Shadows at War

by Capps, Kenneth L. ;

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  September 2006

  Briggs jumped from the back seat of an up-armored Humvee onto the dusty ground that floated up around his ankles like talcum powder.

  “Man, it’s good to see you, Sarge!” Blake called out.

  “Now there’s a familiar sight,” Briggs remarked as the dust settled back on his boots. Blake gave Briggs a friendly slap on the back as he assisted him with his gear.

  “Everything been okay ’round here?” Briggs asked, looking around. His innate concern for the welfare of the men in his platoon overrode any other thought.

  “All accounted for. Everyone has their fingers and toes. Man, it’s good to see you. Welcome home to Iraq, where the action never stops, the food sucks, and everything blows up.” Blake slapped him on the back again. Briggs grinned, nodding.

  Over the next month, Briggs and Blake grew surprisingly close, considering their tenuous history. Their conversations always seemed to come back to Blake’s Uncle Shelby, anticipating all the good times they would have when they returned home. Their combat rotation would screw them out of being home for Christmas, and they wouldn’t return to the States until early next year, but they were okay with it. Other battalions would get to be home with their families, but at least Briggs’s platoon would enjoy easier duties for a while, mostly training and base security. There was the occasional combined operation out in the badlands, but mainly they stuck close to the operations base. They were able to Skype home every day to stay connected with loved ones. The atmosphere was extremely relaxed, and the Marines too, all except for Briggs. He couldn’t let go of the inconsistencies in Check’s description of Trust and his own and Blake’s experiences with the man. What was the truth? What was he missing?

  Since the day Briggs got back to Iraq, it seemed like Check was around him all the time, in one form or another. Even though they were discrete, Briggs was aware that Check’s men were shadowing him, especially around Blake. After a while, he got used to it. What could he do about it? So he started to let up a little, relax just a smidgeon, and accept the reality of his new undercover life. The upside to this loss of privacy was a sense of security. There were lots of eyes on him, watching, waiting, and protecting. That meant all those around him were doubly protected too, and they didn’t even know it. He even had a hunch that the light duty they were pulling was because Check had fixed it that way. Eventually, Briggs chose to look at the entire situation as a win-win, accepting that it was worth putting up with Check’s constant surveillance if it kept his men at the lowest possible level of risk.

  Late one night, Briggs was awakened by his cell phone buzzing. It was Check.

  He told Briggs to get dressed and wait for one of his men to pick him up. Briggs was driven off the base in a small, white panel van with no windows and a sheet of plywood covering the back doors. He had seen it several times on the base. It was used to deliver local fruits and vegetables, along with the occasional freshly butchered goat or lamb. The only seats were for the driver and passenger in the front. The windshield was so horribly fractured, seeing through it seemed impossible. But the driver—a local—skillfully maneuvered through the dusty roads. The van stunk like a barnyard, and dried blood clung to the walls. Apparently, livestock was butchered right in the back. Or maybe something worse. Briggs didn’t ask, but he did make a mental note to better scrutinize the food in the chow hall. The makeshift floorboard of plywood bounced up and down every time they hit a pothole.

  Three of Check’s goons were inside the back of the van, all armed to the teeth with serious non-government-issue hardware. Briggs noticed they all were carrying Glock .40 caliber pistols with extended magazines. It was the same type of pistol Check carried—apparently the chosen weapon of these high-end gunslingers who provided security for people at the upper levels of the food chain.

  Check’s men didn’t say a word until the van came to a stop. One of them slid a section of plywood aside, exposing a rusted-out hole in the floor of the van just to the side of the drive shaft to the rear axle.

  “Okay, jump down and watch your step,” he said to Briggs.

  Under the van was a steel door that opened downward into a passageway. Briggs started to swing his weapon over his shoulder to climb down the ladder when one of the men said, “Here, hand it to me, and I’ll pass it down to you.”

