Deciding to forego the beanie, Hunter folded the black and white checkered cloth in two and draped it over his head. The black cord of the headband smelled like a goat. He doubled it around the top of his head to hold the headdress in place, then pulled down the sun visor to check himself out in the vanity mirror. The cruel Iraqi sun had given him a deep tan that was darker than many of the locals. His beard could have been a little longer and rattier, but he could pass. Score one for the loose Rubicon dress code that had no restrictions on hair length or facial hair.
The first rays of sunlight streaked orange across the sky and soon calls to prayer would echo in the streets. He could already smell smoke from firewood and diesel fumes from generators. The Iraqis didn’t let much of the day get away from them, he’d give them credit for that. He spotted a dark alley with an assortment of cars where he could change and trade in Stella’s SUV for something less conspicuous. He looked in the rearview mirror as he started to turn.
Two Ford Expeditions sped toward him.
Rubicon.
Chapter Six
At the Pentagon, which has encouraged the outsourcing of security work, there are widespread misgivings about the use of hired guns. A Pentagon official says the outsourcing of security work means the government no longer has any real control over the training and capabilities of thousands of U.S. and foreign contractors who are packing weapons every bit as powerful as those belonging to the average G.I. “…they are not on the U.S. payroll. And so they are not our responsibility.”
—Time Magazine, April 12, 2004, as reported by Michael Duffy
Camp Tornado Point, Anbar Province
The first rays of the morning sun were turning the sky orange and a distant wail of a muezzin called the faithful to prayer as Camille marched into Saddam’s former palace. It had been a day since she’d slept and nearly as long since she’d eaten. Her body was achy and her emotions were whitewater, churning with eddies and undertows with no clear main channel. She and Hunter played rough together and delighted in pushing one another to the edge in their own war games, but the heat of their battles usually resolved in wild passion. During their last vacation they had spent days tracking one another throughout Panama and it ended in a sugar cane field where she surprised him and overpowered him, though she was sure he would claim that he was the one who had prevailed. They had made love there for hours, the sharp blades of the cane slicing their skin. This morning had the appearance of another game, but his mood had not been playful. Their sparring suddenly felt strangely real. She grabbed a handful of M&Ms from her pocket and popped them into her mouth. The M&Ms had saved her life more than once, keeping her blood sugar hyped when her body was ready to tank. She chewed fast and swallowed before entering the headquarters of the base commander, USMC Colonel Michael Lukson. Camp Tornado Point was still officially a Marine base and the contractors were guests even though they outnumbered the Marines twenty to one. An aide showed her inside the colonel’s makeshift office, one of Saddam’s former bedrooms.
Camille tried to play cool, but the cavernous room screamed for attention.
It was a bold play of volume and void that had all the class and splendor of an Atlantic City casino. The original furnishings had long ago been stripped away, but gold-plated gargoyles perched atop green malachite pillars protected the granite walls and marble floors. A recessed archway and blue lapis columns framed a life-sized mural of Scud missiles with flames shooting behind them. At least the Iraqi flags on the missiles had been chipped away. Saddam’s military murals competed with fantasy scenes of iridescent dragons menacing chesty blondes that would have been better suited to black velvet than a palace wall. A beam of light shined onto the floor. She looked up, following it to its source. A mortar had knocked a hole in a ceiling dome and it had missed a stylized Saddam leading troops into Jerusalem by only a few inches. She shuddered when she realized she was standing in the middle of Saddam’s wet dream.
The base commander had set up his office in a corner of the grand room. File cabinets and scavenged office fixtures surrounded a simple wooden desk half covered by an old computer monitor. A wall map of the al-Anbar Area of Operation was tacked over the groin of one of Saddam’s nymphs. The colonel sat at his desk, across from a man Camille hadn’t seen or spoken to since the outbreak of the second Gulf War when she had quit the CIA. Joe Chronister was the reason she had joined the Agency and he was also the reason that she left it to start Black Management.
Colonel Lukson stared at her, his thick arms crossed. As was custom when in combat, his short sleeves were down, not rolled up in a cuff. One forearm was tattooed with the Marine Corps’ globe and anchor with the words Semper Fidelis above it; the other arm had the image of an alligator on tracs.
Camille stood perfectly erect beside an empty chair. “Colonel Lukson, sir, I’m Camille Black, president and CEO of Black Management.”
“I know who you are.”
The large empty room behind her made her uneasy, but she continued to stand in silence, waiting for the colonel. She averted her eyes. The military controlled the bases in Iraq and the private military companies were guests on their turf. Camille’s troops at Tornado Point did covert work for the CIA and some secret military units—almost all of it outside the purview of the base commander. It was no secret that Colonel Lukson and other field officers did not like their new roles as landlords for higher paid civilian mercenaries and would relish the eviction of one of them.
After a long minute, Lukson spoke. “Anything you want to tell me, Black?”
“Sir, I was fired on tonight by Rubicon troops.”
“And that’s why you decided to play cowboys and indians on my ranch? You might not take orders from me, but I sure as hell can kick your sweet ass off my base.”
