Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (14 page)

The Stahl guys and Marines at the gate didn’t give us any trouble.  I expected that would come later; the suits would not be happy about losing a vehicle, never mind the fact that there were rows of them not being used, and that we’d stripped out any of the possibly classified stuff when we pulled our teammates out.

We waited by the gate for
Larry and Little Bob to get back.  They weren’t far behind, and pulled in after about five minutes.  Jim and Cyrus hopped in their truck, while Nick stayed in ours for the short drive back to housing.

Back at our billeting, we were finally able to check the guys over.  They seemed none the worse for wear; none of the frag had made it through the armor, and none of them were showing signs of a concussion.  We dropped our gear and waited for Mike and his team to get back.

They were only a few minutes behind us.  Gravel crunched outside the billets, then they were trooping inside the spare room we’d commandeered as a team room.  I gave them a few minutes to drop their gear and rack their rifles, then got started.

“Well, that was a fucking fiasco,” I started.  “That’s mostly my fault; I should have kept us closer together for mutual support.
”

“It wasn’t anything we did wrong, necessarily,” Jim pointed out.  “The bombers didn’t drop the hammer on
us; they dropped it on that patrol.  This was a case of wrong place, wrong time, nothing more.”

“We stil
l wound up exposed and on the defensive,” I said.  “I don’t want that happening again.  We’re not using State’s armored trucks again.  I want vehicles we can ditch at will if need be.  Tomorrow morning, we’ll go back out on another familiarization run, this time to get a couple of trucks and a couple of cars.  We’ll stash them right outside the gate. When we need to, we’ll take the up-armors out, park ‘em, lock ‘em up, and leave them until we come back in.  We’re not getting tied down to employer vehicles again.”

“That’s great,” Cyrus said sarcastically.  “Armor’s for pussies, right?”

Motherfucker.  “I know I don’t have to explain my reasoning to you, Cyrus,” I said.

“No, you don’t.”  He looked up from where he was sitting slumped against the wall.  “You know why?  Because I quit.”

The lack of reaction was almost more surprising than his announcement.  I guess we’d all seen it coming since Basra.  There was just a silence, as we all looked at him.  “Yeah, I’ve had it,” he said defiantly.  “I’m sick of this half-assed, reckless, fucking Superman bullshit.  I’m out.”

“Fine,” I said shortly.  “Then grab your shit and get out.  Go bunk with the Stahl guys, or Ventner’s, if they’ll have you.”  I was as tired of Cyrus’ attitude as he was of the company.  Nobody else stirred or said anything.  Marcus did look a little surprised.  He seemed unsure if he should be upset or not.  He and Cyrus had been teammates for three years, after all.

Cyrus stood up and hefted his kit and rifle in silence, as the rest of the team just watched.  We all owned our own gear, so there was nothing to turn in.

As he got to the door, I said, “I don’t have to tell you, Cyrus, to keep your mouth shut about the mission.  I find out you’ve leaked, I’ll stop up the leak personally.”  He didn’t look at me, but paused by the door, his hand on the handle.  He seemed to sigh a little, then just nodded.
  He left without another word.

Haas had come in during the little confrontation, and was standing quietly by the door
.  “What’s up, Haas?” I asked, breaking the silence and trying to get on with business.  That little rupture could have some nasty side effects down the road if we weren’t careful.

He held up a manila folder.  “While you guys were out, I ventured over to the DFAC, and ran into an old acquaintance, one I
haven’t
burned all my bridges with.  We got to talking a little bit, and I asked if there was a briefing packet for security that he could get me.  This is it.”  He shook his head as he tossed it on the little folding table.  “It’s almost useless.  State’s got its head so far up its ass right now it’s not even funny.  What little they have is a joke.  I don’t think they’ve been collecting any information whatsoever.  They’re clueless as to what’s going on right outside the fucking wall.”  Disgust dripped from his voice.  “I’ve contacted Renton about getting us some more information, but we’re going to have to develop what we can on our own.”

“That’s awesome,” Larry said sarcastically.  “So we
just have to figure out the ground truth, find this ‘Project’ and shut it down, and help get five hundred more State weenies out of the city somehow.  Easy day.”

“The last part is what’s going to put us on a timeline,” Jim pointed out quietly.  “If we’re still hanging around after the Embassy’s evacuated, it’s going to raise some eyebrows.”

