Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians)

by Peter Nealen

  “Fuck,” was about all I could manage. I was having flashbacks to the President of Djibouti getting assassinated. It was about the same MO, but the effects were going to be much worse. “The whole parliament’s gone?”

  “Looks like,” he said. “This country just went completely to shit.”

  “Has anybody taken responsibility?” I asked. I knew that a lot of times these groups would claim they’d executed an attack that somebody else had pulled off, but this was huge. Anybody who’d actually managed to decapitate a sitting government wasn’t going to be shy about it.

  “The Islamic State of Iraq just issued a statement that ‘the brothers’ killed the ‘Iranian apostate government’ of Iraq a few hours ago,” Alek said. The Islamic State of Iraq was AQI’s political wing. “It was heavily implied that it was AQI. Not that that tells us much, considering how many cells and militias fall under AQI’s banner. We’re pretty sure they were Salafists, though.”

  “Great.” I filled him in on what had gone down overnight, including the loss of two trucks worth of Hussein Ali’s militia. “He seems determined to keep going, but a lot of his men, at least from our element, are pretty demoralized. I don’t think that going up against two opponents at once is going to help that.”

  “Probably not,” he mused. “We can’t send you much of any support; both of the teams up here are fully committed, and we’ve got contested airspace between the support birds and Basra. You’re pretty much on your own, minus your allies.” He paused. “Watch your six, Jeff,” he said quietly. “You know how fast this sort of thing can get ugly, especially if the employer starts thinking of other means to get their way.”

  “I know, Alek,” I replied. “I’ve been expecting al Hakim to kick us to the curb as soon as he thinks we’ve become more of a political liability than a tactical and strategic asset. That may be coming sooner than I’d expected or hoped. We’ll have to play it by ear.”

  “You’re the man on the ground,” Alek reiterated. “It’s your call. If you start getting your hackles up, and decide to yank everybody, do it. Mike won’t argue.”

  “I know he won’t,” I said. “We’ve already had an abbreviated version of this conversation.” I changed the subject. “Have the Iranians reacted at all? Or anybody else in the region, for that matter?”

  “There have been several statements from Al Nusra in Aleppo,” he said, “mostly along similar lines with the AQI statements.” That was no surprise, considering that Al Nusra was AQI’s proxy in Syria. “We haven’t heard word one out of Tehran yet. I suspect that’s only a matter of time.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said. “They won’t let this go. I suspect, from what we’ve seen, that they might very well have had this endstate in mind from the get-go. How much do you want to bet that this was the big op the Qods Force guys were recruiting bombers for?”

  “No bet,” Alek said. “On the other hand, if it was AQI, do the Iranians really want the Salafists they’ve been fighting in Syria taking over in Iraq?”

  “Doubtful,” I said. “I don’t think they’d hesitate for a minute to take advantage of the situation, though.”

  “True enough,” Alek said. “Be on the lookout for any new moves. I doubt they’re going to send full troop formations yet; we haven’t gotten any cues that they’re mobilizing on that level, but they’ll be pushing their proxies hard.”

  “Has anybody taken steps to take power?” I asked.

  “Baghdad’s a clusterfuck, from what little information we can come up with,” he replied. “Fallujah and Ramadi have almost completely gone over, with most of the security forces there either dead or fighting for their lives. There’s fighting in Mosul, and Kirkuk just turned into a worse cluster. Nobody’s going to be able to claim they’re in ‘control’ of anything for a while yet, outside of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah.”

  “Any attacks up that way?” I asked. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and glanced over to see Daoud and Hussein Ali walking toward me. I was going to have to wrap this up.

  “There have been a couple,” Alek said. “Kurdish security forces put them down pretty fast, but there have been casualties. It’s just nothing close to what’s going on in the other major cities.”

  I held up a hand to our allies to let them know that I was almost done. “I’m going to have to sign off, Alek,” I said. “Is there any vital intel I absolutely have to have?”

