The girl then checked over her shoulder and fished out a healthy strip of pickled goat meat and two dates.
“Do not let Yasir or anyone else see this food,” she said. “Omar would kill me if he knew.”
Jack palmed the food and slipped a date into his mouth.
As he chewed, he said, “Any news?”
“Perhaps good news,” Giti whispered, as Jack pretended to eat more from the bowl and chewed the meat and dates.
Outside, Sabeen kept Yasir busy in the hallway, flirting back, while his two minions ate their fill of breakfast and drank their tea.
“Abu Omar leaves for al-Rawa this morning for a meeting tonight,” Giti said.
“Who with? Any idea?” Jack asked, swallowing the last of the meat and dates.
“I think with Zarqawi,” she said. “He argued against meeting in Baiji, which is not far from Hibhib, and told his so-called cousin to meet at their uncle’s house in Rawa.”
“Anything else?” Jack asked.
“They are discussing an illness that befell the family yesterday,” she said. “You are no doubt that illness. They both want to resolve this illness their own ways.”
“Fighting over me. I should be flattered.” Jack laughed. “Zarqawi wants the honor of cutting off my head. I nearly shot him less than a year ago, you know?”
“Why didn’t you!” Giti said. “Our sister Lina would be alive. Zarqawi raped her, then shot her in the head with his pistol while he ejaculated inside her.”
“Such a hero,” Jack exclaimed. “I won’t miss with my next shot. I’m Killing Abu Omar, then Zarqawi. That’s a promise.”
“I do not like talk of killing,” Giti said.
“Get used to it, kiddo. It surrounds us,” Jack said.
Giti shuddered and shook her head.
“So with Omar gone, that leaves who in charge here?” Jack asked, hopeful, feeling energy from the two dates.
“I suspect that Abu Omar will take most of his men with him to al-Rawa,” she said. “He will not meet the lion without a means of killing him. But he will not leave you attended lightly, either.”
“I’m hardly a threat locked in here,” Jack said, pondering the what-ifs. “He’ll post some good men here to make sure I don’t pull anything funny. Put someone in charge who he trusts.”
“That is what I believe, too,” Giti said, then she smiled. “He will not anticipate the four little lambs of his harem fighting back, however. That is our advantage.”
“Smart.” Jack smiled. “You should join the Marines. I could use a wise apple like you.”
“Wise apple?” she frowned. “Is that good?”
“Very good,” Jack said.
—
Several of Abu Omar’s gunmen sat on rocks beneath a grove of date palms that grew a hundred feet in front of the house. Their roots tapped into the water supply that also fed the well in the downstairs chamber and ran a trickle into stone troughs built in the midst of the trees, tamarack, and salt grass that lived off the overflow for the animals.
The men ate the sugary confection harvested from the trees and drank tea as they waited for Abu Omar to get mounted and depart for al-Rawa. Along the way, they would stop at two other similar oases, pick up more gunmen in Toyota and Nissan four-by-four war trucks.
Abu Omar preferred to drive his truck, a new blue one with big off-road tires, nerf bars, and matching chrome-pipe headache rack. Two Russian-made Kalashnikov PKMS machine guns gleamed on top, mounted at each corner above the cab.
When he stepped through the door, his men stopped talking and looked at their leader, amazed.
No longer did he wear the baggy clothes of an Iraqi peasant, with a scuffed pistol belt and bare sword stuck in it, but he had bathed, and even trimmed his beard short. He wore green military riding trousers and polished brown cavalry boots, laced at the top, up nearly to his knees. His breeches’ legs were pegged tight inside the boots. On his waist he had tied a red-and-black sash with braided fringe ends that draped down his leg. No longer wearing his shoulder rig, a brown leather Sam Browne held his Makarov 9-by-18-millimeter PMM, packed in a polished brown-leather holster with a flap buttoned over the top. Matching leather magazine pouches rode next to it.
