"What are you saying?"
"I heard the officers of II Corps made out like bandits when the Americans paid them off to stay out of the fight."
"You're full of shit…hold on." Chadirchi had covered the phone, but not very well. Ghaith heard him say 'Wait a moment'. Was he talking on another phone to Ghaith's potential assassin? Good. That would give the Fijians more time to spot him.
"You're lying," Chadirchi came back on. "There was no deal. Who told you such a thing?"
"If you've heard of me you know I'm deep in the mattress with the Tikriti clan. I can tell you, when Saddam's boys heard about the bribe, they were plenty pissed off. If Uday hadn't been allegedly blown away, he would have put out a hit on the whole Corps."
"Why do you say 'allegedly'?" Chadirchi asked, seemingly entranced by the gossip.
"I was in Mosul the day they picked up his pieces…only I suspect they belonged to his body double. DNA is so imprecise…"
"Uday on the loose…" Chadirchi did not sound happy about it. Not many people would.
"Maybe, and if you have any of that safqua money stashed away, you'd better pull it out and run back to Camp Lejeune."
"Tell my more about this remarkable deal. How much could a mere captain expect out of it?"
There was a shout in the direction of the barge. Ghaith crouched and peered over the wall. Perhaps he had misjudged and the jihadists would shoot from the riverbank. The Fijians could have missed someone lying low in the bulrushes. He was distracted by a muffled voice on the phone:
"Go ahead," said Chadrichi into his other phone.
Richmond, Virginia
July, 2008
Secret Cargo
Hamal, the guard at the front gate of O'Connor's Freight Lines Depot, had not been given a break. Only a couple of days after being battered by an unknown assailant, he was back on the job, head bandage and all. But while he had recovered just enough to stand on two feet, he looked to be on the verge of total physical collapse. His eyes were wide, his mouth was slack and he had begun to hallucinate. Because truly, the man in front of him was Saddam Hussein.
Abu Jasim had been one of Saddam's body doubles in the years between American invasions. When Saddam ordered him to undergo surgery so that Abu Jasim would be identical to him in every respect, even with his pants down, Ari helped the hapless soldier flee the country. He had more than paid back the favor by saving Ari from certain death on at least two occasions. While affection between the two men was as strong as ever, a great deal of fiscal incentive had crept into the relationship.
For tonight's adventure he was in full Republican Guard regalia, with the dash of a beret. He strode up to the gate like a man in charge of crushing midgets.
"What are you gaping at!" he bellowed at Hamal. "Have you never seen a man in uniform before?"
"Your…your…your…"
"'Your Majesty' will suffice. Come over here. What is your name?"
"H…Hamal—"
"Bullshit. You're Muhammed Jabouri, the numbers runner. You think I don't know my own criminals? 'Chemical Ali'? Worthless camel dung."
"But he's your first cous…cous—"
"Cousin? That piece of shit locked up in Baghdad? A thousand times removed. The High Tribunal will cook his bacon. I'm talking about the little worms that escaped to America. What was your boo-hoo? That you were an oppressed minority? You make me fart with laughter. Look at the cushy job you've found!"
Hamal pointed to his bandage as evidence to the contrary.
"Ha! Try hanging at the end of a rope for ten minutes! That's how long I had to swing before the phony doctors declared me dead. But I was wearing a fake neck, like Clint Eastwood in Hang 'Em High. I didn't die, but I have a stiff neck like you wouldn't believe."
Ben Torson, crouched in the trees next to Ari, stifled a laugh. Ari gave him a warning glance. Earlier that evening he had reassured Ari he was familiar with night maneuvers.
"I must've rousted a hundred insurgents from their beds," he exaggerated. "You must have accompanied night patrols in Iraq. We usually had translators along."
"Indeed," Ari had replied sadly.
"Are you about to piss in your pants?" Abu Jasim shouted at Hamal. "Then come over and do it in the bushes! You should know Americans frown down upon whizzing in public."
