiate the assault?
There hadn’t been any, and unspoken was the fact that he’d conducted the operation even though it might not be the Ghost because he was sure of two things: one, the guy in the room was bad, and two, because of that, even if it wasn’t the Ghost, he could lead us to him. Now, neither could be proven. I could tell Knuckles was a little torn up about the debacle, but it wasn’t his fault. It was mine.
Whenever something goes wrong on a mission, it’s rarely a one-off single point of failure that appears out of nowhere. Usually, it’s a culmination of things that individually wouldn’t have mattered, but together resulted in a catastrophe. In this case, it was a string of events, starting with me believing Shoshana had seen the Ghost in the first place. I still thought she had, but I’d proceeded without confirming the intelligence, pushing the operation even after only one man had returned. From there, it was easy to list off the breaks in the chain:
I’d given Knuckles the authority to execute without positive identification of the Ghost, even as I knew he was leaning to assault regardless, allowing him the leeway after I’d expressly been told not to by my higher command.
Knuckles had made breach when his PID plan had failed, and without any indication of hostile intent that put the team in jeopardy.
I’d ordered them to exfil with the target instead of leaving him when they were still clean—afterI knew it wasn’t the Ghost.
Brett had failed to conduct a detailed search, missing the hidden blade in the belt buckle.
The lovebirds had arrived and stayed long enough to engender a lapse of the tranquilizer we’d employed.
The target had chosen to fight, using lethal force.
Any single one of those would have resulted in not finding the Ghost, but worst case, it would have given us either a clean break to recock for a follow-on mission or at least a live target to interrogate. Together, they’d conspired to seal his fate.
Knuckles was beating himself up over his decision to assault, as if that was the single point of failure, but in truth, I was to blame. I knew he wanted to execute regardless of the evidence, and deep inside, so did I, so I’d passed that hard choice to him with a limp rejoinder of “hostile intent,” knowing he would use it. Out of all the points of failure, mine alone stood at the top.
I’d told the three team members on the assault to shack up a complete SITREP and then go catch some rack time, meeting back at the safe house at 9 a.m. While bad news didn’t get better with age, since the target was a cold slab of meat, I didn’t see the need to wake up George Wolffe with a Prairie Fire emergency.
Shoshana hadn’t been the least bit disturbed by the end state of the mission, convinced that we’d simply removed an Iranian assassin off the board, and I hoped she was right. Aaron had taken all the intel we’d collected—biometrics, passport information, credit cards, and SIM card data—and had passed it to his people. Ten minutes before I was supposed to speak with Wolffe, he’dreturned with a single bit of good news: the dead guy was a known IRGC logistics officer, working with Unit 840.
By the time Wolffe had connected to the VPN he’d read the SITREPs and was in a predictably bad mood. His first question was, “What part of ‘get positive identification by someone on your team’ was confusing?”
I’d said, “Sir, I know. It was my fault. We had a plan for that, but it was a little bit risky, involving close contact with the target. I gave your instructions, but added that if hostile intent was shown regardless of who appeared, they had authority to execute.”
“Pike, the teamsalwayshave that authority. What you did was give Knuckles permission.”
Which was absolutely true. No mission ROE ever superseded self-defense. But that wasn’t the worst part. He continued, “And where was the hostile intent here?”
“Instead of answering the door, the guy hid behind the bed.”
“That was hostile?”
“Well, no, but it was an indication of guilt. With the preponderance of evidence, Knuckles assumed it was the Ghost.”
“You mean instead of some unarmed random guy who thought you were trying to roll him for money at four a.m.? Which is apparently what he ended up being?”
Wolffe rarely took jabs like that, keeping most ass-chewings purely professional, which told me he was steaming mad.
I said, “Sir, that’s not true. For one, hewasarmed and used lethal force. More than that, the Israelis have run him through their databases, and he’s an Iranian operative known to work for Unit 840. He’s a black hat, and he’s here with the Ghost for a reason. This is no longer us stopping the bleed to cover our ass for a simple escape. Iran’s up to something big, and we’re smack in the middle of it.”
That brought him back down to mission world, and I gave him everything else the Israelis had found, along with the one lead we had, asking him to take it to the Oversight Council. He’d said, “You want me to brief this shit show, then ask them to continue?”
I’d said, “More than that, I want you to convince them of a mission shift. This is no longer about recapturing the Ghost. It’s about preventing some sort of attack. I want authority to explore why the Ghost is here, not just focus on his rendition.”
“From last night’s op, it sounds like you’ve already taken that stepwithoutthe authority.”
I took that jab, not the least because it was true, and said, “Well, I’d prefer having official sanction. Convince them to let me continue with the expanded mission. Forget aboutwherethe Ghost is and focus onwhyhe’s here. I’ll still roll him up, but we’ll also quite possibly break up a terrorist event. Just capturing him and calling it a day might not do it.”
“They’re going to call that mission creep. You know how Palmer will take it. We have no concrete proof of anything nefarious.”
