Seven Days From Sunday (MP-5 CIA #1)

by M. H. Sargent

  “Adnan! Adnan!”

  Adnan turned, surprised to hear someone calling his name. It was his sister, Daneen. She wore a typically modest Muslim dress with a headscarf, or “hijab,” and hurried to catch up to him, tightly clutching a bundle under her arm.

  “Can’t you hear?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been calling your name,” Daneen explained. “You’re walking so fast. No wonder you couldn’t hear.”

  “Sorry,” Adnan said contritely.

  “Is it Ghaniyah?” she asked.

  “Ghaniyah?”

  “Well, what else would have you so preoccupied?” Daneen had only met her a few times, but she knew her brother was very fond of the young woman. She had asked Adnan repeatedly to bring Ghaniyah to dinner some time, but so far he hadn’t taken her up on the offer, so Daneen’s husband and kids had yet to meet the attractive woman. Daneen then smiled and finally Adnan smiled too. “You all right?”

  “Sorry. Just in my own world.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “No where,” he replied, a little more rudely than he meant. He started off again and his sister kept pace with him.

  “It’s Wednesday,” Daneen reminded him. “I was here for lunch, but Thamer said you were out.”

  “I was at the university,” Adnan said, lying smoothly. “I wanted to hear a guest lecturer at the pharmacology school.” Adnan gave her a warm smile. “Sorry, I just forgot about today.”

  “Any word about Ghaniyah then?”

  Adnan shook his head, his smile vanishing. Daneen studied him for a moment, then said, “She’ll be back. It was the explosion, that’s all.”

  Adnan nodded. He knew the truth, but he couldn’t tell his sister that Ghaniyah’s disappearance had nothing to do with the car bomb that demolished the café where she worked. Instead, it had everything to do with al Mudtaji.

  “You have the pills, yes?” his sister asked, bringing his attention back to the present.

  “Of course. I’m sorry I forgot about today.”

  She smiled and took his arm. They walked in comfortable silence, Adnan pleased to feel her touch. When they reached the pharmacy, Adnan opened the door for her. As she started to enter, she looked down toward his feet and exclaimed, “Is that blood?”

  Adnan followed her look. The bottoms of his pant legs were splattered with blood. He couldn’t believe it. He had been in such a hurry to leave, he hadn’t checked himself for blood. He looked down at his shirt, but it was clean. It was just the pants.

  “Where did it come from?” Daneen persisted.

  “Eh, a man. A student, I think. At the university.”

  Daneen looked skeptical. “And he bled on your pants? How could that be?”

  “Two men got in a fight,” Adnan explained impatiently. “Over what, I don’t know. I joined some other guys trying to pull them apart. The one I grabbed fell on my feet, his nose very bloody.”

  Daneen seemed to ponder the likelihood of such an event. Finally she said, “Use cold water only. Not hot. Cold water and it will come out.”

  Jadida, Iraq Wednesday, April 12th 1:56 p.m.

  While most people in Jadida didn’t yet know about the most recent beheading, those in the Iraq National Journal newspaper offices were only too aware. Most of the staff had gathered around the managing editor’s computer monitor to watch the execution live on al Mudtaji’s website. Some had turned away when they saw the masked man raise the sword over his head, not wishing to see the slaughter.

  Maaz, 35, sat cross-legged on the floor fiddling with the digital camera, aiming the lens at the copy editor across the room. He could now zoom in close with the touch of his finger, the auto focus doing the rest. Maaz’s son had found the camera on the street, a find that thrilled his father. Taking the camera to the newspaper office the next day, one of the editor’s was able to download the camera’s memory card onto a computer.

  Fadhil, the newspaper’s top computer whiz, showed Maaz how to delete unwanted photos from the memory card and download the desired photos to the computer. They had found scores of pictures of American Marines, some mugging for the camera, which just confirmed what Maaz had already presumed – the camera had belonged to a Marine.

