Three- Page Stories: Backseat Driver

Colonel Ross Metcalf glared across the table at Judy Denning, the CIA's Station
Chief in Baghdad. Laying his half-rimmed reading glasses on the table, softened
the image of the square corner features of a life-long, Special Forces shadow
warrior. Judy liked the tanned, handsome officer but was wary of his intensity of
purpose and evangelical addiction to American righteousness. Ross, like most
Army officers, was instinctually mistrustful of CIA "true intentions" in the field,
particularly when put up for sale by a mysterious, red-haired, long legged, buxom
linguistic genius.

"Goddammit Judy", Rick said forcefully but quietly as he stuck his finger onto a
"topo" map spread on the table between them. "If the fucking humint can't lay
out the target or clock, how the hell are my boys supposed to pull this trick out of
the bag?"

Judy suppressed a twinge of sexual excitement on hearing Rick's colorful

language. Leaning forward to meet his gaze, giving no ground in the macho
chaos of post-invasion Iraq, Judy said, "Look Ross, we've been through this
before. Source info is grey, not black, and not white. We give it our best shot
but, at some point, you have to make a call. If you believe it, you put it behind
you and deploy. No second guesses and no looking back."

Her words seemed to quiet Ross, playing to his inbred need to be decisive.
Manipulative but dead on accurate. How many more young kids would be
shredded by these freaks parking bombs around town, while we debate the
niceties of intel assessment in war zone, Judy thought to herself, as Ross stared
at the map.

A ninety-minute window at the Malki Traffic Circle, the biggest in town and only
"choke point" on the route where the insertion could be made. Target unknown,
but immaterial. They had the POO. Ross knew all this but was hounded by a
need to be sure before putting his team in harm's way. If the bomb was rigged
for backup remote detonation by enroute surveillance, or if the driver was not
incapacitated in time, things would go downhill quickly. A three hundred kilo C-4,
LPG tank bomb during lunch-rush at Malki would be devastating.

Ross slumped ever so slightly. Judy picked up her cell phone.

------
Sergeant Edward Gong adjusted his khafiya and long, white flowing robes. He
looked again at the cartons of cigarettes and trinkets he and his team would hold
as they fanned out across Malki circle posing as street vendors. A legend among
the small, elite US Special Forces community, Gong's 6-man team was
affectionately known as "The Gong Show." They were, by all accounts, pound-
for-pound, the most lethal force in the military.
As the unmarked truck rolled to a stop, Sergeant Gong made the Sign of the
Cross and looked up for a moment. He grabbed the Back Seat Driver, and leapt
out into the white-hot noonday sun.

Ten minutes later Gong's ear piece radio crackled to life, as static point Bravo
reported the target vehicle approaching. Gong and his men, like a school of fish,
turned in an instant and began to converge on the 9 o'clock circle entrance.

"Solo - by, ace of spades, front-to-back, 35", the radio crackled. Gong and his
team now knew the vehicle was a black van carrying a heavy load canting the
vehicle to the rear, with one occupant driving at approximately 35 kilometers per
hour. Calculating speed, distance and traffic, Gong knew they had 45 seconds to
launch.

The assault would be asymmetrical: two SF troops to take the driver and truck, 4
to establish perimeter security for take down and later to clear traffic for the exit.
Gong saw the inbound van and drew a sharp breath when he saw a school bus
approaching just behind. No time for indecision.

Gong stepped in front of the balck van, waving a carton of Marlboro cigarettes-
the brand of choice in the Middle East. The driver stopped and looked at Gong
as he walked towards the driver's side door, muttering unintelligible phrases in
Arabic. Pierce "The Prince" Savon, a Kansas farm boy less swarthy looking than
Gong, and second in command of the team, approached from the passenger
side and reached for the van door.

They had practiced this a thousand times. It's the hands. The hands are the
targets. Don't look at the eyes. There are no guns. The hands will kill you.

As Gong struck the driver's window with the cigarette carton, the Prince yanked
open the opposite door and reached for the driver's right hand. He grabbed it
and held tight as the driver fought to remove his hand from the steering wheel.

The Prince and Gong knew that suicide bombers arm the bomb by pressing
down a trigger on the steering wheel before departure. Detonation could occur at
any time, once the driver released his grip. Bomb makers were usually located
close to targets to reduce the chances of early detonation. Judy and Ross
discovered this anomaly and conceived of the wickedly effective Back Seat
Driver program.

With ballet-like precision, Gong reached in, clamped a damp rag over the diver's
mouth and nose, causing him to lose consciousness. Gong and the Prince
quickly and methodically inventoried the bomb, detonator and secondary triggers.
The Prince handcuffed the driver's hands behind him, lashed him tight into the
seat, and duct taped his neck to the headrest. His driving days were over, but he
had one last errand to run.
Gong wired in the Back Seat Driver as the perimeter team began to clear traffic
in the circle. The Prince winced at the smell of ceremonial musk oil. Looney
Tune, martyr - bound suicide bombers often shaved their body hair and smeared
themselves with pungent oils before setting out to kill and maim innocent people.
Religious rites seemed to confer an aura of legitimacy to cold-blooded murder.

Gong alligator clipped the last Back Seat Driver connection to the fuse box under
the dash. Thumbs up to the Prince. They exited the vehicle in a fluid motion as it
began to move slowly away. The Prince blew a kiss and waved goodbye as the
van picked up speed around the circle to exit from where it had entered just
moments ago. The operation was so swiftly and quietly executed, that most
people in the congested circle had little time to realize anything untoward had
occurred.
----
Judy and Ross looked over the technician's shoulder, as he drove the van out of
the circle by electronic remote control. On board video gave a 180-degree view
of the driving area. An adjacent monitor showed a GPS generated route map that
traced the van's movement that morning from its POO or Point of Origin to
interception at Malki Circle.

In simple terms, the van was headed back to where it came from.

Judy felt a sense of unease, as she knew what was about to happen. The Back
Seat Driver program was not conceived to merely stop suicide vehicle bombings.
Rather, it was designed to use "reverse terror" by targeting those who built
bombs and launched attacks, most of who maintained a cowardly desire to wage
jihad from a comfortable, anonymous distance.

The "return to sender" aspect of the Back Seat Driver program instilled a sense
of fear in terrorist attack planners, who now had to consider the possibility that
their creations could return, boomerang like, to deliver a fatal blow. The problem
was that car bombs are crude devices that tend to take innocent lives wherever
they are used. Judy and Ross knew this, and agonized over the taking of lives
from a comfortable, sterile distance.

Like a giant-sized toy car, the black van threaded its way through the reverse
GPS map, converging on its new target location. The driver, his white silk martyr
robe in disarray, awakened and began to struggle after recognizing where he
was going.

Ross himself pressed the detonate command button. There were no cheers or
congratulations after the muted blast and vibration. Judy felt a piece of her
humanity torn away, as a long-ago riff from Bob Dylan's Blowin in the Wind
unexpectedly ran across her mind: "How many deaths will it take till we know..."