For nearly two months, I had lain in a hospital bed, endured multiple operations, struggled through rehab, and tried to recover physically and emotionally from all that I had witnessed in Alqosh. Almost seven hundred ISIS jihadists had been killed, but two Delta squads had also been wiped out in one of the deadliest battles in the history of Delta Force. And I had been right in the middle of it.
The one thing that kept me going every day—despite wrenching pain and utter exhaustion—was the certainty of hearing one day soon that Abu Khalif had been captured or killed.
Now, it seemed, that hope was all but gone.
As the president and First Lady stepped out of the Oval Office and headed through the West Wing to the foyer on the north side of the White House, I pulled out my gold pocket watch, a gift from my grandfather, and glanced at it as I followed close behind. It was 8:27 on a dark and snowy night in February. I was going to my first joint session of Congress. I was about to be a guest of the president during his State of the Union address, one in which I was going to be prominently mentioned. I completely disagreed with the president about his policies toward the Islamic State. I was increasingly fearful that Abu Khalif was preparing to strike again, perhaps even here inside the United States. But for now, I had a genuine sense of excitement about what lay ahead.
This was going to be an evening to remember.
5
This was my first time in a presidential motorcade.
It was a sight to behold. Amid the gusting winds and blowing snow and unusually bitter temperatures—hovering at a mere eight degrees, at last check—seven D.C. Metro police motorcycles gunned their engines at the head of the pack, preparing to exit the northeast gate of the White House complex for the two-mile journey to the Capitol. Next in line was the lead car, a police cruiser with its red-and-blue lights flashing, and its two officers—wearing thick winter coats and sipping what I assumed was strong black coffee from a thermos—ready to clear the way for the rest of the team.
Behind these were two identical black stretch Cadillacs, covered in white powder and a bit of ice. The first, in this case, served as the presidential limousine. The second served as the decoy car to confuse any would-be attackers as to which vehicle actually carried the chief executive.
Given my little contretemps with the president in the Oval Office, I suspected I was no longer going to be invited to join the First Couple, and I quickly learned my instincts were right on the money. As I came through the North Portico, I watched as three-star General Marco Ramirez, the commander of Delta Force, wearing his full dress uniform under a thick wool overcoat, got into the president’s limousine with the commander in chief and First Lady.
As an agent closed the door behind them, I have to admit I found myself a bit jealous. It wasn’t that I wanted more time with the president. He wasn’t going to say anything more to me tonight on or off the record, and that was okay. I’d said what I’d come to say. Still, I would have loved an inside look at the car they called “the Beast.” The specially built Cadillac clocked in at about a million and a half dollars. Each door had eight inches of armor plating capable of surviving a direct assault by a rocket-propelled grenade or an antitank missile. The windows were capable of taking direct fire from automatic machine guns without shattering. The chassis was fitted underneath with a massive steel plate designed to withstand the blast of a roadside bomb. The vehicle was even hermetically sealed to protect against biochemical attacks.
Or so I’d been told. I wasn’t going to get to see it for myself tonight. But that was fine. I was at ease with my conscience, and for the moment that was all that mattered to me.
Behind the two limousines were five black Chevy Suburbans, all awash in red-and-blue flashing lights, all being constantly brushed off by agents trying to keep their windows as clear from the elements as they possibly could. I knew from my research that the first Suburban was known as “Halfback” and was filled with a heavily armed counterassault team. The next carried classified electronic countermeasure equipment. The rest I wasn’t entirely sure about, though I knew they carried more agents, a medical team, and a hazmat countermeasures team. These were followed by a vehicle known as “Roadrunner,” which carried the White House communications team, and an ambulance.
I donned my black leather overcoat and matching leather gloves and pulled a black wool cap over my bald and freezing head. Not three steps out the door of the White House, I could see my breath, and my glasses were fogging up. A deputy press secretary directed me into one of several black Lincoln Town Cars that would carry White House staff. Behind these were a number of white vans for the White House press corps, more Secret Service Chevy Suburbans, three or four additional police cars, and more motorcycles.
Fortunately, the driver of my Town Car already had the heat running. It felt good to get inside, shut the door behind me, and take shelter from the storm. I’d expected that. What I hadn’t expected was to see anyone I knew waiting for me.
“Good evening, Collins,” said the man in the backseat. “Good to see you again, and good to see you getting out for a change. How are you feeling?”
“Agent Harris, what a pleasant surprise,” I said, genuinely happy to see him once I’d cleaned the lenses of my glasses and put them back on. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Arthur Harris was a thirty-year veteran with the FBI and part of a rapidly growing unit of special agents hunting ISIS operatives in the U.S. and abroad. We’d first met in Istanbul when he was investigating the car bombing that had taken the life of one of my colleagues at the Times. Later, he’d been involved in the mole hunt that had led to the stunning arrest of CIA director Jack Vaughn, his mistress, and a top intelligence analyst at the NSA back in December. It was Harris who had come to find me at the Marka air base in Amman, and it was Harris who had cleared me for release from Jordanian custody when I had been briefly suspected of being complicit in the attack on the royal palace. As such, Harris and I had spent quite a bit of time together in recent months. We were among the few Americans who had survived all that had happened in Jordan and Iraq, and I was honestly glad to see him again.
