Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians)

by Peter Nealen

  We rolled out in the van and the Toyota, keeping things as low-profile as we could, wearing belt rigs under long shirts or soccer jerseys, and carrying rifles, extra gear, and spare magazines in shapeless bags that wouldn’t immediately scream, “Weapon!” We still didn’t necessarily blend in all that well, being generally burlier than your average Iraqi, but it would take a good second look to tell for sure. Sometimes that was all you needed.

  Naturally, this being Iraq, we couldn’t do the meet at night. Even after everything that has happened in Iraq over the last couple of decades, even the fighters do not like to be up when the sun is down. We didn’t want to be out in daylight, but we weren’t calling this one. Once again, they were trying to manipulate us by bringing shit up at the last minute. Or maybe that was just planning by the “Inshallah” method. I’ve never quite been able to tell the difference.

  I can’t say I was impressed with Al Hakim’s boys when we pulled into the old, apparently abandoned factory that was supposed to be the staging area. There were about fifty of them, mostly standing around smoking and joking, some sleeping, others just sitting around. About half had their faces covered with ski masks or shemaughs. A few were wearing green fatigues, others were just dressed in whatever civilian attire they’d come in. A lot of AKs were in evidence, many of them with the stocks sawed off, as well as a few M4s, a couple of SIG 550s, an ancient, battered RPD, and a few RPG-7s. We had a bag of RPG-27s under the bed of the Toyota, but again, I was keeping that a secret for the time being.

  Nobody was on security that I could see. While everybody was armed, most of them weren’t paying much attention to what was going on around them, concentrating on their conversations or their cigarettes. A few were gathered in the shade by the main building, smoking a hookah and drinking tea.

  “Now this is a high-speed strike force,” Jim said, peering over my shoulder from the back of the van. “Real fucking ninjas, these guys.”

  “Did you expect something else?” I asked. “These are militia, not regulars, sure as hell not ISOF. Worse, they’re Arab militia.” There were some huge cultural blind spots among Arabs as far as military operations went.

  “I don’t know about this, boss,” Larry said from behind the wheel.

  “Look, it’s not ideal,” I said. “It’s so far from ideal that we can’t see ideal’s silhouette anymore. But these guys, clowns though they may be, might just be the key to stopping the IRGC cold here. It’s not much of a shot, but it’s more than we had before.”

  “I don’t know whether to be hopeful or depressed at that,” Jim replied.

  “Try both,” I said, as we pulled up to the main building and stopped. “It works for me.”

  We got out and followed Hassan inside. Paul and Bryan stayed back with the vehicles. These might be our allies, but even if we got to the point of trusting these guys to have our backs no matter what, I still wouldn’t trust them not to rob us blind as soon as we weren’t looking. In my experience, a lot of these guys didn’t have a very well-developed sense of what was other people’s property.

  The interior of the main factory building was dim, lit only by daylight coming in through the open doors. Pigeons fluttered through the rafters, and there was plenty of pigeon shit on the floor and the dusty machines that hulked in the main room. It didn’t look like the factory had actually been used to build anything in a while. There were electric lights above, but most of them were broken, and none were lit.

  Hassan led us into a side room that I supposed had been an office, before the place had shut down. There was a table set up in the middle of the room, and three men sitting around it in white plastic lawn chairs. One was wearing a suit with no tie and the other two were wearing green fatigue jackets and jeans. There were two AKs and a G36C leaning against the wall behind them. A pot of chai steamed on a tray with a few more glasses and a jar of sugar. There was a street map of Basra on the table, and the three of them were yammering loud and fast in Arabic. I couldn’t make any of it out.

  Hassan immediately went to the table and joined the increasingly vociferous conversation. After a few moments of fast talking, and a lot of gesticulating, they stopped talking and looked at us. Hassan turned to me, pointing to the man in the suit.

  “Mister Jeff, this is Daoud al Zubayri. He is Mullah al Hakim’s chief military advisor. He is the leader of this force.”

