“More like Qatar, but, yes, a United Arab Emirate family,” Gray said. “His mother’s mother comes from Doha, and that bunch is very well fixed. Tied to that oil money.”
“Why hang around Iraq?” Snow asked.
“He has designs on moving up and taking over here,” Gray said. “Reestablishing the Sunni Ba’athist regime.”
“Oh, how very ambitious of him,” Snow said.
“He’s got plans for guys like Zarqawi,” Gray said. “And they ain’t pretty.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Elmore said.
“As a little background,” Gray continued, “Abu Omar had become Chemical Ali’s go-to guy, before the war, and Saddam’s favorite headsman, when it became necessary to move a rebellious underling out of office in the dark.
“Everything in Omar’s life ran lined with silk and gold until that day of shock and awe in 2003, when President Bush’s shit hit the Baghdad fan.”
“Boys up here said something about Abu Omar losing his family in the bombing, and that put him on the warpath,” Elmore said.
“Yeah, that did happen,” Gray said. “He sent them to Baghdad, checked them into the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel, where they’d be safe from the American bombs because that’s where CNN slept. Except Omar didn’t count on the mortar and rocket attacks that hit the hotel later. Killed his wife and four boys, stair-stepped down seventeen to three years old.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Elmore said. “He is a man like us, and losing his family is terrible.”
“Don’t waste your time weeping for this piece of shit, Colonel Snow,” Gray said. “He’s not worth one tear. He kept a whole raft of concubines his entire married life. His wife was nothing more than a money bag.”
“I see,” the colonel said.
“Abu Omar has a thing for young girls, you know,” Gray continued. “The younger the treat, the better he likes them.
“But what drives his train is his ambition of one day ruling Iraq. Just like Saddam did. He’s not so much the devout Muslim as he is the evil maniac hell-bent for power.”
Elmore laughed. “Aren’t they all? Especially Zarqawi.”
“I’d say so,” Gray agreed. “Even that fat-ass Iran-loving leader of the Mahdi Army puts on the devout show, but in our heart of hearts we all know he envisions himself running the show in Iraq as supreme leader of the faith and king of the nation. He draws that inspiration from his mentor, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, who rules the roost in Iran, stepping into the shoes of our favorite terrorism monger, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Khomeini. You remember Ayatollah Khomeini, don’t you? The bombing of our Marines in Beirut in 1983 ring a bell?”
“Who can forget?” Elmore said.
“These guys?” Chris Gray said. “All one lump of scum.”
“You got pictures? Locations? Intel?” Elmore asked.
“Langley’s pumping Speedy’s computer full of good stuff as he sleeps,” Gray said. “And how come you’re not sawing a few logs yourself?”
“Who can sleep?” Elmore said.
“Yeah.” Chris laughed. “We don’t do that here, either. In fact, there’s a pretty red-eyed lady from the FBI sitting in Jack’s swivel chair, studying maps of al-Anbar and all that crap from Langley as we speak.”
“I thought she was flying back home today,” Elmore said. “Didn’t Kendrick recall her since the lid blew off her investigation, and Alosi and his boss got subpoenaed to testify before that Senate committee?”
“She plied her wiles, Elmore. You know pretty women and gruff old men. Kendrick’s just like the rest of us.” Gray chuckled, then Liberty snatched the phone from him.
“Jason told me that I should stay here until we rescued Jack,” Liberty told Colonel Snow. “He cares. He wants us to get Jack back alive. No plying of womanly wiles. Besides, Mr. Kendrick knew I’d be worthless back there, and I might even be a help here. So he told me to stay.”
“How about your three boys?” Elmore asked.
“They took the flight home with Alosi,” she said.
“You’re welcome to the facilities there with Captain Burkehart and Smedley,” Elmore told her.
“I’ve already moved in,” Liberty followed.
“Jack’s bunk?” Elmore laughed. “Or is that a dumb question?”
“You know me too well, Elmore,” she answered.
“Stay close to the phone,” the colonel said.
“I wish I could be there with you guys,” she said.
