Into Darkness (4 page)

“Greg? Can you hear me?” she asked, her words incongruous with her lips as the connection strained.

“Yes, sweetheart, I hear you,” he said. He braced himself as her lips quivered and her body shook with a ragged inhale.

“Four cars! Four cars came into the neighborhood, and they passed our house, and one stopped at the Salamancas’ place across the street.” Her voice was high and fast as she broke down. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she wiped her face with a demolished tissue.

“Darling, I know.” He regretted the words the second he said them.

“The hell you do! I stayed with Maria for hours after that worthless rear-detachment guy left her crying on her doorstep. Then I went to the other three houses and tried to do something for those new widows!” Her words came out between heaping breaths.

Behind her, a little voice called, “Mamma?”

Shelton’s heart broke to hear their oldest daughter, Nina, who was so concerned for her mother.

“Just a second, honey,” Mary called over her shoulder and took a deep breath. She exhaled slowly. Shelton waited for her to finish the five-count breath, just as Chaplain Kroh had taught them during predeployment counseling.

“Every wife, mother, and father in the company has been calling me nonstop, asking what happened over there,” she said in a low and controlled tone. “I can’t do this family readiness crap anymore!” Her voice was still low but now in whisper-fight intensity. “I can barely handle worrying only about you; all of this is too much for me.” She raised her hands and pushed her palms toward the screen.

“Honey, we talked about this before I left. I told you things like this would happen—”

“Like this? Seven dead and two missing in one day? I barely kept it together when Lieutenant Oberth and then Specialist…” She paused, her eyes pinging from side to side. “Oh my God. I can’t remember his name.”

“Specialist Howard.” Mary nodded as Shelton said the name.

“I don’t know if I can keep doing this.” She looked down and sobbed quietly.

Shelton almost gave her detailed instructions on how to deal with the grieving families. He almost read a word-by-word statement he had prepared for the company’s families. He almost treated her like a state side lieutenant. Instead, he reached out and tapped on the screen. She looked up.

“Hey, how are the girls doing?” he asked.

“They’re good, but worried about you.” She stopped crying and looked at the door.

“All right. I’ll e-mail you a statement for the company. It reminds everyone to direct all questions to the rear detachment. That should take some pressure off you.”

Her voice lowered. “Greg, what happened to the two missing Soldiers, Brown and O’Neal?”

Shelton shook his head slowly. “We don’t know for sure. Tell everyone that we will not stop searching for them. Remember when I promised the company that everyone will come home? I am a man of my word.”

Someone knocked on the door behind Mary. “Mommy, is that Daddy?” a little voice called.

“Not yet, honey. We still have to wait.” Mary looked guilty as she leaned closer to the microphone. “You need to send Porter back to deal with his tramp of a wife. The cops were at her place to kick out another guy last Thursday. She won’t answer calls or the door, even when we know she’s home.” She rolled her eyes. “Plus, there’s a brand-new Mustang in her driveway, and I know she used Porter’s credit to buy it.”

“Christ, I can’t send anyone back right now.” Shelton would have to keep these details to himself, but he knew word would leak back to Specialist Porter once the communications blackout was lifted.

“I
told
you not to let him sign that power of attorney.” The door behind Mary burst open, and three blond little girls rushed the camera.

“Daddy!” squealed the little girls as they waved and smiled at the camera.

For a second, the war was gone, and Shelton felt the joy of fatherhood. But only for a second.

The brigade conference room roiled with impatient staff officers and Soldiers. The normally sparse room was packed with metal folding chairs relocated for this briefing, the purpose of which was the subject of murmured speculation around the room. Representatives from each battalion staff took up a cluster of seats, lobbing rumors and recent news at each other. Conference tables formed a U shape at the front of the room, facing a wall flanked by a blank projection screen and a blown-up map of the brigade’s area of operations. Folded placards with the names of each battalion commander and his sergeant major stood silent vigil in front of empty chairs.

Ritter sat in the back row with Joe and Jennifer. Cindy Davis’s olive-drab notebook sat on an empty chair between Ritter and Joe, an attempt to hold the seat; the odds of holding it became more precarious as more Soldiers filed in. The back row was the cheap seats for this kind of event, but sitting was better than standing for something that could last hours.

“When was the last time the brigade commander had a meeting like this?” Joe asked.

“Before we left the States—the deployment operations order, I think.” Jennifer tugged at her bottom lip and flipped through her own green notebook, distinguishable as hers only by her name written in Magic Marker on the spine and front cover. The ubiquitous notebooks were highly prized, given their sturdy construction and ability to fit snugly in uniform cargo pockets.

“So this must be important,” Joe said.