On the opposite side of the gun belt, Omar wore his ornate short Moorish ceremonial sword in a black-silk-covered scabbard. He wore red-velvet wraps with rank insignia of field marshal, a circle of five gold stars surrounding a winged Iraqi lion, a design of his own making, mounted on his brown uniform shirt’s epaulets.
Crowning his head and tied behind his shoulders, Abu Omar wore a fine white-silk-and-wool-embroidered royal keffiyeh with a gold-and-red-braided agal making four rope circles around the headdress, and from it four long red-and-black-silk cords tipped with fringed tassels hanging down his back.
As he spoke, he slapped his leg with a black-leather riding crop.
“Today, our army of Helpers of the Sunnah will claim command of all Iraq governance states,” he said. “Today is our day of honor.
“I intend to halt with blood the command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi once and for all. His dwindling forces, most of whom have already defected to our ranks, can join us or die with him today.”
A long silence fell over the men. They didn’t know if their leader had lost his mind, or if he truly had decided that their Jamaat Ansar al-Sunnah army now stood ready to dominate al-Qaeda Iraq.
“Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted Yasir al-Bayati, and he began firing his AK rifle in the air.
That woke them up.
The men standing under the date palms raised their rifles skyward and fired them, too.
“Hurrah! Hurrah!” they began shouting, and soon the place had erupted to shouting and shooting.
Even underground, in the dungeon, Jack heard the shooting and hoped that the place had fallen under attack.
Abu Omar raised his hands, and the men cheered.
“Now, mount up,” he yelled to them.
“Should I drive or will you?” Yasir asked his commander to go, too.
“My most trusted captain, Yasir Sayf al-Bayati,” Abu Omar told the old goatherd. “You must remain here, in command of six men to guard our prisoner. Zarqawi may send men to steal him, so I put you in charge of my best men.”
“You think he would come here?” Yasir asked, now frightened at the idea of standing off a swarm of al-Qaeda with just six men. Even the six best would never match a force of any size. Besides, Yasir had never killed a man. Not even fired a gun at another human being.
“It is very unlikely, to be truthful, my friend,” he said, putting his arm over Yasir’s shoulders. “Yet it could happen. I anticipate that he will try to kill me in al-Rawa, hoping to turn my forces to his command. However, he fools himself to believe that Iraqi faithful will follow some Palestinian from Jordan posing as a kaliph of the Sunnah. I have it on good authority that his father is Shiite and his mother a bloody Catholic.”
“Very good, sir,” Yasir said, bowing his head low to his master with a courtly salute of fingers touching his forehead, saying, “Adab,” showing his respect but feeling rejected once again.
“Mind the women,” Omar said, looking at the four girls standing politely in a line behind Yasir. And to them he asked, “Am I not handsome today?”
All four girls bowed and curtsied to him.
As Giti stood back straight and forced a smile to Abu Omar, he looked at her more closely.
“Giti, you appear rosy today, almost blooming,” the washed and pressed man still with brown teeth said, smiling. “And it appears that you’ve grown around your belly. Are you with child, daughter?”
“Oh, Abu Omar, master,” she said, curtsying and bowing her head. “My glow comes from your magnificence today. I assure you, I am not with child. I know how that would distress you. A peasant slave girl with your child. It
is my unclean time. That is all. I swell and bloat. I am having these horrid cramps!”
“No, no, no, no!” Abu Omar shouted, putting his hand out, in front of his face. “Do not speak of such things in my presence! Do not disgust me with talk of a woman and her unclean period. I forbid it!”
“Go inside! Never speak of such things to men! You have work!” Yasir scolded, and sent all four girls indoors. Then he apologized to his master. “Sir, she is a Christian, unaware of morality and decency. They walk among men with their heads uncovered, and their bare legs showing.”
“Teach them to know better, Yasir,” Omar said, and walked to his truck. He motioned to the gunman sitting behind the steering wheel to get out and go to the other side. “I shall drive.”
Then, as he stepped in the cab, he stood on the side-bar step, and shouted to his men, “Follow me!”
