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

Bryan was moving as soon as the detonation was over, vaulting through the window.  I followed as fast as I could, my boots hitting the floor inside as soon as he’d cleared the
opening.  He went right, so I went left, getting out of the window as fast as possible.  Jim and Cyrus opted to come in through the door, which damned near hit me as Cyrus kicked it open.

All four of us were
intermittently flashing our brilliant weapon lights into the corners of the room.  There had been three men in the upper room.  Two were unmistakably dead.  They were lying crumpled and bloodied in unnatural positions.  The third was stirring and moaning until Cyrus put a bullet through his brain.

Several more shots
popped downstairs, followed by the sound of a falling body, audible in the sudden quiet.  “Tango down on the stairs,” Larry called up.  “Lower floor clear.”

The top floor was only one room, so that made it easy.  “Top floor clear,” I replied.  “Now let’s search this place real quick and get the fuck out of here.  Five minutes.  Marcus, Little Bob, you’ve got exterior security.”

It didn’t take even that long.  There were three laptops and a bunch of loose-leaf papers in Arabic that got shoved into an assault pack.  Abu Tariq was quickly identified; he’d been shot through the upper chest about four times, but his face was intact and helpfully staring sightlessly at the ceiling.  We took quick pictures of the rest of the corpses, in case we’d inadvertently bagged somebody else of some import, then we were moving to the door to exfil.

“Just in time,” Little Bob said quietly as we came downstairs.  “We’d better find another way out.  Four technicals just rolled up to the gate, and we’re going to have company really soon.”

“Up,” I said, without hesitation.  “Onto the roof, over to the next building, and out that way.  Rendezvous at Point 559.”  We hadn’t driven the fighting vehicles on this op, so we weren’t worried about abandoning the trucks.

We pounded back up the stairs, lugging our weapons and the intel we’d gathered.  I started to pause, but Jim grabbed me by the shoulder.  “I’ve got it.  Go.”  I nodded, then got out on the roof.  It was a short jump to the next house, though the homeowner was probably awake and wondering about the heavy footfalls on his ceiling.  Come to think of it, after the explosions next door, he might not be wondering that much.

We got down to the ground, one at a time, holding security for each other as we went.  As pairs hit the ground, they scattered, heading into the warren of streets that was the local neighborhood.  Single and in pairs would be harder to spot, and evasion was our best hope of survival.  A stand up fight in the streets was not going to end well, especially as the local militias descended on us en masse.

I waited around for Jim.  Thirty seconds after
Little Bob and Cyrus had disappeared into the dark he arrived, slithering down the side of the building.  He hung by one hand for a second, then dropped, landing on all fours with a faint grunt.  “I’m getting too old for this high-speed shit, man,” he whispered.

In spite of his old-man grumblings, Jim was on his feet quickly and smoothly.  “Ten more seconds,” he whispered, as I peered out of the compound gate, trying to see if the street was still clear.  I just nodded, and led the way, sprinting across the street and into a narrow alley.

Ten seconds later, on the dot, there was another explosion from the direction of the target house.  By then, we were moving down the street a block and a half away, SBRs hidden under our coats, trying to walk as normally and as much like Iraqis as possible, in case anyone was looking out their windows.

Chapter 2

“You know,” Black said as I walked into his small room/cell, “if you’d taken me along it could have worked out a lot simpler.  I could have gotten us in as Project contractors, then we could have either started schwacking ‘em from the inside, or walked out if it was too hot. 
You guys keep up this kinetic door-kicking shit and there aren’t going to be many of you left before long.”

I studied him impassively.  Unfortunately, he had a point.  I just hated to hear it from a guy who had been paid to support our sworn enemies. 
“What’s your deal, Black?” I asked.  “We capture you fighting with ISIS, but now you want to be all buddy-buddy?”

He
spread his hands.  “Put yourself in my shoes.  Not only do I finally get offered work—and you guys should know how hard that is to come by these days—but it’s a chance to deal some hurt to some real bad guys.  We got to see some really scary shit intel-wise about what the IRGC is up to.  Hezbollah moving CBRN materials into the US from Mexico, nuclear and missile deals with not only North Korea but the Russians and Chinese, too…it’s getting pretty hairy, man.  I know you guys know this just as well as I do, otherwise you wouldn’t have sided with Al Hakim.

“But when we get here, we get thrown in with ‘militias’ that are pretty obviously Al Qaeda or similar Salafist jihadis.  Collins denied it at first, but finally just answered our concerns with ‘shut up and do what you’re told, or I’ll leave you to them.’  I want that fucker’s head on a plate just as bad as you do.  Getting captured was the best thing that’s happened to me since I set foot in this shithole, and that includes if you shoot me in the head and bury me in a shallow grave.”

I just looked at him with narrowed eyes for a moment.  “What about the rest?” I finally asked.  “How many other Project personnel feel the same as you do?”

