by Dale Amidei
“Salam!” he heard one of the two say. A brief exchange followed, then hesitation, then the phrase “I am not to speak in Farsi.”
He carefully checked the recorder to make sure it was picking up the conversation. He had just found the remainder of the men who had attempted his abduction. They were his best chance of locating Abu Bakir Raad.
The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. The Iranians retired early. He listened as they performed the last prayers of the day and saw the lights in the flat dim.
He sat in the darkness thinking for a time afterward. He would be unable to maintain the audio link in the daylight via the laser as it was now; a passerby could notice the rig through the open window. Twenty-four-hour surveillance for an extended period would be taxing. He had trained to operate for long periods without sleep, but it would not be necessary to stay in place through the night. He knew the men to rise early, but they seldom left the flat before noon prayers. Probably, he would have time in the morning to make his report to General McAllen and return without losing his targets for the day.
His decision made, he quickly packed his gear into a pair of waterproof foam-padded aluminum cases and quietly exited his rental. He loaded them into the rear of the Isuzu Trooper he had checked out from McAllen’s vehicle pool; he had parked in the dark a half-block distant and on the opposite side from the Iranians’ structure. The SUV drove a short distance before the headlights illuminated, and he headed back into the interior of the city toward Baghdad International and a few hours of needed rest.
At the same moment eight time zones to the west, Jon Anthony was thinking that his Honda had burned up a lot of Interstate highway between Sheffield and the Beltway during all three weeks of January. It was a Friday, and Colby had let him cut out early to tie up the last of his loose ends and catch up to the rest of the people who helped him maintain sanity at Britteridge. His apartment manager had let him sublease until June, and another Britteridge student had quickly claimed his one-bedroom. What belongings had not come with Anthony to DC sat in a storage unit. He hoped Colby was correct about the timing of his monthly expense reimbursements. They would ease the suffering of his nearly maxed-out credit card.
Dr. Mills had been as good as his word, and the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences had granted him the status of "Withdrawn with Permission" from his program. That action provided the possibility, at least, of one day resuming the pursuit of his PhD. Wainwright had gone nearly apoplectic; Mills in turn insisted on treating his former charge to a farewell lunch in one of Sheffield’s best restaurants at his own expense. Anthony also saw Christie Wilt, who threatened him with bodily harm if he failed to keep up with e-mail reports of his new life. Britteridge, from the Registrar’s office that had canceled his enrollments to Fourth Floor Roberts, was finally finished with him.
Colby had helped him set up in the Marriott’s Residence Inn; it was an easy two miles from the Harry S. Truman Building. There he shared an office—better than the closet in Roberts Hall—with other support staff. He would be in the Truman Building for the eight or so weeks that it would take to prepare for the trip to Baghdad. To earn his keep Colby had him writing reference pieces on the Islamic perspective and Sharia law as it related to Western democracy. The bureaucrats at State insisted that Anthony attend compulsory training before he deployed to Iraq. Designed for the first-timers on Colby’s team, the instruction oriented them to life and culture in the Middle Eastern country as well as on the Foreign Service. Colby’s protests had not helped much, so he sat through a few hours of classes per week that he could just as easily have taught.
His trip to Sheffield this weekend would be his last for a time. His new life was working out. He was ready for it, and he realized that he had been ready for it for longer than he had been traversing this stretch of Interstate. Life ahead, as far as he could see it, was good.
Lieutenant General Peter McAllen, US Army, was in the office at 0700 on Saturday morning. The overnight deliveries to his Inbox were of more interest to him than any distractions the Green Zone provided for officers drawing limited weekend duty. He allowed himself an extra hour of rack time that morning. He considered it a luxury to ignore the first and second Muslim calls to prayer that rang out from the minarets shortly before 0400 and again at dawn. The reports from the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, were stacked neatly as always in his electronic mail in descending order of importance as categorized by his staff.