Ari wished Abu Jasim would keep his voice down. He had been told there were at least two other guards doing rounds at night. Perhaps that was a lie. He had seen no evidence of them. But he couldn't take the risk. He wanted this trespass to be low-key. No garrotes or knock-outs. Oddly, in this great land of murder and mayhem, he was finding it increasingly difficult to inflict harm. So far, he had only killed four men in this country. Or was if five?
He was wearing a black outfit on loan from a doubtful Lawson. They were the ninja version of pajamas. Did CVG investigators really go out garbed like this? Ari didn't ask.
"Actually…" said Hamal lowly, drifting towards the bushes lining the drive.
"Do not be ashamed," Abu Jasim orated. "I have seen great men from all nations lose control of their bladder in my presence."
He might be laying it on thick, but it was working. As Hamal sneaked into the boxwoods to unzip, Ari and Ben shot through the gate on their slippered feet. Avoiding the Customer Service entrance, they braced against the wall leading to the back of the building. Ari pointed up. Raising his eyes, Ben saw the security camera and nodded. Customers were logged, recorded and taped. From what Ari recalled, there were other security cameras directed at the interior of the loading bay. But these were reminders to the workers that anyone lifting cargo for the black market was bound to be caught. In the end, those cameras might be unavoidable. That was what the ski masks were for.
Turning the corner to the bays, Ari stopped. Two of the loading dock crew were chatting with a guard just outside the entrance to the second bay. He nodded at Ben, who nodded back and disappeared back the way he had come, hugging the wall. Ari waited fretfully. It was after hours, but a late-night customer still might show up. His headlights would highlight Ari hunched against the corner of the building.
Five minutes later the guard and workers (and Ari) jumped when an air horn blasted out of a dark corner at the far end of the parking lot, away from the building. A second burst of sound drew another guard out of the building, followed by a third dockworker. All five men began drifting across the lot. Ari had had no idea of what Ben's diversion would consist of, but it had the perfection of a charm. The employees were drawn further into the darkness, as though hypnotized. Perhaps they thought they were missing an important game.
Ari entered the main bay, staying against the wall until he came to the raised loading dock. Gliding along at a crouch, his knee pinging and his back panging, he went to the first rig.
Truck 8.
It was a long shot, of course. The O'Connor rig he was looking for might have been reloaded and shipped out hours after it arrived. Unless it had been adapted to an unusual cargo with a slow turnaround time. Circling Truck 8, he noted the last trailer at the end of the bay. The trailer tractor had been unhitched and was nowhere in sight. There were no hand trucks or pallets on the dock next to it, no sign of imminent loading or unloading. Skipping the other two rigs backed against the bumpers, he rushed across the length of the bay and clambered up a short ladder. The trailer was open. There was no need to take out the pencil flashlight in his pocket. Enough light came from the row of industrial lamps stretching across the hallway beyond the wire mesh security barrier beyond the dock to allow him to see the seats bolted to the floor of the trailer. A quick survey convinced him this was the same trailer in which Mrs. Sadiq's latest guests had arrived. Crossing the length of the trailer, he opened the door in the improvised partition at the back. He found an almost spacious bathroom with a chemical toilet. He took out his penlight and looked at the walls, giving each one a knock. Then he went back into the passenger area and repeated the process, knocking gently on the wall as he went.
&n
bsp; But this was pointless. Each rap resulted in a hollow metallic echo. Stepping back, he switched his light back on and ran the beam along the slight ribbing of the welds between the sheet metal panels. Finding a small notch, he pulled. The panel swung back on interior hinges. The space between the panel and the trailer's exterior was about eight inches wide. And not quite empty. At the bottom of the hidden storage space were pieces of torn wrapping paper.
He closed the panel door. At the next welding line he found another notch, then more down the length of the trailer. Nodding to himself, he turned off the penlight and began to leave.
Two quick hoots came from the air horn. Interpreting this as a signal that the O'Connor employees were returning to the dock, he peeked around the trailer door. The five men had begun to return, but had stopped to look back in the direction of the blasts. They were puzzled, but in no particular hurry. Ari hurried out and scooted down the loading dock ladder. The trailer hid him from view as he retraced his steps out of the bay.