  Briggs handed him the firearm, not giving it a second thought until he got to the bottom. A man pointed him down to the end of the shaft, where another was holding a blue-lens flashlight, showing the way. His heart picked up speed as he looked up, realizing that his weapon was not going to be handed down to him. The ladder was dragged upward and the door shut tight. Dust and small fragments of rock rained down on the floor of the passageway as Briggs heard the van rumble off, his weapon in it.

  Damn it, should have seen that one coming.

  He fumed for a few minutes, hands clenched tightly into fists, until his breathing slowed and he could reason out the situation. This must be their protocol. I’m not one of the boys . . . yet. You don’t trust anyone outside of the club. Makes sense. Hell, I would have done the same thing.

  He kept his mouth shut and followed the blue-lens flashlight along the passageway, all the while taking stock of his surroundings and everything he saw. He’d counted five of Check’s men: three in the van and two in the tunnel. Their weapons were all short range, close-quarters type of firearms, which meant number six—their sniper—was somewhere on top with a long-range weapon. All the men he’d seen so far were wired with headsets, a radio antenna protruding out of the back shoulder pocket of their vests. They wore dark heavy pants, long-sleeved shirts, and baseball caps with small LED lights in the bill. The elbows and knees of their clothing had thick padding sewn in them, which helped them fall comfortably into a fighting position without needing pads strapped to their legs and arms. Their shirts, as well as their pants, were made of Kevlar—big-time expensive. They also wore black Danner combat boots with fighting knives tucked into them. Briggs could tell from their gear and their actions that these guys were high-speed professionals, picked for their exceptional talents. Briggs recognized these men. They had been on the same flight, but they hadn’t spoken to him—not a word—during the entire eleven-hour journey to Iraq.

  The men led him to a passageway with a tight spiral staircase at the end of it. His two escorts descended first, their boots making a metallic clicking sound on each metal step. Down, down, down. Briggs counted over twenty-five steps on his way to the bottom of the ladder well. His best estimate was that they were more than thirty-five or forty feet underground. When they reached the bottom, they entered another large passageway that had railcar tracks in the center of it, and Briggs had to be careful where he walked to keep from tripping.

  One more right turn and they were out of the main passageway, and the tracks disappeared into the darkness behind him. He passed several small rooms along the corridor. Some had sturdy steel doors with large heavy hinges and locks. He could smell fresh paint. Reaching out, he lightly touched a door. The paint was still tacky. He counted six doors down the main hallway and six more as he and his escorts made a right turn down another passageway. Each door in this new passageway was bolted shut with two large padlocks, some type of double security requiring two people, or two keys. At the end of the second hallway, the men made another right turn to pass through back-to-back doors, both heavily guarded by more men in similar dress, carrying similar weapons.

  Briggs didn’t even bother to look at their faces at this point. He concentrated on his path. There was more light at the end of the second tunnel, but they were all red lights, like on a ship’s overhead passageways.

  “Okay, stop here,” one of his escorts said. “Go through this door, wait until I close it, and the other door will open. Pass through it and the colonel will be waiting for you on the other side.”

  Briggs nodded and followed the instructions. The second door swung open, and he was hit by a b
right light pouring in from a large, cavernous room with several large pillars supporting the ceiling above. Check sprung from a chair in front of a desk still wrapped in plastic.

  “Sorry to yank you out of bed this late at night,” he said. “Coffee?”

  “No, but thanks,” Briggs replied as he scanned the enormous room. It was full of boxes and crates, stacked to the ceiling in some spots. He estimated the room was as big as a football field with a ten-foot-high ceiling.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Check said as he leaned against the desk, the plastic crackling in protest. “This is just one of five such caverns we’ve discovered. Saddam Hussein and his henchmen squirreled away a lot of stuff. Everything in this place is brand new, from computers to tanks. The bigger items are in another location out in the desert. Some of these boxes are full of humanitarian aid sent during the embargo for the Iraqi people. If you notice the smell, that’s fresh produce that was supposed to be delivered to schools and soup kitchens in the poorer neighborhoods. They just piled it up in here and let it spoil.” Check looked out over the expansive hollow. “Fuckers.”

