Team Red

by David DeBatto

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. The guy I talked to said there was some question about Doc’s mental state.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. They’re transferring a new guy over from Tikrit today,” Sykes said. “Wanna see something else that’s interesting?”

  He handed DeLuca a piece of paper he had in his back pocket, a color inkjet printout of a photograph of a girl in a pale gray strapless satin evening gown, a corsage in her hands, smiling next to a somewhat dorky-looking young man in a powder blue tuxedo. She was stunning.

  “Am I supposed to know who this is?” DeLuca asked.

  “That’s MacKenzie,” Sykes said. “Is that a howl or what? I Googled her and found her high-school website. She tell you she was elected prom queen? I thought it might be good for a laugh or two.”

  “Do you have any other copies?” DeLuca asked.

  “No, but I could print you one out,” Sykes said. “I thought you were married.”

  “I thought you were engaged to a vintner’s daughter,” DeLuca said. DeLuca refolded Mack’s prom picture and stuck it under the envelope from Doc. One of the concerns, bringing women into the military, had been that male commanding officers might feel extra-protective of them and lose their impartiality. DeLuca didn’t care. He knew that the strength of any team was its cohesiveness, the willingness of each member to subordinate his (or now her) own needs to the good of the whole. Competitiveness was allowed, and good-natured teasing was, too, but divisive behavior was not.

  “Here’s my first decision as TL,” he told the younger man. “Leave it alone. Just don’t go there. Mack is one of us. Okay?”

  “Hey, come on,” Dan said. “I love Mack. She’s one of the boys. I can’t bust her balls like everybody else?”

  “She doesn’t have balls,” DeLuca said, “and she’s not one of the boys. She’s part of the team. So follow the Golden Rule my Italian father taught me—‘Do onto others as I fucking say you should do onto others.’ All right?”

  “I hear you,” Dan said. “You gotta admit she cleans up pretty good, though.”

  “Did you have anything actually useful you were going to do today?” DeLuca said. “Because I have something for you to do. What do you know about Dr. Rihab Taha?”

  “Dr. Germ?” Dan said. “Off the top of my head? Mrs. Six of Spades, married to General Amir Rasheed Muhammad al-Ubaydi, Saddam’s oil minister and weapons delivery system guy. She’s a microbiologist, educated in England, I think—some people call her ‘The Bug Lady,’ both because she headed up Saddam’s bioweapons program and because she was fucking crazy. She used to cry and throw chairs at the U.N. inspectors—serious anger management issues. Apparently she’s been completely out of her mind since she was arrested. They can’t get anything that makes the first bit of sense out of her.”

  “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “They got her lab notes when Saddam’s son-in-law Kamal defected in 1995 with her handwritten proof that she was testing botulinum and anthrax delivered by artillery shells. It’s one of the few bits of hard intel we have that WMD existed.”

  “Rockets, actually,” DeLuca said. “How’d you have such a lousy grade point average at Stanford if you’re that smart?”

  “I had to work at it,” Dan said. “What about Taha?”

  “We’re looking for anybody who might have worked on a biological warfare program called the Jamrat Project. If it’s not in her file, it’s gotta be in somebody’s. Somebody who worked with her, and/or Hazem Ali. Virologist, also educated in England. Gone-a-missing, supposedly directing a veterinary college, last his official location was given. Search the Blix list and then double-check it against ours. Keyword ‘Jamrat.’ Keyword ‘Lanatullah,’ for ‘God’s Justice’ or ‘God’s Curse’ or something like that. Keyword Alf Wajeh. Keyword ‘Thousand Faces.’ Keyword ‘Al Manal.’ Keyword ‘Daura Foot and Mouth Disease Facility.’ Do your Boolean best. Get Joan-Claude to give you spellings. I think she’s got a dictionary somewhere.”

  “The sooner we can reduce this godforsaken country to one gigantic database, the better,” Dan said. “Did something happen I should know about that put biologicals back on the top of the pile?”

  “Just something the guy we popped last night said,” DeLuca told his younger team member. “Ali Hadid. I’m having a cup of tea with his brother today. At noon. According to Ali, Mohammed Al-Tariq is still alive and putting together a new coalition of shitheads. Possibly armed with biologicals.”