Harris smiled. “Between us, I believe the president would like you arrested and beaten. That’s off the record, of course.”
I laughed as the motorcade rolled, but I wasn’t entirely sure he was kidding.
6
Almost immediately Harris’s mobile phone rang.
As he took the call, we exited the White House grounds through the northeast gate, turned right on Pennsylvania Avenue, then immediately took another right onto Fifteenth Street just past the Treasury Department. Moments later, we turned left, rejoining Pennsylvania Avenue, and from there it was a straight shot to the Capitol building.
Looking out the window at all the snowplows working feverishly to keep the president’s route clear, I resisted the impulse to check the latest headlines on Twitter. I already knew the news was grim. Turkish military forces were bombing Kurdish rebels in northern Syria. A series of suicide bombings had just ripped through Istanbul, Ankara, and Antalya, mostly targeting government offices and hotels frequented by foreigners. A petrochemical plant in Alexandria, Egypt, had just come under attack by as-of-yet unknown militants. Rather than be reminded of all that was going wrong in the world, however, I simply wanted to enjoy this moment.
Against all odds, I was actually heading to the U.S. Capitol building to be the president’s guest at the State of the Union address. I was under no illusions. I didn’t deserve to be there. In fact, given all that had happened in the past several months, I should probably be dead, not still working as a journalist and winning awards. For the first month and a half of my recovery, I’d been certain I’d never go back to my life as a foreign correspondent, and even if I did, I had no desire to cover wars and terrorism. I’d seen too many friends get killed and wounded. I’d seen too much horror.
The bitter truth was I’d given my entire career to being part of an elite tribe of war cor
respondents, and it had cost me nearly everything. Now in my early forties, I was divorced. I had no kids. I barely saw my mom or my brother and his family. I was a recovering alcoholic. My neighbors didn’t know me. The doorman at my apartment building across the Potomac barely even recognized me. Wasn’t it time for a change?
But a change to what? I had no idea what I’d do if not write for the Gray Lady. Teach journalism to a bunch of lazy, spoiled twentysomethings who had no idea how the world worked? Cash in with some Wall Street gig—VP of public affairs for some multinational bank or investment firm? I’d rather drink poison. In theory, a change sounded great. But what exactly would I do next? What could I do that I would actually enjoy?
Unbidden, my thoughts abruptly turned to Yael Katzir, the beautiful Israeli agent I had met in Istanbul and with whom I had survived the grueling events in Jordan and northern Iraq. I’d barely seen her since we’d been evacuated together on Air Force One after the attack in Alqosh. Yet I had to admit she was never far from my mind.
As a senior chemical weapons expert for the Mossad, Yael had been at the top of her game. She’d been right about ISIS capturing chemical weapons in Syria. She’d been right to warn then–Prime Minister Daniel Lavi that ISIS was planning a coup d’état in Amman. He hadn’t listened, and now he was dead. What’s more, she’d been spot-on in her analysis that President Taylor was being held by ISIS forces not in Mosul or Homs or Dabiq as many U.S. intelligence analysts had believed at first, but in the little Iraqi town of Alqosh, on the plains of Nineveh. She’d nearly paid with her life. But she’d been right, and now she was a rock star at the highest levels of the Israeli government. The last text she’d sent me, almost three weeks before, was that the new prime minister, Yuval Eitan, had asked her to serve as his deputy national security advisor. It was a big job, a heady promotion. She wasn’t sure she wanted to take it. But it was evidence of the enormous respect and influence she held in Jerusalem.
She had sent me a note asking me what she should do. I’d written back immediately and told her to take it and to make sure she got a big raise to go with it. I couldn’t have been more proud of her, I told her. She deserved every accolade and more.
Selfishly, however, it was hard not to think of her promotion as my loss. I knew there was likely no future for us. She had a job, and she wasn’t going to leave it for me. And honestly, what was I going to do? Move to Israel? Learn Hebrew? Convert to Judaism? The fact was, I’d only known her for a few months. We had only just begun to be friends. Still, I missed her. But with her new responsibilities, I had no idea when I would even see her again.
Harris finally finished his phone call and turned back to me. He didn’t look well.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“Want a scoop?”
“You kidding?” I asked.
“No,” he said, dead serious.
“Sure. What’ve you got?”
“State police in Alabama just took down an ISIS sleeper cell near Birmingham.”
“Seriously?” I asked, pulling a notebook and pen from my pocket.
“Four males, all Iraqi nationals, and a woman from Syria.”
“What were they doing in Birmingham?”
“Weird, right?”
“Very,” I concurred.
“That’s not the half of it,” Harris said. “When the troopers got a search warrant for their apartment, what do you think they found?”
I shrugged.
“Almost five hundred mortar shells—not active ones, mind you, just dummies, the kind the military uses for target practice.”
“What would they need those for?” I asked. “And where would they get them in the first place?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Harris said. “We have no idea.”
