The Mind of a Terrorist Page 5

  The business gave him a legal reason to stay in Mumbai for long periods of time. Even if he never submitted a single visa application.

  At the Five Fitness health club on a random evening, Headley met Vilas Varak, whom he hired to be his personal trainer. Vilas was a so-called shiv sainik—a member of the Shiv Sena political party, a right-wing Hindu nationalist movement and thereby one of Lashkar’s main enemies.

  Headley invited Vilas to breakfasts and dinners. He even held a birthday party for Vilas’s thirtieth birthday, and the two became good friends. And through Vilas Headley had access to Shiv Sena’s huge headquarters in Mumbai, Shivsena Bhavan. The building was added to Headley’s list of possible targets.

  It was also through Vilas that Headley met Rahul Bhatt, a young man with a very famous father, the Bollywood producer Mahesh Bhatt, but also with incredibly low self-esteem. Rahul had been chubby as a teenager, but now he’d pumped his body up in the extreme, and at that time his well-toned muscle mass was featured in a commercial for none other than Five Fitness.

  Headley gave Rahul both his mobile numbers, and the two exchanged text messages and calls daily or went to the movies to see films like Vantage Point, about the carefully-planned murder of an American president. Other times, they simply sat at the Indigo Café in central Mumbai, eating Philly cheesesteaks with apple pie for dessert. Or at one of the local restaurants, where they ate kebabs and drank cans of Diet Coke.

  Rahul got his first knife at the age of ten. Ever since, he had been fascinated by weapons, self-defense, spy stories, terrorism, and explosions. He was hoping to get to play the role of a suicide bomber in one of his father’s films.

  Rahul showed Headley his knife collection, and they discussed the pros and cons of the American M-16 rifle and the Russian AK-47. Or the Glock pistol and the Steyr AUG automatic rifle, both from Austria, compared to weapons from the German manufacturer Heckler & Koch.

  To make himself more interesting—and not least to hide the fact that he received his military training from training camps in Pakistan—Headley said that he had been an elite soldier in the American army. He was a former Ranger and that was why he used the email address ranger1david@hotmail.com when writing to Rahul.

  He also told Rahul he had trained with Pakistan’s elite Special Services Group, known as the Black Storks, after the color of their uniforms. But that was a long time ago, he explained.

  At one point, he confided to Rahul that he was considering starting a business to provide important figures in India with bodyguards. He might have use for Rahul then. Rahul, of course, was happy at the prospect of putting his muscles to good use.

  Headley also suggested a number of books Rahul might find interesting. For example, Killing Zone: A Professional’s Guide to Preparing and Preventing Ambushes, a 264-page book that included analyses of more than forty ambushes and attacks on tourists and businesspeople.

  Headley’s many tales of wild travels, his military knowledge, and his long monologues about justice in the world led Rahul to call him jokingly “Agent Headley.” On several occasions, Rahul considered the possibility of his new friend being a secret agent from some intelligence service or other. But he shot those thoughts down.

  Headley didn’t like the agent nickname. At times he considered maybe recruiting Rahul to fight for Lashkar. He could take Rahul to northern Pakistan for starters, he thought. In the end though, he decided to abandon the idea.

  Under the pretense of being a tourist, Headley traveled instead to the capital, New Delhi, and checked out the military academy, National Defence College. He put the coordinates into his sleek, yellow Garmin GPS.

  Later he visited a fashion show with a local clothing designer in Mumbai’s five hundred-foot-tall World Trade Centre, and this building complex was added to the list too. He photographed the Gateway of India, the famous monument from the colonial period; Maharashtra state’s large police headquarters in Mumbai; and a golf course in the Willington district. He bought backpacks for the ten men. He stayed three times at the Taj—and just for fun, stole one of the hotel’s towels, which he later gave to Sajid Mir. Headley chose to keep a coffee cup from the Taj for himself, as a souvenir.

  Altogether, Headley found more than twenty targets for terrorism in India, which he reported to Lashkar-e-Taiba. And he delivered roughly fifty hours’ worth of video from Mumbai.

  In Pakistan, Lashkar was beset by division.

  One faction of battle-hungry men in the group wanted to join the Taliban’s fight against the occupying forces and infidels in Afghanistan. Lashkar could help to step up the fights in the Pakistani border areas in the north and send people, weapons, and money to the Afghans. After all, that was where the real fighting was going on, said the men. That was where Muslims throughout history had defended themselves and fought back against superior forces. Most recently, against the communist Soviet Union.

  If the Afghans lost to the capitalist Americans, it would be a catastrophe that would affect all Muslims. The men were deeply impressed and inspired by al-Qaeda, and they spent the evenings watching videos of fresh attacks in Afghanistan and rewatching old videos with lectures from Osama bin Laden.

  Another faction wanted to continue the fight against India. That was Lashkar’s real main enemy. Lashkar had already solidly established itself in the fight against India, and for a free, independent, Muslim Kashmir. In moving operations to Afghanistan, that fight would basically have to start over from the beginning. That was the objection. Lashkar would have to share in the honor and glory of operations in Afghanistan if they were successful in defeating the Americans. But in India, they more or less had the field to themselves.