“If the Project starts taking hits starting when we showed up, it’s also going to raise some eyebrows,” I said.  “We’re going to have to be very, very careful about this.  For the most part, our opponents in the last couple of years haven’t had a clue who we are.  This is different.  Collins knows who we are.  If we show up in Baghdad, and his operation starts getting hit right away, he’s going to know we’re involved.  At that point, we become a target, and sitting here at the Embassy, we’re a relatively easy target.  We don’t know who the Project might have here on the inside besides Collins.”

Silence followed, as everyone thought that one over.  It was a shit situation all around.  We really didn’t know enough.  How many layers of power, money, and influence were behind Collins?  I didn’t believe for a heartbeat that he was pulling this all off on his own.  There were movers and shakers behind this op, and they had
to have more irons in the fire than just some rogue advisors helping out avowed enemies of the US and the West in general.

Furthermore, if there were movers and shakers behind this op, the odds that they had people in the Embassy staff were probably pretty good.

“Going after Collins’ people directly ain’t gonna work,” I mused.  “I’m sure we could take several of them down before they figured out what was up and adapted, or came after us, but direct action’s only going to take us so far.  We need to be sneaky.  Indirect.”  I looked up and scanned the faces in the room.  Both teams were watching me intently.  “We’ve got to drive a wedge between ISIS and their advisors.”

There were several nods, as the guys thought through the implications.  Haas spoke up.  “The relationship between ISIS and these guys has to be largely one of mutual advantage, not trust.  These fuckers are the same guys who got formally disowned by Zawahiri back in 2014.  They don’t play nice with anybody; they’ve been at the throats of every other jihadist organization they’ve worked beside since Abu Dua announced their formation in ’13. 
Even mutual benefit would be a hard sell with these assholes.  I suspect Collins’ people are on even thinner ice than we were with Al Hakim.”

A plan was starting to form in my mind.  “We find the ISIS assets, particularly ones that the Project would know about.  We hit them, making sure there aren’t any Project personnel around when we do.  Start to erode what little trust there is.
  If we can drive that wedge, they’ll take care of the problem themselves.”

“How very Sun Tzu of you,” Little Bob said.

I shrugged.  “The man knew his shit.”

“The trick’s going to be finding those targets,” Eddie said.  He was sitting against the back wall, absently stropping one of his several knives against his trouser leg.  “
Ground reconnaissance and developing sources is going to have to be a priority before we even think about running any raids.”

“And on a timeline, that’s going to fucking suck,” Nick commented.

“We’ve got two potential avenues right here with us,” Little Bob said.  “We’ve got Hussein Ali and his guys, and we’ve got Black.  Why not have them go out and do some infiltration?”

Haas shook his head.  “Not that simple.  The Khazraji are Basra Shi’ites.  They won’t easily pass for ISIS fighters.  And Black is wor
se.  He was assigned to Basra.  He shows up at a Project safe house here, questions will be raised as to why he’s out of place, and where the fuck he’s been for the last couple of months.”

“
I’m open to suggestions,” I said.

Larry spoke up for the first time.  “Let’s continue to drive on with the evacuation mission,” he suggested.  “We lay low for a couple of days, and don’t do anything noticeably outside of those parameters.  Meanwhile, we see what Renton manages to dredge up for us. 
There might be something that stands out there.”

It was as good a course of action as any other
.  After some more discussion, we broke up and went to get some rest.

Before I could rest, though, I had an unpleasant task.  With Cyrus quitting, I was down a man, when both of our teams were already shorthanded; we had set teams at ten men, and both Mike and I were down to eight.  Seven wasn’t enough.  I decided it was time to go all in on Renton’s gamble.  I knocked on Black’s door.

He answered after a moment, in just his shorts.  He had a lot of ink, most of it skulls, with a SEAL trident prominently on his right shoulder.  His AK chest rig and rifle were leaning against the wall behind him.
  There wasn’t much of anything else in the room, besides the furniture.  He had even less stuff than we did.  He looked a little bleary, like he’d just woken up.  “What is it?” he asked, squinting at me.

I stepped inside and closed the door.  He backed up and sat on the bed, the AK now within easy reach.
  I was reasonably confident I could get to him if he decided to grab it.  I hoped I wouldn’t have to.  “You offered to help, back in Basra,” I said.  “Does that offer still stand?”

