Around 2000, we were flying into Somalia in a big old four-turboprop converted Russian cargo plane from Yemen. We had just heard that the USS Cole had been hit.
We heard the pilot say, “We are getting ready to land in five minutes, put everything away and put on your seat belts. Please make sure your livestock is tied down. We will be spiraling down for a landing and coming in quickly to avoid Surface-to-Air Missiles.”
As we spiraled down, we could hear the chickens and goats screaming.
Five minutes later, we were down on a desert strip whose only building was a small structure made from rocks that also doubled as a jail.
Before we even fully landed, dozens of pickup trucks, many with .50 cals mounted in the back, came to the plane. We didn’t know why they were there.
Before we could even get off the plane, the belly of the beast opened, and everything was being unloaded. Some items were long cylindrical tubes, all kinds of parts, and of course, our equipment too. Finally, we were escorted to our jeep, and we ran across the desert in the jeep caravan with .50 cals in front and back. I don’t know if I felt secure or not with them there. But we had no choice. We were on our way somewhere hidden.
Jack Calloway was no longer in the Navy. Now, he was a private citizen, a businessman, a spy. His new mission: locate the Drug Lords hidden among the War Lords. For two months, he had traveled across Pakistan and Afghanistan, slipping through the cracks, blending into the chaos. He had met with smugglers, bribed informants, and shadowed his targets through dusty streets and sprawling bazaars.
Before we could get to the next stage in our mission, we had to recover. The heat was unbearable, and it takes its toll little by little. We had to trust our partners in Somalia, or we’d be dead already. So there was no point in worrying about it. We had to sleep, cool off, and get hydrated for tomorrow.
The job was to set up servers in the local phone companies of this town and others to provide them with dial-up internet and monitor telephone calls. It is very simple to bug or listen in to someone’s call in NYC, or if they call someone in Dallas from Somalia, since the calls come in through NYC. But what if they call Manchester or Lisbon and then patch the call to Hollywood, Florida? That is what Al-Qaeda was doing. So what is a three-letter agency to do? Put servers in Somalia. All they had to do was find someone crazy enough with the knowledge to do it.
So that is what we did over the next three months. We traveled all over Somalia and other places installing equipment purchased by warlords to spy on the warlords. Win/Win/Win—except for the terrorists. We thought it was about drugs, and there were plenty of drugs and weapons, but we didn’t know about 9/11. 9/11 was just months away.
We didn’t know what part of the search for The Sheikh, the mystery man behind the World Trade Center bombing and the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, we were helping with. To find someone, you don’t search where he is; you search where he was or where he isn’t. This is how you gather data on where he could be. Besides, he might double back, and UBL was the great possum with plenty of caves—literal and figurative—to hide, play dead, and disappear.
This part of our mission complete, we left Somalia, spending a boring week in Dubai becoming civilized again. We were all dying to eat an good American hamburger, we were tired of eating goat for months. We paid nearly $100 for a couple of burgers at Tony Roma’s in Dubai. The flight back from Somalia on that big Malaysian 777 was paradise—no more military cargo planes or worse, Soviet mixed cargo planes without a toilet.
But Jack’s mission was complete. Time to relax for a while. Then 9/11 happened.
Some months later, he got a mysterious call. They had found their man—the man who mattered—and it was passed on to Washington.
Now, it was time for action.
As the rumble of an MQ-1 Predator drone loomed overhead and the pilots raced to their target . A chaotic and fragmented engagement involving U.S. special forces, CIA paramilitary units, local Afghan militias, and al-Qaeda fighters closed in. Numbering in the hundred this small team had a complex mission to do, with reliance on natives that could switch sides or not fight at any time. The US Military brass decide not to commit to large US ground forces, just bombs.
Jack Calloway watched the fireball rise into the night sky on surveillance footage. Another mission complete. Massive B-52s, F-15s dropped thousands of pounds of bombs. It was like killing cockroaches with hand grenades. He hoped everyone made it out—everyone except the enemy, of course. The Sheikh escaped however. We all knew all too well—this war was far from over.
Because it relied heavily on airstrikes and Afghan proxy forces, and because many al-Qaeda fighters escaped into Pakistan.
There were at least 6-8 major operational plans specifically targeting Osama bin Laden between 1998 and 2011, not counting smaller intelligence operations, aborted plans, and missed opportunities.
NOTE: Most of this story is true, some is a bit fiction to keep from being boring. This operation had no official name. Everyone wants to forget it, but at least NO Americans died. The Battle of Tora Bora did happen, let’s not forget it. All characters are fictional to protect the innocent, as they say.
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