The white pickup drove northwest out of Baqubah five kilometers to a small town identified as Hibhib, where it got off the main road. It passed through the sparse streets and continued onto a single-lane dirt frontage road, running alongside a narrow concrete irrigation canal half full of turquoise water. Dense groves of palm trees, with thick shrubs and undergrowth, extended back a few hundred meters from the track on the passenger’s side. In the early-evening light, the groves were dark and shadowy. The truck approached a boxy two-story house tucked among the trees, sitting half a dozen car lengths back from the road at the end of a driveway. It had a carport under the front edge of the second floor. Only the beige facade of the house was fully visible, as the rear part of the building disappeared into the shadows and palm trunks that surrounded it.
At 4:55 P.M., the truck turned right off the frontage road and stopped halfway up the driveway, in front of a closed gate. While Abd al-Rahman stayed in the passenger seat, the driver got out and went to the driveway gate. A figure emerged from under the carport roof and walked down the driveway to meet him. After a short exchange, the second man went back to the house and then came back and opened the gate. Back in his white pickup, the driver pulled through the open gate and parked in the carport. Our team saw Abd al-Rahman get out and enter the house. The white truck reversed out of the driveway and went back the way it had come. As they watched this down in Baghdad, Tom D. turned to J.C. “What do you think, J.?”
“I have no reason to tell you not to hit it,” J.C. answered.
“I’m not going to promise you that’s Zarqawi,” J.C. said, pointing to the screen. “But whoever we kill is going to be much higher than anybody we’ve ever killed before. So I’m saying, absolutely—whack it.” Inside, he felt, would be al-Masri, Zarqawi—or both.
Tom D. told his operators at Baghdad to go. Steve came into our SAR up in Balad. “We’re launching Tom D.’s boys.” Down at Baghdad, the troop of Green operators suited up and waited for the helicopters to land in the front yard of their villa safe house.
Steve came in a few minutes later. “Sir, you’ve got to see this.”
We brought up the video feed on the screens in front of our U-shaped desk. Mike Flynn and Kurt Fuller were next to me. The video replayed Abd al-Rahman’s arrival and the white truck’s departure. Then he played a scene that had just occurred. On the video, a figure emerged from the shadow of the veranda and walked down the driveway. As he got into the sunlight, we could see more clearly. He looked heavy and was dressed head to toe in black. He walked past the gate and continued to the end of the driveway, where it met the frontage road going back to Hibhib. He stood, looked left up the road, looked right, and walked back to the house.
“That’s AMZ,” I said, turning to Steve standing by the doorway.
“Yes, sir. We’re going to bomb it,” he said.
Steve remembers my reaction being one of irritation—I’d hoped to get Zarqawi alive. I remember calmly telling him to do what he had to do. Having worked so closely with Steve, I’m confident his recollection is more accurate. We’d always planned to capture Zarqawi for his obvious intelligence value, but not at the risk of his escape. To give up that possibility was a difficult decision that had to be made quickly in response to the situation as it was developing, and Steve had the experience and authority to make the call. I’d made a point of, and we’d been very successful, trusting subordinates to use their best judgment. This time should be no different. I did not interfere.
There was good reason to strike. As Tom D. and his operators recognized, a ground raid would be difficult, with a high probability of failure. The house did not appear to be a formidable defensive position, but as we’d learned in the Western Euphrates River valley fight, appearances could be deceiving. More important, palm trees surrounded the house, and the closest bald patch of ground to land our assault helicopters was a quarter mile away. To do a direct assault, because the trees were so tall, the assault force would have had to fast-rope ninety or a hundred feet down, a towering, dangerous distance—and one that would require the helos to float, in daylight, over the house. Doing a fast-rope would be asking to get a helicopter shot down. Most troubling, anyone inside the house could easily slip out the back, disappearing into the thick vegetation and groves. We likely wouldn’t even see it happening.