Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians)

by Peter Nealen

  Some of the guys seemed to be a little in shock, particularly Tony’s guys. Larry, Jim, and I weren’t all that surprised, but we had to play this carefully. I supposed that the “sounding out” I’d been suggesting had just happened whether we wanted it or not, but when you’re operating without much in the way of support, out in the wind the way we were, it didn’t pay to take chances. And being too trusting equaled taking chances. “I don’t have the final say on that, Haas,” I said. “I’m going to have to consult with the other partners.”

  He nodded. “I understand. Don’t take too long, though. I don’t think we have a lot of time to dick around.”

  We didn’t, especially with an enemy facilitator in the next tent. It was only a matter of time before the bad guys figured out he was missing, and acted accordingly. We didn’t quite have the one advantage we’d had in Somalia anymore—there, the bad guys hadn’t had the slightest clue of who we were. Here, there was already a price on our heads. I wouldn’t put it past either AQI or Qods Force to try to send somebody after us in Erbil. That was, of course, why we had a few of these little FOBs scattered around, off the record.

  I traded glances with Jim, who nodded ever so slightly. He’d keep an eye on Haas and our wayward rent-a-spook, Tim, while I went outside to make a call. I grabbed the sat-phone off the comm bench, and headed outside.

  It was getting warm as the day got later, but not as warm as down in the lowlands. A light breeze passed through the low trees and rustled the tents. I extended the antenna and dialed the number. As far as we knew, the Iranians and Iraqi security forces still couldn’t listen in on satellite comms. Unless the NSA decided to help them out, but that way lay a deeper paranoia than I was willing to entertain at the moment.

  Alek answered it. I was starting to wonder if he ever slept these days. Being out of the field and in an op-center wasn’t good for him. “Has our boy talked already?” he asked.

  “Nope,” I answered. “We haven’t even started the conversation yet. We had an unexpected visitor.”

  “What’s going on?” Alek was suddenly wary. There weren’t supposed to be any unexpected visitors at the FOBs.

  “Your boy Haas crashed the party,” I told him. “Says Tim’s OPSEC sucks, and now he wants on board. He also says that there are some State pukes poking around Erbil, and he seems to think they’re more interested in us than in Qods Force or a war between Baghdad and the KRG.”

  “Shit.” Alek sounded more tired than anything else. “And I take it he’s using it as leverage?”

  “Not really,” I said. “If anything, he’s using it to establish his bona-fides. He pointed out that he’s had his suspicions for a while, and hasn’t breathed a word. He even implied that he’s got his own vendetta; said that Danny was a friend of his.” I pondered something for a moment before adding, “He’s either got a hell of a backup plan, or he’s got brass balls, because he showed up alone somewhere where we could just dump his ass in a shallow grave and nobody would be any the wiser. I’m pretty sure he’s entirely aware of that possibility, too.” It said something about our current situation that that statement was by no means hyperbole. It was an option. It wasn’t one I wanted to resort to, but nobody ever said irregular warfare was pretty.

  “You’ve got a point,” Alek allowed. “What do you think?”

  “I already said what I think,” I said. “The guy’s sharp as a tack, and he’s already pointed us at Abu Qadir. I think he’s an asset, and he’s effectively put himself at our mercy.”

  “What’s your next move?” Alek asked.

  “We put Haas to work on Abu Qadir. We wring every bit of information out of him we can. After that, the picture might be a little clearer. Situation dictates from there.”

  There was a silence as Alek thought it over. “We’ll go with your judgment for now. I’ll call Tom and see what he thinks. I know he figured that Haas was too big a risk, but it does look like he’s handed us a pretty limited set of options. Keep an eye on him. We still haven’t vetted him as much as I’d like.”

  I couldn’t argue. Haas’ approach left a lot to be desired. He probably was on our side, but the whole world had turned into a place where you trusted the people you knew, and suspected anybody else. It was tribal as fuck, but that tends to happen when economies collapse, with societies either a short distance behind them, or just in front. We’d have been just as suspicious if he’d walked in to an office back in the States, wearing a suit and tie, with a packet full of documentation under his arm.