  “He’s dead,” Dan said. “They have a whole bag of roadkill to prove it. Don’t they?”

  “Better to be sure,” DeLuca said. “Read my report. Where is Mack, by the way?”

  “Last I saw her, she was researching your lunch date for you,” Sykes said.

  “Excellent,” DeLuca said. “I should be back by eleven-thirty. Tell her I’ll meet her here then.”

  “Where you going?”

  “To see an old friend,” DeLuca said.

  The old friend ordinarily worked either at CENTCOM in Doha or in the Green Zone or out of Saddam’s former palace in Tikrit. DeLuca had heard he’d be inspecting and briefing the TOC that morning. He saw a small fleet of helicopters parked on the tarmac beyond the TOC, the general’s convoy, three Blackhawk HH60s and four fully armed Apaches to fly escort, skimming the treetops at 180 mph. The briefing was for officers only, a discussion of the current ROEs and sitreps, though the situation reports hadn’t changed all that much in the last few months, everything still as fucked up as it ever was. DeLuca located one of the general’s aides and pulled him aside.

  “When he’s done, would you please tell the general that Herr Totenbrau would like to have a word with him?”

  “Herr Totenbrau” was the name of the beer DeLuca and Phillip LeDoux had brewed in the apartment they’d shared, back when they’d roomed together in Frankfurt in the late seventies and early eighties, translating as “Mr. Death Beer.” Their job had been to man a listening post on the East German border, a Quonset hut surrounded by barbed wire atop Mt. Meissner, a twenty-five-hundred-foot forested peak in the Harz range about thirty kilometers east of Kassel, where they spent tedious twelve-hour shifts wearing headphones and eavesdropping on East German telephone conversations, kicking back over bratwursts and beer in the pubs in the local villages when they were off duty. DeLuca and LeDoux had graduated first and second in their class at counterintelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, both of them posting higher scores than anybody had for the previous twenty years. Both had been offered OCS. The problem DeLuca had with Officer’s Candidate School was that when you graduated, you had to be an officer, and he wouldn’t have minded the education, but he had no desire to be an officer. LeDoux had gone on to become, in DeLuca’s opinion, one of the best generals the army had. DeLuca got out of the army when he realized how detrimental military service was to his married life, or lives. His first marriage, to a Long Island girl named Donna, lasted less than two years. He’d married Bonnie feeling optimistic that things would be different, even took a reassignment as an instructor at Huachuca that kept him home more, but he left the service when he saw the same things happening to his second marriage that had happened to his first, not the drinking or the affairs, but the loneliness. Women, he concluded, needed to feel like you put them first. They were funny that way.

  “Langsam nicht sehen,” he said.

  Phillip looked as fit as ever in his DCUs, six foot two and lean, tanned from the desert sun, with just a touch of gray showing in his close-cropped black hair. With his prescription Ray-Bans in place, he looked like an updated version of Douglas MacArthur, minus the corncob pipe. He had a serious demeanor, but like the Texas high-school football coach who only smiles after the championship game is over, he was only serious because he knew it made his men work harder to please him. He smiled broadly when he saw DeLuca beneath the tree.

  “I heard you were lurking around somewhere,” the g
eneral said, returning the salute with a snap. “I’d hug you but the men are watching.”

  “Wouldn’t want to make them jealous,” DeLuca said. “How’ve you been?”

  “Good, good,” LeDoux said, looking DeLuca over from head to toe. “Jesus, David—you look great. Last time I saw you, you were . . .”

  “Twenty-five pounds heavier,” DeLuca admitted.

  “How’d you do it?”

  “Atkins,” DeLuca said. “Like everybody else. Plus I started lifting weights and running five miles a day. I’m in better shape now than I was in Germany. Even then, I had to talk the recruiters into taking me. Regular army wouldn’t consider it. I think the Guard guys were impressed when I told them I’d ridden with Patton.”

  “I got your letter,” LeDoux said. “I’m sorry about Elaine.”

  “She was the best.”

  “How’s Bonnie with you reenlisting?”