—
A white Chinese-manufactured King Long nine-passenger minivan with dark-tinted back windows drove up the highway past Samarrah, on its way through Tikrit. If all seemed well at that point, it would turn onto Highway 19 just outside Baiji and cut across west to Haditha, then around to Rawa. If things did not appear safe that route, they would take the long ride, up to Mosul, across through Tel Afar, and then back south to Qa’im, and from there to Rawa. Five hundred miles rather than two hundred fifty.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi sat far in the back with two bodyguards. Another bodyguard drove the air-conditioned minivan that had a compartment built in the floor where Zarqawi could hide, along with a small cache of weapons, at roadblocks. Three children sat in the middle seat, and a woman posing as their mother rode in the front passenger seat.
For soldiers and police at checkpoints, this looked like any other typical Iraqi family traveling the highway. They had papers and stories for every contingency.
By the time they reached Tikrit, Abu Musab ordered the driver to find the next fuel stop and pull in. His stomach had begun rumbling shortly after breakfast. Now it had gotten unbearable. Possibly nerves. Possibly bad meat.
Al-Qaeda Iraq’s leader could not get to the restroom fast enough. When he came out twenty minutes later, his face damp from washing it, he looked pasty pale and green under his eyes.
“We should turn back, master,” his bodyguard who drove told him. “We can send words to the others who went ahead of us, and those behind us. Let Abu Omar have the American and enjoy his moment of praise. It remains our victory.”
Zarqawi could only nod and walk back to the van.
“After Omar Bakr takes the head of the American,” Zarqawi said, stretching out in the backseat, behind where the other two bodyguards sat, unbuttoning his trousers for his stomach to relax. “Take Omar’s head, too. Send it to me in a white box.”
“Very good, sir,” the aide said. “Anything else?”
“A blue ribbon on it,” Zarqawi said.
“On Abu Omar’s head?” he asked.
“On the box,” Zarqawi said, forcing a smile at the gunman as he released a long, foul-smelling fart.
“Very good, sir,” the driver said, and turned to the woman and children who stood outside. “Get in. We will go back to Hibhib.”
—
When the telephone rang in Abu Omar’s office and bedroom, Yasir looked at the other men, not knowing quite what to do. All other times, the boss had left strict orders for everyone to leave things alone.
As the phone rang again and again without stopping, a guard posted by the front door gave Yasir a look and a shrug.
“Alright!” Yasir said, and went into the office.
He picked up the cellular telephone tied to a rooftop booster and antenna. “Yes?”
“Our cousin has fallen ill,” the voice said. “He cannot travel to Rawa today. You should proceed as you have planned. We will get together later.”
Then the caller hung up the phone.
Yasir looked at the handset and put it back on Abu Omar’s desk.
“What is it?” the guard at the door asked.
“Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has fallen ill and will not come to Rawa today,” Yasir said. “He says to proceed as planned.”
“Very good!” the gunman said. “We should send someone immediately to tell Abu Omar. He will be very unhappy if he waits at al-Rawa tonight, and Zarqawi does not come.”
“I know!” Yasir said, frustrated, worried, confused.
He was not good with decisions.
“I will go,” Yasir finally told the man at the door.
The gunman shook his head no.
“I will take one man with me,” he said. “You will have four men here, plus yourself and those four girls. Just do not unlock the door to the cell, and all will go well.”
“I am in charge!” Yasir said. “I will decide who goes and who stays.”
The gunman bowed and smiled at Yasir. “I only made a suggestion. Of course, you are in charge. What shall I do?”
“Take one man with you and inform Abu Omar that Abu Musab is ill, and will not be in Rawa,” Yasir said.
“Very good, sir,” the gunman said, and whistled to a cohort in the yard, standing watch. He pointed to a white Nissan pickup with a Kalashnikov PKM machine gun on top. “We go to Rawa to fetch Abu Omar home. Zarqawi is not coming.”
Giti came running from the kitchen when she heard the truck leave. “What is wrong?”
“Get to work!” Yasir scolded her. Then Sabeen came to the door.
“Are you alright, Yasir?” she asked, smiling at him.