McAllen, sixtyish, was a career officer and former commander of the United States Army Intelligence Center in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. A fixture here in Baghdad since Saddam’s forces had been dislodged, he received and rerouted intelligence to the unit commanders who could make the best use of it. His record of successes was impressive. Largely he was content to hand off the credit to the end users—the commanders and men in the field—the ones who did the sweating and the bleeding these days. He had “been and done” that during wars in other theaters and was determined now to remain as unobtrusive as he was able. He had the scars and the medals. He had no need to prove anything to anyone—least of all to himself.
He heard a quick, polite knock. McAllen glanced up as his door swung open. The visitor was one of the few military personnel in the Green Zone who could walk into his office unannounced. He was clean-shaven for the moment and in a fresh digital camouflage Battle Dress Uniform with spotless tan Belleville combat boots. He looked much different from his appearance of only a few hours ago as he had listened to a laser mic in a shabby apartment near the edge of the city. He saluted respectfully.
McAllen’s haggard face creased into a smile as he returned the salute. “Good morning, Major. It’s been a while.”
“General. Been keeping busy, sir.” He poured himself a Styrofoam cup of McAllen's freshly brewed coffee.
The General peered at his nametape, not able to make out its lettering. “What are we calling you these days, Major?” he asked in an amused tone.
“Major Matthew Kameldorn, USAF, sir,” was the reply, “as cleared through USSOCOM.” The tall man settled on one of the comfortable office chairs across from the desk.
“Well, that works for me. Camel what?”
“K-a-m-e-l-d-o-r-n, sir. I thought it had a regional flare.”
McAllen’s brow furrowed. He was too literal sometimes to keep up with this man’s dry sense of humor. McAllen knew him as a problem solver though, and one of the sharpest tools in his kit. “You’re all about blending in, Herr Kameldorn, I’ll give you that. What do you have for me today?”
"Kameldorn" took a sip of the Army brew. “Set up on my friends from the marketplace. They’ve got a rental on one of the roads to Uday’s farms.”
McAllen grimaced. “Found those sonsabitches, did you? Anything relevant that will interest me?”
“Not yet. They’re Raad’s gophers though, both of them. They make regular runs back into the city, but no sign of our Iranian friend yet.”
McAllen clicked the message he wanted, and double-checked the few lines it held. “Raad’s been back in Teheran, son. Information is that he’s gearing up to travel again. I’m guessing you’ll catch up with him soon enough.”
Kameldorn grunted. “That would explain his being scarce lately. No indications, I imagine, of what he’ll be up to when we see him again?”
McAllen smiled. “None—intel out of Iran's sketchy when we get wind of it at all. Raad will be up to some color or another of homicidal shit, and I don’t have to tell you that much.”
“No, sir. I’d very much like to settle his shit down for you, sir.”
“You do that, son. We don’t need a Revolutionary Guard operative captured in Baghdad shipping off to Guantanamo. That wouldn’t sit well regionally, and no one stateside wants to hear of any such thing. If he decides to stay home, fine. If he comes back here, he stays here and so does his crew. Plant those bastards anywhere you want, and see what grows.”
Kameldorn finished his cup of the General’s good coffee. He stood and deposited the cup in the trash bin next to the table with the coffee maker. He straightened and saluted respectfully.
McAllen fired off a snappy response that had an unspoken "good hunting" to it. “Dismissed, son. Aim High.”
“Will do, sir. At least as high as the brain stem,” Kameldorn quipped and showed himself out. McAllen returned to his electronic paperwork. He was glad the wing wiper was on his side.
Kameldorn left the General’s office and made his way back to the motor pool. He swiped his card and had it checked by the same pair of sentries who had admitted him when he returned the Isuzu. This time he checked out an aged but mechanically sound Chevy Blazer, again swiping and signing for the vehicle.