  “Trying to adjust,” DeLuca said. “I don’t know how you’re doing with bachelorhood, but it does make all this bullshit easier.” He nodded toward the TOC.

  “Actually, it looks like that part is coming to an end for me,” LeDoux said. “I got engaged, right before coming over. Kathryn O’Connor. From a Navy family, believe it or not. Her father’s at Annapolis. She’s a lawyer.”

  “Then she knows the deal,” DeLuca said.

  “It’s great to see you, David,” LeDoux said. “Anything I can do for you while I’m here? I’m going to have to be getting back to Tikrit pretty soon.”

  “Actually there is,” he said. “Much as I was hoping for a purely social visit.”

  As briefly as he could, he laid out for LeDoux what he’d learned about Al-Tariq, Alf Wajeh, Lanatullah, and the Jamrat Project. LeDoux listened closely, his arms folded across his chest. DeLuca left out the part about there being a price on his own head. By the time he was done, the rotors on all seven helicopters were turning.

  “So what’s your gut?” LeDoux asked. “You think Ali was telling the truth?”

  “My gut is, yeah, he was,” DeLuca said. “He was trying to save his son, but there was more to it. I’m talking to his brother in less than an hour, so I might learn more then. You understand what it could mean if Al-Tariq is still out there, right?”

  LeDoux nodded.

  “I’ve always trusted your gut, David. What do you need from me?” LeDoux asked.

  “Whatever you got,” DeLuca said. “I got sort of a problem with my CO. Remember Gillette in Stuttgart? This guy’s worse. I just got a feeling he’s going to crap on my birthday cake every chance he gets. Plus there could be stuff I need to get done without filling out three hundred forms to do it. You could help me expedite. If you agree that it’s important.”

  “It sounds important to me,” LeDoux said. “Could you forward me the report you wrote up on the raid? And keep me posted along the way?”

  “Absolutely,” DeLuca said. “Look, Phil—I don’t want you to take on something new if your plate is already full. As I assume it is.”

  “I’ve got more than one plate,” LeDoux said. “They make sure of that.” He called over his shoulder to an aide, who stepped forward with a salute.

  “Yes sir, General, sir,” the aide said.

  “Captain Martin,” the general said. “This is Mr. David, from counterintelligence. Mr. David—what was the name of your dog as a child?”

  “My dog?” DeLuca said. “Hazel.”

  “Hazel,” LeDoux repeated. “Captain Martin, you will be my contact with Mr. David. My liaison. When he gives you the password ‘Hazel,’ you are to do your best to accommodate his every need. If there’s something he needs that you can’t do, you come to me.” LeDoux turned to DeLuca. “Do you need a sat phone?”

  “Got one,” DeLuca said.

  The general turned to his aide.

  “Give him your direct number and mine, and take his, and get me a copy.” He saluted the aide.

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Martin said, turning on a heel to leave.

  LeDoux turned to DeLuca one more time.

  “This is going to have to be unofficial, at least for now. I don’t like abrogating the chain of command unless I have to, but I’m going to take your word that I have to.”

  “I appreciate it,” DeLuca said. “I just want to put this to rest, if I can. Otherwise it’s going to be hanging over our heads.”

  “I agree,” LeDoux said. “I’m going to discuss it with a few people, if you don’t mind. We’ll be calling you for updates. Do what it takes. I’ll take the heat.”

  “I’d settle for an air-conditioner for my tent,” DeLuca said, raising his hand to salute. “Did I ever tell you I named my son after you?”

  “Your son’s name is Scott,” LeDoux said.

  “Yeah, and you’re Scottish.”

  “‘LeDoux’ is French-Canadian. I’m only one-sixteenth Scottish.”

  “I know, but whoever heard of a kid named ‘French-Canadian’?”

  The mess hall had been constructed from a pair of adjoined double-wide mobile homes that Brown & Root, a private company, had trucked up from Kuwait, with air-conditioning and seating for two hundred hungry soldiers at a time, though all too often you had to wait an hour in the blazing sun before you ate. It was better than the field kitchens where they handed you an MRE that you had to eat sitting cross-legged in the dirt, but the food was still nothing to write home about, unless you didn’t like the people back home you were writing to.

