The Department (Part 2 — Down to Guantanamo)
Although this story contains material from the world in which we live, including references to actual places, persons, and events, it should be read entirely as a work of fiction. All dialogue is invented. All characters are fictional and not based on any actual living person. The events that take place in this story are entirely the product of my imagination.
The small military lear jet banked hard right as we moved into the familiar first turn to the west. It was a crew of three — two pilots and an attendant — and a manifest of one — me. We had been in the air now for about three hours, and this first turn to the west indicated we were about fifteen minutes out from the airfield along GITMO’s southern coast on the leeward side of the base.
On my way out of the building back in Washington, Wilson had given me the “badge;” the one that basically opened all doors — real and proverbial — and told me which hangar to go to out at Andrews. I’d possessed one of these credit card-sized devices once before, years ago, when I was neck-deep in the so-called War on Terror. The thing came with an embedded thumbprint reader, and it was inoperable without the true owner. This security measure prevented anyone else from using it if it were lost or stolen. And the fine print on the back side warned if anyone other than the owner came into possession of it and failed to return it to the federal government as soon as possible, that person could face prosecution.
It was a neat little piece of plastic. As with the door into Wilson’s building being able to read my palm print, I had no idea how the “badge” worked. I just knew it did. To gain entry to the secured areas that required its use, one held it against the door’s sensor — much like most modern hotel rooms — with the thumb firmly covering a little black circle on the short side of the card. And just like Wilson’s building door, the door would unlatch with an electronic buzz.
I located the hangar, parked, grabbed my overnight bag, and used my new badge to buzz into the hangar side door. It worked. A young Air Force officer appeared from an office. “Colonel Scott?” asked the Air Force Major. “David Scott. If you insist on being formal please call me Mr. Scott. I’m retired.” “Very well Sir. Let’s authenticate first,” as he led me to a secondary check-in system. I placed my right palm against a scanner. When that lit up green, I leaned into another device like one might see in an ophthalmologist’s office for a retinal scan. Again, it lit green. “Okay Sir. Let’s go.”
We walked out into the cavernous hangar that held five small jets with Air Force markings. As we walked, one of the hangar doors began to roll up into the roof. A small crew was walking around our aircraft as the Major and I reached the steps. We walked up into the aircraft, and the pilot, an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel greeted me professionally. “Ready to go Sir?” “Yeah, whenever you guys are ready.” “Grab any seat you want. You’re the only passenger tonight. Lavatory’s in the rear. Can we get you anything?” “Just some bottles of water if you have some.” “I’ll have Staff Sergeant Jones bring you some. Go ahead and buckle in and we’ll get going,” he said, and turned back to the flight deck.
I took the first seat I came to, removed the huge double-wrapped classified three-ring binder from my bag, stowed the bag, and strapped in. Wilson had given me the binder on my way out. It contained the entire life story of Khalil al Qosi, and was heavy on his activities after 1995, when he first popped up on INTERPOL’s radar. I knew and had read most of what was in it, but Wilson told me it had been updated since I had left the effort several years ago. I planned to read the new material during our three-and-a-half hour trip down to the island. But I honestly questioned what could possibly be considered “new material.”
In minutes, the engines came to life, and we began taxiing. The pilots were handling the aircraft like the military flight it was, and I was glad for it; military flights didn’t have to play the games that commercial flights did. No taking half an hour to load while people moved slowly and stood in the aisle forever to stow their belongings. No obligatory safety shows by flight attendants. No waiting in line while 10 other aircraft ahead of you waited to take off in between other aircraft landing. No. We rolled briskly out to the north end of the runway and turned the corner pointed south. The crew brought the aircraft to a halt for maybe 30 seconds. And then we began to roll again, this time building speed as I was pushed gently into my seat back. Quickly, the nose pitched up and we were wheels up. I looked at my watch. It read 10:45 p.m. It was not my first overnight flight down to the island, but it was my first in a very long time.
Ten minutes later, Staff Sergeant Jones came back and handed me two liter bottles of water. “You need anything else Sir, just let me know,” he said. “Thank you Staff Sergeant.” I opened the binder and started to read.
Three hours later, we began that right turn into our initial descent. I had been on flights like this into the island more times than I could now remember. It was always the same flight path. We had taken off from Andrews in the southeast Maryland suburbs of DC, then turned south. Our route took us along the North Carolina Outer Banks, then along the outer Bahamian archipelago for three hours, down into the Caribbean. We maintained this heading until we were just west of the British Turks and Caicos Islands to Cuba’s east.
The base is located on the southern side of the island of Cuba, but we had to stay out of Cuban airspace in order to reach it, and this made for a strange and meandering circular approach. Staff Sergeant Jones came back. “We’re about 15 minutes out Sir.” I knew this, but I just nodded and packed the binder away. I clicked off my reading light, darkening the cabin, and gazed out the right side window.
It had been a while since I had been on this route, and I could now see the lights of Havana out on the distant horizon, garish in the relative blackness of a zero illumination night. As we passed farther south, the city lights faded and the scene returned to what most of the communist island looked like at night from the air: scattered dots of light here and there along the coasts encircling a dark interior, with a single cluster of lights on the southern coast, our destination, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.
Coming out of the turn now, we headed due west. I could see the base coming up on the right side of the aircraft as we flew parallel to the airfield runway that was our target, in the opposite direction of the one in which we would land. We flew the westerly heading for about five minutes, then executed the next turn back toward the north.
Coming out of the northerly turn, we were now descending rapidly into the approach. The base was now off to our right again, but we were now flying perpendicular to the runway. As we got lower, I could now make out the flashing lights that lit up and ran along the runway, west to east.