  “Any other developments I should know about?” I asked.

  “Not really,” he said. “There have been a few skirmishes between Peshmerga and IPs in Kirkuk, but no real movement in one direction or another. The IPs tried a raid the other day and were repulsed pretty quick. So far, the IA has kept outside of the city, suggesting that they are giving the IPs enough rope to hang themselves. There’s never been a lot of love lost between them; my guess is that they’re going to wait until the IPs manage to royally fuck it up, then move in to ‘mop up.’ For the moment, though, it sounds like Baghdad wants to keep this a police action on Iraqi soil as much as possible.”

  “Are any IA units moving toward Kurdistan otherwise?”

  “Not yet. Like I said, it looks like they’re trying to keep this limited to Kirkuk province. The Kurds aren’t buying it, though. The Peshmerga are starting to mobilize.”

  “The IA are just sitting there?” I asked.

  “They’re manning checkpoints,” he said. “In a lot of ways, it’s kind of like Fallujah back in ’04, before the big push.”

  “Anything more from the ISOF?”

  “Not yet. They seem to be waiting for something. I think when you guys busted our people out, they lost their target deck.”

  “No, they didn’t,” I replied grimly. “They just need an excuse to get to Erbil or Sulaymaniyah. Just wait.”

  Two very unpleasant days later, we didn’t have much more than we’d had before.

  Malachi was up and around, though he was bandaged pretty heavily, and his eye was gone. He tried to joke about it, but he was in a lot of pain.

  Haas, Jim, and I were gathered in the main tent, sitting on little camping stools that barely held our weight. Larry couldn’t use one; in fact, he didn’t trust the cots with his bulk, and was sleeping on the floor in the corner.

  “He doesn’t know much,” Haas confessed. “He’s not handing out target packages like we thought; he’s funneling money, intel, and contacts for weapons and explosives. He’s a facilitator, nothing more.” He ran a hand over his unshaven jaw. “It took six broken fingers, four smashed toes, and one crushed testicle to be sure of that.”

  Nobody batted an eye. We were way past the point of being worried about the justification of torturing a terrorist for information. These cocksuckers killed civilians to make a political point. As far as we were concerned, they had removed themselves from any sphere where they might have been entitled to sympathy. They had no rights. Fuck ‘em. Besides, they would do the same to us in an eyeblink.

  “That seems to be the model for the last few years,” I agreed. “Funding agents of chaos is harder to trace, never mind harder to shut down. There’s no hierarchy, so there’s no chain to follow up.”

  “Even if we can figure out where the targets are, we are nowhere near being capable of trying to intercept attacks on all of them,” Jim said. “Only thing we can do is go as high as we can, and then move down. Follow the money contacts. We’ll never get all of them, but we can hurt them. Which is about all we ever hoped to do.”

  “What I can’t quite figure out,” Haas admitted, “is why they’re doing so much to spread random terror. I can see going after the Salafists; hell, they’ve been doing that for several years now—some even during the Syrian civil war. But this could threaten to destabilize the entire country, when they’ve got more influence in Baghdad than they ever have.”

  I frowned, looking down at the dirt. “Yeah, they have the I
raqi parliament mostly in the palm of their hand, but that’s not enough to necessarily station Iranian military forces and equipment on Iraqi soil. There are too many Iraqis who still remember the Iran-Iraq war, not to mention how much damage Qods Force’s facilitators did during the occupation. If they can disrupt things enough, they might hope there won’t be enough organized resistance if they move.”

  “You think they want to occupy Iraq?” Jim asked. “Why?”

  I looked up at the two of them bleakly. I didn’t like where my thoughts were going any more than they were going to. “They lost their primary launch platform for attacks on Israel when they lost Syria. They sure weren’t ready for a bunch of rag-tag, Saudi-funded insurgents to overthrow their ally, even with their assistance. I don’t think they’re going to be fucking around anymore. Not only do they want an ally closer to Israel, they don’t want a hard-core Salafist state right next door to them. They’ll want to be in a position to crush any AQI rising with overwhelming force.