  Some left Lashkar around this time in order to serve directly with their Muslim brothers in Afghanistan. Since that was where the action was, and to them Lashkar was too much about big plans, big words, and far too little action.

  Most of Headley’s contacts in the terrorist group belonged to the faction that wanted to reduce India to dust. But if they hoped to retain the banner representing all of Lashkar, they needed to do something that made a resounding bang. Something spectacular that presented itself as an alternative to the fighting in Afghanistan.

  The plan for an attack in India was upgraded.

  On one of his many trips home to Pakistan to discuss possible targets, Headley noticed progress. There was no longer talk of just two or three men attacking the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, perhaps also killing the participants at a conference. Instead, the plan was now a larger operation to attack several locations simultaneously.

  Headley put forth his suggestions, which were listened to.

  The lower-ranking Lashkar members noticed that there was a surprising amount of respect for Headley, whom they came to know under the cover name Dawood Khan.

  A few days after Christmas in 2007, Headley met Sajid Mir in one of Lashkar’s many safe houses. This one was in Ayub Colony in the airport city of Rawalpindi, just outside Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

  In the Liaquat Bagh park not far away, Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto held a rally during which a man stepped forward, shot two or three rounds toward her white Toyota, and then detonated himself. Twenty-four were killed by the explosion, and for several hours, the perhaps-soon-to-be-president’s life was hanging by a thin thread.

  In the safe house, Sajid Mir and the others prayed that Bhutto would die of her injuries. That would be best for Pakistan. So there was celebration when the news of her death reached them.

  Headley’s photographs and videos from Mumbai were studied carefully while the terrorist leaders viewed Google Earth maps in order to get an overview of the mission. They also built a model of the Taj Hotel out of Styrofoam. Though primitive, the model gave them a physical representation of the challenges they faced next in developing their plans. Thoughts slowly became reality.

  Sajid Mir praised Headley for the steady results he provided but warned him against becoming too close with people like Rahul Bhatt and Vilas Va
rak. It was important that he keep his brain sharp with respect to the mission’s true purpose.

  “Don’t make them friends in your heart. They are not the same kind of people as us. They are our enemies.”

  In the preliminary discussions, work of some detail was done on several plans to get the terrorists out of India after the attack. The young men could, for example, hijack an Indian train or bus and force it to head north, toward Kashmir. Or perhaps they could return to Pakistan by boat under the cover of darkness amid the chaos they had sown. Or hide in an apartment in Mumbai for several weeks to be smuggled out later.

  They could also use the mission as an occasion to steal a large quantity of diamonds from the jewelry store Jazdar in Taj, which Headley had studied during one of his stays at the hotel. The jewels could finance future attacks.

  Several clues point to the probability that some of the ten men actually believed until the end that they would return to Pakistan. Among other things, they did not—in defiance of a direct order—sink the boat that had taken them most of the way to Mumbai before they had switched to the inflatable dinghy that brought them ashore.

  The summer before the attack in Mumbai, though, it was crystal-clear that the plan was for none of the men to survive. It was simply not possible to get them back out without increasing the chances that they would be arrested in the process and thereby risk revealing the people behind the attack. Lashkar was also afraid that their resolve would weaken and they wouldn’t kill nearly as many people if they expected to make it out alive. So it was better to simply do away with that element entirely.

  One of the Lashkar leaders traveled to Mecca in Saudi Arabia to pray that the mission would be successful. Meanwhile, the young men received some advice for the road: being shot would feel like being stabbed with a needle, blood spots would be like rose petals, and angels would descend from heaven to take their souls back to Paradise.

  It was in this late phase of planning that the Jewish center, Nariman House, was added to the list of targets, despite the fact that Lashkar’s leadership had reservations about adding Israel as a direct enemy.

  But Headley was excited. The attack on Nariman House was his idea. He had eaten at the restaurant Trishna nearby while staking out the house, which was located on a small side street. He had even been inside the house.

  * * *

  In the heart of Pakistani capital of Islamabad, a garbage truck pulled up to the gate in front of the Hotel Marriott, an American hotel that was the city’s most prestigious.

  The guards were about to inspect the vehicle when more than thirteen hundred pounds of explosives were detonated. This was on September 20, 2008—two months before Mumbai.

  The force of the explosion made a crater several yards deep in the ground in front of the hotel, and afterward, flames could be seen coming out of more than half the windows in the 258 hotel rooms in the enormous building. The rising smoke was visible from almost everywhere in the city. Alarms sounded endlessly, and car alarms wailed throughout the neighborhood.

  Among the fifty-four dead was the fifty-three-year-old agent in the Danish intelligence service, PET, Karsten Krabbe, who had been sent to the city as a security advisor to the Danish embassy. Barely an hour earlier, the recently elected president Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, had given his first speech as president in the parliament building near the hotel.