  “Nothing more at the moment,” he said. “As soon as I have anything, I’ll send it along. You do the same; we’re all in the same boat here.”

  “Solid,” I replied. “Later, brother.”

  “Out,” he said, and cut the connection.

  I turned to face the two grim militia leaders. Fortunately, Hassan was right behind them.

  I was fully aware of just how much more dangerous this situation had just become. This part of the world had just about invented the concept of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I didn’t know if these men were going to decide that the Salafists were a worse enemy than the Iranians, and therefore side with the Iranians. If they did, our necks were in a noose.

  “Hussein Ali, Daoud,” I said by way of greeting. “I take it you have heard the news?” Why not take the bull by the horns? It can only gore you once, right?

  “We have,” Hassan said. “This is a very bad thing, Mister Jeff.”

  “Yes, it is,” I replied. I sized the two leaders up for a moment. Both were stony-faced, revealing nothing. I was going to have to feel this one out. “What are your plans?”

  Daoud and Hussein Ali exchanged glances. Daoud spoke. Hassan translated, “He says we should go inside and discuss it. Mullah Abdullah is inside, and wishes to see you.”

  I breathed a little bit easier. The Mullah was unlikely to want to become shahid, which was what they should expect if they were going to turn on us. Unless, of course, they had us so completely outgunned that they thought they could take us without much of a fight. I hoped they didn’t either have that kind of strength, or didn’t think that they did.

  When we came inside, Abdullah al Hakim and several other men were sitting on mats in the meeting room, with several trays of chai steaming nearby. Mike was already sitting on a mat with a glass of chai in his hand, and his essentially stock M1A sitting next to him. A quick glance at the room and everything seemed amicable, considering the circumstances.

  I placed my own rifle on the floor, pointed away from the Mullah, and lowered myself stiffly to a cross-legged seat on one of the unoccupied mats. I accepted a glass of chai from one of the militiamen to al Hakim’s right, with a nod of the head, hand over the heart, and, “Shukran.” My Arabic might suck, but I knew how to say “Thank you” with words and gestures.

  “Good morning, Mister Stone,” the Mullah said. “I trust you and your men are well?”

  “We are well enough, given everything that has happened, Mullah,” I said. “And are you well this morning?”

  “I am quite well, if somewhat worried about events,” he said. “A great deal has happened over the last twenty-four hours.”

  So, he was getting right to business. Rare, but when things were this serious, I couldn’t say I was necessarily all that surprised. “Indeed, Mullah,” I said. “My condolences on the men you lost last night. They were very brave.”

  He inclined his head in thanks. “And the man who killed them was very cowardly,” he said, “placing bombs in residential areas. He did not care who they killed. It is better that he is dead.” He sipped his chai. “That he was a foreigner trying to force Iran’s agenda on us makes his crimes even worse.”

  I took a sip of my own chai. It was sickeningly sweet, as always. “I know you have heard about the parliament being killed.” I paused as they murmured prayers to Allah. “So what happens here now?”

  “The parliament meant little to us,” al Hakim said calmly. “That was why we established the PPF in the first place; the IP was becoming too corrupt, and the government was becoming too relian
t on Iranian influence. Strangely enough, our own steps to secure the south were co-opted by the Iranians anyway.

  “Now that the parliament is dead, and the Salafis are on the rise again in the west, the Iranians will move to try to secure the country as their own puppet, before the Al Qaeda does. They were already pushing harder now that their puppets in Syria are dead or fled to Lebanon. After this it will only get worse.”

  “What do you plan to do?” I asked. He’d answered my question, just not exactly what I needed to know. What he’d said was obvious. I had to remind myself that just because he spoke English did not mean that Mullah Abdullah necessarily understood things the same way I did.

  “What we must do now is secure Basra against the Salafis and the IRGC,” he said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. “Neither of them cares for the people, or their way of life. Our people wish only to live in peace, according to the dictates of Allah, granted through his Prophet Mohammed, may peace be upon him. These terrorists want only destruction and death. So we must deny them.”