“Sir, I had to defend myself, sir,” Camille said like an enlisted Marine. She flashed back to her childhood when she had to stand before her father and answer for her mistakes in the same way. At the time it had felt severe, but now, it seemed more like good training. She had a lucrative contract to protect and couldn’t risk any missteps with her Marine host. It was time to use the word “sir” more than she had in the past year.
“And you had to defend yourself from Mr. Kyle as well?”
“Who’s Mr. Kyle, sir?”
The CIA case officer Chronister interrupted. “I believe you encountered the gentleman tonight in the Rubicon offices.”
Camille continued to stand erect in front of the colonel and ignored Chronister. “Sir, Mr. Kyle threatened me at gunpoint. I had to disarm him, sir.”
“By tying him up and breaking his fucking neck?” Chronister said with a laugh. “Camille, I always loved that matter-of-factness about you. You really should’ve been a Marine.”
Fuck you, Joe. She continued to stare straight ahead at the colonel. She wasn’t going to fall for his bait—not this time. She wondered why Hunter had done it. He was one of the most deadly men she knew, but also one of the most moral. He wouldn’t kill without reason.
“Black, answer the question. Did you tie Kyle up and break his neck?” Lukson said.
“No, sir. He was alive, sir, when I left, sir.”
“Did you threaten Mr. Kyle?” Lukson leaned back in his chair causing a caster to fall out. He grabbed the desk to catch his balance.
Chronister laughed. Camille remained stoic, silently thanking her father, who would’ve beaten her senseless if that had happened to him when dressing her down and she had so much as cracked a smile. She was exhausted and trying hard not to tremble before the Marine. “May I help you, sir?”
“Goddamn piece of Iraqi shit.” Lukson got down on the floor and shoved the caster back into the base of the wooden chair. “I’m still waiting on your answer, Black. Did you threaten Kyle?”
“Sir, no, sir.”
“Come on, Camille. Did you not tell him…” Chronister pulled a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and put them on. He unfolded a piece of paper and read from it.
“‘All I care about is eliminating the enemy…and as I see it right now, Rubicon is the enemy?’”
Camille stared straight ahead.
“Answer him, Black.”
“Sir, those are my words, sir. Sir, the only way he could know that is if the Agency is bugging Rubicon offices.”
“What’s it to ya if we listen in on your competitors? What were you doing there?” Chronister gnawed on the end of his reading glasses.
“Black!”
“Sir, Rubicon has been muscling in on Black Management assignments. I suspect, sir, that they’re trying to beat us to big arms caches. I also suspect, sir, that’s why the Agency is keeping an eye on them,” she said stiffly, as if she were at a legal deposition.
“Cut the cloak-and-dagger bull-crap. I don’t have much use for spies and I don’t like mercenaries, but one thing I really hate is a traitor. Fuckers should be shot on sight,” Colonel Lukson said to her as he leaned forward. “The OGA has evidence that a few individuals in Rubicon have been in contact with al-Zahrani’s people. Kyle got too close and they popped him. We’re missing the big guy in this picture and I want to know who he is. We might not see eye-to-eye about spies and mercs, but I think we’re all working from the same field manual when it comes to traitors. You seem like a nice, well-mannered girl. Now do the right thing, sweetheart, and tell us the truth about last night.”
“Sir, I am telling the truth, sir. The only thing I have to add, sir, is that after I left Kyle’s office, some Rubicon troops fired on me and tried to kill me. Maybe they got to Kyle first.”
“Was Mr. Kyle alone when you left the office?” Chronister said.
Camille hesitated.
“Was he alone?” The colonel said, his voice rising with irritation.
Even to cover for Hunter, for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to lie to the Marine’s face. Camille turned toward Chronister as she spoke. “Yes. Kyle was alone.”
Chapter Seven
A sprawling agricultural and smuggling hub on the banks of the Euphrates, Ramadi has long been one of the U.S. military’s stickiest problems. The largest city in Sunni-dominated Al Anbar province, Ramadi has degenerated into a haven for insurgents. Even now, when U.S. forces are working to scale back their presence throughout Iraq, daily combat continues to roil the city.
—The Los Angeles Times, June 11, 2006, as reported by Megan K. Stack and Louise Roug
Ramadi, Anbar Province
Every time Hunter entered Ramadi, he felt like a black man in the Deep South during Jim Crow; there were no friendly faces, only hateful stares and the lynch mob was never far away. The people of Ramadi carried their disdain for the Americans as civic pride. Hunter had been shot at on at least three occasions by the American-trained municipal police force and he couldn’t begin to count the number of times civilians had lit him up. He had personally helped rid the city of scores of insurgents, one bullet at a time, but even after years of campaigns, the main roads were more hazardous than ever for Americans.
Hunter was counting on it.
He took a left into a neighborhood where he had once gone door-to-door trick-or-treating and found enough candy to keep the bomb disposal guys happy for a week. It had taken his Marine unit four days to clear a particularly nasty five square block area and about the same amount of time for the insurgents to return once the Marines had pulled back from the area. The neighborhood had been a real fixer-upper even by Iraqi standards and that was before the Marines had trashed the place searching for insurgent nests. While some parts of Ramadi had pallets of bricks on the sidewalks and residents busy repairing the crumbling walls, mortar holes and twisted metal gates, in this part of town the new occupants hadn’t bothered to cover broken windows. Whoever was living here now was not putting down roots.
