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Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF (pronounced skiff ), accessible only through a heavy steel door with a cipher lock.
    Building C also housed a kitchen that had been transformed into a medical area, two bedrooms, and a room where Annex security staffers watched monitors from the video cameras mounted on the perimeter walls andthroughout the property. As Jack and Rone walked through the building, Rone introduced Jack to the security team, an interpreter, several case officers, and CIA chief Bob.
    Also in Building C was the GRS Team Room, the operators’ Command Post, with a broken-in couch and a wall of wooden cubbies that looked like high school lockers without doors. The cubbies overflowed with the operators’ assault rifles, night-vision goggles, helmets, body armor, ammunition, and everything else they needed to keep other Americans safe. Some operators personalized their cubbies, hanging photos of their wives and children. Along another wall were desks with computers and a whiteboard that recorded the operators’ schedules for the week. A second whiteboard contained notices and classified intelligence updates.
    Whenever a CIA case officer planned a meeting with a source to gather intelligence, he or she ideally gave the GRS operators at least a couple days’ warning, to plan for their safety. If they didn’t know the area well, the operators headed to their computers and used special mapping software developed for the military. Then, if time allowed, they’d get a feel for the place and familiarize themselves with the people who frequented it. But Rone told Jack that scenario was rare; the case officers in Benghazi seldom gave them much time, so he’d need to be ready to scramble at a moment’s notice. Everything in Benghazi was on a short fuse, Rone explained, making it difficult for the operators to feel comfortable about providing adequate security.
    On the east side of Building C were generators and a swimming pool shaped like a shark’s tooth, with swampy,greenish-brown water and a half dozen or so goldfish named for several of the operators. The operators built a filtration system, partly covered the pool with a wooden deck, and called it “the pond.”

    At the back of Building C were glass doors that faced the Annex compound’s north wall. Beyond that wall wasan enormous stockyard with more than a dozen large, rectangular, tin-roofed sheds. Annex residents could hear sheep heading for slaughter bleating and whining inside. Rone told Jack that the operators called the area north and east of the Annex walls “Zombieland,” because it looked like the set of a movie about the undead. On the far side of the Annex’s east wall was an acre of scrub and trees, and beyond that stood a compound with a single-story home. To the south, across Annex Road, were other homes and a four-story concrete building under construction. Farther south, about a half mile away, was a dirt oval horse track. Every Thursday night was race night, featuring high-spirited Arabian stallions. To the west of the Annex was another walled compound, with a single large concrete home.
    The diplomatic Special Mission Compound was located to the northwest of the Annex, across the Fourth Ring Road, only a half mile away as the crow flies and within ten minutes on foot.
    The operators had embedded broken glass atop the Annex walls for added security, but the walls were no protection from the thick smell of manure and the swarms of flies drawn to the neighborhood by the stockyard, the racetrack, and the pond. Buzzing veils of insects made life miserable for the GRS operators. Flies landed on their sweaty faces and rattled in their ears when they lifted weights at a makeshift workout area they called their “prison gym,” located under a carport roof to the east of Building C.
    Rone continued showing Jack around the property. Building A, closest to the front gate, housed four bedrooms and the main dining area, where an American chef