  Briggs noticed several flashes from a high-speed camera taking pictures on the other side of the wall of green plywood boxes. He nodded in that direction and lifted his eyebrows in question at Check.

  “We’re taking inventory of all of this to determine where it came from,” Check explained. “It makes our job easier if the shipping crates aren’t destroyed. Take a look at this picture.”

  On the desk was a photograph. Check slid it over for Briggs to take a look: a box with an odd icon on it.

  “That little insignia is one of Trust Industry’s marks. There are several of them in here.”

  This surprised Briggs, but he remained quiet, taking it all in. Check didn’t mention what was in the boxes, and Briggs didn’t bother asking. He knew that if he needed to know, they would tell him.

  Check eyed Briggs for a reaction, and apparently seeing nothing, he continued the history of the stash. “I never did like working in supply, but that’s where I was stuck for two years after getting wounded in Lebanon. It’s paying off big time right now because I was able to find some similarities among all the chaos. The captain—let’s call him Rex—who Hussein had assigned to hide all of this got the job because he had a photographic memory. He was instructed to never make a list of anything stored anywhere.” Check pursed his lips, rocked back on his heels.

  Briggs’s eyes started to narrow.

  “But he did make a list. Apparently he was going to sell the list to the US in exchange for his freedom and a nice home in the States. Saddam found out about it, of course.”

  Check pulled another chair up to the desk and indicated for Briggs to sit down. Check continued talking as he paced back and forth.

  “So the deal was never closed. Our sources tell us that sometime in 2001, Hussein sent two of his most trusted men to pick up Rex.” Check paused. “These two fine, upstanding gentlemen were Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay. That set a lot of things in motion, especially when Daddy told his two most trusted psychopathic henchmen children to bring him the lowly bookkeeper with no books. They were told to take Rex to one of his little playhouses—not so fun for Rex though. Uday and Qusay knew well enough that no one came back from the playhouses.

  “Now, being the greedy little sorts that they were, they knew Rex was worth big bucks to Daddy, so they decided to try to cash in for themselves. After all, if Daddy wanted this guy for some reason, then the sons knew they would want it as well.” Check scoffed. “Distrust and dishonor: a family tradition.”

  Briggs nodded, trying to hide his impatience.

  “When they arrived at Rex’s house, they asked him a few questions while he was tied to a chair in the kitchen. They made themselves at home, drinking his hidden stash of wine and raping his wife and two daughters. Rex kept his mouth shut. Not a word. What the two of them were doing was nothing compared to what Saddam would do to him if he talked. Rex knew this. He held out for a long time, but eventually he broke. The bookkeeper of all the secrets not written down confessed that he had written them down and that he’d planned to sell the secrets to the United States.”

  “Is that what this is all about? Saddam’s stash of ill-gotten goods?”

  “You’re getting there,” Check replied, holding up a finger. “You see, Scott, we are looking for hidden weapons of mass destruction. Did you notice all the boxes with Chinese markings, and Russian ones too?”

  Briggs had noticed, but a voice screamed inside his head, Bullshit. He was no dummy. If weapons of mass destruction were what Check and his men were really looking for, every one of them would be in hazmat suits, swabbing down boxes for trace elements. No, there was something else to this whole thing, something bigger. He was sure of it.

  “The list. You’re looking for Rex’s list,” he whispered.

  “It would speed up the process.”

  “And Rex is dead?”