The two Rubicon SUVs followed him down the narrow street. His own men were now chasing him. It was time to see if they had learned anything from him. He doubted it.
Time to party in haji-land.
He honked the horn, rolled down his bullet-resistant window and stuck his head outside. The black checkered cloth of his headdress flapped in the wind as he yelled in Arabic, “Help! Americans!”
The language he had once delighted in learning back when he was part of the Marine security detachment at the Cairo embassy now made him cringe. He hated the sound of his voice speaking Arabic; the language of poets and scholars had been reduced to his language of combat. He honked again and repeated himself as he drove circling the block.
Halfway into the second circle, he heard the rapid pop of an AK, then several long bursts of gunfire. He hit the brakes and the Navigator skidded to a halt sideways in the middle of the street, blocking traffic. Hunter jumped from the Navigator shouting, “Allahu akbar.”
The flip-flops were at least two sizes too big, but his toes gripped them as tightly as they could as he ran through the back alleys in search of Khalid the tailor.
He could hear the bullets pelting his pursuers’ armored vehicles and hoped for their sake they had been smart enough to immediately call for reinforcements—it would be their only chance.
Chapter Eight
Private military firms are business providers of professional services intricately linked to warfare. That is, they are corporate bodies that specialise in the sale of military skills. They do everything, from leasing out commando teams and offering the strategic advice of ex-generals to running the outsourced supply chains for the US and now British armies. Such firms represent the evolution, globalisation, and corporatisation of the age-old mercenary trade.
—London News Review, March 19, 2004, as contributed by Peter W. Singer
Camp Tornado Point, Anbar Province
Camille stood in Saddam’s former bedroom before the Marine base commander, ignoring CIA case officer Chronister and staring at a point just behind the colonel at one of Saddam’s murals depicting a serpent constricting around a pin-up girl. Camille was thinking about how much she hated herself for once again protecting Hunter. Using the sidearm she had left him with would’ve been loud and Hunter was the quiet type. She had little doubt he had broken Kyle’s neck shortly before he surprised her in her motor pool. She wasn’t about to take the rap for him, but then again she also had no desire to help Chronister nail him. She may have wanted to hurt Hunter for how he had repeatedly betrayed her, but she was loyal in the face of an outside threat and Chronister had long ago proven himself to be just that.
“Colonel Lukson, may I borrow your office for a few moments?” Chronister said as he shooed away a fly. “I need to discuss some things with Ms. Black in private. I might be able to clear this up so you don’t have to hand the investigation over to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.”
“After how they screwed us at Haditha, I’m happy to keep those CID turds from nosing around my base.” Lukson nodded once, stood and walked away.
Camille and the CIA case officer listened to the squeak of his footsteps across the marble floor. As soon as Lukson had left the room, Camille sat down.
“Really, Camille. I didn’t expect you to protect Hunter Stone.”
“You’re a piece of shit, Joe.”
“You just made yourself a murder suspect. We now have reason to detain you. And detention in Iraq can last a very long time.”
“Fuck you. You’re desperate. You can kill anyone you want in this Allah-forsaken country and, unless you’re a grunt fragging an officer, no one gives a damn.” She reached into a cargo pocket of her 5.11s, pulled out a half-pound bag of peanut M&Ms and threw a handful into her mouth.
“But you handed me a little more leverage to persuade you to come back to work for me,” Chronister said as a pigeon flew near them. Both turned their heads and watched as it landed on a headless statue covered in bird droppings. Chronister continued, “And yeah, I’m getting desperate. As soon as I get some loose ends of a project squared away, I finally get to retire.”
“Work for you again? Go to hell.”
“You’ve done well for yourself since leaving the Agency. You’re a rich lady now. Looks to me like you should be thanking me.”
“I got out because I saw an opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted—something I never had at the CIA—despite your promises.” She held the M&Ms in her sweaty hand so long the color was rubbing off them.
“You’re a damn good operator, but you never would’ve survived in the Special Activities Division—no woman ever has. Come on, Camille, you know those operators. They’re all Delta and SEALs. They don’t play with girls. They’re the Agency’s military—they never would’ve let you go out on a mission with them no matter how desperate they got. If I hadn’t stepped in, you’d still be at the Agency making coffee for the boys.”
“Right. And if I were still working for you, I’d be servicing dead drops, sticking messages under things and marking the spots with chalk—takes real skill. You know, I found out that Iggy had actually approved my transfer over to them. I certified in all the Black Book standards—the exact same standards all the Delta operators train to.”
“Camille, honey, no one doubts you’re every bit as good as they are.” He held his hand out and pointed at the M&M bag. “Gimme.”
She hesitated, then poured him a handful, took more for herself and dropped the bag onto the desk. Joe was the one who had gotten her hooked on them back when he had taken her to Algiers on her first undercover mission for the Agency.
“I trained all my life for that kind of action.” Camille wiped her green and red stained palm on her pants. “You lied to me that I’d get it in the Agency.”
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