  Still a novice photographer, Maaz believed that finding the camera was a sign that he was destined to be a photojournalist. For years, he had been the maintenance manager of the 9,000 square-foot building that now housed the newspaper. Just a few years ago, the building had been owned by Saddam Hussein’s Baath party. Once the Americans invaded, the building was quickly abandoned, the offices left untouched.

  While there was no one to pay him for his services, Maaz continued to maintain the building, often paying for the replacement of broken windows out of his own pocket. For some time this went on and more than once he complained to his wife that there was no point in working for free. However, Daneen had insisted that someone would take over the building and, if he proved himself valuable, he would have a job.

  Daneen had been correct. The first to occupy the building were the fledgling new Iraqi government’s Ministry of Oil and Ministry of Health. Then came a new start-up daily newspaper called the Iraq National Journal. Since the Americans were largely responsible for the new Iraqi government, which occupied most of the building, they paid all the bills, including Maaz’s salary – even gave him a raise.

  After helping the newspaper move into the building, Maaz had taken to stopping by the offices at all hours, intrigued by how stories came together, asking endless questions of everyone. One day word came in from an anonymous caller that there would be a car bombing in a nearby square in just thirty minutes. The staff photographer wasn’t around, so Maaz had been given a camera and told to go with the reporter who would cover the story. Tipping off the media, especially television reporters, to such an attack was quite routine. The terrorists loved to see their assault get maximum coverage, especially if the news clips were picked up by the wire services. Maaz had waited a safe distance away, and when the explosion occurred just as predicted, he had eagerly taken pictures.

  Much to the editor’s disdain however, Maaz had used an entire roll of film and only one picture was actually usable. But that gave him his first photo credit and a new passion – photojournalism. Finding the digital camera just confirmed that his photography should be his full time job. However, since the newspaper could only pay him for photos published, he continued his salaried job as the building’s maintenance manager, hanging around the newspaper office as time permitted.

  “Hey, listen to this,” said Fadhil in a loud voice as he read from his computer monitor. “‘The remains of the infidel will be deposited at the Green Zone.’”

  Dr. Lami, the owner of the newly minted newspaper, stepped out of his office. “This from their website?” he inquired.

  Fadhil nodded. “Just posted.”

  Dr. Lami mulled this over. Then he shook his head. “Leave the head near the Green Zone? I highly doubt that.”

  “It would take balls, but they’ve got them.”

  “Okay,” Dr. Lami said as he glanced around the room. “Who can cover this?”

  Maaz shyly stood. “I can go.”

  Dr. Lami glanced at Maaz, then asked, “Where’s Ali?”

  “He’s still out sick,” someone said. Ali was the staff photographer.

  Dr. Lami looked at Maaz. “Go. But don’t come back until you have a photo I can use.” He looked across the room at Duqaq, a middle-aged journalist. “See if this is true. Get a quote from the Americans.” Gazing at Maaz, he repeated, “I want a photo I can publish, understand?”

  Maaz nodded nervously. He glanced at Fadhil who gave him an encouraging smile.

  MP-5, The Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday, April 12th 2:08 p.m.

  Rick Gonzalez, known as “Gonz” to everyone except his mother, had also been kept in the loop of the latest postings on al Mudtaji’s website, and he knew that the body of the dead American, Timothy Quizby, mig
ht now show up near the Green Zone. It was unthinkable that the body would be left inside the Green Zone – that would be a terrible breach in security for the Coalition forces. The website had claimed the body would be left “at” the Green Zone. But what exactly did this mean? Just outside the Green Zone limits?

  Although Gonz knew al Mudtaji’s website could be playing games with them, all of their postings so far had been extremely accurate. Two weeks after Quizby had been kidnapped, al Mudtaji had bragged that he had the American, posting digital pictures of Quizby holding a local paper so that everyone could verify the actual date of the photo. Then over a week ago, the terrorist had announced that Quizby would be tried and executed (if found guilty, of course) on Wednesday, April 12th. While the American forces pulled out all the stops in trying to locate Quizby, they had come up empty. And today, as promised, the man was executed. Right on schedule.