  “Not only that, but if they move missiles into Iraq, their target list gets a little longer, both to the west and south.”

  “You think they’ve got nukes already?” Jim asked quietly.

  “They haven’t slowed down, except when Mossad kills a few of their scientists, or CIA puts a new virus in their computers. That hasn’t apparently happened in a few years. And it’s not like they’ve made it a big secret what they plan to do with nukes once they get them.”

  There was another silence. If it was true, the stakes had just gone up. That was wholly beside the now almost inevitable war between Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Damn, how did we keep landing in the middle of these fucking powder kegs?

  Because it was what we did, of course. The alternative was go live in poverty in a United States that was looking more and more like Iraq or Afghanistan every year.

  Bob had come in through the flap as I was speaking. A glance at a watch showed that it was just about change-over time for security. “Ah, shit, did this just become a nuke hunt?” he said, “Because that’s going to be a huge cliché when they make the movie.”

  The mood lightened somewhat. “What makes you think we’re going to let you anywhere near Hollyweird, pretty boy?” I asked. “We wouldn’t get any work out of you.”

  Bob chuckled. A year ago he would have gotten pissed, but he wasn’t the designated FNG anymore. He’d seasoned in Somalia, and grown. He sobered quickly. “Seriously, though. Nukes?”

  “Like I said, the Iranians haven’t made it a secret,” I replied. “We haven’t got anything solid yet, just supposition based on their actions, but it makes sense.”

  “Damn.” It wasn’t often Bob was at a loss for words, but he seemed to be this time. “What the hell do we do, then?”

  “We put as much of a monkey wrench in their plans as we can,” I said. “I doubt they’re interested in nuking Iraq. They want Israel. They might want Salafist Syria and Arabia. If they do have nukes, they probably don’t have very many; they’re not going to want to waste them. If we can stymie them here, we might be able to buy somebody a decent chance.” I didn’t have any illusions that we were singlehandedly going to be able to stop the Iranians’ plans for long. Didn’t mean it wasn’t worth a try, though.

  “Find the Qods Force officers,” Haas said. “Find the facilitators. If we can take out the active cells along the way, so much the better, but if we can cut off their sources of funding and intel, it’ll be a big step.”

  “It’ll be a step,” Jim allowed. “But experience has shown that these sorts of small, independent cells can still do a hell of a lot of damage, without direction. The IRGC might just get their cassus belli without having to lift a finger.”

  “Maybe.” I stood up. “We need to get back to Erbil and have a proper planning skull-session. The other teams need to be brought in on this, anyway. And it looks like we need to relocate this FOB, anyway,” I added, with a scowl in Tim’s general direction. We’d had a teammate named Tim, but he’d gone down with a bullet in the neck in Kismayo. Our cheap rent-a-spook was not a good replacement.

  “What about the prisoners?” Haas asked.

  “Shallow grave,” was all I said. Jim’s and Bob’s faces hardened as Haas looked at us. I don’t think he was expecting that. “Unless you think you can get more out of them?”

  He shook his head. “No, I doubt it. It’s probably not worth the time and effort.” He paused for a second, looking down at his hands.

  “You got a problem with killing terrorists, Haas?” I asked quietly.

  He met my eyes, and hesitation was replaced with something else. “No,” he answered, straightening up. “It just takes a little adjustment, I’ll admit. Executing illegal combatants was off the table for a long time.”

  “Yeah, well, we follow a bit older set of rules,” I said. “Rules that work.”

  He nodded. “It’s been a long time since anybody on our side has.”

  “Which is why we’ve been losing,” I said.

  We flew to Erbil without incident, and soon found ourselves back in the main op-center. Alek was waiting for us, along with Hal and his team. There were two guys in dark suits standing off to one side who I’d never seen before, but I knew who they had to be as soon as I walked into the room.