  “Well, he’s not around for us to ask him about the notebook. At one point in the friendly little conversation between Rex and the boys, Rex got a backbone. He decided to take them to ‘the notebook’ hidden in the walls of his office. Off they go to retrieve it, right? I mean, the sons figured Rex was surely telling the truth at this point, since they’d used the majority of his kitchen utensils to convince him to do so, if you know what I mean. But when they got to the office, the notebook was not to be found, and the sons had an epiphany that Rex had lied to them in order to get them away from his home, his family. That’s when they tried to beat it out of him. He died in the process.”

  “So how did you find this place?” Briggs asked, figuring that he wouldn’t get an answer.

  “Rex’s wife,” Check blurted.

  Startled by this new information, the wheels started spinning in Briggs’s head. He was like a duck sitting on the water. His facial expression was sturdy and fixed, but he was paddling like hell beneath the surface.

  “You’re going to figure it out sooner or later.” Check sat on the corner of the desk. “The deal Rex was making, to sell the list and come to the States with his family, was with me. I was put in charge of executing the deal. By the time Uday and Qusay figured out that Rex was lying, the wife had got on the satellite phone we’d given Rex. We got her out of there, along with the book. We were in the middle of putting the deal together when Saddam found out, and the whole thing blew up in our faces. Are you following this?”

  “I think so,” Briggs said. “You thought Saddam’s WMDs would be revealed in the notebook.”

  “More importantly, we hoped to find them before the war started, to add to our justification for invading. WMDs make a certain group of people shut up very quickly and a president and his war machine look justified.”

  “So have you found the WMDs yet?”

  “Not so fast. I haven’t finished my story.”

  Briggs exhaled a frustrated breath and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Ah come on, it’s a good story.” Check started to pace back and forth once again. “Now the wife wants to play the game. She tells my guys who got her and her daughters out of the apartment that she knows where the other notebooks are hidden. But first she wants to go to America. And she wants to drag along her entire family, right down to her damn grandfather—all before she will tell us. Of course we tell her ‘hell no’ and lean on her, saying we already knew where most of the notebooks were, just not all of them. We tell her if she will give us the books, we will put her and her daughters on a flight out that night. She agrees and pulls a notebook from underneath her burqa.” Check slapped the desk. “Ha! How about that? She had it on her the entire time.” He walked to the far end of the desk and placed his hands on the corner of it to stretch out his back.

  Briggs could hear voices at the far end of the storage room and could still see the occasional camera flash. “So did you get all the books?”

  “No. We just got the one she had on her, and we know she did
n’t have any others. My guys moved her and her daughters to a safe house and started to gather up the rest of her family to get them out of Iraq. She was told to stay put while we verified the location of one of the caches on the other side of town—just like this one, only a little smaller. There are a total of twelve of these caches, and we’ve only found five so far. Using the book that came from the wife, I found some clues that gave away the other locations. My guys were all Iraqi nationals serving as double agents, so gathering intel was fairly easy. They were extremely patriotic and wanted to build a better Iraq after the war they knew was coming.”

  Check paused for a long period before he began again. “When my guys returned to the safe house after verifying the first stash, something happened. I think they were followed, or an informant ratted them out. I’m not sure. A firefight broke out and someone tossed a grenade in the room with Rex’s wife. So now she’s gone, and all we have is the one notebook.”

  He pointed at Briggs. “Hence the reason we recruited you.” Check looked at Briggs narrowly. “Trust knows the location of the other stash houses.”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “Take a look at this.” Check handed Briggs a small device. It was cylindrical, like a cigar holder, only thinner. “So far, we have found twenty-four of these hidden in various places among the boxes here. Some are marked Russian, some are marked Chinese, and some from Trust Industries, but all with the same type of device putting out the same encrypted location signal.”

  Briggs tried to control the explosion in his head as the evidence being presented to him revealed the bad side of Trust that Check had been warning him about. A side Briggs hadn’t seen and had begun to believe wasn’t there.

  “If he knows where all the stash houses are, then why don’t you just ask him?”

  “We can’t trace a single thing back to him. All the devices are encrypted with a cancellation code.”

  “What does that mean?”