  Daoud al Zubayri studied us with impassive black eyes. He was a sharp-featured man with a thick Saddam mustache, which had come back into style in the last year. He was also bigger than any of the other Iraqis in the room; while most of us still had about thirty pounds on him, he wasn’t nearly as waif-thin as most of his men. He didn’t look impressed. I was just as unimpressed as he was, and I met his gaze with an equally stony-faced stare. Diplomacy be damned, I wasn’t going to be subservient to an “ally” who wanted to act superior with the weak, undisciplined force he had outside.

  Daoud said something in Arabic. Hassan translated, “He says that he does not know what help you are going to provide with so few men.”

  “My eight men are more effective than half the PPF put together,” I replied. “We are better trained, better armed, and more experienced than his entire force, and their enemies. That is why his boss hired us. We are a force multiplier, with more military experience and tactical knowledge than his men have. We can provide capabilities that he may not have even thought of yet.”

  Hassan translated rapidly. Daoud’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. He said something more, a brief, staccato statement.

  “He says that the Americans and British did not do very much before, that they stayed in their camps and only patrolled in armored vehicles,” Hassan translated. “They were safe while the people suffered under Moqtada’s terror. He wonders how you will be different.”

  I smiled wolfishly. “We aren’t bound by the political restraints that kept the Brits and the US Army from getting their hands dirty. We are here to fight the enemies of a peaceful Basra. We are here to kill the enemies of a peaceful Basra.”

  Daoud was studying me carefully while Hassan translated what I’d said. I could see the wheels turning in his mind; could he trust us? Would we actually help, or would we stir things up and then go home before the job was done? Would we be an asset, or a liability?

  I took the opportunity to watch the other two, the guys in fatigue jackets. They hadn’t said a word since the byplay between Daoud and me had begun, but just watched and listened. One of them was clean-shaven, while the other had a thick beard, and looked like he’d spent most of his life out in the sun. I tagged that guy as the real soldier in the room; Daoud might be the “leader” for whatever reason, but the bearded guy had seen some real fighting. When I glanced at him, he met my gaze without expression, but the wheels were turning behind them as well.

  Finally, Daoud spoke. “He says that he agrees, that we must work together,” Hassan relayed. “He wants you to know that they will work with you, but he wants to be assured that you will also work with them. He says the Coalition Forces did not always do this.”

  I nodded. “There were some very bad decisions made in the last war,” I said, ignoring the fact that the “last war” hadn’t really ended. “We would not be here if that was not the case; Iraq would be at peace.” I didn’t really believe that, either. There were too many centuries of blood soaked into the sand in this part of the world, and the tribes had long memories. “We are not here to fulfill some political agenda back in Washington. We are being paid by the Mullah to work with you, and that is what we are going to do, so that together we can defeat the Iranians and the Mahdi Army, so that your people can live in peace.”

  It was the most political speech I’d ever given. I’m generally not so good at such things; I’ve been accused of being about as diplomatic as a baseball bat with a rusty nail in it. Arabs, and most tribal Third World societies for that matter, tended not to like bluntness. It was impolite, and if you came across as harder, stronger, smarter, or a
ll three than the guy you were talking to, then you just insulted him. In Southeast Asia they call it “losing face.” I don’t know for sure what they call it in the Middle East, since they tend to just try to kill you or otherwise screw you over to make up for it, and restore their standing in the eyes of their peers.

  Daoud was nodding, however, and a broad smile sprouted beneath his mustache. He’d bought it, or at least saw advantage in buying it for the moment. The clean-shaven militiaman was smiling as well, apparently deciding that we were all right. The guy with the beard was still just watching impassively, saying nothing.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of him. He seemed older and harder than the other two; he looked to me like he might well have seen some serious fighting in the past. Where was anyone’s guess. There certainly was no shortage of battlefields these days.