“Good job, honey! We’ll make an intelligence officer out of you yet.” She gave her husband’s knee a pat.

“Does it bother anyone that we, the intelligence officers, have no idea what this is about?” Ritter asked. He waved to Davis as she entered the room.

Davis quickly wove her way past seated spectators and loudly whispered, “They’re coming!” as she took her seat. She breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Ritter. “So, any idea what this is all about?” she asked.

Idle chatter slowed as Captain Shelton entered the room. As the commander of the missing Soldiers, he carried an aura of pity and disdain. The headquarters rumor mill openly questioned how long he would remain in command once the official investigation was over—and what poor infantry officer would be tapped to take up his guidon and take command of Dragon Company? The four battalion commanders filed into the briefing room and stood behind their assigned seats. Silence fell over the room as the brigade command sergeant major entered and took up a position flanking the door.

“The brigade commander!” the command sergeant major shouted. All talk ceased as the room stood to attention. Colonel Townsend strode in, his collapsible pointer extended and in hand. His tall and muscular frame, coupled with his coal-black skin, earned him the nickname “Blade” from the brigade’s rank and file. A slight paunch testified to too many meals in the mess hall, too many sleepless nights, and too many skipped workouts during the last months in Iraq.

Townsend tapped the blank projection screen with his pointer and announced, “Be seated.”

Those in the room took their seats to the sound of dozens of pens clicking open. Major Hibou dashed into the room in a half crouch and took a seat in the first row.

The screen lit up with a slide showing Brown and O’Neal’s photo, titled
Dustwun
. Whoever had made the slide had used their public affairs photos, their stoic faces showing in sharp contrast to the fear and uncertainty carried by
Dustwun
—Duty Status: Whereabouts Unknown. Since Operation Iraqi Freedom wasn’t a war declared by Congress, the simpler and more eponymous terms like “missing in action” or “prisoner of war” weren’t officially used.

“It’s been almost three days since our Soldiers went missing.” Townsend kept his tone level as he looked over the room. “Three days that this brigade has used to move heaven and earth to find them, without any success. Now we finally have a solid lead on their location.” Murmurs of surprise rippled across the room.

Joe canted his head toward Ritter, doing his best to appear focused on Colonel Townsend, and mumbled from the side of his mouth, “You know anything about this?”

Ritter shook his head.

The screen behind Townsend changed to an aerial shot of a decrepit industrial building that hugged the bank of the Euphrates River. Bare girders and mounds of concrete wove through the building like graffiti. Ritter couldn’t decide whether the building was falling apart or had never been finished.

“The Russians never managed to finish this power plant, but that didn’t stop al-Qaeda from moving in and setting up shop,” Townsend said, smacking the screen for emphasis. “Our sources are certain that al-Qaeda has our men in one of the few completed buildings. These same sources assure us that al-Qaeda won’t move them until our lockdown is over.” The slide show switched to an overlay of the power plant, complete with unit symbols, axis of advance, and the myriad of graphic symbols used in Army operational planning. The brigade was going to attack the power plant—and soon.

Colonel Townsend stepped aside as Lieutenant Colonel Reynolds approached the screen and dictated the operations order to the assembled officers. Ritter turned his attention to Major Hibou, who sat hunched over in his chair. Coupled with his small stature, Hibou looked like a scolded child next to the rest of the brigade’s senior officers. He looked like a man life had defeated.

Jennifer leaned across her husband and whispered to Ritter and Davis, “I’m just a captain, but aren’t we supposed to get a rundown on the enemy before the maneuver instructions?”

“That’s right,” Ritter said.

“Hibou doesn’t have his notecards. What’s he going to say?” Jennifer asked. After enough operations orders, the briefing habits of every senior staff officer were well known.

“Maybe he isn’t going to say anything,” Ritter mumbled as a sickening realization crept over him.

Cindy leaned over, pressing her shoulder against Ritter. “We don’t know how many al-Qaeda are waiting for us in there or even where they’re hiding. What kind of plan is this?”

“A bad one.” Ritter exhaled slowly and stared at the disinterested Major Hibou.

Ritter knocked on the door to Major Hibou’s office. He tolerated the silence in Hibou’s office for three deep breaths before raising his hand to knock again.

“Come in,” Hibou said.

As he let himself in, Ritter had to lift the entire door by its handle to realign the hinges. Like most of the brigade headquarters, office construction was haphazard. The overriding belief that the war would end sooner rather than later was a wet blanket on any major construction project. Why take the time and spend the money to build a respectable workspace when it would all go back to the Iraqis? Hibou’s office—Ritter thought of it as more of a broom closet—had enough room for a plywood two-foot-by-four-foot desk, a small bookcase stuffed with unused Army manuals, and two computer screens. Hibou sat at the desk, bathed in the cloud-gray light from his screens. A small pyramid of empty energy drink cans kept a precarious balance at the end of his desk.