“Does the president know?” I asked.
“No, not yet—I don’t think so,” he replied. “We’re just getting this ourselves.”
“Well, somebody better tell him before he starts speaking.”
The motorcade soon pulled up to the parking plaza on the north side of the Capitol and came to a halt. Photographers and news camera operators recorded the president and First Lady and General Ramirez being greeted by the Speaker of the House and led inside. I glanced at my grandfather’s pocket watch. It was almost 9 p.m. The networks would go live in six minutes.
7
THE U.S. CAPITOL BUILDING
“Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States!”
The sergeant at arms of the United States House of Representatives shouted the words at the top of his lungs. When he finished, the room erupted. Everyone in the House Chamber jumped to their feet and launched into deafening and sustained applause. Members of both parties from the House and the Senate were whooping and hollering and cheering the leader of the free world, and they did not stop. Indeed, by my reckoning, Taylor received the longest recorded standing ovation in the history of any State of the Union address.
No wonder the man wasn’t listening to me. Why should he? The president’s approval ratings were now in the mideighties. It was a stunning, neck-wrenching turn of events, given that two months earlier—just before the ISIS attack on the peace summit in Jordan—his approval ratings had been drifting down into the midthirties, imperiling the administration’s entire agenda and threatening to bury dozens of House and Senate Democrats in a political avalanche in the next elections. But since then, the world had dramatically changed. No longer was Taylor politically dead and buried. He had been resurrected, and tonight he was taking a victory lap.
I watched it all unfold from the section of the second-floor gallery reserved for the First Lady and the guests of the First Family. General Ramirez stood directly beside Mrs. Taylor, two rows ahead of me. To their right were the fifteen Iraqi children we had rescued from Abu Khalif’s underground prison in Alqosh, all cheering the president, along with several of the social workers who were caring for them after their traumatic ordeal and helping them get adjusted to their new lives in America. In the row behind the First Lady stood members of her Secret Service protective detail, and beside them stood the wounded but surviving members of the Delta squad who had rescued the president in Alqosh.
Standing beside me was my brother, Matt, also cheering enthusiastically. I was glad he could be here. He’d been with me every step of the way since this ordeal had begun. He had come down from Maine every week, sometimes for two or three days at a time, to spend time with me at Walter Reed. He’d sat with me for hours and let me talk about what I’d been through, what I’d seen and heard in Alqosh and Mosul and Abu Ghraib. Together we’d theorized about where Abu Khalif could be holed up. I thought Khalif was probably in Raqqa. Matt was convinced he was now somewhere in Libya. We’d argued about where Khalif might strike next and how the Taylor administration might respond. He’d read me every newspaper and magazine article he could get his hands on about the allied offensive in northern Iraq. He always prayed with me when he arrived and before he left, and whenever I let him, he read the Bible to me too, working his way through the Gospel according to John. I listened politely. Sometimes I asked questions. Matt always had answers—good ones, interesting ones, compelling ones—but he hadn’t pushed me, and for that I was grateful.
Matt clapped and hollered for the president like just about everyone else in the room, and I understood why. He was a patriot, and he was being swept up in the moment. We’d all thought this president was dead in Jordan, and then in Syria or Iraq, and then—almost miraculously—he’d been rescued, and these dear, precious children had been liberated from the clutches of those ISIS monsters. What’s more, millions of Muslims and Christians and Yazidis in northern Iraq had been liberated from a dark, oppressive force. It was a great story, one for the ages. From most of the country’s vantage point, it all looked like one giant success story. Why shouldn’t they celebrate? They didn’t see what was coming.
But I did.
Abu Khalif had promised he would come to the U.S.
Brazenly, proudly, smugly, he’d told me he had American and Canadian jihadists fighting for him in Syria and Iraq. He’d bragged to me that such men would be able to enter the United States undetected. And now they were here. In Alabama, anyway. Sure, some in Birmingham had been caught. But there were others. Many. I was sure of it. When and how and where they would strike, I had no idea. But I had my guesses. It wasn’t going to be a workplace shooting like in San Bernardino. It wasn’t going to be the attempted assassination of a lone police officer sitting in his patrol car on the streets of Philadelphia. I doubted it was going to be an attack on a satirical newspaper office like Charlie Hebdo in Paris or even an international airport like in Brussels or Istanbul. No, this was going to be bigger. Much bigger. And I suspected Abu Khalif had set his next action into motion even before the attack on the peace summit in Amman.
That’s why he’d gone on the record with me. That’s why he had laid out his entire wicked strategy when I interviewed him in the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad. That’s why in Mosul he had demonstrated for me that he was fully capable of carrying out his threats. The attacks in Jordan were just a trailer. The coming attacks in America were the main attraction.
So I clapped politely. I knew I was on live worldwide television. I needed to be respectful. I would give Taylor his due. But I could not bring myself to do more. I was deeply grateful we’d found the president alive and gotten him out safe. At the same time, I was more convinced than ever that he didn’t truly understand the nature and threat of the evil that was coming. Unless the FBI and the CIA were at the top of their game, the president was about to be blindsided again. We all were.