Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians)

by Peter Nealen

  “I’m not following you,” Jim said.

  “Think about it,” Nick said. “They need to cross the Tigris to get to Kirkuk, or any of the other Kurdish provinces. Where are they going to do that? Here, at Samarra, or way up by Tal’Azbil, which is way the fuck out of the way. They really only would do that if they were planning on going after Erbil. Which is possible,” he conceded, “but I think we’d see and hear about more activity if that was the case. Erbil’s not the flashpoint right now, anyway.

  “So, with Jim to the south, he can spot them if they head for Samarra, and we can find a spot to hunker down out here, where we can watch the Kirkuk-Tikrit road. We might not be able to get in and see what they’re doing in Tikrit, but we can see where they’re going.”

  There was a pause, as we thought over what Nick had said, and Larry finally spotted enough of a gap to surge forward, up onto the road in front of a rusting, red-painted semi-truck, whose driver honked angrily at us as Larry rumbled past in front of him. In some places, that action right there might have drawn unwelcome attention; here, it was business as usual.

  “You’ve got a good point, Key-Lock,” Jim said. “What do you think, Hillbilly?”

  “I think it’s the only way to go, now that Key-Lock’s brought it up,” I said. “The only problem I have with it is that it means we’re not so much collecting information as we are turning into a tripwire.”

  “I don’t have any better ideas, given the situation,” Jim answered. “Trying to get in there is going to mean certain compromise, and that probably isn’t going to end well. Some of these guys might not hate Americans as much as AQI or Jaysh al Mahdi, but they don’t love us, either.”

  “Something else to consider,” Nick pointed out. “If they were jamming last night, and it’s lifted, what does that potentially mean? It tells me they’re getting ready to push. Being the tripwire that sends up the flare that these guys are coming may be the only thing left to do, anyway.”

  “Alright,” I said. “We’re going with the tripwire plan. Kemosabe, get your team where you can observe the main road between Tikrit and Samarra. We’ll do the same on this side of the river. I don’t need to tell you not to get cornered.”

  “No, you don’t,” Jim replied. “We’ll send you all the reports we send to Erbil. See you on the other side.”

  “Roger,” I said. “Out.”

  Larry turned us onto 55, and we started rumbling off to the northeast. There was still traffic heading toward Tikrit, but it wasn’t as thick as on the Kirkuk-Tikrit road. We’d have to time our turnoff carefully, but it would be easier.

  I was keeping my eyes out, watching for any sign that the security forces patrolling around Saqiyah had seen our U-turn and were coming to investigate. I hadn’t been impressed with the due diligence of Iraqi security forces that I’d observed so far, but the kind of lockdown that it appeared they had around Tikrit was new, so I wasn’t going to make any assumptions.

  It didn’t take very long for us to find a turnoff that took us off the main road and into the fields. It was a little bit more interesting going from there, as the roads were narrow dirt tracks and it would have been all too easy to get stuck or slide off into a canal. The canals weren’t deep, but they could still present problems to a truck this size. It wasn’t like the Bears were great off-road vehicles.

  Larry found us a spot near a farm that was, as far as we could tell after about half an hour of observation, abandoned. The fields were fallow, there were no vehicles near the house, and no movement except for the ubiquitous feral dogs. It was about 1200 meters from the main Kirkuk-Tikrit road, which in this terrain, was plenty close enough.

  “Think we really need to get in the back?” Larry asked as he shut the engine down. “It doesn’t seem like there are too many people around to come snooping.”

  “Do you really feel like banking on that?” I asked. “You know as well as I do how people can just come walking up and decide to take a look at something that seems out of place.” Both of us had experienced missions where hides had been compromised by somebody who had been nowhere in sight wandering over for no particular reason and peeking in a loophole.

  “You’ve got a point,” he conceded. “But I don’t like the possibility of somebody coming up and investigating the truck when nobody’s there to run them off or drive away.”