Hibou sat back and motioned to an empty folding chair. “Hello, Eric. Help you with something?” Hibou rested a forearm across his eyes and crossed his ankles.

Ritter opened the chair and sat. “Sir, it’s the sources for this mission.” Ritter pulled several folded sheets from his cargo pocket and laid them on the desk. Each sheet of paper had several sentences bolded in yellow highlights. Hibou didn’t move.

“Go on,” Hibou said.

“These aren’t recruited sources that have given good information in the past. All of this is from people who just walked into a patrol base and said they have information about the missing Soldiers. There must be dozens of reports like this, but—”

“What’s different about these particular reports?” Hibou asked. Ritter felt a flush of anger at the question. Was Hibou setting him up for a “gotcha”?

“They all say the same thing, that al-Qaeda took them to the power plant after the abduction and hasn’t moved them since. And that some insurgent named Mukhtar is in charge of the whole mess.” Ritter reached for the reports, ready to continue his case.

“That is enough intelligence to justify this mission,” Hibou said as he lifted his arm from his eyes and stretched both arms over his head. His eyes were red with exhaustion and defeat.

“But, sir, this could be the same guy going to three different bases! We don’t even have contact information for him to ask follow-up questions. How can we take him with us to identify the building where they’re being held if we can’t have the source with us on the mission?” Ritter demanded.

Hibou ended his stretch and hunched forward, arms resting on his thighs. “I made this same argument to the division commander earlier today, and he just about fired me.”

Ritter’s brows squeezed together in confusion at Hibou’s admission.

“Why? If we’re going to send Soldiers into harm’s way, we should—”

Hibou cut him off with a raised hand. “Eric, you’re a junior captain and not entirely…well versed on Big Army politics. This whole situation with O’Neal and Brown is tragic, and of course we’ll do everything we can to find them, but there’s another issue.”

“That being?”

“It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing that
hajji
got the drop on Shelton’s men. Embarrassing that two men are missing, and we have no good leads on their location. The Army is a small world, and your reputation precedes you. Everyone from Shelton up to the division commander is now tainted.” Hibou turned his head toward a sheet of paper tacked to the wall, a satellite photo of the power plant and surrounding farmlands. “To erase that taint, we’re going to go on the offensive. Show that we’re capable of massive and deliberate action; show that we’re not a bunch of screw-ups.”

“There’s no actionable intelligence, or even good intelligence, suggesting that our guys are in there. Why can’t we make that case to Colonel Townsend?” Ritter failed to hide an incredulous tone as he crossed his arms.

“If you, or I, fight this mission, we’ll spend the rest of this deployment monitoring the mess hall and get a career-ending eval report for our trouble. Career suicide. You get me?” Hibou perked up as he spoke.

Ritter grew heated as an oft-repeated rant came to his lips. “It will end a career to speak the truth? Isn’t this how we ended up in Iraq in the first place? The intelligence types in DC didn’t stand up to—”

“Stop!” Hibou’s command came out as a squawk. His shoulders sank, striking Ritter as a man resigned to his role as the scapegoat. Ritter shut his mouth; the back-and-forth of this discussion was now over. “There’s one of two ways this mission will end in the next day or so: operational success or intelligence failure. If we find them, then Lieutenant Colonel Reynolds can write himself up for another award, and we can get back to the war.”

Hibou reached for his computer monitor and turned on the screen, displaying a half-finished memorandum for record on official letterhead. “If we find nothing—a dry hole—and this comes back on me for shoddy due diligence…then at least I lodged my grievances in an official matter.” He turned the screen off and shook his head. “Shame, isn’t it?”

“What is, sir?” Ritter asked.

“That I have to play these stupid cover-your-ass games while those men are out there…waiting for us to find them. But this is a zero-defects war.”

Hibou pressed his lips together and drummed his fingers on the desktop as Ritter spoke.

“Can we convince the commander to delay for a few days? We could turn up a more credible lead somewhere else...maybe prove that the intelligence driving this mission is bogus.”

“Do you know someone who could provide this miracle intelligence?”

Ritter maintained his poker face as his mind raced. There was no option to make discrete inquiries to the right people. The Caliban Program didn’t officially exist, and once his tenure ended, his communication channels back to the group were to be annihilated as a matter of policy. Besides, kidnapped Soldiers weren’t something Caliban would concern itself with.