  Making matters worse, the previous Sunday, al Mudtaji had proclaimed that all the world would see “the beautiful power of Islam” in an attack inside Iraq that would make 9/11 seem like child’s play. The attack was set for “seven days from Sunday,” which meant this coming Sunday, the 16th. They now had less than four days left to find out what al Mudtaji planned to do and stop him before he could carry it out. While much of the Western media ignored al Mudtaji’s threats, for Gonz and his superiors in the CIA at Langley, his threats were taken very seriously.

  Quizby’s death, right on time, was a bitter blow to Gonz. He took it personally. As soon as the website had declared that Quizby’s body would be left “at the Green Zone,” Gonz had positioned extra Marines to every perimeter of the Green Zone with one great hope – that they catch the bastards dumping the body. With any luck, some tough questioning might then lead them to the now infamous al Mudtaji.

  They didn’t even know the terrorist’s real name. He had taken the name “al Mudtaji,” which translated means “one who stands up,” and proclaimed to be Iraq’s only true leader. He was standing up for the Muslim people against the infidels. Unfortunately, they didn’t have squat on the terrorist. They didn’t know how big his cell was, how he got his funding, or where he might strike next.

  Having served seven years as a Special Forces officer in the Army, Gonz now worked for the CIA as a “military specialist.” Basically it was his job to filter through tons of information coming in, from casual tips given by Iraqi citizens to confessions of captured insurgents, and weed through that intelligence to find what was relevant and what was not. His unit, named “Marco Polo 5” (MP-5) was made up of six CIA agents, most, like himself, had served in the military in some type of “boots on the ground” capacity. This just meant that they could – and would – take matters into their own hands and kill without hesitation if the circumstances warranted it. Unfortunately, two of his best agents had been sent to Pakistan on a covert mission the week before. Which left Gonz extremely short handed as they tried to piece together what they could about al Mudtaji’s promised attack scheduled for Sunday.

  Gonz paced inside MP-5's cramped office space in a building located in the northeast corner of the Green Zone. He was gnawing on a chewed-up pencil, which was his habit, his Army boots silent on the thick rubber floor. Although the small, nondescript building looked quite unremarkable from the outside, inside was the best technology to be found anywhere in the world. As Gonz paced, several extremely fast computers were automatically compiling the data as it came in, cross-referencing names, cities and known affiliations. Whenever possible, cellular conversations were also snatched up, with anything the least bit suspicious quickly downloaded to a computer that would translate the conversation to English and cross reference it.

  Gonz often thought of his job as a game of connect the dots. No terrorist or “insurgent,” as the media liked to call them, acted alone. Each terrorist knew others of like mind and often met with those people or at the very least communicated with them either by phone, cell phone or e-mail. It was the job of MP-5 to identify the individual members of a terrorist cell and, most importantly, find out what the cell planned to do, and intercede before they could act.

  In practical terms, this meant that Gonz’s people had to seek out prospective locals who could serve as good moles. Unfortunately, to date they had only found one, and he had been killed just weeks after being put on the CIA payroll. They never did find out if his cover had been blown or if his death had simply been a coincidence.

  Gonz stopped pacing and stood behind Peterson, the only other person inside MP-5. Technically, Peterson was an Army private. However, Gonz had appropriated the young grunt when he had learned about Peterson’s extensive computer knowledge. Just 18 years old, Peterson had been slightly injured in a firefight outside Fallujah. Moved to the Green Zone to recuperate, Gonz had found him completely rebuilding an Army technician’s laptop that was used by the soldiers to send electronic video-mail to loved ones back home. Although Gonz considered himself computer-literate, he marveled at Peterson’s ability.

  Questioning him afterward, Gonz had learned that when the young man had been in his sophomore year of high school, he had hacked into the school’s computer system and given himself better grades. He said he had never meant to scam the system, it was just a game. Something to do. Then, just a month before graduation, he had been caught and promptly expelled. To avoid the wrath of the city’s district attorney who wanted to make an example of him, Peterson had opted to join the Army.