He studied my face for a moment, as if trying to see whether I was jerking his chain or not.  Finally, he nodded.  “Yes, it does.  To be perfectly honest, I think it’s my best chance of staying alive.”

I found I really didn’t want to do this.  Hussein Ali’s guys weren’t vetted to our usual standards, but we’d fought beside them for a couple of months.  Black, on the other hand, probably wouldn’t pass our standards if he tried out, if only because of his past associations.  Ventner’s warning wasn’t making me feel any better about this.  I felt like I was putting a knife at my own back.  But it couldn’t be helped.  “Then you’re in, for now.  We’re shorthanded, and I need all the guns I can get.”

“Plus you need to keep me close to keep an eye on me,” he said.

I just looked at him impassively.  “There’s that, too.”

“Don’t worry about me, boss,” he said, leaning back on the bed and putting his hands behind his head.  “I’ll be good.  I like my scalp where it is.”

Chapter 10

Two days later, Ventner came to see me.  We’d been running “familiarization” trips around Baghdad, about three a day, in beater local vehicles, and had a lot of the human terrain about as mapped out as we could get from objective observation.  To get any deeper, we’d have to talk to more people and in a lot of the neighborhoods these days that wasn’t necessarily a good idea.

I was working on our situation map in our makeshift team room.  It had gotten quite a bit more organized over the last couple of days.  We had printed out a large overhead map of Baghdad, and taped it to one wall.  Photos were scattered on the wall around it, with lengths of paracord connecting them to the areas where they’d been taken.  Copious notes and observation logs on Rite in the Rain paper were taped below the photos.  The picture was becoming clearer.

Saleh had managed to secure most of the Iraqi Army brigades based around Baghdad, Najaf, and Nasiriyah, but his control hadn’t necessarily contributed to their already abysmal morale or performance.  He’d also apparently mostly suborned the Iraqi Police, though they were generally staying surprisingly neutral.  I’d heard too many stories of the IP being corrupt, working for AQI or the Baathists, or both.

The
strange thing was that nobody was pushing.  Sure, there were skirmishes, and at least five bombings a day, but there was no concerted push one way or another.  ISIS was holding its ground, and the IA, Jaysh al Mahdi, and AAH were generally holding theirs.  There was plenty of posturing, but so far they were content to snipe and nibble at each other.

If
recent history was any indication, that state of affairs could end up going on for years.

I’d just put up the latest notes on AAH checkpoints and patrol patterns in Khadimiya.  One of our possible evac routes ran right through there.  Ventner took a moment, just standing there and studying the map and the rest of the information.  “Damn, you guys don’t fuck around.”

I chuckled dryly.  “Heh.  We’ve been in too many situations in the last couple of years where we couldn’t afford to.  ‘Knowing is half the battle,’ you know.”

He just shook his head.  “I thought we were conscientious.  Granted, we haven’t gotten outside the compound
or the airport much since we got here, but this is some impressive work for three days.”

I decided to get to the point.  “What’s up, Joe?  You didn’t come in here just to admire our observational capability.”

He shook his head.  “A couple of the client personnel have been asking questions,” he said.  “Sarah tried to throw a fit about the up-armor you guys got blown up a couple days ago.”  Sarah Merchant was in charge of the transport assets at the Embassy.  She was short, fat, and a raging bitch.  “But I’ve had other people come up and ask me questions.  A guy I hadn’t seen before came in from outside the other day, and grilled me about you guys.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.  “Short fucker, suit, greasy brown hair?”

“He wasn’t wearing a suit,” Ventner said, “he was wearing khakis and a polo shirt, but yeah, he was short, slicked brown hair, and had a bad case of short-man syndrome.  Acted like he owned the place and like I reported to him.”

“Sounds like Collins,” I said.

“You know him?”

“We’ve had a couple of brushes with him,” I said vaguely, looking back at the board.  Ventner didn’t need to know about the circumstances of our interactions with Collins.

He studied me quietly.  Ventner was sharp; he knew there was more going on with us and Collins than we were saying.  “I take it he’s got something to do with your ‘other business’ here in Baghdad?” he said quietly.  It almost wasn’t a question.  “The business you can’t talk about?”

“You know I can’t tell you that, Joe,” I replied.  That alone was enough of an answer for him.  He nodded.

“Fair enough,” he said.  “I kind of figured that out, anyway, and since his whole attitude pissed me off, I didn’t tell him shit.  Not that I know jack or shit in the first place, but even if I did, I still wouldn’t have told him anything.”  Ventner was notorious for shitting on officious bastards.