  Drinking a little more chai to buy time to gather my thoughts, I considered what he was talking about. It was ambitious, rather like a larger-scale version of the old Anbar Awakening movement that had turned the tide in Iraq the last time. I wondered if it was too ambitious, but it was his call. As long as we had an exit strategy if this went pear-shaped on him, I was in. This was what we were here for in the first place; putting the hurt on Islamist fanatics.

  “How can we help?” I asked.

  He smiled through his beard, though it didn’t quite meet his eyes. The Mullah was canny, and I knew he could be trusted to look out for his own and his people’s interests. I had to keep our mission and our own survival balanced here; he sure wasn’t going to.

  “You have already begun,” he said. “In targeting the Qods Force officers who have infiltrated the PPF, you have already hurt the IRGC’s hold on the city, and the province. I need you to continue doing that. Once we have the PPF back under our control, we can see to the Jaysh al Mahdi and Hezbollah terrorists who are doing violence here.”

  “What about Al Qaeda?” I asked.

  He waved a hand dismissively. “They have little power here,” he said. “They can explode a few buildings and cars, but they are not the main threat. The Iranians have much more influence, and it is them we must deal with.”

  I nodded my understanding. I looked over at Mike, who was just watching impassively. He was a latecomer to this particular scene, and was going to take in as much information as he could before he added anything. That was just Mike’s way. He was one of the more cautious of our team leaders.

  “I doubt we will be able to perform the kind of operation we attempted last night again,” I said carefully. “The IRGC is alerted now, so we will have to proceed somewhat more carefully when it comes to striking their officers.”

  Hussein Ali said something then, and Hassan turned to me to translate as he did. “Yes, that is so. We must be slower and quieter this time. They will be ready for another strike like last night.”

  Hussein Ali and I were on the same page. We’d taken advantage of the enemy’s belief in the security of their position in Basra the night before. Now it was time to change tactics.

  There was another matter, however. “If we eliminate the current leadership of the PPF,” I asked, “who is going to replace them?”

  “Hussein Ali will be the new PPF commander,” Mullah al Hakim said immediately. “Daoud al Zubayri will be his deputy.”

  So, al Hakim would be the power broker, and his chief militia commanders would be the new authorities. It wasn’t surprising, and in fact I was slightly more comfortable with Hussein Ali in charge than I might have been with somebody else, to include Daoud. Hussein Ali had come out and fought with his men the night before. Daoud hadn’t. Neither had Said, for that matter, which raised another question.

  “What about Sattar Said?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him in a couple of days.”

  The three men’s faces went hard. Daoud spat something in Arabic. I couldn’t catch what exactly he said, but the venom in it was obvious. “Sattar Said went over to the PPF before the operation last night,” Hassan said. “He did not know the target list, which is why the operation went as well as it did. He did, however cause the capture of one of Daoud al Zubayri’s cousins, who was a leader in their militia.”

  I didn’t doubt that Sattar Said was now on our kill list.

  “How many of the PPF troops are likely to come over to our side?” I asked. “There have to be some who actually side with the Iranians by choice.”

  Al Hakim nodded sagely. “There are some. There are many who only see it as a way to feed their families. Once the Iranians are out of power, most of the PPF will join us. We are of the same tribes, after all.”

  I hoped he was right. I suspected we were going to have to kill more of the PPF than he thought. It never goes as smoothly as you hope.

  If I’d known just how hard Murphy was going to fuck us, I’d probably have scratched the contract and run right then and there.

  Chapter 26

  It took another two days before anyone was remotely ready to act. Two days of cruising carefully around the city in a rotating array of vehicles, snooping around the PPF’s bases and monitoring their patrols. We saw more of what was going on in the city in two days than we had previously, as all we were doing was watching and listening.

