“They got guns and ammo, and heaven knows what else hidden under their floors,” Barkley said. “Could have a whole battalion of Hajis down in the caverns. Some of these places have quite a setup underground.”
“Colonel,” Staff Sergeant Martin shouted at the door. “You’re going to want to see this.”
Elmore gave a hand sign to Bobby Durant. “Snake, you take charge of those three civilians. Bronco and Jaws, go with him. Mob Squad, you four with Biggs and Hot Sauce, grab some of Barkley’s boys and clear those barns. Check under floorboards. Could have Hajis lying in there with guns.”
Then he and Alvin Barkley headed into the house. Just as they got to the door, Elmore looked back at his men. “And be careful of that dog!”
Sal the Pizza Man had just cracked the barn door and got met with snarling. He took a step back, pulled his pistol, but the old man came running, pleading in Arabic.
“No, no!” he cried, and stepped inside the door. In a few seconds, he came out with the dog on a rope.
Elmore smiled. “Glad it went that way. A good herd dog like that probably cost the old Bedouin a passel of goats.”
“I’d a shot the dog,” Alvin said, stepping inside the house with the lieutenant colonel.
“We need to win the support of the people,” Elmore said. “We don’t win much, making them our enemy by killing the man’s dog. Around these parts, he’d probably rather you killed his wife.”
“I know.” Barkley smiled. “And he loves his wife.”
“You can’t have justice without righteousness,” Elmore said. “And you can’t have mercy without love.”
Barkley nodded. “Another wise saying from the colonel?”
“A wise saying from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.” Elmore smiled.
In the kitchen, Rattler clawed hard on the floorboards, leaving deep marks in the wood. Then Cotton opened a side door that looked like the entrance to a pantry but hid the passage to a world of underground chambers. The working dog bounded down the stairs, Sergeant Padilla hot on his tail, and began barking and snarling amidst a chorus of terrified human screams.
Colonel Snow and First Sergeant Barkley stepped into the kitchen with their guns in their hands, and found Staff Sergeant Martin waiting at the open door at the top of a stone-lined stairway. Below, Rattler barked and snarled while four men wailed loudly for mercy.
At the bottom of the stairs, Jorge Padilla held Rattler on a short lead. The black-faced shepherd with titanium teeth wanted nothing more than to finish chewing arms off four Hajis, now on their knees, bloody wrists zip-tied, Jewfro and Ironhead holding rifles on them.
Barkley called outside on his radio. “I need two fire teams in here to take charge of four prisoners, an interrogator-translator, and a corpsman.”
Cotton Martin motioned for Elmore as he pushed open a door. “Come in here, sir. Take a look.”
It opened into a long chamber filled with double-stack metal bunks, made up military style with US Army blankets tucked tight on the mattresses. Along the wall, a rack of fifty rifles. At the end of the barracks, a raft of Russian B-40 launchers and boxes stacked full of rocket-propelled grenades piled next to a hundred wooden boxes of Russian ammunition. Stenciled on the gun racks and ammo cases, the crest of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard.
“How many of these places do you think are out here?” Elmore said. “It’s like they’re getting ready for newly arriving troops.”
“Exactly,” Martin said.
“Fuck!” Alvin Barkley said, walking into the long squad bay. “What is this? Marine Barracks al-Sunnah?”
“Mind-boggling, isn’t it,” Elmore said. “We need to go upstairs and have a heart-to-heart talk with the proprietor of this establishment.”
An interrogator-translator squatted by the four prisoners, while a Navy Medical corpsman bound up their dog bites. The translator spoke to them in Farsi.
“These guys are Hezbollah, volunteers from southern Lebanon,” the ITT Marine gunnery sergeant said. “They call themselves Sons of the Ummah. A radical Islamic community linked to all Muslim schools and sects worldwide, regardless of whether they be Shiite, Sunni, Khawarji, Sufis, Baha’is, Ahmadiyyas, Druze, Alevis, ’Alwis, or any other of a couple dozen more sects you might name. It’s the old enemy-of-my-enemy thing going on with these guys.”