“You’ll do fine with the skipper and Smedley,” Elmore said. “It would be problematic, even if you could manage to get up here. What would you do, anyway?”
“Go out and hunt Jack, with you guys,” she said.
“Get some sleep, Liberty. I’ll call you later,” Elmore said, and hung up the phone.
He walked to the next module, where Speedy Espinoza had set up shop and pounded on the door.
“Wake up!” he bellowed, imitating his all-time hero, John Wayne. “You’re wasting daylight.”
“What the fuck?” Espinoza moaned, opening his eyes to total darkness. “What time is it?”
“Four thirty in the morning. Coffee’s made,” Elmore said in John Wayne character, as Speedy opened the door.
The colonel went to the three racks where Walter, Kermit, and Cory still snored, and started kicking cots.
“Top Gillespie, I’m surprised that you let this air winger beat you to breakfast,” Snow growled.
“We’re up, Colonel,” Hacksaw grogged, rubbing his eyes.
The outside door swung open, and First Sergeant Alvin Barkley stepped through, helmet on and combat-ready.
“You boys ready to rock and roll?” He smiled, a big old-fashioned metal canteen cup in his hand, steaming with hot coffee.
“Getting that way, First Sergeant,” Snow answered. Then he looked at Espinoza. “Speedy, beam up your computer and open that big file that Langley sent while you rested.”
The former Marine pilot had already sat in the chair and begun typing in his password. In seconds, he had a list of maps and pictures. He clicked on one and up came a photograph of Abu Omar in his Republican Guard uniform, no beard and a black moustache under his nose. He looked remarkably like his cousins, Saddam Hussein and Chemical Ali.
Next thing, CIA Agent Espinoza opened a file that had side-by-side portraits of Omar. One, a photograph of him in a business suit, bare chin and moustache, and the next, an artist’s take on what he might look like with a beard and typical dress of an insurgent leader.
“I know that guy!” Barkley exclaimed the second he saw the graybeard with dirty teeth.
Espinoza gave him a look. “Oh do tell.”
“Way back, when we first started setting up shop here,” the first sergeant went on. “Abu Omar comes rolling up in this fucked-up Russian truck stacked to the sky with all kinds of vegetable produce. Boxes and boxes lashed to the cargo deck of this smoking piece of rusted shit. He has this real pretty young girl in the passenger seat, showing off a little titty for the Iraqi cops who checked them out.
“I had Sergeant Padilla with his killer dog, Rattler, smiling those titanium teeth of his at these scumbags, checking out the truck. Dog alerts, so I want to inspect the cargo. He’s got something hidden under all those onions.
“Both the Iraqi police and the local army bosses stop us in our tracks. They say they know this old goat fucker and claim that he’s harmless. Like ten seconds later, we get a call on the radio from our bosses, and State Department orders us to stand down. He’s just a harmless old farmer from Baiji trucking his vegetables to Haditha.
“Harmless my ass! I’m chapped. So’s Padilla.”
Then the first sergeant stuck his head out the door, and yelled, “Jorge, get your ass in here with your dog. Give this goat fucker a look and tell me if you know him.”
>
In ten seconds, Sergeant Padilla and Corporal Rattler stood front and center in front of the CIA computer. He took one look at the picture.
“Motherfucker!” Padilla said. “We had him in our hands! Those Iraqi cops. Fuck them! They let this asshole go!”
Elmore thought for a moment, and observed, “He’s probably not far from Haditha then.”
“I’d say within a twenty-mile radius,” Barkley said.
“Let’s get this show on the road!” Elmore said. “Instead of wandering up and down the MSR and side roads, we’re going to fan out in a line and move west. I want a five-mile-wide sweep.”
Espinoza sat pecking at his computer, and brought up a map. “There it is. Langley sent it, too. I’ve been searching for this map forever. Take a look.”
“What is it?” Snow asked, looking at the screen and the first sergeant at his side, the room now crowded with a growing number of Marines who had begun stuffing themselves into the tight quarters.
