Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians) (36 page)

             
The three of them looked at each other.  The bearded guy just kind of sat back and looked at the other two as if to say,
Well?  Haven’t thought that part through, have you?
  Daoud and the clean-shaven guy exchanged a few short words, then Daoud turned back to me.

             
“We are striking back against the Iranian-controlled puppets that have been terrorizing our people,” Hassan translated.  “By attacking them in their base, they will know they are not untouchable.”

             
That was about the answer I had been expecting.  Very revolutionary, very militia, not terribly militarily sound.  It was a strategy, of sorts, certainly, but for a mission it was way too vague.  I refrained from pointing out that our ambush in the cemetery in Zubayr had already done a pretty good job of sending that particular message to the PPF.

             
I took a moment to pore over the map, and stroke my beard thoughtfully.  I already had a target picked out, but I didn’t want them to know that.  Let them think that I was pondering it.

             
“You say you have men within the PPF?” I asked.  Hassan and Daoud nodded.  “Then they would know who the Qods Force men are?” I continued.  There were some thoughtful looks after Hassan translated this, and more nods.  “If it is the Qods Force men who are driving the problems here in Basra, perhaps we should use the assets we have to kill or capture them.  From them, we might be able to find out where the Hezbollah and Jaysh al Mahdi fighters are.  It would be a much better use of the men and assets that we have than risking them in an all-out assault on a defended base.”

             
The three men started talking rapidly in Arabic as soon as Hassan had relayed what I’d said.  Actually, Daoud and the clean-shaven guy did most of the talking, with the bearded guy only putting in a word now and then.  Both of them seemed to defer to him; it was similar to the respect I’d seen afforded to elders, but there was something more to it.  I really wanted to know who this guy was, and what he’d done.

             
While they talked, I leaned over to Hassan.  “Okay, I know Daoud,” I said quietly.  “Who are the other two?”

             
“The man with the beard is Hussein Ali al Khazraji,” he said.  “He is a very important man.  He was a Colonel in the Iraqi Army, and is a shaykh of the Al Khazraji.”  That pretty well confirmed my suspicions.  The guy was a heavy hitter locally, which explained why the other two treated him with such respect, and why he didn’t talk all that much.  It didn’t explain why Daoud was apparently running the show instead of him, but I suspected that had something to do with tribal and religious politics that I didn’t know about, and right at the moment, couldn’t care less about.  Mission first.

             
Of course, it occurred to me that not knowing those tribal and sectarian dynamics could very well come back and bite us in the ass, especially considering that we were talking about Shi’a fighting Shi’a fighting Sunni.  We just didn’t have the time right at the moment.

             
“The other man is Sattar Said,” Hassan went on.  “He has been in the Jaysh al Mahdi, and the Iraqi Police.  He argued with Moqtada a few years ago, and now fights for Mullah al Hakim.”

             
I made a mental note to keep a close eye on Said.  Granted, loyalties could change quickly and without warning in the Middle East.  It depended on any number of factors—personal insult, money, perceived advantage to self or tribe, or a perception that the side one was on was losing.  I still didn’t trust somebody who’d already flipped once, and furthermore had been one of Moqtada al Sadr’s lackeys.  If things started to look like he’d do better on the other side, he’d turn on all of us in a heartbeat.

             
Okay, so I was expecting that to happen with all of them at some point.  I just figured that if any of them was more likely to do it sooner rather than later, it would be Said.

             
Ain’t this job grand?

             
The rapid-fire consultation ended.  Hassan hadn’t even tried to fill me in on the high points.  Daoud turned to face us.  “We think your plan is a good one, although I wonder just how effective it might be in putting fear in our enemies, and protecting our homes.”

             
I grinned.  Knowing how strung-out I felt, and how cadaverous my face looked, not to mention the fact that I put no mirth whatsoever in the expression, it can’t have looked pleasant.  “Trust me, when their heavy hitters start disappearing, they’ll feel the fear.”  Hassan translated, and there were more nods.

             
I didn’t relax, exactly.  The situation was too fragile and the loyalties of our allies too murky for that.  But I could sense that this was going well, so far.

             
Hussein Ali spoke at length for the first time.  “He says that one of his most trusted men used to be a deputy police chief in Old Basra,” Hussein interpreted.  “He says he will speak to him tonight.  The new deputy police chief is Iranian Qods Force, and he says that his man will know where and when to strike at him.  He says he will have all the necessary intelligence in the morning.”

             
If the guy really was former Army, and a Colonel, it was possible that he knew exactly what intel was needed for an op like this.  It was also possible, especially since he was a local shaykh, that he’d gotten his rank from pure political and monetary clout, but watching the guy, he didn’t strike me as the type.  He reminded me of a few old soldiers I’d known; hard, quiet, always thinking.  I suspected we’d get a pretty complete target package out of him.

             
Also, under the circumstances, I wasn’t going to pull the crap that some commanders had in these sorts of situations, where they treated their allies like children.  If he didn’t come through, we’d deal with it then.  Right now, rapport required that we trust him to get what we needed.  I was going to have to be prepared with a plan B, in case of the very real chance that these guys dropped the ball, but letting them see that was just stupid, especially when we were as outnumbered as we were.

             
With Hussein Ali having taken the lead on getting the intel we needed, the meeting became much more informal.  Daoud offered us places to sit, and called for more chai.  The atmosphere relaxed, and the conversation turned to less serious matters--family, backgrounds, that sort of thing.

