It's a hot day in August 2010. A CIA asset is tailing a white Suzuki jeep out of the Peshawar Valley and into the parched hills of Northeast Pakistan. Under normal circumstances he would have given up a long

time ago, but today he's under orders to follow

the Suzuki to the end of the earth unless he runs out of gas first. The analyst

back at headquarters are obsessed with the Suzuki's driver, a courier named Al-Qaeda.

They know he's got close ties to the terrorist network Al-Qaeda,

and they think he might eventually point them to the network's founder

Osama bin Laden. Finally on the outskirts of the city of Abadabad the Suzuki

quits the main road and heads down a rutted dirt track. It comes to a stop at a compound surrounded

by 15 foot high white concrete walls. What's Alowati doing here?

Could bin Laden be inside?

As it happens, that reconnaissance mission is the first step in a nine-month journey that will lead to the famous raid by Seal Team Six that ends in

bin Laden's death and much of that journey will take place in the imagination.

Because to make the decisions they need to make, the analysts have to see things they can't actually see both now and in the future.

For months, they gather information from experts, from aerial photos photos from assets on the ground.

They look at the smallest details to try to define what they mean.

Why do the people in the compound burn their trash instead of having it collected?

Why don't they have a landline or internet?

Who is the tall man who paces each day

under a tarpaulin?

When they're reasonably sure that the man has been laden,

they begin to plan how to capture or kill him. They invite ideas

from their team, no matter how outlandish. They could throw stink bombs over the wall

...