He shrugged uneasily.  “Not as many as you might hope. 
He vetted most of us pretty well; he found the guys who didn’t give a fuck, but just wanted to kill shit.  Sunni, Shi’a, whoever, doesn’t matter a fucking bit to them.  They get to run and gun and kill motherfuckers, and they’re happy.  Some of them would probably think twice about trying to take you guys out, but some of them…they really don’t give a flying fuck.  There are probably a dozen like me who got trapped and don’t know how to get out.”

He must have read the skepticism in my expression.  “Look, I know you guys aren’t the most trusting bunch.”  That drew a snort.  “From what little I’ve been able to see, you don’t even trust Al Hakim.”

“This is a tribal part of the world,” I said.  “Trust outside your own tribe, and you’re asking to get burned.  And by ‘burned,’ I mean beheaded on the fucking internet.”  I cut the conversation short by tossing the handful of photos of the dead men in the target house in front of him.  “Any of these look familiar?”

With a shrug, he dropped the conversation and picked up the photos.  “That’s Abu Tariq, all right.”  He shuffled through three more.  “Don’t know any of these guys.”  He stopped at the fourth.  “Holy shit.”  He held up the photo, of a man in his thirties, with a longer beard and no mustache.  “This looks like Abdul Suleyman Nazari.  He’s a Syrian, was part of the Jabh
aat al Islamiya; a rather notorious member, actually.  He was part of the assault team that almost took out Assad just before the Spetsnaz whisked him away.  They say the guy’s killed over a hundred people by himself.  He’s a serious bad guy.”

“Assuming that’s him,” I said dryly, “he
was
a serious bad guy.”

He nodded.  “Point taken.  If it really is him, this is quite a coup.  You should publicize it.”

I just raised an eyebrow.

“Or not.”  He sighed.  “
I’m not saying publicize that it was you guys who did it.  But if you’re going to be running an insurgency against an insurgency, at least Al Hakim’s people need to be putting out the word about what they’re accomplishing, even if it’s you guys who do the real killing.  It’s IO, man.  You should know this.”

“And
Information Operations worked oh so well here the last time around,” I retorted.  “And in Afghanistan.  And in Libya.”

“Just saying,” he said.  “It did wonders for Ahrar al Sham, and then the Islamic Front after it, in Syria.  It’s a tool, that’s all I’m saying.”

I didn’t say anything more as he perused the rest of the pictures.  Finally, he dropped them on the cot and shook his head.  “Nobody else of consequence, at least that I know of or have crossed paths with.  This one”—he tapped one of the last photos—“is Abu Tariq’s cousin, the guy who owns the house.  I’m guessing the rest are family members and security goons.”

I gathered the photos up and started for the door.  We’d definitely run them past some of our allies/clients, to see if anyone recognized them.  As helpful as he was trying to be, even without his baggage Black was a single source, and we’d learned a long time ago not to rely on single-source reporting.  A single-source based raid in Kismayo
, Somalia had killed three of us because the source turned out to be playing for the other team.

“Stone,” Black called just before I closed the door, “think about what I said.  I can get you close to these motherfuckers.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, and shut the door.

I was poring over what meager intel we had on both ISIS and Iranian presence in the city, getting ready for my next meeting with Daoud al Zubayri, one of the militia leaders-turned-PPF commanders, when the sat phone buzzed.

It was Alek, operational head of the company, presently running the Kurdish side of the Praetorian show from Sulaymaniyah. 
He launched right in without preamble.  “Got some news, brother, and you’re not going to like it.”

I rubbed my eyes.  “What else is new?  What’s up?”

“General Qasim Saleh just announced he’s consolidated about seventy-five percent of what’s left of the Iraqi Army.”

“Fuck.”  I knew the name; we all did.  Saleh had been a pretty major player in the anti-Western, Shi’a, pro-Iranian camp in the new Iraqi Army.  There were those who tried to say, repeatedly, that he was too much of an Iraqi nationalist to side with the Iranians.  I supposed it was possible, but being Shi’a, and after the decapitation of the Iraqi government at the hands of Sunni extremists, I’d believe it when I saw it.  “Has he declared himself President yet?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he said.  “If you can get an internet connection, we can send you the video of his speech.  It was…interesting.  Short version: he focused on rebuilding Iraq, taking Fallujah, Mosul, and Ramadi back from the Salafists, and welcomed ‘assistance where it can be found.’”

I grunted.  “Three guesses where that assistance comes from, and the first two don’t count.”

“Exactly,” he said.  “We’ve got video of him meeting with several IRGC officers.”

“
That doesn’t bode well,” I said.  “Hopefully he focuses on Fallujah and Ramadi and leaves Basra alone for the time being.”

There was a pause.  I didn’t like the sound of that.  “Jeff, I hope you’ve got a good E&E plan in place.”

“He’s not going to let Basra be.”  It wasn’t a question.

“What we’re hearing is that he is going to make al Hakim an offer he can’t refuse,” Alek said grimly, “and soon.”

“Where are you hearing this from?” I asked.  “I’m getting the impression that there’s something more going on in the background.”

“We might have a new contract,” he said slowly, “largely dependent on your ‘guest.’”  There was no difficulty figuring out who he was talking about.  “
The contact is on his way to you; he left here this morning.  He’s got the credentials to get past both the Kurdish and Iraqi checkpoints.  He wants to meet with you, and talk to your ‘guest.’”