“Thanks, Joe,” I replied.  “I know it’s got to rankle that we’re staying so close-mouthed about this, but trust me, the fewer people who know about it, the better.”

He picked something up from the way I said it, which was pretty impressive, as I’m not the most emotive individual.  “There are people here who
can’t
know about it, aren’t there?” he asked.  “People who, at the very least, would tell the wrong people.  I’m close, aren’t I?”

“Don’t push it, Joe,” I warned him, turning to face him fully.  I liked Ventner, but knowing that Collins was working at least partially out of the Embassy, I couldn’t trust
anybody
outside of our teams.  Joe Ventner might be completely on our side if we brought him in, but who knew about all of his people?  I knew he engendered a lot of loyalty with his contractors, but there’s always that disaffected asshole who has to carry tales to the client to try to suck up.  We only needed one.  I suddenly thought of Cyrus again, but pushed the thought aside.  We’d tie up that loose end, if it came to that, when it happened.  He’d earned that much consideration, at least.

He held up his hands to placate me.  “I’m not pushing.  Consider the subject dropped.  I trust you guys know what you’re doing.  I just wanted to warn you that somebody—who you s
eem to know—is sniffing around.  I’m not the only one who’s noticed something shady going on, either.  The Chief of Station of all people stopped me for a chat yesterday.”

“Was he asking about us, too?” I asked.

“No, he wasn’t, as a matter of fact.  He was asking about this Collins guy.”  That got my attention.  “He’s apparently seen him around, had him appropriate a couple of comm assets, but won’t otherwise give anyone the time of day.  The COS is wondering what the hell’s going on; he saw me talking to Collins, so he asked me.  Apparently he’s got all the right credentials, but he seems to be acting entirely independently, at least of the Agency.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” I said.  “Unfortunately, I can’t elaborate on that.  Just that it confirms a couple of things for me.”

Ventner nodded, his mouth compressed into a thin line.  He knew something was going on, didn’t know what, and couldn’t find out without pushing his luck.  And he didn’t like it.

As he turned to leave, he stopped in the doorway.  “Jeff,” he said, looking back at me, his expression serious, “I get the impression that whatever you guys are into, it’s dangerous as hell.  If it goes bad, I hope you don’t wait too long to ask for help.”  He was out the door before I could respond.

I stood there and thought about it for a moment.  It wasn’t the first time we’d been offered help; hell, the Ethiopians had offered some aid in Djibouti.  We were a pretty insular company, though, and didn’t accept outside help very gracefully, particularly not on a contract this sensitive.

My reverie was interrupted by someone else knocking on the door.  One of our guys would have just walked in.  I went over and cracked the door open.

The man outside was wearing the black collared shirt, light khakis, and Glock that was practically the contractor uniform around the Embassy.  He was generally nondescript, fit, with sandy hair and a caterpillar mustache.  I’d never seen him before.  “Jeff?” he asked.  “I’m Phil.  Can I come in?  I have some information for you.”

I hesitated.  While most of what we had in our team room could be explained as route reconnaissance for the evacuation, there were a few things that might point to other goals.  He apparently picked up on my hesitation.  “I’m not here on behalf of CP or the client,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a phone.  He hit a speed dial button, and held it out to me.  The number on the screen looked familiar.

With a frown, I took the phone and brought it to my ear.  It picked up after two rings.  “Go.”

I recognized the voice.  It was Renton.  “A guy named Phil just handed me this phone,” I said.

“Ah, Mr. Stone,’” he said.  “This is Phil’s rather melodramatic way of establishing his bona fides.  You can trust him.  He’s read in.  Has he told you anything yet?”

“I haven’t even let him in the door yet,” I replied.  “Do you have anything to add?”

“Not over the phone,” he said.  “Phil’s got everything you need.  I won’t keep you.”  Then he hung up.

I stepped back to let Phil in.  “Well, Renton summed that up pretty well,” I said.  “That was pretty melodramatic.”

He shrugged.  “It seemed like the fastest way to establish who I am,” he said as I closed the door behind him.  “A challenge and pass wasn’t set up for this; I’m not sure why not.”

I stepped over to the table, leaned against it, and crossed my arms.  “So, you work for Renton.”

“Not exactly,” he replied.  “I work
with
Renton.”