“Palestinians?” Elmore said.
“Yes, sir. Just like Zarqawi,” the Marine translator said. “Your basic Beirut bomber type, motivated by the sainted teachings of such ilk as Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden. These four arrived here from Syria this morning, hell-bent on martyrdom.”
“If they came here to die, why didn’t they try just now?” Snow asked the translator.
“One look at that monster with metal teeth, him shredding their filthy hides.” The Marine laughed. “All of a sudden, jihadi martyrdom didn’t seem quite so appealing. They thought the devil had hold of them.”
Sergeant Padilla had Rattler sitting at attention, watching the four prisoners. A slight, hardly noticeable slack off the lead and he went to snarling and barking at the men. Padilla laughed as the men wailed in fear.
“See what I mean, sir?” the translator said, as the dog handler took back his short lead and Rattler silenced, but still happy and smiling. Rattler thought of his Kong reward time with Jorge. He knew what he had earned.
“Good boy, Rattler,” Padilla said, and patted the dog.
—
Outside, another translator from the four-man ITT crew had gone to work on the old man and his wife, quizzing them, as the Marines led the four Palestinian prisoners out of the house. They had zip-tied the Bedouin’s hands behind his back and now put plastic handcuffs on his wife and even on the little eight-year-old granddaughter.
Seeing the zip ties going on the little girl, crying and afraid, the old Bedouin again broke into a jabbering tirade of pleas a hundred miles an hour.
Elmore came out and saw what was happening and wanted to stop it. He could not accept handcuffing the child, nor the old woman.
“It’s a bluff, sir,” First Sergeant Barkley said, taking the colonel by the arm before he could stop the show.
“The child doesn’t know it,” Snow said, seeing the terrified little girl.
“Sir, give these guys a chance,” Barkley said.
Elmore bit his tongue, hating every second of what he saw, and listened to the old man spilling his guts.
The lieutenant in charge of the Interrogator Translator Team came to the colonel. “Abu Omar was here with a hundred men about two hours ago. A dozen guys based here went with him to al-Rawa for a meeting. The old man said he thought it was Zarqawi.”
“Get on the horn to Captain Crenshaw, First Sergeant,” Elmore said.
“Way ahead of you, sir,” Barkley answered, talking on the command-channel radio. “Forces are deploying to Rawa as we speak.”
“What about Gunny Valentine, Lieutenant?” Elmore asked. “Does he know anything?”
“He heard that Abu Omar had him in his dungeon,” the Marine officer answered.
“Which dungeon?” Snow said, and walked to the old man. “Tell us which place! We have no time for games!”
The Marine speaking Arabic told the man what the colonel had said, and the goatherd pointed west. “There are three wells that direction and four wells that direction,” pointing south. “Abu Omar moves from one to another. But all of them are his strongholds. I do not know in which fortress he keeps Ash’abah al-Anbar.”
“What do we do?” Elmore asked the first sergeant and Staff Sergeant Martin, now surrounded by their men.
“Split up?” Cotton asked.
“Half go south and half go west?” Barkley agreed.
Elmore thought and shook his head no.
“We all go south,” Elmore said. “That place that took the bombs the other day, pilots sai
d the place was burning when they pickled a pair of mark 82s down the chimney. Jack was there. Had to be. He showed up on YouTube right after. Omar’s headquarters can’t be far.”
Barkley took out a map section and spread it on the hood of his Hummer. “I marked all those locations that Espinoza had on his computer. Down here to the southwest is the oasis that got bombed, the place you believe Jack got snatched.”
Three other red dots sat in close proximity to the bombed-out camel stop, and the first sergeant pointed to each one. “These two don’t offer advantage, so we can hit them at the toss of a coin.”
Then Barkley put his finger on the red dot about twenty miles west of the Euphrates River, halfway between Haditha and Haqlaniyah.
“See the wadi down south and another wadi just north, both running east, not that far to civilization?” he said. “They use those wadis like highways. Keeps them off the skyline, and if a plane flies by, they pile up next to the ravine wall.”