“What’s the contract?” I asked.  I almost said we were previously committed in Basra, but given what Alek had said about Saleh, that was by no means certain.  We’d known from the get-go that our arrangement with Mullah Abdullah al Hakim to secure Basra as an autonomous province along the political lines espoused by his mentor, Ali al Sistani, was going to last only as long as we weren’t political liabilities to al Hakim. 
Given Saleh’s anti-Americanism and control of the majority of the former Iraqi Army, we were probably about to find ourselves on the “political liability” list.

“I’ll leave that to him to explain.  There are a lot of tangled threads in this shit, brother, and I’m not confident enough in our encryption to want to discuss it over the phone.”

That got my attention.  “Who is this guy?” I asked.  “More importantly—who’s he with?”

“Good questions,” Alek replied wryly.  “He calls himself Renton.  Short, mousy-looking dude, but don’t underestimate him.”

“He’s a spook, isn’t he?” I asked.

“That’s a pretty safe bet,” he said.  “He should be there l
ate tonight or early tomorrow.”  There was another pause.  “Watch your six, brother.  I have a feeling that between Saleh and this new…development, things are going to get pretty sketchy soon.”

“I always watch my six, brother,” I said.  “And I don’t trust much of anybody.  That helps.”

“Good luck, Jeff,” Alek said, then disconnected.

Well, fuck.  I stared at the reports and photos in front of me for a second.  Fuck it.  Daoud was a slimy little fuck anyway; he could wait.  I went looking for Haas.

Haas was our resident spook, a former paramilitary operations officer with a certain three-letter agency turned freelancer, who had sought us out in Kurdistan and joined up after he put a few things together while we were both working separately for Liberty Petroleum.  He was good at it, and had contacts throughout the country, some of which had landed us the job with al Hakim’
s operation in Basra.

Presently, he was writing feverishly in one of the small, black notebooks that he had with him all the time.  I
’d glanced over his shoulder briefly while he was writing in one once, only to discover he wrote in shorthand.  I hadn’t known anybody still did that, but in retrospect, it made sense if he didn’t want anybody reading over his shoulder.

“Hey, Haas,” I said, as he looked up and put the notebook down, “You know a guy named Renton?”

He frowned.  “I did.  I don’t know if we’re talking about the same guy, though.  What does he look like?”

I shrugged.  “Haven’t met him yet.  But Alek says he’s kind of a mousy-looking dude.”

Haas arched an eyebrow and stood up, beginning to pace the small side room that was his pseudo-office.  “Maybe.”  He shook his head.  “I’d have to know more about him.  Why do you ask?”

“He’s on his way here.  Alek wouldn’t tell me much; he seems to be a little gunshy about the security issues with this guy’s visit.  But he’s apparently a spook, and he’s got a contract for us.”

Haas’ frown deepened.  “That doesn’t make sense, unless…” he muttered, I was pretty sure mostly to himself.  He shook his head again.  I was starting to have the hackles go up on the back of my neck.  I’d
never
seen Haas rattled.  Ever.  The guy was the definition of “unflappable.”  But something about Renton coming with a job had him spooked, if you’ll pardon the expression.

“Unless what, Haas?” I asked.  “If you know something that’ll effect whether or not we take this job, I have to know about it.”

“I don’t
know
anything for sure,” he said, staring at the table and rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably.  “The guy I know kind of went quiet a few years back.  I mean he just dropped off the face of the earth.  At first those of us in the know figured he’d just headed back out, but when he didn’t crop up again, we figured he’d quit.  Hell, if he’d died, one of us would have heard about it.  We didn’t hear anything.  He was just gone.”

“Was he good?” I asked.

“Very,” was the reply.  “He was a spook’s spook.  Strong convictions, too, though you wouldn’t know it unless you knew him very well.  I thought I did, until he disappeared.”

“Why’d you think he quit?” I asked.  I was looking for any insight whatsoever.

He chuckled dryly.  “For the same reasons I went private sector a couple years later.  The agency was getting too obsessed with internal politics and ass-covering instead of doing the job.  Assets were getting cut left and right, and the Clandestine Service was the first on the chopping block.  It was all about the techies, and the ones who were trying to save their careers were going to do it over as many bodies as it took.  Real-world threats didn’t matter as much as keeping a spot in the building.  I know Renton was disgusted by it.  That was why we thought he’d just quit, but we could never get an answer when we started digging.  The trail just kind of went cold.”

“That doesn’t seem normal,” I said.  “Hell, I know for a fact they’ve got a file on all of us.”

“If they can find it, yeah,” he replied.  “But Renton knew the right people, the right ears to whisper in, the right palms to grease.  If anybody could disappear without a trace, it was him.”

“So, assuming this is the same guy,” I said, “what’s he want now?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Haas said.  “And if Alek’s gunshy…you know him better than I do, but I’ve gathered from what communications I’ve had with the guy that he doesn’t get this close-mouthed with his compatriots lightly.”