  Daoud waved us over to the table, and the map that was spread out on it. I saw immediately that it was a commercial street map; we had better imagery back at the safehouse and in the vehicles. It also showed what kind of a shoestring this operation was running on; I was reminded of the pictures and videos that had been coming out of the revolutions and civil wars across the Middle East since the first Libyan civil war back in 2011. Whatever worked.

  Daoud was pointing to an area in the north, across the road from Al Najibiyah. “The PPF has set up an operations center here, in the old British FOB,” Hassan translated Daoud’s rapid-fire Arabic. “We have six PPF uniforms, along with several men who are PPF troopers already. They will get in with two PPF trucks, packed with explosives, and then detonate them. In the confusion, we can get into the base and destroy it.”

  It sounded a lot like any number of attacks on IP stations over the years. I supposed it was only to be expected that such tactics would soon become the modus operandi for all sides, especially when the former insurgents and their handlers suddenly became the authorities, with the stationary bases and need to patrol that they’d used against Coalition forces. That didn’t mean I thought it was the best plan.

  I also was painfully aware of the level of training our allies had, and that anything requiring a huge amount of infantry skill was going to be difficult to pull off. I didn’t really want to use these guys as cannon fodder, especially since trust was already an issue. At the same time, I didn’t want to buy off on whatever half-baked plan they came up with, either. It was a balancing act.

  “I would suggest another way,” I said carefully. “While that plan has its good points, why waste the vehicles? We would only get one use out of them. Do you have machineguns?”

  Daoud nodded. “We have several RPKs and two PKPs,” Hassan explained.

  “Are the PPF trucks equipped to mount them?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Hassan said, without waiting to relay my question to Daoud. “One of them has a mount on the cab, and the other has a post in the bed.”

  I took a step closer to the table, and began to point to the map. “You could use those trucks to get closer than any other vehicle, close enough to get good lines of fire on the guard posts. With your men and the trucks, we could set up a base of fire here, inside the walls. My men would be the maneuver element, sweeping through these buildings.” Yes, I was fully aware of the risks inherent in trusting ourselves to an untrained Iraqi militia’s idea of a base of fire. This was going to be dicey, no doubt about that. “What is the target, aside from killing as many PPF as possible?”

  The three of them looked at each other. The bearded guy just kind of sat back and looked at the other two as if to say, Well? Haven’t thought that part through, have you? Daoud and the clean-shaven guy exchanged a few short words, then Daoud turned back to me.

  “We are striking back against the Iranian-controlled puppets that have been terrorizing our people,” Hassan translated. “By attacking them in their base, they will know they are not untouchable.”

  That was about the answer I had been expecting. Very revolutionary, very militia, not terribly militarily sound. It was a strategy, of sorts, certainly, but for a mission it was way too vague. I refrained from pointing out that our ambush in the cemetery in Zubayr had already done a pretty good job of sending that particular message to the PPF.

  I took a moment to pore over the map, and stroke my beard thoughtfully. I already had a target picked out, but I didn’t want them to know that. Let them think that I was pondering it.

  “You say you have men within the PPF?” I asked. Hassan and Daoud nodded. “Then they would know who the Qods Force men are?” I continued. There were some thoughtful looks after Hassan translated this, and more nods. “If it is the Qods Force men who are driving the problems here in Basra, perhaps we should use the assets we have to kill or capture them. From them, we might be able to find out where the Hezbollah and Jaysh al Mahdi fighters are. It would be a much better use of the men and assets that we have than risking them in an all-out assault on a defended base.”

  The three men started talking rapidly in Arabic as soon as Hassan had relayed what I’d said. Actually, Daoud and the clean-shaven guy did most of the talking, with the bearded guy only putting in a word now and then. Both of them seemed to defer to him; it was similar to the respect I’d seen afforded to elders, but there was something more to it. I really wanted to know who this guy was, and what he’d done.