I shrugged.  “Semantics,” I said flatly.  “What is it you wanted to tell me?”

He held out a small external drive.  “There’s some updated imagery and dossiers on some of the suspected Project personnel on here.  Also, there is some reporting you asked for about ISIS activities in the vicinity of Baghdad.”

He stepped over to our situation map and studied it for a moment.  “It looks like you guys have already done a pretty thorough job of mapping out the influences here in the city,” he observed.

I put the drive next to one of our laptops.  “I’ve been around long enough to want as much information going in as possible.  That means plenty of preliminary reconnaissance before making any moves.”

He nodded, still studying the map.  “
What’s your short-term plan?”

“Hit ISIS assets and personnel where the Project guys aren’t,” I said bluntly.  “Try to drive a wedge between them; hopefully we can get ISIS to do our dirty work for us.”

He grimaced.  “Easier said than done,” he said, “especially since we haven’t got a lot of sources close to ISIS.  The last HUMINT source we got even remotely close wound up with his head and his hands cut off.”

“That is a bit of a deterrent,” I agreed.

He glanced around the room once more, then turned to the door.  “I should get back before somebody notices I’m over here,” he said.  “Best to keep a low profile.”

“Hey, Phil,” I said, “how many guys does Renton have here?”

He paused, and looked back at me with a slightly raised eyebrow.  “The Network has people everywhere, Jeff,” he said.  I could hear the capitalization of “Network.”  “It’s been growing for a long time.”  Then he left.

I shook my head.  Fucking spooks.  Turning back to the laptop, I inserted the flash drive, ran it through three separate malware programs, then finally opened it up and started reading.

After almost three hours, I found something.  It would take some work to follow up on, but there was a report that
Waffa bin Khalid and someone called only Al Dhi’b were coming to Al Karmah for a meeting in three days.  I recognized both names; Waffa bin Khalid was the Caliphate of the Arabian Peninsula’s intelligence chief, having taken the reins from Abdulaziz bin Faisal’s dead hands, and a Caliphate terrorist named Al Dhi’b had just slipped away from us in Yemen when we went after Al Masri a little over a year before.  We knew next to nothing about Al Dhi’b, and apparently, neither did Renton’s network, but the fact that he was coming from the Caliphate to Karmah for a meeting with ISIS put him on my radar.  I called the team together and we started to plan.

“This is worse than Baghdad,” I muttered.  From where our van was pulled over to the side of the road, we could see two patrols and a major checkpoint, manned by ISIS fighters in camouflage smocks and chest rigs.  It was early for any Iraqis to be patrolling; the sun was just peeking over the eastern horizon.

“Yeah,” Larry agreed, peering over Yusuf’s shoulder.  F
our of us, including Black, were crammed into the back of a Kia van, curtains drawn over the tinted windows to shield us from casual observation.  Yusuf and Hassan were up front; they wouldn’t pass as locals in Karmah if grilled for very long, but they were better than burly Americans.  Yusuf’s HK93 was jammed between his knee and the gearshift, and Hassan had scraped up a Zastava AK-74 that was between his knees, the stock folded against the receiver.  The rest of us in the back had our weapons in our hands.

“Karmah has always been bad-guy land, going back to ’04,” Bryan pointed out.  “Why else do you think they picked it for the fucking meeting?”

“Take us west,” I told Yusuf.  Hassan translated, just to be sure.  You could never tell just how much Yusuf understood and how much he didn’t.  He turned the wheel and we started bouncing down the canal road to the west.  There had to be another way into the town that didn’t involve passing through an ISIS checkpoint.

We bounced and rattled past a water treatment plant before finding a dirt road leading back north, into Karmah.  The van had definitely seen better days; I kept expecting random bits to start falling off.  As long as it ran long enough to get us in and out, that was all I cared about, I reminded myself.

There was another patrol on the main road running through the center of town, but they didn’t appear to be stopping any vehicles.  We were riding the thin edge of compromise on this op, rolling into a hostile town in broad daylight.  Unfortunately, urban recon is an iffy proposition anyway, as several of us had discovered the hard way in Libya and elsewhere.  You never knew until daylight if the house you were setting up in was actually abandoned or not.  Similarly, a vehicle just sitting there long enough starts to attract attention.  The best way to do this was to roll in, conduct our surveillance while staying as mobile as possible, and get out.  It had its risks, but what doesn’t in this line of work?