  “Terrorism is a cancer in Pakistan. We are determined, God willing, we will rid the country of this cancer,” he said after the attack, which he regarded as being so cold and reckless that it was “impossible” for Muslims to have perpetrated it.

  But the attack led to intense soul-searching by Pakistan’s most senior officials: if one of the few Western hotels with high security could be so easily attacked, with such a powerful bomb, what about the rest of the city? What about the rest of the country?

  In India, too, the attack gave rise to serious reflections about the country’s security.

  Shortly after the attack, Headley took a drive around Mumbai with his friends Rahul and Vilas and talked about the explosion in Islamabad.

  “You know guys, you’re going to see things like that happening in this country soon,” he said, encouraging the two to “be careful” and “keep an eye out for” any dangerous elements in Mumbai.

  “How do you know this?” asked Rahul.

  “On the Internet, you know.”

  The same month, Headley received a message from Sajid Mir: the attack was to take place on the twenty-seventh night of Ramadan. In 2008, that was September 29.

  Around this time, Headley received a text message from Sajid Mir: “The die has been cast,” came the message.

  But when the team of ten young men—“the boys”—began their trip to Mumbai, their ship ran aground and sank. They survived only because of some life vests that happened to be on board. A few weeks later, they tried again with a new ship and new weapons, but when “the boys” tried to board an Indian ship, it led to a firefight, and the mission had to be aborted. All this was relayed to Headley later by Sajid Mir.

  Headley was ready to give up hope. Perhaps it had all been a waste.

  Perhaps these unsuccessful attempts were a sign from some higher power? Not to give up the project, but maybe that Lashkar wasn’t the right place for Headley.

  For the first time, he considered joining an entirely different terrorist group. He was always ready to take a risk if there was some indication that his efforts would lead to results.

  But in the middle of November came a new message from Sajid Mir: a third attempt would soon take place. And then came the text message the evening of November 26. The attack was under way.

  Headley spent next three days in front of his TV, following CNN and the Pakistani channel GEO. He also went online and read whatever he could about the attack.

  He wanted to know everything.

  4

  IN THE CONTROL ROOM

  Mumbai, India

  Thursday, November 27, 2008

  At the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, at 1:08 a.m., a satellite telephone rang.

  “How many hostages?” came the query from the terrorists’ control room in Pakistan.

  “One Belgian. We killed him. One from Bangalore, who had to be controlled with great effort,” replied one of the ten hostage takers.

  “I hope there were no Muslims.”

  “None.”

  The battle had been going on for barely five hours, but already the ten men had killed more than a hundred people, injured at least twice as many, and achieved their ultimate goal. There was fear and chaos all over Mumbai.

  Klaus Seiersen, a medical doctor from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, who was in the city for a conference on radiation treatments, was staying at the five-star American Hotel Marriott in northern Mumbai. After midnight, he heard several loud bangs through the window, and on Indian CNN there were reports that three armed terrorists had broken into the lobby of none other than the Marriott Hotel and were now searching for Western tourists to take hostage.

  Many hotel guests panicked. Where could they hide?

  After some time, Klaus Seiersen learned that the bangs had come from a long-planned fireworks show to celebrate the Indian national cricket team’s victory over England. He called the front desk, which calmly told him that the entire CNN story was fiction. There were no terrorists at the hotel.

  However, exaggerated reports of terrorist attacks in the media of both East and West were nothing in comparison to the authorities’ incomplete grasp of what was going on. Nobody fully understood what was actually happening. And instead of mobilizing all their military and civilian resources, the government ended up doing essentially nothing at all. Shivraj Patil—India’s interior minister, who was responsible for domestic security—first heard of the attacks after an hour and a half, when a relative happened to tell him to turn on the TV. Crucial top-level meetings in the Indian government were deferred hour after hour, because several ministers w
ere out and couldn’t be reached. The leader of Indian special forces, NSG, was at a private party in New Delhi.

  When it was finally decided to dispatch the country’s best soldiers from the capital to Mumbai, there were no planes available that could hold that many men and their equipment.

  It was not until 2:10 a.m. that the two hundred heavily armed and armored men boarded a slow transport plane, an Ilyushin Il-76, that had landed in New Delhi. Barely an hour later, they began on the seven hundred-mile-long flight to Mumbai.

  Seven more hours would pass before the soldiers were ready to go in.

  From the outside, the building looked like a fishing business.

  There were life vests, fishnets, and pieces of a boat on the ground. It was from here—a building in the Malir district, at the eastern end of Karachi in Pakistan—that the attack was conducted.

  In this place, Sajid Mir sat with a group of his best men. Mir was the one moving the attackers around Mumbai as though they were chess pieces in a huge game. He sacrificed them when it accomplished some higher purpose. He was the voice who called himself Wasi.

  He was in complete control.

  Several TV stations were broadcasting direct from the location of hostage situations and burning buildings, and on the control room’s small TV screens and laptops Sajid Mir and his men could follow the police’s advances and evacuations, as well as military reinforcements. The delay in the arrival of the special forces was noted in the control room. This gave them all the more time to inflict damage, set buildings on fire, and kill hostages.