  While they talked, I leaned over to Hassan. “Okay, I know Daoud,” I said quietly. “Who are the other two?”

  “The man with the beard is Hussein Ali al Khazraji,” he said. “He is a very important man. He was a Colonel in the Iraqi Army, and is a shaykh of the Al Khazraji.” That pretty well confirmed my suspicions. The guy was a heavy hitter locally, which explained why the other two treated him with such respect, and why he didn’t talk all that much. It didn’t explain why Daoud was apparently running the show instead of him, but I suspected that had something to do with tribal and religious politics that I didn’t know about, and right at the moment, couldn’t care less about. Mission first.

  Of course, it occurred to me that not knowing those tribal and sectarian dynamics could very well come back and bite us in the ass, especially considering that we were talking about Shi’a fighting Shi’a fighting Sunni. We just didn’t have the time right at the moment.

  “The other man is Sattar Said,” Hassan went on. “He has been in the Jaysh al Mahdi, and the Iraqi Police. He argued with Moqtada a few years ago, and now fights for Mullah al Hakim.”

  I made a mental note to keep a close eye on Said. Granted, loyalties could change quickly and without warning in the Middle East. It depended on any number of factors—personal insult, money, perceived advantage to self or tribe, or a perception that the side one was on was losing. I still didn’t trust somebody who’d already flipped once, and furthermore had been one of Moqtada al Sadr’s lackeys. If things started to look like he’d do better on the other side, he’d turn on all of us in a heartbeat.

  Okay, so I was expecting that to happen with all of them at some point. I just figured that if any of them was more likely to do it sooner rather than later, it would be Said.

  Ain’t this job grand?

  The rapid-fire consultation ended. Hassan hadn’t even tried to fill me in on the high points. Daoud turned to face us. “We think your plan is a good one, although I wonder just how effective it might be in putting fear in our enemies, and protecting our homes.”

  I grinned. Knowing how strung-out I felt, and how cadaverous my face looked, not to mention the fact that I put no mirth whatsoever in the expression, it can’t have looked pleasant. “Trust me, when their heavy hitters start disappearing, they’ll feel the fear.” Hassan translated, and there were more nods.

  I didn’t relax, exactly. The situation was too fragile and the loyalties of our allies too murky for that. But I could sense that this was going well, so far.

  Hussein Ali spoke at length for the first time. “He says that one of his most trusted men used to be a deputy police chief in Old Basra,” Hussein interpreted. “He
says he will speak to him tonight. The new deputy police chief is Iranian Qods Force, and he says that his man will know where and when to strike at him. He says he will have all the necessary intelligence in the morning.”

  If the guy really was former Army, and a Colonel, it was possible that he knew exactly what intel was needed for an op like this. It was also possible, especially since he was a local shaykh, that he’d gotten his rank from pure political and monetary clout, but watching the guy, he didn’t strike me as the type. He reminded me of a few old soldiers I’d known; hard, quiet, always thinking. I suspected we’d get a pretty complete target package out of him.

  Also, under the circumstances, I wasn’t going to pull the crap that some commanders had in these sorts of situations, where they treated their allies like children. If he didn’t come through, we’d deal with it then. Right now, rapport required that we trust him to get what we needed. I was going to have to be prepared with a plan B, in case of the very real chance that these guys dropped the ball, but letting them see that was just stupid, especially when we were as outnumbered as we were.

  With Hussein Ali having taken the lead on getting the intel we needed, the meeting became much more informal. Daoud offered us places to sit, and called for more chai. The atmosphere relaxed, and the conversation turned to less serious matters--family, backgrounds, that sort of thing.

  I ordinarily hate small talk. I’m not a people person. However, there were two angles to take here. The first was building rapport with our new allies, and getting them to trust us. That required the “getting to know you” period. Arabs don’t like to work with people they don’t know. I think it has to do with their tribal backgrounds. Any work that gets done is based on relationships. We’d have to befriend these people.