Hamad was standing in the middle of the gateway, apparently thinking that he was blocking Abu Jasim from entering the premises.
"I'm sorry, Your Majesty," he quavered. "But you can see why I think you're a joke."
"What!" Abu Jasim roared.
"I mean, that someone is playing a joke on me. You can't be you. If you were, you wouldn't be here, at this little depot in the middle of nowhere. You would be in Syria or Jordan—"
"Jordan!"
"Well, Libya…somewhere else, organizing the resistance."
Abu Jasim opened his mouth, but stopped and nodded sagely. "You are right, of course. I'm a total fuck-up. I should be leading my hordes in combat. These Americans need a good kick in the ass. But after spending all that time in a hole in the ground, I needed a break—"
Ari grabbed Hamad's shoulders and pinned them behind his back. He nodded. Abu Jasim stepped up and ended the guard's shout of surprise with an uppercut. As gently as possible, he dragged him away from the entrance and lowered the unconscious Hamad to the ground.
"Now they'll know someone's been here," Abu Jasim said.
"And when he tells Mrs. Sadiq that Saddam Hussein knocked him out…"
Abu Jasim grinned.
Ben raced out from behind the building and they trotted down the road to Abu Jasim's van.
"You've started the engine!" Abu Jasim snarled venomously at his nephew as he jumped into the driver's seat. "Were you planning to take off without us?"
Ahmad pointed at the cord plugged into the van's cigarette lighter receptacle. "I had to charge my laptop."
"You're wasting gas."
"And you're wasting time," Ari said as he and Ben settled into the back. "Leave with haste!"
Pulling out onto the road, Abu Jasim sped towards I-95.
"You weren't expecting the air horn, were you?" Ben laughed as he removed his ski mask.
"I wasn't expecting a complete lack of discretion," Ari answered as he flung off his own ski mask. It brought back bad memories.
"It worked, didn't it?"
Ari dismissed the vulgar response on his lips and leaned towards Ahmad. "What have you discovered, my little overpaid friend?"
"I found all the email addresses for the names on the list you gave me," said Ahmad, tilting the laptop so that Ari could see the screen. What he saw was incomprehensible to him. "I did a little phishing with them."
"I know of that device," Ari asserted.
"It's not a 'device', Colonel. How simple do I have to make this?"
"Your criticism is perilous to your health," Ari advised him.
Abu Jasim laughed out loud.
"If you hit me I'll shut down!" Ahmad protested. He had been slapped more than once by Ari, who had even paid him for the privilege.
"My hands are resting softly at my side," said Ari.
"All right," said Ahmad tensely, not believing a word his uncle's friend said. "First off, I spoofed my IP address, so there's no way they can backtrack to my laptop."
"This is a good thing?"
"It's essential. What I did was really obvious. I pretended to be a technician from Microsoft. I wrote that they had been infected by a virus and that they needed to get back to me with their password so I could investigate their hard drive and clean out the bad gunk. By the way, as outrageous as that sounds, it's a common scam. You'd be amazed at how many people give away their goods."
"I am unamazed by anything people do. Continue."
"Well, the responses I got were half smart and half really stupid. First of all, I think all of these people are scared. You don't click on emails like I sent out unless you have a guilty conscience. But anyone with sense knows that if you click on a phishing email you could let in spyware, malware, all sorts of stuff. Before you get your hopes up, I'm not able to get inside their computers with a simple click. I just mean I could have inserted ads, Trojans, some other nasty stuff, but I couldn't have stolen their identities or anything…unless they gave me their passwords."
"None of them did?"
"No. But most of them answered. Let's see…the secretary at O'Connor's wanted to know who I really was. Nabihah Sadiq told me I was a fool and to stop bothering her. Tareq Sadiq told me to do something to myself. The response from Sanad Raimouny was interesting. He called me a nemesis and said I should keep up the good work. That sort of piqued my interest and I wrote to him again a little later. His account was totally gone."