“For two thousand years, probably more,” Espinoza said, “camel caravans moved large tonnages of cargo from the seaports to Baghdad. These caravans traveled down south to ports by Kuwait, and those along the Mediterranean coast. Places like Tyre and Beirut. Crossing the desert to the west took doing. Once they intercepted the Euphrates flowing south at Haditha, they had it made, followed it to Baghdad. But getting across all this dry country?
“Scattered out here in the desert we see these places in the middle of nowhere. How can people survive out here? No water. Just sand and rocks. Right?”
“Water wells and underground facilities,” Elmore said.
“Bingo!” Speedy laughed and pointed at the red dots on the map. “Each of these locations is an ancient caravan stop. See how they fall in a line that leads toward the Mediterranean seaports?”
Then he pointed at one forty miles southwest of Haditha. “This one here? You had a nest of Hajis based in it. We ran an air strike on it day before yesterday. Took out a trio of gun wagons running high speed cross-country, then we hit the house with two five-hundred-pounders.
“Pilots reported that they saw the place on fire before their bombs hit. Smoke plume drew them to the target. Could be Jack was nearby. Very possible that he set the place ablaze and got caught there?”
“Good guess,” Elmore said.
“Should we check it out?” First Sergeant Barkley asked.
“No,” Elmore said. “They won’t be keeping Jack in a bombed-out camel stop.”
“But they will have him in one that is still operational,” Speedy said, pointing to seven more in a thirty-mile radius, along two lines west from Haditha.
“Flip a coin and shoot?” Elmore asked.
“I think start visiting them systematically,” Speedy said. “We need to get rolling.”
“How’s that look, First Shirt?” Elmore asked Barkley.
“We’re organizing gear, getting Marines suited up, loading ammo. It takes time,” he said.
“Can we get moving by eight o’clock?” Elmore asked.
“By nine, anyway,” Barkley said.
_ 16 _
Burning orange bleeding across the Iraqi desert from first light of a new day cast the Arabian oryx buck’s white coat the same color as the blood-red dunes that surrounded him and his three doe. He stood munching a salad of low-growing green succulents that had found moisture somewhere deep beneath the sands, and gave life where none might otherwise exist.
The oryx had just risen from his bed on the side of a dune where his three mates continued to lie and watch him browse among the thorny plants. His magnificent ebony horns, which curved in graceful arcs like swords over his back, flashed in the morning light. They complemented the glossy black that covered his muzzle and bold jaws, and masked his eyes. Black hair also covered his legs and grew in long strands off the end of his white tail.
The antelope had made their beds on the sand dunes, where heat from the sun had absorbed deep during the previous day, and kept the animals warm during the cold desert night. Lying on the east side of the dune kept any chill from prevailing westerly breezes off their backs.
One of the doe carried a kid in her belly. The other two had not yet cycled for this year’s reproductive season. The buck stayed close to them, ready for their next heat, meanwhile fending away predators and rival bucks.
Some Bedouins who had herded goats and hunted the dry lands of Arabia and Persia centuries ago had thought the white oryx holy and magical. Even in their Muslim faith, they kept their superstitions and myths of the past much alive, even in these modern times.
Yasir Sayf al-Din ibn Abbas al-Bayati shared those Bedouin roots and mystical beliefs. Ever since he caught that one brief glimpse of the big buck and his three doe, he dreamed of them. In those visions, he marveled at the animals from afar, watching them graze on the succulents, obtaining vital moisture for their bodies from eating the plants, much like camels do.
As he dreamed, Yasir al-Bayati felt peace. No war. A calm and goodness filled him. He longed for those days to return, as he remembered life in his childhood.
A cough and a voice upstairs awoke Yasir, who lay on the cold stone floor of the passageway, wrapped in a blanket outside the dungeon door where Jack Valentine slept in chains and had no blanket.
The old Arab jumped to his feet, and grabbed his rifle, which he had leaned against the wall when he wrapped himself in the blanket to keep warm, but had also fallen asleep quickly afterward. He looked up the stone-lined tunnel where two other gunmen under his command were supposed to also stand guard, and they, too, had wrapped up in blankets and lay snoring on the floor.