  We had established something of an SOP for using the Bears, but hadn’t really had a chance to work it out in the field. Our SOP, given the distinct lack of Arabs on the team, had been to park it in a strategic location, where we could have eyes-on an objective, then get everyone back in the tank or the bucket before the sun came up. That way, there was just a truck parked on the side of the road, with no sign that it was anything other than what it appeared to be.

  Now, on the ground, that wasn’t feeling like such a good idea. Even aside from the possibility of security forces deciding to investigate the apparently abandoned truck just sitting there, which I would do, considering how much abandoned vehicles had been used as VBIEDs in this country over the last couple decades, there was also the factor that if somebody came along and found a perfectly functional truck just sitting there unattended, they might very well decide to help themselves. Hell, it wasn’t like the rule of law had really stuck in this country for a long, long time.

  “I think you’re right,” I admitted, as I looked around. “It might be better to be able to just drive away if somebody gets too close, especially this close to an Iraqi Mechanized Division.” I filled Nick and the guys in the back in, sent our POSREP to Alek back in Erbil, along with the updated situation and mission profile, got our weapons out and ready in case we had to break out, then settled in to wait, and watch.

  We didn’t have long to wait. The Iraqis weren’t sitting around until nightfall; they moved at midday. They weren’t making a secret about what they were doing as the 12th Division rolled north on the road to Kirkuk.

  Actually, the IPs were first, riding in an assortment of white-and-blue Toyota pickups and tan up-armored Humvees with PKP Pecheneg machineguns mounted on the turrets. Behind them came the Army.

  It was weird as hell, watching that column. Even as late as some of us had come on the scene—I’d missed Iraq and most of Afghanistan—we had still grown up expecting the bad guys to be using all old Soviet or Chinese knockoffs of Soviet equipment. AKs, T-72s, Hinds, the whole works. Now we were looking at what we could only consider an enemy formation, for all we could tell headed to attack our employers and the best ally America had had in the country, decked out in the best the United States had to offer. The lead vehicles were Stryker combat vehicles, followed by M113s and M1A1 Abrams tanks. Seeing NSV and KPV heavy machineguns mounted on the Abrams and Strykers made it even weirder.

  Most of the trucks, travelling between the Strykers and the tanks, were older American 5-tons. None of the vehicles looked to be in the best shape; they hadn’t had American contractors to help them maintain them for some time. I’m not saying that Iraqis are incapable of maintaining their equipment; just that most of the time they don’t bother. Either manual labor is beneath them, or they figure that it’ll work insh’allah. On the other hand, I’d seen Iraqis get the most banged-up piles of scrap to run, somehow.

  It took a while for the whole column to pass. As a rule, tactical vehicles don’t move as quickly as civilian vehicles do, in large part because they’re a hell of a lot heavier. Keeping a column together is also a lot of work, even on an established road. It becomes especially difficult in a place like Iraq, where the locals don’t think anything of cutting into a military column. That was why a lot of civilians got their cars shredded by machinegun fire during the war. In an environment thick with VBIEDs, the locals would act as though they could just drive wherever they wanted, including in with US military vehicles or through checkpoints. After all, they weren’t bad guys, so they had nothing to worry about, right?

  As we watched the tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, troop trucks, a
nd logistics vehicles roll by, a new roar made both Larry and I look up. About five hundred feet up, a wedge formation of a half dozen Mi-17 Hip helicopters, older Russian transport choppers that formed the backbone of the Iraqi Air Force’s transport fleet, such as it was, rumbled by, heading north.

  “Six Hips,” Larry commented. “That’s most of their inventory, isn’t it?”

  “It’s supposed to be,” I replied, craning my neck to look out the passenger side window, hopefully without exposing myself too much. I was trying to see if I could catch a glimpse of who or what the helos were carrying, but no such luck. The doors were closed, and they were cruising. “This is big.”

  “How big, though?” Larry asked, leaning over the steering wheel to look at the helos through the windshield. “They can’t be going after all of Kurdistan with only one division and a bunch of IPs.”

  “Maybe the Hips are for something else,” I thought out loud. “Maybe…” I snapped my fingers. “What if they’ve got their own HVT list, and that’s ISOF going after them?”