The drive across the city toward the airport was dangerous as always. He had thrown an old, shapeless jacket over his digital BDUs and donned a worn ball cap and sunglasses to make his uniform less conspicuous for the commute. Iraqi drivers were at times only slightly less dangerous than insurgents. So was the caravan of Humvees that had forced him and other drivers to briefly yield by parking on the sidewalk until the massive patrol vehicles had rumbled past that stretch of street.
After forty minutes, he stopped on the shoulder, shedding his coat and cap for the approach to the military gate a short distance from Baghdad International's main entrance. Two pairs of guards, M4 rifles accessible, checked his identification again as they discreetly scanned the invisible RFID tag embedded in the Blazer's driver-side door. So satisfied they wished him a good day and straightened to deliver the proper salutes. He returned his to the men reflexively.
He parked in the designated space to the side of his portable unit. A modular studio affair, it held the necessities of comfort: a twin bed and a small refrigerator that doubled as a nightstand. A single chair and folding table that doubled as his workspace shared the rest of the layout with a wall-mounted set of lockers that segregated his civilian clothing, field gear, dress uniform and weapons.
He attached the Ethernet cable and flipped up the screen on his Toughbook, keying in his sixteen-character password. The system required him to change it every ninety days to a previously unused combination; it was usually a rude phrase having to do with his low opinion of technology. After a glance at his Inbox he folded the unit, and it began its spin-down returning to hibernation.
He changed clothes quickly, slipping his military ID into a hidden pocket that he had sewn into his vest lining. The BDUs were stowed in favor of civilian dress with the ever-present Browning pistol again strapped inside the waistband of his trousers. He slipped an additional two magazines into the pockets of the photographer’s vest and added a pair of extra food bars. The surveillance gear sat, still cased, by the unit’s door with a duffle bag that he had prepped earlier in the morning. A few minutes later, the Blazer was loaded for the drive to his observation post.
He largely skirted the city on the drive north, crossing Highway 11 and continuing over the least traveled routes that he could find. Only as he approached the area of the rental flats did he venture back to the primary roads; from a distance, the slight rise of the suburban terrain provided a better view of the neighborhood to which he was returning. He cursed himself immediately, feeling a rush of adrenaline as he saw the cream Renault two blocks away.
He cornered right and parked quickly, leaning to feign digging in the glove compartment. The vehicle, occupied as usual with his two Iranians, passed behind him. He watched as well as he could in the passenger-side mirror. Neither man so much as glanced at his SUV.
“Morning, fellas,” he muttered to himself, annoyed that they had broken pattern today. He let them get a short distance up the road before he pulled the Blazer out to follow them at a discreet range. They had somewhere to be this morning. He might as well tag along.
Muhammad Qasim al-Khafji was not the only unauthorized Saudi Arabian in Baghdad these days. In fact, more foreign fighters came from the Kingdom than any other country of origin. His few associates here nevertheless referred to him as "The Saudi." His expertly forged papers and Kuwaiti passport were one of three sets that he used, none of which bore his true identity. The son of an oil minister, he could afford the best documents that money could buy. He chose to use his wealth in ways other than the self-indulgent decadence in which many of his fellows immersed themselves.
He had been a teenager when he heard the call to jihad from a radical cleric in his home country. By young adulthood, he had determined the course of his life: he would train to become a soldier of Allah’s mujahideen. He had financed his trip to Chechnya; through the contacts he made there it had been on to the Al-Farooq training camp of Afghanistan where he was initiated into the Al Qaeda network. He had advanced steadily since, always ready to commit personal resources toward the travel and material expenses of brothers in the struggle. That generosity had allowed him to enhance his reputation among his peers.