Finally, the crew lined us up in another turn back to the east, and I eventually lost sight of the runway out the right side window. It would be about three minutes now. It was probably a good thing I couldn’t see any geographic detail now out the window, because the runway at GITMO was set hard against the Caribbean, maybe 100 yards from the twenty-five foot tall cliffs that plunged away into the sea below.
At last, I could see the runway lights passing beneath us, and we touched down with a thud. The engines roared into reverse as the crew arrested our velocity, causing the plane to shudder as it was brought to heel. Finally, we turned left and headed toward the small terminal. I could see the glow of the ground crew’s hand-held torch lights now, guiding the crew in. Finally, we came to a stop. Staff Sergeant Jones gave me the thumbs up and I unbuckled, grabbed my binder and bag, and moved to the hatch.
“Thank you Staff Sergeant,” I said to Jones. “My pleasure Sir. From the look of things, I probably know you’re not down here for fun, but I’ll still say that I hope you have a successful mission, whatever it is.” “Thanks.”
The door to the flight deck opened, and the Lieutenant Colonel and Major who had flown me down waved. “Good luck Sir; hope your time down here is well spent.” “Thanks gents. It was a smooth ride. I appreciate it,” I said.
Jones cracked the hatch open. And as always, I was hit in the face by the stifling humidity of the Cuban night, so thick and heavy it was like walking into an open sauna. I had never gotten used to it. The scent of the desert plant life in the arid hills and ravines throughout the southern part of the island and the base immediately filled my senses. I shook my head. What was I doing here?
I nodded at Jones and I walked down the stairs. It was 2 a.m., Cuban time. I walked to the terminal, dimly lit at this early hour, and saw the outline of a solitary figure standing in the doorway. As I got closer, the figure’s outline began to look familiar. At last, I recognized him fully.
“Well,” the man said, “How did they talk you into this?”
“They made me an offer I didn’t think I could refuse,” I answered. We shook hands. It was Dan Munns, the FBI special agent who had first interrogated Khalil al Qosi when we captured him back in late 2001. He had been on the case for over fifteen years. And he was apparently the only other person Khalil would now speak to.
“Please tell me we aren’t taking the ferry,” I asked.
“Nope. I’ve got a fast boat tonight. No ferry. I’ll take you across and get you into your quarters. When do you want to get started tomorrow?”
“As early as possible.”
“Well, he usually doesn’t get up until about eight these days.”
“Fine, I want to be there at eight then.”
Dan took me out to a waiting Jeep Cherokee, and we made the short drive down to the leeward boat pier. There, a two-man Coast Guard patrol boat waited. We climbed aboard and the two man crew took off across Guantanamo Bay, a five-minute ride over to the windward side of the base. Off in the distance at the top of the hill above the pier stood Camp Justice and the Expeditionary Legal Complex, parts of which were bathed in spotlight.
When we tied up at the windward pier, we got into another Jeep Cherokee and drove over to the main side of the base. Ten minutes later, I was at an old familiar place, the trailer-type units that adjoined Camp Justice, where I would stay for however long I would be down on the island on this trip. This was actually the best place to keep a low profile. Media and other nosy types stayed on main side and didn’t have access to Camp Justice after hours.
“This is the best we could do on such short notice,” Dan said, smiling.
“It’s not a problem. This is sort of home for me down here for some strange reason,” I offered.
“What time do you want me to be here in the morning?”
“Seven.”
He looked at his watch. “That’s only four hours from now,” Dan noted.
“Yeah, I know.”
He looked at me. “You haven’t changed one bit.”
“I hope not,” I answered.
“Fine. I’ll be back at seven,” he said, and drove away.
I found my unit, opened the door with the key Dan had given me, and fell directly into the rack without even taking my clothes off. Within minutes I was out, as peacefully as the situation permitted.
My watch alarm went off at six-thirty. I got cleaned up, brewed a cup of terrible coffee, and went outside to wait on Munns. He arrived promptly at seven. I got in. “Let’s go.”
We drove without speaking to the hub of the base on main side, if one could really call it that, and turned south away from the populated areas through the deepening hills and valleys, and eventually to the secured location of Camp 7.
“You want me to come in?” Dan asked.
“No. I’m going to go in there and see what this is all about,” I told Dan.
“When do you want me to come back?”
“I’ll call you.”
I got out, Dan took off, and I walked up to the now-familiar screening area.
They knew I was coming, and fifteen minutes later, after passing through multiple security and authentication checkpoints, I sat alone in a well-used conference room I had been in a hundred times, it seemed. There was no one-way glass in the room, but there were several security cameras and microphones squirreled away in the walls and ceilings.
I put the binder on the table and sat down on one side. I looked around at the nondescript room. What all had been discussed inside these four walls? I waited.
Five minutes later, the door I had entered opened with a metallic clang. In walked the man I had spent over a decade of my life investigating and studying. I figured at this point, I knew him perhaps better than he knew himself.
I had built an airtight case against him, but the powers that be had never wanted that case to see the inside of a courtroom. They had their reasons. And they were right to be concerned. He had made claims that had never been effectively rebutted. And what he held in his brain could compromise many things. But he had always been a double-edged sword; the other information I knew he held could convict about 20 other people and send them to Supermax for life, or worse.
I stood up, and we came face to face for the first time in many years. He looked the same, and appeared not to have aged a single day since the last time I saw him.
“Hello Khalil.”
Glen Hines is the author of two books, Document and Cloudbreak, available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. He is presently at work on his third book, Crossroads, to be published in early 2019. His writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Task & Purpose, and the Human Development Project.