  “That won’t be good,” Larry said. “Especially considering that we very well might be on that list, given the support we’ve given the KRG over the last few months.”

  I grabbed the intercom. “Nick, how much of this are you guys getting back there?”

  “All of it, brother,” Nick told me. “We’re pretty much live-streaming it to Erbil.”

  “Including those choppers?”

  “Yep,” he replied. “Don’t think I like the looks of that, man,” he said. “I didn’t think the Iraqis had very many big transport helos.”

  “They don’t,” I replied. “Even with the latest shipment from the Russians.”

  “Big op, then,” Nick said.

  “Big op,” I agreed. “Patch me through to the TOC.”

  It took a few seconds, but Alek’s voice came through. “Send it, Hillbilly.”

  “You getting all this, Bossman?” I asked.

  “Stills and video both,” he replied. “It’s about what Haas said it would be.”

  “At least at first glance,” I said. “I’m wondering, with all the other unrest in this shithole of a country, how they justified using half their Hips to secure one city. Isn’t there a lot more trouble out by Fallujah and Ramadi right now?”

  “There is,” he said thoughtfully. “AQI is pushing hard, with a lot of new fighters coming in from Syria. Not to mention a couple of the Awakening militias breaking with Baghdad and essentially forcing government security forces out of Habaniyah the other day.”

  “Holy shit, I didn’t hear anything about that.” Larry looked over at me with an eyebrow raised.

  “We just found out about it,” Alek said. “Apparently a couple of the local sheikhs got sick and tired of being pushed around by Shi’a-dominated IPs, got their men together, most of whom had fought AQI back in the late oughts, surrounded the police station, and ran them out of town. The government is pissed, but nobody was killed, and they’re running into some unexpected resistance from the Al Anbar provincial governor. But they will go in to reestablish control sooner or later, that’s for sure.”

  “How did last night’s raid go?” I asked, my eyes still fixed on the platoon of Abrams tanks, with Iraqi flags flying from their antenna masts, that was rumbling past. It looked like we were coming up on the rearguard.

  “Like clockwork,” Alek replied. “Mike and his boys got back here just before sunup. No losses. Abu Fariq is dead, along with most of the trigger-pullers, but Saif is in having a nice chat with Haas right now.” He chuckled. “He was a little bewildered when they pulled him off the helo this morning.”

  “I bet.” I watched as the final platoon of Strykers brought up the rear of the column and checked my watch. It had been almost three hours since the column started moving past us. “The division is almost past, Alek. We’re going to hold position until dark, then exfil. I don’t think there’s very much more we can find out from here at the moment. We were behind the power curve all the way on this one.”

  “No help for it, brother,” Alek replied. “Get back here; I have a feeling we might have our hands full, especially if they decide that Iraqis should be controlling the oil fields up here.”

  That was a possibility I hadn’t thought about. “You think they’d go after American workers?”

  “These days, I wouldn’t put anything past anybody,” Alek replied. “Stay safe, and I’ll be in touch when you get back to Kirkuk, unless something else comes up before then.”

  “Roger. Hillbilly out.”

  The rest of the day just crawled. It’s hard enough to sit in a hide when nothing’s going on, just staring at the mostly empty desert, whiling away the time until sundown. But we knew there was going to be a lot of work back in Kirkuk, and that column was going to get there before we even started back. Having to use proper fieldcraft and stay put with that knowledge was tough.

  Larry and I switched off staying awake; it had been a long night. You had to get what sleep you could, while you could in this business, especially when you were moving all night. It was hot, and that made sleep difficult, but we couldn’t leave the engine running with the A/C on, not if we wanted to look like an abandoned vehicle. So, one of us dozed fitfully while the other watched, and we waited for darkness.

  The sun lowered toward the horizon, and met the haze of smoke and dust that sapped its heat an hour before it truly set. Once it was down, and darkness settled over the Iraqi desert, we waited another hour before Larry reached down and started the Bear with a rumble that echoed across the abandoned fields. After a few moments to let the engine warm up, and to make sure that we were relatively unobserved, we started moving. Quick comm checks let us know that Jim was already moving. We also found out just how desperately we needed to get back north.