  Alek looked pissed. Understandably so, if the suits were who I thought they were. The two of them stepped forward as we came in.

  “Which one of you is Mr. Stone?” the first guy asked. He was clean-shaven, his hair neatly combed and parted. He looked like he belonged in an office, not out here.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked.

  He looked taken aback. I’m sure in his little circle of bureaucrats nobody ever questioned his authority, certainly not as belligerently as I did.

  “The name is Collins,” he said. “I’m with the State Department. Now which one of you is Mr. Stone?”

  “I’m Stone,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “We have information to the effect that you have Abdullah Abu Qadir in custody,” he said. “Where is he?”

  I kept my face blank as I told him, “Never heard of the guy. Your information’s wrong.”

  He held out a photo of Abu Qadir. “Are you sure?”

  I made a show of examining the photo. Alek hadn’t thrown these clowns out on their asses yet, so I’d play along for a while. “Am I supposed to recognize the guy I’ve never heard of?” I asked. “Or are you calling me a liar?”

  “I’m trying to find out if you may have this man, even if by another name,” he said tightly.

  “So you’re calling me a liar,” I answered, looking him in the eye.

  “Look, you people are already in enough trouble here,” he said. “The more you cooperate, the more this situation might work out for you.”

  “Cooperate?” I passed the point where I gave a damn for why Alek hadn’t thrown them out. “What do you mean cooperate?”

  “You have exchanged fire with Iraqi security forces,” he said, as though talking to a child. “We have good information that you have killed no small number of them. The Iraqis are our allies. This is a very serious matter. If you are holding another Iraqi national against his will, that is even more serious. I think I can get the Iraqis to let us take you back to American custody, but that will be difficult, and dependent on you cooperating with us fully.”

  I looked at Alek, who rolled his eyes. I turned back to Collins. “Are you fucking serious?” He looked taken aback. “You’re more concerned with our maybe killing some Iraqi troops than with Iraqi troops killing our people and then taking more of them hostage? Where the fuck are you people’s priorities? Or is it that governments believe other governments first now? All of you corrupt fucks have to stick together, is that it?”

  I shook my head. “When you bastards abandoned every principle you ever swore to uphold, you lost any and all authority.” I tilted my head and looked at him. “Except what you can enforce by the gun, but you can’t really do that here, can
you? Hell, you can barely keep a lid on the mobs back home, much less deal with us.” I leaned forward, into his space, and made him back up a step. “And if you tried, it would be a big, big mistake, Collins.”

  Collins tried to bluster back some of his poise. “Are you threatening an official of the United States Government? Because if you are…”

  “Are they going to go to the lengths to get you back that they did for those poor bastards from Camp Lemonier?” I asked him. “Last I heard, they were rotting in an Egyptian prison. And there were a lot more of them than there are of you.”

  “We can make things very difficult for you,” Collins warned. “We are in constant contact with the Iraqi government, and there is plenty of reason to help them track down a dangerous band of criminals, if only to preserve the special relationship we have with Baghdad since the war.”

  I snorted. “Save it for the suits in Baghdad, if they even believe you anymore. ‘Special relationship?’ You pulled everybody out and left them to the whims of the Iranians. And the Iranians, to everyone’s eternal shock, still hate all things Western, and still want every infidel dead, no matter how nice you’ve tried to play with them. So, you’ll ‘cooperate’ with the Iraqi authorities and by extension the Iranians, and get…what? ‘Good will?’ I don’t fucking think so.”

  I leaned in and forced him back again. “This isn’t about dead Iraqi soldiers. This isn’t about anything but you fuckers trying to cover your tracks from Africa. Naturally, it couldn’t be your fault that those guys got left behind, so it had to be ours, right? But you can’t have us out and about, doing our jobs like we actually fulfilled our part of the contract. It makes you look bad. So you try to fuck us over because your bosses didn’t have the balls to do what had to be done, and sacrificed over a hundred American citizens in the deal. Ain’t gonna fucking happen, Collins.”