  It was a violent two days. More IEDs went off all across the city. Most were targeting either the PPF or Shi’a mosques, of which there were plenty. One we were pretty sure was a suicide bomber that detonated in the middle of the Sayyed Ali al Musawi Mosque at prayer time, killing fifty people and blowing the front to rubble. I don’t know what that fucker was packing, but it was some heavy-duty explosives.

  There were shootings, murders, a couple of beheadings, and several firefights with the militias and the PPF. We stayed out of it, concentrating on gathering as much information as we could, while Hussein Ali and Daoud planned and prepared to strike at the PPF’s leadership. They were also working on some of their contacts with the PPF, cajoling, bribing, or threatening in order to ensure that once they knocked off the Qods Force infiltrators they could take full control of the force.

  We didn’t just see the movements of PPF and militias. The evening of the first day, Jim and Larry came back to the factory that had become the militia FOB. There were now militiamen there 24/7, though we maintained our own security discreetly. They weren’t all that diligent in daylight, never mind at night. We’d had enough experience in the Third World that we had set a watch even before going outside to piss in the middle of the night and finding the guard posts asleep.

  The two of them came into the outbuilding we’d made into our own little bivouac, carrying the small backpacks they’d carried their comm and weapons in. Jim hadn’t even set his down before he announced, “Well, we’ve got more trouble than just the Iranians.”

  “No shit,” I replied. The bomb in the mosque had just gone off that afternoon. “The Salafis are stirring shit up, too.”

  He dropped the pack on his sleeping mat. “It’s worse than you think,” he said. “Remember the Khilafah assholes we wasted a few days ago? Well, judging by what we saw today, they were just a drop in the bucket.”

  He sat down heavily and started guzzling a bottle of water. Larry took up the story. “We were cruising between Al Abelah, Hateen, and Al Hadi. About half an hour after mid-morning prayer, all hell broke loose in Al Abelah. We’d been noticing that PPF patrols were avoiding the place, but one of them moved in and got hit, hard. It was a coordinated attack that turned into a dogpile. Guys in track suits with AKs, RPGs, HKs, you name it just came boiling out of the neighborhood.

  “That wasn’t the interesting part, though. We were getting out of the fire zone, when Jim spotted a dozen guys with covered faces and rifles getting into a couple of Bongo trucks and heading away from the firefight.”

  �
�It seemed weird, so we followed them,” Jim said. “They were good; we almost lost them three times in the streets and alleys. They weren’t convoying; they only met up about three times on their way out of the city, and they were using some really good counter-surveillance. Whoever trained them knew their shit.”

  He took another swig of water. “They didn’t get to where they were going for over an hour, and covered about half of the southwestern side of the city getting there. When they finally stopped, it was at that old gas station southwest of the western cloverleaf.”

  I checked the map. The cloverleaf was a major intersection between Highway 31 and Baghdad Street. The gas station was about half a mile from the cloverleaf, on the side of Highway 31. We didn’t have a lot of information about it, but I’d heard of gas stations being used as insurgent hangouts and meeting places in the past.

  “Finding a vantage point was a bitch,” Jim continued. “That’s probably why they picked the gas station. We were able to slip into one of the parking lots for the commercial compound a little way to the southeast, and had at least a decent view, if not great.”

  “They parked around the back of the gas station,” Larry added. “Most of them got out, still armed, and took up some sort of security posture around the trucks. It looked like they were waiting for somebody.”

  “Were they?” Bryan asked. It was a small outbuilding, so pretty much the entire two teams were within earshot. Most of mine was right there in the room.

  Jim nodded. “Oh, yeah. After about a half an hour, two vans, another Bongo, and a big-assed panel truck pulled up to the station and three guys got out of the Bongo. They were greeted by one of the guys we’d followed. They talked for a few minutes, then got back in their vehicles, and drove back into the city. They split up again, this time with a few of the new vehicles following one Bongo, the rest following the other. It was a little more overt than they’d been on the way out, but I don’t think they attracted much attention otherwise.”