  Chapter 5

  The safehouse was actually more of a complex of ramshackle buildings on the northeastern edge of Shoraw Village, just outside of Kirkuk. There were no lights visible, but a single IR chemlight gleamed from the corner of the top floor window, on the furthest east building.

  We actually beat Jim’s team there; not having to divert to Samarra Dam helped a lot. There were half a dozen civilian vehicles parked outside the safehouse, but no sign of the other Bear. I was sure that there were tactical vehicles hidden somewhere, but they would have been carefully camouflaged, especially with Iraqi helos in the air overhead.

  Larry pulled the Bear up to the southwest side of the buildings and shut off the engine. We both had our weapons out and our NVGs up. We wouldn’t even move from the cab without the proper recognition signal.

  The signal came from a shadowy figure in the doorway a few yards away. An IR lamp blinked three times. I reached up and acknowledged with two. Then I got out.

  Hal was standing in the doorway, all kitted up, with his OSW FAL in his hands. I was sure that at least two others from his team were in the windows, watching, set back so they couldn’t be seen from outside, even with thermals. He held out his hand as I approached. “Good to see you guys back. I take it Alek filled you in?”

  “Somewhat,” I answered, as behind me Larry started opening the tank and helping the other guys get their gear out. “What the fuck happened?”

  “Those helos you eyeballed yesterday?” Hal said as he led the way inside. “They were full of ISOF troops, and headed for the Baba Dome East complex. They hit the Liberty compound just before it got dark.” He shook his head. “It was a good hit; they knew what they were doing, and had obviously rehearsed it thoroughly. The whole thing was over in less than thirty minutes.”

  “Motherfuck.” I couldn’t be much more eloquent than that. “Did we lose anybody?”

  “No,” he answered. “All the teams were elsewhere. From what I’ve heard, a few of the site security guys might have been shot, but only if they opened fire on the ISOF guys. They played this one like pros, man.”

  “That’s not enough to justify attacking assets of foreign nationals,” I po
inted out. “Not that the US is going to do anything about it, but Liberty was here thanks to an agreement with both the KRG and the Iraqi Federal government. Their Corporate can produce the documentation to prove it, too. Fire discipline doesn’t justify the attack.”

  “Who do they have to justify it to, man?” Hal asked, as we got to the small, field-expedient operations center set up in one of the central rooms. “You said yourself the US isn’t going to do shit. Europe’s fragmented, broke, and rioting, and the UN are just lapdogs to the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians now. Not that the UN was ever effective at anything anyway. They really don’t have to justify shit.”

  He had a point. Still, it wasn’t like it changed anything. Even though Praetorian didn’t handle site security for Liberty’s assets in Iraqi Kurdistan, they were still our people and our client’s assets had been forcibly seized, in violation of previous agreements. Not that agreements on paper seemed to matter much anywhere anymore, but we couldn’t, wouldn’t let it go unanswered. Whether or not we could secure the oil facilities in any sort of permanent manner was up in the air, and from where I sat, looked pretty unlikely, but at the very least, we had to get the people out.

  “What about the city?” I asked.

  Hal stepped over to a map of Kirkuk that had been taped up on the wall. “It’s still calm, for the moment.” He traced the general line of demarcation between the Kurdish quarter and the Turcoman and Arab parts of the city. “There’s been some resistance from the Turcomans, but mostly just of the protest variety, easily dispersed. They haven’t tried to push into the Kurdish section yet; I suspect they’re waiting for morning.”

  I nodded. Behind me, Larry, Nick, Bryan, and Malachi came in, lugging their gear. Malachi asked if he should get mine, but I told him no, I’d get it in a little bit. Turning back to the map, I focused on the Baba Dome East complex.

  The Baba Dome oil field had been exploited off and on for decades, but the breakdown of order in Iraq in general and de facto partition of Kirkuk province had effectively pushed the North Oil Co. out of the Baba Dome East complex. The company’s collapse had contributed, as well. For several years, no one had done much with the field; most of the wells had been capped or simply abandoned.