Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (20 page)

I didn’t argue.  I didn’t even say, “No shit.”  In less than two minutes we were rolling again,
heading for the terminal.

The road swung all the way southeast around the runway, taking a wide curve back north toward the terminal. 
We passed a bunch of the now-abandoned ancillary buildings, seeing little to no activity.  There were only a handful of aircraft on the tarmac, including the two Iraqi Air Force C-130s and a Russian Antonov An-148.  No planes took off or landed while we moved to the terminal.

There was no movement to stop us until we got to the “Welcome to Baghdad International Airport” sign, just short of the terminal itself. 

We were met by three up-armored Humvees and an Ain Jharia armored car, that came tearing up together from the main terminal.  All four vehicles had guns in the turrets, but the Ain Jharia didn’t have a gunner, and the gunners in the other vehicles looked like they were hanging on for dear life.  There was a definite panicked vibe from the formation; I don’t think Abu Bakr had counted on his chosen light colonel being bribed so easily.

They came to a halt in a cloud of dust and a little bit of burning rubber about a hundred yards ahead of us.
  The gunners hastily got themselves sorted and reached for their guns, only to find our gunners already aimed in on them.  Two of them froze as soon as they noticed; the third didn’t notice until he was already bringing his gun down, then apparently didn’t know what to do next, keeping his hands on the PKM but as long as it was pointed off to one side it wasn’t going to do him any good.

For a long moment, we just sat there facing each other.  Nobody in the Iraqi trucks stirred.  Then the armored car’s door opened and Abu Bakr himself got out.

As stiff as his mien was, I could tell he was pissed.  He was in full Iraqi Army uniform—digital cammies, red beret, patches and shoulder boards, with the addition of a patent leather pistol belt and holster.  He stepped in front of the armored car and stood there, his hands on his hips.

“How much you want to bet that the Lt. Col gets shot as soon as we leave?” Larry asked.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m a little more focused on making sure we actually leave,” I said.  “Remember the heavy guns and the TOW back at the gate?”

“I’m trying not to,” he said.

I got out and joined Ventner and Lasher, the senior State guy, as they walked up the column toward Abu Bakr.  Lasher did not look happy; whether because of how heavy we were rolling or the general situation at the airport I don’t know, but I’m inclined to think it was mainly the latter.  He had to have seen enough on the way here to dispense with any State bullshit about being too provocative.  Still, I knew a guy who’d been fired by State weenies for carrying his issue sidearm openly, according to SOP, on the consulate grounds in Kabul.  That was, of course, when there still was a consulate in Kabul; hell, when there was still much of a Kabul in the first place…

We approached Abu Bakr, who stood there and stared at us from behind his aviator sunglasses, trying to appear impassive. 
But he was sweating and a little fidgety; either he was afraid that his grip was weakening, that he was the next on the chopping block after Karmah, or he was just very aware of how close the machine guns on the trucks behind us were and where they were pointed.

Abu Bakr snapped a torrent of Arabic at us.  Hassan had appeared out of nowhere next to me, and murmured the translation.  “He says that the Americans have not run Iraq in several years, and that we have no right to force our way into restricted areas.  He says we are guests
in his country, that we have shown nothing but contempt for their laws, and that now we think we can bully the Iraqis the way we did when there was an occupation.  He says he won’t stand for it, and that we have to leave.”

Lasher patiently tried to explain that this was an international airport, and that there was a US plane waiting for them.  Abu Bakr brushed it off, saying it was Iraqi soil, international airport or not, and that we had to abide by his rules.  Ventner and I traded a look.  We were getting to the point of having to force the issue.  We had the drop on Abu Bakr’s gunners, and none of the rest of his troops were getting out of their trucks.

It was a delicate situation.  I didn’t necessarily want to take Abu Bakr hostage; it not only would poison what little rapport we had with the State people, but it would likely have more backlash on the streets than I wanted us to have to deal with.  At the same time, there was no way we were letting the Iraqi warlord turn us aside at this point.  Bribery was unlikely to work, especially since it had the first time.  There was no way Abu Bakr was going to lose the face involved in succumbing to it the way his subordinate had, especially if he expected to make the Lt. Col pay for it, which I had no doubt he intended.

Ventner and I were now communicating without words.  I flicked my eyes to the up-guns, then to Ventner, then to Abu Bakr.  We had to get this show on the road.  I was already seeing movement from behind the Iraqi vehicles; he
had reinforcements on the way.

Ventner nodded fractionally, then we were moving.  The doors of the vehicles came open, and in seconds my team and half a dozen of Ventner’s shooters were out on the sides of the road, flanking Abu Bakr and his vehicles.

“Hassan, tell him we’re sorry to play it this way, but he’s left us no choice.  We
will
get our people to their aircraft, the aircraft
will
take off, and if there is any move to shoot it down, we
will
kill everyone here,” I said.  “This will be the last he has to deal with us.”  Lasher started a little at that, but there was no way in hell I was going to agree to bringing another lift into this hornet’s nest.  We were committed to the overland route now.  “If he stands his people down and lets us through, it can all be done and over with nice and peaceful-like.  Otherwise, we’ve got a bloodbath, and I guaran-fucking-tee that while his guys might be able to take us down, we’ll kill so many of his soldiers that Saleh will be able to run roughshod over him.”

Hassan translated without hesitation, and from the length of time he took, I suspect he added a few pertinent details. 
Abu Bakr looked a little sick, though he looked even more pissed.  He knew that what Hassan was telling him was spot on; he had to be well informed enough to know that the irregular-looking, bearded dudes with the higher-caliber rifles would happily fuck his shit up, but he didn’t like it.  Finally, with a look that suggested he’d just bitten into a turd, he spat out an affirmative, and turned back to his armored car, turning his back in a pointed gesture of defiance.  He wouldn’t grovel, even though he was backing down in the face of our threats of violence.