             
I ordinarily hate small talk.  I’m not a people person.  However, there were two angles to take here.  The first was building rapport with our new allies, and getting them to trust us.  That required the “getting to know you” period.  Arabs don’t like to work with people they don’t know.  I think it has to do with their tribal backgrounds.  Any work that gets done is based on relationships.  We’d have to befriend these people.

             
The other angle was gaining information.  The more we knew about these men, the better we’d be prepared for whatever actions they might take in the future.  Information is power, and in a situation like this, it meant survival.

             
The conversation went on well into the afternoon.  A lot of chai was drunk, and plenty of friendly talk.  None of us actually said much of anything.  We didn’t even have to communicate about it; everybody already knew what to do. Nobody revealed any personal or operational details beyond the most bare-bones necessities to keep the conversation going.

             
About an hour before dark, Hussein Ali excused himself, ostensibly to go meet with his contact.  Shortly thereafter, I stood up and said that we should also go.  It was almost time for prayer anyway.  Daoud offered to have us stay with the militia, but I politely declined.  I didn’t trust security around here, and we had too much crap back at the safehouse.  I wasn’t leaving Haas, the prisoner, and Little Bob back there alone overnight, either.  Eventually, we might have to take them up on the offer, but for that night, we were going back to our own hidey-hole.

             
As we walked out of the main building, it became abundantly obvious that most of the militia had left, apparently because there was no attack on the PPF base imminent.  As I got in the van, I remarked, “Looks like the great anti-hardliner militia fucked off.”

             
“They started leaving in ones and twos about two hours ago,” Bryan said.  “I guess with no raid coming up they decided to go home.”

             
“That’s the way these outfits usually run,” I said.  “Not terribly disciplined, and everybody goes home at night.”

             
“Back to the barn?” Bryan asked.

             
“Yep.”  I nodded.  “Take us the long way round, though.”  I had dug out some of the imagery and held it up, pointing to the area around the old Shatt al Arab Hotel, which was now the PPF base these guys had wanted to hit.  “Take us by here.”

             
He glanced at where I was pointing.  “That’s solid PPF territory,” he pointed out.

             
“I know.”  I fully expected that sooner or later Daoud was going to get a hair up his ass again about hitting the place, so I wanted to at least get a look at it, in case we had to do something about it.

I shifted in my seat.  Sitting cross-legged on the floor was not the most comfortable at my age.  Too many miles, too many parachute jumps; the knees didn’t like that position anymore, and my
ass cheeks ached from the concrete underneath the thin pad.  Bryan didn’t ask any more questions, but just put the van in gear and started out of the factory complex.  We didn’t have a lot of time, given that the PPF-enforced curfew was going to start soon, but I really wanted to have a look at the base, just in case.  While I hadn’t wanted to launch into the militia’s planned half-baked attack, I wasn’t taking the place off the table as an objective.  In part, I’d delayed because I wanted to run my own reconnaissance on it first.

             
It only took about a half-hour to get there, following the main streets.  The PPF was out in force, but static, manning checkpoints at major intersections, checkpoints we avoided by ducking into the back streets until we were past them.

             
The main thoroughfares were lined with market stalls in several places, and there were crowds buying their food for their evening meal.  Refrigeration was hard to find in Iraq, and with electrical power still being intermittent at best, even after the new power plants the Saudis had built a number of years ago, it was hit or miss when it could be found.  So most people went out to buy their food reasonably fresh for each meal.  That actually made morning and early evening the best times to be out and about, aside from the cover of night.  There were plenty of people and lots of traffic to get lost in.

             
We got up to the main road running along the Shatt al Arab, and turned west, into the sun.  I kept scanning the barges and small ships out on the river, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jim doing the same.  I was hoping that our new contacts would get us a shot at that ship full of Hezbollah fighters coming from Bushehr.  We might not be able to move fast enough to hit them on the river, but I didn’t want that bunch of fanatics running around any longer than need be.

             
Then we were on Dinar Street, and heading back into the thick of the city, and the river receded, hidden by buildings.  We went back to watching for ambushes, IEDs, and checkpoints.

             
“Coming up ahead,” Bryan announced.  “We’re going to have to get closer than I’d like; the only road nearby goes almost right up to the gate, before it goes around and leads to a canal crossing.”

             
“Take it,” I said.  “Unless they’re stopping vehicles short of the gate, we’ll just cruise on by and get a good look at their security.  If they are stopping vehicles, we should be able to tell before we’re committed.”  A quick look at the overhead had showed me Dinar Street travelling along another canal for some distance before reaching the PPF compound.  If we had to, we could turn into a park on the canal and turn around, finding a different route to the safehouse.

             
As we got closer, the glare of the sun dimmed to a dull red, as it sank into the fug that hung over the horizon, but it was still enough to make it hard to see in the shadows of the compound walls.  Not hard enough that we couldn’t see the checkpoint set up about a hundred yards in front of the gate, though.

             
“Into the park,” I directed.  Bryan was already turning.  I reached back for the binoculars in the go-bag behind my seat.

             
Bryan found a good spot, under the trees and away from the road.  There was brightly colored plastic lawn furniture and some playground equipment, but no one was using it.  Basra had become a dangerous place, especially at this time of day.  I got out of the van and walked over to one of the bigger trees, hoping to lose my silhouette in its shadow.

             
The gate was obscured by other buildings and trees along the canal, and I cussed under my breath.  That was the best way in for a PPF Trojan Horse, and I couldn’t see it.  We couldn’t afford to get caught by a PPF checkpoint, however.  I turned my attention to the rest of the walls.