Elmore looked at the topographical lines on the tactical map, studying the contours of the land. Then he looked to the southwest of the prime location and saw that Barkley had marked a red X there.
“What’s that?” Snow asked, pointing at the X.
“Rally Point Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Plan B,” the first sergeant answered. “That’s where we picked up your boys, and we killed a whole shitload of Hajis.”
“Given the size of that squad bay here,” Elmore said, looking at the red dots marked across the desert from Haditha and Hit to Syria and Jordan, “Abu Omar could house a force the size of a regimental landing team out there.”
“Yes, sir, he sure could,” Barkley said.
Elmore looked again at the red dot that Alvin Barkley had pointed out as the prime spot, not that far from Haditha.
“That’s Abu Omar’s headquarters,” Colonel Snow concluded. “What is it, twenty or thirty miles southwest of here?”
“Maybe that, Colonel Snow,” Barkley said. “But given the rough terrain, we go cross-country, it may take us two hours. We can shoot the gap soon as we get our Army counterparts and the Iraqis here to take charge of the prisoners and clear out the basement.”
Elmore looked at the house and checked his watch. “We can’t just blow it to hell and move on?”
“Sure, sir.” Barkley smiled. “But what about the prisoners? We can’t drag them along. How about we shoot them? Just like the Hajis do. Blow the shit out of the place and kill everybody.”
“You made your point, First Sergeant,” Elmore said, and let out a frustrated, deep breath. “We’ll wait.”
Then Colonel Snow looked at the poor old man and his family. They stood, huddled together, zip ties on their wrists, scared to death. The child tore at Elmore’s heart. This was the part of war he hated worst. It ranked right behind losing men.
Elmore knew more than most the toll that war takes not only on the warrior but the people trapped between sides. They do what they must to survive. They have no politics, except family and living.
As Dr. King had taught, justice does not exist without righteousness, and mercy does not exist without love. Elmore believed to be righteous, to be just, to be honorable, a man must take every opportunity to show mercy. It might turn a heart and win a war.
“Have somebody take the zip ties off that fellow and his wife,” Snow said. “And please get them off that little girl. They’re not combatants. They just live here.”
_ 17 _
“Come and eat,” Giti called to the four men standing guard, two outside the house and two inside, AK rifles slung on their shoulders. They leaned their weapons in a line against the wall by the doorway, handy but out of the way, and sat down on four chairs at the kitchen table.
Amira and Miriam put bowls of stewed vegetables on the table, and Sabeen served the four guards from a large, cast-iron skillet with slabs of sizzling wild goat steaks. She forked out the four she had fried in the heavy pan and put two fresh ones on the fire to cook for Yasir, since he had brought home the meat.
“A wild goat that Yasir hunted on the desert,” Giti said, getting the tall pitcher of hot tea ready for the men. “You should thank him for this meal.”
One of the gunmen laughed as he began cutting his steak with a table knife. “Oh yes, this goat must be his fabled Boosolah, the white oryx. We will have unicorn next week.”
The other three laughed as Giti pressed the tea leaves, and got the beverage ready to pour in their cups.
“Here, let me,” Sabeen said, and took the pitcher from Giti.
The Syrian girl took something from her apron, and Giti watched as she lifted the lid to the tea pitcher and poured something inside it.
Giti mouthed words to her, “What did you do?”
Sabeen then opened her hand and showed Giti a triangular-shaped, small plastic squeeze bottle that had contained thirty milliliters of eye drops. On the label she read, “Visine. Gets the Red Out.”
“Eyedrops?” Giti mouthed, her eyebrows straight up, eyes peeled wide, her face expressing complete puzzlement.
Sabeen poured the tea, smiling, acting the hostess with the mostest. Then the heavyset girl shoved the pitcher into Giti’s hands, seeing smoke rolling off the meat in the skillet. “Here, take this!” she exclaimed, and ran to rescue Yasir’s steaks before they burned.
The guards got another laugh, seeing the fat girl hustle.
Sabeen wrapped a hot pad around the iron skillet handle and lifted it from the gas flames as she turned off the burner.