  After recovering from his injury, Peterson never did return to his unit. Instead, he practically lived in the CIA compound, doing anything anyone asked and keeping their equipment up and running. He glanced over his shoulder at Gonz. “Sir, I’ve been thinking...”

  Gonz nodded for him to continue. He liked getting ideas from all his people, and Peterson had proven himself to be quite smart. Peterson continued, saying, “They don’t want the body, whether it’s this guy’s head or the rest of him, to be picked up by anyone but us.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Think about it. The Green Zone. That keeps a lot of others away. They know that. The idiots, they would like to punch us a few times, but they stay clear. Why? If they’re even suspected of something, they’re in prison. So, they keep their distance. But this guy, al Mudtaji, he says the body will be dumped here. That’s the equivalent of telling all the other idiots out there, ‘Back off. Don’t interfere.’”

  Gonz thought about it for a moment. The kid was actually right. If the terrorists did get the body near the Green Zone, that meant Americans would be the first to see it and handle it. Which meant...

  “Booby-trapped, sir,” Peterson said. “Why else leave it where only we are, warning the other idiots to back off?”

  Gonz nodded thoughtfully. Peterson had nicknamed all terrorists “idiots,” and Gonz couldn’t fault him for that. They were idiots. “Our boys know to approach with caution,” Gonz reminded him.

  Peterson nodded. “It’s just that, I get the feeling this is different. They want us to get the body.” He quickly tapped a few keys on his keyboard and a database of names appeared. “I checked, sir. All other Americans beheaded in Iraq, the bodies were just dumped. Sometimes head and torso together, sometimes not. But never was there a tip about where the dump would be.”

  Gonz gnawed on his pencil for a moment, then took it out of his mouth and said, “You might have something there.” A loud series of beeps sounded and Gonz turned toward the main door. Since MP-5 was a CIA structure, security was of utmost importance. The building had only two doors: one was an emergency exit that only opened out; the other – the only active ingress/egress – had a state-of-the-art scanner that required a user to slide a keycard and place a thumb on the scanner. The two had to match in order to enter the building. The loud chirps simply warned that someone was attempting to enter.

  A moment later, Heisman came in carrying a pizza box. He was a large African-American who had played quarterback for a top-ranked Division I football team before wrec
king his knee on a scramble play that resulted in a touchdown, but left him incapacitated for future action in the NFL. Since he had come within ten points of winning the Heisman trophy that year, he had been given the nickname “Heisman.” It seemed to fit him quite well.

  Gonz relied heavily on the ex-jock because he was fluent in Arabic. He also never tired of seeing the startled expressions of Iraqis when they heard their native tongue spoken fluently by a huge black man.

  Gonz said to Heisman, “Got a new wrinkle on the body dump. They’re telling us it’s going to be here, which could mean they don’t want anyone but us dealing with it.”

  “Oh, shit. A booby-trap” Heisman muttered.

  Gonz shook his head. “They love to do that, but why give us a heads-up?” He smiled. “No pun intended to the late Mr. Quizby. So the question is, why? Why broadcast it, and why do they want us to find the body first?”

  The Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq Wednesday, April 12th 3:17 p.m.

  Maaz took a few photographs of the two-star general who stood behind the podium speaking. He knew the newspaper wouldn’t run the photos, but it made him feel like he was doing his job. And most importantly, that he was somehow an equal to the other accredited journalists in the room. It was Maaz’s first time inside the Green Zone and the packed media room, which was filled with journalists from all over the world. He couldn’t help but glance around at the many other reporters, some recording the general’s remarks on microcassette recorders, others scribbling on notepads in their laps.

  I’m one of them, Maaz thought to himself. With the media badge hanging around his neck, no one had questioned him as he entered the room with Duqaq. He was a full-fledged journalist. He stood to one side of the podium, along with several other photojournalists who had also taken pictures of the general. The American general was calling the beheading “a barbaric act” and saying that it would not stop the Americans from continuing to support the Iraqi people’s right for democracy.