We drove straight to the aircraft, which was sitting on the tarmac, away from any of the gates.  There were more Iraqi armored vehicles and troops watching us, but we had abandoned all pretense of a low
profile, and were doing a pretty good impression of a hedgehog by the time we got to the terminal, and none of them approached us.  We pulled up next to the bird, which already had its engines turning, and sat with weapons pointed at the terminal and the troops around it while Lasher got his people offloaded and onto the plane.

I kept waiting for that one trigger-happy fucker to disregard orders and take a shot at us.  All it would take was one RPG fired at the plane, and the entire show was toast.  We could probably fight our way out, but most of the State people would probably die in the process, since they were all out of the vehicles by now, and the bird wouldn’t survive it, either.  I did not want that to happen.

Naturally, it took way too fucking long.  The State people were struggling with their luggage, and a lot of them didn’t seem to have ever learned the meaning of “sense of urgency.”  They took their time getting themselves sorted out and on the aircraft; at least that’s what it felt like.  A glance at my watch showed me that we hadn’t been sitting there nearly as long as I thought we had.

I happened to look back at just the right time to see Cyrus joining the group getting on the aircraft.  He didn’t have much with him; most of it had been left in Kurdistan or Basra, but he still had his kit and his weapon.  He’d probably have to give that up on the way; State wasn’t too keen on weapons crossing international borders.  We’d had to go through all sorts of legal gymnastics to get our own weapons into Kurdistan in the first place.

He didn’t look back, didn’t wave.  Not that I expected him to; he’d made as thorough a break with the rest of us as it was possible to make without violence or out-and-out betrayal.  I still wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t told Collins anything about us, but I found that, when I looked at it aside from the bitterness of having someone counted as a teammate leave us in the middle of an op, I didn’t think he had.  Bitter, opinionated, and pissed off he may have been, but Cyrus had come to us as a seasoned operator, and that didn’t seem like his character.

I still wondered about his “replacement.”  Black
was doing his damnedest to fit in, but the more he tried, the less I think we trusted him.  Not only had he worked for the Project, but he was an outsider, a replacement of necessity.

Finally,
the last of the passengers was aboard, the doors were closed, and the aircraft started taxiing toward the runway.  We kept our position, watching for anybody with a heavy machine gun, RPG, or MANPAD to point it at the plane.  I still wouldn’t put it past some of Abu Bakr’s people to try to stop the takeoff out of sheer spite.

But the plane accelerated down the runway and lifted off, climbing steeply into the early evening air, and there still hadn’t been a shot fired at it.  A few tracers rose sporadically from the outskirts of Baghdad, but they were way off, aimed in the general direction of the plane’s navigation lights by some trigger-happy shitstain who felt like shooting at an airplane for whatever reason.

Now we just had to get out. 

While there might have only been one official way in or out of the airport, most airports have side entrances and exits, and Baghdad International was no exception.  Of course, they are usually guarded, and we expected that, but we didn’t think Abu Bakr was necessarily going to either expect us to go out the side way, or be able to move sufficient force to the side gate to intercept us in time.  As soon as the State plane’s navigation lights were receding into the darkening sky, we were back on the vehicles and speeding north on the service road next to the runway, heading for the north gate.
  It hadn’t necessarily been part of the plan, but we were on point, so the rest of the column followed us.  Since nobody called to find out what the hell was going on, I had to assume that most of the rest of the vehicle commanders had figured it out on the move.

A couple of Abu Bakr’s vehicles started after us, but a single warning burst from Lee’s MAG discouraged them, and they slowed and turned away.  The guards at the north gate apparently decided on the better part of valor and stayed in the guard shack as we blew through the gate.  It hadn’t been secured, but we still had to knock it open with the truck on the way through.

We took the long way back, pushing north to the Abu Ghraib Expressway and then east, heading up to As Salam before banging south on Arbataash Tamuz Street.  We took some potshots on the way back to the Green Zone, but for the most part our speed and guns kept us unmolested.

Along the way, I was on the phone with Ventner.  “Well, it looks like we’re committed to the overland evac,” he said as soon as he picked up.

“It does at that,” I replied, continually scanning the buildings to the sides of the road.  “Though that was kind of a foregone conclusion as soon as we found the main gate blocked off.”

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get things ready,” he said, “but somehow I get the feeling that we’re only going to get one shot.  It’s going to be all or nothing.”

“Agreed,” I said.  “You get it set up, and we’ll be ready when you are.”

I just hoped that our own operations had yielded some fruit by then.

Haas was waiting for me when I got back to our housing.  He looked a little pensive.

“What’s up?” I asked, as I led the way into my room, leaned my rifle against the wall next to my rack, and shucked my gear.  In spite of the cooler weather, my shirt was still sweat-soaked under the plates.

“Renton called,” he said.  “He wanted us to know that the Al Qaim weapons shipment got dealt with.”

“He did, did he?”  While
we were sure that Renton and his network had more assets than just us in-country (and in fact we had banked on that probability when we’d let him know about the shipment), it did seem to simply emphasize just how much we were working in the dark.  It made me a little nervous; while Renton’s goals and ours apparently coincided for the moment, we knew next to nothing about who he worked for, or what their long-term goals were.  For all I knew, we were being played as certainly as Black claimed Collins had played him.  “Did he elaborate?”

“Of course not,” Haas said.  “The guy’s even more close-mouthed than he used to be. 
I don’t know what game he’s playing, but he’s not letting anybody see his cards, that’s for sure.”

“What’s your take on all this, Haas?” I asked, sitting down on the bed.  “You haven’t said much since he first cropped up down in Basra.”