Knocking on Osama's Cave Door

He issues pronouncements as if they should be engraved in marble under the CIA insignia at Langley. Such as: "It's not about connecting the dots. It's about collecting the dots."

And: "The field leads. Headquarters doesn't lead. Sorry ."

"Let me explain something," he says. "When you're in the field, you see it, you smell it, you hear it, you're writing about it, you send messages back to Washington. But Washington always has a hard time understanding it all. You know what I mean. . . . They spend their afternoons at their soccer games with their kids. . . . They're involved, but they don't live it like you do."

In Afghanistan, "I had a little green notebook. I'm keeping track of everything that I'm doing on the fly -- with no staff. . . .

"How much staff do you think General Franks had? Me: No staff!"

He sips his coffee. Laughs quietly. "I'm just hanging out there on the end of a very long branch."

You can tell it is a place he likes to be, a man alone with uncertain ground below. He is unafraid to drop, but talking to him for a few hours reveals a certain anxiety, a sense that he's casting about. He is a warrior who needs to know his next mission.

At midlife, Berntsen is reconfiguring his career and more. Separated from his wife of 20-plus years, he has moved back to the New York area. His daughter, a Navy intelligence officer, just got married. His son is in college.

Berntsen is already writing his next book, which will be about counterterrorism policy. He's pitching a TV documentary and a movie. He's thinking about getting back into government service. He's networking with Republican politicians. He wants someday to run for office.

The war won't end when somebody boxes up the head of bin Laden. "The fight we're in will be for the next two decades, and I plan to be part of this fight," he says.

But there is one thing he's learned since leaving the battlefield: "I have to take it down to a point below simmer and try not to be so angry."