His days as a recruiter in Kabul ended in 2001 with the start of the occupation by the Northern Alliance. He had narrowly avoided disaster by choosing not to join the general retreat to the Tora Bora cave complex as many of his compatriots had. Instead he threaded his solitary way west, across the span of the country, to surreptitious refuge in Iran ten months later. The US invasion of Iraq in the following year seemed a call from heaven, so strongly did it speak to him. Al-Khafji had been in this fight in spirit, body, or influence ever since. Recruiting fighters, he staged attack after attack. Munitions and expertise were invaluable, especially assistance from his contacts in the "Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution"—more often in the West termed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
It had been these Pasdaran, as well as the will of Allah, who had sheltered him from detection by his enemies. The Revolutionary Guards were his allies still. He in turn offered his help whenever possible, and today was such a day.
He had worked in tandem with Iranian-backed compatriots in the past and came to hold a reputation among them of a reliable asset. He realized the influence of the Guards’ operative, who went by the assumed Sunni name of Abu Bakir Raad, even before they first met. Not even a Saudi's personal portfolio could match the resources available to a nation such as Iran, a state that held the ambition of displacing the Western infidel in Iraq. The fight against the tenacious Americans had now stretched almost three bloody years. Many of his brothers had achieved martyrdom, and many infidels had fallen. Many more again would meet their fates before any end that he could foresee. He resigned and dedicated himself to his death, but he had also come to affirm his talent as a coordinator. Many were the ways to serve Allah in His holy struggle. Al-Khafji sought what he saw as the most fitting path.
To that end, he waited here in an abandoned parking lot of a former factory. Once producing machinery under Saddam, it was now largely bulldozed and awaiting reconstruction after the air attacks.
He had arranged accommodations for his returning guest, Abu Bakir Raad. Al-Khafji had stopped using direct communications after the disaster at Tora Bora when users of even satellite phones became painfully aware of the detection capabilities of the Americans. He had two men in vehicles parked in line of sight, each having a view of two sides of the factory from a good distance away. Raad’s retainers were to meet al-Khafji here this morning, and he would make the final arrangements to meet the Iranian in the countryside and smuggle the man into hiding here inside the city. Allah was great. It was His will that they strike at His enemies. It was good to be with His fighters. It was a blessed morning, by the will of Allah.
Kameldorn saw the Renault enter the parking lot and continued past the entrance, turning two blocks later and circling back to survey the lot. He parked his little SUV—engine running, wheels turned street-side—not a hundred meters across the four lane road and fortunately higher. He reached back across the folded rear seat and dragged the duffel bag toward him, digging out the hard case that held a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera: he quickly inst
alled its Nikkor AF telephoto lens.
Zooming in the autofocus, he rolled down the passenger window and rested the camera on the spotting scope's case. The Renault was across from another vehicle, a black Russian sedan. Although the man inside was at a poor angle for the camera, he shot several frames of the front license plate as the men spoke.
Kameldorn frowned as his mind worked. Intuitively, he panning out and searched the perimeter of the meeting ground for anything that seemed out of place. To the west he saw a Peugeot parked with a man behind the wheel, observing the vehicles and the area beyond. Kameldorn shot several varying resolutions. He shifted out again and picked up the front end of another vehicle, a second Volga, its driver less attentively watching the factory lot. The powerful Nikkor lens captured more images of this vehicle’s license, and he shifted back to the meeting.
The man in the black sedan exited to embrace the driver of the Renault, and Kameldorn shot frames as fast as the camera would record them. The meeting ended with vehicles leaving in opposite directions. He stowed the camera carefully, rearranging his equipment in the rear of the Blazer as it had been. To conceal them from a casual observer, he drew an old blanket across the cases and duffel bag. His neighbors in the Renault were returning to their flat, unless he guessed wrong again. The other three automobiles headed back toward the central city. He vacillated briefly between following each, deciding instead to preserve the intelligence he had just collected. He would let General McAllen route the resulting stills to those who could best establish the identity of the men and the vehicles.
Once all four cars were well out of sight, he started back toward Baghdad International using a slightly varied route from the one that had brought him to this location. He was already punching a number into the Thuraya as he drove. It was Saturday. He did not want this report to get lost in any weekend shuffle.