  The private who brought him his food was a Wisconsin farm boy from Rice Lake named James Coombs, but everyone called him Jimmy, from the 305th Military Intelligence Combat Service Support unit. He was a young man of good humor, a soldier who gave no evidence that he’d actually realized where he was or what he was doing. Today he seemed to have good news he was bursting to share.

  “I did what you told me,” he said, setting DeLuca’s tray down in front of him.

  “You stopped listening to rap music?” DeLuca asked.

  “No—I got the paperwork I need to cross-train over to CI,” Jimmy said excitedly. “My CO says I should have some field experience other than KP and stuff, so he’s going to get me some of that, but I was thinking maybe it would help if I had a letter from you, you know, just saying I’m trustworthy and whatever.”

  “Just because I haven’t died of food poisoning yet doesn’t mean I trust you,” DeLuca said. “You sure about this, Jimmy?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I only joined CSS because I was hoping someday to open a restaurant. You think if I go CI, I can be a cop later? I think that would be neat.”

  “That’s how I did it,” DeLuca said. “I’ll write you a letter.”

  Sykes was in the team room, facing a computer monitor. CENTCOM and regular army had all the flat screens now, passing their bulky old monitors down to the Guard units, but they still worked. Sykes’s eyes darted quickly from the screen to DeLuca, then back again.

  “Anything?” DeLuca asked.

  “Did you know the Al-Hakam BW facility tried to claim they were manufacturing chicken feed, even though the place was surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers? Why do you think that was?”

  “I don’t know,” DeLuca said, “but I’ve seen some pretty vicious-looking chickens in this country. Maybe Saddam was afraid they’d revolt.”

  “Sort of like, ‘the buuuckkk stops here’?” Sykes said. “They had clean rooms, they had fermenters, they had eighty-five hundred liters of anthrax, and they had botulinum, which makes your tongue swell up until you choke to death. Or lisp badly, I’m guessing. Nine out of ten Iraqi POWs from the first Gulf War had been immunized against smallpox. What does that tell you?”

  “That they had it in their artillery shells and were afraid of blowback on the battlefield,” DeLuca guessed.

  “Except that smallpox is a strategic weapon. It’s not tactical. Maybe they were afraid the Iranians had it. Dumb fuckers fought the Iranians for eight years and lost nearly a million casualties on both sides
and by the end, the border had changed about three feet. In Iran’s favor.”

  “Yeah, but what a three feet it was,” DeLuca said. “What about the keywords I mentioned?”

  “‘Jamrat’ had sixteen hundred plus hits because it’s the name of a religious festival. Also the name of a bridge that collapsed in Mecca and killed 226 pilgrims. ‘Lanatullah’ mean’s ‘God’s curse,’ but with a sense of ‘God’s-curse-be-upon-you,’ so that’s a big Islamic fuck-you to the Great Satan. Nothing on ‘Alf Wajeh.’ Plenty on ‘Al Manal’ and the ‘Daura Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Facility,’ where they did work on viral agents like hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, human rota virus, camel pox, and botulinum. Just south of the Baghdad airport. Or at least it was.”

  “Was?”

  “We blew it to shit,” Sykes said. “Or did we? Wanna hear something funny?”

  “What?”

  “It got all blowed up all right, but when I punched in the GPS coordinates to see exactly which sortie tagged it, I got nothing.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning either we just lost track of what we were blowing up, and that’s certainly possible, or, they blew it up themselves. Though why would they do that? UNSCOM had been all over the place. They weren’t blowing up anything we didn’t know about already.”

  “Unless they were.”

  “Unless they were,” Sykes agreed. “So when I searched SIPERNET for ‘Jamrat’ plus ‘Al Manal’ plus ‘Lanatullah,’ I got one hit. A guy named Halem Seeliyeh. Twenty-five, Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Cairo, too young to know anything about the early programs, but he worked as a lab assistant at Al Manal. But here’s the interesting thing—before that, he worked at the main BW labs at Salman Pak, where he was one of Hazem Ali’s assistants. According to his intake interview, ‘Jamrat’ was one of the projects he worked on. ‘Lanatullah alake’ was the curse he closed his interview with.”