“Giti, take Yasir his plate of vegetables and the tea. I will follow you with the steaks,” Sabeen said, holding the hot, heavy, cast-iron skillet with both hands.
She had it all figured out. The minute she found the eyedrops in Abu Omar’s bedroom, sitting on his chest of drawers by his bottle of nasal spray. The desert heat and dry, dusty air played havoc on his sensitive eyes and nose.
As the girls went down the stairs, Giti whispered, “What have you done? What are we doing?”
“Escaping, silly,” Sabeen whispered back. “Trust me.”
Yasir sat on a stool with a rifle across his lap, by the big wooden door to the dungeon cell where Jack Valentine lay, waiting for his miracle, seriously praying that God would intervene somehow. Faith, at this point, was all the Marine had left.
It had been four hours since Abu Omar had departed with most of his men, and Jack expected the crew or a big part of them to come back soon. With each minute that he waited, his hopes sank, and the sincerity of his prayers grew stronger.
“We will not feed that man in there,” Yasir said, seeing the two steaks sizzling in the skillet.
“Certainly not,” Giti said. “It would be far too risky to open that door with so few of us here.”
Yasir nodded. “Absolutely right! I am glad you see it this way. He will not starve. When Abu Omar returns, he will saw off the American’s head,” the Arab said, and drew his thumb across his throat, smiling at the girls.
“Killing is wrong,” Giti said, setting Yasir’s plate on a small side table that had two chairs with it, used by the guards posted at night. “Come, sit and eat.”
He checked the ring of keys on his belt, gave the big door a good look, checked the lock, then went across the hallway and sat at the table. Sabeen stood behind him and put both slabs of steak on his plate, next to his ample helping of stewed vegetables.
“You get the most,” Giti said, taking the pitcher of tea, about to pour it. “You are the hunter who brought home the meat.”
Yasir smiled, looking at the wonderful plate filled with hot, fragrant food. “Yes, I did. The men should be grateful.”
“They are eating and enjoying the wild goat steaks upstairs right now,” Giti said. “Do you hear them laughing and talking with Amira and Miriam?”
“Yes, I did well, didn’t I,” Yasir said, and held his cup for Giti to fill
with tea.
Just then there was a crash upstairs, as if the dining table had collapsed. Dishes shattered on the floor as the four guards fell from their chairs and began to yell and wail. Amira and Miriam screamed.
One man lunged for the rifles by the door, but rolled in a ball on the floor in the doorway and cried as he gagged and vomited. Another in the kitchen thrashed violently on the floor, suffering convulsions.
Miriam ran for their guns and grabbed two of them. Amira was right behind her, taking the other two. The girls ran outside and dropped the rifles in the yard. Then they came back inside, terrified, not knowing what they could do for the men or if they should do anything.
The reaction from the eyedrops struck slowly at first, the men feeling a bit of discomfort. They kept eating the good meal. Then suddenly the full force of the poison hit them. All four guards threw up everything they had eaten and gasped for air. Their body temperatures plummeted, along with their blood pressure. Their bronchial tubes constricted nearly closed. One man quickly lapsed into a coma, and another’s system crashed so suddenly hard that he died.
“What?” Yasir said, and stood from his chair.
As he rose to his feet, Sabeen took a full baseball swing with the big, cast-iron skillet and whacked the old Arab across the back of the head. Bong! The force sent Yasir over the table, which collapsed into broken pieces.
He rolled on his back and quivered on the stone floor.
“You killed him!” Giti screamed.
“Oh, no! Yasir!” Sabeen cried, and knelt by him. Then she smiled up at Giti. “He still breathes!”
“Praise God,” Giti said. “I should go upstairs to see what has happened!”
“No!” Sabeen cried out. She grabbed the keys off Yasir’s belt and held them up for her sister slave. “Set the American free! I did this so we can escape! Hurry!”
Jack had heard the commotion and got on his milk stool as the door swung open. Giti rushed to him and fumbled with Yasir’s keys, looking for the one that opened the padlock that held the chains wrapped tight on Jack’s wrists and ankles.
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