Ari chuckled. "And Nizzar?"
"I couldn't find him. My guess is that he doesn't have an account."
"My guess is that he is a computer numbskull," said Ari, who winced when he realized this described him to a T.
Ahmad reeled off the other names of people and companies he had phished. They had all responded in varying degrees, all negative, but telling.
"You didn't mention Rami," Ari said when he had finished.
"Allah's Oriental Carpets, owned by Rami Nohra. He has two email addresses, one personal and one for his business. Easy enough to find, but he didn't answer my query."
"A wise man," said Ari, leaning back in his chair.
"Either that, or he doesn't check his emails."
"A man running a business? He would check his mail hourly."
Ari felt comforting warmth in his midriff. Phishing could be quite relaxing, he decided.
"Wait…just got another response," said Ahmad, tapping on a popup message. "No, it's not a reply. What the hell…?"
"Are you going to tell us?" Ari asked when the young man drew a sharp breath.
"Here…" Ahmad held up the laptop and Ari read aloud:
"YOU WILL DIE FOR THIS."
"What!" Abu Jasim cried out, swerving out of the lane onto the rumble strip. The staccato jouncing almost unnerved him. "What's that?"
"Get back in the lane and it'll stop," shouted a frightened Ben.
Jerking back into traffic, he reached over the shift stick and struck the laptop. "Throw it out the window!"
"Hold on!" Ahmad protested. "Let me check something."
"Do not encourage more death threats," Ari cautioned.
"Amen," said Ben.
"I want to see…I have to see…oh shit! A conflict."
"We can see there is a conflict."
"No, I mean…there, that's it, I've crashed." He turned and an uneasy grimace lurched to his face. "Some asshole was using my internet protocol. That triggered a conflict. When two computers use the same IP, it causes the address to shut down."
"You are destroyed?" Ari asked.
"Well, no…I just have to spoof something else…set up a new account on a different computer. But somebody used my address to send out a whack notice."
"You mean the threat?"
"Whoever it was has some IT experience."
"We are dealing with another geek?"
"I'm not a geek!" Ahmad gasped in exasperation. "Geeks know a lot more than I do about computers."
"Such as the person who wishes death upon us," Ari nodded.
/> "Maybe…"
"You know," said Ben with alarm in his voice, "I'm thinking of what happened back at the hotel when we had to deal with those Arab rednecks."
Ari turned to look at him, unsure if he should be insulted. "Yes?"
"Remember what we were doing on Ahmad's laptop? We were tracking them…"
"And they were tracking us," Ari hissed. "Quick, throw it out the window!"
"All of you, stop panicking," said Ahmad. "I'm shutting down…see?"
"Is that enough? We need to destroy it! Leave off fretting. I will buy you a new one."
"If I threw it out here anyone could pick it up and study the hard drive. We have to do it right. Besides…"
"Besides what?"
"I've got some pretty cool movies on here that I downloaded—"
"I will buy you a hundred copies of Lawrence of Arabia. Throw it out!"
"Listen, I haven't been hacked," Ahmad insisted. "I'm pretty sure I would know…"
"That sounds doubtful," Ari said, upon which all three of the older men in the van chimed, "Throw it out!"
"Hold on! I'll need to take this apart and very carefully remove the magnets to reach the platter, then I need to lift the hard drive out, then take a hammer or something to smash the platter, then start a fire and melt the pieces, or maybe use acid—"
"Bridge," said Abu Jasim.
Ari reached across the console and grabbed the laptop off Ahmad's knees. Slapping it shut, he commanded, "Lower your window, on pain of immediate extermination!"
Ahmad pressed his lever and the window came down. Stretching forward, Ari threw the laptop as hard as he could into the James River.
"I hate Lawrence of Arabia," said Ahmad as he closed his window.
Leading Ari to wonder what kind of movies the boy had downloaded.
The Shelter for Buttered Women Page 29