“I’m sorry, sir. What do you mean?” Ritter kept his micro expressions in check as Hibou scrutinized him. The slightest twitch of the eyes or lips could signal deception, and Ritter wanted to keep Hibou’s trust. There was no way Hibou could know anything for sure. The backstop in his records was foolproof, and he had never spoken of the Program since he left.

He must be fishing for information, Ritter thought. If he knew about the Program, he would never breathe a word of it out in the open.

Hibou slid open a desk drawer packed with manila folders. His fingers danced up the handwritten names until he pulled Ritter’s file from the drawer and placed it on the desktop. He pulled out the one-page bio sheet common to all Army officers. Ritter’s picture in the green class-A uniform took up the lower right corner.

“When I heard you were reassigned to us, I was rather surprised.”

Ritter doubted Hibou had been half as surprised as he was. Before arriving in Iraq, Ritter had been assigned to an air-assault brigade at Fort Campbell, a unit not slated for deployment until the end of the year. Without explanation, orders came down, transferring Ritter to the brigade, which was already in Iraq. It was the Army administrative equivalent of a lightning bolt from a clear-blue sky. His chain of command had fought to keep Ritter, but whoever had cut the orders was immune to persuasion.

“You have combat experience,” Hibou continued, reading from the bio sheet, “native Arabic speaker, graduate of the captain’s course…But you didn’t finish the officer’s basic course at Fort Huachuca.”

Ritter felt a bit of relief; he’d told this lie many times.

Hibou lifted the bio closer to his face and squinted. “Says you were assigned to the European command for several years as your first duty assignment. Odd since you joined the Army right after 9/11.”

Ritter nodded. “I was selected for a study-abroad program through the Sorbonne in Paris. The personnel clerks don’t know how to code it and—”

Hibou shook his head, halting Ritter’s explanation. “Do you remember Captain Schultz? Second Lieutenant Schultz at the time you were at Huachuca? He’s the intelligence officer for Shelton’s battalion.”

Ritter didn’t answer. His eyes crept up and to the left, the normally unconscious body language sign for memory recall. Ritter remembered Schultz as a borderline idiot and had done all he could to avoid him once he’d learned the two were in the same brigade.

“Schultz remembers you. He remembered you were at the lieutenant’s course for a week. Then you vanished from the face of the earth.” Hibou leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Naturally, this led to some questions from a curious bunch of cherry lieutenants, questions the course instructors couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer. It’s like you never existed. Then there’s your masked reports from your time at European command.”

Hibou paused, baiting Ritter to fill the silence with an explanation, but Ritter kept his poker face.

“After a decade and a half in military intelligence, I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Black ops, protected status in the personnel system, units with very odd or boring names. Experienced Soldiers with particular skills get into those units, but not some so-new-he-squeaks lieutenant. What were you doing? Do you have any contacts who can help us find our guys?” Hibou leaned back as he finished, hope and curiosity in his eyes.

Ritter debated his response. Hibou’s analysis of Ritter’s career was annoyingly correct. Ritter knew the paper work supporting his official back story was in order and was irrefutable. A flat-out denial would insult Hibou’s intelligence, but the truth was impossible. To speak of the Program would endanger both Ritter and Hibou. Ritter decided a nonanswer would have to make do.

“Sir, if I was ever a part of some black project—I certainly couldn’t speak of it.”

Hibou’s face twisted in annoyance at Ritter’s response. He slapped both palms on his lap. “No, of course you couldn’t. Forget I asked. But there is one more thing.”

“That being?”

“Both Captains Mattingly, Joe and Jennifer, are assigned to the mission—she to handle any logistics issues and he to handle detainees. As you can imagine, having a married couple on—”

“I’ll go,” Ritter said, no further explanation needed.

“Thank you. Who should sit this one out?”

Ritter thought for a moment. “Joe. He can stay back and process any detainees. Plus, my Arabic—that’s one less interpreter we have to drag along.” With any large mission, any “enablers,” military-dog handlers, combat photographers, civilian journalists, or unarmed interpreters decreased the number of combat Soldiers available. There were only so many seats in a convoy or in an aircraft. For every enabler added to the mission, an infantryman was invariably dropped due to lack of room. A commander could bring all the mission support staff he needed but end up with no dedicated trigger pullers to accomplish the mission. “Enablers” was a contradiction in terms.

Thank you. They don’t know anything about this, and let’s keep it that way. Last thing I need is for Joe to take this as an ego hit and create a giant pissing contest,” Hibou said as he rifled through the operations order and crossed out Joe’s name, writing in Ritter’s name on top. “You have your Combat Action Badge; no one will think you’re out sniffing for medals.”

“Let’s hope not. Anything else, sir?”

Hibou shook his head. “Stay safe.”

Ritter nodded and left the office.