He smiled back at the hefty girl who lifted his heart when she gave him those looks, as if she desired him as much as he wanted her.
“All is fine, Sabeen,” he said, and she came close to him and stood at his side, looking outside, watching the dust trail behind the departing truck. Yasir imagined that this must be how it felt to have a wife by one’s side. He savored the moment.
Two other trucks sat beneath the cover of the date palms, and infrared-reflecting camouflage netting draped over them, where aircraft flying patrols overhead could not spot them.
Yasir had one truck’s set of keys on the ring that he carried on his belt, his truck that he used for his errand runs to Haditha. It had no guns or mounting racks for automatic weapons. Just a rusty white pickup with rattling windows and a radio that buzzed when he played it.
The other truck had a headache rack on the back with a Russian PK machine gun mounted on it. Loaded and ready to run. One of the guards downstairs had those keys.
—
Elmore Snow, flanked by fifty-four Marines mounted in eighteen up-armored Hummers with machine guns on turrets, rolled online. Ahead of them, the first water stop on Speedy Espinoza’s map of caravan routes.
As the flanking vehicles took up defensive positions, surrounding the ancient outpost, Colonel Snow and First Sergeant Barkley pulled their truck past a line of date palms, into the dooryard, scattering a hundred goats that roamed the place. A shaggy brown dog came running out of the house, and Rattler, who sat in the back of the Hummer with Sergeant Padilla, began growling.
“Keep your dog in the truck until we take care of this one,” Elmore said as he stepped out, and Alvin Barkley set the brakes.
An Arab in a black-and-white-checked keffiyeh, khaki trousers, sandals, and a ragged white shirt came out of the house, behind the dog, waving his hands in the air and jabbering Arabic so fast that the interrogator-translator who got out of the next Humvee couldn’t understand the old herdsman. He told him to stop his tirade and speak slowly.
“We are peaceful people here,” the Bedouin said slowly in his native language. “We are poor and peaceful. We raise goats and feed travelers as our ancestors have done here since God made this land.”
With each phrase, the translator told the colonel and the first sergeant what the man said.
“Who is here besides him?”
Snow asked.
After a translation, the old man with the gray scruff growing on his cheeks and more empty gaps than he had left of his long yellow teeth, pointed at the house and started to cry as he spoke.
“My old wife and me, and our little granddaughter,” he wailed, real tears blinking from his wrinkled eyes. “My sons have been taken, and their wives, too. All taken for the war and all dead. All that is left to carry my legacy is one little girl who is eight years old. She hides inside with her grandmother. Please do not harm us.”
Alvin Barkley looked at the colonel and shook his head. “We need to check the basement. These guys can cry a good story. The Hajis will leave an old man and a woman and a little kid to sit on top of their explosives and guns.”
The colonel looked at the translator. “Tell him we mean no one any harm, but he must put the dog in the barn and allow my men to search the house and the basement.”
Before the translator had finished, the man began waving his arms in the air and protesting.
“See what I mean?” Barkley said. Then he looked at the translator. “Tell him to put the dog in the barn, or I will shoot it.”
Then the first sergeant turned back to the Hummer. “Sergeant Padilla, you and Rattler do your thing.”
The big brindle Belgian Malinois with the mostly black face, flashing his titanium smile, came bounding out of the Hummer. He gave two good barks at the old man pulling the dog to the barn and shot the gap to the house.
Before Sergeant Padilla could catch up, Rattler began barking and digging on the floorboards of the kitchen.
Cotton Martin with Cochise Quinlan at his side, backed up by Ironhead Heyward and Jewfro Clingman, guns drawn and cocked, stacked outside the doors and filtered into the house with Sergeant Padilla.
An old woman and little girl came running out the door when the dog ran inside. They ran screaming to the old man, who had finally gotten his dog shut away, and they clung to him for dear life.
“They know their shit has hit the fan,” Barkley told the colonel.
“Yeah, but they don’t have Jack here. I hate to waste precious time,” Colonel Snow said.
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