“Wake up, you fools!” he ordered, kicking the men. Then he hurried back to the wooden door that kept the Marine secure in his cell. He quietly unlocked the padlock put through a steel hasp above the old iron latch.
Carefully, Yasir pulled the door open barely a crack and peeked inside. The American lay curled in a fetal ball, his back to the door. All was well, and he sighed in relief.
“Fuck you!” Yasir heard the prisoner say, and shut the door, satisfied, despite his failure, first night as officer of the guard and chief jailer, slumbering on the job and allowing his men to fall asleep, too.
Then Yasir heard his master’s voice, up early, arguing. He climbed to the top of the stairs and listened as the two guards under his command took posts by the dungeon door.
“Please, cousin,” Abu Omar Bakr al-Nasser said to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on his telephone, “I cannot travel to Baiji today. I must remain close to home because of the illness that has visited my household since yesterday. It is far too great a risk to everyone for me to venture such a distance. Why don’t you visit me instead? We will meet at our uncle’s house at al-Rawa.”
Zarqawi felt like shouting but kept his calm. “I understand, dear cousin. May Allah rid you of this illness before it takes its toll on your household. I will come to you this time, but you must promise to follow my advice. To not follow what I advise you could mean that this grave illness claims you and all those you love.”
“I will meet you at our uncle’s home in al-Rawa tonight. I promise to hear what you say, but I have my own ideas of how to deal with this illness. May Allah give us wisdom to follow his will, and Allah keep our families safe from further illness.” Abu Omar smiled, triumphant. He knew he held the cards and the guns to get his way. Zarqawi knew it, too, or he would never have subordinated himself to risk traveling the day’s journey to the little village on the Euphrates halfway between Haditha Dam and al-Qa’im.
Yasir nearly fell down the stairs as Giti Sadiq and slave sister Sabeen pushed their way past him, carrying breakfast for him and his guards downstairs, and a bowl of rice with beans sprinkled in for Jack, per Omar’s order.
“Watch yourselves!” Yasir scolded them, regaining his footing, then following the two girls.
At
the bottom of the steps, he pulled the cloth off the tray that Sabeen carried. “What do you have for us?”
“Hummus and cheese, pickled goat meat and dates, and warm bread with tea,” Sabeen said, as Giti set their table.
“What about him?” Yasir asked, giving a nod at the closed wooden door.
“Rice with some beans, and a cup of water,” Giti said, and lifted the cloth off the tray that she had carried.
“This is much better than the food the Americans give our brothers in their prison at Abu Ghraib,” Yasir commented. “Abu Omar is far too kind to this son of a pig.”
“Abu Omar has ordered this food for him,” Giti said. “If you have issues with his feeding, you should discuss it with our master. I am happy to do as I am ordered.”
“As you should,” Yasir said, straightening up and speaking firmly to the girl.
“Will you unlock the door?” Giti asked.
Yasir took the ring clip of keys off his belt and found the one that fit the padlock. When he opened the lock, he smiled at Sabeen.
“Lovely Sabeen. How have you been this morning?” he asked the shy girl, and she turned her eyes down and blushed.
“Very good, sir,” she answered.
Jack saw Giti and sat on his stool. She gave him the bowl with no spoon. He had to rake the rice and beans into his mouth with his fingers.
“Here, not so fast,” she said in English, and gave Jack the cup of water. He gulped it down and wanted more.
“May he have more water?” Giti called to Yasir, speaking Arabic.
The Bedouin thought for a moment, came into the foul room, and took Jack’s cup. In the hall, he dipped the cup into a jar filled with drinking water and came back.
“That is all for him today,” he told Giti. “Unless he is alive to eat tonight.”
Giti looked at Jack, and when Yasir went back in the hallway and began flirting with Sabeen, she said, “Take your time. Sip the water. It is all you may get today.”
“Thanks,” Jack said, finishing the rice and few beans.
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