How to Break a Terrorist by Matthew Alexander

Author:Matthew Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Twelve

PREACHER OF HATE

RANDY IS MORE agitated at the morning meeting than usual. The task force commander called earlier looking for an update and found his report wanting. We’re falling behind, and the attacks in Baghdad increase daily.

No pressure or anything.

We begin to go through the detainees we have in the prison. The eleven o’clock meeting allows the previous shift to tell the oncoming shift—’gators, analysts, and support personnel—what’s been accomplished in the previous twelve hours. Today, the mood is somber. Aside from Abu Gamal, we haven’t had much luck.

Photos of Abu Bayda and Abu Haydar flash up on the flat-screen at the front of the room. Lenny stands.

“Neither of them are talking,” he tells us.

Randy mutters damn under his breath.

“Recommendation?” Randy asks.

Lenny thinks about it.

“Retain and exploit both.”

“Agreed.”

Randy turns to the flat-screen at the front of the room, and Abu Raja’s face appears.

Nathan stands up; Steve, who’s been working with Nathan on my shift, stays seated next to him.

“Detainee provided no targets, but we’re close. He’s pretty worn out. We’re going to run a new approach on him today and continue to hit him with the information that Abu Gamal provided.”

“Good. For God’s sake, get something out of him.”

Randy stands, puts a foot up on his chair, and leans with an arm on his knee.

“Let’s look at what we have here people. We’ve got five well-dressed guys in a farmhouse full of suicide bombers. One’s admitted to being the bomb maker. The other four are still sticking to the I don’t know shit story. They all have different excuses for being at the house, and none of them adds up. They concocted that line of crap on the fly, just before our team entered the house. We know what they were doing at the house, but we don’t know who they are or how they fit into Al Qaida’s network. But at least three of them—Abu Bayda, Abu Raja, and Abu Haydar—are big fish. We’ve got to figure this out, okay? As of now, these three guys are the top priority. We’ve got to be relentless. We’re close, I can feel it.”

Steve and Nathan nod. They sense it, too. There’s something about the Group of Five that has all of our instincts buzzing.

“Okay, moving on. We’ve got some personnel changes Bobby’s leaving us to go to an outstation.”

My heart sinks. Bobby and I have a rhythm going.

“Also, as you know, this is David’s last day. Matthew’s our new senior interrogator. That’s it.”

The meeting breaks up and those people getting off shift exit the room. My shift of interrogators stays behind, waiting for me to give them their assignments based on Randy’s priorities. I match up the detainees with the ’gators on my team and then read out the assignments. After I finish, I go to the whiteboard and draw out the assignments with a marker.

I see that someone has already put up a Randyism for the day. There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Randy has allowed to live.

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